Steam is a bad comparison. Steam is invasive, and if you buy a game that uses Steam, you do need Steam to play the game.
If you buy Galciv2 on CD, however, you don't need Stardock Central to install it. And while you need the CD key to get patches, updates and extra stuff, you can get them manually if you really hate SDC. Stardock Central just makes it much easier to get patches and other updates. That's really all it does.
The Netherlands usually use US fighters (F104, a slightly adapted F5, and currently the F16), and it has always worked out quite well. So, looking for the next fighter jet, the JSF seemed to be the obvious choice, although a lot of politicians actually prefered the Eurofighter, because it's good enough and probably cheaper. But we paid $800 million for the right to help develop some parts of JSF, and now it turns out the JSF is going to be more expensive and sell less. I suspect we'll end up with the Eurofighter anyway, and the $800 million will have been mostly wasted.
But if you ask me, I don't know why we even need jet fighters at all. It's not like our neighbours are ever going to attack us, and we'll never be going to war without them and/or the US anyway. And compared to them, I doubt our tiny airforce helps much. If you ask me, we'd better concentrate on what we're good at: submarines, frigates and special forces that can operate without killing everybody in sight and upsetting the local population.
Without managers those workers would have nothing to do. They need direction and enablers.
No they don't. Workers have taken care of themselves for millennia. The managers just make the workers work more efficiently, reaping big profits for themselves and their superiors. It's only because the rich monopolised the means of production that workers now need them.
Construction workers have foremen to direct them. The foremen, if they are part of a larger construction agency, have bosses over them which direct them where to go based on the sales made by salesmen.
And yet houses have been built for 8000 years or more.
Yes, managers certainly add value (most of the time, anyway), but it's still the workers that do the actual work, and they have done that long before there even were managers. Managers make themselves necessary, but they really need workers more than the workers need them.
And I'd like to see it, name some really rich dudes (we'll class really rich as billionaires in todays dollars, adjusted for time) who weren't or aren't more or less jerk offs.
The rich may do a lot of work, but what do they actually produce? Food is grown by farmers, cars are constructed by factory workers, houses are built by construction workers. The managers may enable their work, make the labourers work more efficiently or sell their work for more profit, but even if they do that (which not all actually do), they still don't do the actual work itself.
And then there's the entire financial industry (and especially the stockmarket) that spends long hours just shifting money around for the profit of the owner of that money, without ever producing anything new.
Without workers, you have nothing. Without managers, perhaps the work will be a bit harder or less efficient. Or maybe not.
You're talking about keeping bad coders happy. I'm talking about keeping good coders happy.
Like I said: don't use experimental techniques in production systems. But that has nothing to do with keeping your good coders happy. Keeping good coders happy is simply good business sense. If you don't do that, the good coders will leave, and you'll be stuck with the bad coders. And then how are you going to finish that important system you were working on? In businesses where software quality matters, good coders are the company's biggest asset.
I'm sorry, but even as a programmer I can see that having your program work and be maintainable is much, much more important than allowing a developer to play with new toys.
Well, duh. Maintainability is one of the most important considerations when building software. But that doesn't mean that firing your best people because they don't fit into the mold is a very good idea.
I'm not arguing against maintainability, I'm arguing against the claim that there's no place for prima-donnas in programming.
And playing with new toys can actually be very important if you want your company to stay innovative and competetive. Just don't include those toys in your production systems before you know what you're doing.
Which causes management to move development to the subcontinent, where such prima donna behaviour is not coddled. You take the man's money, you play by the man's rules. If you can't return value in excess of your salary on those terms, expect to be asking someone if they'd like to Biggie Size that soon.
That's exactly the wrong approach to take with talent. The job of a manager is to get the most out of the talent he has at his disposal, not to stifle and downsize it.
In software engineering, the difference in productivity between good programmers and bad programmers can be huge. It's easily possible for someone to be ten times as productive as someone else. And since he's unlikely to get paid ten times as much, you'd better do whatever you can to keep him happy.
And even if he's not 10 times as productive, a smart manager will still make sure he keeps his coders happy. Happiness is good for productivity.
That's probably because this is aimed at developers. It shows in which areas they need to improve. Once Wine is equal to XP in a test, they're done, and should focus on other areas. From that point of view, it makes sense to lump all successes in one category, and distinguish between levels of failures.
This benchmark isn't a Wine vs. XP contest, it's a test to see if Wine is at least as good as XP, and it failed in 81 categories, which means there's still some work to be done.
I've got a whole bunch of.html files in a folder that's readable by anyone with a browser. If I understand the RIAA correctly, I'm a criminal now, despite the fact that I'm the copyright holder of these files?
Does the RIAA have a website? This sounds like their most stupid proposal ever.
Was? It still is. More so than it used to be, in fact. The 3rd edition tended to encourage jack-of-all-trade characters with good DX and IQ, and lots of skills with only a few points. The 4th edition has more expensive DX and IQ, while it's cheaper to have high skills, making specialisation (as well as ST and HT) more attractive.
They also cleaned up the ads/disads system. Looks much better now.
Steve Jackson is in the process of creating his own MMO based on GURPS. Maybe this will be the first, real archetype-free MMO we'll see on the market.
I'm looking forward to it, but the most important thing to make a MMORPG archetype-free, is to make sure that there is extreme variety in the kind of things you can do there. If every quest culminates in a fight where you need to dish out tons of damage and heal your own damage as quickly as possible, you're still going to get tanks and healers.
Your problems with a classless system are easily fixed by making the system, despite its absense of classes, still reward specialisation. That way, a group with a fighter and a healer would be more effective than a group with two fighter/healer hybrids, and if they think the healer can afford to do a bit of fighting too, that's still possible.
Ofcourse IMO the EQ-style MMORPGs have as little to do with real RPGs as a game like Nethack. Give me some intrigue, improvisation and deep roleplay instead. (Alas! Computers aren't smart enough for that.)
I'd expect a generic RPG to allow you play whatever you want, instead of forcing you into specific archetypes around which the game has been designed.
What if I want to play a jack-of-all-trades? Someone who can fight and heal (but not as good as a specialist)? Or, suppose it's not just a hack&slash game but a real RPG, and I don't want to fight or heal at all, but be good something totally different?
Well, that's the principle. Since 90% of the web surfers (less on tech-savvy sites) use IE, I suppose explicitly supporting the latest version of IE is a good idea. But other than that:
Stick to the standards.
Use the correct (X)HTML declaration and obey it.
Do all layout in CSS, don't muck around with tables (except for the 3-columns problem; there tables are acceptable, IMO).
Make sure it's still readable without CSS.
Don't use javascript unless you really have to. Try to make sure it still works without javascript.
Don't use flash, except for content. Using Flash for navigation is really, really bad, but if flash animations and games are the main purpose of your site, it's obviously okay to use it. You're targeting a smaller audience anyway.
Give every image an alt attribute. If it's a meaningless image, give it an alt="". Blind people like not hearing "image, image" all the time.
Don't use absolute font sizes; declare a "font-size: x%" in the body (I've read somewhere that 76% looks the same in all browsers) and use %s or ems from there. Forefox may be smart enough to change absolute font sizes, but IE isn't.
Avoid browser-specific hacks, unless you really, really have to. (Meaning IE is being stupid again.)
I'm sure there's a lot more that every webdesigner should know, but this is a nice start.
We send white collar criminals to jail because while jail probably isn't much of a deterrent for your average bank robber, rapist or murderer (but might be what *those* type of criminals deserve), serving jail time can be VERY frightening for white collar criminals.
Sounds like the real punishment for white collar criminals is being forced to spend time with blue collar criminals.
Additionally, DJs do not need to pay the liscence if they are playing from CD or vinyl.
And that's exactly what makes this such a questionable license. What does it matter how the DJ plays the music? The point is that music is being played in a club (or wherever). It makes sense that royalties should be paid for that, no matter what medium the music is stored on. It does not make sense to crack down only on mp3s.
To me, this doesn't sound like a reasonable license, but like "cracking down on mp3s wherever we can".
I'm gonna read a good book during the trip. In my family, the second day of christmas is a traditional day for board games. Small, German-style ones. The third day of christmas is for a big Anglosaxon-style game, like 1830 or something like that. But perhaps I'll bring Arkham Horror with me this time (although it's not quite big enough). The rest of the week I may go back home and play some more games with friends.
Slashdot Mirror
Steam is a bad comparison. Steam is invasive, and if you buy a game that uses Steam, you do need Steam to play the game.
If you buy Galciv2 on CD, however, you don't need Stardock Central to install it. And while you need the CD key to get patches, updates and extra stuff, you can get them manually if you really hate SDC. Stardock Central just makes it much easier to get patches and other updates. That's really all it does.
The Netherlands usually use US fighters (F104, a slightly adapted F5, and currently the F16), and it has always worked out quite well. So, looking for the next fighter jet, the JSF seemed to be the obvious choice, although a lot of politicians actually prefered the Eurofighter, because it's good enough and probably cheaper. But we paid $800 million for the right to help develop some parts of JSF, and now it turns out the JSF is going to be more expensive and sell less. I suspect we'll end up with the Eurofighter anyway, and the $800 million will have been mostly wasted.
But if you ask me, I don't know why we even need jet fighters at all. It's not like our neighbours are ever going to attack us, and we'll never be going to war without them and/or the US anyway. And compared to them, I doubt our tiny airforce helps much. If you ask me, we'd better concentrate on what we're good at: submarines, frigates and special forces that can operate without killing everybody in sight and upsetting the local population.
I'd like to see a horde of wayward day laborers built a passenger jet.
I'd like to see a horde of managers build a passenger jet.
Without managers those workers would have nothing to do. They need direction and enablers.
No they don't. Workers have taken care of themselves for millennia. The managers just make the workers work more efficiently, reaping big profits for themselves and their superiors. It's only because the rich monopolised the means of production that workers now need them.
Construction workers have foremen to direct them. The foremen, if they are part of a larger construction agency, have bosses over them which direct them where to go based on the sales made by salesmen.
And yet houses have been built for 8000 years or more.
Yes, managers certainly add value (most of the time, anyway), but it's still the workers that do the actual work, and they have done that long before there even were managers. Managers make themselves necessary, but they really need workers more than the workers need them.
The founders of Google?
The rich may do a lot of work, but what do they actually produce? Food is grown by farmers, cars are constructed by factory workers, houses are built by construction workers. The managers may enable their work, make the labourers work more efficiently or sell their work for more profit, but even if they do that (which not all actually do), they still don't do the actual work itself.
And then there's the entire financial industry (and especially the stockmarket) that spends long hours just shifting money around for the profit of the owner of that money, without ever producing anything new.
Without workers, you have nothing. Without managers, perhaps the work will be a bit harder or less efficient. Or maybe not.
I once read that under Saddam, Iraq had more female professors than the Netherlands.
I'm not sure about which of the two countries this is supposed to be saying something.
You're talking about keeping bad coders happy. I'm talking about keeping good coders happy.
Like I said: don't use experimental techniques in production systems. But that has nothing to do with keeping your good coders happy. Keeping good coders happy is simply good business sense. If you don't do that, the good coders will leave, and you'll be stuck with the bad coders. And then how are you going to finish that important system you were working on? In businesses where software quality matters, good coders are the company's biggest asset.
I'm sorry, but even as a programmer I can see that having your program work and be maintainable is much, much more important than allowing a developer to play with new toys.
Well, duh. Maintainability is one of the most important considerations when building software. But that doesn't mean that firing your best people because they don't fit into the mold is a very good idea.
I'm not arguing against maintainability, I'm arguing against the claim that there's no place for prima-donnas in programming.
And playing with new toys can actually be very important if you want your company to stay innovative and competetive. Just don't include those toys in your production systems before you know what you're doing.
Which causes management to move development to the subcontinent, where such prima donna behaviour is not coddled. You take the man's money, you play by the man's rules. If you can't return value in excess of your salary on those terms, expect to be asking someone if they'd like to Biggie Size that soon.
That's exactly the wrong approach to take with talent. The job of a manager is to get the most out of the talent he has at his disposal, not to stifle and downsize it.
In software engineering, the difference in productivity between good programmers and bad programmers can be huge. It's easily possible for someone to be ten times as productive as someone else. And since he's unlikely to get paid ten times as much, you'd better do whatever you can to keep him happy.
And even if he's not 10 times as productive, a smart manager will still make sure he keeps his coders happy. Happiness is good for productivity.
That's probably because this is aimed at developers. It shows in which areas they need to improve. Once Wine is equal to XP in a test, they're done, and should focus on other areas. From that point of view, it makes sense to lump all successes in one category, and distinguish between levels of failures.
This benchmark isn't a Wine vs. XP contest, it's a test to see if Wine is at least as good as XP, and it failed in 81 categories, which means there's still some work to be done.
XHTML is easier for me. My content is in XML, so using XSL to convert it to XHTML is easy. HTML has a mild tendency to break in this setup.
But in support of the "something will filter through" position, I offer you this:
http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen&svnum=1 0&hl=zh-CN&lr=&cr=countryCN&start=80&sa=N
I see two tank pictures there.
I've got a whole bunch of .html files in a folder that's readable by anyone with a browser. If I understand the RIAA correctly, I'm a criminal now, despite the fact that I'm the copyright holder of these files?
Does the RIAA have a website? This sounds like their most stupid proposal ever.
that's why GURPS was so generic
Was? It still is. More so than it used to be, in fact. The 3rd edition tended to encourage jack-of-all-trade characters with good DX and IQ, and lots of skills with only a few points. The 4th edition has more expensive DX and IQ, while it's cheaper to have high skills, making specialisation (as well as ST and HT) more attractive. They also cleaned up the ads/disads system. Looks much better now.
Steve Jackson is in the process of creating his own MMO based on GURPS. Maybe this will be the first, real archetype-free MMO we'll see on the market.
I'm looking forward to it, but the most important thing to make a MMORPG archetype-free, is to make sure that there is extreme variety in the kind of things you can do there. If every quest culminates in a fight where you need to dish out tons of damage and heal your own damage as quickly as possible, you're still going to get tanks and healers.
Your problems with a classless system are easily fixed by making the system, despite its absense of classes, still reward specialisation. That way, a group with a fighter and a healer would be more effective than a group with two fighter/healer hybrids, and if they think the healer can afford to do a bit of fighting too, that's still possible.
Ofcourse IMO the EQ-style MMORPGs have as little to do with real RPGs as a game like Nethack. Give me some intrigue, improvisation and deep roleplay instead. (Alas! Computers aren't smart enough for that.)
I'd expect a generic RPG to allow you play whatever you want, instead of forcing you into specific archetypes around which the game has been designed.
What if I want to play a jack-of-all-trades? Someone who can fight and heal (but not as good as a specialist)? Or, suppose it's not just a hack&slash game but a real RPG, and I don't want to fight or heal at all, but be good something totally different?
According to H.P. Lovecraft, we found Pluto only because aliens wanted us to.
Well, that's the principle. Since 90% of the web surfers (less on tech-savvy sites) use IE, I suppose explicitly supporting the latest version of IE is a good idea. But other than that:
I'm sure there's a lot more that every webdesigner should know, but this is a nice start.
Wait, am I really the first to welcome our new RoboCop overlords? I wonder why...
So where do I sign up for the rights to the next American war?
And does anyone know who holds the rights to the previous wars? CNN? Spielberg?
We send white collar criminals to jail because while jail probably isn't much of a deterrent for your average bank robber, rapist or murderer (but might be what *those* type of criminals deserve), serving jail time can be VERY frightening for white collar criminals.
Sounds like the real punishment for white collar criminals is being forced to spend time with blue collar criminals.
Additionally, DJs do not need to pay the liscence if they are playing from CD or vinyl.
And that's exactly what makes this such a questionable license. What does it matter how the DJ plays the music? The point is that music is being played in a club (or wherever). It makes sense that royalties should be paid for that, no matter what medium the music is stored on. It does not make sense to crack down only on mp3s.
To me, this doesn't sound like a reasonable license, but like "cracking down on mp3s wherever we can".
This may surprise you, but not everyone in the world has a driver's license at age 16.
Correct. I'm 31 and still don't need a driver's license. Living in a city helps a lot, though.
I'm gonna read a good book during the trip. In my family, the second day of christmas is a traditional day for board games. Small, German-style ones. The third day of christmas is for a big Anglosaxon-style game, like 1830 or something like that. But perhaps I'll bring Arkham Horror with me this time (although it's not quite big enough). The rest of the week I may go back home and play some more games with friends.