It depends on the website. Many websites do have the behavior you describe. But some will just delete your session cookie from your browser (without deleting it from the server) which would let the attacker keep using it.
I've been working on a personalized news site, if anyone wants to see what the future looks like:) The site learns what you like (based on up/downvoting, like Reddit) and gives you only the news you want to see.
It would probably interest some Slashdot readers (it filters Slashdot, among other things, so you only see the good stuff) and it works like an RSS reader even if you don't trust the recommendations. It's at http://newsbrane.com/
Except I'm under Linux and no ipv6 sites seem to work for me (default Ubuntu installation). If Apple is making it work by default, well, that's better than what Linux has been doing.
Has anyone studied the possibilities of programming using bidirectional logic?
Feynman has. In his _Lectures on Computing_, he talks about the ramifications of bidirectional gates (reversible computing, but with a cost in complexity) in the context of entropy conservation. It's pretty interesting stuff.
Why does it seem like most open-source projects have abandoned the idea of documentation for a wiki? Is it just because we developers are lazy and figure if we put up a wiki, we won't have to do any documentation because we think users will write the documentation for us? Or did I miss some great open-source revelation that thou shalt use wiki? Maybe I just misplaced that memo.
I don't think this is the case -- I think it's natural evolution. Wikis are essentially "open source documentation." I think generally maintainers used to accept patches to their documentation, but have recently moved to putting that stuff up on a wiki. And this is understandable -- it's much easier for the maintainer to let people simply edit the wiki than to accept patches. (On the other hand, people still generally accept patches for code, because it's much more dangerous to let people commit code willy-nilly than to let them write documentation).
A responsible maintainer will spend the same amount of effort on wiki documentation that he would have spent on other forms of documentation -- or perhaps less, since the wiki provides a more convenient framework for formatting and hyperlinking than many other forms of documentation. When a project has little documentation on their site but somebody put up a wiki, I tend to think the maintainer probably wasn't inclined to write any documentation in the first place, wiki or no. I guess the point is that wikis are just a framework for writing and storing documentation and nobody intended them to be a replacement.
I bought a PB17" in 2004, and it's unpleasantly hot when I'm using the processor heavily. One thing that helped a lot was changing the power management setting to "automatic" rather than "maximum" even on AC power -- now I can use it on my lap just fine and it only becomes unpleasant when I'm doing processor intensive work for long periods of time. I don't think that's a battery issue, though.
What I'd really like to see is a game where you are in FPS mode but the entire game is Oblivion style, swords and shields, some bows, all controlled by the motion. that means you can hold the sword in one hand and swing it, but at the same time guard. And the best part would be the shield should basically cover your view, and hit detection on the shield should be spot on. So if a guy swings from the left, and your shield is on the right you can block it, but at the same time you can attack back, however it wouldn't be a strong attack in game, no matter how you swing your wiimote.
This concept was actually a project I worked on called Swordplay last year in school. Unfortunately, we didn't get to do too much with the physics (not enough time) but we did demonstrate the basic control scheme of sword-and-shield, as well as bow-and-arrow. It's played in a VR cave with two 6-DOF controllers for the left and right hand, and it worked really well. Unfortunately it's not an experience that most people can have, because most people don't have a VR cave, but we're hoping the Wii at least gives people similar experiences.
I feel the Free software/open source community should vigorously discourage any restrictions on usage, rather than distribution, of the software.
It already does... this license doesn't count as Free software under almost any definition (e.g., Debian Social Contract). As such it's not part of the Free software community.
Well, it sounds like you're suggesting this because it would relieve social pressure to play at the right times. The thing is that Blizzard benefits from social pressure, because it keeps more people playing the game.
But from a purely game-balance perspective, it's actually very difficult to do raid scaling properly -- it seems likely that there would always be an optimal number of people to do it with so that the participants maximize their loot. How you would go about balancing this? You can't just scale the HP and loot tables (like Diablo II) because the encounter would become easier and easier with more people (since you have more healers and stuff) -- it would just take a long time. You have to scale up the boss's DPS as well. But you can't scale it too high or he just one-shots the tank every time...
The thing I don't get is how you distinguish the miniscule delay introduced with this system from the much larger delay between subsequent keypresses the user makes. I don't think most people type at such a consistent rate that you could plug this in and immediately start observing traffic. (I wouldn't be too surprised if you could do it after observing the person's typing habits for a long time... but that would be different for every person, so most likely impractical.)
First I had to install the compilers that did not installed in the first round, ok compilers are a specific need and should not be installed in the generic desktop instalation, fedora also do not install those by default. But ubuntu did not gave me a choice to install them. The second head ache was with compiling gnome stuff, I had to install every gnome library 'dev' package by hand, a never ending task since there is aways another one that you forgot...
For future reference, it's pretty easy to get all the build dependencies for a specific package using apt, using "apt-get build-dep packagename". And I definitely have gcc installed through Ubuntu, so I don't know why you say "ubuntu did not give me a choice to install them".
I find that unless you are building mission critical process control systems that need to be extremely bug free, you are better off using the Debian testing version than the official release, particularly if you have newer hardware that you want to be able to use.
You can do this if you like, I guess, although I would feel a little uncomfortable: My rule is "stable whenever it matters to someone else". I use testing on my own machines, but I've definitely found myself in situations where testing was broken (usually just due to large upgrades like libc6 or something, but still, more broken than I wanted to deal with) -- or, if the whole archive isn't broken, you can still get upgrades forced on you that change the behavior of the system in unpredictable ways and make you unhappy. Generally, the increased stability of "stable" is worth it to me and my users when I'm doing any sort of administration.
It's useful to note that in the uncommon-but-not-rare case where you or a user wants a package upgrade from testing or later, you can very easily use apt to pull down the source and build-dep, compile it for your system and install it as a package with very little hassle. Do this for the packages where it matters, and you have a mostly stable system with the features you need.
After "abracadabra" and "eval", it counts from 0-256 in big-endian 32-bit words.
Right before "abracadabra", there's 4096 bytes of weird looking patterned data. I opened it as "raw" 64x64 indexed in Gimp and got the same mysterious "GBV"/"CBV" image as can be extracted from the GIF a little later in the file!
I agree that the Mac application install process is problematic, but I really like the.app system, and I think I can explain some of the drawbacks that you listed above:
1. The program is a standard.app folder, which means it has to come in some sort of wrapping, such as dmg. User opens the dmg file and sees their app, opens it, and sticks it on the dock. The app is never really "installed", but takes much longer to start up and run, and takes up a bit more space, than if the user had copied it to the Applications folder like they were supposed to. 2. Having 50-100 downloaded images loop-mounted all the time can't be good for your computer or your boot time. It's worse if you're a smart user and dragged the program to your Applications folder, but never bothered to eject and throw away the image. You now have two copies of the program for no real reason.
Well, for most people, the.dmg ends up on the desktop. I think most users who download applications learn some variation of the process -- you download an app, run it from the.dmg, and see if you like it. If you like it, then you drag it out of the dmg into the applications folder, and eject/throw away the dmg. The drawback is that Apple never really tells you that this is the way to do it -- you just sorta learn it, I guess.
3. When you decide to uninstall an Application, you drag it to the trash, thus leaving all the cruft in your home directory completely untouched. This also means that you can no longer do the trick of uninstalling and then reinstalling an application in order to completely wipe out the settings, which can be useful if the settings are so badly screwed up that you can't change them from within the application anymore.
This was one thing that took me a while to learn when I started using Macs: deleting the prefs file. Almost always, the app will store its state in a file in ~/Library/Preferences, and you can move away the file for your app and see it start up again just like new. For some reason, I get the feeling that old-time Mac users are used to this process in some shape or form. I don't know where you're supposed to hear about it, though... I eventually picked it up reading macosxhints.com.
4. As far as I know, dmg has no internal compression, which means you often see apps packaged as.dmg.gz or.dmg.bz2, or even.zip or.tar.gz/bz2. Every one of these formats leaves behind traces that you must pick up, often more than a downloaded.exe on Windows. Take the.dmg.gz -- you have to eject, then delete the dmg and the gz file.
This one boggles my mind because I know that dmgs DO have internal compression, and yet I see this all the time as well. Maybe the compression is just not very good, or something. Actually, I think it might be optional, now that I think about it... good question.
5. An Application package isn't really an installer anyway. If you need things installed somewhere else, or if you need a script run on install, you either have to do it every startup (making sure you haven't "installed" already), or you have to make an installer.
I think Apple encourages this style of application development -- having a "first-run" code path for your app. That way you can easily move.app files around, between machines, or get rid of your home directory, change users, etc., and everything will still work. The app is not encouraged to store global state -- only state for a particular user.
Mac Packages are nice (.mpkg), but it has all the same drawbacks (dmg, gz, etc), and now there's... 6. No uninstall.
The thing that bugs me is that developers who port apps from Windows-land tend to use them because that's what they're used to, even when they have a stupid app that doesn't need anything installed anywhere special. The
I found the game to be visually beautiful, but I hated playing it. The one "plus" discussed above, the potion thing, really pissed me off, because I always play healers, and they didn't balance for the healer playstyle at all. It's entirely a solo game. Heals and buffs from the beginning of the game really suck.
Example: when you play as a group, there's some amount of shared XP for killing things, but a much larger portion of the XP is given based on the amount of damage you dealt. Furthermore, quest credit is given when you get the final blow on a monster. So you really have to spec for damage.
It was painful: when I was playing, at peak hour, there were 10-15 people camping the same spawn at once. Whenever anything spawned, people would rush for it and start whacking it. Since it was the final hit that mattered for quests, everyone wanted to wait until it was almost dead and then time their attacks. Kill stealing was everywhere.
Well, ganking isn't real PvP. I mean, it is PvP, but it's not really fun most of the time. Sure, occasionally you'll run into an equally matched opponent in the world and fight them, and it will be fun. And the grandparent did mention the pvp arenas in STV and DM, which are clearly awesome. So yeah, there is PvP in WoW outside of instances. But it's not really compelling, and you can't rely on it being actually fun.
Compare to Shadowbane, a game based around PvP. Mostly there were big castle sieges, which were tremendously fun because you were defending something you personally cared about -- your own guild's city. There were also bosses with valuable runes, and we would fight other players for the right to keep the rune. And then there were groups of gankers who would go around killing leveling groups, and you had to always be ready to defend yourself against the gankers whenever they might appear. Now that's PvP that you can care about.
On topic, on topic, hmm... Oh yeah, instancing. Shadowbane didn't have instancing and it was great. WoW had instancing and it was only okay (didn't provide me with nearly the fun factor of a non-instanced persistent world). Guild Wars is all instanced... and I like it a lot, but it's the "counter-strike" aspect of its PvP that's fun, rather than the traditional MMO feel. I'm not currently in a guild so I don't really do the bigger, more organized groups in Tombs, but I do the 4v4 random arena and it's loads of fun. I think instancing takes away from the "awesome, I can DO something" feel of the world.
Mostly when you watch an FPS tournament, you are watching the same screen as one player or another (usually they mirror the monitors on a projector or something). I think this isn't really beneficial from the viewer's point of view -- most people don't know the map, so even if you look back and forth between the two screens, you're not going to get any sense of anticipation.
However, maybe what the game needs is an overhead or strategic view. That way the viewers can see things that the players don't -- if someone is hiding behind a corner, we would be able to see that and build the anticipation. Then the scene can cut to a player in order to show the fight better.
This would be even cooler for CTF -- if we can see both flags from above, and the locations of the players, that would be really cool.
The problem, of course, is that games don't generally have an overhead observer mode built in. But maybe that would be worth adding -- it is probably not really very difficult to implement. Then you could have several people manning machines as "cameramen" and then the director can cut between views similar to a real sports game in order to give the best experience. (Maybe have cameras on the players' faces as well. That would be sweet.)
Even worse is when you get the guys that just link to articles with a short summary and let people open up in the comments on that particular blog post.
Well, I know you were being a bit facetious, but I figured I'd point out that this is precisely what I appreciate about slashdot, and the other news sites I visit.
I extract the bias out of news stories I hear, not by expecting the summary of the story to be unbiased, but by reading the comments. People who think the bias is unfair will post. By ANDing all the comments above threshold 3 or so, I get a reasonably accurate picture of the truth, and by XORing them (sorta), I get all the different viewpoints on the subject.
Good question. Probably not trivially; I'm guessing Cedega depends on Linux in important ways. (like the way it presents graphics drivers, sound, etc.) It might be portable, although I doubt it would be easy. Certainly you could dual-boot with Linux and Cedega would run that way...
Hiring someone based on your experience with them in a game doesn't sound at all unreasonable to me. If you interview someone in real life, that's maybe half an hour of talking to them and trying to determine if they're suitable for the job.
When you play with them in a game, although you're not discussing the specific task in question, you are getting to know how well you work with them. In a 5man instance, over perhaps 2 hours, you are probably able to get to know them a hell of a lot better than in that 30 minute interview.
You can also observe how they work with others and how well they listen, and so forth. Do this several times over the course of a few months and you can get a pretty good picture of the person, which is a significant portion of what an interview helps to determine.
I would still interview them, however, because you really want to talk specifically about the job in question and make sure that they know what they're talking about. But in terms of getting to know them in terms of their personal qualities, I honestly can't imagine doing anything better than playing a cooperative game with them.
Really? I hit 60 a couple weeks ago and I like the game a lot more now. It's less, I dunno, 'stressful' (in that I don't feel forced to play and level up), and more fun, because I can hold my own against other level 60s (who used to gank me all the time) and beat them.
I can also play with my friends, who have been 60 for months, and do Dire Maul and pvp with them and stuff. I find that the game is a lot more chill now, and still very interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
It depends on the website. Many websites do have the behavior you describe. But some will just delete your session cookie from your browser (without deleting it from the server) which would let the attacker keep using it.
That's why it's a perfect negative feedback system. Genius.
Oh, and if you want to read about why we built Newsbrane, see http://blog.newsbrane.com/?p=4
I've been working on a personalized news site, if anyone wants to see what the future looks like :) The site learns what you like (based on up/downvoting, like Reddit) and gives you only the news you want to see.
It would probably interest some Slashdot readers (it filters Slashdot, among other things, so you only see the good stuff) and it works like an RSS reader even if you don't trust the recommendations. It's at http://newsbrane.com/
Except I'm under Linux and no ipv6 sites seem to work for me (default Ubuntu installation). If Apple is making it work by default, well, that's better than what Linux has been doing.
Has anyone studied the possibilities of programming using bidirectional logic?
Feynman has. In his _Lectures on Computing_, he talks about the ramifications of bidirectional gates (reversible computing, but with a cost in complexity) in the context of entropy conservation. It's pretty interesting stuff.
I did Slidewalk. We used Python, PyOpenGL for graphics, and Pygame for sound. We definitely preferred it over C++ for the reason you stated.
Why does it seem like most open-source projects have abandoned the idea of documentation for a wiki? Is it just because we developers are lazy and figure if we put up a wiki, we won't have to do any documentation because we think users will write the documentation for us? Or did I miss some great open-source revelation that thou shalt use wiki? Maybe I just misplaced that memo.
I don't think this is the case -- I think it's natural evolution. Wikis are essentially "open source documentation." I think generally maintainers used to accept patches to their documentation, but have recently moved to putting that stuff up on a wiki. And this is understandable -- it's much easier for the maintainer to let people simply edit the wiki than to accept patches. (On the other hand, people still generally accept patches for code, because it's much more dangerous to let people commit code willy-nilly than to let them write documentation).
A responsible maintainer will spend the same amount of effort on wiki documentation that he would have spent on other forms of documentation -- or perhaps less, since the wiki provides a more convenient framework for formatting and hyperlinking than many other forms of documentation. When a project has little documentation on their site but somebody put up a wiki, I tend to think the maintainer probably wasn't inclined to write any documentation in the first place, wiki or no. I guess the point is that wikis are just a framework for writing and storing documentation and nobody intended them to be a replacement.
I hate how Slashdot rarely links to the ACTUAL THING THE ARTICLE IS ABOUT. Lake Express
I bought a PB17" in 2004, and it's unpleasantly hot when I'm using the processor heavily. One thing that helped a lot was changing the power management setting to "automatic" rather than "maximum" even on AC power -- now I can use it on my lap just fine and it only becomes unpleasant when I'm doing processor intensive work for long periods of time. I don't think that's a battery issue, though.
What I'd really like to see is a game where you are in FPS mode but the entire game is Oblivion style, swords and shields, some bows, all controlled by the motion. that means you can hold the sword in one hand and swing it, but at the same time guard. And the best part would be the shield should basically cover your view, and hit detection on the shield should be spot on. So if a guy swings from the left, and your shield is on the right you can block it, but at the same time you can attack back, however it wouldn't be a strong attack in game, no matter how you swing your wiimote.
This concept was actually a project I worked on called Swordplay last year in school. Unfortunately, we didn't get to do too much with the physics (not enough time) but we did demonstrate the basic control scheme of sword-and-shield, as well as bow-and-arrow. It's played in a VR cave with two 6-DOF controllers for the left and right hand, and it worked really well. Unfortunately it's not an experience that most people can have, because most people don't have a VR cave, but we're hoping the Wii at least gives people similar experiences.
I feel the Free software/open source community should vigorously discourage any restrictions on usage, rather than distribution, of the software.
It already does... this license doesn't count as Free software under almost any definition (e.g., Debian Social Contract). As such it's not part of the Free software community.
Well, it sounds like you're suggesting this because it would relieve social pressure to play at the right times. The thing is that Blizzard benefits from social pressure, because it keeps more people playing the game.
But from a purely game-balance perspective, it's actually very difficult to do raid scaling properly -- it seems likely that there would always be an optimal number of people to do it with so that the participants maximize their loot. How you would go about balancing this? You can't just scale the HP and loot tables (like Diablo II) because the encounter would become easier and easier with more people (since you have more healers and stuff) -- it would just take a long time. You have to scale up the boss's DPS as well. But you can't scale it too high or he just one-shots the tank every time...
The thing I don't get is how you distinguish the miniscule delay introduced with this system from the much larger delay between subsequent keypresses the user makes. I don't think most people type at such a consistent rate that you could plug this in and immediately start observing traffic. (I wouldn't be too surprised if you could do it after observing the person's typing habits for a long time... but that would be different for every person, so most likely impractical.)
First I had to install the compilers that did not installed in the first round, ok compilers are a specific need and should not be installed in the generic desktop instalation, fedora also do not install those by default. But ubuntu did not gave me a choice to install them. The second head ache was with compiling gnome stuff, I had to install every gnome library 'dev' package by hand, a never ending task since there is aways another one that you forgot...
For future reference, it's pretty easy to get all the build dependencies for a specific package using apt, using "apt-get build-dep packagename". And I definitely have gcc installed through Ubuntu, so I don't know why you say "ubuntu did not give me a choice to install them".
I find that unless you are building mission critical process control systems that need to be extremely bug free, you are better off using the Debian testing version than the official release, particularly if you have newer hardware that you want to be able to use.
You can do this if you like, I guess, although I would feel a little uncomfortable: My rule is "stable whenever it matters to someone else". I use testing on my own machines, but I've definitely found myself in situations where testing was broken (usually just due to large upgrades like libc6 or something, but still, more broken than I wanted to deal with) -- or, if the whole archive isn't broken, you can still get upgrades forced on you that change the behavior of the system in unpredictable ways and make you unhappy. Generally, the increased stability of "stable" is worth it to me and my users when I'm doing any sort of administration.
It's useful to note that in the uncommon-but-not-rare case where you or a user wants a package upgrade from testing or later, you can very easily use apt to pull down the source and build-dep, compile it for your system and install it as a package with very little hassle. Do this for the packages where it matters, and you have a mostly stable system with the features you need.
Interesting patterns in a hex editor:
After "abracadabra" and "eval", it counts from 0-256 in big-endian 32-bit words.
Right before "abracadabra", there's 4096 bytes of weird looking patterned data. I opened it as "raw" 64x64 indexed in Gimp and got the same mysterious "GBV"/"CBV" image as can be extracted from the GIF a little later in the file!
I agree that the Mac application install process is problematic, but I really like the .app system, and I think I can explain some of the drawbacks that you listed above:
.app folder, which means it has to come in some sort of wrapping, such as dmg. User opens the dmg file and sees their app, opens it, and sticks it on the dock. The app is never really "installed", but takes much longer to start up and run, and takes up a bit more space, than if the user had copied it to the Applications folder like they were supposed to.
.dmg ends up on the desktop. I think most users who download applications learn some variation of the process -- you download an app, run it from the .dmg, and see if you like it. If you like it, then you drag it out of the dmg into the applications folder, and eject/throw away the dmg. The drawback is that Apple never really tells you that this is the way to do it -- you just sorta learn it, I guess.
.dmg.gz or .dmg.bz2, or even .zip or .tar.gz/bz2. Every one of these formats leaves behind traces that you must pick up, often more than a downloaded .exe on Windows. Take the .dmg.gz -- you have to eject, then delete the dmg and the gz file.
.app files around, between machines, or get rid of your home directory, change users, etc., and everything will still work. The app is not encouraged to store global state -- only state for a particular user.
1. The program is a standard
2. Having 50-100 downloaded images loop-mounted all the time can't be good for your computer or your boot time. It's worse if you're a smart user and dragged the program to your Applications folder, but never bothered to eject and throw away the image. You now have two copies of the program for no real reason.
Well, for most people, the
3. When you decide to uninstall an Application, you drag it to the trash, thus leaving all the cruft in your home directory completely untouched. This also means that you can no longer do the trick of uninstalling and then reinstalling an application in order to completely wipe out the settings, which can be useful if the settings are so badly screwed up that you can't change them from within the application anymore.
This was one thing that took me a while to learn when I started using Macs: deleting the prefs file. Almost always, the app will store its state in a file in ~/Library/Preferences, and you can move away the file for your app and see it start up again just like new. For some reason, I get the feeling that old-time Mac users are used to this process in some shape or form. I don't know where you're supposed to hear about it, though... I eventually picked it up reading macosxhints.com.
4. As far as I know, dmg has no internal compression, which means you often see apps packaged as
This one boggles my mind because I know that dmgs DO have internal compression, and yet I see this all the time as well. Maybe the compression is just not very good, or something. Actually, I think it might be optional, now that I think about it... good question.
5. An Application package isn't really an installer anyway. If you need things installed somewhere else, or if you need a script run on install, you either have to do it every startup (making sure you haven't "installed" already), or you have to make an installer.
I think Apple encourages this style of application development -- having a "first-run" code path for your app. That way you can easily move
Mac Packages are nice (.mpkg), but it has all the same drawbacks (dmg, gz, etc), and now there's...
6. No uninstall.
The thing that bugs me is that developers who port apps from Windows-land tend to use them because that's what they're used to, even when they have a stupid app that doesn't need anything installed anywhere special. The
I found the game to be visually beautiful, but I hated playing it. The one "plus" discussed above, the potion thing, really pissed me off, because I always play healers, and they didn't balance for the healer playstyle at all. It's entirely a solo game. Heals and buffs from the beginning of the game really suck.
Example: when you play as a group, there's some amount of shared XP for killing things, but a much larger portion of the XP is given based on the amount of damage you dealt. Furthermore, quest credit is given when you get the final blow on a monster. So you really have to spec for damage.
It was painful: when I was playing, at peak hour, there were 10-15 people camping the same spawn at once. Whenever anything spawned, people would rush for it and start whacking it. Since it was the final hit that mattered for quests, everyone wanted to wait until it was almost dead and then time their attacks. Kill stealing was everywhere.
sigh
Well, ganking isn't real PvP. I mean, it is PvP, but it's not really fun most of the time. Sure, occasionally you'll run into an equally matched opponent in the world and fight them, and it will be fun. And the grandparent did mention the pvp arenas in STV and DM, which are clearly awesome. So yeah, there is PvP in WoW outside of instances. But it's not really compelling, and you can't rely on it being actually fun.
Compare to Shadowbane, a game based around PvP. Mostly there were big castle sieges, which were tremendously fun because you were defending something you personally cared about -- your own guild's city. There were also bosses with valuable runes, and we would fight other players for the right to keep the rune. And then there were groups of gankers who would go around killing leveling groups, and you had to always be ready to defend yourself against the gankers whenever they might appear. Now that's PvP that you can care about.
On topic, on topic, hmm... Oh yeah, instancing. Shadowbane didn't have instancing and it was great. WoW had instancing and it was only okay (didn't provide me with nearly the fun factor of a non-instanced persistent world). Guild Wars is all instanced... and I like it a lot, but it's the "counter-strike" aspect of its PvP that's fun, rather than the traditional MMO feel. I'm not currently in a guild so I don't really do the bigger, more organized groups in Tombs, but I do the 4v4 random arena and it's loads of fun. I think instancing takes away from the "awesome, I can DO something" feel of the world.
Ooh, ooh. You made me think of something.
Mostly when you watch an FPS tournament, you are watching the same screen as one player or another (usually they mirror the monitors on a projector or something). I think this isn't really beneficial from the viewer's point of view -- most people don't know the map, so even if you look back and forth between the two screens, you're not going to get any sense of anticipation.
However, maybe what the game needs is an overhead or strategic view. That way the viewers can see things that the players don't -- if someone is hiding behind a corner, we would be able to see that and build the anticipation. Then the scene can cut to a player in order to show the fight better.
This would be even cooler for CTF -- if we can see both flags from above, and the locations of the players, that would be really cool.
The problem, of course, is that games don't generally have an overhead observer mode built in. But maybe that would be worth adding -- it is probably not really very difficult to implement. Then you could have several people manning machines as "cameramen" and then the director can cut between views similar to a real sports game in order to give the best experience. (Maybe have cameras on the players' faces as well. That would be sweet.)
Even worse is when you get the guys that just link to articles with a short summary and let people open up in the comments on that particular blog post.
Well, I know you were being a bit facetious, but I figured I'd point out that this is precisely what I appreciate about slashdot, and the other news sites I visit.
I extract the bias out of news stories I hear, not by expecting the summary of the story to be unbiased, but by reading the comments. People who think the bias is unfair will post. By ANDing all the comments above threshold 3 or so, I get a reasonably accurate picture of the truth, and by XORing them (sorta), I get all the different viewpoints on the subject.
Good question. Probably not trivially; I'm guessing Cedega depends on Linux in important ways. (like the way it presents graphics drivers, sound, etc.) It might be portable, although I doubt it would be easy. Certainly you could dual-boot with Linux and Cedega would run that way...
Hiring someone based on your experience with them in a game doesn't sound at all unreasonable to me. If you interview someone in real life, that's maybe half an hour of talking to them and trying to determine if they're suitable for the job.
When you play with them in a game, although you're not discussing the specific task in question, you are getting to know how well you work with them. In a 5man instance, over perhaps 2 hours, you are probably able to get to know them a hell of a lot better than in that 30 minute interview.
You can also observe how they work with others and how well they listen, and so forth. Do this several times over the course of a few months and you can get a pretty good picture of the person, which is a significant portion of what an interview helps to determine.
I would still interview them, however, because you really want to talk specifically about the job in question and make sure that they know what they're talking about. But in terms of getting to know them in terms of their personal qualities, I honestly can't imagine doing anything better than playing a cooperative game with them.
Really? I hit 60 a couple weeks ago and I like the game a lot more now. It's less, I dunno, 'stressful' (in that I don't feel forced to play and level up), and more fun, because I can hold my own against other level 60s (who used to gank me all the time) and beat them.
I can also play with my friends, who have been 60 for months, and do Dire Maul and pvp with them and stuff. I find that the game is a lot more chill now, and still very interesting.