I rather liked the ripper. It wasn't terribly useful, and as you say, just as easy to kill teammates: friendly-fire friendly. I thought it was funny. I like my weapons to be funny.
What I really miss from the original UT is the secondary fire from the rocket launcher. Rather than rockets, it would launch grenades. These were really handy for firing around a corner. As much as I liked the number of rockets you could fire in the original UT, I agree that it was too powerful.
I hated the pulse guns in the original and UT2K3 (well, they are called link guns now). In UT2K4 Onslaught, they are actually useful.
Now for the superweapons. The redeemer is, as always loads of fun. Portable nukes...fun for the entire family. In UT2K3, the Ion Painter was interesting, but wasn't on enough maps for me to really play with it. I would like to see a 3rd superweapon. Perhaps not an instakill. I think a fairly quick-acting biological or chemical weapon would be interesting. Fire a canister, and watch your enemies die as their health slowly drains away. It should take something like 20-30 seconds, and then dissolve to skeletons then to vapor.
Ah yes, "pancake". For those who haven't tried it yet, the Manta is hovercraft of sorts. It usually flies just high enough to pass over people's heads. But then you can always suddenly descend..."pancake".
The announcer commentary is one of the things that makes UT series fun. It always makes me happy to be acknowledged for doing something nifty. Even if the acknowledgement comes from a computer. With the vehicles you get some new ones:
"pancake" "Road rage" "Vehicular mansaughter" "Hit and run" "top gun"
And of course the series: "double kill", "multikill", "ultrakill", "megakill", etc. is still there.
Besides the risk of public backlash, could using an Anton Pilar order open up the posibility of having it used against you?
For example, if I were raided with such an order, and in the course of seizing infringing material and evidence, the raiders took or copied some of my copyrighted material--by mistake or for evidence--would I have the right to Anton Pilar them back?
It's petty, but if does send the message that you'll fight back.
A better test would be to show that, with the code on which they claim ownership, that they can compile to a binary that is reasonably similar to their product.
While this won't prove that they used GPL code, it will prove that what they are presenting is not the code they used in their product.
From my own experience I think that one of the problems is black-and-white thinking that is driving away the competent and creative.
I work in the development division of the IT company in a large financial services company. All actual coding work is moving off shore (not outsourcing, since we have a development branch in India). We are told that no developer in the US will lose his or her job and that we will have "the opportunity to move into a 'value added' position". Value added means writing specifications rather than code. Officially, there will always be some on shore developer positions, but every one I've talked to -- from middle management down, is skeptical.
On my particular project, we maintain a number of XML configuration files. Whenever we add a new feature, that change needs to be noted in the configuration files. The updates are very similar. Module names, path names, etc. However, something always seems to go wrong with the changes--usually something simple, like the wrong case, or having a relative path start at the wrong point. Since I was usually the one to find these errors that the project lead introduced, I kept suggesting that we need a tool to simplify to process. Well, he finally listened and agreed. But then he made it absolutely clear that I am not allowed to write it. Since it is an internal tool that would be used by 3 people, it doesn't have to be pretty. It is something that I would take an hour to hack up in Perl. I am officially forbidden from using that hour, however, when I have some free time I can spend several hours writing a detailed spec, send it off to India, where we will spend several days emailing back and forth (remember, with the time difference, an answer arrives the next day.), and finally have some very early conference calls (very late for them).
This tool does not require such formality, but offshore development does. If someone was local, I could sketch it out on a whiteboard, and if any questions arise, spend a few more minutes going over it.
Well, I did write the tool, but I haven't shared it with anyone. My job is easier and as long as I don't share, I won't get caught violating the offshore development process.
One promise with offshore development is that the "value added" people can write the specs during the day, ship them off, then check the results the following morning. On one of the two primarily offshore projects I am working on, that does not happen. The India team will have a question, and will end up sitting idle until they get an answer the next day.
I have no doubt that offshoring can work, but it is not for all situations
Funny you should mention rebates. Over the summer I bought a laptop and a WiFi card for my wife. The laptop had a $100 rebate. That came promptly. The WiFi card had a $10 rebate. That just came, and after I called them a couple times.
I've experienced this sort of thing before. The small rebates only come after a call or two, the big ones are prompt.
My theory is for significant rebates people don't forget them, so it is easier for the business to just mail them out. However, for smaller rebates more people forget, or don't think it is worth the bother to follow up. So the company can rely on this as profit.
While the meaning of "ultimate" has shifted from "the last" or "most extreme" to mean "the very best". This is typical of linguistic drift. The change is subtle, and is a narrowing of the definition. However, the next time I hear "penultimate" used to mean "even better than ultimate", someone may take their ultimate breath.
I have, rather unintentionally, contributed to polluting google. I admit I find it amusing, mostly because it was accidental.
If you are searching for information about prosimians, you just might end up on my website.
Likewise, if you are searching for information on a certain letter of the Ogham alphabet, you will find my website and my blog.
How did I do this? I wrote one of those "what * are you?" quizes. I expected, at most, 100 people to take it. Tens of thousands have. I had nothing better to do when I wrote it, but clearly, there many, many other people who had nothing better to do than to take it.
The growth, reaction, and feedback from this was just amazing. I might do another, just because it was fascinating to watch.
Blogging can have an impact on search engines, intentional and not, good and bad.
Consider the glow-in-the-dark mice made by adding jellyfish genes. Are you seriously telling me you could have achieved the same effect by selective breeding?
I tried crossbreeding, but the poor mice kept getting stung.
I hang out on LiveJournal, and while I haven't seen the spam myself, I fear it is only a matter of time.
As long as the spammers are given a live microphone, they will use it to broadcast whatever bullshit they wish.
For the last few weeks, I've been thinking about systems for linking weblogs and weblog owners together. LiveJournal, and I'm sure others, have a fairly robust system of "friends." I have a list of friends that I usually read; I can lock my postings so that only my friends or a subset can view them. You can allow all, registered users, or only friends to comment. What I've been considering would be a similar system, but that would work across different web sites.
The current LiveJournal scheme is a simple, single level trust metric. If this were expanded to allow multiple levels -- friends-of-friends, and so on -- and finer control, we might be able to make life harder for the spammers. Each person with a weblog (or other "open microphone") should have the ability to restrict both read and write access to whomever they wish. A web of trust would allow the weblog owner to keep the log open to friends, friends-of-friends, and so on, to what ever level they wish.
If the weblog owner wishes, the log could be kept wide open.
This isn't censorship. In fact, this is the ultimate in freedom of the press. As a press owner, you are free to say what you wish, and to allow, at your discretion, others to respond.
The only drawback I can see is that it might make it harder to find interesting logs to frequent.
There are two important things needed for this to work. It must be decentralized. If any one organization had complete control, then it would open the possibility for any number of exploitations. Anonymity must me available. A person should be able to remain anonymous with the caveat that a log owner may restrict him. A person should also have the ability to maintain multiple identities. This gives a person anonymity and the ability to gain trust.
There is a huge problem with this. I just purchased a domain name, and the instant the DNS propagated, I started getting hundreds of bounced messages into my catchall. A spammer decided to use my domain to fake the From: lines.
Does AOL really think that spammers use the real domain name?
I avoid being needed at 3:00AM. I've been there before. I've had the VPN software installed on my own computer so I could fix someone else's bugs in the middle of the night.
I have a Palm and a cell phone, but they are mine. Work doesn't have the cell number, nor will they. I no longer have the VPN setup on my computer.
I've refused to work at all hours and on my own time, and it has prevented me from advancing to a position that requires it. That is a feature, not a bug. I know in these days it is hard to be picky, and if I was faced with the prospect of carrying a pager or being unemployed, I'd suck it up, but I would start looking elsewhere.
I work with way too many people who see working as a programmer as a gateway into management. They don't understand why I don't want to "advance" (advance by their definition). It completely baffles them that I'd rather be happy than make more money.
Life is tradeoffs. If the coolest opportunity came round, but it required me to be on call now and then, I'd take it. Likewise, I'd rather not make the extra few thousand a year, but have my time be mine.
I spent so many hours fighting beetles and snakes to slowly level up. If I went against anything much tougher, I'd be prying my sword from my cold, lifeless hands.
I found the fighting part boring, and most people I encountered were of the "0wnz j00" variety.
What sucked me in though, was the scope and detail of the world. What I really wanted to do was to see it. When I did venture out along a well traveled path, I'd soon be dead after nightfall.
Ironically, when I played MUDs (LambdaMOO mostly), the exploring part quickly became tiresome, but the social aspect was interesting. Eventually, I lost interest in that, too.
Ultimately, I decided I don't even like online roleplaying. I just want to be myself. Sometimes I show different aspects of myself under different user names or in different contexts, but it is still me. I am not a level 20 orc-slaying warrior, nor do I want to play one online.
Slashdot Mirror
I rather liked the ripper. It wasn't terribly useful, and as you say, just as easy to kill teammates: friendly-fire friendly. I thought it was funny. I like my weapons to be funny.
What I really miss from the original UT is the secondary fire from the rocket launcher. Rather than rockets, it would launch grenades. These were really handy for firing around a corner. As much as I liked the number of rockets you could fire in the original UT, I agree that it was too powerful.
I hated the pulse guns in the original and UT2K3 (well, they are called link guns now). In UT2K4 Onslaught, they are actually useful.
Now for the superweapons. The redeemer is, as always loads of fun. Portable nukes...fun for the entire family. In UT2K3, the Ion Painter was interesting, but wasn't on enough maps for me to really play with it. I would like to see a 3rd superweapon. Perhaps not an instakill. I think a fairly quick-acting biological or chemical weapon would be interesting. Fire a canister, and watch your enemies die as their health slowly drains away. It should take something like 20-30 seconds, and then dissolve to skeletons then to vapor.
Ah yes, "pancake". For those who haven't tried it yet, the Manta is hovercraft of sorts. It usually flies just high enough to pass over people's heads. But then you can always suddenly descend..."pancake".
The announcer commentary is one of the things that makes UT series fun. It always makes me happy to be acknowledged for doing something nifty. Even if the acknowledgement comes from a computer. With the vehicles you get some new ones:
"pancake"
"Road rage"
"Vehicular mansaughter"
"Hit and run"
"top gun"
And of course the series:
"double kill", "multikill", "ultrakill", "megakill", etc. is still there.
For a while, rather than using "www", I called it "six you". Never caught on.
Besides the risk of public backlash, could using an Anton Pilar order open up the posibility of having it used against you?
For example, if I were raided with such an order, and in the course of seizing infringing material and evidence, the raiders took or copied some of my copyrighted material--by mistake or for evidence--would I have the right to Anton Pilar them back?
It's petty, but if does send the message that you'll fight back.
A better test would be to show that, with the code on which they claim ownership, that they can compile to a binary that is reasonably similar to their product.
While this won't prove that they used GPL code, it will prove that what they are presenting is not the code they used in their product.
From my own experience I think that one of the problems is black-and-white thinking that is driving away the competent and creative.
I work in the development division of the IT company in a large financial services company. All actual coding work is moving off shore (not outsourcing, since we have a development branch in India). We are told that no developer in the US will lose his or her job and that we will have "the opportunity to move into a 'value added' position". Value added means writing specifications rather than code. Officially, there will always be some on shore developer positions, but every one I've talked to -- from middle management down, is skeptical.
On my particular project, we maintain a number of XML configuration files. Whenever we add a new feature, that change needs to be noted in the configuration files. The updates are very similar. Module names, path names, etc. However, something always seems to go wrong with the changes--usually something simple, like the wrong case, or having a relative path start at the wrong point. Since I was usually the one to find these errors that the project lead introduced, I kept suggesting that we need a tool to simplify to process. Well, he finally listened and agreed. But then he made it absolutely clear that I am not allowed to write it. Since it is an internal tool that would be used by 3 people, it doesn't have to be pretty. It is something that I would take an hour to hack up in Perl. I am officially forbidden from using that hour, however, when I have some free time I can spend several hours writing a detailed spec, send it off to India, where we will spend several days emailing back and forth (remember, with the time difference, an answer arrives the next day.), and finally have some very early conference calls (very late for them).
This tool does not require such formality, but offshore development does. If someone was local, I could sketch it out on a whiteboard, and if any questions arise, spend a few more minutes going over it.
Well, I did write the tool, but I haven't shared it with anyone. My job is easier and as long as I don't share, I won't get caught violating the offshore development process.
One promise with offshore development is that the "value added" people can write the specs during the day, ship them off, then check the results the following morning. On one of the two primarily offshore projects I am working on, that does not happen. The India team will have a question, and will end up sitting idle until they get an answer the next day.
I have no doubt that offshoring can work, but it is not for all situations
Rather than your example of quote facilities unquote, I prefer to say ampersand que you oh tee semicolon facilities ampersand que you oh tee semicolon
If we don't have region-free DVDs, then the terrorists have already won.
Funny you should mention rebates. Over the summer I bought a laptop and a WiFi card for my wife. The laptop had a $100 rebate. That came promptly. The WiFi card had a $10 rebate. That just came, and after I called them a couple times.
I've experienced this sort of thing before. The small rebates only come after a call or two, the big ones are prompt.
My theory is for significant rebates people don't forget them, so it is easier for the business to just mail them out. However, for smaller rebates more people forget, or don't think it is worth the bother to follow up. So the company can rely on this as profit.
While the meaning of "ultimate" has shifted from "the last" or "most extreme" to mean "the very best". This is typical of linguistic drift. The change is subtle, and is a narrowing of the definition. However, the next time I hear "penultimate" used to mean "even better than ultimate", someone may take their ultimate breath.
I'm glad its N-S to S-N. I hate it when it flips E-W to W-E.
My lunch thanks you for saying "taken down" and not "went down" in reference to goatse.
I have, rather unintentionally, contributed to polluting google. I admit I find it amusing, mostly because it was accidental.
If you are searching for information about prosimians, you just might end up on my website.
Likewise, if you are searching for information on a certain letter of the Ogham alphabet, you will find my website and my blog.
How did I do this? I wrote one of those "what * are you?" quizes. I expected, at most, 100 people to take it. Tens of thousands have. I had nothing better to do when I wrote it, but clearly, there many, many other people who had nothing better to do than to take it.
The growth, reaction, and feedback from this was just amazing. I might do another, just because it was fascinating to watch.
Blogging can have an impact on search engines, intentional and not, good and bad.
Zepplin NT? Well, if you must use a Zepplin, try Zepplin XP, it doesn't crash as much.
Consider the glow-in-the-dark mice made by adding jellyfish genes. Are you seriously telling me you could have achieved the same effect by selective breeding?
I tried crossbreeding, but the poor mice kept getting stung.
Why did they go with X.25/X.28 when it was aimed at SOHO? I would think that most small offices/home offices would use ethernet.
Empire is the fifth movie in the series.
Clippy: "Hi! It looks like you are searching for 'Linux'. Would you like me to show you why Windows is better than Linux?" [blink][blink]
Perhaps on Palm Sunday?
I hang out on LiveJournal, and while I haven't seen the spam myself, I fear it is only a matter of time.
As long as the spammers are given a live microphone, they will use it to broadcast whatever bullshit they wish.
For the last few weeks, I've been thinking about systems for linking weblogs and weblog owners together. LiveJournal, and I'm sure others, have a fairly robust system of "friends." I have a list of friends that I usually read; I can lock my postings so that only my friends or a subset can view them. You can allow all, registered users, or only friends to comment. What I've been considering would be a similar system, but that would work across different web sites.
The current LiveJournal scheme is a simple, single level trust metric. If this were expanded to allow multiple levels -- friends-of-friends, and so on -- and finer control, we might be able to make life harder for the spammers. Each person with a weblog (or other "open microphone") should have the ability to restrict both read and write access to whomever they wish. A web of trust would allow the weblog owner to keep the log open to friends, friends-of-friends, and so on, to what ever level they wish.
If the weblog owner wishes, the log could be kept wide open.
This isn't censorship. In fact, this is the ultimate in freedom of the press. As a press owner, you are free to say what you wish, and to allow, at your discretion, others to respond.
The only drawback I can see is that it might make it harder to find interesting logs to frequent.
There are two important things needed for this to work. It must be decentralized. If any one organization had complete control, then it would open the possibility for any number of exploitations. Anonymity must me available. A person should be able to remain anonymous with the caveat that a log owner may restrict him. A person should also have the ability to maintain multiple identities. This gives a person anonymity and the ability to gain trust.
There is a huge problem with this. I just purchased a domain name, and the instant the DNS propagated, I started getting hundreds of bounced messages into my catchall. A spammer decided to use my domain to fake the From: lines.
Does AOL really think that spammers use the real domain name?
I avoid being needed at 3:00AM. I've been there before. I've had the VPN software installed on my own computer so I could fix someone else's bugs in the middle of the night.
I have a Palm and a cell phone, but they are mine. Work doesn't have the cell number, nor will they. I no longer have the VPN setup on my computer.
I've refused to work at all hours and on my own time, and it has prevented me from advancing to a position that requires it. That is a feature, not a bug. I know in these days it is hard to be picky, and if I was faced with the prospect of carrying a pager or being unemployed, I'd suck it up, but I would start looking elsewhere.
I work with way too many people who see working as a programmer as a gateway into management. They don't understand why I don't want to "advance" (advance by their definition). It completely baffles them that I'd rather be happy than make more money.
Life is tradeoffs. If the coolest opportunity came round, but it required me to be on call now and then, I'd take it. Likewise, I'd rather not make the extra few thousand a year, but have my time be mine.
I tried EverQuest briefly.
I spent so many hours fighting beetles and snakes to slowly level up. If I went against anything much tougher, I'd be prying my sword from my cold, lifeless hands.
I found the fighting part boring, and most people I encountered were of the "0wnz j00" variety.
What sucked me in though, was the scope and detail of the world. What I really wanted to do was to see it. When I did venture out along a well traveled path, I'd soon be dead after nightfall.
Ironically, when I played MUDs (LambdaMOO mostly), the exploring part quickly became tiresome, but the social aspect was interesting. Eventually, I lost interest in that, too.
Ultimately, I decided I don't even like online roleplaying. I just want to be myself. Sometimes I show different aspects of myself under different user names or in different contexts, but it is still me. I am not a level 20 orc-slaying warrior, nor do I want to play one online.
I think picking on the French has gotten way, way old, but...if the condition is that the French have to fight, their not going to get it back.
This is AOL we are talking about. That should be "r00lz"