But but but! I already paid for the NHL hockey package! I've got to find out who wins the Leafs/Senators series! My life depends on it!
I consider watching CBC and TSN broadcasts of hockey games as positive credit towards learning about another culture. Without these broadcasts, I never would have learned about Don Cherry, Tim Horton's, and Canadian Tire.
Oh boo fucking hoo. It uses JavaScript. It's time to get over the whole "JavaScript-is-evil" prejudice. Lynx is an outdated tool, a tool of last resort. If you're stuck with a machine that can't run a modern browser that handles JavsScript, your computing platform is thoroughly, thoroughly fucked.
Spare me the whines about JS being a tool to invade privacy - a properly configured proxy and/or firewall provides appropriate protection.
I agree that JS is overused in some places, but in many large-scale "web applications", it's the only realistic way to provide the functionality expected in something like a web email service.
So get off your outdated 1998 soapbox. Stop trying to make your bones as a "guru" by aping Jakob Neilsen's neo-Luddite less-is-more mantras. JavaScript is not evil, and it's here to stay. Sorry if that breaks your heart.
You may resume using 'mail' to read your email and leave Gmail for everyone else.
He made a comment near the end of the article about "serving my people". While I admire ESR for his single-minded zealotry, I also fear that same single-minded zealotry.
I'm glad someone is out there fighting for What's Right, but agreeing with ESR on this topic doesn't automatically make me one of "his people".
I enjoy playing blackjack, but I don't count. I am expert-level (99% accuracy) on the basic strategy tables, which can make a big enough difference over the short run. I play for fun and just want my money to last as long as it can; I don't expect to win.
Anyway, I was playing one night in the Tropicana, listening to a pretty decent cover band. It was a Thursday night and the limit was still $5, which is good for low-rollers like me.
I'd been playing for an hour or two, alternating between bottled water and the occasional beer. A tall, thin, Asian guy sits down to my left with a pile of assorted-colored chips, all of them mixed and disorganized.
He doesn't speak to anyone, just pushes his red ($5) chip into the circle. Wins a few, loses a few, but always playing five. On one hand, he rolls out two green chips ($50) and wins the hand. The very next hand, he dropped right back to $10 and loses. Next hand, $5 and loses. $25, wins. Another $25, wins. $5, loses.
I realize he's got to be counting cards. However, if I could recognize it, you could be damn sure the dealer, the pit boss, and the eye in the sky recognized it too.
Anyway, I decide to piggyback this guy a little. He bets $50, I bet $15. He's playing to my left, which makes it awkward, since I've got to wait for him to wager before I can. We did this for a few hands and I may have won a few more chips than I would have normally, but I wasn't betting with the swing that this guy had.
It was about this time that I noticed the heat. A pit boss in a shiny suit standing over the dealer's shoulder. Another guy in an equally shiny suit immediately behind me. I switched back to $5 bets and ordered a gin and tonic, pronto. I've seen "Casino" and I don't want them thinking me and this guy are a team.
They frightened him off simply by offering him a comp (buffet). The poor guy was so rattled by the attention that he scooped up his chips and bailed, without taking the comp. The bosses smirked and went about their rounds.
So, if you're gonna count, don't be so damn obvious about it. You've got to be good enough to count while laughing with the other players, chatting with the dealer, drinking club soda or water, whatever. But if you wildly fluctuate your bets while concentrating so hard the veins bulge out of your forehead, you're toast.
Live on ABC News, some prankster got through to Ted Koppel and ranted for a good two or three minutes about getting people to hit "thankyoufortakingmycall.com" when the power comes back on.
The site appears to be committed to pranking live call-in shows like Larry King or Fox News. Koppel kept the guy on, thinking he had real information, meanwhile, the caller told people not to wander around the subways, warning them of dangers like "something out of Beauty And The Beast". I assume he meant the old TV show, not the Disney movie.
Anyway, it was pretty funny.
thankyoufortakingmycall will probably be slashdotted soon, but it was damn funny while it lasted.
...that's not counting (the price of) the time and effort wasted using Microsoft products instead of better products that were forced out of the market by Microsoft's illegal business practices.
Sorry, I've got to quibble here. What product has been specifically cited as being forced out of business? Netscape? Sure, MS screwed them royally, but they did plenty to shoot themselves in the foot as well. If there were more clear-cut direct cases of people being run out of business by MS, the case would have been a lot, lot bigger.
I'll stop complaining when the payout per-plaintiff is an appreciable fraction of the retail price of the software.
First off, how many people pay full retail price for their Windows OS? I'd bet pretty close to 100% of all Windows consumer installations arrive pre-installed on their Dell or Gateway computers. Secondly, WinXP Home is what, about a hundred bucks? These people will get back 10 to 20 percent of that.
I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but I have to call "bullshit" when I see people expecting the settlement to result in free or nearly-free Microsoft products for everyone who wants one. Why? The product (mostly) worked, did what was claimed.
As for the lawyer fees, how much of the Big Tobacco settlement was swallowed by law firms? That's just the US system. Write your congressmen if you don't like it. Bitching on/. is simply not going to help.
And finally, I bet anyone who got a voucher good for $10 or $20 off the software of their choice - complements of Microsoft - would run off to their local software shop to cash it in, no questions asked. Don't claim you wouldn't.
Did people expect Microsoft to buy them a new car? How about a new house? It's a measly computer program, when all is said and done.
They're paying out $202 million. Admittedly, Microsoft still has plenty left over, but I'm dead certain they didn't want to pay even THAT much.
As for the attorney's fees, again, why should these people work for free? Can you imagine the expense involved in something as simple as photocopying the documents required in this case? It's enormously expensive to run a lawsuit of this magnitude; the lawyers deserve to get paid.
I'm not saying a few of the key partners aren't going to get well off this case, but this is hardly the miscarriage of justice, screw-the-public outcome that seems to be the prevailing opinion here.
Oh wait, I forgot - this is Slashdot, where EVERYTHING Microsoft does is never good enough.
The article quotes Stanton Friedman extensively, as he's written several books on Roswell and the Great UFO Cover-Up. What's telling is how he insists on being identified as a nuclear physicist wherever and whenever possible. Hell, it's even printed that way on the dustcover of the books.
I'm sorry, but this just reeks of insecurity. Friedman knows his claims are frantically outlandish and thinks his nuclear work somehow bestows instant credibility. Okay, great, you did some nuke research at some point in the past and you got an post-graduate degree. Exactly how does that make you an expert on alien civilizations?
I, too, am a reformed UFO 'enthusiast', but now I count Friedman among the long list of frauds in this game for the sole purpose of selling books, newsletters, and getting their photos in the paper.
No one, however, is more egregious than Budd Hopkins, who's made a lucrative career out of analyzing, err, interpreting people's hypnotized utterances as 'proof' of alien abduction. Shameless.
Re:The Java.net creator is on to something
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Sun Opens Java.net
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· Score: 1
And that would be awesome for those of us who don't have a CS degree or an employer who'll shell out for training, yet still want to learn Java. I've learned a lot of Perl by not just using what's on CPAN, but by looking at the source and understanding why things work. Admittedly, it is nice to have a zillion ready-to-use modules to plug into your code, but there's a very substantial benefit to having the ability to see what others are doing.
It's obvious that there are many, many Java classes available for people to use in their code, but having everything collected and categorized in one place would be a great help.
I'm all for porting and getting things running on obscure platforms, but why is getting Mozilla on the Amiga the one that people put up the cash prizes for? Aren't there development projects more worthy of a financial incentive than getting a browser to run on hopelessly-outdated hardware, no matter how rabid the geek-niche userbase?
It's fun and all, but couldn't that money have been better spent on rewarding developers to make something more likely to be useful? I'm sure the crowd here can come up with a long list of more deserving sources for a couple thousand dollars.
If you're interesting in seeing a bizarre rant by any measure, check out ESR's Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto. There's enough pretentious pseudo-intellectual terminology to make Noam Chomsky jealous: "reflexive anti-Americanism", "Islamo-fascist", "...be vigilant against the expedient lie", etc.
What's an Idiotarian? To my way of interpreting this writing, it's basically anyone ESR or his adherents disgrees with. At first, an idiotarian is anyone who supports terrorists and tyrants, a/k/a the American Left. However, the screed goes on to assail the American Right, who are most often in support of eliminating terrorists and tyrants. So, yeah, anyone who doesn't subscribe to ESR's version of militant libertarianism is an idiotarian.
A lot of people here were really beating up on ESR; I decided to my own checking and decided that the guy is veering dangerously close to Unabomber material. Guns, anarchy, manifestos against both political sides, whatever. Time to get a cabin in the woods and issue forth open-source decrees. Just don't wrap 'em around pipe bombs and everything will be okay.
And here's why... all the content on gamefaqs was written by people sitting in front of their computer/PS2/XBox/Nintendo and writing down the information. It wasn't written by "journalists", but by fans. Fans like these despise ad-cluttered, overly-designed sites like GameSpot or IGN.
The result? The faq-writing "scene" will just migrate to a new site. All you people bitching, get off your duffs and get some hosting offering MySQL and CGI access. It's all plaintext, it's not hard to store. Recreate gamefaqs somewhere else. It's not going to be hard.
I'd like to hear your stance on the unofficial BitTorrent clients that are showing up. Some of these clients do more than just present a more user-friendly interface, they allow people to tweak some settings, most notably throttling their upload speeds.
Since BitTorrent's model of "everyone sharing the same data" is fundamental to it's success, it seems like a client that selfishly restricts re-uploading is the complete opposite of the BitTorrent philosophy.
Any thoughts on future changes to eliminate or minimize this kind of cheating?
... I reviewed plenty of drek, and wasn't afraid to describe it as such.
I used to write freelance reviews, maybe 5 or 6 years ago, for an site called "Online Gaming Review" - they've since gone belly-up.
They would send me a game, sometimes a commercial copy, sometimes a gold-mastered final beta. I'd play it for a week or two, write a couple short pages, and they'd send me a check for $100. It was a great deal while it lasted.
However, they did send me more than a few utterly worthless titles that never deserved to see the light of day. And that was my review. I didn't skimp on the details, I didn't play it only for a single day and make up a half-assed opinion. I took it seriously and tried to be a professional while slogging through some truly awful games.
Some of my best reviews were on games I'd purchased myself (those spare hundreds came in handy) - I reviewed the original Fallout, and correctly predicted in my review that it would named Game Of The Year.
So, no - I never got any great free stuff, unless you count those $100 checks for playing computer games "free stuff".
I don't know Tilly and have never worked with him, but I have to ask the obvious question: what did he do to get on the company's radar?
It sounds like he must have done something high-profile to get noticed, otherwise they never would have gone looking for his employment contract and run it through a black-letter-of-the-law interpreter.
I think the issue that has been uncovered is critically important, and I feel better educated because of it, but I can't shake the nagging feeling that Tilly must have somehow angered management - maybe by spending too much time on Open Source projects and not enough on his company assignments? Hmm?
His PerlMonks posting wasn't too forthcoming about what started this whole mess. I'd like to know what did.
... I can say that using the web for searching and locating a potential home is no subsititute for dealing with a hard-working real estate agent. I'm working on a theory that states most good real estate is still sold by realtor and not by the web. Like jobs, if it's not filled easily by normal channels, there must be a reason.
One of the key pieces of data missing from most web-based real estate searches is a precise street address. Without the address, you're stuck relying on the hype entered into the system by the listing agent. You can't drive by and see if you like the neighborhood, or if the house in question is a wreck despite the supposed features, etc.
Keep in mind, too, that those listings are put in by the seller's agent. If you don't have a real estate agent of your own, you're at the whim of the seller's agent, who will collect both sides of the commission when the property sells. For this reason, I'm more comfortable with someone who's working for me and not for the seller.
Plus, you'll probably need a realtor to set up appointments to show the property: most selling realtors and/or homeowners don't want the general public tromping through their for-sale home. This weeds out both the uncommitted browsers and the merely curious.
You're probably going to want a realtor to handle the actual transaction for you when it comes time to buy. Have you ever read a real estate purchase contract? Sure, a lot of people blow it off as a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo and boilerplate, but we're talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in play. Don't you want a trained professional on your side?
Remember, too, that when you're buying, you don't pay your realtor a dime. That's the seller's problem. So why not use their services?
My last tip on choosing a realtor: take advantage of referrals from family, friends, or colleagues. Real estate agents are just like travel agents: they've all got the same products, what distinguishes them is how hard they'll work for you.
-Sharv
p.s.: IANAR (I Am Not A Realtor), I'm just impressed with the job my realtor did for me, compared with the poor results and incomplete data I got using some of the websites listed in the story.
Re:Um, maybe because that's the theme...
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Review: Blow
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· Score: 1
The theme to Miami Vice was composed (and performed?) by Jan Hammer. He's got a lengthy list of credits to his name, including a few computer games.
That's funny, I've lived in Chicago all my life and never knew Richard J. Daley was indicted on anything. Even his entry at Britannica.com reads "His last years were marred by scandals centred on members of his administration, though none of these touched Daley himself."
What made Daley-era machine politics so successful was the elegance and simplicity inherent in the method. No one bought or sold anything - those kinds of transactions could be tracked. It was the vague and ephemeral influence that did all the magic.
So before you call anyone a schmuck, pony up references that The Boss was actually indicted, lest you defame one of this city's legends. That he got away with it all is one of his biggest achievements.
Side note: when he died, all the Chicago Public School kids (myself included) got a day off in mourning. Hopefully that will clarify his stature and prominence at the time - he was far from disgraced.
Well, I've got the other half of your argument. I'm personally excited to see that these supremely talented programmers have once again realized that there's more to 3D gaming than endless deathmatches.
Games like Half-Life, Thief, and System Shock 2 have proven beyond a doubt that there's a significant market for people who like 3D shooters but don't get off on virtual slaughter of real people. Stories and puzzles need to be considered equally with hot graphics to make a great game. Examine the difference in immersion between a great Infocom game like Trinity compared to the beautiful but empty world of Myst for an example.
And while I'm on the subject of deathmatching...
[rant:ON] Deathmatching has always struck me as a little pathological, the ultimate in antisocial behavior. A Quake clan is no substitute for a legitimate team sport or activity - try turning off the monitor once in a while and engage directly with other, real-world people. Join a bowling league, have a poker game, hell, go out in the woods and play paintball if you're so into shooting up your friends. [rant:OFF]
But, hey, DOOM III? Sign me up. I miss those days. I remember being on the net when Doom hit, the great First Age of shareware games. Watched the evolution of all the 3rd-party editors and hacks, downloading the very first user-created map file (a couple of interconnected cubes, not much else)... ah, nostalgia.
From what I've seen of Lucas, especially during the pre-Ep1 hype, was that he's an amazing control freak. Sure, Star Wars is his creation entirely; he dreamed it all up. I can understand his pride in wanting to make sure it was done right.
But, as seen on 60 Minutes, he personally supervised EVERY minute detail: every costume, every design element, all the way down to the individual sounds of the podracer engines. The 60 Minutes piece actually showed him in the sound editing room, listening to barely-indistinguishable engine sounds. "No, it should be more like 'brrrrrrummmm', not 'barrrrummm'," he was seen meticulously instructing some poor hapless flunky.
Personally, I buy the "George wants to personally oversee the DVD" excuse. I imagine he's like that. He's going to wait until he's done micromanaging Episodes II & III before sitting in the DVD mastering lab, hectoring every tech in sight to make sure it measures up to his anal-retentive "vision".
According to a colleague of mine who lived for a time in Oz, it is possible to send U.S.-drawn checks to Australia. The recipient, however, will have to pony up the exchange rate difference and possibly pay a fee to their bank to take the deposit.
Note that large banks (Citibank, Harris, etc.) usually will sell you a money order drawn in foreign currency, if you want to save the Penguin People from the evil bank fee collectors.
Really big banks can probably even sell you authentic Australian currency, but we cannot recommend sending that by mail.
Okay, I have a question. They provide a "printable" version of the article, then chastise us for printing it, stating "Wasting paper isn't Viridian!". If you're going to provide a printable version, complete with the trite "Don't waste paper!" claim, then why in hell is the printable version formatted in one long, single column? With only six words per line average, isn't that a certain way to guarantee wasting even more paper?
If you're going to issue manifestos and lectures, get it right yourself first.
Slashdot Mirror
But but but! I already paid for the NHL hockey package! I've got to find out who wins the Leafs/Senators series! My life depends on it!
I consider watching CBC and TSN broadcasts of hockey games as positive credit towards learning about another culture. Without these broadcasts, I never would have learned about Don Cherry, Tim Horton's, and Canadian Tire.
-sharv
Oh boo fucking hoo. It uses JavaScript. It's time to get over the whole "JavaScript-is-evil" prejudice. Lynx is an outdated tool, a tool of last resort. If you're stuck with a machine that can't run a modern browser that handles JavsScript, your computing platform is thoroughly, thoroughly fucked.
Spare me the whines about JS being a tool to invade privacy - a properly configured proxy and/or firewall provides appropriate protection.
I agree that JS is overused in some places, but in many large-scale "web applications", it's the only realistic way to provide the functionality expected in something like a web email service.
So get off your outdated 1998 soapbox. Stop trying to make your bones as a "guru" by aping Jakob Neilsen's neo-Luddite less-is-more mantras. JavaScript is not evil, and it's here to stay. Sorry if that breaks your heart.
You may resume using 'mail' to read your email and leave Gmail for everyone else.
-sharv
Oh yeah, works great. I tried Googling for the products on my desk.
Try this UPC code and see what product you THINK I have on my desk...
300007034
He made a comment near the end of the article about "serving my people". While I admire ESR for his single-minded zealotry, I also fear that same single-minded zealotry.
I'm glad someone is out there fighting for What's Right, but agreeing with ESR on this topic doesn't automatically make me one of "his people".
Does it?
-sharv
I enjoy playing blackjack, but I don't count. I am expert-level (99% accuracy) on the basic strategy tables, which can make a big enough difference over the short run. I play for fun and just want my money to last as long as it can; I don't expect to win.
Anyway, I was playing one night in the Tropicana, listening to a pretty decent cover band. It was a Thursday night and the limit was still $5, which is good for low-rollers like me.
I'd been playing for an hour or two, alternating between bottled water and the occasional beer. A tall, thin, Asian guy sits down to my left with a pile of assorted-colored chips, all of them mixed and disorganized.
He doesn't speak to anyone, just pushes his red ($5) chip into the circle. Wins a few, loses a few, but always playing five. On one hand, he rolls out two green chips ($50) and wins the hand. The very next hand, he dropped right back to $10 and loses. Next hand, $5 and loses. $25, wins. Another $25, wins. $5, loses.
I realize he's got to be counting cards. However, if I could recognize it, you could be damn sure the dealer, the pit boss, and the eye in the sky recognized it too.
Anyway, I decide to piggyback this guy a little. He bets $50, I bet $15. He's playing to my left, which makes it awkward, since I've got to wait for him to wager before I can. We did this for a few hands and I may have won a few more chips than I would have normally, but I wasn't betting with the swing that this guy had.
It was about this time that I noticed the heat. A pit boss in a shiny suit standing over the dealer's shoulder. Another guy in an equally shiny suit immediately behind me. I switched back to $5 bets and ordered a gin and tonic, pronto. I've seen "Casino" and I don't want them thinking me and this guy are a team.
They frightened him off simply by offering him a comp (buffet). The poor guy was so rattled by the attention that he scooped up his chips and bailed, without taking the comp. The bosses smirked and went about their rounds.
So, if you're gonna count, don't be so damn obvious about it. You've got to be good enough to count while laughing with the other players, chatting with the dealer, drinking club soda or water, whatever. But if you wildly fluctuate your bets while concentrating so hard the veins bulge out of your forehead, you're toast.
Live on ABC News, some prankster got through to Ted Koppel and ranted for a good two or three minutes about getting people to hit "thankyoufortakingmycall.com" when the power comes back on.
The site appears to be committed to pranking live call-in shows like Larry King or Fox News. Koppel kept the guy on, thinking he had real information, meanwhile, the caller told people not to wander around the subways, warning them of dangers like "something out of Beauty And The Beast". I assume he meant the old TV show, not the Disney movie.
Anyway, it was pretty funny.
thankyoufortakingmycall will probably be slashdotted soon, but it was damn funny while it lasted.
I'm the far western Chicago suburbs, and I'm nice and cool able able to report the following:
- the AC is still running
- my cable broadband is still online
- the beer in the fridge is still cold, but running out fast
However, the geek on the local news is reporting that O'Hare is completely snarled for anyone heading east of here, but that's not surprising.
Sorry, I've got to quibble here. What product has been specifically cited as being forced out of business? Netscape? Sure, MS screwed them royally, but they did plenty to shoot themselves in the foot as well. If there were more clear-cut direct cases of people being run out of business by MS, the case would have been a lot, lot bigger.
I'll stop complaining when the payout per-plaintiff is an appreciable fraction of the retail price of the software.
First off, how many people pay full retail price for their Windows OS? I'd bet pretty close to 100% of all Windows consumer installations arrive pre-installed on their Dell or Gateway computers. Secondly, WinXP Home is what, about a hundred bucks? These people will get back 10 to 20 percent of that.
I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but I have to call "bullshit" when I see people expecting the settlement to result in free or nearly-free Microsoft products for everyone who wants one. Why? The product (mostly) worked, did what was claimed.
As for the lawyer fees, how much of the Big Tobacco settlement was swallowed by law firms? That's just the US system. Write your congressmen if you don't like it. Bitching on /. is simply not going to help.
And finally, I bet anyone who got a voucher good for $10 or $20 off the software of their choice - complements of Microsoft - would run off to their local software shop to cash it in, no questions asked. Don't claim you wouldn't.
Did people expect Microsoft to buy them a new car? How about a new house? It's a measly computer program, when all is said and done.
They're paying out $202 million. Admittedly, Microsoft still has plenty left over, but I'm dead certain they didn't want to pay even THAT much.
As for the attorney's fees, again, why should these people work for free? Can you imagine the expense involved in something as simple as photocopying the documents required in this case? It's enormously expensive to run a lawsuit of this magnitude; the lawyers deserve to get paid.
I'm not saying a few of the key partners aren't going to get well off this case, but this is hardly the miscarriage of justice, screw-the-public outcome that seems to be the prevailing opinion here.
Oh wait, I forgot - this is Slashdot, where EVERYTHING Microsoft does is never good enough.
The article quotes Stanton Friedman extensively, as he's written several books on Roswell and the Great UFO Cover-Up. What's telling is how he insists on being identified as a nuclear physicist wherever and whenever possible. Hell, it's even printed that way on the dustcover of the books.
I'm sorry, but this just reeks of insecurity. Friedman knows his claims are frantically outlandish and thinks his nuclear work somehow bestows instant credibility. Okay, great, you did some nuke research at some point in the past and you got an post-graduate degree. Exactly how does that make you an expert on alien civilizations?
I, too, am a reformed UFO 'enthusiast', but now I count Friedman among the long list of frauds in this game for the sole purpose of selling books, newsletters, and getting their photos in the paper.
No one, however, is more egregious than Budd Hopkins, who's made a lucrative career out of analyzing, err, interpreting people's hypnotized utterances as 'proof' of alien abduction. Shameless.
And that would be awesome for those of us who don't have a CS degree or an employer who'll shell out for training, yet still want to learn Java. I've learned a lot of Perl by not just using what's on CPAN, but by looking at the source and understanding why things work. Admittedly, it is nice to have a zillion ready-to-use modules to plug into your code, but there's a very substantial benefit to having the ability to see what others are doing.
It's obvious that there are many, many Java classes available for people to use in their code, but having everything collected and categorized in one place would be a great help.
It's fun and all, but couldn't that money have been better spent on rewarding developers to make something more likely to be useful? I'm sure the crowd here can come up with a long list of more deserving sources for a couple thousand dollars.
I'll start by nominating the EFF.
What's an Idiotarian? To my way of interpreting this writing, it's basically anyone ESR or his adherents disgrees with. At first, an idiotarian is anyone who supports terrorists and tyrants, a/k/a the American Left. However, the screed goes on to assail the American Right, who are most often in support of eliminating terrorists and tyrants. So, yeah, anyone who doesn't subscribe to ESR's version of militant libertarianism is an idiotarian.
A lot of people here were really beating up on ESR; I decided to my own checking and decided that the guy is veering dangerously close to Unabomber material. Guns, anarchy, manifestos against both political sides, whatever. Time to get a cabin in the woods and issue forth open-source decrees. Just don't wrap 'em around pipe bombs and everything will be okay.
And here's why... all the content on gamefaqs was written by people sitting in front of their computer/PS2/XBox/Nintendo and writing down the information. It wasn't written by "journalists", but by fans. Fans like these despise ad-cluttered, overly-designed sites like GameSpot or IGN.
The result? The faq-writing "scene" will just migrate to a new site. All you people bitching, get off your duffs and get some hosting offering MySQL and CGI access. It's all plaintext, it's not hard to store. Recreate gamefaqs somewhere else. It's not going to be hard.
I'd like to hear your stance on the unofficial BitTorrent clients that are showing up. Some of these clients do more than just present a more user-friendly interface, they allow people to tweak some settings, most notably throttling their upload speeds.
Since BitTorrent's model of "everyone sharing the same data" is fundamental to it's success, it seems like a client that selfishly restricts re-uploading is the complete opposite of the BitTorrent philosophy.
Any thoughts on future changes to eliminate or minimize this kind of cheating?
... I reviewed plenty of drek, and wasn't afraid to describe it as such.
I used to write freelance reviews, maybe 5 or 6 years ago, for an site called "Online Gaming Review" - they've since gone belly-up.
They would send me a game, sometimes a commercial copy, sometimes a gold-mastered final beta. I'd play it for a week or two, write a couple short pages, and they'd send me a check for $100. It was a great deal while it lasted.
However, they did send me more than a few utterly worthless titles that never deserved to see the light of day. And that was my review. I didn't skimp on the details, I didn't play it only for a single day and make up a half-assed opinion. I took it seriously and tried to be a professional while slogging through some truly awful games.
Some of my best reviews were on games I'd purchased myself (those spare hundreds came in handy) - I reviewed the original Fallout, and correctly predicted in my review that it would named Game Of The Year.
So, no - I never got any great free stuff, unless you count those $100 checks for playing computer games "free stuff".
Man, I'd love to have that side gig again!
It sounds like he must have done something high-profile to get noticed, otherwise they never would have gone looking for his employment contract and run it through a black-letter-of-the-law interpreter.
I think the issue that has been uncovered is critically important, and I feel better educated because of it, but I can't shake the nagging feeling that Tilly must have somehow angered management - maybe by spending too much time on Open Source projects and not enough on his company assignments? Hmm?
His PerlMonks posting wasn't too forthcoming about what started this whole mess. I'd like to know what did.
One of the key pieces of data missing from most web-based real estate searches is a precise street address. Without the address, you're stuck relying on the hype entered into the system by the listing agent. You can't drive by and see if you like the neighborhood, or if the house in question is a wreck despite the supposed features, etc.
Keep in mind, too, that those listings are put in by the seller's agent. If you don't have a real estate agent of your own, you're at the whim of the seller's agent, who will collect both sides of the commission when the property sells. For this reason, I'm more comfortable with someone who's working for me and not for the seller.
Plus, you'll probably need a realtor to set up appointments to show the property: most selling realtors and/or homeowners don't want the general public tromping through their for-sale home. This weeds out both the uncommitted browsers and the merely curious.
You're probably going to want a realtor to handle the actual transaction for you when it comes time to buy. Have you ever read a real estate purchase contract? Sure, a lot of people blow it off as a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo and boilerplate, but we're talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in play. Don't you want a trained professional on your side?
Remember, too, that when you're buying, you don't pay your realtor a dime. That's the seller's problem. So why not use their services?
My last tip on choosing a realtor: take advantage of referrals from family, friends, or colleagues. Real estate agents are just like travel agents: they've all got the same products, what distinguishes them is how hard they'll work for you.
-Sharv
p.s.: IANAR (I Am Not A Realtor), I'm just impressed with the job my realtor did for me, compared with the poor results and incomplete data I got using some of the websites listed in the story.
-Sharv
Note: the government apparently does as poor a job using PowerPoint as they do securing their networks.
For the detail-minded, here's the report:
Computer Security Report Card
I just wish it was a little easier to read some of the details.
-Sharv
What made Daley-era machine politics so successful was the elegance and simplicity inherent in the method. No one bought or sold anything - those kinds of transactions could be tracked. It was the vague and ephemeral influence that did all the magic.
So before you call anyone a schmuck, pony up references that The Boss was actually indicted, lest you defame one of this city's legends. That he got away with it all is one of his biggest achievements.
Side note: when he died, all the Chicago Public School kids (myself included) got a day off in mourning. Hopefully that will clarify his stature and prominence at the time - he was far from disgraced.
-Sharv
Well, I've got the other half of your argument. I'm personally excited to see that these supremely talented programmers have once again realized that there's more to 3D gaming than endless deathmatches.
Games like Half-Life, Thief, and System Shock 2 have proven beyond a doubt that there's a significant market for people who like 3D shooters but don't get off on virtual slaughter of real people. Stories and puzzles need to be considered equally with hot graphics to make a great game. Examine the difference in immersion between a great Infocom game like Trinity compared to the beautiful but empty world of Myst for an example.
And while I'm on the subject of deathmatching...
[rant:ON]
Deathmatching has always struck me as a little pathological, the ultimate in antisocial behavior. A Quake clan is no substitute for a legitimate team sport or activity - try turning off the monitor once in a while and engage directly with other, real-world people. Join a bowling league, have a poker game, hell, go out in the woods and play paintball if you're so into shooting up your friends.
[rant:OFF]
But, hey, DOOM III? Sign me up. I miss those days. I remember being on the net when Doom hit, the great First Age of shareware games. Watched the evolution of all the 3rd-party editors and hacks, downloading the very first user-created map file (a couple of interconnected cubes, not much else)... ah, nostalgia.
-Sharv
From what I've seen of Lucas, especially during the pre-Ep1 hype, was that he's an amazing control freak. Sure, Star Wars is his creation entirely; he dreamed it all up. I can understand his pride in wanting to make sure it was done right.
But, as seen on 60 Minutes, he personally supervised EVERY minute detail: every costume, every design element, all the way down to the individual sounds of the podracer engines. The 60 Minutes piece actually showed him in the sound editing room, listening to barely-indistinguishable engine sounds. "No, it should be more like 'brrrrrrummmm', not 'barrrrummm'," he was seen meticulously instructing some poor hapless flunky.
Personally, I buy the "George wants to personally oversee the DVD" excuse. I imagine he's like that. He's going to wait until he's done micromanaging Episodes II & III before sitting in the DVD mastering lab, hectoring every tech in sight to make sure it measures up to his anal-retentive "vision".
-Sharv
FYI -
According to a colleague of mine who lived for a time in Oz, it is possible to send U.S.-drawn checks to Australia. The recipient, however, will have to pony up the exchange rate difference and possibly pay a fee to their bank to take the deposit.
Note that large banks (Citibank, Harris, etc.) usually will sell you a money order drawn in foreign currency, if you want to save the Penguin People from the evil bank fee collectors.
Really big banks can probably even sell you authentic Australian currency, but we cannot recommend sending that by mail.
-Sharv
If you're going to issue manifestos and lectures, get it right yourself first.
-Sharv