I disagree with your last statement: "Sure this will get them noticed more, but if the games don't have innovative graphics and gameplay, the popularity of the previous titles is not going to mean shit."
You'll buy it because you'll assume it's going to be at least close to the original game, and the original had great graphics/gameplay, whatever.
As far as general creativity goes, I think there are two major kinds of improvement:
1. The Game itself - is the concept, usability, gameplay, etc. any good? The gameplay of GTA3 was awesome.
2. Presentation - is it visually appealing? Does it have a soundtrack? How realistic is it?
This isn't to say that a game needs to be visually stunning, but presentation is a little more than just icing.
Some of the greatest games did not rely on a new 3D engine, or require expensive CPUs or video cards.
But hell if I didn't enjoy Halo, Half-life, and GTA because of the presentation.
Even if you don't tax them more than a normal business, they deal in much larger amounts of money than many other businesses. Plus, earnings from gambling are taxed more heavily than other earnings. At least, on the consumer side. I can see this reasoning being applied to a casino.
I appreciate your decision to reply instead of mod down. I'm not trying for flamebait or troll here...
The casino has a game where the rules are known, the odds are known, and the risks are known. The point of roulette is that it is essentially a physical random number generator, and you're expected to play (or not play) with the knowledge that you can (and probably will) lose. Roulette odds are pretty low, so the return is pretty high. Picking the lucky number is hard to do - it's "luck." So if you come in and find a way to predict the outcome each time (or close to it, as they did) then you're eliminating the "chance" from the game. It's no longer equal footing, and the casino is going to be ripped off.
I think it's pretty ridiculous to say that what they did wasn't cheating. Do you think the casino would run a game that was easy to beat? Of course not. Finding a way to beat a game is usually cheating - even some sophisticated card counting schemes are not allowed.
Thanks again for not modding down just because you disagree with me.
That's the kind of attitude that reinforces the vigilante methods that many casinos have used in the past. Cheating laws can help protect the cheater... casinos know that they can turn to the law for help dealing with these jackasses, and the jackasses don't end up in a dumpster.
The problem wasn't with their wheel - it was the fact that the players brought in equipment and used it to cheat.
Some other obvious cheating examples: -Bringing in cameras and linking them so a player can see his opponent's cards. -Using a device to let you predict/influence the roll of the dice. -Hacking a slot machine to produce winning pulls
The point? It's not a flaw with the casino or their equipment - it's a bunch of jackasses trying to cheat.
If you can find a way to improve your chances, it's probably against the rules. The only game I'm aware of that has a better than 50% chance of winning (against the house, that is) is blackjack.
Winning big (and often) on roulette raises eyebrows right away. They could have at least tried to beat a game that wasn't quite so obvious.
I think the "moon" label is very inaccurate. It's not orbiting anything but the Sun. It's also, as you noted, much farther away than our own moon. According to the Java applet (which is pretty cool, btw) the asteroid will be on the other side of the sun for a lot of the time (and even outside the orbit of Mars).
Catchy, but misleading headline. Still pretty neat, though.
I know the discussion's kinda dead now, but for clarification's sake:
1. I didn't reimplement it... I just started building it, so there was no hashing in place.
2. Fixing it was easy - switched to SHA in a matter of minutes. The only thing I had to redo was re-creating the only password in the DB.
As for the md5 not being weak for password hashing, I was partly joking... but if I can point at the SHA and impress the client even more, I might as well do so.:) Thanks for the tip, btw.
It came installed with the machine. I should have known better.
Uninstall it? I certainly intend to... any suggestions for a really good one that doesn't screw its customers, use ungodly amounts of memory, and still does its job?
The other day, there was a bitTorrent link in the article, and I realized that I didn't have Bit Torrent installed. So when I went to download it, McAfee told me it was Spyware.
Pharmaceuticals are corrupt and overpriced because of the pharma companies.
Telecom sucks oh so bad because of the telecom companies.
Just look at the pricing, support and service agreements for the major players. Those are their rules - not the government's. When it comes to the government passing legislation that benefits those companies, look at what's behind them - usually a lobby group or one of the companies themselves putting heavy pressure in the right places.
Which leads many people to question why these corporations have so much influence....
I don't know about that. You think a small private company is going to be able to compete with the big boys? Sorry, but I'd rather have a gov't. backed telco at low rates and comparable service than deal with Comcast.
I don't want it controlled by the gov't (even on a community level), but our local ISPs are pretty weak in service, support and pricing. They just can't compete.
I don't see why the gov't can't invest in (and get a return from) a local ISP. Let the ISP run the system, let the gov't. help to fund it and when the profits appear, some of those go back to the gov't.
It avoids privacy issues while still allowing the consumers (and the government) to benefit by providing reasonable competition against the giants.
I don't mean to place everyone within those two categories. I present them as two polar opposites that I'm seeing as the basis of this disagreement, not as a straw man.
I'm also in the middle somewhere... but a lot of people here are trying to argue the second side. And that's just as evil as giving the copyright holder permanent ownership of his work. Unfortunately, I'm arguing against a lot of open source and free software advocates - that have convinced themselves that such control as copyright provides is evil. Really, their objection should be that this control is abused.
"The only problem is, we have found that most of the time the AOL users are reporting our email as spam on accident!"
Sure... on "accident."
Seriously - I'm not sure what business you're in, but do your clients really need to be using AOL? Could be worse, I guess. It could be Netzero. Still, I have a few clients that are AOL customers, and the host of problems that they've faced has been enough to convince them to switch.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm in that age bracket, and I've been watching more TV than ever.
I sit at my coffee table with my laptop and a wireless card...the TV is almost always on.
Yeah, I'm sure that they're all very attractive. Just like in real life.
Deception. The Internet's full of it.
Yeah, my preview button's broken.
Cross my fingers.
"our friendly software giant"
Is that sarcasm?
I disagree with your last statement: "Sure this will get them noticed more, but if the games don't have innovative graphics and gameplay, the popularity of the previous titles is not going to mean shit."
You'll buy it because you'll assume it's going to be at least close to the original game, and the original had great graphics/gameplay, whatever.
As far as general creativity goes, I think there are two major kinds of improvement:
1. The Game itself - is the concept, usability, gameplay, etc. any good? The gameplay of GTA3 was awesome.
2. Presentation - is it visually appealing? Does it have a soundtrack? How realistic is it?
This isn't to say that a game needs to be visually stunning, but presentation is a little more than just icing.
Some of the greatest games did not rely on a new 3D engine, or require expensive CPUs or video cards.
But hell if I didn't enjoy Halo, Half-life, and GTA because of the presentation.
Even if you don't tax them more than a normal business, they deal in much larger amounts of money than many other businesses. Plus, earnings from gambling are taxed more heavily than other earnings. At least, on the consumer side. I can see this reasoning being applied to a casino.
I appreciate your decision to reply instead of mod down. I'm not trying for flamebait or troll here...
The casino has a game where the rules are known, the odds are known, and the risks are known. The point of roulette is that it is essentially a physical random number generator, and you're expected to play (or not play) with the knowledge that you can (and probably will) lose. Roulette odds are pretty low, so the return is pretty high. Picking the lucky number is hard to do - it's "luck." So if you come in and find a way to predict the outcome each time (or close to it, as they did) then you're eliminating the "chance" from the game. It's no longer equal footing, and the casino is going to be ripped off.
I think it's pretty ridiculous to say that what they did wasn't cheating. Do you think the casino would run a game that was easy to beat? Of course not. Finding a way to beat a game is usually cheating - even some sophisticated card counting schemes are not allowed.
Thanks again for not modding down just because you disagree with me.
That's the kind of attitude that reinforces the vigilante methods that many casinos have used in the past. Cheating laws can help protect the cheater... casinos know that they can turn to the law for help dealing with these jackasses, and the jackasses don't end up in a dumpster.
The problem wasn't with their wheel - it was the fact that the players brought in equipment and used it to cheat.
Some other obvious cheating examples:
-Bringing in cameras and linking them so a player can see his opponent's cards.
-Using a device to let you predict/influence the roll of the dice.
-Hacking a slot machine to produce winning pulls
The point? It's not a flaw with the casino or their equipment - it's a bunch of jackasses trying to cheat.
Don't gamble.
If you can find a way to improve your chances, it's probably against the rules. The only game I'm aware of that has a better than 50% chance of winning (against the house, that is) is blackjack.
Winning big (and often) on roulette raises eyebrows right away. They could have at least tried to beat a game that wasn't quite so obvious.
I think the "moon" label is very inaccurate. It's not orbiting anything but the Sun. It's also, as you noted, much farther away than our own moon. According to the Java applet (which is pretty cool, btw) the asteroid will be on the other side of the sun for a lot of the time (and even outside the orbit of Mars).
Catchy, but misleading headline. Still pretty neat, though.
I've never heard of this site, but I expect you'll hear a lot of complaints...
"KuduClub requires a small, monthly fee from US$2,95 or US$9.95 for the broadband package."
At least the New York Times only steals your soul... this actually takes your money. Anyone have a link/text/whatever so we can read it?
Do they feature a horrible actor, awful script, and whiny, annoying characters?
No? Then it's got to be better than the last movie.
I know the discussion's kinda dead now, but for clarification's sake:
:) Thanks for the tip, btw.
1. I didn't reimplement it... I just started building it, so there was no hashing in place.
2. Fixing it was easy - switched to SHA in a matter of minutes. The only thing I had to redo was re-creating the only password in the DB.
As for the md5 not being weak for password hashing, I was partly joking... but if I can point at the SHA and impress the client even more, I might as well do so.
The download was from a link on the official site.. bitconjurer.org.. file residing at sourceforge.
It came installed with the machine. I should have known better.
Uninstall it? I certainly intend to... any suggestions for a really good one that doesn't screw its customers, use ungodly amounts of memory, and still does its job?
This saddens me. I just finished implementing an md5 password hashing routine for a web application.
At least it's not production yet, so I can switch it over.
See? This is why my bosses should let me read Slashdot at work.
The other day, there was a bitTorrent link in the article, and I realized that I didn't have Bit Torrent installed. So when I went to download it, McAfee told me it was Spyware.
Bit Torrent is spyware?
Yet another reason for me to hate McAfee.
Good point.
Pharmaceuticals are corrupt and overpriced because of the pharma companies.
Telecom sucks oh so bad because of the telecom companies.
Just look at the pricing, support and service agreements for the major players. Those are their rules - not the government's. When it comes to the government passing legislation that benefits those companies, look at what's behind them - usually a lobby group or one of the companies themselves putting heavy pressure in the right places.
Which leads many people to question why these corporations have so much influence....
I don't know about that. You think a small private company is going to be able to compete with the big boys? Sorry, but I'd rather have a gov't. backed telco at low rates and comparable service than deal with Comcast.
I don't want it controlled by the gov't (even on a community level), but our local ISPs are pretty weak in service, support and pricing. They just can't compete.
I don't see why the gov't can't invest in (and get a return from) a local ISP. Let the ISP run the system, let the gov't. help to fund it and when the profits appear, some of those go back to the gov't.
It avoids privacy issues while still allowing the consumers (and the government) to benefit by providing reasonable competition against the giants.
We used to recommend Earthlink, FWIW.
Or you could provide a local dialup and give them a phone card (or 10-10-987). Cheaper than AOL, much easier to control.
Don't forget lobbying organizations and companies with enough cash to get what they want.
I don't mean to place everyone within those two categories. I present them as two polar opposites that I'm seeing as the basis of this disagreement, not as a straw man.
I'm also in the middle somewhere... but a lot of people here are trying to argue the second side. And that's just as evil as giving the copyright holder permanent ownership of his work. Unfortunately, I'm arguing against a lot of open source and free software advocates - that have convinced themselves that such control as copyright provides is evil. Really, their objection should be that this control is abused.
"The only problem is, we have found that most of the time the AOL users are reporting our email as spam on accident!"
Sure... on "accident."
Seriously - I'm not sure what business you're in, but do your clients really need to be using AOL? Could be worse, I guess. It could be Netzero. Still, I have a few clients that are AOL customers, and the host of problems that they've faced has been enough to convince them to switch.
Connections, mail problems, whatever.