I would like to add...if you have to ask if ASP is an appropriate language to learn for game development, then you are WAY behind the curve, my friend.
"Nope not at all, I mean producing a decent product at a sensible price."
Your point is moot, because it would still get pirated. You can't tell me $10 is not an acceptable price for many good music albums, however you define good, yet they still get pirated like crazy.
"Morals are defined by the masses, and if the masses support something as being an acceptable activity (which judging by the scale of piracy it is) then it cannot be defined as morally wrong except on a personal level."
So until slavery became illegal in the US, it was morally correct?
I'm so sick of all these straw-man arguments that get thrown around all the time, like those who pirate games and music are engaged in some noble fight. If you would all just be honest with yourselves and admit that you're just a bunch of cheapskates who don't want to pay, I'd have a lot more respect for your argument.
I'll say it again, this is EXACTLY what happened about 10 years ago. Investors started throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at websites without bothering to contemplate the fact that they didn't have a business model, and most of them failed for obvious reasons.
Consider also, that even if Twitter does start to accept advertising, nobody is going to see it. Why? Because a lot of Twitter users (most?) use 3rd party clients, especially the hardcore users. And you know everybody is going to use clients that don't bother them with ads.
Last time I checked, Twitter was free to use and does not have advertising. In other words, its income cannot be anything more than a trivial amount. It's true value is probably a lot closer to $0 than to $500 million.
This is how the dot.com boom of the 90's happened. Users != revenue or profitability.
It's not illegal to own. That said, I don't think I would walk into a casino with this loaded on my iPhone. If casinos suspect you of cheating, or even counting, they will use any pretext to hassle you or even prosecute you as aggressively as possible. Just being in possession of this on a casino floor is a bad idea.
What you're describing though is a failure of individuals, not of the ability to disseminate information. The electoral college doesn't do anything to solve this problem.
Why? Because most people have a lot more information about elected officials on the national level than they do locally. I couldn't tell you who the mayor of my city is, much less what his or her politics are, but I know who every congressional rep is for my state. And I've at least heard of most senators and know their political leanings. It's just a matter of information being available.
No, that's not the idea of the electoral college. Here's the idea:
Back in the day when this was conceived, rural farmer Jim Q. Hatfield in southern Georgia didn't know who many of the candidates were, especially those from, say, Boston. But he did know who two of Georgia's electors were, John Smith and Frank McCoy, because they lived nearby. He liked John Smith, but didn't trust that McCoy fellow, who was a dirty cur and a northern sympathizer. So Jim Hatfield would cast his vote for John Smith with the knowledge that John Smith would then vote for a presidential candidate that represented his interests.
The electoral college has nothing to do with populated areas v. rural areas. It's an outdated system based on the premise that most people don't have enough information about candidates on the national level. This has clearly run its course.
He must be doing something right
on
Anathem
·
· Score: 1
If you don't have both people that love and hate your work, then you're not doing anything interesting. Haven't read it yet, since I've got a few other books in my queue, including Sytem of the World, which is next on my list and will probably take me at least 6 months anyway. But I am LOVING the fact that there is a significant group here complaining it's overlong, wordy, etc., because while those books can be challenging and tedious at times, they often pay off. So far the Baroque Cycle has done that for me, and I'm hoping for more of the same with SOTW and Anathem.
notice the related stories...
Firehose:China Blocks More Internet Services by tringme (1352127)
looking at tringme's profile, he joined....TODAY! What a coincidence. Who cares if it's banned in China, he just wants to spam his service to slashdot.
WTF do you need 3 phones for anyway? Maybe, MAYBE, you need 2, if one is provided by your employer and they have strict limits about personal use. But you certainly do not need three, no matter what excuses you give yourself.
I think the difference in quality of presentations between Keynote and PowerPoint has very little to do with the software itself. They're both just slideware, and PowerPoint is every bit as capable of making good presentations as Keynote is of making bad ones. Bullet points in Keynote are equally ineffective as those in PP.
Rather, it has everything to do with the person giving the presentation. Perhaps those using Macs just tend to be a little more receptive to the "tell a story" method of presenting, rather than the "data dump" method that is the hallmark of bullet point riddled slides.
Part of the problem of 'improving' the game, though, is that Scrabble has a very well known set of rules that people have become accustomed to, for example the placement of the bonus sqaures. And these have a profound effect on gameplay. Tweaking these rules makes the game unlike what people want and are used to, which is why Wordscraper adding quadruple letter squares, or whatever, makes me not want to play it. Because when I want to play Scrabble, I want to play Scrabble, and not some knockoff. So I would rather play real Scrabble with Hasbro's flawed client, than play a fake Scrabble with the new Wordscraper client.
I do not have a reference for this other than hearsay, but from what I understand, Hasbro did indeed try to enter into some sort of licensing agreement with these guys, and they declined. Apparently the Scrabulous guys wanted millions, when in fact they should have been paying Hasbro.
I know companies are *required* to defend their trademarks against infringement, otherwise they become generic terms and they lose them. Not sure if that works for copyrights as well.
So basically, although I'm not happy about it, Hasbro had no other options left but to shut Scrabulous down. They certainly could have handled the situation better though - better transparency, having their own client be ready for prime time, etc.
The reason for his dismissive attitude of unit tests - that he knows exactly how all of his code works, and what impact a change will have - is exactly the reason you need them. In the real world, most programmers do in fact have to share their code with others. You're not always going to know the ramifications of refactoring a particular block of code, even if you wrote it yourself. And if you can keep all of that in your head at once, either your program is trivial, or you are some sort of supergenius. Now while I think the TDD guys are a little bit overzealous sometimes with their "100% coverage or die" attitude, unit testing is still a good habit to get into, regardless of what Knuth thinks.
Because they are a tiny fraction of total passengers flying doesn't justify the hassle and the waste, just as the internment of the Japanese in WWII was not justifiable based on the tiny fraction of the population they represented.
Great analogy there, bud. Imprisoning people based on their ethnicity is almost exactly the same as causing a minor inconvenience based on behavioral traits.
Would you rather they screen those 70,000 people randomly? Or not screen at all? I don't think anybody ever said this was a magic bullet, but it is certainly a powerful method, and a way to reduce racial profiling.
Backgammon is definitely one of the deepest strategy games, and it uses dice as the primary game mechanic. It's how you manage that randomness that is the challenge. Add in the doubling cube, and you've got an extremely nuanced game with very simple gameplay. It also makes for a great gambling game.
So who or what is YOUR final authority? Is it your reasoning ability or education? Is it your faith in science? 300 years ago, science looked very different than today. Where do you suppose science may be 300 years from today? Nothing gets obsolete faster than a science textbook.
This is the biggest fallacy spouted by fundamentalist Christians. Science is a METHOD, not a state, or a body of knowledge. Observe some phenomenon, make a hypothesis about its cause, and test the hypothesis. Repeat as necessary until the test supports the hypothesis. The scientific method has not fundamentally changed in those 300 years.
Nobody has evolved in any measure, even in the slightest, from what humans were 5000 years ago.
Except humans are taller now, even taller than we were a few hundred years ago. Guess what - that's evolution. But really, 5000 years is a very, very short amount of time to expect any significant evolution to happen in such a complex organism as homo sapiens. Evolution happens on a much longer time scale, which makes it very convenient to deny it, because we can't see it happening within our lifespan.
...no matter what your boss says. Just don't do it. It is management's responsibility to come up with metrics. If they can't do that, they're not qualified to hold their position, and frankly, I would tell them to their face. It might get you fired. But I've taken the "this is not my responsibility" tack before with some success. The reason this stuff happens is because workers allow it to happen, and if you don't stand your ground once in a while they will just keep shoving this type of crap at you.
Well, I imagine that General Mills has some computers and computer systems, and just maybe they have people to build and maintain said systems. And maybe all those people work in one department, and they call it the IT department. But I'm really going out on a limb there.
the article is top places to work in IT, not top IT companies.
As far as I'm concerned, the best place on that list is "None of the Above", with the possible exception of SAS. I've spent my time in huge companies, and frankly they can take all their corporate regulations and pay schedules and web filters and [insert typical corporate annoyances] and just shove it. I'm working for a small company now and I love it.
First of all, which students will be the unlucky ones stuck in the bad schools? The ones who can't afford to go to the better one, because the single parent can't afford to get them to school all the way across town. The students stuck in bad schools now would be the students stuck in even worse (and more poorly funded even than now) schools.
Secondly, where will the money for schools come from? Under the Libertarian plan, taxes will be a thing of the past. The Libertarian philosophy wouldn't require those without children in school to contribute, thereby putting more of the burden on parents with children in school. Of course, the ones who can afford this least are the ones hurt the most - the same group they say is suffering because they can't afford private schools under the current system.
The major problem with Libertarian politics is that none of their policies will ever get implemented, so those espousing them will never get to see the major unintended consequences of said policies that might cause them to adjust their positions in a more reasonable direction. Instead, Libertarians will continue to envision a fantasy world Libertarian utopia filled with candy canes and gumdrops and no taxes and privately financed blowjobs for everyone, and they will continue to be completely irrelevant.
The problem with the Libertarian party is that they are a complete bunch of certified nuts. There's a reason they are a fringe party - almost all of their positions are totally unreasonable. They are the political equivalent Islamic extremists.
Here's an example of a Libertarian position on education, under the larger heading of poverty: "Wealthy and middle class parents are able to send their children to private schools, or at least move to a district with better public schools. Poor families are trapped -- forced to send their children to a public school system that fails to educate. It is time to break up the public education monopoly and give all parents the right to decide what school their children will attend. It is essential to restore choice and the discipline of the marketplace to education. Only a free market in education will provide the improvement in education necessary to enable millions of Americans to escape poverty. "
Here they are decrying the very private education system they want to create! And you think schools are underfunded now? Just wait until nobody HAS TO pay for them.
I'm even saying this as somebody who's moderately libertarian and has voted for Libertarian candidates in the past. If you could take what mainstream Republicans claim to stand for on economic issues and what mainstream Democrats claim to stand for on social issues, that's about where by politics fall. But the Libertarian party overshoots that by miles.
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I would like to add...if you have to ask if ASP is an appropriate language to learn for game development, then you are WAY behind the curve, my friend.
"Nope not at all, I mean producing a decent product at a sensible price."
Your point is moot, because it would still get pirated. You can't tell me $10 is not an acceptable price for many good music albums, however you define good, yet they still get pirated like crazy.
"Morals are defined by the masses, and if the masses support something as being an acceptable activity (which judging by the scale of piracy it is) then it cannot be defined as morally wrong except on a personal level."
So until slavery became illegal in the US, it was morally correct?
I'm so sick of all these straw-man arguments that get thrown around all the time, like those who pirate games and music are engaged in some noble fight. If you would all just be honest with yourselves and admit that you're just a bunch of cheapskates who don't want to pay, I'd have a lot more respect for your argument.
I'll say it again, this is EXACTLY what happened about 10 years ago. Investors started throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at websites without bothering to contemplate the fact that they didn't have a business model, and most of them failed for obvious reasons.
Consider also, that even if Twitter does start to accept advertising, nobody is going to see it. Why? Because a lot of Twitter users (most?) use 3rd party clients, especially the hardcore users. And you know everybody is going to use clients that don't bother them with ads.
Last time I checked, Twitter was free to use and does not have advertising. In other words, its income cannot be anything more than a trivial amount. It's true value is probably a lot closer to $0 than to $500 million.
This is how the dot.com boom of the 90's happened. Users != revenue or profitability.
It's not illegal to own. That said, I don't think I would walk into a casino with this loaded on my iPhone. If casinos suspect you of cheating, or even counting, they will use any pretext to hassle you or even prosecute you as aggressively as possible. Just being in possession of this on a casino floor is a bad idea.
Really, their original attempt was more like 0.1 than 1.0...I don't think it even made it to Beta.
What you're describing though is a failure of individuals, not of the ability to disseminate information. The electoral college doesn't do anything to solve this problem.
Why? Because most people have a lot more information about elected officials on the national level than they do locally. I couldn't tell you who the mayor of my city is, much less what his or her politics are, but I know who every congressional rep is for my state. And I've at least heard of most senators and know their political leanings. It's just a matter of information being available.
No, that's not the idea of the electoral college. Here's the idea:
Back in the day when this was conceived, rural farmer Jim Q. Hatfield in southern Georgia didn't know who many of the candidates were, especially those from, say, Boston. But he did know who two of Georgia's electors were, John Smith and Frank McCoy, because they lived nearby. He liked John Smith, but didn't trust that McCoy fellow, who was a dirty cur and a northern sympathizer. So Jim Hatfield would cast his vote for John Smith with the knowledge that John Smith would then vote for a presidential candidate that represented his interests.
The electoral college has nothing to do with populated areas v. rural areas. It's an outdated system based on the premise that most people don't have enough information about candidates on the national level. This has clearly run its course.
If you don't have both people that love and hate your work, then you're not doing anything interesting. Haven't read it yet, since I've got a few other books in my queue, including Sytem of the World, which is next on my list and will probably take me at least 6 months anyway. But I am LOVING the fact that there is a significant group here complaining it's overlong, wordy, etc., because while those books can be challenging and tedious at times, they often pay off. So far the Baroque Cycle has done that for me, and I'm hoping for more of the same with SOTW and Anathem.
notice the related stories...
Firehose:China Blocks More Internet Services by tringme (1352127)
looking at tringme's profile, he joined....TODAY! What a coincidence. Who cares if it's banned in China, he just wants to spam his service to slashdot.
WTF do you need 3 phones for anyway? Maybe, MAYBE, you need 2, if one is provided by your employer and they have strict limits about personal use. But you certainly do not need three, no matter what excuses you give yourself.
I think the difference in quality of presentations between Keynote and PowerPoint has very little to do with the software itself. They're both just slideware, and PowerPoint is every bit as capable of making good presentations as Keynote is of making bad ones. Bullet points in Keynote are equally ineffective as those in PP.
Rather, it has everything to do with the person giving the presentation. Perhaps those using Macs just tend to be a little more receptive to the "tell a story" method of presenting, rather than the "data dump" method that is the hallmark of bullet point riddled slides.
Part of the problem of 'improving' the game, though, is that Scrabble has a very well known set of rules that people have become accustomed to, for example the placement of the bonus sqaures. And these have a profound effect on gameplay. Tweaking these rules makes the game unlike what people want and are used to, which is why Wordscraper adding quadruple letter squares, or whatever, makes me not want to play it. Because when I want to play Scrabble, I want to play Scrabble, and not some knockoff. So I would rather play real Scrabble with Hasbro's flawed client, than play a fake Scrabble with the new Wordscraper client.
Aren't software patents on the way out now?
I do not have a reference for this other than hearsay, but from what I understand, Hasbro did indeed try to enter into some sort of licensing agreement with these guys, and they declined. Apparently the Scrabulous guys wanted millions, when in fact they should have been paying Hasbro. I know companies are *required* to defend their trademarks against infringement, otherwise they become generic terms and they lose them. Not sure if that works for copyrights as well. So basically, although I'm not happy about it, Hasbro had no other options left but to shut Scrabulous down. They certainly could have handled the situation better though - better transparency, having their own client be ready for prime time, etc.
The reason for his dismissive attitude of unit tests - that he knows exactly how all of his code works, and what impact a change will have - is exactly the reason you need them. In the real world, most programmers do in fact have to share their code with others. You're not always going to know the ramifications of refactoring a particular block of code, even if you wrote it yourself. And if you can keep all of that in your head at once, either your program is trivial, or you are some sort of supergenius. Now while I think the TDD guys are a little bit overzealous sometimes with their "100% coverage or die" attitude, unit testing is still a good habit to get into, regardless of what Knuth thinks.
Great analogy there, bud. Imprisoning people based on their ethnicity is almost exactly the same as causing a minor inconvenience based on behavioral traits.
Would you rather they screen those 70,000 people randomly? Or not screen at all? I don't think anybody ever said this was a magic bullet, but it is certainly a powerful method, and a way to reduce racial profiling.
Backgammon is definitely one of the deepest strategy games, and it uses dice as the primary game mechanic. It's how you manage that randomness that is the challenge. Add in the doubling cube, and you've got an extremely nuanced game with very simple gameplay. It also makes for a great gambling game.
...no matter what your boss says. Just don't do it. It is management's responsibility to come up with metrics. If they can't do that, they're not qualified to hold their position, and frankly, I would tell them to their face. It might get you fired. But I've taken the "this is not my responsibility" tack before with some success. The reason this stuff happens is because workers allow it to happen, and if you don't stand your ground once in a while they will just keep shoving this type of crap at you.
Well, I imagine that General Mills has some computers and computer systems, and just maybe they have people to build and maintain said systems. And maybe all those people work in one department, and they call it the IT department. But I'm really going out on a limb there.
the article is top places to work in IT, not top IT companies.
As far as I'm concerned, the best place on that list is "None of the Above", with the possible exception of SAS. I've spent my time in huge companies, and frankly they can take all their corporate regulations and pay schedules and web filters and [insert typical corporate annoyances] and just shove it. I'm working for a small company now and I love it.
Great, I can't wait until people start parking on the sidewalks like they do in Europe.
First of all, which students will be the unlucky ones stuck in the bad schools? The ones who can't afford to go to the better one, because the single parent can't afford to get them to school all the way across town. The students stuck in bad schools now would be the students stuck in even worse (and more poorly funded even than now) schools.
Secondly, where will the money for schools come from? Under the Libertarian plan, taxes will be a thing of the past. The Libertarian philosophy wouldn't require those without children in school to contribute, thereby putting more of the burden on parents with children in school. Of course, the ones who can afford this least are the ones hurt the most - the same group they say is suffering because they can't afford private schools under the current system.
The major problem with Libertarian politics is that none of their policies will ever get implemented, so those espousing them will never get to see the major unintended consequences of said policies that might cause them to adjust their positions in a more reasonable direction. Instead, Libertarians will continue to envision a fantasy world Libertarian utopia filled with candy canes and gumdrops and no taxes and privately financed blowjobs for everyone, and they will continue to be completely irrelevant.
The problem with the Libertarian party is that they are a complete bunch of certified nuts. There's a reason they are a fringe party - almost all of their positions are totally unreasonable. They are the political equivalent Islamic extremists.
Here's an example of a Libertarian position on education, under the larger heading of poverty: "Wealthy and middle class parents are able to send their children to private schools, or at least move to a district with better public schools. Poor families are trapped -- forced to send their children to a public school system that fails to educate. It is time to break up the public education monopoly and give all parents the right to decide what school their children will attend. It is essential to restore choice and the discipline of the marketplace to education. Only a free market in education will provide the improvement in education necessary to enable millions of Americans to escape poverty. "
Here they are decrying the very private education system they want to create! And you think schools are underfunded now? Just wait until nobody HAS TO pay for them.
I'm even saying this as somebody who's moderately libertarian and has voted for Libertarian candidates in the past. If you could take what mainstream Republicans claim to stand for on economic issues and what mainstream Democrats claim to stand for on social issues, that's about where by politics fall. But the Libertarian party overshoots that by miles.
Take that, Intelligent Design!