I would imagine that putting the car in neutral gear is a better plan than turning the key if the throttle sticks open. Some cars will lock the steering wheel if the key is off.
It seems to me that a bigger problem with the ARG genre is that the creators are often hidden till game end. Given that the game experience depends to a large extent on the quality of the writing and game design, you'd only want to play the ones which are designed by competent teams unless you had a lot of free time.
For example, the parent says that only 4orty2wo creates decent games - but you don't know whether it's them when the game starts. By the time you know, you've missed some or all of the game.
I think sooner or later that game designers will realise this and start "branding" games so fans of a previous game will be attracted to their next effort. Mind Candy did this for Perplex City but as far as I know 4orty2wo hasn't (please correct me if I'm wrong).
A cross-media genre of interactive fiction using multiple delivery and communications media, including television, radio, newpapers, Internet, email, SMS, telephone, voicemail, and postal service. Gaming is typically comprised of a secret group of PuppetMasters who author, manipulate, and otherwise control the storyline, related scenarios, and puzzles and a public group of players, the collective detective that attempts to solve the puzzles and thereby win the furtherance of the story.
It's not technically a MMO, but Guild Wars sounds like what you're looking for. There are a few missions which really require a reasonable team but mostly you can grab some AI henchmen and just go, or play random-team PvP arena (usually 5 min or less per round).
N. Korea is effectively inviolate because any military action would result in about a zillion artillery rounds landing on Seoul. 10+ million people live in Seoul. The mass carnage would never be tolerated and evacuation of the city is unfeasible.
'On [the robot's] world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.'" 'Odd,' said Arthur, 'I thought you said it was a democracy.' 'I did,' said Ford, 'It is.' 'So,' said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, 'why don't the people get rid of the lizards?' 'It honestly doesn't occur to them,' said Ford. 'They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.' 'You mean they actually vote for the lizards?' 'Oh yes,' said Ford with a shrug, 'of course.' 'But,' said Arthur, going for the big one again, 'why?' 'Because if they didn't vote for a lizard,' said Ford, 'the wrong lizard might get in'"
For a more complete implementation (which eliminates combined results, etc), you might want to try metacrawler. Dogpile is better known but is exactly the same under the hood, so the one you use probably depends on your UI choice.
I imagine there are a bunch of other metasearch implementations out by now but I happened to do a bit of work on those two back in the day, so I know a little more about them.
Complaining about balance at this point is very premature.
In the 2.0 (as I recall) version, sensory got a big boost with the "cloaking fields" around sensory chambers and aliens won a lot at first on pub servers. Then the marines got the hang of how to cope with that and in the end aliens gave up on sensory first as a strategy.
This is the exact same thing again - people want to try the new thing so aliens will build sensory first a lot for a while, but in the end I'm guessing the same build order will be used as the previous version (defense, movement, sensory).
If this is modelled on the real Oscars, presumably they pre-emptively play the ceremonial "Get Off The Stage You Geek" music before any winner gets near a microphone.
You are incorrect. For example, a friend of mine (and an ex-boss), very smart guy and pretty well respected in the search community is already working for them.
Microsoft's usual product pattern is (IMHO):
1.0: Pretty useless and not in the same class as the market leader. 2.0: Not as good as the market leader but you could use it in a pinch. 3.0: About as good as the market leader. 4.0: Market leader fell down stairs or something and mysteriously MS is ahead now.
I would say that MSN search is up to about 2.0 right now.
Here's a link to the Al-Jazeera translation (thanks to William Gibson for pointing it out). Apparently it's a little closer to the meaning of the original Arabic than the other Net translations.
It was widely surmised that the Sunday broadcasts were the last round of audio clips, but it turns out that's not the case. There's going to be one more round on Thursday 11/4, according to Dana's blog. Details of the final broadcast are not known yet.
I've done a bunch of research on this game since I happened to notice it early. A group of us weren't happy with the quality of reference material available and decided to start an editorial-team based Wiki.
If you're interested in the "I Love Bees" ARG (Alternate Reality Game) and want a more in-depth view, you might want to take a look at the FireFlies Guide. For the whole picture, we have a bunch of analysis and reference info available on the rest of our Wiki.
Programmers can and often do declare "throws Exception" which completely defeats the purpose. So you shouldn't have checked exceptions because people might be dumb? Programmers can and often do totally ignore the possibility of exceptions (for example, in a lot of Microsoft example code) which can cause complete system failure. I could use the "people are dumb" argument to say that you should have checked exceptions as well.
An automated documentation tool like javadoc can and should enumerate the possible exceptions each method might throw. Uh-huh. I haven't seen one that does this automatically for C#, it relies on the programmer to list them. Microsoft's own libraries have some documented exceptions that can be thrown but not all of them.
They are a tedious obstacle to rapid prototyping, where a programmer cannot really know what exceptions are likely to be thrown and shouldn't be asked to enumerate them. Use a rapid prototyping language if that's what you want. By the same argument, maybe C# should get rid of strict type checking too - that's a tedious obstacle as well, right?
Checked exceptions make it impossible to correctly declare interfaces because there is no way a programmer can forsee every possible checked exception anyone might ever want to throw in an implementation class. Sure. But as a client of the interface, if the new implementation you dropped in throws some random exception that I don't catch because I didn't know you could throw it, it's impossible for me to catch the exceptions I cared about and pass up the ones I didn't. So then it makes it impossible to correctly write a client class, since I can't forsee every possible exception anyone might want to throw in an implementation class.
Re:Only Microsoft
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I've read the arguments on the topic, but I don't agree.
Relying on documentation to tell API users what exceptions can be thrown is a really terrible idea if you're trying to write server software that has to actually work. And work all the time, 24/7, not just in a demo. MS still seems to be in the mindset where their developers are mostly making client-side VB applications or tiny ASP sites.
We've had a number of cases so far where C# library methods unexpectedly threw an undocumented exception (that would most likely have been a checked exception in a Java implementation). Now, often if you were smart you'll be lucky and the exception falling through to a general handler won't break anything too badly, but other times something unfortunate will happen.
In my book, when Microsoft's fast-to-develop-cut-all-the-corners methodology meets the real world of SLAs where software actually has to work, something has to give. And yes, you can say "just use Java/Python/Cobol/whatever instead" but the point here is debating whether using checked exceptions is a good idea or not.
I'll be honest - I like a lot of things about C#. It's a good language and their IDE is also good. But deciding that checked exceptions were bad was very unfortunate.
Slashdot Mirror
I would imagine that putting the car in neutral gear is a better plan than turning the key if the throttle sticks open. Some cars will lock the steering wheel if the key is off.
Always nice to answer rhetorical questions.
The answer is "yes it can, but this organisation isn't".
It is very unlikely though. Certainty of lack of bias generally indicates denial.
Clearly you're suffering from liberal bias. Fox News is fair and balanced - it said so right there on the screen!
Someone has to do it.
Don't say another Goddamn word.
Sounds dangerous. I hear there are bears "outside"!
When I got to the end of that article, I half expected to see it signed "Summer Glau".
It seems to me that a bigger problem with the ARG genre is that the creators are often hidden till game end. Given that the game experience depends to a large extent on the quality of the writing and game design, you'd only want to play the ones which are designed by competent teams unless you had a lot of free time.
For example, the parent says that only 4orty2wo creates decent games - but you don't know whether it's them when the game starts. By the time you know, you've missed some or all of the game.
I think sooner or later that game designers will realise this and start "branding" games so fans of a previous game will be attracted to their next effort. Mind Candy did this for Perplex City but as far as I know 4orty2wo hasn't (please correct me if I'm wrong).
This vacancy brings an exciting new job opportunity to the marketplace! Apply now!
It's not technically a MMO, but Guild Wars sounds like what you're looking for. There are a few missions which really require a reasonable team but mostly you can grab some AI henchmen and just go, or play random-team PvP arena (usually 5 min or less per round).
>Oh, but North Korea is next, right?
No, it'll be Iran if anyone.
N. Korea is effectively inviolate because any military action would result in about a zillion artillery rounds landing on Seoul. 10+ million people live in Seoul. The mass carnage would never be tolerated and evacuation of the city is unfeasible.
Douglas Adams summed this up quite well.
'On [the robot's] world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.'"
'Odd,' said Arthur, 'I thought you said it was a democracy.'
'I did,' said Ford, 'It is.'
'So,' said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, 'why don't the people get rid of the lizards?'
'It honestly doesn't occur to them,' said Ford. 'They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.'
'You mean they actually vote for the lizards?'
'Oh yes,' said Ford with a shrug, 'of course.'
'But,' said Arthur, going for the big one again, 'why?'
'Because if they didn't vote for a lizard,' said Ford, 'the wrong lizard might get in'"
This is a simple example of metasearch.
For a more complete implementation (which eliminates combined results, etc), you might want to try metacrawler. Dogpile is better known but is exactly the same under the hood, so the one you use probably depends on your UI choice.
I imagine there are a bunch of other metasearch implementations out by now but I happened to do a bit of work on those two back in the day, so I know a little more about them.
I think this was the link the submitter meant.
Complaining about balance at this point is very premature.
In the 2.0 (as I recall) version, sensory got a big boost with the "cloaking fields" around sensory chambers and aliens won a lot at first on pub servers. Then the marines got the hang of how to cope with that and in the end aliens gave up on sensory first as a strategy.
This is the exact same thing again - people want to try the new thing so aliens will build sensory first a lot for a while, but in the end I'm guessing the same build order will be used as the previous version (defense, movement, sensory).
If this is modelled on the real Oscars, presumably they pre-emptively play the ceremonial "Get Off The Stage You Geek" music before any winner gets near a microphone.
You are incorrect. For example, a friend of mine (and an ex-boss), very smart guy and pretty well respected in the search community is already working for them.
Microsoft's usual product pattern is (IMHO):
1.0: Pretty useless and not in the same class as the market leader.
2.0: Not as good as the market leader but you could use it in a pinch.
3.0: About as good as the market leader.
4.0: Market leader fell down stairs or something and mysteriously MS is ahead now.
I would say that MSN search is up to about 2.0 right now.
Legal fees may well mean that both sides lose.
Here's a link to the Al-Jazeera translation (thanks to William Gibson for pointing it out). Apparently it's a little closer to the meaning of the original Arabic than the other Net translations.
It was widely surmised that the Sunday broadcasts were the last round of audio clips, but it turns out that's not the case. There's going to be one more round on Thursday 11/4, according to Dana's blog. Details of the final broadcast are not known yet.
I've done a bunch of research on this game since I happened to notice it early. A group of us weren't happy with the quality of reference material available and decided to start an editorial-team based Wiki.
If you're interested in the "I Love Bees" ARG (Alternate Reality Game) and want a more in-depth view, you might want to take a look at the FireFlies Guide. For the whole picture, we have a bunch of analysis and reference info available on the rest of our Wiki.
Quick! Get those nice Cuban democracy educators over to oversee the Florida elections, as they offered in 2000!
Or maybe the Zimbabwe guys. I think they offered to help too.
Programmers can and often do declare "throws Exception" which completely defeats the purpose.
So you shouldn't have checked exceptions because people might be dumb? Programmers can and often do totally ignore the possibility of exceptions (for example, in a lot of Microsoft example code) which can cause complete system failure. I could use the "people are dumb" argument to say that you should have checked exceptions as well.
An automated documentation tool like javadoc can and should enumerate the possible exceptions each method might throw.
Uh-huh. I haven't seen one that does this automatically for C#, it relies on the programmer to list them. Microsoft's own libraries have some documented exceptions that can be thrown but not all of them.
They are a tedious obstacle to rapid prototyping, where a programmer cannot really know what exceptions are likely to be thrown and shouldn't be asked to enumerate them.
Use a rapid prototyping language if that's what you want. By the same argument, maybe C# should get rid of strict type checking too - that's a tedious obstacle as well, right?
Checked exceptions make it impossible to correctly declare interfaces because there is no way a programmer can forsee every possible checked exception anyone might ever want to throw in an implementation class.
Sure. But as a client of the interface, if the new implementation you dropped in throws some random exception that I don't catch because I didn't know you could throw it, it's impossible for me to catch the exceptions I cared about and pass up the ones I didn't. So then it makes it impossible to correctly write a client class, since I can't forsee every possible exception anyone might want to throw in an implementation class.
I've read the arguments on the topic, but I don't agree.
Relying on documentation to tell API users what exceptions can be thrown is a really terrible idea if you're trying to write server software that has to actually work. And work all the time, 24/7, not just in a demo. MS still seems to be in the mindset where their developers are mostly making client-side VB applications or tiny ASP sites.
We've had a number of cases so far where C# library methods unexpectedly threw an undocumented exception (that would most likely have been a checked exception in a Java implementation). Now, often if you were smart you'll be lucky and the exception falling through to a general handler won't break anything too badly, but other times something unfortunate will happen.
In my book, when Microsoft's fast-to-develop-cut-all-the-corners methodology meets the real world of SLAs where software actually has to work, something has to give. And yes, you can say "just use Java/Python/Cobol/whatever instead" but the point here is debating whether using checked exceptions is a good idea or not.
I'll be honest - I like a lot of things about C#. It's a good language and their IDE is also good. But deciding that checked exceptions were bad was very unfortunate.
The U.K. magazine PC Zone also reviewed HL2 in their latest issue.
They gave it a score of 97%, which is the best score they've ever given a game.