I had to explain ports and firewalls to one of our Account Services people yesterday. My analogy was a company with oine main number and everyone else on extensions behind that number. So if calling their number (IP address) and asking for extension 80 (port) lets you talk to Janie (900.69.69.69:69) then that's just like connecting to a web server at an address:port combination.
Specifically, we were trying to figure out if a clients BOFH was a BOFH, a PFY or a PHB. We think he's a PHB since there's a lot of money (cash and obligations) sunk into a project that needs a port opened in their firewall and he won't/can't/hasn't opened it up yet.
This may still be better than the other (former) client who put two people in our office using VPN to connect to their home network... and then changed their proxy configuration without telling anyone (like their helpdesk). It took me a week of phone tag to get one of their network analysts to finally say "OK, try this". Then they sent her an XP laptop with that setting locked into the old-and-wrong setting. I think she had to ship it back since they wouldn't cut loose with the admin password. Neither would I, but the box would have worked before I sent it out. We aren't suing them for specifically "rampant idiocy", but that MUST be a factor. We're suing them, a spokesfigure was perp-walked recently and business is way down. I wonder how long they'll manage to stay out of Chapter 11.
That's very unfurtunate. I remember the first version of QuickBooks, a DOS program it was. Simple, character-driven interface. It had menus, screens, fields and all that good stuff. And you could also do everything from the keyboard. Anyone with any skill could do the books as fast as they could type. It was easy to use, and if you knew the first thing about double entry you could use the program. Conversely, learning to use QuickBooks taught you double entry accounting. It was a perfect mapping of the subject matter to the program design.
I'm an interface and usuability nut, so a program getting less useful over time is just sad. I suppose they had to keep tinkering with perfection so they'd have somethig gnew to sell. I'd have probably just put out a new version whenever Microsoft shipped a new Windows and pretty much leave it at that (Internet).
Well, the Lucas Arts press release quoted above has an overemphasis on quality. I'll admit I'm reading between the lines, but that does imply a quality problem to me.
EVE doesn't use a Level or experience system in the classic sense. You train skills by simply investing the time required to advace that skill Ok, skills have levels. They also have Ranks, which is a multiplier of the time required. Attributes affect training time as well.
Going on vacation ? Start training something like Minmatar Cruiser 5 and it'll be done when you get back. The only real catch is you can't freely switch between skills under training, nor train with more than one character per account at a time.
So my two-days-after-retail pilot character is heavily loaded with high skills, my alt character just has enough to run the corporation and our maufacturing operations.
So in EVE it's "I get Electronic Warfare 5 in 9 days !" and not "5000 more goblins to the next level !"
As soon as India has enough PCs/Current-gen game consoles we probably will see games based on the Bhagavad Gita. It'd be perfect for an RPG, online or off.
Well, looking at THAT it's pretty obvious why it took so long:
The data model was "easy". Implementing and optimising it in an engine capable of high FPS... that had to suck. This really had to have taken years. And I'll bet it'll still take a couple of patches to polish it. Everything is made out of materials, not shaded polygons. Shoot a board and it splinters. The allied AI looked gooooooood.
The mod and machinima communtities must be freaking out right now. I really hope this engine gets widely used.
The barrel pachinko scene alone is worth the download. And so are the Striders.
Or how about the whole "why not just destroy ONE piece of the damn thing ?" part that made the second half of the film redundant. And the big bungie gunfight scene was bo-ring and lame.
Speaking of the code revealed under NDA... I Have A Theory
No programmers have looked at the code under NDA, most certainly no UNIX system developers have looked at it.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the comments containing "jokes" and "mispellings" in common between SCO code and Linux code. I think the jokes and mispellings are one and the same, and that it's a bit of programmer humor involving a funny mispelling. It's not at all unlikely that two programmers made the same joke in the comments of conceptually-related code. If it's an 'obvious' joke given an acronym (for example) that both programmers are working with I can easily see multiple lines of comments that read the same.
Or it's comments in code that both systems have in their ancestry. Or it's comments in the NUMA code that really WAS contributed by IBM and SCO is claiming under their inherited rights from the IBM-AT&T source license. Or it's identical comments in different code - where the code is different because it's targetting different architectures even though the intent (and hence the comments) is the same.
The "10" part is mostly marketing. 10.1 to 10.2 was in no way a mere "point release". Substantial portions of the OS we're rewritten and optimized, plus added a ton of features. Apple doesn't have an obvious page describing just what's new anymore since they're pushing 10.3 now, but the main OS X is loaded with goodies^gpropaganda [1]
Think of Jaguar as OS X v2.0 and Panther as OS X v3.0 and you'll be all right. That makes the current OS version 2.6.
WinXP was only a point release to the "kernel" but XP's userland is (supposedly) significantly differnet. Sadly, Win2K's userland was only really needed a point release, and the kernel needed a thorough overhaul [2]
[1] I just noticed (pause for laughter) that the current technologies page is now highlighting Applescript as a top-level component of the OS, on the same conceptual level as Aqua. Imagine that, an OS that considers scripting and automation to be equally as important as the GUI. That's a nice balance.
[2] Admittedly only in comparison to operating systems which I'd consider well-designed, which would be almost anything.
The article referred to Kingdom Hearts as "flawed at best" and implied that it was due to the FF characters that just show up and 'act pretty". It's true, in KH the FF characters don't do *much* but they do point you in the right direction and provide some good opposition in the arena. However, I haven't played any FF games in any depth at all, so I'm not attached to (or familiar with) the characters. I recognized some of the names, but didn't have any emotional connection or sense of how the should be used in the story.
However I do take exception to characterizing Kingdom Hearts as "flawed at best" on every other point. The game looks good, controls well, provides a lot of challenges and side missions. The real star is how well they tie in the Disney properties. The worlds and characters all *work*. I didn't expect that adventuring with Donald and, of all people, Goofy would be cool. But they are. In marvelous level design they squeezed Wonderland into four levels, and kept rotating one room to create different situations and open up different paths. Visiting familiar places and meeting characters was also cool. It all helped drive the urgency of the plotline, since you're charged with protecting all of this familiar territory.
Even without the licensed properties the game would still be worth playing for its enormous bosses and flagrantly beutiful scenery. The Tarzan world has several stunning vistas - go up to the very top of Tarzan's house and you can see for miles, and the fight up the waterfall is just gorgeous. All of the art direction and level design is stellar.
The real-time combat system does an excellent job of combining 3d fighting action (some basic combos to chain up) with platforming intensity and RPG decision making. The sidekicks (Donald, Goofy and/or Tarzan, the Beast, Jack Skellington, Ariel etc) actually help in combat. The game alternates between swarms of small fry, mixed up with smaller numbers of big monsters. Sometimes you have to just button mash and pound your way clear before you're overrun with bad guys, other times you have the opportunity to set up combos and plan your attacks. It keeps the intensity up. And the aerial battle against Captain Hook rocks.
Bosses are big. Sometimes really big. Uggy Wuggy or whatever is name is from Halloweentown turns into a veritable mountain of a monster. You have to climb and jump over him to attack weak points. And he's at least 100 yeards high. Fighting Cerberus in the arena requires jumping on his back to escape the jaws, and fireballs and dark magic and... The human-scaled bosses are still dangerous for all the fact that you can cross blades with them.
KH is also a 3d platformer. Jumping puzzles abound, some of them intricate and requiring precision to pull off. And sometimes you're faced with a jump you just can't make yet and will have to come back to. But they're rarely game killers. I did have to take breaks and come back to execute some sequences, but I felt *good* after the accomplishment. Even the tricky ones rarely felt 'cheap'. At least you never take falling damage, so you usually just have to retrace your steps if you miss a jump (there are a couple of bottomless pits to get lost in though). And you have some chocie in which world to tackle next.
The story is good, deliberately cheesy in places but not overly so. It has lighthearted moments and some very dark ones. The inevitable setup for a sequel is tastefully done. The wholly original world design (the final levels) was very well executed. As a real bonus there iare remarkably few graphical glitches. I found a rendering error under Tarzan's house, and you get slowdowns during big fights in the hold of the pirate ship because there's an environmental fog effect that competes with spell efefcts for rendering time. Other than that, and one or two jumps that we're trickier than they had to be, the game was just about pefect.
"Flawed at beast" my hat. This would have been great without a single licensed property. And they used at least t
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I had to explain ports and firewalls to one of our Account Services people yesterday. My analogy was a company with oine main number and everyone else on extensions behind that number. So if calling their number (IP address) and asking for extension 80 (port) lets you talk to Janie (900.69.69.69:69) then that's just like connecting to a web server at an address:port combination.
Specifically, we were trying to figure out if a clients BOFH was a BOFH, a PFY or a PHB. We think he's a PHB since there's a lot of money (cash and obligations) sunk into a project that needs a port opened in their firewall and he won't/can't/hasn't opened it up yet.
This may still be better than the other (former) client who put two people in our office using VPN to connect to their home network... and then changed their proxy configuration without telling anyone (like their helpdesk). It took me a week of phone tag to get one of their network analysts to finally say "OK, try this". Then they sent her an XP laptop with that setting locked into the old-and-wrong setting. I think she had to ship it back since they wouldn't cut loose with the admin password. Neither would I, but the box would have worked before I sent it out. We aren't suing them for specifically "rampant idiocy", but that MUST be a factor. We're suing them, a spokesfigure was perp-walked recently and business is way down. I wonder how long they'll manage to stay out of Chapter 11.
Stupid people suffer.
That's very unfurtunate. I remember the first version of QuickBooks, a DOS program it was. Simple, character-driven interface. It had menus, screens, fields and all that good stuff. And you could also do everything from the keyboard. Anyone with any skill could do the books as fast as they could type. It was easy to use, and if you knew the first thing about double entry you could use the program. Conversely, learning to use QuickBooks taught you double entry accounting. It was a perfect mapping of the subject matter to the program design.
I'm an interface and usuability nut, so a program getting less useful over time is just sad. I suppose they had to keep tinkering with perfection so they'd have somethig gnew to sell. I'd have probably just put out a new version whenever Microsoft shipped a new Windows and pretty much leave it at that (Internet).
Well, the Lucas Arts press release quoted above has an overemphasis on quality. I'll admit I'm reading between the lines, but that does imply a quality problem to me.
EVE doesn't use a Level or experience system in the classic sense. You train skills by simply investing the time required to advace that skill Ok, skills have levels. They also have Ranks, which is a multiplier of the time required. Attributes affect training time as well.
Going on vacation ? Start training something like Minmatar Cruiser 5 and it'll be done when you get back. The only real catch is you can't freely switch between skills under training, nor train with more than one character per account at a time.
So my two-days-after-retail pilot character is heavily loaded with high skills, my alt character just has enough to run the corporation and our maufacturing operations.
So in EVE it's "I get Electronic Warfare 5 in 9 days !" and not "5000 more goblins to the next level !"
Wait a sec... wealth on paper ? Any SCO exec who doesn't dump ALL their stock this year is gonna take it in the shorts on capital gains tax.
I'd like to quote a former boss of mine:
"All chess players are basically scum."
He was a nationally-rated master himself.
I've started seeing things like [%LASTNAME] in what little spam gets looked at.
if you think you have a tech support horror story, imagine trying to support the illiterate incompetent trying to figure out your spamware !
Well, the first month's figures are in at 50,000. I'd love to see it hit 500,000 eventually.
It's firmed up nicely from the retail release, *most* of the issues in some of the reviews have been fixed.
Well, then you're better off trying to bribe them.
I'd want about three-fifty.
Call me when you need investors.
It's an outstanding "insert" in context. The goatse image really would require therapy.
Can it send email yet ?
As soon as India has enough PCs/Current-gen game consoles we probably will see games based on the Bhagavad Gita. It'd be perfect for an RPG, online or off.
Well, looking at THAT it's pretty obvious why it took so long:
The data model was "easy". Implementing and optimising it in an engine capable of high FPS... that had to suck. This really had to have taken years. And I'll bet it'll still take a couple of patches to polish it. Everything is made out of materials, not shaded polygons. Shoot a board and it splinters. The allied AI looked gooooooood.
The mod and machinima communtities must be freaking out right now. I really hope this engine gets widely used.
The barrel pachinko scene alone is worth the download. And so are the Striders.
SPOILER - TR1
Or how about the whole "why not just destroy ONE piece of the damn thing ?" part that made the second half of the film redundant. And the big bungie gunfight scene was bo-ring and lame.
I was trying to remember who came up with "Delphi Pools", thanks.
Speaking of the code revealed under NDA... I Have A Theory
No programmers have looked at the code under NDA, most certainly no UNIX system developers have looked at it.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the comments containing "jokes" and "mispellings" in common between SCO code and Linux code. I think the jokes and mispellings are one and the same, and that it's a bit of programmer humor involving a funny mispelling. It's not at all unlikely that two programmers made the same joke in the comments of conceptually-related code. If it's an 'obvious' joke given an acronym (for example) that both programmers are working with I can easily see multiple lines of comments that read the same.
Or it's comments in code that both systems have in their ancestry. Or it's comments in the NUMA code that really WAS contributed by IBM and SCO is claiming under their inherited rights from the IBM-AT&T source license. Or it's identical comments in different code - where the code is different because it's targetting different architectures even though the intent (and hence the comments) is the same.
This looked like a good place for a rant.
10.0 was a classic case of a "point zero" release. 10.1 was necessary to really use the thing, I didn't do a rollout until 10.11 was out.
Apple is including their development tools with every system. I'm looking forward to trying Xcode.
The "10" part is mostly marketing. 10.1 to 10.2 was in no way a mere "point release". Substantial portions of the OS we're rewritten and optimized, plus added a ton of features. Apple doesn't have an obvious page describing just what's new anymore since they're pushing 10.3 now, but the main OS X is loaded with goodies^gpropaganda [1]
Think of Jaguar as OS X v2.0 and Panther as OS X v3.0 and you'll be all right. That makes the current OS version 2.6.
WinXP was only a point release to the "kernel" but XP's userland is (supposedly) significantly differnet. Sadly, Win2K's userland was only really needed a point release, and the kernel needed a thorough overhaul [2]
[1] I just noticed (pause for laughter) that the current technologies page is now highlighting Applescript as a top-level component of the OS, on the same conceptual level as Aqua. Imagine that, an OS that considers scripting and automation to be equally as important as the GUI. That's a nice balance.
[2] Admittedly only in comparison to operating systems which I'd consider well-designed, which would be almost anything.
That could be handy, I'll need a Mars-adapted flyer for an animation project.
Intellimouse ? The one where the mouse cord gets frayed by a badly-designed shim ? That one ?
At least MS will replace 'em for free.
A game based on "The Bad Lieutenant" ?
Brrrr
The countersuit writes itself.
The article referred to Kingdom Hearts as "flawed at best" and implied that it was due to the FF characters that just show up and 'act pretty". It's true, in KH the FF characters don't do *much* but they do point you in the right direction and provide some good opposition in the arena. However, I haven't played any FF games in any depth at all, so I'm not attached to (or familiar with) the characters. I recognized some of the names, but didn't have any emotional connection or sense of how the should be used in the story.
However I do take exception to characterizing Kingdom Hearts as "flawed at best" on every other point. The game looks good, controls well, provides a lot of challenges and side missions. The real star is how well they tie in the Disney properties. The worlds and characters all *work*. I didn't expect that adventuring with Donald and, of all people, Goofy would be cool. But they are. In marvelous level design they squeezed Wonderland into four levels, and kept rotating one room to create different situations and open up different paths. Visiting familiar places and meeting characters was also cool. It all helped drive the urgency of the plotline, since you're charged with protecting all of this familiar territory.
Even without the licensed properties the game would still be worth playing for its enormous bosses and flagrantly beutiful scenery. The Tarzan world has several stunning vistas - go up to the very top of Tarzan's house and you can see for miles, and the fight up the waterfall is just gorgeous. All of the art direction and level design is stellar.
The real-time combat system does an excellent job of combining 3d fighting action (some basic combos to chain up) with platforming intensity and RPG decision making. The sidekicks (Donald, Goofy and/or Tarzan, the Beast, Jack Skellington, Ariel etc) actually help in combat. The game alternates between swarms of small fry, mixed up with smaller numbers of big monsters. Sometimes you have to just button mash and pound your way clear before you're overrun with bad guys, other times you have the opportunity to set up combos and plan your attacks. It keeps the intensity up. And the aerial battle against Captain Hook rocks.
Bosses are big. Sometimes really big. Uggy Wuggy or whatever is name is from Halloweentown turns into a veritable mountain of a monster. You have to climb and jump over him to attack weak points. And he's at least 100 yeards high. Fighting Cerberus in the arena requires jumping on his back to escape the jaws, and fireballs and dark magic and... The human-scaled bosses are still dangerous for all the fact that you can cross blades with them.
KH is also a 3d platformer. Jumping puzzles abound, some of them intricate and requiring precision to pull off. And sometimes you're faced with a jump you just can't make yet and will have to come back to. But they're rarely game killers. I did have to take breaks and come back to execute some sequences, but I felt *good* after the accomplishment. Even the tricky ones rarely felt 'cheap'. At least you never take falling damage, so you usually just have to retrace your steps if you miss a jump (there are a couple of bottomless pits to get lost in though). And you have some chocie in which world to tackle next.
The story is good, deliberately cheesy in places but not overly so. It has lighthearted moments and some very dark ones. The inevitable setup for a sequel is tastefully done. The wholly original world design (the final levels) was very well executed. As a real bonus there iare remarkably few graphical glitches. I found a rendering error under Tarzan's house, and you get slowdowns during big fights in the hold of the pirate ship because there's an environmental fog effect that competes with spell efefcts for rendering time. Other than that, and one or two jumps that we're trickier than they had to be, the game was just about pefect.
"Flawed at beast" my hat. This would have been great without a single licensed property. And they used at least t