What the heck is a "scripter"? A programmer who can't learn another language?
So far this year I've used C++, VB and VBScript at work. If my bosses insist that a program be written in C++, it's not me they're discriminating against.
Take for example my paper copy of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I've read that thing probably a dozen times. A beautiful work of art. But,
I was expecting:
there is always that time when I just know I could have written a sentence better than Douglas Adams. That is when the Open Source license is essential.
Your neighbourhood computer store will sell you a system assembled to your specifications for a reasonable price, and service it if it breaks. It'd cost more than Chuu's example, but not much.
I don't think you understand the concept. NWN was never supposed to be "EverQuest without the fee". It was supposed to be "D&D online" and BioWare sure delivered on that.
Personally I'd much rather play D&D with a good dungeon master than EverQuest, so I like NWN. I don't see why the camera angle is such a big deal; I can see more than far enough to cast a fireball without toasting the rest of the party. And I really don't get the "little customizability" comment - I can customize the whole damn game!
It's not EverQuest, and you don't have to like it, but NWN already has about 1800 published mods. Clearly a lot of people think it's a good game for modding.
There I was on vacation, wondering what to do with my free time, and a spam popped into my inbox. I remembered the article about Graham's statistical technique, which seemed a lot more interesting than an arbitrary keyword list or a set of ad-hoc rules, so I decided to write an anti-spam program. Vacation accomplished.
After a couple of weeks I've built up a big enough spambase that Graham's algorithm is pretty close to 100% effective (and no false positives at all).
However, I did run into one problem: Some particularly devious spammers are base64 encoding their email so that it can't be scanned by programs like this. (I can't think of any other reason why they're using base64 encoding for text/plain or text/html messages.)
After I added code to check the email header and decode the message body it worked much better.
When I was in first-year Computer Science (not Computer Engineering) at UW I had to take a course in COBOL programming. There were FORTRAN and Pascal courses, but co-op students had to take COBOL because that's what IBM and the insurance companies wanted us to know.
So don't get the idea that there's something new going on here. UW has been making deals with companies about curriculum for at least 20 years.
And people have been complaining about it for 20 years too. Heh, anyone remember the phony posters announcing a presentation by the head of IT on why we had to use a crappy IBM system?
Well, that's true now, but when I was at UW ('82 - '87) there was no Computer Engineering. A lot of the Computer Science students were there to learn how to program.
I liked the more mathematical approach, but then I liked C&O 230 too.
I saw something amusing when I went to read the article on Tom's Hardware Guide. The first page was headed by a banner ad for the ATI Radeon 8500. But the banner was blank - the graphic was missing!
I suppose it's possible that the ATI ad just happened to come up in the rotation (reloading the page brings up a variety of different ads), and the ad banner server could be slashdotted... but I prefer to believe it's a fight between ATI's marketers and NVIDIA's hackers.
They're German, give them a break. (I think the Xbox writers are French.) There have always been plenty of misspelling and strange grammar in the English-language articles on THG. I have never had any problem understanding the articles, though, and I thank Tom et al. for making their reviews available in English.
I'm not totally sure that link will work by the time you read this, but right now it appears to me as an ad for Yahoo Essentials or X10 cameras (changes when I refresh). If you click on "Continue to message" you'll get to the page I was actually trying to reach. It only happens about once every half-dozen clicks.
I'm also not totally sure that this is what C.T. was referring to, because I was only able to find an example on groups.yahoo.com, not dailynews.yahoo.com.
MSNBC has had them for a long time, and Yahoo Groups (groups.yahoo.com) has had them for a few days. You click on a link, but before going to that page it takes you to an ad page. Then after a few seconds it loads the page you actually want; or else you have to click on a "Continue..." link to get there. They only show up every so often; it's not that the ad was "pulled", it's just that you didn't get it the next time you clicked.
This world-wide-web thing sure is complicated, eh?
I've been seeing these interstitial ads for a few days on Yahoo Groups (groups.yahoo.com). I haven't been able to get one to show up on dailynews.yahoo.com in the last few minutes, so I'm assuming they work the same way there.
MS don't have a great history of backwards compatibility, they have a great history of patches that upgrade their old stuff to match the new stuff. DR-DOS, Samba et al all demonstrate the changing nature of those supposedly backwards compatible APIs.
DR-DOS and Samba have had problems because they were relying on things that are not published API's or standards.
I have written lots of software on Win 3.1 that works fine on Win 95, and on Win 95 that works fine on Win XP.
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The MPAA and RIAA are not police forces!
So far this year I've used C++, VB and VBScript at work. If my bosses insist that a program be written in C++, it's not me they're discriminating against.
I need to plug a floppy drive into my computer to update the firmware in the DVD-ROM drive. Apparently there's no other way to do it.
Your neighbourhood computer store will sell you a system assembled to your specifications for a reasonable price, and service it if it breaks. It'd cost more than Chuu's example, but not much.
Personally I'd much rather play D&D with a good dungeon master than EverQuest, so I like NWN. I don't see why the camera angle is such a big deal; I can see more than far enough to cast a fireball without toasting the rest of the party. And I really don't get the "little customizability" comment - I can customize the whole damn game!
It's not EverQuest, and you don't have to like it, but NWN already has about 1800 published mods. Clearly a lot of people think it's a good game for modding.
Yes, given infinite development time.
that a CEO these days is a raving paranoiac.
There I was on vacation, wondering what to do with my free time, and a spam popped into my inbox. I remembered the article about Graham's statistical technique, which seemed a lot more interesting than an arbitrary keyword list or a set of ad-hoc rules, so I decided to write an anti-spam program. Vacation accomplished.
After a couple of weeks I've built up a big enough spambase that Graham's algorithm is pretty close to 100% effective (and no false positives at all).
However, I did run into one problem: Some particularly devious spammers are base64 encoding their email so that it can't be scanned by programs like this. (I can't think of any other reason why they're using base64 encoding for text/plain or text/html messages.)
After I added code to check the email header and decode the message body it worked much better.
When I was in first-year Computer Science (not Computer Engineering) at UW I had to take a course in COBOL programming. There were FORTRAN and Pascal courses, but co-op students had to take COBOL because that's what IBM and the insurance companies wanted us to know.
So don't get the idea that there's something new going on here. UW has been making deals with companies about curriculum for at least 20 years.
And people have been complaining about it for 20 years too. Heh, anyone remember the phony posters announcing a presentation by the head of IT on why we had to use a crappy IBM system?
Well, that's true now, but when I was at UW ('82 - '87) there was no Computer Engineering. A lot of the Computer Science students were there to learn how to program. I liked the more mathematical approach, but then I liked C&O 230 too.
(A former Theratronics employee is standing right behind me, but he denies having worked on the Therac-25.)
So the record companies should sue AOL Time Warner! Um...
I saw something amusing when I went to read the article on Tom's Hardware Guide. The first page was headed by a banner ad for the ATI Radeon 8500. But the banner was blank - the graphic was missing!
I suppose it's possible that the ATI ad just happened to come up in the rotation (reloading the page brings up a variety of different ads), and the ad banner server could be slashdotted... but I prefer to believe it's a fight between ATI's marketers and NVIDIA's hackers.
They're German, give them a break. (I think the Xbox writers are French.) There have always been plenty of misspelling and strange grammar in the English-language articles on THG. I have never had any problem understanding the articles, though, and I thank Tom et al. for making their reviews available in English.
I'm not totally sure that link will work by the time you read this, but right now it appears to me as an ad for Yahoo Essentials or X10 cameras (changes when I refresh). If you click on "Continue to message" you'll get to the page I was actually trying to reach. It only happens about once every half-dozen clicks.
I'm also not totally sure that this is what C.T. was referring to, because I was only able to find an example on groups.yahoo.com, not dailynews.yahoo.com.
(Yeah, my hobby is hacking computer games.)
Haven't you seen an interstitial ad before?
MSNBC has had them for a long time, and Yahoo Groups (groups.yahoo.com) has had them for a few days. You click on a link, but before going to that page it takes you to an ad page. Then after a few seconds it loads the page you actually want; or else you have to click on a "Continue..." link to get there. They only show up every so often; it's not that the ad was "pulled", it's just that you didn't get it the next time you clicked.
This world-wide-web thing sure is complicated, eh?
I've been seeing these interstitial ads for a few days on Yahoo Groups (groups.yahoo.com). I haven't been able to get one to show up on dailynews.yahoo.com in the last few minutes, so I'm assuming they work the same way there.
DR-DOS and Samba have had problems because they were relying on things that are not published API's or standards.
I have written lots of software on Win 3.1 that works fine on Win 95, and on Win 95 that works fine on Win XP.
That was a glider ... unless you managed to make a little origami motor for it.
That battle system sounds just like D&D as implemented in the Baldur's Gate games. (Except for the mana part.)
And (of interest to Slashdot readers) in Baldur's Gate you can write your own AI scripts for your party.
But some people claim to have played Halo deathmatch on a LAN.
Yeah, right. Microsoft will put those other tiny companies right out of business. Which would be bad because, you know, Sony would never try to be a huge control-freak media monopoly.
By the way, where did you hear that Microsoft isn't getting royalties from third-party Xbox games? Or is that just your own conspiracy theory?