I guess now I'm supposed to feel guilty and unl33t when hairy upgrades like this are made so damn easy.
You could always do rpmbuild --target=i686 or whateever to each of the source RPMs to pacify your conscience...:-)
I know what you mean. I just YaST in the new RPMs. It's too easy. I used to be someone who compiled KDE (v1.x) from source on HP-UX, and make it transparently start from xdm, along with auto merging CDE and KDE prefs.
Actually, I used to replace a lot the the HP utilities with GNU ones (GNU/HP-UX!), as the GNU ones worked and didn't have memory leaks etc. (Eg: rcs, libregex, less vs. more etc)
Well, the hardware has all gotten faster, but the compile times haven't! I don't miss HP's compilers though, but now I feel like I must go write a cryptic script to do something or other...
Move here! If you take an evening class once a week, you'll be proficient after a short time. After a year, you'll be perfectly capable of handling all of your daily business in German. It's quite a logical langauge.
Also, a lot of firms want people who speak good English, so make sure your grammar and spelling are good.
You may need a while to get used to some of the other things here, such as the high price of fuel, and the overly high taxes. OTOH, the Germans do make some very nice cars...
You may have been being sarcastic, but there are a number who believe that the rights to significant portions of Windows NT (and therefore 2K,XP) belong to HP - who bought Compaq, who bought DEC, where Dave Cutler and a number of others who architected NT had been working on VMS before they went off to MS.
While some machines are broken, or so slow that they need replacing, the time taken to replace other machines is often non-trivial for a benefit that is minimal. Sometimes, simple upgrades have much more effect for the amount of time and money spent. A common one is more RAM, but a lot of users would benefit a lot from a new monitor or a flat screen - or a second screen even. Little things, like replacing ball mice with optical ones go down well.
You might also look at some the infrastructure. If everything is slow because the network is overloaded, replacing machines won't make any difference.
In a lot of firms, the top people get new kit regularly (which they don't need), and the bottom people suffer with old cast-offs. Look at the entire setup, and see where people are needing upgrades the most, then replace those parts.
Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft could always include in the license for all games, a clause that you may not resell the product.
Except that that would be illegal in a lot of coutries. Microsoft tried to enforce reseller restrictions onto their OEM versions of Windows etc. The German courts decided that this practice (which forced bundling) was illegal. You can therefore buy (new or used) OEM Windows without being required to any hardware. I believe this is not so in the States.
Some markets are absolutely dependant on customers selling off old items to be able to buy new ones. Take vehicles, for example.
Having read the article, however, I do understand his point about watching where your money goes, and I think its a very valid point. He also talked about used games being very close in price to the new ones. The smaller the price difference between used and new, the more likely I am to just buy the new one! I think his store is ripping him off. It's a free market, and it isn't too hard to find alternative locations to buy used items, so stuff the store and its oversized markup - buy where it's cheaper!
You didn't say enough about your requirements to be able to say for sure, but here are some points that may help you:
Logic in the database almost always gives you more performance. It's less portable, but if your database is one that scales well, its a much simpler solution.
We've found that some types of lookup could be done quicker when they were coming out of hash tables in an application server, rather than queries from the database. These cases are definately the minority though.
Moving logic out onto an application server gives you alternate ways of spreading your load. If your database is very heavily loaded, doing this will free DB resources and actually speed things up, as some of the work is done on another machine (or machines). Some database systems don't scale very well (ie: clustering), so using a different application architecture can help a lot.
I tend to do things using application servers, but this is because I have to combine data from different sources, not all of them databases. It makes sense to have the business logic all in one place - including user rights, audit trail/logging etc. I also like the fact that users don't have direct access to the database.
The right answer for you depends more on your requirements than anything else. There is no answer which is always right for all situations.
... MS is already light years ahead of OSS in terms of localization and supporting foreign languages.
That's not quite true. Certainly, their translated versions of Windows, Office and so on are very well done, but there's one very major problem with them: they're each separate versions.
I want English, my wife wants German. It's not possible to install a Windows box so that we both get what we want - we have to choose one and we're stuck with it. OpenOffice is the same (both Windows and Unix versions). Other software is designed to be more flexible. - see KDE, for example.
While I'm here: a lot of (non-Microsoft) Windows apps break language related things by hardcoding them. "Program Files" is "Programme" in German, and the "Startup" folder in the Start menu is called "Autostart". These names are dynamically available from the system, and it's annoying when badly coded programs put things in the wrong places.
I find it interesting that Microsoft recently refused to do Hebrew and IIRC Arabic, but suddenly announces Welsh, which doesn't have as many users. They lost business to Linux because of their earlier refusal, and I'm sure that that loss, coupled with the recent KDE announcements about Niedersaechsisch has forced a rethink.
There is a lot of work to do before OSS catches up, but there is a lot of local interest in things like translations - you don't need an IT background to get involved, which was a big barrier for many. At least one German university is actively involved in translating KDE, as part of its language studies. I'm sure that a fair amount of OSS will overtake Microsoft in this area, now that well designed frameworks are in place.
The survey is quite interesting, as are the stats as to how many servers and players are online etc. Average player minutes last month: 1.160 billion! I'm guessing that's a US billion, which is 1000 x 1million; a UK and German billion (probably other places too) is 1million x 1million. Anyway, I was surprised at the AMD/Intel CPU distribution (about half each).
However, for all their ease of updates and cutting out middlemen for software retail etc, it sucks. As soon as an update like this comes out, everybody's steam client wants to update, the servers get overloaded and become effectively unavailable - I can't play online without updating, and I can't even play any of the steam games offline (offline play is part of this update). Must be hell for those with slower links.
If it worth joining a system, where you can't use it for 3 days when a large update comes out? I think the basic idea is good, but the implementation sucks raw eggs! They don't even use the browser settings and go through a proxy - that would save a lot of bandwidth, and reduce their system load. You could go further with something like BitTorrent, even.
Is there already any distro with the kernel 2.6 series?
Check out the current SuSE distribution (9.0) - that came with a RC for 2.6.0. I'm not sure whether newer 2.6.x kernels have been made available via online update, as I'm not running SuSE 9.0 myself. Alternatively, the 9.1 release will probably be out in April, and I'd be very surprised if it's not based on 2.6.
Go out and get yourself a second hand HP Jornada 720 (or 710 or 728). It's smaller, lighter, and the battery will last around 9 hours. OK - it is WinCE, but it's good for taking notes and keeping a calendar and address book.
You can then copy files to/from your normal desktop computer. There is communication/sync software for Linux available, but I haven't tried that yet. You can also connect to Linux via PPP (eg: with the serial cable) - that I have tried, and it works well. For Windows, there's ActiveSync of course.
I like these better than the smaller palmtops, as the screen is much wider (640x240) and it has the built in keyboard as well as the touch screen. Trying to use Excel on the small screens is a real pain, and I can type on the keyboard much faster than I can accurately scribble.
I use the Jornada as an alternative to a laptop. My laptop weighs 4.5kg, and I don't want to lug it everywhere to meetings; the weight of the Jornada is negligable in comparison. The laptop battery lasts 3 hours, the Jornada 9. The Jornada's instant on/off works that much better than the laptop (no drive spin up/down time etc), and it gets used all the time, thus saving more - I have to recharge mine every couple of weeks, and I use it a lot. Apparently, the 728 has a battery that lasts 14 hours.
I got my Jornada on Ebay for 300 Euros - much less than what you'll pay for a tablet PC. The difference will buy you a reasonable desktop.
It does seem to have gotten better, but sometimes I can't tell if someone really is that good, or if they're cheating. Of course, I don't like being shot round corners by cheaters; bots can also look like cheating players - they are very accurate over long distances, which normal players generally aren't.
One giveaway is ping: it's fair to assume that if someone has got a significantly better ping than you, they are going to get the shots in better. I've noticed that my playing is much better with a ping of 80 than with one of 120 - somehow I miss less the faster my ping is. For many, changing from an old modem to isdn/cable/dsl has at least as big an effect as any cheat would. I therefore think it's fair to suspect someone of cheating when they keep on fragging you although they have a 200 ping and you have 100.
With that said, I don't play on many servers that require anti-cheat programs like punkbuster, although the newer (steam) versions of HL and co seem like they might now have anti-cheat stuff built in.
Daimler also have hail protection for their large car park of brand new Mercedes cars at Sindelfingen (by Stuttgart), but they don't use sonic booms. They have two Cessna pilots on standby, who will fly up and ionise the clouds or something like that, which stops the hail from forming. It seems to work well, too.
Ask a female friend who hasn't read the book if they would have enjoyed the movie more or less without Arwen and the love story element.
My wife, and other girls I know, were all far more interested in Legolas and Aragorn than Arwen, that's for sure. In fact, I bet if I asked my wife who Arwen was, she wouldn't know.
My experience, after a good few years at it, is the same as what Lambent said - work on the design together, do tasks separately, and recombine. Pair programming works on certain problems, where one of the two has asked for help, but otherwise it's counterproductive and lets both parties get very annoyed with each other.
Some of the other rules in the article are nice in theory, but not really practical in real life. For example: customers aren't always available, and often don't want to be either. Involving the customer too much usually ends up in them wanting something other than what they originally agreed to, but within the same time frame and for the same price (and then they get upset when they can't have it).
Moving people around can backfire too - you can end up with people who have a little knowledge in a lot of subjects. It's not always realistic to expect that everyone knows enough to program every part of the system. Some people really don't have that capacity; if you have a team of top notch people who can, consider yourself lucky.
Some of the other points listed aren't that extreme at all, and should be part of the normal development cycle. Eg: must pass complete testing before release! They also list the point that the rules themselves need to be flexible, and can be changed. I like this; it's necessary when working with people as they don't produce an identical result each time they get the same input!
Actually, the German company is called H+B EDV Datentechnik GmbH. The AntiVir software, however, is really quite good. You can download the windows version for free; there are usually updates every few days. As with lots of German companies, they do both German and English versions.
There is also a Linux version, and it's also free for personal use, but you have to sign up first. I did (they don't spam my email address at all either) and the software is very good. On SuSE, you can have YaST integrate it with Postfix at the click of a button! I think the default setting is to reply to virus emails to inform the sender, which a lot of people don't like, but reconfiguring Postfix isn't exactly rocket science.
I remember playing Red Alert on easy first, then again on hard. It was more fun for me - I got double the challenge. Did the same with Half-Life. I liked being able to do that.
I can understand what Scott is saying, and I think that a properly implemented ADD will give you this too. A bad ADD will mean that a poor player who got lucky ends up in a situation they can't win, and gets frustrated and gives up.
I had another idea though: instead of just changing some variables (hit points or whatever), what about changing the gameplay? For example, you could change puzzles or add new ones. Eg: remove a box, so the player can't just jump up somewhere - they have to be more creative. You could also add access (eg: remove walls etc) to areas which are hidden to beginners - let them focus on the mission, and send the experts a different (more difficult) way round. How about making better players go off to find a key/card to open a door, but letting the other players through without needing it. Are there any games that already change the maps according to player skill?
The key to really making it work is finding the balance of what to do for which skill level; being able to accurately judge a player's skill is an important part of this. It's a lot of work, and sometimes it's easier to let the player choose their skill level.
One other thing occurs to me. Remember Doom's nightmare mode? I don't think you could ever reasonably have something like that with an ADD system, but there are some (strange) people who find it fun.
The fire (flamethrower) is good for blocking other players' views; the fire grenades are quite useful against lower health classes like snipers, as thy create an area the sniper won't want to go in.
If you've played Neo TFC, the pyro is a very powerful class: it has a sort of long-jump/superspeed ability, which allows the player to not only go very fast but also effectively fly. The pyro also has a freeze ray, which glues a player to the ground (easy grenade target).
Actually, Neo TFC has some very nice additions for all the classes. Scout gets teleport, sniper gets anti-rocket bag, soldier gets remote controlled rocket, medic gets anti-grenade thingy and snarks, engineer gets new cool toys. There are a number of features which can only be done with a combination of certain classes - team play is therefore very much encouraged.
Back to the original article: he talks about things like CS, but doesn't mention TFC, where the snipers are rarely a problem. A simple shot from a sniper does little damage - to increase power, a player must hold the button down for a couple of seconds before releasing to shoot, and during this time the sniper can only walk very slowly. Snipers can't quickly take out a rush of opponents; their lower health/armour makes them more vulnerable too. I think the balance there is OK.
My less technical friends have no problem mailing me because I use a mailto link on my homepage.
I have a link too, but I use @ instead of @ and that actually works well enough that spam bots don't recognise it. The browersers I've tried (Konq,Moz,IE) display it and handle it properly though. I saw that here a while back in an article about where addresses are most likely to be harvested from.
This is interesting. I have occasionally gotten spam offering email addresses. They're sorted by domain, have duplicates removed, and also have had addresses removed which contain certain strings such as "spam", as such addresses are generally not real ones - like yours.
Double protection is good, but some people just don't get it, especially when you post in places such as newsgroups, where you've modified your from address. I've wondered whether setting up a real subdomain for real email addresses would help or not (eg: nospam.domain.com, or for you no_spam_damnit.domain.com). It would at least be interesting to see what came in. Maybe somebody did it already.
... so it eventually jams up the player by fscking the lens and servos.
The servos, maybe, but the lens? You do know that the MD is not an optical medium, right?
My MD Walkman is at least 6 years old. It's been used lots, mostly with the same set of 20 or so disks, and I've not had any problems with the media. Much better than CD-Rs which start to die after a couple of years! MDs are re-recordable too; the walkman can split, reorder and join tracks - I don't see many MP3 players offering those features. Our band records all our live gigs on MD. It just works.
The fact of the matter is that disks in a given region often have different language releases. I have seen DVDs in England with only English, or (for example) English and Spanish; the same films are available in Germany with English and German. These are both the same region. The covers are different in different countries anyway.
Films are also edited differently for different locations - some places are much more sensitive than others.
I don't like the regional encoding. It introduces artificial restrictions on the product, and I'm not even sure that that's legal. I can understand staggered cinema releases for films - the cast/crew can be at each premiere in each country sequentially. They just did that with LotR III. I don't see that it makes sense for video/DVD releases though. I hope they get rid of it AND the whole region encoding thing, but I'm not sure they will. Either way, I'm sure that they will still produce different editions for different geographical locations.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of which, I saw the ad in the game, but I never did find out where I could rent Sister Act III... :-)
-- Steve
I guess now I'm supposed to feel guilty and unl33t when hairy upgrades like this are made so damn easy.
You could always do rpmbuild --target=i686 or whateever to each of the source RPMs to pacify your conscience... :-)
I know what you mean. I just YaST in the new RPMs. It's too easy. I used to be someone who compiled KDE (v1.x) from source on HP-UX, and make it transparently start from xdm, along with auto merging CDE and KDE prefs.
Actually, I used to replace a lot the the HP utilities with GNU ones (GNU/HP-UX!), as the GNU ones worked and didn't have memory leaks etc. (Eg: rcs, libregex, less vs. more etc)
Well, the hardware has all gotten faster, but the compile times haven't! I don't miss HP's compilers though, but now I feel like I must go write a cryptic script to do something or other...
-- Steve
Move here! If you take an evening class once a week, you'll be proficient after a short time. After a year, you'll be perfectly capable of handling all of your daily business in German. It's quite a logical langauge.
Also, a lot of firms want people who speak good English, so make sure your grammar and spelling are good.
You may need a while to get used to some of the other things here, such as the high price of fuel, and the overly high taxes. OTOH, the Germans do make some very nice cars...
-- Steve
You may have been being sarcastic, but there are a number who believe that the rights to significant portions of Windows NT (and therefore 2K,XP) belong to HP - who bought Compaq, who bought DEC, where Dave Cutler and a number of others who architected NT had been working on VMS before they went off to MS.
-- Steve
While some machines are broken, or so slow that they need replacing, the time taken to replace other machines is often non-trivial for a benefit that is minimal. Sometimes, simple upgrades have much more effect for the amount of time and money spent. A common one is more RAM, but a lot of users would benefit a lot from a new monitor or a flat screen - or a second screen even. Little things, like replacing ball mice with optical ones go down well.
You might also look at some the infrastructure. If everything is slow because the network is overloaded, replacing machines won't make any difference.
In a lot of firms, the top people get new kit regularly (which they don't need), and the bottom people suffer with old cast-offs. Look at the entire setup, and see where people are needing upgrades the most, then replace those parts.
-- Steve
...as loudly as possibly. Every day. For several months.
It's what Wally would do.
After that, people will be relieved when you stop to listen to your music.
Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft could always include in the license for all games, a clause that you may not resell the product.
Except that that would be illegal in a lot of coutries. Microsoft tried to enforce reseller restrictions onto their OEM versions of Windows etc. The German courts decided that this practice (which forced bundling) was illegal. You can therefore buy (new or used) OEM Windows without being required to any hardware. I believe this is not so in the States.
Some markets are absolutely dependant on customers selling off old items to be able to buy new ones. Take vehicles, for example.
Having read the article, however, I do understand his point about watching where your money goes, and I think its a very valid point. He also talked about used games being very close in price to the new ones. The smaller the price difference between used and new, the more likely I am to just buy the new one! I think his store is ripping him off. It's a free market, and it isn't too hard to find alternative locations to buy used items, so stuff the store and its oversized markup - buy where it's cheaper!
-- Steve
You didn't say enough about your requirements to be able to say for sure, but here are some points that may help you:
I tend to do things using application servers, but this is because I have to combine data from different sources, not all of them databases. It makes sense to have the business logic all in one place - including user rights, audit trail/logging etc. I also like the fact that users don't have direct access to the database.
The right answer for you depends more on your requirements than anything else. There is no answer which is always right for all situations.
-- Steve
Try this! I've done it before, and it's funny...
-- Steve
That's not quite true. Certainly, their translated versions of Windows, Office and so on are very well done, but there's one very major problem with them: they're each separate versions.
I want English, my wife wants German. It's not possible to install a Windows box so that we both get what we want - we have to choose one and we're stuck with it. OpenOffice is the same (both Windows and Unix versions). Other software is designed to be more flexible. - see KDE, for example.
While I'm here: a lot of (non-Microsoft) Windows apps break language related things by hardcoding them. "Program Files" is "Programme" in German, and the "Startup" folder in the Start menu is called "Autostart". These names are dynamically available from the system, and it's annoying when badly coded programs put things in the wrong places.
I find it interesting that Microsoft recently refused to do Hebrew and IIRC Arabic, but suddenly announces Welsh, which doesn't have as many users. They lost business to Linux because of their earlier refusal, and I'm sure that that loss, coupled with the recent KDE announcements about Niedersaechsisch has forced a rethink.
There is a lot of work to do before OSS catches up, but there is a lot of local interest in things like translations - you don't need an IT background to get involved, which was a big barrier for many. At least one German university is actively involved in translating KDE, as part of its language studies. I'm sure that a fair amount of OSS will overtake Microsoft in this area, now that well designed frameworks are in place.
-- Steve
The survey is quite interesting, as are the stats as to how many servers and players are online etc. Average player minutes last month: 1.160 billion! I'm guessing that's a US billion, which is 1000 x 1million; a UK and German billion (probably other places too) is 1million x 1million. Anyway, I was surprised at the AMD/Intel CPU distribution (about half each).
However, for all their ease of updates and cutting out middlemen for software retail etc, it sucks. As soon as an update like this comes out, everybody's steam client wants to update, the servers get overloaded and become effectively unavailable - I can't play online without updating, and I can't even play any of the steam games offline (offline play is part of this update). Must be hell for those with slower links.
If it worth joining a system, where you can't use it for 3 days when a large update comes out? I think the basic idea is good, but the implementation sucks raw eggs! They don't even use the browser settings and go through a proxy - that would save a lot of bandwidth, and reduce their system load. You could go further with something like BitTorrent, even.
-- Steve
Is there already any distro with the kernel 2.6 series?
Check out the current SuSE distribution (9.0) - that came with a RC for 2.6.0. I'm not sure whether newer 2.6.x kernels have been made available via online update, as I'm not running SuSE 9.0 myself. Alternatively, the 9.1 release will probably be out in April, and I'd be very surprised if it's not based on 2.6.
-- Steve
Go out and get yourself a second hand HP Jornada 720 (or 710 or 728). It's smaller, lighter, and the battery will last around 9 hours. OK - it is WinCE, but it's good for taking notes and keeping a calendar and address book.
You can then copy files to/from your normal desktop computer. There is communication/sync software for Linux available, but I haven't tried that yet. You can also connect to Linux via PPP (eg: with the serial cable) - that I have tried, and it works well. For Windows, there's ActiveSync of course.
I like these better than the smaller palmtops, as the screen is much wider (640x240) and it has the built in keyboard as well as the touch screen. Trying to use Excel on the small screens is a real pain, and I can type on the keyboard much faster than I can accurately scribble.
I use the Jornada as an alternative to a laptop. My laptop weighs 4.5kg, and I don't want to lug it everywhere to meetings; the weight of the Jornada is negligable in comparison. The laptop battery lasts 3 hours, the Jornada 9. The Jornada's instant on/off works that much better than the laptop (no drive spin up/down time etc), and it gets used all the time, thus saving more - I have to recharge mine every couple of weeks, and I use it a lot. Apparently, the 728 has a battery that lasts 14 hours.
I got my Jornada on Ebay for 300 Euros - much less than what you'll pay for a tablet PC. The difference will buy you a reasonable desktop.
-- Steve
It does seem to have gotten better, but sometimes I can't tell if someone really is that good, or if they're cheating. Of course, I don't like being shot round corners by cheaters; bots can also look like cheating players - they are very accurate over long distances, which normal players generally aren't.
One giveaway is ping: it's fair to assume that if someone has got a significantly better ping than you, they are going to get the shots in better. I've noticed that my playing is much better with a ping of 80 than with one of 120 - somehow I miss less the faster my ping is. For many, changing from an old modem to isdn/cable/dsl has at least as big an effect as any cheat would. I therefore think it's fair to suspect someone of cheating when they keep on fragging you although they have a 200 ping and you have 100.
With that said, I don't play on many servers that require anti-cheat programs like punkbuster, although the newer (steam) versions of HL and co seem like they might now have anti-cheat stuff built in.
-- Steve
Daimler also have hail protection for their large car park of brand new Mercedes cars at Sindelfingen (by Stuttgart), but they don't use sonic booms. They have two Cessna pilots on standby, who will fly up and ionise the clouds or something like that, which stops the hail from forming. It seems to work well, too.
-- Steve
Funny... except that it's Harold.
Our Father in heaven,
Harold be Thy name...
-- Steve
Ask a female friend who hasn't read the book if they would have enjoyed the movie more or less without Arwen and the love story element.
My wife, and other girls I know, were all far more interested in Legolas and Aragorn than Arwen, that's for sure. In fact, I bet if I asked my wife who Arwen was, she wouldn't know.
-- Steve
My experience, after a good few years at it, is the same as what Lambent said - work on the design together, do tasks separately, and recombine. Pair programming works on certain problems, where one of the two has asked for help, but otherwise it's counterproductive and lets both parties get very annoyed with each other.
Some of the other rules in the article are nice in theory, but not really practical in real life. For example: customers aren't always available, and often don't want to be either. Involving the customer too much usually ends up in them wanting something other than what they originally agreed to, but within the same time frame and for the same price (and then they get upset when they can't have it).
Moving people around can backfire too - you can end up with people who have a little knowledge in a lot of subjects. It's not always realistic to expect that everyone knows enough to program every part of the system. Some people really don't have that capacity; if you have a team of top notch people who can, consider yourself lucky.
Some of the other points listed aren't that extreme at all, and should be part of the normal development cycle. Eg: must pass complete testing before release! They also list the point that the rules themselves need to be flexible, and can be changed. I like this; it's necessary when working with people as they don't produce an identical result each time they get the same input!
-- Steve
Actually, the German company is called H+B EDV Datentechnik GmbH. The AntiVir software, however, is really quite good. You can download the windows version for free; there are usually updates every few days. As with lots of German companies, they do both German and English versions.
There is also a Linux version, and it's also free for personal use, but you have to sign up first. I did (they don't spam my email address at all either) and the software is very good. On SuSE, you can have YaST integrate it with Postfix at the click of a button! I think the default setting is to reply to virus emails to inform the sender, which a lot of people don't like, but reconfiguring Postfix isn't exactly rocket science.
-- Steve
I remember playing Red Alert on easy first, then again on hard. It was more fun for me - I got double the challenge. Did the same with Half-Life. I liked being able to do that.
I can understand what Scott is saying, and I think that a properly implemented ADD will give you this too. A bad ADD will mean that a poor player who got lucky ends up in a situation they can't win, and gets frustrated and gives up.
I had another idea though: instead of just changing some variables (hit points or whatever), what about changing the gameplay? For example, you could change puzzles or add new ones. Eg: remove a box, so the player can't just jump up somewhere - they have to be more creative. You could also add access (eg: remove walls etc) to areas which are hidden to beginners - let them focus on the mission, and send the experts a different (more difficult) way round. How about making better players go off to find a key/card to open a door, but letting the other players through without needing it. Are there any games that already change the maps according to player skill?
The key to really making it work is finding the balance of what to do for which skill level; being able to accurately judge a player's skill is an important part of this. It's a lot of work, and sometimes it's easier to let the player choose their skill level.
One other thing occurs to me. Remember Doom's nightmare mode? I don't think you could ever reasonably have something like that with an ADD system, but there are some (strange) people who find it fun.
-- Steve
The fire (flamethrower) is good for blocking other players' views; the fire grenades are quite useful against lower health classes like snipers, as thy create an area the sniper won't want to go in.
If you've played Neo TFC, the pyro is a very powerful class: it has a sort of long-jump/superspeed ability, which allows the player to not only go very fast but also effectively fly. The pyro also has a freeze ray, which glues a player to the ground (easy grenade target).
Actually, Neo TFC has some very nice additions for all the classes. Scout gets teleport, sniper gets anti-rocket bag, soldier gets remote controlled rocket, medic gets anti-grenade thingy and snarks, engineer gets new cool toys. There are a number of features which can only be done with a combination of certain classes - team play is therefore very much encouraged.
Back to the original article: he talks about things like CS, but doesn't mention TFC, where the snipers are rarely a problem. A simple shot from a sniper does little damage - to increase power, a player must hold the button down for a couple of seconds before releasing to shoot, and during this time the sniper can only walk very slowly. Snipers can't quickly take out a rush of opponents; their lower health/armour makes them more vulnerable too. I think the balance there is OK.
-- Steve
My less technical friends have no problem mailing me because I use a mailto link on my homepage.
I have a link too, but I use @ instead of @ and that actually works well enough that spam bots don't recognise it. The browersers I've tried (Konq,Moz,IE) display it and handle it properly though. I saw that here a while back in an article about where addresses are most likely to be harvested from.
-- Steve
This is interesting. I have occasionally gotten spam offering email addresses. They're sorted by domain, have duplicates removed, and also have had addresses removed which contain certain strings such as "spam", as such addresses are generally not real ones - like yours.
Double protection is good, but some people just don't get it, especially when you post in places such as newsgroups, where you've modified your from address. I've wondered whether setting up a real subdomain for real email addresses would help or not (eg: nospam.domain.com, or for you no_spam_damnit.domain.com). It would at least be interesting to see what came in. Maybe somebody did it already.
-- Steve
The servos, maybe, but the lens? You do know that the MD is not an optical medium, right?
My MD Walkman is at least 6 years old. It's been used lots, mostly with the same set of 20 or so disks, and I've not had any problems with the media. Much better than CD-Rs which start to die after a couple of years! MDs are re-recordable too; the walkman can split, reorder and join tracks - I don't see many MP3 players offering those features. Our band records all our live gigs on MD. It just works.
-- Steve
The fact of the matter is that disks in a given region often have different language releases. I have seen DVDs in England with only English, or (for example) English and Spanish; the same films are available in Germany with English and German. These are both the same region. The covers are different in different countries anyway.
Films are also edited differently for different locations - some places are much more sensitive than others.
I don't like the regional encoding. It introduces artificial restrictions on the product, and I'm not even sure that that's legal. I can understand staggered cinema releases for films - the cast/crew can be at each premiere in each country sequentially. They just did that with LotR III. I don't see that it makes sense for video/DVD releases though. I hope they get rid of it AND the whole region encoding thing, but I'm not sure they will. Either way, I'm sure that they will still produce different editions for different geographical locations.
-- Steve