Is that link for real? If so, I have to agree with you... it's complete crap. I don't think it's the least bit realistic, and the "virtual actor" (as you put it) looks and sounds stupid.
If I bought a game with lips synced that bad I'd only be able to play for about 2 minutes before I'd have to put a layer of opaque paint onto my monitor.
This is correct. Taking it a step further, all my apps are on a seperate partition, including steam. I don't even have to "restore" anything when reinstalling windows, I just make a new shortcut to the steam app (and regedit it to run automatically when I start windows if I want, but I don't find that necessary).
To be fair, I was furious with Valve when I purchased HL2 and only had modem (56k) at the time. Over time I have become less hostile towards their content delivery/activation. They did a little thing like recognising that I already had licences to various games when I bought the orange box, and allowed me to give away copies of these previous purchased games. Compared to MS and others, I found this strategy to be wonderfully "honest" and rewarding. I still hate the internet registering/activation/communication thing, but what valve/steam did (in my eyes) put them up quite a few notches in my respect-meter.
Well that's crazy. I have, sitting on my desk, a purchased copy of Rainbow 6 Vegas 2. I uninstalled it about 30 minutes after installing it. My computer far exceeds (as in 400% or more) the minimum specifications. The game still ran like crap. So I took it off and will never buy a game from that publisher again. I am not going to go through the hassle of trying for a refund. I am not going to go through the hassle of telling them I will never buy one of their games again. They won't listen anyway. So, it will sit here on my desk with my beer on top of it. Expensive coaster? Yeah, but I don't care:-)
That was a bit silly. Now I can just ring the bank and say my name is "Anonymous Coward" and my password is "Cottage Rd". This means I can transfer all of your funds... didn't think of that did ya!
See my comment above. In Australia (at least) the banks "telephone banking password" is stored as plain text. I.e. the password is compared to the password, not the encypted-password compared to the encrypted-password. If I ring the bank, the operator can see my telephone banking password (which is obvious because they can hint at what it is, and even tell me if I answer other silly reminder questions).
Which is the same in Australia. If I ring telephone banking they ask me for my password, which they can plainly see (I know, because I forgot it once and they told me I was on character out as a gentle "reminder"). It does seem absurd that my slashdot password is probably more secure than my banking "password". Note that the telephone banking password is different to my online banking password, which appears to be stored encyrypted--as it should be (note that I connot verify this as I do not work for a bank, but my anecdotal evidence confirms it).
I am also wondering about the description. Does the ebay auction description qualify as a formal description? If so, the type specimen description is going to be something like: "Very rare amber insect. One of a kind! Polished and made available to astute buyer. Bidding starts at only 15 pounds. Don't miss out out this outstanding specimen. Will look great as a broach. Cash only."
[...] you will miss that commute time as a way to separate your personal life from your work life.
You know, I'd never thought of that before. My commute is 45 minutes each way and I am thinking of work in both directions. It's true though, the 45 minutes into work my mind is preparing for work. The 45 minutes home, my mind is tying up loose ends so when I finally get home, I can switch off. I do write notes when I get home if I think of something while in the car driving, but they're very short notes that I email myself so I can refocus on them the next day. If it were not for the drive, I'm not sure the switching off when I pull into the garage would be as easy.
Yeah, that is an excellent way of describing it. And, yes (I didn't make it clear) I do think my manager is right. Working at home means it's much more difficult just to "turn off" at the end of the day. There is always the temptation to do just one more paragraph of a report, or just one more function of code. Or, google one more piece of information. Or, look up one last reference. Etc.
There is also the issue that I am enduring right this moment. I am home sick, and know it would be very easy for me login to the VPN or fire-up the remote desktop and continue my current project. It's taking quite a bit to resist that temptation actually, but at the end of the day: I am sick, I should not be doing work. When I was telecommuniting "not" working was probably more difficult when I was ill, meaning that I wasn't giving myself much needed rest. All in all, not telecommuniting anymore is a Good Thing, even though I would still like to do it (mainly to save fuel costs:-).
and, on occassion, I still try to do it (telecommute). Unfortunately, my new manager does not see the advantages and it's less likely these days that I am allowed to. I can see my managers point, even though I might disagree. I am just as productive (if not more productive) at home as I am when at work. The "problem" my manager sees, though, is something along the lines of needing a clear separation between "work" time and "lesiure/relaxation" time. Having a physical distinction (i.e workplace/home) between these two activities he sees as a way to ensure that employees lives are balanced and the home does not become just another workplace. Personally I have no problem seperating work and home, but I can understand his point, and I can understand his dilemma (how would he "know" that I can make this distinction). It gets me angry sometimes that I can no longer telecommute, but I guess I should just be grateful that I have a manager who (apparently) looks out for the mental well-being of employees.
And "deliverables" is just as stupid a metric (when measured per day as you suggest) as any other quasi-objective (yeah, ok, subjective) "goal". The "goal" is an "objective" that helps to reach "aims" that are all... subjective.
What is too complex? How many companies understand the code (whatever language) that supports them? Even in the very tech-orientated companies that I have worked for, I would say 5%. "Complexity" is not an excuse.
As much as I love Linux, I don't think that "Linus is dead on right". Coming from anybody else that interview would be labelled as a rant or a troll. Coming from Linus, I still regard it as a rant. He said *NOTHING* in the interview, but just went on and on (between the lines) about how great he is. Sorry. I admire the man. I respect him. But, seriously, he needs to grow up.
I can't read the article 'cause it's/.'d, but from what I can see on the Flickr mirror of the images, it's not only all the games, but stacks of spindles that, I assume, have development builds. So not only does the secret/foregotten door contain every game, but stacks of historical/never-seen-before stuff (read: pre-release builds) as well!
The authors also tested software designed to crack CAPTCHAs against images created using reCAPTCHA, and found that they failed completely. The authors ascribe this to the fact that the letters in scanned images contain distortions that are not the result of a clean mathematical transformation. User response times were also measured, but there were no significant differences between the time it took users to handle traditional systems and that required to use reCAPTCHA.
I am wondering why dual boot is "lame"... I dual boot for a couple of reasons. A) For games; B) For Windows apps that I need for work (although, I avoid this now by having XP in vmWare); C) For cross-platform debugging/test (again, vmWare to the rescue); and D) my microscope software, which, alas I can't get to find the scope using vmWare... I have no idea why.
I have 3 machines at home plus my laptop. And I still dual boot on my main machine. Living life in two worlds aint that bad.
Slashdot Mirror
Pics or it didn't happen
I believe that the pictures look pretty similar to the screenshots of Doom 4.
Ignore my last comment... it's obviously a different "heavy rain".
Is that link for real? If so, I have to agree with you... it's complete crap. I don't think it's the least bit realistic, and the "virtual actor" (as you put it) looks and sounds stupid.
If I bought a game with lips synced that bad I'd only be able to play for about 2 minutes before I'd have to put a layer of opaque paint onto my monitor.
If you've got access to 4 year old books and the Net, quit whining and looking for the most up to date books.
I don't think anyone was whining.
This is correct. Taking it a step further, all my apps are on a seperate partition, including steam. I don't even have to "restore" anything when reinstalling windows, I just make a new shortcut to the steam app (and regedit it to run automatically when I start windows if I want, but I don't find that necessary).
To be fair, I was furious with Valve when I purchased HL2 and only had modem (56k) at the time. Over time I have become less hostile towards their content delivery/activation. They did a little thing like recognising that I already had licences to various games when I bought the orange box, and allowed me to give away copies of these previous purchased games. Compared to MS and others, I found this strategy to be wonderfully "honest" and rewarding. I still hate the internet registering/activation/communication thing, but what valve/steam did (in my eyes) put them up quite a few notches in my respect-meter.
Well that's crazy. I have, sitting on my desk, a purchased copy of Rainbow 6 Vegas 2. I uninstalled it about 30 minutes after installing it. My computer far exceeds (as in 400% or more) the minimum specifications. The game still ran like crap. So I took it off and will never buy a game from that publisher again. I am not going to go through the hassle of trying for a refund. I am not going to go through the hassle of telling them I will never buy one of their games again. They won't listen anyway. So, it will sit here on my desk with my beer on top of it. Expensive coaster? Yeah, but I don't care :-)
Thanks beav007. My comment was not well thought out.
On a more serious note, it's obvious they're not confirming the hashes... otherwise they would have to ask you for the hash, not the password
That was a bit silly. Now I can just ring the bank and say my name is "Anonymous Coward" and my password is "Cottage Rd". This means I can transfer all of your funds... didn't think of that did ya!
See my comment above. In Australia (at least) the banks "telephone banking password" is stored as plain text. I.e. the password is compared to the password, not the encypted-password compared to the encrypted-password. If I ring the bank, the operator can see my telephone banking password (which is obvious because they can hint at what it is, and even tell me if I answer other silly reminder questions).
Which is the same in Australia. If I ring telephone banking they ask me for my password, which they can plainly see (I know, because I forgot it once and they told me I was on character out as a gentle "reminder"). It does seem absurd that my slashdot password is probably more secure than my banking "password". Note that the telephone banking password is different to my online banking password, which appears to be stored encyrypted--as it should be (note that I connot verify this as I do not work for a bank, but my anecdotal evidence confirms it).
I am also wondering about the description. Does the ebay auction description qualify as a formal description? If so, the type specimen description is going to be something like: "Very rare amber insect. One of a kind! Polished and made available to astute buyer. Bidding starts at only 15 pounds. Don't miss out out this outstanding specimen. Will look great as a broach. Cash only."
This is probably the funnier name. I wonder if there is going to be a precedence debate.
[...] you will miss that commute time as a way to separate your personal life from your work life.
You know, I'd never thought of that before. My commute is 45 minutes each way and I am thinking of work in both directions. It's true though, the 45 minutes into work my mind is preparing for work. The 45 minutes home, my mind is tying up loose ends so when I finally get home, I can switch off. I do write notes when I get home if I think of something while in the car driving, but they're very short notes that I email myself so I can refocus on them the next day. If it were not for the drive, I'm not sure the switching off when I pull into the garage would be as easy.
Yeah, that is an excellent way of describing it. And, yes (I didn't make it clear) I do think my manager is right. Working at home means it's much more difficult just to "turn off" at the end of the day. There is always the temptation to do just one more paragraph of a report, or just one more function of code. Or, google one more piece of information. Or, look up one last reference. Etc.
:-).
There is also the issue that I am enduring right this moment. I am home sick, and know it would be very easy for me login to the VPN or fire-up the remote desktop and continue my current project. It's taking quite a bit to resist that temptation actually, but at the end of the day: I am sick, I should not be doing work. When I was telecommuniting "not" working was probably more difficult when I was ill, meaning that I wasn't giving myself much needed rest. All in all, not telecommuniting anymore is a Good Thing, even though I would still like to do it (mainly to save fuel costs
and, on occassion, I still try to do it (telecommute). Unfortunately, my new manager does not see the advantages and it's less likely these days that I am allowed to. I can see my managers point, even though I might disagree. I am just as productive (if not more productive) at home as I am when at work. The "problem" my manager sees, though, is something along the lines of needing a clear separation between "work" time and "lesiure/relaxation" time. Having a physical distinction (i.e workplace/home) between these two activities he sees as a way to ensure that employees lives are balanced and the home does not become just another workplace. Personally I have no problem seperating work and home, but I can understand his point, and I can understand his dilemma (how would he "know" that I can make this distinction). It gets me angry sometimes that I can no longer telecommute, but I guess I should just be grateful that I have a manager who (apparently) looks out for the mental well-being of employees.
And "deliverables" is just as stupid a metric (when measured per day as you suggest) as any other quasi-objective (yeah, ok, subjective) "goal". The "goal" is an "objective" that helps to reach "aims" that are all... subjective.
... that it's because it's too complex for them.
What is too complex? How many companies understand the code (whatever language) that supports them? Even in the very tech-orientated companies that I have worked for, I would say 5%. "Complexity" is not an excuse.
As much as I love Linux, I don't think that "Linus is dead on right". Coming from anybody else that interview would be labelled as a rant or a troll. Coming from Linus, I still regard it as a rant. He said *NOTHING* in the interview, but just went on and on (between the lines) about how great he is. Sorry. I admire the man. I respect him. But, seriously, he needs to grow up.
You are correct of course... also note the lack of dust. The "forgotten" room has less dust than my bedroom (not that that is saying much)
Cheers
I can't read the article 'cause it's /.'d, but from what I can see on the Flickr mirror of the images, it's not only all the games, but stacks of spindles that, I assume, have development builds. So not only does the secret/foregotten door contain every game, but stacks of historical/never-seen-before stuff (read: pre-release builds) as well!
The authors also tested software designed to crack CAPTCHAs against images created using reCAPTCHA, and found that they failed completely. The authors ascribe this to the fact that the letters in scanned images contain distortions that are not the result of a clean mathematical transformation. User response times were also measured, but there were no significant differences between the time it took users to handle traditional systems and that required to use reCAPTCHA.
I am wondering why dual boot is "lame"... I dual boot for a couple of reasons. A) For games; B) For Windows apps that I need for work (although, I avoid this now by having XP in vmWare); C) For cross-platform debugging/test (again, vmWare to the rescue); and D) my microscope software, which, alas I can't get to find the scope using vmWare... I have no idea why.
I have 3 machines at home plus my laptop. And I still dual boot on my main machine. Living life in two worlds aint that bad.
if the owner/group permissions were set properly in fstab an easier solution would prevail