That's the way it is with any off-the-rack clothing. Pants are especially ridiculous (or maybe I'm just in denial about my expanding waistline). Wal-Mart doesn't do irregular stock, since you can't really ensure a steady supply of it, and you have to deal with the variable pricing that entails. That stuff goes to consignment stores like Ross.
Clothes are perhaps different though, I know more about how they deal with electronics than anything else.
I dunno, on the one hand it's the rapacious Wal-Beast, but on the other hand, it's Sony, Viacom, and company. Being a Wal-Mart supplier is brutal on the business, but I personally would LOVE to see the media companies be the ones bent over a barrel this once.
> You've got the power to make a difference in the story selection process
The link does nothing more than redirect to the front page. Was it supposed to do something else?
There already is a submission queue, a big one. What the editors choose to post, and the color commentary in both the submission and by the editors, is what we all complain about. Meaninglessly, I might add, since all our complaints do is verify that the advertisers are still getting eyeballs.
> In other words, if you distribute GPL v3 code, you wouldn't be able to attach conditions, like patent licenses for instance.
I fail to see how they can keep Novell from distributing gcc, binutils, and so forth if they don't even modify them. Or is the "mere aggregation" clause completely out now. Libraries might have some leverage, but the only one that links to more or less everything is glibc, which is under the LGPL. I sure wouldn't mind concerted efforts to kill glibc, but for purely technical reasons only.
I stand corrected -- thanks for adding some seasoned perspective to the discussion.
Certainly the "AAA" titles have Hollywood-esque production budgets, but a lot of that would seem independent of the technology. Writing, directing, acting, scoring, etc are all part of the package of these games, and while the progress of technology might drive the demand, the gaming culture is demanding it as well. Certainly beefier platforms drive some of the demand, but an increasingly discerning gamer culture does independent of the technology as well. How much of the budget would you say is driven by production costs like that as opposed to technology overhead?
I'm kind of glad to see a platform that isn't primarily focused on the "AAA" titles, though it's downright irritating to see The Faithful play it up as The One True Path To Enlightened Gaming.
Ceasar 4 has perhaps some of the most gratuitous bloom I've ever seen in a game. Every building in it just shines like a thousand suns, and makes your GPU about as hot too. Tilted Mill is now 0 for 2 on picking up Impressions' legacy.
Perhaps it's why Gamespy skipped the Lens Flare Award for 2006 -- bloom won it in 2004, and it deserved to win the dubious honor again, but there's nothing new to say about it.
With the Wii you get to produce an Unreal 2 Engine game with some graphical enhancements over a Gamecube game but costs don't explode; in contrast to make a PS3/XBox 360 game your budget will probably explode to being 3-4 times what a PS2/XBox game cost
Reality Distortion Field: disengage.
Having to maintain ports for two different engines is a cost. Textures and models are typically downscaled for consoles anyway. Your 3-4 times figure has zero connection with reality.
I've always thought there should be a borg-like game project to roll all the unfinished games into one big ball and work out the common elements into a single game engine, then just farm out the artwork,etc. back to the individual project holders. It could be way easier to generate a lot of interesting games that way.
If you rolled enough of these projects up, you'd end up creating a critical mass of incompetence. The bogon cascade alone could annihilate any project that got near it.
"Adding more programmers to a late project makes it later." -- Fred Brooks
PHP is an oddity -- the syntax is okay, and since PHP5 it actually has some nice features like interfaces that move it toward an optional-static-typing model.
But the language is still a dumping ground of half-assed inconsistent global functions and it still demands those ridiculous PI tags surrounding every source. It still has problems dealing with its own object reference semantics (the === operator doesn't actually compare references for example). It's got the syntax down, at least as a "sane perl" goes, but virtually nothing else.
Maybe PHP6 will make PHP tolerable. Considering that the same morons are designing it, I'm not holding my breath.
Python's a lot better about locating errors than it was in the 1.x series, including whitespace ones. I'd try it again if that's all that got to you. The whitespace thing still occasionally irks me, but it's pretty evenly balanced by not having to use semicolons.
I find python's "half open ranges" and lack of variable declaration far more irritating than anything else.
> Perl is dying as companies grow sick of the costs of maintainability.
They sure as fuck aren't moving to a language that doesn't even have the same capabilities of use strict;. Yeah, we all just love how python ignores typos in variable names because it has no concept of a declaration.
I assume you've never used Perl 6 rules. I have. They are so much more powerful and usable than Perl regexes that they deserved a different name.
Yeah, except as a sign of all the other pointless churn in Perl6, they're not called "rules" anymore. It's back to calling them regexes, even the new production-rule kind. No doubt it'll flip back to "rules" a couple more times this year.
I love perl, but perl6 is doomed thanks to bikeshed-painting like this.
The syntax of the perl language, including the syntax around regex literals, is incompatible. The syntax of the regexes themselves when you use the 'p5' option is exactly the same. I defy you to show otherwise.
> The hubris needed to upend this core part of the language is pretty astonishing.
You mean like the first time he messed around with regexes? Now any regex implementation that doesn't have perl's features is considered a toy. And Perl is merely catching up to Snobol and Icon.
Perl will do fine despite ignorant fools who sneer at it. Perl6 is still headed to perpetually unreleased oblivion, but some features will hopefully break off and find their way back into perl5 and elsewhere. Regexes among them.
It's not firefox, it's your system resolver -- you can even ping 1113982819 if you want. The decimal address works on linux, the binary one doesn't. If the binary address works on windows, its resolver is even more insane than I had imagined.
I've worked customer service before, and though it's a little more complicated than that, the gist is correct: Except when you're summarizing what the customer is saying, you shouldn't use "you" to make statements of fact, because they sound like accusations. Obviously it's not an ironclad rule.
What drives me absofuckinglutely nuts with disgust however are the number of articles in Wikipedia written in the second person. But that's for an entirely different reason.
Regardless of who is at "fault" here... keep in mind that this Jandreau fella is probably the God of Customer Service on the pay side too. I guess their IT must still be pretty good, since I can't imagine anyone who actually pays Lycos money actually tolerating the treatment.
My guess is that Jandreau will find out that there is in fact someone higher up than him, because that someone will fire his ass.
> Publicly traded companies do not have to reveal deals in progress... That would ridiculous.
No, but you can't trade stock based on the information of deals in progress if that information is not public. That's why I suggested that the transaction would involve something other than stock. IPO's in particular have a "quiet period" that could sink the whole IPO if that sort of discussion came to light.
Actually, that's naked insider trading. It's more like "we're investing in a new company X, and we could send them your way as their systems vendor, that is, with our cash. So what about that purchasing deal we were talking about before?"
> What's wrong with paying another company to carry only your products? Is it considered anti-competitive?
Yes, but not all anti-competitive behavior is unlawful. Dell and Intel are big enough, however, that it probably would be.
Additionally, this was a secret payment which is a very very big no-no. For all we know, it could have been a direct kickback to executives, which is the "go directly to jail" kind of illegal.
> The problem was, people who drink Coke exclusively don't like the ultra-sweet taste of Pepsi.
When Coke was getting beat up by the Pepsi Challenge, they did their own taste tests, and New Coke won pretty much every single time. The New Coke flop was one of the first lessons in what happens when you screw with a brand. There'd never been such a backlash before, and the reaction was simply unprecedented. It's literally a textbook case in marketing now.
Plenty of other misinformation in your post too, like Coke's supposed patent. Show me a patent number if you can find one. That's because their formula was, and still is a trade secret (but easily reverse-engineered). Not patented.
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That's the way it is with any off-the-rack clothing. Pants are especially ridiculous (or maybe I'm just in denial about my expanding waistline). Wal-Mart doesn't do irregular stock, since you can't really ensure a steady supply of it, and you have to deal with the variable pricing that entails. That stuff goes to consignment stores like Ross.
Clothes are perhaps different though, I know more about how they deal with electronics than anything else.
I dunno, on the one hand it's the rapacious Wal-Beast, but on the other hand, it's Sony, Viacom, and company. Being a Wal-Mart supplier is brutal on the business, but I personally would LOVE to see the media companies be the ones bent over a barrel this once.
> You've got the power to make a difference in the story selection process
The link does nothing more than redirect to the front page. Was it supposed to do something else?
There already is a submission queue, a big one. What the editors choose to post, and the color commentary in both the submission and by the editors, is what we all complain about. Meaninglessly, I might add, since all our complaints do is verify that the advertisers are still getting eyeballs.
> In other words, if you distribute GPL v3 code, you wouldn't be able to attach conditions, like patent licenses for instance.
I fail to see how they can keep Novell from distributing gcc, binutils, and so forth if they don't even modify them. Or is the "mere aggregation" clause completely out now. Libraries might have some leverage, but the only one that links to more or less everything is glibc, which is under the LGPL. I sure wouldn't mind concerted efforts to kill glibc, but for purely technical reasons only.
I stand corrected -- thanks for adding some seasoned perspective to the discussion.
Certainly the "AAA" titles have Hollywood-esque production budgets, but a lot of that would seem independent of the technology. Writing, directing, acting, scoring, etc are all part of the package of these games, and while the progress of technology might drive the demand, the gaming culture is demanding it as well. Certainly beefier platforms drive some of the demand, but an increasingly discerning gamer culture does independent of the technology as well. How much of the budget would you say is driven by production costs like that as opposed to technology overhead?
I'm kind of glad to see a platform that isn't primarily focused on the "AAA" titles, though it's downright irritating to see The Faithful play it up as The One True Path To Enlightened Gaming.
Ceasar 4 has perhaps some of the most gratuitous bloom I've ever seen in a game. Every building in it just shines like a thousand suns, and makes your GPU about as hot too. Tilted Mill is now 0 for 2 on picking up Impressions' legacy.
Perhaps it's why Gamespy skipped the Lens Flare Award for 2006 -- bloom won it in 2004, and it deserved to win the dubious honor again, but there's nothing new to say about it.
With the Wii you get to produce an Unreal 2 Engine game with some graphical enhancements over a Gamecube game but costs don't explode; in contrast to make a PS3/XBox 360 game your budget will probably explode to being 3-4 times what a PS2/XBox game cost
Reality Distortion Field: disengage.
Having to maintain ports for two different engines is a cost. Textures and models are typically downscaled for consoles anyway. Your 3-4 times figure has zero connection with reality.
I've always thought there should be a borg-like game project to roll all the unfinished games into one big ball and work out the common elements into a single game engine, then just farm out the artwork,etc. back to the individual project holders. It could be way easier to generate a lot of interesting games that way.
If you rolled enough of these projects up, you'd end up creating a critical mass of incompetence. The bogon cascade alone could annihilate any project that got near it.
"Adding more programmers to a late project makes it later." -- Fred Brooks
> There's always some anti-game lobby he could be the front for.
Right on. "Parents for Videogame Decency, led by disbarred lawyer Jack Thompson".
Fact is, he could lead such an outfit right now. Disbarring him would at least stick the label on him.
> So, let me get this straight. He sues the Florida Bar Association because he basically says its an evil communist terrorist organization
Of which he is a member. Isn't the irony jus' hee-larious?
PHP is an oddity -- the syntax is okay, and since PHP5 it actually has some nice features like interfaces that move it toward an optional-static-typing model.
But the language is still a dumping ground of half-assed inconsistent global functions and it still demands those ridiculous PI tags surrounding every source. It still has problems dealing with its own object reference semantics (the === operator doesn't actually compare references for example). It's got the syntax down, at least as a "sane perl" goes, but virtually nothing else.
Maybe PHP6 will make PHP tolerable. Considering that the same morons are designing it, I'm not holding my breath.
Python's a lot better about locating errors than it was in the 1.x series, including whitespace ones. I'd try it again if that's all that got to you. The whitespace thing still occasionally irks me, but it's pretty evenly balanced by not having to use semicolons.
I find python's "half open ranges" and lack of variable declaration far more irritating than anything else.
> Perl is dying as companies grow sick of the costs of maintainability.
They sure as fuck aren't moving to a language that doesn't even have the same capabilities of use strict;. Yeah, we all just love how python ignores typos in variable names because it has no concept of a declaration.
I assume you've never used Perl 6 rules. I have. They are so much more powerful and usable than Perl regexes that they deserved a different name.
Yeah, except as a sign of all the other pointless churn in Perl6, they're not called "rules" anymore. It's back to calling them regexes, even the new production-rule kind. No doubt it'll flip back to "rules" a couple more times this year.
I love perl, but perl6 is doomed thanks to bikeshed-painting like this.
The syntax of the perl language, including the syntax around regex literals, is incompatible. The syntax of the regexes themselves when you use the 'p5' option is exactly the same. I defy you to show otherwise.
> The hubris needed to upend this core part of the language is pretty astonishing.
You mean like the first time he messed around with regexes? Now any regex implementation that doesn't have perl's features is considered a toy. And Perl is merely catching up to Snobol and Icon.
Perl will do fine despite ignorant fools who sneer at it. Perl6 is still headed to perpetually unreleased oblivion, but some features will hopefully break off and find their way back into perl5 and elsewhere. Regexes among them.
It's not firefox, it's your system resolver -- you can even ping 1113982819 if you want. The decimal address works on linux, the binary one doesn't. If the binary address works on windows, its resolver is even more insane than I had imagined.
I've worked customer service before, and though it's a little more complicated than that, the gist is correct: Except when you're summarizing what the customer is saying, you shouldn't use "you" to make statements of fact, because they sound like accusations. Obviously it's not an ironclad rule.
What drives me absofuckinglutely nuts with disgust however are the number of articles in Wikipedia written in the second person. But that's for an entirely different reason.
Regardless of who is at "fault" here ... keep in mind that this Jandreau fella is probably the God of Customer Service on the pay side too. I guess their IT must still be pretty good, since I can't imagine anyone who actually pays Lycos money actually tolerating the treatment.
My guess is that Jandreau will find out that there is in fact someone higher up than him, because that someone will fire his ass.
> Publicly traded companies do not have to reveal deals in progress... That would ridiculous.
No, but you can't trade stock based on the information of deals in progress if that information is not public. That's why I suggested that the transaction would involve something other than stock. IPO's in particular have a "quiet period" that could sink the whole IPO if that sort of discussion came to light.
> For God's sake, can we at least pretend that there is a shred of credibility here?
You're new here, aren't you?
I come for the community. I doubt even a quarter of us actually respect the editors.
Actually, that's naked insider trading. It's more like "we're investing in a new company X, and we could send them your way as their systems vendor, that is, with our cash. So what about that purchasing deal we were talking about before?"
> What's wrong with paying another company to carry only your products? Is it considered anti-competitive?
Yes, but not all anti-competitive behavior is unlawful. Dell and Intel are big enough, however, that it probably would be.
Additionally, this was a secret payment which is a very very big no-no. For all we know, it could have been a direct kickback to executives, which is the "go directly to jail" kind of illegal.
> The problem was, people who drink Coke exclusively don't like the ultra-sweet taste of Pepsi.
When Coke was getting beat up by the Pepsi Challenge, they did their own taste tests, and New Coke won pretty much every single time. The New Coke flop was one of the first lessons in what happens when you screw with a brand. There'd never been such a backlash before, and the reaction was simply unprecedented. It's literally a textbook case in marketing now.
Plenty of other misinformation in your post too, like Coke's supposed patent. Show me a patent number if you can find one. That's because their formula was, and still is a trade secret (but easily reverse-engineered). Not patented.
> Also, Microsoft lying under oath doesn't put a rootkit on my computer.
You do realize you're talking about the company that makes Windows, right?