falckon - Slashdot User

Comment Thwarting piracy to what end? (Score 1) 244

by falckon on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @08:25AM (#28689129) Attached to: The Evolution of Multiplayer Games and Online Play

Let's say they are successful, and they do make it such that you can't play online, or even at all without a legitimate copy. These copyright measures are obviously annoying to their legitimate customers, as evidenced by many /.ers here, and I'd venture a guess that they don't increase sales. I think that most people who pirate games wouldn't buy them anyways, they will just find something else to pirate. They may end up getting 5% of the people who would have pirated the game to buy it, but by annoying their paying customer base with limited functionality or a required connection to play I think it hurts sales more than it helps them in the long run. Pirates will always be there, freeloading your games, companies should worry about impressing their paying customer base.

Comment Re:The facts just changed (Score 1) 524

by falckon on Saturday June 20, 2009 @12:41AM (#28399269) Attached to: Microsoft Launches New "Get the Facts" Campaign

Sorry, my copy paste failed me, the second one for manageability should read: "Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools."

Comment The facts just changed (Score 1) 524

by falckon on Saturday June 20, 2009 @12:39AM (#28399253) Attached to: Microsoft Launches New "Get the Facts" Campaign

Did anyone notice that their facts just changed? I thought facts were supposed to be universal truths. Here's the two examples I noticed, but I can tell the wording of some of the others changed too.

Manageability:
< Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools. That's just not nice.
> Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools. That's just not nice.

Developer Tools:
< Of course Internet Explorer 8 wins this one. There's no need to install tools separately, and it offers better features like JavaScript profiling.
> Internet Explorer 8 has the most comprehensive developer tools built in, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript editing, but also JavaScript profiling; other browsers have developer tools available, but either require you to download them separately, or aren't as complete.

Comment Re:One good point about the Economical Crisis. (Score 3, Interesting) 132

by falckon on Monday May 25, 2009 @12:15AM (#28080053) Attached to: City of Vancouver Adopts Open Standards

In the future, programming will all be in XML, as this is will prove more adaptable to change. Open source software will of course embrace this open extensible language.

for (i=0;i<10;i++)
printf("%d\n", i);

Will be replaced with the following code which is not only much easier to read, and type, but is also adaptable to whatever extra options may be added to for loops over the years.

Comment Re:Better solution (Score 1) 874

by falckon on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @04:15PM (#26906369) Attached to: Don't Like EULAs? Get Your Cat To Agree To Them

The problem is your preparation in having a BAC ready shows intent. Witnesses would work better, just have them testify that you were inebriated when they saw you that night, and the access times of the files installed after agreeing to the EULA on that same night.

Additionally, can continuing to use the program really constitute agreement if you don't even remember installing it and hence do not realize that an agreement was a prerequisite to using the program?

Comment Could have chosen a better game (Score 3, Interesting) 37

by falckon on Sunday February 08, 2009 @02:07AM (#26770057) Attached to: Study Compares Brain Activity In Games Against Humans and AI

I think it's interesting that they chose the Prisoner's Dilemma for the game - a 2 choice discrete turn game. While not everyone knows the algorithms computers use for such games, people generally consider computers to be quite good at turn-by-turn games (like chess) and should be regarded as more formidable opponents. Not to mention playing a computer at this game should provoke our minds to attempt to decipher the pattern if we believe we are playing a computer so that we can beat it.

But the main reason I find it interesting is that it is very easy to get into an always defect loop. If you opponent has been defecting every turn, what incentive is there for you to defect? In this sense playing a human is an almost random process as to when to stop defecting, and when you do you will most likely lose the turn anyways. If I were playing a human I would think less about my opponents thoughts and fall into a tit-for-tat play style (repeating the last move), starting cooperatively.

I think it would be more interesting to see the effect of thinking you are playing a computer vs a human in a game with more information. For example, in chess you may leave a piece open when playing a human if you believe your opponent will not see it given the large number of possible moves, whereas with a computer you know at least every immediate move will be considered.

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