You know what they say. Heir today, gone tomorrow...

I think he already answered that. His second paragraph talks about the occasional need for dynamically generated SQL. Dynamically generated != prepared, therefore you have your 1%.

Fuck yeah! That's the spirit. Bring back the /. I know!

I think the GP was talking about DRM/anti-pirating measures, not the user controls. Essentially they're trying to turn computer games into the black box that console games are.

Good points. I find the map features interesting as well. I like the idea of having some sort of organization there, as with Starcraft you just had people appending a bunch of random ascii characters to a name and throwing it out there. Dunno about others but I often found it confusing to determine exactly what I was looking at. Giving the option of paid maps/mods is a good idea too... players can decide for themselves whether something is of value, and conversely map/mod makers will have to tell a convincing story in order to get people to pay.

Also really looking forward to a more robust set of editing tools. One of the funnest things for me was building storyline maps. Triggers were a wonderful asset for that, but some customization was still missing. Can't wait to get my hands on the new map editor.

Yup. There's still quite a few playing Diablo 2. Though Blizzard has pissed a lot off with the upcoming patch... lot of failed expectations there.

I'm sure parliament is trembling in their shoes about now. They cannot hope to stand against anonymous. Who can possibly save them? Maybe... batman...

All this tells me is that these companies understand the nature of their respective mediums. If you're releasing to a console with no possibility of updates it *is* important that you be meticulous and catch any bugs. If you're releasing to a webserver, then you've got more flexibility. Either way though, I will agree that I've seen a lack of discipline in ensuring code correctness, both at places I've worked and in commercial products where the results are apparent. I think the damage of releasing something low quality is vastly underestimated by most companies.

Tying this back to the original topic, I think agile has contributed in meaningful ways, but in most situations it's not a complete solution. In a large project, you need an overall strategy, with milestones that tie into your business model. I don't think agile provides that. I see agile's role more in the tactics of breaking up goals into manageable chunks and then working to complete those goals. It's effective at this because it provides a framework for accountability and proactive resolution of roadblocks. This is very important in a long term project, because if you don't have short term goals and feedback on intermediate tasks, it's easy to lose site of the overall purpose of your endeavor - that is to provide something of value to the consumer.

You mean like clicking "quote parent"?

So... racism gets +1 interesting and the guy who points it out gets -1 troll. Good job moderators!

That is exactly what the volt does, except without a trailer lugging behind. Unlike the Prius it is not as you say, a "traditional hybrid".

Physical goods are not the same as digital media, or ideas and concepts. Different rules of supply and demand apply to them, because in the abstract world scarcity is only artificially imposed by keeping secrets. The law of karma is far more important here, because you rely on your clients being honorable. If you screw enough people over, someone who has your content will get pissed at you and start offering it for free. And others who might have been willing to pay a reasonable price, will now get it for free.

This is not good, or bad. It is the nature of this economy. Play nice, offer something of value, and listen to your target audience, and you can be profitable. Be greedy and try to control everything and people will laugh at you as they distribute your precious "secret" to everyone who wants it.

Furthermore, bad will always win because good is dumb.

Note that the "good guys" revealed their methods immediately after discovery, which means the "bad guys" can start looking for a workaround. The "bad guys" won't make the same slip.

I've never read a user interface design article or book that I found insightful. Bickerydyke is right, this article completely glosses over the actual evolution of our current icons and how they changed people's expectations to what they are today. Instead, he poses some contrived gradient scale of reality -> cartoon and posits this as the only relevant factor.

Who writes these things? All the "UI experts" I've seen seem to take their field in isolation of everything else, which completely defeats the purpose of UI planning. The overall concept is pretty simple, you have to figure out a way to connect the abstract model of your software with something tangible for the user. This requires deep understanding of what problem the software is trying to solve, and the user's prior experience and expectations. You can't get around that by applying some magic formula to arrive at the "perfect" UI. Take your one size fits all t-shirts and get the hell out.

Yay, let's post arbitrary values and label them "THE TRUTH".