I agree with this; similarly if a game is too hard then a player might find they have purchased content (later levels) to which they are denied access. Granted, this is through their own mediocrity or lack of commitment to attain the relevant skill level, but i think that every player should have the opportunity to play through all the content that they have paid for within the context of how much work that particular person are prepared to put in to achieve it.

Dara O'Briain makes the same point on Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG3aHvPG6H8

Not true at all. While these notes are technically not legal tender in England (technically they are promissory notes from external banks), they are treated as such by banks and retailers, and any note that is a denomination of pounds sterling is universally accepted. So "for all practical purposes", they are indeed useful.

You just gave me a horrible vision of unlockable content appearing only after a certain number of ad-views, or worse still, click through on ads/purchase of sponsor item.

Maybe because the browsers Google, Apple, KDE and Gnome include by default are all built atop third party, open source rendering engines that try to comply to web standards; the OS providers themselves have no hand in forcing or attempting to force (whether deliberate or accidental) the propriety or direction of the web and their rendering process is completely transparent. (!whoosh, fwiw; it just seemed appropriate to reply here)

Except any "large corporate environment" should have commoditised the desktop PC long ago, with a managed desktop image, roaming profiles, etc. making rebuild (or even re-image) the only software-based repair that ever needs doing to a desktop; hardware repairs would be completed under warranty by third party engineers.

I just can't believe that anyone wasted 2 fucking years of their life trying to "disprove" it.

Rebuild one of the computers they give you. Do whatever you want to secure it. Give it back to them for the kids to use. If your build is any good, when they see how it runs, they will ask you to sort out their other PC, and the kids won't interrupt you.

> b) It has never been known to be transmitted from swine to humans.
Actually, shortly after this article was printed, there was a case in Soviet Russia where...

Funny how TPB is still up, eh?

It's like teaching a programming class in D--yeah, the language is nice, but it's not what people use.

This is a lousy example that works against you. As many programmers have, I learned one programming language (Java) at Uni and have *never* used it since. I have since, however, worked in asp, c, c++, c#, asp.net, perl, sh, vb, vbscript, ruby, python... and probably more that I can't remember; none of these ever presented any problems to me, nor should they to any real programmer, regardless of previous experience.

The point, as many other people have been saying, is that if the principles are taught well, rather than procedure, then the platform becomes absolutely irrelevant.