I'm am one of the original programmers from Ensemble Studios.

I've heard of the game being used for something like a few times over the years.

If I recall correctly, back in the day (around 1999-2002) we received a few requests for a customized version of Age of Kings to support whatever it was they were doing - be it adding extra data output (like a log file detailing every combat step), fixing the random number seeds so slightly different scenario could have the exact same random number sequence used or some additional feature to the scenario editor.

I think (and again my memory is hazy on this so I could be wrong) we actually did produce one, and maybe a second, custom build of the game for use in an academic / research setting.

Living in the Seattle area, and having met and hung out with some former Boeing Engineers, they all have pretty much echoed your statements.

They're supposed to take their time and milk that sweet, sweet cost-plus contract for a decade...

The largest part of GPU driver installs over the years has been bug fixes and/or improvements for specific games.

I can speak of a specific example of a GPU driver bug-fix, because I am the coder responsible for such a bug in Microsoft's Age of Empires (1997)

During the game's development in 1996 and 1997, we did not yet have 3D cards with 2D functionality (the stand alone Voodoo 1 card existed). Instead we were using 2D cards with 512K to 2MB of VRAM, capable of generating frame buffers up to 1280x1024 with 8-bit indexed color. These were VESA era cards, many of which used bank switching of 64K windows into the onboard VRAM.

Microsoft's DirectDraw API did for Windows 95 what UniVBE basically did for DOS games of the era - presented VRAM as a linear frame buffer that worked on (most) all video cards, and did any bank-switching needed behind the scenes by trapping the CPU fault when you wrote to a VRAM address that wasn't currently mapped to the card, and switching the address remapping and GPU VRAM bank transparently before resuming your code.

Using the DirectDraw API you had to issue a Lock() command to get access to the VRAM, and then Unlock() it when you were done copying pixels to it, so that it could do things like present the current frame, or next frame if you were double buffering, or execute a blit, which may or may not involve support hardware on the video card. The Unlock command would invalidate the mapped memory region to the GPU.

In one spot in the code of Age of Empires, I forgot to call Unlock(). On all the 2D cards in 1997.. it didn't matter. You could still write to the video card buffer and it was ok. Once we started getting GPUs with 3D and more VRAM like the nVidia GeForce 256 and ATI Radeon 9600, which also meant newer version of Direct3D (DriectX), etc, the code in Age of Empires would crash the game.

Both nVidia and ATI put code in their drivers to specifically detect that that game, and fix the problem so that the game ran, despite being a "bad citizen" and not calling Unlock(). This was keyed, at least in part, off the .exe filename. If you renamed empires.exe to expires1.exe (or anything else), the game would crash as soon as you attempted to start a game.

I think you meant JavaSCRIPT....

Adding to this point, even if there were a fiduciary duty to maximize monetary returns above all else, there typically isn't any time scale specified for that return. A long-term investment that is expected to eventually return more than some other option with higher short-term gains, is still a valid investment based on fiduciary duty.

I asked some long time Microsoft employees about what happened to the quality of their documentation, and what I was told is that there was a distinct documentation group and the number of technical writers used to be significant, and you had people making the documentation that actually SWEs and/or had some knowledge and understanding of what they were writing about, and they would make sure sections were complete, and items cross referenced, etc.

But they were seen by executives as a big expense that could be eliminated, and most of them were let go/eliminated to save money and the bright idea was that going forward documentation could be a combination of written by the programmers making Windows or the compilers and documentation automatically generated by source scanning tools.

And that's how we've gotten to the state where let's say you might look for documentation on an enum used in a new API call because they can't decide if UWP is the future of Windows or the past, and the only documentation in existence you can find is an auto generated page that indicates the enum exists with no further information.

The ISPs charge their customers for bandwidth. They charge for whatever speed and transfer amounts they want, at whatever price they want.

It's implied that most data that goes to or from their customers will also go from or to somewhere else. How on earth could any reasonable person expect to get paid from someone at the other end of the pipe, when the entire purpose of an ISP is to interface their customers to the pipe in the first place?

An independent point is that without "those online service providers", there wouldn't be much need for ISPs at all.

I think you missed the parts of the summary where they talk about the "other systems" around the reactor and safety:

Also:

That won't eliminate all staff, but it probably brings the levels down closer to a non-nuclear plant. I'd be very surprised if there's any coal, NG, or hydro plant that doesn't have 24x7 staffing. Solar and wind farms may be the only (large-scale) power sources that have no full-time staffing requirements. (I don't know for sure, but I will say that I've driven by wind and solar arrays dozens of times, and have never seen anybody working at them)

UPTO is pretty much worthless if the employee can't reliably choose the days they actually get to 'take off' due to requiring the approval of their management chain (who deny them).

My wife has conventional vacation accrual working for a consulting firm. She is currently deployed on a project for a major telcom provider, which frankly is a sh*t show and why they had to bring in outside consultants to fix things. A co-worker of hers has been stuck on a parallel project there for over 3 years.

Since there are always new fires to put out, due to the client's inability to handle pretty much anything, every one of her vacation day requests for the past year so far have been denied, as the client is telling her managers that they need her doing the work of 2 or more people, and her managers value that over her needs.

She has had to take a few sicks days recently, and I suspect job offers coming from other companies may somehow be related to that.... *cough*

The 8088 was a 16-bit CPU with an 8-bit data bus. Internally, it was basically the same thing as an 8086.

I am one of the original developers of Age of Empires 1 & 2 back in the late 1990s.

Ensemble Studios would get a lot of fan mail, and among them were many letters from people who told us that playing the game inspired them to learn more about the actual history behind and around the civilizations and battles referenced in our games.

It quickly taught us to always be clear and up front that "this is just a game, optimized for fun and not accuracy, but if you are interested we encourage you to consult your library and schools to learn more about the people and events.. (blah blah. something like that..)"

So it wouldn't surprise me if some people get the idea that events as portrayed in a video game actually reflect the real history (falsely or incompletely)

gah. I meant to say of newer games submitted, which is a subset of the entire catalog. Would be nice if there was a short window of time after posting that I could edit my comment.

...Unity Games make up over half the games on Steam.

80-90% of the Indie teams and studios I know are using Unity, with most of the remainder using Unreal.

Unity made their engine & tools accessible to more types/genre's of games than what Unreal was suitable for (perceived or actual) aka First person/FPS for a long time, along with making it fiscally accessible in an attempt to capture market share. And it worked, Unreal in particular responded - you no longer need to fork over $250K to just get started with it.

I've worked with both, and they both have advantages and drawbacks, but do think Unity is a better choice for more types of games, especially non-AAA stuff.

Gotta read the whole article, there are reasonable limitations in the Act:

• It only applies to consumer goods, which is probably why this separate bill is needed for farm equipment.
• Jim Bob spitting on or gouging a product with a screwdriver would invalidate the protections, according to this paragraph in the Limitations section: "The federal minimum standards for full warranties are waived if the warrantor can show that the problem associated with a warranted consumer product was caused by damage while in the possession of the consumer, or by unreasonable use, including a failure to provide reasonable and necessary maintenance."

Right-to-repair has never been about having carte blanche to destroy things and then assert that the manufacturer is responsible for repairs under warranty. Not that that would prevent opponents from claiming it is so.