Who exactly were you referring to there? Slashdotters like to take to piss out of conspiracy theorists as much as they like to report on them. If it was a worthy conspiracy theory to start with in the first place; sounded more like a market analysis tool to most of us, I expect.
If anybody tells the DEA that meth producers also use Dihydrogen Monoxide we are all in big trouble.
Or, lacking a band saw, we used to pop a power drill thru the platters a couple of times - after opening them up to take the magnets.
You can also just put the power drill thru the whole unit a few times, if you can't be bothered opening it up for the magnets. Not too hard to guess where the platters are inside there.
The web site features "Latest News
Sure, some guys are getting a buzz on over some wacky out there open source collaboration, but is it a story yet?
Yeah, what he said. I'm closer to 50 than 40, and some of the languages I have worked with in the past are no longer in use, or at least not widespread use (then again, some of the software I developed is still being used 18 years later). I took some time out from development, in a business analyst role, and enjoyed that quite a lot, but not as much as I enjoy development, and after a few years I felt like I was kinda falling behind on the technology.
Having moved back into a development role, partly supporting old legacy stuff and partly doing new development in
If you are having doubt whilst still so young, you are either not really a natural programmer, or you have become jaded from being in a rut too long. Maybe you need to look into some of the open source projects out there in internetland, some of the apps, libraries and, for example web application frameworks, inspire me endlessly (mostly wishing I could get my employers to pay attention to them as well).
Do what you enjoy, all the better if somebody else appreciates it and pays you for it, but try not to get trapped into just using one toolset or language. Go for variety and always try to learn new ones when you can.
Not sure where it is at now, I bought the book when it was *current* and really liked the framework, but didn't get into developing a live app with it at the time.
When I recently went back to look at using it, they have replaced 2 or 3 or more of the base libraries and the book appears to be redundant. Haven't yet investigated enough to see if there are clear and useful instructions available online for getting up and running with the latest version, but I would like to see an in-depth guide to things that are different from the book that was originally published.
I agree with that, but also would like to point at that, maybe there is a better reason that the blogger in question thought older programmers asked less questions.
Maybe more of us prefer the traditional ways of investigating a programming chalenge, or new language, framework etc BEFORE going to a public forum to ask for assistance.
Sure, I have sometimes picked up useful pointers from Stackoverflow, but it wouldn't be my first stop when investigating a problem. Over the years I think the better programmers I have worked with have been those who know how to look up the manual/programming guide/whatever when necessary, and go bothering their workmates only after MSDN (for instance) failed to give a clear answer (yet again)
Well their scientists have shown great concern over killing off the whales, why should this be different?
After all they spent huge amounts of resources going out there to fire harpoons into whales so that they could do some scientific research on them afterwards. I think the research went along the lines of "... hmm. it looks dead".
After what seems to be a general dumbing-down of games in recent times, and especially after paying out over $60 (nz) for Portal 2 ($10 per hour of play, wtf), I am currently in a state where I will find it hard to purchase a new game from Valve again. Hopefully these free-to-play offerings may offer a little better challenge or at least provide some fun gaming, enough to make it feel worthwhile purchasing some of those silly little DLC offerings.
In the past few months I have probably spent more hours playing a free game than any of the ones I have paid for. I think it is time I started donating to the developers driven by their own sense of commitment instead of the sweatshop lads.
No it's not a wave, or a particle. They are just a field-effect generated by our holographic projector.
And don't even ask how many sticks of RAM are being used to track them all.
I think I agree with you, tho this is probably why online gaming is the better option; in a single user game with any of the levels of complexity you mention, I think the end-user can quickly determine if there has been a lot of time and cleverness put into the AI side of things, and the ability of the NPC's to keep things interesting in the game can sometimes be what makes a game worth continuing to play (or at least, continuing to enjoy, as I have played some to the end just out of sheer bloody-mindedness).
In recent purchases that come to mind, portal 2 probably dissapointed, in terms of single player challenge, long-lasting playability and the thought of ever replaying the game for nostalgia. This is why, I think, the current trend is to sell a game as a basic intro to an environment or scenario, which then urges the player to join into an online interactive, where hopefully the real live (or partially drunk/asleep/stoned/whatever on a Friday night) players will provide the challenge to make the game popular.
I'm not sure I prefer it myself, but it must work for those who calculate sales and margins and such. Is any major game producer putting all that much time and effort, any more, into the long lasting epic single-player offline game? Even the concept of breaking the story development into episidic releases seems to have landed on the big red Go Straight To Fail square. How long have we waited for another episode in HL2?
p.s. Proof reading suggested almost a criticism of Valve. This is unintentional, Valve are my top favorites in software, all time, no more to say there.
Well by that reckoning, wouldn't they *want* people to be able to download the propaganda for free?
Well in his article he does say...
The supervisor who spoke with me was not sure how this software ended up in the new laptop thus put me on hold. He confirmed that yes, Samsung did knowingly put this software on the laptop to, as he put it, "monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."
"A car is just a big purse on wheels." -- Johanna Reynolds
