Those weren't unlocked by a key, were they?
My memory of those days might be foggy, but I seem to recall that the shareware versions simply didn't contain the levels past "Episode 1", but instead had a bunch of nag screens. In order to get the full thing, you had to order it and get it physically delivered, or go buy it at the nearest retail outlet that had it. So no unlock-codes..
Now, if they can skip the fission stage, that changes things. Then you've got a nuke that can likely be made much smaller (both in size and yield) and much cleaner. Whether this is a good thing depends primarily on what it's used for.
Presumably lobbing them at the middle east, while dancing around singing "It's not a nuke, it's not a nuke, you can't do anything, wheeee!"
As a close-to-30 completely uneducated (effective high-school dropout) developer, stick in there and get your masters, easily.
Like people have pointed out, when HR compares a masters with 2 years of work experience, the masters will win.
And if I were in your position, I'd wager that the economic funk we're in is a little less depressing in 2 years. If you're right, two years well spent. If it goes downhill, well, then you'd be pretty much fucked anyway (last in, first out).
Masters and whatnot stop being relevant after a couple of years (it's not like anyone even bothers to ask for my grades anymore, having worked for over 10 years whereof 8 "in the business"), but it'll give you a good head start when you're compared to people like me
Remember, people are buying COMPUTER most of them don't understand that there's an OS running on it, it's just a computer, much like a radio.
Do YOU know what OS/firmware your television/radio/refridgerator/telephone/dishwasher/washingMachine/etc are running? I didn't think so.
Big difference. "You" (as in your average person, and the more than average persons, in fact most people outside of the ones employed in a tight area around the manufacturer) cannot change the OS on your fridge/dishwasher/whattamajig, so it's a bit of a moot point.
If I can't change it, I couldn't care less about what it's running. That's not saying I would care if I could change it, but the unchangeability of it makes complete ignore that factor. There are some lights on my fridge indicating temperature, and buttons for me to change it, it all looks suspiciously analogue to me, so I can't even say that it runs AN os, it could all be hardwired. Which would make upgrades a bitch
If it takes two service packs to support something, how does that rhyme with "out of the box"?
I can agree with "Microsoft Office supports ODF with two major patchsets". If it did it OOTB, it would have done so at release - as in, ohidon'tknow - out of the box.
"Now, the word 'unblowupable' is thrown around a lot these days...."
Can't we just create a uuid at birth?
"[..] can reasonably be considered unique among all UUIDs created [...]"
Problem solved. Btw, i'm "534d16af-0e7f-4847-bd96-0b64d73fd8f3", pleased to make your acquaintance.
I have no "Movies" in my iTunes.
Oooooohhhhh, that must be because I'm not part of the world, but of those minor landmasses outside of the borders of the U.S.A.
If I switch iTunes to the american store, I get "Movies", but I sure as hell can't buy anything, because that's not available in the spanish store.
In fact, not even TV-series are available there. I can follow links to the other stores to (for example) the Dr Who-selection they have there, but I sure as hell can't buy anything.
And I bet you that if I _COULD_ buy it, it'd surely be dubbed in spanish, because the languages you speak are apparently defined by the credit cards you currently possess.
(And on the subject of itunes store, the app store is a joke. I can't even get _free_ applications from a store that's not spanish. Which is a shame, since I'm swedish and there are some interesting swedish things I would like, but I can't get them - regardless of them being free apps.)
"I know from my training and experience as both a cyber crime investigator and as a lay person acquainted with online chatting, emailing shopping, and other miscellaneous online activity, people who use computers and regularly go online to various websites, often must eftter information known as "user names", or log-in screen names, as well as passwords, in order to access certain things on their computers and on various online websites."
I, for one, welcome our new experienced cyber crime investigator overlords!
Oh lookie, "sex change".
I fully blame this (freudian?) slip on the wallclock, indicating a time before 10am.
After all, barbershops and even paid-for sex changes have come about due to player demand in World of Warcraft.
Uhm. Paying for sex in WoW?
Exactly how deeply entrenched in your parents basement would you have to be to do that?
No complex database or HTTP hacking. You control EXACTLY what the URL is. You're always in control of where the visitor is redirected to.
Huh? Wha? 301's are magical beasts of ancient lore that i can't control? Last time i checked, a 301-response gave me full control to redirect from any url on the domains i control to anywhere else, so i control EXACTLY what the url is. And you can be damn sure I'm in control to where it points.
Your system is flawed, on the simple premise that it's just a different way of doing exactly what's already available, but ass-backwards.
A couple of years ago i sketched out something like this for a project at work.
It was with a known cloud of clients though, so security could easily be beefed out with no concerns to "compatiblity" on the client side.
Basically, a big ol tracker running in position X.
A number of headless clients connected to storage systems, spread across the world, potentially divided into a hierarchy based on connectivity.
Each client uses a unique key-pair to communicate with the tracker (phase 1 of security, for a 3rd party it'd be a bitch to sniff, not even another client could sniff and make sense of any of the data related to the first client).
In client communications, a random (weaker) cipher is used, to obscure the data transfer slightly more.
So basically, heavily encrypted tracker communication, weaker encrypted client communication.
All client->client communication apart from the actual data channel also went via the tracker in question, so the only client->client happenings would be a port opening on client A and a connection request from client B, handshake and then the data transfer.
At the time of new files, a "Hello. Wake up now omgplz"-kind of request would be made available to the clients, starting with the innermost ones first (to facilitate a relatively speedy distribution of the files across the entire network, while attempting to not completely clog the intarweb tube of the "master client"), and when deemed appropriate (x% completion among y% of tier-z clients), move on to tier-(z+1).
This, of course, won't scale to something the size of pirate bay without some serious hardware from the future, but i find it an interesting sidetracking
Doom didn't have reloading, now did it?
I recall Doom 2's double barreled shotgun having some "chug two more cartridges in there"-animation, but apart from that there was nothing keeping you from holding down the fire button and spewing sprites until your ammo counter read 000, was there?
I'm going to counter that with (-1 Fact Nazi), and rate you (-1 Overly Eloquent).
If all else fails, lower your standards.
