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Bug

Are Complex Games Doomed To Have Buggy Releases? 362

Posted by Soulskill from the where-did-my-face-go dept.
An anonymous reader points out a recent article at Gamesradar discussing the frequency of major bugs and technical issues in freshly-released video games. While such issues are often fixed with updates, questions remain about the legality and ethics of rushing a game to launch. Quoting: "As angry as you may be about getting a buggy title, would you want the law to get involved? Meglena Kuneva, EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner, is putting forward legislation that would legally oblige digital game distributors to give refunds for games, putting games in the same category in consumer law as household appliances. ... This call to arms has been praised by tech expert Andy Tanenbaum, author of books like Operating Systems: Design and Implementation. 'I think the idea that commercial software be judged by the same standards as other commercial products is not so crazy,' he says. 'Cars, TVs, and telephones are all expected to work, and they are full of software. Why not standalone software? I think such legislation would put software makers under pressure to first make sure their software works, then worry about more bells and whistles.'"

Comment Re:How long can they fight it (Score 5, Interesting) 348

by Crunchie Frog (#29178561) Attached to: Swedish Authorities Attempt Pirate Bay Shutdown

I know, because we only use TPB for Linux distros, right?

You're a pirate and you steal movies, music, programs, and games.

At least fucking admit to it.

No he's not a pirate and no he doesn't steal yada yada.

He may be a copyright infringer, and he may be infringing on the copyright of movies, music, programs and games. There's a difference, despite what Big Money would say / like you to believe. Maybe that should be admitted, because its closer to the truth than your rhetoric.

Comment Re:Oversucking (Score 2, Informative) 296

by Crunchie Frog (#28105217) Attached to: Build an $800 Gaming PC

My original 485DX33 box had the old 'turbo' button on the front to switch between 8 and 33 Mhz. The thing would never boot if it was set to 33Mhz, always froze after POST, but once booted in 8Mhz 'mode', you could happily press that button and feel that 33Mhz power blowing your hair...

Never did work out what the problem was.

Comment Re:Be afraid, be very afraid (Score 1) 252

by Crunchie Frog (#23757243) Attached to: RIAA Throws In Towel On "Making Available" Case

"Maybe, maybe not. The number of computers you're downloading from bears no relevance. I could be downloading at a very slow rate but be uploading at a much higher rate."
Nope, that's impossible. If you're uploading at a faster rate than you're downloading, you would be uploading data you have not yet downloaded. I guess it would be possible to download and upload at nearly the same amount, but it would be unlikely. Especially considering most ISPs upload rates are significantly lower than their download rates and the fact that you're downloading from multiple sources and are only uploading from one.
No it's not impossible. You are misunderstanding something here. I can easily upload faster than i download simply by uploading the same part of the file many times to different people. How can i have ratios of greater than 1.0 on files I'm downloading if this is not possible?

Also the upload/download speed of your connection has no relevance. You are clearly talking about ADSL which almost always has a faster download than upload speed (the A stand for Asynchonous, Hurrah!), but my Bitorrent client doesn not use all my bandwidth. I often set my upload speed faster than my download speed on private trackers where i wish to improve (or at least maintain) my ratio.
Programming

Submission + - How do i start programming? 2

Submitted by abcjared
abcjared writes: I'm in my last year of school hoping to go onto uni.
I have learnt many programming languages ( asm, c, c++, java, perl, php, python, etc..) but most of them from very old and outdated books. I have often tried to get into a programing project but I just don't have enough experience with any of these languages and crumble under lots of syntax errors.

I want to help out some simple open source projects but I don't know where to start?
Books

Submission + - Terry Pratchett Diagnosed with Alzheimers

Submitted by
rucs_hack
rucs_hack writes: "Terry Pratchett, the author of the Discworld series, has been Diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
He describes it as 'an embuggerance', and plans to continue writing his next two books, "Nation" and "Unseen Academicals" which are not based in the discworld universe.
I imagine the rest of the slashdot community will join me in extending our sympathy and hope for some means to mitigate the effects of the illness."

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