Posts by Gene Cash 4500 posts • joined 22 Mar 2007
Then you've got stuff like HALO Infinite where I'm in a "boss battle" - except my rockets and other weapons go straight through the enemy without affecting him. So I've given up.
I remember when you got a console because the games were better QAed.
And there's no way in hell I'd play a game on my phone and that postage stamp theatre crap. I want a reasonably comfortable controller and a monitor where I can actually see what's going on.
I moved into a new (to me) house and the breaker box was labeled in Egyptian hieroglyphics so I figured I'd update it by turning on all the lights, turning off all the breakers, and flipping them one by one, then going into the house and seeing what lit up.
There was a lot of "HUH, that's INTERESTING" said that day, especially seeing when one room lit up, as well as the closet in an unconnected room. And when one breaker turned on the light and one outlet in the "family room" but all the other outlets were on another breaker.
Granted, this is a house old enough for a NEMA 10-30 for the dryer, which has a neutral but not a ground (which is why it's no longer code)
I'd like the same thing, but there's no reason for any of that to go to some server halfway across the continent. If the app talked directly to the thermostat or light bulb across my wi-fi, that would be ok.
All the thermostats I've found do phone home, but it takes a bit of digging to discover that.
It feels like the HALO team did the original cutscenes, then got laid off and the Modern Warfare 2 guys had to finish it from their notes.
There's literally nothing aside from "kill aliens" so far. There's a dig site I'm supposed to get to, but I have no idea how, and a team of guys on a hill apparently that I'm supposed to save, but I have no idea how to get there.
I've found a tank, but there's nowhere to take it because it's hard to drive and the trees and rocks are in the way, and there's nothing obvious to attack with it.
There's ghosts scattered around that I can't drive.
The marines are stupid. I saved a bunch and now they're all clustered around the tank and won't leave to come with me.
I have had a couple boss fights but I've learned almost nothing from them, except one guy's name. There was "sooper dooper sword elite dude" who instead of attacking me with his sword, just spammed me with impossibly accurate grenades from an absolutely impossible range.
The "new girl" is too perky and idiotic. I feel like I'm traveling with Mr. B. Natural from MST3K.
The Pelican somehow has an unlimited supply of vehicles and doesn't mind coming to drop them off, but won't pick me up and take me anywhere.
I'm playing "normal" and Brutes and Elites fall instantly with simple faceshots, then there are these "fast attack" brutes that land and you have to grenade spam them.
I guess I'll go shoot some more aliens. I don't have much else to do.
Edit: and I started the game, and got "you are not the fireteam leader" and it refused to play the game.
I googled the error and "halo infinite" and "campaign" and got NO HITS. I updated my HALOBOX and it played. Yay. Is this fuckin' Windows 10 or what?
HALO Reach is pretty good. It's the only other game with actual storyline.
ODST is "not bad" but I mainly liked it for the voice acting. The city is a pretty nice and well thought out setting, especially at night. It ranks above HALO 2 for me, but that's not saying much.
Speaking of info in the US... my local station had a info channel that was just a camera sliding along a wall of instruments.
There was a clock, thermometer, wind direction, wind speed, barometer, a handwritten weather forecast note, and a couple other things I've forgotten.
The camera would slowly pan along, reach the end of the track and reverse, so you had to wait a minute if you missed the reading of interest. It would dwell on the clock and forecast note at each end for a couple seconds.
So anyone else have this? Nobody else seems to remember such a thing.
I'd buy it.
There's very poor competition here on the Florida east coast.
I have a "choice" of AT&T or Spectrum, which is a choice between crap and garbage. For example, if the power wobbles, I lose connectivity, so obviously the local equipment doesn't have even the most basic battery backup.
I'm paying $80/mo for for 20mb/sec.
The thing that concerns me is customer service. I wouldn't put up with the condescending and patronizing crap that Tesla customers accept. However, being better than AT&T "service" is a very low bar to hurdle.
So wait a minute, it's better to crowd together at a register for 3 to 4 times longer, instead? What?
The kiosks forced employees to bring the bags to a table, so they were hated.
They were the only reason I went to McD's, because the only time I get my order correct is when I type it in myself (and this includes Wendy's, Burger King, Taco Bell, Arby's, and other such monstrosities) and McD's was the only place with working self-order kiosks.
Apparently "add extra onion" is a feat beyond human comprehension at the register.
Anyway, it's been a really cool series, and thank you all for bringing a smile to my face (where it felt really out of place) multiple times
That's a classic "baffle 'em with bullshit" statement if I ever heard one. I'd respect the FAA and the airline industry if they didn't blather and bloviate like that. You only do that if you don't have an actual position to defend.
The "real work" should have begun on this years ago, if it's an actual issue.
Remember all the "turn your phone off before you crash the plane!" that turned out to be complete bullshit and there was never any interference noted from cellphones?
As much as I hate AT&T and Verizon, I think they're in the right on this one.
This isn't "legacy" - it's a horrible hack, as they're trying to encode a character based representation into a numeric variable and seems to be the result of some horrible mental confusion. This should have never been written in the first place. They need an absolute thrashing.
I would not call them a "coder" any more than someone that "programs HTML"
I used to heard CompuPro S-100 boxes in a cat litter plant back in the '80s. They put fuller's earth through a long kiln fired by waste oil.
I had to periodically pour "fines" out of the machines in a small pile.
If you went into the actual plant, you had to wear a mask, and you couldn't see more than 20 feet.
Nope. Crowdfunding is cyber-panhandling.
"Established companies launching standard products and new editions" - isn't that actually pre-ordering? I've preordered a Prusa XL because I'm very satisfied with my i3 Mk3, and Prusa has always delivered in the past. I do not in any way consider that crowdfunding.
I do know webcomics artists and stuff do kickstarters for things like shirts, pins, posters, and other merch, but that's because they really need to know the demand (or lack thereof) and they can't be stuck with a closetful of shirts for the next decade. So they use the Kickstarter framework because it's the easiest/cheapest way to do it, but it's not really crowdfunding either. All the people that back the Kickstarter get their shirt with the witty saying or whatever.
I have noticed however that I'm buying a ton less from Amazon because I can't find shit in the page-after-page of alphabet-soup Chinese company names all using the exact same stock photo of their supposed product.
My last 4 large purchases were directly from the original vendor website. It seems people have finally a) realized how to make a shopping cart that works, and b) pushing people off to a distributor or reseller or "find a dealer" does NOT work.
You've got someone that made all the effort to find your widget AND your website.., don't alienate him by refusing to sell to him, like selling your own damn widget is dirty work that's beneath you. I never understood that.
Especially when you list 3 local stores as "dealers" and I already know for absolute certain they DO NOT sell your product, which is why I'm looking at your damn website in the first place!
Eventually we may get an executive capable of planning their way out of a paper bag, although I won't hold my breath.
I think the irony of democracy is that those most qualified to run the place really don't want to, and they're busy doing other things. So you get actors, failed businessmen, and other useless idiots.
WTF happened to the previous planning conditions?
Absolutely nothing, they're still there. They're counting on people forgetting about it. Nothing will get done unless someone digs it up and does it.
We don't do paid parking in the US. People go elsewhere and the business fails.
That's why the most important thing in the house is the backup drive, kept in a very thick data-rated fireproof safe. If the house burned down and I still had that drive, life could go on.
Cloud is just a copy. There's nothing there that isn't already on my computer locally.
I've moved houses and I'm now facing the task of tossing my old Creative Computing magazines. It's amazing to read through those and remember stuff.
Remember when object-oriented languages were called "actor languages" and class inheritance and methods were called "message passing"? I mentioned that to a CS PhD at work and had to drag out the old Creative Computing articles to prove it.
Well, the issue is actually getting anything to/from the iPad... for example a PDF to read at lunch.
There's simply no way to do it from Linux. And when you talk to Apple, they tell you to "get the manufacturer of your Lee Nooks to write a transfer application"
With Android, you can use adb or an FTP client. I couldn't find any FTP clients for an iPad (at least not 2 years ago)
Also, I can't write an app to turn GPS/cell on/off as necessary for my garage door app. I can root my Android device and then it'll let me do so.
As I read this, Google Mail gives:
Corrupted Content Error
The site at https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/ has experienced a network protocol violation that cannot be repaired.
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because an error in the data transmission was detected.
Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.
And Twitter gives:
Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot. [Try Again]
And Google Maps dies and causes stuff to segfault in Firefox.
So I'm sure some folks are really enjoying their Christmas eve.
https://spacenews.com/jwst-launch-marks-only-the-start-of-a-risky-deployment-process/
"The first deployment takes place 33 minutes after liftoff, when it releases its solar panel. That will be followed by its first midcourse correction burn, called MCC-1a, which will take place 12.5 hours after liftoff. Those two events are the most time-sensitive ones for the spacecraft"
"there are 344 single-point failures in the spacecraft, 80% of which are associated with deployment mechanisms"
"The sunshield, for example, includes 140 release mechanisms, 70 hinge assemblies, eight deployment motors, about 400 pulleys and 90 cables that are a total of 400 meters long"
"A maneuver 29 days after launch will place JWST into its final halo orbit"
Watching a MotoGP race (or other race - but this is my experience) on TV is a complete waste of time.
The compression blocks don't even allow you to read the numbers on the front of the bikes, it's that bad.
My TV died 8 years ago and I've not seen anything that would suggest it's worth paying the money to replace it.
So if "computer engineering is fundamentally broken" what's your solution, other than "do it different"?
I'm serious, we need all the help we can get.
I see it's a basic consequence of the fact that every time we write an application, we're mostly doing something completely new, that hasn't been done before, under tight time and resource constraints.
I've seen dozens of major coding methodologies in my life. Flowcharting everything. Gotos are bad. Structured programming. Top-down design. Functional programming, Object-oriented. Pair coding. Agile. Copying from stackoverflow.
People are (mostly) doing their best, but programming is hard and irreducible complexity is irreducible.
I had a problem where my calls would get routed to AT&T customer support, but rebooting the phone fixed it, until one day recently when that didn't work, and no one could call me.
"You have been rerouted to customer service because your phone has been determined to be incompatible with AT&T's new 5G service, coming in February. Please hold for a representative."
So I waited on hold to speak with someone. I was rather steaming because I was trying to dial into a meeting to fix someone's computer issues.
The guy started off repeating that my phone was incompatible with 5G, then went into "would you like to purchase a new compatible phone..."
I said "wait, you disconnected my service to try to SELL ME A NEW PHONE? SERIOUSLY?" and continued with my opinion of his customer service, and possibly his genetic heritage, and his mother's service to the local army battalion.
He made some clicky-click noises and informed me that my phone service had been restored.
And yes, I filed an FCC complaint. The "President's office" has emailed me to call them. I replied that I have no interest in calling and speaking off the record. If they have a statement or questions, they can email me. I've also switched to T-Mobile, for whatever slight good that might do.
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