Duel In The Somme – Page 23
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I cannot recall who called, but somebody did. Now, I just hope Tom shows up at Hooters shoves his resignation down Kelso's throat.
Awwwww right!
Actually, if Tom's been offered a corner office? I hope he shows up at Hooters with job offers for everybody BUT Kelso, who can explain to HIS boss (aka "Daddy") about the defection of their best people.
"Supreme excellence in the Art of War lies in winning without fighting."
I don't know, the rest of the team seemed to side with Kelso, from teasing him with Snoopy dolls to escorting the boss to the dogfight. If I were Tom, I would let the team keep working under the man, they seem to deserve each other. That being said, losing part of a potential 14 million dollar contract is something Kelso's father would whip him over.
You have a point about "summer soldiers" and "fair-weather friends."
On the one hand, there's the Attila the Hun approach:
"To crush your enemy, to see him driven before you, etc."
On the other hand, there's:
"Toddle off and do nothing."
But on the gripping hand:
"The small man
Builds cages
For everyone
He
Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
-- Hafiz"
The gripping hand, eh? Someone just flashed his sci-fi nerd card.
I've been seeing that expression around a lot lately. Did someone let the moties out?
/approves
And darned proud of it. Tom's my kind of people.
It's such a USEFUL turn of phrase. One of these days I need to get my own copies of the Motie books...
Looks like Tom's lost the battle but won the war.
you beat me to it, who was that roman general...
Fabius Maximus? He was certainly good at it
Pyrrhic victory? Won battles with such losses he might as well just have lost?
Phyrus of Epirus is where the phrase comes from, Epirus was the greek kingdom of southern Italy when the Romans rose in teh centre he invaded and managed defeat the Romans but at such great losses he had to retreat anyway rather than capitalizing on his victory giving the Romans time to rebuild
I don't know of any Roman general, but there was this Greek general, Pyrrhus of Epirus, who fought the Romans and did the opposite thing: Won the battles but lost the war.
Could have been any number, Scipio africanus did it, the General who fought King Pyrrhus... Even Julius Caesar was prone to defeat, but winning wars was definitely his speciality.
On a subtler note, this shows he could have cheated at any time...if he had wanted to. If your planes are constantly trying to explode, and must be kept from doing so by software, how hard would it be to write in a small exception to make your opponent's plane explode when you start shooting at it?
Harder than you think. Trust me on this.
Yeah, the only way he'd have been able to specify Kelso's plane and not make it generic for every plane? Knowing ahead of time exactly which instance of the triplane class Kelso was going to use and coding specifically for that. Which means that any person using that specific triplane was going to have problems.
And if it was set for every triplane? Tom would have been accused of "cheating" by exploiting a bug in the engine. He was in a no-win situation with the flight, and adding "cheats" just for this would (A) cheapen the sim for everyone else and (B) fail to prove that he's the better man.
It is a better question to ask than most would probably think about.
What Lorraine wants... is a basic flight sim module into ToBIAS a week from thursday.
I think the incentive has been far more effective than expected.
So the true question is:
Did Tom actually win the weekend business trip?
The challenge wasn't winning the dogfight. Go back to page 7. Was this done the way it OUGHT to be done?
How about "If it's near my sights, and I pull the trigger, it explodes regardless of if I hit it". But I totally agree that it would cheapen the sim and be a dirty move...I'm just saying that there would be some folks who would do that sort of thing.
if (pilot != "kelso")
{
stop_exploding(plane);
}
else
{
kaboom(plane, "really big");
}
Ironically, I think Tom would have won if he had implemented the commercial flight sim. They showed that he was an ace at a flight sim, while Kelso was an ace in real planes. And then Kelso flies the plane like it's nothing and Tom can barely handle it.
I figured it would be something like this. Lorraine knows her quarry, too: she's been subtly goading him into doing something like this, to show his hand and prove what he's got. Clever, clever, clever: I'm betting she was always looking for more than just the program. Eh, whatever, I'm a sucker for a "nerd makes good" story line anyhow!
"Unexplode"? Like implode? (Would have been neat to see Kelso's plane implode around him but you can't get everything...)
lol. idk if you're serious or not, but Zorro is referring to what he said earlier about ToBIAS occasionally forgetting that a critical piece of machinery exists for a while, causing the plane to fall apart.
"Unexploding" and "imploding" are pretty different concepts!
An implosion is an object collapsing on itself, forcing matter and energy inwards, while being unexploded, in this context, is simply reverting the object to a whole state, where no kind of -plosion has occured at all!
So he solved the falling apart problem with a workaround...
function explode (plane target)
{
Plane falls apart
If the plane wasn't supposed to fall apart
{
unexplode(target)
}
}
Something like that?
No I guess it would be more like:
try
{
// Fly the plane
}
Catch(PlaneExplodedException ex)
{
if(ex.ShouldNotExplode == true)
{
// Unexplode the plane specified in ex
}
}
// Reminder: I shouldn't write code when I reply to a blog comment
More like:
periodically {
foreach(airborne plane) {
if it has been "forgotten" {
// oops
reload(plane);
} else {
backup(plane);
}
}
}
Buddy that would not work, because it would check plains that have taken damage and restore them every frame.
I say revenge is a dish best served cold. Tom should let Kelso find out after the fact that Tom has landed in the catbird seat. Let Kelso hold forth at Hooter's about his prowess in the sim. His defeat will be more crushing when he discovers too late that the golden goose has flown.
I think we can now safely say ZEPOPOLIS VICTORY!
Now here's a question:
If there's code that stops the plane exploding...
does that mean they can NEVER explode, and as such, never will?
Also, when will this software be available for video games?
I think Tom should abstain from bragging or shoving his newly found employment to Kelso's face. Tom should be the bigger man, above that sort of petty feeling, in order to achieve a true victory.
how about
"I admit it Mr Kelso, you ARE the better man. I admit my defeat. I feel I have no choice but to resign in disgrace. Please forward my last check to
CogNoTek, Inc
Artificial Reality Department
Chief of Project Developments Zepopolis"