RedBeard’s Curious Life

A prologue:
Why are all the good shows scheduled in the exact same time slot?
- audience gets fewer watchable shows
- network gets lower ratings
- advertisers get less coverage

Laugh Tracks = annoying.

On to the main feature…
Some TV shows you may or may not have seen, and what I think of them:

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Attention people who make software, particularly games:
DO NOT RUN AS ADMIN.

If I have a security policy in effect on my machine that prevents your installer from futzing around with system-wide settings, there’s probably a good reason for it. Windows might not have the most robust and user-friendly security system in the world, but the concept of a game failing to install because it can’t write to the system registry or the “program files” folder is pretty pathetic. Granted, by default all Windows users are administrators, but that’s no excuse to make a few simple changes that will vastly increase the usability and decrease the annoyance factor of your product for those who have smarter sysadmins. If you simply have to run as admin, at least run your installer and game through AppVerifier with limited-user testing enabled, and you’ll get a big fat load of warnings and errors about silly little things that will break your program unless you take a few minutes to correct them. But seriously, you can and should write and run all your code as a limited user.

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