Boy am I glad I didn't pursue that physics major. The only thing I got out of that is that Alice and Bob needed a marriage counselor to reconcile their differences.
Anyone mind converting that attempt in layman's terms to something useful, like a car analogy?
The firefox 2 cake was pure evil. Cake with black icing stains teeth and it is very hard to remove with anything but a long brushing. Pretty much any bakery will advise you to not use black icing for an office party for this reason.
Is it exactly 6 mm, or is it.635? If its exactly 6 mm, then you'd have to have an adapter to fit it to the 1/4'' pipe already in most US establishments, making it cost prohibitive. I'm not in the industry but I could imagine that may cause problems with pressure as well. If its.635, then why change it from an accurate description to a misnomer solely to purge imperial measurement?
+1 funny to you sir, too bad I already posted. I've decided to stop discussing this topic since every time I retort to complaints about imperial units with a reason they're still used, I get modded troll by abusive mods.
I think it has a lot to do with enthusiast cards. That market segment is incredibly picky and extremely informed. They tend to push the hardware to the limits, and beyond if it all possible. A lot of these guys run fans at 100% for a year with the card pushed to the max, so it has a lifespan less than 30% of a stock card. As such, they buy more cards per year than their mainstream counterpart. They are also the highest profit margin and recoup R&D costs for NVidia and ATI.
A good way to kill your enthusiast appeal is telling them that you hard-coded in OC prevention to dangerous voltages and temps into your cards. "Just works" doesn't cut it in that arena.
Do you want to pay for the conversion? The reason it isn't done is it is not worth the cost. Buttloads of industries use tools and supplies that have measures set in the imperial system, like piping. Converting all of these would require massive investment, and incur complications much more expensive than leaving it be. If you simply changed the measures without dimensions it wouldn't help, because "gimme that 1/4'' pipe" is much easier than "gimme that.635cm pipe" for people who would use it, and people would continue to use imperial regardless. This doesn't even include the re-education of the general populace that rarely uses measurements, which is daunting and expensive.
The people who require precise measurement and an international system both use metric and know how to convert to it. Their mistakes are simply negligence and laziness (this is coming from someone in the shipping industry who uses short ton [2000lb], long ton[2240lb], and metric ton[1000kg] regularly). Forcing everyone to convert because it would make everything equal for the OCD crowd is not a valid reason.
I think it is in the console companies' best interest to not allow competition with PC players, not due to portability but due to competition. Mice are a humongous advantage, and would cause competitive players to flock to the platform with the higher skill ceiling (PCs).
As cool as it would be seeing Xboxers rage about mice, not gonna happen.
If you enjoy their method for disclosing information, you should check out The Secret World. Its a MMO that will be released in coming years, and they drop hints through cryptic messages/videos on their website. It is up to the community to decipher them, and there have been rewards for the first people to solve the mysteries. Some people spend dozens of hours unwinding the messages, which require web searches on mythology, cults, and conspiracy theories. Its great fun to watch and participate.
Read soppsa's post, they didn't want to work on MW anymore. Isn't MW2 essentially CoD 5? The series is tired, let it die.
Hopefully they'll make something fresh, not a "not MW, but like MW." Its hard to use the word fresh and new FPS in the same sentence but you get my drift.
Your agenda is showing. The world isn't black and white. You paint conservative idealism, yet don't point out the flaws in liberal idealism. Idealism is dangerous in general, since the solution is always in the grey area. Deciding on a solution to a problem based on the current situation always beats deciding based on an ideal.
My late Grandfather used to tell me stories all the time of stuff that happened in the air traffic control tower at Charlotte-Douglas airport (he was the chief of the tower for 20 years). 99% of the time, human error is to blame, for stuff like military pilots trying to land at the wrong airport and not listening to comms to stuff like poor pronounciation over comms to pilots causing close calls. By the end of his career, he found that work ethic was more important than credentials, because laziness was the cause of a large majority of mishaps. It is difficult to train work ethic, and easy to impart knowledge.
Rewarding diligence and establishing a culture of consistency was their solution. I've seen it work in other industries over the years as well. But, when you think about it, isn't it just common sense to do it? Why do you need a book to explain that?
Well said. I work in an industry that is fairly dangerous to blue collar workers (port industry), and safety in this company is on the forefront of every discussion. I have never been part of a company that took safety so seriously, and almost 10% of the employees in my office are dedicated to it alone. It is a win-win for the company - safer operations reduce claims, improves image, improves bottom line, improve morale, improves productivity, and gives you a selling point vs. competition. The only negative is safety dept upkeep.
Any sane company can justify overzealous efforts on safety in an industry with heavy machinery, even to quarter-minded dumbass shareholders.
Your commonts enlightened me on why they used an IPS panel rather than a TN panel in the tablet. Yes, colors are better, but the viewing angle of TN panels suck in comparison to IPS. Maybe it won't be as awkward as other tablets in laps/desk use due to the expensive display technology (you can bet it was a good factor in the price).
Good post. I also think it has a lot to do with nurture vs. nature. Yes, this in anecdotal, but I see a common trend in the extremely devout who aren't gifted with strong intellect. They were raised in religious families, and indoctrinated into the religion from the time of cognitive thought. Its not "Don't steal that gum, its wrong", its "Don't steal that gum because God said you should'nt." People raised like this base their actions on what God says they should do, not what they feel is right. Yes, many overcome this as life goes on, but many do not. This type of thinking is the root of fanaticism, and also the root of some of the greatest humanitarian efforts on the planet.
Any sort of rapid destruction of religion would result in chaos due to what I described above. The only way to change this way of thinking is over time through generational gaps.
There was never an incentive to PvP in WoW other than the adrenaline. Before the honor system was implemented, PvP players would roam around looking for a good fight. The only people fighting were those who enjoyed it. However, there was no risk involved, which caused it to get very stale very fast. They then proceeded to implement the honor system, a system that rewarded time rather than skill. After that came arenas, which took out the random factor and the fear variable when out in the world.
The Author's friend is looking for something like AC or UO where being out in the world involves risk. In both of these games, when you die you lose stuff. Shadowbane did a good implementation of land ownership so clans had something to fight over. Darkfall included cities, full loot pvp, and completely different gamplay (aiming not just random numbers) but failed due to a poor launch, a few lackluster implementations, and easily exploitable mob AI and siege mechanics.
The thing all of the games I listed in the above paragraph have in common is there is a constant presence of risk vs. reward. WoW and other vanilla MMOs do not have this. There aren't many feelings in gaming that compare to looting your 15th mob, holding 2000 gold, and hearing a bow draw behind you like in Darkfall (there was no radar), or assaulting an enemy city with 100 other people to try to take their land.
To answer the OP, the reason is that most MMOs fail in general. I'd argue less than 10% of MMOs are truly successful, and the fact that you can count the hardcore FFA PVP MMOs on one hand doesn't put the odds in their favor. For every PVE MMO thats successful dozens fail, they just never get the attention the risk MMOs do. Be patient, one of these days a well-funded indie studio with a good idea and skilled developers will code a game that will win your heart. Until that day comes, we'll just have to settle for less. Another reason is that most people play games to relax rather than compete. Risk PVP MMOs are inherently extremely competitive, and only caters to a small portion of the gaming community. As such, a successful MMO catering to this niche will probably reach 1 million players at most (case in point Eve).
I've seen one good example of an extended warranty, offered to me by Bassett. They give you a 5 year warranty on furniture for a set price, and if you don't use the warranty, you get a store credit after 5 years for the warranty cost. Its a win-win for you if you want the protection and like their stuff, and a win-win for them because you're going to buy more stuff in the future.
Obviously this warranty doesn't work with other things like it does for expensive furniture, but I just wanted to point out that there is a way to have a good warranty where good customer service benefits the insurer. Just because electronics companies haven't figured one out doesn't mean it doesn't exist somewhere in someone's brain.
This is common among all companies I've worked for, from Banks to Transportation to Retail. Executives between 40 and 65 went to school between 1965 and 1985, during and right after resolving major descrimination issues. It will take much more time to balance out than this. The system is being corrected from the bottom up, and as such, it will take many more generations for these numbers to change significantly, as long as people are hired on merit rather than equality (and I'm glad they are).
I'd also like to point out that Exec diversity can not be taken from that industries' diversity. Execs are more likely to be PHB MBAs than industry experts who got their hands dirty at the entry level.
Google is in the business of collecting data and applying it to practical problems. I imagine the voice-to-text will be vastly improved over its generations by users accepting/rejecting the vtt result and them pooling the results data. The same thing could be done for translation from one language to another.
I see it as crowdsourcing the algorithm accuracy checks among millions of people, allowing them to improve the algo at a much faster rate than they (or their competitors) would otherwise be able to do in a closed testing environment.
This is all speculating on the fact that google pools results of translations or VTT and whether the user accepts/declines them. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they did.
I'd like to note I said I prefer the third, but I don't honestly think that its exactly what is happening. In reality the world standard of living gaining while the US standard of living is edging slightly downward, slowly closing the gap (oatworm explains in an above post).
It can really be broken down into a very simple formula. If overseas cost + shipping cost > local cost, it shifts towards local. If the opposite is true, it shifts toward outsourcing. As an example, the massive reduction in shipping costs during the 40's and 50's due to containerization tipped the scales and made outsourcing economical for manufacturing. Also, the communications explosion reduced information transfer costs and was the catalyst for tech job outsourcing.
As the cost in China/India edges upwards due to cost of living/quality of life increases, eventually it will not be as economical as it once was. Then it will shift somewhere else. Eventually, either shipping costs will be too high to produce overseas or the US production costs will be close enough to bring the jobs back.
You think if we had the means to produce them, people would have bought it? I'm sorry, but the reason domestic capacity doesn't exist is because it isn't competitive. Big gov't is not going to solve this in any way shape or form, it would actually make the issue worse by increasing admin overhead (taxes). If what you're advocating is protectionism, then I suggest you go read a bit of history on the subject and its reults.
There are only three sane ways manufacturing jobs will return to the US: De-globalisation due to peak oil, normalizing quality of life in the US down to the rest of the world, or bringing the rest of the world to the US quality of life. I prefer the third option.
As much as we all hate legalese, it has a valid purpose: To turn language, which can be interpreted many ways, into black & white statements that only have one valid interpretation. While combinations of solid legal statements can still turn grey, it removes more grey area than would be created through the use of common language. If you take the time to read some solid legal documents, you'll notice they read similar to a programming language and can be broken down into conditional statements.
I started to think of lawyers as translators after working with claims & on lease agreements for 2 years.
The best example of this is Sins of a Solar Empire. Besides the fact that its a great game, it doesn't require a CD in the drive, and doesn't require you to enter the CD key on install. If you want to download updates you have to enter the key. You can even play on LAN with the same CD key. Plays straight out of the box with no problems whatsoever. Stardock has made the move to impulse though, which is similar to Steam, so now you have to create an impulse account to get updates rather than just entering the CD key.
My friends were so impressed with the implementation that my lending of the game sold another four copies for the company. Reminds me of good old starcraft spawns...the first hit is free.
Southern city infastructure isn't as centralized as most northern cities because population density is lower (lower geographical constraints for expansion, lower land value). For most southern cities, scale down LA or Atlanta and you'll in the right ballpark. Also, biking to work in 100 degrees is not practical nor safe, especially with little to no bike lanes and overcrowded roads.
Slashdot Mirror
Boy am I glad I didn't pursue that physics major. The only thing I got out of that is that Alice and Bob needed a marriage counselor to reconcile their differences.
Anyone mind converting that attempt in layman's terms to something useful, like a car analogy?
The firefox 2 cake was pure evil. Cake with black icing stains teeth and it is very hard to remove with anything but a long brushing. Pretty much any bakery will advise you to not use black icing for an office party for this reason.
Is it exactly 6 mm, or is it .635? If its exactly 6 mm, then you'd have to have an adapter to fit it to the 1/4'' pipe already in most US establishments, making it cost prohibitive. I'm not in the industry but I could imagine that may cause problems with pressure as well. If its .635, then why change it from an accurate description to a misnomer solely to purge imperial measurement?
+1 funny to you sir, too bad I already posted. I've decided to stop discussing this topic since every time I retort to complaints about imperial units with a reason they're still used, I get modded troll by abusive mods.
I think it has a lot to do with enthusiast cards. That market segment is incredibly picky and extremely informed. They tend to push the hardware to the limits, and beyond if it all possible. A lot of these guys run fans at 100% for a year with the card pushed to the max, so it has a lifespan less than 30% of a stock card. As such, they buy more cards per year than their mainstream counterpart. They are also the highest profit margin and recoup R&D costs for NVidia and ATI.
A good way to kill your enthusiast appeal is telling them that you hard-coded in OC prevention to dangerous voltages and temps into your cards. "Just works" doesn't cut it in that arena.
Do you want to pay for the conversion? The reason it isn't done is it is not worth the cost. Buttloads of industries use tools and supplies that have measures set in the imperial system, like piping. Converting all of these would require massive investment, and incur complications much more expensive than leaving it be. If you simply changed the measures without dimensions it wouldn't help, because "gimme that 1/4'' pipe" is much easier than "gimme that .635cm pipe" for people who would use it, and people would continue to use imperial regardless. This doesn't even include the re-education of the general populace that rarely uses measurements, which is daunting and expensive.
The people who require precise measurement and an international system both use metric and know how to convert to it. Their mistakes are simply negligence and laziness (this is coming from someone in the shipping industry who uses short ton [2000lb], long ton[2240lb], and metric ton[1000kg] regularly). Forcing everyone to convert because it would make everything equal for the OCD crowd is not a valid reason.
I think it is in the console companies' best interest to not allow competition with PC players, not due to portability but due to competition. Mice are a humongous advantage, and would cause competitive players to flock to the platform with the higher skill ceiling (PCs).
As cool as it would be seeing Xboxers rage about mice, not gonna happen.
If you enjoy their method for disclosing information, you should check out The Secret World. Its a MMO that will be released in coming years, and they drop hints through cryptic messages/videos on their website. It is up to the community to decipher them, and there have been rewards for the first people to solve the mysteries. Some people spend dozens of hours unwinding the messages, which require web searches on mythology, cults, and conspiracy theories. Its great fun to watch and participate.
Read soppsa's post, they didn't want to work on MW anymore. Isn't MW2 essentially CoD 5? The series is tired, let it die.
Hopefully they'll make something fresh, not a "not MW, but like MW." Its hard to use the word fresh and new FPS in the same sentence but you get my drift.
Your agenda is showing. The world isn't black and white. You paint conservative idealism, yet don't point out the flaws in liberal idealism. Idealism is dangerous in general, since the solution is always in the grey area. Deciding on a solution to a problem based on the current situation always beats deciding based on an ideal.
My late Grandfather used to tell me stories all the time of stuff that happened in the air traffic control tower at Charlotte-Douglas airport (he was the chief of the tower for 20 years). 99% of the time, human error is to blame, for stuff like military pilots trying to land at the wrong airport and not listening to comms to stuff like poor pronounciation over comms to pilots causing close calls. By the end of his career, he found that work ethic was more important than credentials, because laziness was the cause of a large majority of mishaps. It is difficult to train work ethic, and easy to impart knowledge.
Rewarding diligence and establishing a culture of consistency was their solution. I've seen it work in other industries over the years as well. But, when you think about it, isn't it just common sense to do it? Why do you need a book to explain that?
Well said. I work in an industry that is fairly dangerous to blue collar workers (port industry), and safety in this company is on the forefront of every discussion. I have never been part of a company that took safety so seriously, and almost 10% of the employees in my office are dedicated to it alone. It is a win-win for the company - safer operations reduce claims, improves image, improves bottom line, improve morale, improves productivity, and gives you a selling point vs. competition. The only negative is safety dept upkeep.
Any sane company can justify overzealous efforts on safety in an industry with heavy machinery, even to quarter-minded dumbass shareholders.
Your commonts enlightened me on why they used an IPS panel rather than a TN panel in the tablet. Yes, colors are better, but the viewing angle of TN panels suck in comparison to IPS. Maybe it won't be as awkward as other tablets in laps/desk use due to the expensive display technology (you can bet it was a good factor in the price).
Good post. I also think it has a lot to do with nurture vs. nature. Yes, this in anecdotal, but I see a common trend in the extremely devout who aren't gifted with strong intellect. They were raised in religious families, and indoctrinated into the religion from the time of cognitive thought. Its not "Don't steal that gum, its wrong", its "Don't steal that gum because God said you should'nt." People raised like this base their actions on what God says they should do, not what they feel is right. Yes, many overcome this as life goes on, but many do not. This type of thinking is the root of fanaticism, and also the root of some of the greatest humanitarian efforts on the planet.
Any sort of rapid destruction of religion would result in chaos due to what I described above. The only way to change this way of thinking is over time through generational gaps.
There was never an incentive to PvP in WoW other than the adrenaline. Before the honor system was implemented, PvP players would roam around looking for a good fight. The only people fighting were those who enjoyed it. However, there was no risk involved, which caused it to get very stale very fast. They then proceeded to implement the honor system, a system that rewarded time rather than skill. After that came arenas, which took out the random factor and the fear variable when out in the world.
The Author's friend is looking for something like AC or UO where being out in the world involves risk. In both of these games, when you die you lose stuff. Shadowbane did a good implementation of land ownership so clans had something to fight over. Darkfall included cities, full loot pvp, and completely different gamplay (aiming not just random numbers) but failed due to a poor launch, a few lackluster implementations, and easily exploitable mob AI and siege mechanics.
The thing all of the games I listed in the above paragraph have in common is there is a constant presence of risk vs. reward. WoW and other vanilla MMOs do not have this. There aren't many feelings in gaming that compare to looting your 15th mob, holding 2000 gold, and hearing a bow draw behind you like in Darkfall (there was no radar), or assaulting an enemy city with 100 other people to try to take their land.
To answer the OP, the reason is that most MMOs fail in general. I'd argue less than 10% of MMOs are truly successful, and the fact that you can count the hardcore FFA PVP MMOs on one hand doesn't put the odds in their favor. For every PVE MMO thats successful dozens fail, they just never get the attention the risk MMOs do. Be patient, one of these days a well-funded indie studio with a good idea and skilled developers will code a game that will win your heart. Until that day comes, we'll just have to settle for less. Another reason is that most people play games to relax rather than compete. Risk PVP MMOs are inherently extremely competitive, and only caters to a small portion of the gaming community. As such, a successful MMO catering to this niche will probably reach 1 million players at most (case in point Eve).
I've seen one good example of an extended warranty, offered to me by Bassett. They give you a 5 year warranty on furniture for a set price, and if you don't use the warranty, you get a store credit after 5 years for the warranty cost. Its a win-win for you if you want the protection and like their stuff, and a win-win for them because you're going to buy more stuff in the future.
Obviously this warranty doesn't work with other things like it does for expensive furniture, but I just wanted to point out that there is a way to have a good warranty where good customer service benefits the insurer. Just because electronics companies haven't figured one out doesn't mean it doesn't exist somewhere in someone's brain.
This is common among all companies I've worked for, from Banks to Transportation to Retail. Executives between 40 and 65 went to school between 1965 and 1985, during and right after resolving major descrimination issues. It will take much more time to balance out than this. The system is being corrected from the bottom up, and as such, it will take many more generations for these numbers to change significantly, as long as people are hired on merit rather than equality (and I'm glad they are).
I'd also like to point out that Exec diversity can not be taken from that industries' diversity. Execs are more likely to be PHB MBAs than industry experts who got their hands dirty at the entry level.
20 megabits should be enough for anyone
Google is in the business of collecting data and applying it to practical problems. I imagine the voice-to-text will be vastly improved over its generations by users accepting/rejecting the vtt result and them pooling the results data. The same thing could be done for translation from one language to another.
I see it as crowdsourcing the algorithm accuracy checks among millions of people, allowing them to improve the algo at a much faster rate than they (or their competitors) would otherwise be able to do in a closed testing environment.
This is all speculating on the fact that google pools results of translations or VTT and whether the user accepts/declines them. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they did.
I'd like to note I said I prefer the third, but I don't honestly think that its exactly what is happening. In reality the world standard of living gaining while the US standard of living is edging slightly downward, slowly closing the gap (oatworm explains in an above post).
It can really be broken down into a very simple formula. If overseas cost + shipping cost > local cost, it shifts towards local. If the opposite is true, it shifts toward outsourcing. As an example, the massive reduction in shipping costs during the 40's and 50's due to containerization tipped the scales and made outsourcing economical for manufacturing. Also, the communications explosion reduced information transfer costs and was the catalyst for tech job outsourcing.
As the cost in China/India edges upwards due to cost of living/quality of life increases, eventually it will not be as economical as it once was. Then it will shift somewhere else. Eventually, either shipping costs will be too high to produce overseas or the US production costs will be close enough to bring the jobs back.
You think if we had the means to produce them, people would have bought it? I'm sorry, but the reason domestic capacity doesn't exist is because it isn't competitive. Big gov't is not going to solve this in any way shape or form, it would actually make the issue worse by increasing admin overhead (taxes). If what you're advocating is protectionism, then I suggest you go read a bit of history on the subject and its reults.
There are only three sane ways manufacturing jobs will return to the US: De-globalisation due to peak oil, normalizing quality of life in the US down to the rest of the world, or bringing the rest of the world to the US quality of life. I prefer the third option.
The first hit is free.
As much as we all hate legalese, it has a valid purpose: To turn language, which can be interpreted many ways, into black & white statements that only have one valid interpretation. While combinations of solid legal statements can still turn grey, it removes more grey area than would be created through the use of common language. If you take the time to read some solid legal documents, you'll notice they read similar to a programming language and can be broken down into conditional statements.
I started to think of lawyers as translators after working with claims & on lease agreements for 2 years.
The best example of this is Sins of a Solar Empire. Besides the fact that its a great game, it doesn't require a CD in the drive, and doesn't require you to enter the CD key on install. If you want to download updates you have to enter the key. You can even play on LAN with the same CD key. Plays straight out of the box with no problems whatsoever. Stardock has made the move to impulse though, which is similar to Steam, so now you have to create an impulse account to get updates rather than just entering the CD key.
My friends were so impressed with the implementation that my lending of the game sold another four copies for the company. Reminds me of good old starcraft spawns...the first hit is free.
Southern city infastructure isn't as centralized as most northern cities because population density is lower (lower geographical constraints for expansion, lower land value). For most southern cities, scale down LA or Atlanta and you'll in the right ballpark. Also, biking to work in 100 degrees is not practical nor safe, especially with little to no bike lanes and overcrowded roads.