I take ad blocking off for good sites that request it.
And then if they ever serve up a large animated, pop-up, sliding, flash, java, or autoplay sound ad I turn it back off with a note never to turn it back on.
What he said, after much consulting with his PR people is 'used games can play on PS4'.
That's a far different statement.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if they left it up to the publisher to set the used game rights per game. Tied to only one console, tied to only one account, tied to one account but up to 3 consoles, disk must be in the console, no restrictions, etc.
Relying on the people who want to track you to honor your "Please don't" request is just guaranteeing disappointment.
Now there are plenty of ways you can clamp down on the tracking and cross-site leakage, from NoScript to RefControl, but the single easiest cross-browser cross-platform way to do it is Ghostery: https://www.ghostery.com/
Most importantly, unlike the other methods (NoScript in particular) it only very rarely breaks a page. So it's just set up and forget.
I'm sure it's not as effective as some other tactics, but the 'works on everything' and 'just works' is really key to just using it all the time everywhere.
If you just disable Metro and get your start menu back with Start8, RetroUI, Classic Shell, or other options, you've got Win7 with a few nice upgrades. It's not worth a lot of effort or extra money to stick with Win7 (though if you can for the same price, go for it) Nor would I suggest most people pay the upgrade price for an existing Win7.
I do this at work - nobody even notices except one of our IT guys when he saw my lock screen, which looks a bit different under 8. More to the point I can swap back between it and Win7 machines and not even care or notice except that Win8 has a nicer copy/move box.
Just look at the comments here. Apple just doesn't want that controversy s@$%storm, and the 'they didn't approve it' controversy is a minor fartzephyr in comparison. That rule is specifically there to prevent games like like this, especially ones that won't make them much money. Educating people is approximately nowhere on the list of App Store goals.
Any decent game machine is going to need an add-in card, not an Intel GPU. I'm not sure if they'd be okay with something that mandates competitors' products. And if not, would they try to kill it? Given the hold they have on the PC market and how much money they can and do throw around to try to move the market (ultrabooks!) it could be tough if they did.
But perhaps they'd grudgingly go with it just to sell more high power desktop CPUs and motherboards.
We've got a simple coding standard here with things like member variable prefixing, file naming, spacing (4 spaces, no tabs), etc. When you go into existing code you know what you're looking at and when you start writing a new file you don't need to decide about this_naming vs thisNaming vs ThisNaming vs GetThisItem vs thisItem vs etc. etc. etc. And you can grab the standard file header and drop it in. All in all, it saves a lot of time.
On the other hand, we're not pedants and don't dictate brace placement or otherwise care about whitespace like 'if( this )' vs 'if (that)' because that's not a major impact on readability or editability. If we really cared we'd just have the code automatically reformatted on check-in. You just need to work with professionals - easier said than done, I know.
It's a given that most will target 30fps since more shinies looks better in screenshots and youtube videos than 60fps does. And most consumers can't tell the difference until put a 60 and 30 fps version side by side and let them play.
The leaked/rumored PS4/XNext specs show them as equivalent or slightly weaker than current mid-high gaming PCs, and those can't do 60 fps locked on all the recent shiny games at 1920x1080 with all effects on (except those like CoD MP that specifically target it), so it's unlikely the consoles would. Cheap components is the driver, especially for PS4.
But there's no reason a fighting game or fps can't aim for 60fps on the new gen if it wants to. Use your shaders and effects wisely and no problem.
Games on the Radeon 6850 would generally perform fine but seem 'jittery'. Usually didn't notice it, but sometimes it was quite obvious that you were losing frames here and there even when in non-complex situations. Of course you wouldn't notice a single one, but when it's happening every 2-3 seconds it starts being noticable when you're playing for hours. Some games were much worse than others, though I couldn't say it was directly related to how shiny the game looked. It was never big enough a deal that I did anything about it (had it for two years).
When the fan on it exploded last month and burned out the 6850 I got a GeForce 660 (no brand loyalty either way) and the issue just went away. Obviously it's a much faster card than a two year old card, but it's also noticeably smoother even with graphics cranked up to about the same FPS. It's the exact same system, that's all that changed.
Just one anecdote, but the article would explain what I was noticing (though not why).
So just to follow this up, because it's obviously important to you (and I certainly understand pride in your company), I did some quick research, and the last of the three guys I know interviewed there last October, which is over a year ago. Perhaps things have changed since?
This is true - I have never interviewed or worked for Google, but the people I know who have interviewed there have been asked brain teasers, and I'd trust at least two of the three not to lie. Please see my response to tlambert below, because it'd be silly to repeat it all again. I welcome your drive to wipe them out - perhaps it was a hangover.
Hmm, well, this might just be the product of being so large. I have no first-hand knowledge, admittedly. But I know three people who've interviewed at Google, and all of them said they were asked these sort of brain teaser questions. None of them got the job, so you always have the sour grapes option, right? But they were very specific about the questions, including the ancient 'you've got a 3x3 grid, how can you cross every node in 4 strokes' and the 'how many piano tuners are there in the world?'.
I also see this stuff turning up in my RSS feed. Just Google (TM) for 'google brain teaser' and you'll get a million hits, and books such as http://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Work-Google/dp/031609997X . Now you can argue than any of these questions are problem solving, but the interviewees were not able to Google (TM) for answers in the interview, and wouldn't that be one of your first tools?
I admire your stand, and believe you would not use silly brainteasers, but it's hard to believe that nobody at the company is doing it based on admittedly secondhand reports.
Everybody at my place is over 30, mostly over 40, and we have several over 70. A lot of people come here after 'retirement' because they just go stir crazy sitting at home and not solving problems.
We have a hardcore interview on real world problem solving skills and experience (not Google or MS gotcha brain teasers) and it's very easy to get a feel for how internally motivated someone is. We hire the good people even though they cost a lot more than the ones right out of college. But a good experienced guy can get twice the work done with half the effort/time, because we've already made all the mistakes - and then twice that at least if nobody else on the team is dragging them down. Another 2x if management isn't! It's a bargain if you look at it like that.
Silicon Valley works on the model of 'hire newbies and burn through their endless energy for cheap while we spend the VC money on goodies' so what the story says isn't wrong. But I'd like to let experienced middle-aged people who really feel driven to engineer know that you can always get a good job at a decent small to mid-sized company - the job market there is huge. I get at least a couple job inquiries every month, and they know how old I am.
It's the driven part that counts - I get a high off solving problems and making cool useful stuff, and so do the other people here. I've never thumbs downed a candidate who had decent skills and just couldn't stop talking about the cool things s/he'd done. But we can all smell a stagnant large company 'lifer' when s/he walks in the door. If you've got the drive, don't let yourself get trapped, even if 'it's a job!'
Yes, guys with 20 years experience are going to be less of a value proposition for things you'd outsource to India, which involve tirelessly scouring the web for code snippets and banging them together till they compile.
I'm sure we all know those lifers who've let their skillsets stagnate, but if you want it done right the first time in half the time give it to the old guy who still enjoys his career.
One key point that makes it not a free energy machine is that you can't actually read it or otherwise do anything useful with it (nor can it do anything) without spending extra external energy.
And in any normal situation, like sitting in a room on Earth, you might even have to spend energy keeping it undisturbed by things like thermal jostling (i.e., cooled to near absolute zero).
Certs mean nothing to us when hiring. A degree means something so far as you stuck in there and got the degree.
But show us something you've done? That's gold. Doesn't matter if it's just for yourself as long as we can take a look at it.
So make one really polished public Drupal site you can show potential employers. Put down 'skilled at Linux' (people tend to believe this pathetically easy) and if they ask you about it be prepared to back it up.
If you can't show us a single thing you've done we're unlikely to hire you no matter what's on your resume.
I've seen this so many times before, from both sides. When the SDK is usable but not 'done' (locked down, polished up, fully documented) you restrict it to eager early devs with caveats like 'API calls subject to change!' The early devs also act as free beta/QA testers, which is the single biggest reason to do the pre-release at all. Then when it's Finished finished you release it to the wilds.
This doesn't tell you whether just the SDK isn't done or whether the OS APIs aren't locked down yet either. The latter would be bad if they're intending to get the SDK out this year.
Slashdot Mirror
Yo bro it's to prove that you're ready to CRUSH CODE and brogram like a real brogrammer bro.
That is of course tongue in cheek... yet accurate. http://www.metafilter.com/113526/Want-to-bro-down-and-crush-code
I take ad blocking off for good sites that request it.
And then if they ever serve up a large animated, pop-up, sliding, flash, java, or autoplay sound ad I turn it back off with a note never to turn it back on.
Of course we've known about the state's emotional and mental instability forever. Still the only state with its own Fark tag!
https://twitter.com/_FloridaMan
http://www.fark.com/topic/florida/
What he said, after much consulting with his PR people is 'used games can play on PS4'.
That's a far different statement.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if they left it up to the publisher to set the used game rights per game. Tied to only one console, tied to only one account, tied to one account but up to 3 consoles, disk must be in the console, no restrictions, etc.
Relying on the people who want to track you to honor your "Please don't" request is just guaranteeing disappointment.
Now there are plenty of ways you can clamp down on the tracking and cross-site leakage, from NoScript to RefControl, but the single easiest cross-browser cross-platform way to do it is Ghostery: https://www.ghostery.com/
Most importantly, unlike the other methods (NoScript in particular) it only very rarely breaks a page. So it's just set up and forget.
I'm sure it's not as effective as some other tactics, but the 'works on everything' and 'just works' is really key to just using it all the time everywhere.
Should be 'A nationwide corn shortage brought on by ethanol mandates, as designed by the people who imposed them'.
If you just disable Metro and get your start menu back with Start8, RetroUI, Classic Shell, or other options, you've got Win7 with a few nice upgrades. It's not worth a lot of effort or extra money to stick with Win7 (though if you can for the same price, go for it) Nor would I suggest most people pay the upgrade price for an existing Win7.
I do this at work - nobody even notices except one of our IT guys when he saw my lock screen, which looks a bit different under 8. More to the point I can swap back between it and Win7 machines and not even care or notice except that Win8 has a nicer copy/move box.
'when the public really demands 3-D content'
When it doesn't require glasses and doesn't give you headaches.
Just look at the comments here. Apple just doesn't want that controversy s@$%storm, and the 'they didn't approve it' controversy is a minor fartzephyr in comparison. That rule is specifically there to prevent games like like this, especially ones that won't make them much money. Educating people is approximately nowhere on the list of App Store goals.
Any decent game machine is going to need an add-in card, not an Intel GPU. I'm not sure if they'd be okay with something that mandates competitors' products. And if not, would they try to kill it? Given the hold they have on the PC market and how much money they can and do throw around to try to move the market (ultrabooks!) it could be tough if they did.
But perhaps they'd grudgingly go with it just to sell more high power desktop CPUs and motherboards.
We've got a simple coding standard here with things like member variable prefixing, file naming, spacing (4 spaces, no tabs), etc. When you go into existing code you know what you're looking at and when you start writing a new file you don't need to decide about this_naming vs thisNaming vs ThisNaming vs GetThisItem vs thisItem vs etc. etc. etc. And you can grab the standard file header and drop it in. All in all, it saves a lot of time.
On the other hand, we're not pedants and don't dictate brace placement or otherwise care about whitespace like 'if( this )' vs 'if (that)' because that's not a major impact on readability or editability. If we really cared we'd just have the code automatically reformatted on check-in. You just need to work with professionals - easier said than done, I know.
It's a given that most will target 30fps since more shinies looks better in screenshots and youtube videos than 60fps does. And most consumers can't tell the difference until put a 60 and 30 fps version side by side and let them play.
The leaked/rumored PS4/XNext specs show them as equivalent or slightly weaker than current mid-high gaming PCs, and those can't do 60 fps locked on all the recent shiny games at 1920x1080 with all effects on (except those like CoD MP that specifically target it), so it's unlikely the consoles would. Cheap components is the driver, especially for PS4.
But there's no reason a fighting game or fps can't aim for 60fps on the new gen if it wants to. Use your shaders and effects wisely and no problem.
Games on the Radeon 6850 would generally perform fine but seem 'jittery'. Usually didn't notice it, but sometimes it was quite obvious that you were losing frames here and there even when in non-complex situations. Of course you wouldn't notice a single one, but when it's happening every 2-3 seconds it starts being noticable when you're playing for hours. Some games were much worse than others, though I couldn't say it was directly related to how shiny the game looked. It was never big enough a deal that I did anything about it (had it for two years).
When the fan on it exploded last month and burned out the 6850 I got a GeForce 660 (no brand loyalty either way) and the issue just went away. Obviously it's a much faster card than a two year old card, but it's also noticeably smoother even with graphics cranked up to about the same FPS. It's the exact same system, that's all that changed.
Just one anecdote, but the article would explain what I was noticing (though not why).
And to followup the followup, by 'last October' he meant 2010, which is actually two years ago. Perhaps this is partly why he didn't get hired, eh?
So perhaps it's now a thing of the distant past. Who can remember two years ago? That's pre-Facebook IPO!
So just to follow this up, because it's obviously important to you (and I certainly understand pride in your company), I did some quick research, and the last of the three guys I know interviewed there last October, which is over a year ago. Perhaps things have changed since?
This is true - I have never interviewed or worked for Google, but the people I know who have interviewed there have been asked brain teasers, and I'd trust at least two of the three not to lie. Please see my response to tlambert below, because it'd be silly to repeat it all again. I welcome your drive to wipe them out - perhaps it was a hangover.
Hmm, well, this might just be the product of being so large. I have no first-hand knowledge, admittedly. But I know three people who've interviewed at Google, and all of them said they were asked these sort of brain teaser questions. None of them got the job, so you always have the sour grapes option, right? But they were very specific about the questions, including the ancient 'you've got a 3x3 grid, how can you cross every node in 4 strokes' and the 'how many piano tuners are there in the world?'.
I also see this stuff turning up in my RSS feed. Just Google (TM) for 'google brain teaser' and you'll get a million hits, and books such as http://www.amazon.com/Are-Smart-Enough-Work-Google/dp/031609997X . Now you can argue than any of these questions are problem solving, but the interviewees were not able to Google (TM) for answers in the interview, and wouldn't that be one of your first tools?
I admire your stand, and believe you would not use silly brainteasers, but it's hard to believe that nobody at the company is doing it based on admittedly secondhand reports.
Everybody at my place is over 30, mostly over 40, and we have several over 70. A lot of people come here after 'retirement' because they just go stir crazy sitting at home and not solving problems.
We have a hardcore interview on real world problem solving skills and experience (not Google or MS gotcha brain teasers) and it's very easy to get a feel for how internally motivated someone is. We hire the good people even though they cost a lot more than the ones right out of college. But a good experienced guy can get twice the work done with half the effort/time, because we've already made all the mistakes - and then twice that at least if nobody else on the team is dragging them down. Another 2x if management isn't! It's a bargain if you look at it like that.
Silicon Valley works on the model of 'hire newbies and burn through their endless energy for cheap while we spend the VC money on goodies' so what the story says isn't wrong. But I'd like to let experienced middle-aged people who really feel driven to engineer know that you can always get a good job at a decent small to mid-sized company - the job market there is huge. I get at least a couple job inquiries every month, and they know how old I am.
It's the driven part that counts - I get a high off solving problems and making cool useful stuff, and so do the other people here. I've never thumbs downed a candidate who had decent skills and just couldn't stop talking about the cool things s/he'd done. But we can all smell a stagnant large company 'lifer' when s/he walks in the door. If you've got the drive, don't let yourself get trapped, even if 'it's a job!'
Yes, guys with 20 years experience are going to be less of a value proposition for things you'd outsource to India, which involve tirelessly scouring the web for code snippets and banging them together till they compile.
I'm sure we all know those lifers who've let their skillsets stagnate, but if you want it done right the first time in half the time give it to the old guy who still enjoys his career.
One key point that makes it not a free energy machine is that you can't actually read it or otherwise do anything useful with it (nor can it do anything) without spending extra external energy.
And in any normal situation, like sitting in a room on Earth, you might even have to spend energy keeping it undisturbed by things like thermal jostling (i.e., cooled to near absolute zero).
We have engineers here learning entire new systems and languages at age 60. We enjoy it - it's one of the benefits of the job.
If you're looking at it as a chore, then the answer is that you should probably be looking at something else.
Certs mean nothing to us when hiring. A degree means something so far as you stuck in there and got the degree.
But show us something you've done? That's gold. Doesn't matter if it's just for yourself as long as we can take a look at it.
So make one really polished public Drupal site you can show potential employers. Put down 'skilled at Linux' (people tend to believe this pathetically easy) and if they ask you about it be prepared to back it up.
If you can't show us a single thing you've done we're unlikely to hire you no matter what's on your resume.
Yeah, people used to ask 'Who the heck would pay for a game beta?' Now we know.
I've seen this so many times before, from both sides. When the SDK is usable but not 'done' (locked down, polished up, fully documented) you restrict it to eager early devs with caveats like 'API calls subject to change!' The early devs also act as free beta/QA testers, which is the single biggest reason to do the pre-release at all. Then when it's Finished finished you release it to the wilds.
This doesn't tell you whether just the SDK isn't done or whether the OS APIs aren't locked down yet either. The latter would be bad if they're intending to get the SDK out this year.
I have one of these and like it a lot. Turns any desk into a sit/stand desk, and the tray is nice and large: http://www.ergodesktop.com/content/kangaroo-pro-junior/
Of course other people like it a lot, too, so it's a month backordered. You can usually find the Ergotron WorkFit-Ses in stock.