I don't actually think you're trolling, but I do think that "ignoring" is the wrong term for it. Independent artists can be very good, but the vast majority of them are utter crap. Nobody wants to listen to an hour of crap music to find one good song, and while the music industry isn't revolutionary right now, there are still decent bands to be found, and the crap bands aren't as plentiful nor as bad as the independents. Most independent artists are independent because they can't get signed, and any that are good or popular get signed pretty quickly.
So, things will continue pretty much the way they are, a minority moaning about how independent artists should be given a shot while most people go to the more consistent label-backed artists. Because if there's anything we know, it's that labels are good at creating consistency.
It's not going to die at all. Computers are always going to be more ubiquitous than consoles and a great target for games because there are just so many of them already. The install base of computers is huge, and casual games are just beginning to tap a large portion of the potential. Whether these casual gamers will ever move beyond casual games is up for debate, but that doesn't mean that they're not games.
Consoles are gaining popularity, and that's good. But they'll never come equipped with a keyboard and mouse because people already have one of those (a pc). RTS games are better and many people prefer the PC FPS experience. Valve develops for PCs almost exclusively, with their console offerings being really bad. Coincidentally, they're also one of the most popular publishers in the industry right now. Civilization has yet to make a console release, and it'll probably be sub-par.
Finally, it's cheaper to develop a small game for a PC than a console, so independent companies release on the PC a lot. XBLA is changing that, but it's not going to change overnight and it's not going to completely dominate.
So, the importance and dominance of the PC as the gaming platform is being diminished and will continue down that road for a while, but it'll never die. The install base and the setup will keep it going for a long, long time.
Because nobody makes games for linux. There are a lot of reasons for that:
1. The linux user group is self-selecting to under represent gamers because of the dominance of windows. Since almost all games require windows, you either have to work with each game individually to get it working with WINE or dual boot windows; the extra work of Wine is a high hurdle with no guarantee of success, and dual booting eliminates disk space, ease, and makes it so you have to buy windows anyway. Emulation has almost all the same problems, it's just easier once it's running.
2. The group that uses linux has a large portion of people that are unwilling to use closed source software. Since games are a pure luxury item, most people don't want to make a high quality, open source one (working to make one defeats the purpose unless you get pleasure from coding the game itself). If the game's closed source, it's automatically going to lose a significant portion of an already small market.
3. Linux is a moving/amorphous target. Usually people get around this by using open source, since that means you can just compile against the new kernel and you're fine. But for a closed source, binary distribution this isn't as simple. The game manufacturers (who use a lot of tricks to make their games faster and better) would have to try to optimize for a platform that has multiple distributions and multiple hardware platforms (32 bit, 64 bit, solaris, mac) where there's no guarantee the kernel or the scheduler or the window manager will remain the same. In windows they can be sure that the movement's going to be steady and they'll have to release a compatibility patch infrequently.
4. The biggest one is market share. The market for linux is already small because you have to be technically skilled to even think about using it, and yet that's what's required to even get onto the computer. That's changing slowly, but if you take a number that's less than 10% of all computer users and then take away from it as above, you're looking at a pitifully small market that requires a lot of work to address.
As linux grows, so will demand, and these problems will get worked out. Until then, I'll just have to get used to the fact that I have a ten second window when my computer boots to decide whether I'm going to be playing games or if I'm going to be more productive.
Bullshit. For the purposes of a college degree it is. The difference between CS and programming is a tired distinction; the truth is that we don't have language to explain the distinction between those who research hardware and software and those who build hardware and software (at least in different areas). I've heard it said that programmers are like construction workers, but that's false too, because they don't do the heavy lifting of putting the program together, the compiler does that. Software engineering is the closest if you take the two terms separately, but at the college I went to, they used that as a term for those who did the highest level work on programs, which computer science being the regular programmers.
So, i guess right now you're right, but the language is changing. Deal with it.
I imagine he mentions it because it's the most practical concern that the state lawmakers would pay attention to. Free speech rights have been restricted by the supreme court before, and this law would easily fit the constitutional test if they only forced minors to register (I seem to remember this being the case in Ender's Game, but I'm not sure). This would also ring more true with the populace as a whole.
Governments need to relax regulations on locking-in apprentices to their sponsoring employer I, too, long for the old days of indentured servitude. The balance of power between a corporation and its employees (and yes, I believe it's balanced) is that the employee can stop working for the corporation. If you're good, when you put in notice you'll get at least one free lunch of your boss trying to get you to stay however they can. Employees have power, power they lose when they're not allowed to leave.
The problem is that the IT industry, like many industries, expects to find a pool of skilled and experienced available staff, at the drop of a hat, without the company putting in any effort themselves. You're correct in saying that this is due to employees being able to leave whenever they want to, but that doesn't change the fact that companies have needs for experienced employees right now, not two years from now. If there's not enough people who can do the job, then there's a shortage. Most good companies will be willing to take someone as an investment and spend 2 years on them, but they've got to be good first. Too many people are in this industry because it pays well, not because they have the ability to do it. They learn about the subject in school, but they don't learn how to do it, and they fail; from some of the examples I've seen, experience and apprenticeships won't change that.
I can speak of my experience for the western US (but east of california) and say that it can sometimes take months to get a good candidate to apply. There are a lot of mediocre or bad programmers out there, most of them with degrees. I'm very suspicious of the claims in this report; they've looked at graduation rates (worthless, since most of the programmers I work with don't have a degree or have a degree in something other than CS) and they've asked HR about applications and overall satisfaction of the people that were hired. At the large shops I've worked at, there are a lot of mediocre programmers that aren't great, but they're good enough to not get fired. If you're someone like Google and you have stricter standards, I could easily see a shortage of good programmers.
So, to sum up, I see no shortage of programmers, just a shortage of good programmers.
We live in a society, on the way to be adopted globally, where capitalism is interpreted so narrowly that we have only one linear metric for success: cash. That's the myth that's being perpetuated by those bending over. For me, my family and friends, it's much more important to be loyal to those around you, spend time together, etc. I could earn a lot more money than I do now, but I'd rather spend my weekends with my wife watching stupid movies and enjoying ourselves before we start raising a family.
People lose sight of the fact that money is nothing more than a means to an end, and if you're living life for anything but happiness, you need to get hit by the clue stick. Being rich doesn't hurt anything, and I wouldn't turn down a billion dollars if someone offered it, but I wouldn't give up my current life for a six-figure salary; it's just not worth it.
According to the FAQ it's because you sometimes come up with bits of wisdom, and something people have to sever that connection to feel comfortable sharing their knowledge.
I have no doubt that the UN will continue to voice support for the idea of free speech. The problem is that the UN lacks an army of its own and the will to enforce its own edicts, probably because there are so many nations with so many conflicting interests with so many ways for a single nation to gum up the works. The UN lacks the power and the conviction to actually support what it says it believes in; the US, if anything, is over eager in those areas.
They're going to charge the robot? j/k but seriously, the threat of physical force is usually just as good as the use of it. I'm sure the robot could fire in self defense too, since it could easily be considered the man using non-lethal force to protect his property.
If you don't know it's proprietary because you never took the time to find out, you're still at fault. If you take a job with an employer that forces you to use proprietary software, aren't you just like a guard at a concentration camp?*
* Godwin's law invoked purposely and is used in a sarcastic manner. Author of this post in no way endorses the view that proprietary software is evil.
By linking the two big bogeymen of the internet, they're trying to justify more regulation. It's the same crap they pull with buying SUV's == supporting terrorists, etc.
as such, runs counter to government as we know it. If by "runs counter" you means "limits the power of the government over the people" then I agree with you. Arguably, that's half the intent of the constitution. The constitution does two things: limits the power of the government, and makes sure that what power they do have is used properly.
We should be able to to see what our police are doing and what our congesspeople are doing. Why? Because they work for us. That's not the reason at all. The reason is that we're in a contract with the government, that they'll protect us and we'll give up some rights/abilities that we had before (for instance, I can't just beat the shit out of somebody any more for no reason, but now they can't do the same to me). To accomplish this, we've given the government a lot of power, power that could easily be abused. This is different from an employee/employer relationship.
This is closer to a relationship between two corporations, one that's much larger than the other but requires the help of the smaller one. In theory, the American people are represented by the larger and more powerful corporation. The smaller one (the government) has no inherent power over the larger corporation, only the power that the larger corporation gives them. In this instance, the larger company would have to be deeply, deeply dumb not to require all the procedures of the smaller company while they're doing the work for the larger, since the larger has more to lose. Without proper oversight, the smaller will take as much power from the larger that they can.
In this analogy, it might even get to the point where the government takes so much power that the populace actually becomes weaker than the government. In that instance I'm fairly certain that Jefferson would suggest watering the tree of liberty.
You misunderstand, and in doing so you come off as an arrogant prick, which you probably are. First, I don't download music. I haven't since high school, when I realized that it was wrong. Also, at that point most of my tastes stopped evolving, so I saw no reason to buy more music. I have purchased a few cds, and I even downloaded one that was out of print, but that's it.
Second, my comment about scarcity of time and talent was in support of paying for music. Time is always very limited, and talent is increasingly hard to come by, so artists who've spent time with their talent should be rewarded.
The reason that I hate those companies (and believe me, I hate them a lot), is because they're using illegal means to sue people; they're getting damages from these lawsuits that are ridiculous (as you pointed out, you can buy a song for $.99, yet somehow that song is worth several thousands of dollars when it's pirated); they're using public ignorance to further their agenda both with public relations (dogs sniffing out illegal dvds? give me a break) and the juries not realizing what a steaming pile of shit their evidence is; and by distorting what the truth is about these issues by using purposely inflammatory words like "pirate" and "steal" where they don't apply.
I guess the lesson you should take away from this is that you don't have to be in the way of the damage to be indignant about a corrupt corporation abusing its power.
But we know that there is no scarcity on the bits themselves, and the copyright only creates the scarcity. What bothers me, and probably a lot of other people, is that they act like we're taking a physical object when we're not. If I download a song that I will never buy anyway, they've lost nothing by that download, unlike someone stealing a car, or a dvd off the shelf, or any of the other ridiculous bullshit analogies that they use.
The scarcity's in the time and talent of the artist. Rick Astley put time and effort into his songs, and he's considerably more talented than most singers. If he wrote the music and lyrics, then that's even more time that was put into the song. It's not property in the tangible sense.
Also, our law recognizes this, because you're not charged with felony theft when you download a shitload of music/movies off the internet, so try again.
So what you're saying is that there's a hidden cost I failed to delineate in my one sentence answer? I'm shocked.
The problem with your statement is that it's not generic enough to fit the question. You're absolutely correct that in the situation where you're platform is going obsolete, you need to follow your procedure, which is really just computing the cost of waiting to switch as a hidden cost of maintaining the platform.
What about a situation where they chose out of competing, emerging technologies and they chose the wrong one? Ruby is an emerging technology, one that's likely to maintain its niche status instead of going widespread; arguably it's already obsolete. Your analysis fits very well for a large, complex application that's been going for a while, but not for those which aren't.
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I don't actually think you're trolling, but I do think that "ignoring" is the wrong term for it. Independent artists can be very good, but the vast majority of them are utter crap. Nobody wants to listen to an hour of crap music to find one good song, and while the music industry isn't revolutionary right now, there are still decent bands to be found, and the crap bands aren't as plentiful nor as bad as the independents. Most independent artists are independent because they can't get signed, and any that are good or popular get signed pretty quickly.
So, things will continue pretty much the way they are, a minority moaning about how independent artists should be given a shot while most people go to the more consistent label-backed artists. Because if there's anything we know, it's that labels are good at creating consistency.
It's not going to die at all. Computers are always going to be more ubiquitous than consoles and a great target for games because there are just so many of them already. The install base of computers is huge, and casual games are just beginning to tap a large portion of the potential. Whether these casual gamers will ever move beyond casual games is up for debate, but that doesn't mean that they're not games.
Consoles are gaining popularity, and that's good. But they'll never come equipped with a keyboard and mouse because people already have one of those (a pc). RTS games are better and many people prefer the PC FPS experience. Valve develops for PCs almost exclusively, with their console offerings being really bad. Coincidentally, they're also one of the most popular publishers in the industry right now. Civilization has yet to make a console release, and it'll probably be sub-par.
Finally, it's cheaper to develop a small game for a PC than a console, so independent companies release on the PC a lot. XBLA is changing that, but it's not going to change overnight and it's not going to completely dominate.
So, the importance and dominance of the PC as the gaming platform is being diminished and will continue down that road for a while, but it'll never die. The install base and the setup will keep it going for a long, long time.
Because nobody makes games for linux. There are a lot of reasons for that:
1. The linux user group is self-selecting to under represent gamers because of the dominance of windows. Since almost all games require windows, you either have to work with each game individually to get it working with WINE or dual boot windows; the extra work of Wine is a high hurdle with no guarantee of success, and dual booting eliminates disk space, ease, and makes it so you have to buy windows anyway. Emulation has almost all the same problems, it's just easier once it's running.
2. The group that uses linux has a large portion of people that are unwilling to use closed source software. Since games are a pure luxury item, most people don't want to make a high quality, open source one (working to make one defeats the purpose unless you get pleasure from coding the game itself). If the game's closed source, it's automatically going to lose a significant portion of an already small market.
3. Linux is a moving/amorphous target. Usually people get around this by using open source, since that means you can just compile against the new kernel and you're fine. But for a closed source, binary distribution this isn't as simple. The game manufacturers (who use a lot of tricks to make their games faster and better) would have to try to optimize for a platform that has multiple distributions and multiple hardware platforms (32 bit, 64 bit, solaris, mac) where there's no guarantee the kernel or the scheduler or the window manager will remain the same. In windows they can be sure that the movement's going to be steady and they'll have to release a compatibility patch infrequently.
4. The biggest one is market share. The market for linux is already small because you have to be technically skilled to even think about using it, and yet that's what's required to even get onto the computer. That's changing slowly, but if you take a number that's less than 10% of all computer users and then take away from it as above, you're looking at a pitifully small market that requires a lot of work to address.
As linux grows, so will demand, and these problems will get worked out. Until then, I'll just have to get used to the fact that I have a ten second window when my computer boots to decide whether I'm going to be playing games or if I'm going to be more productive.
Bullshit. For the purposes of a college degree it is. The difference between CS and programming is a tired distinction; the truth is that we don't have language to explain the distinction between those who research hardware and software and those who build hardware and software (at least in different areas). I've heard it said that programmers are like construction workers, but that's false too, because they don't do the heavy lifting of putting the program together, the compiler does that. Software engineering is the closest if you take the two terms separately, but at the college I went to, they used that as a term for those who did the highest level work on programs, which computer science being the regular programmers.
So, i guess right now you're right, but the language is changing. Deal with it.
I imagine he mentions it because it's the most practical concern that the state lawmakers would pay attention to. Free speech rights have been restricted by the supreme court before, and this law would easily fit the constitutional test if they only forced minors to register (I seem to remember this being the case in Ender's Game, but I'm not sure). This would also ring more true with the populace as a whole.
I can speak of my experience for the western US (but east of california) and say that it can sometimes take months to get a good candidate to apply. There are a lot of mediocre or bad programmers out there, most of them with degrees. I'm very suspicious of the claims in this report; they've looked at graduation rates (worthless, since most of the programmers I work with don't have a degree or have a degree in something other than CS) and they've asked HR about applications and overall satisfaction of the people that were hired. At the large shops I've worked at, there are a lot of mediocre programmers that aren't great, but they're good enough to not get fired. If you're someone like Google and you have stricter standards, I could easily see a shortage of good programmers.
So, to sum up, I see no shortage of programmers, just a shortage of good programmers.
People lose sight of the fact that money is nothing more than a means to an end, and if you're living life for anything but happiness, you need to get hit by the clue stick. Being rich doesn't hurt anything, and I wouldn't turn down a billion dollars if someone offered it, but I wouldn't give up my current life for a six-figure salary; it's just not worth it.
They can't advertise anything that's illegal. Pervert.
Yeah, I use adblock because, ever since I got rid of my TV, I can't stand advertisements. I'm glad I'm free of the idiot box!
According to the FAQ it's because you sometimes come up with bits of wisdom, and something people have to sever that connection to feel comfortable sharing their knowledge.
Or were you talking about something else?
DRM/lock-in smoke, don't breathe this.
I have no doubt that the UN will continue to voice support for the idea of free speech. The problem is that the UN lacks an army of its own and the will to enforce its own edicts, probably because there are so many nations with so many conflicting interests with so many ways for a single nation to gum up the works. The UN lacks the power and the conviction to actually support what it says it believes in; the US, if anything, is over eager in those areas.
They're going to charge the robot? j/k but seriously, the threat of physical force is usually just as good as the use of it. I'm sure the robot could fire in self defense too, since it could easily be considered the man using non-lethal force to protect his property.
If you don't know it's proprietary because you never took the time to find out, you're still at fault. If you take a job with an employer that forces you to use proprietary software, aren't you just like a guard at a concentration camp?*
* Godwin's law invoked purposely and is used in a sarcastic manner. Author of this post in no way endorses the view that proprietary software is evil.
By linking the two big bogeymen of the internet, they're trying to justify more regulation. It's the same crap they pull with buying SUV's == supporting terrorists, etc.
Let he who has never used proprietary software cast the first stone.
That lends a lot of weight to the raytracing argument, since I generally prefer Picard over Kirk...
This is closer to a relationship between two corporations, one that's much larger than the other but requires the help of the smaller one. In theory, the American people are represented by the larger and more powerful corporation. The smaller one (the government) has no inherent power over the larger corporation, only the power that the larger corporation gives them. In this instance, the larger company would have to be deeply, deeply dumb not to require all the procedures of the smaller company while they're doing the work for the larger, since the larger has more to lose. Without proper oversight, the smaller will take as much power from the larger that they can.
In this analogy, it might even get to the point where the government takes so much power that the populace actually becomes weaker than the government. In that instance I'm fairly certain that Jefferson would suggest watering the tree of liberty.
You misunderstand, and in doing so you come off as an arrogant prick, which you probably are. First, I don't download music. I haven't since high school, when I realized that it was wrong. Also, at that point most of my tastes stopped evolving, so I saw no reason to buy more music. I have purchased a few cds, and I even downloaded one that was out of print, but that's it.
Second, my comment about scarcity of time and talent was in support of paying for music. Time is always very limited, and talent is increasingly hard to come by, so artists who've spent time with their talent should be rewarded.
The reason that I hate those companies (and believe me, I hate them a lot), is because they're using illegal means to sue people; they're getting damages from these lawsuits that are ridiculous (as you pointed out, you can buy a song for $.99, yet somehow that song is worth several thousands of dollars when it's pirated); they're using public ignorance to further their agenda both with public relations (dogs sniffing out illegal dvds? give me a break) and the juries not realizing what a steaming pile of shit their evidence is; and by distorting what the truth is about these issues by using purposely inflammatory words like "pirate" and "steal" where they don't apply.
I guess the lesson you should take away from this is that you don't have to be in the way of the damage to be indignant about a corrupt corporation abusing its power.
But we know that there is no scarcity on the bits themselves, and the copyright only creates the scarcity. What bothers me, and probably a lot of other people, is that they act like we're taking a physical object when we're not. If I download a song that I will never buy anyway, they've lost nothing by that download, unlike someone stealing a car, or a dvd off the shelf, or any of the other ridiculous bullshit analogies that they use.
The scarcity's in the time and talent of the artist. Rick Astley put time and effort into his songs, and he's considerably more talented than most singers. If he wrote the music and lyrics, then that's even more time that was put into the song. It's not property in the tangible sense.
Also, our law recognizes this, because you're not charged with felony theft when you download a shitload of music/movies off the internet, so try again.
So what you're saying is that there's a hidden cost I failed to delineate in my one sentence answer? I'm shocked.
The problem with your statement is that it's not generic enough to fit the question. You're absolutely correct that in the situation where you're platform is going obsolete, you need to follow your procedure, which is really just computing the cost of waiting to switch as a hidden cost of maintaining the platform.
What about a situation where they chose out of competing, emerging technologies and they chose the wrong one? Ruby is an emerging technology, one that's likely to maintain its niche status instead of going widespread; arguably it's already obsolete. Your analysis fits very well for a large, complex application that's been going for a while, but not for those which aren't.
You start by looking at what platform you're using... ;)