You Union will have to tackle distribution as well.
Even if you manage to Unionize every game producer in the US, Walmart is going to snooker someone into setting up a game mill in some third world country, and refuse to stock any of your merchandise. That's basically been their approach with just about every other industry with Unions.
I can't help but notice the Disney effect. Once you have a lot of Intellectual Capital, the temptation seems to be let the creative side of the house wither away and milk your past work for all it's worth using cheap help.
That hasn't been my experienced. I'm 30, and I've been told on numerous interviews that I'm overqualified.
At my present employer it IS policy to hire the young and naive. Our department recently had to fill a help-desk job, and turned their noses up at several candidates I had suggested because they thought they could get some kid right out of school.
Well, right now we are training some kid right out of school.
Safety doesn't sell. The illusion of safety sells. If auto-makers were really all that concerned about safety, SUV's would never have been marketed. Air bags would have been better tested over a range of conditions. And we'd all be running around in cars powered by diesel/electric drivetrains.
(Not that diesel/electric drive trains are all that safe. It's just a lot more fuel efficient for the stop and go traffic conditions most people actually drive in.)
They would also stop making a different model every year so that lessons learned could make their way into the continual improvement process.
Car makers claim that people demand new, different, and flashy cars every year. But when, exactly, have you been able to buy a simple, modest, time proven design? At least new from the factory, that is.
Yes, pure research does pay off handsomely, but this is nothing like pure research. It's a highly specific goal that requires a highly specific set of parameters to work in a highly specific way.
In WWI both sides researched successively more massive guns, bigger battleships, and henous new devices to break up trench warfare. All of those projects were black holes where money and resources were poured in. Why? Torpedoes turned any cheap boat into something that could sink a battleship. Rockets could travel farther, carry more, and be more easily deployed than cannons that filled rail cars. Trench warfare became obsolete with the advent of tanks and other forms of mechanized warfare.
Developing the world's largest cannon -> application.
In between you have America, where you have to be driving 70 because "that's what everyone else is doing." I'm not kidding. At least on average.
In truth you are always stuck in a balancing act between a old fart with his cruise control set to 45 in front of you, in the left lane, a truck that does 120 mph down hill but is so overloaded he's back to 45 up hill, and speed demons who, no matter what speed you are traveling, insist on riding so close they could clean their teeth in your rear view mirror.
"Order" only seems to arrive on an open road in the middle of the night, when a cop catches you for going over the posted limit after the speed drops 20 mph at a state line.
So, am I the only one who thinks that we are living in a post-apocalptic world. Think about the visions of John, then think about the events of WWII. The Children of Judah DID have numbers on their hands. (Concentration camp prisoners had a tattoed ID number.) The end of the "world" did come by fire. (With the advent of nuclear weaponry, Total War(tm) has largely been eliminated. The world John wrote about was ruled by conquerors.) And in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you literally did have people who were standing one second, and gone the next. They were evaporated by the X-Ray bursts.
I could go further in my little analysis. But our world sufferes from a giant case of "what do we do now?"
We have had heavy lifting capacity to geo-syncronous orbit for 30 years. In all that time I can think of 2 things that require massive payloads. 1) Manned spaceflight. 2) Space based weapon systems.
Thinking outside the box, there is an application for retrieving matter from interplanetary mining operations. But since most of that is bulk material anyway, it would be far cheaper to wrap whatever it is in an ablative shield and drop it in an empty field somewhere.
Seriously we are talking about spending several billion dollars to POTENTIALLY save a few million. I say potentially, because the space industry is littered with the bleached bones of other projects that were supposedly going to save us a pile of cash.
Actually, yes, there are several things that make a Space Elevator impossible.
Economic: A space elevator is a "cheap" way to get a ton of material into space, for which there is only a market for a few pounds.
Wear on the launch vehicle's rollers. Any roller is going to be designed to be softer than the cable proper, so that the tires wear out and not the cable. 60,000km is a long way to go on a set of tires. Too hard and you damage the cable. Too soft and you are riding rim partway up.
Chemistry. Carbon molecules have a high affinity for oxygen, especially in the presence of ionizing radiation. The paint required to properly protect the cable adds millions of tons to the mass of the project. Once the cable does start to corrode, it won't take long for a crack large enough to destroy the cable to appear.
Fire. With a conventional rocket, if something sparks out and a fire starts you only destroy the rocket. With an elevator, any fire that breaks out will damage the cable. Even if the cable itself does not burn, it will be exposed to intense heat which will alter the chemical bonds of the carbon molecules, turning your nice high-strength material to graphite.
Fatigue. Since we are operating on the edge of the material's tensile strength, almost any additional load we put on it is going to cause fatigue. And it you have never seen carbon thread fail, it is a nifty sight. All you need to do is score it in tension.
What you say? These are not impossibilities? True, they aren't to construction. But they are to operation. And if the thing ain't going to be operating long, why build it in the first place?
No, this isn't the "Kitty Hawk" stage. The Wright brothers flew a working testbed the had all of the elements of proper aircraft. This is the bathtub toy stage of developing a Nuclear Attack submarine.
Disney is going to find that at the end of the day, Pixar is the one with brand recognition. Their last couple of animation pieces have been horrible.
Not on technical ground mind you. On writing, plot design, and general creativeness they failed. The very fact that their first movie is a sequel of a sequel should tell you where they are coming from. Disney, the mighty, seems to think the only way to put out a CGI movie of any credibility is to duplicate a previous effort.
(Sigh). Well, my one year old doesn't know or care how long Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid have been out. It's all new to her. And I guess that's Disney's strategy.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if you manage to Unionize every game producer in the US, Walmart is going to snooker someone into setting up a game mill in some third world country, and refuse to stock any of your merchandise. That's basically been their approach with just about every other industry with Unions.
Always Low Price. Always. (Zieg Heil!)
I can't help but notice the Disney effect. Once you have a lot of Intellectual Capital, the temptation seems to be let the creative side of the house wither away and milk your past work for all it's worth using cheap help.
Except that many games license out a third party engine. They aren't doing fundimental R&D. They are producing textures and scripted responses.
At my present employer it IS policy to hire the young and naive. Our department recently had to fill a help-desk job, and turned their noses up at several candidates I had suggested because they thought they could get some kid right out of school.
Well, right now we are training some kid right out of school.
(Not that diesel/electric drive trains are all that safe. It's just a lot more fuel efficient for the stop and go traffic conditions most people actually drive in.)
They would also stop making a different model every year so that lessons learned could make their way into the continual improvement process.
Car makers claim that people demand new, different, and flashy cars every year. But when, exactly, have you been able to buy a simple, modest, time proven design? At least new from the factory, that is.
Pound for pound, humans have the longest and thickest schlongs of all primates. The more you know.
Four Words: Microsoft Windows for Vehicles
If you want services, more to a populated area that has them. And don't bitch about your taxes.
I want to die like my granddad, peacefully in my sleep. Not screaming and carrying on like the people in the car he was driving.
And stay peeved for the rest of your life.
Though I have to think the 90% of the wireless communication systems between cars would be censored by the FCC
In WWI both sides researched successively more massive guns, bigger battleships, and henous new devices to break up trench warfare. All of those projects were black holes where money and resources were poured in. Why? Torpedoes turned any cheap boat into something that could sink a battleship. Rockets could travel farther, carry more, and be more easily deployed than cannons that filled rail cars. Trench warfare became obsolete with the advent of tanks and other forms of mechanized warfare.
Developing the world's largest cannon -> application.
Developing the world's first torpedo -> research.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one thinking that.
In truth you are always stuck in a balancing act between a old fart with his cruise control set to 45 in front of you, in the left lane, a truck that does 120 mph down hill but is so overloaded he's back to 45 up hill, and speed demons who, no matter what speed you are traveling, insist on riding so close they could clean their teeth in your rear view mirror.
"Order" only seems to arrive on an open road in the middle of the night, when a cop catches you for going over the posted limit after the speed drops 20 mph at a state line.
I could go further in my little analysis. But our world sufferes from a giant case of "what do we do now?"
Thinking outside the box, there is an application for retrieving matter from interplanetary mining operations. But since most of that is bulk material anyway, it would be far cheaper to wrap whatever it is in an ablative shield and drop it in an empty field somewhere.
Seriously we are talking about spending several billion dollars to POTENTIALLY save a few million. I say potentially, because the space industry is littered with the bleached bones of other projects that were supposedly going to save us a pile of cash.
Economic: A space elevator is a "cheap" way to get a ton of material into space, for which there is only a market for a few pounds.
Wear on the launch vehicle's rollers. Any roller is going to be designed to be softer than the cable proper, so that the tires wear out and not the cable. 60,000km is a long way to go on a set of tires. Too hard and you damage the cable. Too soft and you are riding rim partway up.
Chemistry. Carbon molecules have a high affinity for oxygen, especially in the presence of ionizing radiation. The paint required to properly protect the cable adds millions of tons to the mass of the project. Once the cable does start to corrode, it won't take long for a crack large enough to destroy the cable to appear.
Fire. With a conventional rocket, if something sparks out and a fire starts you only destroy the rocket. With an elevator, any fire that breaks out will damage the cable. Even if the cable itself does not burn, it will be exposed to intense heat which will alter the chemical bonds of the carbon molecules, turning your nice high-strength material to graphite.
Fatigue. Since we are operating on the edge of the material's tensile strength, almost any additional load we put on it is going to cause fatigue. And it you have never seen carbon thread fail, it is a nifty sight. All you need to do is score it in tension.
What you say? These are not impossibilities? True, they aren't to construction. But they are to operation. And if the thing ain't going to be operating long, why build it in the first place?In space, no one can hear you replace Barry Manilow with a clavier.
No, this isn't the "Kitty Hawk" stage. The Wright brothers flew a working testbed the had all of the elements of proper aircraft. This is the bathtub toy stage of developing a Nuclear Attack submarine.
You, Sir, watch too much tentacle porn.
Not on technical ground mind you. On writing, plot design, and general creativeness they failed. The very fact that their first movie is a sequel of a sequel should tell you where they are coming from. Disney, the mighty, seems to think the only way to put out a CGI movie of any credibility is to duplicate a previous effort.
(Sigh). Well, my one year old doesn't know or care how long Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid have been out. It's all new to her. And I guess that's Disney's strategy.
Walt is spinning in his grave.
I just installed XP SP2 on my Viao and just removed my firewall @#$#$^@$^Q34tq0ert0ertweSR&$%&@64-0w452456
^ATZ
*** NO CARRIER
We go through Hell Desk folks like Murphy Brown goes through secretaries. I'm on the Server and Network end.
Er, you can be a sysadmin without being inherently Evil? Maybe just out of school, but Evil(tm) comes with the job.