This is absolutely correct. In fact this is already a solved problem as even different consoles (eg, XBox vs Wii) have very different input systems. This is why game developers typically abstract away the front end so that it's easy to have a different version for each console and input systems are often layered such that only the first layer or two need to be replaced for a different input system. The largest lump of code in many games, at least the games I worked on, was game play, AI and graphics/animation which are largely reusable with a few changes between systems, even systems as different as the Wii (No shaders, OpenGL like API) and the XBox (DirectX with shaders). With WP7 you would have even fewer difference making even more shared code.
And don't forget one of the most violent games ever, Manhunt 2. Of the current big 3, it only came out on the Wii and featured skull cracking hammer motion control. So, as usual, it still comes down to the parents having to make sure the kids don't see what the parents don't want them to see.
I mostly agree with you except on the "remembering training" part. If you have to remember your training then you haven't trained enough. A huge part of the martial arts training I received has been about training your reflexes and muscle memory to the point where you don't think during a fight/sparing match, it's automatic. That's part of the reason it's such a huge time investment, you have to repeat things until they are second nature. My martial arts friends and I even go so far as to feign attack in a surprise situation sometimes (under safe conditions, if you screw around you get hurt) to test and improve each other's reactions.
I think a lot of people who dislike Objective-C are those who just looked it over and haven't spent too much time with it. I used to feel the same way until I got most of the way through an iPhone app recently. I view it as an acquired taste. Watching the great WWDC videos that Apple provides on it's development site helped me to understand it a lot and learn why they do the things they do with it.
People DO normally allow you to surf their website if it is unlocked. People DO NOT normally allow you to walk into their house uninvited if it is unlocked. I think this is a case where "reasonable expectation" applies.
I'm a former game programmer (only got out a few months ago) as well and I agree with you 100%. The short of it for me is if you like playing and creating video games, don't join the industry. Things you enjoy doing are better kept as hobbies. The industry likes to take your excitement and crush it with late nights and by making you feel like crap about every product you make, though I'm sure there are exceptions to that. You might think that the long hours aren't a big deal, but when you're SO/Wife starts telling you that you need to find a new job because she's tired of not seeing and you start considering sleeping at the office you'll start changing your mind.
One last thing, the pay often sucks. There is a high demand for these jobs because people think they want them, so they end up offering you crap money compared to working in other areas of programming. I was offered more money to work in VB6 than I was offered to work on games in C++.
I haven't complete given up on game programming that said, I still work on little projects on my own time, but I won't ever do it for anyone else again.
Most crappy programmers I know don't read Slashdot, nor do they read anything else that could be considered "industry material". Hard to stay crappy if you keep learning.
You damn well can notice DRM on the Xbox 360. I recently had mine die and I sent it back to MS for repair. They sent back a referb unit as per their usual policy. Along with the Xbox was a note telling me to redownload all my DLC so that the licenses on my hard drive would be updated to work with the new console. Well that only works if the jack asses at MS remember to actually transfer the licenses to the new Xbox on their servers, which they failed to do in my case.
It took a lot of poking around but I eventually found xbox.com/drm which gave me proof that they indeed forgot to transfer the licenses and also gave me a way to transfer the licenses to the new Xbox, though you can only do this once per year.
While I was having these DRM issues I could only play DLC games when I was on the account they were purchased on and logged on to Xbox live. As soon as I lost my internet connection (which happened to be having issues around this time) all my DLC games would get the word trial added beside their name. I did a test and brought up the list of all my DLC games, pulled the network cable out of the Xbox and saw the word "Trial" added to the name of every one of my games, top to bottom, one at a time. Event my damn wallpaper disappeared because that was DRMed too.
That said at least they have a tool like xbox.com/drm and at least they do allow you to link your games to a console so they can be played offline once that is achieved. Still, I'm sure this isn't the last I'll see of these issues.
People need to be both vocal AND not buy it. Otherwise they may think that the product failed because it didn't make your penis bigger.
This is why saying "just don't buy it then" is a silly response to "product Y sucks because of issue X". One would think if they are bitching they probably aren't going to buy it, they just want to make sure people know why.
I agree. They are NOT talking about evolution here, they are talking about mutation. While a mutation can turn out to be an advancement which more or less makes it evolution, it could also be negative change that doesn't end up propagating to other members of the species. On a side note, I bet that men, being a greater source of mutation, would also be a greater source of genetic birth defects.
The only problem is, it doesn't matter what's in the constitution, they can just use section 33 (the Notwithstanding clause) to override it. The only down side for them is that they have to renew it every once in a while.
The difference is demand and a monopoly. There is still a massive demand for XP, but Microsoft ignoring that fact. In a normal case if a company stopped selling a popular product because they wanted to sell a new version the consumer would have to the choice to rebel and go to a different company. That would motivate the company to keep selling the old product. Because MS has a monopoly, (effective) there now no competitive motivation for them to keep selling it, so they won't.
In your example "Ninja Turtle cereal" doesn't have near the demand that XP does, nor did it enjoy monopoly status. You can never forget that the rules change when it comes to monopolies.
However, for those numbers to have meaning you'd have to compare them to the general population. If most people make between $25,000-$39,000 and fewer make 6 digits, it would make sense if that's reflected in the WoW population. You can't just show that there are a large number of "lard asses" in WoW, you also have to show that it's a significantly different portion than that found in the general population.
You'd be surprised by how many games, even a lot of console (I've seen flash used on the PSP, PS2, Wii, 360 and PS3) games, use flash for their entire front ends. Most just don't allow you the access to change the content... at least not easily. That said I agree flash is horrible and it tends to eat way more CPU than it should, which is why I've seen a lot of people moving away from it. The artists like it though because it's familiar to them, so it can be a bit of a fight to get them to switch to another system.
I see a lot of comments about regulation being good or bad, some saying it's the cause and some saying the lack of it is the cause. This is just silly.
Regulation is a tool, kind of like a gun, and can be used for good or bad purposes. If you are going to say regulation is bad or good, you should name a specific regulation. Granted there are cases when any regulation is bad, but it's just silly to say it's all bad or all good.
I find it funny that people equate the greater raw processing power of the PS3 with better graphics potential. What they forget is that most of the graphics processing isn't done by the CPU (XBOX 360) or the PPU and SPUs (PS3) but by the GPU. The XBOX 360 has a more powerful GPU that supports some interesting features which the PS3 does not. Sure there maybe a few graphics operation you could offload from the GPU on the PS3, but not much.
The real place where the cell could do well is in physics and AI programming. Especially with physics, it is fairly easy to split things up into small programs you can run on the SPUs.
I didn't see anything about NCSoft going bankrupt. They have many other MMOs including the hit Guild Wars and those aren't being closed down as far as I can find. I would think the shareholders and 3rd party agreements and code would be the major obstacles. Also they probably would worry about competitors finding out anything they consider a trade secret.
This is a great point! If you were thrown in jail because you broke a that you morally disagree with, shouldn't you be able to vote against those who brought the law in?
Allowing felons to vote seems like a safe guard against corruption to me. It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to make a law to turn a group of people who you didn't want to vote into felons so they couldn't. Make sleeping on a park bench a felony if you want to stop homeless people from voting, for example.
Slashdot Mirror
I 100% agree. Slashdot was my second choice for after work entertainment :( It was nice enough to tell my why my first choice didn't work.
This is absolutely correct. In fact this is already a solved problem as even different consoles (eg, XBox vs Wii) have very different input systems. This is why game developers typically abstract away the front end so that it's easy to have a different version for each console and input systems are often layered such that only the first layer or two need to be replaced for a different input system. The largest lump of code in many games, at least the games I worked on, was game play, AI and graphics/animation which are largely reusable with a few changes between systems, even systems as different as the Wii (No shaders, OpenGL like API) and the XBox (DirectX with shaders). With WP7 you would have even fewer difference making even more shared code.
And don't forget one of the most violent games ever, Manhunt 2. Of the current big 3, it only came out on the Wii and featured skull cracking hammer motion control. So, as usual, it still comes down to the parents having to make sure the kids don't see what the parents don't want them to see.
I mostly agree with you except on the "remembering training" part. If you have to remember your training then you haven't trained enough. A huge part of the martial arts training I received has been about training your reflexes and muscle memory to the point where you don't think during a fight/sparing match, it's automatic. That's part of the reason it's such a huge time investment, you have to repeat things until they are second nature. My martial arts friends and I even go so far as to feign attack in a surprise situation sometimes (under safe conditions, if you screw around you get hurt) to test and improve each other's reactions.
I was about to insult your analogy because Zombies are totally not an equal to Vampires... then I thought about the properties of each...
Vampire (Apple)
- sexy
- intelligent
- chrismatic
- thinks nothing of charming you only to suck you dry of blood/money
Zombies (Microsoft)
- slow
- stupid
- flakey
- only has power in numbers
Further evidence for the Microsoft zombie theory can be found during the Windows Mobile 7 release party.
I think a lot of people who dislike Objective-C are those who just looked it over and haven't spent too much time with it. I used to feel the same way until I got most of the way through an iPhone app recently. I view it as an acquired taste. Watching the great WWDC videos that Apple provides on it's development site helped me to understand it a lot and learn why they do the things they do with it.
People DO normally allow you to surf their website if it is unlocked. People DO NOT normally allow you to walk into their house uninvited if it is unlocked. I think this is a case where "reasonable expectation" applies.
World series isn't as bad, at least teams from Canada can participate! Not so much with Hulu.
I agree with all your points, but Java using an interpreter?
Java has used JIT complication of a very long time now http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_compilation.
In fact some JVMs can even recompile on the fly after it gathers runtime data for even better performance http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/j-jtp12214/.
It's the same in North America. I guess the best way to get creative control over a game is to get an MBA! Maybe in marketing?
I'm a former game programmer (only got out a few months ago) as well and I agree with you 100%. The short of it for me is if you like playing and creating video games, don't join the industry. Things you enjoy doing are better kept as hobbies. The industry likes to take your excitement and crush it with late nights and by making you feel like crap about every product you make, though I'm sure there are exceptions to that. You might think that the long hours aren't a big deal, but when you're SO/Wife starts telling you that you need to find a new job because she's tired of not seeing and you start considering sleeping at the office you'll start changing your mind.
One last thing, the pay often sucks. There is a high demand for these jobs because people think they want them, so they end up offering you crap money compared to working in other areas of programming. I was offered more money to work in VB6 than I was offered to work on games in C++.
I haven't complete given up on game programming that said, I still work on little projects on my own time, but I won't ever do it for anyone else again.
Most crappy programmers I know don't read Slashdot, nor do they read anything else that could be considered "industry material". Hard to stay crappy if you keep learning.
You damn well can notice DRM on the Xbox 360. I recently had mine die and I sent it back to MS for repair. They sent back a referb unit as per their usual policy. Along with the Xbox was a note telling me to redownload all my DLC so that the licenses on my hard drive would be updated to work with the new console. Well that only works if the jack asses at MS remember to actually transfer the licenses to the new Xbox on their servers, which they failed to do in my case.
It took a lot of poking around but I eventually found xbox.com/drm which gave me proof that they indeed forgot to transfer the licenses and also gave me a way to transfer the licenses to the new Xbox, though you can only do this once per year.
While I was having these DRM issues I could only play DLC games when I was on the account they were purchased on and logged on to Xbox live. As soon as I lost my internet connection (which happened to be having issues around this time) all my DLC games would get the word trial added beside their name. I did a test and brought up the list of all my DLC games, pulled the network cable out of the Xbox and saw the word "Trial" added to the name of every one of my games, top to bottom, one at a time. Event my damn wallpaper disappeared because that was DRMed too.
That said at least they have a tool like xbox.com/drm and at least they do allow you to link your games to a console so they can be played offline once that is achieved. Still, I'm sure this isn't the last I'll see of these issues.
People need to be both vocal AND not buy it. Otherwise they may think that the product failed because it didn't make your penis bigger.
This is why saying "just don't buy it then" is a silly response to "product Y sucks because of issue X". One would think if they are bitching they probably aren't going to buy it, they just want to make sure people know why.
I agree. They are NOT talking about evolution here, they are talking about mutation. While a mutation can turn out to be an advancement which more or less makes it evolution, it could also be negative change that doesn't end up propagating to other members of the species. On a side note, I bet that men, being a greater source of mutation, would also be a greater source of genetic birth defects.
The only problem is, it doesn't matter what's in the constitution, they can just use section 33 (the Notwithstanding clause) to override it. The only down side for them is that they have to renew it every once in a while.
http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/bp194-e.htm
It's not so much a constitution in practice. It is more like a set of recommendations.
The difference is demand and a monopoly. There is still a massive demand for XP, but Microsoft ignoring that fact. In a normal case if a company stopped selling a popular product because they wanted to sell a new version the consumer would have to the choice to rebel and go to a different company. That would motivate the company to keep selling the old product. Because MS has a monopoly, (effective) there now no competitive motivation for them to keep selling it, so they won't. In your example "Ninja Turtle cereal" doesn't have near the demand that XP does, nor did it enjoy monopoly status. You can never forget that the rules change when it comes to monopolies.
However, for those numbers to have meaning you'd have to compare them to the general population. If most people make between $25,000-$39,000 and fewer make 6 digits, it would make sense if that's reflected in the WoW population. You can't just show that there are a large number of "lard asses" in WoW, you also have to show that it's a significantly different portion than that found in the general population.
You'd be surprised by how many games, even a lot of console (I've seen flash used on the PSP, PS2, Wii, 360 and PS3) games, use flash for their entire front ends. Most just don't allow you the access to change the content... at least not easily. That said I agree flash is horrible and it tends to eat way more CPU than it should, which is why I've seen a lot of people moving away from it. The artists like it though because it's familiar to them, so it can be a bit of a fight to get them to switch to another system.
I see a lot of comments about regulation being good or bad, some saying it's the cause and some saying the lack of it is the cause. This is just silly.
Regulation is a tool, kind of like a gun, and can be used for good or bad purposes. If you are going to say regulation is bad or good, you should name a specific regulation. Granted there are cases when any regulation is bad, but it's just silly to say it's all bad or all good.
I find it funny that people equate the greater raw processing power of the PS3 with better graphics potential. What they forget is that most of the graphics processing isn't done by the CPU (XBOX 360) or the PPU and SPUs (PS3) but by the GPU. The XBOX 360 has a more powerful GPU that supports some interesting features which the PS3 does not. Sure there maybe a few graphics operation you could offload from the GPU on the PS3, but not much.
The real place where the cell could do well is in physics and AI programming. Especially with physics, it is fairly easy to split things up into small programs you can run on the SPUs.
I didn't see anything about NCSoft going bankrupt. They have many other MMOs including the hit Guild Wars and those aren't being closed down as far as I can find. I would think the shareholders and 3rd party agreements and code would be the major obstacles. Also they probably would worry about competitors finding out anything they consider a trade secret.
I find it interesting that they checked out 4 for the Mac and only 2 for the PC.
Does anyone else find it annoying that Mac users have a tendency to use the term 'PC' as if it were a synonym for 'Windows'?
Seems strange that they even did that during the PowerPC days too. I would think it would have the potential to confuse some of their own user base.
If there are enough people in jail to impact the turnout of a vote over something like that then we probably have bigger issues.
This is a great point! If you were thrown in jail because you broke a that you morally disagree with, shouldn't you be able to vote against those who brought the law in? Allowing felons to vote seems like a safe guard against corruption to me. It seems like it wouldn't be too hard to make a law to turn a group of people who you didn't want to vote into felons so they couldn't. Make sleeping on a park bench a felony if you want to stop homeless people from voting, for example.