A two-pronged attack to turn the illogic of these laws against the MPAA.
FIRST, when you have a contract with a provider, whether cable, DSL, or POTS, it is implicit that you are providing THEM (and through them, the rest of the world) access to YOUR network. Thus, they are just as accountable to YOU for any unauthorized equipment or devices attached to their computers. They have to ask YOUR permission to use that invisible proxy. THEY become responsible for spam sent by other customers to YOUR machine. I'm sure all those hungry lawyers with lasers on their heads would be much happier to take on Time Warner or SBC (greater potential reward) than a bunch of out-of-work home user techies.
A potential corrolary to this is that the MPAA or any other organization that e-mails you likewise becomes answerable to YOU in how they perform that communication. Require them, under law, to use the mail client YOU specify.
NEXT, Go after the MPAA, RIAA, et al. for using NAT, VPNs, and other such techs in their OWN networks. What's good for the goose...
First, you've got to consider the limiting factor, likely how quickly your webcam can update. Then, you'd have to focus it so that it's only picking up the monitor, and not joe blow walking nearby. Then, you've got to worry about snapping a picture during the middle of the monitor's screen refresh (unless you're using an LCD panel, guess the one would be faster, while the other wouldn't have refresh issues).
But, even better, this is full-duplex operation, so roughly double your speed.
Finally, I think you need to re-think your speeds... you're talking ISDN speeds, but that's 64kbits PER SECOND. this is bumped up greatly by the fact that you should at least be able to process 10fps fairly reliably. That's 640kbps, Full-Duplex, uncompressed. Using data compression algorithms and in I/O buffer, bump it up to T1 speed......
OR...
Replace the whole darned thing with an IRDA module available down at the local CompUSA.
(Gotta admit, the coolness factor would be high, though. Random snow on the screen that actually means something. Would be fun to write a screensaver that displayed the entire contents of your HD this way. If nobody caught on, you could spread this as a virus & sneak lots of juicy information out of government buildings just by peeking through windows.... Maybe I shoulda posted anonymously)
And to be completely fair, most of the perms here think it sucks and hate the system, too. The ones who are jerks, in my observation, are the ones who started out 2 or 3 years ago as temps, themselves. I think they don't realize just how tough it is now, because temps are paid less than they were, and when they were in this position, there actually was a chance of being converted to full-time (the position I took was listed as contract-to-hire, and the recruiter told me 98% of contractors were being converted after 6 months... but to my knowledge not a single contractor has been converted since I started 9 months ago.)
Is this what we can expect in the future from Corporate Amercia? Microsoft is one of the few companies that really grew in the last 20 years. If they won't treat their employess well, who will? Reading storries like this makes me sick.
Yes. Yes, it is what you can expect. D3LL does exactly the same thing in Austin... Down to the Red vs. Blue badges. And to the other guy who said contractors get paid more, NO, we're paid less, and less, and less, as the economy sinks and they're able to get away with paying less. No benefits, and then three months of unemployment. Then come back for more of the same. This article only barely touches on the thrills of coming to work each day not knowing if your job will still be there. Not just because of layoffs, but because as a contractor, YOU have to fit in with the regular full-timers, and not the other way around. Thus, their idea of 'teamwork' means being the bitch of whatever fulltime employee wants to make you lick his boots. Don't even get me started with this stuff. I don't have enough time in a week to detail all my gripes with this system.
Kudos to the contractors who won the suit, good for you. But the govt should have left well-enough alone, because the end-result is the rest of us are royally screwed.
straight from someone whos never tried or needed to do anything more than play a game cd or mp3 on their computer.
ever try recording on your awe 32? hardly awe inspiring.
sound cards have a long way to come. go to a home studio with any amount of funk and you'll see about 20k worth of things that have yet to be included on your sound card.
You don't need them, you never will. You're not the be all and end all of needs.
Actually, I've done a little recording here and there with it. Been QUITE pleased with the results. It can require a little tweaking and good software, but you can get decent enough results. Not doing professional-quality stuff, but then I certainly wouldn't be doing professional-quality work with any flavor of Audigy. $20K seems to me to be a little more than just a 'home studio', at least if it's all spent on gear. You could spend that much on decent soundproofing, mics & stands, headphones, etc before you ever touch recording equipment. You want to talk studio-recording, then take the argument somewhere that studio-quality equipment is being discussed. Audigy ain't it.
Speaking to hiss: I've never heard such from the AWE on playback. Recording hiss, yes, I've seen it, but more often than not, it has been due to the source and not the card. If you've got a decent-sized tower case, put the video and NIC as far away from the sound card as possible, and you'll likely see a big improvement in noise.
Good Point. Only reasons I'm not still using my old GUS: 1) it was ISA 2) driver compatibility issues 3) was not full-duplex, inasmuch as I can recall. Like it or not, the AWE32 became the standard, and that's why I still use it today. Everything's backward-compatible with it.
AWE 32 was the last big worthwhile 'innovation' in sound cards. I'm still using mine all these years later, and it's all I've ever needed. It's a real wonder sound cards are even around these days. Seems to me all the circuitry should be in the speakers, with audio delivered over USB. Reduce noise inherent inside the PC case, and you only have to pay once for some nice, expensive speakers (which you need, anyway). My days of paying $200 or more for a sound card ended somewhere back around 1993-1995. It's just not worth it to me to spend that kind of cash, when you still have to add the cost of speakers on top of it to see the performance boost.
Since the phone supports Java, you can download an HTML Web browser for J2ME phones [reqwireless.com].
In that case, forget browsers... I want to put a server on this thing, combined with the builtin camera, you've got a walking, wireless, go-anywhere, self-powered webcam.
On the down side, data charges would be rough, but you could perhaps get around that while at home/office using bluetooth.
Wonder how long it would take for me to be slashdotted?
I understand what's involved in trademark protection, but "google" is an
important new verb, so I certainly don't want to delete it from the site. I
also don't want any legal hassles. Is there a response I can send to this
lawyer that will allow me to keep this entry? What if I just acknowledge
that Google(tm) is a trademark of Google Technologies Inc.? Would that be
good enough?
OK, so what I notice is the difference in capitalization. Google's lawyers spell their trademark with a capital 'G', while the verb in question is spelled with a lower-case 'g'. Couldn't it be argued that they're NOT the same word? Just a thought.
The only problem, the only reason this won't work, is that they're already onto the tactic. You buy that $50 or $60 printer these days, and it only has enough ink for about 10 pages before it starts nagging you that you need a refill.
Luckily, the price of laser printers is coming down enough that a reasonably good model can be had for $200 to $300. I bought a Samsung laser printer a year ago & still haven't run out of toner from the original cartridge, which, itself was not supposed to be a full cartridge. New ones run around $80, and are supposed to print about 5000 pages. This one was supposed to get about half that. It's a couple dozen times faster than inkjet, too.
Cheap, nothing... I quit buying it after they stopped offerring free upgrades. Got sick of new versions coming out and the movies not being backward-compatible. If you're working on a Windoze box, there's not much point in having it except to watch movie previews, and that ain't worth the $29.
I have used AT&T WS for years, and made SO many calls to customer service. My experience has been that they are friendly, helpful, and competent, but sometimes plagued by a terribly poor accounting & computer system. (It actually DOES go down frequently)
I used pocketnet up until October, when I switched to the GSM system. It was in August when I noticed they'd started charging me per-K charges for the 'free' pocketnet. I called & complained, and they refunded the charges, but then the same thing happened in September.
The GSM switch was an even worse story, which is as yet unresolved. They made me pay off the charges on my previous account (because they have to close out the actual account). Then, they set up a new account with the same phone number for the GSM phone. After this was up & working, I found I could no longer reach the online customer service, because I didn't know the account number. I couldn't get phone support, because they had set my employer's address as the billing address for the account. I finally got someone to listen to me & convinced them I was the owner of the phone, and they said they'd change it, but it required closing the account again and creating ANOTHER account. Later that day, I got a call from somebody else at ATTWS saying they'd screwed up & I was now making calls on an account that was closed, because the SIM card in the GSM phone only works on a single account & I'd need to go to the ATTWS store to get a new SIM card, free of charge. He assured me everything would be straightened out.
Two months later, I still cannot get online cust service, every time I all for customer support, I'm told I'm not in charge of the account, and two weeks ago, I received another bill for the original non-gsm account that was supposed to be paid off.
There are two things keeping me from telling AT&T to go fsck themselves: 1) The $150 cancellation fee + cost of buying a phone for someone else's service and 2) Wanting to keep my phone number. These are EXACTLY the anticompetitive behaviors that have come under fire recently in court proceedings in the northeast. Will any of those class-action suits ever come to Texas? God, I hope so. I want to give back to AT&T a little of what they've given me over the years.
Add to that the fact that on Time Warner's digital box, you can block channels... but only 30 out of 500. And when you're flipping, they still show up. Just with a big 'channel blocked' message.
See, here in Austin, they give you a choice of $9 for basic cable (no premium channels) or add $47 for all digital (except HBO etc) or add $41 to get channels 1-77 in analog. By the time I pay that $41 each month, I may as well be paying for the digital subscription. All I want is $9 basic plus about 4 or 5 of the 'plus' channels, for which I'd gladly pay $3/month each. The reason they don't want you to do that is they still have to pay to provide all those channels, whether their subscribers watch them or not.
I think the biggest ripoff is in the price of the cable box. I pay $5.95/month for the same digital box I used to pay $3.95/month. I know these cost money, and they have to recoup their cost, but after 4 years of digital, I think that box has paid for itself a couple of times over, they certainly don't have any call to raise the prices, and if I see 'em do it again, I'll promptly turn it back in.
As I understand it, the SmartStep systems with desktop CPUs are targeted toward a business-traveller market that just wants a portable high-power system. They don't care about battery life, since they can plug it in when they're in a conference room, with projector attached. What they want is raw performance. As has already been noted, you'd do well to research your purchases in the future.
Very cool, but I gotta ask two questions... 1) how to implement other operation: OR, NOT, etc. and 2) It looks like he lets the excess water simply run off... no method for collection or recycling.
Naturally, this brings to mind all sorts of jokes about computers that can finally REALLY do windows. Still, one wonders: What's so original about this? Who hasn't operated a steam-driven computer while playing Myst or Riven?
What I find interesting is that they're selling bot-writing tools. I haven't seen too many of those around, so perhaps they'd have been able to patent THAT idea. I really don't see how a company could write tools to make bots and then think there were honestly think there's no prior art. Looks to me like a 'lets see how much we can get away with' ploy. Unfortunately, how much they can get away with is usually: a lot. Of course, I suppose most executives out there don't really know all that much about IP law, and they're just trying to protect their businesses. They have lawyers who file the paperwork and handle the patent application process. And, of course, those lawyers are paid for doing this work. They're also paid for pursuing claims against anyone who infringes the patents, whether the company wins or loses. So.... perhaps we shouldn't question the scruples of this company as a whole so much as the litigating community itself.
My point is that people know about Dave because he had a big web persona during the fanboy glory days that followed the release of Quake, back when.plan file updates make headlines on gaming news sites.
I thought he was pretty well-known back in the days of Doom. The linux port IMO is worthy of inclusion in the recently posted 100 linux milestones.
But at the same time, Dave's game development history is pretty weak. He worked on DOOM, yes, but he was just a grunt. Abuse was written by someone else (Jonathan Clark). Golgotha was never completed. I'm not saying that Dave is a bad guy or a knucklehead or anything like that. He's certainly not the loudmouth that Brian Hook turned out to be. So we all know Dave because of his little failed company, and we're all clamoring to work for him. But who knows the names of the people who worked on Grand Theft Auto 3, Final Fantasy X, Age of Empires, Metal Gear Solid 2, Siphon Filter, of Medal of Honor? These are all huge, huge games, each of which sold over a million copies (with the exception of Medal of Honor; I don't know how well it did).
I don't want to argue just for the sake of argument, but I feel you're not giving him enough credit here. Game development isn't just about one guy writing a hot graphics engine. It's a TEAM effort. He's got that experience in spades. Yes, he didn't write Abuse. Contractual obligations with id at the time prevented him from coding, as I understand it. On the other hand, he was managing a team of programmers, dealing with publishers, investors, and doing the day-to-day payroll type work. The question at hand was not the source of Dave's fame, but rather if he's a good person to work for. On that note, I'd say I would rather work for someone who's tried and failed and is trying again, someone who might have a better idea what he's doing.
What, may I ask, does fame and fortune have to do with making good games or putting together a good development team? I'm not sure why you picked those particular titles, but I'd point out that Doom was/is a landmark in gaming, not just because of being the first, biggest hit 3dfps (yes, cite Wolfenstein etc etc tc. Doom was still the first to really hit the public eye), more than this, Doom made it big, because of the marketing and shareware distribution campaign, as well as the fun gameplay, and the realism of the gore. Was all this Dave's doing? Nope. However, he was involved in it. He was THERE. That's why we're talking about him now.
The bottom line is that the fanboy worldview is severely--and intentionally--limited.
Dave Taylor is also the former co-founder of the now defunct Crack.com which released Abuse and the incomplete Golgotha. At UT Austin, he helped start the IEEE-CS National Programming Contest, which involved teams of college students developing and pitting AI's against each other in a client-server gaming environment created by ddt's team. Sort of an AI 'Robot Wars'. Ddt has both game development, console development AND business development experience. I rather hope this venture is more successful than his last, and I'm confident his previous experience will make it so. Having known several people who've worked for him, I would say YES, he's a great person to work for. Having known my fair share of loyal/. readers, I daresay this IS a good place to troll for people with immense programming talent, and if no previous console experience, they will likely share Dave's point of view and be able to quickly learn all they need to know about porting to a console.
Why is it that people feel the need to bitch about every story that's posted these days?
Slashdot Mirror
The solution is simple, and it is thus:
A two-pronged attack to turn the illogic of these laws against the MPAA.
FIRST, when you have a contract with a provider, whether cable, DSL, or POTS, it is implicit that you are providing THEM (and through them, the rest of the world) access to YOUR network. Thus, they are just as accountable to YOU for any unauthorized equipment or devices attached to their computers. They have to ask YOUR permission to use that invisible proxy. THEY become responsible for spam sent by other customers to YOUR machine. I'm sure all those hungry lawyers with lasers on their heads would be much happier to take on Time Warner or SBC (greater potential reward) than a bunch of out-of-work home user techies.
A potential corrolary to this is that the MPAA or any other organization that e-mails you likewise becomes answerable to YOU in how they perform that communication. Require them, under law, to use the mail client YOU specify.
NEXT, Go after the MPAA, RIAA, et al. for using NAT, VPNs, and other such techs in their OWN networks. What's good for the goose...
Just a thought.
Yeah, that's what he meant... $2500/year each.
They're outsourced to India.
First, you've got to consider the limiting factor, likely how quickly your webcam can update. Then, you'd have to focus it so that it's only picking up the monitor, and not joe blow walking nearby. Then, you've got to worry about snapping a picture during the middle of the monitor's screen refresh (unless you're using an LCD panel, guess the one would be faster, while the other wouldn't have refresh issues).
But, even better, this is full-duplex operation, so roughly double your speed.
Finally, I think you need to re-think your speeds... you're talking ISDN speeds, but that's 64kbits PER SECOND. this is bumped up greatly by the fact that you should at least be able to process 10fps fairly reliably. That's 640kbps, Full-Duplex, uncompressed. Using data compression algorithms and in I/O buffer, bump it up to T1 speed......
OR...
Replace the whole darned thing with an IRDA module available down at the local CompUSA.
(Gotta admit, the coolness factor would be high, though. Random snow on the screen that actually means something. Would be fun to write a screensaver that displayed the entire contents of your HD this way. If nobody caught on, you could spread this as a virus & sneak lots of juicy information out of government buildings just by peeking through windows.... Maybe I shoulda posted anonymously)
And to be completely fair, most of the perms here think it sucks and hate the system, too. The ones who are jerks, in my observation, are the ones who started out 2 or 3 years ago as temps, themselves. I think they don't realize just how tough it is now, because temps are paid less than they were, and when they were in this position, there actually was a chance of being converted to full-time (the position I took was listed as contract-to-hire, and the recruiter told me 98% of contractors were being converted after 6 months... but to my knowledge not a single contractor has been converted since I started 9 months ago.)
Is this what we can expect in the future from Corporate Amercia? Microsoft is one of the few companies that really grew in the last 20 years. If they won't treat their employess well, who will? Reading storries like this makes me sick.
Yes. Yes, it is what you can expect. D3LL does exactly the same thing in Austin... Down to the Red vs. Blue badges. And to the other guy who said contractors get paid more, NO, we're paid less, and less, and less, as the economy sinks and they're able to get away with paying less. No benefits, and then three months of unemployment. Then come back for more of the same. This article only barely touches on the thrills of coming to work each day not knowing if your job will still be there. Not just because of layoffs, but because as a contractor, YOU have to fit in with the regular full-timers, and not the other way around. Thus, their idea of 'teamwork' means being the bitch of whatever fulltime employee wants to make you lick his boots. Don't even get me started with this stuff. I don't have enough time in a week to detail all my gripes with this system.
Kudos to the contractors who won the suit, good for you. But the govt should have left well-enough alone, because the end-result is the rest of us are royally screwed.
This Link gives a little info from the Centaur side of the issue.
Final Fantasy, the TV series.
Actually, I've done a little recording here and there with it. Been QUITE pleased with the results. It can require a little tweaking and good software, but you can get decent enough results. Not doing professional-quality stuff, but then I certainly wouldn't be doing professional-quality work with any flavor of Audigy. $20K seems to me to be a little more than just a 'home studio', at least if it's all spent on gear. You could spend that much on decent soundproofing, mics & stands, headphones, etc before you ever touch recording equipment. You want to talk studio-recording, then take the argument somewhere that studio-quality equipment is being discussed. Audigy ain't it.
Speaking to hiss: I've never heard such from the AWE on playback. Recording hiss, yes, I've seen it, but more often than not, it has been due to the source and not the card. If you've got a decent-sized tower case, put the video and NIC as far away from the sound card as possible, and you'll likely see a big improvement in noise.
Good Point. Only reasons I'm not still using my old GUS:
1) it was ISA
2) driver compatibility issues
3) was not full-duplex, inasmuch as I can recall.
Like it or not, the AWE32 became the standard, and that's why I still use it today. Everything's backward-compatible with it.
AWE 32 was the last big worthwhile 'innovation' in sound cards. I'm still using mine all these years later, and it's all I've ever needed. It's a real wonder sound cards are even around these days. Seems to me all the circuitry should be in the speakers, with audio delivered over USB. Reduce noise inherent inside the PC case, and you only have to pay once for some nice, expensive speakers (which you need, anyway). My days of paying $200 or more for a sound card ended somewhere back around 1993-1995. It's just not worth it to me to spend that kind of cash, when you still have to add the cost of speakers on top of it to see the performance boost.
On the down side, data charges would be rough, but you could perhaps get around that while at home/office using bluetooth.
Wonder how long it would take for me to be slashdotted?
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/0 9/1627251&mode=thread
At least this one has some new information. Maybe we're seeing some progress.
OK, so what I notice is the difference in capitalization. Google's lawyers spell their trademark with a capital 'G', while the verb in question is spelled with a lower-case 'g'. Couldn't it be argued that they're NOT the same word? Just a thought.
The only problem, the only reason this won't work, is that they're already onto the tactic. You buy that $50 or $60 printer these days, and it only has enough ink for about 10 pages before it starts nagging you that you need a refill.
Luckily, the price of laser printers is coming down enough that a reasonably good model can be had for $200 to $300. I bought a Samsung laser printer a year ago & still haven't run out of toner from the original cartridge, which, itself was not supposed to be a full cartridge. New ones run around $80, and are supposed to print about 5000 pages. This one was supposed to get about half that. It's a couple dozen times faster than inkjet, too.
Cheap, nothing... I quit buying it after they stopped offerring free upgrades. Got sick of new versions coming out and the movies not being backward-compatible. If you're working on a Windoze box, there's not much point in having it except to watch movie previews, and that ain't worth the $29.
I have used AT&T WS for years, and made SO many calls to customer service. My experience has been that they are friendly, helpful, and competent, but sometimes plagued by a terribly poor accounting & computer system. (It actually DOES go down frequently)
I used pocketnet up until October, when I switched to the GSM system. It was in August when I noticed they'd started charging me per-K charges for the 'free' pocketnet. I called & complained, and they refunded the charges, but then the same thing happened in September.
The GSM switch was an even worse story, which is as yet unresolved. They made me pay off the charges on my previous account (because they have to close out the actual account). Then, they set up a new account with the same phone number for the GSM phone. After this was up & working, I found I could no longer reach the online customer service, because I didn't know the account number. I couldn't get phone support, because they had set my employer's address as the billing address for the account. I finally got someone to listen to me & convinced them I was the owner of the phone, and they said they'd change it, but it required closing the account again and creating ANOTHER account. Later that day, I got a call from somebody else at ATTWS saying they'd screwed up & I was now making calls on an account that was closed, because the SIM card in the GSM phone only works on a single account & I'd need to go to the ATTWS store to get a new SIM card, free of charge. He assured me everything would be straightened out.
Two months later, I still cannot get online cust service, every time I all for customer support, I'm told I'm not in charge of the account, and two weeks ago, I received another bill for the original non-gsm account that was supposed to be paid off.
There are two things keeping me from telling AT&T to go fsck themselves: 1) The $150 cancellation fee + cost of buying a phone for someone else's service and 2) Wanting to keep my phone number. These are EXACTLY the anticompetitive behaviors that have come under fire recently in court proceedings in the northeast. Will any of those class-action suits ever come to Texas? God, I hope so. I want to give back to AT&T a little of what they've given me over the years.
You left out:
But they use proprietary, expensive, suck-ass batteries in most of the portable electronics they sell (BOO!!!)
Mod this guy up.
Add to that the fact that on Time Warner's digital box, you can block channels... but only 30 out of 500. And when you're flipping, they still show up. Just with a big 'channel blocked' message.
See, here in Austin, they give you a choice of $9 for basic cable (no premium channels) or add $47 for all digital (except HBO etc) or add $41 to get channels 1-77 in analog. By the time I pay that $41 each month, I may as well be paying for the digital subscription. All I want is $9 basic plus about 4 or 5 of the 'plus' channels, for which I'd gladly pay $3/month each. The reason they don't want you to do that is they still have to pay to provide all those channels, whether their subscribers watch them or not.
I think the biggest ripoff is in the price of the cable box. I pay $5.95/month for the same digital box I used to pay $3.95/month. I know these cost money, and they have to recoup their cost, but after 4 years of digital, I think that box has paid for itself a couple of times over, they certainly don't have any call to raise the prices, and if I see 'em do it again, I'll promptly turn it back in.
As I understand it, the SmartStep systems with desktop CPUs are targeted toward a business-traveller market that just wants a portable high-power system. They don't care about battery life, since they can plug it in when they're in a conference room, with projector attached. What they want is raw performance. As has already been noted, you'd do well to research your purchases in the future.
Yes and No.
Yes, I already had a basic grasp of how to do it.
but
No, I would like to see it done in one unit.
Very cool, but I gotta ask two questions... 1) how to implement other operation: OR, NOT, etc. and 2) It looks like he lets the excess water simply run off... no method for collection or recycling.
Naturally, this brings to mind all sorts of jokes about computers that can finally REALLY do windows. Still, one wonders: What's so original about this? Who hasn't operated a steam-driven computer while playing Myst or Riven?
You can bang your fist on it. Better yet, climb up and jump up and down on it! Open and slam the drawers. Or just spill some coffee on it.
What I find interesting is that they're selling bot-writing tools. I haven't seen too many of those around, so perhaps they'd have been able to patent THAT idea. I really don't see how a company could write tools to make bots and then think there were honestly think there's no prior art. Looks to me like a 'lets see how much we can get away with' ploy. Unfortunately, how much they can get away with is usually: a lot. Of course, I suppose most executives out there don't really know all that much about IP law, and they're just trying to protect their businesses. They have lawyers who file the paperwork and handle the patent application process. And, of course, those lawyers are paid for doing this work. They're also paid for pursuing claims against anyone who infringes the patents, whether the company wins or loses. So.... perhaps we shouldn't question the scruples of this company as a whole so much as the litigating community itself.
What, may I ask, does fame and fortune have to do with making good games or putting together a good development team? I'm not sure why you picked those particular titles, but I'd point out that Doom was/is a landmark in gaming, not just because of being the first, biggest hit 3dfps (yes, cite Wolfenstein etc etc tc. Doom was still the first to really hit the public eye), more than this, Doom made it big, because of the marketing and shareware distribution campaign, as well as the fun gameplay, and the realism of the gore. Was all this Dave's doing? Nope. However, he was involved in it. He was THERE. That's why we're talking about him now. OK.... So what?
Dave Taylor is also the former co-founder of the now defunct Crack.com which released Abuse and the incomplete Golgotha. At UT Austin, he helped start the IEEE-CS National Programming Contest, which involved teams of college students developing and pitting AI's against each other in a client-server gaming environment created by ddt's team. Sort of an AI 'Robot Wars'. Ddt has both game development, console development AND business development experience. I rather hope this venture is more successful than his last, and I'm confident his previous experience will make it so. Having known several people who've worked for him, I would say YES, he's a great person to work for. Having known my fair share of loyal /. readers, I daresay this IS a good place to troll for people with immense programming talent, and if no previous console experience, they will likely share Dave's point of view and be able to quickly learn all they need to know about porting to a console.
Why is it that people feel the need to bitch about every story that's posted these days?