Agreed. That's almost exactly what I was saying over here.
Software engineering is often like being asked to plan a space mission to the surface of a planet that we know nothing about. Sending someone safely to our moon is an understood problem. One might suppose that the moon-mission gives us a useful framework upon which we could build our plans for the mystery planet expedition. However, not knowing where we're going raises all sorts of new risks that we must anticipate, if we are to land our intrepid astronauts safely on the surface. What if there is no dry land? What if the gravity is dangerously high? What if the atmosphere is corrosive? How can we validate whether we have addressed all the possibilities?
Ultimately, we have to make assumptions, and unit test our sundry components within the assumed tolerances. We address as many of the edge conditions as we can realistically hope to address within our budget and time constraints. However, in the end, we land Jane Astronaut on the planet surface, and she is promptly stepped on by Godzilla, who is blissfully unconcerned about our risk assessment.
You're preaching to the choir, man. Software engineers don't have to (by definition) program. Computer scientists, likewise, don't have to program. There's a real problem in the fact that we conflate these three disciplines. It's exacerbated by the universities, who often lack a software engineering major, and in their computer science department, end up conflicted with themselves over whether they're meant to be teaching computer science theory or vocational programming. Back when I studied computer science, we were largely forbidden to work with other students on anything, so we learned nothing about developing software in teams, let alone engineering things that other people needed to build -- though, from what I understand, that is improving. Still, there are tragically few people who are actually trained to be software engineers, and that's just a tiny fraction of the people who have it printed on their business cards.
However, since we are apparently in agreement on that point, I'll grant that you have a more valid bone to pick with me on the matter of software engineering discipline. I will grant that there are people who have attempted to codify methodologies for the software engineering discipline that are meant to achieve an "Engineering" level of reliability. That said, your examples are kind of weak. Z notation and UML are languages, rather than methodologies. They will not ensure quality engineering any more than C++ ensures quality code. Formal methods (mentioned towards the end of the "Software development process" article you linked) are really the closest thing to traditional engineering you're going to run into. Though it's extremely rare, in practice, that systems are designed with that level of validation, or that the funding is provided to do so.
Even if the funding were available, I'm not sure that, in practical terms, it would even be feasible in a reasonable amount of time to address all possible software systems with that sort of process. Avionics are a relatively old, stable problem space that doesn't change much. Many software engineers work in areas where the problems are not so well-understood. Their designs -- no matter how formally diagrammed -- often end up being more like battle plans than blue prints.
>> I'm guessing you're not aware that in some countries >> (for example, Germany I believe) one cannot legally >> call oneself an Engineer without the appropriate >> qualifications, in the same way that one cannot >> call oneself a Doctor.
Given that A.) The OP mentions that Canada restricts the use of the term "engineer" and B.) I live in a state that restricts the use of the term "engineer" in much the same way (and for much the same reasons) as Canada, I'd say your guess is wrong.:)
However, you pretty much just underscored my point: In the US, there is no way to know if a software engineer is capable. Heck, even in my state, enforcement is weak, if not non-existent. Some companies seem to use the term "software engineer" for most senior programmers, across the board, and it's hard to even get them to make an exception, if you object to that usage. I'm not sure there's any way out of it, at this point.
I was unable to read the article, due to Slashdottery, but from the quote, I think Mr. Wise is failing to understand what "engineer" means. There's no minimal competency required to slap "Software Engineer" on your card, there's no license board that will certify your competence, there's guarantee to a given customer that you have any clue what you're doing, and you are ultimately not liable for damages, in most cases, if you are producing defective work.
It's not that software engineers don't care, or that we're somehow inferior. It's that there's no way to learn software engineering the way Engineering disciplines are learned. You can teach a civil engineer to make a bridge that will stand for 200 years, but there is no educational program in existence that can even begin teach a software engineer to design flawless software. That discipline simply doesn't exist. I can use mathematics to design a concrete structure that is 100% guaranteed to float. I cannot use mathematics to design billing system software that is 100% guaranteed to address all requirements. A hodgepodge of algorithm analysis, best practices, design patterns, gut instinct, pretty diagrams, and programming experience does not an engineering discipline make.
On top of all this, people make demands of software engineers that no one would make of an Engineer. Imagine that a construction crew is halfway through building the bridge which you designed, and then the government comes back to you, and tells you that no, they've decided that really they want the entire bridge to be two feet to the left. Oh, and they don't like how the concrete looks, so could we use granite, instead? Or, imagine that a car company has tasked you with creating a concept car for the Detroit auto show, but they don't quite know what it looks like or what it should do, beyond some vague hand-waving, and they're hoping that you can iteratively evolve a concept car for them, so they can give feedback as you work, but they expect this all to happen for the price of building one car. Then, they come back two months later, and tell you that they've decided that they're skipping the auto show, and instead, they need it to be road legal and ready for production by July.
So, yes, we may call ourselves "software engineers," but we're not really Engineers. We have a lot of uncertainty in our lives, and in all fairness, I, for one, don't want the liability.
I really hate to say this, but I would feel negligent if I did not question the wisdom of using this project to drag Crystal Space into the 21st century, when there are more up-to-date, perfectly viable, modular, extensible open source 3D graphics engines available. Ogre3D, for example, is available under the exact same license as Crystal Space, and it supports all of the features you mention, and has already been used to make commercial games. Trust me, developing a pro-quality game is a steep enough hill to climb without burning extra time and money modernizing a somewhat dusty graphics engine. Why risk the mission on that? Is this just a bad case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome, or do you really have a good practical reason to do this? I'm not saying that you should put Crystal Space out to pasture, per se, but I'm not convinced that you should be trying to do all of this at once. The single most frequent mistake made by new would-be indie game developers is biting off more than they can chew. Don't set yourself up for failure. Keep your eye on the ball.
Now that I've given you the obligatory dire warning, good luck.;-)
I agree. Being a programmer, I think natural language is good for talking to other human beings, and hopelessly inefficient for anything else. Why recite Dickens to a dishwasher, when it has perfectly good knobs and buttons? Why do we constantly suffer under this mad delusion that computers are somehow meant to act like people? Alas, Turing, why did you steer us off this cliff?
Ah, yes, this is one of the reasons I don't miss E3 at all. I'll never forget standing in front of my game, and having slack-jawed idiots come try to chat me up, and then NOT BELIEVE ME when I told them I was the lead programmer on the game I was showing off. Year after year, I still hear lunk-headed idiots hauling out the same old tropes about women not being able to code, and women gamers being attention whores, and women not being interested in games due to various half-baked evolutionary psychology theories, over and over and over again. Seriously, it gets old.
NeutronCowboy is half-right. There are still a lot of people out there who need educating. Though, I don't run into too many of them in the industry, much, these days. The industry is becoming increasingly good about hiring people with brains and social skills. I still see a lot of ignorance and hatred in the general public, though. There's always someone out there who wants to put you down.
Are you serious? I'd pay as much as $4000 for a robot that could pick up items in my apartment and put them away where they belong, neatly, in an organized fashion, when they are not needed at the moment. This is not because I'm lazy. On the contrary: It's because I am too busy to have time to tidy up.
Hell, I'd develop it myself... but if I had time to do that, I wouldn't need a robot to do my tidying.
The FA is making the mistake of succumbing to the fallacy behind the Turing Test. Saying that AIBO is an "advanced" robot is a bit like like saying that ELIZA is an "advanced" AI. Emulating a human or animal does not in any way make a robot more general-purpose. All it does is mean that the robot has the specialized role of acting like a human or animal. No matter how "advanced" they might be, there is no humanoid robot that can currently carry wounded troops out of danger, but there are specialized "mule" robots that can do this. You're not going to stop to criticize the fact that a robot can't smile and say "Have a nice day" while it's hauling your wounded ass out of a combat zone.
For the record, as of CS3 (July 2007), Premiere is available for the Mac again.
Your other points are all valid. Anybody who wrote "Final Cut Studio has become the standard when it comes to professional video editing" clearly doesn't actually know any professional video editors.
Given my experiences, thus far, I wish there was less painful interoperability between Adobe's video editing and effects software and Apple's own tools -- but not at the expense of a merger (or worse, potentially losing Windows support). If anything, I'd like to see Adobe's creative software extended to more platforms, rather than fewer. There are a lot of folks out there who would explode with joy to get their hands on a real Linux version of Photoshop.
My worst childhood chemistry accident happened not from my chemistry set (in spite of it containing a cyanide compound), but when I was trying to clean an unrelated stain on my bedroom carpet, with everyday household cleaning liquids. At first, I put dish soap on the stain, but that didn't seem to be doing the trick. So, then, I added a little bleach. Oddly, the dish soap must have had a small amount of ammonia in it, because hello, chlorine gas! That day, I learned an important lesson: Cleaning things is dangerous. Let the professionals do it.
If only I'd been playing with my chemistry set, instead!
If the major anti-virus software vendors didn't make products that A.) tried to lock people into subscriptions they don't want, and B.) continuously annoyed the bejeezus out of them, maybe compliance would be much higher. Hardware vendors should really take the high road, and ship consumer machines with anti-virus protection that will be free forever. Free for the first year does NOT cut it. Moreover, I've more than once found myself screaming at the computer, because McAfee's godforsaken anti-virus software was causing me trouble, and it insisted on restarting itself every time I shut it down. My anti-virus software should shut up and GET OUT OF MY WAY, unless I have a virus on my computer. I don't WANT it popping up little windows to let me know about all the creative ways its finding to slow my machine down. I don't want to be dumped to the desktop while playing my favorite videogame, because I accidentally clicked on some stupid notification bubble McAfee shoved in the corner of my screen, to let me know it patched 3K of data. LEAVE ME ALONE.
It seriously gets so bad that I look forward to my free subscriptions expiring, so I can justify uninstalling that junk, and installing ClamWin, instead.
As for phishing... I wasn't even aware there WAS anti-phishing software. Honestly, I don't think software can protect you against human exploits. The best way to avoid phishing is to use that squooshy gray thing between your ears. I hear it works wonders.
While some very early machinima was comprised largely of recordings of Quake gameplay, that certainly doesn't characterize most offerings, today. Most of what you'll find out there now is either music videos or narrative films. Heck, machinima has even appeared at Sundance. I recommend that you take a look around at what's available, before you knock the film-makers. "Red vs. Blue" is a good newbie's introduction to machinima, but if you want a taste of what else is out there, I recommend heading over to The Machiniplex for some flicks. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Actually, there's a lot of machinima used in commercial settings. GameStop is running a series of machinima commercials right now, for example. Somebody got paid for those. Microsoft is also doing a series of machinima ads, online. MTV runs machinima eye-catches, and has a machinima music video show. "Make Love Not Warcraft" is a perfect example of using WoW machinima for commercial use.
You didn't actually read Blizzard's Fair Use Guide before posting that, did you?
No, they don't expect the 16-year-old kid to go out and get a license before he makes his movie. They only want you to get a "content use license" if your film ends up being used for a commercial purpose, or screened in public at a festival. That's not at all unreasonable, since you're making ample use of their artwork in your movie.
I am not some "learn 3D over the weekend" kid. I've used Blender extensively, and I hate it so much that I'm tempted to unload my own personal money for Maya.
1.) I'd have a nice advance towards my Maya fund, if I had a dollar for every damn time I've failed to save the file I was working on, because I didn't notice the little, TINY "Save over" dialog box. I can't think of any other application that feels the need to verify that I really want to save the file I've been working on and saving for the last three hours. And, if you've used Blender for any length of time, you know what rolling the mouse off of a dialog box means...
2.) WTF IS WITH THE $#&*(@&ing dialog boxes that disappear when you roll off of them? I've had to pop the same dialog or menu four times in a row, because I kept accidentally rolling off of it. This is especially annoying if you've typed something into the dialog box, because you have to do it all over again when you bring it back up.
3.) The UI may be lame, but the UI widgets available to script developers make them look like a treat. Many scripts are a nightmare to use -- not because their developers were lacking, but because they just had a godawful poor set of UI elements to work with.
4.) I'm sick of "features" that are really barely supported python scripts, that are often hellish to use (see #3).
5.) Blender actually has some pretty cool features that nobody uses because NOBODY CAN FIND THEM. Who knew that Blender had a retopo tool?
6.) I'm in edit mode, but I have the object button panel selected. Now, I'm in object mode, but I have the mesh button panel selected. Confused yet? It's even more confusing when you're looking for an option that you know is USUALLY on the button panel you currently have selected, but oops -- you're in the wrong mode.
7.) Why does my button that allows me to make only front faces selectable just... disappear sometimes?
8.) And why do my tool tips just stop working sometimes?
9.) Try to talk someone through the texturing workflow, just once. See how efficient they think that is.
10.) Why can't I lasso UVs in the UV editing window? It seems like a pretty obvious feature that's missing.
11.) Why does the left click do something I almost never do, and right click does something I want to do constantly? If I had a dollar for every time I've accidentally moved the center cursor, that would be the rest of my Maya fund.
12.) Why can't I remap the keys?
13.) I can't add programmable shaders without writing them in C/C++? This is 2007, isn't it?
Oh, geeze, I could go on and on and on. 1 and 2 alone have been enough to make me want to tear apart the source code -- but I don't know to what degree the Blender team would be interested in my mods. Sometimes, I think some of the long-time Blender users have a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome.
I think it was seminal, in the sense that many game developers played it, and hold it up as a sort of ideal for quest design, character development, and story development. It's one of those games we tell students to go out and get their hands on, because they need to play this game before they go out into the world to make their own games.
That said, however, in spite of the game's very existence, many in the industry speak of it as though it were an unattainable ideal. The lukewarm market response to PS:T isn't very encouraging for the people who hand out the money. It would take a perfect storm for anyone to get a chance to make something like that again.
However, the risks that the industry is afraid to take are golden opportunities for indies. Get cracking, folks!
I'm a female gameplay programmer, and I have played both male and female avatars, on numerous games. I'd have to say that the only "special twist" most games put in for female avatars is the very special power of not looking like a warthog's arse. Yes, game developers would like to attract more female players, but we aren't stupid. We know that a lot of the people playing female avatars are men. Why would we reward people for choosing a more attractive butt to look at while they played? There are much better ways to attract females to a game than that. Honestly.
Though, rest assured, your theory doesn't make me think any less of you. It's perfectly normal for people to imagine all manner of voodoo lurking in the gameplay mechanics of their favorite games. This is due to a combination of magical thinking and the brain's natural response to the sort of variable reward schedules you find in these games. In short, the human brain is exquisitely good at pattern matching, but is particularly prone to false positives, so we occasionally develop intense faith in patterns that just aren't there. Even knowing all this, I find myself doing the same thing, sometimes.
That said, though, your primary point should not be diminished. Demanding that people don't cross-play is every bit as silly as demanding that the players of spellcasters really be able to cast spells. It's a goddamn escapist fantasy world. So, let people escape!
However, even more important than that, the fact that many female avatars are played by men right now is actually protective, in a way. Sexual anonymity curtails a great deal of potential sexual harassment. When the genders are outed, an abusive person's targets are clear. I expect that this change will make the game completely unplayable for their real female players.
I'm honestly dubious of anyone whinging about a lack of programming jobs in the US. Is there really a shortage of programming jobs, or do they have the wrong (or insufficient) skills? Or, are they in the wrong geographic area, for that matter? Being a career programmer requires some flexibility, and a lifetime of learning, because technology does not stand still. Not to be mean, but a lot of the people who were knocked out of programming at the end of the.com boom shouldn't have been programmers, in the first place.
Believe it or not, there is a drastic shortage of qualified game programmers in some parts of the country right now. Oh, there are plenty of people applying for those jobs, but most of them simply lack the skills. It's tragic.
I strictly block Flash ads, and I block them because too much Flash turns the otherwise mild-mannered Firefox into a lumbering, resource-munching behemoth. If you want me to see your ads, don't use Flash. It's that simple.
Yeah, the only company that ever looked at my transcripts was my very first employer out of school. Nobody else has asked to look at them. When I applied for a visa to work in another country, it was sufficient to show a photocopy of my diploma. On those occasions when employers have asked me what my grades were like, I usually smirk and answer something like, "Good enough to graduate." It has never once kept me from getting an offer. I think, perhaps, how you answer that question is more important than what your answer is. If you hem and haw about it, or get all nervous and awkward, it's going to be unimpressive. You have to own up to it. In your case, you can use it as an opportunity to talk up all the great experience you were getting during this period.
I logged in and checked to see if I had mod points, just so I could mod you up, if I did. Sadly, I didn't. But, that word just makes me bristle every time I see it. I've canceled mailing lists, just because the organization running them frequently posted about their webinars. Just seeing the subject line in my mail box was too much to bear.
Ugh, typing it just now made me tense up in annoyance.
Now, I think you're conflating the notion of "disturbing" with the uncanny valley, in some respects. Nothing in WoW falls anywhere within 100 miles of the uncanny valley, quite on-purpose. They deliberately went for an exaggerated, almost cartoony art style for everything. If you find the undead in WoW disturbing, it's not because of the uncanny valley. The uncanny valley isn't the only thing that is capable of triggering the human disgust reflex. In the case of WoW's undead, it is much more likely that you are experiencing disgust over what they represent, rather than disgust at the eerie accuracy of that representation.
The reason people love to cite "Spirits Within" as an uncanny valley example is because the characters looked, for all intents and purposes, like animatronic corpses on the screen. That triggers the disgust reflex, before you even have opportunity to be appalled by the bad voice acting.
As for AI, I'm not sure why anyone is even discussing this. Most game AI is so abominably terrible that it comes nowhere close to approaching the uncanny valley. Moreover, in many cases, it NEEDS to be terrible. If our AI enemies were as smart as real people, we'd be doomed.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. That's almost exactly what I was saying over here.
Software engineering is often like being asked to plan a space mission to the surface of a planet that we know nothing about. Sending someone safely to our moon is an understood problem. One might suppose that the moon-mission gives us a useful framework upon which we could build our plans for the mystery planet expedition. However, not knowing where we're going raises all sorts of new risks that we must anticipate, if we are to land our intrepid astronauts safely on the surface. What if there is no dry land? What if the gravity is dangerously high? What if the atmosphere is corrosive? How can we validate whether we have addressed all the possibilities?
Ultimately, we have to make assumptions, and unit test our sundry components within the assumed tolerances. We address as many of the edge conditions as we can realistically hope to address within our budget and time constraints. However, in the end, we land Jane Astronaut on the planet surface, and she is promptly stepped on by Godzilla, who is blissfully unconcerned about our risk assessment.
You're preaching to the choir, man. Software engineers don't have to (by definition) program. Computer scientists, likewise, don't have to program. There's a real problem in the fact that we conflate these three disciplines. It's exacerbated by the universities, who often lack a software engineering major, and in their computer science department, end up conflicted with themselves over whether they're meant to be teaching computer science theory or vocational programming. Back when I studied computer science, we were largely forbidden to work with other students on anything, so we learned nothing about developing software in teams, let alone engineering things that other people needed to build -- though, from what I understand, that is improving. Still, there are tragically few people who are actually trained to be software engineers, and that's just a tiny fraction of the people who have it printed on their business cards.
However, since we are apparently in agreement on that point, I'll grant that you have a more valid bone to pick with me on the matter of software engineering discipline. I will grant that there are people who have attempted to codify methodologies for the software engineering discipline that are meant to achieve an "Engineering" level of reliability. That said, your examples are kind of weak. Z notation and UML are languages, rather than methodologies. They will not ensure quality engineering any more than C++ ensures quality code. Formal methods (mentioned towards the end of the "Software development process" article you linked) are really the closest thing to traditional engineering you're going to run into. Though it's extremely rare, in practice, that systems are designed with that level of validation, or that the funding is provided to do so.
Even if the funding were available, I'm not sure that, in practical terms, it would even be feasible in a reasonable amount of time to address all possible software systems with that sort of process. Avionics are a relatively old, stable problem space that doesn't change much. Many software engineers work in areas where the problems are not so well-understood. Their designs -- no matter how formally diagrammed -- often end up being more like battle plans than blue prints.
>> I'm guessing you're not aware that in some countries
:)
>> (for example, Germany I believe) one cannot legally
>> call oneself an Engineer without the appropriate
>> qualifications, in the same way that one cannot
>> call oneself a Doctor.
Given that A.) The OP mentions that Canada restricts the use of the term "engineer" and B.) I live in a state that restricts the use of the term "engineer" in much the same way (and for much the same reasons) as Canada, I'd say your guess is wrong.
However, you pretty much just underscored my point: In the US, there is no way to know if a software engineer is capable. Heck, even in my state, enforcement is weak, if not non-existent. Some companies seem to use the term "software engineer" for most senior programmers, across the board, and it's hard to even get them to make an exception, if you object to that usage. I'm not sure there's any way out of it, at this point.
I was unable to read the article, due to Slashdottery, but from the quote, I think Mr. Wise is failing to understand what "engineer" means. There's no minimal competency required to slap "Software Engineer" on your card, there's no license board that will certify your competence, there's guarantee to a given customer that you have any clue what you're doing, and you are ultimately not liable for damages, in most cases, if you are producing defective work.
It's not that software engineers don't care, or that we're somehow inferior. It's that there's no way to learn software engineering the way Engineering disciplines are learned. You can teach a civil engineer to make a bridge that will stand for 200 years, but there is no educational program in existence that can even begin teach a software engineer to design flawless software. That discipline simply doesn't exist. I can use mathematics to design a concrete structure that is 100% guaranteed to float. I cannot use mathematics to design billing system software that is 100% guaranteed to address all requirements. A hodgepodge of algorithm analysis, best practices, design patterns, gut instinct, pretty diagrams, and programming experience does not an engineering discipline make.
On top of all this, people make demands of software engineers that no one would make of an Engineer. Imagine that a construction crew is halfway through building the bridge which you designed, and then the government comes back to you, and tells you that no, they've decided that really they want the entire bridge to be two feet to the left. Oh, and they don't like how the concrete looks, so could we use granite, instead? Or, imagine that a car company has tasked you with creating a concept car for the Detroit auto show, but they don't quite know what it looks like or what it should do, beyond some vague hand-waving, and they're hoping that you can iteratively evolve a concept car for them, so they can give feedback as you work, but they expect this all to happen for the price of building one car. Then, they come back two months later, and tell you that they've decided that they're skipping the auto show, and instead, they need it to be road legal and ready for production by July.
So, yes, we may call ourselves "software engineers," but we're not really Engineers. We have a lot of uncertainty in our lives, and in all fairness, I, for one, don't want the liability.
The Washington Post is also covering the new transplant technique, with a different human interest story attached.
I really hate to say this, but I would feel negligent if I did not question the wisdom of using this project to drag Crystal Space into the 21st century, when there are more up-to-date, perfectly viable, modular, extensible open source 3D graphics engines available. Ogre3D, for example, is available under the exact same license as Crystal Space, and it supports all of the features you mention, and has already been used to make commercial games. Trust me, developing a pro-quality game is a steep enough hill to climb without burning extra time and money modernizing a somewhat dusty graphics engine. Why risk the mission on that? Is this just a bad case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome, or do you really have a good practical reason to do this? I'm not saying that you should put Crystal Space out to pasture, per se, but I'm not convinced that you should be trying to do all of this at once. The single most frequent mistake made by new would-be indie game developers is biting off more than they can chew. Don't set yourself up for failure. Keep your eye on the ball.
;-)
Now that I've given you the obligatory dire warning, good luck.
I agree. Being a programmer, I think natural language is good for talking to other human beings, and hopelessly inefficient for anything else. Why recite Dickens to a dishwasher, when it has perfectly good knobs and buttons? Why do we constantly suffer under this mad delusion that computers are somehow meant to act like people? Alas, Turing, why did you steer us off this cliff?
Ah, yes, this is one of the reasons I don't miss E3 at all. I'll never forget standing in front of my game, and having slack-jawed idiots come try to chat me up, and then NOT BELIEVE ME when I told them I was the lead programmer on the game I was showing off. Year after year, I still hear lunk-headed idiots hauling out the same old tropes about women not being able to code, and women gamers being attention whores, and women not being interested in games due to various half-baked evolutionary psychology theories, over and over and over again. Seriously, it gets old.
NeutronCowboy is half-right. There are still a lot of people out there who need educating. Though, I don't run into too many of them in the industry, much, these days. The industry is becoming increasingly good about hiring people with brains and social skills. I still see a lot of ignorance and hatred in the general public, though. There's always someone out there who wants to put you down.
Are you serious? I'd pay as much as $4000 for a robot that could pick up items in my apartment and put them away where they belong, neatly, in an organized fashion, when they are not needed at the moment. This is not because I'm lazy. On the contrary: It's because I am too busy to have time to tidy up.
Hell, I'd develop it myself... but if I had time to do that, I wouldn't need a robot to do my tidying.
The FA is making the mistake of succumbing to the fallacy behind the Turing Test. Saying that AIBO is an "advanced" robot is a bit like like saying that ELIZA is an "advanced" AI. Emulating a human or animal does not in any way make a robot more general-purpose. All it does is mean that the robot has the specialized role of acting like a human or animal. No matter how "advanced" they might be, there is no humanoid robot that can currently carry wounded troops out of danger, but there are specialized "mule" robots that can do this. You're not going to stop to criticize the fact that a robot can't smile and say "Have a nice day" while it's hauling your wounded ass out of a combat zone.
It's easy to be frank, when you're blaming someone else.
For the record, as of CS3 (July 2007), Premiere is available for the Mac again.
Your other points are all valid. Anybody who wrote "Final Cut Studio has become the standard when it comes to professional video editing" clearly doesn't actually know any professional video editors.
Given my experiences, thus far, I wish there was less painful interoperability between Adobe's video editing and effects software and Apple's own tools -- but not at the expense of a merger (or worse, potentially losing Windows support). If anything, I'd like to see Adobe's creative software extended to more platforms, rather than fewer. There are a lot of folks out there who would explode with joy to get their hands on a real Linux version of Photoshop.
My worst childhood chemistry accident happened not from my chemistry set (in spite of it containing a cyanide compound), but when I was trying to clean an unrelated stain on my bedroom carpet, with everyday household cleaning liquids. At first, I put dish soap on the stain, but that didn't seem to be doing the trick. So, then, I added a little bleach. Oddly, the dish soap must have had a small amount of ammonia in it, because hello, chlorine gas! That day, I learned an important lesson: Cleaning things is dangerous. Let the professionals do it.
If only I'd been playing with my chemistry set, instead!
If the major anti-virus software vendors didn't make products that A.) tried to lock people into subscriptions they don't want, and B.) continuously annoyed the bejeezus out of them, maybe compliance would be much higher. Hardware vendors should really take the high road, and ship consumer machines with anti-virus protection that will be free forever. Free for the first year does NOT cut it. Moreover, I've more than once found myself screaming at the computer, because McAfee's godforsaken anti-virus software was causing me trouble, and it insisted on restarting itself every time I shut it down. My anti-virus software should shut up and GET OUT OF MY WAY, unless I have a virus on my computer. I don't WANT it popping up little windows to let me know about all the creative ways its finding to slow my machine down. I don't want to be dumped to the desktop while playing my favorite videogame, because I accidentally clicked on some stupid notification bubble McAfee shoved in the corner of my screen, to let me know it patched 3K of data. LEAVE ME ALONE.
It seriously gets so bad that I look forward to my free subscriptions expiring, so I can justify uninstalling that junk, and installing ClamWin, instead.
As for phishing... I wasn't even aware there WAS anti-phishing software. Honestly, I don't think software can protect you against human exploits. The best way to avoid phishing is to use that squooshy gray thing between your ears. I hear it works wonders.
While some very early machinima was comprised largely of recordings of Quake gameplay, that certainly doesn't characterize most offerings, today. Most of what you'll find out there now is either music videos or narrative films. Heck, machinima has even appeared at Sundance. I recommend that you take a look around at what's available, before you knock the film-makers. "Red vs. Blue" is a good newbie's introduction to machinima, but if you want a taste of what else is out there, I recommend heading over to The Machiniplex for some flicks. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Actually, there's a lot of machinima used in commercial settings. GameStop is running a series of machinima commercials right now, for example. Somebody got paid for those. Microsoft is also doing a series of machinima ads, online. MTV runs machinima eye-catches, and has a machinima music video show. "Make Love Not Warcraft" is a perfect example of using WoW machinima for commercial use.
You didn't actually read Blizzard's Fair Use Guide before posting that, did you?
No, they don't expect the 16-year-old kid to go out and get a license before he makes his movie. They only want you to get a "content use license" if your film ends up being used for a commercial purpose, or screened in public at a festival. That's not at all unreasonable, since you're making ample use of their artwork in your movie.
I am not some "learn 3D over the weekend" kid. I've used Blender extensively, and I hate it so much that I'm tempted to unload my own personal money for Maya.
1.) I'd have a nice advance towards my Maya fund, if I had a dollar for every damn time I've failed to save the file I was working on, because I didn't notice the little, TINY "Save over" dialog box. I can't think of any other application that feels the need to verify that I really want to save the file I've been working on and saving for the last three hours. And, if you've used Blender for any length of time, you know what rolling the mouse off of a dialog box means...
2.) WTF IS WITH THE $#&*(@&ing dialog boxes that disappear when you roll off of them? I've had to pop the same dialog or menu four times in a row, because I kept accidentally rolling off of it. This is especially annoying if you've typed something into the dialog box, because you have to do it all over again when you bring it back up.
3.) The UI may be lame, but the UI widgets available to script developers make them look like a treat. Many scripts are a nightmare to use -- not because their developers were lacking, but because they just had a godawful poor set of UI elements to work with.
4.) I'm sick of "features" that are really barely supported python scripts, that are often hellish to use (see #3).
5.) Blender actually has some pretty cool features that nobody uses because NOBODY CAN FIND THEM. Who knew that Blender had a retopo tool?
6.) I'm in edit mode, but I have the object button panel selected. Now, I'm in object mode, but I have the mesh button panel selected. Confused yet? It's even more confusing when you're looking for an option that you know is USUALLY on the button panel you currently have selected, but oops -- you're in the wrong mode.
7.) Why does my button that allows me to make only front faces selectable just... disappear sometimes?
8.) And why do my tool tips just stop working sometimes?
9.) Try to talk someone through the texturing workflow, just once. See how efficient they think that is.
10.) Why can't I lasso UVs in the UV editing window? It seems like a pretty obvious feature that's missing.
11.) Why does the left click do something I almost never do, and right click does something I want to do constantly? If I had a dollar for every time I've accidentally moved the center cursor, that would be the rest of my Maya fund.
12.) Why can't I remap the keys?
13.) I can't add programmable shaders without writing them in C/C++? This is 2007, isn't it?
Oh, geeze, I could go on and on and on. 1 and 2 alone have been enough to make me want to tear apart the source code -- but I don't know to what degree the Blender team would be interested in my mods. Sometimes, I think some of the long-time Blender users have a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome.
I think it was seminal, in the sense that many game developers played it, and hold it up as a sort of ideal for quest design, character development, and story development. It's one of those games we tell students to go out and get their hands on, because they need to play this game before they go out into the world to make their own games.
That said, however, in spite of the game's very existence, many in the industry speak of it as though it were an unattainable ideal. The lukewarm market response to PS:T isn't very encouraging for the people who hand out the money. It would take a perfect storm for anyone to get a chance to make something like that again.
However, the risks that the industry is afraid to take are golden opportunities for indies. Get cracking, folks!
I'm a female gameplay programmer, and I have played both male and female avatars, on numerous games. I'd have to say that the only "special twist" most games put in for female avatars is the very special power of not looking like a warthog's arse. Yes, game developers would like to attract more female players, but we aren't stupid. We know that a lot of the people playing female avatars are men. Why would we reward people for choosing a more attractive butt to look at while they played? There are much better ways to attract females to a game than that. Honestly.
Though, rest assured, your theory doesn't make me think any less of you. It's perfectly normal for people to imagine all manner of voodoo lurking in the gameplay mechanics of their favorite games. This is due to a combination of magical thinking and the brain's natural response to the sort of variable reward schedules you find in these games. In short, the human brain is exquisitely good at pattern matching, but is particularly prone to false positives, so we occasionally develop intense faith in patterns that just aren't there. Even knowing all this, I find myself doing the same thing, sometimes.
That said, though, your primary point should not be diminished. Demanding that people don't cross-play is every bit as silly as demanding that the players of spellcasters really be able to cast spells. It's a goddamn escapist fantasy world. So, let people escape!
However, even more important than that, the fact that many female avatars are played by men right now is actually protective, in a way. Sexual anonymity curtails a great deal of potential sexual harassment. When the genders are outed, an abusive person's targets are clear. I expect that this change will make the game completely unplayable for their real female players.
Believe it or not, there is a drastic shortage of qualified game programmers in some parts of the country right now. Oh, there are plenty of people applying for those jobs, but most of them simply lack the skills. It's tragic.
I strictly block Flash ads, and I block them because too much Flash turns the otherwise mild-mannered Firefox into a lumbering, resource-munching behemoth. If you want me to see your ads, don't use Flash. It's that simple.
Yeah, the only company that ever looked at my transcripts was my very first employer out of school. Nobody else has asked to look at them. When I applied for a visa to work in another country, it was sufficient to show a photocopy of my diploma. On those occasions when employers have asked me what my grades were like, I usually smirk and answer something like, "Good enough to graduate." It has never once kept me from getting an offer. I think, perhaps, how you answer that question is more important than what your answer is. If you hem and haw about it, or get all nervous and awkward, it's going to be unimpressive. You have to own up to it. In your case, you can use it as an opportunity to talk up all the great experience you were getting during this period.
I logged in and checked to see if I had mod points, just so I could mod you up, if I did. Sadly, I didn't. But, that word just makes me bristle every time I see it. I've canceled mailing lists, just because the organization running them frequently posted about their webinars. Just seeing the subject line in my mail box was too much to bear.
Ugh, typing it just now made me tense up in annoyance.
Now, I think you're conflating the notion of "disturbing" with the uncanny valley, in some respects. Nothing in WoW falls anywhere within 100 miles of the uncanny valley, quite on-purpose. They deliberately went for an exaggerated, almost cartoony art style for everything. If you find the undead in WoW disturbing, it's not because of the uncanny valley. The uncanny valley isn't the only thing that is capable of triggering the human disgust reflex. In the case of WoW's undead, it is much more likely that you are experiencing disgust over what they represent, rather than disgust at the eerie accuracy of that representation.
:)
The reason people love to cite "Spirits Within" as an uncanny valley example is because the characters looked, for all intents and purposes, like animatronic corpses on the screen. That triggers the disgust reflex, before you even have opportunity to be appalled by the bad voice acting.
As for AI, I'm not sure why anyone is even discussing this. Most game AI is so abominably terrible that it comes nowhere close to approaching the uncanny valley. Moreover, in many cases, it NEEDS to be terrible. If our AI enemies were as smart as real people, we'd be doomed.