There is a difference between a pleasant and stimulating environment and the tools used. Windows or any other OS on any piece of hardware are tools. Painting the handle of a hammer in warm pastels would be pleasant but doesn't make a roofer more productive (it just puts money in Martha Stewart's pocket).
But a hammer with a specially designed core could further absorb shock, reducing the strain on the master roofer's hand. This may not make a difference in a single day's work, but over several weeks a roofer may learn to truly appreciate the subtle benefit of a shock-reducing hammer.
It always surprises me when people show disdain at so-called "eye-candy" like Apple's Exposé, or fading menus, or more recently the new Javascript effects which are popping up. People have gotten along without them up until now, so there is this geeky assumption that they're useless frills.
In the space of computer applications, many things that in other domains would be frilly are in fact quite useful. For example, well designed color schemes and web page designs not only reduce eye strain, but help direct the user quickly to important areas.
Lastly, the IT/Internet sector had plenty of pleasant and stimulating environments. At companies which produced less than nothing and went utterly bankrupt after absurdly overvalued IPOs which were followed by everyone bailing with their ill-gotten gains. Leather couches, roller skates at work, and bar stools for seats in front of 21-inch monitors may have been stimulating and pleasant, but I don't recall them actually resulting in productivity of any kind.
These things have nothing to do with work. We're talking about things that make your work easier and less stressful. Shrewd businessmen should be eager for quality design, because it helps up productivity in the short and long run.
For example, a few shrewd companies have been using flat screen monitors for their secretaries since before it was popular. Not only do they "look nice" out in the front office, but they also interact better with most fluorescent lighting and glare, reducing vision care plan costs. A LCD monitor was a "frill" as early as 3 years ago, but people have known that they're better on your eyes for quite some time now.
Now in cubicle land where people do real work... Well, compare the average big corporation's IT department with the aforementioned "pleasant and stimulating environments". In corporate IT, more work is done before lunch every day than was ever done in anything more pleasant and stimulating surroundings because it needs to be done and there's a paycheck in it. A decent paycheck trumps any kind of pleasant and stimulating. Hooters girls giving me massages would be pleasant and stuimulating, but would not make me more productive.
Bullshit. As a cubicle-lander myself, I hate them. They really mess with me. I'm required to listen to some kind of music or noise because cubicles do a poor job of shielding noise. I am always hearing someone else talking, having a meeting, or moving around. Without a door to give people hints when I am concentrating, people waltz in without the slightest regard for my mental state and level of activity. The minimized space might mean they can cram more of us in one place, but it doesn't mean we're more productive as a whole.
It's depressing that even simple principles regarding interaction and interface design are lost on people, who consider it "frilly". Even the UNIX command line exhibits a surprising amount of design within its domain (many commands are short because they are faster to type and retain a uniqueness for tab completion).
What's so sad is that every series you've named outside of Zatch Bell and VH:D is horribly, horribly maimed in the american release. Gundam Seed was actually a decent series once you got about 10 episodes in. One Piece is fantastic and funny when you don't see the neutered American version, where they don't drink, piss, cuss, or die.
And yes, even the Adult Swim version is cut somewhat.
I feel your pain, man. I really do. One of the reasons I watch fansubs is because most of the major anime retailers cannot resist the urge to fuck with the anime, and can't seem to afford decent voice actors (or they have good voice actors but whoever does the sync and remix is lousy).
My feeling is that one of these days, a japanese animation studio is going to realize that releasing their DVDs as region-unlocked with american subs would mean massive profits and wouldn't introduce much cost. They're going to win big, and then anime will truly become mainstream in America.
C) Not that many people in the US are actually interested in watching movies where the women are portrayed as children with blue hair, guys are always "cool" (in a Japanese-thinking sort of way), everyone's eyes go huge and bug out, saliva is everywhere, all the characters overreact, all monsters have tentacles, and the story lines are shrouded in inexplicable nonsense/lack of backstory?
Raise your hand if you've seen Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie? C it is then.
Wait a second. I call straw man on this one! There's horrible anime out there, but there's also horrible TV in all genres. Expecting a magical transformation of bad tv to good just by throwing some asians into the production line isn't exactly the height of logic. You're talking about an animated adaptation of a fightin-genre video game. What did you expect?
I'm an anime geek, and even I hate about 3/4 of the offerings that are coming out these days. Part of it is simple economics in Japan. Kids watch more cartoons than adults, so there are more kid's animes. Now, this is great for the little boys and girls who watch Dogtato or the early-teens who enjoy s-cry-ed, but for most adult audiences, it's not going to hold up.
Simply complaining that there is bad anime, and therefore all anime is bad is similar to complaining that all novels suck because of the Danielle Steel books. It's not fair, it's not logical, it's not going to hold up even at Slashdot.
The majority of people tune it out despite the occasional gem like the Ghost in the Shell series. (Which I think is significantly better than the movie, BTW.)
And then you go on to admit that you've seen anime that is actually quite good. Try this, turn on daytime Nick-TV and try and struggle through that. Just as bad, usually. Not meant for you.
The most frustrating part of being an adult anime fan is that lots of the really good interesting series won't make it to America because they address topics too risky for the american preconeption of "cartoon." DearS, which is focused around modern slavery, has been out forever and it seems like an eternity before I can actually buy those DVDs.
It's frustrating because even finding something interesting like Paranoia Agent in stock at my local retailers is a challenge, and I tend to get overcharged online. Many more people would be interested in Anime if they saw some of the better series instead of having some retarded fan-kid ("it's anime, it must be good!") introduce them via crap.
Beleive it or not, some people really consider graphics to be an intergal part of their gaming experience. They're just as much of a gamer as you are.
You're putting words in my mouth. Don't do that. I didn't say graphics weren't important. I'm saying their importance is overblown by the industry, because that's the easiest way for them to rehash a concept yet again.
I just try to look at games objectively. See what's really different, what's really there, what's really not. People who get caught up in graphics irritate me, because even old-style 2d games can be extremely fun. Of course graphics are important.
And beleive it or not, you are not the sole dictator of what is considered a fun game and not a fun game. It's nice that you don't like FPS's anymore and like playing oddball games, but don't use that fact to raise yourself above him, or anyone else for that matter. Get over yourself.
Look, say what you will about me, that's fine. I understand I'm due for some backlash because I challenged the sacred FPS, but folks need to ask themselves if their games are really innovating and providing something new. If you grab a game and play it for 3 months until the next game in that genre comes out, you probably didn't get a great game.
It's okay to like FPSs. What irritates me is how complacent people are about their games. People calling Bf2 a revolution seriously need to get a reality check. This game is a minor tweak on a theme genre. It may be better than its peers, but compared to the pace of other game genres, FPSs are incredibly stagnant.
Here, let me give you a set of mainstream examples of where other genres are actually moving forward. Tactial Espionage games.
Start with Metal Gear Solid, which was an startlingly new kind of gameplay that no one else had ever fully realized and executed on. MGS1 was nearly flawless and literally founded a new genre. Cut to MGS3, which takes everything we liked about MGS1&2, cleans out the stuff we didn't like (games are supposed to be interactive, MGS2-team!), and then completely restructures the gameplay and raises the bar on the scenes, environment, guard AI, and stealth techniques.
And it's not just MGS in the genre. Check out Splinter Cell. The newest SC game has a Co-Op mode that is, to put it bluntly, fucking amazing. Terrific level and scenario design, clever environments, a kind of duo action that is both familiar and unique. I can't wait to see more games work on getting their multiplayer up to the challenge. That is real progress.
FPSs are still fun. Obviously, I've played Bf2 and I don't hate it. I just think it's telling that minor tweaks like spawn location and an incremental graphics bump are considered Game of the Year material in the FPS genre. Halflife2 was particularly dissapointing to me. People seem to confuse features (new physics engine, whee!) with good applications of those features (a freeform interactive environment where terrain becomes part of the action as more than just cover).
The question to ask yourself is "does this new feature enhance the game/gameplay, or is it a gimmick (ala lensflare from a few years ago)?".
I never said that you can't enjoy KD or WOTS2 and still buy into some games like BF2. I have some guilty pleasure games, like back when KOTOR came out, and more recently with Dynasty Warriors 5. Even then I admit they're not exactly exploding with quality.
I'm not even saying it's bad to like BF2. I just think it sad that the FPS genre is so devoid of innovation that people get excited about little things like spawn location.
I wish people would demand more of their games, but because a relatively bland experience is the norm, people consider it reasonable to play a game for a few months, then toss it aside for the next iteration of FPS-multiplayer software. It's kind of sad.
The PC game industry isn't entirely stagnant. Its mainstream is. Great games come out for the PC, and even being the console whore that I am, I still try and get ahold of some games.
Maybe it's more ambitious than any of the existing alternatives and simply isn't finished yet ?
Considering that WinFS was supposed to be one of the key features of Longhorn, and it was separated from Longhorn and slated to be added to Windows XP and Longhorn as an add-on, it sure gives me the impression that it's done.
It's probably not done though. WinFS has been in the works as a promise practically since WinXP came out. It had better up the ante, because it's had a much longer development time.
The computer world is leapfrog after leapfrong. 5 years ago Apple's OS was (technicalogically) trailing the competition by 5 - 10 years. Today, MacOS is in many ways cutting edge.
Since when has Microsoft been in the business of raising the bar on software? Since Win98, they haven't done much in the way of drastically new technical capabilities.
What competitors are you thinking of ? OS X is probably ahead on the whole, but it's still got performance issues and for most aspects of networking, is worse.
Linux ? It has some advantages in a few corner cases - mainly to do with customisability - but on the whole it's, at *best*, just on par with Windows.
OS X is a superior Desktop OS in every way that matters outside of the games shelf at Game Stop. Linux (and the BSDs for very specific applications) is a superior server OS (this is not a corner case). They are undisputed champions of their domains right now.
Bleeding edge isn't as safely profitable as rehashing out old games.
A truer statement you will not find. The truth is that there are masses of people out there who will cheerfully consume large quantities of mediocre content.
The fact that people are excited about Battlefield 2, which is yet another FPS war sim army-style, just blows my mind. I have a friend who's trying to justify it to me.
"No, it's great. See, the graphics are amazing, and the netplay is wonderful. Now, you spawn on your team leader, and you all work together. It's brilliant!
My response, "So it's yet another Doom clone with new spawn rules and a graphics update. Yee-haw. Know what I was playing? Katamari Damacy and Way of the Samurai 2." Trying to explain to him these games, let alone show them to him, is an utter waste of time. He walks out at the title screen, claiming he can't stand graphics so "old".
It's really depressing, because as long as there are people like him, we're going to see more games like EAInsert-Sport-Here 200X, Halflife 2 (Just like Halflife 1, but more so).
The fact is that Microsoft has code, right now today, to make desktop search happen on Longhorn. If desktop search becomes a killer app for Apple or others (and believe me, it hasn't yet...no one sees floods of people flocking to Apple or some other platform just to get desktop search), Microsoft has the resources to make it part of Longhorn or release it as a separate application...and if it becomes important enough, they will.
Uhh, it's clearly important enough, TFA shows that.
Let's face it. WinFS stalled, and it stalled badly. We can put a pretty face on it by saying that it's Longhorn that caused it with their incredibly long time-to-market, but that's bunk. If it's really ready for use today, why aren't we seeing it? That's the kind of salvo MS would return fire with after they got raked over the coals during the Apple Tiger launch, and before that with the Google Desktop Search agent.
SteveB basically admitted this in TFA, and said in half a year they hope to have a working search package ready for deployment.
The fact is, Windows XP is technologically behind all of its competitors. The fact is, even in that handicapped environment, Google could still build a reasonable desktop search, and MS can't. The fact is, MS is coasting along on their market penetration right now, and if they don't act soon they're going to start losing business.
hahahhahahahahaha...
Ruby on Rails has like what... 5 people using it? Okay lets be generous.. 100...
You realize that the beta of the new Pragmatic Programmer Rails book has sold more copies than that on iteration 1? The demand is absurd.
I'm a Rails novice. My abilities with Rails are only marginal compared to the gurus of the framework. And I am turning down consulting jobs. I work on Rails at work now, both professionally (see where I work in my description and be shocked) and in my current consulting job.
I have turned down two consulting offers because I simply don't have the time in the week to juggle more than 1 full time and 1 part time job. Both were for what I'd consider "enterprise" class applications.
Rails is huge, and its getting bigger. A cursory technorati and google search can show you that. If you can't see this, you're going to be left behind as a web developer.
Well, DirectX is is a whole suite of stuff. But it comes down to two major components that you and I care about.
The most obvious is Direct Drawing, which is high throughput accelerated 2d/3d drawing. Next, is Direct Sound, which is a way to play and mix sounds in real time and play with sound card features.
But, Apple has a good set of OpenGL drivers,(they could be better, of course) and Darwin is supported by OpenAL and SDL. Considering that many games are ported with basically no loss of features or functionality or features, it seems like they are roughly equivalent. Also consider that Id releases games without relying on them, and Id usually pushes their games way ahead of everyone else, and you can draw the conclusion that OpenGL has the advantage.
People target DirectX for the same reason that people target Java. Mediocrity lowers prices for developers, and Windows has a larger installed gamer base.
My comment wasn't about any specific platform - it was about things taking 15+ minutes to compile. As far as I can tell, those days are far from gone! Some of the code I work with takes an hour or two to compile (luckily I usually only have to do that once a day or so, and do single component compiles the rest of the time).
Fix your build system. Except in very rare cases or first-time compiles, you should be able to keep your build times low. I use Qt all the time, and all its complex generated code means it compiles much more slowly. With distcc and ccache, I can usually get my development build times down under the 2 minute mark even for large programs.
Compiling the whole software package that you work on may take longer, but no one cuts a new version more than once or twice a day, and people who use Continuous Integration have build servers.
So yes, they're largely gone if you set up your infrastructure right.
Apple refuses to open up some of their standards or use other people's standards, it remains isolated from the PC world in terms of software compatibility.
You're not getting DirectX, ever. Which is a good thing. DirectX is horrifyingly complex when compared to OpenGL, and it doesn't need to be. Quite frankly, it's MS that needs to change. Things like the.framework architecture, have been around for years, but people are still lagging on them even though they are better ideas.
No one is going to justify a technology downgrade just so that you can play Yet Another WW2 FPS.
Geez kevmo, the chip on your shoulder could cut glass.
I am a professional developer, I work with Ruby, OpenGL, Cocoa (Apple's devkit), Linux, C++, ant Qt all from my four year old mac. It holds up like a champ, and this machine is slower than a mac mini if you remove the Mini's slow disk issue by using a firewire drive.
If you buy a mac mini and then play games on your consoles, you'll get the best of both worlds. On the one hand, you'll get a great OS. On the other, you'll get access to more innovative games instead of endless FPS and RTS rehashes that make up the PC gaming world. And--icing on the cake--you'll spend less than you would on a slick gaming machine.
As of yet, we're still having trouble getting phones and PDAs right. The OS most phones uses just plain stinks. It's clunky, slow, ugly, and doesn't grow with the user. It's also very poorly documented; most phone documentation I've seen only makes passing references to the interface to the phone, instead giving you the minimum effort action to achieve each bulleted "feature".
I'd sign up for something like the Treo if it actually did many things well. But, it's such a comprimise device. It's a mediocre PDA, a mediocre MP3 player, has medicre battery life compared to specialized devices, and there are better phones out there for that price.
For now, I'll carry separate devices that do a job well, rather than comprimising for a combo device.
Apple was so enamored with absolute pure, minimalist design that some designers may argue that ergonomics were compromised.
I'm sure the head of the iPod department will really give two shits about ergonomics when he goes for his daily swim in his pool filled with crisp $100 bills...
Common misconception, "More Features Means More Value." Maybe one day people will crave a PDA that is also a phone and an MP3 player. That day has yet to come.
The iPod is so popular in part because it is a simple, no-frills solution. For most people, the world of players is confusing, riddled with complex features that they don't understand or need. Apple realized this, simpified the approach, and people love it. They then went on to simplify the whole music acquisition process. iTMS is so good that it competes with illegal downloads.
It may not be very geeky, but it's this kind of clarity that the vast majority of novice computer users appreciate. Customization is something experience and confident users will do, and the simple truth is that the vast majority of modern computer users never reach that level of confidence and knowledge.
It is great! Thanks for recognizing. Try running RHEL 2/3 or Debian Woody/Sarge sometime. In a bad month, I'll have to update 1 or 2 packages, usually ones I don't even need to be there (telnet, etc).
Neither are desktop OS's. They may be able to perform some of the tasks of Desktop OSs, but they definitely fall short of even the Windows XP level of functionality. Please compared Apples to, well... something reasonably equivalent. My Pontiac Vibe can't drive through rivers. That doesn't mean that it sucks compared to a Humvee with a snorkel.
I wasn't aware the vendors like Apple could blow off vulnerabilities because they were hard to exploit.
Linus Torvalds sure seems to think it's okay. Linux isn't going to address the Intel hyperthreading issue because of the extreme difficulty of exploiting it in any practical way. Or did you forget that?
And don't go brining up MP3Concept ever again. That ridiculous farce doesn't deserve anymore discussion. It was a stupid example of a file-icon-vs-type, which nearly every desktop environment has when they do not show file extensions.
The last time I checked, some people on Full disclosure spend hundreds of hours on just one exploit.
The point is: you claim Apple has a "fabulous reputation" - I say they don't. They're no different than everyone else. This negates your "fabulous" claim, which is obviously overzealous.
Compared to the rest of the Desktop environment world, Mac OS X has a good track record on security. Compared to its peers, OS X has a "fabulous" security record and turnaround time on most patches for remote exploits.
It is true, and I have already mentioned, that OS X's local security is not-so-fabulous. This is generally considered to be okay for a desktop OS. As Apple moves to the more common infrastructure of x86 and makes inroads in the server market, this policy must change, or they will fail.
I don't see any special "poster child treatment" as far as RH, Gentoo and Debian are concerned. Maybe you're taking this too personally - maybe I'm misinterpreting it?
Your mistake, I think, is in assuming Linux is even a competitor to OS X in the Desktop field. It is not. This is good for Linux and OS X, so let's keep it that way for now.
People who claim OSX has awesome security piss me off. I don't consider myself an absolutist, but if you do, that's fine. I just like to see facts spread around rather than the same old OSX astroturfing that we're seeing so much of lately.
Karma be damned!
Mac OS X is the Linux of the desktop world, in terms of darling status. If you don't like the competition, start working on Gnome or KDE. They need your help. No one else is even trying to compete anymore, it seems. Microsoft is happy to rely on their market penetration to keep them moving forwards, BeOS is dead, OS/2 was basically stillborn.
A key point to take away from this is that Apple's products are rapidly becoming more secure. Tiger is significantly more secure than Panther which is much more secure than Jaguar. Apple's security policy seems to scale directly to their popularity and need. Back durng the 10.2 days, they didn't need much security, OS X was so rare and ran on such a poorly-understood architecture that they were almost never even attacked, let alone exploited.
Tiger seems to be the first Mac OS X release that takes local security very seriously. They now have a lot more security on downloads and application execution. While it may not be ready for Server primetime as Debian, Gentoo and Redhat are, it doesn't need to be, yet.
This implies that you are not a security person. If your main argument is "oh it's patched, it'se secure", you have done a day of security in your life.
There are two kinds of insecure. The first, insecure and everyone knows it, is Windows. That's bad. The second is statistically insecure, which is the state of most software today. Very few systems actually go to the level of rigor provided by OpenBSD which allows them to make bold claims about security.
And even then, they mess up.
Some of us want stable, non-changing software for long periods of time. You know, so I don't have to go through updating foo-OS every week because my vendor can't get his shit together.
Well yeah, that'd be great, I'm sure. But you're tragically misinformed if you think this will ever be the case. The state of software engineering, and by extension security techniques, is constantly changing. In software, you update until you're obsolete. If you don't like that, don't use software.
Indeed, patching something does make it secure after the fact, but it doesn't help with it being secure in the first place. Apple needs to sit down, hire some GOOD programmers, and comb through their code.
Bugs have slipped through, and they will continue to slip through. This is a problem endemic to the industry, and Free Software is no exception. Please do not blame Apple. If you must blame someone, blame the Apple Fanboys who preach absolute security, because they're creating unfair expectations. So far, OS X has a good track record as a desktop OS. As a server OS, I wouldn't go that far.
Maybe the quicktime heap overwrite from last year, that Apple refused to give attention to.
You mean the qts file heap overflow?. The one blown totally out of proportion because successful remote code execution was extremely difficult?
How about the MP3Concept spoof thing floating around early last year? The one apple failed to acknowledge?
Both of these allow me to get access to the computer from somewhere other than in front of it. Especially with some social engineering.
Yeah, too bad they don't work anymore.
Bullshit. Gentoo, Debian, Linux and Freebsd had no vulnerabilites as abusurd as "at not dropping root privileges" in years, Apple did is in Jan. In 1994, it would have been ok to let that slip by, but not any more. Solaris is a different matter..they can't seem to keep their "passwd" utility safe no matter what they do.
Because things like Gentoo, Debian and Redhat get special poster-child treatment. They cheerfully call people when their integrated apps have holes. But, when someone points out that many standard linux applications have holes in them, they claim it's "not part of the distribution."
I go to osvdb, search Apple, OSX and check "remote". I see 56. I don't know what you're smoking. Hell, I see 18 this year alone, and it's only June!
I was talking about on the front page. Yes, Apple has has remote exploits. As I said, in general their track record on patching them has been at least as good as any other commercial vendor. A heck of a lot better than some. They are not the paragon of security, and as they move to intel machines (which, architecturally, are easier to exploit and better understood by the crowd who writes exploits) t
That's one of the reasons people like to say Apple is secure. For remote exploits, they have a fabulous reputation of quick patches. For local exploits, they have an average (good, but marred by a few bad apples, like the sync bug).
But, MacOSX has always defaulted to all-services-off. So, you wouldn't see a worm targetting the AFP server making it very far on the net.
Apple's security is on par with most Linux distros. This does not mean it's OpenBSD. It means that it does have some bugs, but is highly resistant to most attacks. Apple has been able to be more lax about buffer overflows because of the PPC's architecture, which makes a classic buffer overflow more difficult. When they switch to Intel, we'll probably see them step up their local security policy to compensate.
And your comment, "Most of these are ludicrous! Look at how many remote vulnerabilities there are! Some are absurd! Didn't apple do ANY checking?" That implies that you are not a security person, don't really understand the vulnerabilities listed, and are trying to spread FUD. I count 5 exploits that are triggerable remotely (even if they are not going to disclose data and permissions remotely). Of course Apple does checking. That's why the thing isn't riddled with bugs, has awesome security features like a time sensitive, integrity-checking Keychain, and generally has a good set of secure, default settings.
Obviously, so did I. It's easy to do here on Slashdot, where any comment at less than 100% intensity gets lost in the noise.
I meant to imply that they seem to foster a sense of culture of optimism. Their motto seems to indicate that you can run a business without being "evil."
Depends on what you call evil. I participated in a meeting that did marketing once. While the marketers were nice, I couldn't help but feel like what we were doing was strange. We were in a high-rise building, looking down on the peon like people below, making up categories for our users and saying, "how can we make it attractive to them?"
This is smart business, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, lumping people together. Is it evil? Depends on your feel. Does everyone do it in the business? Hell yes, even Google.
I wouldn't call you evil, but you have to admit that you have a sense of pessimism (I'm sure you feel that it's just "realism"). I apologize if you thought I was calling you evil..
Well, I am very cynical about my last two employers, who were all sweetness and roses until they had me sign an employment contract. Then the lies began. There are lots of people like me out here, who wanted to trust our employers so badly that we made bad decisions.
I'm not going to stumble blindly into an electric fence ever again. If this makes me a pessimist, so be it. I prefer to think of it as accepting that not everyone plays as fair as I do, and I need to be prepared both financially and emotionally to deal with it. Just because I am idealistic doesn't mean everyone else is.
Given that Paradox's position seems to be softening from his original post, I think part of him would agree with that. It's obvious, though, that Paradox is probably NOT the type to ever work at Google. I don't mean to sound judgmental but their motto IS "don't be evil" and Paradox's personality borders upon it. That sort of skepticism could be poison in a culture of dreamers.
Ouch!
I'm... evil?
Okay, timeout. When did this happen? Because I'm willing to contemplate the fact that Google could abuse its personal project policy, I am suddenly not a dreamer, not creative, not the kind of person who would ever work at google, and I'm borderline evil?
Forgive me for taking your post with a grain of salt, but that's a heck of a huge assumption?
Not to burst your bubble, but I have 5 emails in my inbox from google employees. Most of them much nicer than ajs, some of them agreeing that concern is valid and explaining to me why Google is a special case. So there are people working at google who shared my concerns.
Sometimes, I read things here that just leave me shaking my head in awe. Your post is one of them. You can be a fan of something without being a raving zealot. You can love something and still criticize it. You can enjoy something but still weigh its pros and cons. You can do something even when you know it's risky.
No, you have never been burned in the past. Please, go find me any company in the past 50 years whose S-1 for their IPO includes a promise not to be evil.... I'll wait, go ahead.
Companies make promises all the time. Companies have made contractual promises to me, written in ink and signed by both parties, that they managed to squeeze out of.
So yes, I have been burned by corporate promises. So far, I think Google has done a good job of not abusing the enourmous power they have over the internet. But, that doesn't mean they are incapable of doing such an action.
You have NEVER been burned, because you've never had the chance. This is classic reverse-psychology. You walk up to someone and say, "I'm not going to be evil," and for the next decade they're watching you like a hawk to see you do something evil. Of course, if Google had filed an S-1 that said, "we intend on razing the Earth and building a little house out of the bones of innocent children," everyone would have chuckled and gone on with their lives.... we're so messed up.
I think you've mistaken me for someone else. I am definitely not an anti-google person. But, I think it's important that we remind ourselves that companies and their culture are not static. Take Apple as a classic case. The company went from edgy and smart to dumb and shallow, and now they're going back the other way for awhile.
No, I don't. You said that Google was asking you to work on a personal project and that they then claimed ownership. No such process occurs. They ask you to spec your own Google project. VERY DIFFERENT. There is a clear understanding that what you are working on is just the same as every other project, just specified by you. Your manager even has to approve it!
I could be pedantic here, but I won't. I didn't realize this was how they worded it. Part of what my original post (the GP) was complaining about was the near-mindless google-hysteria that infects slashdot whenever we talk about this feature of the company.
We had the same problem with the Safari-KHTML fiasco. People got so enthusiastic that they completely left reality, and the backlash was pretty ugly.
I'm not being defensive, and you dodged the point that Google's corporate culture, counter to your claims, does indeed accomplish the things you seem to think that it cannot.
Let me rephrase it then. This feature of google corporate culture allows them to work on projects that they otherwise could not. They are bruteforcing the "What is a good project?" problem. It is clever, I like the idea. The more I hear about it from Google employees (a few of which have emailed me explaining the real story, which I appreciate, thanks folks!) the more I think that Google has safely addressed all the issues around.
But, it takes a special kind of employer to make such a scenario palatable.
Well, I'm sure that if you didn't take the time to write up an idea, they'd be concerned. It is, after all, one of the conditions under which you are hired, and you did agree to do so. If you were unhappy with specifying your own project, you could have negotiated that up-front. Dealing in good faith with your employer is ALWAYS a good idea.
It's not necessarily a good idea, but I strongly believe that it is the professional and ethical thing to do. As my own personal history suggests, it is not always the economically best thing to do. But I freely admit my last two employers have gone above and beyond the call of stereotypical assholery.
What planet does that kind of attitude come from?! Why is it a display of trust to work on a project of your own choosing? Because you might enjoy it? When my boss lets me work on what I want to work on, I'm thrilled. I don't ask, "but will I be able to claim ownership over it?"
Every time someone uses some variant of the word "evil" in association with Google, I just have to laugh. Have you met anyone from Google? This is a company fascinated with the technology of the Internet. This is a company full of people (from founders to trenches) that honestly believe that technology can make people's lives better.
Forgive us. We've been burned many times in the past. Nor would you realize my employer is such a drag by only talking to me.:) Unless, of course, I told you.
Go do some research. The personal project thing is highly confused outside of the company. Inside the company, you are asked to work on a project that has a benefit to Google. It's not your chance to write something for yourself, it's a chance to get paid to work on the Google project YOU WANT. This is no more sinister than not having such a project and having you work on a project of your manager's choosing.
You take exactly what I said, and cast it in a positive light. That's great and all, but let's get with it here. Google's asking you for unpaid work. Yes, they pay you for one day of work on said project, but like all "independent projects", they're hoping you kick spare hours into it.
On the one hand, it's great that Google realizes the potential of this and encourages it. It means that Google's culture is engineer-oriented, which few modern tech firms can boast. On the other hand, they're asking for free work. The only reason I can even imagine this practice in a favorable light is because of Google's terrific track record as a company.
I wouldn't do it for my current employer. Not only would they scold me, they would probably screw me over too. They have a profoundly different track record.
But, that's just the thing. Their corproate culture CAN create these things because their corporate culture allows employees to spec their own project.
No need to be defensive.
You're really reaching for some dirt. My Advice? Give up.
Absolutely not, on both counts. I think that Google's practice is clever and I said most engineers would find it pleasant. I would love to work at Google. But what I don't want to hear is people gush about how Google gives people free time to work on whatever they want.
And if Google ever abuses the engineers who take part in this practice, or penalizes someone for not having an independent project, Google is going to be publicly reamed over it. Working on projects like that is a powerful and significant display of trust that Google's employees have in their company.
That said, I find that the "personal projects" aspect of Google is one of the more sinister. Remember that Google can take your personal project if they want it. So it's not really a personal project, it's funded independent R&D.
It's part of the way Google tries to stay agile. By insinuating ownership over projects that their corporate culture couldn't create, they can come up with things that another company their size couldn't, and do it cheaper (remember, Google employees are salaried, and likely you're going to work on the project in your spare time as well).
Add to that the rumblings we've been hearing about how Google "strongly encourages" employees to have such a project, and you paint Google's practice in a less favorable light.
I'm not saying the practice is wrong, but let's not forget that it's just another way to diversify their investment in an engineer. I think it's extremely clever and most engineers would find it pleasant, but I know I couldn't work on many of my projects because I wouldn't want Google to co-opt them.
Slashdot Mirror
Just another person saying that it seems to work okay on Solaris. Methinks it's your install.
And Mac OS X Safari/Firefox, Windows IE6 (although the transparency is glitchy, of course), and Linux Firefox & Mozilla.
It always surprises me when people show disdain at so-called "eye-candy" like Apple's Exposé, or fading menus, or more recently the new Javascript effects which are popping up. People have gotten along without them up until now, so there is this geeky assumption that they're useless frills.
In the space of computer applications, many things that in other domains would be frilly are in fact quite useful. For example, well designed color schemes and web page designs not only reduce eye strain, but help direct the user quickly to important areas.
These things have nothing to do with work. We're talking about things that make your work easier and less stressful. Shrewd businessmen should be eager for quality design, because it helps up productivity in the short and long run. For example, a few shrewd companies have been using flat screen monitors for their secretaries since before it was popular. Not only do they "look nice" out in the front office, but they also interact better with most fluorescent lighting and glare, reducing vision care plan costs. A LCD monitor was a "frill" as early as 3 years ago, but people have known that they're better on your eyes for quite some time now. Bullshit. As a cubicle-lander myself, I hate them. They really mess with me. I'm required to listen to some kind of music or noise because cubicles do a poor job of shielding noise. I am always hearing someone else talking, having a meeting, or moving around. Without a door to give people hints when I am concentrating, people waltz in without the slightest regard for my mental state and level of activity. The minimized space might mean they can cram more of us in one place, but it doesn't mean we're more productive as a whole.It's depressing that even simple principles regarding interaction and interface design are lost on people, who consider it "frilly". Even the UNIX command line exhibits a surprising amount of design within its domain (many commands are short because they are faster to type and retain a uniqueness for tab completion).
And yes, even the Adult Swim version is cut somewhat.
I feel your pain, man. I really do. One of the reasons I watch fansubs is because most of the major anime retailers cannot resist the urge to fuck with the anime, and can't seem to afford decent voice actors (or they have good voice actors but whoever does the sync and remix is lousy).
My feeling is that one of these days, a japanese animation studio is going to realize that releasing their DVDs as region-unlocked with american subs would mean massive profits and wouldn't introduce much cost. They're going to win big, and then anime will truly become mainstream in America.
I'm an anime geek, and even I hate about 3/4 of the offerings that are coming out these days. Part of it is simple economics in Japan. Kids watch more cartoons than adults, so there are more kid's animes. Now, this is great for the little boys and girls who watch Dogtato or the early-teens who enjoy s-cry-ed, but for most adult audiences, it's not going to hold up.
Simply complaining that there is bad anime, and therefore all anime is bad is similar to complaining that all novels suck because of the Danielle Steel books. It's not fair, it's not logical, it's not going to hold up even at Slashdot.
And then you go on to admit that you've seen anime that is actually quite good. Try this, turn on daytime Nick-TV and try and struggle through that. Just as bad, usually. Not meant for you.The most frustrating part of being an adult anime fan is that lots of the really good interesting series won't make it to America because they address topics too risky for the american preconeption of "cartoon." DearS, which is focused around modern slavery, has been out forever and it seems like an eternity before I can actually buy those DVDs.
It's frustrating because even finding something interesting like Paranoia Agent in stock at my local retailers is a challenge, and I tend to get overcharged online. Many more people would be interested in Anime if they saw some of the better series instead of having some retarded fan-kid ("it's anime, it must be good!") introduce them via crap.
I just try to look at games objectively. See what's really different, what's really there, what's really not. People who get caught up in graphics irritate me, because even old-style 2d games can be extremely fun. Of course graphics are important.
Look, say what you will about me, that's fine. I understand I'm due for some backlash because I challenged the sacred FPS, but folks need to ask themselves if their games are really innovating and providing something new. If you grab a game and play it for 3 months until the next game in that genre comes out, you probably didn't get a great game.It's okay to like FPSs. What irritates me is how complacent people are about their games. People calling Bf2 a revolution seriously need to get a reality check. This game is a minor tweak on a theme genre. It may be better than its peers, but compared to the pace of other game genres, FPSs are incredibly stagnant.
Here, let me give you a set of mainstream examples of where other genres are actually moving forward. Tactial Espionage games.
Start with Metal Gear Solid, which was an startlingly new kind of gameplay that no one else had ever fully realized and executed on. MGS1 was nearly flawless and literally founded a new genre. Cut to MGS3, which takes everything we liked about MGS1&2, cleans out the stuff we didn't like (games are supposed to be interactive, MGS2-team!), and then completely restructures the gameplay and raises the bar on the scenes, environment, guard AI, and stealth techniques.
And it's not just MGS in the genre. Check out Splinter Cell. The newest SC game has a Co-Op mode that is, to put it bluntly, fucking amazing. Terrific level and scenario design, clever environments, a kind of duo action that is both familiar and unique. I can't wait to see more games work on getting their multiplayer up to the challenge. That is real progress.
FPSs are still fun. Obviously, I've played Bf2 and I don't hate it. I just think it's telling that minor tweaks like spawn location and an incremental graphics bump are considered Game of the Year material in the FPS genre. Halflife2 was particularly dissapointing to me. People seem to confuse features (new physics engine, whee!) with good applications of those features (a freeform interactive environment where terrain becomes part of the action as more than just cover).
I'm not even saying it's bad to like BF2. I just think it sad that the FPS genre is so devoid of innovation that people get excited about little things like spawn location.
I wish people would demand more of their games, but because a relatively bland experience is the norm, people consider it reasonable to play a game for a few months, then toss it aside for the next iteration of FPS-multiplayer software. It's kind of sad.
The PC game industry isn't entirely stagnant. Its mainstream is. Great games come out for the PC, and even being the console whore that I am, I still try and get ahold of some games.
It's probably not done though. WinFS has been in the works as a promise practically since WinXP came out. It had better up the ante, because it's had a much longer development time.
Since when has Microsoft been in the business of raising the bar on software? Since Win98, they haven't done much in the way of drastically new technical capabilities. OS X is a superior Desktop OS in every way that matters outside of the games shelf at Game Stop. Linux (and the BSDs for very specific applications) is a superior server OS (this is not a corner case). They are undisputed champions of their domains right now.The first thing I thought when I read the post and skimmed the article was, "Well duh. What did you think neural nets were?"
I guess it's good to prove it, though.
The fact that people are excited about Battlefield 2, which is yet another FPS war sim army-style, just blows my mind. I have a friend who's trying to justify it to me.
"No, it's great. See, the graphics are amazing, and the netplay is wonderful. Now, you spawn on your team leader, and you all work together. It's brilliant!
My response, "So it's yet another Doom clone with new spawn rules and a graphics update. Yee-haw. Know what I was playing? Katamari Damacy and Way of the Samurai 2." Trying to explain to him these games, let alone show them to him, is an utter waste of time. He walks out at the title screen, claiming he can't stand graphics so "old".
It's really depressing, because as long as there are people like him, we're going to see more games like EAInsert-Sport-Here 200X, Halflife 2 (Just like Halflife 1, but more so).
Let's face it. WinFS stalled, and it stalled badly. We can put a pretty face on it by saying that it's Longhorn that caused it with their incredibly long time-to-market, but that's bunk. If it's really ready for use today, why aren't we seeing it? That's the kind of salvo MS would return fire with after they got raked over the coals during the Apple Tiger launch, and before that with the Google Desktop Search agent.
SteveB basically admitted this in TFA, and said in half a year they hope to have a working search package ready for deployment.
The fact is, Windows XP is technologically behind all of its competitors. The fact is, even in that handicapped environment, Google could still build a reasonable desktop search, and MS can't. The fact is, MS is coasting along on their market penetration right now, and if they don't act soon they're going to start losing business.
I'm a Rails novice. My abilities with Rails are only marginal compared to the gurus of the framework. And I am turning down consulting jobs. I work on Rails at work now, both professionally (see where I work in my description and be shocked) and in my current consulting job.
I have turned down two consulting offers because I simply don't have the time in the week to juggle more than 1 full time and 1 part time job. Both were for what I'd consider "enterprise" class applications.
Rails is huge, and its getting bigger. A cursory technorati and google search can show you that. If you can't see this, you're going to be left behind as a web developer.
The most obvious is Direct Drawing, which is high throughput accelerated 2d/3d drawing. Next, is Direct Sound, which is a way to play and mix sounds in real time and play with sound card features.
But, Apple has a good set of OpenGL drivers,(they could be better, of course) and Darwin is supported by OpenAL and SDL. Considering that many games are ported with basically no loss of features or functionality or features, it seems like they are roughly equivalent. Also consider that Id releases games without relying on them, and Id usually pushes their games way ahead of everyone else, and you can draw the conclusion that OpenGL has the advantage.
People target DirectX for the same reason that people target Java. Mediocrity lowers prices for developers, and Windows has a larger installed gamer base.
Compiling the whole software package that you work on may take longer, but no one cuts a new version more than once or twice a day, and people who use Continuous Integration have build servers.
So yes, they're largely gone if you set up your infrastructure right.
You're not getting DirectX, ever. Which is a good thing. DirectX is horrifyingly complex when compared to OpenGL, and it doesn't need to be. Quite frankly, it's MS that needs to change. Things like theNo one is going to justify a technology downgrade just so that you can play Yet Another WW2 FPS.
Geez kevmo, the chip on your shoulder could cut glass.
I am a professional developer, I work with Ruby, OpenGL, Cocoa (Apple's devkit), Linux, C++, ant Qt all from my four year old mac. It holds up like a champ, and this machine is slower than a mac mini if you remove the Mini's slow disk issue by using a firewire drive.
If you buy a mac mini and then play games on your consoles, you'll get the best of both worlds. On the one hand, you'll get a great OS. On the other, you'll get access to more innovative games instead of endless FPS and RTS rehashes that make up the PC gaming world. And--icing on the cake--you'll spend less than you would on a slick gaming machine.
As of yet, we're still having trouble getting phones and PDAs right. The OS most phones uses just plain stinks. It's clunky, slow, ugly, and doesn't grow with the user. It's also very poorly documented; most phone documentation I've seen only makes passing references to the interface to the phone, instead giving you the minimum effort action to achieve each bulleted "feature".
I'd sign up for something like the Treo if it actually did many things well. But, it's such a comprimise device. It's a mediocre PDA, a mediocre MP3 player, has medicre battery life compared to specialized devices, and there are better phones out there for that price.
For now, I'll carry separate devices that do a job well, rather than comprimising for a combo device.
The iPod is so popular in part because it is a simple, no-frills solution. For most people, the world of players is confusing, riddled with complex features that they don't understand or need. Apple realized this, simpified the approach, and people love it. They then went on to simplify the whole music acquisition process. iTMS is so good that it competes with illegal downloads.
It may not be very geeky, but it's this kind of clarity that the vast majority of novice computer users appreciate. Customization is something experience and confident users will do, and the simple truth is that the vast majority of modern computer users never reach that level of confidence and knowledge.
And don't go brining up MP3Concept ever again. That ridiculous farce doesn't deserve anymore discussion. It was a stupid example of a file-icon-vs-type, which nearly every desktop environment has when they do not show file extensions.
Compared to the rest of the Desktop environment world, Mac OS X has a good track record on security. Compared to its peers, OS X has a "fabulous" security record and turnaround time on most patches for remote exploits.It is true, and I have already mentioned, that OS X's local security is not-so-fabulous. This is generally considered to be okay for a desktop OS. As Apple moves to the more common infrastructure of x86 and makes inroads in the server market, this policy must change, or they will fail.
Your mistake, I think, is in assuming Linux is even a competitor to OS X in the Desktop field. It is not. This is good for Linux and OS X, so let's keep it that way for now. Mac OS X is the Linux of the desktop world, in terms of darling status. If you don't like the competition, start working on Gnome or KDE. They need your help. No one else is even trying to compete anymore, it seems. Microsoft is happy to rely on their market penetration to keep them moving forwards, BeOS is dead, OS/2 was basically stillborn.A key point to take away from this is that Apple's products are rapidly becoming more secure. Tiger is significantly more secure than Panther which is much more secure than Jaguar. Apple's security policy seems to scale directly to their popularity and need. Back durng the 10.2 days, they didn't need much security, OS X was so rare and ran on such a poorly-understood architecture that they were almost never even attacked, let alone exploited.
Tiger seems to be the first Mac OS X release that takes local security very seriously. They now have a lot more security on downloads and application execution. While it may not be ready for Server primetime as Debian, Gentoo and Redhat are, it doesn't need to be, yet.
There are two kinds of insecure. The first, insecure and everyone knows it, is Windows. That's bad. The second is statistically insecure, which is the state of most software today. Very few systems actually go to the level of rigor provided by OpenBSD which allows them to make bold claims about security.
And even then, they mess up.
Well yeah, that'd be great, I'm sure. But you're tragically misinformed if you think this will ever be the case. The state of software engineering, and by extension security techniques, is constantly changing. In software, you update until you're obsolete. If you don't like that, don't use software.
Bugs have slipped through, and they will continue to slip through. This is a problem endemic to the industry, and Free Software is no exception. Please do not blame Apple. If you must blame someone, blame the Apple Fanboys who preach absolute security, because they're creating unfair expectations. So far, OS X has a good track record as a desktop OS. As a server OS, I wouldn't go that far.
You mean the qts file heap overflow?. The one blown totally out of proportion because successful remote code execution was extremely difficult?
You mean the one Secunia rated at "Very Low Risk"? because it was trumped up by the mac antivirus community? The one that doesn't work properly if you have "show file extensions" on? The one that Apple publicly acknowledged?
Yeah, too bad they don't work anymore.
Because things like Gentoo, Debian and Redhat get special poster-child treatment. They cheerfully call people when their integrated apps have holes. But, when someone points out that many standard linux applications have holes in them, they claim it's "not part of the distribution."
I was talking about on the front page. Yes, Apple has has remote exploits. As I said, in general their track record on patching them has been at least as good as any other commercial vendor. A heck of a lot better than some. They are not the paragon of security, and as they move to intel machines (which, architecturally, are easier to exploit and better understood by the crowd who writes exploits) t
That's one of the reasons people like to say Apple is secure. For remote exploits, they have a fabulous reputation of quick patches. For local exploits, they have an average (good, but marred by a few bad apples, like the sync bug).
But, MacOSX has always defaulted to all-services-off. So, you wouldn't see a worm targetting the AFP server making it very far on the net.
Apple's security is on par with most Linux distros. This does not mean it's OpenBSD. It means that it does have some bugs, but is highly resistant to most attacks. Apple has been able to be more lax about buffer overflows because of the PPC's architecture, which makes a classic buffer overflow more difficult. When they switch to Intel, we'll probably see them step up their local security policy to compensate.
And your comment, "Most of these are ludicrous! Look at how many remote vulnerabilities there are! Some are absurd! Didn't apple do ANY checking?" That implies that you are not a security person, don't really understand the vulnerabilities listed, and are trying to spread FUD. I count 5 exploits that are triggerable remotely (even if they are not going to disclose data and permissions remotely). Of course Apple does checking. That's why the thing isn't riddled with bugs, has awesome security features like a time sensitive, integrity-checking Keychain, and generally has a good set of secure, default settings.
This is smart business, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth, lumping people together. Is it evil? Depends on your feel. Does everyone do it in the business? Hell yes, even Google.
Well, I am very cynical about my last two employers, who were all sweetness and roses until they had me sign an employment contract. Then the lies began. There are lots of people like me out here, who wanted to trust our employers so badly that we made bad decisions.I'm not going to stumble blindly into an electric fence ever again. If this makes me a pessimist, so be it. I prefer to think of it as accepting that not everyone plays as fair as I do, and I need to be prepared both financially and emotionally to deal with it. Just because I am idealistic doesn't mean everyone else is.
I'm... evil?
Okay, timeout. When did this happen? Because I'm willing to contemplate the fact that Google could abuse its personal project policy, I am suddenly not a dreamer, not creative, not the kind of person who would ever work at google, and I'm borderline evil?
Forgive me for taking your post with a grain of salt, but that's a heck of a huge assumption?
Not to burst your bubble, but I have 5 emails in my inbox from google employees. Most of them much nicer than ajs, some of them agreeing that concern is valid and explaining to me why Google is a special case. So there are people working at google who shared my concerns.
Sometimes, I read things here that just leave me shaking my head in awe. Your post is one of them. You can be a fan of something without being a raving zealot. You can love something and still criticize it. You can enjoy something but still weigh its pros and cons. You can do something even when you know it's risky.
Companies make promises all the time. Companies have made contractual promises to me, written in ink and signed by both parties, that they managed to squeeze out of.
So yes, I have been burned by corporate promises. So far, I think Google has done a good job of not abusing the enourmous power they have over the internet. But, that doesn't mean they are incapable of doing such an action.
I think you've mistaken me for someone else. I am definitely not an anti-google person. But, I think it's important that we remind ourselves that companies and their culture are not static. Take Apple as a classic case. The company went from edgy and smart to dumb and shallow, and now they're going back the other way for awhile.
I could be pedantic here, but I won't. I didn't realize this was how they worded it. Part of what my original post (the GP) was complaining about was the near-mindless google-hysteria that infects slashdot whenever we talk about this feature of the company.
We had the same problem with the Safari-KHTML fiasco. People got so enthusiastic that they completely left reality, and the backlash was pretty ugly.
Let me rephrase it then. This feature of google corporate culture allows them to work on projects that they otherwise could not. They are bruteforcing the "What is a good project?" problem. It is clever, I like the idea. The more I hear about it from Google employees (a few of which have emailed me explaining the real story, which I appreciate, thanks folks!) the more I think that Google has safely addressed all the issues around.
But, it takes a special kind of employer to make such a scenario palatable.
It's not necessarily a good idea, but I strongly believe that it is the professional and ethical thing to do. As my own personal history suggests, it is not always the economically best thing to do. But I freely admit my last two employers have gone above and beyond the call of stereotypical assholery.
Con
I agree with this, heartily.
On the one hand, it's great that Google realizes the potential of this and encourages it. It means that Google's culture is engineer-oriented, which few modern tech firms can boast. On the other hand, they're asking for free work. The only reason I can even imagine this practice in a favorable light is because of Google's terrific track record as a company.
I wouldn't do it for my current employer. Not only would they scold me, they would probably screw me over too. They have a profoundly different track record.
No need to be defensive. Absolutely not, on both counts. I think that Google's practice is clever and I said most engineers would find it pleasant. I would love to work at Google. But what I don't want to hear is people gush about how Google gives people free time to work on whatever they want.And if Google ever abuses the engineers who take part in this practice, or penalizes someone for not having an independent project, Google is going to be publicly reamed over it. Working on projects like that is a powerful and significant display of trust that Google's employees have in their company.
I like Google. I'd love to work at Google.
That said, I find that the "personal projects" aspect of Google is one of the more sinister. Remember that Google can take your personal project if they want it. So it's not really a personal project, it's funded independent R&D.
It's part of the way Google tries to stay agile. By insinuating ownership over projects that their corporate culture couldn't create, they can come up with things that another company their size couldn't, and do it cheaper (remember, Google employees are salaried, and likely you're going to work on the project in your spare time as well).
Add to that the rumblings we've been hearing about how Google "strongly encourages" employees to have such a project, and you paint Google's practice in a less favorable light.
I'm not saying the practice is wrong, but let's not forget that it's just another way to diversify their investment in an engineer. I think it's extremely clever and most engineers would find it pleasant, but I know I couldn't work on many of my projects because I wouldn't want Google to co-opt them.