There's a reason classic games were so much better:
Graphics Sucked.
Since graphics of the day sucked, you couldn't take the same game you had before, slap new pixels around it, and say, "Come buy our new game! Aren't these graphics _cool_?"
If you wanted to sell a new game, you pretty much had to come up with a new game. Not new packaging for the same old game again...
It's one thing to decide that "oops, we goofed, we can't handle this much bandwidth." It's completely reasonable.
It's another thing entirely to say, "Oops, we goofed, we can't handle this much bandwidth, let's put in restrictions and not tell our users."
I never believed I'd be a cable-modem user. After all, letting my ISP be run by folks with a cable company's mentality just seemed like a really dumb idea.
Then ComCast@home showed up. And I still can't get ISDN, let alone *DSL.
Now I'm a cable-modem user. And I'm still wondering about the wisdom of letting my ISP be run by folks with the mentality of a cable company....
-F
Re:New... Athlon! With triple-cleaning power!
on
K7 Renamed "Athlon"
·
· Score: 1
Nothing's wrong with K7, they just have to look to the future.
Two generations later, they've got a real marketing problem on their hands. Who's gonna buy a processor if you call it a K9? What a _dog_!
I liked Pirates of Silicon Valley overall. It's an interesting story, even to those of us who grew up with the characters in the news, watching the whole thing as it really happened.
It probably could have been retitled "The Rise and Fall of Steve Jobs"-- most of the interesting parts of the movie were the ones dealing with Apple, not Microsoft. In fact, often it seemed like the Bill Gates scenes were only thrown in because he's the richest man in the known universe, which should make him a sure draw for Nielsen ratings-- but they're rarely interesting scenes. In fact, during the negotiation with IBM, they have to step back and have Steve Ballmer's character tell people that "Hey, this is history! This is important!", but most of the scenes dealing with early Apple were interesting in their own right.
The treatments of historical events was played a bit fast and loose for the sake of the story-- but the character interaction seemed to be right with what we'd expect from these people, whom admittedly, most of us have never met. Steve Jobs comes across as the eccentric we expect. Woz is the technical genius who really doesn't have any clue that he's building 'tomorrow'. Bill Gates comes across as someone who _really_ doesn't like to lose. And the corporate bigwigs are dead-on. None of them believe there can be any money at all in personal computers.
If you're looking for a movie about the geek gadgets that evolved into what we now know as computers, this is not the movie for you. But if you want to get a glimpse into the minds of the people who changed the world, I think this is a good guess at that.
Of course, you should take this review with a grain of salt-- after all, I liked War Games, too...
-F
Re:here's the pricelist [/. effect claims another]
on
Empeg Shipping
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· Score: 2
As to "How much music per gig"-- when compressing my own.mp3 music, I find I get about a compression ratio of 10-12 to 1, depending on the music. Guessing 10:1, and figuring that a 600 MB CD holds about an hour of music (making the numbers easy.:) ), you can figure that 60 MB holds about an hour of mp3, so you can get about seventeen hours of music to a gig. (and as back-of-the-napkin as these figures are, your mileage _will_ vary.)
...but certainly not in the fashion management seems to think of itself. Management has a number of roles.
Management's primary role in a technological field is to remove obstacles from the paths of geeks. Get the details out of the way so that the geek can solve the problem at hand.
Management is also a clearinghouse for decisions. A good project has to have a focus, and you can't get focus by committee. This doesn't actually mean, though, that a manager needs to be technically oriented-- a good manager can handle this sort of decision. Technical background gives one an edge in the decision-making process, but even a manager with a non-technical background can (though it seems he rarely does) get all the information required to make an intelligent decision. This aspect of management is the big time consumer-- and is, in fact, often farmed out to technical types; team leads or project managers. One place I've worked had six or eight projects going on. This made for six or eight project managers, and then one manager above all of them. The one manager covered the first part (getting the obstacles out of the way) for all six or eight groups.
Why is "management" considered "higher" than geeks? Because they need the authority to enforce the decisions. One has to have a chain of command. But if you want to keep your geeks happy, this isn't the important thing. If the manager is respected by the geek, you don't need a "chain of command" to give you "authority" (and it is possible for geeks to respect managers-- maybe even common. If you're not getting respect from your geeks, there's a reason!) Management, like anything else, is a job. If you do it well, geeks will respect you. And the best managers for geeks are ones that don't look like they're managing-- they do the first two things well. But they don't go getting in the way.
Trouble is, this goes against everything else managers read. Managers want to be good at what they do, just like everyone else. Gets 'em promoted. So they read, usually books on management or magazines. What do the books and magazines say? Things like "If it isn't broke, fix it!" and "be proactive!" What they never do seem to say is, "After you've fixed all the things that _are_ broke!" and "about appropriate things."
And that's why geek management needs to be different. Geeks don't respect people who change things just because "change is good". Geeks, being problem solvers, tend to like problem solvers.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a reason classic games were so much better:
Graphics Sucked.
Since graphics of the day sucked, you couldn't take the same game you had before, slap new pixels around it, and say, "Come buy our new game! Aren't these graphics _cool_?"
If you wanted to sell a new game, you pretty much had to come up with a new game. Not new packaging for the same old game again...
-F
It's one thing to decide that "oops, we goofed, we can't handle this much bandwidth." It's completely reasonable.
It's another thing entirely to say, "Oops, we goofed, we can't handle this much bandwidth, let's put in restrictions and not tell our users."
I never believed I'd be a cable-modem user. After all, letting my ISP be run by folks with a cable company's mentality just seemed like a really dumb idea.
Then ComCast@home showed up. And I still can't get ISDN, let alone *DSL.
Now I'm a cable-modem user. And I'm still wondering about the wisdom of letting my ISP be run by folks with the mentality of a cable company....
-F
Nothing's wrong with K7, they just have to look to the future.
Two generations later, they've got a real marketing problem on their hands. Who's gonna buy a processor if you call it a K9? What a _dog_!
-F
I liked Pirates of Silicon Valley overall. It's an interesting story, even to those of us who grew up with the characters in the news, watching the whole thing as it really happened.
It probably could have been retitled "The Rise and Fall of Steve Jobs"-- most of the interesting parts of the movie were the ones dealing with Apple, not Microsoft. In fact, often it seemed like the Bill Gates scenes were only thrown in because he's the richest man in the known universe, which should make him a sure draw for Nielsen ratings-- but they're rarely interesting scenes. In fact, during the negotiation with IBM, they have to step back and have Steve Ballmer's character tell people that "Hey, this is history! This is important!", but most of the scenes dealing with early Apple were interesting in their own right.
The treatments of historical events was played a bit fast and loose for the sake of the story-- but the character interaction seemed to be right with what we'd expect from these people, whom admittedly, most of us have never met. Steve Jobs comes across as the eccentric we expect. Woz is the technical genius who really doesn't have any clue that he's building 'tomorrow'. Bill Gates comes across as someone who _really_ doesn't like to lose. And the corporate bigwigs are dead-on. None of them believe there can be any money at all in personal computers.
If you're looking for a movie about the geek gadgets that evolved into what we now know as computers, this is not the movie for you. But if you want to get a glimpse into the minds of the people who changed the world, I think this is a good guess at that.
Of course, you should take this review with a grain of salt-- after all, I liked War Games, too...
-F
As to "How much music per gig"-- when compressing my own .mp3 music, I find I get about a compression ratio of 10-12 to 1, depending on the music. Guessing 10:1, and figuring that a 600 MB CD holds about an hour of music (making the numbers easy. :) ), you can figure that 60 MB holds about an hour of mp3, so you can get about seventeen hours of music to a gig. (and as back-of-the-napkin as these figures are, your mileage _will_ vary.)
-F
Geeks _do_ need management.
...but certainly not in the fashion management seems to think of itself. Management has a number of roles.
Management's primary role in a technological field is to remove obstacles from the paths of geeks. Get the details out of the way so that the geek can solve the problem at hand.
Management is also a clearinghouse for decisions. A good project has to have a focus, and you can't get focus by committee. This doesn't actually mean, though, that a manager needs to be technically oriented-- a good manager can handle this sort of decision. Technical background gives one an edge in the decision-making process, but even a manager with a non-technical background can (though it seems he rarely does) get all the information required to make an intelligent decision. This aspect of management is the big time consumer-- and is, in fact, often farmed out to technical types; team leads or project managers. One place I've worked had six or eight projects going on. This made for six or eight project managers, and then one manager above all of them. The one manager covered the first part (getting the obstacles out of the way) for all six or eight groups.
Why is "management" considered "higher" than geeks? Because they need the authority to enforce the decisions. One has to have a chain of command. But if you want to keep your geeks happy, this isn't the important thing. If the manager is respected by the geek, you don't need a "chain of command" to give you "authority" (and it is possible for geeks to respect managers-- maybe even common. If you're not getting respect from your geeks, there's a reason!) Management, like anything else, is a job. If you do it well, geeks will respect you. And the best managers for geeks are ones that don't look like they're managing-- they do the first two things well. But they don't go getting in the way.
Trouble is, this goes against everything else managers read. Managers want to be good at what they do, just like everyone else. Gets 'em promoted. So they read, usually books on management or magazines. What do the books and magazines say? Things like "If it isn't broke, fix it!" and "be proactive!" What they never do seem to say is, "After you've fixed all the things that _are_ broke!" and "about appropriate things."
And that's why geek management needs to be different. Geeks don't respect people who change things just because "change is good". Geeks, being problem solvers, tend to like problem solvers.
-F