Icefrog did all the hardest work, by far. He brought the hero count up to absurd numbers and did amazing amounts of polish and balance work as well as technical work to keep the file size reasonable. What he has pulled off is phenomenal.
Speaking as a game developer, I'm excited by this. I did the Linux ports of Doom/Quake in the 90's and got in some trouble for a phone-home script called "runme" which gave me great data on the systems out there (btw, there was a file called README which explained exactly what it did, but I had a hunch most people would be too lazy to read, which they generally were). The data was fantastic, but it was just a drop sample way back, and I'd love to learn what's out there now.
It's hard to justify supporting Linux as a game platform because the deployment isn't well understood. If Ubuntu goes public with the data, it'll be super valuable to anyone wanting to bring native games to Linux.
I'm quite certain game designers would be better at it than our current leaders. They have the humility and experience to know that you need to observe and iterate on your systems of motivation, that it needs to be "easy to learn, hard to master", and that it needs to be encouragingly paced and balanced. I agree with you that levels of control are quite different between a game and the real world, but I still feel they have much better high-level experience, and they have proven track records of getting people to do incredibly mind-numbing things for very long periods of time while still feeling satisfied by the results. I've yet to hear of a better qualification to design a system to motivate us to do a lot of the mind-numbing jobs required of us.
As for the smart folks having tried and failed argument, I don't doubt it, but when you consider that to change it, you need to take immense wealth away from the immensely wealthy, you can see why short of revolution, it's been hard to reset initial conditions to something fair. Now that we have a global economy, attempting to change the laws in any country will just have the effect of the wealthy shifting assets to other countries not covered by treaties reflecting those laws, which usually lag badly, giving them plenty of time to squirm out of the country's laws they don't like and into a country more hospitable to their needs.
It's a problem that you find in MMO's, too. When you patch it later in such a way as to take wealth and assets away from the early adopters in order to balance things, for instance to free up land for development, you get threats that they will abandon the game and use their considerable influence to urge others to follow suit.
To AC, your analogy is not without merit. I insisted on adding those two features because I felt it would improve the game for gamers, unaware of the rules against them at the major portals. To a large degree, it's my fault, but it's definitely more fun to see your high scores show up against others, and on June 16, when we released a massive patch that dramatically improved the look of the game for free, I think that was good for the players, too. We of course considered removing those features but felt they would increase our odds of portal approvals at the expense of the players, which is not cool.
If you try it, you'll see how the high scores are a huge part of the experience. Removing them is like removing the high scores from a pinball game in my opinion. It's still fun, but it takes out a big reason to get better at the game.
I apologize for making it sound like an advertisement, but as I pointed out, little opportunities like these are just about the only exposure opportunities we get, and I thought it appropriate to the conversation and an opportunity to mention it.
As for the who-cares-about-bubble-pop-games sentiment, the market got flooded with a lot of bubble crap for a while there, and it definitely hurts us. Same thing has happened to several genres. Every once in a while, a genre comes back, as adventure games did when the casual market got big. I hope the same will happen to bubble pop games. Beakiez is not one of the many also-rans that flooded the genre. It's got several novel bits to it and is tuned for hardcore bubble pop fans. I long ago lost the ability to get into the top-10.
Anyway, my point was mainly that competition is fierce, the markets are stratifying, and this isn't an issue unique to games, as others have pointed out. Less money to go around makes for a tougher time for the losers of the game of capitalism, which is in large part what's behind that Gamasutra article.
Behind the stress is mostly flooded markets and a lack of cash to go around for everybody.
We've been producing a game called Beakiez (http://beakiez.com), which is a super hardcore bubble pop game. Indie team, no funding, just using savings and odd jobs to fund it. Despite getting reports that it's a lot of fun and that going for the high scores is quite addictive, we've been denied by all the major casual game portals for the following reasons: a. it auto-patches when new versions come out, b. it talks to a central server to list high scores, and c. it's a bubble pop game. Almost all the major portals have strict guidelines that don't allow external server connections or auto-patching, and one really major portal normally associated with being indie-friendly has an issue with bubble pop games, as they've been deemed a "dead genre." As a result, we got rejected from some of the biggest portals out there.
This means we have to get every single player to come to our website and to buy from us directly. As you can imagine, this isn't easy. It can be really hard on morale, but you have to let go and not be angry.
This isn't really just about the game industry at all. One thing that's become extremely obvious to me as a game designer is that capitalism features extremely poor balancing and pacing. Imagine if in WoW, 50% of the players never leveled their characters once, as it was excruciatingly difficult to get to level 2, and really only 5% made it to level 5. From there on out, levels 6 to 80, levels get progressively easier to get past, to where you can literally wake up and find that you've gotten through 8 advanced levels in your sleep, equivalent to waking up and making $100k in interest income, for example.
Capitalism is essentially the world's oldest MMO, and the rules (laws) are so complex and hackishly patched that you have to rent people (lawyers) to interpret small corners of them. The more money you have, the more people you can hire to navigate and circumvent those rules, so you get a lot of cheaters at the top. In an MMO, this would lead to a mass exodus from the game to a competing game, but capitalism doesn't really let you leave. It's the game we all have to play.
I keep hope alive that someday our elected representatives and lawmakers will be accomplished game designers. They know how to motivate people better than just about anyone. They make addictive, balanced, and fair systems for a living. I frankly think our industry's best designers could run circles around today's top politicians and lawmakers.
In the meantime, I think we all just need to keep our noses to the grindstone, lower those burn rates, and try to eek out what satisfaction we can in our work and personal lives.
Find a project with a mailing list where people are asking for a feature that is just below the radar, keeps getting put off because of more important things. Implement it, submit the patch, and pray. If no love, which is unfortunately common and even likely for new contributors, shoot video of the feature in action and send a letter out to the mailing list linking the video, and let them know where they can find the patch if they want it, start collecting and posting feedback on the patch from users.
Given the complexity and inherent risk of these things, it seems considerably more reasonable to just create artificial life that doesn't need an atmosphere, water, day cycles, and all that organic nonsense.
Exactly. Moreover, the "use alpha-numerics" nonsense doesn't help much. A purely case-sensitive password 8 characters long with no alphanumerics can have 53,459,728,531,456 permutations. That's way more than enough when coupled with this simple permanent/temporary lockout technique Kral mentions above.
If they just made the government an open operation, as they promised to, they wouldn't have to waste time tracking down untrue shit and correcting conspiracy theories, because people would already have easy access to the information debunking the nutters. Privacy gets lots of attention as being super important, but frankly, it's the root of most evil. When you go open, you diffuse a lot of drama.
Actually, one of the best things you can do is push back on the changing priorities. Take the initiative to decide what is most important, and do it to completion, even if they're telling you to jump on the new task-du-jour. In the long-term, this is much healthier, because it's been shown again and again that humans are super not handy at multi-tasking, so you get much less effective work out of coders when you switch priorities a lot. No piece of software will ever get over that underlying task-switching cost.
A lot of coders get nervous about taking the reins like this, but I have pretty specific advice regarding it: You should do what you believe is in the best interest of the company, and you should stick to it through completion, until you're either fired or promoted for it. If you're fired, you've got the perfect story. "Their real issue was that the poor customer experience was losing clients, but they kept trying to jump me around to these other priorities to close new clients that we could quickly lose, and it was a waste of time, so I put my foot down and focused on the root issue. They fired me for it." That's the way to go out, not in a dithering, clinging-to-your-job-doing-what-you're-told-even-though-you-know-it's-ineffective withering departure. Obviously, if you're promoted, it's all win.
Frankly, that great coders very rarely get fired, no matter how outlandishly they behave. Most coders have no idea how much power they hold and how incredibly scarce they are. As dumb as some of the pointy-haired types get, they almost always know that it's the coders making the product, not them. I've done talent representation for coders (sounds odd, I know, but great coders are a hot commodity), and they're consistently surprised at the terms they can get.
Anyway, I know that's detracting a bit from what you're after, but I hear this request for production management tools a lot, and partly to do with the switching priorities as a reason. But when I'm talking to the great teams, they aren't great because they have the perfect project management tools. They often use pretty simple shit. They're great because they're pragmatic, focus on doing fewer things to completion, and they get a lot less distracted by the day-to-day theories and opportunity-chasing. Capitalism rewards this, and it also leads to a much lighter load on your project management needs.
They've never been lax with John when he had complications like these. This really comes across as unfair to me, particularly in light of the fact that he has done the most with the least money while also being the most open about his process.
I've been in this position a few times because in game development, there are lots of bad games out there that are rushed to completion to sync them up with the release of a film, for example, or to hit Christmas, or because a publisher is trying to make its quarter or because a developer is running out of money.
Here's your lame project survival kit:
1. Stick close to the most talented folks on the team, and treat them as your real boss. Pretty soon, they're going to leave. Make sure they have fond memories of you, so that they can recommend you where they end up, and make sure you get their personal email addresses. Everybody loves a good, helpful coder. This is by far and away the most useful thing you can do for both your soul and the long-term health of your career.
2. Drop the project from your resume. Mention the company but explain that you worked on various projects there.
3. Take responsibility for turning the project around, find a scapegoat in sales, gather evidence, and pin it on him (never in writing) when it goes down in flames. This will make you part evil and is a big part of how people fail upwards, but lots of folks have had made lucrative careers using this approach.
4. Lame projects typically have poor direction and allow people to get away with doing whatever they want without being fired, as long as they look busy. So invent a task that or sub-project that results in a short, flashy demo or video that makes you look good to your next employer.
5. Flatter the slimiest, most inept manager in the group. They typically crave this because no one recognizes their true "genius". They also often pick option 3. and end up attached to some new project to fuck up, which can buy time while you're looking for a new job. They work hard to surround themselves with loyal useful people who say nice things about them.
6. Start humbly asking to buy the CEO lunch and start picking his brain on executive management or anything he knows lots about and seems to be passionate about discussing. Never let him pay for lunch, because you consider it too educational. You may or may not be interested in what he has to say, but the key thing is face time. When things go to poo, it'll be harder for him to fire you.
7. Stop being lazy about your future. Look hard for another job. Put 1-2 hours into it every day after you come home from work. Lame projects blacken and destroy souls.
He could always go insecure and just have an open Presidency, per his campaign promises.
Honestly, it would be a lot better for the country if he did. He would then have a lot more eyeballs on the country's issues, and as a great Finn once said, "With many eyeballs, all problems become shallow."
I like Obama and voted for him, but it takes balls, bigger ones than I think he has.
Pay instead to have people walk the sidewalks and spray down dog poop so that the ground can absorb the nutrients. Dog poop gone, free fertilizer, problem solved. If the US took better care of its sidewalks, more people would enjoy walking, which is precisely what the country needs in particular, both to get off oil, and to get our fat citizens walking again. It's totally ridiculous that we're bagging fertilizer in plastic and then burying it in land fills.
When you have universal surveillance, it becomes much harder to steal someone's identity without getting caught, because you are visible, too.
Let's say that someone stole my identity to use my credit card to buy a Playstation/3. It's going to show up as a transaction on my credit card at a certain time, and it's going to get delivered somewhere at a certain time. The retailer and the victim can now go through footage to see who was there to accept the package.
This dramatically lowers the cost of law enforcement and democratizes it. You can now do a lot of the homework yourself.
The main drawbacks to universal surveillance are the high cost of the infrastructure and maintenance, as well as a tough time adjusting for anyone who didn't grow up with it.
It has a very long list of benefits, including one that I think people do not readily consider- a sense of community.
I believe surveillance, when universal, and when the feeds are available to all, can be an extremely good thing. This essentially emulates small town life, but with the benefit that you have so many people out there, that odds are excellent that you're going to find lots of other people engaging in your behavior, and even better, people will see the context in which your behavior is marinating.
I think this creates a glass house society where you quickly realize that everyone is human, can much more easily sympathize with the poor, and the rich and powerful cannot get away with quite as much.
There are lots of other benefits of doing this, from law enforcement (in a non-Orwellian way) automation, to the relaxation of the executive branch, to having perfect forensic details of all kinds of events that would teach us about human society much faster than we've ever been able to learn about it before, to providing a vast source of entertainment and education.
The only issue with surveillance is when it is not universal and when the feeds are not available to all.
Speaking as another one of the knuckledragging retards, I have to say that I welcome our well-deserved international image, and I hope we suffer the consequences for it. We had our time in the sun, we squandered it, and we deserve everything that is happening to us now and everything that is coming.
I don't care that we were involved in civil disobedience. That's lovely, but it's results that matter. We elected that cretin to run our country, and every day we remain in this country and pay our taxes, we are complicit in the crimes he commits on our behalf.
Slashdot Mirror
Icefrog did all the hardest work, by far. He brought the hero count up to absurd numbers and did amazing amounts of polish and balance work as well as technical work to keep the file size reasonable. What he has pulled off is phenomenal.
Speaking as a game developer, I'm excited by this. I did the Linux ports of Doom/Quake in the 90's and got in some trouble for a phone-home script called "runme" which gave me great data on the systems out there (btw, there was a file called README which explained exactly what it did, but I had a hunch most people would be too lazy to read, which they generally were). The data was fantastic, but it was just a drop sample way back, and I'd love to learn what's out there now.
It's hard to justify supporting Linux as a game platform because the deployment isn't well understood. If Ubuntu goes public with the data, it'll be super valuable to anyone wanting to bring native games to Linux.
I'm quite certain game designers would be better at it than our current leaders. They have the humility and experience to know that you need to observe and iterate on your systems of motivation, that it needs to be "easy to learn, hard to master", and that it needs to be encouragingly paced and balanced. I agree with you that levels of control are quite different between a game and the real world, but I still feel they have much better high-level experience, and they have proven track records of getting people to do incredibly mind-numbing things for very long periods of time while still feeling satisfied by the results. I've yet to hear of a better qualification to design a system to motivate us to do a lot of the mind-numbing jobs required of us.
As for the smart folks having tried and failed argument, I don't doubt it, but when you consider that to change it, you need to take immense wealth away from the immensely wealthy, you can see why short of revolution, it's been hard to reset initial conditions to something fair. Now that we have a global economy, attempting to change the laws in any country will just have the effect of the wealthy shifting assets to other countries not covered by treaties reflecting those laws, which usually lag badly, giving them plenty of time to squirm out of the country's laws they don't like and into a country more hospitable to their needs.
It's a problem that you find in MMO's, too. When you patch it later in such a way as to take wealth and assets away from the early adopters in order to balance things, for instance to free up land for development, you get threats that they will abandon the game and use their considerable influence to urge others to follow suit.
Thanks for the replies. I read them all.
To AC, your analogy is not without merit. I insisted on adding those two features because I felt it would improve the game for gamers, unaware of the rules against them at the major portals. To a large degree, it's my fault, but it's definitely more fun to see your high scores show up against others, and on June 16, when we released a massive patch that dramatically improved the look of the game for free, I think that was good for the players, too. We of course considered removing those features but felt they would increase our odds of portal approvals at the expense of the players, which is not cool.
If you try it, you'll see how the high scores are a huge part of the experience. Removing them is like removing the high scores from a pinball game in my opinion. It's still fun, but it takes out a big reason to get better at the game.
I apologize for making it sound like an advertisement, but as I pointed out, little opportunities like these are just about the only exposure opportunities we get, and I thought it appropriate to the conversation and an opportunity to mention it.
As for the who-cares-about-bubble-pop-games sentiment, the market got flooded with a lot of bubble crap for a while there, and it definitely hurts us. Same thing has happened to several genres. Every once in a while, a genre comes back, as adventure games did when the casual market got big. I hope the same will happen to bubble pop games. Beakiez is not one of the many also-rans that flooded the genre. It's got several novel bits to it and is tuned for hardcore bubble pop fans. I long ago lost the ability to get into the top-10.
Anyway, my point was mainly that competition is fierce, the markets are stratifying, and this isn't an issue unique to games, as others have pointed out. Less money to go around makes for a tougher time for the losers of the game of capitalism, which is in large part what's behind that Gamasutra article.
Behind the stress is mostly flooded markets and a lack of cash to go around for everybody.
We've been producing a game called Beakiez (http://beakiez.com), which is a super hardcore bubble pop game. Indie team, no funding, just using savings and odd jobs to fund it. Despite getting reports that it's a lot of fun and that going for the high scores is quite addictive, we've been denied by all the major casual game portals for the following reasons: a. it auto-patches when new versions come out, b. it talks to a central server to list high scores, and c. it's a bubble pop game. Almost all the major portals have strict guidelines that don't allow external server connections or auto-patching, and one really major portal normally associated with being indie-friendly has an issue with bubble pop games, as they've been deemed a "dead genre." As a result, we got rejected from some of the biggest portals out there.
This means we have to get every single player to come to our website and to buy from us directly. As you can imagine, this isn't easy. It can be really hard on morale, but you have to let go and not be angry.
This isn't really just about the game industry at all. One thing that's become extremely obvious to me as a game designer is that capitalism features extremely poor balancing and pacing. Imagine if in WoW, 50% of the players never leveled their characters once, as it was excruciatingly difficult to get to level 2, and really only 5% made it to level 5. From there on out, levels 6 to 80, levels get progressively easier to get past, to where you can literally wake up and find that you've gotten through 8 advanced levels in your sleep, equivalent to waking up and making $100k in interest income, for example.
Capitalism is essentially the world's oldest MMO, and the rules (laws) are so complex and hackishly patched that you have to rent people (lawyers) to interpret small corners of them. The more money you have, the more people you can hire to navigate and circumvent those rules, so you get a lot of cheaters at the top. In an MMO, this would lead to a mass exodus from the game to a competing game, but capitalism doesn't really let you leave. It's the game we all have to play.
I keep hope alive that someday our elected representatives and lawmakers will be accomplished game designers. They know how to motivate people better than just about anyone. They make addictive, balanced, and fair systems for a living. I frankly think our industry's best designers could run circles around today's top politicians and lawmakers.
In the meantime, I think we all just need to keep our noses to the grindstone, lower those burn rates, and try to eek out what satisfaction we can in our work and personal lives.
Find a project with a mailing list where people are asking for a feature that is just below the radar, keeps getting put off because of more important things. Implement it, submit the patch, and pray. If no love, which is unfortunately common and even likely for new contributors, shoot video of the feature in action and send a letter out to the mailing list linking the video, and let them know where they can find the patch if they want it, start collecting and posting feedback on the patch from users.
For future reference, suggestions are better received when they come with funding to write them, even if the pay is very modest.
Agreed. The oil was either going to enter the water or the atmosphere. Either way, it's a mess. Just more visible this way.
Given the complexity and inherent risk of these things, it seems considerably more reasonable to just create artificial life that doesn't need an atmosphere, water, day cycles, and all that organic nonsense.
Exactly. Moreover, the "use alpha-numerics" nonsense doesn't help much. A purely case-sensitive password 8 characters long with no alphanumerics can have 53,459,728,531,456 permutations. That's way more than enough when coupled with this simple permanent/temporary lockout technique Kral mentions above.
If they just made the government an open operation, as they promised to, they wouldn't have to waste time tracking down untrue shit and correcting conspiracy theories, because people would already have easy access to the information debunking the nutters. Privacy gets lots of attention as being super important, but frankly, it's the root of most evil. When you go open, you diffuse a lot of drama.
Actually, one of the best things you can do is push back on the changing priorities. Take the initiative to decide what is most important, and do it to completion, even if they're telling you to jump on the new task-du-jour. In the long-term, this is much healthier, because it's been shown again and again that humans are super not handy at multi-tasking, so you get much less effective work out of coders when you switch priorities a lot. No piece of software will ever get over that underlying task-switching cost.
A lot of coders get nervous about taking the reins like this, but I have pretty specific advice regarding it: You should do what you believe is in the best interest of the company, and you should stick to it through completion, until you're either fired or promoted for it. If you're fired, you've got the perfect story. "Their real issue was that the poor customer experience was losing clients, but they kept trying to jump me around to these other priorities to close new clients that we could quickly lose, and it was a waste of time, so I put my foot down and focused on the root issue. They fired me for it." That's the way to go out, not in a dithering, clinging-to-your-job-doing-what-you're-told-even-though-you-know-it's-ineffective withering departure. Obviously, if you're promoted, it's all win.
Frankly, that great coders very rarely get fired, no matter how outlandishly they behave. Most coders have no idea how much power they hold and how incredibly scarce they are. As dumb as some of the pointy-haired types get, they almost always know that it's the coders making the product, not them. I've done talent representation for coders (sounds odd, I know, but great coders are a hot commodity), and they're consistently surprised at the terms they can get.
Anyway, I know that's detracting a bit from what you're after, but I hear this request for production management tools a lot, and partly to do with the switching priorities as a reason. But when I'm talking to the great teams, they aren't great because they have the perfect project management tools. They often use pretty simple shit. They're great because they're pragmatic, focus on doing fewer things to completion, and they get a lot less distracted by the day-to-day theories and opportunity-chasing. Capitalism rewards this, and it also leads to a much lighter load on your project management needs.
They've never been lax with John when he had complications like these. This really comes across as unfair to me, particularly in light of the fact that he has done the most with the least money while also being the most open about his process.
Not just talking about the graphics. The writing, voice-over, camera direction, and art direction on the 1999 cinematic is better, too.
Compare this Diablo 3 Monk Trailer that just came out in 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFGXKV_45HQ
With this Warcraft 3 trailer that was released back in 1999:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOdTeT1xUQQ
Pretty wild. A 10 year difference, and the WC3 trailer still looks better to me.
Just implement the idea and sell it. The market will give you a pretty good indication of the idea's worthiness.
I've been in this position a few times because in game development, there are lots of bad games out there that are rushed to completion to sync them up with the release of a film, for example, or to hit Christmas, or because a publisher is trying to make its quarter or because a developer is running out of money.
Here's your lame project survival kit:
1. Stick close to the most talented folks on the team, and treat them as your real boss. Pretty soon, they're going to leave. Make sure they have fond memories of you, so that they can recommend you where they end up, and make sure you get their personal email addresses. Everybody loves a good, helpful coder. This is by far and away the most useful thing you can do for both your soul and the long-term health of your career.
2. Drop the project from your resume. Mention the company but explain that you worked on various projects there.
3. Take responsibility for turning the project around, find a scapegoat in sales, gather evidence, and pin it on him (never in writing) when it goes down in flames. This will make you part evil and is a big part of how people fail upwards, but lots of folks have had made lucrative careers using this approach.
4. Lame projects typically have poor direction and allow people to get away with doing whatever they want without being fired, as long as they look busy. So invent a task that or sub-project that results in a short, flashy demo or video that makes you look good to your next employer.
5. Flatter the slimiest, most inept manager in the group. They typically crave this because no one recognizes their true "genius". They also often pick option 3. and end up attached to some new project to fuck up, which can buy time while you're looking for a new job. They work hard to surround themselves with loyal useful people who say nice things about them.
6. Start humbly asking to buy the CEO lunch and start picking his brain on executive management or anything he knows lots about and seems to be passionate about discussing. Never let him pay for lunch, because you consider it too educational. You may or may not be interested in what he has to say, but the key thing is face time. When things go to poo, it'll be harder for him to fire you.
7. Stop being lazy about your future. Look hard for another job. Put 1-2 hours into it every day after you come home from work. Lame projects blacken and destroy souls.
Depends on your point of view. Most bird habitats are threatened. Humans are overpopulated.
He could always go insecure and just have an open Presidency, per his campaign promises.
Honestly, it would be a lot better for the country if he did. He would then have a lot more eyeballs on the country's issues, and as a great Finn once said, "With many eyeballs, all problems become shallow."
I like Obama and voted for him, but it takes balls, bigger ones than I think he has.
Difference being that you can't feasibly take your car to any other track.
Pay instead to have people walk the sidewalks and spray down dog poop so that the ground can absorb the nutrients. Dog poop gone, free fertilizer, problem solved. If the US took better care of its sidewalks, more people would enjoy walking, which is precisely what the country needs in particular, both to get off oil, and to get our fat citizens walking again. It's totally ridiculous that we're bagging fertilizer in plastic and then burying it in land fills.
When you have universal surveillance, it becomes much harder to steal someone's identity without getting caught, because you are visible, too.
Let's say that someone stole my identity to use my credit card to buy a Playstation/3. It's going to show up as a transaction on my credit card at a certain time, and it's going to get delivered somewhere at a certain time. The retailer and the victim can now go through footage to see who was there to accept the package.
This dramatically lowers the cost of law enforcement and democratizes it. You can now do a lot of the homework yourself.
The main drawbacks to universal surveillance are the high cost of the infrastructure and maintenance, as well as a tough time adjusting for anyone who didn't grow up with it.
It has a very long list of benefits, including one that I think people do not readily consider- a sense of community.
I believe surveillance, when universal, and when the feeds are available to all, can be an extremely good thing. This essentially emulates small town life, but with the benefit that you have so many people out there, that odds are excellent that you're going to find lots of other people engaging in your behavior, and even better, people will see the context in which your behavior is marinating.
I think this creates a glass house society where you quickly realize that everyone is human, can much more easily sympathize with the poor, and the rich and powerful cannot get away with quite as much.
There are lots of other benefits of doing this, from law enforcement (in a non-Orwellian way) automation, to the relaxation of the executive branch, to having perfect forensic details of all kinds of events that would teach us about human society much faster than we've ever been able to learn about it before, to providing a vast source of entertainment and education.
The only issue with surveillance is when it is not universal and when the feeds are not available to all.
Scan to the bottom of this link, and you'll see the budget:
http://armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=357
$4M for some scuba gear with ambition or $3.5M for the real thing? Hmm...
Speaking as another one of the knuckledragging retards, I have to say that I welcome our well-deserved international image, and I hope we suffer the consequences for it. We had our time in the sun, we squandered it, and we deserve everything that is happening to us now and everything that is coming.
I don't care that we were involved in civil disobedience. That's lovely, but it's results that matter. We elected that cretin to run our country, and every day we remain in this country and pay our taxes, we are complicit in the crimes he commits on our behalf.