Hate to be the one to break it to you, but as upsetting events in my life go, this one ranks just below Sandy Duncan replacing Valerie Harper on The Hogan Family.
Alternately, if thumbprinting is that big of a problem for you... don't use checks! =)
Seriously, though, there's nothing stopping a consumer from paying with cash, credit, debit, or live clucking chickens. The simple fact is that checks have become an outdated and fraud-ridden payment system. Many of the stores I frequent have stopped accepting them entirely; the remainder will either have to follow suit before long or rely upon identity-based systems such as this.
Idealistically, it might be better for all these shops to drop checks and avoid the new privacy issues. (I'd prefer that myself.) Capitalistically, I don't think the market share is small enough for them to do that yet. Think of checks as being where the floppy disk was three years ago: just enough demand to keep them around.
Spam does not magically increase an employee's percentage of "up time"; hence, if an employee spends (for example) 60% of the time up-and-working, the cost of spam in arkham6's argument can be multiplied by 60%.
You make an interesting point here but, no surprise, I'm going to respectfully disagree.
My argument remains that applying time-based calculations to a project-based workplace just doesn't stick. (And doing so fractionally won't make it fractionally less of an error.) Unless "lost time" reaches such critical mass that it prevents a day's tasks from being completed or irreparably pollutes the quality of an employee's downtime, the monetary loss can be considered negligible.
Or to approach the matter from another direction, spam is downtime. I've never known anyone to say: "Man, those junk mails cost me so much time this morning. I'd better cancel my afternoon project meeting so I have enough time left to read Slashdot." These seconds aren't additive (to uptime) but subtractive (from downtime).
Now one could make a strong case for the loss of employee downtime affecting the quality of work, but that's a different argument from the one at hand.
[re: Luxemburg:] Bad analogy.
More like my feeble attempt at humor. (Sorry 'bout that.) Replace with yawning, stretching, sneezing, or your favorite G-rated bodily function.
Ah, the "lost time" argument -- rhetoric at its most manipulative and least accurate. (Nothing personal against you, arkham. Your post was actually an entertaining read.)
The fallacy here is in assuming that every employee exists in a continual "on-and-working" state from the moment she sits down at her desk. Under such an assumption, 10 seconds spent doing something else equals 10 seconds of quantifiable production loss. Problem is, most white-color jobs are task based: I need to get X done today, where X equals a presentation, a subroutine, a sales call to Duluth -- whatever. Ten seconds spent doing something else don't result in 10 seconds less of X.
The only place where these efficiencies would truly come into play is repetitive (and, might I add, borderline inhumane) assembly line work like meatpacking. And I'm assuming most meatpackers are less concerned about getting spam than making it.
Heck, given the original argument, we could calculate astronomical amounts of monetary loss for just about everything. Employee time spent blinking could bankrupt a third world country. The time spent typing smiley faces? There goes Luxemburg. =)
some of the top paid players can't speak a word of English, but worst still
*bzsdft*
There was a penalty on the play -- simultaneous English-language elitism and bad grammar in the same sentence. 15 yards and repeat the post.
*bzsdft*
The pricing guide I use for sales specifically lists "presenation to client when artwork is not used in the final product" as a billable event...
Please tell me your company doesn't actually try to enforce this policy. It'd be like going to Banana Republic and getting charged for trying on clothes. Almost all the major stock houses tend to take a very liberal approach to comping images. (Here's an example.) Given the state of the industry these days, seems like it'd be economic suicide to do otherwise.
Now that's pretty cool; my spell-checker made a Freudian slip. Substitue "fantasy" for "fascism" above and then start wondering if computers really do have a sense of humor. =)
I'd really like to see a serious, rational reply to this objection, because up until now, I have not heard one.
Okay, how's this: it's a modern spin on the cowboy archetype (or going even farther back, that of the bandit wandering though the woods, as in Rashomon). There's always been a certain glamour to a lone figure who makes his/her way in the world by living outside the bounds of the law. Yes, crime is involved -- cowboys held up banks and shot up bars, bandits robbed whatever nobility happened to be schlepping through the forest on a given day -- but almost never to the point where it's disturbing enough to shatter the fascism. (Which is why the lynchings and rapes you mention would have no place in GTA3).
Pure and simple: it's escapist entertainment of the type that's been going on for centuries.
I can understand why Horizon Comics might be upset, but the truth is this sort of thing is extremely common in pitches and proposals -- particularly in my chosen profession of advertising. Heck, there's even a catchy name for it: "swipe". As in, "Hey, I need some swipe of people playing pool for this Budweiser ad." At which point, some junior art director will scamper off and start flipping through magazines and stock books looking for that perfect temp photo.
Everyone understands that this isn't our original artwork, that it's only there to give the client a sense of what the ad could look like and ultimately get them excited enough about the idea to execute it with real art. I have the sense that MIT looked at the illustrations for this Army proposal much the same way.
What does seem like dirty pool, however, is that someone decided to go that one extra and add their own credit line -- "H. Thomas", it looks like? -- to said swipe. And that, my friends, is where we begin to cross the line into outright theft. I'd agree that MIT, at the very least, owes an apology to all involved. (Although I guess creating invisible ninja supersoldiers means never having to say you're sorry, right?)
Not to be contrary but -- aw, fsck it. I'll be contrary.
Surely, that does also show how our society continues catering to the lowest common denominator - instead of having an intelligent debate about something, we'll make a pretty game about it. The endless dumbing down of homo sapiens.
Putting that statement's mildly elitist slant -- that certain media are more entitled to express social commentary simply because they are held in a higher esteem -- to the side for the moment, there's a simple fact (well okay, generalization) that folks seem to be missing here:
People express themselves with the tools they have access to and/or are most comfortable with.
Which is to say, painters paint, writers write, orators drag soapboxes out to the park, manual laborers withhold their services, etc. Why should we be surprised when interactive producers do the same within their chosen medium?
Were these games the *only* form of commentary taking place right now, I could understand your point. But given that I can walk down the street in a couple of weeks and catch over 50 different plays, songs, and other multimedia pieces in response to Sept. 11, it's probably safe to say that the other media are holding their own.
Count me as one more vote for monitor hoods; the things are life savers. There was this one agency I used to work for that got unbelievable sunny, starting around noon every day. Made trying to design print pieces near impossible, since the light and glare would tend to wash out all colors on-screen. Those hoods were the only thing that kept me sane.
But here's the best part: forget LaCie, you can make your own hood in a couple of minutes for a only couple of bucks. Heck, we used to do it all the time.
(1) Run down to your local Pearl/Staples/etc and buy a poster-sized piece of black mounting board. (Or any other reasonably thick, dark and matte -- i.e., non-glossy -- material will do.)
(2) Measure the width of the front of your monitor casing and cut a piece of board to slightly more than that width by, let's say, 18 inches deep. That's the top.
(3) Cut two more pieces, half the width of the first but the same depth. Those are the sides.
(4) Now all you need to do is get some strong tape -- again, matte black if you can find it -- and tape the pieces together: side - top - side.
(5) Place atop the monitor, tape side up, and let the side fins flop down. (For another couple of bucks, add some velcro tabs to keep the whole thing firmly in place.) Welcome to the Land that Glare Forgot.
As I've said many times before, a really good alternative for them would be building computerized kiosks that let the customer burn his/her own selection of songs onto a high-quality CD - and pay for it by the song. (Probably by taking a resultant printed receipt up to the counter/checkout lane with the shiny new disc)... I would think most retails stores would absolutely love this idea, as would consumers who can finally buy their own "custom mix" CD
Actually, something along thess lines *was* done before, way way back in the early 90s. A company called Personics set up custom mix-tape kiosks in Sam Goody and other chain music outlets. And yes, the retailers LOVED it. And, yes again, the labels HATED it, ultimately killing the project by holding back licensing on popular songs. You can read about the whole sorry tale here.
And for the record, I did make heavy use of these machines back in high school. I'd create mix tapes by a dozen bands I was curious about but hadn't yet heard -- the Sugarcubes, let's say -- and come back later to buy full albums by the bands I ended up liking. (Mind you, this was before the popularization of both the Internet and in-store "try-before-you-buy" listening.) Pretty much the same thing a lot of people use Kazaa/Gnutella for today -- a sampler platter. And the labels would opposed a CD-based version for all the same reasons.
Maybe the problem is that you don't know what you're doing.
Either that or I'm a half-drunk asshole. Either answer wouldn't surprise me.
We should also consider the possibility that you're half-drunk *because* you don't know what you're doing. I mean, come on -- you posted this at 1 a.m. and you *still* weren't fully hoisted yet? What were you drinking, Tequiza or something?
Oh, this is just too much fun. I absolutely have to parse this one:
"Thank you for contacting Sigma Designs and requesting information that relates to our MPEG-4 CODEC and the availability of its source code. We would like to take this opportunity to address the relevant issues that have been raised."
You might be wondering why I'm standing next to your car -- yeah, the one with the smashed window right here -- with a slim-jim in one hand and your stereo in the other. I swear it's not what it looks like.
"...Fulfilling this goal was carried out in two steps. The first was the introduction of an MPEG-4 CODEC, provided free of charge, so that worldwide users could begin encoding new content."
Here's the deal -- I thought it was my car. I've got one just like this.
"The second was the release of source code, so that the development community could continue with technical improvements."
Okay, so maybe I knew it was your car, but I was... um... just borrowing it. I'm all done, see? Here, you can have it back now. No harm, no foul.
"Sigma never intended in making, nor realized, any profits from this code base."
Tell you the truth, I wasn't even planning on keeping your crummy car. We were just gonna use it as the getaway vehicle in this bank job we're doing next week, see?
"Several weeks after the CODEC was first released, Sigma was contacted by the XVID development team regarding the use of certain portions of their code. Upon examination, it was determined that one of our programmers, unbeknownst to management and contrary to Sigma's policy, had utilized some routines posted by XVID as open source."
Wait, wait, ignore everything I just said. It was really some other guy that was trying to steal your car -- this shady looking punk in a leather jacket. You're lucky I got here when I did. I think he ran that way. If you hurry you can still catch him.
"During the past four weeks, Sigma had communicated with XVID to resolve the situation. As a result, Sigma has decided to make the current version of the MPEG-4 CODEC available under the GPL license."
"Sigma is a supporter of the Linux operating system, appreciates the work being done by the open source community, and continues to issue certain other code under open source arrangements."
But if you don't mind me saying so, sir, you've got great taste in stereo equipment. I got a good luck at that puppy as I was prying her out of the dash and yours is a beaut!
"Though we believe that we have acted as expediently as possible, Sigma Designs sincerely apologizes to the open source community for this inadvertent use of GPL code and for the several weeks it took to resolve the situation."
So we're cool, right? No one needs to call the cops or anything. I'll just grab my stuff and -- look over there! The Pope!
*sound of running footsteps in the other direction*
Oh, sure, ATI might give lip service to our little primate friends. But take a closer look at their
branding for this project. That's no monkey, mister! That there's a gorilla! (Or possibly an extra from the movie "Congo".)
Where are the cute tricks involving prehensile tails? Where are the happy waltzes to some itinerant organ grinder's music? WHERE'S MY MONKEY?!
<advocacy class="mac">
Unless you're using a Mac, in which case you can already just click and drag any old image you want out of the browser window. =) </advocacy>
Ehmm... whatever happened to 'innocent until proven guilty'?
This only applies if people tend to say things like "All rise" or "The Honorable <YOUR NAME HERE> presiding" whenenver you walk in a room. Otherwise, your average citizen* has every right to form an opinion of culpability based on the available evidence and respond accordingly (within the limits of the law). Lacking this, the whole concept of citizen activism would be pointless.
All briefs may be filed via the clerk at The Court of Public Opinion.
*May not apply in some countries. Please check the label on the back of your government for democracy content.
In all truth, can anyone beyond hardcore geeks tell the difference in you desktop when you swap from 16 bit color to 32-bit color?
Speaking as a professional designer -- yes, absolutely. Back in the day when 16-bit displays were all too common, I'd have to use them to show 32-bit work to clients. Almost invariably, those clients would notice the resulting dithering/banding in the art. I'd have to reassure them that these were screen artifacts that wouldn't show up in the printed output. And these were hardly tech-savvy people.
But beyond that, I'm not even sure your 16-bit v. 32-bit example is a fair comparison in this case. The differences between individual "adjacent" colors get smaller and smaller the larger you make the palette. To argue your case might be like arguing that the difference between.0001 and.001 is the same as that between 1.0 and 0.1; sure, it's only a decimal place, but the resulting error would be far greater in the second case.
Excellent example, the color books at Sherwin Williams, you really think that have over 4000 different colors in that book, and most of those almost look that same as another color.
Terrible example. Were you planning to use all 4,000 of those colors on your wall at the same time? (If the answer's "yes", I'd like to humbly apologize, Sir Elton John. My mother loves your music.)
The story's not nearly compelling enough to cover for any flaws in the gameplay (as in BG2), and the gameplay's not nearly addictive enough to cover for any deficits in the story (as in IWD). Without that compensating effect, the end product ends up feeling a little tepid. Still fun, but not memorably so.
I wish I could say I just have some irrational bias against NWN, but -- well let's put it this way: The look on my face when I picked up the box at EB was that of a boy who's just decided to sneak the world's cutest stray puppy home from the park. And the look on my face after about 8 hours of playing was that of the same boy, finding out that the puppy just took care of some business in Mom's basket of clean laundry.
What if that trickle turned into a flood, not just from the North Carolina Piedmont but from all around the country? It would be a watershed moment in the Internet's rise as a force in American democracy.
Okay, someone *really* needs to stop watching the end of "Miracle on 34th Street" before writing his columns.
Watershed? No. It's called mailbombing -- and has happily been ignored by politicians both big and small since the dawn of time.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah..... no.
Hate to be the one to break it to you, but as upsetting events in my life go, this one ranks just below Sandy Duncan replacing Valerie Harper on The Hogan Family.
Which is to say, not at all.
Damn, I lost a mouthful of coffee laughing at that one. And it was *really good* coffee.
Seriously, though, there's nothing stopping a consumer from paying with cash, credit, debit, or live clucking chickens. The simple fact is that checks have become an outdated and fraud-ridden payment system. Many of the stores I frequent have stopped accepting them entirely; the remainder will either have to follow suit before long or rely upon identity-based systems such as this.
Idealistically, it might be better for all these shops to drop checks and avoid the new privacy issues. (I'd prefer that myself.) Capitalistically, I don't think the market share is small enough for them to do that yet. Think of checks as being where the floppy disk was three years ago: just enough demand to keep them around.
You make an interesting point here but, no surprise, I'm going to respectfully disagree.
My argument remains that applying time-based calculations to a project-based workplace just doesn't stick. (And doing so fractionally won't make it fractionally less of an error.) Unless "lost time" reaches such critical mass that it prevents a day's tasks from being completed or irreparably pollutes the quality of an employee's downtime, the monetary loss can be considered negligible.
Or to approach the matter from another direction, spam is downtime. I've never known anyone to say: "Man, those junk mails cost me so much time this morning. I'd better cancel my afternoon project meeting so I have enough time left to read Slashdot." These seconds aren't additive (to uptime) but subtractive (from downtime).
Now one could make a strong case for the loss of employee downtime affecting the quality of work, but that's a different argument from the one at hand.
More like my feeble attempt at humor. (Sorry 'bout that.) Replace with yawning, stretching, sneezing, or your favorite G-rated bodily function.
The fallacy here is in assuming that every employee exists in a continual "on-and-working" state from the moment she sits down at her desk. Under such an assumption, 10 seconds spent doing something else equals 10 seconds of quantifiable production loss. Problem is, most white-color jobs are task based: I need to get X done today, where X equals a presentation, a subroutine, a sales call to Duluth -- whatever. Ten seconds spent doing something else don't result in 10 seconds less of X.
The only place where these efficiencies would truly come into play is repetitive (and, might I add, borderline inhumane) assembly line work like meatpacking. And I'm assuming most meatpackers are less concerned about getting spam than making it.
Heck, given the original argument, we could calculate astronomical amounts of monetary loss for just about everything. Employee time spent blinking could bankrupt a third world country. The time spent typing smiley faces? There goes Luxemburg. =)
"Why Do Articles That Claim To Be About Cell Phones But Actually Read Like Second-Rate Sex And The City Gossiping Make Us Look Stupid?"
*bzsdft*
There was a penalty on the play -- simultaneous English-language elitism and bad grammar in the same sentence. 15 yards and repeat the post.
*bzsdft*
Please tell me your company doesn't actually try to enforce this policy. It'd be like going to Banana Republic and getting charged for trying on clothes. Almost all the major stock houses tend to take a very liberal approach to comping images. (Here's an example.) Given the state of the industry these days, seems like it'd be economic suicide to do otherwise.
Now that's pretty cool; my spell-checker made a Freudian slip. Substitue "fantasy" for "fascism" above and then start wondering if computers really do have a sense of humor. =)
Okay, how's this: it's a modern spin on the cowboy archetype (or going even farther back, that of the bandit wandering though the woods, as in Rashomon). There's always been a certain glamour to a lone figure who makes his/her way in the world by living outside the bounds of the law. Yes, crime is involved -- cowboys held up banks and shot up bars, bandits robbed whatever nobility happened to be schlepping through the forest on a given day -- but almost never to the point where it's disturbing enough to shatter the fascism. (Which is why the lynchings and rapes you mention would have no place in GTA3).
Pure and simple: it's escapist entertainment of the type that's been going on for centuries.
Everyone understands that this isn't our original artwork, that it's only there to give the client a sense of what the ad could look like and ultimately get them excited enough about the idea to execute it with real art. I have the sense that MIT looked at the illustrations for this Army proposal much the same way.
What does seem like dirty pool, however, is that someone decided to go that one extra and add their own credit line -- "H. Thomas", it looks like? -- to said swipe. And that, my friends, is where we begin to cross the line into outright theft. I'd agree that MIT, at the very least, owes an apology to all involved. (Although I guess creating invisible ninja supersoldiers means never having to say you're sorry, right?)
Putting that statement's mildly elitist slant -- that certain media are more entitled to express social commentary simply because they are held in a higher esteem -- to the side for the moment, there's a simple fact (well okay, generalization) that folks seem to be missing here:
People express themselves with the tools they have access to and/or are most comfortable with.
Which is to say, painters paint, writers write, orators drag soapboxes out to the park, manual laborers withhold their services, etc. Why should we be surprised when interactive producers do the same within their chosen medium?
Were these games the *only* form of commentary taking place right now, I could understand your point. But given that I can walk down the street in a couple of weeks and catch over 50 different plays, songs, and other multimedia pieces in response to Sept. 11, it's probably safe to say that the other media are holding their own.
But here's the best part: forget LaCie, you can make your own hood in a couple of minutes for a only couple of bucks. Heck, we used to do it all the time.
(1) Run down to your local Pearl/Staples/etc and buy a poster-sized piece of black mounting board. (Or any other reasonably thick, dark and matte -- i.e., non-glossy -- material will do.)
(2) Measure the width of the front of your monitor casing and cut a piece of board to slightly more than that width by, let's say, 18 inches deep. That's the top.
(3) Cut two more pieces, half the width of the first but the same depth. Those are the sides.
(4) Now all you need to do is get some strong tape -- again, matte black if you can find it -- and tape the pieces together: side - top - side.
(5) Place atop the monitor, tape side up, and let the side fins flop down. (For another couple of bucks, add some velcro tabs to keep the whole thing firmly in place.) Welcome to the Land that Glare Forgot.
And for the record, I did make heavy use of these machines back in high school. I'd create mix tapes by a dozen bands I was curious about but hadn't yet heard -- the Sugarcubes, let's say -- and come back later to buy full albums by the bands I ended up liking. (Mind you, this was before the popularization of both the Internet and in-store "try-before-you-buy" listening.) Pretty much the same thing a lot of people use Kazaa/Gnutella for today -- a sampler platter. And the labels would opposed a CD-based version for all the same reasons.
Shame, really...
Get with the program, people...
You might be wondering why I'm standing next to your car -- yeah, the one with the smashed window right here -- with a slim-jim in one hand and your stereo in the other. I swear it's not what it looks like.
Here's the deal -- I thought it was my car. I've got one just like this.
Okay, so maybe I knew it was your car, but I was... um... just borrowing it. I'm all done, see? Here, you can have it back now. No harm, no foul.
Tell you the truth, I wasn't even planning on keeping your crummy car. We were just gonna use it as the getaway vehicle in this bank job we're doing next week, see?
Wait, wait, ignore everything I just said. It was really some other guy that was trying to steal your car -- this shady looking punk in a leather jacket. You're lucky I got here when I did. I think he ran that way. If you hurry you can still catch him.
OW! OW! Stop kicking me! Alright, here's your damn stereo back! Jeez!
But if you don't mind me saying so, sir, you've got great taste in stereo equipment. I got a good luck at that puppy as I was prying her out of the dash and yours is a beaut!
So we're cool, right? No one needs to call the cops or anything. I'll just grab my stuff and -- look over there! The Pope!
*sound of running footsteps in the other direction*
Where are the cute tricks involving prehensile tails? Where are the happy waltzes to some itinerant organ grinder's music? WHERE'S MY MONKEY?!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/tr anscripts/fisa_opinion.pdf
<advocacy class="mac">
Unless you're using a Mac, in which case you can already just click and drag any old image you want out of the browser window. =)
</advocacy>
All briefs may be filed via the clerk at The Court of Public Opinion.
*May not apply in some countries. Please check the label on the back of your government for democracy content.
But beyond that, I'm not even sure your 16-bit v. 32-bit example is a fair comparison in this case. The differences between individual "adjacent" colors get smaller and smaller the larger you make the palette. To argue your case might be like arguing that the difference between .0001 and .001 is the same as that between 1.0 and 0.1; sure, it's only a decimal place, but the resulting error would be far greater in the second case.
Terrible example. Were you planning to use all 4,000 of those colors on your wall at the same time? (If the answer's "yes", I'd like to humbly apologize, Sir Elton John. My mother loves your music.)Okay. That's enough nan-sense from the two of you.
Potential Employer: Well, we've reviewed your resume and references and, if we may be frank, you're entirely unqualified for this position.
*sound of beeper going off*
Me: Did I mention I can destroy you all with the power of my mind?
Potential Employer: Okay, that's just about enough of that. Securit--
*cue 7.1 earthquake*
Me: $400k sound good to start?
The story's not nearly compelling enough to cover for any flaws in the gameplay (as in BG2), and the gameplay's not nearly addictive enough to cover for any deficits in the story (as in IWD). Without that compensating effect, the end product ends up feeling a little tepid. Still fun, but not memorably so.
I wish I could say I just have some irrational bias against NWN, but -- well let's put it this way: The look on my face when I picked up the box at EB was that of a boy who's just decided to sneak the world's cutest stray puppy home from the park. And the look on my face after about 8 hours of playing was that of the same boy, finding out that the puppy just took care of some business in Mom's basket of clean laundry.
Okay, someone *really* needs to stop watching the end of "Miracle on 34th Street" before writing his columns.
Watershed? No. It's called mailbombing -- and has happily been ignored by politicians both big and small since the dawn of time.