When we're at the stage that we can land on these kinds of objects (The Japs have managed to get one of their probes to 'land' or 'dock' with an asteroid I think) - then we've got the problems that come with efficiently harvesting and refining the materials.
Don't get me wrong, I think the idea has merrit, but we haven't reached that stage of the game yet. We would still need to probe it extensively - see how much of it is usable, recreate the conditions it occurs in to engineer a way to refine it, then make an efficient way to build that into a ship or probe such that it's more efficient to have it refuel at these moonlets as opposed to just extra fuel from the start.
I actually think that perl is the best programming language every designed[...] perl is the English of programming languages.
You went on to describe how Perl is great but just so you know - every one of those reasons you listed is why every multi-lingual person on the planet hates English. It's a pain in the ass to learn because there are too many exceptions to the rules or the rules aren't well defined. Look no further than pluralization. Add an S, in most cases. Oh, but if it ends in an y, make it 'ies', like skies. And for some words, that end in sh or ch or x or something, its 'es', like wrenches. Oh and for Goose, its Geese. But the plural for Moose is not meese, in fact, its just moose, not even mooses.
We won't bother getting into Contractions or prefixes/suffixes or any of the real gritty stuff. English itself is a pain, let alone how many variants of it are across the Earth, with their own Formal, informal, and Slang terminology.
So yeah, while the flexibility that makes Perl accessible to more programming styles is good to you, its still a a pain to learn, and one of the reasons why people are put off by it. Without a standardized way of doing things its difficult to understand exactly whats going on. Some of the most obfuscated code I've ever seen has been written in Perl.
Yep. General statistics. If you watch the movie 21, he'll explain variable change.
*situation is that he's hypothetically offered a car that is behind 1 of 3 doors. After choosing one, the host of the show opens one of the doors to reveal nothing. Now does he want to stick with his choice or change it.*
Micky Rosa: He says, "Ben, do you want to stay with door number one or go with door number two?". Now, is it in your interest to switch your choice? Ben Campbell: Yeah. Micky Rosa: Well wait, the host knows where the car is. So how do you know he's not trying to play a trick on you - trying to use reverse psychology to get you to pick a goat? Ben Campbell: Well I wouldn't really care. I mean, my answer's based on statistics - based on variable change. Micky Rosa: Variable change? But he just asked you a simple question. Ben Campbell: Yeah, which changed everything. Micky Rosa: Enlighten us. Ben Campbell: Well, when I was originally asked to pick a door, I had a 33.3% chance of choosing right. But after he opens one of the doors and re-offers me the choice, it's now 66.7% if I choose to switch... So yeah, I'll take door number two and thank you for the extra 33.3%.
Not everyone likes 3rd person view for all games. I think it sucks for when you control a walking/running character and need to aim. That's the job of 1st person view.
Except there is a reason perspectives are designed that way. I can't use an external view in something like Halo because it would allow you to see around corners and things like that.
In the case of Alien Swarm, it only takes 1 or 2 shots to kill a standard alien. As it stands, its already pretty easy and its got a well built learning curve - But its also very teamwork centric, like L4D - you'll only do as well as your team can work together.
Because of that, the top down view is designed to make you have a tougher time not hitting team mates. Taking this challenge away from the game essentially cripples the game.
I agree, Steam is not the best system for getting digital games, but I'm one of the few who prefer it FOR the client. The way its built lets you socially network with gamers you know personally or ones you just meet rather easily. Great Matchmaking system, Great chat tools, achievements, etc. Digital Distribution plays its part but its not the selling point of Steam for Me. Because as you've stated, there are lots of digital distributors out there, you just have to find the one that works for you.
If the reason they aren't making enough is because they don't have enough work to do, thats not my problem. $40 an hour is ludicrous. Changing a web page when you're given the info takes all of 10 minutes. If you can't find 40 hours a week to work charging a regular rate, that is not my fault, that is a bad business model and too many designers have gotten away with gouging it.
What you described is not a problem with crowdsourcing but a problem with businesses. If they cannot compete with people willing to do it for free, than yes, they should resort to focuses clients to form that steady income. Everyone else wishes they had that degree of freedom, I certainly wish I could do freelance Contract work and make enough to get by, so I could work whenever I wanted. Sadly, not everyone has that degree of freedom, and it's not fair for Designers to think that they are owed that much.
What was the last Chinese Car Manufacturer that even penetrated the US market to damage the sales of US companies?
I get that trade secrets are trade secrets, but documents worth $40 Million? To who? It's not like you would have lost $40 Million had they been delivered.
The problem is that Crowdsourcing works because people built their businesses on the structure of getting paid more than what their work truly deserved.
And really, I'm glad to see them going - despite doing some small work in the industry. Here's the skinny:
My girlfriend works for a conservational society downtown, at a place called the Lougheed House. Peter Lougheed was one of the biggest founders of this city. Even today he has a provincial park and a hospital named after him. His House with it's massive garden is still downtown, surrounded by giant hotels, but still standing with most of its original decorations. They've turned the grand dining hall into an expensive restaurant, and there were some additions to the house during the world wars, but for the most part, its as original as it can be.
A few years ago, they hired a guy, we'll call him "Ted" - to design a web page. I'm not entirely familiar with how much was involved, but in the end - the website is hosted online - and is considered property of the Lougheed House. However, they have no idea who is hosting it, how to access any administrative tools, nothing like that. Anytime they want to make a change, they call up Ted and Ted makes the updates for them. He charges $40 for this.
So after the marketting team went to a presentation from the Ex-president of Critical Mass, they have decided that web-marketting is something they really need to pick up on. They've started a facebook page, twitter, a blog, etc. They want to keep their website up to date more often. Monthly news postings, etc etc. My girlfriend, she's not exactly in the marketting team but more like an event co-ordinator also got to attend this meeting (and was rubbing it in my face that she got to go while I was working. And apparently there was a devilled egg tray!). So she approached me afterwards, asking how difficult it is to update a website, because they don't want to spend $40 every time they want to make a change.
And I told her, it all depends on what you want to change, and how you want to change it. She said they mostly just want to change a few images, update it with some info, not really template or layout changing, just words and pictures. And so I told her, its pretty simple, HTML is easy enough for a noobie to edit. You can, in fact, ignore all the code, look for the section you want to edit, and just change whats between the tags. As for images, its as easy as either overwriting the old image, or putting the new one in the same place and changing the reference in the html to the new image.
Excited about this, she told her boss. Upon this, they consulted with TED about what they wanted to do, and TED offered that he would make them a CMS (content management system) for $30,000 if they want. Not only do they not have that kind of money, but I already told them how to make the changes they want. The only thing they need is access to whatever FTP or hosting company they are using - I imagine Ted is the only one with the credentials to actually upload to the webserver. It sounds like he is going to hand it over, though, and not hold things hostage, which is good.
No matter how much my girlfriend tries to relay my information, they want me to come in and consult with their marketting team. They will pay me (more than my current job) for my time, and deliver a free lunch. I think Monday, I never enjoy Mondays so I think I'll take it off from work and do something fun like teach people HTML & CSS.
Anyways, the point is, I'm tired of companies and contractors trying to over-inflate prices to make more money than they really deserve. Don't get me wrong, design can be a tricky business. But if you are a professional designer, and you can truly produce some stuff better than anyone else, you shouldn't have an issue with crowdsourcing. Some college person spending his off hours on a design SHOULD NOT be able to compare with your product which you have spent all your work experience developing the necessary skills to come out on top.
I studied what interested me. Typically, things that interested me were things that I could actually do - I didn't have much of an interest in things I couldn't do
Well now, that's where you're weird. You could do any number of things. You could study history, you could program computers, you could become a carpenter. All 3 of these require completely different skillsets and there is no real reason why anyone with the sufficient resources couldn't do any of these.
So knowing "What you can do" does not help vocation. Which you could extend to say Aptitude tests and mental ability tests are not helpful in choosing a career someone might enjoy.
However - enjoyment and what you're good at might not always line up. You're basing this off the premise that you have to enjoy the career for the brainscan assigns you to, regardless how good you are at it.
What if the software is something that does something useful, but you don't use it, in a very inefficient way (Like some of the HP Printer Features that start on startup, regardless if you have a printer set up or not).
Your argument while true in its logic fails to address the actual issue of development.
Someone with leadership skills ends up playing WoW, and in WoW, their skills are rewarded, thus they notice their leadership skills, and attribute all glory to WoW for them.
That is basically your argument, and yes, it is true.
Now what about someone who doesn't understand leadership, social dynamics, and team-building. They don't get the job because they don't have experience in that area. However WoW strips that away completely. Someone can be put in a leadership role by a friend, by themselves, or by demonstrating their skills. There are many ways for someone without the skills to develop them in a game like WoW. Is that to say they couldn't have developed them elsewhere? No. Is that to say they wouldn't have developed them in the real world, had they been given the chance? No. But the tragedy is that MMO's are the only way right now to test these things without any real implications or consequences.
Because every 3 months there is a policy reset, because they get sued and they have to make changes, and if you don't visit every day you do not have time to set your policies back to that. And the default policy is never a secure one.
In that time, you get tagged in a photo by a friend of that time down by the lake, something completely out of your control.
I predict lawyers will be made very rich, and Facebook will continue on its stead decline of user approval rating. Because we all know that whoever wins, they're going to change the UI again, make uploading pictures more buggy, and mine your data.
Slashdot Mirror
When we're at the stage that we can land on these kinds of objects (The Japs have managed to get one of their probes to 'land' or 'dock' with an asteroid I think) - then we've got the problems that come with efficiently harvesting and refining the materials.
Don't get me wrong, I think the idea has merrit, but we haven't reached that stage of the game yet. We would still need to probe it extensively - see how much of it is usable, recreate the conditions it occurs in to engineer a way to refine it, then make an efficient way to build that into a ship or probe such that it's more efficient to have it refuel at these moonlets as opposed to just extra fuel from the start.
I actually think that perl is the best programming language every designed[...] perl is the English of programming languages.
You went on to describe how Perl is great but just so you know - every one of those reasons you listed is why every multi-lingual person on the planet hates English. It's a pain in the ass to learn because there are too many exceptions to the rules or the rules aren't well defined. Look no further than pluralization. Add an S, in most cases. Oh, but if it ends in an y, make it 'ies', like skies. And for some words, that end in sh or ch or x or something, its 'es', like wrenches. Oh and for Goose, its Geese. But the plural for Moose is not meese, in fact, its just moose, not even mooses.
We won't bother getting into Contractions or prefixes/suffixes or any of the real gritty stuff. English itself is a pain, let alone how many variants of it are across the Earth, with their own Formal, informal, and Slang terminology.
So yeah, while the flexibility that makes Perl accessible to more programming styles is good to you, its still a a pain to learn, and one of the reasons why people are put off by it. Without a standardized way of doing things its difficult to understand exactly whats going on. Some of the most obfuscated code I've ever seen has been written in Perl.
Yep. General statistics. If you watch the movie 21, he'll explain variable change.
*situation is that he's hypothetically offered a car that is behind 1 of 3 doors. After choosing one, the host of the show opens one of the doors to reveal nothing. Now does he want to stick with his choice or change it.*
Micky Rosa: He says, "Ben, do you want to stay with door number one or go with door number two?". Now, is it in your interest to switch your choice?
Ben Campbell: Yeah.
Micky Rosa: Well wait, the host knows where the car is. So how do you know he's not trying to play a trick on you - trying to use reverse psychology to get you to pick a goat?
Ben Campbell: Well I wouldn't really care. I mean, my answer's based on statistics - based on variable change.
Micky Rosa: Variable change? But he just asked you a simple question.
Ben Campbell: Yeah, which changed everything.
Micky Rosa: Enlighten us.
Ben Campbell: Well, when I was originally asked to pick a door, I had a 33.3% chance of choosing right. But after he opens one of the doors and re-offers me the choice, it's now 66.7% if I choose to switch... So yeah, I'll take door number two and thank you for the extra 33.3%.
How else are they going to get a head of the competition?
Not everyone likes 3rd person view for all games. I think it sucks for when you control a walking/running character and need to aim. That's the job of 1st person view.
Except there is a reason perspectives are designed that way. I can't use an external view in something like Halo because it would allow you to see around corners and things like that.
In the case of Alien Swarm, it only takes 1 or 2 shots to kill a standard alien. As it stands, its already pretty easy and its got a well built learning curve - But its also very teamwork centric, like L4D - you'll only do as well as your team can work together.
Because of that, the top down view is designed to make you have a tougher time not hitting team mates. Taking this challenge away from the game essentially cripples the game.
I agree, Steam is not the best system for getting digital games, but I'm one of the few who prefer it FOR the client. The way its built lets you socially network with gamers you know personally or ones you just meet rather easily. Great Matchmaking system, Great chat tools, achievements, etc. Digital Distribution plays its part but its not the selling point of Steam for Me. Because as you've stated, there are lots of digital distributors out there, you just have to find the one that works for you.
If the reason they aren't making enough is because they don't have enough work to do, thats not my problem. $40 an hour is ludicrous. Changing a web page when you're given the info takes all of 10 minutes. If you can't find 40 hours a week to work charging a regular rate, that is not my fault, that is a bad business model and too many designers have gotten away with gouging it.
What you described is not a problem with crowdsourcing but a problem with businesses. If they cannot compete with people willing to do it for free, than yes, they should resort to focuses clients to form that steady income. Everyone else wishes they had that degree of freedom, I certainly wish I could do freelance Contract work and make enough to get by, so I could work whenever I wanted. Sadly, not everyone has that degree of freedom, and it's not fair for Designers to think that they are owed that much.
I don't use Safari so I know this particular exploit hasn't worked on me. Improves my chances, at least.
In Soviet Russia, shark quote lets you die!
The only reason HD-DVD didn't take off was Not enough repeated letters in the name to be catchy. This time they'll try HHDVVDDBVD.
*props to RvB
Hey, when Comic Sans shows up on your Navbar, you won't be making jokes.
Well, I was not aware of that. I wish I could retract my statement.
How do you know you haven't already had the information taken from you?
What was the last Chinese Car Manufacturer that even penetrated the US market to damage the sales of US companies?
I get that trade secrets are trade secrets, but documents worth $40 Million? To who? It's not like you would have lost $40 Million had they been delivered.
Well, everyone worth taking care of, at least.
The problem is that Crowdsourcing works because people built their businesses on the structure of getting paid more than what their work truly deserved.
Gone are those days indeed.
And really, I'm glad to see them going - despite doing some small work in the industry. Here's the skinny:
My girlfriend works for a conservational society downtown, at a place called the Lougheed House. Peter Lougheed was one of the biggest founders of this city. Even today he has a provincial park and a hospital named after him. His House with it's massive garden is still downtown, surrounded by giant hotels, but still standing with most of its original decorations. They've turned the grand dining hall into an expensive restaurant, and there were some additions to the house during the world wars, but for the most part, its as original as it can be.
A few years ago, they hired a guy, we'll call him "Ted" - to design a web page. I'm not entirely familiar with how much was involved, but in the end - the website is hosted online - and is considered property of the Lougheed House. However, they have no idea who is hosting it, how to access any administrative tools, nothing like that. Anytime they want to make a change, they call up Ted and Ted makes the updates for them. He charges $40 for this.
So after the marketting team went to a presentation from the Ex-president of Critical Mass, they have decided that web-marketting is something they really need to pick up on. They've started a facebook page, twitter, a blog, etc. They want to keep their website up to date more often. Monthly news postings, etc etc. My girlfriend, she's not exactly in the marketting team but more like an event co-ordinator also got to attend this meeting (and was rubbing it in my face that she got to go while I was working. And apparently there was a devilled egg tray!). So she approached me afterwards, asking how difficult it is to update a website, because they don't want to spend $40 every time they want to make a change.
And I told her, it all depends on what you want to change, and how you want to change it. She said they mostly just want to change a few images, update it with some info, not really template or layout changing, just words and pictures. And so I told her, its pretty simple, HTML is easy enough for a noobie to edit. You can, in fact, ignore all the code, look for the section you want to edit, and just change whats between the tags. As for images, its as easy as either overwriting the old image, or putting the new one in the same place and changing the reference in the html to the new image.
Excited about this, she told her boss. Upon this, they consulted with TED about what they wanted to do, and TED offered that he would make them a CMS (content management system) for $30,000 if they want. Not only do they not have that kind of money, but I already told them how to make the changes they want. The only thing they need is access to whatever FTP or hosting company they are using - I imagine Ted is the only one with the credentials to actually upload to the webserver. It sounds like he is going to hand it over, though, and not hold things hostage, which is good.
No matter how much my girlfriend tries to relay my information, they want me to come in and consult with their marketting team. They will pay me (more than my current job) for my time, and deliver a free lunch. I think Monday, I never enjoy Mondays so I think I'll take it off from work and do something fun like teach people HTML & CSS.
Anyways, the point is, I'm tired of companies and contractors trying to over-inflate prices to make more money than they really deserve. Don't get me wrong, design can be a tricky business. But if you are a professional designer, and you can truly produce some stuff better than anyone else, you shouldn't have an issue with crowdsourcing. Some college person spending his off hours on a design SHOULD NOT be able to compare with your product which you have spent all your work experience developing the necessary skills to come out on top.
On the internet? That'd be a first.
I studied what interested me. Typically, things that interested me were things that I could actually do - I didn't have much of an interest in things I couldn't do
Well now, that's where you're weird. You could do any number of things. You could study history, you could program computers, you could become a carpenter. All 3 of these require completely different skillsets and there is no real reason why anyone with the sufficient resources couldn't do any of these.
So knowing "What you can do" does not help vocation. Which you could extend to say Aptitude tests and mental ability tests are not helpful in choosing a career someone might enjoy.
However - enjoyment and what you're good at might not always line up. You're basing this off the premise that you have to enjoy the career for the brainscan assigns you to, regardless how good you are at it.
What if the software is something that does something useful, but you don't use it, in a very inefficient way (Like some of the HP Printer Features that start on startup, regardless if you have a printer set up or not).
Shovelware, Bloatware, Crapware, pre-installed software, Windows Vista,
they're all interchangable really.
Your argument while true in its logic fails to address the actual issue of development.
Someone with leadership skills ends up playing WoW, and in WoW, their skills are rewarded, thus they notice their leadership skills, and attribute all glory to WoW for them.
That is basically your argument, and yes, it is true.
Now what about someone who doesn't understand leadership, social dynamics, and team-building. They don't get the job because they don't have experience in that area. However WoW strips that away completely. Someone can be put in a leadership role by a friend, by themselves, or by demonstrating their skills. There are many ways for someone without the skills to develop them in a game like WoW. Is that to say they couldn't have developed them elsewhere? No. Is that to say they wouldn't have developed them in the real world, had they been given the chance? No. But the tragedy is that MMO's are the only way right now to test these things without any real implications or consequences.
Would it be easier if it were more bat-like, hanging from the line instead of perching?
Because every 3 months there is a policy reset, because they get sued and they have to make changes, and if you don't visit every day you do not have time to set your policies back to that. And the default policy is never a secure one.
In that time, you get tagged in a photo by a friend of that time down by the lake, something completely out of your control.
I predict lawyers will be made very rich, and Facebook will continue on its stead decline of user approval rating. Because we all know that whoever wins, they're going to change the UI again, make uploading pictures more buggy, and mine your data.