Bean counters like to deal in simple concepts like adding up all the hours in the day and saying that's the amount of work they expect, and that any deviation from that is "lost productivity".
The real truth is that productivity is very hard to measure, and expected productivity even harder. As the bean counters are usually fairly stupid, I'd suggest they simply stop trying and go count something that's really countable, like beans.
Let the rest of us get back to work (and reading slashdot).
I thought the H1 and H2 were basically completely different vehicles -- the H1 being a derivative of the military vehical (so sharing some of its advantages and shortcomings), and the H2 being some kind of bizarro joke trying to capitalize on the H1's popularity by using the same name.
The thing that mystifies me about archy, is that it bases so much on typing non-trivial amounts of text while holding down various modifier keys. That seems just annoying[*] and yet they seem to have gone whole-hog with this concept in their attempt to avoid modality (though it's obviously near impossible to do so absolutely). I like the emphasis on "immediateness", but the whole thing seems just a bit nuts.
[*] You think using control while typing "x" is bad? How about holding a modifier key down while you enter an entire filename!
Oh come on, it was the '70s! Just be glad they didn't figure out a way to introduce roller-disco as a major plot thread.
I was about that age when the original came out, and remember being constantly a bit disappointed how tacky everything was... However I think one reason I was disappointed was the clear sense of something grander underneath, which had been overwhelmed by the pressures of commercial television (studio boss: "More roller-disco!").
Which is how different from fawning over Linus, Bill Joy, Woz etc etc ?
Linus, Bill Joy, Woz, etc., each have a brain? And did something useful with them? On their own? As opposed to being artificial constructs of a cynical and corrupt celebrity industry?
Mind you, brains are way over-rated, but it's something...
Man, those clumsy slashdot editors seem to have chopped off the end of the story! Here, I'll fill it in:
"... and then, to celebrate our triumph of design, our mastery of every nuance of the gaming console's form, we all got completely smashed on champagne the night before the deadline, and fell into a deep sleep.
Unable to wake us, but knowing the deadline had come, my teenage nephew "buzz" panicked and submitted some random photo he found on the website of a Taiwanese PC-maker.
A shame, I suppose, but... maybe the world just wasn't ready for what we had done. Someday, though, someday..."
"For Luigi's sake officer, she was 80 years old! Not long for this world, soon to be an ex-citizen! Surely it's better to die quickly from massive trauma inflicted by an insane geek committing unspeakable perversions to the grand old sport of bicycling than to choke on her own phlegm in some decrepit bingo parlor?... Officer...?"
I haven't heard much rumbling about it since then, although I hit the wrong one and close a window occasionally still. It's not the worst thing in the world
No, but it was a pretty damn stupid change. Along with the peek-a-boo button labels, it lends credence to the accusation that they've simply stopped caring about usability, and now just go for eye candy.
Most failed commercial products never saw the light of day, so only those who worked on them will know they ever existed.
Ha haha ha! I've used pleeenty of commercial software that should have failed, on account of sucking so much, but was none-the-less sold for money.
Often this stuff shows up in applications where you have little choice but to use it, so it can just keep on sucking and suck in the money too. I find myself fervantly wishing I were using some horrid sucky FOSS instead, because then there'd at least be a small possibility of fixing some of the problems myself.
[BTW what on earth is the point of this story? We've know this jboss guy is a moron for ages, and he's still a moron; this is news?]
Huh? Debian's most famous asset is stability... they actually think hard about how to keep the system stable for long periods, across upgrades.
Other linux vendors seem to think more about a flashy first impression; they generally work well if you never change much from the release you bought or use any non-mainstream software, but as soon as you try to upgrade something... watch out!
Clearly there's room for a layer of "paid responsibility" on top of Debian though, someone who will do the dirty work when necessary, and grin and bear it (and say "by monday!") when the screaming starts...
I think the real answer is a comment made by an earlier poster in this thread: the PSP was way over-hyped in the beginning; sure the screen is extremely nice, but a nice screen is not nearly enough!
It's very, very hard to build a "perfect" handheld, and neither the PSP nor the DS even comes close. The DS is notably annoying in some ways (my main complaint: it's too damn big for those small screens!), but having a 2nd screen with a stylus really opens up a lot of possibilities.
Sony's secret weapons with the PS2 were their installed base and their insane over the top hype. In the case of the PSP, they don't have an installed base... and playing the hype card apparently wasn't enough. Now they've got to compete based on merit, and it's going to be a long, hard, slog...
It's always amusing seeing reviewers' estimates of game length; if they say "25 hours", I know it will take me approximately 347 hours to finish it.
I only tend to play once every couple of weeks, so with RPGs much of that time is wandering around in confusion trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing...
smaller artists are hit harder by piracy. If you're selling 1,000 CDs a year, 200 people pirating music is a much bigger hit than if you sell 1,000,000 CDs a year
This doesn't seem entirely clear; "piracy" can serve to widely increase exposure (it's pretty widely held that microsoft benefitted immensely from "pirating" of earlier versions of windows).
There are probably many different scenarios where the tradeoff could go in either direction.
I don't think that's quite fair -- SMAP may not be the future of music, and they're definitely, er, over-exposed, but they at least seem to be pretty likeable guys.
That's big difference between Japanese and American "corporate pop" in my mind: Japanese pop stars generally seem more or less normal people if you discount the fact that they're on TV every 57 seconds (I was going to say something about the funny clothing and hairstyles, but come to think of it half the teenagers in Japan dress the same way...); American pop stars are usually mind-bendingly annoying self-obsessed wankers.
That doesn't make any sense -- "linux" and "unix" are functionally more or less the same these days (licensing issues aside of course); the only real difference is historical.
In Japan women are quite literally forced to choose between having children and having a career. Having both is not possible. And many women choose career which further depresses the childbirth rate.... On another matter, if people think female participation in technology and scientific related fields is low in the US or Australia it's got nothing on Japan.
I work for NEC (in Japan), in software development, and there's about 60-40 male/female-ratio here (counting only "real" jobs such as software development). Many of my co-workers have had kids, and AFAIK none of them have quit -- they usually seem to leave for 3-4 months just after childbirth and then come back. There is a notable lack of women in top-level management positions, though in my experience this is also true in the U.S.
However, I think it is true that NEC is fairly progressive for a big Japanese company.
Good thing too, it'd be pretty damn gross if you were chowing down on your wafer and it suddenly turned into a warm rubbery little disc of human flesh.
Let's put it this way: both the dualshock (2) and the gamecube controller have various flaws which are fairly well agreed upon:
GC flaws:
Overly small d-pad (a flaw only for "d-pad oriented" games; many games actually use this simply for item selection etc., which doesn't depend on the size).
Non-symmetrical sticks/too-small C-stick (for games which need two sticks)
Small and hard to press z-button
DS2 flaws:
Painful and hard to use d-pad (a flaw for d-pad oriented games -- but it's pretty strange that such a bad d-pad is still in the prime location on the controller)
Badly placed analogue sticks (well... a pretty basic problem)
Inconsistent button usage
The GC controller flaws seem to result from a certain over-emphasis on a particular style of controller usage -- certain controls are emphasized at the expense of others -- but it's pretty clear that Nintendo thought through their preferred control scheme and made the controller work well for that case.
The DS2 flaws, on the other hand, are harder to characterize, and seem to stem from a lack of attention to detail -- both the d-pad and analogue sticks are annoying to use for different reasons. It has a much more generic feel, which is good in some ways (more flexible) and bad in others (less optimized).
So based on your particular style of gaming, there are reaons to prefer one or the other -- but if an article like this makes any pretense at an evenhanded analysis, a conclusion that the DS2 is great and the GC controller sucks is simply bizarre.
On the other hand, the GameCube controller does what he suggests, and labels each button with a letter. And as a result, every time a game tells me to push "X" or "Y" I have to pause, look down at the controller, and hunt for the symbols.
This is confused (have you ever played a game on the gamecube?) -- the gamecube buttons are dramatically different shapes, sizes, and colors, and games inevitably refer to them by showing little pictures of the button in context; you can locate them by feel. As far as I can tell the letters are never used except in online walk-throughs and the like (and for this particular purpose, using letters for each is a fantastic idea).
Morever, the gamecube has an extremely standard set of uses for the buttons (the "main/fire/activate/confirm" button is always big central button, the "back" button is always the little circular button next to it, etc).
The playstation buttons, being identically sized and symmetrical, are actually rather easy to get confused -- and games make this worse by being inconsistent about button assignments (if it were always "circle means confirm etc." that would kind of nice, but it's not).
What's pretty clear is that nintendo puts quite a bit of effort into the ergonomics of their controllers and does a lot of user testing (their most famous developer, miyamoto, is famously obsessed with the subject). Based on the often glaringly obvious problems with Sony controllers (the PSP analogue nub being a great example), it doesn't seem that Sony does much testing at all, and more or less treats controllers as simply another element of the unit's aeshetics.
The main problem with Nintendo's controllers, as far as I can see, is that they seem to do the bulk of testing with their own game designs, so that the results are sometimes awkward for games ported from other consoles and perhaps certain game genres with well-established controller conventions (e.g. fighting games where everybody is crying out for 17 face buttons...).
Slashdot Mirror
Bean counters like to deal in simple concepts like adding up all the hours in the day and saying that's the amount of work they expect, and that any deviation from that is "lost productivity".
The real truth is that productivity is very hard to measure, and expected productivity even harder. As the bean counters are usually fairly stupid, I'd suggest they simply stop trying and go count something that's really countable, like beans.
Let the rest of us get back to work (and reading slashdot).
I thought the H1 and H2 were basically completely different vehicles -- the H1 being a derivative of the military vehical (so sharing some of its advantages and shortcomings), and the H2 being some kind of bizarro joke trying to capitalize on the H1's popularity by using the same name.
The thing that mystifies me about archy, is that it bases so much on typing non-trivial amounts of text while holding down various modifier keys. That seems just annoying[*] and yet they seem to have gone whole-hog with this concept in their attempt to avoid modality (though it's obviously near impossible to do so absolutely). I like the emphasis on "immediateness", but the whole thing seems just a bit nuts.
[*] You think using control while typing "x" is bad? How about holding a modifier key down while you enter an entire filename!
Oh come on, it was the '70s! Just be glad they didn't figure out a way to introduce roller-disco as a major plot thread.
I was about that age when the original came out, and remember being constantly a bit disappointed how tacky everything was... However I think one reason I was disappointed was the clear sense of something grander underneath, which had been overwhelmed by the pressures of commercial television (studio boss: "More roller-disco!").
Which is how different from fawning over Linus, Bill Joy, Woz etc etc ?
Linus, Bill Joy, Woz, etc., each have a brain? And did something useful with them? On their own? As opposed to being artificial constructs of a cynical and corrupt celebrity industry?
Mind you, brains are way over-rated, but it's something...
Man, windows users are so pissy...
"For Luigi's sake officer, she was 80 years old! Not long for this world, soon to be an ex-citizen! Surely it's better to die quickly from massive trauma inflicted by an insane geek committing unspeakable perversions to the grand old sport of bicycling than to choke on her own phlegm in some decrepit bingo parlor? ... Officer...?"
I haven't heard much rumbling about it since then, although I hit the wrong one and close a window occasionally still. It's not the worst thing in the world
No, but it was a pretty damn stupid change. Along with the peek-a-boo button labels, it lends credence to the accusation that they've simply stopped caring about usability, and now just go for eye candy.
Most failed commercial products never saw the light of day, so only those who worked on them will know they ever existed.
Ha haha ha! I've used pleeenty of commercial software that should have failed, on account of sucking so much, but was none-the-less sold for money.
Often this stuff shows up in applications where you have little choice but to use it, so it can just keep on sucking and suck in the money too. I find myself fervantly wishing I were using some horrid sucky FOSS instead, because then there'd at least be a small possibility of fixing some of the problems myself.
[BTW what on earth is the point of this story? We've know this jboss guy is a moron for ages, and he's still a moron; this is news?]
Huh? Debian's most famous asset is stability... they actually think hard about how to keep the system stable for long periods, across upgrades.
... watch out!
Other linux vendors seem to think more about a flashy first impression; they generally work well if you never change much from the release you bought or use any non-mainstream software, but as soon as you try to upgrade something
Clearly there's room for a layer of "paid responsibility" on top of Debian though, someone who will do the dirty work when necessary, and grin and bear it (and say "by monday!") when the screaming starts...
I think the real answer is a comment made by an earlier poster in this thread: the PSP was way over-hyped in the beginning; sure the screen is extremely nice, but a nice screen is not nearly enough!
... and playing the hype card apparently wasn't enough. Now they've got to compete based on merit, and it's going to be a long, hard, slog...
It's very, very hard to build a "perfect" handheld, and neither the PSP nor the DS even comes close. The DS is notably annoying in some ways (my main complaint: it's too damn big for those small screens!), but having a 2nd screen with a stylus really opens up a lot of possibilities.
Sony's secret weapons with the PS2 were their installed base and their insane over the top hype. In the case of the PSP, they don't have an installed base
It's always amusing seeing reviewers' estimates of game length; if they say "25 hours", I know it will take me approximately 347 hours to finish it.
I only tend to play once every couple of weeks, so with RPGs much of that time is wandering around in confusion trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing...
smaller artists are hit harder by piracy. If you're selling 1,000 CDs a year, 200 people pirating music is a much bigger hit than if you sell 1,000,000 CDs a year
This doesn't seem entirely clear; "piracy" can serve to widely increase exposure (it's pretty widely held that microsoft benefitted immensely from "pirating" of earlier versions of windows).
There are probably many different scenarios where the tradeoff could go in either direction.
I didn't say "smart and interesting", just "not wankers". I think the average celeb is actually kind of dim.
I don't think that's quite fair -- SMAP may not be the future of music, and they're definitely, er, over-exposed, but they at least seem to be pretty likeable guys.
That's big difference between Japanese and American "corporate pop" in my mind: Japanese pop stars generally seem more or less normal people if you discount the fact that they're on TV every 57 seconds (I was going to say something about the funny clothing and hairstyles, but come to think of it half the teenagers in Japan dress the same way...); American pop stars are usually mind-bendingly annoying self-obsessed wankers.
Because as we all know, "360 dev kits shipped out" is ultra-important, time-critical news. A few days late will just not do.
That doesn't make any sense -- "linux" and "unix" are functionally more or less the same these days (licensing issues aside of course); the only real difference is historical.
A hummer built at a honda factory?
$1 DVDs in cardboard sleeves marked "Family DVDs." Prominently featured was Romero's Night Of The Living Dead.
Well nothing promotes family togetherness like being besieged by zombies does.
IPv6 was explicitly designed to make routable addresses reasonable, and using it like that seems to be pretty much a basic assumption.
IPv4, with its teeny address space, is not a good analogy.
In Japan women are quite literally forced to choose between having children and having a career. Having both is not possible. And many women choose career which further depresses the childbirth rate. ... On another matter, if people think female participation in technology and scientific related fields is low in the US or Australia it's got nothing on Japan.
I work for NEC (in Japan), in software development, and there's about 60-40 male/female-ratio here (counting only "real" jobs such as software development). Many of my co-workers have had kids, and AFAIK none of them have quit -- they usually seem to leave for 3-4 months just after childbirth and then come back. There is a notable lack of women in top-level management positions, though in my experience this is also true in the U.S.
However, I think it is true that NEC is fairly progressive for a big Japanese company.
7. Ha ha, just kidding!
Good thing too, it'd be pretty damn gross if you were chowing down on your wafer and it suddenly turned into a warm rubbery little disc of human flesh.
GC flaws:
DS2 flaws:
The GC controller flaws seem to result from a certain over-emphasis on a particular style of controller usage -- certain controls are emphasized at the expense of others -- but it's pretty clear that Nintendo thought through their preferred control scheme and made the controller work well for that case.
The DS2 flaws, on the other hand, are harder to characterize, and seem to stem from a lack of attention to detail -- both the d-pad and analogue sticks are annoying to use for different reasons. It has a much more generic feel, which is good in some ways (more flexible) and bad in others (less optimized).
So based on your particular style of gaming, there are reaons to prefer one or the other -- but if an article like this makes any pretense at an evenhanded analysis, a conclusion that the DS2 is great and the GC controller sucks is simply bizarre.
On the other hand, the GameCube controller does what he suggests, and labels each button with a letter. And as a result, every time a game tells me to push "X" or "Y" I have to pause, look down at the controller, and hunt for the symbols.
This is confused (have you ever played a game on the gamecube?) -- the gamecube buttons are dramatically different shapes, sizes, and colors, and games inevitably refer to them by showing little pictures of the button in context; you can locate them by feel. As far as I can tell the letters are never used except in online walk-throughs and the like (and for this particular purpose, using letters for each is a fantastic idea).
Morever, the gamecube has an extremely standard set of uses for the buttons (the "main/fire/activate/confirm" button is always big central button, the "back" button is always the little circular button next to it, etc).
The playstation buttons, being identically sized and symmetrical, are actually rather easy to get confused -- and games make this worse by being inconsistent about button assignments (if it were always "circle means confirm etc." that would kind of nice, but it's not).
What's pretty clear is that nintendo puts quite a bit of effort into the ergonomics of their controllers and does a lot of user testing (their most famous developer, miyamoto, is famously obsessed with the subject). Based on the often glaringly obvious problems with Sony controllers (the PSP analogue nub being a great example), it doesn't seem that Sony does much testing at all, and more or less treats controllers as simply another element of the unit's aeshetics.
The main problem with Nintendo's controllers, as far as I can see, is that they seem to do the bulk of testing with their own game designs, so that the results are sometimes awkward for games ported from other consoles and perhaps certain game genres with well-established controller conventions (e.g. fighting games where everybody is crying out for 17 face buttons...).