Not for the claustrophobic, that's for sure - just another trend in the industry I suppose - save on real estate costs - at the last place I was at, the new plans call for everyone to be in 60 sq. ft including managers...
... Linux and desktops. Has everyone become that "windows"-ised that we can't figure out any non-Microsoft application? Maybe it's because I've been using computers for 20+ years, but I can remember secretaries (er, office assistants) using *Select* word processor on CPM DEC/Rainbow machines - monochrome word processing with an HTML-like syntax - after a day of training, they were competent users and able to efficiently and effectively pound out memos, letters, etc....
Sure, there's always a learning curve associated with a new platform - but the typical office user needs are limited to email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.... TBHWY, I find the Microsoft versions to be loaded with so much bloat that excessive time is wasted in figuring out why this paragraph is aligned improperly or some other esoteric bug with a Microsoft Office application. I'm not a big fan of WP programs (EMACS or any appropriate text editor for the platform - Ultraedit for Windows), but the new version of AbiWord seems to suit me fine, Gnumeric does all I need in a spreadsheet, mySql fills the bill for a DB app, etc.... Granted, there's no monolithic email app, but I get along fine with Mozilla Messenger. And for my needs (in working on web development projects), GIMP is a more than adequate surrogate for Adobe photoshop.
The biggest shortcoming of Linux on the desktop is not the lack of quality office applications, but the short list of popular game ports - waiting 1-2 years for a popular game (if at all) to be ported... though the situation will get better if many more like me predominately run Linux on the desktop and clamor for Linux games.
The big argument against Linux in the office, however, is all of the 3rd party crapware applications that companies have bought into, then found that the canned code needed tailoring and modification to suit the unique needs of the specific firm. Rewriting one of these sub-system applications would be no big deal, but many companies are beset with a plethora of these types of orphaned microcomputer applications, and moving all of them on to an open platform would be a formidable challenge, especially when the company may not even have access to core blocks of code due to licensing restrictions.
I am a senior programmer/analyst who was displaced by H1-B visa holder. And it was simply done because of money - I spent four years with the company and earned numerous awards, and even letters of glowing accomodation from the CEO of a Fortune 20 company. I have found new work, but it's been at cost to what I could normally make in a free market, as opposed to one that is artificially restricted - sure H1-B visa holders can change jobs, but for many, that would start the clock over on the time for green card - so they toil like Joseph worked to gain a wife in the old testament, waiting for their 5 or 6 or 7 years, or whatever the mark is now. Others in my same predicament have opted for early retirement (if they could afford it - I sure couldn't;(), and others are working as lifeguards and waiters while they scour the job market for a position that will most likely only pay 60-80% of what they were earning.
The new model is to "offshore" the coding support and development - 50% of the programmers are in India, and 50% are comprised mostly of H1-B Visa holders. It's not about quality - it's about cost. Nobody cares about quality until an application system has been down for three days straight, or some nasty lawsuit is filed by a disgruntled and angry customer. The visa holder is hardly qualified - in fact, in many instances he/she is handed a manual on the plane ride over to the U.S.. Some newcomers are very bright and catch on quickly and become competent programmers. But in many cases, it simply isn't so and even the brightest imports are not a substitute for a skilled programmer that has 10+ years working on a particular platform. There are things that take me minutes to figure out that will take that person days... it is not bragging, it's just things become second-nature to you after you've been seasoned by enough firewalks.
I realize most of my career experience has been in the realm of mainframe computing - I've worked on old Burroughs mainframes, VAX, PDP, and most all of the large IBM mainframe series - I can look back to a day when my manager was just like me, only more experienced. We would get together at lunchtime, sandwich in the mouth, and scribble out solutions to development problems, and brainstorm on satisfying customer demand. Nowdays, my manager is more likely to be some MBA type or worst, Sociology major that has no clue of large systems or the craft of programming and/or systems development. All that matters is cost. It really drove it home in my last contract when I would stroll in to work after a couple of days vacation, then see a problem that hadn't been solved for 2-3 days - I would nail it in less than a few hours. Am I a genius? No. I just knew where to look, and could ask the right questions. Maybe this is more exaggerated because most of my professional experience, like I stated, has been working on esoteric mainframes. But I am guessing it's not dramatically different that someone that read a book on Perl and cranked out a few home-brewed scripts vs. someone who's been developing and supporting enterprise level Perl code for 5+ years.
And the kicker is that we won't realize the grevious errors of this strategy until 5-10 years from now. Then, all of the system "experts" that were retained to guide and coach the newcomers will be gone - retired. And the raw youth that they trained will migrate on to the next "bodyshop" that pays a little more than the paltry wages they received before they got their green card.
It used to be that when we were faced with a shortage of talented programming professionals in the past, firms would actively recruit from the operational side - sure, not all those who toiled as computer operators or customer service reps and wanted to be a programmer possessed the necessary skill. But they were tested, the best then enrolled into a rigirous training program that prepared them for a new career. It was a win-win scenario for the company and the individuals who bootstrapped themselves into a better position. Those days are gone - now, American programmers are discarded and foreign H1-B visa holders are imported and/or the work is sent overseas. What message does that send to the youth of U.S.A.? I'm sure some wiseenheimer will retort that there are still individuals that rise above these obstacles and environmental challenges and succeed in spite. To which I respond - telling me that just because 0.5% of the population can do it, so can the other 99.5% is bunk. This shouldn't be about Darwinism, it should be about investing in our youth.
Listening to a local talk radio show, where the host was an auto mechanic - he described his surprise at encountering all of the "computer types" that seemed to have jobs that pay not much more than a "general help" position - it baffled him that the salary of educated professionals paled in comparison to the mechanics in his shop. I guess our lot is to be the same as the predicament of teachers today...
... those online services had a niche market, as tech savvy geeks represented the market.
The net is used by nearly all and a good majority of them are not tech savvy, nor do they wish to be - they just use the net as newspaper, TV, or radio, or telephone.
And bandwidth is still expensive - any high traffic site faces $5K and more for monthly bandwidth charges - that may be peanuts for a large company but that is prohibitive for most citizens...
Though I do agree that Dvorak is a clueless hack to be ignored...
I'm reading a lot of comments here where people are questioning the ease of setup, difference between dialup and broadband, etc.... While, those are good arguments, I have to say you arn't getting the point - Broadband is not taking off as fast because (1) it's still not available to a large segment of the population, (2) it's still nowhere simple as plugging a phone line in and getting a dial tone and (3) a good deal of people really don't see the need for broadband over a standard dialup connect...
DSL providers and cable companies have scaled back their rollouts - in my neighborhood, cable access was supposed to be here already but the target date keeps slipping (first it was summer of 2000, then it was early 2001, then it was end of 2001, now I'm told by Cox that they're re-examining their rollout strategy - whatever that means...). I keep getting ad fliers telling me that I'm elgible for DSL but when I call, I'm told I can't get it and that there are no plans for when and just to keep checking back periodically. I believe Sprint broadband is available but I'm not too familiar with it and fear spending money on technology that may be defunct after a year or two...
Dialup net access is simple - you plug in the phone line to the back of the computer, and most people are so lazy that they are paying $25 a month to AoL just because their machine came preloaded or they popped in a 30 days free CD, not realizing that they could receive the same service for $15 a month or less from a local ISP. And sorry, broadband is not as simple as cable hookup even - most families have issues with multiple PCs, extra costs for wiring, etc.... - it's not a big deal for techies like/. posters and readers but for the average Joe it is a larger hassle.
This may shock some geeks, but broadband access is not seen as a "must have" by many. Again, the average Joe feels he is served enough with email and basic net access. He's not downloading ISO images or building an MP3 collection. Yes, this may change at some point in the future, but not for at least several years. Also, many don't realize the difference unless they are a heavy net user - and Dvorak is right (o, it pains me to say that...) about the web being standardized for a dialup connect visitor - it doesn't make sense to do otherwise - and he's right - streaming media via broadband still looks choppy - it does make the net surf exprience a quicker, smoother one, but unless you use the net frequently, is it worth the extra money and hassle?
... and that would solve the "having to pay overtime" problem - still, a schedule would have to be drawn up and "coverage" would to be assigned and rotated (for fairness).
Of course, one Fortune 500 firm I worked at made all of their customer support staff exempt salaried employees to avoid paying overtime. But then OSHA (don't ask me why OSHA) stepped in and found that the positions did not qualify as "exempt" positions and forced the company to change the policy back... The company sought to seek out the "whisteblower" who made the phone call - called individual people into the office of their superiors to quiz them on the identity of "Deep Throat"
Dvorak, the curmudgeony PC poobah ...
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Calling Out TiVo
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· Score: 2
... self appointed, column writer/TechTV host is turning into a tired old characteture of himself... but to be fair here, Dvorak is pretty cranky and pessimistic concerning just about everything in the computer biz - well, except for his wish for a PDA phone...
The Silicon Spin TV show is actually pretty good, well it was before it was transformed into this new "TechLive" Paul Allen redoux format... less of him and more of the guests is a good thing - one bothersome thing is that most of the "experts" that participate in the "panel of pundits" are all usually pretty clueless too - CEOs of web startups like well you know, those morphed prefixes onto business terms like epinions.com, idrive.com, emhotep.com, etc.... Once, I watched all 5 pundits stammer incessantly when trying to define what "peer-to-peer" actually meant in technical means... Crossfire for wanna-be geeks... you can check out some shows at www.siliconspin.com if you don't get it on your cable as I think the channel is only on the dish and a handful of cable systems (I think they still stream them)...
He's all over the web, giving his viewpoints on M$, HTML, Palms, the web, Apple, Tech Stocks... I don't think he really knows what he's talking about anymore - at one time he did, but he's just a two trick pony know trotting for the bleachers...
In fact, my client is going to be hiring very soon for my project. Out of all my friends, I've never known a single one to lose a hi-tech job to work outsourced to a foreign country.
Just because it hasn't happened to you or your friends, doesn't mean it isn't happening... put the mocha down, and discard some of the dangerous, propagandized misconceptions about the benefits of unions. For starters, unions arn't all about rewarding "superiority" over "skills" - they are more concerned about protecting worker rights. Just because some facet of unionization may be corrupt doesn't make unions inherently bad.
I haven't read any of his earlier works and I still need to finish the series (4th of 4) just came out... Some may disagree but I think Otherland is incredible - cyberpunk, mythology, fantasy, sci-fi all woven into the epic - most of the action takes place in a virtual reality world where visitors are hooked into physical life support systems while they explore online realms that vary as the limits of imagination, all vividly detailed...
at least the "online store" buy portion of the site...
my big question is (judging only from previous/. story/comments), is has the handwriting recognition been improved? is it grafitti or some other construct?
i love my visor but since i bought it (about a year ago), i still haven't found a good checkbook application - i've tried all the commercial, shareware, open source free stuff out there and none of them fulfill my basic requirements (approximating my checkbook register in my since discarded Franklin planner):
nothing complex, just store check num, tran type/code, amount, description, date and maybe flag for tax deductable...
sort transactions in reverse order - this seems to be a big issue on palm os apps...
don't even care about reports or budgets or any other nonsense - just give me an easy way to enter entries and look them up (search by name or date range) - the fancy smancy reporting i can code a little script to total up in 10 minutes
Find really isn't an issue either if i have an option to export a spreadsheet type view for a given date range into txt/memo format
the apps that came bundled with palm were fine 2 years ago, but i don't think they take advantage of the 8M-16M devices now - i don't want to have to access my home box or carry a planner/book around when i want to locate quickly the dates when i sent a check to the insurance company or when the power goes off i can easily verify that i paid the bill instead of settling for rolling blackout...
i considered rolling my own for palm os, but just was discouraged at learning another API and i think even a gimped linux handheld os might offer a better platform than the palm - i still find it astonishing that i can play a decent game of bridge on my visor, but i can't find a decent checkbook.prc - i tried to live with the built-in expense app but it was awkward and clunky and had to tap thru 2-3 screens when entering stuff or looking it up...
... but you know what, the same thing is happening in the dial-up net customer realm too... I would love to have cable modem and/or DSL access but it ain't in my neighborhood yet, and judging from the slowdown of broadband progress, it may not be a reality here for a couple of years...
Meanwhile, the enjoyable, reliable, dependable ISP service we received from a local ISP just vanished into thin air... sold out to Earthlink - so after paying for a year in advance, all of a sudden I lost my email address (which they said I would have access to for post 90 days...) and dialup service... they said in a form letter that Earthlink would be sending us a packet and blah blah blah but we have yet to recieve a packet and our win-doze/linux dialup attempts are met with failure starting Wednesday... if I desired Earthlink or AoL I would have signed up with them eons ago... but now I have to seek another local provider - and I'm not certain that they're not headed to the same destination soon enough...
Basically, it sucks and there is no regulation and the customer can be royally fucked and there's nothing you can do... I believe (or at least hope for...) that this cries out for regulation of sorts - net access should be awarded the same consideration as TV/radio (FCC, etc.), phone, power... considering that for many it is a lifeline to work, school, etc. and that access should be provided even to the most economically disadvantaged to grant opportunity to those who seek to better themselves...
Meanwhile, my emails to my "former" ISP go unanswered, though if my email account has been prematurely disabled, I don't figure they'll telephone me or send me a letter...
BTW, the provider name is Inficad in Phoenix, AZ area... they can bite my shiny metal butt and if I had the power I would slap a class action lawsuit on their asses immediately...
I think this is an incredibly short sighted move on the part of MLB - but, hey, it's not like these buffoons are blessed with intelligence to match their riches... I can't see this being a successful venture, other than a small contingency of losers who are even bigger morons than Baseball's Lords of the Realm... meantime, you shut the young kids out that already are flocking as far away from as a baseball diamond...
I think the "new economy" is eventually going to humble the present-day professional sport franchise realm... licenses and IP rights go only so far - I mean it was nice when the video game Madden 93 was the craze but the only way you could tell it was Walter Payton running with the rock was the #34 graphic showing above his pixelated image... now, we have authentic simulation creations that don't necessarily need the pro league license, only the ability for you to add a #34 and custom name...
I have a dish and I subscribe to the hockey and football deals but I won't be renewing those next season... Why? - well, for a number of reasons - the yearly subscription price is indeed reasonable (little over $100) but a number of things really bug me - [1] I pay for the games but I don't get my favorite team announcers and I don't understand why that can't be provided - they can sub in the same ad space they sell for the dish package deals - it wouldn't matter to me... [2] I can't watch all the games at the same time - not being a smart-ass but I wish they would use the channel real estate that I donate my hard earned credits for replays and maybe put together some highlight reels (NFL really only one that does this and even theirs is a half-hearted endeaver - the NBA channel is merely a placeholder for nba.com...) of present and past action, or for goodness sake, air some of them Don Cherry rock-em sock-em videos... and [3] the state of sports on the dish in general - early dish days would get me all the sports channels from all across USA and each one had its own flavor and lots of minor league action was carried - now they've all been swallowed up by Fox Sports and the programming is all the same, and stuff like minor league hockey, college hockey, minor league baseball, roller hockey, etc. was dropped for the likes of Bob Ley, Keith Olberman - the regional sportscasts are a feeble attempt to restore the homebrewed flavor that has been painfully sterilized...
So, if I "jones" for some sports action, I guess I'll have to settle for the local teams or the ESPN game of the week... if it's not available in the chosen recreational time slot, perhaps I'll live vicariously and engage in some sporting activity myself, or maybe I'll put the finishing touches on that massively multiplayer sports role playing game that everyone has been clamoring for...
That is the percentage of home internet users that have broadband access right now - 12% (see recent internet.com survey for more details. Two-thirds of the rest "say" they have a 56k connection - they may have a 56k modem but I doubt if many actually get a true 50k+ connection with their ISP - in fact, I venture that many of those
who could get 56K have now opted for DSL - since being within a certain radius of the switching station an office hub (or whatever the correct term for it is...), more than likely had the option of affordable DSL.
Until the market is represented by at least 75% broadband saturation, I don't think ignoring the modem players is a wise choice for any game producing company. Granted, the figure last December was like 7%, so it almost doubled in a year - maybe next year it will be 25% - at any rate, it will be at least a couple of years...
I think the broadband factor is more an issue with the 3D FPS games - if you have a good ISP and get latency of 200-300ms on a dial-up - you can engage in enjoyable multiplayer gaming... Other factors for RTS games like Age of Empires/Age of Kings are memory and processor speed as all of those AI pathfinding algorithms eat up both - especially when the grand total unit deployment goes into the 1000's. One player with a P-200 and 64 meg can make the game lag as all others will have to wait while his/her box tries to "keep up" with the action and faster computers.
I don't understand why broadband isn't more available in metropolitan areas at least - here in the Phoenix area, I live in the city but do not have any option (except Sprint broadband which really doesn't count - don't know what piece of the 12% of that survey are represented here either... the initial latency makes multiplayer gaming for RTS or FPS or anything except turn based games tedious...) for DSL or cable modems. Cable modems are coming soon, but then they said that last year... Meanwhile, the giant media conglomerates that are Qwest and Cox are laying people off while there are residents clamoring for high speed internet... go figure...
... the fact that most large companies refuse to deal with independents - many shun independents for precisely (at least the legal dept. proclamations) the M$ suit and other similar litigation in the past... and for many others, a firm has to get on a "approved vendor" list before they will do business with that firm - sure, there are exceptions even in the most stringent do-goody firms, but for the average Joe Techsupport, or Joe Programmer even, they have to go to an "approved vendor" - even if they procure the position on their own merit and contacts, the hiring company directs them to the "pimp house"...
... forget about the crackers, hackers and script kiddies... just figure that some plain ol ballot stuffing of the electronic kind... there is no way now to tie a ballot to the person voting - there is a list of registered voters, but the ballot itself has no mark or registration or serial number or id or etc. that ties it back to the original voter... and without that, what is to stop an election official from just tapping a button, or a unbiased program glitch from just making the whole event a travesty?
I'm not saying that the present system is perfect - it is far from it - but the presence of a filled in paper ballot is a lot harder to cheat with (though it is still possible and probally occurs...)... just that a person's right to choose and vote and not reveal it would have to change - I am not sure if America is ready for that - Americans are funny about privacy, as I think a lot are going to learn...
netscape is a pile of shit - at one time is was the best browser, now it is a small shell of its former greatness, clinging to its very existence - just look at the statistics and look at the useragents hitting your pages (if you develop pages for non-geeks...)... let us examine the reasons for the shitiness of ns?
illegal operation performed - get it all the time with 4.6 version - in fact, "clean" html (certified by the w3c scripts...) cause a given page to just crash the browser mysteriously...
inconsistent css rendering - it is one thing to "not support" a css feature, but to have features wildly and inconsistently supported makes it tough to develop web pages with css... maybe it is a utopian dream to believe in the power of style sheets, but the existence of netscape browsers force me to (1)code special sections for ns users, (2) curse ns to no end, as there is not even a simple chart that can be drawn to indicate which tags work, which do not... so trying to find a "common denominator" is a brutal task
slower rendering engine, though i don't quite think it is the memory hog that IE is...
in attempting to placate the beginner-average user, ns lost me long ago - i hate using the mouse and every new ns version seems more mouse reliant... i tried the new beta and was unimpressed, though i realize that i may have be too snappy in judgement, conditioned by promises of past releases that did not impress me...
it's late, and i can conjure up some more distasteful morsels but what is the point... there are other alternatives than MSIE - Opera for one, which is my personal choice - i realize many browsing the web on linux boxes may feel that they are stuck with ns, but it seems to me that with new releases of opera beta 4 for linux and the KDE browser that i would much rather use those than be sentenced to time with a crappy program like ns
you ns afficianados will flame me away i guess... i am entitled to my feelings right - it makes it all the more sad that i really wish that ns never relinquished its top share to m$, maybe that's what makes it so much more disheartening...
... bleh... a bunch of self-proclaimed pundits and "experts" relied upon by tech clueless executives looking for the holy grail...
Note to Mr. CIO - you have a brain, use it... if you need information, consult with a true "source", someone who has fought on the frontline, dealt with the particular technology, etc.... don't be afraid to make a decision yourself.
I hate when someone retorts back to me "Well, the Gartner group says..." - I could give a rat's ass - every problem space is unique and the worst mistake people make is to attempt to identify a cookie-cutter solution to problems or opportunities that appear to be similar from a distance, but when examined closely, are quite different indeed...
Yourdon is a weenie ...
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Death March
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· Score: 4
... who the hell can take this guy seriously?
Let's review his authoring history... first, he writes a book ("...decline of the American...") that basically says that programmers in America are dead, that "software factories" in Asia/Japan will replace all the domestic programmers, that COBOL programmers are dead and COBOL is a dead language...
Then, he recants those assertions in "Rise of the American Programmer", and claims that Java and new web platforms have "rekindled" the American software programmers... right before the dawn of Y2K hysteria, again, he pronounces the death of COBOL again...
Now, the Y2K book where he sounds the FUD bell, and tells everyone to run to the hills, stock up on non-perishable rations, and build that bomb shelter kit...
Granted, this work offers a perspective of failing software projects and I even read most of it once while browsing at a local B&N and some of the anecdotes were quite amusing... but to spend a dime on this charlatan... bleh... how does this guy have any credibility whatsoever?
... it is funny to see things go full circle... although this is about "open source" requirements, I want to share my perspective from large business systems I have developed/supported...
Back before the 90s, and late 80s even, systems were thrown up with little requirements gathering or some kind of steering committee comprised of business users, operational staff, and programmers all formulated the requirements together...
By the 90s, however, architecture and implementation functions were separated, and those building the system merely were the technical authors - the requirements were dictated by analyst groups... now, the whole picture is hilarious - at least from the perspective of large business systems - when it made sense to separate the implemetation from the architecture - (70s - 80s - due to fact that new systems were built often, and the lifetime of a system was only a few years...) - and indeed, there was a push to do this...
Now, the situation is sometimes comical (at least to my programmer perspective:)), to see architecture and implementation separated, but the systems are 20-30+ years old, and there is noone that knows the "business rules" and/or requirements of the system - the rules are "embedded" within sphaghetti tangled code that has been trampled all over for 20+ years... but now, an analyst that has no ablility to read code whatsoever makes critical business decisions on requirements...
And please dispel with the notion that the present systems structure has nothing to do with the formulation of new business requirements - in a perfect world, perhaps, but cost is a big factor and cost can only be measured with a good grasp of the existing system framework structure... at least for "large" systems, no one is rewriting these... only adding another "hack" to achieve some essential critical business function that needs to be implemented yesterday...
Maybe as hardware costs keep diminishing... but as that continues, I have observed diminishing skills of new programmers... management always tries to opt for the "magic bullet", that just buy some shrinkwrap, plug in a few variables, and voila... there is no substitute for knowing how to program...
... yeah, I agree, a lot of the more recent episodes are not as good... still, there is a gem here and there... I hadn't thought about the guest angle aspect, but I think that is a perceptive assessment... my wife seems to think that the last several years episodes start out fine for the 1st 5-10 minutes and are a hoot, but the remainder of the show sucks...
My favorite episodes... here goes... not in any particular order...
Bart gets caught shoplifting - Buy me Bonestorm or go to hell.
The Pulp Fiction parody - Bart and Milhaus spitting off of the bridge... tall guy in the VW pulls down Nelson's pants and makes him march...
The Sideshow Bob episode where the Simpsons become the Thompsons and go to Terror Lake... Check out my new chainsaw and hockey mask...
The Johnny Cash/chilli cookoff/space coyote/soulmate episode...
the 3 segment spin-off parody - love-matic grandpa, wiggum pi, and the variety show knock-off...
any episode with the comic book store guy in it...
the halloween special where the children were being eaten by the teachers - i think another segment was a poe story knockoff, and another had Homer zapping through time... or was that the attack of the giant marketing statues...
Flanders goes insane when house is destroyed - We don't believe in rules, man. We gave that all up when we stared living like freaky beatniks...
Some of the worst episodes have been indeed recent episodes - the one where Homer and Flanders go to Vegas, I can't think of ones right now but there have been more than a few stinkers lately...
... let's face it, a lot of people just buy a computer to do email and surf the web... and with still most online are navigating on a 28k connection (yeah, 56k modems but it is real rare to get a true connection above 33k... at least in America...)... even when broadband options are available, only a small percentage of people sign up for service - until that happens, net usage on a small pipe really doesn't need all that CPU...
And if we have to wait for some technician from Q-Worst, baby bells, etc.... to physically visit each home to install broadband to customers who have no clue, well, it's going to be awhile... and given the problems and delays that people have experienced with both @home and DSL, it might be a while before all the kinks are worked out... and broadband includes a "broad" customer base...
There are more games being developed today, so yes, so just by pitching quarters into a shot glass, some of them will make it in... these are the good games while the rest are just "wanna-be"s...
... and No, because as pointed out in other comments, gameplay seems to be sacrificed for all the glitzy eye-candy... if the gameplay sucks, however, no amount of incredible awe inspiring 3-D rendering is going to save that game... a 10 year old game with a 2-D format with good gameplay is far superior to any polygon 3-D game that has choppy, inferior gameplay...
For example, one of my favorite games of all time was NHL95 - the graphics were not that great but the gameplay was incredible and the command button interface timely and responsive... later offerings that moved the game setting to a polygon based plan suffered from poor gameplay (though I haven't seen the last year or two... so it might be improved now...)...
The other point is that as the game worlds become more complex, so does the learning curve in new players learning how to play... while some are eager to dive into a 100+ page manual like Opera on a baked ham and study all the intricacies of a game, most like to learn as they go, and something that is too complex and not intuitive enough is bound to shoo them away...
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Not for the claustrophobic, that's for sure - just another trend in the industry I suppose - save on real estate costs - at the last place I was at, the new plans call for everyone to be in 60 sq. ft including managers ...
... Linux and desktops. Has everyone become that "windows"-ised that we can't figure out any non-Microsoft application? Maybe it's because I've been using computers for 20+ years, but I can remember secretaries (er, office assistants) using *Select* word processor on CPM DEC/Rainbow machines - monochrome word processing with an HTML-like syntax - after a day of training, they were competent users and able to efficiently and effectively pound out memos, letters, etc. ...
Sure, there's always a learning curve associated with a new platform - but the typical office user needs are limited to email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc. ... TBHWY, I find the Microsoft versions to be loaded with so much bloat that excessive time is wasted in figuring out why this paragraph is aligned improperly or some other esoteric bug with a Microsoft Office application. I'm not a big fan of WP programs (EMACS or any appropriate text editor for the platform - Ultraedit for Windows), but the new version of AbiWord seems to suit me fine, Gnumeric does all I need in a spreadsheet, mySql fills the bill for a DB app, etc. ... Granted, there's no monolithic email app, but I get along fine with Mozilla Messenger. And for my needs (in working on web development projects), GIMP is a more than adequate surrogate for Adobe photoshop.
The biggest shortcoming of Linux on the desktop is not the lack of quality office applications, but the short list of popular game ports - waiting 1-2 years for a popular game (if at all) to be ported ... though the situation will get better if many more like me predominately run Linux on the desktop and clamor for Linux games.
The big argument against Linux in the office, however, is all of the 3rd party crapware applications that companies have bought into, then found that the canned code needed tailoring and modification to suit the unique needs of the specific firm. Rewriting one of these sub-system applications would be no big deal, but many companies are beset with a plethora of these types of orphaned microcomputer applications, and moving all of them on to an open platform would be a formidable challenge, especially when the company may not even have access to core blocks of code due to licensing restrictions.
... cheap labor.
I am a senior programmer/analyst who was displaced by H1-B visa holder. And it was simply done because of money - I spent four years with the company and earned numerous awards, and even letters of glowing accomodation from the CEO of a Fortune 20 company. I have found new work, but it's been at cost to what I could normally make in a free market, as opposed to one that is artificially restricted - sure H1-B visa holders can change jobs, but for many, that would start the clock over on the time for green card - so they toil like Joseph worked to gain a wife in the old testament, waiting for their 5 or 6 or 7 years, or whatever the mark is now. Others in my same predicament have opted for early retirement (if they could afford it - I sure couldn't ;(), and others are working as lifeguards and waiters while they scour the job market for a position that will most likely only pay 60-80% of what they were earning.
The new model is to "offshore" the coding support and development - 50% of the programmers are in India, and 50% are comprised mostly of H1-B Visa holders. It's not about quality - it's about cost. Nobody cares about quality until an application system has been down for three days straight, or some nasty lawsuit is filed by a disgruntled and angry customer. The visa holder is hardly qualified - in fact, in many instances he/she is handed a manual on the plane ride over to the U.S.. Some newcomers are very bright and catch on quickly and become competent programmers. But in many cases, it simply isn't so and even the brightest imports are not a substitute for a skilled programmer that has 10+ years working on a particular platform. There are things that take me minutes to figure out that will take that person days ... it is not bragging, it's just things become second-nature to you after you've been seasoned by enough firewalks.
I realize most of my career experience has been in the realm of mainframe computing - I've worked on old Burroughs mainframes, VAX, PDP, and most all of the large IBM mainframe series - I can look back to a day when my manager was just like me, only more experienced. We would get together at lunchtime, sandwich in the mouth, and scribble out solutions to development problems, and brainstorm on satisfying customer demand. Nowdays, my manager is more likely to be some MBA type or worst, Sociology major that has no clue of large systems or the craft of programming and/or systems development. All that matters is cost. It really drove it home in my last contract when I would stroll in to work after a couple of days vacation, then see a problem that hadn't been solved for 2-3 days - I would nail it in less than a few hours. Am I a genius? No. I just knew where to look, and could ask the right questions. Maybe this is more exaggerated because most of my professional experience, like I stated, has been working on esoteric mainframes. But I am guessing it's not dramatically different that someone that read a book on Perl and cranked out a few home-brewed scripts vs. someone who's been developing and supporting enterprise level Perl code for 5+ years.
And the kicker is that we won't realize the grevious errors of this strategy until 5-10 years from now. Then, all of the system "experts" that were retained to guide and coach the newcomers will be gone - retired. And the raw youth that they trained will migrate on to the next "bodyshop" that pays a little more than the paltry wages they received before they got their green card.
It used to be that when we were faced with a shortage of talented programming professionals in the past, firms would actively recruit from the operational side - sure, not all those who toiled as computer operators or customer service reps and wanted to be a programmer possessed the necessary skill. But they were tested, the best then enrolled into a rigirous training program that prepared them for a new career. It was a win-win scenario for the company and the individuals who bootstrapped themselves into a better position. Those days are gone - now, American programmers are discarded and foreign H1-B visa holders are imported and/or the work is sent overseas. What message does that send to the youth of U.S.A.? I'm sure some wiseenheimer will retort that there are still individuals that rise above these obstacles and environmental challenges and succeed in spite. To which I respond - telling me that just because 0.5% of the population can do it, so can the other 99.5% is bunk. This shouldn't be about Darwinism, it should be about investing in our youth.
Listening to a local talk radio show, where the host was an auto mechanic - he described his surprise at encountering all of the "computer types" that seemed to have jobs that pay not much more than a "general help" position - it baffled him that the salary of educated professionals paled in comparison to the mechanics in his shop. I guess our lot is to be the same as the predicament of teachers today ...
For an irreverant look at Lineage, hop over to a review done by LtM a few months back ...
... those online services had a niche market, as tech savvy geeks represented the market.
The net is used by nearly all and a good majority of them are not tech savvy, nor do they wish to be - they just use the net as newspaper, TV, or radio, or telephone.
And bandwidth is still expensive - any high traffic site faces $5K and more for monthly bandwidth charges - that may be peanuts for a large company but that is prohibitive for most citizens ...
Though I do agree that Dvorak is a clueless hack to be ignored ...
... mark on this one ...
I'm reading a lot of comments here where people are questioning the ease of setup, difference between dialup and broadband, etc. ... While, those are good arguments, I have to say you arn't getting the point - Broadband is not taking off as fast because (1) it's still not available to a large segment of the population, (2) it's still nowhere simple as plugging a phone line in and getting a dial tone and (3) a good deal of people really don't see the need for broadband over a standard dialup connect ...
DSL providers and cable companies have scaled back their rollouts - in my neighborhood, cable access was supposed to be here already but the target date keeps slipping (first it was summer of 2000, then it was early 2001, then it was end of 2001, now I'm told by Cox that they're re-examining their rollout strategy - whatever that means ...). I keep getting ad fliers telling me that I'm elgible for DSL but when I call, I'm told I can't get it and that there are no plans for when and just to keep checking back periodically. I believe Sprint broadband is available but I'm not too familiar with it and fear spending money on technology that may be defunct after a year or two ...
Dialup net access is simple - you plug in the phone line to the back of the computer, and most people are so lazy that they are paying $25 a month to AoL just because their machine came preloaded or they popped in a 30 days free CD, not realizing that they could receive the same service for $15 a month or less from a local ISP. And sorry, broadband is not as simple as cable hookup even - most families have issues with multiple PCs, extra costs for wiring, etc. ... - it's not a big deal for techies like /. posters and readers but for the average Joe it is a larger hassle.
This may shock some geeks, but broadband access is not seen as a "must have" by many. Again, the average Joe feels he is served enough with email and basic net access. He's not downloading ISO images or building an MP3 collection. Yes, this may change at some point in the future, but not for at least several years. Also, many don't realize the difference unless they are a heavy net user - and Dvorak is right (o, it pains me to say that ...) about the web being standardized for a dialup connect visitor - it doesn't make sense to do otherwise - and he's right - streaming media via broadband still looks choppy - it does make the net surf exprience a quicker, smoother one, but unless you use the net frequently, is it worth the extra money and hassle?
... and that would solve the "having to pay overtime" problem - still, a schedule would have to be drawn up and "coverage" would to be assigned and rotated (for fairness). Of course, one Fortune 500 firm I worked at made all of their customer support staff exempt salaried employees to avoid paying overtime. But then OSHA (don't ask me why OSHA) stepped in and found that the positions did not qualify as "exempt" positions and forced the company to change the policy back ... The company sought to seek out the "whisteblower" who made the phone call - called individual people into the office of their superiors to quiz them on the identity of "Deep Throat"
... self appointed, column writer/TechTV host is turning into a tired old characteture of himself ... but to be fair here, Dvorak is pretty cranky and pessimistic concerning just about everything in the computer biz - well, except for his wish for a PDA phone ...
The Silicon Spin TV show is actually pretty good, well it was before it was transformed into this new "TechLive" Paul Allen redoux format ... less of him and more of the guests is a good thing - one bothersome thing is that most of the "experts" that participate in the "panel of pundits" are all usually pretty clueless too - CEOs of web startups like well you know, those morphed prefixes onto business terms like epinions.com, idrive.com, emhotep.com, etc. ... Once, I watched all 5 pundits stammer incessantly when trying to define what "peer-to-peer" actually meant in technical means ... Crossfire for wanna-be geeks ... you can check out some shows at www.siliconspin.com if you don't get it on your cable as I think the channel is only on the dish and a handful of cable systems (I think they still stream them) ...
He's all over the web, giving his viewpoints on M$, HTML, Palms, the web, Apple, Tech Stocks ... I don't think he really knows what he's talking about anymore - at one time he did, but he's just a two trick pony know trotting for the bleachers ...
Just because it hasn't happened to you or your friends, doesn't mean it isn't happening ... put the mocha down, and discard some of the dangerous, propagandized misconceptions about the benefits of unions. For starters, unions arn't all about rewarding "superiority" over "skills" - they are more concerned about protecting worker rights. Just because some facet of unionization may be corrupt doesn't make unions inherently bad.
My favorite Otherland character? He is finally figuring out who he really is ... well, sort of ...
I haven't read any of his earlier works and I still need to finish the series (4th of 4) just came out ... Some may disagree but I think Otherland is incredible - cyberpunk, mythology, fantasy, sci-fi all woven into the epic - most of the action takes place in a virtual reality world where visitors are hooked into physical life support systems while they explore online realms that vary as the limits of imagination, all vividly detailed ...
at least the "online store" buy portion of the site ...
my big question is (judging only from previous /. story/comments), is has the handwriting recognition been improved? is it grafitti or some other construct?
i love my visor but since i bought it (about a year ago), i still haven't found a good checkbook application - i've tried all the commercial, shareware, open source free stuff out there and none of them fulfill my basic requirements (approximating my checkbook register in my since discarded Franklin planner):
the apps that came bundled with palm were fine 2 years ago, but i don't think they take advantage of the 8M-16M devices now - i don't want to have to access my home box or carry a planner/book around when i want to locate quickly the dates when i sent a check to the insurance company or when the power goes off i can easily verify that i paid the bill instead of settling for rolling blackout ...
i considered rolling my own for palm os, but just was discouraged at learning another API and i think even a gimped linux handheld os might offer a better platform than the palm - i still find it astonishing that i can play a decent game of bridge on my visor, but i can't find a decent checkbook .prc - i tried to live with the built-in expense app but it was awkward and clunky and had to tap thru 2-3 screens when entering stuff or looking it up ...
... but you know what, the same thing is happening in the dial-up net customer realm too ... I would love to have cable modem and/or DSL access but it ain't in my neighborhood yet, and judging from the slowdown of broadband progress, it may not be a reality here for a couple of years ...
Meanwhile, the enjoyable, reliable, dependable ISP service we received from a local ISP just vanished into thin air ... sold out to Earthlink - so after paying for a year in advance, all of a sudden I lost my email address (which they said I would have access to for post 90 days ...) and dialup service ... they said in a form letter that Earthlink would be sending us a packet and blah blah blah but we have yet to recieve a packet and our win-doze/linux dialup attempts are met with failure starting Wednesday ... if I desired Earthlink or AoL I would have signed up with them eons ago ... but now I have to seek another local provider - and I'm not certain that they're not headed to the same destination soon enough ...
Basically, it sucks and there is no regulation and the customer can be royally fucked and there's nothing you can do ... I believe (or at least hope for ...) that this cries out for regulation of sorts - net access should be awarded the same consideration as TV/radio (FCC, etc.), phone, power ... considering that for many it is a lifeline to work, school, etc. and that access should be provided even to the most economically disadvantaged to grant opportunity to those who seek to better themselves ...
Meanwhile, my emails to my "former" ISP go unanswered, though if my email account has been prematurely disabled, I don't figure they'll telephone me or send me a letter ...
BTW, the provider name is Inficad in Phoenix, AZ area ... they can bite my shiny metal butt and if I had the power I would slap a class action lawsuit on their asses immediately ...
I think this is an incredibly short sighted move on the part of MLB - but, hey, it's not like these buffoons are blessed with intelligence to match their riches ... I can't see this being a successful venture, other than a small contingency of losers who are even bigger morons than Baseball's Lords of the Realm ... meantime, you shut the young kids out that already are flocking as far away from as a baseball diamond ...
I think the "new economy" is eventually going to humble the present-day professional sport franchise realm ... licenses and IP rights go only so far - I mean it was nice when the video game Madden 93 was the craze but the only way you could tell it was Walter Payton running with the rock was the #34 graphic showing above his pixelated image ... now, we have authentic simulation creations that don't necessarily need the pro league license, only the ability for you to add a #34 and custom name ...
I have a dish and I subscribe to the hockey and football deals but I won't be renewing those next season ... Why? - well, for a number of reasons - the yearly subscription price is indeed reasonable (little over $100) but a number of things really bug me - [1] I pay for the games but I don't get my favorite team announcers and I don't understand why that can't be provided - they can sub in the same ad space they sell for the dish package deals - it wouldn't matter to me ... [2] I can't watch all the games at the same time - not being a smart-ass but I wish they would use the channel real estate that I donate my hard earned credits for replays and maybe put together some highlight reels (NFL really only one that does this and even theirs is a half-hearted endeaver - the NBA channel is merely a placeholder for nba.com ...) of present and past action, or for goodness sake, air some of them Don Cherry rock-em sock-em videos ... and [3] the state of sports on the dish in general - early dish days would get me all the sports channels from all across USA and each one had its own flavor and lots of minor league action was carried - now they've all been swallowed up by Fox Sports and the programming is all the same, and stuff like minor league hockey, college hockey, minor league baseball, roller hockey, etc. was dropped for the likes of Bob Ley, Keith Olberman - the regional sportscasts are a feeble attempt to restore the homebrewed flavor that has been painfully sterilized ...
So, if I "jones" for some sports action, I guess I'll have to settle for the local teams or the ESPN game of the week ... if it's not available in the chosen recreational time slot, perhaps I'll live vicariously and engage in some sporting activity myself, or maybe I'll put the finishing touches on that massively multiplayer sports role playing game that everyone has been clamoring for ...
That is the percentage of home internet users that have broadband access right now - 12% (see recent internet.com survey for more details. Two-thirds of the rest "say" they have a 56k connection - they may have a 56k modem but I doubt if many actually get a true 50k+ connection with their ISP - in fact, I venture that many of those who could get 56K have now opted for DSL - since being within a certain radius of the switching station an office hub (or whatever the correct term for it is ...), more than likely had the option of affordable DSL.
Until the market is represented by at least 75% broadband saturation, I don't think ignoring the modem players is a wise choice for any game producing company. Granted, the figure last December was like 7%, so it almost doubled in a year - maybe next year it will be 25% - at any rate, it will be at least a couple of years ...
I think the broadband factor is more an issue with the 3D FPS games - if you have a good ISP and get latency of 200-300ms on a dial-up - you can engage in enjoyable multiplayer gaming ... Other factors for RTS games like Age of Empires/Age of Kings are memory and processor speed as all of those AI pathfinding algorithms eat up both - especially when the grand total unit deployment goes into the 1000's. One player with a P-200 and 64 meg can make the game lag as all others will have to wait while his/her box tries to "keep up" with the action and faster computers.
I don't understand why broadband isn't more available in metropolitan areas at least - here in the Phoenix area, I live in the city but do not have any option (except Sprint broadband which really doesn't count - don't know what piece of the 12% of that survey are represented here either ... the initial latency makes multiplayer gaming for RTS or FPS or anything except turn based games tedious ...) for DSL or cable modems. Cable modems are coming soon, but then they said that last year ... Meanwhile, the giant media conglomerates that are Qwest and Cox are laying people off while there are residents clamoring for high speed internet ... go figure ...
... the fact that most large companies refuse to deal with independents - many shun independents for precisely (at least the legal dept. proclamations) the M$ suit and other similar litigation in the past ... and for many others, a firm has to get on a "approved vendor" list before they will do business with that firm - sure, there are exceptions even in the most stringent do-goody firms, but for the average Joe Techsupport, or Joe Programmer even, they have to go to an "approved vendor" - even if they procure the position on their own merit and contacts, the hiring company directs them to the "pimp house" ...
... forget about the crackers, hackers and script kiddies ... just figure that some plain ol ballot stuffing of the electronic kind ... there is no way now to tie a ballot to the person voting - there is a list of registered voters, but the ballot itself has no mark or registration or serial number or id or etc. that ties it back to the original voter ... and without that, what is to stop an election official from just tapping a button, or a unbiased program glitch from just making the whole event a travesty?
I'm not saying that the present system is perfect - it is far from it - but the presence of a filled in paper ballot is a lot harder to cheat with (though it is still possible and probally occurs ...) ... just that a person's right to choose and vote and not reveal it would have to change - I am not sure if America is ready for that - Americans are funny about privacy, as I think a lot are going to learn ...
netscape is a pile of shit - at one time is was the best browser, now it is a small shell of its former greatness, clinging to its very existence - just look at the statistics and look at the useragents hitting your pages (if you develop pages for non-geeks ...) ... let us examine the reasons for the shitiness of ns?
it's late, and i can conjure up some more distasteful morsels but what is the point ... there are other alternatives than MSIE - Opera for one, which is my personal choice - i realize many browsing the web on linux boxes may feel that they are stuck with ns, but it seems to me that with new releases of opera beta 4 for linux and the KDE browser that i would much rather use those than be sentenced to time with a crappy program like ns
you ns afficianados will flame me away i guess ... i am entitled to my feelings right - it makes it all the more sad that i really wish that ns never relinquished its top share to m$, maybe that's what makes it so much more disheartening ...
... bleh ... a bunch of self-proclaimed pundits and "experts" relied upon by tech clueless executives looking for the holy grail ...
Note to Mr. CIO - you have a brain, use it ... if you need information, consult with a true "source", someone who has fought on the frontline, dealt with the particular technology, etc. ... don't be afraid to make a decision yourself.
I hate when someone retorts back to me "Well, the Gartner group says ..." - I could give a rat's ass - every problem space is unique and the worst mistake people make is to attempt to identify a cookie-cutter solution to problems or opportunities that appear to be similar from a distance, but when examined closely, are quite different indeed ...
... who the hell can take this guy seriously?
Let's review his authoring history ... first, he writes a book ("...decline of the American ...") that basically says that programmers in America are dead, that "software factories" in Asia/Japan will replace all the domestic programmers, that COBOL programmers are dead and COBOL is a dead language ...
Then, he recants those assertions in "Rise of the American Programmer", and claims that Java and new web platforms have "rekindled" the American software programmers ... right before the dawn of Y2K hysteria, again, he pronounces the death of COBOL again ...
Now, the Y2K book where he sounds the FUD bell, and tells everyone to run to the hills, stock up on non-perishable rations, and build that bomb shelter kit ...
Granted, this work offers a perspective of failing software projects and I even read most of it once while browsing at a local B&N and some of the anecdotes were quite amusing ... but to spend a dime on this charlatan ... bleh ... how does this guy have any credibility whatsoever?
... it is funny to see things go full circle ... although this is about "open source" requirements, I want to share my perspective from large business systems I have developed/supported ...
Back before the 90s, and late 80s even, systems were thrown up with little requirements gathering or some kind of steering committee comprised of business users, operational staff, and programmers all formulated the requirements together ...
By the 90s, however, architecture and implementation functions were separated, and those building the system merely were the technical authors - the requirements were dictated by analyst groups ... now, the whole picture is hilarious - at least from the perspective of large business systems - when it made sense to separate the implemetation from the architecture - (70s - 80s - due to fact that new systems were built often, and the lifetime of a system was only a few years ...) - and indeed, there was a push to do this ...
Now, the situation is sometimes comical (at least to my programmer perspective :)), to see architecture and implementation separated, but the systems are 20-30+ years old, and there is noone that knows the "business rules" and/or requirements of the system - the rules are "embedded" within sphaghetti tangled code that has been trampled all over for 20+ years ... but now, an analyst that has no ablility to read code whatsoever makes critical business decisions on requirements ...
And please dispel with the notion that the present systems structure has nothing to do with the formulation of new business requirements - in a perfect world, perhaps, but cost is a big factor and cost can only be measured with a good grasp of the existing system framework structure ... at least for "large" systems, no one is rewriting these ... only adding another "hack" to achieve some essential critical business function that needs to be implemented yesterday ...
Maybe as hardware costs keep diminishing ... but as that continues, I have observed diminishing skills of new programmers ... management always tries to opt for the "magic bullet", that just buy some shrinkwrap, plug in a few variables, and voila ... there is no substitute for knowing how to program ...
... yeah, I agree, a lot of the more recent episodes are not as good ... still, there is a gem here and there ... I hadn't thought about the guest angle aspect, but I think that is a perceptive assessment ... my wife seems to think that the last several years episodes start out fine for the 1st 5-10 minutes and are a hoot, but the remainder of the show sucks ...
My favorite episodes ... here goes ... not in any particular order ...
Some of the worst episodes have been indeed recent episodes - the one where Homer and Flanders go to Vegas, I can't think of ones right now but there have been more than a few stinkers lately ...
... let's face it, a lot of people just buy a computer to do email and surf the web ... and with still most online are navigating on a 28k connection (yeah, 56k modems but it is real rare to get a true connection above 33k ... at least in America ...) ... even when broadband options are available, only a small percentage of people sign up for service - until that happens, net usage on a small pipe really doesn't need all that CPU ...
And if we have to wait for some technician from Q-Worst, baby bells, etc. ... to physically visit each home to install broadband to customers who have no clue, well, it's going to be awhile ... and given the problems and delays that people have experienced with both @home and DSL, it might be a while before all the kinks are worked out ... and broadband includes a "broad" customer base ...
There are more games being developed today, so yes, so just by pitching quarters into a shot glass, some of them will make it in ... these are the good games while the rest are just "wanna-be"s ...
... and No, because as pointed out in other comments, gameplay seems to be sacrificed for all the glitzy eye-candy ... if the gameplay sucks, however, no amount of incredible awe inspiring 3-D rendering is going to save that game ... a 10 year old game with a 2-D format with good gameplay is far superior to any polygon 3-D game that has choppy, inferior gameplay ...
For example, one of my favorite games of all time was NHL95 - the graphics were not that great but the gameplay was incredible and the command button interface timely and responsive ... later offerings that moved the game setting to a polygon based plan suffered from poor gameplay (though I haven't seen the last year or two ... so it might be improved now ...) ...
The other point is that as the game worlds become more complex, so does the learning curve in new players learning how to play ... while some are eager to dive into a 100+ page manual like Opera on a baked ham and study all the intricacies of a game, most like to learn as they go, and something that is too complex and not intuitive enough is bound to shoo them away ...