There has been a change in the software industry since about 2000. Id put the mark at around Googles IPO actually, but I cant say exactly when. What I can say is that the current way technology companies are grown promotes an attitude of exploiting open source rather than contributing.
I cant really blame these companies though, they are designed to flip. A VC backed firm is almost always going to be setup for a short-term gain in the hopes of bringing a handsome return on investment later. For a VC, expecting a payout in 20 years is unheard of, especially if you plan on doing it without an IPO and stock options for everyone involved.
This actually, and sadly, just doesn't apply to software, it applies to just about everything manufactured by human labor in the United States. Venture Capital seems to follow this plan:
1. Find thing that looks like a hot prospect.
2. Offer to back thing with preciousss capital.
3. Cut costs and leave a shell of the thing, but hide this fact from investors.
4. IPO and abandon ship! (Replace IPO with "Create Derivative" to explain how mortgages went from something close to a AAA asset to "Toxic Assets.")
People aren't trying (well, mostly, and Yog-Sothoth bless the folks who are) to create going concerns, they are trying to create Potemkin Villages to fool people with more money than sense. Google is actually a bad example here. They are a stable and successful corporation that does quality work and the company is a going concern.
We could structure the laws to really, really punish the flippers and reward those who are making an actual working company. (It seems currently to be the other way around.) But we have the problem of a government composed of people who would gladly sell our children to zoos for meat, and the fact that the VC people have money and really like the current system.
Actually, probably the best place to get real useful business information for D&D is from the History of D&D, specifically, the History of TSR hobbies.
Actually, probably the best place to get real useful business information for D&D is from the History of D&D, specifically, the History of TSR hobbies.
"Now, you might ask," said the greasy salesman at the Radio Shack sales meeting I had to attend when I worked there, "Why is a customer going to buy a service plan that costs more than the cheap pair of headphones he is buying? Well, you tell him that when he comes back to the store with that service plan, he'll be a king. He'll be able to replace them no questions asked."
"Anyway, the point is you need to be creative and get your extended service plan sales up..."
There was an old Dr. Who episode called "The Happiness Patrol," non-smilers would be drowned in syrup.
Also, in the Simpsons Time Travel Tree House of Horror episode, the Ned Flanders world had mandatory smiling enforced by hooks, and if that didn't sort out the Negative Nellies, then there was the option of a total frontal lobotomy. "And they let you keep the piece of brain they cut out," as Moe says.
Look, how hard is this, Google isn't selling search services, Email, document publishing software, or the like.
Google is selling eyeballs, just like broadcast tv, broadcast radio, etc. They aren't selling anything to their users, they are harvesting their users and selling them to advertisers. They are able to sell stuff that's pretty well targetted through their search and Email.
The tradeoff of charging for their stuff would be that they would become a lot less valuable to advertisers, and people who are paying to use them would resent the fact that they are "paying for advertising."
So Google's service isn't free, it's just the Mark Cuban isn't their customer. Unless he's buying ad-space with them, in which case he's just not very bright.
The big story I think of is Portal which came out of a Freeware game created at Digipen called Narbacular Drop. So, that's the kind of thing that gives me a (perhaps innaccurate) view of Digipen. Hey, some students from there went almost straight from there to Valve! And have a hit video game under their belts to boot!
Now, what does that mean? Well, looking for an equivalent program where you are going to school would probably be a start. I don't know how Full Sail, I know a guy who went there for film and works for a newspaper now, but that might just be because of his personality and overly cautious nature. (They have a game design program too, which is why I bring them up.)
Note: Game programming, designing, etc, is notoriously horrible as a career. Don't take my advice as me saying go into it as a career, but if I were going to, this is where I'd start.
What we have here is a quasi-religious belief in the goodness of Man. Something not born out by human behavior for as long as there have been humans.
None of it is based on real science, and it has what for most of it's adherants is a non-falsifiable premise, no matter how many Sparticani the Romans crucified, how many babies sacrificed to Dagon, or how many hearts were given to the Aztec gods.
The Good News is the attractive and inspiriting proposition that most people have a powerful instinctual disinclination to kill other human beings, and under normal conditions, including their own presence on a battlefield in immediate proximity to homicidal strangers, will refuse to do so. The Bad News is that modern media culture produces an abnormal condition in which ordinary children are all too likely to become much more effective killers than, say, a typical American GI facing the SS in Normandy. And Col. Grossman is supremely confident that he can prove both of these contentions. His attempts to do so, in these two fantastic and extremely dispiriting parodies of rational argument, are fascinating illustrations of the intellectual level of much contemporary American social science.
I wouldn't care, but the whole point of all these mental gymnastics is to remove First Amendment protections from video games, as Frederick Wertham did to comic books for many years. And the author of the article sites as his "realistic, murder simulator" Bioshock. Seriously, Bioshock.
I might have more respect if they were talking about realistic war simulations... ok, who am I kidding, no I wouldn't. But Bioshock? Seriously? They game where you have magic powers and the enemies all look like freakshow rejects? That game?
Gamers may suffer some kind of identity crisis as the familiar markers of their beloved niche evolve or disappear entirely. The solution to that one's easy: Get over it.
You know, I always think it's great when people say this, but they always forget the alternative... I don't have to play video games if I don't think they are fun. There are tons of other things to do in this world. In fact, I'm actually not going to play video games if I don't think they are fun. I have something called a job for when I want to do things that aren't fun.
More importantly for the people who say, "Get over it," if I find that the new video games aren't fun, I'll stop buying them and wait until someone produces some that are worthy. Heck, since I'll likely fill my leisure time with alternative activities I might just forget that games exist entirely....
Hacker: A natural computer genius, grew up with a keyboard in his hand. Hackers may have a formal education but they learned the guts of computing long before that. They have an almost intuitive, because it is deeply learned, knowledge of what works and what doesn't when it comes to computers. I think being a hacker is something to be aspired to, but I doubt that anyone can apply the title to themselves. Well, some people can, because they're just that good.
Cowboy: An independant soul who may be too stubborn to admit he is wrong about certain ingrained behaviors he's picked up over time. Sometimes people will put up with his ways because he is just that good, other times he'll make a catastrophic error and send everything to Hell. Not good or evil, just stubborn and independent. Sometimes his stubbornness can work in a company's favor, when the political thing to do is actually the wrong thing, and the cowboy won't "go along to get along." Sadly, the company is unlikely to thank the cowboy for this.
Cog: Mister Cellophane, a nobody who anyone can step on, a little grey man. This guy figures "you take care of the company, the company will take care of you," but is surprised when being taken care of by the company involves a pair of cement shoes and a trip to the pier. Cogs do their best to be easily replacable, and try to make themselves politically popular. Maybe that path succeeds for them, but maybe they find themselves the sacrificial lamb. In MIT slang you could possibly call this person a tool.
I parse the article this way "We'd like less independent geniuses and more interchangeable cogs, please."
Story Time: Back in the Nineties I worked for a.com that was planning to provide a total network solution for Doctors, Clinics and Hospitals.
Because of the liabilities associated with medical records we were looking at token based security. Basically an electronic key that a computer could read to allow access to the network. Now the idea was that this would be available from anywhere, so the main problem was they we'd have to give away readers along with the tokens.
Flash forward to today. The only things that should have password protection only are things where we don't really care about security. Oh, and FYI, any website that asks "What is your grammar school name?" are disqualified from having decent password security. (Even if they Email your password, how do they know you aren't logging into the Littlest Petshop's Web Board, while standing over your victim's corpse and his open Webmail connection? Well?)
Meanwhile, we have the perfect token reader in the form of USB ports, but I don't know anyone who uses them for that.
I see peoples' passwords constantly. Here are some popular ones:
Wife's Name Kid's Name Sports Team
Sometimes they mix it up with something really secure, like the current year. I don't blame people though, I'm paranoid that people will guess my passwords even though I create the important ones by rolling dice...
It's not capitalism that has this effect, it's power. The Potemkin Village effect.
The big problem in the U. S. is that regulatory capture has led to unaccountable corporate power.
I'm not sure what capitalism is. It seems to be just a bunch of words used to intimidate people from telling everyone that the emperor has no clothes. It's a bunch of glittering generalities primarily to protect entrenched, increasingly aristocratic power in a society with less and less social mobility. The cant of the New Feudalism.
It's certainly nothing coherent enough to be called a philosophy.
Yes, if fact the first time it happened, it was because the Timelords had "changed his appearance." I don't know why they feel this need for a pseudo-science fictional explanation, it's never bothered James Bond.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if that's your poison, then you need to know, even the undead fear... The Goon!
Oh, and also, kawaii.
o/~ its time to take a ride on a nightmare merry go round / you'll be dead on arrival from the likes of the killer klowns / from outer space... o/~
Why do one when you can do both? Hey, that film is a classic!
1974: The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, possibly my favorite Harryhausen epic.
Typical sex-crazed Hobbit! What are the part Hobo part Rabbit?
This actually, and sadly, just doesn't apply to software, it applies to just about everything manufactured by human labor in the United States. Venture Capital seems to follow this plan:
1. Find thing that looks like a hot prospect.
2. Offer to back thing with preciousss capital.
3. Cut costs and leave a shell of the thing, but hide this fact from investors.
4. IPO and abandon ship! (Replace IPO with "Create Derivative" to explain how mortgages went from something close to a AAA asset to "Toxic Assets.")
People aren't trying (well, mostly, and Yog-Sothoth bless the folks who are) to create going concerns, they are trying to create Potemkin Villages to fool people with more money than sense. Google is actually a bad example here. They are a stable and successful corporation that does quality work and the company is a going concern.
We could structure the laws to really, really punish the flippers and reward those who are making an actual working company. (It seems currently to be the other way around.) But we have the problem of a government composed of people who would gladly sell our children to zoos for meat, and the fact that the VC people have money and really like the current system.
But, Brain, isn't that a bit much to access a cash register at Chuck E. Cheese's? Narf!
Laziness, Hubris and Impatience are the three virtues of a programmer.
Actually, probably the best place to get real useful business information for D&D is from the History of D&D, specifically, the History of TSR hobbies.
Here's a good starting point. It's a sad and horrifying tale of corporate intrigue that led to business failure.
Actually, probably the best place to get real useful business information for D&D is from the History of D&D, specifically, the History of TSR hobbies.
Here's a good starting point. It's a sad and horrifying tale of corporate intrigue that led to business failure.
"Now, you might ask," said the greasy salesman at the Radio Shack sales meeting I had to attend when I worked there, "Why is a customer going to buy a service plan that costs more than the cheap pair of headphones he is buying? Well, you tell him that when he comes back to the store with that service plan, he'll be a king. He'll be able to replace them no questions asked."
"Anyway, the point is you need to be creative and get your extended service plan sales up..."
There was an old Dr. Who episode called "The Happiness Patrol," non-smilers would be drowned in syrup.
Also, in the Simpsons Time Travel Tree House of Horror episode, the Ned Flanders world had mandatory smiling enforced by hooks, and if that didn't sort out the Negative Nellies, then there was the option of a total frontal lobotomy. "And they let you keep the piece of brain they cut out," as Moe says.
Also, I present this video.
Kawaii!
Look, how hard is this, Google isn't selling search services, Email, document publishing software, or the like.
Google is selling eyeballs, just like broadcast tv, broadcast radio, etc. They aren't selling anything to their users, they are harvesting their users and selling them to advertisers. They are able to sell stuff that's pretty well targetted through their search and Email.
The tradeoff of charging for their stuff would be that they would become a lot less valuable to advertisers, and people who are paying to use them would resent the fact that they are "paying for advertising."
So Google's service isn't free, it's just the Mark Cuban isn't their customer. Unless he's buying ad-space with them, in which case he's just not very bright.
Don't forget The Forge, a great place to find off the beaten path games.
Oh, and, of course, Troll Lord games for those of us in the "get off my lawn" demographic.
If your cheap, you can wait a year until Free RPG Day
Of course, me? I prefer boardgames. (and card games).
The big story I think of is Portal which came out of a Freeware game created at Digipen called Narbacular Drop. So, that's the kind of thing that gives me a (perhaps innaccurate) view of Digipen. Hey, some students from there went almost straight from there to Valve! And have a hit video game under their belts to boot!
Now, what does that mean? Well, looking for an equivalent program where you are going to school would probably be a start. I don't know how Full Sail, I know a guy who went there for film and works for a newspaper now, but that might just be because of his personality and overly cautious nature. (They have a game design program too, which is why I bring them up.)
Note: Game programming, designing, etc, is notoriously horrible as a career. Don't take my advice as me saying go into it as a career, but if I were going to, this is where I'd start.
And again, I must refer to this:
Grossman-ism: Media Violence and Mad Social Science
What we have here is a quasi-religious belief in the goodness of Man. Something not born out by human behavior for as long as there have been humans.
None of it is based on real science, and it has what for most of it's adherants is a non-falsifiable premise, no matter how many Sparticani the Romans crucified, how many babies sacrificed to Dagon, or how many hearts were given to the Aztec gods.
I wouldn't care, but the whole point of all these mental gymnastics is to remove First Amendment protections from video games, as Frederick Wertham did to comic books for many years. And the author of the article sites as his "realistic, murder simulator" Bioshock. Seriously, Bioshock.
I might have more respect if they were talking about realistic war simulations... ok, who am I kidding, no I wouldn't. But Bioshock? Seriously? They game where you have magic powers and the enemies all look like freakshow rejects? That game?
I remember my brother told me that the z button was included against the wishes of the joystick designers on orders from higher up...
Of course [citation needed]
I have to say, that it finally dawned on me that DS stands for Dual Shock... it was a strange thread up until now.
You know, I always think it's great when people say this, but they always forget the alternative... I don't have to play video games if I don't think they are fun. There are tons of other things to do in this world. In fact, I'm actually not going to play video games if I don't think they are fun. I have something called a job for when I want to do things that aren't fun.
More importantly for the people who say, "Get over it," if I find that the new video games aren't fun, I'll stop buying them and wait until someone produces some that are worthy. Heck, since I'll likely fill my leisure time with alternative activities I might just forget that games exist entirely....
Hacker: A natural computer genius, grew up with a keyboard in his hand. Hackers may have a formal education but they learned the guts of computing long before that. They have an almost intuitive, because it is deeply learned, knowledge of what works and what doesn't when it comes to computers. I think being a hacker is something to be aspired to, but I doubt that anyone can apply the title to themselves. Well, some people can, because they're just that good.
Cowboy: An independant soul who may be too stubborn to admit he is wrong about certain ingrained behaviors he's picked up over time. Sometimes people will put up with his ways because he is just that good, other times he'll make a catastrophic error and send everything to Hell. Not good or evil, just stubborn and independent. Sometimes his stubbornness can work in a company's favor, when the political thing to do is actually the wrong thing, and the cowboy won't "go along to get along." Sadly, the company is unlikely to thank the cowboy for this.
Cog: Mister Cellophane, a nobody who anyone can step on, a little grey man. This guy figures "you take care of the company, the company will take care of you," but is surprised when being taken care of by the company involves a pair of cement shoes and a trip to the pier. Cogs do their best to be easily replacable, and try to make themselves politically popular. Maybe that path succeeds for them, but maybe they find themselves the sacrificial lamb. In MIT slang you could possibly call this person a tool.
I parse the article this way "We'd like less independent geniuses and more interchangeable cogs, please."
The Harlan Ellison story always remonds me of this one: Kevin Smith about talk Superman.
Well, passwords alone are ungood...
Story Time: Back in the Nineties I worked for a .com that was planning to provide a total network solution for Doctors, Clinics and Hospitals.
Because of the liabilities associated with medical records we were looking at token based security. Basically an electronic key that a computer could read to allow access to the network. Now the idea was that this would be available from anywhere, so the main problem was they we'd have to give away readers along with the tokens.
Flash forward to today. The only things that should have password protection only are things where we don't really care about security. Oh, and FYI, any website that asks "What is your grammar school name?" are disqualified from having decent password security. (Even if they Email your password, how do they know you aren't logging into the Littlest Petshop's Web Board, while standing over your victim's corpse and his open Webmail connection? Well?)
Meanwhile, we have the perfect token reader in the form of USB ports, but I don't know anyone who uses them for that.
I see peoples' passwords constantly. Here are some popular ones:
Wife's Name
Kid's Name
Sports Team
Sometimes they mix it up with something really secure, like the current year. I don't blame people though, I'm paranoid that people will guess my passwords even though I create the important ones by rolling dice...
In other words, "Do a good job and make clean, efficient and easily maintainable code."
Programmer does this, "Oh, good job. Well, we won't be needing you anymore, the guard will watch as you pack you desk and leave forever."
In an alternate timeline, the same programmer writes a million lines of inefficient, undocumented spaghetti code.
"Ugh... what a mess. Looks like we'll need to keep you on to maintain it forever."
You know what that reminds me of? Soviet-style accounting. Perhaps "capitalism" and "communism" are in fact the same thing?
For this article wouldn't it be AmericaLast or MultinationalCorporationsFirst?
It's not capitalism that has this effect, it's power. The Potemkin Village effect.
The big problem in the U. S. is that regulatory capture has led to unaccountable corporate power.
I'm not sure what capitalism is. It seems to be just a bunch of words used to intimidate people from telling everyone that the emperor has no clothes. It's a bunch of glittering generalities primarily to protect entrenched, increasingly aristocratic power in a society with less and less social mobility. The cant of the New Feudalism.
It's certainly nothing coherent enough to be called a philosophy.
Yes, if fact the first time it happened, it was because the Timelords had "changed his appearance." I don't know why they feel this need for a pseudo-science fictional explanation, it's never bothered James Bond.