one might wonder if id's unspoken business plan is to let Carmack create the greatest engine possible, and then just polish the art until consumers have rigs fast enough to run it.
I remember quake 3 going through a similar statis period of about a year between playable and release. and quake3 didn't even have a 'single player game experience'.
but if doom3 had already been released, all you'd hear is moaning about how high the system requirements are. what good would it do them to burn out their product inertia because no-one can play it?
i'd also guess carmack's time is much more profitably spent adding flexibility to the new engine to increase its appeal to licensees; and supporting the q3 engine licensees, than trying to optimize doom3 until they do release.
There is simply a wall at which the game won't run well enough on enough machines to warrant a release. And it's right next to the wall at which the time spent optimizing the engine results in less performance gain than the upgrade rate of the gaming market.
Funny... p2p stats seem to indicate that the most-traded songs are precisely the 'samey' 'generic' RIAA-propped 'artists' that are suffering the largest slump in sales(only top 10 pop album sales are down, all other genres are up).
this more indicates the public's dissatisfaction with the single-driven nature of pop albums. $20 an album, and only 2 or 3 songs they like is just not a good deal anymore. though they're angry with the legal distribution channels, the download statistics show that most people -do- actually prefer what's on the radio.
but the RIAA is no more abhorrent than WalMart to the consumer. They aren't customers in search of the best product, or an outlet that deals only in the highest quality goods. They are customers in search of the best deal. That WalMart and the RIAA are only middle-men peddling 'good enough' simply doesn't matter. The only difference between the acceptance of the two, is that one of these anticompetitive monsters isn't providing the best deal anymore.
SCO on the other hand is simply trying to -steal- Linux. they don't want to -kill- linux. they want to get rich off it. whether SCO has a legitimate product or not doesn't matter to the OS-buying public. they aren't revolting, they're waiting to see if they have to recalculate their ROI.
the people who -are- revolting are the community that supports Linux, and the companies that have given away their work to that commmunity. the OS consumer doesn't seem to have their dander up, they're just waiting for the smoke to clear. Only those with something to lose from SCO appropriating their hard work, or charging fees they don't have the resources to pay are reacting.
True, consumers always recognize quality products. BMW, Apple, DeWalt -- these are recognized names that are synonymous with quality in their fields. Yet they are also not market leaders in the consumer arena.
one would be wise not to underestimate the market's tolerance for an inferior product, if it's cheap enough.
i'm sorry, but that post sounds like someone without a degree hoping, or someone with a degree being bitter.
primarily, in my experience the coders i've worked with that have certs and no degrees get -shiat- on by corporate america. they get paid half as much or less, they have a piece of paper that -expires- and becomes obsolete, and they have very little leverage in the open-market - because their qualification is locked to a vendor.
then they either have to pay out-of-pocket to update their certs regularly, or they enter into a neo-bondage wage-slavery to their employer in exchange for having the tests (and classes if they need them) paid for.
and just how many job postings say 'MCSA/MCSD required' vs 'BA/BS required'? a quick trip through monster disproves this supposedly 'informative' rant.
personally, I have -never- seen a coding job that required an MS cert. and i've switched jobs -alot-. even now that the job market is tight, i've never seen a job posting that says MCSD/MCSA required. I'm sure that they don't hurt, and i'm sure that the same isn't true for hardware/network guys -- but we're talking about coding here.
whereas any hands-on you get in school will be obsoleted, you will -still- be writing the same algorithms. for as long as people have been, and will be writing code, the core skills haven't and won't change and are entirely platform and language neutral.
good coders need to be able to write good -algorithms-. MS doesn't test you on that. good coders need to write good designs. MS only tests you on your ability to use their tools to leverage -their- design. good coders need to be able to write clean code, that's documented and easy to maintain. MS doesn't even pretend to test you on that.
a MS cert means you know how to use their tools, plain and simple. it in no way means you can even use their tools -well-. the main thing that the cert proves (and the degree proves to a lesser extent) is that you're willing to play the corporate game. certs, like MBAs, are primarily tools to jockey for promotions in the giant games of chutes and ladders that occur in mega-corporate america. quite simply, if you frown on the idea of getting a cert, you'd be miserable at any company that gives weight to one.
true, a man with a degree and a cert will likely get a job over a man with only a degree - all else being equal. but a man with only a degree will do -vastly- better than a man with only a cert.
the only one thing truly matters is experience.
which is why i would sooner recommend a coder in school to put every piece of code he ever wrote for fun or profit in an online portfolio. app and source.
Because if it ever comes down to a handful of equally qualified candidates, the employer will always go with the guy whose work he can -see-. (unless your work is crap, but in that case it isn't a toss up between equally qualified candidates is it?)
you can wax nostalgic about how coding had more integrity before the short dev cycles of today, and you've got a damn good point there.
but you can't say that employers give preference to certs over degrees. that's absurdly false.
So long as our voting method favors groups that band together to put up a single candidate, and penalizes those that support several fairly similar candidates, the 2 party system will prevail.
that's why the more moderate republicans can't tell the thumpers to take their religious righteousness and go home. the bible belt is a mathematically necessary evil to ensure that the broader conservative ideology can compete with the broader liberal ideology.
1992 with Perot's party splitting the conservatives in just that way demonstrates my point. Conservatives fractionalized, Liberals won with an overall minority vote. Similarly, even the slight fractionalization of liberals into traditional democratic support and green party support allowed a minority-supported conservative to take the presidential election.
(remember, in '92 Bill Clinton received a lower percentage of popular vote than George W Bush did in 2k. it isn't a problem consigned to just the left or right.)
only something like Instant Runoff Voting can truly open up american politics and let it out of the caricaturized left/right politicking we currently have.
The point that most americans lie in the middle is important. It shows that most americans are more interested in moderate compromise than extreme ideological quibbling. Yet, they are not served by their own party. And if they were, it would merely force one or the other party to be absorbed into it.
America has always had a 2 party dominated system (over time, during reorganizational periods there have been more, but they don't stay for long). And IRV is a simple, proven way to do that.
It also conveniently frees up political parties and voters to actually deal with rotten incumbents. You don't have to worry about splitting support between a rotten incumbent partymember, and a new one and that allowing an opponent to slide into office with minority support.
Our democracy could really use a change like that.
I don't know if the politically correct police told you or not, but you're not allowed to promote nuclear energy.
you're supposed to ignore the inescapeable pollution and toxins that fossil fuels and lead-acid batteries dump into our atmosphere, and forget that nuclear power provides at the very least the opportunity for sealed system waste.
nope, we'd rather be 100% certain that we're asphyxiating ourselves and the planet rather than run the risk of irradiating a designated part of it.
any talk of a nuclear reaction is only to be met with horror and outrage. you're not supposed to point out science can create reactors in which it is -impossible- for them to go critical.
no my friend, we are way more advanced a civilization than to think nuclear energy is plausible.
nerdish behavior is not even becoming -popular-. what's becoming popular is merely -part- of the content that used to be exclusively in the domain of the nerdish. it's being coopted and de-geeked. as acceptance of parts of our domain grow, some of those parts are merely breaking out of our social stigma.
watching a scifi or fantasy movie may not be nerdy anymore, but reading a scifi/fantasy book, or discussing the technology/philosophy still is.
having a collection of comic-based movies may be cool, but having an actual comic book collection will still get the derogatory labels applied.
no friend-geeks, this is not 'our' time. this is merely a time of acceptance of some of the content and media we embraced long ago.
yeah, if all you want to do is PVR, then just buying a TiVO makes sense. But if you really want a convergence device to tie your tv into the network -- tivo can't compete.
with a roll-your-own, you could add all sorts of functionality: . streaming non-mpeg2 video clips from across the network . listening to your mp3 collection on your living-room sound system . watching a slideshow of digicam vacation pics . firing up an emulator and enjoying some pong . actually web browsing from a fully functional machine (add wireless keyboard for full effect)...
Tivo is fine functionality, but there's no reason to stop there. not when Tivo + lifetime subscription ~= cost of rolling your own
I mean, anyone who cared to, knew the entire story of Lord of the Rings years before they even started making the films. Does it screw up the movie knowing that Boromir dies, Aragorn triumphs and Frodo Nine-fingers is successful?
Everyone knows that Romeo and Juliet die, Peter Pan escapes, and Oz is a sham -- yet adaptations of these stories never cease, and they're some of the most rewatched/retold stories around.
Any movie that revolves around a single surprise for cinematic weight isn't that good to begin with.
Sure, surprises have their place and they can be really great. but no good film is -ruined- by a spoiled surprise. part of why people like the surprises they do, is because they give you something you enjoyed getting. people -loved- that vader was luke's father. but knowing that before the end of Empire Strikes Back doesn't remove the fact that it's a good addition to the story.
hell, twists that aren't good are made fun of worse than if the plot item they reveal was understood from the beginning.
The Neverending Story was pretty much shown to have been a cliche dream-sequence from the beginning, and it doesn't get half as much crap as other stories with a 'but it was all just a dream' 'twist' at the end. because the others try to -surprise- you with a bad cliche.
so spoiling the surprise doesn't truly ruin anything, unless the surprise is good anyway -- which means the story is still good.
which is why you didn't care if Trinity's death was spoiled, but would have if Bruce Willis' was.
675 is the number of employees at the netscape campus that is being reduced to 300. == -375 jobs
as you point out. but that is only 1 of the 3 california offices being hit with layoffs in California. 450 refers to the number of total jobs lost in the entire state.
This leaves the balance of the 450 lost jobs (the 75 missing from the nestcape-alone tally) to come from the number of non-re-located employees from the sanfran complex (housing spinner and nullsoft), and the san diego offices.
Have you reported such inconsistencies to the maintainers?
Not for the most part, because I don't use linux for anything other than a server. When I encounter them, I shrug and deal with it, because my time in front of a linux box is few and far between.
My point was simply that it is one such issue that Sun would have to cover if they were to make linux consumer-friendly.
You mean 640x480 pixels, 16 colors? First impression in this case is that "Linux looks ugly."
Better ugly than 'Linux don't work'. Windows has a handy way around the same problem - it's called use what works (ugly), suggest an svga or uvga driver (better), switch to it for 15 seconds, then ask the person if it worked. These problems have been solved before - but the shift in mindset is difficult. There is no denying linux works just fine as it is, and suggesting a change like that generally meets blank faces at best.
CUPS if that's what CUPS does, then it sounds like someone already has the solution at hand - provided the interface is publicly specified and it works. but again, the particular CUPS->printer driver is still up to reverse engineering or corporate support. There is no technical way around a company who simply doesn't want you to have a linux driver. However, if the mainline products are supported (your average Canon, HP printers) then that's good enough for most consumers. Again, I don't see SUN addressing such usability and driver issues in their endeavor. They seem to be stopping at throwing the JDS on a linux distro and stamping it with the Java logo.
USB devices that aren't standard storage well if you can't reverse engineer a driver for hardware that's intentionally being difficult, there's not much you can do. Some hardware will always just be incompatible until the vendor decides to change that. Thing is, SUN has the kind of weight that could get the market leaders in each peripheral market to at least supply specs to the linux driver community. Which they would need to do -- but don't seem to be doing. Again, this is about whether SUN is going to make a successful linux distro for consumers, and I don't see them paying attention in the right places (usability being paramount).
Gimp well this goes back to my main gripe with consumer user interfaces. they should be task-centric instead of application-centric. My mom shouldn't select a photo application from a list (implying she knows the function of each program in the list). She should simply select something like 'Paint a picture' or 'Edit a photo' from a task list. Any appropriate app could be tied to that item by default, and installing an alternate app could update that task item. Similarly with 'Surf the web', 'email', 'write a book', 'write a note', etc. that kind of interface would have to be optional, which is fairly easy given the flexibility of Linux. (i can have my UI, you can have yours, grandma can have hers, and underneath it all works the same).
It may seem as simple as renaming a shortcut, but the point is to have a defined number of tasks with unique names, so that there aren't a half dozen 'paint a picture' links in the menu structure. It could even exist parallel to the application lists -- if you'll forgive my Windows analogy, a Start->Tasks menu that's more prominently featured than Start->Programs.
root well, i've never used sudo (or even heard of it prior to now), so i'll have to assume it's a functional equivalent of what i described. but yeah, that would be my point. It's not a technically difficult task, and traditionally that's the kind of thing ignored by the Linux community. Usabilty ranks last, and that hasn't created an OS a consumer can easily use. It wouldn't surprise me that Apple had already solved that problem. Trick there being that Apple doesn't seem to be willing to allow the prices of its computers to fall down to meet Joe Sixpack's budget, so there's definitely room for a Free-as-in
UI guidelines The guidelines are fine. that many of the most popular applications do not follow them is the problem. competing guidelines muddy the waters, but it is not the existing guidelines themselves - it's the lack of conformity to a standard. any standard. and the lack of visual consistancy is a big part of that as well.
install woes again, i haven't installed a linux distro in over a year, but last time around, while there wasn't a mount point requested (completely unnecessary, yet present for way too long), the install set a default root password, left several internet services on and for example - asked me for my preferred video driver (from a list).
I like flexibility as much as the next guy, but grandmother-proof means you just use the most basic driver that works, and offer the chance to switch later through a config panel.
and since the install was graphical, obviously they found a vga driver that was working.
and consumer linux users won't be needing ftp or smtp services on by default, let alone with a default root password.
printing if a program worked with HP and Canon, i'd consider that a good enough start. Perhaps what linux truly needs is a common print control that sits between the application and the printer driver. lets face it, the moving pieces are the hold up there, another layer of abstraction won't bother performance.
A defined a standard for application interfacing with the printer control -- and then leave it up to the specific driver translation as necessary. hell, use HP PCL if they'll let you.
but the point is that printing itself is a much larger hassle than it needs to be, if it's going to be consumer-friendly.
Digicams well this i think is more plausible, as most are firewire or USB compliant and the transmission standard dictates the file access protocols, so drivers aren't usually required.
what would be beneficial is some sort of auto-detect interface for USB/firewire devices, that bring up that annoying-to-us 'hey, what should we do with the camera you just plugged in?' dialogue, and allow association with a particular application.
painting Gimp is good but the default setup for the interface does not lead a new user to the logical conclusion that if i want to edit a picture i should run 'GIMP'.
root well root was an example. if the analogy of root and 'head of household' works - then why don't the interfaces reflect that?
personally i think that's a dangerous association, for the same security reasons i don't advise even professionals to use administrator/root accounts directly. a user would rightly assume that by default they, as head of household, should be root, and log in as root all the time. which is naughty in my book.
aside from that though, i think the entire concept of root/administrator is something the user shouldn't be asked to understand in detail. the install should ask for a password (perhaps with the 'head of household' or 'administrator' monicker). the install then makes a simple user account that is used by default. software installation or system configuration procedures can then prompt for the 'root' password through an installation procedure, but only maintain that root connection for the duration of their operation.
that way you don't have to worry about grandma getting her box rooted when she gets online because she chose a 'bad' password.
again, i know much of this is a bit out there, and many linux advocates would scoff at it as being unnecessary. But really i think all computers by default could use a bit more dumbing down and the openness of Linux provides a perfect opportunity for just that. It's open, it's free, and it can be done right for the consumer without hassling the poweruser.
and i'm not linux bashing. it's a hell of a server and workstation - and the main reason i haven't installed a distro in over a year, is because since i configured
Then would you please write a driver for my Microtek Scanmaker 4850 scanner? No, you may not have the specification unless you can pry it out of Microtek
That's a legit gripe, but that's Microtek's hardware, it's their call. It has nothing to do with Microsoft. Many company's have even helped the OSS community make drivers, but some of course, don't feel it worth employee time, or feel like giving away their specifications gives away some product 'edge'. And it might.
The only non-Windows applications on Best Buy's shelf are the GNU/Linux distributions. Yes, there are applications from publishers other than Microsoft, but they're all for either Windows or a game console, and they don't list a recommended WINE version in their System Requirements box.
well, that's basically what i meant. i was referring to non-MS-published but solely-MS-compatible software. label makers, simple finance software and silly educational games.
Can you give a good explanation as to why Microsoft Windows is compatible with so much more 3rd-party hardware than GNU/Linux other than through a pure chicken-and-egg situation?
Yes.
the first barrier for true competition on the consumer desktop is Linux's current state of OS usability. It's openness has been without a strong de facto standard in interface design, and it's installations are too open to user intervention. There just isn't a good consumer distro that is as grandparent-friendly as Windows. (last i checked, admittedly a year ago. i hear it's better, so i may be wrong on this point, but there's always room for improvement).
the second barrier is that the Linux crowd is not making the little neat apps that consumers like. It makes the large, flexible, powerful systems that nearly all come with extremely complex and tragically inconsistant UIs (as they're designed by technical professionals for technical professionals -- not grandparents. and inconsistant as in across applications. linux apps tend to have very intuitive interfaces - if you've ever worked in a similar program before). but there isn't a dumbed-down personal finance widget. A cute label maker that Just Works with standard printers. A photo app that lets them just plug in a digicam and browse pictures or draw smiley faces on Cousin Bob without worrying about layers and opacity.
It's a shift of focus that's necessary if Linux is to be viable in the consumer market. When it's usable and comfortable for most of the consumer needs, people -will- start to use it. likely it will be geeks that are more and more comfortable installing a consumer linux on the machines of their nontechnical family and friends.
and once the user base grows, even a tiny bit - 3rd party developers will leap all over the chance to make their innane little applications. Companies like MicroTek may never release specifications for their scanners, but likely they'd support another market when it becomes large enough. Not all companies will however, as they only have the resources for supporting 1 OS. Much software doesn't even have corresponding Mac versions, but I've found hardware makers in particular are more apt to support multiple platforms.
More and more GNU/Linux software -is- being developed, and the OS -is- being refined. so eventually, GNU/Linux can't help but eventually beat Windows on the consumer desktop (winning by better developer support, faster turnaround on bug fixes, and more stable and secure systems).
Much like the academics on the pre-Mosaic internet, many Linux users tend to feel like people should have to know what 'root' privileges are to use a computer, as well as where the proper config files are and what a mount point is. (some go much further)
And that attitude is contrary to getting Linux successfully on a consumer desktop, and getting developers to commercially support Linux versions of their applications.
that's bs. ms is the most easy to work with corporation for developing applications and hardware.
Corporation mind you. yes, OSS is easier now, but try comparing MS developer support in 1990 vs apple. then consider the complete -lack- of third party peripherals for the apple. sure, most of MS market share now has been network effect and their installed base. but once upon a time they had serious competition that they beat out. and gates mantra has always been to making it as easy as possible to develop applications, and the market will follow the apps.
Developers -love- MS's support and tools, and that's why it originally won out on the desktop against cpm, os/2, and mac.
MS opening the box to anyone and everyone who wanted to write software or create hardware, and dropping that barrier for entry has always been their greatest business strength.
the application barrier only actually exists in the case of the web browser, because windows started to pull more and more of ie's core rendering functionality into the OS so that it actually became improbable (not impossible) to remove it entirely. but still, people have been using opera for years now and loving it. Netscape had sour grapes and was complaining that even if you install navigator you still had ie-ish rendering from explorer, and you could still browse the web through it firing off iexplore.
what they got actually busted on in the antitrust trial, was not technical specification mind you. it was business practice. the default arrangement that said 'if you want to sell windows, you can't sell our competitors' stuff'. this being relaxed following the suit is what freed up dell and compaq to start releasing servers running linux. that itself is arguably monopolistic, as that's the core business practice of every automaker in regards to their dealerships. no-one buys a GM dealership and then start selling new Explorers (used/trade-in are an exception). and yet there's no anti-trust trials there. but i digress.
judge jackson was biased and technologically ignorant. he was trying to make a political statement, and that is fundamentally why MS's appeals have been so successful.
his 'applications barrier to entry' is a non-technical opinion. the sheer wealth of non-MS applications on your average best buy shelf for dirt cheap from such a wide variety of vendors is proof positive that there is no such barrier.
it took me one book and a standard copy of msdn to create a device driver for windows, then 9x, and NT. i didn't have to pay a licensing fee on the software when i was done. i didn't have to pay an extra fee for the capability to write a device driver. and the msdn subscription was cheaper than the mac dev tools.
where's the device drivers barrier to entry there?
precisely. you wind up with local production handling local demand (relatively local in the global sense) - and absolutely 0 untrained labor.
part of the holdup of fully automating in more traditional big-machine production has been the Unions. They aren't so big on entire manufacturing lines disappearing, and routinely strike to keep away layoffs from automation. thing is, the big producers aren't hiring at the rate they're retiring (adjusting for production growth).
compile all this with the growing seperation of wealth, and the most likely downfall of the current world order is to be over economic reasons - rather than military or religious ones.
of course, democracy is flexible, and likely can weather changes, but a social clash is all but inevitable.
As people have always said, it's all about the applications. Better OS's than MS have come and gone - but windows holds the desktop because they have the desktop applications.
and argue as you may about performance or server marketshare or stability -- linux does not have the consumer application maturity.
the home consumer wants to create birthday cards, print pictures from their digicams, play games off-the-shelf, do their taxes, browse, keep a schedule, and email.
Sure, linux does all those things. but as the stifling size of the MS consumer software market shows -- having the application available does not mean you have the interface the user likes. often the home user will buy a program that lets him do something he can already do. but because the interface is so backwards, he doesn't even know it.
many home consumers will routinely use a different graphics program to scan than they do to make an invitation or an envelope or print digital pictures. current linux users are absolutely content with the single complex program. you can see there, the purpose gap as well as a culture gap between linux and the average home user.
the installation procedures, the dependencies, recompiles, configs -- it all echoes the hardcore requirements, and stands in contrast to the home user's needs.
linux on the home desktop can start to beat microsoft when the installation becomes easier, the interfaces become better, and the silly applications that slashdotters don't buy start to appear.
so unless Sun is going to really work on the consumer usability end of linux - it isn't going to work.
for about 10k anyone should be able to do the same in a few months time, using one uniprocessor machine
so how fast could they do it with 10 1k uniprocessor machines? or 20 $500 machines?
partciularly with an easily segmented problem like this, the most likely 'wild' resource would be @home-ish.
Re:I think my form of encryption is better
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exactly, it all comes back to doing proper encryption. 'quantum' cryptography isn't going to change much in the security biz. it's a buzzword now, a far-off technology, and when it hits, it'll just be another flavor of the same game. it doesn't help much, it just has a convenient feature that only confirms the key assumption that all cryptographers start with.(that somebody is listening, but information needs to be exchanged)
you still need solid cryptography, and right now, that seems to be most effectively done through one-time pad and public/private key pairs.
Re:I think my form of encryption is better
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what you are referring to as quantum cryptography isn't really cryptography, it's a semi-convenient side effect of encoding messages at the quantum level. Physics guarantees that the first reader of such a message necessarily destroys the message. Trick is, you still need decent cryptography behind such a scheme, as it won't much matter to a cracker if you know he's there or not -- he'll still have your sensitive info if you didn't properly encrypt the actual message. in most applications you simply can't stop communicating and still remain relevant just because you know someone is eavesdropping.
convenient because you know for certain if you're being spied on? sure. secure? hell no.
case in point: the US -knew- the japanese were spying on our wwII transmissions. just as the Japanese -knew- the US was spying. knowing that the enemy is listening didn't alleviate the problem - it still comes down to good crypto. one can't simply stop communicating and wait for the eavesdropper to leave.
truly secure quantum communication:
1. achieve quantum-entanglement of 2 particles 2. build com device to send messages via altering spin of one particle 3. give the second particle to your friend 4. build com device to read messages via observing the spin of the second particle 5. enjoy instant snoop-proof communications... 6. profit?
(truly secure because there is no traditional transmission. still theoretcial of course;p -- and it's one-way, you'd need a second pair of entangled particles to transmit back. but that second unit would be trivial if you could actually create the first functional unit.)
deaf people have been known to wear their hearing aides every waking moment.
i would think if magnetic induction were inherently hazardous to your health, deaf people would have been dropping like flies from brain cancer by now.
i'd add that the basic reason is that consoles are a specifically designed and purposed to be mass market devices.
if you see a ps2 game in a store, you know that your ps2 can play it. no questions asked. no weird driver problems, no 3d card or processor requirements.
turn on machine, plug in game, and play.
PC gaming is inherently more complex (variable system requirements and all), and unrealistic marketing of 'minimum' requirements isn't helping any.
I love PC games as much as the next guy - but the reason the console market outsells the pc market is simply because they hit the mass market better.
You hear rappers, actors and sports stars talking about their console libraries. You -ever- hear any one of them talking about a PC game?
the very idea that someone has to be 'serious' about gaming to play PC games is indicative of the situation. you have to -really- like PC games to put up with the upgrade cycles, the drivers, the config files and the key mapping.
this generation of consoles cost at most $300 brand new. and they have a life of 4 years at least. most PC gamers will have gone through -at-least- 2 video cards if not 2 entirely different computers in that time frame.
then there's the mass-market-friendly rental/return scene for console games, standing in stark contrast to the PC.
neither market is going to die, or is 'better', but it's inevitable that the machine specifically -targetted-, ground-up, to gaming is going to achieve greater financial success (from the mass market) than the machine that merely -supports- gaming.
it sounds like this may be exactly what they've been doing.
only those deliberately trying to 'game' the google rankings are complaining.
google isn't -hurting- anyone. if someone is googling for your company name, they're going to find it. but if you're attempting to game your way up to the top of generic search terms broadly describing your business - it shouldn't be a surprise that it's not in the google user's best interest to see your non-authoritative link higher than it should be in their results.
google built itself on the idea that it -worked- for the users, and gave them honest, quality links. if people can game their methods, then it ceases to 'work'. they won't have customers for long if they don't fix it.
This is the single biggest slipstream attempt at purchased legislation since then-congressional aide Mitch Glazier snuck the 'work for hire' catch into the Satellite Home Viewing Act of 1999. Mitch Glazier was hired as the RIAA's top lobbyist 3 months later. (details)
So we all know this is outrageous.
But who do we call? Where is a list of representative's email addresses? Where is a list of senator's email addresses? Is the FSF, or EFF setting up a fund I can donate to, to work against this? Is there an email campaign going?
I haven't bought the RIAA's musical offerings in years, so I've already cut off my funding for these domestic, economic terrorists -- but is there someone I can give support -to- that has a voice to tell our government congress how asinine this is? how asinine Orrin Hatch is?
I mean, Orrin Hatch is a songwriter who works for an RIAA member label, isn't this at the least a clear-cut case of conflict of interest?
i thought GTA1 sucked. if that's preposterous, i don't know. it's my preference, it's the way the game struck me when i played it. It didn't have the unifying attention to detail and theme that vice city had - the right balance of story, nonlinear action, polish and gameplay that pulled it up above mindless violence (just as half-life pulled fps beyond simple quake fests).
GTA2 struck me as a slight update on GTA1. Along the lines of q2 as an update to q1 -- some new stuff, sure, but not 'new' on the whole. i honestly didn't play GTA3, so i can't really comment on that. (i got the doublepack and haven't been able to put vice city down)
as for Predator vs Glengary Glenn Ross... 'sophisticated' is absolutely a better word choice. i used 'mature' to take a stab at the article's author. he tried to parlay that label as somehow alluding to sophistication, when clearly it doesn't.
A game is marked M just as a movie is marked R. when the publisher feels the need to let parents know 'if you get offended, you can't say we didn't warn you'. It has absolutely nothing to do with content sophistication. It sticks simply to sex, violence, and language. Nothing more.
The mod scene -is- fairly underground, but my point was that it doesn't seem to be -legitimized-. there isn't a community that covers mods in the aggregate: that reviews mods, discusses mods, talks to mod-makers - let alone map-makers or gametype tinkerers. And when there is a small zine that half-heartedly covers mods, they stick zealously to mods in their preferred engine, and then they only talk about the successful ones.
No-one is providing a mod maker some attention, or creating a dialogue on what works, what doesn't and -why-. We know counterstrike works. but why? the simplicity? guns? team-focused gameplay? more 'realistic' combat and setting? goals? a gestalt of all those things?
where's the honest dialogue on why it resonated, why it worked?
And what about the single player mods? half-life with Zombies, half-life with Cowboys, Sven Co-op, Neverwinter modules... no-one really talks about them. Sure, their respective game-engine focused communities mention them, and let people know when new releases happen. but no-one is creating much of a dialogue about how the ideas come about, what the mod maker was -trying- to do, and whether that worked or not. most importantly, no-one is discussing -creative- alternatives that might make the mod 'work'.
I honestly don't think that the underground style of risk-taking should occur in the commerical arena. It's bad business, and its not helpful to the industry in the end. If the 'Deus Ex 2's or 'Half-life 2's have to support a dozen more low-budget 'risky' projects, eventually a bad bunch of risks will all fail, and the profits on the mainstream game won't be able to support the company. at some point the publisher's investors will simply put their money elsewhere, and that's not good for anyone.
no, experimentation -should- remain no budget. it should be left up to individuals working purely from passion, without the pressures of deadlines or commercialization. when they strike a chord, they can be co-opted into the mainstream.
the missing element is simply a couple focal points for the community that treat the underground scene with respect as a legitimate form, at least as important as mainstream gaming itself. (preferrably without the art-house snobbishness that accompanies the film parallel, but i'll take what i can get)
someone needs to dare to aim for the nonexistant market. ignore bungie, id, and valve. ignore rockstar, ea, and eidos. they're being covered to death. only by joining the community in the aggregate, across all engines, mods and hand-coded creations, and taking the whole thing seriously can we create a 'legitimate' scene that's worth participating in, in and of itself. whereas right now, the mod scene seems to be 95% about cracking the mainstream dev industry.
sure, some indy films are simple pitches for mainstream acceptance. but many of them could care less. they create the movies they want to watch regardless of whether they get paid for helping move the art form forward.
Slashdot Mirror
one might wonder if id's unspoken business plan is to let Carmack create the greatest engine possible, and then just polish the art until consumers have rigs fast enough to run it.
I remember quake 3 going through a similar statis period of about a year between playable and release. and quake3 didn't even have a 'single player game experience'.
but if doom3 had already been released, all you'd hear is moaning about how high the system requirements are. what good would it do them to burn out their product inertia because no-one can play it?
i'd also guess carmack's time is much more profitably spent adding flexibility to the new engine to increase its appeal to licensees; and supporting the q3 engine licensees, than trying to optimize doom3 until they do release.
There is simply a wall at which the game won't run well enough on enough machines to warrant a release. And it's right next to the wall at which the time spent optimizing the engine results in less performance gain than the upgrade rate of the gaming market.
Funny... p2p stats seem to indicate that the most-traded songs are precisely the 'samey' 'generic' RIAA-propped 'artists' that are suffering the largest slump in sales(only top 10 pop album sales are down, all other genres are up).
this more indicates the public's dissatisfaction with the single-driven nature of pop albums. $20 an album, and only 2 or 3 songs they like is just not a good deal anymore. though they're angry with the legal distribution channels, the download statistics show that most people -do- actually prefer what's on the radio.
but the RIAA is no more abhorrent than WalMart to the consumer. They aren't customers in search of the best product, or an outlet that deals only in the highest quality goods. They are customers in search of the best deal. That WalMart and the RIAA are only middle-men peddling 'good enough' simply doesn't matter. The only difference between the acceptance of the two, is that one of these anticompetitive monsters isn't providing the best deal anymore.
SCO on the other hand is simply trying to -steal- Linux. they don't want to -kill- linux. they want to get rich off it. whether SCO has a legitimate product or not doesn't matter to the OS-buying public. they aren't revolting, they're waiting to see if they have to recalculate their ROI.
the people who -are- revolting are the community that supports Linux, and the companies that have given away their work to that commmunity. the OS consumer doesn't seem to have their dander up, they're just waiting for the smoke to clear. Only those with something to lose from SCO appropriating their hard work, or charging fees they don't have the resources to pay are reacting.
True, consumers always recognize quality products. BMW, Apple, DeWalt -- these are recognized names that are synonymous with quality in their fields. Yet they are also not market leaders in the consumer arena.
one would be wise not to underestimate the market's tolerance for an inferior product, if it's cheap enough.
i'm sorry, but that post sounds like someone without a degree hoping, or someone with a degree being bitter.
primarily, in my experience the coders i've worked with that have certs and no degrees get -shiat- on by corporate america. they get paid half as much or less, they have a piece of paper that -expires- and becomes obsolete, and they have very little leverage in the open-market - because their qualification is locked to a vendor.
then they either have to pay out-of-pocket to update their certs regularly, or they enter into a neo-bondage wage-slavery to their employer in exchange for having the tests (and classes if they need them) paid for.
and just how many job postings say 'MCSA/MCSD required' vs 'BA/BS required'? a quick trip through monster disproves this supposedly 'informative' rant.
personally, I have -never- seen a coding job that required an MS cert. and i've switched jobs -alot-. even now that the job market is tight, i've never seen a job posting that says MCSD/MCSA required. I'm sure that they don't hurt, and i'm sure that the same isn't true for hardware/network guys -- but we're talking about coding here.
whereas any hands-on you get in school will be obsoleted, you will -still- be writing the same algorithms. for as long as people have been, and will be writing code, the core skills haven't and won't change and are entirely platform and language neutral.
good coders need to be able to write good -algorithms-. MS doesn't test you on that.
good coders need to write good designs. MS only tests you on your ability to use their tools to leverage -their- design.
good coders need to be able to write clean code, that's documented and easy to maintain. MS doesn't even pretend to test you on that.
a MS cert means you know how to use their tools, plain and simple. it in no way means you can even use their tools -well-. the main thing that the cert proves (and the degree proves to a lesser extent) is that you're willing to play the corporate game. certs, like MBAs, are primarily tools to jockey for promotions in the giant games of chutes and ladders that occur in mega-corporate america. quite simply, if you frown on the idea of getting a cert, you'd be miserable at any company that gives weight to one.
true, a man with a degree and a cert will likely get a job over a man with only a degree - all else being equal. but a man with only a degree will do -vastly- better than a man with only a cert.
the only one thing truly matters is experience.
which is why i would sooner recommend a coder in school to put every piece of code he ever wrote for fun or profit in an online portfolio. app and source.
Because if it ever comes down to a handful of equally qualified candidates, the employer will always go with the guy whose work he can -see-. (unless your work is crap, but in that case it isn't a toss up between equally qualified candidates is it?)
you can wax nostalgic about how coding had more integrity before the short dev cycles of today, and you've got a damn good point there.
but you can't say that employers give preference to certs over degrees. that's absurdly false.
So long as our voting method favors groups that band together to put up a single candidate, and penalizes those that support several fairly similar candidates, the 2 party system will prevail.
that's why the more moderate republicans can't tell the thumpers to take their religious righteousness and go home. the bible belt is a mathematically necessary evil to ensure that the broader conservative ideology can compete with the broader liberal ideology.
1992 with Perot's party splitting the conservatives in just that way demonstrates my point. Conservatives fractionalized, Liberals won with an overall minority vote. Similarly, even the slight fractionalization of liberals into traditional democratic support and green party support allowed a minority-supported conservative to take the presidential election.
(remember, in '92 Bill Clinton received a lower percentage of popular vote than George W Bush did in 2k. it isn't a problem consigned to just the left or right.)
only something like Instant Runoff Voting can truly open up american politics and let it out of the caricaturized left/right politicking we currently have.
The point that most americans lie in the middle is important. It shows that most americans are more interested in moderate compromise than extreme ideological quibbling. Yet, they are not served by their own party. And if they were, it would merely force one or the other party to be absorbed into it.
America has always had a 2 party dominated system (over time, during reorganizational periods there have been more, but they don't stay for long).
And IRV is a simple, proven way to do that.
It also conveniently frees up political parties and voters to actually deal with rotten incumbents. You don't have to worry about splitting support between a rotten incumbent partymember, and a new one and that allowing an opponent to slide into office with minority support.
Our democracy could really use a change like that.
I don't know if the politically correct police told you or not, but you're not allowed to promote nuclear energy.
you're supposed to ignore the inescapeable pollution and toxins that fossil fuels and lead-acid batteries dump into our atmosphere, and forget that nuclear power provides at the very least the opportunity for sealed system waste.
nope, we'd rather be 100% certain that we're asphyxiating ourselves and the planet rather than run the risk of irradiating a designated part of it.
any talk of a nuclear reaction is only to be met with horror and outrage. you're not supposed to point out science can create reactors in which it is -impossible- for them to go critical.
no my friend, we are way more advanced a civilization than to think nuclear energy is plausible.
nerdish behavior is not even becoming -popular-. what's becoming popular is merely -part- of the content that used to be exclusively in the domain of the nerdish. it's being coopted and de-geeked. as acceptance of parts of our domain grow, some of those parts are merely breaking out of our social stigma.
watching a scifi or fantasy movie may not be nerdy anymore, but reading a scifi/fantasy book, or discussing the technology/philosophy still is.
having a collection of comic-based movies may be cool, but having an actual comic book collection will still get the derogatory labels applied.
no friend-geeks, this is not 'our' time. this is merely a time of acceptance of some of the content and media we embraced long ago.
those who lead can never be part of the pack.
this isn't a pyramid scheme... it's 'viral marketing'. /sarcasm
yeah, if all you want to do is PVR, then just buying a TiVO makes sense. But if you really want a convergence device to tie your tv into the network -- tivo can't compete.
with a roll-your-own, you could add all sorts of functionality:
. streaming non-mpeg2 video clips from across the network
. listening to your mp3 collection on your living-room sound system
. watching a slideshow of digicam vacation pics . firing up an emulator and enjoying some pong
. actually web browsing from a fully functional machine (add wireless keyboard for full effect)...
Tivo is fine functionality, but there's no reason to stop there. not when Tivo + lifetime subscription ~= cost of rolling your own
I mean, anyone who cared to, knew the entire story of Lord of the Rings years before they even started making the films. Does it screw up the movie knowing that Boromir dies, Aragorn triumphs and Frodo Nine-fingers is successful?
Everyone knows that Romeo and Juliet die, Peter Pan escapes, and Oz is a sham -- yet adaptations of these stories never cease, and they're some of the most rewatched/retold stories around.
Any movie that revolves around a single surprise for cinematic weight isn't that good to begin with.
Sure, surprises have their place and they can be really great. but no good film is -ruined- by a spoiled surprise. part of why people like the surprises they do, is because they give you something you enjoyed getting. people -loved- that vader was luke's father. but knowing that before the end of Empire Strikes Back doesn't remove the fact that it's a good addition to the story.
hell, twists that aren't good are made fun of worse than if the plot item they reveal was understood from the beginning.
The Neverending Story was pretty much shown to have been a cliche dream-sequence from the beginning, and it doesn't get half as much crap as other stories with a 'but it was all just a dream' 'twist' at the end. because the others try to -surprise- you with a bad cliche.
so spoiling the surprise doesn't truly ruin anything, unless the surprise is good anyway -- which means the story is still good.
which is why you didn't care if Trinity's death was spoiled, but would have if Bruce Willis' was.
675 is the number of employees at the netscape campus that is being reduced to 300. == -375 jobs
as you point out. but that is only 1 of the 3 california offices being hit with layoffs in California. 450 refers to the number of total jobs lost in the entire state.
This leaves the balance of the 450 lost jobs (the 75 missing from the nestcape-alone tally) to come from the number of non-re-located employees from the sanfran complex (housing spinner and nullsoft), and the san diego offices.
Have you reported such inconsistencies to the maintainers?
Not for the most part, because I don't use linux for anything other than a server. When I encounter them, I shrug and deal with it, because my time in front of a linux box is few and far between.
My point was simply that it is one such issue that Sun would have to cover if they were to make linux consumer-friendly.
You mean 640x480 pixels, 16 colors? First impression in this case is that "Linux looks ugly."
Better ugly than 'Linux don't work'. Windows has a handy way around the same problem - it's called use what works (ugly), suggest an svga or uvga driver (better), switch to it for 15 seconds, then ask the person if it worked. These problems have been solved before - but the shift in mindset is difficult. There is no denying linux works just fine as it is, and suggesting a change like that generally meets blank faces at best.
CUPS
if that's what CUPS does, then it sounds like someone already has the solution at hand - provided the interface is publicly specified and it works. but again, the particular CUPS->printer driver is still up to reverse engineering or corporate support. There is no technical way around a company who simply doesn't want you to have a linux driver. However, if the mainline products are supported (your average Canon, HP printers) then that's good enough for most consumers. Again, I don't see SUN addressing such usability and driver issues in their endeavor. They seem to be stopping at throwing the JDS on a linux distro and stamping it with the Java logo.
USB devices that aren't standard storage
well if you can't reverse engineer a driver for hardware that's intentionally being difficult, there's not much you can do. Some hardware will always just be incompatible until the vendor decides to change that. Thing is, SUN has the kind of weight that could get the market leaders in each peripheral market to at least supply specs to the linux driver community. Which they would need to do -- but don't seem to be doing. Again, this is about whether SUN is going to make a successful linux distro for consumers, and I don't see them paying attention in the right places (usability being paramount).
Gimp
well this goes back to my main gripe with consumer user interfaces. they should be task-centric instead of application-centric. My mom shouldn't select a photo application from a list (implying she knows the function of each program in the list). She should simply select something like 'Paint a picture' or 'Edit a photo' from a task list. Any appropriate app could be tied to that item by default, and installing an alternate app could update that task item. Similarly with 'Surf the web', 'email', 'write a book', 'write a note', etc. that kind of interface would have to be optional, which is fairly easy given the flexibility of Linux. (i can have my UI, you can have yours, grandma can have hers, and underneath it all works the same).
It may seem as simple as renaming a shortcut, but the point is to have a defined number of tasks with unique names, so that there aren't a half dozen 'paint a picture' links in the menu structure. It could even exist parallel to the application lists -- if you'll forgive my Windows analogy, a Start->Tasks menu that's more prominently featured than Start->Programs.
root
well, i've never used sudo (or even heard of it prior to now), so i'll have to assume it's a functional equivalent of what i described. but yeah, that would be my point. It's not a technically difficult task, and traditionally that's the kind of thing ignored by the Linux community. Usabilty ranks last, and that hasn't created an OS a consumer can easily use. It wouldn't surprise me that Apple had already solved that problem. Trick there being that Apple doesn't seem to be willing to allow the prices of its computers to fall down to meet Joe Sixpack's budget, so there's definitely room for a Free-as-in
UI guidelines
The guidelines are fine. that many of the most popular applications do not follow them is the problem. competing guidelines muddy the waters, but it is not the existing guidelines themselves - it's the lack of conformity to a standard. any standard. and the lack of visual consistancy is a big part of that as well.
install woes
again, i haven't installed a linux distro in over a year, but last time around, while there wasn't a mount point requested (completely unnecessary, yet present for way too long), the install set a default root password, left several internet services on and for example - asked me for my preferred video driver (from a list).
I like flexibility as much as the next guy, but grandmother-proof means you just use the most basic driver that works, and offer the chance to switch later through a config panel.
and since the install was graphical, obviously they found a vga driver that was working.
and consumer linux users won't be needing ftp or smtp services on by default, let alone with a default root password.
printing
if a program worked with HP and Canon, i'd consider that a good enough start. Perhaps what linux truly needs is a common print control that sits between the application and the printer driver. lets face it, the moving pieces are the hold up there, another layer of abstraction won't bother performance.
A defined a standard for application interfacing with the printer control -- and then leave it up to the specific driver translation as necessary. hell, use HP PCL if they'll let you.
but the point is that printing itself is a much larger hassle than it needs to be, if it's going to be consumer-friendly.
Digicams
well this i think is more plausible, as most are firewire or USB compliant and the transmission standard dictates the file access protocols, so drivers aren't usually required.
what would be beneficial is some sort of auto-detect interface for USB/firewire devices, that bring up that annoying-to-us 'hey, what should we do with the camera you just plugged in?' dialogue, and allow association with a particular application.
painting
Gimp is good but the default setup for the interface does not lead a new user to the logical conclusion that if i want to edit a picture i should run 'GIMP'.
root
well root was an example. if the analogy of root and 'head of household' works - then why don't the interfaces reflect that?
personally i think that's a dangerous association, for the same security reasons i don't advise even professionals to use administrator/root accounts directly. a user would rightly assume that by default they, as head of household, should be root, and log in as root all the time. which is naughty in my book.
aside from that though, i think the entire concept of root/administrator is something the user shouldn't be asked to understand in detail. the install should ask for a password (perhaps with the 'head of household' or 'administrator' monicker). the install then makes a simple user account that is used by default. software installation or system configuration procedures can then prompt for the 'root' password through an installation procedure, but only maintain that root connection for the duration of their operation.
that way you don't have to worry about grandma getting her box rooted when she gets online because she chose a 'bad' password.
again, i know much of this is a bit out there, and many linux advocates would scoff at it as being unnecessary. But really i think all computers by default could use a bit more dumbing down and the openness of Linux provides a perfect opportunity for just that. It's open, it's free, and it can be done right for the consumer without hassling the poweruser.
and i'm not linux bashing. it's a hell of a server and workstation - and the main reason i haven't installed a distro in over a year, is because since i configured
Then would you please write a driver for my Microtek Scanmaker 4850 scanner? No, you may not have the specification unless you can pry it out of Microtek
That's a legit gripe, but that's Microtek's hardware, it's their call. It has nothing to do with Microsoft. Many company's have even helped the OSS community make drivers, but some of course, don't feel it worth employee time, or feel like giving away their specifications gives away some product 'edge'. And it might.
The only non-Windows applications on Best Buy's shelf are the GNU/Linux distributions. Yes, there are applications from publishers other than Microsoft, but they're all for either Windows or a game console, and they don't list a recommended WINE version in their System Requirements box.
well, that's basically what i meant. i was referring to non-MS-published but solely-MS-compatible software. label makers, simple finance software and silly educational games.
Can you give a good explanation as to why Microsoft Windows is compatible with so much more 3rd-party hardware than GNU/Linux other than through a pure chicken-and-egg situation?
Yes.
the first barrier for true competition on the consumer desktop is Linux's current state of OS usability. It's openness has been without a strong de facto standard in interface design, and it's installations are too open to user intervention. There just isn't a good consumer distro that is as grandparent-friendly as Windows.
(last i checked, admittedly a year ago. i hear it's better, so i may be wrong on this point, but there's always room for improvement).
the second barrier is that the Linux crowd is not making the little neat apps that consumers like. It makes the large, flexible, powerful systems that nearly all come with extremely complex and tragically inconsistant UIs (as they're designed by technical professionals for technical professionals -- not grandparents. and inconsistant as in across applications. linux apps tend to have very intuitive interfaces - if you've ever worked in a similar program before). but there isn't a dumbed-down personal finance widget. A cute label maker that Just Works with standard printers. A photo app that lets them just plug in a digicam and browse pictures or draw smiley faces on Cousin Bob without worrying about layers and opacity.
It's a shift of focus that's necessary if Linux is to be viable in the consumer market. When it's usable and comfortable for most of the consumer needs, people -will- start to use it. likely it will be geeks that are more and more comfortable installing a consumer linux on the machines of their nontechnical family and friends.
and once the user base grows, even a tiny bit - 3rd party developers will leap all over the chance to make their innane little applications. Companies like MicroTek may never release specifications for their scanners, but likely they'd support another market when it becomes large enough.
Not all companies will however, as they only have the resources for supporting 1 OS. Much software doesn't even have corresponding Mac versions, but I've found hardware makers in particular are more apt to support multiple platforms.
More and more GNU/Linux software -is- being developed, and the OS -is- being refined. so eventually, GNU/Linux can't help but eventually beat Windows on the consumer desktop (winning by better developer support, faster turnaround on bug fixes, and more stable and secure systems).
Much like the academics on the pre-Mosaic internet, many Linux users tend to feel like people should have to know what 'root' privileges are to use a computer, as well as where the proper config files are and what a mount point is. (some go much further)
And that attitude is contrary to getting Linux successfully on a consumer desktop, and getting developers to commercially support Linux versions of their applications.
that's bs. ms is the most easy to work with corporation for developing applications and hardware.
Corporation mind you. yes, OSS is easier now, but try comparing MS developer support in 1990 vs apple. then consider the complete -lack- of third party peripherals for the apple. sure, most of MS market share now has been network effect and their installed base. but once upon a time they had serious competition that they beat out. and gates mantra has always been to making it as easy as possible to develop applications, and the market will follow the apps.
Developers -love- MS's support and tools, and that's why it originally won out on the desktop against cpm, os/2, and mac.
MS opening the box to anyone and everyone who wanted to write software or create hardware, and dropping that barrier for entry has always been their greatest business strength.
the application barrier only actually exists in the case of the web browser, because windows started to pull more and more of ie's core rendering functionality into the OS so that it actually became improbable (not impossible) to remove it entirely. but still, people have been using opera for years now and loving it. Netscape had sour grapes and was complaining that even if you install navigator you still had ie-ish rendering from explorer, and you could still browse the web through it firing off iexplore.
what they got actually busted on in the antitrust trial, was not technical specification mind you. it was business practice. the default arrangement that said 'if you want to sell windows, you can't sell our competitors' stuff'. this being relaxed following the suit is what freed up dell and compaq to start releasing servers running linux. that itself is arguably monopolistic, as that's the core business practice of every automaker in regards to their dealerships. no-one buys a GM dealership and then start selling new Explorers (used/trade-in are an exception). and yet there's no anti-trust trials there. but i digress.
judge jackson was biased and technologically ignorant. he was trying to make a political statement, and that is fundamentally why MS's appeals have been so successful.
his 'applications barrier to entry' is a non-technical opinion. the sheer wealth of non-MS applications on your average best buy shelf for dirt cheap from such a wide variety of vendors is proof positive that there is no such barrier.
it took me one book and a standard copy of msdn to create a device driver for windows, then 9x, and NT. i didn't have to pay a licensing fee on the software when i was done. i didn't have to pay an extra fee for the capability to write a device driver. and the msdn subscription was cheaper than the mac dev tools.
where's the device drivers barrier to entry there?
precisely. you wind up with local production handling local demand (relatively local in the global sense) - and absolutely 0 untrained labor.
part of the holdup of fully automating in more traditional big-machine production has been the Unions. They aren't so big on entire manufacturing lines disappearing, and routinely strike to keep away layoffs from automation. thing is, the big producers aren't hiring at the rate they're retiring (adjusting for production growth).
compile all this with the growing seperation of wealth, and the most likely downfall of the current world order is to be over economic reasons - rather than military or religious ones.
of course, democracy is flexible, and likely can weather changes, but a social clash is all but inevitable.
As people have always said, it's all about the applications. Better OS's than MS have come and gone - but windows holds the desktop because they have the desktop applications.
and argue as you may about performance or server marketshare or stability -- linux does not have the consumer application maturity.
the home consumer wants to create birthday cards, print pictures from their digicams, play games off-the-shelf, do their taxes, browse, keep a schedule, and email.
Sure, linux does all those things. but as the stifling size of the MS consumer software market shows -- having the application available does not mean you have the interface the user likes. often the home user will buy a program that lets him do something he can already do. but because the interface is so backwards, he doesn't even know it.
many home consumers will routinely use a different graphics program to scan than they do to make an invitation or an envelope or print digital pictures. current linux users are absolutely content with the single complex program. you can see there, the purpose gap as well as a culture gap between linux and the average home user.
the installation procedures, the dependencies, recompiles, configs -- it all echoes the hardcore requirements, and stands in contrast to the home user's needs.
linux on the home desktop can start to beat microsoft when the installation becomes easier, the interfaces become better, and the silly applications that slashdotters don't buy start to appear.
so unless Sun is going to really work on the consumer usability end of linux - it isn't going to work.
the robotic revolution in manufacturing will obsolete this labor argument long before a global solution is sorted out.
there will simply be warehouses of automatons producing perfect product for the mere cost of materials time and electricity.
no safety inspections, no overtime, no coerced employment. no mistakes, no tired employees, no lunch breaks, no shift-changes.
silent, ceaseless, and dependable, with linear growth projections and no wasted overhead on middle-management or hr.
it isn't too far off now. it's already starting.
witness the chip business loss of TMSC to the end-to-end automated IBM plant in New England. (AMD & Nvidia switched several lines)
for about 10k anyone should be able to do the same in a few months time, using one uniprocessor machine
so how fast could they do it with 10 1k uniprocessor machines? or 20 $500 machines?
partciularly with an easily segmented problem like this, the most likely 'wild' resource would be @home-ish.
exactly, it all comes back to doing proper encryption. 'quantum' cryptography isn't going to change much in the security biz. it's a buzzword now, a far-off technology, and when it hits, it'll just be another flavor of the same game. it doesn't help much, it just has a convenient feature that only confirms the key assumption that all cryptographers start with.(that somebody is listening, but information needs to be exchanged)
you still need solid cryptography, and right now, that seems to be most effectively done through one-time pad and public/private key pairs.
what you are referring to as quantum cryptography isn't really cryptography, it's a semi-convenient side effect of encoding messages at the quantum level. Physics guarantees that the first reader of such a message necessarily destroys the message. Trick is, you still need decent cryptography behind such a scheme, as it won't much matter to a cracker if you know he's there or not -- he'll still have your sensitive info if you didn't properly encrypt the actual message. in most applications you simply can't stop communicating and still remain relevant just because you know someone is eavesdropping.
...
;p -- and it's one-way, you'd need a second pair of entangled particles to transmit back. but that second unit would be trivial if you could actually create the first functional unit.)
convenient because you know for certain if you're being spied on? sure.
secure? hell no.
case in point: the US -knew- the japanese were spying on our wwII transmissions. just as the Japanese -knew- the US was spying. knowing that the enemy is listening didn't alleviate the problem - it still comes down to good crypto. one can't simply stop communicating and wait for the eavesdropper to leave.
truly secure quantum communication:
1. achieve quantum-entanglement of 2 particles
2. build com device to send messages via altering spin of one particle
3. give the second particle to your friend
4. build com device to read messages via observing the spin of the second particle
5. enjoy instant snoop-proof communications
6. profit?
(truly secure because there is no traditional transmission. still theoretcial of course
deaf people have been known to wear their hearing aides every waking moment.
i would think if magnetic induction were inherently hazardous to your health, deaf people would have been dropping like flies from brain cancer by now.
i'd add that the basic reason is that consoles are a specifically designed and purposed to be mass market devices.
if you see a ps2 game in a store, you know that your ps2 can play it. no questions asked. no weird driver problems, no 3d card or processor requirements.
turn on machine, plug in game, and play.
PC gaming is inherently more complex (variable system requirements and all), and unrealistic marketing of 'minimum' requirements isn't helping any.
I love PC games as much as the next guy - but the reason the console market outsells the pc market is simply because they hit the mass market better.
You hear rappers, actors and sports stars talking about their console libraries. You -ever- hear any one of them talking about a PC game?
the very idea that someone has to be 'serious' about gaming to play PC games is indicative of the situation. you have to -really- like PC games to put up with the upgrade cycles, the drivers, the config files and the key mapping.
this generation of consoles cost at most $300 brand new. and they have a life of 4 years at least. most PC gamers will have gone through -at-least- 2 video cards if not 2 entirely different computers in that time frame.
then there's the mass-market-friendly rental/return scene for console games, standing in stark contrast to the PC.
neither market is going to die, or is 'better', but it's inevitable that the machine specifically -targetted-, ground-up, to gaming is going to achieve greater financial success (from the mass market) than the machine that merely -supports- gaming.
it sounds like this may be exactly what they've been doing.
only those deliberately trying to 'game' the google rankings are complaining.
google isn't -hurting- anyone. if someone is googling for your company name, they're going to find it. but if you're attempting to game your way up to the top of generic search terms broadly describing your business - it shouldn't be a surprise that it's not in the google user's best interest to see your non-authoritative link higher than it should be in their results.
google built itself on the idea that it -worked- for the users, and gave them honest, quality links. if people can game their methods, then it ceases to 'work'. they won't have customers for long if they don't fix it.
This is the single biggest slipstream attempt at purchased legislation since then-congressional aide Mitch Glazier snuck the 'work for hire' catch into the Satellite Home Viewing Act of 1999.
Mitch Glazier was hired as the RIAA's top lobbyist 3 months later. (details)
So we all know this is outrageous.
But who do we call? Where is a list of representative's email addresses? Where is a list of senator's email addresses? Is the FSF, or EFF setting up a fund I can donate to, to work against this? Is there an email campaign going?
I haven't bought the RIAA's musical offerings in years, so I've already cut off my funding for these domestic, economic terrorists -- but is there someone I can give support -to- that has a voice to tell our government congress how asinine this is? how asinine Orrin Hatch is?
I mean, Orrin Hatch is a songwriter who works for an RIAA member label, isn't this at the least a clear-cut case of conflict of interest?
i thought GTA1 sucked. if that's preposterous, i don't know. it's my preference, it's the way the game struck me when i played it. It didn't have the unifying attention to detail and theme that vice city had - the right balance of story, nonlinear action, polish and gameplay that pulled it up above mindless violence (just as half-life pulled fps beyond simple quake fests).
... 'sophisticated' is absolutely a better word choice. i used 'mature' to take a stab at the article's author. he tried to parlay that label as somehow alluding to sophistication, when clearly it doesn't.
GTA2 struck me as a slight update on GTA1. Along the lines of q2 as an update to q1 -- some new stuff, sure, but not 'new' on the whole. i honestly didn't play GTA3, so i can't really comment on that. (i got the doublepack and haven't been able to put vice city down)
as for Predator vs Glengary Glenn Ross
A game is marked M just as a movie is marked R. when the publisher feels the need to let parents know 'if you get offended, you can't say we didn't warn you'. It has absolutely nothing to do with content sophistication. It sticks simply to sex, violence, and language. Nothing more.
The mod scene -is- fairly underground, but my point was that it doesn't seem to be -legitimized-. there isn't a community that covers mods in the aggregate: that reviews mods, discusses mods, talks to mod-makers - let alone map-makers or gametype tinkerers. And when there is a small zine that half-heartedly covers mods, they stick zealously to mods in their preferred engine, and then they only talk about the successful ones.
No-one is providing a mod maker some attention, or creating a dialogue on what works, what doesn't and -why-. We know counterstrike works. but why? the simplicity? guns? team-focused gameplay? more 'realistic' combat and setting? goals? a gestalt of all those things?
where's the honest dialogue on why it resonated, why it worked?
And what about the single player mods? half-life with Zombies, half-life with Cowboys, Sven Co-op, Neverwinter modules... no-one really talks about them. Sure, their respective game-engine focused communities mention them, and let people know when new releases happen. but no-one is creating much of a dialogue about how the ideas come about, what the mod maker was -trying- to do, and whether that worked or not. most importantly, no-one is discussing -creative- alternatives that might make the mod 'work'.
I honestly don't think that the underground style of risk-taking should occur in the commerical arena. It's bad business, and its not helpful to the industry in the end. If the 'Deus Ex 2's or 'Half-life 2's have to support a dozen more low-budget 'risky' projects, eventually a bad bunch of risks will all fail, and the profits on the mainstream game won't be able to support the company. at some point the publisher's investors will simply put their money elsewhere, and that's not good for anyone.
no, experimentation -should- remain no budget. it should be left up to individuals working purely from passion, without the pressures of deadlines or commercialization. when they strike a chord, they can be co-opted into the mainstream.
the missing element is simply a couple focal points for the community that treat the underground scene with respect as a legitimate form, at least as important as mainstream gaming itself. (preferrably without the art-house snobbishness that accompanies the film parallel, but i'll take what i can get)
someone needs to dare to aim for the nonexistant market. ignore bungie, id, and valve. ignore rockstar, ea, and eidos. they're being covered to death. only by joining the community in the aggregate, across all engines, mods and hand-coded creations, and taking the whole thing seriously can we create a 'legitimate' scene that's worth participating in, in and of itself. whereas right now, the mod scene seems to be 95% about cracking the mainstream dev industry.
sure, some indy films are simple pitches for mainstream acceptance. but many of them could care less. they create the movies they want to watch regardless of whether they get paid for helping move the art form forward.