Unfortunately, every time this subject comes up in Slashdot the discussion seems very predictable.
People think of wikipedia as 'open-source', and there are some parallels:
People who think of wikipedia as 'open source for encyclopedias' have trouble digesting the fact that most people go to encyclopedias to Save Time (TM), not to start their own investigation to confirm and correct the veracity of an article written by some educated amateur.
There are some interesting parallels in their replies to criticism too: - All the edits are there! If you find an error just fix it!
Which is all well and good if you don't have anything better to do with your time than helping to maintain that project.
But most people have other things to do, such as working in other projects, and would rather go to an 'authoritative source' when they need quick reliability, whether free or not.
The question is whether wikipedia can be a Product (in the scope of Britannica) or not. The answer is not.
An open source tree does not a Product make, not unless your product is the hobby itself.
Most properly maintained open source projects learned this: an 'authoritative' release version is required to be taken seriously by the less adventurous. Let the hobbyist have the snapshots.
IF wikipedia wants to be authoritative, it would benefit from the concept of a fact-checked, edited 'release' with the corresponding cycle.
It wouldn't even have to be done by Wikipedia itself; the space could be taken by independent organizations (for profit or not) much like Linux distributions provide tested, documented bundles of software that is developed through more dynamic cycles.
Re:Greenpeace did this here in the Netherlands
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Guerrilla Drive-Ins
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· Score: 1
Let me see if I understand this:
Greenpeace: an environmentalist group that is, to say the least, worried about global warming as a physical reality.
The Day After Tomorrow: a B-movie that is not just lousy, but scientifically so utterly absurd that it makes global warming look as credible as "Godzilla research". Which may be why scientists behind global warming theories were quick to denounce its lack of scientific rigor.
It makes perfect sense that Greenpeace would project this movie as a political message against the real danger of global warming, to convince people to take it seriously.
Saying "English is the lingua franca of business" is more like saying "Zeibatsu Monstrosity is the Cadillac of SUVs".
The fact that it became, by extension, a universal language in other areas has a nice parallel in the Soccer Mom using said Monstrosity to drive up to the supermarket, fully convinced that its superiority in the frozen tundra also make it the perfect vehicle for the suburban landscape.
Yes, it is rather annoying when people expect you to know THEIR primary language when they want to communicate... like, say, English.
I'll remain skeptical about your bet that most people have a basic level of English proficiency until I see the native US citizenship meeting that criteria in written communications.
English is the lingua franca of business, which made it by extension that of diplomacy and research. But while the US inherited this cultural dominance from the UK, it preserved a very provincial cultural scope.
It could be insulting, if it were not so naive, this assumption that just because most people can do business on a second-language they will always stick to it in informal interactions, in deference to others they are not communicating with directly.
Most people do not switch back-and-forth between languages without effort: they are "functional" on their second-language, which is very far from "relaxed" and "fluent" which is how they want to communicate with their friends and communities.
Although having a lingua franca, be that English or any other, is a great advantage in business, research, and other "practical" forms of communication that permeate all social interaction, it is deceptive to expect more spontaneous social groups to follow that rule.
It's also deceptive to think that international communities are cleanly partitioned by language; it's a decent approximation, but n-lingual conversations, and by extension communities, are not rare by any means.
Perhaps this is a sign that our online social-network systems break easily under the assumption of "language indifference".
Perhaps we should be filtering our threads of communication by locale/language metatags that match what we can understand, effectively ignoring pieces of the conversation we cannot parse (although we can be made aware of their existence). This is what we do in real life.
Hmmm... this sounds like arguing against Morrowind being perfect, as opposed to having horrible gameplay.
Balance is the worst part of Morrowind, but that is a disappointly common problem in RPGs, computer-based or not. I didn't find it much worse than most AD&D-inspired RPGs where level X==DemiGod, unless you went out of your way to exploit the system... and in that case the Console is right there.
My pet peeve on that regard is when exploiting the system is the only way to play, which automatically destroys the balance.
Example:
Enchanted items are overpowered in Morrowind because they should be VERY hard to get. But...
The economics model in Morrowind was broken because there was no way to get decent capital legitimately. Shops underpay, which is fine, but they never had the capital to buy your expensive, heavy loot.
So what should have been an easter egg to get infinite money becomes the only way to make any money to repair armour, weapons, etc. Why not keep doing it?
Suddenly you have enough cash to enchant whatever items you want, or buy anything that is in the market.
Many of these problems are improved in the add-ons, which is why I've gone back to the game.
I disagree with the "lack of soul", however. I agree that Morrowind's quest-system easily falls into the "fedex+sword" model that plagues most RPGs. But for good or evil the "soul" of Morrowind, like Daggerfall, is in the universe they populate, not in the optional main story.
I don't mean the pretty graphics. I mean the set of factions, mythologies, histories and folk stories that tie in with the general environment as well as the plot if you bother to pay attention and read the in-game books. Most RPGs use these as shallow decorations to the main plot, where Morrowind suffers from the opposite.
In any case, Bethesda DOES have a history of being overambitious. Taking the step forward is not the issue, I think, but whether you will like where that step is going.
Morrowind was a big step in some direction from Daggerfall, whether that was forward or not is very subjective. I suspect the same thing will happen with FO3.
I don't know what you mean by "raw gameplay". Care to give more details?
If it is what I normally consider gameplay, and what reviewers, gamers and other people I know call "gameplay" (i.e.: the essential mechanics of the game) I think Morrowind was pretty good. I'm still playing these days.
Sure, there were some minor "gameplay" issues I would have liked to see improved: high-level balance, economics model etc. But the quality was still pretty high...
Now, if by "raw gameplay" you mean "Being Able to Play the Freaking Game", I agree with you.
To this day I play it, and to this day it crashes silently and sends me to the desktop on random occasions.
The point is course-ware: stuff to use in your own course. It provides a guideline for other academics to quickly build a course on the same topic without starting from scratch.
I don't think it's particularly useful for the typical student, but I suspect a syllabus that "works" and a set of problems can be very helpful to a teacher preparing a given course for the first time.
As a resource for self-study, it's just an extra source of materials, like Ars Digita or your local library.
I agree that the quality is mixed at best, but you should not depend only on the materials given by a (non-interactive) online course (maybe with problem solutions included!). Live classrooms depend A LOT on the teacher to compensate for the narrowness of the material covered in X time.
These efforts are not revolutionary but they should not be underrated:
As someone else pointed out, professors have been sharing lecture notes online and offline for a long time. However, the informality of that process has its problems now that some universities see themselves as IP-factories. Not to mention actual plagiarism and unauthorized republication.
An indexed, licensed, free set of course material is a step in the right direction.
Re:A Quibble with your Quibble
on
Hardcore Java
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· Score: 1
Agreed, up to a point...
When I read the title of the review, the first thing that came to my mind was "Server-based Java Programming", from Manning editorials.
It's one of those really good books that have been sligthly, but unfortunately misnamed. Although the motivation IS server-side code, and there's enough material covering the topic (data layers, rmi, services, etc), its best material was on class loaders and funky ways of using and abusing them.
It was very good at explaining the implications of language features, where other books just reiterate documentation.
I got it when I was a student playing with Servlets, and it was: - Almost completely unrelated to what I needed. - Too advanced for my level at that time. - One of the best programming books I've read, and one which fundamentally changed the way I program and think about other programs.
From the review, I have very good reasons not to buy that book, ever. It's not like there is a shortage of books teaching you best practices on how to do exceptions or implement event-handlers in Java.
Have 12 children, fake their salaries, for 12 votes? Sure! That sounds efficient!
It would be cheaper to just bribe (or threaten) your workers to vote for who you want...
I) Having your children earn artificial income leads to very real artificial losses, both in terms of lost deductions, and taxes that you have to pay for your artificial income.
Remember, dependants are deductions: it's the way the state tries to encourage producing more taxpayers... er, citizens.
Now, you would have 12 single individuals, each one paying taxes for their artificial salaries with the minimal deductions... and the family business paying their own share of taxes as employer. Plus the legal and accounting expenses of making this work.
Granted. You WILL have members of wealthy family with this kind of "artificial independence", but it will not be any worse than it is now: they will be adults, and it will be done to give them a work history and something to do after their expensive college is over.
II)12 children? Wealthy family?
In the Modern Western Society, a wealthy family rarely goes through the trouble of having 12 children: that's a very expensive way to breed political power these days.
Children are only an efficient way to maximize power when their total expense does not include the training, education and social behavior that is expected, and demanded, from the upper classes to keep the same social level across generations.
Raising children is expensive in money, time and other resources. Particularly if they are entitled to a bright, wealthy future of privilege because of their parents.
When expectations are lower, and/or the state pays for most of the bills (basic education), it is more efficient to have more children as resources.
Even in societies where the education bill is fully paid for by the state, having more than 2 or 3 children is not rentable for the upper-middle class, or higher.
Not unless there are more subtle forces at work, that promise a different kind of political influence: social reputation, respect, tradition, religious belief, etc.
Not to mention that there are a LARGE number of reasons your wealthy family ambitious for more power will NOT do such a thing out of the same ambition: dependants lead to tax deductions, government programs, etc.
I think that would work better than age discrimination in general.
As someone said, while you could introduce a minimum criteria or "standarized" testing as a requirement for voting, it could be "used for evil"... it would never pass because of the dangers of class discrimination, or if it passed, it would very likely be used for such things... unintentionally, even. Hence most democratic countries lack a literacy restriction on the vote.
Even a substantial amount of intelligence is no guarantee of common sense either: overspecialization can lead a very intelligent and/or talented person to be politically clueless (and easy to manipulate as a political symbol too).
The fact is that even a college degree these days is not guarantee of common sense, or even of a modicum of intelligence.
On the other hand, if you were not a dependant and filed your own taxes for a couple of years (or filed a joint-return with a spouse/partner), you are a self-sustained individual (and went through the bureaucratic hazing).
Whatever common sense you were going to get in the first years of your life, you're probably getting it now. Introduce a 1-2 year buffer from the first return, if you want.
If you are a 37-year old maintained by your family, you are not yet responsible for your actions, and you should let someone else in the household vote.
This would have been a horrible solution in a purely patriarchal society with single-household income. But considering that female labor is not substantially blocked anymore (even if proper compensation can be), tying the vote to economic independence would make sense.
You have to be kidding: do you really think big business is only made through Lear Jets? Do you think every corporation has a few of those laying around? Perhaps first-class is full of careless tourists and low-level manager types?
MAYBE the CEO-to-CEO, corporate-merging, meeting will consist of people who can hop from airport to airport in the company jet.
But most deals are prepared, and most often ultimately made, by guys a few steps down the organigram. You think any division manager can borrow the hypothetical company jet for business prospecting? You think those who can have the time to negotiate every deal of importance?
Far more important than tourist dollars are business dollars:
Until recently the US was the undisputed center of the international economy. Recently the EU has risen as a potential threat, and in other fields so has China.
Despite all claims of telecommunications and ecommerce, big business deals are still made in personal meetings, and have more to do with social processes than with economics.
Given these measures, where do you think the business will go?
If you had to choose between making a deal with someone who deals with you as an equal, or someone who treats you like a terrorist, which one would you choose?
Many a good business proposal has gone down because of more trivial reasons: bad personal chemistry, bad food in a business dinner, personal dislike for a national stereotype, etc.
In Latin America, for example, people have been typically happy to do business with Americans:
The stereotype says that Americans like to do business, have money, and keep things straightforward. The US was normally seen as a nation that welcomes you and treats you like a king as long as you bring money to pay for it.
The whole US was for most middle-class businessmen of the region like a mix of Disneyland and a Giant Shopping Mall is for a teenage girl. A business meeting in Atlanta, New York or Florida is a half-vacation.
In short, they're happy and receptive to a pitch while the other team has 'home advantage'.
More recently, it's easy to find people feeling personally insulted by new measures post 9/11. Now this can make them feel like criminals.
People will start to simply refuse to go to the US, for business or pleasure: "if they want to do business, let them come here". And the stereotype will be different as well: Americans are paranoid, make things difficult, think of everyone else as criminals and terrorists.
It wouldn't take much for a friendly European or Asian competitor to take the business. It's not like they have to dazzle them with a better offer, they just have to make them feel better about the deal.
Hardcover books rarely become best-sellers either. Books in general rarely become best-sellers, that's the whole point of a best-seller: it's a "hit" in contrast with the rest of the market.
Minimal changes: you can make dramatic textual changes, and end up with a pretty bad translation of a novel. Those are not the changes we are talking about, not in writing, and not in code.
We are talking of Semantic Changes. A minor change in the name of a character will only reverberate throughout the work if it has MEANING.
The same can obviously be said of Computer Games: I've been playing Age of Mythology and Rise of Nations recently. Both are pretty much the same game (Age of Empires), yet the first manages to ruin pretty good mechanics by giving a lackluster mythos (ironic), while the second builds a refreshing new game from a few gameplay tunings, a graphic re-design, and a different approach to "campaign".
The phenomenon described about the computer game industry is not a sign of "shrinking", it's a sign of maturity, and I would rather say that the industry will not shrink BECAUSE of that phenomenon.
All "creative" industries are based on the "hit" concept: they hedge their bets on boilerplate productions to finance the few hits. But in order to finance the hit, they need some degree of predictability, and they will purposedly keep the majority of their material as boilerplate.
This is not just for cashing in for the short-term. It is a long-term strategy to minimize risk over the lifetime of the business: if they were cashing in for the short-term, they would finance only potential hits, and hope to strike another Doom.
We have seen that happen in computer games: ION Storms.
I think this is unavoidable for an industry, and while it could make computer game development less fun and revolutionary, it will make it a more successful business.
Note: you are infinitely more likely to produce a professional-level computer game solo, in your garage, than a movie. You are equally unlikely to produce a "blockbuster", but it's far easier to make an indie game than to coordinate an indie movie, because surprise surprise, a movie IS a team effort, while an indie game neet not be.
I'm not saying that most people enter the military to be heroes. I'm saying that the military doesn't lie about the risks, and actually tries to sell them as heroic.
My argument was that regardless of your motivation you are Responsible for Your Actions (TM).
Whether you chose to be in the military because you wanted them to go to college, know the world, find yourself or follow family tradition, you cannot claim you were Forced by the Social Circumstances (TM), Deceived Into Serving The Man (TM), or any other excuse.
People have many reasons to make decisions that permanently affect their lives: marrying, having children, choosing careers, whatever...
Those are their choices, not for us to judge blindly. When we do that not only do we patronize them, we dehumanize them. We show less respect to their judgement than most have for househeld pets.
P.D.:
No, I have not served my country's military, and that was my choice. I don't have much appreciation for military organizations in general, if you must know.
But I find the pattern of renouncing and disowning personal responsability both insulting and disturbingly common.
That, and I do come from a country where there is a limited draft, and there are real class issues with respect to the military, with certain political consequences.
Which means whenever I read something like the parent comment it seems at best like a really bad joke.
Good to see you have a solid grasp of personal responsability.
The US is not currently drafting civilians. You do not need to be wealthy to avoid military service, you just have to NOT voluntarily apply.
The military seems pretty straightforward about the "running risks, shooting people" part, they're not lying about it. They may not put it in the harshest light, but I don't see them selling the "Army of One" idea as "cushy job, easy salary". Rather, they try to sell it as heroism.
If you sign up for the military, you do it knowing the risks, regardless of your motivation.
While "I'll never see action" may be a "justifiable assumption", it is still a conscious risk to take based on the odds. You're still signing a contract that says you're willing to risk your life if necessary, and that's your part of the deal, regardless of how unlikely you think that necessity is.
If you wanted to take advantage of the deal and never pay up on your promise, we'll, it was your own bad decision.
Soldier is not the only profession that expects you to potentially risk your life in some undetermined future. We don't normally expect cops to say "well, I never really expected to deal with crime directly anyway" or national guards to neglect duty on the grounds that "I didn't expect to deal with REAL emergencies!".
We don't steal the responsability from their actions by assuming they don't know what they're signing for.
Instead, we expect them to be the proud professionals we need them to be; we're aware they'd rather not deal with the ugly side of things, but we hope they will rise to the needs of the situations they're trained for. We praise their outstanding character and do our best to make sure they can do their work as safely as possible.
In other words, we give them the benefit of the doubt of being decent people who can make their own decisions, good or bad. They can marry, they can have kids, they can join the circus or the military.
But since you, obviously, are wealthy enough to worry about the class issues and make the assumption their social disadvantage makes them defenseless children freeloading on the government, I'd suggest you use some of your ample free time to re-read the articles you link to, which do not support your argument and are actually orthogonal to the whole issue.
All your examples translate into "there's still some innovation there", but don't contradict the original argument. The same could be said of the game industry, and still the article would be right: the general trend is towards repeating well-known successes.
99% of literature is boilerplate repetition: romances, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, etc. repeat time after time narrative recipes with very minimal changes. Most paperback novels have about as much originality as a porno movie.
Does that mean that if you have a great original idea it will not be appreciated by your typical large editorial?
Nope, I'm sure they'll be very happy to publish it if it's good. But it's almost certain that most of their novels are unoriginal copies/sequels, and intentionally so.
Since it's easier to come up with a decent standard novel that follows the rule of the genre than it is to bring original literature, this can create a vicious cycle.
This is a clear step forward in terms of usability.
In the same spirit, I hope they soon release the extension that re-downloads the source, changes all the variable names to different conventions and recompiles:
i counters to j, j to i, lowercase to camelCase, camelCase to CamelCaseAsInC#, UPPERCASE to _underscored... the possibilities are endeless!.
You are absolutely right, HP & Starbucks would never create these kiosks for Linux afficiandos. But because the kiosk is already in the store (as a music download/burn kiosk), the incremental cost of loading some distros on the HD is extremely low.
You got a point there: iff there is a matching demographic, the incremental cost of providing that feature in their kiosk would be worth it. It might even be worth to subsidize it, if the incremental cost is overset by higher customer satisfaction and retention (much like poetry readings in bookstores).
Good point! Perhaps sales of a service-addon would be very low. But what about sales of cheapo, preloaded distros? What is more impulsive than a $9.95, "tryout HP Desktop linux" CD?
Almost anything? An OS is normally not an impulsive choice for any significant non-hobbyist demographic, Linux users included. It's not just the "el cheapo" price, it's the baggage: the time spent installing, reconfiguring, etc. makes this unavoidable an "investment".
We're back on the hobbyist demographic in that case.
Not true. Although many users will download patches & upgrades themselves, some users will prefer to get a new preloaded CD with all the latest versions. This also deals with the security problem (when security holes are found in an old distro) of having to expose an unpatched machine on the internet in order to access the patches. HP could even advertize (in those specialized Linux magazines) that this Starbucks download kiosk is a great way to get linux distros and OSS application CDs.
So, let's see: although we're dealing with a small demographic group, an even smaller demographic group actually might be a repeat customer in order to get patches and updates.
Which makes one ponder: - Will they demand a cheaper (free?) patch/update disc in that case? - Isn't that what support is supposed to do?
Would we expect people to drop by to buy their patch/update CD every two weeks? Or to run to the coffee shop when a new vulnerability is exposed?
I know if I had to do that I would stop preferring my updates burned on a CD from a brick-and-mortar source. It would simply be impractical, as opposed to the Net connection.
The people who prefer a pre-packaged distro per upgrade, and prefer a solid CD per update, sound like the people who will update rather infrequently.
Apparently HP & Starbucks think that the the music versions of the kiosks will be profitable. I would assume they have factored in the cost of people browsing, listening to, and selecting music tracks.
And they don't have to provide browsable Linux distros, only information about the pros/cons of the alternatives. HP could even offer a total impulse buy to all music buyers ("Make your computer feel like new again, get HP Linux & OpenOffice for $9.95")
You're missing the point. Entirely. You might want to go back and read my previous posts.
The whole business model is BASED on "browsing->hang-out->buy". The costs of browsing are not just factored out, they are the WHOLE POINT of this scheme.
The benefits will be reaped out only if customers spend an inordinate amount of time browsing, sampling, and making impulsive buys that end up being as expensive, if not more, as they would have spent on traditional CDs. The coffee is there is to keep them in the store.
The problem with Linux is PRECISELY that it is not easily browseable, not easily sampled.
Even if you go through all of the expenses to make it browseable, only people already extensively familiar with Linux can "sample" it a minute or two and choose a distro. For the rest, the differences would be too insignificant or too drastic.
Without browsing and sampling, the product fits about as much as selling furniture at McDonalds.
Perhaps this would require further clarification of this "business model" idea.
1. Linux maganizes target specifically a demographic that is interested in Linux and willing to buy paper that "talks" about it, in full awareness it's all in the Net anyway, most often published by the magazines themselves.
Would you suggest that the Linux-geek demographic is suffciently large and affluent for HP and Starbucks to open retail coffe/distro stores for their pleasure?
Perhaps they could open bird-watcher coffee-and-print shops as well. Birdwatchers could drop by for coffee, watch birds on supplied telescopes and binoculars, take pictures with HP digital cameras and print them with HP inkjet printers.
Or perhaps HP is aiming at more mainstream markets than hobbyists.
2. Right. Because spending 50 bucks on software and support is exactly what people do when dropping by for coffee, as opposed to... say, computer stores.
They're aiming at the impulsive consumer market. There is an economic barrier which said market cannot surpass if it is to be "impulsive", and although it varies from time to time, it tends to float around a "lunch at a cheap restaurant price". Currently 15-20 bucks. In other words, money a middle-class consumer wouldn't miss too much and can spend on a whim without thinking twice.
That is the market for media: pulp-books, magazines, music, comics, etc. Stuff where you hope exposure==buy, because it is unlikely to be seen as an investment by the consumer.
3. You do realize the whole point behind their business model is the "browse->hang-out->buy" process?
If people want a specific Linux distro, they'll go looking for it at specialized stores/places. If they don't know enough to face a clerk and say "give me a debian with that mocha", they would have to "browse"...
There are two BIG problems with that business model:
-Browsing is expensive for the store: you have to provide computers, preferably with broadband, to let users play with the distros.
First, this sounds like CompUSA, not Starbucks. Second, this is a lot of equipment for very little revenue (distros). CompUSA can do it because they're selling PCs, MS Office, and other stuff that rakes larger profit margins than 9.95, 59.95 with support.
- IF you make a sale, and IF you get them to sign up for support... there is essentially no repeat customer.
What are they going to do, drop by next week to buy a new distro? If you made a good sale, they won't need to see you until they get another PC.
Just like a software store lives selling applications, not just OSes, you would need some other substantial form of CD-pressing revenue to justify the distro-scheme.
Yet that is difficult to justify since the whole point of the distros is to include all the common applications.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think the A-Team was "ludicrous"... maybe an unintentional comedy of sorts, but at least had a better sense of humor than McGyver, for example.
Now, thinking of ludicrous examples of 80s TV shows, "Small Wonder" popped into my head. I will forever curse the author of this article for that... but he has a point. Sure, enough, there was a fan site for "Small Wonder".
However, some jewels remain improperly exploited. The lack of an "Sledge Hammer" DVD is a crime against humanity. The show was proud of its own ludicrousness, and was the best spoof of the 80s TV shows in general. I can only imagine it died because on an unhealthy lack of cynicism in previous generations, and a lack of the awareness of its existence in the current ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, every time this subject comes up in Slashdot the discussion seems very predictable.
People think of wikipedia as 'open-source', and there are some parallels:
People who think of wikipedia as 'open source for encyclopedias' have trouble digesting the fact that most people go to encyclopedias to Save Time (TM), not to start their own investigation to confirm and correct the veracity of an article written by some educated amateur.
There are some interesting parallels in their replies to criticism too:
- All the edits are there! If you find an error just fix it!
Which is all well and good if you don't have anything better to do with your time than helping to maintain that project.
But most people have other things to do, such as working in other projects, and would rather go to an 'authoritative source' when they need quick reliability, whether free or not.
The question is whether wikipedia can be a Product (in the scope of Britannica) or not. The answer is not.
An open source tree does not a Product make, not unless your product is the hobby itself.
Most properly maintained open source projects learned this: an 'authoritative' release version is required to be taken seriously by the less adventurous. Let the hobbyist have the snapshots.
IF wikipedia wants to be authoritative, it would benefit from the concept of a fact-checked, edited 'release' with the corresponding cycle.
It wouldn't even have to be done by Wikipedia itself; the space could be taken by independent organizations (for profit or not) much like Linux distributions provide tested, documented bundles of software that is developed through more dynamic cycles.
Let me see if I understand this:
Greenpeace: an environmentalist group that is, to say the least, worried about global warming as a physical reality.
The Day After Tomorrow: a B-movie that is not just lousy, but scientifically so utterly absurd that it makes global warming look as credible as "Godzilla research".
Which may be why scientists behind global warming theories were quick to denounce its lack of scientific rigor.
It makes perfect sense that Greenpeace would project this movie as a political message against the real danger of global warming, to convince people to take it seriously.
Yep, sure it does.
Almost.
Saying "English is the lingua franca of business" is more like saying "Zeibatsu Monstrosity is the Cadillac of SUVs".
The fact that it became, by extension, a universal language in other areas has a nice parallel in the Soccer Mom using said Monstrosity to drive up to the supermarket, fully convinced that its superiority in the frozen tundra also make it the perfect vehicle for the suburban landscape.
Yes, it is rather annoying when people expect you to know THEIR primary language when they want to communicate... like, say, English.
I'll remain skeptical about your bet that most people have a basic level of English proficiency until I see the native US citizenship meeting that criteria in written communications.
English is the lingua franca of business, which made it by extension that of diplomacy and research. But while the US inherited this cultural dominance from the UK, it preserved a very provincial cultural scope.
It could be insulting, if it were not so naive, this assumption that just because most people can do business on a second-language they will always stick to it in informal interactions, in deference to others they are not communicating with directly.
Most people do not switch back-and-forth between languages without effort: they are "functional" on their second-language, which is very far from "relaxed" and "fluent" which is how they want to communicate with their friends and communities.
Although having a lingua franca, be that English or any other, is a great advantage in business, research, and other "practical" forms of communication that permeate all social interaction, it is deceptive to expect more spontaneous social groups to follow that rule.
It's also deceptive to think that international communities are cleanly partitioned by language; it's a decent approximation, but n-lingual conversations, and by extension communities, are not rare by any means.
Perhaps this is a sign that our online social-network systems break easily under the assumption of "language indifference".
Perhaps we should be filtering our threads of communication by locale/language metatags that match what we can understand, effectively ignoring pieces of the conversation we cannot parse (although we can be made aware of their existence). This is what we do in real life.
Hmmm... this sounds like arguing against Morrowind being perfect, as opposed to having horrible gameplay.
Balance is the worst part of Morrowind, but that is a disappointly common problem in RPGs, computer-based or not. I didn't find it much worse than most AD&D-inspired RPGs where level X==DemiGod, unless you went out of your way to exploit the system... and in that case the Console is right there.
My pet peeve on that regard is when exploiting the system is the only way to play, which automatically destroys the balance.
Example:
Enchanted items are overpowered in Morrowind because they should be VERY hard to get. But...
The economics model in Morrowind was broken because there was no way to get decent capital legitimately. Shops underpay, which is fine, but they never had the capital to buy your expensive, heavy loot.
So what should have been an easter egg to get infinite money becomes the only way to make any money to repair armour, weapons, etc. Why not keep doing it?
Suddenly you have enough cash to enchant whatever items you want, or buy anything that is in the market.
Many of these problems are improved in the add-ons, which is why I've gone back to the game.
I disagree with the "lack of soul", however. I agree that Morrowind's quest-system easily falls into the "fedex+sword" model that plagues most RPGs. But for good or evil the "soul" of Morrowind, like Daggerfall, is in the universe they populate, not in the optional main story.
I don't mean the pretty graphics. I mean the set of factions, mythologies, histories and folk stories that tie in with the general environment as well as the plot if you bother to pay attention and read the in-game books. Most RPGs use these as shallow decorations to the main plot, where Morrowind suffers from the opposite.
In any case, Bethesda DOES have a history of being overambitious. Taking the step forward is not the issue, I think, but whether you will like where that step is going.
Morrowind was a big step in some direction from Daggerfall, whether that was forward or not is very subjective. I suspect the same thing will happen with FO3.
I don't know what you mean by "raw gameplay". Care to give more details?
If it is what I normally consider gameplay, and what reviewers, gamers and other people I know call "gameplay" (i.e.: the essential mechanics of the game) I think Morrowind was pretty good. I'm still playing these days.
Sure, there were some minor "gameplay" issues I would have liked to see improved: high-level balance, economics model etc. But the quality was still pretty high...
Now, if by "raw gameplay" you mean "Being Able to Play the Freaking Game", I agree with you.
To this day I play it, and to this day it crashes silently and sends me to the desktop on random occasions.
But I don't think that's what you meant.
Your local library: probably still open, with reduced budget and now an annoying layer of censorship on Internet access "to protect the children".
Ars Digita: dead, but a very useful zombie (aduni.org).
For a reasonable fee (about 160 bucks, shipping included) you can order a hard drive with all their course content (80 gb).
They still keep a lot of material online, with some restrictions (bandwidth cost), which I was in the habit of downloading abusively until last year.
Unfortunately the price was reasonable but unreachable (considering other expenses) when I was a student.
The point is course-ware: stuff to use in your own course. It provides a guideline for other academics to quickly build a course on the same topic without starting from scratch.
I don't think it's particularly useful for the typical student, but I suspect a syllabus that "works" and a set of problems can be very helpful to a teacher preparing a given course for the first time.
As a resource for self-study, it's just an extra source of materials, like Ars Digita or your local library.
I agree that the quality is mixed at best, but you should not depend only on the materials given by a (non-interactive) online course (maybe with problem solutions included!). Live classrooms depend A LOT on the teacher to compensate for the narrowness of the material covered in X time.
These efforts are not revolutionary but they should not be underrated:
As someone else pointed out, professors have been sharing lecture notes online and offline for a long time. However, the informality of that process has its problems now that some universities see themselves as IP-factories. Not to mention actual plagiarism and unauthorized republication.
An indexed, licensed, free set of course material is a step in the right direction.
Agreed, up to a point...
When I read the title of the review, the first thing that came to my mind was "Server-based Java Programming", from Manning editorials.
It's one of those really good books that have been sligthly, but unfortunately misnamed. Although the motivation IS server-side code, and there's enough material covering the topic (data layers, rmi, services, etc), its best material was on class loaders and funky ways of using and abusing them.
It was very good at explaining the implications of language features, where other books just reiterate documentation.
I got it when I was a student playing with Servlets, and it was:
- Almost completely unrelated to what I needed.
- Too advanced for my level at that time.
- One of the best programming books I've read, and one which fundamentally changed the way I program and think about other programs.
From the review, I have very good reasons not to buy that book, ever. It's not like there is a shortage of books teaching you best practices on how to do exceptions or implement event-handlers in Java.
???
Have 12 children, fake their salaries, for 12 votes? Sure! That sounds efficient!
It would be cheaper to just bribe (or threaten) your workers to vote for who you want...
I) Having your children earn artificial income leads to very real artificial losses, both in terms of lost deductions, and taxes that you have to pay for your artificial income.
Remember, dependants are deductions: it's the way the state tries to encourage producing more taxpayers... er, citizens.
Now, you would have 12 single individuals, each one paying taxes for their artificial salaries with the minimal deductions... and the family business paying their own share of taxes as employer. Plus the legal and accounting expenses of making this work.
Granted. You WILL have members of wealthy family with this kind of "artificial independence", but it will not be any worse than it is now: they will be adults, and it will be done to give them a work history and something to do after their expensive college is over.
II)12 children? Wealthy family?
In the Modern Western Society, a wealthy family rarely goes through the trouble of having 12 children: that's a very expensive way to breed political power these days.
Children are only an efficient way to maximize power when their total expense does not include the training, education and social behavior that is expected, and demanded, from the upper classes to keep the same social level across generations.
Raising children is expensive in money, time and other resources. Particularly if they are entitled to a bright, wealthy future of privilege because of their parents.
When expectations are lower, and/or the state pays for most of the bills (basic education), it is more efficient to have more children as resources.
Even in societies where the education bill is fully paid for by the state, having more than 2 or 3 children is not rentable for the upper-middle class, or higher.
Not unless there are more subtle forces at work, that promise a different kind of political influence: social reputation, respect, tradition, religious belief, etc.
Not to mention that there are a LARGE number of reasons your wealthy family ambitious for more power will NOT do such a thing out of the same ambition: dependants lead to tax deductions, government programs, etc.
I think that would work better than age discrimination in general.
As someone said, while you could introduce a minimum criteria or "standarized" testing as a requirement for voting, it could be "used for evil"... it would never pass because of the dangers of class discrimination, or if it passed, it would very likely be used for such things... unintentionally, even. Hence most democratic countries lack a literacy restriction on the vote.
Even a substantial amount of intelligence is no guarantee of common sense either: overspecialization can lead a very intelligent and/or talented person to be politically clueless (and easy to manipulate as a political symbol too).
The fact is that even a college degree these days is not guarantee of common sense, or even of a modicum of intelligence.
On the other hand, if you were not a dependant and filed your own taxes for a couple of years (or filed a joint-return with a spouse/partner), you are a self-sustained individual (and went through the bureaucratic hazing).
Whatever common sense you were going to get in the first years of your life, you're probably getting it now. Introduce a 1-2 year buffer from the first return, if you want.
If you are a 37-year old maintained by your family, you are not yet responsible for your actions, and you should let someone else in the household vote.
This would have been a horrible solution in a purely patriarchal society with single-household income. But considering that female labor is not substantially blocked anymore (even if proper compensation can be), tying the vote to economic independence would make sense.
Is there a way to MetaMod the Moderation as +5 Funny?
You're that naked guy from the radio show in Grand Theft Auto 3, right?
You have to be kidding: do you really think big business is only made through Lear Jets? Do you think every corporation has a few of those laying around? Perhaps first-class is full of careless tourists and low-level manager types?
MAYBE the CEO-to-CEO, corporate-merging, meeting will consist of people who can hop from airport to airport in the company jet.
But most deals are prepared, and most often ultimately made, by guys a few steps down the organigram. You think any division manager can borrow the hypothetical company jet for business prospecting? You think those who can have the time to negotiate every deal of importance?
Far more important than tourist dollars are business dollars:
Until recently the US was the undisputed center of the international economy. Recently the EU has risen as a potential threat, and in other fields so has China.
Despite all claims of telecommunications and ecommerce, big business deals are still made in personal meetings, and have more to do with social processes than with economics.
Given these measures, where do you think the business will go?
If you had to choose between making a deal with someone who deals with you as an equal, or someone who treats you like a terrorist, which one would you choose?
Many a good business proposal has gone down because of more trivial reasons: bad personal chemistry, bad food in a business dinner, personal dislike for a national stereotype, etc.
In Latin America, for example, people have been typically happy to do business with Americans:
The stereotype says that Americans like to do business, have money, and keep things straightforward. The US was normally seen as a nation that welcomes you and treats you like a king as long as you bring money to pay for it.
The whole US was for most middle-class businessmen of the region like a mix of Disneyland and a Giant Shopping Mall is for a teenage girl. A business meeting in Atlanta, New York or Florida is a half-vacation.
In short, they're happy and receptive to a pitch while the other team has 'home advantage'.
More recently, it's easy to find people feeling personally insulted by new measures post 9/11. Now this can make them feel like criminals.
People will start to simply refuse to go to the US, for business or pleasure: "if they want to do business, let them come here". And the stereotype will be different as well: Americans are paranoid, make things difficult, think of everyone else as criminals and terrorists.
It wouldn't take much for a friendly European or Asian competitor to take the business. It's not like they have to dazzle them with a better offer, they just have to make them feel better about the deal.
Well, I knew THAT.
But where do the epidemic-carrying bees and the intelligent black oil fit in?
Hardcover books rarely become best-sellers either. Books in general rarely become best-sellers, that's the whole point of a best-seller: it's a "hit" in contrast with the rest of the market.
Minimal changes: you can make dramatic textual changes, and end up with a pretty bad translation of a novel. Those are not the changes we are talking about, not in writing, and not in code.
We are talking of Semantic Changes. A minor change in the name of a character will only reverberate throughout the work if it has MEANING.
The same can obviously be said of Computer Games: I've been playing Age of Mythology and Rise of Nations recently. Both are pretty much the same game (Age of Empires), yet the first manages to ruin pretty good mechanics by giving a lackluster mythos (ironic), while the second builds a refreshing new game from a few gameplay tunings, a graphic re-design, and a different approach to "campaign".
The phenomenon described about the computer game industry is not a sign of "shrinking", it's a sign of maturity, and I would rather say that the industry will not shrink BECAUSE of that phenomenon.
All "creative" industries are based on the "hit" concept: they hedge their bets on boilerplate productions to finance the few hits. But in order to finance the hit, they need some degree of predictability, and they will purposedly keep the majority of their material as boilerplate.
This is not just for cashing in for the short-term. It is a long-term strategy to minimize risk over the lifetime of the business: if they were cashing in for the short-term, they would finance only potential hits, and hope to strike another Doom.
We have seen that happen in computer games: ION Storms.
I think this is unavoidable for an industry, and while it could make computer game development less fun and revolutionary, it will make it a more successful business.
Note: you are infinitely more likely to produce a professional-level computer game solo, in your garage, than a movie. You are equally unlikely to produce a "blockbuster", but it's far easier to make an indie game than to coordinate an indie movie, because surprise surprise, a movie IS a team effort, while an indie game neet not be.
You're missing the point.
I'm not saying that most people enter the military to be heroes. I'm saying that the military doesn't lie about the risks, and actually tries to sell them as heroic.
My argument was that regardless of your motivation you are Responsible for Your Actions (TM).
Whether you chose to be in the military because you wanted them to go to college, know the world, find yourself or follow family tradition, you cannot claim you were Forced by the Social Circumstances (TM), Deceived Into Serving The Man (TM), or any other excuse.
People have many reasons to make decisions that permanently affect their lives: marrying, having children, choosing careers, whatever...
Those are their choices, not for us to judge blindly. When we do that not only do we patronize them, we dehumanize them. We show less respect to their judgement than most have for househeld pets.
P.D.:
No, I have not served my country's military, and that was my choice. I don't have much appreciation for military organizations in general, if you must know.
But I find the pattern of renouncing and disowning personal responsability both insulting and disturbingly common.
That, and I do come from a country where there is a limited draft, and there are real class issues with respect to the military, with certain political consequences.
Which means whenever I read something like the parent comment it seems at best like a really bad joke.
Good to see you have a solid grasp of personal responsability.
The US is not currently drafting civilians. You do not need to be wealthy to avoid military service, you just have to NOT voluntarily apply.
The military seems pretty straightforward about the "running risks, shooting people" part, they're not lying about it. They may not put it in the harshest light, but I don't see them selling the "Army of One" idea as "cushy job, easy salary". Rather, they try to sell it as heroism.
If you sign up for the military, you do it knowing the risks, regardless of your motivation.
While "I'll never see action" may be a "justifiable assumption", it is still a conscious risk to take based on the odds. You're still signing a contract that says you're willing to risk your life if necessary, and that's your part of the deal, regardless of how unlikely you think that necessity is.
If you wanted to take advantage of the deal and never pay up on your promise, we'll, it was your own bad decision.
Soldier is not the only profession that expects you to potentially risk your life in some undetermined future. We don't normally expect cops to say "well, I never really expected to deal with crime directly anyway" or national guards to neglect duty on the grounds that "I didn't expect to deal with REAL emergencies!".
We don't steal the responsability from their actions by assuming they don't know what they're signing for.
Instead, we expect them to be the proud professionals we need them to be; we're aware they'd rather not deal with the ugly side of things, but we hope they will rise to the needs of the situations they're trained for. We praise their outstanding character and do our best to make sure they can do their work as safely as possible.
In other words, we give them the benefit of the doubt of being decent people who can make their own decisions, good or bad. They can marry, they can have kids, they can join the circus or the military.
But since you, obviously, are wealthy enough to worry about the class issues and make the assumption their social disadvantage makes them defenseless children freeloading on the government, I'd suggest you use some of your ample free time to re-read the articles you link to, which do not support your argument and are actually orthogonal to the whole issue.
All your examples translate into "there's still some innovation there", but don't contradict the original argument. The same could be said of the game industry, and still the article would be right: the general trend is towards repeating well-known successes.
99% of literature is boilerplate repetition: romances, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, etc. repeat time after time narrative recipes with very minimal changes. Most paperback novels have about as much originality as a porno movie.
Does that mean that if you have a great original idea it will not be appreciated by your typical large editorial?
Nope, I'm sure they'll be very happy to publish it if it's good. But it's almost certain that most of their novels are unoriginal copies/sequels, and intentionally so.
Since it's easier to come up with a decent standard novel that follows the rule of the genre than it is to bring original literature, this can create a vicious cycle.
This is typical of large "creative" industries.
This is a clear step forward in terms of usability.
In the same spirit, I hope they soon release the extension that re-downloads the source, changes all the variable names to different conventions and recompiles:
i counters to j, j to i, lowercase to camelCase, camelCase to CamelCaseAsInC#, UPPERCASE to _underscored... the possibilities are endeless!.
So what you're saying is that we shouldn't smuggle the cocaine and the laptop, at the same time?
right?
You got a point there: iff there is a matching demographic, the incremental cost of providing that feature in their kiosk would be worth it. It might even be worth to subsidize it, if the incremental cost is overset by higher customer satisfaction and retention (much like poetry readings in bookstores).
Almost anything? An OS is normally not an impulsive choice for any significant non-hobbyist demographic, Linux users included. It's not just the "el cheapo" price, it's the baggage: the time spent installing, reconfiguring, etc. makes this unavoidable an "investment".
We're back on the hobbyist demographic in that case.
So, let's see: although we're dealing with a small demographic group, an even smaller demographic group actually might be a repeat customer in order to get patches and updates.
Which makes one ponder:
- Will they demand a cheaper (free?) patch/update disc in that case?
- Isn't that what support is supposed to do?
Would we expect people to drop by to buy their patch/update CD every two weeks? Or to run to the coffee shop when a new vulnerability is exposed?
I know if I had to do that I would stop preferring my updates burned on a CD from a brick-and-mortar source. It would simply be impractical, as opposed to the Net connection.
The people who prefer a pre-packaged distro per upgrade, and prefer a solid CD per update, sound like the people who will update rather infrequently.
You're missing the point. Entirely. You might want to go back and read my previous posts.
The whole business model is BASED on "browsing->hang-out->buy". The costs of browsing are not just factored out, they are the WHOLE POINT of this scheme.
The benefits will be reaped out only if customers spend an inordinate amount of time browsing, sampling, and making impulsive buys that end up being as expensive, if not more, as they would have spent on traditional CDs. The coffee is there is to keep them in the store.
The problem with Linux is PRECISELY that it is not easily browseable, not easily sampled.
Even if you go through all of the expenses to make it browseable, only people already extensively familiar with Linux can "sample" it a minute or two and choose a distro. For the rest, the differences would be too insignificant or too drastic.
Without browsing and sampling, the product fits about as much as selling furniture at McDonalds.
Perhaps this would require further clarification of this "business model" idea.
1. Linux maganizes target specifically a demographic that is interested in Linux and willing to buy paper that "talks" about it, in full awareness it's all in the Net anyway, most often published by the magazines themselves.
Would you suggest that the Linux-geek demographic is suffciently large and affluent for HP and Starbucks to open retail coffe/distro stores for their pleasure?
Perhaps they could open bird-watcher coffee-and-print shops as well. Birdwatchers could drop by for coffee, watch birds on supplied telescopes and binoculars, take pictures with HP digital cameras and print them with HP inkjet printers.
Or perhaps HP is aiming at more mainstream markets than hobbyists.
2. Right. Because spending 50 bucks on software and support is exactly what people do when dropping by for coffee, as opposed to... say, computer stores.
They're aiming at the impulsive consumer market. There is an economic barrier which said market cannot surpass if it is to be "impulsive", and although it varies from time to time, it tends to float around a "lunch at a cheap restaurant price". Currently 15-20 bucks. In other words, money a middle-class consumer wouldn't miss too much and can spend on a whim without thinking twice.
That is the market for media: pulp-books, magazines, music, comics, etc. Stuff where you hope exposure==buy, because it is unlikely to be seen as an investment by the consumer.
3. You do realize the whole point behind their business model is the "browse->hang-out->buy" process?
If people want a specific Linux distro, they'll go looking for it at specialized stores/places. If they don't know enough to face a clerk and say "give me a debian with that mocha", they would have to "browse"...
There are two BIG problems with that business model:
-Browsing is expensive for the store: you have to provide computers, preferably with broadband, to let users play with the distros.
First, this sounds like CompUSA, not Starbucks. Second, this is a lot of equipment for very little revenue (distros). CompUSA can do it because they're selling PCs, MS Office, and other stuff that rakes larger profit margins than 9.95, 59.95 with support.
- IF you make a sale, and IF you get them to sign up for support... there is essentially no repeat customer.
What are they going to do, drop by next week to buy a new distro? If you made a good sale, they won't need to see you until they get another PC.
Just like a software store lives selling applications, not just OSes, you would need some other substantial form of CD-pressing revenue to justify the distro-scheme.
Yet that is difficult to justify since the whole point of the distros is to include all the common applications.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think the A-Team was "ludicrous"... maybe an unintentional comedy of sorts, but at least had a better sense of humor than McGyver, for example.
Now, thinking of ludicrous examples of 80s TV shows, "Small Wonder" popped into my head. I will forever curse the author of this article for that... but he has a point. Sure, enough, there was a fan site for "Small Wonder".
However, some jewels remain improperly exploited. The lack of an "Sledge Hammer" DVD is a crime against humanity. The show was proud of its own ludicrousness, and was the best spoof of the 80s TV shows in general. I can only imagine it died because on an unhealthy lack of cynicism in previous generations, and a lack of the awareness of its existence in the current ones.