Maybe hamas is a lot bigger than Al Qaeda, or the people being killed are easier to replace. Hamas has the benefit of being geographically well connected, they have relative safe havens for training away from the Israelis - where the really important people are really hard to kill (in Syria and Iran particularly). When you kill one ideological figurehead you haven't really gotten yourself much. If you want to kill their bomb makers for example, it doesn't do you a lot of good to kill 30 bomb makers only to have 30 more safely away in training one from one guy.
But yes, that's the question, whether or not it is effective in this particular case of drone strikes on Al Qaeda. It's unlikely it would be equally effective everywhere. It would depend a lot on the organization and structure of the organization you're targeting.
Right, but a cheap quadrocopter that can carry anything meaningful is like 1200 bucks. That goes to my 'cost prohibitive'. A cheap quadrocopter (like a parrot AR) is on par with the RC plane already listed.
I'm concerned particularly because of the damage one nutter can do, not what institutionally is going to happen.
One 'minuteman' who decides to take matters into his own hands can, from the relative safety of his roof fly a drone around and kill dozens of people before the police can catch on and locate him. Italy and Spain have literally boats of people trying to get into their countries, which, combined with high unemployment and civil unrest is a recipe for some guy deciding to try and sink one the boats, and that could have hundred of people killed.
It only takes one rich guy (or company hired by a rich guy) to shoot up an 8 year old kid trying to collect his wayward frisbee for this to go poorly.
Anders Brevik managed to kill nearly 80 people with just a bunch of guns and a car bomb. Drones elevate the capability (and the psychological disconnect from the killing) to a whole other level, and are much harder to catch a perpetrator because you have to find the source of the signal.
can only be effective if you actually kill the right person. Which is something else you need to assess, and figure out if you are, on average, killing the *right people* at a high enough rate.
Ya but that's not enough to mount weapons on or do much other than take pictures, and even then, with a 2.6 kilo craft you'd have to have a pretty light camera (which you can get of course, but again, more money), but I grant you, in the context of was saying that wasn't perfectly clear.
As i replied somewhere else below, they actually might not be. It seems obvious that killing people in charge of hostile organizations can be useful. It's a matter of whether or not drone strikes can effectively kill people at a high enough rate to actually degrade organizational capabilities.
The US has done about 310 drone strikes in pakistan total (bush and obama), which under Obama is at a tempo of about 1 a week. So then how quickly is Al Qaeda able to replace that capability*, and, obviously, I only casually looked up Pakistan, a serious study should be looking at multiple countries.
*If you can't directly measure their capability to train replacements, the way you could with a regular army, you need an assessment of organizational capability that's less direct. Coming up with that measurement is important too, because you might learn a lot of meta info about the organization in trying to figure out how to assess its organizational capabilities.
A similar problem, on the effectiveness of patriot missile systems was looked at for years. (e.g. from 1992 http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1992_h/h920407h.htm)
As it turned out, the US was *completely* wrong in it's early assessments of how effective their missile intercept technology was. That's why you do studies like this. It was quite possible UAV's were never, or almost never, successfully killing the person targeted, or that just killing a person (even a person with some leadership experience) was of virtually no value because they could be easily replaced.
Think of it this way. Fighting the german army in WW2, if you'd been able to kill 500 Colonel level officers with targeted strikes, that may have had some civilian casualties, it wouldn't have actually gotten you very much, the german army would have had literally thousands of Colonels (probably over 10 000), are more people who could have been quickly trained and promoted to fill those vacancies. Al Qaeda is much harder to pick apart, and figure out how relevant anyone is. There have been, apparently, 310 drone strikes in pakistan alone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan), so presumably they've tried to kill around 350 people with that. So how relevant are those 350 people to Al Qaeda (in addition to the couple of thousand other people killed as a side effect of the drone strikes)? It's entirely possible that killing those guys, at a rate of what is now about 1 target a week is inconsequential to al qaeda's capability, but, the study studies more than just pakistan, and what it does look at it sees as actually being effective.
That's how politics is sabotaging honest analysis and discussion of possible effectiveness, and a legitimate discussion of what needs to be improved for such technology to actually be useful.
Flying two stealth helicopters into Pakistan and shooting up a house full of people wasn't about to make them any happier than a drone strike would. But at least the helicopters make it seem like the US side was taking some human risks to achieve its goals, but if the Pakistanis had shot down the helicopters, or if it was the wrong building, someone not particularly high value or the like it would have played out very differently.
What the article is trying to analyse is whether or not targeted assassinations can actually be effective at tearing apart terror networks. It seems reasonably obvious that they can be, on the occasion that they're targeted on the right people, and then actually kill those people. Even if you kill innocent civilians at the same time, those angered to take arms against in retaliation don't have the practical experience or leadership role in an existing terrorist network to pick up where the dead guy left off. That's almost classic Clausewitz destroying their political and military organizational capabilities, and not being particularly concerned with the total mass of the enemy force, as long as it can't organize it's not a serious threat.
It's also pretty obvious, as you somewhat cynically point out, that claiming 'zero casualties' and so on are lies. Tracking the repercussions of those, and and long term consequences of drone strikes is going to be much messier. You might be able to tear down the Al Qaeda networks of suicide bombers and so on, but the next guy might be happy to use drones against you (or for other, less directly murderous purposes, like drug running).
Honestly, my biggest fear with drone strikes in the long run is more about what crazy people will do with the technology when it trickles down enough into the civilian world ( you can already get RC flying vehicles it's just cost prohibitive at the moment). Are you going to see the 'minutemen' or equivalent using drones to shoot people trying to (potentially illegally) cross into the US for example? How about Italians or Spaniards trying to sink immigrant ships off their southern coasts. That sort of thing could go badly real fast. Do you want rich people using drones to 'patrol' the area their estates and, because it's their right to defend their property, shooting anyone who might look like they're illegally trespassing? Sure, this might work for taking down Al Qaeda, but I'd be far more worried about whomever is next on the list (which could be a reborn version of Al Qaeda for all it matters).
Agreed. I think 'Pokemon' is more of a franchise than a single product anyway, so it has largely replaced itself with newer versions. Kids will always find things to collect and entertain themselves with, marbles, cards, electronic versions of the above etc. That Nintendo and Pokemon have clung on for 13 years is a testament to how well they've been able to understand and adapt to that market.
That's actually the point from what I understand. You're supposed to suffer and know what it's like to be poor and to be able to rejoice every night when you feast. It is supposed to teach you humility, so you know what it's like for the poor wage slave who has to do that all year round because he/she can't afford food every day.
This runs into the first problem, which is that Islam was developed with a particular latitude in mind, and the rules don't work as well far north or south of it, and secondly, lots of muslims who really have to do business during ramadan just become noctural and sleep all day.
It's the holy month of Ramadan where Muslims fast for a whole month and then have a big feast at the end of it.
Because it's a month long 'holiday' doesn't really do it justice. Life still goes on, just at strange hours and in strange ways. I've had islamic scholars tell me that part of the point is to experience hunger, so when some Muslims switch to being nocturnal they're missing the point. But that happens a lot of places, the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law so to speak.
Technically Indonesia is not an islamic state, they recognize a couple of religions (some of Islam, some of Christianity, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism), but as is practically the case, with just shy of 90% of the population being (or at least claiming to be) Muslim you can't really get around Islamic tradition.
The physical retail market for PC games has been gone for years. They don't even try to bundle things because there's no point in trying. You can buy an xbox controller with a cable and it works exactly as you would expect on a PC. But PC games are basically all digital these days unless you're a super expensive collectors edition or a mega title.
This is business. If you can't handle the rules and costs for working with microsoft and XBLA then don't work with them, and make a game you can sell somewhere else.
I make strategy games (or at least, parts of strategy games for other people, and do academic work on strategy games), console releases aren't worth the effort because controllers suck for most of what I work on these days. So you know full well that you aren't going to hit a big chunk of the gaming market being on PC only. That's fine, but you knew that before you spent your first dollar on the game.
The game in question ('fez') might really need a controller to be effective. That's fine, but he shouldn't have agreed to work with MS if he wasn't prepared for their deal. Call it a life lesson in business management.
moving data between computers. Not everyone knows how to do network sharing. they may also physically mail the encrypted USB sticks to people (or pass them around) for whatever reason. Ontario is a big place, and we've got about 13 million people over a large area, so there might be a lot of data moved around snail mail style by people who for whatever reason aren't linked up to a the central physical database.
They may also have data for static analysis. The 'real' data might be updated constantly as people change addresses and so on, which is fine, but if you want to analyze voting patterns, say related to a investigation of robocalling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocall_scandal), you need the data preserved as it applied to a particular point in time.
Political campaigns can know your name (maybe just first name), address and whether or not you voted and they can reasonably conclude gender most of the time from first name.
But ya, overall that information is pretty public (except whether or not you voted). You're in any of the phone book, land registries, employer office parties, condo corporations etc.
None of us in this business like having to have games go through layers of certification testing, but it costs money to do, and if you want your game on XBL, WiiWare or PSN you deal with that. All 3 have both design and technical requirements, which are intended largely to benefit the consumer and their brand image (so you don't stare at blank loadscreens for 5 minutes, you can't have a game kill your console that sort of thing).
It is by no means a perfect system, but it overall positions a game on a console as certain quality of experience, if you can't deliver that, make your game for mobile or PC. And yes, it sucks to have to pay for bandwidth for patches and so on, but that's the point - do it properly and you don't have to pay as often, and MS/Sony/Nintendo are going to test your game to make sure it doesn't break the consoles etc. Or, you can be like endless space (which btw is a good game, albeit somewhat buggy in earlier versions) and have 10 patches on steam and not have to spend a hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so.
They might have a legitimate argument with microsoft as to why they didn't catch this problem in testing the first time round - but that depends on the specifics of the bug and XBLA testing.
It's up to developers and publishers to build relationships with consumers, it's not up to console makers to foot the bill for that. Of course you could build relationships with consumers the way EA does, but that's another topic.
Or it prints one page, and then a line on another page that is otherwise blank etc. As I say you can work around it (fit to page essentially) but my point is that this is a deliberate choice by microsoft to adjust the document to your particular printer settings.
Adobe deliberately went another way (that is after all how you differentiate your products). But one isn't 'better' than the other, they are aiming to solve different problems. If you have something where the aspect ratio particularly matters then shrinking or expanding to fill paper size is the wrong answer, if you have something where page numbers must be preserved then you can go with PDF.
Production cost and quality can be a lot more painful than that even. If you're making a 15 million sales volume game (think FIFA) you're into motion capturing, fluid animation dynamics, voice acting, licensed images of athletes, fields, stadiums etc.
The problem with something like FIFA is that there isn't a 'story' to tell. It's a football game. You have a team, you play football. You make up your own story, assuming you want one at all, but the tools are supposed to support a virtual football team and playing.
The 'golden age of games' when games could be made for 500 or 600k was great, 2 artists and you could have everything you needed, and you could contract out audio or have some one on staff that was a hobbyist improvise. But not when your production costs are 5 million, or 50 million. And when you're competing with people who have production values of 5 million or 50 million, doing a shitty job of the art/audio etc. will bury your title, assuming anyone will even pick it up.
I have written academic papers and even then, you're better off to do the draft in word and then typesetting in LaTeX. Some people, the ones who can write well on their first attempt, can go straight to LaTeX, but that's rare even in academia.
You'd think that. But you try watching someone who's writing their PhD in physics in LaTeX who doesn't know the difference between then and than, or they're and their (or typo's one then then other), and so on, and you'll realize that little green squiggly line in Word makes a huge difference to readability.
My office mate/GF can do the maths fine, but she doesn't get language at all, and she doesn't get collaborative editing at all, and because she's using LaTeX her boss has a horrible time trying to explain to her what she's doing wrong within the document.
Yet LaTeX persists because people in academia find that it fits their needs better.
Only because some journals are still living in the 1980's. And these days, as I said, the actual writing of a document is best done in an office suite.
The office suites are poor editors, and they don't support version control in any meaningful manner. Yes, I have struggled through change tracking and document merging. Compared to writing a document with several co-authors at different locations and using something sane, like git, the tools you advocate are essentially non-functional.
Not knowing how to use the tools properly and then failing to be successful applies to anything. Thinking something can't be done because you don't know how to do it makes you the lunatic.
MS Word file to a versioning system in any meaningful way, or easily breaking up the document into smaller files.
you mean sharepoint?
I agree, you can't easily break the document up into smaller files. But that's sort of a bizarre requirement. I wrote one thesis in LaTeX and just wrote a book with two other people in Word (not entirely voluntarily). If you don't know how to use word, you're going to waste time on it, same thing with LaTeX.
And yes, LaTeX will be better for typesetting, but not for the actual text of the document. All of my writing is CS or physics, and the *writing* portion, where you are trying to convey information in words is better done in an office suite first, and then typeset however you want. That's what I said the first time.
I've written a thesis in LaTeX and a book in Word (because I was collaborating with two chinese guys, one of whom didn't know LaTeX). Word was *FAR* easier for the content.
Oh dear, you really don't get it. For any technical writing, LaTeX is just better than those office suites
This statement is straight out of the 1980's. Which, if you read the rest of my comment I straight up address. LaTeX is horrible for actually writing words and collaboratively editing those words. The best you can get is source control and revisioning, which is still way behind comments, tracking, linked notes, etc. that you can do with an office suite.
LaTeX has its advantages for final document style and preparation to be sure, I'm not exactly a huge fan of math type or the like, and I grant that doing equations in LaTeX is easier than in Word, but the actual writing part ugh.
Also, we didn't have any problems doing numbering automatically for the book in word, so I don't view that as a 'problem', it's a matter of knowing how to do it properly.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe hamas is a lot bigger than Al Qaeda, or the people being killed are easier to replace. Hamas has the benefit of being geographically well connected, they have relative safe havens for training away from the Israelis - where the really important people are really hard to kill (in Syria and Iran particularly). When you kill one ideological figurehead you haven't really gotten yourself much. If you want to kill their bomb makers for example, it doesn't do you a lot of good to kill 30 bomb makers only to have 30 more safely away in training one from one guy.
But yes, that's the question, whether or not it is effective in this particular case of drone strikes on Al Qaeda. It's unlikely it would be equally effective everywhere. It would depend a lot on the organization and structure of the organization you're targeting.
Right, but a cheap quadrocopter that can carry anything meaningful is like 1200 bucks. That goes to my 'cost prohibitive'. A cheap quadrocopter (like a parrot AR) is on par with the RC plane already listed.
I'm concerned particularly because of the damage one nutter can do, not what institutionally is going to happen.
One 'minuteman' who decides to take matters into his own hands can, from the relative safety of his roof fly a drone around and kill dozens of people before the police can catch on and locate him. Italy and Spain have literally boats of people trying to get into their countries, which, combined with high unemployment and civil unrest is a recipe for some guy deciding to try and sink one the boats, and that could have hundred of people killed.
It only takes one rich guy (or company hired by a rich guy) to shoot up an 8 year old kid trying to collect his wayward frisbee for this to go poorly.
Anders Brevik managed to kill nearly 80 people with just a bunch of guns and a car bomb. Drones elevate the capability (and the psychological disconnect from the killing) to a whole other level, and are much harder to catch a perpetrator because you have to find the source of the signal.
Addendum to my previous reply:
targeted assassinations
can only be effective if you actually kill the right person. Which is something else you need to assess, and figure out if you are, on average, killing the *right people* at a high enough rate.
Ya but that's not enough to mount weapons on or do much other than take pictures, and even then, with a 2.6 kilo craft you'd have to have a pretty light camera (which you can get of course, but again, more money), but I grant you, in the context of was saying that wasn't perfectly clear.
You needed a study to tell you that?
To quote myself in, literally, the next sentence:
It seems reasonably obvious that they can be
As i replied somewhere else below, they actually might not be. It seems obvious that killing people in charge of hostile organizations can be useful. It's a matter of whether or not drone strikes can effectively kill people at a high enough rate to actually degrade organizational capabilities.
The US has done about 310 drone strikes in pakistan total (bush and obama), which under Obama is at a tempo of about 1 a week. So then how quickly is Al Qaeda able to replace that capability*, and, obviously, I only casually looked up Pakistan, a serious study should be looking at multiple countries.
*If you can't directly measure their capability to train replacements, the way you could with a regular army, you need an assessment of organizational capability that's less direct. Coming up with that measurement is important too, because you might learn a lot of meta info about the organization in trying to figure out how to assess its organizational capabilities.
Who knew?
A similar problem, on the effectiveness of patriot missile systems was looked at for years. (e.g. from 1992 http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1992_h/h920407h.htm)
As it turned out, the US was *completely* wrong in it's early assessments of how effective their missile intercept technology was. That's why you do studies like this. It was quite possible UAV's were never, or almost never, successfully killing the person targeted, or that just killing a person (even a person with some leadership experience) was of virtually no value because they could be easily replaced.
Think of it this way. Fighting the german army in WW2, if you'd been able to kill 500 Colonel level officers with targeted strikes, that may have had some civilian casualties, it wouldn't have actually gotten you very much, the german army would have had literally thousands of Colonels (probably over 10 000), are more people who could have been quickly trained and promoted to fill those vacancies. Al Qaeda is much harder to pick apart, and figure out how relevant anyone is. There have been, apparently, 310 drone strikes in pakistan alone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan), so presumably they've tried to kill around 350 people with that. So how relevant are those 350 people to Al Qaeda (in addition to the couple of thousand other people killed as a side effect of the drone strikes)? It's entirely possible that killing those guys, at a rate of what is now about 1 target a week is inconsequential to al qaeda's capability, but, the study studies more than just pakistan, and what it does look at it sees as actually being effective.
That's how politics is sabotaging honest analysis and discussion of possible effectiveness, and a legitimate discussion of what needs to be improved for such technology to actually be useful.
Flying two stealth helicopters into Pakistan and shooting up a house full of people wasn't about to make them any happier than a drone strike would. But at least the helicopters make it seem like the US side was taking some human risks to achieve its goals, but if the Pakistanis had shot down the helicopters, or if it was the wrong building, someone not particularly high value or the like it would have played out very differently.
What the article is trying to analyse is whether or not targeted assassinations can actually be effective at tearing apart terror networks. It seems reasonably obvious that they can be, on the occasion that they're targeted on the right people, and then actually kill those people. Even if you kill innocent civilians at the same time, those angered to take arms against in retaliation don't have the practical experience or leadership role in an existing terrorist network to pick up where the dead guy left off. That's almost classic Clausewitz destroying their political and military organizational capabilities, and not being particularly concerned with the total mass of the enemy force, as long as it can't organize it's not a serious threat.
It's also pretty obvious, as you somewhat cynically point out, that claiming 'zero casualties' and so on are lies. Tracking the repercussions of those, and and long term consequences of drone strikes is going to be much messier. You might be able to tear down the Al Qaeda networks of suicide bombers and so on, but the next guy might be happy to use drones against you (or for other, less directly murderous purposes, like drug running).
Honestly, my biggest fear with drone strikes in the long run is more about what crazy people will do with the technology when it trickles down enough into the civilian world ( you can already get RC flying vehicles it's just cost prohibitive at the moment). Are you going to see the 'minutemen' or equivalent using drones to shoot people trying to (potentially illegally) cross into the US for example? How about Italians or Spaniards trying to sink immigrant ships off their southern coasts. That sort of thing could go badly real fast. Do you want rich people using drones to 'patrol' the area their estates and, because it's their right to defend their property, shooting anyone who might look like they're illegally trespassing? Sure, this might work for taking down Al Qaeda, but I'd be far more worried about whomever is next on the list (which could be a reborn version of Al Qaeda for all it matters).
Agreed. I think 'Pokemon' is more of a franchise than a single product anyway, so it has largely replaced itself with newer versions. Kids will always find things to collect and entertain themselves with, marbles, cards, electronic versions of the above etc. That Nintendo and Pokemon have clung on for 13 years is a testament to how well they've been able to understand and adapt to that market.
That's actually the point from what I understand. You're supposed to suffer and know what it's like to be poor and to be able to rejoice every night when you feast. It is supposed to teach you humility, so you know what it's like for the poor wage slave who has to do that all year round because he/she can't afford food every day.
This runs into the first problem, which is that Islam was developed with a particular latitude in mind, and the rules don't work as well far north or south of it, and secondly, lots of muslims who really have to do business during ramadan just become noctural and sleep all day.
It's the holy month of Ramadan where Muslims fast for a whole month and then have a big feast at the end of it.
Because it's a month long 'holiday' doesn't really do it justice. Life still goes on, just at strange hours and in strange ways. I've had islamic scholars tell me that part of the point is to experience hunger, so when some Muslims switch to being nocturnal they're missing the point. But that happens a lot of places, the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law so to speak.
Technically Indonesia is not an islamic state, they recognize a couple of religions (some of Islam, some of Christianity, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism), but as is practically the case, with just shy of 90% of the population being (or at least claiming to be) Muslim you can't really get around Islamic tradition.
Yet a lot of PC game publishers
The physical retail market for PC games has been gone for years. They don't even try to bundle things because there's no point in trying. You can buy an xbox controller with a cable and it works exactly as you would expect on a PC. But PC games are basically all digital these days unless you're a super expensive collectors edition or a mega title.
The local reporting here said it was. I'm not sure who is wrong/lying
Then don't make a fighting game.
Seriously.
This is business. If you can't handle the rules and costs for working with microsoft and XBLA then don't work with them, and make a game you can sell somewhere else.
I make strategy games (or at least, parts of strategy games for other people, and do academic work on strategy games), console releases aren't worth the effort because controllers suck for most of what I work on these days. So you know full well that you aren't going to hit a big chunk of the gaming market being on PC only. That's fine, but you knew that before you spent your first dollar on the game.
The game in question ('fez') might really need a controller to be effective. That's fine, but he shouldn't have agreed to work with MS if he wasn't prepared for their deal. Call it a life lesson in business management.
moving data between computers. Not everyone knows how to do network sharing. they may also physically mail the encrypted USB sticks to people (or pass them around) for whatever reason. Ontario is a big place, and we've got about 13 million people over a large area, so there might be a lot of data moved around snail mail style by people who for whatever reason aren't linked up to a the central physical database.
They may also have data for static analysis. The 'real' data might be updated constantly as people change addresses and so on, which is fine, but if you want to analyze voting patterns, say related to a investigation of robocalling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocall_scandal), you need the data preserved as it applied to a particular point in time.
encrypted
USB sticks
you missed an important part.
Why would you include date of birth?
Political campaigns can know your name (maybe just first name), address and whether or not you voted and they can reasonably conclude gender most of the time from first name.
But ya, overall that information is pretty public (except whether or not you voted). You're in any of the phone book, land registries, employer office parties, condo corporations etc.
None of us in this business like having to have games go through layers of certification testing, but it costs money to do, and if you want your game on XBL, WiiWare or PSN you deal with that. All 3 have both design and technical requirements, which are intended largely to benefit the consumer and their brand image (so you don't stare at blank loadscreens for 5 minutes, you can't have a game kill your console that sort of thing).
It is by no means a perfect system, but it overall positions a game on a console as certain quality of experience, if you can't deliver that, make your game for mobile or PC. And yes, it sucks to have to pay for bandwidth for patches and so on, but that's the point - do it properly and you don't have to pay as often, and MS/Sony/Nintendo are going to test your game to make sure it doesn't break the consoles etc. Or, you can be like endless space (which btw is a good game, albeit somewhat buggy in earlier versions) and have 10 patches on steam and not have to spend a hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so.
They might have a legitimate argument with microsoft as to why they didn't catch this problem in testing the first time round - but that depends on the specifics of the bug and XBLA testing.
It's up to developers and publishers to build relationships with consumers, it's not up to console makers to foot the bill for that. Of course you could build relationships with consumers the way EA does, but that's another topic.
so it all prints on an A4 sheet
Or it prints one page, and then a line on another page that is otherwise blank etc. As I say you can work around it (fit to page essentially) but my point is that this is a deliberate choice by microsoft to adjust the document to your particular printer settings.
Adobe deliberately went another way (that is after all how you differentiate your products). But one isn't 'better' than the other, they are aiming to solve different problems. If you have something where the aspect ratio particularly matters then shrinking or expanding to fill paper size is the wrong answer, if you have something where page numbers must be preserved then you can go with PDF.
Production cost and quality can be a lot more painful than that even. If you're making a 15 million sales volume game (think FIFA) you're into motion capturing, fluid animation dynamics, voice acting, licensed images of athletes, fields, stadiums etc.
The problem with something like FIFA is that there isn't a 'story' to tell. It's a football game. You have a team, you play football. You make up your own story, assuming you want one at all, but the tools are supposed to support a virtual football team and playing.
The 'golden age of games' when games could be made for 500 or 600k was great, 2 artists and you could have everything you needed, and you could contract out audio or have some one on staff that was a hobbyist improvise. But not when your production costs are 5 million, or 50 million. And when you're competing with people who have production values of 5 million or 50 million, doing a shitty job of the art/audio etc. will bury your title, assuming anyone will even pick it up.
I have written academic papers and even then, you're better off to do the draft in word and then typesetting in LaTeX. Some people, the ones who can write well on their first attempt, can go straight to LaTeX, but that's rare even in academia.
You'd think that. But you try watching someone who's writing their PhD in physics in LaTeX who doesn't know the difference between then and than, or they're and their (or typo's one then then other), and so on, and you'll realize that little green squiggly line in Word makes a huge difference to readability.
My office mate/GF can do the maths fine, but she doesn't get language at all, and she doesn't get collaborative editing at all, and because she's using LaTeX her boss has a horrible time trying to explain to her what she's doing wrong within the document.
Yet LaTeX persists because people in academia find that it fits their needs better.
Only because some journals are still living in the 1980's. And these days, as I said, the actual writing of a document is best done in an office suite.
The office suites are poor editors, and they don't support version control in any meaningful manner. Yes, I have struggled through change tracking and document merging. Compared to writing a document with several co-authors at different locations and using something sane, like git, the tools you advocate are essentially non-functional.
Not knowing how to use the tools properly and then failing to be successful applies to anything. Thinking something can't be done because you don't know how to do it makes you the lunatic.
MS Word file to a versioning system in any meaningful way, or easily breaking up the document into smaller files.
you mean sharepoint?
I agree, you can't easily break the document up into smaller files. But that's sort of a bizarre requirement. I wrote one thesis in LaTeX and just wrote a book with two other people in Word (not entirely voluntarily). If you don't know how to use word, you're going to waste time on it, same thing with LaTeX.
And yes, LaTeX will be better for typesetting, but not for the actual text of the document. All of my writing is CS or physics, and the *writing* portion, where you are trying to convey information in words is better done in an office suite first, and then typeset however you want. That's what I said the first time.
I've written a thesis in LaTeX and a book in Word (because I was collaborating with two chinese guys, one of whom didn't know LaTeX). Word was *FAR* easier for the content.
Oh dear, you really don't get it. For any technical writing, LaTeX is just better than those office suites
This statement is straight out of the 1980's. Which, if you read the rest of my comment I straight up address. LaTeX is horrible for actually writing words and collaboratively editing those words. The best you can get is source control and revisioning, which is still way behind comments, tracking, linked notes, etc. that you can do with an office suite.
LaTeX has its advantages for final document style and preparation to be sure, I'm not exactly a huge fan of math type or the like, and I grant that doing equations in LaTeX is easier than in Word, but the actual writing part ugh.
Also, we didn't have any problems doing numbering automatically for the book in word, so I don't view that as a 'problem', it's a matter of knowing how to do it properly.