Because they need to collect taxes based on what you earn. This isn't rocket science.
So I tell them what I earn, and they tax accordingly.
Maybe when you're grown up you'll understand how taxation works.
I do understand how taxation works.
Perhaps you'll understand how due process works.
If the police think I've stolen something, they can't jsut demand access to a safety deposit box and try to find it. They'd need a search warrant. If the IRS think I've evaded taxes, they can start rifling through my account to find this out. Why does one crime give me privacy, and the other not?
with it's rules about all participants being in uniform, which these guys were not
They don't have to be in uniform. It also covers ad-hoc inhabitants who carry arms openly and respect the principles of war, and civilians with a support role.
If they do not fit these criteria, then there is still no justification for holding them without trial, since they are clearly war criminals, and they should be tried as such.
Furthermore, if there is any doubt aboiut whether they are lawful combatants, they should be treated as such until a tribunal has found otherwise.
For a legitimate hardware manufacturer it is not difficult at all to get their drivers signed through a certificate authority. This is not done through Microsoft (and is different from their certification programs).
They have to develop them though. There's got to be some means by which they can install unsigned drivers and test on a variety of configurations without having to acquire a special developers edition of vista for each test station.
Has XP's product activation actually reduced piracy significantly? Have MS actually checked this? Most people buy their machines with Windows pre-installed. I can't imagine piracy to make that big a dent in sales.
To be fair though (and possibly too serious for this thread), those are quite sensible units. VW beetles have been sold everywhere for the past 60 years. People know what they look like and have an idea of what they're likely to weigh. While there's a difference between an association football pitch and an american football field, they're close enough to give a basic impression of size. Most people have seen a football field, and can get anidea of how much space 10 of them would take up. Similarly, Americans all know how big a quarter is but haven't a clue how big 950mm^2 is.
Still - Some people do use bad ones. Like "as tall as an olympic swimming pool on its end". Surely the water would fall out.
The Quarter is 24.26mm diameter. The 20 Euro cent is only 22.25. It's closer to the 50 Euro cent at 24.25 (And I'm surprised how similar the Euro sizes are (source).
For a UK perspective, it's close to the 10p (or the old shilling/5p) size. Or an Australian or New Zealand 10 cent coin
Building games is completely different that any other kind of software development. It needs to managed that way... special needs in mind.
No. It's not. It's similar in many respects, at least on the software side. And as such it can take many of the principles from other forms of software devlopment. We still have some code to develop. We're still going to have to experiment and try different ideas.
It is true that many concepts have to be prototyped and tested before they're incorporated, since a formal test on the specification isn't going to be able to determine whether a game is fun, and a lot of the time we're developing completely new algorithms which is a bit of an unknown quantity, but the games industry is not unique in this respect.
I don't know. What extra information will they receive?
Is it a privacy violation for the police to search your home for drugs with no evidence when you have already declared that you have no drugs? Of course it is, but that's probably not the same situation. There are other things in your home that you may want to keep private. Is it possible to have information in your Paypal account that the IRS has no business knowing?
The thing is, there's a basic moral principle here. They should not assume that you're lying. They should assume that you're honest. If you're committing tax fraud, surely It's up to them to prove your guilt, not for you to prove your innocence.
I'm just playing devils advocate here. Being totally dogmatic about the assumption of innocence clearly isn't going to work. Far too many people would avoid paying taxes. the question is, what should and shouldn't the IRS be allowed to do and see? Should they have any access to overseas investments? Swiss bank accounts? Safety deposit boxes with precious family heirlooms? Account information of foreigners who may have made taxable income in the US?
My company tried pulling something like that. I just made it clear that I do overtime when I deem it neccesary. However, it's hard. Saying "No I won't do overtime" is a surprisingly difficult thing to do. Especially when you're the only one saying it.
Going totally off topic - how did you find a job outside of games? I tried, but all the ads on job websites turn out to be agencies, and agencies are only interested in finding me positions with games companies.
Okay... What about the people who are paying the taxes they're supposed to, and correctly declared all the money in their paypal account? Do they not have the right to privacy?
The games industry is moving in this direction. The studio I've been working for is a little ad hoc, having only been around for about 2 years, and the process of improvement isn't formalised yet, but we have found actual established engineering practices are beneficial. Although - to reinforce your point, we're also all a little older than I've seen atother companies.
Not that long ago, code re-use was practically unheard of, there were no coding standards, formal design was ad-hoc, and people just hacked away as thyey saw fit. This isn't the case any more. Studios are learning, and developing and improving. But you also have to see this in context. Games as major software engineering projects is a new concept. I bet Visicalc and CP/M were developed in a similar way to how games have been developed until recently. I bet Excel and OSX weren't.
Don't outsource your core business. When you're a games developer, outsourcing development, the publishers will wonder why they're dealing with you when they can work directly with the developers, and the developers will wonder why they're developing for you when they can develop for the publishers.
It all depends on what you count as a sequel. Could you count Doom 3 as the latest version of the Wolfenstein series, for example? Wolf3d, Doom, and Quake are all largely the same game. And the popular (in Europe) Championship Manager Football Management games have an update every year which is almost the same game but with latest data, and some improvements. Counting each They're on version 13 or so. And Pacman has had a huge number of spin offs.
Final Fantasy is most likely the game with the most numbered sequels.
No. Just a lot of macros to conmbine full adders together to actually store something useful.
Now if it also had a 2 bit address space, things could be interesting...
2 bit coder. Writing code isn't strictly neccesary forbeing a software engineer any more than welding bridges together is an essential part of structural engineering. It's just that software engineers tend to do their own construction.
It does add complexity and inconsistency to an already complex and inconsistent language. Action has a -tion suffix. It's a noun. It describes a state or process of doing or acting. All words ending in "-tion" behave in a similar way. None of them are verbs.
Too many factors. No indication of the cause or effect. There are many reasons for a reduction in violent crime, and many causes of violent crime. The correct thing to do would be to find a way to measure aggressiveness, and compare the aggressiveness of people playing violent games with those provided by other forms of stimulation, and by non violent games (plus a control group).
layoffs" implies that you think you are being brutal, "realignments" implies that think you are doing what you have to.
To me, they sound liek they mean the same thing, except "realignment" sounds like the person using the word is trying to cover something up. Essentially it sounds like they're lying, but they don't actually succeed in deceiving, which is why people would lie in the first place. Net result - it makes people sound like pathological liars. At least it does to me.
A lot of people like a straight talker. People who avoid flowery language give the impression of honesty and reliability. You don't need realignments. You need layoffs! Otherwise you're lying to people. Which is completely pointless because you're not actually deceiving anyone, so you're a bastard and a liar rather than just a bastard.
Avoid buzzwords, and avoid metaphor. Use jargon if neccesary, but only if it's absolutely clear from context or general use that everyone knopws what the jargon means. Learn the difference between jargon and buzzwords.
Indeed. I'm still slightly sceptical, and would like to know more details about the experimental method, whether those determining the level of "permissiveness" were aware of which games each subject played, how much they played the game, and various other factors, but it does definitely point to an argument that games influence behaviour.
Currently, my company has a few trial units in Walmart. We bend over backwards to give them anything they want. If we get the account, our revenue will quadruple and make us a national player in a billion dollar industry with about 60 employees. As much of a pain that is, it is worth it to the company.
That's good.
Now, work out a way to screw over Walmart. Quickly! They will bully you into reducing your margins more and more. They will refuse to purchase from you. Don't rely on your revenue remaining quadrupled. Don't allow sales to other retailers to drop. Use Walmart as a cash cow. Spend any money you get from them in finding other ways to get your product to the consumer.
The thing is - bypassing the publisher isn't that hard. You need printing/pressing (manuals, game box inserts and discs) which is probably all donw by a single company. You need marketing, which is easily outsourced, and we have a lot of companies willing to do this, and you need distribution, for which it is also easy to find a specialist.
What you also need is money. Publishers have it. Developers don't.
The question is, how many people will go elsewhere if a game is not available in Walmart? Games are expensive. They're worth travelling for, and not usually an impulse purchase. There's also real competition from the specialist games stores. It does depend very much on the game, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
Because they need to collect taxes based on what you earn. This isn't rocket science.
So I tell them what I earn, and they tax accordingly.
Maybe when you're grown up you'll understand how taxation works.
I do understand how taxation works.
Perhaps you'll understand how due process works.
If the police think I've stolen something, they can't jsut demand access to a safety deposit box and try to find it. They'd need a search warrant. If the IRS think I've evaded taxes, they can start rifling through my account to find this out. Why does one crime give me privacy, and the other not?
with it's rules about all participants being in uniform, which these guys were not
They don't have to be in uniform. It also covers ad-hoc inhabitants who carry arms openly and respect the principles of war, and civilians with a support role.
If they do not fit these criteria, then there is still no justification for holding them without trial, since they are clearly war criminals, and they should be tried as such.
Furthermore, if there is any doubt aboiut whether they are lawful combatants, they should be treated as such until a tribunal has found otherwise.
For a legitimate hardware manufacturer it is not difficult at all to get their drivers signed through a certificate authority. This is not done through Microsoft (and is different from their certification programs).
They have to develop them though. There's got to be some means by which they can install unsigned drivers and test on a variety of configurations without having to acquire a special developers edition of vista for each test station.
Has XP's product activation actually reduced piracy significantly? Have MS actually checked this? Most people buy their machines with Windows pre-installed. I can't imagine piracy to make that big a dent in sales.
To be fair though (and possibly too serious for this thread), those are quite sensible units. VW beetles have been sold everywhere for the past 60 years. People know what they look like and have an idea of what they're likely to weigh. While there's a difference between an association football pitch and an american football field, they're close enough to give a basic impression of size. Most people have seen a football field, and can get anidea of how much space 10 of them would take up. Similarly, Americans all know how big a quarter is but haven't a clue how big 950mm^2 is.
Still - Some people do use bad ones. Like "as tall as an olympic swimming pool on its end". Surely the water would fall out.
The Quarter is 24.26mm diameter. The 20 Euro cent is only 22.25. It's closer to the 50 Euro cent at 24.25 (And I'm surprised how similar the Euro sizes are (source).
For a UK perspective, it's close to the 10p (or the old shilling/5p) size. Or an Australian or New Zealand 10 cent coin
Yes!
Why do they have the right to know everything I earn? Why am I presumed guilty of tax evasion?
Building games is completely different that any other kind of software development. It needs to managed that way... special needs in mind.
No. It's not. It's similar in many respects, at least on the software side. And as such it can take many of the principles from other forms of software devlopment. We still have some code to develop. We're still going to have to experiment and try different ideas.
It is true that many concepts have to be prototyped and tested before they're incorporated, since a formal test on the specification isn't going to be able to determine whether a game is fun, and a lot of the time we're developing completely new algorithms which is a bit of an unknown quantity, but the games industry is not unique in this respect.
I don't know. What extra information will they receive?
Is it a privacy violation for the police to search your home for drugs with no evidence when you have already declared that you have no drugs? Of course it is, but that's probably not the same situation. There are other things in your home that you may want to keep private. Is it possible to have information in your Paypal account that the IRS has no business knowing?
The thing is, there's a basic moral principle here. They should not assume that you're lying. They should assume that you're honest. If you're committing tax fraud, surely It's up to them to prove your guilt, not for you to prove your innocence.
I'm just playing devils advocate here. Being totally dogmatic about the assumption of innocence clearly isn't going to work. Far too many people would avoid paying taxes. the question is, what should and shouldn't the IRS be allowed to do and see? Should they have any access to overseas investments? Swiss bank accounts? Safety deposit boxes with precious family heirlooms? Account information of foreigners who may have made taxable income in the US?
My company tried pulling something like that. I just made it clear that I do overtime when I deem it neccesary. However, it's hard. Saying "No I won't do overtime" is a surprisingly difficult thing to do. Especially when you're the only one saying it.
Going totally off topic - how did you find a job outside of games? I tried, but all the ads on job websites turn out to be agencies, and agencies are only interested in finding me positions with games companies.
Okay... What about the people who are paying the taxes they're supposed to, and correctly declared all the money in their paypal account? Do they not have the right to privacy?
The games industry is moving in this direction. The studio I've been working for is a little ad hoc, having only been around for about 2 years, and the process of improvement isn't formalised yet, but we have found actual established engineering practices are beneficial. Although - to reinforce your point, we're also all a little older than I've seen atother companies.
Not that long ago, code re-use was practically unheard of, there were no coding standards, formal design was ad-hoc, and people just hacked away as thyey saw fit. This isn't the case any more. Studios are learning, and developing and improving. But you also have to see this in context. Games as major software engineering projects is a new concept. I bet Visicalc and CP/M were developed in a similar way to how games have been developed until recently. I bet Excel and OSX weren't.
Don't outsource your core business. When you're a games developer, outsourcing development, the publishers will wonder why they're dealing with you when they can work directly with the developers, and the developers will wonder why they're developing for you when they can develop for the publishers.
It all depends on what you count as a sequel. Could you count Doom 3 as the latest version of the Wolfenstein series, for example? Wolf3d, Doom, and Quake are all largely the same game. And the popular (in Europe) Championship Manager Football Management games have an update every year which is almost the same game but with latest data, and some improvements. Counting each They're on version 13 or so. And Pacman has had a huge number of spin offs.
Final Fantasy is most likely the game with the most numbered sequels.
No. Just a lot of macros to conmbine full adders together to actually store something useful. Now if it also had a 2 bit address space, things could be interesting...
2 bit coder. Writing code isn't strictly neccesary forbeing a software engineer any more than welding bridges together is an essential part of structural engineering. It's just that software engineers tend to do their own construction.
It does add complexity and inconsistency to an already complex and inconsistent language. Action has a -tion suffix. It's a noun. It describes a state or process of doing or acting. All words ending in "-tion" behave in a similar way. None of them are verbs.
Too many factors. No indication of the cause or effect. There are many reasons for a reduction in violent crime, and many causes of violent crime. The correct thing to do would be to find a way to measure aggressiveness, and compare the aggressiveness of people playing violent games with those provided by other forms of stimulation, and by non violent games (plus a control group).
layoffs" implies that you think you are being brutal, "realignments" implies that think you are doing what you have to.
To me, they sound liek they mean the same thing, except "realignment" sounds like the person using the word is trying to cover something up. Essentially it sounds like they're lying, but they don't actually succeed in deceiving, which is why people would lie in the first place. Net result - it makes people sound like pathological liars. At least it does to me.
A lot of people like a straight talker. People who avoid flowery language give the impression of honesty and reliability. You don't need realignments. You need layoffs! Otherwise you're lying to people. Which is completely pointless because you're not actually deceiving anyone, so you're a bastard and a liar rather than just a bastard.
Avoid buzzwords, and avoid metaphor. Use jargon if neccesary, but only if it's absolutely clear from context or general use that everyone knopws what the jargon means. Learn the difference between jargon and buzzwords.
Indeed. I'm still slightly sceptical, and would like to know more details about the experimental method, whether those determining the level of "permissiveness" were aware of which games each subject played, how much they played the game, and various other factors, but it does definitely point to an argument that games influence behaviour.
Currently, my company has a few trial units in Walmart. We bend over backwards to give them anything they want. If we get the account, our revenue will quadruple and make us a national player in a billion dollar industry with about 60 employees. As much of a pain that is, it is worth it to the company.
That's good.
Now, work out a way to screw over Walmart. Quickly! They will bully you into reducing your margins more and more. They will refuse to purchase from you. Don't rely on your revenue remaining quadrupled. Don't allow sales to other retailers to drop. Use Walmart as a cash cow. Spend any money you get from them in finding other ways to get your product to the consumer.
The thing is - bypassing the publisher isn't that hard. You need printing/pressing (manuals, game box inserts and discs) which is probably all donw by a single company. You need marketing, which is easily outsourced, and we have a lot of companies willing to do this, and you need distribution, for which it is also easy to find a specialist.
What you also need is money. Publishers have it. Developers don't.
Wrong question.
The question is, how many people will go elsewhere if a game is not available in Walmart? Games are expensive. They're worth travelling for, and not usually an impulse purchase. There's also real competition from the specialist games stores. It does depend very much on the game, of course.