Expansion packs seem like good value since they cost less than a full release. But generally expansions get done within a year or two of the original game. I can think of two reasons for this; expansion packs don't have as much content as the original and game engines age pretty quickly.
NWN 2 is scheduled to release in two years, which means Obsidian is going to have a lot of time to develop new content. Dozens of artists working for two years cost a lot, so it won't be feasible for them to release a value-priced expansion pack. But in two years NWN will look like ass compared to the newest titles. So Obsidian will need a new engine for their new content. Therefore the scope of this project demands a new release rather than an expansion. QED
Those greedy fuckers want to charge money for adding flowing robes and vertical walking staffs? Hang them by their thumbs! Why do all these companies persist in the delusion that they deserve to be paid for adding features? Why can't they just sell a box for $5 and then support that for free forever? That sure would be convenient for me and my freeloading friends.
You are spot on with your analysis. I think the answer must be option 1 though. 2 can be ruled out because the Itanium has an insignificant market. 3 is a tautology for all enormous tech companies. And 4 is impossible:)
The reason Intel thinks they can use Xeon as a trojan horse for Itanic is Nocona, Intel's X86-64 clone of AMD's Opteron processor. Nocona will satisfy a lot of customers that are impressed by the promise of 64-bit computing but are too chickenshit to go with an AMD product. Once these folks already have a server with the proper socket an upgrade to the new processor will be a little easier.
Ahh, you must be a Sowell groupie. That would explain your flame-on attitude.
I suggest before you sound off about writing software you try it - it's harder than you think. The users usually don't know what they want, they just know how to complain about what they don't like. And if you don't already have a user community then it's even harder. You have to guess which features will be the most popular and design your GUI around that.
Maybe you were thinking of ancient software domains like email, word processors, etc. It doesn't take a genius to look at existing software and say "this works, this sucks..." Hindsight is 20/20. It is quite a bit more difficult to make the same observations about software domains that are new or don't even exist yet. Or domains where there aren't as many examples to compare.
Even well-understood domains like word processors are still the subject of user debate. Many people prefer very specific versions of different products. I've used a number of word processors and in the end they all boil down to a common set of features. But those features are more or less accessible in different products, hence the difference in opinion.
So the basic problem is that different people think different things are "simple". I personally think changing my browser proxy settings is very simple, and should be an easily accessible browser control. Apparently the various browser development teams disagree with me, because they always hide that control in a sub-sub-menu. Instead they feature buttons for useless features like "Search" (who needs this with Googlebar?). So I end up downloading an extension for my browser to get this feature.
All Sowell did was play the roll of Captain Obvious: GUI design is hard, and most people screw it up. And it will stay screwed up until software learns to read minds, despite your simple assertations.
Of course! How could we all have been so blind? All we need to do to make software better is to make the most popular features easier to use. I feel like I've wasted years of my life writing crappy UI's without this incredibly valuable nugget of wisdom.
Now all we need is someone who can both see into the future and read our user's minds to tell us which features will be the most popular.
Maybe we can ask the jackass who wrote this article to figure this out for us. Or maybe he's only smart enough to whine about the software after it's already done.
Boarders is a real word; it means people that rent a room in a shared house with the landlord in a package that includes meals. It is derived from the phrase "room and board". The problem with spellcheckers is that they can't do anything about correctly spelled grammatical mistakes.
Another thing you need to believe is that other people think differently than you. Many people think your unrelated argument is not the central crux of the issue, despite your assertations.
I would even argue with your unrelated argument about the ethics of terminating a "unique human life" for "convinience"(sic). It is debatable whether an unborn baby constitutes life; can a foetus think? And if you think an unwanted child is nothing more than "inconvenient" then you have a lot to learn about life. Raising a child right is a monumental task that, if done wrong, permanently damages the child and the parent.
I agree that folks should take some responsibility for their actions. But I disagree with your slippery slope logic on the price of IE, and also MS's culpability in the matter.
Internet Explorer is not free. Microsoft argued until they were blue in the face that IE is integrated into Windows, and they were right. Which means that you pay for IE when you pay for Windows. There is no separate IE business unit, and IE only runs on Windows.
MS touts the ease of use of IE, and markets their browser to the general public, who are not noted for their computer savvy. If IE was released with documentation describing the risks of the Internet and with safe default settings then MS could rightly say that the users were shooting themselves in the foot. But instead IE is not safe by default and Microsoft hides the details of security behind non-descriptive sliders in a sub-menu.
My understanding is that Sony, Matsushita and the other big consumer electronics companies are developing these high density discs for one specific purpose; to hold HD quality video content. Currently DVDs only have enough storage for average length movies at 480i resolution. A 25-50GB disc could hold a movie at 720p or 1080i resolution, which would be a serious improvement.
Maybe the idea is to shake the bugs out of the format by beta-testing it on the Lunatic Fringe... I mean, early adopters that are willing to shell out big bucks for a writable drive.
Microsoft won't lift a finger to fix anything more than critical security flaws in IE. And why should they? They have >90% market share and they don't make a dime off of IE unless they bundle it with a new OS.
The real shame is that most folks aren't aware what a real browser can do. If everyone knew about the added security and features of Firefox then IE would rapidly lose share and MS would once again have a reason to get off their asses and fix IE's myriad flaws.
I believe they misquoted Thomas J. McIntyre at the top of the article. This should have read:
"Implementing such a request risks a crash of our Administration that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of credibility, which would be devastating to our hopes of being reelected."
Notice that they will be able to supply this information in December, which is conveniently after November.
This could work out like Nixon's tapes though; the fact that this information exists and the current administration is withholding it from us could be enough evidence to damn them in the court of public opinion.
The problem with going after the producers and distributors of the dialer software is that it ends up being whack-a-mole. Any scam artist worth their salt is perfectly capable of shutting down one scam under legal pressure and opening a new one. Going after the telcos is much easier, even if the dialer agents are more culpable.
It is true that in many cases a customer will never change their database, so designing an application for portability seems pointless. However in my direct experience I have had to port an application from Sybase to Oracle, and it was a nightmare due to the number and complexity of the stored procedures.
The real problem with stored procedures is that PL/SQL is an awful programming language. The syntax is primitive. I didn't recognize it until I saw some examples of discredited languages of a bygone era. the parser is crappy; is returns crummy compilation errors and reformats your source. The DB eats your source, adding a level of indirection between your source and the implementation. And the runtime environment is very finicky.
And if I spent a couple of years learning about PL/SQL I would still know nothing about how to solve more general computing problems. Instead if I learn Java I can use that knowledge to program almost anything.
I thought most of the rules were applicable for the general development community, but this one stuck out like a sore thumb. It sounds too political to be a general development guideline. We all know that the express desire of Microsoft is to tie everything into Windows in order to maximise the usage of their platform. But this often directly contradicts the goals of an application development group.
The reality is that there are many platforms out there, and great software runs wherever the user needs it. This means that multiple platforms are often needed to meet the needs of the user. Some people might argue about the limited functionality of HTML based apps, but in many cases the ubiquity of browser software easily overcomes the limitations of the platform.
A bug is a fairly well understood concept: it is a user submitted deviance from the desired behavior.
Obviously few people here understand the meaning of a defect in the softwre development process. It is a deviance from the expected behavior as described in the documentation for the current phase.
The difference is that the documentation for early phases do not have the same level of detail as later phases. Modules aren't fully integrated with each other, so unit test cases must be used. Additional functionality may be added later as well.
The term defect is manager-speak, but it is very useful because it describes something you can measure. It is straightforward to verify that a software project meets a list of criteria to pass a phase gate. It is not possible to determine whether a project is bug-free, because that would take an inordinate amount of test time. This is why real software is never bug-free.
I always thought Patlabor had a similar feel to GitS, now I know why; Oshii directed both.
Both movies do have a slow pace. But they also have some interesting commentary on the meaning of the human soul when machines become so sophisticated that they can substitute for flesh. Patlabor also explores the juxtaposition of advanced technology on traditional Japan. If you can get past the mangled English dialog then you can see the value of these themes.
Brooks explicitly deals with the subject of communication. He points out that time spent on communication grows exponentially with the team size. This means that at a certain point adding people will actually decrease the amount of available work time and therefore increase the development time.
The main new platform that doesn't run Windows is the smart phone. They are still large and expensive, and there is still a lack of standardization. But think about the potential market; everyone who carries a phone and would like to perform some basic computing tasks (email, IM, maps/directions, contacts, etc). Right now M$ has only a small fraction of that market.
There are a variety of new form factors that may take off as well. Car-based PCs, tablets, HTPCs, etc. M$ has their fingers in all of these markets, but they don't have killer apps so they are not clear winners. There are lots of non-M$ app opportunities for developers that are willing to look beyond the PC form factor.
There are less Linux desktops out there than ones running MacOS. Most non-fanboys don't think Linux is going to storm the desktop for years to come. How are open desktop APIs going to impact the deployability of apps unless they have a majority of the installed base?
I have been working on business apps for years now and I agree completely with the author. We deliver HTML based interfaces because it is so much easier to ensure the client runs on different hardware platforms. Desktop APIs come and go, but HTML is still going strong. The slickest rich client UI in the world is no good if it won't run.
One big advantage is registered applications for file types. You don't have to remember the exact name of the executable for every single type. GUI applications can also leverage the registry to determine how to handle a file.
Another advantage is a usable taskbar. I don't want to have to view every window to pick the one I want to view next.
Someone else on this thread mentioned the advantage of selecting multiple files in a dialog and dragging them to another folder. This operation is faster in my experience than trying to remember the names of a dozen files or copying/pasting from ls.
I also like a variety of launchers for commonly used applications. I use a wide enough variety of apps that I often forget the exact names, so the command line is not always that efficient.
Via already makes a line of small integrated motherboards with most of those requirements, called EPIA. They use their own Eden processor. It's pretty gutless, but it would make a fine file server or I/O device.
Slashdot Mirror
Expansion packs seem like good value since they cost less than a full release. But generally expansions get done within a year or two of the original game. I can think of two reasons for this; expansion packs don't have as much content as the original and game engines age pretty quickly.
NWN 2 is scheduled to release in two years, which means Obsidian is going to have a lot of time to develop new content. Dozens of artists working for two years cost a lot, so it won't be feasible for them to release a value-priced expansion pack. But in two years NWN will look like ass compared to the newest titles. So Obsidian will need a new engine for their new content. Therefore the scope of this project demands a new release rather than an expansion. QED
Those greedy fuckers want to charge money for adding flowing robes and vertical walking staffs? Hang them by their thumbs! Why do all these companies persist in the delusion that they deserve to be paid for adding features? Why can't they just sell a box for $5 and then support that for free forever? That sure would be convenient for me and my freeloading friends.
That's right, now that your processor is prone to Van Eck phreaking even your computer has to wear a tin-foil hat!
"Have you tried staples?"
You are spot on with your analysis. I think the answer must be option 1 though. 2 can be ruled out because the Itanium has an insignificant market. 3 is a tautology for all enormous tech companies. And 4 is impossible :)
The reason Intel thinks they can use Xeon as a trojan horse for Itanic is Nocona, Intel's X86-64 clone of AMD's Opteron processor. Nocona will satisfy a lot of customers that are impressed by the promise of 64-bit computing but are too chickenshit to go with an AMD product. Once these folks already have a server with the proper socket an upgrade to the new processor will be a little easier.
Ahh, you must be a Sowell groupie. That would explain your flame-on attitude.
I suggest before you sound off about writing software you try it - it's harder than you think. The users usually don't know what they want, they just know how to complain about what they don't like. And if you don't already have a user community then it's even harder. You have to guess which features will be the most popular and design your GUI around that.
Maybe you were thinking of ancient software domains like email, word processors, etc. It doesn't take a genius to look at existing software and say "this works, this sucks..." Hindsight is 20/20. It is quite a bit more difficult to make the same observations about software domains that are new or don't even exist yet. Or domains where there aren't as many examples to compare.
Even well-understood domains like word processors are still the subject of user debate. Many people prefer very specific versions of different products. I've used a number of word processors and in the end they all boil down to a common set of features. But those features are more or less accessible in different products, hence the difference in opinion.
So the basic problem is that different people think different things are "simple". I personally think changing my browser proxy settings is very simple, and should be an easily accessible browser control. Apparently the various browser development teams disagree with me, because they always hide that control in a sub-sub-menu. Instead they feature buttons for useless features like "Search" (who needs this with Googlebar?). So I end up downloading an extension for my browser to get this feature.
All Sowell did was play the roll of Captain Obvious: GUI design is hard, and most people screw it up. And it will stay screwed up until software learns to read minds, despite your simple assertations.
Of course! How could we all have been so blind? All we need to do to make software better is to make the most popular features easier to use. I feel like I've wasted years of my life writing crappy UI's without this incredibly valuable nugget of wisdom.
Now all we need is someone who can both see into the future and read our user's minds to tell us which features will be the most popular.
Maybe we can ask the jackass who wrote this article to figure this out for us. Or maybe he's only smart enough to whine about the software after it's already done.
Boarders is a real word; it means people that rent a room in a shared house with the landlord in a package that includes meals. It is derived from the phrase "room and board". The problem with spellcheckers is that they can't do anything about correctly spelled grammatical mistakes.
Another thing you need to believe is that other people think differently than you. Many people think your unrelated argument is not the central crux of the issue, despite your assertations.
I would even argue with your unrelated argument about the ethics of terminating a "unique human life" for "convinience"(sic). It is debatable whether an unborn baby constitutes life; can a foetus think? And if you think an unwanted child is nothing more than "inconvenient" then you have a lot to learn about life. Raising a child right is a monumental task that, if done wrong, permanently damages the child and the parent.
I agree that folks should take some responsibility for their actions. But I disagree with your slippery slope logic on the price of IE, and also MS's culpability in the matter.
Internet Explorer is not free. Microsoft argued until they were blue in the face that IE is integrated into Windows, and they were right. Which means that you pay for IE when you pay for Windows. There is no separate IE business unit, and IE only runs on Windows.
MS touts the ease of use of IE, and markets their browser to the general public, who are not noted for their computer savvy. If IE was released with documentation describing the risks of the Internet and with safe default settings then MS could rightly say that the users were shooting themselves in the foot. But instead IE is not safe by default and Microsoft hides the details of security behind non-descriptive sliders in a sub-menu.
My understanding is that Sony, Matsushita and the other big consumer electronics companies are developing these high density discs for one specific purpose; to hold HD quality video content. Currently DVDs only have enough storage for average length movies at 480i resolution. A 25-50GB disc could hold a movie at 720p or 1080i resolution, which would be a serious improvement.
Maybe the idea is to shake the bugs out of the format by beta-testing it on the Lunatic Fringe... I mean, early adopters that are willing to shell out big bucks for a writable drive.
Microsoft won't lift a finger to fix anything more than critical security flaws in IE. And why should they? They have >90% market share and they don't make a dime off of IE unless they bundle it with a new OS.
The real shame is that most folks aren't aware what a real browser can do. If everyone knew about the added security and features of Firefox then IE would rapidly lose share and MS would once again have a reason to get off their asses and fix IE's myriad flaws.
I believe they misquoted Thomas J. McIntyre at the top of the article. This should have read:
"Implementing such a request risks a crash of our Administration that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of credibility, which would be devastating to our hopes of being reelected."
Notice that they will be able to supply this information in December, which is conveniently after November.
This could work out like Nixon's tapes though; the fact that this information exists and the current administration is withholding it from us could be enough evidence to damn them in the court of public opinion.
The problem with going after the producers and distributors of the dialer software is that it ends up being whack-a-mole. Any scam artist worth their salt is perfectly capable of shutting down one scam under legal pressure and opening a new one. Going after the telcos is much easier, even if the dialer agents are more culpable.
It is true that in many cases a customer will never change their database, so designing an application for portability seems pointless. However in my direct experience I have had to port an application from Sybase to Oracle, and it was a nightmare due to the number and complexity of the stored procedures.
The real problem with stored procedures is that PL/SQL is an awful programming language. The syntax is primitive. I didn't recognize it until I saw some examples of discredited languages of a bygone era. the parser is crappy; is returns crummy compilation errors and reformats your source. The DB eats your source, adding a level of indirection between your source and the implementation. And the runtime environment is very finicky.
And if I spent a couple of years learning about PL/SQL I would still know nothing about how to solve more general computing problems. Instead if I learn Java I can use that knowledge to program almost anything.
Portability is for canoes
I thought most of the rules were applicable for the general development community, but this one stuck out like a sore thumb. It sounds too political to be a general development guideline. We all know that the express desire of Microsoft is to tie everything into Windows in order to maximise the usage of their platform. But this often directly contradicts the goals of an application development group.
The reality is that there are many platforms out there, and great software runs wherever the user needs it. This means that multiple platforms are often needed to meet the needs of the user. Some people might argue about the limited functionality of HTML based apps, but in many cases the ubiquity of browser software easily overcomes the limitations of the platform.
A bug is a fairly well understood concept: it is a user submitted deviance from the desired behavior.
Obviously few people here understand the meaning of a defect in the softwre development process. It is a deviance from the expected behavior as described in the documentation for the current phase.
The difference is that the documentation for early phases do not have the same level of detail as later phases. Modules aren't fully integrated with each other, so unit test cases must be used. Additional functionality may be added later as well.
The term defect is manager-speak, but it is very useful because it describes something you can measure. It is straightforward to verify that a software project meets a list of criteria to pass a phase gate. It is not possible to determine whether a project is bug-free, because that would take an inordinate amount of test time. This is why real software is never bug-free.
I always thought Patlabor had a similar feel to GitS, now I know why; Oshii directed both.
Both movies do have a slow pace. But they also have some interesting commentary on the meaning of the human soul when machines become so sophisticated that they can substitute for flesh. Patlabor also explores the juxtaposition of advanced technology on traditional Japan. If you can get past the mangled English dialog then you can see the value of these themes.
What luxury! At least "head" refers to a part of the body. Here we're called "resources".
Brooks explicitly deals with the subject of communication. He points out that time spent on communication grows exponentially with the team size. This means that at a certain point adding people will actually decrease the amount of available work time and therefore increase the development time.
The main new platform that doesn't run Windows is the smart phone. They are still large and expensive, and there is still a lack of standardization. But think about the potential market; everyone who carries a phone and would like to perform some basic computing tasks (email, IM, maps/directions, contacts, etc). Right now M$ has only a small fraction of that market.
There are a variety of new form factors that may take off as well. Car-based PCs, tablets, HTPCs, etc. M$ has their fingers in all of these markets, but they don't have killer apps so they are not clear winners. There are lots of non-M$ app opportunities for developers that are willing to look beyond the PC form factor.
There are less Linux desktops out there than ones running MacOS. Most non-fanboys don't think Linux is going to storm the desktop for years to come. How are open desktop APIs going to impact the deployability of apps unless they have a majority of the installed base?
I have been working on business apps for years now and I agree completely with the author. We deliver HTML based interfaces because it is so much easier to ensure the client runs on different hardware platforms. Desktop APIs come and go, but HTML is still going strong. The slickest rich client UI in the world is no good if it won't run.
You just proved that the results of a trivial test are trivial.
One big advantage is registered applications for file types. You don't have to remember the exact name of the executable for every single type. GUI applications can also leverage the registry to determine how to handle a file.
Another advantage is a usable taskbar. I don't want to have to view every window to pick the one I want to view next.
Someone else on this thread mentioned the advantage of selecting multiple files in a dialog and dragging them to another folder. This operation is faster in my experience than trying to remember the names of a dozen files or copying/pasting from ls.
I also like a variety of launchers for commonly used applications. I use a wide enough variety of apps that I often forget the exact names, so the command line is not always that efficient.
Via already makes a line of small integrated motherboards with most of those requirements, called EPIA. They use their own Eden processor. It's pretty gutless, but it would make a fine file server or I/O device.