What was disturbing to me about his rant was not what he said, but how ill-defined his terms were. He professed that Nintendo does not take gaming seriously as an art form. What is this "art" he speaks of? As someone who studies philosophy, it's very important to me that such an objective argument as "Nintendo hurts art" is defined properly.
When one speaks of art, they speak of aesthetics. What he argues is that function possesses the highest form of aesthetics. This is an extremely shaky ground for argument. One could easily weigh other factors of a game in with beauty... graphics, challenge, and enjoyment seem to be the pervasive accounts of beauty in gaming. Let's focus on these three and see if we can try to understand why Nintendo chose to focus on enjoyable rather than pretty and smarter games.
Graphics: Since the PS1, graphics seems to be the focus of most games. Higher texture density, more polygons, faster processing. These were what made a game "good" for a very very very long time. And while game sales were still increasing, more and more gamers were complaining that games seemed too much like their predecesors. Racing games were prettier, but they were still racing games. Fighting games had more characters with greater detail, but they were still fighting games. Sandbox games like GTA were getting sharper graphics and interfaces, but they were still GTA. Gamers were catching on that the industry is merely eating glitter to make the same old crap sparkle more.
Smarter: With the same old games comes the same old play. The only way to improve this is through design changes, which serves for temporary "newness" but quickly becomes associative in a near one-to-one nature from previous games in the genre. Final Fantasy games, for example, had a completely different play style from game to game, but functioned on the same basic prinicples as the last game (until 12). Fighting games may have different dynamics of button mashing and combo systems, but they were still button mashers. And racing games? Pfft. So in lieu of breaking the mold and trying to make games that challenge the mind in new ways, developers... dare I say "in the box" developers... improve AI so that the same old game is harder to the same old player. While this may be nice when playing a genre game, I fail to see the argument that it has been applied artfully from system to system. Granted, it can be. It just has not thus far and I do not see a majority of developers as taking full advantage of it any time soon.
Enjoyability: Remember the first time you played a side fighter? Remember the first time you played a virtual fighter? Remember the first time you played an RPG? Remember the first time you played GTA? Wow, wasn't that fun? And so much so, it's had many gamers chasing the carrot on the stick for the companies that put out those games ever since. Remember the first time you played a 3D game with an analog stick? Do you remember all the other games you played using the same analog stick? That was enjoyment you got out of EVERY SINGLE GAME from a simple interface change. Nintendo has been the pioneer in that market since the Super Nintendo (and arguably sooner). Sure, they made a lot of sacrifices to graphics and processing power. But let's face it, the Wii is enjoyable. They chose a different definition of "art". To Nintendo, making games a social experience, making them widely available, and making them "fun" was what "art" is. To Nintendo, their system is THE system to progress video games as an "art form".
To say that Nintendo does not do for gaming as an art form as much as the other two major systems does is rather blind, I think. No other company has been as influential on the other two systems as Nintendo. Top buttons on the d-pad? Sony used it. Trigger buttons? XBox. Analog sticks? Sony and XBox. Force feedback through controller rumble? Sony took it again.. this time illegally. And now, full motion sensing capabilities... SONY TRIED TO COPY IT. So my question to this man would be,
A) Pardon my skepticism. Estimates say the TDK coating makes the discs 100 times more scratch resistant. Emphasis on the last word... resistant.
B) Fair enough. So far, however, Sony has been a lot of chatter and very little substance.
C) A single cell processor runs at a frequency of 3GHz... sure I'll accept that. You forgot something important, though. RISC... super crazy RISC. Nothing but the most simple operations are available. Sure, it may run at 3GHz, but each clock cycle will be executing more code... and that is NOT parellel. You can take that 3GHz and drop it down to 1/16th of its speed when you're trying to, say, calculate the planar norm on an object:-P . Again, people are looking at the clock speed and immediately interpreting that as the speed of the system. There's way too many factors to consider, and you're missing a few of them (such as the L2 cache being divided 8 ways... so it's not really 512Mbs...). I'd check your mental arithmetic... it's wrong.
I just want to emphasize, this IS NOT like running 8 CPU's as you're used to seeing them. These are *very simple* processors. It's like 8 LC3 simulators running at once. Ok, maybe not that extreme, but still pretty weak.
D) Yes, I have considered that. You've never dealt with 4 processors managing the same memory stack being stuck on the same bus and being run at parellel, have you? It doesn't work like that, bud. The OS is managing one program, it's just sending the code asynchonously. Sure, each process can define individual parts to individual processors from main memory, but each assignment goes over the same bus, and can only be sent one at a time. Combine this with the fact each processor is *NOT* complex enough to handle some very simple arithmetic operations without MANY instructions, each hitting the main memory, and you can see how collisions and halting will be a problem... a problem that is only solved by devoting an entire processor (or even two) to handling such collisions. Which, by the way, takes more time to access main memory and send over the bus. Again, PS3 is easy to sell to people who don't know what they're talking about, but it's a buncha hooey to people like me who do.;-)
E) Fair enough. I've heard they weren't nearly ready for production, but that's second hand knowledge.
Number 3 - PS3: The theoretical processing power in their 8 cells is fantastic. I've had it explained to me a few times by my friends (who also happen to be computer engineers), and it sounds like, if done correctly, *for the correct game*, it can be a real thing of beauty. 8 mini processors working in parrellel sounds great! However, if you know something about programming, you know that memory dependence is pretty important. For instance, if you do a simple loop, you have various operations dependent on one or two iterators. Let's say you assign these iterators to its own processor (yeah, stupid, but it's an example, k?) then that processor will be INACTIVE for LONG periods of time while another processor does it's thing. So in the most optimal circumstances, the cell technology is amazing, but in it's least optimal, you may as well be using a 386.
Now the problem isn't that the cell power can be optimized, it's just that there's NO TOOLS TO DO SO AT THIS TIME. That's right, it's up to DEVELOPERS to optimize their own code, and I'm going to be honest, the learning curve and time that's going to be spent doing so is just not going to help this system.
There's LOADS of other problems, too. Lack of units. High unit cost. Expensive cables that (opps!) aren't included. The fragility of the Blue Ray CRC (it's so dense that one tiny scratch can destroy an entire disc because it stops the error correction from even being able to do its job). And the lack of any real online system to be demonstrated.
No question, this complete LOSER this round is PS3. It's time to move Sony next to Sega at the E3 conference. I bet those two will have lots to talk about.
Number 2 - Xbox360: The Xbox is in a realm of its own. It focuses on games that are not innovative, but instead improves ever so slightly on older paradigms. In this, those "hardcore" gamers who enjoy playing the best shooters on a *controller* will enjoy the XBox (yes, I know they're coming out with new controls). Bloodlust, violence, action, and adrenaline are all emphasized in the XBox gaming system. Plus, it has a well established community of online players. Nothing new, nothing impressive, nothing to write home about, but very very consistent. Will not reach a wide interest, but reaches out to a market that is quite full of young angry males. And by quite full, I mean full enough to build an entire business off of them.
Number 1 - Wii: This is not because I was raised on Nintendo. It's not because I owned the Mario/Zelda Cerial, subscribed to Nintendo power throughout the 90's, got up early as a kid to watch Captain N and the Super Mario World TV shows, owned mario comic books, and even paid to see that crappy Mario Bros. Movie. I had all but abandoned that company after my two fav gaming companies, Squaresoft and Capcom, left Nintendo. I'm supporting Nintendo because after ALLLLLL these years of CRAP... I'm amazed to find a company that puts out a QUALITY PRODUCT, who gets THIRD PARTY SUPPORT for this product, who INNOVATES the market using this product, who will successfully INTEGRATE other products into this product, and who has made this ANGRY YOUNG MALE feel like a DOE EYED BOY again. Part of me wants to ask Santa for this machine just to relive the feeling of not being able to sleep at night, waking my parents up to go around the Christmas tree in my footies to open the biggest box first and show a level of enthusiasm that only a kid on Christmas day could muster at 4am.
Where to start? Old games. All of them. Downloadable (small price, price I'm willing to freaking pay). Eventual online play. Wifi. Wii controller. The most amazing Zelda game to date. DS connectivity. Reasonable price range. Company profit. Innovative games like Mario Galaxy. The return of third party support. And the list goes on and on and on and on.
Yeah, hey, this guy is clearly out of touch with what it means to be a gamer if he thinks that people are all about the PS3. In fact, fire this man. He's a bad reporter.
It's pretty clear this kid didn't get enough wacks early enough, so he should have gave him jail time OR have his parents publicly spank his ass in front of his highschool every day for a week. He can either go to jail, or his parents spank him publicly. If it were me, I'd choose the spanking, and also choose never to do that spammer crap again.
Heh, buddy I've been in the work force. I'm going to school *now*.
According to yall, I have very little actual knowledge of what I speak, yet for some reason *NONE* of you can explain why. I wonder why that is. Every position I've held seems straight out of a Dilbert comic... and you know how well managers are portrayed in those. Yes, I've had good, I've had bad, but both the good and bad were something I could do, Anonymous Coward. There is no "trick" to being a manager.
Explain to me what is difficult about a managerial position, then? I can't see it. It's a lot of work, do not get me wrong, but there's a lot more people who will survive a business degree who couldn't survive a comp sci degree. Flip it around and you do not see the same thing. There's no way I could do their jobs? Pfft. Riiight. Buddy, there's no way they could do *my* job, not the other way around.
Why is it that people who make the most accusations of fallacious statements are often most proned to making fallacious statements themselves.
Well, I'm a programmer, which is a trade very rarely done well;-)... But for a significant number of servers that are built, yeah I'd say a person with average intellect and good ability to read technical documentation can build a server. Sure, then you have your experts who can do some AMAZING things extremely fast and off the top of their head. But for the most part, a little bit of training can turn a burger flipper to a small networking "specialist".
Heh, Reston. Just an intern, though, I have nothing to worry about. Still going to school and no plans on leaving... ever:-P Loans are a wonderful thing. (I kid, I kid)
I can't imagine having to be paranoid about employees. That seems to me to be a bigger problem than hardware.
I am someone who is currently interning for a large fortune 500 tech company who is about to do some drastic changes to the way we do our business (today, actually). There's some serious lay offs going down here, garunteed. The business and marketing folks are as good as out the door. Us tech guys? Pfft, nothing to worry about. The fact is the reason your tech guys have you by the proverbial balls is because you're not educated enough to do their job. Heh, but the fact is, most anyone who has powerpoint and mediocre social skills can do your job. They reach their glass ceiling long before you do, however. They picked a trade with high security and low possibility of advancement. You picked a field with low security but high possibility of advancement. You can't have both unless you run your own business. Sorry.
If you're paranoid about your employees, then they are unhappy with you. The nature of most people is to be faithful to good leaders. Sure, there are exceptions to this rule, but I think it's pretty clear to me, that you do not have the faith of those you manage. Either that or you do not have faith in those you manage. The two generally play hand in hand. I'm with CmdrTaco on this one... I can't imagine having to be paranoid about those on your payroll. Remember, you have the power, and tech guys are becoming more and more common each day. Make them happy with you and then you'll have little to worry about. Make them happy with your company and then you'll have little to worry about.
And the #1 reason most SA's and programmers get frustrated with managers? The internal policy inhibits innovation instead of improving it. I had a manager whose personal policy was "to hell with policy" and I gotta say, he was the best boss I ever had. I know, for myself, if I want to do the best job I can. If policy interferes with that, then I feel as though I'm doing a bad job against my will. If this continues, yes, I'll hate my job, and I'll feel like it's the company's/manager's fault.
I rambled a little, but hopefully you can garner some advice from that.
Yes, but the point of this whole article isn't that someone knows about the workings of the diebold system, it's that it takes so little effort to tamper with it. Flip a switch, load the flash, tampered machine, invalid counts. Election fraud in boot-up time. That's a big problem, man. Hell, they can pre-load the flash, and then when the machines are disconnected to be moved and counted, the reboot process will seamlessly manufacture a frauded count. Sorry, unacceptable. Decomission these machines please, Diebold.
You're assuming a few things. First off, you're assuming that no one but diebold has access to these specifications. While it is mostly correct, I can garuntee that these specifications are listed somewhere in some government classified file... a file that only those with access to CIA, NSA, or (what have you) can view. Namely, members of the executive branch... While you may trust your government to do what is right, I do not. Not this administration, anyway. And seeing as they not only own the machines, they operate and distribute them, I am not going to be surprised if it leaks that they also reverse engineered or tampered with them.
The fact is, someone, somewhere knows how these machines work alreay. Do you trust this person that you do not know? Or perhaps an entire team knows... do you trust this team? Do you even know who this team is? What about those with access to the machine? Do you trust them? Somewhere there's a decommissioned unit or prototype lying around, and somewhere there's someone who has messed with it. I feel this to be an almost certainty.
So now we're in a situation where the information is available to many anonymous people. To be honest, that didn't bother me... I knew that from the begining. What DOES bother me, however, is that these anonymous people now have an immense amount of power because they can *do something about it*. Before this article, I was under the assumption that even if they have access to the machines, they couldn't easily change the information on all of them. Now it becomes clear that someone can change the information on them easily and efficiently. This disturbs me, and it should disturb you as well.
Well...in responce to your astute notice that most of the readers of slashdot are, in fact, using windows....Why do you think that is if they hate it so much? Hmmmm...could it be because THEY DONT HAVE A CHOICE My god, son, squeegie your third eye and realize that not only are they in clear violation of Ant-Trust laws, but they are violate fair-competition laws by running other companies whose products are just-as if not better than theirs into the proverbial ground. Don't you see that if our laws are not enforced now like they were during the Roaring Twenties, we could be praying to MS instead of Jesus. I'm a HUGE proponent of protecting a business's right to own money. I do not, however, condone the current practice of protecting a business's market share. MS never put out a product that was worhty of that much money (yes, even SQLServer), so how do you think they generated their income. Did you know that 65% of MS's moula is not generated from product sales or technical training and support, but from royalties they make sowtware companies pay (through the nose for) in order to be "allowed" to use certain API calls. That right there, is an excellent example of an unAmerican, malignant cancer. I blame Intellectual Property laws, myself, but MS is still responcible for their actions. I mean, look...The only way someone could even compete with MS is to give their fucking stuff away! I mean, give me a break... this has to stop.
Good point...I went over "the deal" to see if that was the case, and found that yes, Interplay has bought exclusive game rights to a Matrix game that is made for consol and desktop platforms....the question now is "What is the platform the internet game runs on?"
On the Matrix site linked, there is are shockwave games...they seem internet-based. They certainly are on-line. Do they violate the Interplay-XBox deal?
You are forgeting the concave curvature of space. Not only does x=1 and x=2 meet at some point, but they also touch themselves at their respective ends (although they really dont have "ends").
Actually, napster wasn't a business from day one. On day one it was some college pothead with computer knowledge (don't flame, I know its a tacky prog) who wanted to off the system by trading songe with his friends over the internet. Napster was founded on being a way to screw record companies out of money (not like I feel the least bit sorry for them). It wasn't really until litigation ensued that Napster was less of a project and more of a business (damn lawyers and their bills).
I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. I think Flash, like JavaScript, is a tool to be used sparringly. Flash should not be used to diseminate info to the masses...that's not its intended purpose. Flash's job is to add a sense of motion and fun to the web, a sense that many of us/. geeks attempt to ignore. I think Flash is probably to coolest toy out there on the web right now. At the same time, though, it's waaay overused. This isn't Flash's fault. Flash didn't decide to make you sit through 8 mins of intro just to get to the meat and potatoes you need. The moronic developer is the one with the problem.
If you have a problem with the content being ignored due to bells and whistles, CSS is more of a concern than Flash. God, I cant tell you how many times I have screamed at developers for using !import on me so that I cant read the damn text.
It's like that argument on wheter cars are evil because they kill... In the end most everyone agrees, it's the person behind the wheel, not the car, that is doing the killing.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're going to print, use princexml.com's app. Create HTML documents which are converted to PDF on the fly.
What was disturbing to me about his rant was not what he said, but how ill-defined his terms were. He professed that Nintendo does not take gaming seriously as an art form. What is this "art" he speaks of? As someone who studies philosophy, it's very important to me that such an objective argument as "Nintendo hurts art" is defined properly.
... dare I say "in the box" developers... improve AI so that the same old game is harder to the same old player. While this may be nice when playing a genre game, I fail to see the argument that it has been applied artfully from system to system. Granted, it can be. It just has not thus far and I do not see a majority of developers as taking full advantage of it any time soon.
When one speaks of art, they speak of aesthetics. What he argues is that function possesses the highest form of aesthetics. This is an extremely shaky ground for argument. One could easily weigh other factors of a game in with beauty... graphics, challenge, and enjoyment seem to be the pervasive accounts of beauty in gaming. Let's focus on these three and see if we can try to understand why Nintendo chose to focus on enjoyable rather than pretty and smarter games.
Graphics: Since the PS1, graphics seems to be the focus of most games. Higher texture density, more polygons, faster processing. These were what made a game "good" for a very very very long time. And while game sales were still increasing, more and more gamers were complaining that games seemed too much like their predecesors. Racing games were prettier, but they were still racing games. Fighting games had more characters with greater detail, but they were still fighting games. Sandbox games like GTA were getting sharper graphics and interfaces, but they were still GTA. Gamers were catching on that the industry is merely eating glitter to make the same old crap sparkle more.
Smarter: With the same old games comes the same old play. The only way to improve this is through design changes, which serves for temporary "newness" but quickly becomes associative in a near one-to-one nature from previous games in the genre. Final Fantasy games, for example, had a completely different play style from game to game, but functioned on the same basic prinicples as the last game (until 12). Fighting games may have different dynamics of button mashing and combo systems, but they were still button mashers. And racing games? Pfft. So in lieu of breaking the mold and trying to make games that challenge the mind in new ways, developers
Enjoyability: Remember the first time you played a side fighter? Remember the first time you played a virtual fighter? Remember the first time you played an RPG? Remember the first time you played GTA? Wow, wasn't that fun? And so much so, it's had many gamers chasing the carrot on the stick for the companies that put out those games ever since. Remember the first time you played a 3D game with an analog stick? Do you remember all the other games you played using the same analog stick? That was enjoyment you got out of EVERY SINGLE GAME from a simple interface change. Nintendo has been the pioneer in that market since the Super Nintendo (and arguably sooner). Sure, they made a lot of sacrifices to graphics and processing power. But let's face it, the Wii is enjoyable. They chose a different definition of "art". To Nintendo, making games a social experience, making them widely available, and making them "fun" was what "art" is. To Nintendo, their system is THE system to progress video games as an "art form".
To say that Nintendo does not do for gaming as an art form as much as the other two major systems does is rather blind, I think. No other company has been as influential on the other two systems as Nintendo. Top buttons on the d-pad? Sony used it. Trigger buttons? XBox. Analog sticks? Sony and XBox. Force feedback through controller rumble? Sony took it again.. this time illegally. And now, full motion sensing capabilities... SONY TRIED TO COPY IT. So my question to this man would be,
Any guesses as to what this man's guild is? I'm thinking Ascent from Medivh (can't remember where they moved to).
A) Pardon my skepticism. Estimates say the TDK coating makes the discs 100 times more scratch resistant. Emphasis on the last word... resistant.
:-P . Again, people are looking at the clock speed and immediately interpreting that as the speed of the system. There's way too many factors to consider, and you're missing a few of them (such as the L2 cache being divided 8 ways... so it's not really 512Mbs...). I'd check your mental arithmetic... it's wrong.
;-)
B) Fair enough. So far, however, Sony has been a lot of chatter and very little substance.
C) A single cell processor runs at a frequency of 3GHz... sure I'll accept that. You forgot something important, though. RISC... super crazy RISC. Nothing but the most simple operations are available. Sure, it may run at 3GHz, but each clock cycle will be executing more code... and that is NOT parellel. You can take that 3GHz and drop it down to 1/16th of its speed when you're trying to, say, calculate the planar norm on an object
I just want to emphasize, this IS NOT like running 8 CPU's as you're used to seeing them. These are *very simple* processors. It's like 8 LC3 simulators running at once. Ok, maybe not that extreme, but still pretty weak.
D) Yes, I have considered that. You've never dealt with 4 processors managing the same memory stack being stuck on the same bus and being run at parellel, have you? It doesn't work like that, bud. The OS is managing one program, it's just sending the code asynchonously. Sure, each process can define individual parts to individual processors from main memory, but each assignment goes over the same bus, and can only be sent one at a time. Combine this with the fact each processor is *NOT* complex enough to handle some very simple arithmetic operations without MANY instructions, each hitting the main memory, and you can see how collisions and halting will be a problem... a problem that is only solved by devoting an entire processor (or even two) to handling such collisions. Which, by the way, takes more time to access main memory and send over the bus. Again, PS3 is easy to sell to people who don't know what they're talking about, but it's a buncha hooey to people like me who do.
E) Fair enough. I've heard they weren't nearly ready for production, but that's second hand knowledge.
From 3 to 1, one being top system:
Number 3 - PS3: The theoretical processing power in their 8 cells is fantastic. I've had it explained to me a few times by my friends (who also happen to be computer engineers), and it sounds like, if done correctly, *for the correct game*, it can be a real thing of beauty. 8 mini processors working in parrellel sounds great! However, if you know something about programming, you know that memory dependence is pretty important. For instance, if you do a simple loop, you have various operations dependent on one or two iterators. Let's say you assign these iterators to its own processor (yeah, stupid, but it's an example, k?) then that processor will be INACTIVE for LONG periods of time while another processor does it's thing. So in the most optimal circumstances, the cell technology is amazing, but in it's least optimal, you may as well be using a 386.
Now the problem isn't that the cell power can be optimized, it's just that there's NO TOOLS TO DO SO AT THIS TIME. That's right, it's up to DEVELOPERS to optimize their own code, and I'm going to be honest, the learning curve and time that's going to be spent doing so is just not going to help this system.
There's LOADS of other problems, too. Lack of units. High unit cost. Expensive cables that (opps!) aren't included. The fragility of the Blue Ray CRC (it's so dense that one tiny scratch can destroy an entire disc because it stops the error correction from even being able to do its job). And the lack of any real online system to be demonstrated.
No question, this complete LOSER this round is PS3. It's time to move Sony next to Sega at the E3 conference. I bet those two will have lots to talk about.
Number 2 - Xbox360: The Xbox is in a realm of its own. It focuses on games that are not innovative, but instead improves ever so slightly on older paradigms. In this, those "hardcore" gamers who enjoy playing the best shooters on a *controller* will enjoy the XBox (yes, I know they're coming out with new controls). Bloodlust, violence, action, and adrenaline are all emphasized in the XBox gaming system. Plus, it has a well established community of online players. Nothing new, nothing impressive, nothing to write home about, but very very consistent. Will not reach a wide interest, but reaches out to a market that is quite full of young angry males. And by quite full, I mean full enough to build an entire business off of them.
Number 1 - Wii: This is not because I was raised on Nintendo. It's not because I owned the Mario/Zelda Cerial, subscribed to Nintendo power throughout the 90's, got up early as a kid to watch Captain N and the Super Mario World TV shows, owned mario comic books, and even paid to see that crappy Mario Bros. Movie. I had all but abandoned that company after my two fav gaming companies, Squaresoft and Capcom, left Nintendo. I'm supporting Nintendo because after ALLLLLL these years of CRAP... I'm amazed to find a company that puts out a QUALITY PRODUCT, who gets THIRD PARTY SUPPORT for this product, who INNOVATES the market using this product, who will successfully INTEGRATE other products into this product, and who has made this ANGRY YOUNG MALE feel like a DOE EYED BOY again. Part of me wants to ask Santa for this machine just to relive the feeling of not being able to sleep at night, waking my parents up to go around the Christmas tree in my footies to open the biggest box first and show a level of enthusiasm that only a kid on Christmas day could muster at 4am.
Where to start? Old games. All of them. Downloadable (small price, price I'm willing to freaking pay). Eventual online play. Wifi. Wii controller. The most amazing Zelda game to date. DS connectivity. Reasonable price range. Company profit. Innovative games like Mario Galaxy. The return of third party support. And the list goes on and on and on and on.
Yeah, hey, this guy is clearly out of touch with what it means to be a gamer if he thinks that people are all about the PS3. In fact, fire this man. He's a bad reporter.
It's pretty clear this kid didn't get enough wacks early enough, so he should have gave him jail time OR have his parents publicly spank his ass in front of his highschool every day for a week. He can either go to jail, or his parents spank him publicly. If it were me, I'd choose the spanking, and also choose never to do that spammer crap again.
We'll see buddy, we'll see.
Heh, buddy I've been in the work force. I'm going to school *now*.
According to yall, I have very little actual knowledge of what I speak, yet for some reason *NONE* of you can explain why. I wonder why that is. Every position I've held seems straight out of a Dilbert comic... and you know how well managers are portrayed in those. Yes, I've had good, I've had bad, but both the good and bad were something I could do, Anonymous Coward. There is no "trick" to being a manager.
Good job swaying my opinion. *golf clap*
Explain to me what is difficult about a managerial position, then? I can't see it. It's a lot of work, do not get me wrong, but there's a lot more people who will survive a business degree who couldn't survive a comp sci degree. Flip it around and you do not see the same thing. There's no way I could do their jobs? Pfft. Riiight. Buddy, there's no way they could do *my* job, not the other way around.
Why is it that people who make the most accusations of fallacious statements are often most proned to making fallacious statements themselves.
The fact is, you're an idiot.
Well, I'm a programmer, which is a trade very rarely done well ;-) ... But for a significant number of servers that are built, yeah I'd say a person with average intellect and good ability to read technical documentation can build a server. Sure, then you have your experts who can do some AMAZING things extremely fast and off the top of their head. But for the most part, a little bit of training can turn a burger flipper to a small networking "specialist".
Heh, Reston. Just an intern, though, I have nothing to worry about. Still going to school and no plans on leaving... ever :-P Loans are a wonderful thing. (I kid, I kid)
I am someone who is currently interning for a large fortune 500 tech company who is about to do some drastic changes to the way we do our business (today, actually). There's some serious lay offs going down here, garunteed. The business and marketing folks are as good as out the door. Us tech guys? Pfft, nothing to worry about. The fact is the reason your tech guys have you by the proverbial balls is because you're not educated enough to do their job. Heh, but the fact is, most anyone who has powerpoint and mediocre social skills can do your job. They reach their glass ceiling long before you do, however. They picked a trade with high security and low possibility of advancement. You picked a field with low security but high possibility of advancement. You can't have both unless you run your own business. Sorry.
If you're paranoid about your employees, then they are unhappy with you. The nature of most people is to be faithful to good leaders. Sure, there are exceptions to this rule, but I think it's pretty clear to me, that you do not have the faith of those you manage. Either that or you do not have faith in those you manage. The two generally play hand in hand. I'm with CmdrTaco on this one... I can't imagine having to be paranoid about those on your payroll. Remember, you have the power, and tech guys are becoming more and more common each day. Make them happy with you and then you'll have little to worry about. Make them happy with your company and then you'll have little to worry about.
And the #1 reason most SA's and programmers get frustrated with managers? The internal policy inhibits innovation instead of improving it. I had a manager whose personal policy was "to hell with policy" and I gotta say, he was the best boss I ever had. I know, for myself, if I want to do the best job I can. If policy interferes with that, then I feel as though I'm doing a bad job against my will. If this continues, yes, I'll hate my job, and I'll feel like it's the company's/manager's fault.
I rambled a little, but hopefully you can garner some advice from that.
Yes, but the point of this whole article isn't that someone knows about the workings of the diebold system, it's that it takes so little effort to tamper with it. Flip a switch, load the flash, tampered machine, invalid counts. Election fraud in boot-up time. That's a big problem, man. Hell, they can pre-load the flash, and then when the machines are disconnected to be moved and counted, the reboot process will seamlessly manufacture a frauded count. Sorry, unacceptable. Decomission these machines please, Diebold.
You're assuming a few things. First off, you're assuming that no one but diebold has access to these specifications. While it is mostly correct, I can garuntee that these specifications are listed somewhere in some government classified file... a file that only those with access to CIA, NSA, or (what have you) can view. Namely, members of the executive branch... While you may trust your government to do what is right, I do not. Not this administration, anyway. And seeing as they not only own the machines, they operate and distribute them, I am not going to be surprised if it leaks that they also reverse engineered or tampered with them.
The fact is, someone, somewhere knows how these machines work alreay. Do you trust this person that you do not know? Or perhaps an entire team knows... do you trust this team? Do you even know who this team is? What about those with access to the machine? Do you trust them? Somewhere there's a decommissioned unit or prototype lying around, and somewhere there's someone who has messed with it. I feel this to be an almost certainty.
So now we're in a situation where the information is available to many anonymous people. To be honest, that didn't bother me... I knew that from the begining. What DOES bother me, however, is that these anonymous people now have an immense amount of power because they can *do something about it*. Before this article, I was under the assumption that even if they have access to the machines, they couldn't easily change the information on all of them. Now it becomes clear that someone can change the information on them easily and efficiently. This disturbs me, and it should disturb you as well.
Would you mind elaborating for me, or will this vague response have to suffice?
Well...in responce to your astute notice that most of the readers of slashdot are, in fact, using windows....Why do you think that is if they hate it so much? Hmmmm...could it be because THEY DONT HAVE A CHOICE My god, son, squeegie your third eye and realize that not only are they in clear violation of Ant-Trust laws, but they are violate fair-competition laws by running other companies whose products are just-as if not better than theirs into the proverbial ground. Don't you see that if our laws are not enforced now like they were during the Roaring Twenties, we could be praying to MS instead of Jesus. I'm a HUGE proponent of protecting a business's right to own money. I do not, however, condone the current practice of protecting a business's market share. MS never put out a product that was worhty of that much money (yes, even SQLServer), so how do you think they generated their income. Did you know that 65% of MS's moula is not generated from product sales or technical training and support, but from royalties they make sowtware companies pay (through the nose for) in order to be "allowed" to use certain API calls. That right there, is an excellent example of an unAmerican, malignant cancer. I blame Intellectual Property laws, myself, but MS is still responcible for their actions. I mean, look...The only way someone could even compete with MS is to give their fucking stuff away! I mean, give me a break... this has to stop.
Simple, the entire program is loaded into Qbit-RAM and the program counter auto magically ececutes via a Qbit while-loop.
Good point...I went over "the deal" to see if that was the case, and found that yes, Interplay has bought exclusive game rights to a Matrix game that is made for consol and desktop platforms....the question now is "What is the platform the internet game runs on?"
On the Matrix site linked, there is are shockwave games...they seem internet-based. They certainly are on-line. Do they violate the Interplay-XBox deal?
PEBCAK
Actually, napster wasn't a business from day one. On day one it was some college pothead with computer knowledge (don't flame, I know its a tacky prog) who wanted to off the system by trading songe with his friends over the internet. Napster was founded on being a way to screw record companies out of money (not like I feel the least bit sorry for them). It wasn't really until litigation ensued that Napster was less of a project and more of a business (damn lawyers and their bills).
Were you replying to me? I said that Flash was the coolest toy on the web...I love Flash. I think you are preaching to the chior.
If you have a problem with the content being ignored due to bells and whistles, CSS is more of a concern than Flash. God, I cant tell you how many times I have screamed at developers for using !import on me so that I cant read the damn text.
It's like that argument on wheter cars are evil because they kill... In the end most everyone agrees, it's the person behind the wheel, not the car, that is doing the killing.
At last count we had 9000+ pages. :-P