1. How many people forget to fill up their gas tank? Imagine running empty a few thousand feet up. 2. How many people can't handle light traffic on a Sunday, or for no reas run off the road into a telephone pole? How would these people do flying? 3. How many impatient assholes are out there that cut you off in traffic so they can get to the red light ahead 5 seconds faster? What would these guys do while waiting in a holding pattern to land, or waiting to take off?
That right there is why flight as the preferred private travel means would never work. Oh and how many people have the room on their property for a runway?
I'm a Mac user, got a great powerbook running 10.4, but I have to jump in on this point to point out the differences between OS X and Vista in terms of complexity and development time.
1. OSX was based on the FreeBSD kernel and leveraged a LOT of UNIX structure under the covers. Lift the GUI off of OSX and you essentially have a BSD box. This means, for Apple, a lot of the engineering had already been completed. They were just adding in their own layers of stuff. Vista on the otherhand is supposedly a near-completely rewrite from the NT kernel OSs (NT, 2k, XP). That's a massive difference in work effort involved.
2. Vista has to run on a near infinite combination of hardware. OS X has to work on a very controlled set. This alone will make coding and testing a hellish experience. Add in the complete rework of how the desktop works (it's 3d now), the revamping of DirectX, and a pretty significant change to the security model and networking code and you're looking at some insane complexity that has to be tested.
Personally, I think that MS bit off way more than it could chew with Vista. They shot for the moon when in reality they should have been happy with breaking Earth orbit. If you look at the evolution of MacOS, you'll see many iterative improvements every 18 or so months. It kept the OS fresh, added features at a reasonable pace for both developers and users, and didn't get sucked into development hell. OS X has taken this approach with it's point releases every year or so. OS X, while a huge shift from OS 9, wasn't on the same scale as the Vista shift is for Microsoft.
Porting to Vista is the very accurate way of putting it, since the software directly intervenes in the display layer and mucks around with things there. In this way, the transition from XP to Vista is huge.
Welcome to niche market products. Yes, writing an office app that has it's UI or something entirely dependent on the OS features, or has to be rewritten significantly for a new version of Windows is dumb... but what if the software is a utility that extends certain aspects of Windows? In those instances, porting/rewriting for the new version is an accurate assessment and a reasonable business decision.
Well, I'm about to start a new job in a month for a software company that is focusing very heavily on porting their products to Windows Vista, and I figure any head-start I can get in learning the new OS will be of huge benefit to me in the new job.
Freedom of speech in regards to Internet censorship, even in the public school setting, only applies if the school is mandated to provide said access. Last I checked, there's nothing out there saying such access is a right or manditory. Much like you can't just run around saying whatever you like in school, you can't use school resources any way you like.
Remember this particular thread is about a kid who intentionally put up a proxy to circumvent security and content controls put in place by network administrators and then distributed instructions to other students on how to use it to also circumvent said controls. He is acting all indignant over his freedoms being trampled when nothing of the sort happened. He misused school resources. He broke the rules. He tried to paint it as a rights issue that they were squashing his freedom to do what he wanted with his free time and free resources, neglecting to acknowledge that he then used them to mishandle school resources.
Schools have a right to determine the terms of use for their computers and internet connection. They have a responsibility to do so to protect themselves too since they don't qualify as a common carrier and can be held legally responsible for what travels their wires.
And a public school actually has no obligation to provide internet access period. They're not a telco, they're not a common carrier of information. There is nothing even close to a free speech issue with public schools filtering their net connection.
I was working as helpdesk/sysadmin/security/all-around-IT-guy for a Univ dept while attending school. I pulled 30-40hrs/wk despite being in classes and such. When I graduated, I asked to be made full-time. I was their first IT person ever that would service MacOS, Windows and *NIX. I often went well above and beyond my original charter (answer emails and fix problems) by building an automated helpdesk system, built a new computer lab, often worked with profs to build out better lab configs etc... They declined however, saying they didn't actually need anyone full-time, they couldn't justify the budget.
Since I left 2 years ago, they've gone through about 6 or 7 part-time techs, often hiring in pairs to cover the hours and the tasks I accomplished on my own.
It's a tough balance to strike. You have to be good at what you do, but not too good or else your employer will just expect that as your base-line performance and not reward you accordingly.
It's taken for granted now that most people entering the workforce will have a college degree nowadays. So you come out of school with a degree in CompSci/CompEng/Info Systems etc... but really, what do you actually *know* about how to program/network/run systems? Judging by most 4 year programs, you don't know much of anything practical. You've got a lot of good theory in your head but almost nothing in terms of job skills. You may have taught yourself a lot in part time jobs or in your spare time, but to the average employeer looking to hire a college grad, they don't want to usually hear about hobby work etc...
And now that the market is relatively flooded with entry level people in IT, companies don't want to waste their time doing too much on-the-job training. They know they can pick and choose from a large pool, looking for the handful of people who already know what they're doing. That leaves everyone else scrambling for work. They get caught in the catch-22 of "You need work experience to get work, which is the only way to get experience"
What choice do these people have, if they want to get started, other than to go for some training and certs? Look at a cert as the diploma for a specialized education program. Sure, a cert may not be so useful to someone late in their career, but for those just getting started, often it's the jumpstart in knowledge and experience they need to get a real job and start getting real experience.
By the arguments given on this thread, you could just as easily assert that a college degree is a sign that someone doesn't know their arse from a hole in the ground since such a certification means absolutely nothing in terms of ability or knowledge.
No, you don't HAVE to reveal your sources, however if you do you're no longer trusted by any potential source. It's a tough balance to strike, because it's through those sources that you get your best stories which gains you noteriety and attention. If you're no longer a trusted reporter, no one will talk to you.
... either Square has a dim view of the XBox 360 or.... They're a Sony crew! Square has been tied hard and fast to Sony for many years now, so it's no surprise that they'd focus on that platform first and foremost.
Vista is actually the most logical "second" platform for them to code for since PCs are still the main base for MMOs. Consoles are growing in this area, but they're a very small percentage overall so far. Sony is probably paying Square a pretty penny for the exclusive console rights for the next hot MMO too, it can be used as a selling point for the PS3.
Saying that Square is already giving up on the 360 because their next MMO isn't being primarily developed for it is like saying Blizzard is giving up on the PS3 because they're remaining largely a PC development house. It doesn't make sense.
With the GameCube already below that price, and with all the next gen consoles coming out right now, staying above $100.00 is stupid. It's too much money for a platform that is going to be abandoned within a year. We've already seen a dramatic drop in current-gen sales as everyone is waiting for their next-gen console of choice.
Considering how old the PS2 is now, and how little life it has left in it, this just serves as further proof that Sony is out of touch with the US market. It bodes ill for what they will end up doing with the PS3. Nothing will kill Sony faster than a next-gen console that retails at the core package for $400-500 (and probably considerably more for the Ultimate pack that includes such peripherals as game pads, the power cord and maybe a drive to read the discs.)
Or it's possible that he does other things offline that don't necessarily involve dating? I know I could fill my non-work time completely with any number of non-computer hobbies if I wanted to. Just because he doesn't have the time he wants for gaming, doesn't mean he's disorganized, just that maybe he has different priorities.
Actually, you can still buy token ring pcmcia cards from IBM if you're a large enough customer (as my employer is). Yeah... we're still on token ring and won't be changing anytime soon.:\
These rules vary from school to school. At Penn State, as an undergrad, I am almost 100% sure that if you come up with something, even if you use school resources to develop and prototype it, it's still yours.
If you're a grad student though, it belongs to them.
If you work for the University while an undergrad, the lines get murky.
No matter what, you won't replace e-mail as the primary means for the distribution of information within a company, or as a means for more personal (i.e. not suitable for the entire project team) communications. So any collaboration tool you put into an environment becomes yet another techno gadget everyone has to learn and use, and split their attention between. And undoubtedly if you split communications between multiple tools, you end up with part of the information over here, another part over there, and often a lot of it just gets "lost" in the shuffle. Look at communicating over IM vs EMail. IM information is usually lost when you close the window, but email gets stored until you delete it. Both are good tools for getting info around, but one is very temporary. Depend too much on IM and you lose records of decisions made or information passed. You get caught with "I never told you that..." and you have nothing to prove them wrong.
At work, I'm forced to use Outlook, and it tells me when I have new mail, sorts it as I told it to, tells me when I have meetings coming up and so long as my rules are properly setup, acts as a fairly good information sort tool. Collab tools tend to be web apps that don't grab your attention very much, they don't want to be "dissruptive" when that's exactly what they need to be.
Also, Probably 90% of my emails, even ones directly related to projects, are limited in scope to what I'm trying to accomplish and wouldn't benefit from being conducted over a collab tool space. The entire team doesn't need to sort through my thread on getting the SQL server migrated to the SAN.
We use Sharepoint at my company, and while I'm not crazed about it from a features perspective, it does do one thing amazingly well. Document management. That's the space these tools should be focusing on right now. The days of using a file share to store all your docs are ending as they are turning into a tangled mess of crap that no one can really search through. Also, you won't replace e-mail outright. You have to slowly replace it. The collab tool that has solid hooks into Exchange and provides superb integration WITH e-mail will be the winner in the space. Don't treat e-mail as an adversary that needs to be crushed, treat it as a tool to embrace. Use it as an extension of the collaboration tool. Leverage those user habits that everyone complains about, ease users into the new tools in a way that they don't even notice it. A collaboration system should be seen by the user as an extra feature of their e-mail. Then, you can start to swing more and more communication into systems like Sharepoint and eventually relegate e-mail to a minor communication tool like Instant Messenger apps are now.
But the core lesson these collab companies need to learn is that you can't expect users to eagerly embrace another tool that's tossed on top of the pile of current tools. I don't want 3+ systems to distribute information to my coworkers. I want one tool that does it all. One central system that keeps it all sorted and handles notifications. One UI for me to learn once. One tool to track so I can reduce some of my desktop clutter.
The solution to every tech problem is not always to just toss down another layer of utilities and applications. Try improving what's already used.
There's a difference between a monopoly developed through illegal means (Microsoft) and one that exists because there simply isn't any worthy competition (Apple). The first deserves prosecution. The second deserves a round of applause because it accomplished something every company in the world wants.
Make a product so good, so popular that no one can even come close to offering something of similar quality.
Apple's monopoly in the online music sales arena is mostly because they got there first, and the competition is too fragmented to make a serious assault on iTMS. Is it Apple's fault their competitors can't get their acts together?
There are forms and degrees of monopolies, some bad, some the result of offering a good product. You jump straight to the Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia extreme... which even Microsoft doesn't come close to. Typical AC to spout insane fear mongering.
People are acting like it's some revelation that you need to have a broader skillset to increase job security. If you do one or two things very well, it's easier for HR to replace you than if you did half a dozen things really well, or did some business function very well. A coder, no matter how good, can be replaced by another coder.
The more you do for an organization the more essential you become.
Unless you're the only guy who can keep their network running, as an IT guy you're replacable. Want to stay in IT but increase job security without going for management? Become an expert in the industry your company operates in. If you know your industry better, you can better tailor technology solutions to meet corporate needs. A coder is a dime a dozen. A coder who knows the business processes and logic is invaluble as they can build better apps for the business, they understand the requirements better. A security admin who understands the regulatory issues and threats associated with a type of business can better protect against them.
IT for the sake of IT doesnt fly much anymore. You can't just be a tech monkey they toss in the back of the server room and expect to be secure in your spot... and especially don't expect to be valued as highly as sales or marketing are. You may provide an essential service, but so does the janitor. You have to show your value to the business above and beyond keeping the machines running. You have to somehow show you can help the company make more money (no, keeping the lights on doesn't count, you have to show how you can make money through process improvement, or new products/opportunities).
That said, for young people in the field, if you want to last in IT, I'd worry more about getting the solid technical foundation first, then worry about business skills. Sure you may bounce around a lot in the first few years as jobs shift around, but it will make you more valuble down the line when you begin the management transition. Most IT managers have no tech skills, and it shows. Be different! Be the boss who has a clue! Build your tech experience first!
WoW is *not* an RPG. MMORPGs have only the barest of elements in common with traditional RPGs. In MMORPGs, you're not really a hero, just another person. You don't impact the world in a meaningful way. There is no real progressing story that you contribute to. There almost no real sense of immersion when you have people running around spamming "WTB [Wang] x3!"
MMORPGs are a completely different genre and can't be placed in the same category as games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Fallout, Neverwinter Nights, Morrorwind or Oblivion.
When people talk about CRPGs, they're generally not talking WoW or EQ or anything like those, they mean the singleplayer games that are closer to pen and paper RPGs.
I think the whole "indie" thing in music, comics, games etc follows a very simple rule:
If you are unsuccessful at making money from games/music/comics, then you're indie. If you manage to make money in any real amount, then you're a souless corporate bastard who should be ridiculed and hated.
In Stardock's case, they got the indie credit because their games were never considered AAA titles with tons of marketing and corporate push from the publisher... they also used publishers that were far from the top of the industry... as evidenced by how many skipped town without paying royalties on sales.
It's their content... they have the benefit of distributing it as they see fit. Just because I want my TV shows in inverted, sepia tone, doesn't mean I have some sort of right to it if the creator/distributor doesn't want to provide it.
If you don't like the DRM, don't buy it. But you're not suddenly entitled to it for free. Vote with your wallet, and if the DRM is offensive enough, enough people won't buy it and they'll change their tune based on economics.
What so few here get is that ethics and what's right and wrong in terms of business practices doesn't make one damn bit of difference. The owner of content gets to set terms of distribution. If they pick DRM, that's that. DRM doesn't bother a very large majority of consumers, thus DRM won't go away.
Like most things here, it's an academic debate on how things should be in an ideal world and has nothing to do with reality.
Well, it seems there's always a general outcry any time someone gets nabbed for doing this. I see a lot of half-arsed justification to explain away why illegal copying is "OK" or "right" when someone gets caught.
There's a difference between player created content and content that is generated dynamically based on player actions. In the first case, you end up with Star Wars Galaxies, a game that tried to provide as many tools as was reasonable to the players, and the players created some great environments and set pieces to "play in" but it lacked real gameplay and real game content. To do player created content, you have to take something like Neverwinter Nights, and make it a LOT simpler to build and script in. But then you have balance issues with players creating a sword of uberness +100 that slays everything and then people building impossible content to counter that. You'd have to put artificial caps on what players could create themselves, and then the "official" content would always be better and there would be little point for most to play the player content.
Now, for dynamically generated content, I think this is something we can manage, and I'm disappointed we haven't started seeing that yet. Say you're in a space sim world, and you are a pirate. You see a small patrol go by, and you destroy it for whatever reason. The game should then send something (AI or a player) to investigate where the patrol went. If they get destroyed or delayed, additional events kick off, growing in complexity and difficulty. You may be a diversion to draw forces away from a planet or starbase that is about to be raided, who knows. Games should have an ebb-and-flow to them, where the world goes about its business without the need for the player to exist. Imagine X3, where money moves around on AI ships and freighters, so a real economy is established independent of the player. Pirates and police clash automatically and there's general activity going on all the time. Take that and then get it to start reacting to what the player is doing.
That is how dynamic content could revolutionize the MMO world.
And on perm-death... you can't do that since there are too many chances that events outside of a player's control could result in their death. Lag, network issues between them and the server, a server bug, a client bug, the client machine crashing etc...
A non-class character system is pretty much what you had in SWG originally. A series of jobs you could do, and a limited number of "points" to allocate. As you did actions more, you gained xp in that area, and could eventually get the next step in that specific ladder. This system allows characters to get good at what the player wants to do, and ignores the other areas.
The problem with SWG was that sadly there wasn't enough variety to game content so it all boiled down to people picking two or three hybrid professions that had the max return versus the limited content available. You had uber ranged, uber melee and uber crafter. The character advancement system was excellent, but there wasn't a game there to support it.
To take the step further to mimmic real-life you could add a "use it or lose it" factor. Take the last 100 xp generating actions of the character, figure out the relative weights of each type of action. As you do more and more of action A, your skill in action B and action C may decrease slightly. Afterall, chances are you're not going to be the world's best swordsman AND gunslinger. The character's skill reflects what the character is actually doing.
The reason you won't see a system like that in a major MMO though is because it would be damn near impossible to balance against content or make updates to without throwing the whole thing out of whack. It removes the whole "class" issue, and so long as the game provides viable avenues to play that are rewarding for any profession or combination of professions, it would give probably one of the most dynamic play experiences out there.
Well, so long as you're not pirating the content instead, it's all good. But you can't justify your illegal acquisition of music by saying you disagree with the delivery method.
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1. How many people forget to fill up their gas tank? Imagine running empty a few thousand feet up.
2. How many people can't handle light traffic on a Sunday, or for no reas run off the road into a telephone pole? How would these people do flying?
3. How many impatient assholes are out there that cut you off in traffic so they can get to the red light ahead 5 seconds faster? What would these guys do while waiting in a holding pattern to land, or waiting to take off?
That right there is why flight as the preferred private travel means would never work. Oh and how many people have the room on their property for a runway?
I'm a Mac user, got a great powerbook running 10.4, but I have to jump in on this point to point out the differences between OS X and Vista in terms of complexity and development time.
1. OSX was based on the FreeBSD kernel and leveraged a LOT of UNIX structure under the covers. Lift the GUI off of OSX and you essentially have a BSD box. This means, for Apple, a lot of the engineering had already been completed. They were just adding in their own layers of stuff. Vista on the otherhand is supposedly a near-completely rewrite from the NT kernel OSs (NT, 2k, XP). That's a massive difference in work effort involved.
2. Vista has to run on a near infinite combination of hardware. OS X has to work on a very controlled set. This alone will make coding and testing a hellish experience. Add in the complete rework of how the desktop works (it's 3d now), the revamping of DirectX, and a pretty significant change to the security model and networking code and you're looking at some insane complexity that has to be tested.
Personally, I think that MS bit off way more than it could chew with Vista. They shot for the moon when in reality they should have been happy with breaking Earth orbit. If you look at the evolution of MacOS, you'll see many iterative improvements every 18 or so months. It kept the OS fresh, added features at a reasonable pace for both developers and users, and didn't get sucked into development hell. OS X has taken this approach with it's point releases every year or so. OS X, while a huge shift from OS 9, wasn't on the same scale as the Vista shift is for Microsoft.
Porting to Vista is the very accurate way of putting it, since the software directly intervenes in the display layer and mucks around with things there. In this way, the transition from XP to Vista is huge.
Welcome to niche market products. Yes, writing an office app that has it's UI or something entirely dependent on the OS features, or has to be rewritten significantly for a new version of Windows is dumb... but what if the software is a utility that extends certain aspects of Windows? In those instances, porting/rewriting for the new version is an accurate assessment and a reasonable business decision.
Well, I'm about to start a new job in a month for a software company that is focusing very heavily on porting their products to Windows Vista, and I figure any head-start I can get in learning the new OS will be of huge benefit to me in the new job.
Freedom of speech in regards to Internet censorship, even in the public school setting, only applies if the school is mandated to provide said access. Last I checked, there's nothing out there saying such access is a right or manditory. Much like you can't just run around saying whatever you like in school, you can't use school resources any way you like.
Remember this particular thread is about a kid who intentionally put up a proxy to circumvent security and content controls put in place by network administrators and then distributed instructions to other students on how to use it to also circumvent said controls. He is acting all indignant over his freedoms being trampled when nothing of the sort happened. He misused school resources. He broke the rules. He tried to paint it as a rights issue that they were squashing his freedom to do what he wanted with his free time and free resources, neglecting to acknowledge that he then used them to mishandle school resources.
Schools have a right to determine the terms of use for their computers and internet connection. They have a responsibility to do so to protect themselves too since they don't qualify as a common carrier and can be held legally responsible for what travels their wires.
And a public school actually has no obligation to provide internet access period. They're not a telco, they're not a common carrier of information. There is nothing even close to a free speech issue with public schools filtering their net connection.
I had a sort of similar experience to you.
I was working as helpdesk/sysadmin/security/all-around-IT-guy for a Univ dept while attending school. I pulled 30-40hrs/wk despite being in classes and such. When I graduated, I asked to be made full-time. I was their first IT person ever that would service MacOS, Windows and *NIX. I often went well above and beyond my original charter (answer emails and fix problems) by building an automated helpdesk system, built a new computer lab, often worked with profs to build out better lab configs etc... They declined however, saying they didn't actually need anyone full-time, they couldn't justify the budget.
Since I left 2 years ago, they've gone through about 6 or 7 part-time techs, often hiring in pairs to cover the hours and the tasks I accomplished on my own.
It's a tough balance to strike. You have to be good at what you do, but not too good or else your employer will just expect that as your base-line performance and not reward you accordingly.
It's taken for granted now that most people entering the workforce will have a college degree nowadays. So you come out of school with a degree in CompSci/CompEng/Info Systems etc... but really, what do you actually *know* about how to program/network/run systems? Judging by most 4 year programs, you don't know much of anything practical. You've got a lot of good theory in your head but almost nothing in terms of job skills. You may have taught yourself a lot in part time jobs or in your spare time, but to the average employeer looking to hire a college grad, they don't want to usually hear about hobby work etc...
And now that the market is relatively flooded with entry level people in IT, companies don't want to waste their time doing too much on-the-job training. They know they can pick and choose from a large pool, looking for the handful of people who already know what they're doing. That leaves everyone else scrambling for work. They get caught in the catch-22 of "You need work experience to get work, which is the only way to get experience"
What choice do these people have, if they want to get started, other than to go for some training and certs? Look at a cert as the diploma for a specialized education program. Sure, a cert may not be so useful to someone late in their career, but for those just getting started, often it's the jumpstart in knowledge and experience they need to get a real job and start getting real experience.
By the arguments given on this thread, you could just as easily assert that a college degree is a sign that someone doesn't know their arse from a hole in the ground since such a certification means absolutely nothing in terms of ability or knowledge.
No, you don't HAVE to reveal your sources, however if you do you're no longer trusted by any potential source. It's a tough balance to strike, because it's through those sources that you get your best stories which gains you noteriety and attention. If you're no longer a trusted reporter, no one will talk to you.
... either Square has a dim view of the XBox 360 or.... They're a Sony crew! Square has been tied hard and fast to Sony for many years now, so it's no surprise that they'd focus on that platform first and foremost.
Vista is actually the most logical "second" platform for them to code for since PCs are still the main base for MMOs. Consoles are growing in this area, but they're a very small percentage overall so far. Sony is probably paying Square a pretty penny for the exclusive console rights for the next hot MMO too, it can be used as a selling point for the PS3.
Saying that Square is already giving up on the 360 because their next MMO isn't being primarily developed for it is like saying Blizzard is giving up on the PS3 because they're remaining largely a PC development house. It doesn't make sense.
With the GameCube already below that price, and with all the next gen consoles coming out right now, staying above $100.00 is stupid. It's too much money for a platform that is going to be abandoned within a year. We've already seen a dramatic drop in current-gen sales as everyone is waiting for their next-gen console of choice.
Considering how old the PS2 is now, and how little life it has left in it, this just serves as further proof that Sony is out of touch with the US market. It bodes ill for what they will end up doing with the PS3. Nothing will kill Sony faster than a next-gen console that retails at the core package for $400-500 (and probably considerably more for the Ultimate pack that includes such peripherals as game pads, the power cord and maybe a drive to read the discs.)
Or it's possible that he does other things offline that don't necessarily involve dating? I know I could fill my non-work time completely with any number of non-computer hobbies if I wanted to. Just because he doesn't have the time he wants for gaming, doesn't mean he's disorganized, just that maybe he has different priorities.
Actually, you can still buy token ring pcmcia cards from IBM if you're a large enough customer (as my employer is). Yeah... we're still on token ring and won't be changing anytime soon. :\
These rules vary from school to school. At Penn State, as an undergrad, I am almost 100% sure that if you come up with something, even if you use school resources to develop and prototype it, it's still yours.
If you're a grad student though, it belongs to them.
If you work for the University while an undergrad, the lines get murky.
No matter what, you won't replace e-mail as the primary means for the distribution of information within a company, or as a means for more personal (i.e. not suitable for the entire project team) communications. So any collaboration tool you put into an environment becomes yet another techno gadget everyone has to learn and use, and split their attention between. And undoubtedly if you split communications between multiple tools, you end up with part of the information over here, another part over there, and often a lot of it just gets "lost" in the shuffle. Look at communicating over IM vs EMail. IM information is usually lost when you close the window, but email gets stored until you delete it. Both are good tools for getting info around, but one is very temporary. Depend too much on IM and you lose records of decisions made or information passed. You get caught with "I never told you that..." and you have nothing to prove them wrong.
At work, I'm forced to use Outlook, and it tells me when I have new mail, sorts it as I told it to, tells me when I have meetings coming up and so long as my rules are properly setup, acts as a fairly good information sort tool. Collab tools tend to be web apps that don't grab your attention very much, they don't want to be "dissruptive" when that's exactly what they need to be.
Also, Probably 90% of my emails, even ones directly related to projects, are limited in scope to what I'm trying to accomplish and wouldn't benefit from being conducted over a collab tool space. The entire team doesn't need to sort through my thread on getting the SQL server migrated to the SAN.
We use Sharepoint at my company, and while I'm not crazed about it from a features perspective, it does do one thing amazingly well. Document management. That's the space these tools should be focusing on right now. The days of using a file share to store all your docs are ending as they are turning into a tangled mess of crap that no one can really search through. Also, you won't replace e-mail outright. You have to slowly replace it. The collab tool that has solid hooks into Exchange and provides superb integration WITH e-mail will be the winner in the space. Don't treat e-mail as an adversary that needs to be crushed, treat it as a tool to embrace. Use it as an extension of the collaboration tool. Leverage those user habits that everyone complains about, ease users into the new tools in a way that they don't even notice it. A collaboration system should be seen by the user as an extra feature of their e-mail. Then, you can start to swing more and more communication into systems like Sharepoint and eventually relegate e-mail to a minor communication tool like Instant Messenger apps are now.
But the core lesson these collab companies need to learn is that you can't expect users to eagerly embrace another tool that's tossed on top of the pile of current tools. I don't want 3+ systems to distribute information to my coworkers. I want one tool that does it all. One central system that keeps it all sorted and handles notifications. One UI for me to learn once. One tool to track so I can reduce some of my desktop clutter.
The solution to every tech problem is not always to just toss down another layer of utilities and applications. Try improving what's already used.
There's a difference between a monopoly developed through illegal means (Microsoft) and one that exists because there simply isn't any worthy competition (Apple). The first deserves prosecution. The second deserves a round of applause because it accomplished something every company in the world wants.
Make a product so good, so popular that no one can even come close to offering something of similar quality.
Apple's monopoly in the online music sales arena is mostly because they got there first, and the competition is too fragmented to make a serious assault on iTMS. Is it Apple's fault their competitors can't get their acts together?
There are forms and degrees of monopolies, some bad, some the result of offering a good product. You jump straight to the Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia extreme... which even Microsoft doesn't come close to. Typical AC to spout insane fear mongering.
People are acting like it's some revelation that you need to have a broader skillset to increase job security. If you do one or two things very well, it's easier for HR to replace you than if you did half a dozen things really well, or did some business function very well. A coder, no matter how good, can be replaced by another coder.
The more you do for an organization the more essential you become.
Unless you're the only guy who can keep their network running, as an IT guy you're replacable. Want to stay in IT but increase job security without going for management? Become an expert in the industry your company operates in. If you know your industry better, you can better tailor technology solutions to meet corporate needs. A coder is a dime a dozen. A coder who knows the business processes and logic is invaluble as they can build better apps for the business, they understand the requirements better. A security admin who understands the regulatory issues and threats associated with a type of business can better protect against them.
IT for the sake of IT doesnt fly much anymore. You can't just be a tech monkey they toss in the back of the server room and expect to be secure in your spot... and especially don't expect to be valued as highly as sales or marketing are. You may provide an essential service, but so does the janitor. You have to show your value to the business above and beyond keeping the machines running. You have to somehow show you can help the company make more money (no, keeping the lights on doesn't count, you have to show how you can make money through process improvement, or new products/opportunities).
That said, for young people in the field, if you want to last in IT, I'd worry more about getting the solid technical foundation first, then worry about business skills. Sure you may bounce around a lot in the first few years as jobs shift around, but it will make you more valuble down the line when you begin the management transition. Most IT managers have no tech skills, and it shows. Be different! Be the boss who has a clue! Build your tech experience first!
WoW is *not* an RPG. MMORPGs have only the barest of elements in common with traditional RPGs. In MMORPGs, you're not really a hero, just another person. You don't impact the world in a meaningful way. There is no real progressing story that you contribute to. There almost no real sense of immersion when you have people running around spamming "WTB [Wang] x3!"
MMORPGs are a completely different genre and can't be placed in the same category as games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Fallout, Neverwinter Nights, Morrorwind or Oblivion.
When people talk about CRPGs, they're generally not talking WoW or EQ or anything like those, they mean the singleplayer games that are closer to pen and paper RPGs.
I think the whole "indie" thing in music, comics, games etc follows a very simple rule:
If you are unsuccessful at making money from games/music/comics, then you're indie.
If you manage to make money in any real amount, then you're a souless corporate bastard who should be ridiculed and hated.
In Stardock's case, they got the indie credit because their games were never considered AAA titles with tons of marketing and corporate push from the publisher... they also used publishers that were far from the top of the industry... as evidenced by how many skipped town without paying royalties on sales.
Blizzard is and always has been a US dev house. They are now largely owned by Vivendi Universal, which is a French publisher.
It's their content... they have the benefit of distributing it as they see fit. Just because I want my TV shows in inverted, sepia tone, doesn't mean I have some sort of right to it if the creator/distributor doesn't want to provide it.
If you don't like the DRM, don't buy it. But you're not suddenly entitled to it for free. Vote with your wallet, and if the DRM is offensive enough, enough people won't buy it and they'll change their tune based on economics.
What so few here get is that ethics and what's right and wrong in terms of business practices doesn't make one damn bit of difference. The owner of content gets to set terms of distribution. If they pick DRM, that's that. DRM doesn't bother a very large majority of consumers, thus DRM won't go away.
Like most things here, it's an academic debate on how things should be in an ideal world and has nothing to do with reality.
Well, it seems there's always a general outcry any time someone gets nabbed for doing this. I see a lot of half-arsed justification to explain away why illegal copying is "OK" or "right" when someone gets caught.
There's a difference between player created content and content that is generated dynamically based on player actions. In the first case, you end up with Star Wars Galaxies, a game that tried to provide as many tools as was reasonable to the players, and the players created some great environments and set pieces to "play in" but it lacked real gameplay and real game content. To do player created content, you have to take something like Neverwinter Nights, and make it a LOT simpler to build and script in. But then you have balance issues with players creating a sword of uberness +100 that slays everything and then people building impossible content to counter that. You'd have to put artificial caps on what players could create themselves, and then the "official" content would always be better and there would be little point for most to play the player content.
Now, for dynamically generated content, I think this is something we can manage, and I'm disappointed we haven't started seeing that yet. Say you're in a space sim world, and you are a pirate. You see a small patrol go by, and you destroy it for whatever reason. The game should then send something (AI or a player) to investigate where the patrol went. If they get destroyed or delayed, additional events kick off, growing in complexity and difficulty. You may be a diversion to draw forces away from a planet or starbase that is about to be raided, who knows. Games should have an ebb-and-flow to them, where the world goes about its business without the need for the player to exist. Imagine X3, where money moves around on AI ships and freighters, so a real economy is established independent of the player. Pirates and police clash automatically and there's general activity going on all the time. Take that and then get it to start reacting to what the player is doing.
That is how dynamic content could revolutionize the MMO world.
And on perm-death... you can't do that since there are too many chances that events outside of a player's control could result in their death. Lag, network issues between them and the server, a server bug, a client bug, the client machine crashing etc...
A non-class character system is pretty much what you had in SWG originally. A series of jobs you could do, and a limited number of "points" to allocate. As you did actions more, you gained xp in that area, and could eventually get the next step in that specific ladder. This system allows characters to get good at what the player wants to do, and ignores the other areas.
The problem with SWG was that sadly there wasn't enough variety to game content so it all boiled down to people picking two or three hybrid professions that had the max return versus the limited content available. You had uber ranged, uber melee and uber crafter. The character advancement system was excellent, but there wasn't a game there to support it.
To take the step further to mimmic real-life you could add a "use it or lose it" factor. Take the last 100 xp generating actions of the character, figure out the relative weights of each type of action. As you do more and more of action A, your skill in action B and action C may decrease slightly. Afterall, chances are you're not going to be the world's best swordsman AND gunslinger. The character's skill reflects what the character is actually doing.
The reason you won't see a system like that in a major MMO though is because it would be damn near impossible to balance against content or make updates to without throwing the whole thing out of whack. It removes the whole "class" issue, and so long as the game provides viable avenues to play that are rewarding for any profession or combination of professions, it would give probably one of the most dynamic play experiences out there.
Well, so long as you're not pirating the content instead, it's all good. But you can't justify your illegal acquisition of music by saying you disagree with the delivery method.