My understanding is that they've hired a guy who wrote some of the ACPI BIOS internals within Linux. Apple's openly admitted that they've been running OSX on x86 for some time just in case. I believe that Darwin on x86 is available right now, if you're interested. Unless you're claiming they built a PC with openfirmware, I dont see how the presence of a BIOS throws a wrench into anything.
Coupled with their own admission that users could theoretically dual boot Windows and OSX, the evidence clearly indicates that OSX does not need openFirmware to operate. I really don't see what they plan to do to enforce this; perhaps the secret plan is that they aren't and you're just supposed to buy one of their expensive toys to play with, but they'll take your money anyways if you're on to them.
Well, a fuckload of people downloaded the Tiger beta when it found its way to bittorrent. I'd expect quite a few people to give it a try, especially since the hacks will be likely be well documented by the time Longhorn rolls around and everyone reformats for good measure anyways. Will these people try it for a week, love it and turn around and buy it outright? No. But I'm sure Apple will complain about a loss of money equal to shelf price times infringers.
People "seriously interested in the simplicity, stability, interface, and power of Apple products" already own Apples, and are far more likely to purchase a new one. I think you seriously overestimate the size of this group. Especially since the "too poor anyways" category makes up a good percentage of new computers sold to individuals.
The long tail is an artifact of selection bias. Online retailer biased journals like Wired work on the assumption that the collection of Amazon or iTMS is a complete library of everything people might want to buy. If that's not true, then the whole house comes crumbling down, and you basically are saying "everything Amazon bothers to sell moves at least one copy a month." Of course, Amazon is the master of pricing, and they will manipulate the price of anything growing stale quite well so that it does sell. Why might Amazon sell something at invoice plus internal costs? Because despite the author's arguments, even Amazon has limited space. On the other hand, iTMS doesn't have much control over price. I don't think they care to admit that they don't carry everything you could ever want, but if you asked a dead manager if iTMS ever dropped or didn't carry a song, the answer is probably "yes." In short, the long tail is the result of inventory control and discounting in a particular form of goods.
As for the Revolution, there are two scenarios. Either it's an open market operated by the benevolent souls at Nintendo, or there's a price barrier to entry. The first will pretty quickly denegrate into a bunch of free games made by people in their spare time as a form of artistry turned philanthopy. The other is far more likely, and the result will be a clash between Nintendo's quality guidelines and several small startup's desire to compete on price.
New software is supposed to be made to run on all platforms. If you've ever looked at the Applications directory from a command line, then you'll notice that there's a lot of folders where Finder reports a single application. Each platform will basically have its own set of platform specific folders. The emulator they've invested in allows x86 platforms to run code compiled for other platforms. I'm not sure how this will impact OS Classic, but it can't be favorable.
Most developers do program cross platform, but the other platform is Windows. There is the point that their program already has SSE, but really, very few programs ever use Altivec, because it's a pita versus not. What we're talking about is really a new, third platform: OSX on x86. That means merging any platform specific code with the OSX version. Still not a lot of work though.
Well, there is testing. It's just done by firms like RedHat and it's not made publicly available. There's also a very public and fairly thourough testing procedure done by Debian, but they don't specifically target the kernel, the way this particular system is.
How exactly do you form a union? Get a bunch of employees together, organize and refuse to work until conditions are met, including the recognition of a union? That works okay when you can't be easily replaced by a bajillion other people who really really want to do the same thing. There's game creation classes in my local community college now. It's grunt work, but they're young and willing to work for lower wages. You already picked up on it when you said that there's an amount of pride there, on the other side of the coin, there's an amount of envy as well.
No shame, but even less possibilities for one. Agents of change came and went, and went by the name of "Gathering of Developers." I think you know how the story turned out.
One of the main goals appears to be whether the kernel builds or not. I shouldn't have to tell slashdot that build errors are among the most trivial of OS programming errors. They certainly exist, as the chart shows, but whoever is in charge of this project has a long way to go, by adding real tests of functionality. Consider it job security;)
I think the Zelda game deserves a write off. Ocarina of Time was hands down the biggest game of that generation, and potentially ever. Three young link dungeons, and like eight adult link temples plus shitloads of side quests add up to a hell of a lot. Honestly, it's no wonder the game came late, and that both Wind Waker and Majora's Mask seem smaller. Even though a link to the past was roughly the same size, it had the advantage of being 2d instead of 3d. And I think the dungeons themselves weren't as complicated.
But plenty of other games are getting longer. Hell I just picked up Starfox, and it feels like the first level is longer than the easy route on SF64. F-Zero GX is definetely longer and better, and Metroid Prime is a longer game than you make it out to be. Of course, all these games have been farmed out to other people.
Also, I'm not even sure what the ancestor of Luigi's mansion is.
I don't think Google needs any more money. At this point, their underprivledged stocks are worth ludicrous sums of money, and I can only imagine what the value of their upperclass stock is worth. There are other organizations that are operating in the same way the Linux Fund was. Honestly, it would be neat to see the money used to fund bounties. 500 hundred dollars a pop could go pretty far in that reguard. Certainly beats the pants off of yet another stupid pointless conference.
That's not entirely true, it's just that educators and computer programming have basically been sitting at different lunch tables for the past decade.
Games are great at making drills bearable. Drills are a valid part of an education, just ask your math teacher. Problem is that it becomes much more difficult to use computer programs to teach at higher levels of thinking. There's a hierarchy of learning I've seen that's probably pretty accurate, and what it basically says is that drills are the lowest form of education and that creating and evaluating creations are the most complex forms of learning. Most simulation games stop short of true creation and let you adjust certain variables on, say, a water bottle rocket.
I think there's a limit to what games can accomplish. At this point, I doubt we'll ever see a game that challenges you to come up with a funny story, or other writing tasks. Games might be better suited to deterministic subjects like math and science than the humanities.
And I don't think that most of your teachers have the time or patience to learn how to modify LinCity to better represent pedestrian traffic. At best, it's a challenge for them to integrate existing games into their cirriculum. Maybe this is because the games are crappy, or aren't customizable enough, but maybe it's because learning isn't a competition.
You could just take a job at the local mall or wherever sounds convienent. Consider it your last chance to study business from the ground, and how vital interpersonal skills are. Develop some leadership skills, and make friends with management and they'll make good references later if they're still around.
Or you can pursue a job in a dissolving technical field. Within this route, there are a couple of options; you can hunt down an internship, you can find a grunt level IT job (Typically helpdesk), or you can try your hand at good old entrepeneurship.
An internship is very unlikely for you. First off, it's way too late. Internships are planned out far in advance so waiting till basically May rules that out. Moreover, they aren't geared for someone like you. At an internship, the intern basically doesn't make the company much money, if any. The few IT companies that haven't cut back on staff reguard this as a test run for a full time job and as such are looking for people readying to graduate with a degree. So basically, there's people just like you (though I think you overstate your qualifications some) who also have the benefit of a degree and Professors who will vouch for them. It's not a game you're likely to win. It's gonna take a lot of person to person talking to convince someone to circumvent the braindead HR checkoff sheet and get you in an interview situation. And it will take even more communication skills to put you in front of the other candidates given your handicap.
Helpdesk and call center jobs is a lot more common, but so much more draining. Three months of that job should be enough to dissuade you from not getting a degree or falling into that trap again. Despite the rapid turnover on this kind of work, they probably won't hire you if you let word slip that you're headed for college soon. The pay isn't bad, but depending on the details of the job, you may have frustrated people yelling in your ear about how such and such service they're paying for is down and it should be fixes YESTERDAY. Of the three, this is the most likely to succeed, and they're willing to train you on their communication skills rather than pay extra for the people who come with that built in.
The other option is to start your own business. Starting your own business is risky, but you're in the perfect field for it. The cost of starting your own software business is basically the cost of ramen noodles and other living expenses. YOu can scour local tech mailing lists for postings and maybe find a short term contract. If you post a well written and well reasoned request (perhaps cleverly disguised as advice) you might turn something up. Or maybe write and sell a small game. I've been considering this myself because there's so many Community College junkies out there who want to make games that you could probably find a few talented gems out there who can make things happen. Just don't expect big money fast and remember that three months is really no time at all, so think small. Maybe if you really think you're all that, just find a decent artist and split the sales 50 / 50. But it's gonna take a lot of work and interpersonal skills to find someone and convince them you can keep up your half of the bargain.
Technically, I guess there's three options. You could do nothing all summer, and maybe contribute to one of those GPL'd projects you spoke of. But we both know that won't put food on the table today, and you won't be developing that crucial skill you probably think isn't important. The truth is, it's vitally important, whether you're convincing someone that the brand name really is worth the extra money, or if you're convincing your boss that your idea has merit and can save the company a good chunk of change. Programmers who's job description allows them to exist in a vacuum have long ago been replaced by small shell scripts. Any path you choose, I suggest you focus on opportunities that will exercise your talents of communication and persuasion.
A lot of people know that the GBA sells nearly as well as the PS2. PS2 fans tend to call that unfair, citing reasons such as the GBA costing way less and providing way less. The article also mentions that Nintendo doesn't have any room for losses, but their handheld franchise at this point is basically the equivelent of Microsoft's XP.
Of course, Nintendo isn't going to "pull a Sega." The first reason being that Sega has been going downhill ever since they pulled a Sega themselves. Sonic Heroes was out for three months before they put it on the Greatest Hits list, which really means that they made way more units than they could sell at 50 dollars. The division that pursued the X-Box has basically fell apart. Secondly, they've got a great collection of handhelds that should easily succeed in the future. Even if you were to term "pulling a Sega" as dropping out of the traditional console-into-TV system market, they're still making a good bit of money on it.
Nintendo is among the strongest of the three, game wise. The article turns this into a counter point, saying that they're more like a third party concerned about their own games rather than the hardware. But it means they've got the talent to produce and rely upon a set of guarenteed revenue streams. When the PS2 was released, the anticipated big hits were Gran Tourismo, Metal Gear and Final Fantasy. They all fared well but at this point, as a franchise they're all in decline. The big games
But they're more than just a game making company. They've proven they know how to make a viable and affordable system over and over. They wouldn't be around otherwise. Take a look at the next round of consoles. They all pretty much look like the Gamecube. Fast RAM, PowerPC chips, expandable modules. I had joked that maybe Nintendo should just rerelease the Cube in a different form and see how few people notice the difference. You can bitch about how much more awesome newer hardware can be (and Nintendo would agree with you), but it takes a hell of a lot of work to make character models and textures, and every step of visual improvement means more of that work. You can't just up the resolution, because the TVs 99 out of 100 people use for this stuff isn't supported. If MS is really serious about being the progenitor of the HD revolution, they'd better include the cables with the system. My guess is that they won't even provide S-Video. They'll talk a good game, but you won't be playing it.
Just because the Open Source Movement isn't as openly communist as some socialist EU official would have liked doesn't mean it doesn't meet its goals of open software.
If the problem is truly that IBM and the like are selling branded Open Source, and people are buying it, then the GPL will lubricate the production of competitors for 'IBM Open Source.' If this official somehow wants society to realize that IBM software isn't so different from, say, Debian software, well then I hope he's got the cash to market to the purchasing managers.
I contend that the "Open Source Community" is taking itself seriously, which is why more and more of these programmers are becoming subcontractors. Hell, a lot of the kernel work is done by people paid by big companies to do so. If it appears to be a complete mess, its because, in part, it is so. Amatuers and professionals alike can write software; by saying something close to "you want IBM Open Source" IBM is putting its professional word behind the software. Open source is not a centrally planned economny, no matter how many people have told you that the GPL reeks of socialism and that RMS echoes the rhetoric of famous Communists.
Specialization is for insects. 2000 unemployed people is a freaking boon to the entrepeneurial world. Silicon Valley became a mecca specifically because of the talent pool in the area. Economists will tell you that low unemployment will put serious strains on the appearance of new firms and the growth of existing ones. I realize that Europe is hardly suffering from such a malady, and that high unemployment often leads to things that economists rarely consider, such as political overthrows and revolutions.
Seriously, if you think your management is prone to fuck ups, then why the struggle to stay on board with them? You're only even paying attention (or at least acting upon) the actions that directly affect ya'; why are they so much better at making other decisions? I realize this is Europe, where so very few start their own business. There's certainly no shortage of ideas for new things. At the very least, it's an opportunity to grab four of your buddies and start a consulting firm, if you're not sure just what you can make and sell.
But cutbacks rarely salvage a failing company. Usually it's a smarter deal to package a unit up and sell it, but that can be difficult to do with backoffice departments and businesses largely operating on human capital, such as consulting. I don't know the details of what's going on at IBM, but from what I'm gleaning off of the web, it appears that IBM is laying off significant amounts of management and place more of that burden on the underlings remaining.
If I may use an allegory, it sounds a bit like they're given the foreman of construction the added responsbilities of sales, pricing and client targeting. Of course, this becomes a far worse scenario when you translate the allegory to the world of software, where the map is the road and things are generally far less plannable. I don't know exactly what field operatives in IBM Europe do, whether they do database design on-site or if they simply deploy prepackaged hardware and software. Hell, it could be that the plan is to cut the bottom layer off and have the old managers start doing the grunt work in addition.
All of this wouldn't be a problem if Europe was actually growing meaningfully; these days, IBM can provide computer systems for just about every business. Layoffs like this will wind up putting a screw on consumer spending and outlook, which only prolong the disaster. If Europeans felt more in control of their own destiny, then I suspect they'd be more resiliant to these sorts of downturns.
Hardly. Mr Dell bought debentures, not stock. Essentially, it's a corporate bond that can (and maybe just was) converted into common stock. Michael can't directly guarentee that his company will pay Redhat, although his company is doing quite well and they are probably the company's biggest client.
And this purchase was made in January of 2004. Someone just finally noticed a mention in an SEC filing. Your theory holds as much water as the redhat purchase.
No substitute for practice. The typing tutor softwares just present novel forms of practice. If you really want to get better, just hop on #debian or #gentoo on FreeNode and start answering questions. At 800+ users, the flow of text within the channel tends to be about a screen's full of independent conversations. Or you could just bittorrent mario teaches typing, but it throws so much useless punctuation that you'll never use in real conversations;).
Actually, Nintendo is just very clever about hiding the load times. In Luigi's Mansion, there was a load time involved when you opened a door (similar to Biohazard, but without the lame graphics). Metroid Prime just enhanced this by starting sooner. You shoot a door to open it, so it knows where it should be loading stuff. As you're walking toward the door, the game is loading the room. You'll notice that sometimes those doors don't open very quickly; sometimes I get to the door before it opens. The door doesn't open till the next room is loaded.
Passive or pre-emptive loading has been a long time in coming. I recall reading in Next-Gen about a game called One that utilized that stuff on the PS1, and Turok had some huge levels (which was part of the reason for the fog). Generally, if your game doesn't pre load, its because they were either rushing to release on time or it was some junky one-off to help make studio ends meet.
The flash card deal is a bit strange. I really liked the was F-Zero handled it (most of the time). Three bars that actually filled up and moved on quickly, catering to the theme of speed present in the whole game. Grand Tourismo 3 has this wierd progress bar that is basically only ever empty or full.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to burst your personal and rabid conspiracy theory, but Powell left the administration in March, as this chart illustrates.
My understanding is that they've hired a guy who wrote some of the ACPI BIOS internals within Linux. Apple's openly admitted that they've been running OSX on x86 for some time just in case. I believe that Darwin on x86 is available right now, if you're interested. Unless you're claiming they built a PC with openfirmware, I dont see how the presence of a BIOS throws a wrench into anything.
Coupled with their own admission that users could theoretically dual boot Windows and OSX, the evidence clearly indicates that OSX does not need openFirmware to operate. I really don't see what they plan to do to enforce this; perhaps the secret plan is that they aren't and you're just supposed to buy one of their expensive toys to play with, but they'll take your money anyways if you're on to them.
Well, a fuckload of people downloaded the Tiger beta when it found its way to bittorrent. I'd expect quite a few people to give it a try, especially since the hacks will be likely be well documented by the time Longhorn rolls around and everyone reformats for good measure anyways. Will these people try it for a week, love it and turn around and buy it outright? No. But I'm sure Apple will complain about a loss of money equal to shelf price times infringers.
People "seriously interested in the simplicity, stability, interface, and power of Apple products" already own Apples, and are far more likely to purchase a new one. I think you seriously overestimate the size of this group. Especially since the "too poor anyways" category makes up a good percentage of new computers sold to individuals.
Partial Least Squares Regression?
The long tail is an artifact of selection bias. Online retailer biased journals like Wired work on the assumption that the collection of Amazon or iTMS is a complete library of everything people might want to buy. If that's not true, then the whole house comes crumbling down, and you basically are saying "everything Amazon bothers to sell moves at least one copy a month." Of course, Amazon is the master of pricing, and they will manipulate the price of anything growing stale quite well so that it does sell. Why might Amazon sell something at invoice plus internal costs? Because despite the author's arguments, even Amazon has limited space. On the other hand, iTMS doesn't have much control over price. I don't think they care to admit that they don't carry everything you could ever want, but if you asked a dead manager if iTMS ever dropped or didn't carry a song, the answer is probably "yes." In short, the long tail is the result of inventory control and discounting in a particular form of goods.
As for the Revolution, there are two scenarios. Either it's an open market operated by the benevolent souls at Nintendo, or there's a price barrier to entry. The first will pretty quickly denegrate into a bunch of free games made by people in their spare time as a form of artistry turned philanthopy. The other is far more likely, and the result will be a clash between Nintendo's quality guidelines and several small startup's desire to compete on price.
New software is supposed to be made to run on all platforms. If you've ever looked at the Applications directory from a command line, then you'll notice that there's a lot of folders where Finder reports a single application. Each platform will basically have its own set of platform specific folders. The emulator they've invested in allows x86 platforms to run code compiled for other platforms. I'm not sure how this will impact OS Classic, but it can't be favorable.
Most developers do program cross platform, but the other platform is Windows. There is the point that their program already has SSE, but really, very few programs ever use Altivec, because it's a pita versus not. What we're talking about is really a new, third platform: OSX on x86. That means merging any platform specific code with the OSX version. Still not a lot of work though.
Well, there is testing. It's just done by firms like RedHat and it's not made publicly available. There's also a very public and fairly thourough testing procedure done by Debian, but they don't specifically target the kernel, the way this particular system is.
How exactly do you form a union? Get a bunch of employees together, organize and refuse to work until conditions are met, including the recognition of a union? That works okay when you can't be easily replaced by a bajillion other people who really really want to do the same thing. There's game creation classes in my local community college now. It's grunt work, but they're young and willing to work for lower wages. You already picked up on it when you said that there's an amount of pride there, on the other side of the coin, there's an amount of envy as well.
No shame, but even less possibilities for one. Agents of change came and went, and went by the name of "Gathering of Developers." I think you know how the story turned out.
One of the main goals appears to be whether the kernel builds or not. I shouldn't have to tell slashdot that build errors are among the most trivial of OS programming errors. They certainly exist, as the chart shows, but whoever is in charge of this project has a long way to go, by adding real tests of functionality. Consider it job security ;)
I think the Zelda game deserves a write off. Ocarina of Time was hands down the biggest game of that generation, and potentially ever. Three young link dungeons, and like eight adult link temples plus shitloads of side quests add up to a hell of a lot. Honestly, it's no wonder the game came late, and that both Wind Waker and Majora's Mask seem smaller. Even though a link to the past was roughly the same size, it had the advantage of being 2d instead of 3d. And I think the dungeons themselves weren't as complicated.
But plenty of other games are getting longer. Hell I just picked up Starfox, and it feels like the first level is longer than the easy route on SF64. F-Zero GX is definetely longer and better, and Metroid Prime is a longer game than you make it out to be. Of course, all these games have been farmed out to other people.
Also, I'm not even sure what the ancestor of Luigi's mansion is.
I don't think Google needs any more money. At this point, their underprivledged stocks are worth ludicrous sums of money, and I can only imagine what the value of their upperclass stock is worth. There are other organizations that are operating in the same way the Linux Fund was. Honestly, it would be neat to see the money used to fund bounties. 500 hundred dollars a pop could go pretty far in that reguard. Certainly beats the pants off of yet another stupid pointless conference.
That's not entirely true, it's just that educators and computer programming have basically been sitting at different lunch tables for the past decade.
Games are great at making drills bearable. Drills are a valid part of an education, just ask your math teacher. Problem is that it becomes much more difficult to use computer programs to teach at higher levels of thinking. There's a hierarchy of learning I've seen that's probably pretty accurate, and what it basically says is that drills are the lowest form of education and that creating and evaluating creations are the most complex forms of learning. Most simulation games stop short of true creation and let you adjust certain variables on, say, a water bottle rocket.
I think there's a limit to what games can accomplish. At this point, I doubt we'll ever see a game that challenges you to come up with a funny story, or other writing tasks. Games might be better suited to deterministic subjects like math and science than the humanities.
And I don't think that most of your teachers have the time or patience to learn how to modify LinCity to better represent pedestrian traffic. At best, it's a challenge for them to integrate existing games into their cirriculum. Maybe this is because the games are crappy, or aren't customizable enough, but maybe it's because learning isn't a competition.
You could just take a job at the local mall or wherever sounds convienent. Consider it your last chance to study business from the ground, and how vital interpersonal skills are. Develop some leadership skills, and make friends with management and they'll make good references later if they're still around.
Or you can pursue a job in a dissolving technical field. Within this route, there are a couple of options; you can hunt down an internship, you can find a grunt level IT job (Typically helpdesk), or you can try your hand at good old entrepeneurship.
An internship is very unlikely for you. First off, it's way too late. Internships are planned out far in advance so waiting till basically May rules that out. Moreover, they aren't geared for someone like you. At an internship, the intern basically doesn't make the company much money, if any. The few IT companies that haven't cut back on staff reguard this as a test run for a full time job and as such are looking for people readying to graduate with a degree. So basically, there's people just like you (though I think you overstate your qualifications some) who also have the benefit of a degree and Professors who will vouch for them. It's not a game you're likely to win. It's gonna take a lot of person to person talking to convince someone to circumvent the braindead HR checkoff sheet and get you in an interview situation. And it will take even more communication skills to put you in front of the other candidates given your handicap.
Helpdesk and call center jobs is a lot more common, but so much more draining. Three months of that job should be enough to dissuade you from not getting a degree or falling into that trap again. Despite the rapid turnover on this kind of work, they probably won't hire you if you let word slip that you're headed for college soon. The pay isn't bad, but depending on the details of the job, you may have frustrated people yelling in your ear about how such and such service they're paying for is down and it should be fixes YESTERDAY. Of the three, this is the most likely to succeed, and they're willing to train you on their communication skills rather than pay extra for the people who come with that built in.
The other option is to start your own business. Starting your own business is risky, but you're in the perfect field for it. The cost of starting your own software business is basically the cost of ramen noodles and other living expenses. YOu can scour local tech mailing lists for postings and maybe find a short term contract. If you post a well written and well reasoned request (perhaps cleverly disguised as advice) you might turn something up. Or maybe write and sell a small game. I've been considering this myself because there's so many Community College junkies out there who want to make games that you could probably find a few talented gems out there who can make things happen. Just don't expect big money fast and remember that three months is really no time at all, so think small. Maybe if you really think you're all that, just find a decent artist and split the sales 50 / 50. But it's gonna take a lot of work and interpersonal skills to find someone and convince them you can keep up your half of the bargain.
Technically, I guess there's three options. You could do nothing all summer, and maybe contribute to one of those GPL'd projects you spoke of. But we both know that won't put food on the table today, and you won't be developing that crucial skill you probably think isn't important. The truth is, it's vitally important, whether you're convincing someone that the brand name really is worth the extra money, or if you're convincing your boss that your idea has merit and can save the company a good chunk of change. Programmers who's job description allows them to exist in a vacuum have long ago been replaced by small shell scripts. Any path you choose, I suggest you focus on opportunities that will exercise your talents of communication and persuasion.
Nobody but you said anything about Oxycontin, they're referring to oxytocin, a hormone naturally produced in the human body.
A lot of people know that the GBA sells nearly as well as the PS2. PS2 fans tend to call that unfair, citing reasons such as the GBA costing way less and providing way less. The article also mentions that Nintendo doesn't have any room for losses, but their handheld franchise at this point is basically the equivelent of Microsoft's XP.
Of course, Nintendo isn't going to "pull a Sega." The first reason being that Sega has been going downhill ever since they pulled a Sega themselves. Sonic Heroes was out for three months before they put it on the Greatest Hits list, which really means that they made way more units than they could sell at 50 dollars. The division that pursued the X-Box has basically fell apart. Secondly, they've got a great collection of handhelds that should easily succeed in the future. Even if you were to term "pulling a Sega" as dropping out of the traditional console-into-TV system market, they're still making a good bit of money on it.
Nintendo is among the strongest of the three, game wise. The article turns this into a counter point, saying that they're more like a third party concerned about their own games rather than the hardware. But it means they've got the talent to produce and rely upon a set of guarenteed revenue streams. When the PS2 was released, the anticipated big hits were Gran Tourismo, Metal Gear and Final Fantasy. They all fared well but at this point, as a franchise they're all in decline. The big games
But they're more than just a game making company. They've proven they know how to make a viable and affordable system over and over. They wouldn't be around otherwise. Take a look at the next round of consoles. They all pretty much look like the Gamecube. Fast RAM, PowerPC chips, expandable modules. I had joked that maybe Nintendo should just rerelease the Cube in a different form and see how few people notice the difference. You can bitch about how much more awesome newer hardware can be (and Nintendo would agree with you), but it takes a hell of a lot of work to make character models and textures, and every step of visual improvement means more of that work. You can't just up the resolution, because the TVs 99 out of 100 people use for this stuff isn't supported. If MS is really serious about being the progenitor of the HD revolution, they'd better include the cables with the system. My guess is that they won't even provide S-Video. They'll talk a good game, but you won't be playing it.
Just because the Open Source Movement isn't as openly communist as some socialist EU official would have liked doesn't mean it doesn't meet its goals of open software.
If the problem is truly that IBM and the like are selling branded Open Source, and people are buying it, then the GPL will lubricate the production of competitors for 'IBM Open Source.' If this official somehow wants society to realize that IBM software isn't so different from, say, Debian software, well then I hope he's got the cash to market to the purchasing managers.
I contend that the "Open Source Community" is taking itself seriously, which is why more and more of these programmers are becoming subcontractors. Hell, a lot of the kernel work is done by people paid by big companies to do so. If it appears to be a complete mess, its because, in part, it is so. Amatuers and professionals alike can write software; by saying something close to "you want IBM Open Source" IBM is putting its professional word behind the software. Open source is not a centrally planned economny, no matter how many people have told you that the GPL reeks of socialism and that RMS echoes the rhetoric of famous Communists.
It can only be a matter of time now. Although, in all likely hood, it will wind up spending most of its time optimizing Gentoo settings.
Most of the European states beat out the US in the per capita ranking, given by the table in the article.
"So easy to abuse no wonder its number one!"
The rankings are per capita, which means they're adjusted for population.
That would be because
A) that's ALL that it did
B) they wrote and distributed software that automated the process
Specialization is for insects. 2000 unemployed people is a freaking boon to the entrepeneurial world. Silicon Valley became a mecca specifically because of the talent pool in the area. Economists will tell you that low unemployment will put serious strains on the appearance of new firms and the growth of existing ones. I realize that Europe is hardly suffering from such a malady, and that high unemployment often leads to things that economists rarely consider, such as political overthrows and revolutions.
Seriously, if you think your management is prone to fuck ups, then why the struggle to stay on board with them? You're only even paying attention (or at least acting upon) the actions that directly affect ya'; why are they so much better at making other decisions? I realize this is Europe, where so very few start their own business. There's certainly no shortage of ideas for new things. At the very least, it's an opportunity to grab four of your buddies and start a consulting firm, if you're not sure just what you can make and sell.
But cutbacks rarely salvage a failing company. Usually it's a smarter deal to package a unit up and sell it, but that can be difficult to do with backoffice departments and businesses largely operating on human capital, such as consulting. I don't know the details of what's going on at IBM, but from what I'm gleaning off of the web, it appears that IBM is laying off significant amounts of management and place more of that burden on the underlings remaining.
If I may use an allegory, it sounds a bit like they're given the foreman of construction the added responsbilities of sales, pricing and client targeting. Of course, this becomes a far worse scenario when you translate the allegory to the world of software, where the map is the road and things are generally far less plannable. I don't know exactly what field operatives in IBM Europe do, whether they do database design on-site or if they simply deploy prepackaged hardware and software. Hell, it could be that the plan is to cut the bottom layer off and have the old managers start doing the grunt work in addition.
All of this wouldn't be a problem if Europe was actually growing meaningfully; these days, IBM can provide computer systems for just about every business. Layoffs like this will wind up putting a screw on consumer spending and outlook, which only prolong the disaster. If Europeans felt more in control of their own destiny, then I suspect they'd be more resiliant to these sorts of downturns.
Hardly. Mr Dell bought debentures, not stock. Essentially, it's a corporate bond that can (and maybe just was) converted into common stock. Michael can't directly guarentee that his company will pay Redhat, although his company is doing quite well and they are probably the company's biggest client.
And this purchase was made in January of 2004. Someone just finally noticed a mention in an SEC filing. Your theory holds as much water as the redhat purchase.
No substitute for practice. The typing tutor softwares just present novel forms of practice. If you really want to get better, just hop on #debian or #gentoo on FreeNode and start answering questions. At 800+ users, the flow of text within the channel tends to be about a screen's full of independent conversations. Or you could just bittorrent mario teaches typing, but it throws so much useless punctuation that you'll never use in real conversations ;).
Actually, Nintendo is just very clever about hiding the load times. In Luigi's Mansion, there was a load time involved when you opened a door (similar to Biohazard, but without the lame graphics). Metroid Prime just enhanced this by starting sooner. You shoot a door to open it, so it knows where it should be loading stuff. As you're walking toward the door, the game is loading the room. You'll notice that sometimes those doors don't open very quickly; sometimes I get to the door before it opens. The door doesn't open till the next room is loaded.
Passive or pre-emptive loading has been a long time in coming. I recall reading in Next-Gen about a game called One that utilized that stuff on the PS1, and Turok had some huge levels (which was part of the reason for the fog). Generally, if your game doesn't pre load, its because they were either rushing to release on time or it was some junky one-off to help make studio ends meet.
The flash card deal is a bit strange. I really liked the was F-Zero handled it (most of the time). Three bars that actually filled up and moved on quickly, catering to the theme of speed present in the whole game. Grand Tourismo 3 has this wierd progress bar that is basically only ever empty or full.