What do you feel is the most rewarding aspect of your career?
The piles of cash?
The work itself?
The fame?
The look on a fanboy's face between the time he recognizes you and can utter, 'OMG, It's Bruce Campbell!'?
Working with some of the hottest women ever constructed (Renee O'Connor, Angela Dotchin)?
Other? (please specify):
There are many, many reasons to develop software. Sometimes there's something that Should Be There(tm), but isn't. Sometimes I feel like busting out a clever
hack to impress myself and friends. Sometimes it's fun to just tackle a random
challenge and see how well I can do with it. Sometimes someone's willing to pay me to write code for them.
I create for pleasure. If someone pays me, that's great. If not, what have I lost? Absolutely nothing; I spent a portion of my free time doing something I enjoy. The work is its own reward. The only reason I have a "day job" is so that I can fund my recreation.
I think the better question is:
Why do so many believe that financial profit is the only incentive to create?
My state government isn't even this stupid. If you travel on the turnpike, you get a ticket, stamped with the current time/date, when you get on the highway. When you get off, they run your ticket through a machine which calculates your toll. It could trivially calculate your average speed and the nice person at the gate could hand you a speeding ticket with your change.
Fortunately, they don't. Because if they did, people would stop using the turnpike, and they'd lose income.
I'm not a fan of rental-car agencies in general, but I'll certainly never use this one.
It seems to me that most of the posters in this thread thus far have missed the important distinction between the two devices.
The Indrema was conceived as part of a commercial venture to break into the console market, in the same vein as the XBox, only with much less financial backing.
The TuxBox, on the other hand, is a hobby to those working on it. Let's not forget that Linux was Linus' hobby ten years ago. Are they going to compete directly with Sony/MS/Nintendo? No.
If it works, it should start to pop up in geeks' homes, a few at a time. If it works well, it will gain momentum, and game coders, being geeks themselves, will port or cross-develop for the TuxBox and drop the finished product on their bosses' desks right next to the Sony/MS/Nintendo variant when they're done. When there are many such quality games, the masses will follow.
If I sold you a copy of my car, then you should be allowed to do with that copy whatever you like.
Fair use means just that to me, and I'm sure, to many other/.ers. If I buy a copy of your music or movie, I want to be able to enjoy it wherever I am on whatever equipment I have available.
Under the terms of the DMCA, isn't Rep. Boucher a circumvention device himself, attempting to undermine the law the content providers bought, which effectively controls access to their goodies? I'm concerned that Judge Kaplan may restrict our access to this guy.
Yes, pouring all effort into technical coolness and none into gameplay will result in a bad game.
Vowing to not take advantage of technical coolness will also result in a game that is less than it could be.
You can't fix extremism by taking an opposite extremist view. I agree that games should begin with a strong gameplay premise and build from there; but, if that gameplay could be enhanced with spectaculacious(tm) graphics and sound, why would you not want to take advantage of that? I like The Sims for its gameplay, but if it looked like some 8-bit game from 1984, I'd get bored even more quickly than I did with Unreal Tournament. Perhaps that does say something about my own personal bias towards the whiz-bang; but, I still play Asteroids an average of 10 hours a month. Its gameplay was just that good.
Now, if I found a game that could capture that gameplay and couple it with 3D video and sound, I'd be all over it.
Any policy which covers your ass is too invasive for most people to consider "fair", and conversely, a "fair" policy is ineffective. Since you're the employer, though, you get to dictate the rules and your employees can either put up with it or seek employment elsewhere.
In this high-tech my mechanical invention is still relevant, therefore I issue the following application for patent:
The Lever
A device for transmitting and converting force, which consists of a bar and a fulcrum. The bar can be any rigid device which rotates about the fulcrum. When force is exerted on the bar on one side of the fulcrum, a complimentary force is exerted by the other side of the bar, allowing many forms of work to be accomplished, in many instances with less energy than without the lever.
Slashdot Mirror
There's quite a mental leap from 1% of 270,000,000 (2.7 million) to no one. How'd you make that jump, logically speaking?
What do you feel is the most rewarding aspect of your career?
The piles of cash?
The work itself?
The fame?
The look on a fanboy's face between the time he recognizes you and can utter, 'OMG, It's Bruce Campbell!'?
Working with some of the hottest women ever constructed (Renee O'Connor, Angela Dotchin)?
Other? (please specify):
--Blob
Are oranges apples or pears?
There are many, many reasons to develop software. Sometimes there's something that Should Be There(tm), but isn't. Sometimes I feel like busting out a clever
hack to impress myself and friends. Sometimes it's fun to just tackle a random
challenge and see how well I can do with it. Sometimes someone's willing to pay me to write code for them.
I create for pleasure. If someone pays me, that's great. If not, what have I lost? Absolutely nothing; I spent a portion of my free time doing something I enjoy. The work is its own reward. The only reason I have a "day job" is so that I can fund my recreation.
I think the better question is:
Why do so many believe that financial profit is the only incentive to create?
--Blob
This is unbelievably short-sighted.
My state government isn't even this stupid. If you travel on the turnpike, you get a ticket, stamped with the current time/date, when you get on the highway. When you get off, they run your ticket through a machine which calculates your toll. It could trivially calculate your average speed and the nice person at the gate could hand you a speeding ticket with your change.
Fortunately, they don't. Because if they did, people would stop using the turnpike, and they'd lose income.
I'm not a fan of rental-car agencies in general, but I'll certainly never use this one.
--Blob
It seems to me that most of the posters in this thread thus far have missed the important distinction between the two devices.
The Indrema was conceived as part of a commercial venture to break into the console market, in the same vein as the XBox, only with much less financial backing.
The TuxBox, on the other hand, is a hobby to those working on it. Let's not forget that Linux was Linus' hobby ten years ago. Are they going to compete directly with Sony/MS/Nintendo? No.
If it works, it should start to pop up in geeks' homes, a few at a time. If it works well, it will gain momentum, and game coders, being geeks themselves, will port or cross-develop for the TuxBox and drop the finished product on their bosses' desks right next to the Sony/MS/Nintendo variant when they're done. When there are many such quality games, the masses will follow.
It's already happened once, keep the faith.
--blob
If I sold you a copy of my car, then you should be allowed to do with that copy whatever you like.
/.ers. If I buy a copy of your music or movie, I want to be able to enjoy it wherever I am on whatever equipment I have available.
Fair use means just that to me, and I'm sure, to many other
--blob
Under the terms of the DMCA, isn't Rep. Boucher a circumvention device himself, attempting to undermine the law the content providers bought, which effectively controls access to their goodies? I'm concerned that Judge Kaplan may restrict our access to this guy.
--blob
Yes, pouring all effort into technical coolness and none into gameplay will result in a bad game.
Vowing to not take advantage of technical coolness will also result in a game that is less than it could be.
You can't fix extremism by taking an opposite extremist view. I agree that games should begin with a strong gameplay premise and build from there; but, if that gameplay could be enhanced with spectaculacious(tm) graphics and sound, why would you not want to take advantage of that? I like The Sims for its gameplay, but if it looked like some 8-bit game from 1984, I'd get bored even more quickly than I did with Unreal Tournament. Perhaps that does say something about my own personal bias towards the whiz-bang; but, I still play Asteroids an average of 10 hours a month. Its gameplay was just that good.
Now, if I found a game that could capture that gameplay and couple it with 3D video and sound, I'd be all over it.
--Blob
Any policy which covers your ass is too invasive for most people to consider "fair", and conversely, a "fair" policy is ineffective. Since you're the employer, though, you get to dictate the rules and your employees can either put up with it or seek employment elsewhere.
--Blob
In this high-tech my mechanical invention is still relevant, therefore I issue the following application for patent:
The Lever
A device for transmitting and converting force, which consists of a bar and a fulcrum. The bar can be any rigid device which rotates about the fulcrum. When force is exerted on the bar on one side of the fulcrum, a complimentary force is exerted by the other side of the bar, allowing many forms of work to be accomplished, in many instances with less energy than without the lever.