Actually a really elegant embeddable language. On previous products I've created I've embbbeded TCL, Python, LISP and FORTH. Lua is more elegant and almost as small as a FORTH kernel. I assure you Lua is already in at least three very propular products.
"At its height in 1997, the directors of PointCast reportedly spurned an offer of $450 million from News Corp for the company. They hoped to go public for a larger amount, but never did."
I concur. I've seen these on nearly every contract I've been offered. I strike them and they say essentially, "okay - no prob, we always try for this..."
Shit - anyone know of any other game companies for sale at firesale prices?
Yes - all of them.
This is how Electronic Arts grows. EA has cash, but it hasn't really innovated since 1984. As someone who's previously worked in the games industry and still has lots of friends at EA and other game companies, let me lay it out for you:
The games business is a hit driven business, with most innovative titles coming out of small publishers (with only one exception right now - Blizzard).
Step 1: Small publisher (Origin, Jane's, Crystal, etc...) comes out with a hot new title. It sells like gangbusters.
Step 2: The now 'successful' publisher, hires up more people to work on their next hot title. Founders become 'industry visionaries' and appear on many CGDC panels. One of three things happen with this next 'hot' title...
2a) The title ships in time for Christmas and is a big success. Great! Return to step 2 and try again. The odds of this happening is low.
2b) The title ships in time for Christmas but is a flop. Advance to step 3.
2c) The title misses the Christmas ship date and has to go out in the spring, where volumes are much smaller. Advance to step 3
Step 3: You now have a payroll crunch because of lots of employees/investors to feed and no new income (remember, this is a hit driven business). EA will come to you and say, "I'm going to write a number on a piece of paper - I think you'll agree it's fair." Hint: It's not fair. You'll say no, because you just need to get that second 'backup' title finished and you'll be okay again.
Step 4: If the backup title succeeds, you've dodged a bullet - go back to step 2 and try again. Otherwise, EA will come back to you and say "I'm going to write a number on a piece of paper. It's not going to be as large as last time, but I think you'll agree it's fair." Hint: It's still not fair - its going to be much lower than last time. Unfortunately, you'll have to take it because you are out of cash. Congrats: You are now an executive producer for a new division in EA. Most likely, you'll never be allowed to make an 'risky' game again.
The chances of repeately doing step 2 successfully are very low.
I concur.
I've developed software for Palm OS and was amazed with how primitive the OS stayed for so long. To this day my Treo won't let a webpage load in the background while I read my mail. No real threading!
Adding features like threading should have been done years ago and it could have been done without making a heavy OS.
Microsoft is evil, but the current crop of WinCE devices have really advanced. Very nice.
Simply not true - in fact I attended a talk by one of the investigators who was contracted by the NTSB.
John was flying a LongEZ - which is certainly not in the light sport plane class. It is a pretty spiffy plane in the high performance general aviation class (though homebuilt).
The initial cause of failure was running one tank dry at low altitude (bad).
The tank selector valve is normally controlled by a pushrod, however that was disconnected in John's plane. Instead he had vice grips cliped to the valve which was now unreachable in flight (bad).
John apparently disconnected his seat belt/harness so he could reach the fuel selector by diving over the back seat (bad).
Sudden shift to an aft CG (bad).
Steep decent into water without a seat belt (bad). (At this point the plane was still perfectly okay, no structural failures occured until impact.)
When John ran out of gas at low altitude over water by a beach, he should have ditched. Ditching is normally not the best choice for emergency landings, but this particular design floats and does not tend to flip over. At low altitude he should not have tried to fix all his mistakes, he should just land the plane.
I've flown in a number of LongEZs and they are great planes. Designed sold/by Burt Rutan (of Spaceship One/Voyager fame).
The parent poster knows not of what he speaks.
If you are curious about homebuilt aircraft (not light sport aircraft) check out my builders log: http://www.geeksville.com/plane
I think people have hit on a number of reasons this idea just wouldn't make sense. I'll add one more:
The cost of a server farm is a small fraction of the cost of making a movie.
A close friend of mine is in charge of the server farms for a feature film animation company. For their next film they sat down and considered the hardware architecture they wanted, bought a few test machines, then said okay send us a few hundred PCs.
They didn't even care (much) how much the PCes costed, or that they might want to reuse hardware from the previous movie. For them, new movie = a bunch of new hardware - no big deal.
I've donated more than $100 to both Kerry and Dean and didn't show up. However a friend who lives a block away did show up - so the site isn't a hoax, just buggy.
A number of years ago, I was working at a really innovative company. The technical chalenges were great etc... However, I and my fellow engineers began to realize that our immediate manager was a jerk (made false statements to management, political, concerned more with his image than the product).
One of us talked with the manager about these perceived shortcomings, and he reacted _very_ defensively and hostile. We then lost confidence we could improve his management style.
Two of our team quit and returned to their former company.
The rest of us were considering doing the same, but we liked the company. Instead of quitting, we went to our department head. We explained our problem, and why our peers had quit. We said, either the lying fellow goes or we go.
Two weeks later we had a new manager and were from then on as happy as clams.
This was a 'pre dot com boom' time, but I would do the same thing now if the problem reoccured. If your team is _really_ valuable, then the company will do what is necessary to keep you happy. If your team isn't that valuable, improve your skills and contribution until it is valuable.
A few months ago I was poking around their "network file server in a box" - I forget the model number, but it is shoebox sized and purple.
I can say for a fact that they used Linux and a number of other GPL bits in this box. I almost sounded the alarm, but I was way too busy with other things.
What I found: 1) Open case 2) Remove small compact flash card that contains the software for this product 3) Install compact flash card into my notebook 4) Use cfdisk, notice that there are three ext2 filesystems 5) Mount ext2 filesystem 6) See that they are using a 2.4.x kernel 7) See that they are using GPL print spooling software (I forget which) 8) Try to find _any_ notice about the GPL in the docs or via the debug serial port _NO NOTICE_. 9) Visit linksys website to find GPL required sources, not there.
If anyone wants more details please message me off list.
Whenever I read useful articles such as this, I'm reminded of Orson Scott Card's "How software companies die":
Software - How Software Companies Die
By: Orson Scott Card
The environment that nutures creative programmers kills management
and marketing types - and vice versa. Programming is the Great Game.
It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing
else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover
that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than
the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes
lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because
your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won.
You're aware that some people think you're a nerd. So what? They're
not players. They've never jousted with Windows or gone hand to hand
with DOS. To them C++ is a decent grade, almost a B - not a language.
They barely exist. Like soldiers or artists, you don't care about the
opinions of civilians. You're building something intricate and fine.
They'll never understand it.
BEEKEEPING
Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on:
You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You
can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in
one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey.
You keep these bees from stinging by paying them money. More money
than they know what to do with. But that's less than you might think.
You see, all these programmers keep hearing their parents' voices in
their heads saying "When are you going to join the real world?" All
you have to pay them is enough money that they can answer (also in
their heads) "Geez, Dad, I'm making more than you." On average, this
is cheap. And you get them to stay in the hive by giving them other
coders to swarm with. The only person whose praise matters is another
programmer. Less-talented programmers will idolize them; evenly
matched ones will challenge and goad one another; and if you want to
get a good swarm, you make sure that you have at least one certified
genius coder that they can all look up to, even if he glances at other
people's code only long enough to sneer at it. He's a Player, thinks
the junior programmer. He looked at my code. That is enough. If a
software company provides such a hive, the coders will give up sleep,
love, health, and clean laundry, while the company keeps the bulk of
the money.
OUT OF CONTROL
Here's the problem that ends up killing company after company. All
successful software companies had, as their dominant personality, a
leader who nurtured programmers. But no company can keep such a leader
forever. Either he cashes out, or he brings in management types who end
up driving him out, or he changes and becomes a management type himself.
One way or another, marketers get control. But...control of what?
Instead of finding assembly lines of productive workers, they quickly
discover that their product is produced by utterly unpredictable,
uncooperative, disobedient, and worst of all, unattractive people who
resist all attempts at management. Put them on a time clock, dress
them in suits, and they become sullen and start sabotaging the product.
Worst of all, you can sense that they are making fun of you with every
word they say.
SMOKED OUT
The shock is greater for the coder, though. He suddenly finds that
alien creatures control his life. Meetings, Schedules, Reports. And
now someone demands that he PLAN all his programming and then stick to
the plan, never improving, never tweaking, and never, never touching
some other team's code. The lousy young programmer who once worshiped
him is now his tyrannical boss, a position he got because he played
golf with some sphincter in a suit. The hive has been ruined. The best
coders leave. And the marketers, comfortable now because they're
surrounded by power neckties and they have things under control, are
baffled that each new iteration of their software loses market share
as the code bloats and the bugs proliferate. Got to get some better
packaging. Yeah, that's it.
Not really true. I have a firm 'hacker' background, but a CS degree from a top tier university makes a fair amount of difference. The theory I learned in school really does make me a stronger engineer than if I had just hacked.
In my years hiring engineers, I've only encountered one engineer who was self taught but still understood algorithms and not just hacking.
See the jobs list on www.apple.com. A long time ago I was an Apple Intern, it was great: small teams of reasonably bright people.
Similar perks to the MS internships - and you don't have to serve satan.
CS is the stronger degree.
on
CS vs CIS
·
· Score: 1
As a high level engineer who does a lot of hiring, CS is definitely preferred. With CS you learn valuable theory to match good implementation.
CIS is is easier and you just learn to push buttons. If you want to be an engineer and make things go CS, if you want to be a technician and use things CIS.
Sorry for the bluntness.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually a really elegant embeddable language. On previous products I've created I've embbbeded TCL, Python, LISP and FORTH. Lua is more elegant and almost as small as a FORTH kernel. I assure you Lua is already in at least three very propular products.
"At its height in 1997, the directors of PointCast reportedly spurned an offer of $450 million from News Corp for the company. They hoped to go public for a larger amount, but never did."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PointCast
I concur. I've seen these on nearly every contract I've been offered. I strike them and they say essentially, "okay - no prob, we always try for this..."
Yes - all of them.
This is how Electronic Arts grows. EA has cash, but it hasn't really innovated since 1984. As someone who's previously worked in the games industry and still has lots of friends at EA and other game companies, let me lay it out for you:
The games business is a hit driven business, with most innovative titles coming out of small publishers (with only one exception right now - Blizzard).
Step 1: Small publisher (Origin, Jane's, Crystal, etc...) comes out with a hot new title. It sells like gangbusters.
Step 2: The now 'successful' publisher, hires up more people to work on their next hot title. Founders become 'industry visionaries' and appear on many CGDC panels. One of three things happen with this next 'hot' title...
2a) The title ships in time for Christmas and is a big success. Great! Return to step 2 and try again. The odds of this happening is low.
2b) The title ships in time for Christmas but is a flop. Advance to step 3.
2c) The title misses the Christmas ship date and has to go out in the spring, where volumes are much smaller. Advance to step 3
Step 3: You now have a payroll crunch because of lots of employees/investors to feed and no new income (remember, this is a hit driven business). EA will come to you and say, "I'm going to write a number on a piece of paper - I think you'll agree it's fair." Hint: It's not fair. You'll say no, because you just need to get that second 'backup' title finished and you'll be okay again.
Step 4: If the backup title succeeds, you've dodged a bullet - go back to step 2 and try again. Otherwise, EA will come back to you and say "I'm going to write a number on a piece of paper. It's not going to be as large as last time, but I think you'll agree it's fair." Hint: It's still not fair - its going to be much lower than last time. Unfortunately, you'll have to take it because you are out of cash. Congrats: You are now an executive producer for a new division in EA. Most likely, you'll never be allowed to make an 'risky' game again.
The chances of repeately doing step 2 successfully are very low.
Ever considered that the whole burning man thing has its roots in paganism...
Yeah - just like Christianity or Norse Mythology...
Adding features like threading should have been done years ago and it could have been done without making a heavy OS.
Microsoft is evil, but the current crop of WinCE devices have really advanced. Very nice.
Why stop there? Perhaps with this device, I could purify the air in LA well enough to walk across town.
Yep - my wife works at EA. Over the last couple of years they've really started to mistreat their employees.
Too bad - it used to be a good company.
Simply not true - in fact I attended a talk by one of the investigators who was contracted by the NTSB.
John was flying a LongEZ - which is certainly not in the light sport plane class. It is a pretty spiffy plane in the high performance general aviation class (though homebuilt).
The initial cause of failure was running one tank dry at low altitude (bad).
The tank selector valve is normally controlled by a pushrod, however that was disconnected in John's plane. Instead he had vice grips cliped to the valve which was now unreachable in flight (bad).
John apparently disconnected his seat belt/harness so he could reach the fuel selector by diving over the back seat (bad).
Sudden shift to an aft CG (bad).
Steep decent into water without a seat belt (bad). (At this point the plane was still perfectly okay, no structural failures occured until impact.)
When John ran out of gas at low altitude over water by a beach, he should have ditched. Ditching is normally not the best choice for emergency landings, but this particular design floats and does not tend to flip over. At low altitude he should not have tried to fix all his mistakes, he should just land the plane.
I've flown in a number of LongEZs and they are great planes. Designed sold/by Burt Rutan (of Spaceship One/Voyager fame).
The parent poster knows not of what he speaks.
If you are curious about homebuilt aircraft (not light sport aircraft) check out my builders log: http://www.geeksville.com/plane
AT&T: Hi, I'm Jim and I'd like to tell you about an exciting new calling plan.
me: I'm sorry, but I don't have a phone.
AT&T: But I just called you on a phone.
me: Woah. Your freaking me out, I've gotta go.
I think people have hit on a number of reasons this idea just wouldn't make sense. I'll add one more:
The cost of a server farm is a small fraction of the cost of making a movie.
A close friend of mine is in charge of the server farms for a feature film animation company. For their next film they sat down and considered the hardware architecture they wanted, bought a few test machines, then said okay send us a few hundred PCs.
They didn't even care (much) how much the PCes costed, or that they might want to reuse hardware from the previous movie. For them, new movie = a bunch of new hardware - no big deal.
I've donated more than $100 to both Kerry and Dean and didn't show up. However a friend who lives a block away did show up - so the site isn't a hoax, just buggy.
As a pilot with a WAAS capable IFR GPS (Garmin 430), I've looked into this. There just aren't that many WAAS ground correction transmitters yet.
A number of years ago, I was working at a really innovative company. The technical chalenges were great etc... However, I and my fellow engineers began to realize that our immediate manager was a jerk (made false statements to management, political, concerned more with his image than the product).
One of us talked with the manager about these perceived shortcomings, and he reacted _very_ defensively and hostile. We then lost confidence we could improve his management style.
Two of our team quit and returned to their former company.
The rest of us were considering doing the same, but we liked the company. Instead of quitting, we went to our department head. We explained our problem, and why our peers had quit. We said, either the lying fellow goes or we go.
Two weeks later we had a new manager and were from then on as happy as clams.
This was a 'pre dot com boom' time, but I would do the same thing now if the problem reoccured. If your team is _really_ valuable, then the company will do what is necessary to keep you happy. If your team isn't that valuable, improve your skills and contribution until it is valuable.
Hi,
A few months ago I was poking around their "network file server in a box" - I forget the model number, but it is shoebox sized and purple.
I can say for a fact that they used Linux and a number of other GPL bits in this box. I almost sounded the alarm, but I was way too busy with other things.
What I found:
1) Open case
2) Remove small compact flash card that contains the software for this product
3) Install compact flash card into my notebook
4) Use cfdisk, notice that there are three ext2 filesystems
5) Mount ext2 filesystem
6) See that they are using a 2.4.x kernel
7) See that they are using GPL print spooling software (I forget which)
8) Try to find _any_ notice about the GPL in the docs or via the debug serial port _NO NOTICE_.
9) Visit linksys website to find GPL required sources, not there.
If anyone wants more details please message me off list.
Thanks! I am so there!
Software - How Software Companies Die
By: Orson Scott Card
The environment that nutures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa. Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won. You're aware that some people think you're a nerd. So what? They're not players. They've never jousted with Windows or gone hand to hand with DOS. To them C++ is a decent grade, almost a B - not a language. They barely exist. Like soldiers or artists, you don't care about the opinions of civilians. You're building something intricate and fine. They'll never understand it.
BEEKEEPING
Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey. You keep these bees from stinging by paying them money. More money than they know what to do with. But that's less than you might think. You see, all these programmers keep hearing their parents' voices in their heads saying "When are you going to join the real world?" All you have to pay them is enough money that they can answer (also in their heads) "Geez, Dad, I'm making more than you." On average, this is cheap. And you get them to stay in the hive by giving them other coders to swarm with. The only person whose praise matters is another programmer. Less-talented programmers will idolize them; evenly matched ones will challenge and goad one another; and if you want to get a good swarm, you make sure that you have at least one certified genius coder that they can all look up to, even if he glances at other people's code only long enough to sneer at it. He's a Player, thinks the junior programmer. He looked at my code. That is enough. If a software company provides such a hive, the coders will give up sleep, love, health, and clean laundry, while the company keeps the bulk of the money.
OUT OF CONTROL
Here's the problem that ends up killing company after company. All successful software companies had, as their dominant personality, a leader who nurtured programmers. But no company can keep such a leader forever. Either he cashes out, or he brings in management types who end up driving him out, or he changes and becomes a management type himself. One way or another, marketers get control. But...control of what? Instead of finding assembly lines of productive workers, they quickly discover that their product is produced by utterly unpredictable, uncooperative, disobedient, and worst of all, unattractive people who resist all attempts at management. Put them on a time clock, dress them in suits, and they become sullen and start sabotaging the product. Worst of all, you can sense that they are making fun of you with every word they say.
SMOKED OUT
The shock is greater for the coder, though. He suddenly finds that alien creatures control his life. Meetings, Schedules, Reports. And now someone demands that he PLAN all his programming and then stick to the plan, never improving, never tweaking, and never, never touching some other team's code. The lousy young programmer who once worshiped him is now his tyrannical boss, a position he got because he played golf with some sphincter in a suit. The hive has been ruined. The best coders leave. And the marketers, comfortable now because they're surrounded by power neckties and they have things under control, are baffled that each new iteration of their software loses market share as the code bloats and the bugs proliferate. Got to get some better packaging. Yeah, that's it.
Not really true. I have a firm 'hacker' background, but a CS degree from a top tier university makes a fair amount of difference. The theory I learned in school really does make me a stronger engineer than if I had just hacked.
In my years hiring engineers, I've only encountered one engineer who was self taught but still understood algorithms and not just hacking.
See the jobs list on www.apple.com. A long time ago I was an Apple Intern, it was great: small teams of reasonably bright people.
Similar perks to the MS internships - and you don't have to serve satan.
As a high level engineer who does a lot of hiring, CS is definitely preferred. With CS you learn valuable theory to match good implementation. CIS is is easier and you just learn to push buttons. If you want to be an engineer and make things go CS, if you want to be a technician and use things CIS. Sorry for the bluntness.