Telecompute is so.... 90s. I hate to say it. But we've moved past that.
The future is ROWE. Results Oriented Work Environment. In a ROWE only results matter. Not how you get it done, or where you get it do it.
In essence, if you can get your work done from a tropical island (with good wifi), then by all means do it. You are not paid for putting your butt in a seat, but rather for your productivity.
ROWE treats employees as adults who know how to manage their own time. Telecommuting, "flex time" and the like are just ways of rewarding employees with what they should already have... control over their lives.
ROWE came out of a successful experiment at Best Buy (HQ not retail stores). Its been adopted by a lot of big name companies, including Netflix.
Yeah, so we set out to do something about it. We spent 20 months building Fantasy University on Facebook (now in open beta).
One of the things we did was decide we'd make a game first, and layer on only the minimal trappings of social game mechanics. There was a gnawing feeling all along, coupled with data from those who knew better, that this would be a tough road.
The good news is we did create a game that's got tons of depth, serious game play mechanics and great content that can be entertaining all by itself. But our microtrans and social elements remain rather unsophisticated. At least if you measure them by the so-called psychological tricks that are used. Sure we give some benefits for having your friends play and such, but its not about that.
So is that a good idea? We have a promising start, but it's too early to tell much. But I can see that massive volume is all about playing the meta game with those who come to your app. And I'm not certain that's the sort of business we want to be in....
So we are in a bit of quandary on which way to take it.
I sorta of like the fact you had to cap her out of her missery... but then they really wused out in the ending. It made no sense that your character was still alive ("It's not your time yet") even though he hurtled himself into the sun... and then the chick will just be hanging out in the spirit world waiting for you when you want to bang her. Yeah.....whatever.
Over the past two years, the local Tech schools (I won't name names) have been coming to us looking for instructors for their new "game design" programs. I like to help out, but as I did I found that their approach to this wasn't realistic... and soon I found out why:
Essentially, for the tech schools, this is sort of a scam. I heard straight from one of the directors... Mom and Dad bring billy to a tech school because they don't want his slacking-ass sucking them dry anymore. He looks at the programs offered... oooow communications... that sounds easy... and dull. Then he sees "game design" and BINGO he's excited, enthusiastic... he envisions making Grand Theft Auto XXII or whatever... mom and dad see their son enthusiastic about school for the first time... and the school tells them about how the game business is a multibillion dollar industry... it's a done deal.
But who's teaching these courses? So far, in this area, they have little to no teachers who can do this stuff. No one who's A) an industry vet and B) who would put up with the academic BS, and C) who has a masters degree (most of the best have no degree at all) and D) willing to do it basically for nothing pay wise. There are people who have A, B and D... and would be invaluable in teaching kids exactly what it takes... but with no masters, no dice.
From what I hear, most of the big tech schools simply had this decision to have a game program handed down from on high (at the corporate level)... "You shall offer this program... ENGAGE!" In some areas, this isn't too hard... in others it's darn near impossible due to a lack of game deveopment company representation. They don't seem too concerned (except for the individuals responsible for starting up the program).
A lot of kids are going to waste time in sub-standard programs until this works itself out.
I hate to say this, but I just have to laugh everytime I see something like this. Someone makes a "plague" that runs amok in WoW... wow! Revolutionary! First time that's been done in an MMO!
Um, hardly. That's baby-step stuff. Just like most everything that is considered "new and revolutionary" in MMOs, is flippin old hat to those of us who've been doing online games for a zillion years now (read: zillion = 18+ years). I had a plague run amok in GemStone ][ some 14 odd years ago. And we've sure as heck done a lot more interesting things than that in the years since.
This isn't news. It's just becoming more well known. I don't mind that, I just wish people had more MMO history in their brain pan.
Yes, that is our intention. We expec tot have long-runnning quests with staff participation, RP awards and NPC merchants. Now, because of scale, we may have to adjust our approach. But, personally, I want to bring as much of that over to the graphical side as possible. Maybe even more so... we'll see.
Yup, it is a totally new game. We started over. And we spent three years working on nothing but tools and design for the looming battle we intended to wage against medeocrity in MMORPGs. If nothing else, I hope we give the genre a much needed shove forward....
Haha... yes, on a long enough time scale it is a minor setback. And, it's quite funny that you claim I have no evidence supporitng my hypothesis by typing it as a post on Slashdot via. the Internet rather than chisseling it on a tablet.;)
Don't get me wrong though, I want to win every battle. For every reason you do, I imagine. Just trying to keep things in perspective. Something the "other side" seldom does.
This is nothing new, of course. Those of us in the Skeptic community have been fighting this battle for years, on small and large scales. Some feel that the these things go in ebbs and flows... that a small gain here for creationist nonsense is not that meaningful in the long run because, ultimately, science always marches on and dogma drops away.
It really depends on if you view the war between religion and scienece in the short or long term. Inevitably, sceience is what leads to what we know as our way of life much more than religion. It is simply that scienece gives us stuff and asks nothing in return (except perhaps funding hidden in the cost of products we buy and to some degree taxes). But religion demands of us every day and its biggest benefit to one personally only happens convienently in the afterlife.
So even though a rabbid creationist has no trouble hopping on a plane to fly to kansas after reading about the debate on the internet to debate why God is the only possible thing that could lead to the complexity of life... he seldom even consideres none of that was possible without science. And that in the time it took to create those things, and many more, out of science religion has given us nothing new to better our lives.
Worst of all, religious explainations have no predictive value. You can't use the dogma to predict what will happen next, or what you will discover next. Only science gives us that ability. So even at the basic level, the two are apples and oranges when it comes to trying to compare them.
But the fundemental ignorance of many people lead them to not even understand what science is. And the dogma they've swallowed turns them against it before they even know what it is.
It's sad, but ultimately religion always has to make room for the advances of science. A bone headed school board will hurt some children in the short run, but ultimately will never prevail.
Well, I can say that in Hero's Journey (our upcomming MMPOG) a second core will make a difference. We use worker threads for some difficult tasks (such as dynamic texture compositing). Works good on a hyperthreaded CPU, should work fantastic on a dual core though we've yet to try it.
There are many things in games that would benefit from pervasive multi-core machines. It is harder to quantify than say a GPU's tri throughput, but it can be as dramatic. When dual or more cores are common-place, there is going to be tons of neat applications for the game developer crowd.
The biggest problem we face are people with older Pentiums with neither. So, make sure everyone upgrades!:)
Do you only have your vet engineers and a bunch of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed kids? I would figure you'd have everything in between too... bring in young talent, get them experience and train them up. The good ones coming into their own as the old ones retire to tinker in their garage.
The rot can be in engineer core too....
My dad was a great tool engineer at Boeing (with it was owned by MacD&D before that). He was brilliant at finding ways to save that companie's butts. But there were engineers there, in other departments, who resented that because it could often make them look bad.
My dad would see problems and find unbelieveable solutions. For example, they used this very expesnive and dangerous process of pumping molten metal under pressure to create custom bushings per screw hole in parts the F15. My dad, in our basement, created a jig to do the same thing with inexpensive and entirely safe hot glue. A simple hot glue gun and a wooden rig.
It took forever to convince them to even try it. He had to get everyone to sign off on the thing, from the materials guys (what the hell good is hot glue?) to the people who would look foolish if it worked. Eventually he managed to get a trial setup. They'd use his system to create a bushing and drill a hole with it and see if it meet the extreme tolerances required.
While doing the experiment, one of the engineers who'd end up looking foolish for "inventing" the molten metal process reached up and nudged the drill as it was making the hole. He tried to be sneaky, but everyone saw it. Never-the-less, the experiment was a success and the whole was perfect, even with the attempt at sabotage.
He ran into that sort of thing all the time. Management was less of a problem than just bad, don't-rock-my-career engineers. Of course in this case, management just shelved the idea anyway and didn't use it. At least not at first.... one day, a few years into retirement, my dad gets a call for boeing asking if he'd ressurect that process. They suddenly needed to be able to do things cheaper, get the winning bid on whatever-the-heck, and his process would be key. My dad, being the kind of guy he was, created a detailed how-to for them and mailed it off never asking for anything in return (despite the millions this meant to their bottom line).
Not sure if they ever ended up using it, but it was just one of many things he inveted there. Some of them had far reaching affects on how they built their aircraft. I wasn't able to follow his adventures in engineer after they moved him into Black World and he couldn't talk about what he did, have visitors or even bring home anything. But I'm sure it was exciting.:)
The thing is... it's not about the momey. I eBayed it off at a loss... I even encouraged people not to bid.:) I don't care about the $300. I care about what might be a silent rot in the Apple core. Though form hearing soe other experiences out there, it may not be so silent.
In thruth, I didn't expect it. Interesting to hear your experience.
I just assumed that a company that molds itself about making computers more friendly to the masses would mold its company to the same philosophy. On the one hand I guess it is disheartening to hear that my incident wasn't just someone having a bad day at his desk at Apple... but might be more systemic of a problem.
My quible was never with the fact I made a mistake, I said that right up front when I emailed them asking what my options are. What got me was "Sorry, you are screwed" type email that came back. Strike that. They didn't even use the word sorry. More just like "You have no opions. Love, The Apple Store Team"
Maybe their computer is "kick-ass" but not in the sense of market share. And, one-buttom-mouse-fetish aside, I'd love if it were bigger. Having a customer service attitude like that isn't going to help them get there. Kind of sad, really.
In this case, it was the online store. It went "up the chain"... I think... one level there. But that person was even more distant than the other and all he/she/it (since they don't have names, apparently, I don't know) is "The representative who answers your previous questions is authorized to speak for Apple." Whatever that heck that means.:)
You are right, I could have known. But if you follow the path through their web as I did, you don't see any of that. I knew I wanted Motion from seeing it demo'd in person (at SIGGRAPH), so I didn't go to the marketing part of the web site on it.
In many ways, I acted more like a typical customer... the kinda Apple tries to appeal too: the nontechnical user. I read the hype pages on the Mac mini (that talk about how they have great graphics power) and then just started filling my shopping cart with the Mac mini, keyboard, mouse and upgrades.
Then it encouraged me to buy some software and so I added iWorks and Motion to the cart. The shopping cart software COULD have seen that there was a potential problem since I was buying a mini and software that does not work on a mini at the same time. A warning would have surficed.
I understand why some companies do not let you return software. My company makes software (though piracy is not much of an issue for us). But fully understand the issues.
The problem is that Apple didn't deal with this in what, I would argue, is a customer-centric fashion. Their correspondence were cold and indifferent. They showed no flexibility, much less concern. Heck, they didn't even try to upsell me... what a perfect opportunity to say.. "Hey, how about upgrading to a G5... that'll do what you want!" I was not going to do that, but at least a well trained Apple Store Team (as they call themselves) should have made that play.
So, yes, I did make a mistake. But not an unreasonable mistake. And not one that should have been undoable. This is the sort of nonsense that really turns people off. And makes them complain loudly about how they were treated.
Given how much I like Apple, admire Apple, I wish this just wasn't how things went down. The cost of the software, frankly, is a non-issue for me. It was the principle of the thing.
I did the same thing... when that mac mini came out, I ran... not walked... to the Apple store to buy it. I got the ugpraded version, plus some software: iWork and Motion.
Oops!
I suppose had I looked at the specs closer I could have known, but Motion doesn't work with a Mac Mini. It won't even install. Somewhat depressing, but the graphics card isn't up to the task. And the installer won't let you even try with pokey response, it just doesn't let you install.
I admire Apple a lot. And to finally buy a Mac was a big step. But the mistake with Motion was compounded by the fact that the Apple Store would not allow me to return the software. The reason, of course, was because I had opened it. Nevermind that I didn't even know it wasn't compatible until the install informed me as such. Their web store sure didn't.
No appealing to reason worked with these guys. They were as cold, unhelpful and indifferent to my situation as the most arrogant companies I've ever dealt with.
Somehow I expected more from Apple. It's been so annoying that I just pusehd the Mini off to the side and haven't booted it up since. Having gotten nowhere with the "Apple Store Team" (as they don't respond to emails with their actual name) I just went and eBay'd the software off at a loss, in a bit of a protest auction. For what it's worth.
I still admire Apple for its cutting edge design talent, and astute strategy to capture the market. I think the mac mini was a dramatic step for them. But their customer service at the Apple Store is, in my opinion, completely out of step with what it takes to make Apple competitive.
And it's sad too... because I was telling everyone who'd listen about my jump to Machood. And later, when they came to ask me how my experience went.... that was a lot of sales lost for those guys because they wouldn't do the right thing. Ultimately this may not make a bit of difference in the scheme of things, but it certainly isn't optimal for them.
I've always found Oracle's licensing to be pretty wrong-headed at every turn. You can sense that they really don't feel they need to compete on price, which is usually the ultimate undoing of an overly arrogant company.
My sense of things, though, is that to move from one database technology to another is a massive undertaking. You fight with these tools so much that you become an expert with them... warts and all... and even if someone else has a better and cheaper mouse-trap, mission-critical stuff just refuses to budge off the old workhorse.
The dual-core problem is just a new flavor of the Oracle licensing problem. It will be interesting to see if they budge.
I did not compare Subversion to CVS... but Subversion was very pokey when we worked with it. Moving to Perforce on the same hardware and topology was very fast. The bigger the project, the more Perforce really shines, IMHO.
My biggest wish is that the integration of these tools with VisualStudio were better. Not sure if Microsoft is going to address this in the next version or not, but it's very klunky. Especially if you want to branch....
I think it might depend on how big of a deal speed is. We used SourceSafe and CVS for awhile, then tried Subversion and found it unreasonably slow. Since it was impacting our ability to produce, we moved to Perforce and haven't looked back. Perforce is, as advertised, very fast!
It's not about checking for an overflow, its about not having one or having some way of dealing with it other than crashing/malfunctioning. An assert() tells the programmer (at least) where things went wrong, but hardly gets planes in the air again.
I don't get this... I own a LCoS HDtv. Its rather beautiful when displaying hidef, with the exception of a noticble banding in dark images... the black levels are not as good as I'd like. I have 55" screen, and it's fairly thin for a projection TV.... and light too.:)
Well I own a 55" Phillips LCOS HDTV. The only quanlity issue I have with it is the black levels and some banding in dark areas. I've noticed the same symptoms on other technologies too. In typical images, the HD scenes are outstanding.
Slashdot Mirror
Telecompute is so.... 90s. I hate to say it. But we've moved past that.
The future is ROWE. Results Oriented Work Environment. In a ROWE only results matter. Not how you get it done, or where you get it do it.
In essence, if you can get your work done from a tropical island (with good wifi), then by all means do it. You are not paid for putting your butt in a seat, but rather for your productivity.
ROWE treats employees as adults who know how to manage their own time. Telecommuting, "flex time" and the like are just ways of rewarding employees with what they should already have... control over their lives.
ROWE came out of a successful experiment at Best Buy (HQ not retail stores). Its been adopted by a lot of big name companies, including Netflix.
To learn more, check out: http://gorowe.com/
I switched my company to ROWE last year after months of due diligence. And we've never looked back.
David
Yeah, so we set out to do something about it. We spent 20 months building Fantasy University on Facebook (now in open beta).
One of the things we did was decide we'd make a game first, and layer on only the minimal trappings of social game mechanics. There was a gnawing feeling all along, coupled with data from those who knew better, that this would be a tough road.
The good news is we did create a game that's got tons of depth, serious game play mechanics and great content that can be entertaining all by itself. But our microtrans and social elements remain rather unsophisticated. At least if you measure them by the so-called psychological tricks that are used. Sure we give some benefits for having your friends play and such, but its not about that.
So is that a good idea? We have a promising start, but it's too early to tell much. But I can see that massive volume is all about playing the meta game with those who come to your app. And I'm not certain that's the sort of business we want to be in....
So we are in a bit of quandary on which way to take it.
** spoiler alert **
I sorta of like the fact you had to cap her out of her missery... but then they really wused out in the ending. It made no sense that your character was still alive ("It's not your time yet") even though he hurtled himself into the sun... and then the chick will just be hanging out in the spirit world waiting for you when you want to bang her. Yeah.....whatever.
Over the past two years, the local Tech schools (I won't name names) have been coming to us looking for instructors for their new "game design" programs. I like to help out, but as I did I found that their approach to this wasn't realistic... and soon I found out why:
Essentially, for the tech schools, this is sort of a scam. I heard straight from one of the directors... Mom and Dad bring billy to a tech school because they don't want his slacking-ass sucking them dry anymore. He looks at the programs offered... oooow communications... that sounds easy... and dull. Then he sees "game design" and BINGO he's excited, enthusiastic... he envisions making Grand Theft Auto XXII or whatever... mom and dad see their son enthusiastic about school for the first time... and the school tells them about how the game business is a multibillion dollar industry... it's a done deal.
But who's teaching these courses? So far, in this area, they have little to no teachers who can do this stuff. No one who's A) an industry vet and B) who would put up with the academic BS, and C) who has a masters degree (most of the best have no degree at all) and D) willing to do it basically for nothing pay wise. There are people who have A, B and D... and would be invaluable in teaching kids exactly what it takes... but with no masters, no dice.
From what I hear, most of the big tech schools simply had this decision to have a game program handed down from on high (at the corporate level)... "You shall offer this program... ENGAGE!" In some areas, this isn't too hard... in others it's darn near impossible due to a lack of game deveopment company representation. They don't seem too concerned (except for the individuals responsible for starting up the program).
A lot of kids are going to waste time in sub-standard programs until this works itself out.
I hate to say this, but I just have to laugh everytime I see something like this. Someone makes a "plague" that runs amok in WoW... wow! Revolutionary! First time that's been done in an MMO!
Um, hardly. That's baby-step stuff. Just like most everything that is considered "new and revolutionary" in MMOs, is flippin old hat to those of us who've been doing online games for a zillion years now (read: zillion = 18+ years). I had a plague run amok in GemStone ][ some 14 odd years ago. And we've sure as heck done a lot more interesting things than that in the years since.
This isn't news. It's just becoming more well known. I don't mind that, I just wish people had more MMO history in their brain pan.
Haha... yeah... someone got their labels mixed up!
Yeah, if that bluring is what it seems.... I imagine it is an attempt to do a type of "frosted glass" effect. That's pretty cool, actually.
Yes, that is our intention. We expec tot have long-runnning quests with staff participation, RP awards and NPC merchants. Now, because of scale, we may have to adjust our approach. But, personally, I want to bring as much of that over to the graphical side as possible. Maybe even more so... we'll see.
Yup, it is a totally new game. We started over. And we spent three years working on nothing but tools and design for the looming battle we intended to wage against medeocrity in MMORPGs. If nothing else, I hope we give the genre a much needed shove forward....
Haha... yes, on a long enough time scale it is a minor setback. And, it's quite funny that you claim I have no evidence supporitng my hypothesis by typing it as a post on Slashdot via. the Internet rather than chisseling it on a tablet. ;)
Don't get me wrong though, I want to win every battle. For every reason you do, I imagine. Just trying to keep things in perspective. Something the "other side" seldom does.
-- David
This is nothing new, of course. Those of us in the Skeptic community have been fighting this battle for years, on small and large scales. Some feel that the these things go in ebbs and flows... that a small gain here for creationist nonsense is not that meaningful in the long run because, ultimately, science always marches on and dogma drops away.
It really depends on if you view the war between religion and scienece in the short or long term. Inevitably, sceience is what leads to what we know as our way of life much more than religion. It is simply that scienece gives us stuff and asks nothing in return (except perhaps funding hidden in the cost of products we buy and to some degree taxes). But religion demands of us every day and its biggest benefit to one personally only happens convienently in the afterlife.
So even though a rabbid creationist has no trouble hopping on a plane to fly to kansas after reading about the debate on the internet to debate why God is the only possible thing that could lead to the complexity of life... he seldom even consideres none of that was possible without science. And that in the time it took to create those things, and many more, out of science religion has given us nothing new to better our lives.
Worst of all, religious explainations have no predictive value. You can't use the dogma to predict what will happen next, or what you will discover next. Only science gives us that ability. So even at the basic level, the two are apples and oranges when it comes to trying to compare them.
But the fundemental ignorance of many people lead them to not even understand what science is. And the dogma they've swallowed turns them against it before they even know what it is.
It's sad, but ultimately religion always has to make room for the advances of science. A bone headed school board will hurt some children in the short run, but ultimately will never prevail.
Well, I can say that in Hero's Journey (our upcomming MMPOG) a second core will make a difference. We use worker threads for some difficult tasks (such as dynamic texture compositing). Works good on a hyperthreaded CPU, should work fantastic on a dual core though we've yet to try it.
:)
There are many things in games that would benefit from pervasive multi-core machines. It is harder to quantify than say a GPU's tri throughput, but it can be as dramatic. When dual or more cores are common-place, there is going to be tons of neat applications for the game developer crowd.
The biggest problem we face are people with older Pentiums with neither. So, make sure everyone upgrades!
Do you only have your vet engineers and a bunch of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed kids? I would figure you'd have everything in between too... bring in young talent, get them experience and train them up. The good ones coming into their own as the old ones retire to tinker in their garage.
:)
The rot can be in engineer core too....
My dad was a great tool engineer at Boeing (with it was owned by MacD&D before that). He was brilliant at finding ways to save that companie's butts. But there were engineers there, in other departments, who resented that because it could often make them look bad.
My dad would see problems and find unbelieveable solutions. For example, they used this very expesnive and dangerous process of pumping molten metal under pressure to create custom bushings per screw hole in parts the F15. My dad, in our basement, created a jig to do the same thing with inexpensive and entirely safe hot glue. A simple hot glue gun and a wooden rig.
It took forever to convince them to even try it. He had to get everyone to sign off on the thing, from the materials guys (what the hell good is hot glue?) to the people who would look foolish if it worked. Eventually he managed to get a trial setup. They'd use his system to create a bushing and drill a hole with it and see if it meet the extreme tolerances required.
While doing the experiment, one of the engineers who'd end up looking foolish for "inventing" the molten metal process reached up and nudged the drill as it was making the hole. He tried to be sneaky, but everyone saw it. Never-the-less, the experiment was a success and the whole was perfect, even with the attempt at sabotage.
He ran into that sort of thing all the time. Management was less of a problem than just bad, don't-rock-my-career engineers. Of course in this case, management just shelved the idea anyway and didn't use it. At least not at first.... one day, a few years into retirement, my dad gets a call for boeing asking if he'd ressurect that process. They suddenly needed to be able to do things cheaper, get the winning bid on whatever-the-heck, and his process would be key. My dad, being the kind of guy he was, created a detailed how-to for them and mailed it off never asking for anything in return (despite the millions this meant to their bottom line).
Not sure if they ever ended up using it, but it was just one of many things he inveted there. Some of them had far reaching affects on how they built their aircraft. I wasn't able to follow his adventures in engineer after they moved him into Black World and he couldn't talk about what he did, have visitors or even bring home anything. But I'm sure it was exciting.
-- David
The thing is... it's not about the momey. I eBayed it off at a loss... I even encouraged people not to bid. :) I don't care about the $300. I care about what might be a silent rot in the Apple core. Though form hearing soe other experiences out there, it may not be so silent.
-- David
In thruth, I didn't expect it. Interesting to hear your experience.
I just assumed that a company that molds itself about making computers more friendly to the masses would mold its company to the same philosophy. On the one hand I guess it is disheartening to hear that my incident wasn't just someone having a bad day at his desk at Apple... but might be more systemic of a problem.
My quible was never with the fact I made a mistake, I said that right up front when I emailed them asking what my options are. What got me was "Sorry, you are screwed" type email that came back. Strike that. They didn't even use the word sorry. More just like "You have no opions. Love, The Apple Store Team"
Maybe their computer is "kick-ass" but not in the sense of market share. And, one-buttom-mouse-fetish aside, I'd love if it were bigger. Having a customer service attitude like that isn't going to help them get there. Kind of sad, really.
In this case, it was the online store. It went "up the chain"... I think... one level there. But that person was even more distant than the other and all he/she/it (since they don't have names, apparently, I don't know) is "The representative who answers your previous questions is authorized to speak for Apple." Whatever that heck that means. :)
You are right, I could have known. But if you follow the path through their web as I did, you don't see any of that. I knew I wanted Motion from seeing it demo'd in person (at SIGGRAPH), so I didn't go to the marketing part of the web site on it.
In many ways, I acted more like a typical customer... the kinda Apple tries to appeal too: the nontechnical user. I read the hype pages on the Mac mini (that talk about how they have great graphics power) and then just started filling my shopping cart with the Mac mini, keyboard, mouse and upgrades.
Then it encouraged me to buy some software and so I added iWorks and Motion to the cart. The shopping cart software COULD have seen that there was a potential problem since I was buying a mini and software that does not work on a mini at the same time. A warning would have surficed.
I understand why some companies do not let you return software. My company makes software (though piracy is not much of an issue for us). But fully understand the issues.
The problem is that Apple didn't deal with this in what, I would argue, is a customer-centric fashion. Their correspondence were cold and indifferent. They showed no flexibility, much less concern. Heck, they didn't even try to upsell me... what a perfect opportunity to say.. "Hey, how about upgrading to a G5... that'll do what you want!" I was not going to do that, but at least a well trained Apple Store Team (as they call themselves) should have made that play.
So, yes, I did make a mistake. But not an unreasonable mistake. And not one that should have been undoable. This is the sort of nonsense that really turns people off. And makes them complain loudly about how they were treated.
Given how much I like Apple, admire Apple, I wish this just wasn't how things went down. The cost of the software, frankly, is a non-issue for me. It was the principle of the thing.
I did the same thing... when that mac mini came out, I ran... not walked... to the Apple store to buy it. I got the ugpraded version, plus some software: iWork and Motion.
Oops!
I suppose had I looked at the specs closer I could have known, but Motion doesn't work with a Mac Mini. It won't even install. Somewhat depressing, but the graphics card isn't up to the task. And the installer won't let you even try with pokey response, it just doesn't let you install.
I admire Apple a lot. And to finally buy a Mac was a big step. But the mistake with Motion was compounded by the fact that the Apple Store would not allow me to return the software. The reason, of course, was because I had opened it. Nevermind that I didn't even know it wasn't compatible until the install informed me as such. Their web store sure didn't.
No appealing to reason worked with these guys. They were as cold, unhelpful and indifferent to my situation as the most arrogant companies I've ever dealt with.
Somehow I expected more from Apple. It's been so annoying that I just pusehd the Mini off to the side and haven't booted it up since. Having gotten nowhere with the "Apple Store Team" (as they don't respond to emails with their actual name) I just went and eBay'd the software off at a loss, in a bit of a protest auction. For what it's worth.
I still admire Apple for its cutting edge design talent, and astute strategy to capture the market. I think the mac mini was a dramatic step for them. But their customer service at the Apple Store is, in my opinion, completely out of step with what it takes to make Apple competitive.
And it's sad too... because I was telling everyone who'd listen about my jump to Machood. And later, when they came to ask me how my experience went.... that was a lot of sales lost for those guys because they wouldn't do the right thing. Ultimately this may not make a bit of difference in the scheme of things, but it certainly isn't optimal for them.
I've always found Oracle's licensing to be pretty wrong-headed at every turn. You can sense that they really don't feel they need to compete on price, which is usually the ultimate undoing of an overly arrogant company.
My sense of things, though, is that to move from one database technology to another is a massive undertaking. You fight with these tools so much that you become an expert with them... warts and all... and even if someone else has a better and cheaper mouse-trap, mission-critical stuff just refuses to budge off the old workhorse.
The dual-core problem is just a new flavor of the Oracle licensing problem. It will be interesting to see if they budge.
I did not compare Subversion to CVS... but Subversion was very pokey when we worked with it. Moving to Perforce on the same hardware and topology was very fast. The bigger the project, the more Perforce really shines, IMHO.
My biggest wish is that the integration of these tools with VisualStudio were better. Not sure if Microsoft is going to address this in the next version or not, but it's very klunky. Especially if you want to branch....
-- David
I think it might depend on how big of a deal speed is. We used SourceSafe and CVS for awhile, then tried Subversion and found it unreasonably slow. Since it was impacting our ability to produce, we moved to Perforce and haven't looked back. Perforce is, as advertised, very fast!
I have the Phillips Cineos 55PL9774. The banding is in the dark scenes.
-- David
It's not about checking for an overflow, its about not having one or having some way of dealing with it other than crashing/malfunctioning. An assert() tells the programmer (at least) where things went wrong, but hardly gets planes in the air again.
-- David
I don't get this... I own a LCoS HDtv. Its rather beautiful when displaying hidef, with the exception of a noticble banding in dark images... the black levels are not as good as I'd like. I have 55" screen, and it's fairly thin for a projection TV.... and light too. :)
-- David
Well I own a 55" Phillips LCOS HDTV. The only quanlity issue I have with it is the black levels and some banding in dark areas. I've noticed the same symptoms on other technologies too. In typical images, the HD scenes are outstanding.
-- David