IANAL, but posting the copyright note to YouTube may be covered by the legal doctrine of "Fair Use". Fair Use allows some degree of copying for the purpose of criticism or comment.
MS are not a search company, MS dont want to be a search company but as is the way when you are a perceived are the dominant IT player you must be seen to 'compete' with all the 'upstarts' to keep the share holders happy, so your business heads gob off about how stupid the opposition business heads are.
Even for the dominant player, it does not make sense to try and compete with everyone. And many large corporations in other areas don't (do you see Daimler-Chrysler making extremely cheap cars? or Boeing making little sports planes?). I think this is a case of Microsoft hubris rather than necessity.
While IANAL, I know that they are in Germany (which has a loser pays system too). There is an ordinance that determines how much a lawyer can bill you, depending on amount of money at stake, level of jurisdiction etc. And even if you pay him more under the table, the amount you get awarded from the court after winning might not exceed the official numbers.
There are a few booby traps in the system, but it still makes things a lot more calculable than a system where you might have to pay the whole bill for the opposition's $10.000/hour lawyer.
You are right if you say the typical "techno-thriller" is not inspiring in the sense that it creates an imagination of different worlds. As I said, another genre;-)
So much can be grounded in solid science, but so much of a good story borders on the fantastic or the exceptional rather than solid science. Good SF depends as much on good storytelling and good imagination as facts. Usually SF is more about society with a technology rather than the technology itself. If you don't want anything that is beyond factually proven things, I think you're not going to have something that actually is an entertaining or an imagination triggering read.
I think it puts you into another genre;-) Authors like Tom Clancy or Dale Brown write warfare/adventure stories that use today's technology or modest extrapolations. Those are typically called "techno-thrillers" and can be quite entertaining, but I would not call them Science Fiction. BTW, there are huge differences in quality. If you want to check out the techno-thriller genre, try the earlier stuff of Tom Clancy. Up to "Debt Of Honor", after that he drifted off into political ramblings rather than telling gripping adventure stories.
That means, everything up to and including "Stranger In A Strange Land". The few later Heinlein books I tried to read invariable bored me, because the suspense was gone. Somehow things were too easy for the heroes...
There are a lot of niche applications or in-house development jobs that are not covered by standard applications. Things like writing control software for machines that are typically done by a small team of developers at the hardware manufacturer.
If jobs for creating office suites disappear, that will only affect a small part of the field.
Fast internet access for business customers is still somewhat expensive. Connecting to your own server in-house with a fast LAN will be cheaper in many cases.
In theory, my current company has design process (much reworked over the last year). It is followed in a rather perfunctory way so far, but I see some improvements creeping in. Also, the people writing the "design inputs" are gaining in experience and might eventually belong to the very few people who can write decent specs. There are other reasons to maybe switch jobs, but I will not do it over the lack of design process as it seems to get better:-)
In my experience, very few users are capable of creating a high-quality spec out of thin air. But when they get to play with a prototype, they will usually find out what they really wanted but are missing in the prototype;-)
Be prepared to go through a few iterations, AND you might have to say "no" at some point because once the prototype - feedback - prototype cycle is started, requests for new features will keep pouring in.
If the above fails (some users will say they dislike the program but cannot tell you what they would like instead), your project is probably doomed. I've seen that happen before.
That said, I think many tech companies have open positions and describe having difficulty filling them. Does the entire sector, as a whole, not pay enough? Are there people out there that are not working for anyone, rather than work for what they deem to be too little? Said another way, if you see that across the board, tech companies have open heads, it's hard to suggest that it is purely a Microsoft problem related to salary or other undesirability. Doesn't Google have difficulty hiring people? Apple?
Another point is: Are the requirements for the open positions reasonable?
While I don't know the situation at Microsoft, I often see job offers that come with an impressive list of required experience. As in, 5 years in the field plus knowledge of two or three very specific tools. If you insist that your applicants fulfill all this requirements, the pool of suitable employees becomes pretty small. Don't be surprised if the few that are eligible think "great, supply is low, I can demand extraordinary wages".
I think this can work with an extended open beta phase.
The typical open source project can be downloaded and tried out for free, games developers that expect their customers to do their testing for them should do the same. And you still have to release something playable, otherwise people will get frustrated enough to quit even if it is free.
In practice, some development shops do this. I got into the Auto Assault beta, played the game for a few months and helped to find the bugs. While I did finally NOT buy the game as the gameplay was too shallow for my taste, I think it was reasonably mature on the technical side when released. Well done, NetDevil. Other companies think they can get away with charging for a beta product, and the makers of Vanguard seem to fall in this category. I don't have much symphaty for that.
You are definitely right about the 'really nice' rocks, as those are usually in low security areas where you can be attacked by player pirates - the most dangerous species in game;-)
In manufacturing, I disagree. You may be able to find a few items where supply is short, but most of the time you'll need Production Efficiency at a high level. Preferably level 5 plus a BPO researched for material efficiency. I guess if you specialize for that, you can do it after one month or so, at the expense of having not many other skills. My own char is going to hit that level these days, but that is 3 months into the game because I did not specialize as a manufacturer. In fact, I would have put it off a bit longer if the corp did not need a second producer (the first one is not online much these days).
CONCORD merely enforces a safe area for newbies, which is IMHO necessary for new players to enjoy the game. But even so, I would be in favor of making them a bit less invincible. Make high sec raidable but at great difficulty so it does not happen all the time. Player alliances, however, do try to take over large areas of 0.0 space and deny it to others. That has a much greater impact on new players, and I can see how starting on a new shard might be attractive.
Put the (first part of the) monomyth into an introduction movie. Make it skippable.
Seriously, games had cinematics for years now. Why not use them for that purpose? So you have 10 or 15 minutes of introduction video. That little film shows how the hero lives a peaceful life as a farmer, except for the weekly militia training with his buddies. Then bandits raze the village......and the game begins. Our hero, mistakenly left for dead by the villains, comes to and starts his quest for revenge. Or something like this.
GP did not tell us how the company fared after he left, but I think it is possible that the turnover got high enough to destroy the productivity of the team. In that case, the company might be bankrupt by now...
As I understand it, Microsoft was already successful in getting ECMA to accept their XML format as an ECMA standard. Now they want ISO/IEC JTC1 to accept their OpenXML as an ISO standard too, which IBM is opposing. Read the open letter linked to in TFA, for all its marketing speak it will give you more insight into the facts. The open letter does, however, omit one important detail: ISO has a bit of prejudice against releasing multiple standards for the same purpose, because that tends to defeat the purpose of a standard. As ODF was an ISO standard first, this does of course work against Microsoft's OpenXML. Now Microsoft tries to malign this as an attempt to "take away choice".
ATI has not released its upcoming DX10 graphics card yet, so the only available DX10 card is the Nvidia 8800 with lousy drivers. Vista drivers for older (DX9) cards also suck, both for Nvidia and ATI. But for DX9 you can stay with XP anyway;-)
In this case, people actually ordered the goods but Amazon made an obvious pricing error. AFAIK (IANAL) they can revoke the sales contract under German law, but NOT simply charge extra money. I don't know who would have to pay for shipping the goods back. In the end, it might still be wiser to let people keep the free shipment.
Now to the other case you mentioned, a shipment that was never ordered. The recipient has to store this one for a "reasonable time" (a few weeks?) but the sender is responsible for picking it up. If no pickup occurs, the recipient can just keep it.
Bad: Money is more worthless in this game than any other MMORPG. Somehow no newer MMORPGS seem to care to make an economy. If you get the best lewt in the game, your character will only be about 5-10% better than a storebought character even though you have lots of flashy stats. Attributes mean about nothing. I won't even post an example of this. Lets just say your stat sheet is a total joke.
If "best lewt" defines the game, the economy will be fucked anyway. For a decent MMORPG economy, make player-crafted stuff the best (or at least necessary because there is not enough loot, see below). Add serious item destruction in lost fights so the crafters don't run out of work. Open PVP helps with that;-) Have some consumables (ammo).
While GP may or may not really be a developer for ATI/NVIDIA, managers in general are known for sugarcoating problems rather than being honest. Thus I would not expect Dwight Diercks to tell us the full truth.
Avira AntiVir complains about one of our old DOS tools. Not a serious problem, as we don't release this particular executable, but annoying. Avira AntiVir also complains about some other files I'm pretty sure are harmless... maybe I need another scanner:-(
Interesting...and I could see the "cheapest" argument cropping up in Germany too. The funny part would start when some students refuse to waste their time watching ads and sue against the resulting expulsion/removing of "computer privileges".
I guess many managers think that way, but it is a bit shortsighted. You forgot the number of people D who will avoid Dell in the future, multiplied with the number E of Dell laptops per user they would otherwise have bought and the lost profit per laptop F.
So X is really A times B times C plus D times E times F.
Slashdot Mirror
IANAL, but posting the copyright note to YouTube may be covered by the legal doctrine of "Fair Use". Fair Use allows some degree of copying for the purpose of criticism or comment.
Even for the dominant player, it does not make sense to try and compete with everyone. And many large corporations in other areas don't (do you see Daimler-Chrysler making extremely cheap cars? or Boeing making little sports planes?). I think this is a case of Microsoft hubris rather than necessity.
While IANAL, I know that they are in Germany (which has a loser pays system too). There is an ordinance that determines how much a lawyer can bill you, depending on amount of money at stake, level of jurisdiction etc. And even if you pay him more under the table, the amount you get awarded from the court after winning might not exceed the official numbers.
There are a few booby traps in the system, but it still makes things a lot more calculable than a system where you might have to pay the whole bill for the opposition's $10.000/hour lawyer.
You are right if you say the typical "techno-thriller" is not inspiring in the sense that it creates an imagination of different worlds. As I said, another genre ;-)
I think it puts you into another genre
Authors like Tom Clancy or Dale Brown write warfare/adventure stories that use today's technology or modest extrapolations. Those are typically called "techno-thrillers" and can be quite entertaining, but I would not call them Science Fiction.
BTW, there are huge differences in quality. If you want to check out the techno-thriller genre, try the earlier stuff of Tom Clancy. Up to "Debt Of Honor", after that he drifted off into political ramblings rather than telling gripping adventure stories.
That means, everything up to and including "Stranger In A Strange Land". The few later Heinlein books I tried to read invariable bored me, because the suspense was gone. Somehow things were too easy for the heroes...
There are a lot of niche applications or in-house development jobs that are not covered by standard applications. Things like writing control software for machines that are typically done by a small team of developers at the hardware manufacturer.
If jobs for creating office suites disappear, that will only affect a small part of the field.
Fast internet access for business customers is still somewhat expensive. Connecting to your own server in-house with a fast LAN will be cheaper in many cases.
In theory, my current company has design process (much reworked over the last year). It is followed in a rather perfunctory way so far, but I see some improvements creeping in. Also, the people writing the "design inputs" are gaining in experience and might eventually belong to the very few people who can write decent specs. :-)
There are other reasons to maybe switch jobs, but I will not do it over the lack of design process as it seems to get better
In my experience, very few users are capable of creating a high-quality spec out of thin air. But when they get to play with a prototype, they will usually find out what they really wanted but are missing in the prototype ;-)
Be prepared to go through a few iterations, AND you might have to say "no" at some point because once the prototype - feedback - prototype cycle is started, requests for new features will keep pouring in.
If the above fails (some users will say they dislike the program but cannot tell you what they would like instead), your project is probably doomed. I've seen that happen before.
Another point is: Are the requirements for the open positions reasonable?
While I don't know the situation at Microsoft, I often see job offers that come with an impressive list of required experience. As in, 5 years in the field plus knowledge of two or three very specific tools.
If you insist that your applicants fulfill all this requirements, the pool of suitable employees becomes pretty small. Don't be surprised if the few that are eligible think "great, supply is low, I can demand extraordinary wages".
I think this can work with an extended open beta phase.
The typical open source project can be downloaded and tried out for free, games developers that expect their customers to do their testing for them should do the same. And you still have to release something playable, otherwise people will get frustrated enough to quit even if it is free.
In practice, some development shops do this. I got into the Auto Assault beta, played the game for a few months and helped to find the bugs. While I did finally NOT buy the game as the gameplay was too shallow for my taste, I think it was reasonably mature on the technical side when released. Well done, NetDevil.
Other companies think they can get away with charging for a beta product, and the makers of Vanguard seem to fall in this category. I don't have much symphaty for that.
You are definitely right about the 'really nice' rocks, as those are usually in low security areas where you can be attacked by player pirates - the most dangerous species in game ;-)
In manufacturing, I disagree. You may be able to find a few items where supply is short, but most of the time you'll need Production Efficiency at a high level. Preferably level 5 plus a BPO researched for material efficiency. I guess if you specialize for that, you can do it after one month or so, at the expense of having not many other skills.
My own char is going to hit that level these days, but that is 3 months into the game because I did not specialize as a manufacturer. In fact, I would have put it off a bit longer if the corp did not need a second producer (the first one is not online much these days).
CONCORD merely enforces a safe area for newbies, which is IMHO necessary for new players to enjoy the game. But even so, I would be in favor of making them a bit less invincible. Make high sec raidable but at great difficulty so it does not happen all the time.
Player alliances, however, do try to take over large areas of 0.0 space and deny it to others. That has a much greater impact on new players, and I can see how starting on a new shard might be attractive.
Put the (first part of the) monomyth into an introduction movie. Make it skippable.
...and the game begins. Our hero, mistakenly left for dead by the villains, comes to and starts his quest for revenge. Or something like this.
Seriously, games had cinematics for years now. Why not use them for that purpose? So you have 10 or 15 minutes of introduction video. That little film shows how the hero lives a peaceful life as a farmer, except for the weekly militia training with his buddies. Then bandits raze the village...
GP did not tell us how the company fared after he left, but I think it is possible that the turnover got high enough to destroy the productivity of the team. In that case, the company might be bankrupt by now...
As I understand it, Microsoft was already successful in getting ECMA to accept their XML format as an ECMA standard. Now they want ISO/IEC JTC1 to accept their OpenXML as an ISO standard too, which IBM is opposing.
Read the open letter linked to in TFA, for all its marketing speak it will give you more insight into the facts. The open letter does, however, omit one important detail:
ISO has a bit of prejudice against releasing multiple standards for the same purpose, because that tends to defeat the purpose of a standard. As ODF was an ISO standard first, this does of course work against Microsoft's OpenXML. Now Microsoft tries to malign this as an attempt to "take away choice".
ATI has not released its upcoming DX10 graphics card yet, so the only available DX10 card is the Nvidia 8800 with lousy drivers. ;-)
Vista drivers for older (DX9) cards also suck, both for Nvidia and ATI. But for DX9 you can stay with XP anyway
In this case, people actually ordered the goods but Amazon made an obvious pricing error. AFAIK (IANAL) they can revoke the sales contract under German law, but NOT simply charge extra money. I don't know who would have to pay for shipping the goods back. In the end, it might still be wiser to let people keep the free shipment.
Now to the other case you mentioned, a shipment that was never ordered. The recipient has to store this one for a "reasonable time" (a few weeks?) but the sender is responsible for picking it up. If no pickup occurs, the recipient can just keep it.
If "best lewt" defines the game, the economy will be fucked anyway.
For a decent MMORPG economy, make player-crafted stuff the best (or at least necessary because there is not enough loot, see below).
Add serious item destruction in lost fights so the crafters don't run out of work. Open PVP helps with that
Have some consumables (ammo).
While GP may or may not really be a developer for ATI/NVIDIA, managers in general are known for sugarcoating problems rather than being honest. Thus I would not expect Dwight Diercks to tell us the full truth.
Avira AntiVir complains about one of our old DOS tools. Not a serious problem, as we don't release this particular executable, but annoying. :-(
Avira AntiVir also complains about some other files I'm pretty sure are harmless... maybe I need another scanner
1) True, I don't recognize the original that was paraphrased. ;-)
2) If E and F are extremely small Dell is fucked anyway
Interesting...and I could see the "cheapest" argument cropping up in Germany too.
The funny part would start when some students refuse to waste their time watching ads and sue against the resulting expulsion/removing of "computer privileges".
I guess many managers think that way, but it is a bit shortsighted. You forgot the number of people D who will avoid Dell in the future, multiplied with the number E of Dell laptops per user they would otherwise have bought and the lost profit per laptop F.
So X is really A times B times C plus D times E times F.