Code names are fine - there's absolutely no problem with using them, as long as they're not used as the official terminology. I don't want to have to try to figure out if "Feisty Fawn" is a more recent distribution than "Oscar Ox" - though I believe since a couple releases ago, each new version is just based on the next letter of the alphabet, which goes some way to alleviating the problem - but unless you know that, there's a lot of WTF.
I just want a version number so I can look at it and go "yes, that's a bigger number than I'm aware of previously, so it must be a new version". I also don't want to have to remember two things that map to the same thing. Just describe it with a version number, which is long standing convention in software, or stick to the stupid word naming system - pick one!
I wonder (on average) what is more productive though - a happy employee with freedom to do non-work-related tasks while utilising work infrastructure and time, or a not-happy employee that comes in and works at 80% because he's not particuarly happy.
Obviously this is massively subjective depending on the role and the person, so I wonder if in some cases companies have actually done studies on this to see what happens.
I worked at a company that did something similar, though for different reasons. Their solution was to have a separate computer (or computers, can't remember how many) that was completely separated off the corporate network, plugged into its own Internet link.
People could get up and use this at any time to do pretty much whatever they want. It was reimaged regularly to stop viruses, etc, from being a problem just in case some newb downloading something stupid.
From the company's point of view, this had a few advantages:
- employees could get up and check their mail and do other internet stuff whenever they wanted without compromising the office network - employees would peer review other employees (if not overtly, then at least the pressure was there that when you were sitting at this other PC doing personal stuff, you weren't working and everyone knew it)
From copyright.org.au comes this document (PDF, sorry) which mentions (in the context of the Australian Copyright Act, I assume):
There is a new exception allowing fair dealing for parody or satire.
There is a whole section titled "Fair dealing for parody or satire" with more information that is worth a read (if you're Australian, anyway). It's not a clear-cut answer, but there's certainly a case for parody being allowable under Australian copyright law.
I have a mate that works for a rail company. He's a certified professional engineer by training, but his job is essentially programming. He told me the other day that all the programmers they hire have to be engineers - its a requirement as they're working on software that runs trains.
Unfortunately a lot of the engineers that come through, while they're certified, are just lousy programmers. They don't get enough exposure (in the courses here, anyway) to solid programming techniques and practices to make them really decent hires out of uni. They end up needing 12-24 months of training before they're useful (except in special circumstances), after which time they're usually off looking for a higher paying job.
So, I agree with you. It's too easy to get a CS degree and a programming job. I'm a CS graduate and the vast majority of my programming knowledge didn't come from uni, that's for sure. Fortunately I'm not a programmer first and foremost by trade (though I do dabble) so I don't feel guilty about my lousy code:)
Seriously, console developers need to look at existing markets (ie, PC) so they stop making the same old tired mistakes in the online space. Shit, most PC developers need to do it to.
Trying to protect other games against asshats is something you need to seriously factor in in any online game. There's just too many people out there with too much spare time and not enough respect for others.
All without doing anything squinky: just identify which torrents are hot, add one of their own. It's what BitTorrent does, after all.
The statistical probability, despite what the story might have you believe, is that the hot torrents aren't distributing data that can legally be distributed. ISPs would have to seed torrents that are probably distributing copyrighted data.
There's the other fact that ISPs would have to snoop their customer's connections to find out what they're downloading. I don't know if I'd like that as a user.
BTW, there is no need to travel to the outback to see kangaroos. All of these incidents have occurred over the last 20 or so years in Canberra.
Concur - I was in a cab one night in suburban Brisbane (maybe 10km out of the CBD, lots of parkland near by but it's hardly the outback or bush) and we hit a kangaroo that just jumped straight out in front of us - no way it could have been avoided. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't be there myself!
Heh that's interesting - I'm in Queensland and I've heard news reports from various places about how this is the coolest summer we've had in like 20 years.
This is definitely the mildest summer I can remember. Normally by this point in the year we're in the same boat as it sounds like you are - still 30 degrees and 99% humidity in the middle of the night. But it's actually still pretty cool at night.
Left and right are artificial political assignations used to oversimplify politics so it can be superficially reported to people with below average IQs.
Excellent summary. I've often wondered how best to try to explain that to people and that looks like a very efficient way.
I, personally, don't want spellchecking in my OS, unless its a subsystem/service that can be disabled. I almost never spellcheck (not much of what I write is important enough to justify it) and I don't want to incur any operating system overhead. I just want it to make sure my applications don't crash!
.... probably 80%-90% of the websites I visit REQUIRE me to enable scripting before I can use things like navigation elements, which are a little crucial. Some of the more lame ones (like http://www.channelgo.com.au/) actually successfully load all the content, then it detects I don't have Javascript, and redirects me to a page telling me I need to reenable Javascript!
I like the extra feeling of security I get using NoScript, but I'm pretty close to ditching it because the pain of having to enable and reload every website I visit just to do something like be able to click on an 'about' or 'FAQ' link is too much.
Not long after, independent of myspace, I managed to find a cool hangout in meatspace where I started to have actual social interaction, and myspace suddenly seems a bit less lame 'cause I can add these people online and be able to contact them if I feel like it without feeling like I'm imposing on their time with a phone call.
I've been doing that for years with email and I don't have get smashed in the face with the vast, unaccountable horror that is most myspace pages:)
Compare that to the Wii. It's a remote control that points. Everyone can play wii bowling. Everyone can navigate the metagame without wondering if they should use the d-pad or the left or right analog sticks. It's intuitive. You don't have to think as much about it. You can just get on with the business of playing games.
I can't agree more. I just came back from Christmas day with the family where after seeing me, my brother and my sister playing Wii, everyone from my 4 year old cousin to my 80 year old grandfather wanted a go. They were able to pick it up and Just Play It.
I can't wait to see what happens in the next year or so with games once developers build on the stuff that it can offer.
10 years ago, in the wake of Window's 95, everyone wanted someone to make PC gaming a more user friendly experience that didn't require endless patches and work to play games
Windows 95 onwards made life WAY easier to play games. Remember dicking around with autoexec.bat and config.sys trying to get enough free memory to load games back in the day?!? I sure do.
Windows made my life much easier in terms of game playing. Patching games is a whole different problem and comes down to how developers handle patches. Some of them have a clue and get it right most of the time, but some of them are STILL utterly clueless. Some of them expect you to download a 500mb patch for a minor version update. Some of them expect you to pick between 8 different updates from various previous versions for a 2mb patch. Augh!
...or, how to get investors to give you a dumptruck full of money:
1) Show them the statistics that explain how video games are now bigger than the movie industry. 2) Show them Blizzard press releases announcing the number of million subscribers (we'll call this x. 3) Explain how each of those people not only shelled out for the game, but pays per $y month for playing. 4) Create a PowerPoint presentation which shows xxy (ensure your projector screen has enough room for all the zeros that come after the $ sign. 5) Let investors know where the dump truck is parked.
In all seriousness - I can't believe Fallout has the brand awareness that the Warcraft brand does. Whoever managed to scrounge together $75m should get some sort of medal. These guys are going to have to be in it for the long haul, but I wonder how much of that cash is going to be allocated towards the marketing budget to try to get WoW players to switch teams.
Not only that, they've got a three year development window to compete with. Who knows what other massive mass-market brands are going to get their MMOs out the door in that time, further chewing away at the potential player base (I'm waiting for the Harry Potter MMO to come out and rule the world - hell, if they make it kid safe and put in enough decent content...).
If you're doing science fiction, you have to really think it out and create an incredibly rich environment that is compelling in its own right, and worth exploring and going back to week after week. That's what Joss Whedon did with Firefly.
Really? I thought he just took cowboys and put them in space.
I'd like to see some sort of standard for identifying files as able to be redistributed.
I maintain a couple mirror sites and before I mirror anything, I read the Terms and Conditions, EULAs, whatever, to make sure that redistribution is implied to the point where I feel comfortable mirroring it, or expressly given.
While this wouldn't stop redistribution of copyrighted content, it'd make the lives of people that only want to legimately redistribute content much easier.
I don't know how such a system would work - it'd need to be embedded in all file types and work on all platforms. The only way I can think of that wouldn't involve serious changes would be standard filename naming conventions, but that is so low tech and lame.
I'm sure they'd stop doing it if the Slashdot audience stopped foaming at the mouth for every Dvorak article, but as long as it draws ranting anti-Dvorak pundits it'll continue to contribute nicely to their ad revenue.
I personally read pretty much every Dvorak-related post, not because I care about what he has to say, but I find it interesting to see the same comments made every single time about "omgz, why do slashdot keep featuring his articles?" and I enjoy reading all the flamebait comments for a bit of a laugh.
Until Slashdot readers start ignoring these posts entirely it's totally in Slashdot's interests to keep adding them to the front page to generate discussion.
There's a lot of music out there made by artists that are as-yet unsigned or don't want to be signed. The Internet is the best avenue for these people to make money without getting sewn up by a label deal. Check them all out - there's a lot of great stuff out there. Just because it's not from Sony or Universal doesn't mean it's not worth listening to.
(Here in Australia we have something going called TripleJ Unearthed, which is a competition which gets new artists to the attention of everyone (run by TripleJ, the greatest radio station in all the world). Support the artists directly and suddenly they don't need a record label!)
Slashdot Mirror
Code names are fine - there's absolutely no problem with using them, as long as they're not used as the official terminology. I don't want to have to try to figure out if "Feisty Fawn" is a more recent distribution than "Oscar Ox" - though I believe since a couple releases ago, each new version is just based on the next letter of the alphabet, which goes some way to alleviating the problem - but unless you know that, there's a lot of WTF.
I just want a version number so I can look at it and go "yes, that's a bigger number than I'm aware of previously, so it must be a new version". I also don't want to have to remember two things that map to the same thing. Just describe it with a version number, which is long standing convention in software, or stick to the stupid word naming system - pick one!
What'd be cool is if the movie industry would just bite the bullet and actually try releasing a new release DVD for like $5. Just to see what happens.
I wonder (on average) what is more productive though - a happy employee with freedom to do non-work-related tasks while utilising work infrastructure and time, or a not-happy employee that comes in and works at 80% because he's not particuarly happy.
Obviously this is massively subjective depending on the role and the person, so I wonder if in some cases companies have actually done studies on this to see what happens.
I worked at a company that did something similar, though for different reasons. Their solution was to have a separate computer (or computers, can't remember how many) that was completely separated off the corporate network, plugged into its own Internet link.
People could get up and use this at any time to do pretty much whatever they want. It was reimaged regularly to stop viruses, etc, from being a problem just in case some newb downloading something stupid.
From the company's point of view, this had a few advantages:
- employees could get up and check their mail and do other internet stuff whenever they wanted without compromising the office network
- employees would peer review other employees (if not overtly, then at least the pressure was there that when you were sitting at this other PC doing personal stuff, you weren't working and everyone knew it)
I have a mate that works for a rail company. He's a certified professional engineer by training, but his job is essentially programming. He told me the other day that all the programmers they hire have to be engineers - its a requirement as they're working on software that runs trains.
:)
Unfortunately a lot of the engineers that come through, while they're certified, are just lousy programmers. They don't get enough exposure (in the courses here, anyway) to solid programming techniques and practices to make them really decent hires out of uni. They end up needing 12-24 months of training before they're useful (except in special circumstances), after which time they're usually off looking for a higher paying job.
So, I agree with you. It's too easy to get a CS degree and a programming job. I'm a CS graduate and the vast majority of my programming knowledge didn't come from uni, that's for sure. Fortunately I'm not a programmer first and foremost by trade (though I do dabble) so I don't feel guilty about my lousy code
... and everyone else in the world who doesn't read the Internet will know that there's now a way to back up their HD/BluRay discs.
Seriously, console developers need to look at existing markets (ie, PC) so they stop making the same old tired mistakes in the online space. Shit, most PC developers need to do it to.
Trying to protect other games against asshats is something you need to seriously factor in in any online game. There's just too many people out there with too much spare time and not enough respect for others.
There's the other fact that ISPs would have to snoop their customer's connections to find out what they're downloading. I don't know if I'd like that as a user.
Heh, indeed. The other thing to note is that hell - maybe it will live up to the expectations.
Heh that's interesting - I'm in Queensland and I've heard news reports from various places about how this is the coolest summer we've had in like 20 years.
This is definitely the mildest summer I can remember. Normally by this point in the year we're in the same boat as it sounds like you are - still 30 degrees and 99% humidity in the middle of the night. But it's actually still pretty cool at night.
I, personally, don't want spellchecking in my OS, unless its a subsystem/service that can be disabled. I almost never spellcheck (not much of what I write is important enough to justify it) and I don't want to incur any operating system overhead. I just want it to make sure my applications don't crash!
.... probably 80%-90% of the websites I visit REQUIRE me to enable scripting before I can use things like navigation elements, which are a little crucial. Some of the more lame ones (like http://www.channelgo.com.au/) actually successfully load all the content, then it detects I don't have Javascript, and redirects me to a page telling me I need to reenable Javascript!
I like the extra feeling of security I get using NoScript, but I'm pretty close to ditching it because the pain of having to enable and reload every website I visit just to do something like be able to click on an 'about' or 'FAQ' link is too much.
I can't wait to see what happens in the next year or so with games once developers build on the stuff that it can offer.
See: www.google.com
Searching for +mp3 intitle:index.of +[insert your favourite artist here] would be enough to keep these jerks busy for a while.
Windows made my life much easier in terms of game playing. Patching games is a whole different problem and comes down to how developers handle patches. Some of them have a clue and get it right most of the time, but some of them are STILL utterly clueless. Some of them expect you to download a 500mb patch for a minor version update. Some of them expect you to pick between 8 different updates from various previous versions for a 2mb patch. Augh!
...or, how to get investors to give you a dumptruck full of money:
1) Show them the statistics that explain how video games are now bigger than the movie industry.
2) Show them Blizzard press releases announcing the number of million subscribers (we'll call this x.
3) Explain how each of those people not only shelled out for the game, but pays per $y month for playing.
4) Create a PowerPoint presentation which shows xxy (ensure your projector screen has enough room for all the zeros that come after the $ sign.
5) Let investors know where the dump truck is parked.
In all seriousness - I can't believe Fallout has the brand awareness that the Warcraft brand does. Whoever managed to scrounge together $75m should get some sort of medal. These guys are going to have to be in it for the long haul, but I wonder how much of that cash is going to be allocated towards the marketing budget to try to get WoW players to switch teams.
Not only that, they've got a three year development window to compete with. Who knows what other massive mass-market brands are going to get their MMOs out the door in that time, further chewing away at the potential player base (I'm waiting for the Harry Potter MMO to come out and rule the world - hell, if they make it kid safe and put in enough decent content...).
I'd like to see some sort of standard for identifying files as able to be redistributed.
I maintain a couple mirror sites and before I mirror anything, I read the Terms and Conditions, EULAs, whatever, to make sure that redistribution is implied to the point where I feel comfortable mirroring it, or expressly given.
While this wouldn't stop redistribution of copyrighted content, it'd make the lives of people that only want to legimately redistribute content much easier.
I don't know how such a system would work - it'd need to be embedded in all file types and work on all platforms. The only way I can think of that wouldn't involve serious changes would be standard filename naming conventions, but that is so low tech and lame.
I'm sure they'd stop doing it if the Slashdot audience stopped foaming at the mouth for every Dvorak article, but as long as it draws ranting anti-Dvorak pundits it'll continue to contribute nicely to their ad revenue.
I personally read pretty much every Dvorak-related post, not because I care about what he has to say, but I find it interesting to see the same comments made every single time about "omgz, why do slashdot keep featuring his articles?" and I enjoy reading all the flamebait comments for a bit of a laugh.
Until Slashdot readers start ignoring these posts entirely it's totally in Slashdot's interests to keep adding them to the front page to generate discussion.
Good list - I would also add the following:
Support independent music!
There's a lot of music out there made by artists that are as-yet unsigned or don't want to be signed. The Internet is the best avenue for these people to make money without getting sewn up by a label deal. Check them all out - there's a lot of great stuff out there. Just because it's not from Sony or Universal doesn't mean it's not worth listening to.
(Here in Australia we have something going called TripleJ Unearthed, which is a competition which gets new artists to the attention of everyone (run by TripleJ, the greatest radio station in all the world). Support the artists directly and suddenly they don't need a record label!)