The question is how much of the 40GB drive will be consumed by "overlay graphical advertising" while you use it. I'm sure my aim will be improved in SOCOM once there are flashing banner ads cycling in the bottom right.
I get paid by the hour. Never work fixed bid, never work for a salary. I do my work in very small chunks (never more than about 20 hours "ahead of the curve"). I believe strongly in delivering a product quickly, and at an affordable price. The client then can see what I have done, and decide to proceed further, use what has been done or cut bait with minimal time and financial commitment.
As long as you design with the long view in mind, very often a smaller implementation will deliver value immediately. For example, a small office that believed that one of the employees was dipping into the till asks for a "write once" invoicing system. For only 11 hours of work, they have a system that allows them to build invoices and know that what they get at the end of the day isn't a "modified" version, with a lower total. With a small investment they close a financial hole.
In the long run I get called back to add more features, because they can see further value in automating more functions. They know that I can perform the task at hand, and they know it will be reasonably priced. When they ask for more accounting functionality, I can build it easily as the tables I used were already designed with an eye for integration with the accounting package they use (that's the designing for the long view part).
Sounds familiar... every time I drop off the end of a contract I think "hey, I just keep the contracts I have at a simmer for a few weeks and take a break". Never happens. I'm at one of the "simmering" contract sites and we realize how many things we have put off for them in the past.
I really could use the vacation, but usually it's my fault for seeing opportunity to improve systems and being unable to resist it.
I have to concur here. A well designed GUI for data entry is no different from a console. One of the problems I find in GUI's is that they want to use tab to move fields and enter to submit. Old fashion data entry terminals used enter to move fields and "send" or some other custom key to actually commit the form. Seems like a simple thing, but I have found that by mapping some custom key handlers for using tab/space/enter where appropriate (and auto advancing on fixed width fields) you can run just as fast. Faster if you include well hotkeyed drop-down combo boxes.
Wow... I was basing my comment on classic Tetris addictiveness. I didn't realize you could screw it up that much. It is, after all, the most common "I wanna be a game programmer, so play me slight variation on tetris!" program I ever saw.
Tetris worlds online may be the killer app that online console gaming needs. Online FPS and racing are fine, but Tetris is the "common gamers gaming crack".
I would love to see how many parents suddenly are willing to play the kids system online for the first time with this one. If this works, console online gaming could become a normal everyday thing.
I find it a real shame that old school turn based strategy gamers are religated to the tiny screen of the game boy. Thank goodness for the SP so I don't have to contort to light the screen anymore, but I miss classic turn based strategy gaming, and Nintendo's Gameboy titles are about all that's left of it.
How have you dealt with things like newsletters and such which may not come from a identifiable e-mail address. For example, I subscribe to several notification lists that come from a domain other than that of the company that actually produces the product.
I use a similiar solution, but I find I have to dig in the spam folder periodically to find e-mails from newsletters that changed source addresses and the like...
Printing company: 1/2 admin for 25 people, 1 server, 12 workstations (1 person with other duties).
Manufacturing company: 2 admin/programmers for 150 people, 4 servers, 60 workstations. (Programmers are amazingly effective admin, as they can script solutions others would just repetitively apply).
Software company: 1/2 admin/programmer for 5 people, 4 servers.
Nail on the head about broad skill sets. I am a programmer who works in C, Perl, Visual Basic (ASP and Desktop) and C#. However, I can also install servers and workstations, troubleshoot third party software problems (MRP and ERP programs most frequently) and build LAN and WAN networks. Because I never stuck myself into a narrow niche, I have never lacked for work. In fact, during the last few years I have had to repeatedly increase my rates to keep the workload manageable.
Have to agree with you there - if you are concerned about "image quality", console gaming isn't probably where you want to be in the first place. The games are hard wired for an resolution that was last popular in gaming during the 486-early pentium era, and when you buy a modern PC with a modern video card (said video card costing 150% of an entire console, admittedly) you can have "image quality" that console gamers don't even *know they could* dream about.
(That said, I still play console games because they aren't in my home office, making it *appear* I'm not at the same computer activity I was at for the previous 12 hours working... obsessive compulsiveness I guess.)
We use Jabber for a distributed (multi-state) group of developers. Perhaps I should just knuckle under and pay for long distance? (I'm sure telecom stockholders would appreciate my efforts). I think you lack an understanding of how IM is used by professional developers - we don't sit all day chatting about the weather, how 3l33t we are or throwing MP3s to each other; we get quick answers to questions that would otherwise hold up programming a module.
Additionally, I love it when people use this to communicate outside the building - rather that than the Cell going off during a meeting because the wife needs some fixings for dinner on the way home.
The reality is it depends on the maturity of your team. All of my team members are mature enough to use IM as a tool. Those who were not mature enough were fired after a warning. This applies to ANY communication tool, any violation of company codes.
Actually, at one point there was a game based in part on the ability to be disconnected and return called NetStorm. I actually liked it quite a bit (was a beta tester and bought it when it came out) but it ended up selling a very small number of copies and all the players on the server were using hacked clients by day two of the actual release.
Anyway, the game would fight on while you were gone, which was possible because the pieces were stationary cannons and the like, so when you came back you probably were a bit behind, but not wiped out. I won a few times after a reconnect, so the idea worked.
I cast my vote for Ultra Edit as well... small program with a lot of power in the right places. Color syntax highlighting for the esoteric languages I use (user definable) and hex edit for those annoying files.
I would have to agree with this assessment - the library should set the lan up distinct from any other networks already in place and only allow access out via a proxy. Whether access to the proxy is based on the library card is a different issue. On one side I can see that accountability of use (using the library to set up a freemail account and send death threats from there) must be balanced with the fact that someone may be at the library precisely so they can access information that may be sensitive in their own home environment. Release of information clauses about the use of the proxy would have to be very tight for most people to feel comfortable using it (i.e., will release with a warrant).
Of course, with the new cybersnooping laws looming everywhere in response to the massive armies of terrorist/cracker/Taliban that failed to appear, perhaps that's too much to ask for.
Our development project uses open source where possible, for example our "support" tools are open source (the Mantis Bugtracker, a modified PHPWiki for collaborative documentation, tools for creating XML for the web) but we are in the situation that we are hosting a web application, so the code is never "distributed". However, we never integrate open source code into the codebase proper, so even if we did distribute it we should be fine - the tools used are not part of the resulting codebase.
Formula De (not a RPG, but whatever) includes a set of unusually numbered d4, d6, d8, d12, d20 and d30 to represent the gears you can shift into. The d30 is not produced like the d10 (which isn't platonic either) but looks like a big d20 with diamond faces.
They are edited for explicit content and sometimes even the theme gets warped a bit in the process. These edits are provided by the studios themselves, and there are three major markets for these edits:
#1: the conservitive "US" religious community (where sex is edited more heavily than violence, but bloodshed is reduced as well)
#2: "Euro" community, where sex is retained (sometimes enhanced with scenes we don't get) but violence is very toned down.
#3: "International" (which means everywhere else) which has everything watered down pretty heavily.
It's interesting to see how poorly understood the Internet is to the justices. The terminology is the same as if they were using "local community standards" to determine if a strip club should be allowed. That works when you are talking about a place with physical presence, but are we now going to apply the "local community standards" of some enclave of rich religious puritans to every internet user? I'm a member of a church who's "community standards" would reject most PG-13 movies (and in fact has specially edited versions of popular movies made to prevent the members from fleeing to R rated movies and "corrupting" themselves).
Let's hope that subjecting those who did not agree to a strict "community standard" themselves to the harshest that can be found turns this around...
It's a shame that this kit can't make self running CDs. Only others with the kit can see the work done by the PS2-Linux community, and that's a shame, because the demo scene for this could have been huge.
I doubt anything homegrown would have *impared* sales of commercial games, but the control over the distribution of works created with Linux (of all things) is draconian.
(Apparently with a mod chip you can boot, but that's even fuzzier legal waters...)
Someday the dictators of the world will realize that saying "don't look at this" just draws people like flies. Or perhaps like moths, since totalitarian governments normally just kill those who disobey. If your style of government is to mute all objectors by killing them, why restrict speech and make it "cool" to have access to it?
Perhaps the goal is to identify those who are dangerous by leaking just enough that only those who would like basic human rights for the citizens access it so you can send out the death squads more effectively? Makes you wonder how many people no longer exist due to weblogs...
This is great news for the big game houses, but could spell a problem for the smaller game houses that specialize in Mac games. There are quite a few wonderful games that are unavailable on PC in the shareware space, and these programmers have found an audiance due to the lower number of commercial games available. If this turns a six month project into a one month project, I think a lot more commercial games will be available, which might shrink the market for the independents that have slaved away to support the Mac.
I find your attitude interesting. I work in a geographically distributed team and we do 90% of our conversations in IM. E-mail is too slow, and telephone too intrusive to ask the trivial questions that come up all day during software development. Perhaps we are more mature, or perhaps we are boring as all get out, but we almost never have anything unrelated to programming to discuss via IM.
Maybe a bigger issue you have (if you truly hire programmers) is to hire professionals who are on task without a whip and chain. With our programmers working from several states, we rely on output to determine of someone is slacking or not. If output suddenly drops and I didn't have a day filled with technical questions about the troublesome area, I know somethings up. But arguing that IM is useless except for wasting time is an luddute argument. Perhaps e-mail should be blocked too? They could be using it send jokes. Maybe the water cooler should be removed... someone might get the idea they could have a conversation!
Slashdot Mirror
The question is how much of the 40GB drive will be consumed by "overlay graphical advertising" while you use it. I'm sure my aim will be improved in SOCOM once there are flashing banner ads cycling in the bottom right.
I get paid by the hour. Never work fixed bid, never work for a salary. I do my work in very small chunks (never more than about 20 hours "ahead of the curve"). I believe strongly in delivering a product quickly, and at an affordable price. The client then can see what I have done, and decide to proceed further, use what has been done or cut bait with minimal time and financial commitment.
As long as you design with the long view in mind, very often a smaller implementation will deliver value immediately. For example, a small office that believed that one of the employees was dipping into the till asks for a "write once" invoicing system. For only 11 hours of work, they have a system that allows them to build invoices and know that what they get at the end of the day isn't a "modified" version, with a lower total. With a small investment they close a financial hole.
In the long run I get called back to add more features, because they can see further value in automating more functions. They know that I can perform the task at hand, and they know it will be reasonably priced. When they ask for more accounting functionality, I can build it easily as the tables I used were already designed with an eye for integration with the accounting package they use (that's the designing for the long view part).
Sounds familiar... every time I drop off the end of a contract I think "hey, I just keep the contracts I have at a simmer for a few weeks and take a break". Never happens. I'm at one of the "simmering" contract sites and we realize how many things we have put off for them in the past.
I really could use the vacation, but usually it's my fault for seeing opportunity to improve systems and being unable to resist it.
I have to concur here. A well designed GUI for data entry is no different from a console. One of the problems I find in GUI's is that they want to use tab to move fields and enter to submit. Old fashion data entry terminals used enter to move fields and "send" or some other custom key to actually commit the form. Seems like a simple thing, but I have found that by mapping some custom key handlers for using tab/space/enter where appropriate (and auto advancing on fixed width fields) you can run just as fast. Faster if you include well hotkeyed drop-down combo boxes.
Wow... I was basing my comment on classic Tetris addictiveness. I didn't realize you could screw it up that much. It is, after all, the most common "I wanna be a game programmer, so play me slight variation on tetris!" program I ever saw.
Tetris worlds online may be the killer app that online console gaming needs. Online FPS and racing are fine, but Tetris is the "common gamers gaming crack".
I would love to see how many parents suddenly are willing to play the kids system online for the first time with this one. If this works, console online gaming could become a normal everyday thing.
I find it a real shame that old school turn based strategy gamers are religated to the tiny screen of the game boy. Thank goodness for the SP so I don't have to contort to light the screen anymore, but I miss classic turn based strategy gaming, and Nintendo's Gameboy titles are about all that's left of it.
How have you dealt with things like newsletters and such which may not come from a identifiable e-mail address. For example, I subscribe to several notification lists that come from a domain other than that of the company that actually produces the product.
I use a similiar solution, but I find I have to dig in the spam folder periodically to find e-mails from newsletters that changed source addresses and the like...
Printing company: 1/2 admin for 25 people, 1 server, 12 workstations (1 person with other duties).
Manufacturing company: 2 admin/programmers for 150 people, 4 servers, 60 workstations. (Programmers are amazingly effective admin, as they can script solutions others would just repetitively apply).
Software company: 1/2 admin/programmer for 5 people, 4 servers.
Let's hope it doesn't search for "Big Red Robot" anytime soon...
Nail on the head about broad skill sets. I am a programmer who works in C, Perl, Visual Basic (ASP and Desktop) and C#. However, I can also install servers and workstations, troubleshoot third party software problems (MRP and ERP programs most frequently) and build LAN and WAN networks. Because I never stuck myself into a narrow niche, I have never lacked for work. In fact, during the last few years I have had to repeatedly increase my rates to keep the workload manageable.
Have to agree with you there - if you are concerned about "image quality", console gaming isn't probably where you want to be in the first place. The games are hard wired for an resolution that was last popular in gaming during the 486-early pentium era, and when you buy a modern PC with a modern video card (said video card costing 150% of an entire console, admittedly) you can have "image quality" that console gamers don't even *know they could* dream about.
(That said, I still play console games because they aren't in my home office, making it *appear* I'm not at the same computer activity I was at for the previous 12 hours working... obsessive compulsiveness I guess.)
We use Jabber for a distributed (multi-state) group of developers. Perhaps I should just knuckle under and pay for long distance? (I'm sure telecom stockholders would appreciate my efforts). I think you lack an understanding of how IM is used by professional developers - we don't sit all day chatting about the weather, how 3l33t we are or throwing MP3s to each other; we get quick answers to questions that would otherwise hold up programming a module.
Additionally, I love it when people use this to communicate outside the building - rather that than the Cell going off during a meeting because the wife needs some fixings for dinner on the way home.
The reality is it depends on the maturity of your team. All of my team members are mature enough to use IM as a tool. Those who were not mature enough were fired after a warning. This applies to ANY communication tool, any violation of company codes.
Actually, at one point there was a game based in part on the ability to be disconnected and return called NetStorm. I actually liked it quite a bit (was a beta tester and bought it when it came out) but it ended up selling a very small number of copies and all the players on the server were using hacked clients by day two of the actual release.
Anyway, the game would fight on while you were gone, which was possible because the pieces were stationary cannons and the like, so when you came back you probably were a bit behind, but not wiped out. I won a few times after a reconnect, so the idea worked.
I cast my vote for Ultra Edit as well... small program with a lot of power in the right places. Color syntax highlighting for the esoteric languages I use (user definable) and hex edit for those annoying files.
I would have to agree with this assessment - the library should set the lan up distinct from any other networks already in place and only allow access out via a proxy. Whether access to the proxy is based on the library card is a different issue. On one side I can see that accountability of use (using the library to set up a freemail account and send death threats from there) must be balanced with the fact that someone may be at the library precisely so they can access information that may be sensitive in their own home environment. Release of information clauses about the use of the proxy would have to be very tight for most people to feel comfortable using it (i.e., will release with a warrant).
Of course, with the new cybersnooping laws looming everywhere in response to the massive armies of terrorist/cracker/Taliban that failed to appear, perhaps that's too much to ask for.
Our development project uses open source where possible, for example our "support" tools are open source (the Mantis Bugtracker, a modified PHPWiki for collaborative documentation, tools for creating XML for the web) but we are in the situation that we are hosting a web application, so the code is never "distributed". However, we never integrate open source code into the codebase proper, so even if we did distribute it we should be fine - the tools used are not part of the resulting codebase.
Formula De (not a RPG, but whatever) includes a set of unusually numbered d4, d6, d8, d12, d20 and d30 to represent the gears you can shift into. The d30 is not produced like the d10 (which isn't platonic either) but looks like a big d20 with diamond faces.
They are edited for explicit content and sometimes even the theme gets warped a bit in the process. These edits are provided by the studios themselves, and there are three major markets for these edits:
#1: the conservitive "US" religious community (where sex is edited more heavily than violence, but bloodshed is reduced as well)
#2: "Euro" community, where sex is retained (sometimes enhanced with scenes we don't get) but violence is very toned down.
#3: "International" (which means everywhere else) which has everything watered down pretty heavily.
It's interesting to see how poorly understood the Internet is to the justices. The terminology is the same as if they were using "local community standards" to determine if a strip club should be allowed. That works when you are talking about a place with physical presence, but are we now going to apply the "local community standards" of some enclave of rich religious puritans to every internet user? I'm a member of a church who's "community standards" would reject most PG-13 movies (and in fact has specially edited versions of popular movies made to prevent the members from fleeing to R rated movies and "corrupting" themselves).
Let's hope that subjecting those who did not agree to a strict "community standard" themselves to the harshest that can be found turns this around...
It's a shame that this kit can't make self running CDs. Only others with the kit can see the work done by the PS2-Linux community, and that's a shame, because the demo scene for this could have been huge.
I doubt anything homegrown would have *impared* sales of commercial games, but the control over the distribution of works created with Linux (of all things) is draconian.
(Apparently with a mod chip you can boot, but that's even fuzzier legal waters...)
Perhaps the goal is to identify those who are dangerous by leaking just enough that only those who would like basic human rights for the citizens access it so you can send out the death squads more effectively? Makes you wonder how many people no longer exist due to weblogs...
This is great news for the big game houses, but could spell a problem for the smaller game houses that specialize in Mac games. There are quite a few wonderful games that are unavailable on PC in the shareware space, and these programmers have found an audiance due to the lower number of commercial games available. If this turns a six month project into a one month project, I think a lot more commercial games will be available, which might shrink the market for the independents that have slaved away to support the Mac.
I find your attitude interesting. I work in a geographically distributed team and we do 90% of our conversations in IM. E-mail is too slow, and telephone too intrusive to ask the trivial questions that come up all day during software development. Perhaps we are more mature, or perhaps we are boring as all get out, but we almost never have anything unrelated to programming to discuss via IM.
Maybe a bigger issue you have (if you truly hire programmers) is to hire professionals who are on task without a whip and chain. With our programmers working from several states, we rely on output to determine of someone is slacking or not. If output suddenly drops and I didn't have a day filled with technical questions about the troublesome area, I know somethings up. But arguing that IM is useless except for wasting time is an luddute argument. Perhaps e-mail should be blocked too? They could be using it send jokes. Maybe the water cooler should be removed... someone might get the idea they could have a conversation!
This is the most distant man made object from the Sun. Now as long as it doesn't come back with a nebula around it to kill everyone, I'll be happy.