Sorry Jim, but you can't really claim that this is the ''First Review of the Treo 600.''
It's not a review because it's a PROTOTYPE. It's a BETA. (Say it in your best Dr. Evil voice with me). Even the headline on the article in PC Magazine calls it a PREVIEW. So it's a hands-on preview at best.
Let's aim for some journalistic accuracy here, something that's woefully lacking in most of what passes for technology press.
That said, I like your stuff. Keep up the good work.
We'll have to agree to disagree. I understand very clearly what patents are and aren't supposed to protect (even though the -1 Flamebait moderators on the original comment don't seem to;) ) There are lots of private groups and clubs out there that let users have unlimited use of [insert product here] for a yearly or monthly subscription.
That doesn't make it a unique business method worthy of a patent.
I have to disagree with you - it's not a new method. Netflix has taken a very old and common idea and applied to an industry that lacks any imagination, insight and vision. Netflix has commercialized an idea that has been used for many years on a much smaller scale. It's great that people enjoy using Netflix and they've managed to build a viable business out of it.
But that still doesn't make it worthy of a patent.
It's not from the Post (Washington's newspaper of record). It's from the Washington TIMES (the OTHER paper in Washington DC), which seems to be a neo-conservative alternative to what is seen as the left-leaning Post.
Bernie Ecclestone who handles the marketing and money side of F1 thinks, breaths and lives money. I would have thought that he would have gone with Microsoft on this one.
Ecclestone does think, breathe and live money, which is why he went with Sony. All he had to do was take a look at the number of PS2s sold and looked at the number of Xboxes sold and the answer is an obvious one. Sony's larger installed base = more users = more sales. The math is simple.
We are testing the new Sony Clie NZ90 which comes with a 2 Mega Pixel camera, built-in Bluetooth, Palm OS 5, wireless LAN slot, voice recorder and a 320 x 480 pixel display. We are testing it with the add-on 802.11b wireless LAN WiFi card. It records video in MPEG-4 and plays back MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 (among other formats) so I'm not exactly clear on what the fuss is about here.
First of all, what do you call a journalist? The overwhelming majority of the gaming press are, in fact, NOT journalists. A professional journalist's main goal is to inform the public of the truth about whatever the subject matter is. First-hand reporting is a fundamental aspect of journalism (which is at the core of the problems at the New York Times and the Jayson Blair scandal). In the case of games it means giving people fair, accurate and balanced information that they need to make a judgement of whether a game is suitable for them. It's a form of service journalism and public advocacy.
What you have described is not a ''lack of communication skills'' -- PR reps are professional communicators whose job is to present their client's/employer's message to the appropriate audiences and to filter out those people who they see as unnecessary or unhelpful to their corporate goals.
Establishing a relationship with these organizations is INTENDED to be mind-numbingly difficult. In most cases, they instantly recognize who can give them the coverage they desire and reach the audience they are looking for. As for the unknown quantities, they take a wait and see approach.
We've been around for a while and gaming has been a secondary focus of our site. It's only recently that the gatekeepers have opened the doors. Now most of what we get from them is hype, fluff and the same kind of stuff that the gaming press calls news. At this point when we meet people from PR agencies and company reps they are starting to tell us that they have heard of us.
The best tip is not to dance. Don't be like the rest of the so-called gaming press and regurgitate whatever hype they send you.
The best trick is not to play any tricks. They've probably seen any tricks that you can come up with or that anyone advises you to use. Professionals don't play tricks and don't have to play tricks.
As for the people who pretend to be journalists just so they can get free games, they are probably the worst problem because they are singularly the biggest reason why it is so difficult to establish a new relationship with hardware and software companies.
What publication do you work for and what is its history? If it is a national trade publication as you say, you should have no difficulties at all.
Actually 50% is not (strictly speaking) controlling interest. 50% +1 of voting shares is absolute control.
A controlling interest is a number of the VOTING shares that is enough to swing a vote in the direction you desire. That's why in most jurisdictions securities regulations require filing disclosures if you own >5% of the shares outstanding.
A controlling interest can be 30%, 20% 10% or even less.
It's governed by statistical models, probabilities and obviously the basic math. As long as another shareholder or group of shareholders does not have enough votes to control the direction the company, you have the controlling interest.
This is a theme that has been repeated several times here on Slashdot in different forms, whether it refers to games or hardware or something else.
I've written on this subject before, specifically about Real World tests. Real Gear may be another consideration for you when deciding what makes a reliable review. I seem to recall that nVidia supplied most (if not all) of the people who 'reviewed' this card a beta or a reference board. Too bad the average person can't buy a beta or a reference board at their local retailer.
Long-term testing is a critical part of our review philosophy at Geartest.com: Real gear. Real world. Real reviews.
What does that mean? Real gear: We don't write reviews about products in a pre-release stage or based on press releases. Real world: We use the products for an extended period in real conditions. Real reviews: Then we tell readers what we found, with updates as warranted. That results in a fair review. That means that good, bad or mediocre, products will get the reviews that they deserve.
We tend to concentrate on the qualitative aspects in our technology product reviews because our focus is on producing fair, reliable, plain-language reviews with an eye to the user experience and long-term value. When you buy a product you want to be sure that it will serve you well and perform over time.
The problem with most so-called 'reviews' you see in the technology press is that they aren't real reviews at all. Using a gadget for a few hours here and there over a period of a couple of weeks doesn't tell you anything about the product's performance over an extended period of time. Neither does focusing on how pretty something looks. Then there's the regurgitated press release factories.
In this case, the 'reviewers' have to take their share of the blame for nVidia cheating and tweaking the units that they supplied. After all, the 'reviewers' are the ones who agreed to 'review' and benchmark pre-release products.
If you'd like to read a long-term detailed Aeron chair review, you can find it here. It has its flaws but I haven't come across a better task chair yet.
Interestingly enough my original submission was not posted in its entirety. The last line originally read:
Bricklin is now CTO of Interland, a company which I have few positive things to say about.
We were with HostPro as well -- phenomenal QoS and customer service -- I recommended them to several people. Then came Interland.
I won't go into all of the sordid details here but Interland has just sucked. We have noticed brief and minor improvements in service when we compalined loudly wnough, but those were just blips. The service continued on its downward slide consistently.
Recently we had no access to e-mail or administration of the site for over 2 MONTHS!!!
We finally have a new sales rep who seems to be responsive, but we shall see how long this continues and are preparing to move to another provider if the promises receive no follow-through.
We published an interview with Spaf a little while ago and his insights still are well-worth reading and heeding. He is still very concerned about the newest users on the Internet, etiquette, ethics, and the impact of networked communication on society. You can read the interview here.
They sit there and carefully and systematically work through each game, taking notes on the sound, music, graphics, etc. They evaluate the game the same way Roger Ebert carefully picks through a movie and sees it's good bits and bad bits.
That's only one thing that a game reviewer is supposed to do. They are also supposed to review the game as a whole. More often than most would care to admit, there is nowhere near that level of attention to detail when conducting a review. How many times have we seen so-called reviewers exposed for being nothing more than fanboys on the take from publishers (bribes, junkets and payola)? Or even worse, how often do they write reviews without ever seeing or playing the game in question (fraudulent reviews)?
As long as the publishers know that they can manipulate reviewers by the carrot --bribes, junkets and payola-- or the stick --threatening no review copies of games or no access to staff for interviews-- they know that they can get away with just about anything when publishing games. Is there any wonder why 95% of games published don't make a profit?
At Geartest.com we have faced the latter problem, where publishers will not send us the actual products, even when we occasionally request them.
They send us press releases, screenshots, more PR about promotional offers, bundle discounts and contests, but they rarely send the software.
Maybe it's because we have repeatedly told them that we won't publish non-news, and we won't publish features without direct access to the game in question and/or the staff who made the game (in the case of interviews/features).
Meanwhile, you get self-proclaimed 'journalists' like Marc Saltzman who carve out a cottage industry for themselves while doing nothing to advance serious, legitimate, journalistic or critical coverage of games.
There are an endless number of Web site and so-called 'game press' that are happy to publish PR and advertising and call them articles or features. As long as there are gamers who give these sites and magazines their traffic and pay for this type of PR content, the game companies, their marketing agencies and the publications themselves have no incentive to stop pimping, whoring and publishing lousy games.
High-quality gameplay back in the old days was the sole focus of developing games. They didn't have the gimmicks of fancy graphics or the capabilities massive hard drives or even memory. It all had to be stored in a ROM that fit into a few kb.
The gamplay was great because it had to be. I recall seeing an interview somewhere with Nolan Bushnell of Atari fame saying as much.
The concept of FUN was a core idea. It sounds simple but the core idea nowadays is often COOL. What's cool is not always what's fun. That is a lesson that many producers need to learn. (I say producers because the developers are rarely in control of the games they work so hard to create.)
Just because you can use the latest eye candy it doesn't mean you should. I like great looking games as much as the next person, but I like great-playing games even more.
Trust - Authentication vs. Encryption vs. Privacy
on
Wireless Mesh Networks
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· Score: 1
Trust is the key component missing from this picture. Mesh networks seem great for trivial information but what if I need to send someone critical or sensitive data? How do I know if I can trust the nodes to relay my data without compromising it?
Most people do not use encryption, leaving their communications in the clear. We see this today with 802.11x networks and even e-mail. How many people do their online banking over a wireless connection? How many people send e-mail that contains sensitive information?
Encryption is all well and good but if someone decides to flood the network with encrypted packets (remember that encryption also adds overhead and slows things down) what do you do then? Or what if someone decides to launch a DDoS, grabbing new leases as soon as the last batch of packets are sent? If they are hopping around, how do you know that it is the same person/entity?
Users/access points need to be authenticated in this type of network environment. Presumably this would involve some sort of digital certificate. That raises all kinds of privacy questions. If you are just surfing the Web, why does someone need you to authenticate? What if you are visiting medical sites to learn about particular illnesses? You may not want your identity to be associated with such information. With authentication to establish your identity as a trusted entity, the flip side of it is that now your online movements can be tracked to your authenticated identity.
Generally speaking the technical issues are never the most difficult or challenging with the introduction of new technologies -- the social issues are.
To compare SHI(f)T to Red Herring is laughable. Red Herring was far and away a superior publication in every respect. The only comparison is that they are now both out of business.
I'm not one to be repetitive, but since you brought it up, this bears repeating:
* * *
NOTE: Posted on behalf of a Slashdot reader (but not a member).
= = =
SHI(f)T - An Inside History
SHI(f)T started out as a make-work project for idle rich kids and a tax shelter for their parents.
It began its life as a wannabe literary magazine for "young writers", accepting the rejects from respected literary magazines with a mandate to discover new writers and fiction and aiming to, "Kick in the teeth of the literary establishment." Instead the literary establishment kicked SHI(f)Ts teeth in so far that they were coming out the other end.
Meeting no financial success, after 3 issues the magazine rebranded itself "the voice of an unsettled generation," still focusing on disaffected artists under 35.
With losses mounting, a few issues later they changed the focus of the magazine to "New Media and Culture" writing about the new technology of CD-ROMs, wrapped up in Doug Coupland fever, Generation-X hype and breaking their ban on coverage of anyone over 35.
With the magazine failing in its infancy and the parents of SHI(f)T's founders no longer willing to indefinitely pour unlimited funds into the fiscal black hole the project had become, the magazine looked south and decided to again relaunch and rebrand itself as Canada's version of Wired (that's actually how they promoted it). The magazine then boosted circulation by more than 500%, losing even more money, with an eye to being acquired based on high circulation numbers. The printing spree was funded by last-ditch investments from family and government artistic grants.
The parents/investors used their business connections with entertainment lawyer Michael Levine (called the Michael Ovitz of Canada) and the president of one of Canada's oldest and largest publishers, Maclean-Hunter (which was looking for new properties aimed at young people) to engineer a minority investment stake, using Wired as a benchmark to value the magazine. Insiders reported that the magazine used false subscriber numbers that were at least double the real number to garner the deal.
A year later the deal was dead, with Maclean-Hunter ceasing support for the still-floundering magazine.
Enter white knight and multi-millionaire Richard Szalwinski, founder of digital film, video and animation software company Discreet Logic (now the Discreet division of CAD/CAM software giant Autodesk).
With money to burn and a newly acquired publishing company looking for media properties, Szalwinski bought the magazine and made the founders instant millionaires.
Internal politics went crazy and the new general manager of the magazine brought in by Szalwinski cleaned house, getting rid of the good (such as new editor Laas Turnbull) along with the bad. Among the ousted was the co-founder of the magazine.
Szalwinski lost his shirt in a disastrous attempt to launch the magazine in the USA as a Wired competitor in 1999 and by this time, freelance contributors had not been paid for months. A year later, on the brink of bankruptcy, he sold the magazine back to co-founder Andrew Heintzman who financed it slashing the already-dismal salaries of employees by as much as 1/3 and asked them to pay into an employee ownership plan to help rescue the company. Most of the young, inexperienced, idealistic staffers agreed but some who didn't were laid off or fired "with cause." This still failed to buoy the sinking magazine's fortunes.
Facing bankruptcy, the employees sold the magazine to MultiVision publishing who thought they could leverage the SHI(f)T brand to relaunch the magazine. The new SHI(f)T's redesign was unreadable and the "unified" look they created made it difficult to know what you were looking at when you flipped through it. They recently killed its columns, saying they were "too long" at 800 words, eliminating the only remaining compelling content since the columnists were knowledgeable. And now they have finally decided to put the tired publication out of its misery.
Although some truly excellent writers have come through SHI(f)T, they were great in spite of it, not because of it. The majority were simply horrid. You can find some of both varieties around Slashdot (no names). The only thing that is sad about the death of this magazine is that a number of people who depended on it for part or all of their income will now be unemployed or scrambling to find some way of making up the sudden loss of revenue.
The magazine was a horribly mismanaged ego-trip at almost every stage that could never really decide if it wanted to be an arts, entertainment or technology magazine, and was master of none of these domains. Even staffers and contributors made dismissive, derisive comments about the magazine, its direction and content throughout its life, but as long as they were being paid (and even if they were not) a paycheck is a paycheck.
It proclaimed itself as Canadian but for the majority of its life it focused on American media, entertainment products and personalities, often almost indistinguishable from private label retail catalogs that masquerade as magazines.
It was a pseudo-intellectual, vapid fanboy, hype-machine wank, that preyed on the greed and fed the egos of just about everyone they duped to invest in it.
And, as we have seen time and again, the founders are laughing all the way to the bank.
NOTE: Posted on behalf of a Slashdot reader (but not a member).
= = =
SHI(f)T - An Inside History
SHI(f)T started out as a make-work project for idle rich kids and a tax shelter for their parents.
It began its life as a wannabe literary magazine for "young writers", accepting the rejects from respected literary magazines with a mandate to discover new writers and fiction and aiming to, "Kick in the teeth of the literary establishment." Instead the literary establishment kicked SHI(f)Ts teeth in so far that they were coming out the other end.
Meeting no financial success, after 3 issues the magazine rebranded itself "the voice of an unsettled generation," still focusing on disaffected artists under 35.
With losses mounting, a few issues later they changed the focus of the magazine to "New Media and Culture" writing about the new technology of CD-ROMs, wrapped up in Doug Coupland fever, Generation-X hype and breaking their ban on coverage of anyone over 35.
With the magazine failing in its infancy and the parents of SHI(f)T's founders no longer willing to indefinitely pour unlimited funds into the fiscal black hole the project had become, the magazine looked south and decided to again relaunch and rebrand itself as Canada's version of Wired (that's actually how they promoted it). The magazine then boosted circulation by more than 500%, losing even more money, with an eye to being acquired based on high circulation numbers. The printing spree was funded by last-ditch investments from family and government artistic grants.
The parents/investors used their business connections with entertainment lawyer Michael Levine (called the Michael Ovitz of Canada) and the president of one of Canada's oldest and largest publishers, Maclean-Hunter (which was looking for new properties aimed at young people) to engineer a minority investment stake, using Wired as a benchmark to value the magazine. Insiders reported that the magazine used false subscriber numbers that were at least double the real number to garner the deal.
A year later the deal was dead, with Maclean-Hunter ceasing support for the still-floundering magazine.
Enter white knight and multi-millionaire Richard Szalwinski, founder of digital film, video and animation software company Discreet Logic (now the Discreet division of CAD/CAM software giant Autodesk).
With money to burn and a newly acquired publishing company looking for media properties, Szalwinski bought the magazine and made the founders instant millionaires.
Internal politics went crazy and the new general manager of the magazine brought in by Szalwinski cleaned house, getting rid of the good (such as new editor Laas Turnbull) along with the bad. Among the ousted was the co-founder of the magazine.
Szalwinski lost his shirt in a disastrous attempt to launch the magazine in the USA as a Wired competitor in 1999 and by this time, freelance contributors had not been paid for months. A year later, on the brink of bankruptcy, he sold the magazine back to co-founder Andrew Heintzman who financed it slashing the already-dismal salaries of employees by as much as 1/3 and asked them to pay into an employee ownership plan to help rescue the company. Most of the young, inexperienced, idealistic staffers agreed but some who didn't were laid off or fired "with cause." This still failed to buoy the sinking magazine's fortunes.
Facing bankruptcy, the employees sold the magazine to MultiVision publishing who thought they could leverage the SHI(f)T brand to relaunch the magazine. The new SHI(f)T's redesign was unreadable and the "unified" look they created made it difficult to know what you were looking at when you flipped through it. They recently killed its columns, saying they were "too long" at 800 words, eliminating the only remaining compelling content since the columnists were knowledgeable. And now they have finally decided to put the tired publication out of its misery.
Although some truly excellent writers have come through SHI(f)T, they were great in spite of it, not because of it. The majority were simply horrid. You can find some of both varieties around Slashdot (no names). The only thing that is sad about the death of this magazine is that a number of people who depended on it for part or all of their income will now be unemployed or scrambling to find some way of making up the sudden loss of revenue.
The magazine was a horribly mismanaged ego-trip at almost every stage that could never really decide if it wanted to be an arts, entertainment or technology magazine, and was master of none of these domains. Even staffers and contributors made dismissive, derisive comments about the magazine, its direction and content throughout its life, but as long as they were being paid (and even if they were not) a paycheck is a paycheck.
It proclaimed itself as Canadian but for the majority of its life it focused on American media, entertainment products and personalities, often almost indistinguishable from private label retail catalogs that masquerade as magazines.
It was a pseudo-intellectual, vapid fanboy, hype-machine wank, that preyed on the greed and fed the egos of just about everyone they duped to invest in it.
And, as we have seen time and again, the founders are laughing all the way to the bank.
Normally I wouldn't do this but most people are going to miss what is a well-considered and thoughtful post for no other reason than their threshold settings will filter it out. So here it is:
Corrections Re:Marc Saltzman, Game Industry Flack (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 13, @05:35PM (#5297773)
ShwAsasin is typical of people who don't understand how the news media works and operates, probably because he has never worked in a news environment.
Marc Saltzman "isn't JUST a CNN crony" - he has a syndicated column (in which he summarizes press releases). That means that the newspapers mentioned just dip into the newswire stream whenever they need to fill a hole in a page. It DOES NOT mean he "writes for numerous newspapers" (since when did two papers become "numerous"?) and it certainly doesn't impart to him any real credibility.
The books Marc has "written" are little more than long-form versions of the fanboy game press drek that passes for "reporting", which so many have decried here on Slashdot and elsewhere. The majority of them are game strategy guides and cheat codes. That's not journalism and barely passes for writing.
Marc is well known within the games industry as a flack that even the PR agencies can't stand, but more than one PR rep has confessed that they need him because he has managed to build himself a profile. Marc is tolerated by both games companies and the editors at the papers you mentioned, not celebrated as an authority as you would have us think. Marketing staff at the game companies see Marc as a necessary evil until legitimate technology and business journalists (not fanboys) start to cover their industry like any other technology/software/entertainment business.
Editors have confided that they are aware that he has barely (if at all) played the games he "reviews" but the tyranny of the news cycle compels them to publish whatever they can get their hands on when it comes to games. Because they have already paid for content through their newswire subscription, it doesn't really cost the papers anything to run Marc's bumpf.
At industry events, Saltzman simply walks around the displays, picks up the press materials and sampler CDs, asks the game company reps when the next free trip to [INSERT EXOTIC DESTINATION HERE] will be and what kind of graft they will be giving away, and then he goes home.
Why have I posted anonymously? Because I don't need the flames and grief that comes with exposing one of the worst fraud artists that has latched onto and leeched the games industry.
On a personal level Marc is nice enough guy, but on a professional one he leaves much to be desired.
Marc is the living example of the axiom "Politicians, old buildings and whores all become respectable with age." I'll leave it you to figure out which category Marc Saltzman fits into.
"RH says they're now following the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, developed in the wake of recent accounting troubles at some companies."
When I last checked GAAP-based accounting has been around since the 1930s although they were not known by that name. In the USA, FASB is reponsible for establishing US GAAP. If Red Hat previously chose not to follow these standards and cook their books instead, we should hardly applaud them for finally doing what they should have done all along... especially now that deceptive accounting practices are no longer in fashion in the corporate world.
From the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants: Between 1938 and 1959, the AICPA's Committee on Accounting Procedure (CAP) issued fifty-one authoritative pronouncements known as Accounting Research Bulletins that formed the basis of what became known as generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. In 1959, the CAP was replaced by another part-time body, the Accounting Principles Board (APB), which during the next fourteen years issued thirty-one new standards.
From the Financial Accounting Standards Board: Since 1973, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has been the designated organization in the private sector for establishing standards of financial accounting and reporting. Those standards govern the preparation of financial reports.
The argument for what I call economic inertia is a good one, especially with corporate shareholders these days demanding that management squeeze everything they can out of every dollar and stretch every last penny as far as it will go.
A mainframe that does everything that you need it to do (and more) and works well with your company processes is worth far more to you than the investment of time and resources in an untested, unknown system that may or may not work. Remember that new systems don't go online until after extensive use and testing in parallel with the current one (if it's done correctly). That means duplication of efforts and resources.
Anyone who has worked at a company that builds enterprise-scale applications or mission-critical solutions knows that when the customer has an XYZ mainframe, you'd better have applications that support XYZ or you'll find the contract goes to your competitor who does. It's not an option not to support it.
Unless there is a strong business case for moving to a newer technology, mainframes will be with us for quite a long time.
A hint to the coders out there: the number of people who know and understand these systems is declining. There's a mint to be made if you can deliver services to support them.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry Jim, but you can't really claim that this is the ''First Review of the Treo 600.''
It's not a review because it's a PROTOTYPE. It's a BETA. (Say it in your best Dr. Evil voice with me). Even the headline on the article in PC Magazine calls it a PREVIEW. So it's a hands-on preview at best.
Let's aim for some journalistic accuracy here, something that's woefully lacking in most of what passes for technology press.
That said, I like your stuff. Keep up the good work.
Neither did Netflix.
No, thanks. I'm very happy with my career of choice. And I am doing something - pointing out how absurd this patent and those like it are
We'll have to agree to disagree. I understand very clearly what patents are and aren't supposed to protect (even though the -1 Flamebait moderators on the original comment don't seem to
That doesn't make it a unique business method worthy of a patent.
I have to disagree with you - it's not a new method. Netflix has taken a very old and common idea and applied to an industry that lacks any imagination, insight and vision. Netflix has commercialized an idea that has been used for many years on a much smaller scale. It's great that people enjoy using Netflix and they've managed to build a viable business out of it.
But that still doesn't make it worthy of a patent.
Why don't I enter a patent for renting or leasing a car for a month?
Sometimes I wonder who it is they hire to work at the USPTO.
This appears to amount to patenting an idea, not an invention or method.
It's not from the Post (Washington's newspaper of record). It's from the Washington TIMES (the OTHER paper in Washington DC), which seems to be a neo-conservative alternative to what is seen as the left-leaning Post.
Bernie Ecclestone who handles the marketing and money side of F1 thinks, breaths and lives money. I would have thought that he would have gone with Microsoft on this one.
Ecclestone does think, breathe and live money, which is why he went with Sony. All he had to do was take a look at the number of PS2s sold and looked at the number of Xboxes sold and the answer is an obvious one. Sony's larger installed base = more users = more sales. The math is simple.
Earlier this year, we ran an article about the game and some of the pitfalls and hurdles Legacy Online's developer, Ottawa's Oceanus Communications, faced to put the game out. It's an interesting little team composed of an Italian theoretical astrophysicist, a former Nortel employee, and a team of Cuban developers.
We are testing the new Sony Clie NZ90 which comes with a 2 Mega Pixel camera, built-in Bluetooth, Palm OS 5, wireless LAN slot, voice recorder and a 320 x 480 pixel display. We are testing it with the add-on 802.11b wireless LAN WiFi card. It records video in MPEG-4 and plays back MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 (among other formats) so I'm not exactly clear on what the fuss is about here.
First of all, what do you call a journalist? The overwhelming majority of the gaming press are, in fact, NOT journalists. A professional journalist's main goal is to inform the public of the truth about whatever the subject matter is. First-hand reporting is a fundamental aspect of journalism (which is at the core of the problems at the New York Times and the Jayson Blair scandal). In the case of games it means giving people fair, accurate and balanced information that they need to make a judgement of whether a game is suitable for them. It's a form of service journalism and public advocacy.
What you have described is not a ''lack of communication skills'' -- PR reps are professional communicators whose job is to present their client's/employer's message to the appropriate audiences and to filter out those people who they see as unnecessary or unhelpful to their corporate goals.
Establishing a relationship with these organizations is INTENDED to be mind-numbingly difficult. In most cases, they instantly recognize who can give them the coverage they desire and reach the audience they are looking for. As for the unknown quantities, they take a wait and see approach.
We've been around for a while and gaming has been a secondary focus of our site. It's only recently that the gatekeepers have opened the doors. Now most of what we get from them is hype, fluff and the same kind of stuff that the gaming press calls news. At this point when we meet people from PR agencies and company reps they are starting to tell us that they have heard of us.
The best tip is not to dance. Don't be like the rest of the so-called gaming press and regurgitate whatever hype they send you.
The best trick is not to play any tricks. They've probably seen any tricks that you can come up with or that anyone advises you to use. Professionals don't play tricks and don't have to play tricks.
As for the people who pretend to be journalists just so they can get free games, they are probably the worst problem because they are singularly the biggest reason why it is so difficult to establish a new relationship with hardware and software companies.
What publication do you work for and what is its history? If it is a national trade publication as you say, you should have no difficulties at all.
Actually 50% is not (strictly speaking) controlling interest. 50% +1 of voting shares is absolute control.
A controlling interest is a number of the VOTING shares that is enough to swing a vote in the direction you desire. That's why in most jurisdictions securities regulations require filing disclosures if you own >5% of the shares outstanding.
A controlling interest can be 30%, 20% 10% or even less.
It's governed by statistical models, probabilities and obviously the basic math. As long as another shareholder or group of shareholders does not have enough votes to control the direction the company, you have the controlling interest.
From my rejected post late last night:
Today TiVo begins selling information about its customers' viewing habits to advertisers and others. Two years ago TiVo admitted it had plans to sell subscriber information - it looks like that day is finally here. This should be interesting if only due to the new TiVo hacking book about to be published.
This is a theme that has been repeated several times here on Slashdot in different forms, whether it refers to games or hardware or something else.
I've written on this subject before, specifically about Real World tests. Real Gear may be another consideration for you when deciding what makes a reliable review. I seem to recall that nVidia supplied most (if not all) of the people who 'reviewed' this card a beta or a reference board. Too bad the average person can't buy a beta or a reference board at their local retailer.
Long-term testing is a critical part of our review philosophy at Geartest.com: Real gear. Real world. Real reviews.
What does that mean? Real gear: We don't write reviews about products in a pre-release stage or based on press releases. Real world: We use the products for an extended period in real conditions. Real reviews: Then we tell readers what we found, with updates as warranted. That results in a fair review. That means that good, bad or mediocre, products will get the reviews that they deserve.
We tend to concentrate on the qualitative aspects in our technology product reviews because our focus is on producing fair, reliable, plain-language reviews with an eye to the user experience and long-term value. When you buy a product you want to be sure that it will serve you well and perform over time.
The problem with most so-called 'reviews' you see in the technology press is that they aren't real reviews at all. Using a gadget for a few hours here and there over a period of a couple of weeks doesn't tell you anything about the product's performance over an extended period of time. Neither does focusing on how pretty something looks. Then there's the regurgitated press release factories.
In this case, the 'reviewers' have to take their share of the blame for nVidia cheating and tweaking the units that they supplied. After all, the 'reviewers' are the ones who agreed to 'review' and benchmark pre-release products.
If you'd like to read a long-term detailed Aeron chair review, you can find it here. It has its flaws but I haven't come across a better task chair yet.
Interestingly enough my original submission was not posted in its entirety. The last line originally read:
Bricklin is now CTO of Interland, a company which I have few positive things to say about.
We were with HostPro as well -- phenomenal QoS and customer service -- I recommended them to several people. Then came Interland.
I won't go into all of the sordid details here but Interland has just sucked. We have noticed brief and minor improvements in service when we compalined loudly wnough, but those were just blips. The service continued on its downward slide consistently.
Recently we had no access to e-mail or administration of the site for over 2 MONTHS!!!
We finally have a new sales rep who seems to be responsive, but we shall see how long this continues and are preparing to move to another provider if the promises receive no follow-through.
We published an interview with Spaf a little while ago and his insights still are well-worth reading and heeding. He is still very concerned about the newest users on the Internet, etiquette, ethics, and the impact of networked communication on society. You can read the interview here.
They sit there and carefully and systematically work through each game, taking notes on the sound, music, graphics, etc. They evaluate the game the same way Roger Ebert carefully picks through a movie and sees it's good bits and bad bits.
That's only one thing that a game reviewer is supposed to do. They are also supposed to review the game as a whole. More often than most would care to admit, there is nowhere near that level of attention to detail when conducting a review. How many times have we seen so-called reviewers exposed for being nothing more than fanboys on the take from publishers (bribes, junkets and payola)? Or even worse, how often do they write reviews without ever seeing or playing the game in question (fraudulent reviews)?
As long as the publishers know that they can manipulate reviewers by the carrot --bribes, junkets and payola-- or the stick --threatening no review copies of games or no access to staff for interviews-- they know that they can get away with just about anything when publishing games. Is there any wonder why 95% of games published don't make a profit?
At Geartest.com we have faced the latter problem, where publishers will not send us the actual products, even when we occasionally request them.
They send us press releases, screenshots, more PR about promotional offers, bundle discounts and contests, but they rarely send the software.
Maybe it's because we have repeatedly told them that we won't publish non-news, and we won't publish features without direct access to the game in question and/or the staff who made the game (in the case of interviews/features).
Meanwhile, you get self-proclaimed 'journalists' like Marc Saltzman who carve out a cottage industry for themselves while doing nothing to advance serious, legitimate, journalistic or critical coverage of games.
There are an endless number of Web site and so-called 'game press' that are happy to publish PR and advertising and call them articles or features. As long as there are gamers who give these sites and magazines their traffic and pay for this type of PR content, the game companies, their marketing agencies and the publications themselves have no incentive to stop pimping, whoring and publishing lousy games.
High-quality gameplay back in the old days was the sole focus of developing games. They didn't have the gimmicks of fancy graphics or the capabilities massive hard drives or even memory. It all had to be stored in a ROM that fit into a few kb.
The gamplay was great because it had to be. I recall seeing an interview somewhere with Nolan Bushnell of Atari fame saying as much.
The concept of FUN was a core idea. It sounds simple but the core idea nowadays is often COOL. What's cool is not always what's fun. That is a lesson that many producers need to learn. (I say producers because the developers are rarely in control of the games they work so hard to create.)
Just because you can use the latest eye candy it doesn't mean you should. I like great looking games as much as the next person, but I like great-playing games even more.
Trust is the key component missing from this picture. Mesh networks seem great for trivial information but what if I need to send someone critical or sensitive data? How do I know if I can trust the nodes to relay my data without compromising it?
Most people do not use encryption, leaving their communications in the clear. We see this today with 802.11x networks and even e-mail. How many people do their online banking over a wireless connection? How many people send e-mail that contains sensitive information?
Encryption is all well and good but if someone decides to flood the network with encrypted packets (remember that encryption also adds overhead and slows things down) what do you do then? Or what if someone decides to launch a DDoS, grabbing new leases as soon as the last batch of packets are sent? If they are hopping around, how do you know that it is the same person/entity?
Users/access points need to be authenticated in this type of network environment. Presumably this would involve some sort of digital certificate. That raises all kinds of privacy questions. If you are just surfing the Web, why does someone need you to authenticate? What if you are visiting medical sites to learn about particular illnesses? You may not want your identity to be associated with such information. With authentication to establish your identity as a trusted entity, the flip side of it is that now your online movements can be tracked to your authenticated identity.
Generally speaking the technical issues are never the most difficult or challenging with the introduction of new technologies -- the social issues are.
To compare SHI(f)T to Red Herring is laughable. Red Herring was far and away a superior publication in every respect. The only comparison is that they are now both out of business.
I'm not one to be repetitive, but since you brought it up, this bears repeating:
* * *
NOTE: Posted on behalf of a Slashdot reader (but not a member).
= = =
SHI(f)T - An Inside History
SHI(f)T started out as a make-work project for idle rich kids and a tax shelter for their parents.
It began its life as a wannabe literary magazine for "young writers", accepting the rejects from respected literary magazines with a mandate to discover new writers and fiction and aiming to, "Kick in the teeth of the literary establishment." Instead the literary establishment kicked SHI(f)Ts teeth in so far that they were coming out the other end.
Meeting no financial success, after 3 issues the magazine rebranded itself "the voice of an unsettled generation," still focusing on disaffected artists under 35.
With losses mounting, a few issues later they changed the focus of the magazine to "New Media and Culture" writing about the new technology of CD-ROMs, wrapped up in Doug Coupland fever, Generation-X hype and breaking their ban on coverage of anyone over 35.
With the magazine failing in its infancy and the parents of SHI(f)T's founders no longer willing to indefinitely pour unlimited funds into the fiscal black hole the project had become, the magazine looked south and decided to again relaunch and rebrand itself as Canada's version of Wired (that's actually how they promoted it). The magazine then boosted circulation by more than 500%, losing even more money, with an eye to being acquired based on high circulation numbers. The printing spree was funded by last-ditch investments from family and government artistic grants.
The parents/investors used their business connections with entertainment lawyer Michael Levine (called the Michael Ovitz of Canada) and the president of one of Canada's oldest and largest publishers, Maclean-Hunter (which was looking for new properties aimed at young people) to engineer a minority investment stake, using Wired as a benchmark to value the magazine. Insiders reported that the magazine used false subscriber numbers that were at least double the real number to garner the deal.
A year later the deal was dead, with Maclean-Hunter ceasing support for the still-floundering magazine.
Enter white knight and multi-millionaire Richard Szalwinski, founder of digital film, video and animation software company Discreet Logic (now the Discreet division of CAD/CAM software giant Autodesk).
With money to burn and a newly acquired publishing company looking for media properties, Szalwinski bought the magazine and made the founders instant millionaires.
Internal politics went crazy and the new general manager of the magazine brought in by Szalwinski cleaned house, getting rid of the good (such as new editor Laas Turnbull) along with the bad. Among the ousted was the co-founder of the magazine.
Szalwinski lost his shirt in a disastrous attempt to launch the magazine in the USA as a Wired competitor in 1999 and by this time, freelance contributors had not been paid for months. A year later, on the brink of bankruptcy, he sold the magazine back to co-founder Andrew Heintzman who financed it slashing the already-dismal salaries of employees by as much as 1/3 and asked them to pay into an employee ownership plan to help rescue the company. Most of the young, inexperienced, idealistic staffers agreed but some who didn't were laid off or fired "with cause." This still failed to buoy the sinking magazine's fortunes.
Facing bankruptcy, the employees sold the magazine to MultiVision publishing who thought they could leverage the SHI(f)T brand to relaunch the magazine. The new SHI(f)T's redesign was unreadable and the "unified" look they created made it difficult to know what you were looking at when you flipped through it. They recently killed its columns, saying they were "too long" at 800 words, eliminating the only remaining compelling content since the columnists were knowledgeable. And now they have finally decided to put the tired publication out of its misery.
Although some truly excellent writers have come through SHI(f)T, they were great in spite of it, not because of it. The majority were simply horrid. You can find some of both varieties around Slashdot (no names). The only thing that is sad about the death of this magazine is that a number of people who depended on it for part or all of their income will now be unemployed or scrambling to find some way of making up the sudden loss of revenue.
The magazine was a horribly mismanaged ego-trip at almost every stage that could never really decide if it wanted to be an arts, entertainment or technology magazine, and was master of none of these domains. Even staffers and contributors made dismissive, derisive comments about the magazine, its direction and content throughout its life, but as long as they were being paid (and even if they were not) a paycheck is a paycheck.
It proclaimed itself as Canadian but for the majority of its life it focused on American media, entertainment products and personalities, often almost indistinguishable from private label retail catalogs that masquerade as magazines.
It was a pseudo-intellectual, vapid fanboy, hype-machine wank, that preyed on the greed and fed the egos of just about everyone they duped to invest in it.
And, as we have seen time and again, the founders are laughing all the way to the bank.
Obviously the title is wrong.
It was supposed to be SHI(f)T
It's a Friday night. Give me a break.
NOTE: Posted on behalf of a Slashdot reader (but not a member).
= = =
SHI(f)T - An Inside History
SHI(f)T started out as a make-work project for idle rich kids and a tax shelter for their parents.
It began its life as a wannabe literary magazine for "young writers", accepting the rejects from respected literary magazines with a mandate to discover new writers and fiction and aiming to, "Kick in the teeth of the literary establishment." Instead the literary establishment kicked SHI(f)Ts teeth in so far that they were coming out the other end.
Meeting no financial success, after 3 issues the magazine rebranded itself "the voice of an unsettled generation," still focusing on disaffected artists under 35.
With losses mounting, a few issues later they changed the focus of the magazine to "New Media and Culture" writing about the new technology of CD-ROMs, wrapped up in Doug Coupland fever, Generation-X hype and breaking their ban on coverage of anyone over 35.
With the magazine failing in its infancy and the parents of SHI(f)T's founders no longer willing to indefinitely pour unlimited funds into the fiscal black hole the project had become, the magazine looked south and decided to again relaunch and rebrand itself as Canada's version of Wired (that's actually how they promoted it). The magazine then boosted circulation by more than 500%, losing even more money, with an eye to being acquired based on high circulation numbers. The printing spree was funded by last-ditch investments from family and government artistic grants.
The parents/investors used their business connections with entertainment lawyer Michael Levine (called the Michael Ovitz of Canada) and the president of one of Canada's oldest and largest publishers, Maclean-Hunter (which was looking for new properties aimed at young people) to engineer a minority investment stake, using Wired as a benchmark to value the magazine. Insiders reported that the magazine used false subscriber numbers that were at least double the real number to garner the deal.
A year later the deal was dead, with Maclean-Hunter ceasing support for the still-floundering magazine.
Enter white knight and multi-millionaire Richard Szalwinski, founder of digital film, video and animation software company Discreet Logic (now the Discreet division of CAD/CAM software giant Autodesk).
With money to burn and a newly acquired publishing company looking for media properties, Szalwinski bought the magazine and made the founders instant millionaires.
Internal politics went crazy and the new general manager of the magazine brought in by Szalwinski cleaned house, getting rid of the good (such as new editor Laas Turnbull) along with the bad. Among the ousted was the co-founder of the magazine.
Szalwinski lost his shirt in a disastrous attempt to launch the magazine in the USA as a Wired competitor in 1999 and by this time, freelance contributors had not been paid for months. A year later, on the brink of bankruptcy, he sold the magazine back to co-founder Andrew Heintzman who financed it slashing the already-dismal salaries of employees by as much as 1/3 and asked them to pay into an employee ownership plan to help rescue the company. Most of the young, inexperienced, idealistic staffers agreed but some who didn't were laid off or fired "with cause." This still failed to buoy the sinking magazine's fortunes.
Facing bankruptcy, the employees sold the magazine to MultiVision publishing who thought they could leverage the SHI(f)T brand to relaunch the magazine. The new SHI(f)T's redesign was unreadable and the "unified" look they created made it difficult to know what you were looking at when you flipped through it. They recently killed its columns, saying they were "too long" at 800 words, eliminating the only remaining compelling content since the columnists were knowledgeable. And now they have finally decided to put the tired publication out of its misery.
Although some truly excellent writers have come through SHI(f)T, they were great in spite of it, not because of it. The majority were simply horrid. You can find some of both varieties around Slashdot (no names). The only thing that is sad about the death of this magazine is that a number of people who depended on it for part or all of their income will now be unemployed or scrambling to find some way of making up the sudden loss of revenue.
The magazine was a horribly mismanaged ego-trip at almost every stage that could never really decide if it wanted to be an arts, entertainment or technology magazine, and was master of none of these domains. Even staffers and contributors made dismissive, derisive comments about the magazine, its direction and content throughout its life, but as long as they were being paid (and even if they were not) a paycheck is a paycheck.
It proclaimed itself as Canadian but for the majority of its life it focused on American media, entertainment products and personalities, often almost indistinguishable from private label retail catalogs that masquerade as magazines.
It was a pseudo-intellectual, vapid fanboy, hype-machine wank, that preyed on the greed and fed the egos of just about everyone they duped to invest in it.
And, as we have seen time and again, the founders are laughing all the way to the bank.
Normally I wouldn't do this but most people are going to miss what is a well-considered and thoughtful post for no other reason than their threshold settings will filter it out. So here it is:
Corrections Re:Marc Saltzman, Game Industry Flack (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 13, @05:35PM (#5297773)
ShwAsasin is typical of people who don't understand how the news media works and operates, probably because he has never worked in a news environment.
Marc Saltzman "isn't JUST a CNN crony" - he has a syndicated column (in which he summarizes press releases). That means that the newspapers mentioned just dip into the newswire stream whenever they need to fill a hole in a page. It DOES NOT mean he "writes for numerous newspapers" (since when did two papers become "numerous"?) and it certainly doesn't impart to him any real credibility.
The books Marc has "written" are little more than long-form versions of the fanboy game press drek that passes for "reporting", which so many have decried here on Slashdot and elsewhere. The majority of them are game strategy guides and cheat codes. That's not journalism and barely passes for writing.
Marc is well known within the games industry as a flack that even the PR agencies can't stand, but more than one PR rep has confessed that they need him because he has managed to build himself a profile. Marc is tolerated by both games companies and the editors at the papers you mentioned, not celebrated as an authority as you would have us think. Marketing staff at the game companies see Marc as a necessary evil until legitimate technology and business journalists (not fanboys) start to cover their industry like any other technology/software/entertainment business.
Editors have confided that they are aware that he has barely (if at all) played the games he "reviews" but the tyranny of the news cycle compels them to publish whatever they can get their hands on when it comes to games. Because they have already paid for content through their newswire subscription, it doesn't really cost the papers anything to run Marc's bumpf.
At industry events, Saltzman simply walks around the displays, picks up the press materials and sampler CDs, asks the game company reps when the next free trip to [INSERT EXOTIC DESTINATION HERE] will be and what kind of graft they will be giving away, and then he goes home.
Why have I posted anonymously? Because I don't need the flames and grief that comes with exposing one of the worst fraud artists that has latched onto and leeched the games industry.
On a personal level Marc is nice enough guy, but on a professional one he leaves much to be desired.
Marc is the living example of the axiom "Politicians, old buildings and whores all become respectable with age." I'll leave it you to figure out which category Marc Saltzman fits into.
"RH says they're now following the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, developed in the wake of recent accounting troubles at some companies."
When I last checked GAAP-based accounting has been around since the 1930s although they were not known by that name. In the USA, FASB is reponsible for establishing US GAAP. If Red Hat previously chose not to follow these standards and cook their books instead, we should hardly applaud them for finally doing what they should have done all along... especially now that deceptive accounting practices are no longer in fashion in the corporate world.
From the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants:
Between 1938 and 1959, the AICPA's Committee on Accounting Procedure (CAP) issued fifty-one authoritative pronouncements known as Accounting Research Bulletins that formed the basis of what became known as generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. In 1959, the CAP was replaced by another part-time body, the Accounting Principles Board (APB), which during the next fourteen years issued thirty-one new standards.
From the Financial Accounting Standards Board:
Since 1973, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has been the designated organization in the private sector for establishing standards of financial accounting and reporting. Those standards govern the preparation of financial reports.
The argument for what I call economic inertia is a good one, especially with corporate shareholders these days demanding that management squeeze everything they can out of every dollar and stretch every last penny as far as it will go.
A mainframe that does everything that you need it to do (and more) and works well with your company processes is worth far more to you than the investment of time and resources in an untested, unknown system that may or may not work. Remember that new systems don't go online until after extensive use and testing in parallel with the current one (if it's done correctly). That means duplication of efforts and resources.
Anyone who has worked at a company that builds enterprise-scale applications or mission-critical solutions knows that when the customer has an XYZ mainframe, you'd better have applications that support XYZ or you'll find the contract goes to your competitor who does. It's not an option not to support it.
Unless there is a strong business case for moving to a newer technology, mainframes will be with us for quite a long time.
A hint to the coders out there: the number of people who know and understand these systems is declining. There's a mint to be made if you can deliver services to support them.