"I don't know how anyone wrote software back in the days before dual high resolution screens."
Simple - we had both a vga and a monochrome monitor hooked up to the same computer (vga video + hercules mono). Borlands' compilers, dbase, etc. all supported the/dual command-line switch. Also, you could switch monitors manually "mode co80" "mode mono" . Use ansi.sys to assign each string to a function key, and switching monitors was a 1-keystroke operation.
It was nice to be able to step through your source on one monitor while watching the output on the other. Or hae a batch file display the passwords on the mono monitor, then launch a game on the vga (anyone remember "Death Track"?:-).
So yes, there's a couple of decades to back up the assertion that dual monitors are better.
"You would have thought that M$ and all there money they are throughing at vist would be able to make a virus imune OS, but obviously not."
Its not to their economic advantage to do so. How many "unvalidated" copies would they miss if users didn't have to continually patch, update, and reinstall?
Remember - "Follow the money." Its always about either money or power - or in this case, both.
Its sad, and a lot of people don't know that its illegal to pressure someone to put in unwanted overtime, paid or unpaid. Employers that want to last would make sure this sort of culture doesn't exist. Sure, they benefit from it short-term, but long-term, its a road to disaster. Short-term gain for long-term pain.
Yes, when you're working on something you enjoy, you don't mind the extra hours... but you eventually become stale and lose perspective. Not a good thing.
"If an individual tries to rock the boat, they are gently reminded that there are other people willing to work for low wages."
With cell phones that can record sound and video so pervasive, that's a quick way for a company to lose a large lawsuit, as well as get slapped with all sorts of fines for breaking labour standards. The days of "shhh... put up with being overly exploited or you're gone" are gone.
The "people are interchangeable parts" philosophy is short-sited on the employers' part, but it explains the poor quality of a LOT of stuff. People with low morale, bad hours, etc., how can you expect them to put the same quality time in as someone who is proud of what they do, who they work for, and is making enough so that they don't have to deal with the wolf at the door? Better to hire fewer people, and pay them more. The mythical man-month is a fact.
Depends on your jurisdiction. In some areas, there's a levy on blank dvds that covers this. Same as the levy on, for example, blank CDs in Canada, that is paid to the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA.
As for excessive bandwidth use being "prima facie evidence" of illegal movie downloading, they don't know the meaning of the term. Its nothing of the sort, and is easily disproven - I've downloaded 9 gigs of isos - OpenSuse 10 Alpha 3 - and uploaded 26 gigs of the same in the last couple of weeks.
Evidence that is sufficient to raise a presumption of fact or to establish the fact in question unless rebutted.
A prima-facie case is a lawsuit that alleges facts adequate to prove the underlying conduct supporting the cause of action and thereby prevail.
There is a big difference between "prima facie" and "baseless assumption without any evidence so we can screw our customers over".
80 hours a week and you don't get the perks that have to be given by LAW? For 80 hours a week, enlightened self-interest says the employer better have a few non-statutory perks lined up, or they'll end up with a burned-out no-morale employee, who is no good to anyone.
And, as I pointed out, $80k for 80 hrs/week is not exactly good money - their base salary before overtime is only $13.99/hr - a far cry from the $38.46/hr. that someone making the same for 40 hours is getting. So, after they've put in all those hours, and drop back to 37.5 hours a week (because you can be sure that anyone who won't pay the statutory overtime meals isn't going to pay a half-hour lunch), they'll be grossing less than $525/week, or just under $27,300 p.a.
If they need you that bad that you have to work 80 hours a week, you're entitled to some extra consideration. Or doesn't the persone who submits to this sort of abuse not have any pride in their work?
Hate replying to myself but the last bit got clipped...
and only making $6.16 an hour as a base salary if you're in a double time and a half after 80 hours area. Your pay would be 40 hours at your base rate, + 20 hours at time and a half (equivalent to 30 hours at your base rate), plus 20 hours at double time(equivalent to 40 hours at your base rate) and 20 hours at double time and a half,(equivalent to 50 hours at your base rate). In other words, your cmpensation should total the equivalent of 40+30+40+50, or 160 hours at your base rate, for a 100-hour week. Plus time paid to eat the over-12-hour day meal, plus the meal itself. If you're "eating" all this by working 100 hours a week for $80,000 p.a., you're actually making less as base pay than someone earning the minimum wage would in many areas.
Actually, you're earning even less. Overtime at 1-1/2 the base pay starts, depending on the jurisdiction, at either 40 hours or 44 hours. Double time usually starts at 60 hours.
For example, working a 40-hour week at a base rate, 20 hours at time-and-a-half, and 20 hours at double time, a person who earns $80,000 a year has a base pay of $13.99 per hour.
Even if they only get time-and-a-half for the other 40 hours, that's still only $15.39 per hour.
Either one is a far cry from $80,000 p.a/52 weeks/40 hours per week, or $38.46/hr.
And don't forget the compulsory perks, like a paid meal (both the food AND the time to eat it paid by the employer) for any work day in excess of 12 hours - which will be all 6 days (pretty much everywhere requires the employer to give all workers 32 consecutive hours off each week no matter how many hours are worked). So, even at $10 a head, that's an additional $3,000 p.a., plus the time to eat it at (at least) time and a half, and possible double time and a half.
And for those who put in 100-hour weeks... well, you're earning a base salary of $11.84 if you're in a time-and-a-half jurisdiction, and only making $6.16 an hour as a base salary.
"My guess is that people in the game design industry are there because they love it, not necessarily for excess compensation as compared to salaries paid in other fields within the industry. So, excess hours over the standard workweek are probably acceptable to many people."
... right... how long are they going to "love" 80-hour weeks...?
"
I've never heard of a CD or DVD drive's laser suddenly burning holes in the disc.
I've had cd drives that ate the cd, and one time ejected a cd at high speed. Think frisbee, not coaster. When a disk fails at 52x, your PC will sound like an unbalanced washig machine.
Ditto with mechanical shock -- a DVD will survive a lot rougher handling than a harddrive will, even if the latter's heads are parked.
Drive over a hard drive, then put it back in the machine - it'll work. Just drop your 100-spindle stack of dvds on the floor (because they were way more awkward to handle than one stupid hard drive) and at least one will land on its edge and develop fractures - not to mention the scratches and the way that any ambient dirt will get on them.
Your time has to be worth something - dvds just aren't worth the time any more, and usb keys are getting so cheap (and large enough) that for many purposes, back it up to a key and throw it in a drawer off-site.
Anyone with a bit of motivaton should be able to figure out hard page breaks just by browsing through the menus. "Insert hard page break? Mmmm - I wonder what that means? F1..."
People who still after a decade, haven't figured out ctl+c, ctl+v, ctl+x should be fired for gross incompetence. Ditto for people who only know how to save to the default location.
I just wish everyone would standardize on YYYYMMDD as the date format. This DDMMYYYY or MMDDYYYY stuff is confusing - you have to look at a list of dates, and find one that has a 13 in it, to figure out which is the day and which is the month. Then there's the MMDDYY and DDMMYY and YYMMDD and YYDDMM stuff...
Of course they are - and I'll be one of their customers, if I ever get around to buying a Wii (which I probably will - it'll be my first console since the SNES, and I think it would be fun to have for when friends visit). However, running a java dos emulator on a mobile phone won't cut it - the screen resolution is wrong, the input devices just aren't there (keyboard, mouse and joystick can't be replaced by a N-S-E-W clicker and a number pad), and if its slow on a 3ghz pc with 2 gig of ram, imagine how slow it'll be on a mobile phone running less than 1/10 the speed, and less than 1/100 the ram?
"True, but heat pumps are more efficient than resistive heaters."
Of course, but heat pumps can't seed debian isos for the last month, or suse 10.3 isos this month. (and no, I don't want to get into the whole "Novell is bad" thing - Novell has already gone on record that there are no infringing patents in linux, and I wish everyone who's freaking out would get a grip and stop repeating Monkeyboy's FUD/lies/slander).
"but those are issues that could easily be fixed by tuning it to run on a specific platform."
Oh yes, java's "write once, run everywhere"... still doesn't work. Java really needs to be redone from scratch.
There were a lot of games that were put out as shareware or demoware that are still available. Also, I have 5-1/4 and 3-1/2 floppies that are still readable just fine - I keep an old pentium floating around just in case...
Sorry, but in your defense, you fail it in your "lets separate the requirements" analysis.
The FIRST requirement of a fax is to communicate a message. If it can be done more efficiently by using just a single page (the fax "cover sheet" with the message written on it, rather than both a cover sheet and a page with the message, because your clip art took up too much space on the cover page), then it should be done that way. Fax cover sheets that have a ton of junk clip art are a waste of resources and time. Maybe you don't remember the crudescence that was in Word 2.0? Within weeks, everyone was receiving the same "funny" fax cover pages with full-page graphics, with a second page, rather than just a cover page with the message included. I put the blame 50/50 on Delrina/Winfax and Microsoft Word.
Fax cover sheets with a ton of clip art do indeed communicate a message - same as html email with all sorts of "wallpaper" does - but its a negative message. It screams "unprofessional" to the fax recipient. Sending out a press release about the upcoming 10-year-anniversary of your company? Don't include cheesy clip art of party hats and birthday cakes. DO include a fact or two about the company, its contribution to the community, and a contact name/email/phone# - all of which can be done in plain text on the cover sheet, and is more likely to be retained.
"In other words develop some manners please and stop bashing someone that probably lacks the time and or talent to produce what you think is a "professional" looking fax cover sheet."
There are 3 simple remedies available to them, two of which are free:
Cartridge-based games aren't the same as ones distributed on floppies (though you can find the ROMs online for most of them - just google for MAME ROM).
Slashdot Mirror
"I don't know how anyone wrote software back in the days before dual high resolution screens."
Simple - we had both a vga and a monochrome monitor hooked up to the same computer (vga video + hercules mono). Borlands' compilers, dbase, etc. all supported the /dual command-line switch. Also, you could switch monitors manually "mode co80" "mode mono" . Use ansi.sys to assign each string to a function key, and switching monitors was a 1-keystroke operation.
It was nice to be able to step through your source on one monitor while watching the output on the other. Or hae a batch file display the passwords on the mono monitor, then launch a game on the vga (anyone remember "Death Track"? :-).
So yes, there's a couple of decades to back up the assertion that dual monitors are better.
You forgot - "then ou have to save the virus to the ipod"
The article goes on to say it can't propagate itself ... all it can do is corrupt files. That's not a virus.
"You would have thought that M$ and all there money they are throughing at vist would be able to make a virus imune OS, but obviously not."
Its not to their economic advantage to do so. How many "unvalidated" copies would they miss if users didn't have to continually patch, update, and reinstall?
Remember - "Follow the money." Its always about either money or power - or in this case, both.
It will certainly make it easier to hijack someone's "web browsing experience" - just hook a semi up to the trailer and drive away with it.
Adds a whole new take to "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes."
Its sad, and a lot of people don't know that its illegal to pressure someone to put in unwanted overtime, paid or unpaid. Employers that want to last would make sure this sort of culture doesn't exist. Sure, they benefit from it short-term, but long-term, its a road to disaster. Short-term gain for long-term pain.
Yes, when you're working on something you enjoy, you don't mind the extra hours ... but you eventually become stale and lose perspective. Not a good thing.
"Did anyone else misread this as: more serious, lengthy German board games which last a few years "
Like "Invade Poland!"
"If an individual tries to rock the boat, they are gently reminded that there are other people willing to work for low wages."
With cell phones that can record sound and video so pervasive, that's a quick way for a company to lose a large lawsuit, as well as get slapped with all sorts of fines for breaking labour standards. The days of "shhh ... put up with being overly exploited or you're gone" are gone.
The "people are interchangeable parts" philosophy is short-sited on the employers' part, but it explains the poor quality of a LOT of stuff. People with low morale, bad hours, etc., how can you expect them to put the same quality time in as someone who is proud of what they do, who they work for, and is making enough so that they don't have to deal with the wolf at the door? Better to hire fewer people, and pay them more. The mythical man-month is a fact.
Depends on your jurisdiction. In some areas, there's a levy on blank dvds that covers this. Same as the levy on, for example, blank CDs in Canada, that is paid to the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA.
As for excessive bandwidth use being "prima facie evidence" of illegal movie downloading, they don't know the meaning of the term. Its nothing of the sort, and is easily disproven - I've downloaded 9 gigs of isos - OpenSuse 10 Alpha 3 - and uploaded 26 gigs of the same in the last couple of weeks.
There is a big difference between "prima facie" and "baseless assumption without any evidence so we can screw our customers over".
80 hours a week and you don't get the perks that have to be given by LAW? For 80 hours a week, enlightened self-interest says the employer better have a few non-statutory perks lined up, or they'll end up with a burned-out no-morale employee, who is no good to anyone.
And, as I pointed out, $80k for 80 hrs/week is not exactly good money - their base salary before overtime is only $13.99/hr - a far cry from the $38.46/hr. that someone making the same for 40 hours is getting. So, after they've put in all those hours, and drop back to 37.5 hours a week (because you can be sure that anyone who won't pay the statutory overtime meals isn't going to pay a half-hour lunch), they'll be grossing less than $525/week, or just under $27,300 p.a.
If they need you that bad that you have to work 80 hours a week, you're entitled to some extra consideration. Or doesn't the persone who submits to this sort of abuse not have any pride in their work?
Hate replying to myself but the last bit got clipped...
and only making $6.16 an hour as a base salary if you're in a double time and a half after 80 hours area. Your pay would be 40 hours at your base rate, + 20 hours at time and a half (equivalent to 30 hours at your base rate), plus 20 hours at double time(equivalent to 40 hours at your base rate) and 20 hours at double time and a half,(equivalent to 50 hours at your base rate). In other words, your cmpensation should total the equivalent of 40+30+40+50, or 160 hours at your base rate, for a 100-hour week. Plus time paid to eat the over-12-hour day meal, plus the meal itself. If you're "eating" all this by working 100 hours a week for $80,000 p.a., you're actually making less as base pay than someone earning the minimum wage would in many areas.
Actually, you're earning even less. Overtime at 1-1/2 the base pay starts, depending on the jurisdiction, at either 40 hours or 44 hours. Double time usually starts at 60 hours.
For example, working a 40-hour week at a base rate, 20 hours at time-and-a-half, and 20 hours at double time, a person who earns $80,000 a year has a base pay of $13.99 per hour.
Even if they only get time-and-a-half for the other 40 hours, that's still only $15.39 per hour.
Either one is a far cry from $80,000 p.a /52 weeks /40 hours per week, or $38.46/hr.
And don't forget the compulsory perks, like a paid meal (both the food AND the time to eat it paid by the employer) for any work day in excess of 12 hours - which will be all 6 days (pretty much everywhere requires the employer to give all workers 32 consecutive hours off each week no matter how many hours are worked). So, even at $10 a head, that's an additional $3,000 p.a., plus the time to eat it at (at least) time and a half, and possible double time and a half.
And for those who put in 100-hour weeks ... well, you're earning a base salary of $11.84 if you're in a time-and-a-half jurisdiction, and only making $6.16 an hour as a base salary.
"My guess is that people in the game design industry are there because they love it, not necessarily for excess compensation as compared to salaries paid in other fields within the industry. So, excess hours over the standard workweek are probably acceptable to many people."
... talk about protectionist measures ...
"Magneto-Optical media is used by medical facilities where archival time length is paramount."
My last magnto-optical media died from the click of death, you ignorant clod.
" I've never heard of a CD or DVD drive's laser suddenly burning holes in the disc.
I've had cd drives that ate the cd, and one time ejected a cd at high speed. Think frisbee, not coaster. When a disk fails at 52x, your PC will sound like an unbalanced washig machine.
Ditto with mechanical shock -- a DVD will survive a lot rougher handling than a harddrive will, even if the latter's heads are parked.
Drive over a hard drive, then put it back in the machine - it'll work. Just drop your 100-spindle stack of dvds on the floor (because they were way more awkward to handle than one stupid hard drive) and at least one will land on its edge and develop fractures - not to mention the scratches and the way that any ambient dirt will get on them.
Your time has to be worth something - dvds just aren't worth the time any more, and usb keys are getting so cheap (and large enough) that for many purposes, back it up to a key and throw it in a drawer off-site.
Anyone with a bit of motivaton should be able to figure out hard page breaks just by browsing through the menus. "Insert hard page break? Mmmm - I wonder what that means? F1 ..."
People who still after a decade, haven't figured out ctl+c, ctl+v, ctl+x should be fired for gross incompetence. Ditto for people who only know how to save to the default location.
"find it weird because they say cinq point cinq, yet they write it as 5,5."
That's nothing - a quarter is pronounced "trente cents" - thirty cents.
... which is why you have different locales.
I just wish everyone would standardize on YYYYMMDD as the date format. This DDMMYYYY or MMDDYYYY stuff is confusing - you have to look at a list of dates, and find one that has a 13 in it, to figure out which is the day and which is the month. Then there's the MMDDYY and DDMMYY and YYMMDD and YYDDMM stuff ...
"103,262207 US dollars? Wow, everything *is* more expensive in Europe!"
Not all locales use the period as the decimal indicator. Europe uses the comma ...
Of course they are - and I'll be one of their customers, if I ever get around to buying a Wii (which I probably will - it'll be my first console since the SNES, and I think it would be fun to have for when friends visit). However, running a java dos emulator on a mobile phone won't cut it - the screen resolution is wrong, the input devices just aren't there (keyboard, mouse and joystick can't be replaced by a N-S-E-W clicker and a number pad), and if its slow on a 3ghz pc with 2 gig of ram, imagine how slow it'll be on a mobile phone running less than 1/10 the speed, and less than 1/100 the ram?
"True, but heat pumps are more efficient than resistive heaters."
Of course, but heat pumps can't seed debian isos for the last month, or suse 10.3 isos this month. (and no, I don't want to get into the whole "Novell is bad" thing - Novell has already gone on record that there are no infringing patents in linux, and I wish everyone who's freaking out would get a grip and stop repeating Monkeyboy's FUD/lies/slander).
"Wait....a luddite website??? Isn't that an oxymoron?"
Sure it is, and it fits right in with this article about tin-foil paint.
"but those are issues that could easily be fixed by tuning it to run on a specific platform."
Oh yes, java's "write once, run everywhere" ... still doesn't work. Java really needs to be redone from scratch.
There were a lot of games that were put out as shareware or demoware that are still available. Also, I have 5-1/4 and 3-1/2 floppies that are still readable just fine - I keep an old pentium floating around just in case ...
Sorry, but in your defense, you fail it in your "lets separate the requirements" analysis.
The FIRST requirement of a fax is to communicate a message. If it can be done more efficiently by using just a single page (the fax "cover sheet" with the message written on it, rather than both a cover sheet and a page with the message, because your clip art took up too much space on the cover page), then it should be done that way. Fax cover sheets that have a ton of junk clip art are a waste of resources and time. Maybe you don't remember the crudescence that was in Word 2.0? Within weeks, everyone was receiving the same "funny" fax cover pages with full-page graphics, with a second page, rather than just a cover page with the message included. I put the blame 50/50 on Delrina/Winfax and Microsoft Word.
Fax cover sheets with a ton of clip art do indeed communicate a message - same as html email with all sorts of "wallpaper" does - but its a negative message. It screams "unprofessional" to the fax recipient. Sending out a press release about the upcoming 10-year-anniversary of your company? Don't include cheesy clip art of party hats and birthday cakes. DO include a fact or two about the company, its contribution to the community, and a contact name/email/phone# - all of which can be done in plain text on the cover sheet, and is more likely to be retained.
There are 3 simple remedies available to them, two of which are free:
Cartridge-based games aren't the same as ones distributed on floppies (though you can find the ROMs online for most of them - just google for MAME ROM).