This has come up many times; especially at game/graphics/"fun" companies almost everyone has the "or crud" moment when they realize that it's work now. It even has a somewhat tacky acronym (TGINAG--Thank God I'm Not A Gynecologist). Of all the solutions I've heard, only two have worked consistantly for me.
Either:
program in a very different language (e.g. Postscript or Haskel, if your days are spent in something like C); especially a language you don't already know. A lot of the early fun when programing was new to you was, after all, the fact that it was new
or
take up something other than programming that will still exercize your brain, such as physics, drawing, woodworking, model rocketry, writing, trading stocks, or...
1) I was about to agree with your distinction between accountability and liability, but then you confounded them yourself, and started sweaaring for emphasis rather than holding to your position.
2) Who wants "authoritarian" software? No me.
3) I think you are confusing system administration accounts with backdoors, and erring in assuming that somehow all the people you work with are trustworthy. The key strength of open source is
we don't implicitly trust each other
and further
we don't even trust ourselves
I think its a mind set you either get or you don't.
4) Yeah, really. I've even met them and had lunch in a a few cases. But the most amazing thing to me is that you work in a company where quizlings sign their backdoors.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. If you really dislike Open Source Software, there's a simple solution: don't use it.
Wizard mode was not (IIRC) a backdoor; it was a system admenistration account that required a password set by the site administrator.
There was a bug that allowed BG's to gain access, but (again, IIRC) it wasn't a backdoor put there by somebody so that they could later gain access to systems that weren't theirs.
What this article is claiming -- and everybody seems to be ignoring -- is that open source, being a wild system with no accountability (liability) nor authority, is more prone to dangerous bugs and backdoors that closed software developers don't have to worry about. This is the key -- not that hacker X is going to put a backdoor in that won't get caught by peers, but that hacker X's identity and location are completely unknown (not true for employees of a closed software developer) and that there is nobody whose lifestyle is in jeopardy should such a backdoor be found.
No, they aren't ignoring, they are denying it. Because it's bunk.
Accountability has very little to do with preventing problems and everything with placing blame after they happen.
Open source has more loci of "authority" than closed source, chained in a check-and-ballance system that greatly improves their effectiveness. And the cap stone is, I get to make an informed choice about what I run on my boxes.
It isn't true that closed source developers don't have to worry about backdoors, but it may well be true that they believe that they don't. There have been many cases of backdoors in popular closed source programs (Remember "Netscape engineers are wennies"?) but can you name one backdoor that made it into a widely used open source product?
As far as knowing the identity of the person who supplied a patch, this is just plain nuts. I can (and have) easily tracked down the person who wrote/submitted a patch to an open source product, and the person who accepted it--often, I can have an e-mail wigning its way to them in miuntes. But I can't recall ever learning the identity of a programmer who made a change in a closed source product, or even being offered the means to.
This is the point I was going to make (but I found it here before I got around to posting).
Zen. Take a breath. Then take another breath. Repeat. You don't need to solve this type of problem; you can simply stop having it by letting go of it.
I once worked as a liason to a company run by an amazing person. He jokingly refered to himself as "a type triple-A" personality. He got into a confrontation every five minutes or so, with anyone that was handy. I liked shouting matches.
His assistant was an even more amazing person; the calmest, sweetest person you'd ever care to meet. She was a buddhist. She just didn't engage with him; or rather, she engaged with him, instead of against him. It's hard to explain. It's not that she gave in, it's that she didn't fight. She was polite, reasonable, etc. and didn't mind him being however he wanted to be. It took all the wind out of his sails.
-- MarkusQ
Too much realism
on
Game with God
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Religion is ignored in gaming, or if it is portrayed, it's wildly caricatured
So, is this yet another case of game designers trying to imitate the real world too closely?
Getting out of the Earth's gravity well is only the first problem. Climbing higher in the Sun's (Mars is, after all, farther out) is the second, and the falling into Mars's smaller well is the third. All three of these favour rocks coming our way over rocks going theirs, though non of them strongly enough to say it couldn't happen.
-- MarkusQ
Re:Is posting of contract revenues unusual?
on
Red Hat Vs. The Lawyers
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Keep seeing at your investments as a crusade and you will lose your shirt.
Perhaps, but that's nothing compared to what you lose if you suport things you know to be wrong just because you hope to thereby get money.
But it appears that the crux of this case is that Red Hat must prove that the mis-stated earnings were the result of an honest mistake, not intentional fudging
But that's not the only exit. From the lawyer's press release:
Specifically, the complaint alleges that Defendants disseminated materially false and misleading statements to the market and concealed material adverse facts concerning the Company's financial performance.
This should be a slam dunk, since the changes (monthly vs. daily pro ration) are clearly not a case of "materially false and misleading statements," but rather a minor change with negligable net effect. Should be easy to sink on undisputed facts.
Another good place to put it might be OVER the freeways in sunny areas as a sunshade.
Another advantage: The CO2 concentration is significantly greater near a highway. Thus they should grow faster (since their growth rate should be CO2 limited in all but the dimmest light).
You might have to worry about CO, but if they could (as some SSO can) use this too, it would reduce the pollution even more.
My main questions are at a lower level: how would the gas exchange system work (bubblers?) and how would you clean the pipes?
This should have shown everyone that the market is insane. The rise of SCO shares was for me the least suprising. Their is always a sucker somewhere. The market isn't about investment it is about gambling and the larger the odds the bigger the payout.
No, the market is sane, once you realize that it isn't about investment or gambling--it's about taking money from foolish people as quickly as possible (e.g., before they can use it to do something bad) and giving it to wiser people. If a person believes that you can make zillions of dollars selling dog food over the internet, or that SCO has IBM dead to rights, or that Elvis is going to save Enron, you want to make sure that they don't have the means to act on their dellusions. Likewise, if someone can spot the seed of a good idea or the first bloom of a reasonable company doing something that needs doing in a field of tall grass and cow pies, and is willing to risk a bit of their own funds to help their pick grow to the point where we all can benefit from the fruits of their effort, you want to let them do so.
The stock market handles this process quite nicely. Unlike comunism, which takes from the rich and gives to the poor, capitalism takes from the dumb and gives to the not-as-dumb. The SCO saga is just one more case in point.
I don't have any good links handy, but Google is your friend. Try to find several explanations of all the key points, to make sure you really understand, especially since there are some odd terms used in specific and non-obvious ways (like computer jargon, but totally unrelated).
With today's discount brokerages, you don't need a lot of money to short productively, but you do need to do the math. Set up a spread sheet or write a program to get a feel for what will happen to your position if the stock rises or falls by different amounts; model your brokerages margin requirements, fee structure, tax impact (shorts are taxed sort of like longs, but with the sign flipped in such a way that you still pay taxes--of course). Know when you would expect a margin call, and what you will do about it, and likewise a short squeeze--if you've read enough about shorting, you'll know exactly what these terms mean; if you don't read more.
You can,of course, short stocks without learning all the terminology and doing the math, just as you can write code without learning a language or working out your design. But if your program doesn't run, you aren't out real money. So it pays to do the work up front.
All in all, shorting is harder than SQL but easyier than perl.
As for having lots of long to ballance a short position, one technique I like is to have equal amounts long and short in pairs of companies in the same industry. If you think Amagimated Widgits has got the right stuff, and Widgits International is full of goose sprockets, go long on the first and short on the second. That way, you are buffered from fluctuations that move the whole market (or just the Widgit industry) one way or the other. You profit if your judgement of the two companies pans out, regardless of how "the market" performs.
-- MarkusQ
Re:Unsolicited advice on shorting
on
SCO Caught Copying
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I never short stocks. Bought stocks can go to zero and all you loose is the entire principal. If on a fluke you shorted SCO and by another fluke they won in court, you can loose many times your investment. You could owe your entire future. The sky is the limit on your potential losses. I'd rather diversify than have the potential for unlimited losses. The potential of unlimited growth is why I'm in the market. The thought of unlimited loss is pretty scarry.
This is standard anti-shorting FUD. You can (and should) just as easily limit/hedge loss on a short position as on a long, and even if you don't no broker will let you go infinitely negative on any position, so your losses are limited to what you choose to risk.
That said, one of the biggest problems with the market today is not enough people take short positions on the questionable stocks. This creates a bias in the market because everyone wants "the market" to go up--meaning they want bad stocks rise in value along with good stocks. But that's just another way of saying "bubble" which is bad for everyone but the few crooks who get away with the goods without getting caught.
If you want a healthy market, learn how to short stocks, look for idiots trying to scam the system, and nail them for a tiddy profit. It's fun, it's helps the good guys and hurts the bad, and if you do your homework (you should always do your homework) it's an easier and safer way to make a profit than buying into the FUD and going long across the board.
The first question to ask yourself when deciding where to put something is where did it come from? Often, this is the best place to put it.
I have been part of the whole where-does-the-business-logic-belong process many times, and if your company is anything like the ones I've seen, some middle manager with training in a field unrelated to anything you're dealing with pulled the "business logic" out of someplace, and you might suggest that they stuff it back in the same place when they are finished with it.
In any case, bright light often is bad for business logic, so it should be kept someplace like that anyway.
I heard and read about the Guildhall, and I was wondering if anyone could relate their experiences from it? I've heard that many so called Game Development Schools don't really do much for preparing the student for life in the industry. Does the Guildhall address this very well? What are post graduation job possibilities? Basically, is this worth the tuition?
I don't know anything about the Guildhall per se, but I've worked professionally in the computer game industry on and off for the last twenty five years or so (starting with text based games for a TSS), and I can tell you this much:
If it's worth the tuition then it won't do much to prepare you for life in the industry.
If you're really concerned about being prepared for life "in the industry" I'd recommend going to Las Vegas. Take lots of cash. Trust everyone you meet. That's the quickest way I know for getting up to speed on "life in the industry".
-- MarkusQ
P.S. It is my firm belief that some things should only be done for love, and that game development is one of them. The nice thing about game development is that once you have absorbed the lesson of Las Vegas, you won't be tempted into thinking that there are any other realistic options, and you can focus on the fact that on a typical day you're having way more fun at work than most people have in a month.
P.P.S. Do not share this joyous insight with your landlord when explaining why the rent has been...rescheduled. Just tell him/her that you want the rent check to be perfect when you mail it, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be ready by early next quarter, so no worries.
At work we build our own desktop boxes (~85% linux, these days) or get them from a local guy who does custom builds for a living, but when someone wants a laptop we've gotten them from a company called eracks; we've bought a half dozen or so over the past couple years, and have been pleased with them--especially the fact that you can talk to somebody who knows what they're doing if you need something less standard, such as a linux/bsd dual boot setup, etc.
You're both wrong. Or at least, prose-wise, the whole dynamic of his message has been transformed by your attempts to narrow his statements to a specific implication context-wise. This isn't about narrowing. This isn't about context. This is about limitless possibilities for vissioning the implications without giving it to the growning dependence on actual meaning.
Look at his resume--all of the important companies that aren't trying to hide the fact--and have never tried to hide the fact--that he may once have run them, or sat on their boards. No one is trying to hide the fact; it would be too hard, and as he says he isn't good at hiding. These companies wouldn't want him on theirs boards if they doubted for a moment that he wasn't the sort of guy who could and would tell it like it is, plain-speaking-wise, without the risk of sounding like he was trying to avoid beating around the bush when the chips were down.
As for the GPL & F/OSS--well, his position speaks for itself.
Wow. Less than 10 posts on this when the one above it has 200 some odd. This must be some kind of record for the least-cared about story to ever hit the front page.
Not neccessarily. I think it may be because they're giving us the wrong access code or something. At least, all of my posts in this thread so far have shown up under an adjacent story which is posted on the same web site.
I swear, these electronic messaging systems are just too unreliable.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. And darn it, why can't I get a simple paper reciept when I post?!
My personal best was a ride up on BEOS (no graph available, but they went from ~3 to ~20) in a few days and then a switch to a long-term short on XLA.
as they went from ~86 to ~5. I don't have the day trader mentality in general, but there are occasions where the PR BS is so thick and deep that it isn't so much a matter of timing the market as calling some joker's bluff.
That's a "dead cat bounce," so called because after that it never moves again other than slowly melting into the ground.
IMHO, anyone who's short SCOX at this point will probably hang on till they're back in their pre-pump-and-dump trading range (i.e. << $1), at which point it won't matter that much. There are several reasons for this (e.g. taxes, ROI), and I wouldn't expect enough people to decided to close out all at once to cause much of a bounce.
Slashdot Mirror
This has come up many times; especially at game/graphics/"fun" companies almost everyone has the "or crud" moment when they realize that it's work now. It even has a somewhat tacky acronym (TGINAG--Thank God I'm Not A Gynecologist). Of all the solutions I've heard, only two have worked consistantly for me.
Either:
or
-- MarkusQ
That's not how I recall the story (but I have no other reason to doubt your account), and yes, I'd sure call that a backdoor.
So the count is at one of F/OSS vs. four or five in CSS that I can think of off the top of my head (MSSQL, MS FrontPage, MS ISS, MS Excel, MS Win ME).
-- MarkusQ
1) I was about to agree with your distinction between accountability and liability, but then you confounded them yourself, and started sweaaring for emphasis rather than holding to your position.
2) Who wants "authoritarian" software? No me.
3) I think you are confusing system administration accounts with backdoors, and erring in assuming that somehow all the people you work with are trustworthy. The key strength of open source is
I think its a mind set you either get or you don't.4) Yeah, really. I've even met them and had lunch in a a few cases. But the most amazing thing to me is that you work in a company where quizlings sign their backdoors.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. If you really dislike Open Source Software, there's a simple solution: don't use it.
Wizard mode was not (IIRC) a backdoor; it was a system admenistration account that required a password set by the site administrator.
There was a bug that allowed BG's to gain access, but (again, IIRC) it wasn't a backdoor put there by somebody so that they could later gain access to systems that weren't theirs.
-- MarkusQ
No, they aren't ignoring, they are denying it. Because it's bunk.
- Accountability has very little to do with preventing problems and everything with placing blame after they happen.
- Open source has more loci of "authority" than closed source, chained in a check-and-ballance system that greatly improves their effectiveness. And the cap stone is, I get to make an informed choice about what I run on my boxes.
- It isn't true that closed source developers don't have to worry about backdoors, but it may well be true that they believe that they don't. There have been many cases of backdoors in popular closed source programs (Remember "Netscape engineers are wennies"?) but can you name one backdoor that made it into a widely used open source product?
- As far as knowing the identity of the person who supplied a patch, this is just plain nuts. I can (and have) easily tracked down the person who wrote/submitted a patch to an open source product, and the person who accepted it--often, I can have an e-mail wigning its way to them in miuntes. But I can't recall ever learning the identity of a programmer who made a change in a closed source product, or even being offered the means to.
-- MarkusQShould I be going around and changing my records everywhere to say 'Timothy' to match my Social Security records?
No. Have your name legally changed to something that requires Unicode to represent. Much more fun, and better for society in the long run as well.
I promise.
-- MarkusQ
This is the point I was going to make (but I found it here before I got around to posting).
Zen. Take a breath. Then take another breath. Repeat. You don't need to solve this type of problem; you can simply stop having it by letting go of it.
I once worked as a liason to a company run by an amazing person. He jokingly refered to himself as "a type triple-A" personality. He got into a confrontation every five minutes or so, with anyone that was handy. I liked shouting matches.
His assistant was an even more amazing person; the calmest, sweetest person you'd ever care to meet. She was a buddhist. She just didn't engage with him; or rather, she engaged with him, instead of against him. It's hard to explain. It's not that she gave in, it's that she didn't fight. She was polite, reasonable, etc. and didn't mind him being however he wanted to be. It took all the wind out of his sails.
-- MarkusQ
So, is this yet another case of game designers trying to imitate the real world too closely?
-- MarkusQ
Getting out of the Earth's gravity well is only the first problem. Climbing higher in the Sun's (Mars is, after all, farther out) is the second, and the falling into Mars's smaller well is the third. All three of these favour rocks coming our way over rocks going theirs, though non of them strongly enough to say it couldn't happen.
-- MarkusQ
Perhaps, but that's nothing compared to what you lose if you suport things you know to be wrong just because you hope to thereby get money.
-- MarkusQ
But that's not the only exit. From the lawyer's press release:
This should be a slam dunk, since the changes (monthly vs. daily pro ration) are clearly not a case of "materially false and misleading statements," but rather a minor change with negligable net effect. Should be easy to sink on undisputed facts.
-- MarkusQ
Bah! GIMP is for wimps who can't play emacs. You don't even need to know lisp to do gouraud shading, for gosh sakes! Where's the skill in that?
-- MarkusQ
Another good place to put it might be OVER the freeways in sunny areas as a sunshade.
Another advantage: The CO2 concentration is significantly greater near a highway. Thus they should grow faster (since their growth rate should be CO2 limited in all but the dimmest light).
You might have to worry about CO, but if they could (as some SSO can) use this too, it would reduce the pollution even more.
My main questions are at a lower level: how would the gas exchange system work (bubblers?) and how would you clean the pipes?
-- MarkusQ
This should have shown everyone that the market is insane. The rise of SCO shares was for me the least suprising. Their is always a sucker somewhere. The market isn't about investment it is about gambling and the larger the odds the bigger the payout.
No, the market is sane, once you realize that it isn't about investment or gambling--it's about taking money from foolish people as quickly as possible (e.g., before they can use it to do something bad) and giving it to wiser people. If a person believes that you can make zillions of dollars selling dog food over the internet, or that SCO has IBM dead to rights, or that Elvis is going to save Enron, you want to make sure that they don't have the means to act on their dellusions. Likewise, if someone can spot the seed of a good idea or the first bloom of a reasonable company doing something that needs doing in a field of tall grass and cow pies, and is willing to risk a bit of their own funds to help their pick grow to the point where we all can benefit from the fruits of their effort, you want to let them do so.
The stock market handles this process quite nicely. Unlike comunism, which takes from the rich and gives to the poor, capitalism takes from the dumb and gives to the not-as-dumb. The SCO saga is just one more case in point.
-- MarkusQ
I don't have any good links handy, but Google is your friend. Try to find several explanations of all the key points, to make sure you really understand, especially since there are some odd terms used in specific and non-obvious ways (like computer jargon, but totally unrelated).
With today's discount brokerages, you don't need a lot of money to short productively, but you do need to do the math. Set up a spread sheet or write a program to get a feel for what will happen to your position if the stock rises or falls by different amounts; model your brokerages margin requirements, fee structure, tax impact (shorts are taxed sort of like longs, but with the sign flipped in such a way that you still pay taxes--of course). Know when you would expect a margin call, and what you will do about it, and likewise a short squeeze--if you've read enough about shorting, you'll know exactly what these terms mean; if you don't read more.
You can,of course, short stocks without learning all the terminology and doing the math, just as you can write code without learning a language or working out your design. But if your program doesn't run, you aren't out real money. So it pays to do the work up front. All in all, shorting is harder than SQL but easyier than perl.
As for having lots of long to ballance a short position, one technique I like is to have equal amounts long and short in pairs of companies in the same industry. If you think Amagimated Widgits has got the right stuff, and Widgits International is full of goose sprockets, go long on the first and short on the second. That way, you are buffered from fluctuations that move the whole market (or just the Widgit industry) one way or the other. You profit if your judgement of the two companies pans out, regardless of how "the market" performs.
-- MarkusQ
I never short stocks. Bought stocks can go to zero and all you loose is the entire principal. If on a fluke you shorted SCO and by another fluke they won in court, you can loose many times your investment. You could owe your entire future. The sky is the limit on your potential losses. I'd rather diversify than have the potential for unlimited losses. The potential of unlimited growth is why I'm in the market. The thought of unlimited loss is pretty scarry.
This is standard anti-shorting FUD. You can (and should) just as easily limit/hedge loss on a short position as on a long, and even if you don't no broker will let you go infinitely negative on any position, so your losses are limited to what you choose to risk.
That said, one of the biggest problems with the market today is not enough people take short positions on the questionable stocks. This creates a bias in the market because everyone wants "the market" to go up--meaning they want bad stocks rise in value along with good stocks. But that's just another way of saying "bubble" which is bad for everyone but the few crooks who get away with the goods without getting caught.
If you want a healthy market, learn how to short stocks, look for idiots trying to scam the system, and nail them for a tiddy profit. It's fun, it's helps the good guys and hurts the bad, and if you do your homework (you should always do your homework) it's an easier and safer way to make a profit than buying into the FUD and going long across the board.
-- MarkusQ
The first question to ask yourself when deciding where to put something is where did it come from? Often, this is the best place to put it.
I have been part of the whole where-does-the-business-logic-belong process many times, and if your company is anything like the ones I've seen, some middle manager with training in a field unrelated to anything you're dealing with pulled the "business logic" out of someplace, and you might suggest that they stuff it back in the same place when they are finished with it.
In any case, bright light often is bad for business logic, so it should be kept someplace like that anyway.
-- MarkusQ
I heard and read about the Guildhall, and I was wondering if anyone could relate their experiences from it? I've heard that many so called Game Development Schools don't really do much for preparing the student for life in the industry. Does the Guildhall address this very well? What are post graduation job possibilities? Basically, is this worth the tuition?
I don't know anything about the Guildhall per se, but I've worked professionally in the computer game industry on and off for the last twenty five years or so (starting with text based games for a TSS), and I can tell you this much:
If you're really concerned about being prepared for life "in the industry" I'd recommend going to Las Vegas. Take lots of cash. Trust everyone you meet. That's the quickest way I know for getting up to speed on "life in the industry".-- MarkusQ
P.S. It is my firm belief that some things should only be done for love, and that game development is one of them. The nice thing about game development is that once you have absorbed the lesson of Las Vegas, you won't be tempted into thinking that there are any other realistic options, and you can focus on the fact that on a typical day you're having way more fun at work than most people have in a month.
P.P.S. Do not share this joyous insight with your landlord when explaining why the rent has been...rescheduled. Just tell him/her that you want the rent check to be perfect when you mail it, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be ready by early next quarter, so no worries.
At work we build our own desktop boxes (~85% linux, these days) or get them from a local guy who does custom builds for a living, but when someone wants a laptop we've gotten them from a company called eracks; we've bought a half dozen or so over the past couple years, and have been pleased with them--especially the fact that you can talk to somebody who knows what they're doing if you need something less standard, such as a linux/bsd dual boot setup, etc.
-- MarkusQ
So, you like to sing at camp?
-- MarkusQ
Man, I wish we could mod stories. This one deserives at least:
- -1 Overrated,
- -1 Troll,
- -1 Redundant,
- -2 Flamebait
-- MarkusQand
You're both wrong. Or at least, prose-wise, the whole dynamic of his message has been transformed by your attempts to narrow his statements to a specific implication context-wise. This isn't about narrowing. This isn't about context. This is about limitless possibilities for vissioning the implications without giving it to the growning dependence on actual meaning.
Look at his resume--all of the important companies that aren't trying to hide the fact--and have never tried to hide the fact--that he may once have run them, or sat on their boards. No one is trying to hide the fact; it would be too hard, and as he says he isn't good at hiding. These companies wouldn't want him on theirs boards if they doubted for a moment that he wasn't the sort of guy who could and would tell it like it is, plain-speaking-wise, without the risk of sounding like he was trying to avoid beating around the bush when the chips were down.
As for the GPL & F/OSS--well, his position speaks for itself.
-- MarkusQ
Not neccessarily. I think it may be because they're giving us the wrong access code or something. At least, all of my posts in this thread so far have shown up under an adjacent story which is posted on the same web site.
I swear, these electronic messaging systems are just too unreliable.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. And darn it, why can't I get a simple paper reciept when I post?!
My personal best was a ride up on BEOS (no graph available, but they went from ~3 to ~20) in a few days and then a switch to a long-term short on XLA. as they went from ~86 to ~5. I don't have the day trader mentality in general, but there are occasions where the PR BS is so thick and deep that it isn't so much a matter of timing the market as calling some joker's bluff.
-- MarkusQ
That's a "dead cat bounce," so called because after that it never moves again other than slowly melting into the ground.
IMHO, anyone who's short SCOX at this point will probably hang on till they're back in their pre-pump-and-dump trading range (i.e. << $1), at which point it won't matter that much. There are several reasons for this (e.g. taxes, ROI), and I wouldn't expect enough people to decided to close out all at once to cause much of a bounce.
-- MarkusQ