There are people with the necessary skills and intellect coming out of UK universities. I'd wager the real problem is that they're ending up working in finance, which has far larger salaries than the games industry
Parent is spot on. I know quite a few folks who work in London in IT, in the finance sector, earning a million plus GBP per annum, living in million pound plus apartments on the Thames, driving supercars and even a couple who've bought their own planes. Can anyone on here who's UK based and has friends working in the games industry think of anyone they know with that sort of lifestyle? All my knowledge of the games industry here suggests it's long hours and shitty salaries, unless you're the CEO of Rockstar in Scotland.
Back in the days of the 8 and 16 bit era, people could code up a game at home and get it published if it was any good (thinking Jet Set Willy here) and maybe make it rich (thinking the Darling brothers of recent news fame), nowadays, to compete in the market and get it published you need an army of programmers etc, who'll all work for average salaries. Is it any wonder we've all gone into the finance sector to make our money?
Quite a few of the possible first uses are a bit out of kilter with video game history, and some of the fifty just plain pointless, although the author acknowledges this.
I totally agree. I used to work for a 150+ staff software house back in 1999-2001, and for one project we took on three contractors who'd come over from India to help knock some pretty simple Java stuff together. I spent a whole day briefing them on what was needed of them (all very basic stuff, something I with 1 year's commercial experience at the time and my computer science degree was doing in my sleep). At the end of the day's meetings about what was required of them and getting them all set up to work the following day, they were given some time to ask questions about anything they were unsure of, concepts, environment, the project etc. Not a peep.
Forward to the next day at work, and my usual daily routine again, and I had one of them sitting pretty near to where I was. I kept an occasional eye on him to ensure he wasn't struggling too hard, but by the end of the day it was apparent that he'd done nothing. Nothing. Not one line of code, not asked anyone related to the project for help, in fact, not spoken to anyone at all as far as I can gather. This was the same for all of them.
Cue the next day and me having to spend another day with them going over it all again, trying to get them to communicate if they didn't understand anything to me, and not just nod in agreement (or disagreement or whatever their head shake was supposed to mean).
It wasn't just their lack of programming skills (they were supposed to be all excellent Java developers with degree equivalent computer science qualifications and commercial experience etc) but their lack of English which made everything almost impossible to achieve in any sensible timescale. Eventually we got there, when one of them finally understood it all and could then explain and help his co contractors, but boy did it take some time.
I have another memory of a day where another Indian contractor came in and spent the whole day in the staff chillout area waiting for someone to speak to him. I don't think it occurred to him to report to reception and let them know he was there, nor ask any of the hundred or so staff in the building where to go / what to do.
Ah, those happy days of the dot com boom and bust.
That these people are allowed to vote - if they can't read the literature that comes with the console, how can they read candidate names? Fair enough the six year olds might not know about blu ray, but can we really believe that those very same six year olds went out and bought a ps3 with their hard earned? Ok, I'm probably exaggerating but somewhere someone isn't reading the information they've been given.
I also like the OP's anti-ps3 slant by clever editing of the quote from the article.
Sony have made one major mistake with the ps3, releasing little or no killer game for the console themselves soon after the console's launch, when they had the longest time with the dev kits out of all the developers to get used to making the most of the console's abilities. I was undecided about whether to get a 360 or ps3 up until a couple of weeks ago, so much so, that I rebought a psTWO (after a brief foray into Nintendo in the shape of a Gamecube, that I quickly offloaded) to play all the good games I missed out on the first time round. Once there's a few killer titles out and I can afford a really nice TV to run it through, I'll be jumping on the ps3 train.
Dogs are evolved to track prey and find carrion - they need to be able to sniff and run at the same time.
Dog's noses are very impressive...it's incredible to see the kinds of tricks they can manage. But I wonder where that statement of "a million times more sensitive than humans"
Dog's noses are impressive - my Springer Spaniel, whilst being trained by a very experienced Game shooter and farm estate manager (my father-in-law, with 2 gun dogs of his own) managed the following: Whilst walking round a random wood (that the dog had never visited before) in Hampshire (UK), my father-in-law had just grabbed a branch of a tree off the dog, that the dog had only just that moment picked up. Said father-in-law decided to do a test, he threw the log deep into the woods and told the dog to retrieve it. Dog lollops off to retrieve said branch. Father-in-law and my partner walk off leaving the dog to find the branch. Thirty minutes later, dog turns up right next to them, having smelled them out, and holding aforementioned branch in his mouth. In a wood, in Hampshire, in a different county to the dog's normal home, in a wood he'd never visited before. Awesome. Nowadays he just thinks his reflection in the tv screen is another dog. Stupid dog:-)
Let me play devil's advocate -- can you be sure that a human male doesn't have as strong a scent as a human female?
Only on slashdot could someone wonder if a woman doesn't smell stronger than a man in any way. Haven't ANY of you guys been near a woman's lower half recently...I am not saying they smell bad (far from it when looked after properly - any ladies reading this, don't use soap!), just emit a strong odour (no, I'm not American, thus I can spell odour correctly) - which is a bit of a give-away if an animal happens to catch a whiff...sheesh. Stop posting on slashdot, clean up, go to a bar, talk to a woman, and she might let you get your nose near enough to know what some posters on here are on about.
You can't get "buff" with this machine, because cardiovascular work alone simply cannot increase your muscle size
It all depends on your definition of buff. If by buff you mean big bulging muscles that are unncessarily over developed by a training regime that concentrates on bulking up then no, it won't help you get buff. If however, by buff you mean good muscle definition then it will - by lowering your overall body fat percentage. Your muscles naturally stand out more (less fat between muscle and skin) and look more defined. Freddie Ljungberg isn't the body of Calvin Klein because he looks like Arnie, but because he has a well defined musculature based on low body fat due to his job as a professional footballer (soccer player for you US citizens). You don't need to do crunches to get a six pack, just have body fat content of less than 10%. Provided there is a calorie deficit in your weekly count, and you don't have any medical problems preventing it, your body fat will decrease. This device could help achieve this, as would any amount of cardio vascular exercise incorporated into a lifestyle that contains none.
There are also some games that lend themselves better to n00bs like Cribbage... I can't count the number of times I've been beaten by people who just started playing, and I've been playing it for almost 20 years.
I can't help thinking this is a bad example. Cribbage doesn't really lend itself well to new players at all when they are playing against more skilled players as often they will lose and not understand why, often thinking it's just the luck of the cards when there is a very high skill level involved, most often demonstrated during the 'pegging' phase of scoring. However, they will find they repeatedly lose, whereas if luck were the only factor, they should win at least some of the time. This usually results in the more experienced player having to teach the newbie the finer intricacies of the game to the point where they aren't playing so much as teaching / learning.
If the new player is generally a good all round card player (that is to say, plays a lot of different card games at a decent level) then they should pick it up pretty quickly, but someone with no aptitude for cards is going to get their arse handed to them regularly. I don't mean to insult, but if you've been playing 20 years and are getting beaten by newbies, either a) they extremely lucky with the cards they are getting, b) they are very good card players who've picked up the finer points very quickly, or c) you are not that good at cribbage.
Which will mean competing for ratings, which will mean more reality crap being flooded over the channel, which will mean an end to the BBC's quality programming
But may also lead to the BBC being able to compete on an equal footing for rights to sporting events that Sky currently hold the monopoly on. Have you seen the drivel that the BBC sports line-up now consists of? Anyone seriously interested in watching sport on TV will have Sky which means paying a monthly subscription in the region of £30 on top of the license fee. I would quite happily not pay a license fee and pay a monthly premium should I wish to view BBC channels, I currently have all the beeb channels and rarely watch them. I know this is a bit sport biased, but there are other areas where Sky excels, movies, music etc.
This becomes a particular concern when you think about what people put in their waste water that can't easily be filtered by treatment plants, drugs such as antibiotics or contraceptives, for example.
Bullshit. In Britain we have incredibly few gun related crimes. It's big news, really big news if someone is killed by the bullet in this country. It's not an everyday occurance...
You are clearly not living in the same Britain as me. In Birmingham there is gun related crime reported on the local news virtually every day.
Never underestimate how impressed young women are by touch typing skills - especially when you own one of those 'bendy keyboards' which they have never seen before (they seem to think it's harder to type on a 'natural' keyboard than a standard one for some reason - then again, so do most people I try to get to make the switch because for about a week it is weird to use).
How on earth did I get modded troll for this comment?
I was being ironic in the first statement and at the same time making a valid point. Many of us are too old to care for Pokemon battle red championship or whatever the latest version is. I agree that their first party games usually are top notch, and especially the Mario / Zelda franchises, but many Nintendo owners are complaining at the lack of mature-themed games for the systems.
The second statement is my opinion on Nintendo releasing a new handheld when they didn't need to. Why invest R&D money in this gap-filler handheld when they could have put it into game development for the GBA or the next Gameboy version?
A platform game featuring a moustachioed plumber, or a pokemon franchised game?
I fear for Nintendo's future in the console market. They already have the handheld market in their pocket, they should be following the more powerful next-gen handheld business plan à la Sony, but instead they are trying to, well, I am not sure what they are trying to do. How about a handheld I can take on holiday with me and play something like GT4 on, then port the save over to the big console when I get home?
Also, increasingly in Formula 1, it's more about getting pole position than the actual race itself as it is so difficult to overtake, and qualifying times, done on one 'hot' lap, are often much closer than.88 of a second.
If we cannot get people in the UK to stop using their mobiles whilst driving, which is a known cause of fatality, we are hardly likely to convince them they cannot use their mobile while they pump petrol into their car.
IIRC, the Pump was all about the fit of the trainer, as it inflated the tongue area to better surround the upper part of the foot. It was an alternative to laces was it not? This sounds more like changing the dynamics of the sole, which I can see being useful on alternating surface races (cross country perhaps), but not much else.
As a semi-serious runner, I think it will probably not sell among anyone who is already clued up about the type of footwear they require until Adidas can prove equivocally that it can shave seconds off performance times. Most serious runners already know their ideal shoe, and it's more about pronation and body mechanics affecting running style than energy return from the sole.
I am not sure how the system works in the US, but here in the UK, most maths degrees require that the students program software during their course. In my 5 years working as a programmer I have noticed that some of the best programmers I have worked with have had maths degrees. I therefore drew the conclusion that either people with good maths degrees are significantly more intelligent than most other subject graduates, or that maths graduates' minds are better suited to programming. My French degree on the other hand doesn't help at all.
I badmouth my mother, she is a racist, homophobic, narrow minded woman. Tell me why I should respect her? Just because she was selfish enough to want a child? And my upbringing was nowhere near as bad as Eminem's. I just don't have the talent to make it public on a global scale.
Slashdot Mirror
There are people with the necessary skills and intellect coming out of UK universities. I'd wager the real problem is that they're ending up working in finance, which has far larger salaries than the games industry
Parent is spot on. I know quite a few folks who work in London in IT, in the finance sector, earning a million plus GBP per annum, living in million pound plus apartments on the Thames, driving supercars and even a couple who've bought their own planes. Can anyone on here who's UK based and has friends working in the games industry think of anyone they know with that sort of lifestyle? All my knowledge of the games industry here suggests it's long hours and shitty salaries, unless you're the CEO of Rockstar in Scotland.
Back in the days of the 8 and 16 bit era, people could code up a game at home and get it published if it was any good (thinking Jet Set Willy here) and maybe make it rich (thinking the Darling brothers of recent news fame), nowadays, to compete in the market and get it published you need an army of programmers etc, who'll all work for average salaries. Is it any wonder we've all gone into the finance sector to make our money?
14. Coupled avatars....Possible first use: Banjo-Kazooie, 1998.
Hasn't this guy ever heard of Head Over Heels, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Over_Heels_(video_game)?
Quite a few of the possible first uses are a bit out of kilter with video game history, and some of the fifty just plain pointless, although the author acknowledges this.
I totally agree. I used to work for a 150+ staff software house back in 1999-2001, and for one project we took on three contractors who'd come over from India to help knock some pretty simple Java stuff together. I spent a whole day briefing them on what was needed of them (all very basic stuff, something I with 1 year's commercial experience at the time and my computer science degree was doing in my sleep). At the end of the day's meetings about what was required of them and getting them all set up to work the following day, they were given some time to ask questions about anything they were unsure of, concepts, environment, the project etc. Not a peep.
Forward to the next day at work, and my usual daily routine again, and I had one of them sitting pretty near to where I was. I kept an occasional eye on him to ensure he wasn't struggling too hard, but by the end of the day it was apparent that he'd done nothing. Nothing. Not one line of code, not asked anyone related to the project for help, in fact, not spoken to anyone at all as far as I can gather. This was the same for all of them.
Cue the next day and me having to spend another day with them going over it all again, trying to get them to communicate if they didn't understand anything to me, and not just nod in agreement (or disagreement or whatever their head shake was supposed to mean).
It wasn't just their lack of programming skills (they were supposed to be all excellent Java developers with degree equivalent computer science qualifications and commercial experience etc) but their lack of English which made everything almost impossible to achieve in any sensible timescale. Eventually we got there, when one of them finally understood it all and could then explain and help his co contractors, but boy did it take some time.
I have another memory of a day where another Indian contractor came in and spent the whole day in the staff chillout area waiting for someone to speak to him. I don't think it occurred to him to report to reception and let them know he was there, nor ask any of the hundred or so staff in the building where to go / what to do.
Ah, those happy days of the dot com boom and bust.
That these people are allowed to vote - if they can't read the literature that comes with the console, how can they read candidate names? Fair enough the six year olds might not know about blu ray, but can we really believe that those very same six year olds went out and bought a ps3 with their hard earned? Ok, I'm probably exaggerating but somewhere someone isn't reading the information they've been given.
I also like the OP's anti-ps3 slant by clever editing of the quote from the article.
Sony have made one major mistake with the ps3, releasing little or no killer game for the console themselves soon after the console's launch, when they had the longest time with the dev kits out of all the developers to get used to making the most of the console's abilities. I was undecided about whether to get a 360 or ps3 up until a couple of weeks ago, so much so, that I rebought a psTWO (after a brief foray into Nintendo in the shape of a Gamecube, that I quickly offloaded) to play all the good games I missed out on the first time round. Once there's a few killer titles out and I can afford a really nice TV to run it through, I'll be jumping on the ps3 train.
Dogs are evolved to track prey and find carrion - they need to be able to sniff and run at the same time.
:-)
Dog's noses are very impressive...it's incredible to see the kinds of tricks they can manage. But I wonder where that statement of "a million times more sensitive than humans"
Dog's noses are impressive - my Springer Spaniel, whilst being trained by a very experienced Game shooter and farm estate manager (my father-in-law, with 2 gun dogs of his own) managed the following: Whilst walking round a random wood (that the dog had never visited before) in Hampshire (UK), my father-in-law had just grabbed a branch of a tree off the dog, that the dog had only just that moment picked up. Said father-in-law decided to do a test, he threw the log deep into the woods and told the dog to retrieve it. Dog lollops off to retrieve said branch. Father-in-law and my partner walk off leaving the dog to find the branch. Thirty minutes later, dog turns up right next to them, having smelled them out, and holding aforementioned branch in his mouth. In a wood, in Hampshire, in a different county to the dog's normal home, in a wood he'd never visited before. Awesome. Nowadays he just thinks his reflection in the tv screen is another dog. Stupid dog
Let me play devil's advocate -- can you be sure that a human male doesn't have as strong a scent as a human female?
Only on slashdot could someone wonder if a woman doesn't smell stronger than a man in any way. Haven't ANY of you guys been near a woman's lower half recently...I am not saying they smell bad (far from it when looked after properly - any ladies reading this, don't use soap!), just emit a strong odour (no, I'm not American, thus I can spell odour correctly) - which is a bit of a give-away if an animal happens to catch a whiff...sheesh. Stop posting on slashdot, clean up, go to a bar, talk to a woman, and she might let you get your nose near enough to know what some posters on here are on about.
You can't get "buff" with this machine, because cardiovascular work alone simply cannot increase your muscle size
It all depends on your definition of buff. If by buff you mean big bulging muscles that are unncessarily over developed by a training regime that concentrates on bulking up then no, it won't help you get buff. If however, by buff you mean good muscle definition then it will - by lowering your overall body fat percentage. Your muscles naturally stand out more (less fat between muscle and skin) and look more defined. Freddie Ljungberg isn't the body of Calvin Klein because he looks like Arnie, but because he has a well defined musculature based on low body fat due to his job as a professional footballer (soccer player for you US citizens). You don't need to do crunches to get a six pack, just have body fat content of less than 10%. Provided there is a calorie deficit in your weekly count, and you don't have any medical problems preventing it, your body fat will decrease. This device could help achieve this, as would any amount of cardio vascular exercise incorporated into a lifestyle that contains none.
There are also some games that lend themselves better to n00bs like Cribbage... I can't count the number of times I've been beaten by people who just started playing, and I've been playing it for almost 20 years.
I can't help thinking this is a bad example. Cribbage doesn't really lend itself well to new players at all when they are playing against more skilled players as often they will lose and not understand why, often thinking it's just the luck of the cards when there is a very high skill level involved, most often demonstrated during the 'pegging' phase of scoring. However, they will find they repeatedly lose, whereas if luck were the only factor, they should win at least some of the time. This usually results in the more experienced player having to teach the newbie the finer intricacies of the game to the point where they aren't playing so much as teaching / learning.
If the new player is generally a good all round card player (that is to say, plays a lot of different card games at a decent level) then they should pick it up pretty quickly, but someone with no aptitude for cards is going to get their arse handed to them regularly. I don't mean to insult, but if you've been playing 20 years and are getting beaten by newbies, either a) they extremely lucky with the cards they are getting, b) they are very good card players who've picked up the finer points very quickly, or c) you are not that good at cribbage.
As a Zen Buddhist I care nothing for his Christian morality
Very good, Zen indeed.
Yes, I truly hate the man
Not very Zen. Oh dear.
Yes. I can hate a man that does those things...I know I'm right
I think you failed your Zen test.
Which will mean competing for ratings, which will mean more reality crap being flooded over the channel, which will mean an end to the BBC's quality programming
But may also lead to the BBC being able to compete on an equal footing for rights to sporting events that Sky currently hold the monopoly on. Have you seen the drivel that the BBC sports line-up now consists of? Anyone seriously interested in watching sport on TV will have Sky which means paying a monthly subscription in the region of £30 on top of the license fee. I would quite happily not pay a license fee and pay a monthly premium should I wish to view BBC channels, I currently have all the beeb channels and rarely watch them. I know this is a bit sport biased, but there are other areas where Sky excels, movies, music etc.
This becomes a particular concern when you think about what people put in their waste water that can't easily be filtered by treatment plants, drugs such as antibiotics or contraceptives, for example.
Probably something like prozac!
Bullshit. In Britain we have incredibly few gun related crimes. It's big news, really big news if someone is killed by the bullet in this country. It's not an everyday occurance...
You are clearly not living in the same Britain as me. In Birmingham there is gun related crime reported on the local news virtually every day.
Or perhaps virtual rubber, to go along with the virtual women they are having a relationship with?
Never underestimate how impressed young women are by touch typing skills - especially when you own one of those 'bendy keyboards' which they have never seen before (they seem to think it's harder to type on a 'natural' keyboard than a standard one for some reason - then again, so do most people I try to get to make the switch because for about a week it is weird to use).
I was being ironic in the first statement and at the same time making a valid point. Many of us are too old to care for Pokemon battle red championship or whatever the latest version is. I agree that their first party games usually are top notch, and especially the Mario / Zelda franchises, but many Nintendo owners are complaining at the lack of mature-themed games for the systems.
The second statement is my opinion on Nintendo releasing a new handheld when they didn't need to. Why invest R&D money in this gap-filler handheld when they could have put it into game development for the GBA or the next Gameboy version?
A platform game featuring a moustachioed plumber, or a pokemon franchised game?
I fear for Nintendo's future in the console market. They already have the handheld market in their pocket, they should be following the more powerful next-gen handheld business plan à la Sony, but instead they are trying to, well, I am not sure what they are trying to do. How about a handheld I can take on holiday with me and play something like GT4 on, then port the save over to the big console when I get home?
Also, increasingly in Formula 1, it's more about getting pole position than the actual race itself as it is so difficult to overtake, and qualifying times, done on one 'hot' lap, are often much closer than .88 of a second.
If we cannot get people in the UK to stop using their mobiles whilst driving, which is a known cause of fatality, we are hardly likely to convince them they cannot use their mobile while they pump petrol into their car.
It was an alternative to laces was it not?
Ignore that bit, that was me thinking of the Puma Disc system.
IIRC, the Pump was all about the fit of the trainer, as it inflated the tongue area to better surround the upper part of the foot. It was an alternative to laces was it not? This sounds more like changing the dynamics of the sole, which I can see being useful on alternating surface races (cross country perhaps), but not much else.
As a semi-serious runner, I think it will probably not sell among anyone who is already clued up about the type of footwear they require until Adidas can prove equivocally that it can shave seconds off performance times. Most serious runners already know their ideal shoe, and it's more about pronation and body mechanics affecting running style than energy return from the sole.
I am not sure how the system works in the US, but here in the UK, most maths degrees require that the students program software during their course. In my 5 years working as a programmer I have noticed that some of the best programmers I have worked with have had maths degrees. I therefore drew the conclusion that either people with good maths degrees are significantly more intelligent than most other subject graduates, or that maths graduates' minds are better suited to programming. My French degree on the other hand doesn't help at all.
I badmouth my mother, she is a racist, homophobic, narrow minded woman. Tell me why I should respect her? Just because she was selfish enough to want a child? And my upbringing was nowhere near as bad as Eminem's. I just don't have the talent to make it public on a global scale.