I'd say it depends. I worked at one company, and then several years later was applying for work at its direct competitor. The stigma didn't carry over (they offered me a job); instead, they were far more interested in what I had done and how it matched up with the job opportunity. They went out of their way not to ask me questions that tread on possible NDA (non-disclosure agreement) territory.
Unless your friends-of-friends are actively involved in upper management (director level +), they shouldn't have problems. If they are involved in upper-level management, then they already know several executive-level headhunters who will find them new jobs in a hurry. Sucks, but that's how it goes when you play at that level.
I bought VMWare back in the 2.0 days, and I've been strangled by their desktop pricing ever since. I need it because I'm an author of technical books and I need to take screenshots of things like boot screens and such. VMWare has good technology, but I've observed:
* They have focused more on the ESX and GSX line than the desktop. This makes sense from a technology perspective (building upon core competency) and marketing perspective (the server room is where the big bucks are).
* The desktop is marketed towards QA and test geeks, either in software development or IT shops who need testbeds for playing with new toys before running them out to the users. Again, this is where the money is.
* The home / hobbyist / other technical professionals have not been a part of their target market for several years now, and so they don't really care if the pricing fits more with medium-to-large businesses than for someone like me.
* Lastly, they do a poor job linking the useful information that sometimes can be found in their forums with any FAQs, help files, or other addenda. From personal experience, I found that running a guest OS "out of the box" is not covered enough to be helpful. Just try running Mandrake or *BSD by following the help file! Frustration ensues -- and it could be alleviated by a single Web page of helpful advice. Instead, the user gets to go mining for tidbits lurking among hostile VMWare geek postings. Not a good way to encourage new customers, let me tell ya.
I'm sorry to see VMWare get swallowed up by EMC; they have good technology and the market fit makes sense, but I don't think I've ever seen a smaller company get bought by a larger company and have the technology survive in any useful form without being mutated and bastardized beyond all recognition.
Fifty cents is too much. I'd toss a handful of quarters at it for twenty-five cents a play, but the nostalgia thing only goes so far....unless, of course, it's Asteroids. I'd play that game for hours -- at $0.25 a go, of course.
Seattle Children's Hospital is a *very* worthy cause. My wife and I donated our older Playstation to them, along with some fun games of the platformer / run-and-jump variety that we were no longer playing. Many of the kids are there with serious and life-threatening diseases, such as leukemia, and anything that helps take their minds off of their problems is a welcome respite from the struggles with health and the sometimes painful treatment.
If you have an older system you don't use as much, or have multiple gaming consoles, consider donating one of them to a local children's hospital this season. You will be glad you did.
As a professional writer, I use a lot of different tools. Several of my books I've used MS Word, because the publishers had special templates and macros they used in production that weren't easily ported or usable in other software. (I know, I tried it.)
On other stuff (aka 'submitted but not published' works) I've used TextPad, OpenOffice, and Power Writer . TextPad lets me write without getting any programming or interface nonsense in the way; OpenOffice lets me compose more complex documents with footnotes; and Power Writer contains plot, character, and idea databases that help keep all my reference details in one place.
All good, all for different reasons. Except Word. I'm not very fond of Word.
"We go to the moon, and we do these other things... not because they are easy, but because they are hard." --John F. Kennedy
It's only when people have visions of things bigger than themselves and their immediate needs that great things happen. The visionaries provide the drive, while the pragmatists make it happen. As cynical as many of you are about Congress and its motivations, having a compelling vision for exploration and research is welcome. I'd rather have excitement and drive than ennui and cynicism.
AICN can be useful but it's often to get the gold from the dross. Coming Attractions is also a good site. If you'd like a good site with excellent reviewers, message boards and informed folks from both sides of the screen, try http://www.chud.com. I've been going there for a couple years now and the folks never fail to provide insight into movies and trends. The message boards aren't nearly as shrill as AICN, so you can actually discuss movies without engaging in "You suck!" arguments with some fanboy.
Personally, I don't understand why is Hollywood (apparently) fascinated with Asimov's robot stories.
Hollywood sees stories in terms of other stories. "Bicentennial Man" was probably pitched as "Pinocchio as a robot!" "I, Robot" was probably pitched as "Bladerunner, but with cool action and a hip detective!" It's sad, but that's how the system works.
As to your question, Asimov's stories often rely on clever or trick endings, and Hollywood and movie audiences like simple, clever, trick endings. See "The Sixth Sense", which used a trick ending, versus "Gattaca", which did not. Gattaca is by far the better film and tells the better story, and will last much longer as an example of thought-provoking, insightful sf. But that rarely sells, so Hollywood wants to dish up a hip detective with a trick ending.
No doubt the studio toads will congratulate themselves on their cleverness, when in reality we'll just get a watered-down O. Henry story with special effects. Very, very sad.
Without Ellison's script, it's a dubious project
on
Will Smith as I, Robot
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I've also read Ellison's proposed script. It is a perfect blend of science, robotics, and humanism. After all, at the heart, the "Robot" series of stories are not just puzzles or murder mysteries, but they touch on what it means to be human. Ellison, more than any other sf writer alive, understands this and addressed it with great insight in the script.
However, he's known for being a cranky pants, plus he's expensive, plus he'd probably want final script approval. In the movie industry's eye, that's three strikes; no movie producer would want to take a risk on something like that, even though the product would be far superior to anything currently on the market. (We could start another thread on the industry's business-before-art motivation, but that's a whole different nasty mess that we'd have to wade through.)
In sum, I don't hold out much hope for a script that's billed as an amalgamation of Vintar's script "Hardwired" plus "I, Robot" plus script doctoring by Hillary Seitz and Akiva Goldsman, and is going through the usual studio mill. My guess is this will be a lowest-common-denominator "thriller" with "dark overtones" aka Bladerunner, but not nearly as intellectual, insightful, visionary, or entertaining.
Good luck to 'em, but I'd much rather see Ellison's script produced. If you can, go find a copy and read it. It's quite a remarkable story, along with insight into the studio process and the fight to get it produced despite the best efforts of studio toads.
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I'd say it depends. I worked at one company, and then several years later was applying for work at its direct competitor. The stigma didn't carry over (they offered me a job); instead, they were far more interested in what I had done and how it matched up with the job opportunity. They went out of their way not to ask me questions that tread on possible NDA (non-disclosure agreement) territory.
Unless your friends-of-friends are actively involved in upper management (director level +), they shouldn't have problems. If they are involved in upper-level management, then they already know several executive-level headhunters who will find them new jobs in a hurry. Sucks, but that's how it goes when you play at that level.
I bought VMWare back in the 2.0 days, and I've been strangled by their desktop pricing ever since. I need it because I'm an author of technical books and I need to take screenshots of things like boot screens and such. VMWare has good technology, but I've observed:
* They have focused more on the ESX and GSX line than the desktop. This makes sense from a technology perspective (building upon core competency) and marketing perspective (the server room is where the big bucks are).
* The desktop is marketed towards QA and test geeks, either in software development or IT shops who need testbeds for playing with new toys before running them out to the users. Again, this is where the money is.
* The home / hobbyist / other technical professionals have not been a part of their target market for several years now, and so they don't really care if the pricing fits more with medium-to-large businesses than for someone like me.
* Lastly, they do a poor job linking the useful information that sometimes can be found in their forums with any FAQs, help files, or other addenda. From personal experience, I found that running a guest OS "out of the box" is not covered enough to be helpful. Just try running Mandrake or *BSD by following the help file! Frustration ensues -- and it could be alleviated by a single Web page of helpful advice. Instead, the user gets to go mining for tidbits lurking among hostile VMWare geek postings. Not a good way to encourage new customers, let me tell ya.
I'm sorry to see VMWare get swallowed up by EMC; they have good technology and the market fit makes sense, but I don't think I've ever seen a smaller company get bought by a larger company and have the technology survive in any useful form without being mutated and bastardized beyond all recognition.
Fifty cents is too much. I'd toss a handful of quarters at it for twenty-five cents a play, but the nostalgia thing only goes so far. ...unless, of course, it's Asteroids. I'd play that game for hours -- at $0.25 a go, of course.
Seattle Children's Hospital is a *very* worthy cause. My wife and I donated our older Playstation to them, along with some fun games of the platformer / run-and-jump variety that we were no longer playing. Many of the kids are there with serious and life-threatening diseases, such as leukemia, and anything that helps take their minds off of their problems is a welcome respite from the struggles with health and the sometimes painful treatment.
If you have an older system you don't use as much, or have multiple gaming consoles, consider donating one of them to a local children's hospital this season. You will be glad you did.
As a professional writer, I use a lot of different tools. Several of my books I've used MS Word, because the publishers had special templates and macros they used in production that weren't easily ported or usable in other software. (I know, I tried it.) On other stuff (aka 'submitted but not published' works) I've used TextPad, OpenOffice, and Power Writer . TextPad lets me write without getting any programming or interface nonsense in the way; OpenOffice lets me compose more complex documents with footnotes; and Power Writer contains plot, character, and idea databases that help keep all my reference details in one place. All good, all for different reasons. Except Word. I'm not very fond of Word.
"We go to the moon, and we do these other things ... not because they are easy, but because they are hard." --John F. Kennedy
It's only when people have visions of things bigger than themselves and their immediate needs that great things happen. The visionaries provide the drive, while the pragmatists make it happen. As cynical as many of you are about Congress and its motivations, having a compelling vision for exploration and research is welcome. I'd rather have excitement and drive than ennui and cynicism.
AICN can be useful but it's often to get the gold from the dross. Coming Attractions is also a good site. If you'd like a good site with excellent reviewers, message boards and informed folks from both sides of the screen, try http://www.chud.com. I've been going there for a couple years now and the folks never fail to provide insight into movies and trends. The message boards aren't nearly as shrill as AICN, so you can actually discuss movies without engaging in "You suck!" arguments with some fanboy.
Personally, I don't understand why is Hollywood (apparently) fascinated with Asimov's robot stories.
Hollywood sees stories in terms of other stories. "Bicentennial Man" was probably pitched as "Pinocchio as a robot!" "I, Robot" was probably pitched as "Bladerunner, but with cool action and a hip detective!" It's sad, but that's how the system works.
As to your question, Asimov's stories often rely on clever or trick endings, and Hollywood and movie audiences like simple, clever, trick endings. See "The Sixth Sense", which used a trick ending, versus "Gattaca", which did not. Gattaca is by far the better film and tells the better story, and will last much longer as an example of thought-provoking, insightful sf. But that rarely sells, so Hollywood wants to dish up a hip detective with a trick ending.
No doubt the studio toads will congratulate themselves on their cleverness, when in reality we'll just get a watered-down O. Henry story with special effects. Very, very sad.
I've also read Ellison's proposed script. It is a perfect blend of science, robotics, and humanism. After all, at the heart, the "Robot" series of stories are not just puzzles or murder mysteries, but they touch on what it means to be human. Ellison, more than any other sf writer alive, understands this and addressed it with great insight in the script.
However, he's known for being a cranky pants, plus he's expensive, plus he'd probably want final script approval. In the movie industry's eye, that's three strikes; no movie producer would want to take a risk on something like that, even though the product would be far superior to anything currently on the market. (We could start another thread on the industry's business-before-art motivation, but that's a whole different nasty mess that we'd have to wade through.)
In sum, I don't hold out much hope for a script that's billed as an amalgamation of Vintar's script "Hardwired" plus "I, Robot" plus script doctoring by Hillary Seitz and Akiva Goldsman, and is going through the usual studio mill. My guess is this will be a lowest-common-denominator "thriller" with "dark overtones" aka Bladerunner, but not nearly as intellectual, insightful, visionary, or entertaining.
Good luck to 'em, but I'd much rather see Ellison's script produced. If you can, go find a copy and read it. It's quite a remarkable story, along with insight into the studio process and the fight to get it produced despite the best efforts of studio toads.