I would be able to pick it up quickly. I'm a developer not a sysadm. Where I alluded to it being close enough was from that perspective, not from sysadm or helpdesk.
>>don't even meet what the ad says
I maintain it might be useful to be more strict in your job posting.
I think you miss my point. You publicise a resource (the job) and from a high-potent position (Microsoft) so it's my thinking you need to be extra-careful of what signals you send.
And you can -obviously- automate the scanning of Microsoft Word Documents for the proper keywords, if nothing else.
I have to say I was a little taken aback by your gp posting. Your use of "obviously" signals to me a disconnect somewhere. Obvious to you, but -obviously- not to the applicants.
Again, nobody is motivated to waste even $0.39. Not if it's that obvious. Not even considering you're Microsoft. Not if it's "obvious".
So, it must not be "obvious" to many of the applicants (excepting those who mass-mail to anything which moves, and those you'll not be able to manage no matter what you do)
>>who seemingly have never X'ed in their life.
I think you need to consider X-prime and Y-prime. Those are the subjective interpretations of your (obviously) well thought out statements. There are language, regional and other communications issues whereby X becomes X-prime. My $0.02, ok?
>>more likely to get hired if every interviewer comes away thinking that you are >>familiar with the company and genuinely want to work there.
This is a great point and should have gotten you modded up. It's probably one of the things I most often fail to do myself. (mental note ) We know applicants are busy and that it's tempting to shoot off electronic resumes to anything that moves... but we're busy too. You're asking us to take 5-20 minutes to take a look at you. Give us the most reason you can to do so.
>>I'm exaggerating a little, but you get the idea
I think this used to be true. I think apres buste it isn't so much. I'd love to hear from some HR folks in both large and small organizations. For us, a position generated a number of responses, they were sorted through by HR based on the requirements we gave, and possible matches forwarded to us for second round evaluation. We didn't keep those after all was said and done but I don't know how long, or if, HR kept them. I don't see much point to it myself since both our and the applicants' status quickly changes and our need for that combination of skills and experience has moved past that applicant either to satisfaction or not.
Your odds are not increased by contacting me directly (even if a perfect fit) since HR has to vet the submission anyway. All I can do with such is pass it to HR for their 'blessing' and hope they send it on back to me. That's actually a delay. Even if I *love* you, I'm going to have to push to get it through HR. I probably won't since, well, I don't love easily and I have little time for love in any case:O
>>whether the HR person happens to guess good keywords.
We always try to give HR as helpful a filtering scenario and criteria as possible. We always ask them to call if they have one on their desk they're not sure about. Hearing the cover or skills list can help them determine matching. Not that they typically made use of this channel, but at least they could not deny our involvment.
On the other side, I try to target my cover letter to HR. Even in small organisations where the hiring manager proxies, he's thinking in different terms when shuffling through a bunch of new submissions. If that captures any interest then if I've done my homework, he'll have little reason to *not* see a match with my skills and experience.
>>I got my current job
I moved from electronics to software QA in '95 by exactly the same mechanism. Also to a better position in '97 by exactly the same mechanism. In both cases I was hired within weeks of responding to the newsgroup posting. ISP's no longer carry local newsgroups (for some reason nobody uses them much anymore except for spam, pr0n and fighting) these days. Too bad.
When the rush to six-figure consulting took a lot of our programmers to the South in the late 90's I was tapped to take a programming position. I've never had a review that wasn't exceeds or above. That's due to my having a love for programming. Had I submitted a resume through normal channels I am absolutely certain I'd not have gotten past the initial HR screen. Only my direct physical access to the hiring manager and the company's dire need made it possible.
So- I don't discount your point as to getting access directly to the person who would supervise or hire. But for those who chose this path be aware that contact has to be carefully managed.
Having never seen the actual job posting, still I'll venture a guess, and I'd suggest that you add:
"ACHDS Certification or similar is required - other candidates will not be considered"...to your job posting. Assuming, of course, that is relevent.
In any case, the way you phrased this need (says that applicants need experience) seems a little less strict than your intention. That's subjective, but given my years of experience with Windows and Linux (and the similarity of MacOSX to RedHat Linux) I might consider that stated need as met. From your converstation it probably is not;)
You might also borrow a trick I've seen recruiters use whereby a skills assessment document is submitted along with the resume. I don't know how that would work for you but if it caused that applicant to assert training, experience and/or certification on relevent platforms and with relevent technology you might find applicants begin to self-filter. Or they might just *not* complete the skills assessment and submit anyway. I mean, dude, you're Microsoft:)
Though, I *hate* filling those out. It's all in my resume is how I'm thinking at the time. But then, I don't waste time submitting to too many where my skills aren't a very close match.
>>If you think the job is well within your skill set, it probably is
If you *think* it is, it probably is not.
The *last* thing a job seeker should do is send an uninvited correspondance to a middle manager. Getting someone on the inside to speak for you or to break the ice is one thing. As a hiring supervisor, I'd toss anything that didn't match up to a public job posting or referral or came from our internal email system as a current employee. And if it was a phone call? I'd forward to HR with barely a comment.
My job descriptions generally *understated* the required skills. My boss's and my philosophy was that drive and ingenuity more than made up for specific experiences . Some skills were absolute and they were portrayed as such.
I hardly know what to say about your concept of HR. They have the resources to answer phones, verify initial matches, check references, etc. They do a lot more than notice someone who is uncertain. Most job seekers are uncertain. For their part they have to know some detail before they can imagine life at your company. That's natural. To extend your metaphor; you know how we treat unauthorized invasions across our firewalls, right?;)
Apply for jobs even if you think that it may not be a good fit for you.
For the love of god, please stop wasting your time... and mine... with this.
Poster should probably have said "perfect fit" instead. I agree there's no sense to wasting time at either side of the desk when the applicant lacks core skills. However there are two scenarios that going ahead with a resume submission makes some sense. 1) Most skills are met fully/exceeds and one or two are not. 2) Skills are met fully/exceeds but experience is within 65-85 percent of stated need.
Few job postings present any prioritization matrix since that's wordy, probably not well understood on the hiring end, and probably dynamic in nature. So needing 3 years of C++ and 5 years of Java today may well be 5/3 next month. Perhaps java and C++ are required. Perhaps any object oriented experience would suffice.
If you're getting what you consider an inordinate number of bad submissions, I suggest to you that your statement of requirements might be lacking. Few job seekers will find any value in wasting the time to create the submission when it is clear to them they have no chance whatsoever. I'm sure Microsoft draws an exceptional amount of submissions and I'd offer to you that means you need to be especially adept in your job requirements. And there are the total noobs who find it necessary to push any possibility since they have no experience to speak of. But for the rest of us, we try to match our skills, experience and interests as closely as possible. Really.
Job Seekers: Companies no longer "keep you on file". Don't submit in the hopes that some other opportunity, heretofore unpublished, will be recognized as the Perfect Fit to your resume or that in the near future "something will open up". Won't happen. Employers today want a pre-packaged solution and tightly control resources.
Employers: Please understand that our first experience with you is your statement of need. Help us to know if we have a shot. Our situations vary greatly. Nobody out here is perfect in every way. We know that. You know that. Ambivalence on your part invites us to "peel the onion". There's a correspondence to ambivalence + interest level and the number of resumes you'll receive.
tverbeek: While I agree with most of what you said, an ongoing problem is an indication that there is a false assumption such that the proposed solution is inaccurate.
I sit corrected. I only ever bought or played a handful of PC games, most of which were bargain-bin. This one sticks in my mind since nothing about needing another purchase is mentioned on the box. This one I bought at full price when it was fairly new, and I checked it's capabilities closely according to that which was printed on the box.
I'm sitting here looking at the original box.
On the back: " * Wild multiplayer competition - Race with your freinds via LAN, direct modem, or over the Web on the MSN (tm) Gaming Zone."
On the bottom: " Requirements for multiplayer play: *...modem, LAN...connection to other systems * Internet access required for internet play...charges may apply *...Gaming Zone...web browser..."
It seems that the philosophy of Wii is the complete opposite (which I heartily welcome) and that was my main point. Taking a shot at Microsoft was apparantly unwarranted. But you have to admit that I was suckered by their false packaging.
As an aside, this was the one and only time I've ever tried to copy an original game disk and the only time I've ever considered actually downloading a cracked version. Play fair with me and I'll reciprocate. The opposite also stands. But that's me....;)
>>non-trivial work item My turn;) Some games just *imply* the capability for multiplayer action. I've played some that were buggy but had a great time with them nonetheless (Machine Hunter comes to mind). I don't assume any such support though.
Adding the protections against re-using the same disk to spawn another player, while supporting TCP/IP play, seems to me to be the non-trivial task as well as an opening toward more buggy behavior, not the other way around.
In any case, the vendor makes this priority decision long before we have the product in our hands. If they advertise multiplayer play they should allow multiplayer play. If that requires another purchase, either in controller or other hardware or subscription or downloadable key or a whole other boxed distribution then that should be apparant from their packaging. And it should be as bug free as to allow 'most' installations to run it without problems.
A core precept in investigative psycology is 'once a criminal, always a criminal'. DNA records on any convicted person can be seen as a hedge against the *next* crime that person *will* commit.
IMO it abrogates the precept of innocence until proven otherwise and violates the Bill Of Rights guarantee against search without probable cause.
There's a fair amount of anecdotal evidence (http://www.monroeworld.com/forums/showthread.php? t=1561) that the prices dropping set the stage fotr the next generation of consoles. The glut of consoles, not games, provided a critical mass of adoption in the home where it was then accepted that 'everyone had an NES'. The market settled on a few winners (dropping the TI, Commodore and other bit players) in favor of Nintendo and Sega, and drove Sony's entrance into the market.
IMO, it was not a crash so much as an adjustment. A consolidation.
I doubt that it was in any way influenced by the quality or number of the games themselves. Generally, increased choice drives increased adoption, no matter the pin-point exceptions.
>>Not only that, but the people who are willing to try something new in terms of >>controls are probably also going to be more willing to try something from a new >>company that they have never heard
That's a critical factor. Given that some of the indie work might appear on Virtual Console, the SDK (and whatever its inherent costs) becomes a loss-leader. Say Xbox offers a total of 1500 games. Say PS3 offers a total of 2000 games. Say Wii offers a total of 23000 games.
To which would you subscribe?
The sheer momentum is an attraction that closed-shop platforms cannot gain.
I looked at your site and could not find a coherent message. What's it about, who's it for? I may be interested in TOD but it isn't immediately clear that that's something you are in control of. Many sites I visit position the same kind of message and it can be anything from a web-ring to FOSS to some forum or other irrelevant page. And those sites use the same syntactic conventions; mention the link and give a short description.
IOW- target your web space better and you might not need to remain in the basement;)
PS- if you want to be taken seriously, don't mention Jesus on the home page. IMHO.
PPS- why regurgitate news available so many other places? To which I refer to the April 27 headline.
Her work revolved around a Hero. Bill G of Microsoft was never the only factor and at times not even the deciding factor. Rand, to my rememberance, always put the Hero in a moral and ethical situation to which he/she responded gracefully. That's not something you can say about Gates specifically, nor Microsoft generally.
In typical Microsoft fashion, multiplayer required that you have as many original game CD's as players. How often does that happen? It's a shit simulation to begin with so we never met anyone who also had this game. Never able to verify that multi-player actually worked. Knowing Microsoft, it's reasonable to presume that it does not, or that it works very badly.
Though I'm sure Microsoft Support has a script to handle calls about that.
With that and my experience with Flight Simulator, I resolved to *never* have an Xbox.
YMMV.
But it's the antithesis of ad-hoc multiplayer game play that I see in Wii.
I've read rumor that Nintendo will offer its Wii SDK at a cost level an order of magnitude less than those of Xbox and Playstation. I've spent the last hour looking for some contact point at Nintendo where I could sign up. While I would expect there to be some barrier to coming onboard, I expect neither free support nor marketing, just the benefit of being able to submit my offering into their QA/Alpha/Beta channels. While that cost is not insignificant, the potential return to the console maker is, as you point out, HUGE. There's been a lot of banter about the stagnation of the console gaming platform/games/experience. Too pricey. Nothing new in games. Yet it's clear from the flash/flex/web gaming market that there really are novel and interesting new ideas out there.
The reliability defecit of the PS2 soured me on consoles in general. Sony's lack of response to my enquiries about development soured me on Sony specifically. My Son would not share those biases so it was probable that a PS3 was in our future. Wii. I *love* the idea of off-your-ass gaming. The eye-toy was a step in that direction but suffered from technical compromises. So long as his PS2 continues to function -an unknown quantity considering our previous 3 PS2's reliability- his favorite Playstation games will continue to function. Virtual Console and the old Nintendo games we already have make the Wii an interesting propostion. Its wiimote and nunchuck make it, in my mind, a very probable scenario. I'd have bought one, sight unseen, today if it were possible.
I think gaming in the physical space, similar to first-person VR but second-person by-proxy, that the Wii will offer is a huge step forward in gaming evolution. It has the potential to actually make a golf or baseball simulation accurate. fun. At maturity I can imagine specialized controllers that might simulate motorcycle handlebars/throttle/clutch/brakes. Now, how much fun might that be?!
The one trick I think Nintendo is missing is multiPOV. While recent effort has been towards distributed, client/server, architecure (socomm is a good example) where each player has his own console and video, this suffers latency that realtime simulations (a la motorcycle madness) must compromise to overcome. Split-screen has its own limitation. Multi-head console play, with wireless motion sensing controllers set the stage for ad-hoc game play more similar to basement D&D of a bygone age. Imagine my monitor showing the ball as it's pitched and your monitor showing the scene from the POV of the pitcher. The game has to calculate the physics of all that in any case, it's the graphics generation that's the holdup. Few C/S environments will allow realtime depth for this. IMO.
In any case... I look forward to our new Nintendo Overlords... blah blah blah;)
Correct. That's how things are today. A little pork brought to the district, a little high-visibility "action" against the bogeyman of the day, and voila, instant re-election (well, incumbant privileges too;)
If the congressperson really believed his constituency were watching and remembering and reporting, he'd bow to their will.
For the populace's part in it, yes, we'd have to give up our instant gratifications and steel ourselves to give up pork-barrel graft.
Either you accept that it can change -but it will be very very hard- or you accept that it can not. Either is a choice. Choosing not to decide is still a Choice (thanks Geddy!).
Exceedingly insightful. No matter how you lay out the game, the cheaters who have access to the game can bastardize the game. It's the actual transgressions we need to find, not the potential transgressions. You know, innocent until proven? That's enough work to keep all our government busy, IMHO...
It was originally an expression of a landowner's responsibility to keep and protect his property, family and community. What the UK folks don't understand is we fought this battle a couple of centuries ago and, hold on..... we won.
That spririt is interwoven with our psyche over here, though it is much suppressed and nearly vestigal in our modern populace.
A limited distrust of one's government is a good thing, in our opinion. Personal weaponry, while probably ineffective as a total solution, is effective on a point-by-point basis.
Remember, you're comparing your close, mature, smaller localles to a huge country of diverse peoples. Our borders extend from one ocean to another both above and below. Insurgents and local criminal elements have little real opposition lest we deputize a much larger fraction of the populace. The framer's knew this. They expected us all to share in the responsibility to maintain order.
The second ammendment is nothing more than expression of distributed policy.
Impassioned, I'll give you that. But what are you *doing* about it. Do you really think those millions and millions of dollars flowing here-to-there will just stop? That millions of people involved in domestic spying will just retire?
Listen. The power is *still* ours. Gongress is still in our control, but only if we invoke that control. Any law or executive power extant today can be modified or revoked. Our voice is there. But we have to speak. We have to make our elected representatives believe we are actually watching and remembering. And reporting.
It will take committed people who don't care that it is 'illegal' to talk about abuses of power and specific instances thereof. They'll go to jail. They'll need support. But first there have to be those who are willing to do what their conscience dictates.
What would that look like?! Could the complete eradication of each and every hand-held firearm (rifles, shotguns and pistols) prevent my obtaining such a weapon from a museum? from some other country? from building my own?
Even if each and every hand-held firearm were traceable by RFID or similar technology, even if that were true across the entire Earth, would it not be possible to remove such tracking devices, potentially? Would not some subversive organization determine to produce illicit weapons?
Dreamer or not you need to internalize the fact that personal freedoms are never given. They are earned. They must be continually protected and re-earned or they go away.
Please note it is not my position that the common possession of firearms is in any way indicitive or relevent to the freedoms of the populace. In an organized society it is the rule of law which affords those. But, in the absense of rule of law, one must compete on a level field. Ask any of the recipients of Enron's largesse if they are comfortable with the Federal governments' ability to assure their continued participation in a fair and equal competition. Ask anyone who has had a "third-kind encounter" with the lawless component of our world if they are comfortable that the constabulary can provide for them an inviolable environment.
Call Detail Records (CDR) contain originating and terminating number and other detail but not customer name, address, SSI or anything like that. To link to that information would be an additional step, not the other way around. Trimming is therefore not necessary.
If your LEC provides online lookup of your call records, you can probably verify this for your own account.
My experience is with a 2nd-tier carrier so should anyone with knowledge from a 1st tier verify I'd definately defer.
Oh, and while I operated on CDR I was never involved in providing that information to any outside entity, so don't expect me to know exactly what is sent to the NSA. I'm just saying a dump of CDR would not, IME, contain personal data and no effort is required to assure that fact.
Back in the days before video games and exposure to second-language users our teachers *still* had to drill us on the usage of their/there/they're, lose/loose and other homophones. I think you've nailed an important component though. Even with that drilling I find myself mimicking or absorbing spellings that I've read. Even from our local printed newspaper, I find these mistakes!
Anytime -school, job, or leisure- I've needed to compose I make the *attempt* to check my spelling and its readability. I think there's also a dash of immediate-gratification to the problem in that the desire to get it posted preempts any responsibility to make it correct.
I'm no spelling nor grammar nazi and seeing postings from such tend to annoy me; I was predisposed towards taking any such posting in a negative manner. Apologies. It's clear you're a literate person.
A little "tin foil" maybe;)
I'm not sure what baseline you'd use for comparison. At the turn of the 19th century the percentage of the population publicly presenting composition would have been a magnitude less than it is today. I think the expectations placed on that percentage was higher, but it should be noted that it *could* be higher. The forced public schooling of the masses, while a debatable strategy, has the effect of diluting the pool and, thus, bringing the average competency downwards.
While it serves any entrenched oligarchy to have its subjects minimally competent, I can only *wish* that I'd had the resources available to me that are to today's students. Quotes abound from sages across the generations that "today's youth... the death of us all". It was ever thus and I imagine it will always be thus.
I would imagine the Tower of Babel was described by its proponents using rather loose rules of grammar since it's human nature that isolated pockets of people degenerate from any standard syntactical convention. That's just a guess; I'm not quite old enough to have been there or anything...;)
Misspellings, colloquialisms, and such are adapted into the language over time and become the rule, not the exception. That's a natural progression. There is, however, a difference between slang and using a word (lose/loose) which is blatantly conflicted.
As to our destiny, I believe that forcing kids into public shooling has nothing but deleterious consequences; devaluing the nature of education at its root, preventing the entity from experiencing life in h/er own trajectory, economic drain, etc. I find it unconscionable to expect a herd of cows -bovine biology aside- to *like* being milked. Compounded by the influence of action-packed electronic baubles and tween/teen social networking, it is no leap to envision a dark apodosis.
<trite> truism="It'll get worse before it gets better!" </>
Slashdot Mirror
>>Linux is close enough to OS X
I would be able to pick it up quickly. I'm a developer not a sysadm. Where I alluded to it being close enough was from that perspective, not from sysadm or helpdesk.
>>don't even meet what the ad says
I maintain it might be useful to be more strict in your job posting.
I think you miss my point. You publicise a resource (the job) and from a high-potent position (Microsoft) so it's my thinking you need to be extra-careful of what signals you send.
And you can -obviously- automate the scanning of Microsoft Word Documents for the proper keywords, if nothing else.
I have to say I was a little taken aback by your gp posting. Your use of "obviously" signals to me a disconnect somewhere. Obvious to you, but -obviously- not to the applicants.
Again, nobody is motivated to waste even $0.39. Not if it's that obvious. Not even considering you're Microsoft. Not if it's "obvious".
So, it must not be "obvious" to many of the applicants (excepting those who mass-mail to anything which moves, and those you'll not be able to manage no matter what you do)
>>who seemingly have never X'ed in their life.
I think you need to consider X-prime and Y-prime. Those are the subjective interpretations of your (obviously) well thought out statements. There are language, regional and other communications issues whereby X becomes X-prime. My $0.02, ok?
-rsh
>>more likely to get hired if every interviewer comes away thinking that you are
:O
>>familiar with the company and genuinely want to work there.
This is a great point and should have gotten you modded up. It's probably one of the things I most often fail to do myself. (mental note ) We know applicants are busy and that it's tempting to shoot off electronic resumes to anything that moves... but we're busy too. You're asking us to take 5-20 minutes to take a look at you. Give us the most reason you can to do so.
>>I'm exaggerating a little, but you get the idea
I think this used to be true. I think apres buste it isn't so much. I'd love to hear from some HR folks in both large and small organizations. For us, a position generated a number of responses, they were sorted through by HR based on the requirements we gave, and possible matches forwarded to us for second round evaluation. We didn't keep those after all was said and done but I don't know how long, or if, HR kept them. I don't see much point to it myself since both our and the applicants' status quickly changes and our need for that combination of skills and experience has moved past that applicant either to satisfaction or not.
Your odds are not increased by contacting me directly (even if a perfect fit) since HR has to vet the submission anyway. All I can do with such is pass it to HR for their 'blessing' and hope they send it on back to me. That's actually a delay. Even if I *love* you, I'm going to have to push to get it through HR. I probably won't since, well, I don't love easily and I have little time for love in any case
>>whether the HR person happens to guess good keywords.
We always try to give HR as helpful a filtering scenario and criteria as possible. We always ask them to call if they have one on their desk they're not sure about. Hearing the cover or skills list can help them determine matching. Not that they typically made use of this channel, but at least they could not deny our involvment.
On the other side, I try to target my cover letter to HR. Even in small organisations where the hiring manager proxies, he's thinking in different terms when shuffling through a bunch of new submissions. If that captures any interest then if I've done my homework, he'll have little reason to *not* see a match with my skills and experience.
>>I got my current job
I moved from electronics to software QA in '95 by exactly the same mechanism. Also to a better position in '97 by exactly the same mechanism. In both cases I was hired within weeks of responding to the newsgroup posting. ISP's no longer carry local newsgroups (for some reason nobody uses them much anymore except for spam, pr0n and fighting) these days. Too bad.
When the rush to six-figure consulting took a lot of our programmers to the South in the late 90's I was tapped to take a programming position. I've never had a review that wasn't exceeds or above. That's due to my having a love for programming. Had I submitted a resume through normal channels I am absolutely certain I'd not have gotten past the initial HR screen. Only my direct physical access to the hiring manager and the company's dire need made it possible.
So- I don't discount your point as to getting access directly to the person who would supervise or hire. But for those who chose this path be aware that contact has to be carefully managed.
Having never seen the actual job posting, still I'll venture a guess, and I'd suggest that you add:
...to your job posting. Assuming, of course, that is relevent.
;)
:)
"ACHDS Certification or similar is required - other candidates will not be considered"
In any case, the way you phrased this need (says that applicants need experience) seems a little less strict than your intention. That's subjective, but given my years of experience with Windows and Linux (and the similarity of MacOSX to RedHat Linux) I might consider that stated need as met. From your converstation it probably is not
You might also borrow a trick I've seen recruiters use whereby a skills assessment document is submitted along with the resume. I don't know how that would work for you but if it caused that applicant to assert training, experience and/or certification on relevent platforms and with relevent technology you might find applicants begin to self-filter. Or they might just *not* complete the skills assessment and submit anyway. I mean, dude, you're Microsoft
Though, I *hate* filling those out. It's all in my resume is how I'm thinking at the time. But then, I don't waste time submitting to too many where my skills aren't a very close match.
fwiw...
I am, thanks millions!
>>If you think the job is well within your skill set, it probably is
;)
If you *think* it is, it probably is not.
The *last* thing a job seeker should do is send an uninvited correspondance to a middle manager. Getting someone on the inside to speak for you or to break the ice is one thing. As a hiring supervisor, I'd toss anything that didn't match up to a public job posting or referral or came from our internal email system as a current employee. And if it was a phone call? I'd forward to HR with barely a comment.
My job descriptions generally *understated* the required skills. My boss's and my philosophy was that drive and ingenuity more than made up for specific experiences . Some skills were absolute and they were portrayed as such.
I hardly know what to say about your concept of HR. They have the resources to answer phones, verify initial matches, check references, etc. They do a lot more than notice someone who is uncertain. Most job seekers are uncertain. For their part they have to know some detail before they can imagine life at your company. That's natural. To extend your metaphor; you know how we treat unauthorized invasions across our firewalls, right?
Few job postings present any prioritization matrix since that's wordy, probably not well understood on the hiring end, and probably dynamic in nature. So needing 3 years of C++ and 5 years of Java today may well be 5/3 next month. Perhaps java and C++ are required. Perhaps any object oriented experience would suffice.
If you're getting what you consider an inordinate number of bad submissions, I suggest to you that your statement of requirements might be lacking. Few job seekers will find any value in wasting the time to create the submission when it is clear to them they have no chance whatsoever. I'm sure Microsoft draws an exceptional amount of submissions and I'd offer to you that means you need to be especially adept in your job requirements. And there are the total noobs who find it necessary to push any possibility since they have no experience to speak of. But for the rest of us, we try to match our skills, experience and interests as closely as possible. Really.
Job Seekers: Companies no longer "keep you on file". Don't submit in the hopes that some other opportunity, heretofore unpublished, will be recognized as the Perfect Fit to your resume or that in the near future "something will open up". Won't happen. Employers today want a pre-packaged solution and tightly control resources.
Employers: Please understand that our first experience with you is your statement of need. Help us to know if we have a shot. Our situations vary greatly. Nobody out here is perfect in every way. We know that. You know that. Ambivalence on your part invites us to "peel the onion". There's a correspondence to ambivalence + interest level and the number of resumes you'll receive.
tverbeek: While I agree with most of what you said, an ongoing problem is an indication that there is a false assumption such that the proposed solution is inaccurate.
>>because most PC multiplayer games are like that
...modem, LAN...connection to other systems * Internet access required for internet play...charges may apply * ...Gaming Zone...web browser..."
;)
;) Some games just *imply* the capability for multiplayer action. I've played some that were buggy but had a great time with them nonetheless (Machine Hunter comes to mind). I don't assume any such support though.
I sit corrected. I only ever bought or played a handful of PC games, most of which were bargain-bin. This one sticks in my mind since nothing about needing another purchase is mentioned on the box. This one I bought at full price when it was fairly new, and I checked it's capabilities closely according to that which was printed on the box.
I'm sitting here looking at the original box.
On the back: " * Wild multiplayer competition - Race with your freinds via LAN, direct modem, or over the Web on the MSN (tm) Gaming Zone."
On the bottom: " Requirements for multiplayer play: *
It seems that the philosophy of Wii is the complete opposite (which I heartily welcome) and that was my main point. Taking a shot at Microsoft was apparantly unwarranted. But you have to admit that I was suckered by their false packaging.
As an aside, this was the one and only time I've ever tried to copy an original game disk and the only time I've ever considered actually downloading a cracked version. Play fair with me and I'll reciprocate. The opposite also stands. But that's me....
>>non-trivial work item
My turn
Adding the protections against re-using the same disk to spawn another player, while supporting TCP/IP play, seems to me to be the non-trivial task as well as an opening toward more buggy behavior, not the other way around.
In any case, the vendor makes this priority decision long before we have the product in our hands. If they advertise multiplayer play they should allow multiplayer play. If that requires another purchase, either in controller or other hardware or subscription or downloadable key or a whole other boxed distribution then that should be apparant from their packaging. And it should be as bug free as to allow 'most' installations to run it without problems.
A core precept in investigative psycology is 'once a criminal, always a criminal'. DNA records on any convicted person can be seen as a hedge against the *next* crime that person *will* commit.
IMO it abrogates the precept of innocence until proven otherwise and violates the Bill Of Rights guarantee against search without probable cause.
There's a fair amount of anecdotal evidence (http://www.monroeworld.com/forums/showthread.php? t=1561) that the prices dropping set the stage fotr the next generation of consoles. The glut of consoles, not games, provided a critical mass of adoption in the home where it was then accepted that 'everyone had an NES'. The market settled on a few winners (dropping the TI, Commodore and other bit players) in favor of Nintendo and Sega, and drove Sony's entrance into the market.
IMO, it was not a crash so much as an adjustment. A consolidation.
I doubt that it was in any way influenced by the quality or number of the games themselves. Generally, increased choice drives increased adoption, no matter the pin-point exceptions.
>>Not only that, but the people who are willing to try something new in terms of
>>controls are probably also going to be more willing to try something from a new
>>company that they have never heard
That's a critical factor. Given that some of the indie work might appear on Virtual Console, the SDK (and whatever its inherent costs) becomes a loss-leader. Say Xbox offers a total of 1500 games. Say PS3 offers a total of 2000 games. Say Wii offers a total of 23000 games.
To which would you subscribe?
The sheer momentum is an attraction that closed-shop platforms cannot gain.
I looked at your site and could not find a coherent message. What's it about, who's it for? I may be interested in TOD but it isn't immediately clear that that's something you are in control of. Many sites I visit position the same kind of message and it can be anything from a web-ring to FOSS to some forum or other irrelevant page. And those sites use the same syntactic conventions; mention the link and give a short description.
;)
IOW- target your web space better and you might not need to remain in the basement
PS- if you want to be taken seriously, don't mention Jesus on the home page. IMHO.
PPS- why regurgitate news available so many other places? To which I refer to the April 27 headline.
Her work revolved around a Hero. Bill G of Microsoft was never the only factor and at times not even the deciding factor. Rand, to my rememberance, always put the Hero in a moral and ethical situation to which he/she responded gracefully. That's not something you can say about Gates specifically, nor Microsoft generally.
IOW- bullpuckey
>>realtime simulations (a la motorcycle madness)
In typical Microsoft fashion, multiplayer required that you have as many original game CD's as players. How often does that happen? It's a shit simulation to begin with so we never met anyone who also had this game. Never able to verify that multi-player actually worked. Knowing Microsoft, it's reasonable to presume that it does not, or that it works very badly.
Though I'm sure Microsoft Support has a script to handle calls about that.
With that and my experience with Flight Simulator, I resolved to *never* have an Xbox.
YMMV.
But it's the antithesis of ad-hoc multiplayer game play that I see in Wii.
I've read rumor that Nintendo will offer its Wii SDK at a cost level an order of magnitude less than those of Xbox and Playstation. I've spent the last hour looking for some contact point at Nintendo where I could sign up. While I would expect there to be some barrier to coming onboard, I expect neither free support nor marketing, just the benefit of being able to submit my offering into their QA/Alpha/Beta channels. While that cost is not insignificant, the potential return to the console maker is, as you point out, HUGE. There's been a lot of banter about the stagnation of the console gaming platform/games/experience. Too pricey. Nothing new in games. Yet it's clear from the flash/flex/web gaming market that there really are novel and interesting new ideas out there.
;)
The reliability defecit of the PS2 soured me on consoles in general. Sony's lack of response to my enquiries about development soured me on Sony specifically. My Son would not share those biases so it was probable that a PS3 was in our future. Wii. I *love* the idea of off-your-ass gaming. The eye-toy was a step in that direction but suffered from technical compromises. So long as his PS2 continues to function -an unknown quantity considering our previous 3 PS2's reliability- his favorite Playstation games will continue to function. Virtual Console and the old Nintendo games we already have make the Wii an interesting propostion. Its wiimote and nunchuck make it, in my mind, a very probable scenario. I'd have bought one, sight unseen, today if it were possible.
I think gaming in the physical space, similar to first-person VR but second-person by-proxy, that the Wii will offer is a huge step forward in gaming evolution. It has the potential to actually make a golf or baseball simulation accurate. fun. At maturity I can imagine specialized controllers that might simulate motorcycle handlebars/throttle/clutch/brakes. Now, how much fun might that be?!
The one trick I think Nintendo is missing is multiPOV. While recent effort has been towards distributed, client/server, architecure (socomm is a good example) where each player has his own console and video, this suffers latency that realtime simulations (a la motorcycle madness) must compromise to overcome. Split-screen has its own limitation. Multi-head console play, with wireless motion sensing controllers set the stage for ad-hoc game play more similar to basement D&D of a bygone age. Imagine my monitor showing the ball as it's pitched and your monitor showing the scene from the POV of the pitcher. The game has to calculate the physics of all that in any case, it's the graphics generation that's the holdup. Few C/S environments will allow realtime depth for this. IMO.
In any case... I look forward to our new Nintendo Overlords... blah blah blah
Correct. That's how things are today. A little pork brought to the district, a little high-visibility "action" against the bogeyman of the day, and voila, instant re-election (well, incumbant privileges too ;)
3 11934 it's full of wailing and bitching.
If the congressperson really believed his constituency were watching and remembering and reporting, he'd bow to their will.
For the populace's part in it, yes, we'd have to give up our instant gratifications and steel ourselves to give up pork-barrel graft.
I just revisited the GP which spawned my original post. Except for http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=185486&cid=15
Either you accept that it can change -but it will be very very hard- or you accept that it can not. Either is a choice. Choosing not to decide is still a Choice (thanks Geddy!).
I'm fairly certain that congress' votes are counted accurately.
The point is to make them vote our will.
>>Care to guess why they stopped?
because it got a little too dicey even for them?
Silent is silent. No matter the what/who/why.
mod parent up
Exceedingly insightful. No matter how you lay out the game, the cheaters who have access to the game can bastardize the game. It's the actual transgressions we need to find, not the potential transgressions. You know, innocent until proven? That's enough work to keep all our government busy, IMHO...
It was originally an expression of a landowner's responsibility to keep and protect his property, family and community. What the UK folks don't understand is we fought this battle a couple of centuries ago and, hold on..... we won.
That spririt is interwoven with our psyche over here, though it is much suppressed and nearly vestigal in our modern populace.
A limited distrust of one's government is a good thing, in our opinion. Personal weaponry, while probably ineffective as a total solution, is effective on a point-by-point basis.
Remember, you're comparing your close, mature, smaller localles to a huge country of diverse peoples. Our borders extend from one ocean to another both above and below. Insurgents and local criminal elements have little real opposition lest we deputize a much larger fraction of the populace. The framer's knew this. They expected us all to share in the responsibility to maintain order.
The second ammendment is nothing more than expression of distributed policy.
>> and have somehow righted themselves
Impassioned, I'll give you that. But what are you *doing* about it. Do you really think those millions and millions of dollars flowing here-to-there will just stop? That millions of people involved in domestic spying will just retire?
Listen. The power is *still* ours. Gongress is still in our control, but only if we invoke that control. Any law or executive power extant today can be modified or revoked. Our voice is there. But we have to speak. We have to make our elected representatives believe we are actually watching and remembering. And reporting.
It will take committed people who don't care that it is 'illegal' to talk about abuses of power and specific instances thereof. They'll go to jail. They'll need support. But first there have to be those who are willing to do what their conscience dictates.
I, for one welcome, our new Mexican overlords....
The descendants of Aztlan will not put up with this shit. They won't sacrifice their....
oh wait. nevermind.
mod parent up.
tyrants battling tyrants. sort of reminds me of those 60's godzilla movies.
and yes, I think that's a bad thing...
>>if there was a sufficient amount of gun control
What would that look like?! Could the complete eradication of each and every hand-held firearm (rifles, shotguns and pistols) prevent my obtaining such a weapon from a museum? from some other country? from building my own?
Even if each and every hand-held firearm were traceable by RFID or similar technology, even if that were true across the entire Earth, would it not be possible to remove such tracking devices, potentially? Would not some subversive organization determine to produce illicit weapons?
Dreamer or not you need to internalize the fact that personal freedoms are never given. They are earned. They must be continually protected and re-earned or they go away.
Please note it is not my position that the common possession of firearms is in any way indicitive or relevent to the freedoms of the populace. In an organized society it is the rule of law which affords those. But, in the absense of rule of law, one must compete on a level field. Ask any of the recipients of Enron's largesse if they are comfortable with the Federal governments' ability to assure their continued participation in a fair and equal competition. Ask anyone who has had a "third-kind encounter" with the lawless component of our world if they are comfortable that the constabulary can provide for them an inviolable environment.
I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.
Call Detail Records (CDR) contain originating and terminating number and other detail but not customer name, address, SSI or anything like that. To link to that information would be an additional step, not the other way around. Trimming is therefore not necessary.
If your LEC provides online lookup of your call records, you can probably verify this for your own account.
My experience is with a 2nd-tier carrier so should anyone with knowledge from a 1st tier verify I'd definately defer.
Oh, and while I operated on CDR I was never involved in providing that information to any outside entity, so don't expect me to know exactly what is sent to the NSA. I'm just saying a dump of CDR would not, IME, contain personal data and no effort is required to assure that fact.
Anytime -school, job, or leisure- I've needed to compose I make the *attempt* to check my spelling and its readability. I think there's also a dash of immediate-gratification to the problem in that the desire to get it posted preempts any responsibility to make it correct.
I'm no spelling nor grammar nazi and seeing postings from such tend to annoy me; I was predisposed towards taking any such posting in a negative manner. Apologies. It's clear you're a literate person.
A little "tin foil" maybe
I'm not sure what baseline you'd use for comparison. At the turn of the 19th century the percentage of the population publicly presenting composition would have been a magnitude less than it is today. I think the expectations placed on that percentage was higher, but it should be noted that it *could* be higher. The forced public schooling of the masses, while a debatable strategy, has the effect of diluting the pool and, thus, bringing the average competency downwards.
While it serves any entrenched oligarchy to have its subjects minimally competent, I can only *wish* that I'd had the resources available to me that are to today's students. Quotes abound from sages across the generations that "today's youth... the death of us all". It was ever thus and I imagine it will always be thus.
I would imagine the Tower of Babel was described by its proponents using rather loose rules of grammar since it's human nature that isolated pockets of people degenerate from any standard syntactical convention. That's just a guess; I'm not quite old enough to have been there or anything...
Misspellings, colloquialisms, and such are adapted into the language over time and become the rule, not the exception. That's a natural progression. There is, however, a difference between slang and using a word (lose/loose) which is blatantly conflicted.
As to our destiny, I believe that forcing kids into public shooling has nothing but deleterious consequences; devaluing the nature of education at its root, preventing the entity from experiencing life in h/er own trajectory, economic drain, etc. I find it unconscionable to expect a herd of cows -bovine biology aside- to *like* being milked. Compounded by the influence of action-packed electronic baubles and tween/teen social networking, it is no leap to envision a dark apodosis.