It was kind of sad, though, because she all but admitted it was because she couldn't hack real programming work. She frabricated a great deal of false statements on her resume and came close to out-right lying in her interview. But she was more than happy to get the job with a contractor, because she figures the combination of slow-moving projects and general red tape involved in firing someone would give her tremendous job security.
That alone made me scared of government contractors. But they can't all be incompetent slackers, can they? They can't, right? *sigh*
The reality of it is that most DBAs, programmers and database developers in the working world scoffed at the ad campaign the moment it began. Sure, Oracle has a great product, but we all knew it wasn't bulletproof, no matter how may awards for "best of class security" it supposedly won.
The only real losers in this, other than organizations whose Oracle databases were victimized by a security flaw, were the corporate purchasers who were sold on the hype. They'll have to live with the fact that their DBMS isn't "unbreakable." Honestly, though, there are relatively few of those (none I can think of that are well-publicized, at least), as they are usually run on well locked-down *nix boxes.
It's not anything new. It's just agressive advertising. Some might argue that it's false advertising, but that's probably being a bit harsh. It's more like...overly boastful advertising.
I've done work for the civil court system and land records offices in my area. Their records - all of them - are public. But it's not like any of their information is "sensitive". Thus, open-sourcing any of their software doesn't present any real risk.
On the other hand, an organization like, say the NSA is publicly funded with American tax dollars. It would be impossible to say that open-sourcing their software wouldn't present any real risk.
It really is an organization-to-organization call.
I'm trying really hard not to fall into that group of/. readers that either ignore or dislike Katz's every single post. But this article...oh my.
First of all, what is the point? What are we, the readers, supposed to take away from this article? For most of my life, I've felt like I have above average reading comprehension skills, but I'm having trouble figuring out the point here. Let's see...I've read it twice now...nope, no point. Lots of words with no meaning. Not a single enlightening bit of information discerned. Why? Because the article contradicts itself.
Apple (and Jobs, by proxy I suppose) brought the consumers the gift of accessible computers, but Jobs doesn't understand what keeps the technology industry moving.
Katz, what are you saying? Jobs in an idiot or he's a genius? Are you saying anything at all? Is there an opinion here, or just someone's retelling of things that could possibly be construed as something resembling facts? "His idea to fuse the desktop with pop culture is, in fact, a powerful one. But it's too soon.""If you're a teenager, Web designer, film editor or visual arts major, or even a loving Grandma, it's great that the iMac allows you to create your own DVDs, organize and edit digital pictures, play CDs or convert MP3's, turn home videotapes into high-quality edited films."
But for all the wasted verbage, the article finally wraps it up at the end: What's cool isn't necessarily what sells. God damn, Katz. You're a genius.
I, too, am a software developer. Typically, UML is used at two points in my company's development process. Early on, just after the requirements analysis, the software developer (me in this case) sits down with the analysts (which I could be one of on any given project) and designs what will likely be the architecture of the system. That includes mapping out the class relationships as well, all done in UML. These aren't detailed diagrams, as you might imagine. If all we did was hand over the diagrams in that state to some other developer, that other developer wouldn't have a clue what to build. That class relationship/interaction UML is only good from a high-level system design standpoint.
We'll also use UML largely to represent the workflow or flow of information as we understand it from our analysis. Thinks like "customer enters store, makes order, sales takes money, gives receipt" can be represented pretty easily and clearly.
We still haven't used UML for anything detailed. Our class documentation is formated more like the class definitions in O'Reilly's "Java In A Nutshell" (I really like that format), and the workflow is detailed more through use case scenarios and more specific flowchart diagrams (i.e. a complete diagram of what happens in that "sales takes money" part of the process).
In general, we find UML useful for higher-level abstract diagrams. Even our customers, who are usually very non-technical people, understand those diagrams quite easily. For our internal understanding, we use more detailed documentation.
"Both AOL and Microsoft have vowed to support SIMPLE."
Wouldn't that be a surprise?
Enough with the sarcasm. Am I wrong in the understanding that when I instant message (IM) with someone, that our IM clients have knowledge of each other's IP addresses once they are resolved for the first time? What's so bad about sending files broken out as packets to another IP address?
Are people like Phillips automatically assuming that the majority of the public is going to rip them off?
It doesn't take a genius to steal cable but, really, what is the percentage of people who legitimately pay for cable rather than steal it? I'd be willing to better the overwhelming majority pay for it.
And it's not as if the customer hasn't paid for the content here. So what if Joe Consumer broadcasts the Superbowl via wireless to the TV in his bathroom? If Joe Consumer is a paying customer, it shouldn't matter.
The vast majority still pay for their content. Each time I hear a story like this, I get the feeling that many large companies are simply fighting against imaginary enemies.
Don't forget that lots of portal companies depend on ad revenues to support their business. Yahoo gives an awful lot away, it stands to reason that they'd try everything they can to get some revenue coming in.
This really isn't anything new, though. I regularly see advertisements (in particular on TechTV) that are done well enough that, if I'm not really paying attention at first, I have to do a double-take and look for the "Paid Advertisement" text to make sure it's not an actual show of some sort. Anything to expose those products to viewers' eyeballs.
Really, though, who's surprised by this given the recent collapse of banner ad revenue on the web?
At the risk of sounding redundant...
on
The Drone War
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· Score: 2
Because another poster pretty much nailed it on the head...
Having drones fight the battles for you is good thing, at least from the perspective of one raised under Western culture.
There are two distinct advantages:
1) Humans, who we value much more than drones, don't have to die in the vast numbers that were formally associated with military conflict. This prevents a great amount of emotional trauma for everyone involved.
2) There is a distinct psychological advantage in technological superiority. Imagine not having a chance against your foe because your foe's technology is so much greater than your own. So great, in fact, that your foe needs not to send great numbers of warriors to battle. You might be inclined to surrender beforehand, lest your armies be slaughtered and you disgraced and disposed. I forget the exact quotes, but there's no telling how many wise people have paraphrased "The best way to win a war is to convince your opponent to give up before the fight begins."
Sure, the visionaries of the past could see machines doing the fighting on our behalf. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Romantics might begin debates on the cowardice of using drones to fight a battle of ideals, but, please, spare me such nonsense. No one except the religiously brainwashed and perhaps the terminally ill and racked with pain wants to die: some people are merely resigned to the fact that very are likely to.
I've often wondered why more companies don't release the source code once the product is no longer viable. When I was younger and less experienced in the corporate world, I'd always thought it was because corporations were made up of evil bastards who want to control everything. As it turns out, most corporations are just made up of people who want to keep their jobs.
Anyway, a really good reason for not releasing the source code is that no matter how hard you try, you ALWAYS end up supporting it. I'm sure in most cases it would be a hassle and an unnecessary expenditure. Not to mention any legal issues that might arise if it becomes evident that a company has *ahem* borrowed code from someone else's product. I bet we'd be amazed to see the amount of IT espionage that happens between major competitors.:)
You know, there are quite a lot of game companies that I wish did this though. Besides id.
The demographic hasn't changed.
on
Attack of the Clones
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Lucas has always said that Star Wars is a modern-day fairy tale. Great love stories intertwined in a universe of Good vs. Evil where the Good Guys win. It's the stuff great kiddie stories are made of.
I mean, hey, let's look at that first triology for a second. We've got a love story between a princess and an outlaw (whose best friend, by the way, is a large, loveable hairy guy). That's classic fairy tale stuff. Then we've got the tale of a confused and tortured young man struggling to become a champion of good whilst laboring in the shadow of his evil father who, as it turns out, is still a pretty good guy himself.
I can't tell if this is a fairy tale or a soap opera. Frankly, there isn't much difference.
The point is, Lucas made a film that adults can - more or less - enjoy, but it's always been heavy on the childish side of things. The story and characters are easy to digest. It doesn't take a literary genius to understand that the Emporer was an evil mad man and Luke was the proverbial White Knight. The story is cut and dry.
But I will admit that including a boy band like NSync in the movie, even for a cameo, is bowing to market influence in a major way. Oh wait...there was Jar Jar and that whole "Pod Race To Sell Toys" scene in Episode I.:)
Well, yes mass amounts of music would change the dynamic quite a bit. There will always be those who want something - a lot of something - for nothing. But most of my argument stems from your average music listener's point of view.
That point of view, I believe, is one where the average person listens to 2 or 3 songs off a given CD and ignores the rest as "filler." Let's say that the average, music-purchasing consumer buys 12 CDs per year (someone else is more than welcome to plug in the appropriate stats). If we assume the maximum number of desired tracks per album is 3, then that's only $36 spent on the music the consumer wants. But, given that CD prices range between $15 and $25 dollars, that same consumer will likely end up spending upwards of $180 on music. Bum deal.
I'm sure that there will always be those who want their music for free, and if they want it bad enough, they'll find a way to get it. But the majority still do it the old-fashioned entirely legal way and I think recording industry companies can still make a good buck without pissing said old-fashioned customers off so much that they (the customers) start looking for the less-than-legal free ways.
Movies like Shrek and Final Fantasy (especially Final Fantasy) have done a lot to show what total CG movies can be, but movies like Lord of the Rings and (to a lesser extent, IMHO) Star Wars: Episode One have shown how the effective use of CG can not only compliment human acting, it can bring the immersion and suspension of disbelief to another level.
I don't think anyone is going to dispute that the scenery and cinematography in Lord of the Rings was fantastic. Granted, the perspective (swooping high above in many cases) allows for loss of detail in such a way that you fool the eyes of the audience in a lot of cases, but the close-up scenes have become finely detailed as well, showing that the possibilities for effectively integrating CG in a live action scene are greater than in previous years.
I agree that a bumper crop of CG movies are coming, but here's another trend to watch out for: actors that do especially well with blue-screens and acting with things/people that aren't really there.
Oh, and just a side note...I think all this effective CG stuff is going to really hurt the traditional latex/foam rubber movie monster special effects industry. In years past, things like the cave troll in LotR would have been done with a guy in a suit, or hydraulics or such. But, it probably wouldn't have seemed as fluid or expressive, so, eh no loss, right?:)
Some crap about subscription services and charging one dollar per song. As usual, I probably should have thought about it a bit more beforehand. Would one dollar per song be profitable?
I'm just asking because I know I've certainly never produced an album or promoted an artist. What kind of costs are involved here? If you wanted to produce an album (assuming CD sales would continue as well as online distribution) and then make the songs available for download in MP3 format, would $1.00 be a good price at which to sell? Would that make money for the artist as well as the company?
I'm guessing that albums and singles that are really successful are those which have sold upwards of one million copies, but that math doesn't seem to work out on a per-song basis. Assuming an artist/band has ONE hit single that one million people download and pay $1.00 for, that's only $1 million in revenue. Considering the likely costs involved, it doesn't seem worth it.
Anyone got any idea what it costs these days to have a professionally-produced album? How about the costs of maintaining a file-download facility like the one needed to support this kind of MP3 distribution?
The sad thing, IMHO, is that I'm sure a lot of people will pick back up using it because a) they don't know any better and b) they think that paying a bit for the music makes everything OK (after all, the artists are getting paid, right?).
I can't help but think that we'd all be better off if the RIAA companies would agree to start a subscription service where people can download songs for $1.00 per song in MP3 (unprotected) format. That kind of pricing makes it so that most people wouldn't mind paying for the music (after all, getting it from your friends would just be a bitch and it's only a dollar). Not to mention, you could avoid the "filler" tracks that come on many albums.
A buck per song. MP3 format so I can take it with me when I go for a jog/sit in the bookstore/mow the lawn/visit the outhouse. If the RIAA companies "trim the fat" a little to get production costs down, everyone could be happy.
I hate to say it, but I'm just telling it like it is. I'm not a huge fan of anime, but I do occassionally skim through the anime newsgroups. Let me be the first to say that a lot of it makes me ill. It's increasingly difficult to find the honest-to-goodness alluring, semi-mature anime amongst the "alien sex fiend" variety anime.
Sure, you can call me a troll, I fully expected it. But I didn't say it because I look forward to someone producing this kind of material, it was more of a harsh, sarcastic look at the real world.
I don't mean to make light of rape. It's a horrible crime and rapists shouldn't just be chemically castrated or jailed; they should be killed. But I do mean to point out that anime (the majority of which is produced in Japan) is polluted with sick, twisted, demeaning fantasies.
The joke here - as if you could possibly get it - is that anyone (meaning sicko anime producers) who could come up with the crap that they come with is likely to adapt any new technology into some sort of demeaning, cybernetic sex fiend theme.
Aw, why the hell am I explaining this? Humour, no matter how subtle or explicit is obviously lost here.
Well, you know those crazy Japanese. We can expect to see sex robots with silver dildos on each of their 18 tentacle arms raping hog-tied schoolgirls for HOURS and HOURS on their methanol batteries.
I have never, nor will I willingly place a time bomb in software I create that forces a customer to buy another version of said software needlessly.
Having said that though, there is one approach along these lines that I don't necessarily disagree with. When the customer buys the product, part of what they, the customer, is expecting is support. Employing support people (What, you don't expect me to do this myself do you? I'm a programmer.;) ) costs money, but hopefully the sale of the product makes up for that. The product will, most likely, change (hopefully for the better) over time but free support for the product should last no less than 6 months. 6 months should give a customer plenty of time to get familiar with the installation and use of the software.
After the predesignated length of time - which, by the way, the customer should be made aware of from the start - support should cost money. Keeping your tech support knowledge base going, keeping knowledgeable, experienced people on your tech support staff and supporting older versions of your software all cost money. The more versions of your software you support, the more it will wind up costing you. Since these old versions don't reflect new sales, the costs have to be made up with charging for support.
Of course, you could go to another extreme and offer either free or significantly reduced-cost upgrades for life for your customers. That's always nice.
Re:Just for the sake of asking...
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Review: SliMP3
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· Score: 2
Ack, I'd forgotten all about the iPod. Shame the thing is $400, because I just know I'd eventually lose or crush something that small. Hate to have flushed that money down the drain.:)
Just for the sake of asking...
on
Review: SliMP3
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· Score: 2
I've got just a few questions about MP3 players:
Software
Which MP3 player has the smallest memory footprint/is the least taxing on the system in Windows? In Linux?
Hardware
Which portable MP3 player has the smallest form factor? How about smallest form factor with the most memory (say, 64 or 128 MB)?
But, as a parent, I think I can tell which toys are too explicitly (or even suggestively) violent for my child. And even if I didn't know anything about software and video games, they now have a ratings system that tells me which age group for which they are most appropriate.
I think the thing that disturbs me most about this is not that some people would compile a list like this - people are free to state their opinions about toys and games all they want - it's that parents would rely so heavily on these types of lists to make their decisions for them. To me, it's just further evidence of a parent's wish to simply not be bothered or involved.
If you really want to have some influence on what your kids are getting into, then for the love of all things good, GET INVOLVED. Use some common sense! Do you want your kids considering guns as toys? No? Then don't buy them gun-wielding toys. It's a pretty simple concept. Don't want your kids to get the idea in their head that head-to-head combat is Good Thing[tm]? Then don't buy them fighting games. It's all very, very common-sensical. There are lots of toys from which to choose. Pick the ones with which you feel most comfortable.
IMHO, I think it's good that Nintendo has an almost fluffy, cartoon feeling to their current crop of games (Super Monkey Ball, Smash Bros., and Luigi's Castle in particular). It carries forth the stylings of other hit games of theirs, such as great SNES games like Zelda: A Link To The Past and Super Mario World and the Mario game for the N64. I've seen so many dark, grim, gloomy, "edgy" games that I'm sick of them. Give me vivid colors, bouncy music, and a huge dose of good ol' arcade fun.
Don't get me wrong, I've played plenty of dark, thoughtful and grim games. I enjoy many of them. But my game time is limited (what, with work, family, blah blah blah), so give me an ejoyable, light-hearted game where I can sit down, game on and let my brain go into "smile and drool" mode.
These are games, for cryin' out loud. Maybe they were targeted for little kids, maybe they weren't. Maybe we can all just hush up, quit worrying about the targeted market and enjoy them.;)
A friend of mine said a while back that he hoped ATI sold plenty of video cards so nVidia would have a reason to keep progressing forward. "Without competition," he said, "nVidia will just stagnate and 3d gaming will go nowhere."
Hogwash. nVidia has a great reason to keep progressing: profit. My mother (family EQ addict) runs a TNT2-based card and pretty soon I'll be upgrading her to a GeForce 3. I run a GeForce 2 Ultra, but I imagine I'll be upgrading to something else come spring time. If nVidia didn't keep moving 3d gaming forward, there would be no need to replace your 3d card with a new one...ergo, limited amounts of repeat customers. As it is, nVidia releases a new, more powerful 3d card every six months in both high-priced and value varieties. Game developers often adopt the latest and greatest as the standard by which they'll be producing a game, so gamers always have a reason to go out and get the latest smokin' piece o' silicon.
But I am still glad to see that there is competition out there, which probably contributes to nVidia pushing the envelope harder and faster than if there were no competitors.
...but I know quite a few people who are addicted to MMORPGs, Everquest and UO in particular.
Addiction is something that, for the most part, exists on a chemical and/or psychological level. From what I understand, the general opinion amongst people who study these things is that a chemical addiction (lets say, nicotine) is easier to break and eventually beat than a psychological addiction (lets say, your average sexual fetish). In my opinion, gaming as a whole is neither a psychological or chemical addiction because, I believe, for the most part gamers can and do go for extended periods of time without gaming. Be it a holiday away from home, final exams, whatever. I consider myself an avid gamer and, quite frankly, there are times when I simply can't be bothered to game.
But, I have friends and family that are players of UO and Everquest and I believe they fit the profile of people who are psychologically addicted to the experience. Their personalities change, sometimes drastically when they do not get their fix. The amount of money they are willing to spend, not just in monthly fees but in expansion packs, strategy guides, virtual items on eBay, etc seems almost silly when your realize the money spent goes towards existence in a virtual society. To top it all off, these players are not only often doing very little in the way of "having fun" in the game, they spend a great deal of time downright unhappy with the whole ordeal. I know no less than five Everquest players who have sworn it off out of anger and frustration, only to sit right back down in front of the PC and play some more. If the EQ message boards are any indication, the number of people in the same mindset numbers in the tens of thousands.
It becomes an addiction when you no longer feel that you want to play, but you need to play.
Slashdot Mirror
It was kind of sad, though, because she all but admitted it was because she couldn't hack real programming work. She frabricated a great deal of false statements on her resume and came close to out-right lying in her interview. But she was more than happy to get the job with a contractor, because she figures the combination of slow-moving projects and general red tape involved in firing someone would give her tremendous job security.
That alone made me scared of government contractors. But they can't all be incompetent slackers, can they? They can't, right? *sigh*
The reality of it is that most DBAs, programmers and database developers in the working world scoffed at the ad campaign the moment it began. Sure, Oracle has a great product, but we all knew it wasn't bulletproof, no matter how may awards for "best of class security" it supposedly won.
The only real losers in this, other than organizations whose Oracle databases were victimized by a security flaw, were the corporate purchasers who were sold on the hype. They'll have to live with the fact that their DBMS isn't "unbreakable." Honestly, though, there are relatively few of those (none I can think of that are well-publicized, at least), as they are usually run on well locked-down *nix boxes.
It's not anything new. It's just agressive advertising. Some might argue that it's false advertising, but that's probably being a bit harsh. It's more like...overly boastful advertising.
I've done work for the civil court system and land records offices in my area. Their records - all of them - are public. But it's not like any of their information is "sensitive". Thus, open-sourcing any of their software doesn't present any real risk.
On the other hand, an organization like, say the NSA is publicly funded with American tax dollars. It would be impossible to say that open-sourcing their software wouldn't present any real risk.
It really is an organization-to-organization call.
I'm trying really hard not to fall into that group of /. readers that either ignore or dislike Katz's every single post. But this article...oh my.
First of all, what is the point? What are we, the readers, supposed to take away from this article? For most of my life, I've felt like I have above average reading comprehension skills, but I'm having trouble figuring out the point here. Let's see...I've read it twice now...nope, no point. Lots of words with no meaning. Not a single enlightening bit of information discerned. Why? Because the article contradicts itself.
Apple (and Jobs, by proxy I suppose) brought the consumers the gift of accessible computers, but Jobs doesn't understand what keeps the technology industry moving.
Katz, what are you saying? Jobs in an idiot or he's a genius? Are you saying anything at all? Is there an opinion here, or just someone's retelling of things that could possibly be construed as something resembling facts? "His idea to fuse the desktop with pop culture is, in fact, a powerful one. But it's too soon." "If you're a teenager, Web designer, film editor or visual arts major, or even a loving Grandma, it's great that the iMac allows you to create your own DVDs, organize and edit digital pictures, play CDs or convert MP3's, turn home videotapes into high-quality edited films."
But for all the wasted verbage, the article finally wraps it up at the end: What's cool isn't necessarily what sells. God damn, Katz. You're a genius.
I, too, am a software developer. Typically, UML is used at two points in my company's development process. Early on, just after the requirements analysis, the software developer (me in this case) sits down with the analysts (which I could be one of on any given project) and designs what will likely be the architecture of the system. That includes mapping out the class relationships as well, all done in UML. These aren't detailed diagrams, as you might imagine. If all we did was hand over the diagrams in that state to some other developer, that other developer wouldn't have a clue what to build. That class relationship/interaction UML is only good from a high-level system design standpoint.
We'll also use UML largely to represent the workflow or flow of information as we understand it from our analysis. Thinks like "customer enters store, makes order, sales takes money, gives receipt" can be represented pretty easily and clearly.
We still haven't used UML for anything detailed. Our class documentation is formated more like the class definitions in O'Reilly's "Java In A Nutshell" (I really like that format), and the workflow is detailed more through use case scenarios and more specific flowchart diagrams (i.e. a complete diagram of what happens in that "sales takes money" part of the process).
In general, we find UML useful for higher-level abstract diagrams. Even our customers, who are usually very non-technical people, understand those diagrams quite easily. For our internal understanding, we use more detailed documentation.
From the article:
"Both AOL and Microsoft have vowed to support SIMPLE."
Wouldn't that be a surprise?
Enough with the sarcasm. Am I wrong in the understanding that when I instant message (IM) with someone, that our IM clients have knowledge of each other's IP addresses once they are resolved for the first time? What's so bad about sending files broken out as packets to another IP address?
Are people like Phillips automatically assuming that the majority of the public is going to rip them off?
It doesn't take a genius to steal cable but, really, what is the percentage of people who legitimately pay for cable rather than steal it? I'd be willing to better the overwhelming majority pay for it.
And it's not as if the customer hasn't paid for the content here. So what if Joe Consumer broadcasts the Superbowl via wireless to the TV in his bathroom? If Joe Consumer is a paying customer, it shouldn't matter.
The vast majority still pay for their content. Each time I hear a story like this, I get the feeling that many large companies are simply fighting against imaginary enemies.
on such a system, because that would explain why it's /.'d all to heck. ;)
No chance of a mirror, eh? How about a Google cache?
Don't forget that lots of portal companies depend on ad revenues to support their business. Yahoo gives an awful lot away, it stands to reason that they'd try everything they can to get some revenue coming in.
This really isn't anything new, though. I regularly see advertisements (in particular on TechTV) that are done well enough that, if I'm not really paying attention at first, I have to do a double-take and look for the "Paid Advertisement" text to make sure it's not an actual show of some sort. Anything to expose those products to viewers' eyeballs.
Really, though, who's surprised by this given the recent collapse of banner ad revenue on the web?
Because another poster pretty much nailed it on the head...
Having drones fight the battles for you is good thing, at least from the perspective of one raised under Western culture.
There are two distinct advantages:
1) Humans, who we value much more than drones, don't have to die in the vast numbers that were formally associated with military conflict. This prevents a great amount of emotional trauma for everyone involved.
2) There is a distinct psychological advantage in technological superiority. Imagine not having a chance against your foe because your foe's technology is so much greater than your own. So great, in fact, that your foe needs not to send great numbers of warriors to battle. You might be inclined to surrender beforehand, lest your armies be slaughtered and you disgraced and disposed. I forget the exact quotes, but there's no telling how many wise people have paraphrased "The best way to win a war is to convince your opponent to give up before the fight begins."
Sure, the visionaries of the past could see machines doing the fighting on our behalf. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Romantics might begin debates on the cowardice of using drones to fight a battle of ideals, but, please, spare me such nonsense. No one except the religiously brainwashed and perhaps the terminally ill and racked with pain wants to die: some people are merely resigned to the fact that very are likely to.
I've often wondered why more companies don't release the source code once the product is no longer viable. When I was younger and less experienced in the corporate world, I'd always thought it was because corporations were made up of evil bastards who want to control everything. As it turns out, most corporations are just made up of people who want to keep their jobs.
:)
Anyway, a really good reason for not releasing the source code is that no matter how hard you try, you ALWAYS end up supporting it. I'm sure in most cases it would be a hassle and an unnecessary expenditure. Not to mention any legal issues that might arise if it becomes evident that a company has *ahem* borrowed code from someone else's product. I bet we'd be amazed to see the amount of IT espionage that happens between major competitors.
You know, there are quite a lot of game companies that I wish did this though. Besides id.
Lucas has always said that Star Wars is a modern-day fairy tale. Great love stories intertwined in a universe of Good vs. Evil where the Good Guys win. It's the stuff great kiddie stories are made of.
:)
I mean, hey, let's look at that first triology for a second. We've got a love story between a princess and an outlaw (whose best friend, by the way, is a large, loveable hairy guy). That's classic fairy tale stuff. Then we've got the tale of a confused and tortured young man struggling to become a champion of good whilst laboring in the shadow of his evil father who, as it turns out, is still a pretty good guy himself.
I can't tell if this is a fairy tale or a soap opera. Frankly, there isn't much difference.
The point is, Lucas made a film that adults can - more or less - enjoy, but it's always been heavy on the childish side of things. The story and characters are easy to digest. It doesn't take a literary genius to understand that the Emporer was an evil mad man and Luke was the proverbial White Knight. The story is cut and dry.
But I will admit that including a boy band like NSync in the movie, even for a cameo, is bowing to market influence in a major way. Oh wait...there was Jar Jar and that whole "Pod Race To Sell Toys" scene in Episode I.
Well, yes mass amounts of music would change the dynamic quite a bit. There will always be those who want something - a lot of something - for nothing. But most of my argument stems from your average music listener's point of view.
That point of view, I believe, is one where the average person listens to 2 or 3 songs off a given CD and ignores the rest as "filler." Let's say that the average, music-purchasing consumer buys 12 CDs per year (someone else is more than welcome to plug in the appropriate stats). If we assume the maximum number of desired tracks per album is 3, then that's only $36 spent on the music the consumer wants. But, given that CD prices range between $15 and $25 dollars, that same consumer will likely end up spending upwards of $180 on music. Bum deal.
I'm sure that there will always be those who want their music for free, and if they want it bad enough, they'll find a way to get it. But the majority still do it the old-fashioned entirely legal way and I think recording industry companies can still make a good buck without pissing said old-fashioned customers off so much that they (the customers) start looking for the less-than-legal free ways.
Movies like Shrek and Final Fantasy (especially Final Fantasy) have done a lot to show what total CG movies can be, but movies like Lord of the Rings and (to a lesser extent, IMHO) Star Wars: Episode One have shown how the effective use of CG can not only compliment human acting, it can bring the immersion and suspension of disbelief to another level.
:)
I don't think anyone is going to dispute that the scenery and cinematography in Lord of the Rings was fantastic. Granted, the perspective (swooping high above in many cases) allows for loss of detail in such a way that you fool the eyes of the audience in a lot of cases, but the close-up scenes have become finely detailed as well, showing that the possibilities for effectively integrating CG in a live action scene are greater than in previous years.
I agree that a bumper crop of CG movies are coming, but here's another trend to watch out for: actors that do especially well with blue-screens and acting with things/people that aren't really there.
Oh, and just a side note...I think all this effective CG stuff is going to really hurt the traditional latex/foam rubber movie monster special effects industry. In years past, things like the cave troll in LotR would have been done with a guy in a suit, or hydraulics or such. But, it probably wouldn't have seemed as fluid or expressive, so, eh no loss, right?
Some crap about subscription services and charging one dollar per song. As usual, I probably should have thought about it a bit more beforehand. Would one dollar per song be profitable?
I'm just asking because I know I've certainly never produced an album or promoted an artist. What kind of costs are involved here? If you wanted to produce an album (assuming CD sales would continue as well as online distribution) and then make the songs available for download in MP3 format, would $1.00 be a good price at which to sell? Would that make money for the artist as well as the company?
I'm guessing that albums and singles that are really successful are those which have sold upwards of one million copies, but that math doesn't seem to work out on a per-song basis. Assuming an artist/band has ONE hit single that one million people download and pay $1.00 for, that's only $1 million in revenue. Considering the likely costs involved, it doesn't seem worth it.
Anyone got any idea what it costs these days to have a professionally-produced album? How about the costs of maintaining a file-download facility like the one needed to support this kind of MP3 distribution?
The sad thing, IMHO, is that I'm sure a lot of people will pick back up using it because a) they don't know any better and b) they think that paying a bit for the music makes everything OK (after all, the artists are getting paid, right?).
I can't help but think that we'd all be better off if the RIAA companies would agree to start a subscription service where people can download songs for $1.00 per song in MP3 (unprotected) format. That kind of pricing makes it so that most people wouldn't mind paying for the music (after all, getting it from your friends would just be a bitch and it's only a dollar). Not to mention, you could avoid the "filler" tracks that come on many albums.
A buck per song. MP3 format so I can take it with me when I go for a jog/sit in the bookstore/mow the lawn/visit the outhouse. If the RIAA companies "trim the fat" a little to get production costs down, everyone could be happy.
Going off topic, but what they hey.
I hate to say it, but I'm just telling it like it is. I'm not a huge fan of anime, but I do occassionally skim through the anime newsgroups. Let me be the first to say that a lot of it makes me ill. It's increasingly difficult to find the honest-to-goodness alluring, semi-mature anime amongst the "alien sex fiend" variety anime.
Sure, you can call me a troll, I fully expected it. But I didn't say it because I look forward to someone producing this kind of material, it was more of a harsh, sarcastic look at the real world.
I don't mean to make light of rape. It's a horrible crime and rapists shouldn't just be chemically castrated or jailed; they should be killed. But I do mean to point out that anime (the majority of which is produced in Japan) is polluted with sick, twisted, demeaning fantasies.
The joke here - as if you could possibly get it - is that anyone (meaning sicko anime producers) who could come up with the crap that they come with is likely to adapt any new technology into some sort of demeaning, cybernetic sex fiend theme.
Aw, why the hell am I explaining this? Humour, no matter how subtle or explicit is obviously lost here.
Screw my Karma, I've got enough to Troll...
Well, you know those crazy Japanese. We can expect to see sex robots with silver dildos on each of their 18 tentacle arms raping hog-tied schoolgirls for HOURS and HOURS on their methanol batteries.
This is just my opinion as a software developer.
;) ) costs money, but hopefully the sale of the product makes up for that. The product will, most likely, change (hopefully for the better) over time but free support for the product should last no less than 6 months. 6 months should give a customer plenty of time to get familiar with the installation and use of the software.
I have never, nor will I willingly place a time bomb in software I create that forces a customer to buy another version of said software needlessly.
Having said that though, there is one approach along these lines that I don't necessarily disagree with. When the customer buys the product, part of what they, the customer, is expecting is support. Employing support people (What, you don't expect me to do this myself do you? I'm a programmer.
After the predesignated length of time - which, by the way, the customer should be made aware of from the start - support should cost money. Keeping your tech support knowledge base going, keeping knowledgeable, experienced people on your tech support staff and supporting older versions of your software all cost money. The more versions of your software you support, the more it will wind up costing you. Since these old versions don't reflect new sales, the costs have to be made up with charging for support.
Of course, you could go to another extreme and offer either free or significantly reduced-cost upgrades for life for your customers. That's always nice.
Ack, I'd forgotten all about the iPod. Shame the thing is $400, because I just know I'd eventually lose or crush something that small. Hate to have flushed that money down the drain. :)
I've got just a few questions about MP3 players:
Software
Which MP3 player has the smallest memory footprint/is the least taxing on the system in Windows? In Linux?
Hardware
Which portable MP3 player has the smallest form factor? How about smallest form factor with the most memory (say, 64 or 128 MB)?
But, as a parent, I think I can tell which toys are too explicitly (or even suggestively) violent for my child. And even if I didn't know anything about software and video games, they now have a ratings system that tells me which age group for which they are most appropriate.
I think the thing that disturbs me most about this is not that some people would compile a list like this - people are free to state their opinions about toys and games all they want - it's that parents would rely so heavily on these types of lists to make their decisions for them. To me, it's just further evidence of a parent's wish to simply not be bothered or involved.
If you really want to have some influence on what your kids are getting into, then for the love of all things good, GET INVOLVED. Use some common sense! Do you want your kids considering guns as toys? No? Then don't buy them gun-wielding toys. It's a pretty simple concept. Don't want your kids to get the idea in their head that head-to-head combat is Good Thing[tm]? Then don't buy them fighting games. It's all very, very common-sensical. There are lots of toys from which to choose. Pick the ones with which you feel most comfortable.
IMHO, I think it's good that Nintendo has an almost fluffy, cartoon feeling to their current crop of games (Super Monkey Ball, Smash Bros., and Luigi's Castle in particular). It carries forth the stylings of other hit games of theirs, such as great SNES games like Zelda: A Link To The Past and Super Mario World and the Mario game for the N64. I've seen so many dark, grim, gloomy, "edgy" games that I'm sick of them. Give me vivid colors, bouncy music, and a huge dose of good ol' arcade fun.
;)
Don't get me wrong, I've played plenty of dark, thoughtful and grim games. I enjoy many of them. But my game time is limited (what, with work, family, blah blah blah), so give me an ejoyable, light-hearted game where I can sit down, game on and let my brain go into "smile and drool" mode.
These are games, for cryin' out loud. Maybe they were targeted for little kids, maybe they weren't. Maybe we can all just hush up, quit worrying about the targeted market and enjoy them.
A friend of mine said a while back that he hoped ATI sold plenty of video cards so nVidia would have a reason to keep progressing forward. "Without competition," he said, "nVidia will just stagnate and 3d gaming will go nowhere."
Hogwash. nVidia has a great reason to keep progressing: profit. My mother (family EQ addict) runs a TNT2-based card and pretty soon I'll be upgrading her to a GeForce 3. I run a GeForce 2 Ultra, but I imagine I'll be upgrading to something else come spring time. If nVidia didn't keep moving 3d gaming forward, there would be no need to replace your 3d card with a new one...ergo, limited amounts of repeat customers. As it is, nVidia releases a new, more powerful 3d card every six months in both high-priced and value varieties. Game developers often adopt the latest and greatest as the standard by which they'll be producing a game, so gamers always have a reason to go out and get the latest smokin' piece o' silicon.
But I am still glad to see that there is competition out there, which probably contributes to nVidia pushing the envelope harder and faster than if there were no competitors.
...but I know quite a few people who are addicted to MMORPGs, Everquest and UO in particular.
Addiction is something that, for the most part, exists on a chemical and/or psychological level. From what I understand, the general opinion amongst people who study these things is that a chemical addiction (lets say, nicotine) is easier to break and eventually beat than a psychological addiction (lets say, your average sexual fetish). In my opinion, gaming as a whole is neither a psychological or chemical addiction because, I believe, for the most part gamers can and do go for extended periods of time without gaming. Be it a holiday away from home, final exams, whatever. I consider myself an avid gamer and, quite frankly, there are times when I simply can't be bothered to game.
But, I have friends and family that are players of UO and Everquest and I believe they fit the profile of people who are psychologically addicted to the experience. Their personalities change, sometimes drastically when they do not get their fix. The amount of money they are willing to spend, not just in monthly fees but in expansion packs, strategy guides, virtual items on eBay, etc seems almost silly when your realize the money spent goes towards existence in a virtual society. To top it all off, these players are not only often doing very little in the way of "having fun" in the game, they spend a great deal of time downright unhappy with the whole ordeal. I know no less than five Everquest players who have sworn it off out of anger and frustration, only to sit right back down in front of the PC and play some more. If the EQ message boards are any indication, the number of people in the same mindset numbers in the tens of thousands.
It becomes an addiction when you no longer feel that you want to play, but you need to play.