really why does that make any sense for them to sit and twiddle thumbs while you work on something?
It doesn't... but usually they do have something useful to do, and of course they don't really have to be there every single hour that we are there as well.
It's the difference between just leading a team and being a part of it.
Us 'older people' with families realize that they can't be in the gaming industry. I have a wife, kid, and another kid on the way. I'm not about to sacrifice my family so that I can work on video games.
It's not just the gaming industry. And you should worry about yourself as well as your family... I've worked those kinds of hours sometimes, and even for short periods of time it will really take it out on you, physically and mentally.
There's a simple rule that I like: if you (as a manager) call overtime, you will work the same hours. I worked on a project with a manager who did exactly that... not to bother us, but to be there just in case, to make us take a break from time to time, and to bring us breakfast after pulling an all-nighter. You can be sure this manager only called overtime if it was really necessary!
We know that, and they know it too... But they wanted to be seen acting decisively, by declaring a War on Piracy. A "War on declining shelf space" or "war on crappy music" doesn't sound as good.
"Creationist thinking"? We have a new oxymoron of the highest order...
How this trollish post got modded to +5 insightful, I have no idea. (Even though I am a devout atheïst and evolutionist myself:-)
Even some creationists believe in evolution. My religious friend believes that god just set the rules and gave things a little push, then leaned back and enjoyed the show without interfering (besides a few miracles here & there).
The gaming community needs a massively online space spim where everyone has the same grades (but different styles) of ships and it actually takes piloting skills to be decent.
When I started with SWG, I was expecting Planetside-style combat, i.e. you buy a weapon to your taste, and your skill points increase the accuracy of your aim, but you still have to aim and fire the weapon yourself/
How disappointed I was to find that SWG, a game with guns rather than swords, still uses freaking dice rolls in what is essentially turn-based combat.
So when we arrive on Mars, we'll bring a complex enough ecosystem that we'll infect the planet with the disease now erupting from Earth: us.
Well, as an apparent 'green', at least you're honest about your priorities. So mankind is not something wonderful, something worth preserving, or even just the species that happens to be up top at the moment; no, we're a disease. I suppose that means we should be eradicated, or...? Please run for public office so that I'm able to not vote for you.
Should we use Mars for our own useful purposes, or should we preserve it as the useless rock that it is now?
So? I can see why they wouldn't want to be too free with their search engine technology. For once, someone might easily duplicate it, but more importantly, people might exploit inside knowledge of the system to bump their own webpages up in the ranking. Pageranking has to rely on certain 'tricks' rather than a fully objective and fair mechanism, and in this case, obscurity is way to go.
Multi-Billion dollar corporation
I don't see this as a reason to stop cheering for them. Nothing wrong with financial success.
Monopolistic Practices
The question is: do they simply have a monopoly on certain things, or do they use their monopoly to illegaly control prices or keep out competitors? For one, I don't really see where the monopoly is... advertising? I wasn't aware that advertisers have to go through Google these days...
Secretive
See my first point.
Google has a good and eminently useful core product which they provide for free. They make money off ads like so many free web services, but they choose to do so in a rather low-key manner. In addition they are starting to offer other free services, not by copying the competition, but by listening to the customers and raising the standard for everying else. Compare GMail to other free email services, and you'll see what I mean.
I guess many people are cheering for Google because this appears to be a company with good ideas, but also with good ethics, a drive to do things right, and attention for their customers; qualities that other companies often see as cost centers and something that they have to pay lip service to, to further their public image. With Google it seems that these very qualities are the things that made them succesful. It's nice to look at a company that works because of these good practices rather than despite them, because it reinforces our belief that the world works as it should, and that the good guys can finish first. (Yes yes, it sounds melodramatic, but I don't really have any other way to put all this).
Re:It's like a free ride when you've already paid.
on
GTA: San Andreas Leaked
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Presenting an argument as if it were ridiculous, as a way of countering it, is a fallacy. So let's be explicit: what is your specific logical response to this argument?
OK, I'll bite.
Copying this game isn't stealing in the usual sense of the word, like taking a physical asset from the owner. But you are potentially still causing them damage. Perhaps you would not have bought the game... but you're happy to share the copy of this game with your friends, and your friends' friends, some of which might be potential customers. Suppose everyone obtained their copy from a friend instead of buying it... even though no-one actually stole anything from Rockstar, they'd get no revenue from a product they probably spent several million on to develop. Many people counter this argument with a rationalisation "Oh, I would not have bought this game anyway, it's all the others causing the damage". Well, I can certainly believe that you wouldn't buy the game for $50 when you can get it for free... which is why you are still causing damage to the company by passing the copy onwards to others, thereby convincing them not to pay money for a legit copy.
Copyright is a rather artificial construct. Why would we allow publishers control over their work, if that work could be made to benefit the whole world without any additional cost to the publisher? Answer: because it still takes money to create the work, and publishers should be able to make a profit on it. Only a communist would demand that publishers and artists work for nothing... and that is what you are demanding when you state that it is OK to copy software. That, or you think that others should pay for the content you enjoy for free...
Of course there are reasons why copying actually helps rather than hurts: people can have a free preview, it's like free advertising for the publisher, etc. etc. But if you copy something and continue to use it, I have no problems calling you a thief of the artist and of those who paid for their legitimate copy.
Re:It's like a free ride when you've already paid.
on
GTA: San Andreas Leaked
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Yet another news article that continues the bombardment of the uninformed public trying to change the definition of words to fit their needs.
And on the other side of the fence, we have the copyright violators (hmm, "pirates" is a lot less unwieldy), who continue the bombardment of the uninformed public trying to convince them that copying software is OK, because "it's not like we're actually stealing something".
At this point I realized that I could to work on one monitor and watch a full screen DVD on the other. This was pretty cool until I realized how counterproductive it could be.
Amateur! The obvious solution is to get a 3rd monitor for watching your DVDs. That is what I did... (on a separate computer, though)
Dual head is really helpful for productivity for certain jobs. The most obvious and common job is the kind where you have to work on one document, while referring to other documents or webpages. I found that being able to keep my own document open while reading stuff on the other screen, really helps me to keep my flow of thought. Even a small extra screen provides much more useful desktop real estate than a single, high resolution monitor: I have a 1200x1024 17" main screen and a smaller 1024x768 15" one... both LCDs. I found this to be such an improvement over a single 21" 2048xwhatever tube, that I now got dual head at work as well.
But they can't; how precisely can Microsoft remain a profitable publicly traded company while embracing open source? Their software is all they have.
The article suggests that Microsoft should embrace Linux, which has nothing to do with open source. Microsoft could, for instance, create a non-free, closed-source Linux version of Office to take advantage of that slice of the market. The main challenge for Microsoft would be the change in their business model; which is the fact that they can exploit the customers' dependance on Office and Windows to interoperate with other users. To communicate with others in the corporate world, you pretty much need MS. Office. And once you have learned to use that product at work, people naturally use it to work at home as well. And to run MS Office, you'll need Windows: that is what their business depends on.
I'm sorry Peter Jackson didn't film The Scouring of the Shire.
Same here... it would also have made for a better winding down of the story. As it stands now, many people complain about the way the movie seems to end 3 times or so. Although personally, I would have hated this movie to end with a bang, say, with the celebration and coronation thingy on top of Minas Tirith.
When you buy a media player, you're buying the media format. The quality, design or features of the actual PLAYER are almost secondary. You would think consumers would understand this at some point, but I guess not. Laserdisc or Betamax, anyone?
With Laserdisc or Betamax, you are indeed tied to the physical format. With an MP3 player, you wouldn't want to be. The analogy would be valid if the iPod would play only iTunes files; how popular do you think the iPod would have been then?
When I'll buy an MP3 player, I will look for design and features first! That includes usability, something that Apple got right with their player. The ability to buy songs off iTunes is nice, but I don't really care about that; I have enough other (legal, yes, thank you) sources of music. People buy iPods because they are of good quality, they work well, are easy to use, and have a high cool factor. iTunes may influence the buying decision some, but it's not overly important... especially since people new to the iPod generally won't have previous experience with iTunes.
they want to extract the last drop of milk from us.
They are welcome to, as long as there's no underhanded tactics going on. In turn, you are free to deny them their wealth by not buying their products. But piracy, or whatever you want to call it, is wrong.
I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with a 'war on IP theft'. However, as usual, there's the question of:
- priorities... is this really the thing that law enforcement agencies should be focussing on?
- rights: are they just applying a little extra zeal to find IP thieves, or will they mess with our laws and rights as well? Will this mean that recording a movie in a theater is now on a par with armed robbery, as far as sentences are concerned?
- tactics: is this a drive to crack down on the real high-volume pirates, or can we expect more billion-dollar lawsuits against grannies and teenagers, ruining their lives over a few downloaded copies of Britney in order to scare the rest of us into being good little consumers?
Usually, when the US declares war on anything, there is cause for John Q Public to worry...
They'd incent the inventor to share the goodies and the whole world would end up improved
How would revealing the source help? It would save you the effort of reverse engineering, but you would still not be (legally) able to use whatever it is you were interested in, without obtaining a license from the inventor.
I'd recommend it as it seems to fit your needs as described.
One problem with Targus bags is the fact that it's a well known brand for laptop cases... you might as well carry a sign "I carry an expensive laptop, please rob me".
Robbers increasingly look for high-potential targets, like people with the tell-tale white Ipod earphones. If you get a Targus bag, remove the brand labels.
Why should we be happy when the spammers get spammed?
For the same reason we sentence young 'taggers' to a few hours of cleaning up grafitti: we make the perpetrator aware of the damage he is causing, in hopes that he will see the error of his ways.
Is this really a problem or just a natural progression?
I think it's perfectly natural. If I have a good Internet connection and an Ipod, should I get my music
- in a store, where they might not carry what I am looking for, or the CD I want is out of stock, where I have to ask the store clerk for every single CD I'd like to listen to, and where those same clerks often are distinctly un-knowledgable about music.
- or, on the Internet, where I can buy music legally by the song (and at a better price as well), where they pretty much carry everything on-line, and where I can browse to my heart's content without leaving my house?
It was bound to happen, and it's only natural that the first business to be affected is the one dealing in stuff that is essentially non-physical. I think other retailers must be beginning to feel the on-line competition as well... on line purchasing is way up for physical goods suchs as toys, clothes and electronics, and these are all purchases taken away from physical shops.
To have something that is patentable, you need a physical invention that does something useful, and I don't see how a smell in itself provides this usefulness.
How about perfumes? I am sure Chanel would like to patent their Nr. 5 smell... after all this is the only useful feature you get when you buy an expensive bottle of the stuff. Currently the smell itself is not protected; and you can buy very similar copycat perfumes, the only thing they are not allowed to do is sell it under the name of Chanel.
Then again, manufacturers should be able to protect designer smells like perfumes. Not sure whether patents are the way to do this... and we don't want any 'one click'-like patents. Else I'd patent the smell of manure as a way to keep unwanted visitors off my land... and then give every farmer the choice of paying me royalties, or invent a manure that does not smell like mine.
I respond to every time someone presumes to have some standard on who should vote and who is better off staying home.
Oh, I have a standard on who should vote and who shouldn't... though it's just my opinion, and I am not proposing to impose it or any other standard on voters. Voting should be open to all.
However, I agree with the guy who says that it's a bit silly to ask people to go vote for the sake of voting, i.e. "go and mark any old box on the ballot with the red pencil". I think uninformed people shouldn't vote, but I do not propose to bar them from voting. Rather, I propose we encourage them to inform themselves, rather than just 'go vote'
Re:I'm not convinced...
on
The Long Tail
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
how can 'the tail' possibly pay for projects that cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars?
In 2 ways:
1) It is now easier and cheaper to reach your audience across the globe. In the past, it might not have been profitable to create a $1M movie about, say, gay cowboys eating pudding (ref. Southpark) and sell it to the US niche market. These days however it's not that much harder to reach the same niche market on other continents. In other words, the 'tail' has grown considerably fatter without much extra cost.
2) You no longer have to rely on economies of scale to sell your product at an affordable price and still make a profit. If you make a record for $500, you can sell 50 of them for just $15 and still make a profit. The old model of music distribution did now allow for such small production runs. In other words: selling to a small 'tail' can be profitable because the overhead and startup costs have become much lower.
The good news for us consumers is that we no longer have to rely on the selection of prefab rubbish fed to us by the record companies, who rely on economies of scale. Today, the tiniest band in New Zealand can sell a single record to a customer in the UK and still make money on it (they won't recoup their cost on that one record, but the cost of selling it can be lower than their reasonable asking price). Compared to 10 years ago, there is a lot more content for us to enjoy, and it is easier for us to find it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's the difference between just leading a team and being a part of it.
There's a simple rule that I like: if you (as a manager) call overtime, you will work the same hours. I worked on a project with a manager who did exactly that... not to bother us, but to be there just in case, to make us take a break from time to time, and to bring us breakfast after pulling an all-nighter. You can be sure this manager only called overtime if it was really necessary!
(*)By the way, where did all these Rolexes come from all of a sudden? Lately I'm getting a few of these spams a day.
Even some creationists believe in evolution. My religious friend believes that god just set the rules and gave things a little push, then leaned back and enjoyed the show without interfering (besides a few miracles here & there).
The gaming community needs a massively online space spim where everyone has the same grades (but different styles) of ships and it actually takes piloting skills to be decent. When I started with SWG, I was expecting Planetside-style combat, i.e. you buy a weapon to your taste, and your skill points increase the accuracy of your aim, but you still have to aim and fire the weapon yourself/
How disappointed I was to find that SWG, a game with guns rather than swords, still uses freaking dice rolls in what is essentially turn-based combat.
Should we use Mars for our own useful purposes, or should we preserve it as the useless rock that it is now?
Google has a good and eminently useful core product which they provide for free. They make money off ads like so many free web services, but they choose to do so in a rather low-key manner. In addition they are starting to offer other free services, not by copying the competition, but by listening to the customers and raising the standard for everying else. Compare GMail to other free email services, and you'll see what I mean.
I guess many people are cheering for Google because this appears to be a company with good ideas, but also with good ethics, a drive to do things right, and attention for their customers; qualities that other companies often see as cost centers and something that they have to pay lip service to, to further their public image. With Google it seems that these very qualities are the things that made them succesful. It's nice to look at a company that works because of these good practices rather than despite them, because it reinforces our belief that the world works as it should, and that the good guys can finish first. (Yes yes, it sounds melodramatic, but I don't really have any other way to put all this).
Copying this game isn't stealing in the usual sense of the word, like taking a physical asset from the owner. But you are potentially still causing them damage. Perhaps you would not have bought the game... but you're happy to share the copy of this game with your friends, and your friends' friends, some of which might be potential customers. Suppose everyone obtained their copy from a friend instead of buying it... even though no-one actually stole anything from Rockstar, they'd get no revenue from a product they probably spent several million on to develop. Many people counter this argument with a rationalisation "Oh, I would not have bought this game anyway, it's all the others causing the damage". Well, I can certainly believe that you wouldn't buy the game for $50 when you can get it for free... which is why you are still causing damage to the company by passing the copy onwards to others, thereby convincing them not to pay money for a legit copy.
Copyright is a rather artificial construct. Why would we allow publishers control over their work, if that work could be made to benefit the whole world without any additional cost to the publisher? Answer: because it still takes money to create the work, and publishers should be able to make a profit on it. Only a communist would demand that publishers and artists work for nothing... and that is what you are demanding when you state that it is OK to copy software. That, or you think that others should pay for the content you enjoy for free...
Of course there are reasons why copying actually helps rather than hurts: people can have a free preview, it's like free advertising for the publisher, etc. etc. But if you copy something and continue to use it, I have no problems calling you a thief of the artist and of those who paid for their legitimate copy.
Dual head is really helpful for productivity for certain jobs. The most obvious and common job is the kind where you have to work on one document, while referring to other documents or webpages. I found that being able to keep my own document open while reading stuff on the other screen, really helps me to keep my flow of thought. Even a small extra screen provides much more useful desktop real estate than a single, high resolution monitor: I have a 1200x1024 17" main screen and a smaller 1024x768 15" one... both LCDs. I found this to be such an improvement over a single 21" 2048xwhatever tube, that I now got dual head at work as well.
When I'll buy an MP3 player, I will look for design and features first! That includes usability, something that Apple got right with their player. The ability to buy songs off iTunes is nice, but I don't really care about that; I have enough other (legal, yes, thank you) sources of music. People buy iPods because they are of good quality, they work well, are easy to use, and have a high cool factor. iTunes may influence the buying decision some, but it's not overly important... especially since people new to the iPod generally won't have previous experience with iTunes.
I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with a 'war on IP theft'. However, as usual, there's the question of:
- priorities... is this really the thing that law enforcement agencies should be focussing on?
- rights: are they just applying a little extra zeal to find IP thieves, or will they mess with our laws and rights as well? Will this mean that recording a movie in a theater is now on a par with armed robbery, as far as sentences are concerned?
- tactics: is this a drive to crack down on the real high-volume pirates, or can we expect more billion-dollar lawsuits against grannies and teenagers, ruining their lives over a few downloaded copies of Britney in order to scare the rest of us into being good little consumers?
Usually, when the US declares war on anything, there is cause for John Q Public to worry...
Robbers increasingly look for high-potential targets, like people with the tell-tale white Ipod earphones. If you get a Targus bag, remove the brand labels.
- in a store, where they might not carry what I am looking for, or the CD I want is out of stock, where I have to ask the store clerk for every single CD I'd like to listen to, and where those same clerks often are distinctly un-knowledgable about music.
- or, on the Internet, where I can buy music legally by the song (and at a better price as well), where they pretty much carry everything on-line, and where I can browse to my heart's content without leaving my house?
It was bound to happen, and it's only natural that the first business to be affected is the one dealing in stuff that is essentially non-physical. I think other retailers must be beginning to feel the on-line competition as well... on line purchasing is way up for physical goods suchs as toys, clothes and electronics, and these are all purchases taken away from physical shops.
Then again, manufacturers should be able to protect designer smells like perfumes. Not sure whether patents are the way to do this... and we don't want any 'one click'-like patents. Else I'd patent the smell of manure as a way to keep unwanted visitors off my land... and then give every farmer the choice of paying me royalties, or invent a manure that does not smell like mine.
However, I agree with the guy who says that it's a bit silly to ask people to go vote for the sake of voting, i.e. "go and mark any old box on the ballot with the red pencil". I think uninformed people shouldn't vote, but I do not propose to bar them from voting. Rather, I propose we encourage them to inform themselves, rather than just 'go vote'
1) It is now easier and cheaper to reach your audience across the globe. In the past, it might not have been profitable to create a $1M movie about, say, gay cowboys eating pudding (ref. Southpark) and sell it to the US niche market. These days however it's not that much harder to reach the same niche market on other continents. In other words, the 'tail' has grown considerably fatter without much extra cost.
2) You no longer have to rely on economies of scale to sell your product at an affordable price and still make a profit. If you make a record for $500, you can sell 50 of them for just $15 and still make a profit. The old model of music distribution did now allow for such small production runs. In other words: selling to a small 'tail' can be profitable because the overhead and startup costs have become much lower.
The good news for us consumers is that we no longer have to rely on the selection of prefab rubbish fed to us by the record companies, who rely on economies of scale. Today, the tiniest band in New Zealand can sell a single record to a customer in the UK and still make money on it (they won't recoup their cost on that one record, but the cost of selling it can be lower than their reasonable asking price). Compared to 10 years ago, there is a lot more content for us to enjoy, and it is easier for us to find it.