So we have to tell the ESRB about the content that we removed from a game, that has no way for the player to access, that can only be available by a hacker who then unlocked the data by reverse engineering the game?
Yes, it's not "removed" if shipped on disc. It is also a pretty safe bet hackers will find it. It's still not clear if the Hot Coffee thing was a marketing gimmick, an east egg for the technically inclined, or laziness or carelesness. Given a company that makes its name on controversy I just can't quite rule out the former yet. In any case, now that we have had a demonstration of all the free press you can get from content only available through a 3rd party hack, yes, I think the content needs to be declared if **shipped** on the disc. Remove it from the disc and the ESRB never has to know.
And in keeping with that theme there is always Steve's 3 GHz in 12 months. When the PowerPC G5 was introduced?
I just can't help but chuckle at Apple singing Intel's praises these days. Althugh part of me is sad, I did enjoy programming in PowerPC assembly, creating 16 local variables in a C function and watch them all go to registers,...
About time with the virtual windows! Took them long enough...all other major *nix based window managers have them. Makes their "photocopying" comment at WWDC seem double edged, eh?
Yep. A 64-bit OS running 32-bit apps too, even MS has managed that.
I disagree with your logic. If the gamers have Macs, then even if they're playing games written for Win32, they are not PC gamers.
I agree with your comment about "gamers", but it is not "gamers" I am discussing, it is "markets". In particular the developer perspective. Earlier you wrote "If a lot of people make that switch, then the PC gaming market will reduce in size, the Mac gaming market will increase in size, and games developers will put effort into making their games run optimally on both." My point is merely that a market is defined by the target platform, in this case Win32, not the hardware manufacture. To a developer it does not matter whether a machine is made by Apple, Dell, or if it is some no-name whitebox clone. All that matters is that the machine supports Windows and DirectX APIs. These APIs define the platform and therefore the market. The developer only needs to write, code, for one platform, Windows/DirectX. The Mac market is diminished because there is no need to write for Mac OS X, OpenGL, CoreAudio, etc. A Mac gamer does not make a Mac market, Mac APIs and code does. Optimizing the Mac gamer's experience by coding Mac APIs and avoiding the overhead of Win32/DirectX translation is not necessary if these gamers are buying and playing Win32 games. It would be nice, but the financial justification for this is not all Mac gamers. Replacing a Win32 sale with a Mac sale adds no revenue to support the effort. The effort is solely paid for by those Mac gamers who refuse to run Win32. They are the only additional revenue. That is the fundamental problem I am discussing.
Of course, what we really need is Microsoft to stop creating DirectX and start creating open extensions to OpenGL so that developers can code against a single cross-platform API. But that would be altruistic and I can understand them not wanting to do that. I can understand far less game developers not requiring it.
Game developers are largely not OS or platform advocates. They follow the customers. The customers are on Win32 and on Win32 DirectX is compelling. DirectX provides a convenient integrated solution to video, audio, and input, etc. I'd pass on it's networking though. If a developer has no interest in native Linux or Mac ports why would they care about OpenGL? I've used OpenGL for scientific work but if I were to start a game I would definitely use DirectX for the Win32 version. Personally I think cross-platform APIs are too often least common denominator approaches and are oversold by OS advocates. I say use whatever tech is native to the platform. Under Win32 Direct3D and DirectSound, under Mac OpenGL and CoreAudio,...
But as asked, "Does this matter".
I buy Windows licences for my PCs almost exclusively so I can play games on them. Everything else I do I can find alternates for.
If all the games for the PC also run on the Mac (through Cider) then I'll put some serious thought into buying a Mac for my next home computer. If a lot of people make that switch, then the PC gaming market will reduce in size, the Mac gaming market will increase in size, and games developers will put effort into making their games run optimally on both.
Your post contradicts itself. (1) "all the games for the PC also run on the Mac (through Cider)" and (2)"PC gaming market will reduce in size". (1) enlarges the Win32 market, it does not reduce it. It does not matter what hardware you purchased. All that matters is that developers can target Win32 and reach a larger audience. Again, if Mac users can run Win32 games that reduces that need for a native Mac port. Why would a developer do a port, there is no new money, they already have Mac-based customers buying Win32?
The real problem is that Cider greatly reduces the potential revenue from native Mac ports. Getting a Mac user to run a Win32 version is the real "winning" strategy for developers. More here: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193063&c id=15843808
yes but for the people like me that don't want a work computer and a gaming rig on the same desk at home.. i am forced to pic the OS that works with both..
You don't need two machines. You can dual boot Linux and Windows on PC hardware or Mac OS X and Windows on Apple hardware. Only one machine on your desk.
If this is for real, then we might just see more Mac ports of games...
No, this will not mean more Mac ports. If anything it may mean fewer. Developers considering Mac may be able to blow off native Mac ports using the same reasons that they blow off native Linux ports: (1) Dual boot. (2) Emulation of the Win32 gaming APIs. Under PowerPC dual booting was not an option and emulation would mean emulating a CPU not just a gaming API. Since running the Win32 version of a game on Mac hardware was not realistic, a native port was justified. If Ciders allows Win32 games to run "well enough" then there is no economic reason to do a native Mac port.
The market for a game is *not* the number of Mac/Linux purchasers. Yeah, that sounds odd but hang on a minute. The market is really only those who refuse to dual boot or emulate and won't buy unless they have a native port. Those who are willing to dual boot or emulate and run the Win32 version don't count because they do not add any revenue. They are already customers buying the Win32 version. A native Mac/Linux version would generate no additional revenue from these people, it would only move a sale from the Win32 column to the Mac or Linux column. So there is no new revenue, but there are the expenses from development and support, and these expenses have to be paid for by those who would never buy the Win32. Under Linux there are too few of these people.
Today Mac has the advantage over Linux that Mac gamers have a proven track record of spending money. If developers can get Mac gamers to to accept Cider in large enough numbers then native Mac ports will no longer occur.
Open source works best when copying an existing game, not developing something new. As the parent mentioned it is difficult to get folks to agree on a design, an implementation, etc. The advantage of a pay oriented development model over a volunteer oriented model is that people are still motivated to do work when they are not getting their way. Come to think of it, other open source projects that were design heavy went well when they were subsidized/financed and were issuing paychecks.
I find it extremely difficult to justify porting or designing a game for Mac - and definately not profitable. When it's done it's usually an investment; garnering support for future releases or 'making a name' in the Mac community. Considering Linux is even smaller... The numbers just don't add up yet. It isn't really about market penetration or percentages, it's about pure numbers. How many Linux machines are on the planet; of those how many are used in a home-use desktop fashion; of those how many are willing to spend $40-60 on a game; and of those who would be willing to buy this particular game.
What most people fail to realize is that the "Linux Market" is *not* the number of Linux users willing to buy games. It is *only* those users who will *ONLY* buy Linux games and who will never emulate or dual boot. Those who emulate or dual boot are *already* paying customers, Win32 customers, they aren't part of a new market. Producing a Linux version would merely move their purchase from the Win32 column to the Linux column, providing new expenses but no new revenue to the company. The new revenue only comes from those who refuse to buy Win32 versions and emulate or dual boot.
It used to be that the comparison to Mac was poor because emulation was not practical, the CPU not just the API needed to be emulated, and dual booting was not an option. However those following recent events know that these are now options on Intel based Macs. If anything, the need for native Mac versions has diminished.
Brilliant! I can't wait to roll up to a gas station and have 30 pumps to chose from! That's economy-of-scale for ya!
Petroleum is used for more than gasoline. What is saved in other areas may be applied to gasoline demand.
It is not oil, ethanol, or [insert silver bullet]
on
Vinod Khosla Talks Ethanol
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It is not oil, ethanol, or [insert silver bullet technology here]; it is all of them together.
We don't need a 100% replacement for oil. If we can replace 10% with one economical technology, 5% with another, and 2% with yet another then good. Repeats as additional technologies become economical.
Tony
wow.. I'm really perplexed at the lack of insight here.. if we're moving towards higher throughput, think about how many cores are tied up in processing I/O.. for example on PCIe moving at 10GbE (next leap) - would tie up about 2CPUs.. higher quality video and audio may tie up a few more, and then if you want to do anything on top of that - well now you're up to 5 or 6.. so 8 cores is a smart move.
I think you are missing some bottlenecks that all those cores are going to be sharing. Also, I think DMA-like controllers and microcontrollers may be better suited for some of the things you mention.
"For those extremely rare apps and jobs that are highly parallelable 8 and above will be useful. However this will be very rare and this is why the comparisons to the infamous 640K quote are misguided."
Couldn't Bill have said the same thing way back when?
No. Did you not read the bit about using more memory is simple but using many cpus is not, and that problems are often not parallelable? Memory and CPU cycles are not really equatable.
I'll also try to explain it another way. Normal users and many parallel users are not going to be running many jobs, solving man problems, that are parallelable. The advantage of multicore CPUs is that it allows us to run more than one job at a time with less interference, the jobs are not "stealing" CPU cycles from eachother as much. However these are diminishing returns, people won't be seeing much of a difference given their daily workflow when moving from a quad to an oct. Only a handful doing some very specialized things will see a difference.
"For those extremely rare apps and jobs that are highly parallelable 8 and above will be useful."
In the field of scientific computing, parallelizable code is pretty much the norm, and there are decent languages and libraries to handle it for the programmer. Scientific computing is a significant portion of the world's overall computing needs, it's not something particularly rare.
I used to work on computational chemistry code. These scientific apps are a niche. Yes they burn enormous amounts of CPU cycles on supercomputers and parallel computing systems, yes someone will eventually build a parallel computing system with an array of Core 2s, but that is not really relevant to mainstream users including many scientists and engineers. From what I saw at a major international chemical firm only a handful of chemists ran the sort of apps you referred to, most ran software that let them draw 2D chemical diagrams (it might as when been a MS Word plug-in, like the "Drawing Tool" but chemistry specific) and simple 3D molecular modeling programs (glorified versions of the plastic ball and stick model kits, some optimization of geometry but not something highly parallelable).
What quite a few other posters are failing to understand is that he is referring to diminishing returns. 1 to 2 give you some fractional improvement, 2 to 4 gives you a smaller fractional improvement, 4 to 8 gives you an even smaller fractional improvement, etc. At some point the cost, size, heat, noise (for the cooling), etc is not worth the fractional improvement. For most users that will probably be dual or quad.
For those extremely rare apps and jobs that are highly parallelable 8 and above will be useful. However this will be very rare and this is why the comparisons to the infamous 640K quote are misguided. Increasing RAM is easy, software naturally consumes RAM with no additional work necessary, just do more of what you are alraedy doing. Multiprocessing is something completely different, the code must be designed and written quite differently, and it is often very difficult to retrofit existing code for multiprocessing. Now you have the practical problem that not all problems are parallelable.
Strangely enough, I think one case where 8 cores could be useful in a home environment would be a bit retro. A multiuser/centralized system. One PC with the computational power for the entire family, dumb terminals for individual users, connections to appliances for movies, music, etc. Such a machine might go into the basement, garage, closet, or other location where noise is not an issue. Of course, I'm not sure such a centralized machine would be cost effective.
What about a cell phone? Most of them have massive early-termination fees.
They have to, they subsidized that cool new feature laden cell phone you are carrying, US cell phone deals are not as one-sided as you think. If you take the phone and quit the service they lose big time. Some parts of the world do not subsidize, you pay full retail for your phone, and customers have an easier time changing providers. US consumers have voted with their dollars, they would rather have the Motorola Razor for $50 than have an easier time switching providers.
Hey man, STFU... I have a BS in EE (from a real college) and a MS in Physics (again, from a real college) and I have been jobless for some time now. 15 years unix experience, analog design experience, worked in phyics labs, particle accelerators, etc, etc, and I can not get a job anywhere. Take your "waaahhh, mommy, mommy I am doing too much" article and stuff it. At least you are pulling a check.
A degree does not entitle you to a job, you also need marketable skills. You mention 15 years unix experience, do you have any Windows experience? Unix is technically superior but you do pigeon hole yourself if that is *all* you know. You mention particle accelerators, have you worked on things that are a bit more common? Particle accelerators and cool and are vital to the advancement of science, but we don't need that many. Again, you seem to have pigeon holed yourself. The problem is not the market, the problem *seems* to be that you chose to become a narrow specialist in an area without much demand.
I also suspect your work has been in academic environments. If so, you are underqualified with only a Master's. Are you working on a PhD? If I were a professor I would favor a PhD candidate over someone who decided a Master's was enough.(*)
I apologize for any bad guesses. If they are far off the mark you may want to consider if there are kernels of truth in there.
Nothing against Master's degrees, I'm working on a second one. I have near zero interest in a PhD.
This was nothing more than a "protect the children" witch hunt!
Sorry, the truth is that things are more complicated than you are aware of. Take Two is a publicly traded company. Federal law requires that Take Two inform *investors* of the risks that face the company. If Hot Coffee was intentional, a marketing gimmick, then Take Two had a legal responsibility to inform investors that its marketing strategy could result in product recalls, no charge replacements, loss of retail outlets, etc. The FTC had every right to investigate whether Hot Coffee was a marketing gimmick or not. It *is* the FTC's job to protect *investors* from the sort of non-disclosure just described.
I know enough people who strongly advocate the game to imply it at least had a soul at some point and heavy handed game balance changes with no respect for the established game world story or "fluff" as some call it is high on my list of ways MMOGs can lose there souls.
It seems your followup is unfounded as well.;) Since the alliance is gaining these talents through the introduction of *new* races the existing storyline is not being disrupted, existing races have not been altered. The storyline expands with the expansion. Matter of fact, using your definition of soul the game continues to demonstrate soul since one of new races, the Blood Elves, were in Warcraft III.
Altho their revenu and profits are good, why is their share price going down?
Stock price is about expected future growth, not current revenue. The current iPod results were *expected* and already built into *past* stock prices. In other words, outstanding iPod sales is why Apple was around 60 a week or so ago rather than around 30. Meeting those great expectations keeps the price stable, it does not raise it. To raise it you need an expectation of future growth.
Yep, I have a bonafide graduate degree. MBA in marketing... If I had chosen a graduate degree in my field, I might have gotten *some* use out of it...
I have a BS and MS in CS. The MS was more of the same, more in depth, and some research in a very specialized topic, a niche. If your career is in that niche the MS CS may be useful. I don't regret it, the research was in the area of my choosing and I really enjoyed it. Plus my employer picked up the tab. However, in general the MBA will make a better add-on to the BS CS. I know many of you are flinching as your read this, PHB images floating through your heads. I did exactly the same when I was finishing my BS. I was talking about what to do next with a lab partner, mentioned I wasn't sure about an MS, he shocked me by saying that if he goes to grad school it would be for an MBA. I thought he was nuts at the time, now I realize he was right.
Having a basic understanding of business, how it works and what it needs, is important. Technical knowledge is *not* enough, you have to develop an understanding of management and business if you hope to be a decision maker rather than an implementor of the decisions of others. An MBA is not the only route to develop this necessary understanding, but it is a fairly quick one and a readily accepted one.
Lots of geeks complain about the poor decisions made by management and execs. Some complaints are bogus, the geeks not being aware of other non-technical issues. Some complaints are entire legitimate and management/execs are ignoring the technical issues. How to fix this, more geeks getting MBAs IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
So we have to tell the ESRB about the content that we removed from a game, that has no way for the player to access, that can only be available by a hacker who then unlocked the data by reverse engineering the game?
Yes, it's not "removed" if shipped on disc. It is also a pretty safe bet hackers will find it. It's still not clear if the Hot Coffee thing was a marketing gimmick, an east egg for the technically inclined, or laziness or carelesness. Given a company that makes its name on controversy I just can't quite rule out the former yet. In any case, now that we have had a demonstration of all the free press you can get from content only available through a 3rd party hack, yes, I think the content needs to be declared if **shipped** on the disc. Remove it from the disc and the ESRB never has to know.
... took them long enough ...
...
And in keeping with that theme there is always Steve's 3 GHz in 12 months. When the PowerPC G5 was introduced?
I just can't help but chuckle at Apple singing Intel's praises these days. Althugh part of me is sad, I did enjoy programming in PowerPC assembly, creating 16 local variables in a C function and watch them all go to registers,
..sigh... i wish i could build a box running linux with those specs ....anyone know where i can find one ?
o otCamp.
The Apple Store, http://store.apple.com./
I believe some folks have BootCamp working with Linux, http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/Triple_Boot_via_B
About time with the virtual windows! Took them long enough...all other major *nix based window managers have them. Makes their "photocopying" comment at WWDC seem double edged, eh?
Yep. A 64-bit OS running 32-bit apps too, even MS has managed that.
I disagree with your logic. If the gamers have Macs, then even if they're playing games written for Win32, they are not PC gamers.
I agree with your comment about "gamers", but it is not "gamers" I am discussing, it is "markets". In particular the developer perspective. Earlier you wrote "If a lot of people make that switch, then the PC gaming market will reduce in size, the Mac gaming market will increase in size, and games developers will put effort into making their games run optimally on both." My point is merely that a market is defined by the target platform, in this case Win32, not the hardware manufacture. To a developer it does not matter whether a machine is made by Apple, Dell, or if it is some no-name whitebox clone. All that matters is that the machine supports Windows and DirectX APIs. These APIs define the platform and therefore the market. The developer only needs to write, code, for one platform, Windows/DirectX. The Mac market is diminished because there is no need to write for Mac OS X, OpenGL, CoreAudio, etc. A Mac gamer does not make a Mac market, Mac APIs and code does. Optimizing the Mac gamer's experience by coding Mac APIs and avoiding the overhead of Win32/DirectX translation is not necessary if these gamers are buying and playing Win32 games. It would be nice, but the financial justification for this is not all Mac gamers. Replacing a Win32 sale with a Mac sale adds no revenue to support the effort. The effort is solely paid for by those Mac gamers who refuse to run Win32. They are the only additional revenue. That is the fundamental problem I am discussing.
Of course, what we really need is Microsoft to stop creating DirectX and start creating open extensions to OpenGL so that developers can code against a single cross-platform API. But that would be altruistic and I can understand them not wanting to do that. I can understand far less game developers not requiring it.
...
Game developers are largely not OS or platform advocates. They follow the customers. The customers are on Win32 and on Win32 DirectX is compelling. DirectX provides a convenient integrated solution to video, audio, and input, etc. I'd pass on it's networking though. If a developer has no interest in native Linux or Mac ports why would they care about OpenGL? I've used OpenGL for scientific work but if I were to start a game I would definitely use DirectX for the Win32 version. Personally I think cross-platform APIs are too often least common denominator approaches and are oversold by OS advocates. I say use whatever tech is native to the platform. Under Win32 Direct3D and DirectSound, under Mac OpenGL and CoreAudio,
But as asked, "Does this matter". I buy Windows licences for my PCs almost exclusively so I can play games on them. Everything else I do I can find alternates for. If all the games for the PC also run on the Mac (through Cider) then I'll put some serious thought into buying a Mac for my next home computer. If a lot of people make that switch, then the PC gaming market will reduce in size, the Mac gaming market will increase in size, and games developers will put effort into making their games run optimally on both.
Your post contradicts itself. (1) "all the games for the PC also run on the Mac (through Cider)" and (2)"PC gaming market will reduce in size". (1) enlarges the Win32 market, it does not reduce it. It does not matter what hardware you purchased. All that matters is that developers can target Win32 and reach a larger audience. Again, if Mac users can run Win32 games that reduces that need for a native Mac port. Why would a developer do a port, there is no new money, they already have Mac-based customers buying Win32?
The real problem is that Cider greatly reduces the potential revenue from native Mac ports. Getting a Mac user to run a Win32 version is the real "winning" strategy for developers. More here: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193063&c id=15843808
yes but for the people like me that don't want a work computer and a gaming rig on the same desk at home.. i am forced to pic the OS that works with both..
t hreshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=15842981# 15843808
You don't need two machines. You can dual boot Linux and Windows on PC hardware or Mac OS X and Windows on Apple hardware. Only one machine on your desk.
Now, you may not want to dual boot for this reason: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193063&
If this is for real, then we might just see more Mac ports of games ...
No, this will not mean more Mac ports. If anything it may mean fewer. Developers considering Mac may be able to blow off native Mac ports using the same reasons that they blow off native Linux ports: (1) Dual boot. (2) Emulation of the Win32 gaming APIs. Under PowerPC dual booting was not an option and emulation would mean emulating a CPU not just a gaming API. Since running the Win32 version of a game on Mac hardware was not realistic, a native port was justified. If Ciders allows Win32 games to run "well enough" then there is no economic reason to do a native Mac port.
The market for a game is *not* the number of Mac/Linux purchasers. Yeah, that sounds odd but hang on a minute. The market is really only those who refuse to dual boot or emulate and won't buy unless they have a native port. Those who are willing to dual boot or emulate and run the Win32 version don't count because they do not add any revenue. They are already customers buying the Win32 version. A native Mac/Linux version would generate no additional revenue from these people, it would only move a sale from the Win32 column to the Mac or Linux column. So there is no new revenue, but there are the expenses from development and support, and these expenses have to be paid for by those who would never buy the Win32. Under Linux there are too few of these people.
Today Mac has the advantage over Linux that Mac gamers have a proven track record of spending money. If developers can get Mac gamers to to accept Cider in large enough numbers then native Mac ports will no longer occur.
Open source works best when copying an existing game, not developing something new. As the parent mentioned it is difficult to get folks to agree on a design, an implementation, etc. The advantage of a pay oriented development model over a volunteer oriented model is that people are still motivated to do work when they are not getting their way. Come to think of it, other open source projects that were design heavy went well when they were subsidized/financed and were issuing paychecks.
I find it extremely difficult to justify porting or designing a game for Mac - and definately not profitable. When it's done it's usually an investment; garnering support for future releases or 'making a name' in the Mac community. Considering Linux is even smaller... The numbers just don't add up yet. It isn't really about market penetration or percentages, it's about pure numbers. How many Linux machines are on the planet; of those how many are used in a home-use desktop fashion; of those how many are willing to spend $40-60 on a game; and of those who would be willing to buy this particular game.
What most people fail to realize is that the "Linux Market" is *not* the number of Linux users willing to buy games. It is *only* those users who will *ONLY* buy Linux games and who will never emulate or dual boot. Those who emulate or dual boot are *already* paying customers, Win32 customers, they aren't part of a new market. Producing a Linux version would merely move their purchase from the Win32 column to the Linux column, providing new expenses but no new revenue to the company. The new revenue only comes from those who refuse to buy Win32 versions and emulate or dual boot.
It used to be that the comparison to Mac was poor because emulation was not practical, the CPU not just the API needed to be emulated, and dual booting was not an option. However those following recent events know that these are now options on Intel based Macs. If anything, the need for native Mac versions has diminished.
Brilliant! I can't wait to roll up to a gas station and have 30 pumps to chose from! That's economy-of-scale for ya!
Petroleum is used for more than gasoline. What is saved in other areas may be applied to gasoline demand.
It is not oil, ethanol, or [insert silver bullet technology here]; it is all of them together.
We don't need a 100% replacement for oil. If we can replace 10% with one economical technology, 5% with another, and 2% with yet another then good. Repeats as additional technologies become economical. Tony
Strange typo in the parent, "Normal users and many parallel users" should be "Normal users and many power users".
wow .. I'm really perplexed at the lack of insight here .. if we're moving towards higher throughput, think about how many cores are tied up in processing I/O .. for example on PCIe moving at 10GbE (next leap) - would tie up about 2CPUs .. higher quality video and audio may tie up a few more, and then if you want to do anything on top of that - well now you're up to 5 or 6 .. so 8 cores is a smart move.
I think you are missing some bottlenecks that all those cores are going to be sharing. Also, I think DMA-like controllers and microcontrollers may be better suited for some of the things you mention.
"For those extremely rare apps and jobs that are highly parallelable 8 and above will be useful. However this will be very rare and this is why the comparisons to the infamous 640K quote are misguided."
Couldn't Bill have said the same thing way back when?
No. Did you not read the bit about using more memory is simple but using many cpus is not, and that problems are often not parallelable? Memory and CPU cycles are not really equatable.
I'll also try to explain it another way. Normal users and many parallel users are not going to be running many jobs, solving man problems, that are parallelable. The advantage of multicore CPUs is that it allows us to run more than one job at a time with less interference, the jobs are not "stealing" CPU cycles from eachother as much. However these are diminishing returns, people won't be seeing much of a difference given their daily workflow when moving from a quad to an oct. Only a handful doing some very specialized things will see a difference.
"For those extremely rare apps and jobs that are highly parallelable 8 and above will be useful."
In the field of scientific computing, parallelizable code is pretty much the norm, and there are decent languages and libraries to handle it for the programmer. Scientific computing is a significant portion of the world's overall computing needs, it's not something particularly rare.
I used to work on computational chemistry code. These scientific apps are a niche. Yes they burn enormous amounts of CPU cycles on supercomputers and parallel computing systems, yes someone will eventually build a parallel computing system with an array of Core 2s, but that is not really relevant to mainstream users including many scientists and engineers. From what I saw at a major international chemical firm only a handful of chemists ran the sort of apps you referred to, most ran software that let them draw 2D chemical diagrams (it might as when been a MS Word plug-in, like the "Drawing Tool" but chemistry specific) and simple 3D molecular modeling programs (glorified versions of the plastic ball and stick model kits, some optimization of geometry but not something highly parallelable).
What quite a few other posters are failing to understand is that he is referring to diminishing returns. 1 to 2 give you some fractional improvement, 2 to 4 gives you a smaller fractional improvement, 4 to 8 gives you an even smaller fractional improvement, etc. At some point the cost, size, heat, noise (for the cooling), etc is not worth the fractional improvement. For most users that will probably be dual or quad.
For those extremely rare apps and jobs that are highly parallelable 8 and above will be useful. However this will be very rare and this is why the comparisons to the infamous 640K quote are misguided. Increasing RAM is easy, software naturally consumes RAM with no additional work necessary, just do more of what you are alraedy doing. Multiprocessing is something completely different, the code must be designed and written quite differently, and it is often very difficult to retrofit existing code for multiprocessing. Now you have the practical problem that not all problems are parallelable.
Strangely enough, I think one case where 8 cores could be useful in a home environment would be a bit retro. A multiuser/centralized system. One PC with the computational power for the entire family, dumb terminals for individual users, connections to appliances for movies, music, etc. Such a machine might go into the basement, garage, closet, or other location where noise is not an issue. Of course, I'm not sure such a centralized machine would be cost effective.
What about a cell phone? Most of them have massive early-termination fees.
They have to, they subsidized that cool new feature laden cell phone you are carrying, US cell phone deals are not as one-sided as you think. If you take the phone and quit the service they lose big time. Some parts of the world do not subsidize, you pay full retail for your phone, and customers have an easier time changing providers. US consumers have voted with their dollars, they would rather have the Motorola Razor for $50 than have an easier time switching providers.
Hey man, STFU... I have a BS in EE (from a real college) and a MS in Physics (again, from a real college) and I have been jobless for some time now. 15 years unix experience, analog design experience, worked in phyics labs, particle accelerators, etc, etc, and I can not get a job anywhere. Take your "waaahhh, mommy, mommy I am doing too much" article and stuff it. At least you are pulling a check.
A degree does not entitle you to a job, you also need marketable skills. You mention 15 years unix experience, do you have any Windows experience? Unix is technically superior but you do pigeon hole yourself if that is *all* you know. You mention particle accelerators, have you worked on things that are a bit more common? Particle accelerators and cool and are vital to the advancement of science, but we don't need that many. Again, you seem to have pigeon holed yourself. The problem is not the market, the problem *seems* to be that you chose to become a narrow specialist in an area without much demand.
I also suspect your work has been in academic environments. If so, you are underqualified with only a Master's. Are you working on a PhD? If I were a professor I would favor a PhD candidate over someone who decided a Master's was enough.(*)
I apologize for any bad guesses. If they are far off the mark you may want to consider if there are kernels of truth in there.
Nothing against Master's degrees, I'm working on a second one. I have near zero interest in a PhD.
This was nothing more than a "protect the children" witch hunt!
Sorry, the truth is that things are more complicated than you are aware of. Take Two is a publicly traded company. Federal law requires that Take Two inform *investors* of the risks that face the company. If Hot Coffee was intentional, a marketing gimmick, then Take Two had a legal responsibility to inform investors that its marketing strategy could result in product recalls, no charge replacements, loss of retail outlets, etc. The FTC had every right to investigate whether Hot Coffee was a marketing gimmick or not. It *is* the FTC's job to protect *investors* from the sort of non-disclosure just described.
I know enough people who strongly advocate the game to imply it at least had a soul at some point and heavy handed game balance changes with no respect for the established game world story or "fluff" as some call it is high on my list of ways MMOGs can lose there souls.
;) Since the alliance is gaining these talents through the introduction of *new* races the existing storyline is not being disrupted, existing races have not been altered. The storyline expands with the expansion. Matter of fact, using your definition of soul the game continues to demonstrate soul since one of new races, the Blood Elves, were in Warcraft III.
It seems your followup is unfounded as well.
Altho their revenu and profits are good, why is their share price going down?
Stock price is about expected future growth, not current revenue. The current iPod results were *expected* and already built into *past* stock prices. In other words, outstanding iPod sales is why Apple was around 60 a week or so ago rather than around 30. Meeting those great expectations keeps the price stable, it does not raise it. To raise it you need an expectation of future growth.
Yep, I have a bonafide graduate degree. MBA in marketing ... If I had chosen a graduate degree in my field, I might have gotten *some* use out of it ...
I have a BS and MS in CS. The MS was more of the same, more in depth, and some research in a very specialized topic, a niche. If your career is in that niche the MS CS may be useful. I don't regret it, the research was in the area of my choosing and I really enjoyed it. Plus my employer picked up the tab. However, in general the MBA will make a better add-on to the BS CS. I know many of you are flinching as your read this, PHB images floating through your heads. I did exactly the same when I was finishing my BS. I was talking about what to do next with a lab partner, mentioned I wasn't sure about an MS, he shocked me by saying that if he goes to grad school it would be for an MBA. I thought he was nuts at the time, now I realize he was right.
Having a basic understanding of business, how it works and what it needs, is important. Technical knowledge is *not* enough, you have to develop an understanding of management and business if you hope to be a decision maker rather than an implementor of the decisions of others. An MBA is not the only route to develop this necessary understanding, but it is a fairly quick one and a readily accepted one.
Lots of geeks complain about the poor decisions made by management and execs. Some complaints are bogus, the geeks not being aware of other non-technical issues. Some complaints are entire legitimate and management/execs are ignoring the technical issues. How to fix this, more geeks getting MBAs IMHO.