I know what you meant, but I played it at E3. And played it and played it and played it. It was just plain fun. No complications, no overwrought driving physics, no realistic damage modeling. Just fun. I liked the fact that it was fast and simple and pretty. It can compete with the big boys because it's a different beast; it's not as deep, but it doesn't require a mental investment to enjoy.
I mean,/. is noted for its incisive, insightful music reviews. What better forum to tell you whether or not it's worth your while to pollute clubs around the world with your sonic garbage?
(actually, I really am curious. If it'll pay as well as a tech job, maybe you guys are better than this week's Creed cover band)
It's obvious what it's designed for? Only because we're conditioned to recognize it as a pencil's shape. I'd say it's more obviously used for poking things, on first appraisal.
I disagree. I find that, as I enter my mid 20s, that my taste in music and video games has broadened tremendously. The inclusion of a decent salary into my lifestyle has enabled me to be more adventurous with my tastes. Beyond Good and Evil, Xiu Xiu, Moonbase Commander, Dub Narcotic... in college, I had more time, but less resources. Now I can invest in myself, to make my entertainment time more enjoyable. And if I don't like a game or album or book, I just put it down and ignore it. I have enough money that I don't have to squeeze every morsel of value from a purchase.
And no, I don't have a wife or kids. I wear condoms for a reason.
Well, this is up to the publishers. However, I can say right now, standing atop my ivory tower, lord of all I survey: No.
They will cost as much as any portable game ever has. Lowered manufacturing costs do little to affect prices. The great transfer to optical media kicked prices down by $10 in some instances, but the market showed that a $50 price point was acceptable. $40 for portables is where they'll stay.
Also good, if you're on the west coast, is the Go Game. Same theory, and as a veteran of 3 games, I can attest to the organizer's wit and the game's fun, though technical snafus have been common. They use public games to beta-test ideas, and make most of their money from private functions.
Directly after the quoted text in the submission, the article reads, "SunnComm is taking a stand here because we believe that those who own property, whether physical or digital, have the ultimate authority over how their property is used." I agree. The problem here is that the idea of ownership is simply not defined properly in modern american law. It has suddenly become legal, in the last few years, for companies to sell me products to which they retain ownership. If this problem is corrected, and consumers are given rights to the products they buy, a large portion of this DMCA nonsense would evaporate.
I feel I should have some sort of reference upon which to base this speculation, but I don't. Nonetheless, I'd assume that the designers were told to focus less on things like game cartridges; Nokia probably wants to focus on downloadable games. If it concentrates on its wireless aspects, it differentiates itself immediately and fully from the GBA.
I work as a techwriter in LA, been doing this for three years now (one in college, two in the real world). Go ahead and reply if you have any questions I don't address.
Coders' attitudes have varied widely across the places I've worked. Being one of the hallowed few writers that can also code, I can tell you that a technical writer's technical know-how is consistently underestimated and undervalued. This manifests itself most frequently in coders' inability to notify you of new features or changed functionality; they assume you wouldn't understand, so don't bother to tell you until the UI has been finalized, which is usually 1-2 hours before shipping. Also, unless you enter a company with management that truly buys in to the idea of high-quality documentation, you'll never be given true responsibility for your documents (since they will always tell you that the engineers are responsible for content, but then blame you when you're not notified of new functionality). And we're always the first to go in a layoff.
Yes. Go, right now, to raycomm.com and subscribe to the TECHWR-L mailing list. I have never seen another list so active, free of spam, and professional. Though 90% of the posters are truly helpful every time, keep special lookout for posts by John Posada, Geoff Hart, and Susan Gallagher; I'm leaving out a ton of helpful people (sorry everyone), but those are the best that spring to mind.
The most common software used, by far, is Word. But EVERYONE agrees that it's completely unsuitable for long documents. More common in well-funded doc shops is Adobe Framemaker, a wonderful program that alwaysalwaysalways does what I tell it to do, and no more. It's got a small learning hump (you HAVE to use templates, it's not optional as in Word), but it's a joy to use. Other programs I've encountered are Quadralay Web Works Publisher for HTML conversion, SnagIt, Doxygen, RoboHelp (commonly used with Word, and just as buggy), and Visio. Currently, I'm using Frame with WWP for user/admin docs, and plain ol' Javadoc for the API documentation. Oh, and get familiar with the Chicago Manual of Style; nothing is more important to a techwriter than consistency.
Starting pay out of the gate, regardless of skillset, hovers in the $30-40k range. It doesn't get too much higher, at least not as high as programmers; it's not considered as essential, usually. But it's a good "in" for management.
Technical writing is, most of all, a really easy job. Provided your work environment is up to snuff, it requires as little or as much effort and imagination as you wish to put into it. The pay's OK, especially in the short-term, and it can give you valuable career experience while you figure out what you REALLY want to do.
Because that may create a time paradox! Everyone from our time knows that time portal technology came from information intercepted by the Department of Homeland Security from terrorists!
Sure, Bush is passing hundreds of millions of dollars for research into hydrogen fuel cell technology to halt dependence on oil. But what about experts' claims that supplies of The Internet will run dry by 2018? Do you, as America's foremost lobbyist to Congress, know of any pending legislation to address this threat?
Aside from my nostalgia for this list (I had a 32X and Sega CD, and still have my Virtual Boy), I have to take sincere issue with the writer mentioning Captain Quazar as one of the decent games for the 3DO.
Captain Quazar? That game was crap! And I should know, I worked on it! The company that developed it, Cyclone Studios (bought by 3DO near the end of the game's production cycle) split their initial development efforts between that game and the best game made for the 3DO, Battlesport. Now THAT was a good game. Intuitive controls, fast action, quick rounds; everything I want in a round-robin multiplayer blast fest.
But no, Captain Quazar was just an ambitious mistake. I was a high-school student who played football with the company president, and they brought me in for some simple playtesting and initial level design. Captain Quazar's biggest problem was the fact that you could only get ammo by breaking open crates, but there wasn't enough RAM for them to include a melee weapon animation, so the only way to break crates was with the gun. If you ran out of your very limited ammo, you were screwed.
I heard it had a lot of bugs on release. I guess you can blame me for that, I was always playing Battlesport (or Tekken on the new import Playstation we had), and I never bothered to test Captain Quazar enough.
I think you're giving them too much credit. My money's on that they simply have 52 playing cards on a play area, and claim that there are 32,000 possible card game variants.
Either that, or the console is only capable of 32K colors, and changing a pixels color is considered an entire new game!
I disagree, I've found two jobs (1 perm and 1 internship) off of dice.com. Jobtrak.com, which affiliates with particular schools (probably yours) was also very helpful, got me three internships. I have never gotten a job through networking or through pounding the pavement.
But my best advice goes out to those still in school: DO AN INTERNSHIP!!!!
I was a crap student. I got Cs the whole way through college. But I kept at it, got my degree, and focused all of my efforts on getting good references from internships and getting experience. Now that I'm out of school, I'm making far more money doing docs than my engineer friends, and I have much brighter prospects for the future, since I can switch careers at a whim. Job experience in school (and if you work hard enough, your bosses at internships will say in your reference that you passed the level of intern, into a real employee) gave me the requisite 2+ years that everyone needs to have flexibility.
Do not be fooled by the establishment's dictum that you must get straight As to be successful. It's a lot more than that, as my 3.96GPA friend working as a secretary will note.
Yeah. I think you're a goddamn pinko commie homo. Of course, your kids will never know what that means, since I will soon successfully block them from searching for those terms, and they'll kill themselves off by age 10 anyway playing with guns they got at school (go NRA!)
As a techwriter, this article is of immediate use to me. Among the companies at which I've worked, there's been a growing movement away from providing explanatory documentation, and a movement towards procedural documentation. I've been running into particular problems documenting our API, which is intended to be used by relatively novice programmers working for law offices or large companies with legal departments. It's been difficult trying to convince the developers why we need to explain the interaction between our UI layers, our functional layers, and our security layers; they are of the opinion that the whole point of our providing these APIs is to prevent clients from having to examine our system's architecture. But what if the client wants to add a non-standard UI component, or impersonate a different user with different rights? So the question is, is documentation the answer to the abstration problem? If we always present a cohesive view of the reasoning and implementation of the abstraction in documentation, can this forgive any leaks we may produce?
Does anyone know what stance the more indie labels (KRS, K Records, 5RC, Matador, etc.) are taking on copy protection schemes? They seem to be much more interested in online music distribution, and generally supportive of digital music, but I don't see many indie labels putting entire CDs online.
Yes, well, that's wonderful, but this is a public forum that addresses concerns of the geek community. Anything said here means less than a public radio personality bitching at you during a pledge drive. The important thing is that people who do matter may read from this forum, and realize that people DO care about their rights and current freedoms. Small errors from these people do not, in the end, matter; what matters is the general atmosphere of concern. Listen less to the words and more to the meaning.
Or just lighten up. Slashdotters are inconsequential.
Slashdot Mirror
I know what you meant, but I played it at E3. And played it and played it and played it. It was just plain fun. No complications, no overwrought driving physics, no realistic damage modeling. Just fun. I liked the fact that it was fast and simple and pretty. It can compete with the big boys because it's a different beast; it's not as deep, but it doesn't require a mental investment to enjoy.
Or my massive Wang.
I mean, /. is noted for its incisive, insightful music reviews. What better forum to tell you whether or not it's worth your while to pollute clubs around the world with your sonic garbage?
(actually, I really am curious. If it'll pay as well as a tech job, maybe you guys are better than this week's Creed cover band)
It's obvious what it's designed for? Only because we're conditioned to recognize it as a pencil's shape. I'd say it's more obviously used for poking things, on first appraisal.
I disagree. I find that, as I enter my mid 20s, that my taste in music and video games has broadened tremendously. The inclusion of a decent salary into my lifestyle has enabled me to be more adventurous with my tastes. Beyond Good and Evil, Xiu Xiu, Moonbase Commander, Dub Narcotic... in college, I had more time, but less resources. Now I can invest in myself, to make my entertainment time more enjoyable. And if I don't like a game or album or book, I just put it down and ignore it. I have enough money that I don't have to squeeze every morsel of value from a purchase.
And no, I don't have a wife or kids. I wear condoms for a reason.
Jesus, move to LA. I'm wearing shorts today! And no smog in the winter!
Well, this is up to the publishers. However, I can say right now, standing atop my ivory tower, lord of all I survey:
No.
They will cost as much as any portable game ever has. Lowered manufacturing costs do little to affect prices. The great transfer to optical media kicked prices down by $10 in some instances, but the market showed that a $50 price point was acceptable. $40 for portables is where they'll stay.
Also good, if you're on the west coast, is the Go Game. Same theory, and as a veteran of 3 games, I can attest to the organizer's wit and the game's fun, though technical snafus have been common. They use public games to beta-test ideas, and make most of their money from private functions.
Directly after the quoted text in the submission, the article reads, "SunnComm is taking a stand here because we believe that those who own property, whether physical or digital, have the ultimate authority over how their property is used."
I agree. The problem here is that the idea of ownership is simply not defined properly in modern american law. It has suddenly become legal, in the last few years, for companies to sell me products to which they retain ownership. If this problem is corrected, and consumers are given rights to the products they buy, a large portion of this DMCA nonsense would evaporate.
I feel I should have some sort of reference upon which to base this speculation, but I don't. Nonetheless, I'd assume that the designers were told to focus less on things like game cartridges; Nokia probably wants to focus on downloadable games. If it concentrates on its wireless aspects, it differentiates itself immediately and fully from the GBA.
I work as a techwriter in LA, been doing this for three years now (one in college, two in the real world). Go ahead and reply if you have any questions I don't address.
Technical writing is, most of all, a really easy job. Provided your work environment is up to snuff, it requires as little or as much effort and imagination as you wish to put into it. The pay's OK, especially in the short-term, and it can give you valuable career experience while you figure out what you REALLY want to do.
Good luck!
Because that may create a time paradox! Everyone from our time knows that time portal technology came from information intercepted by the Department of Homeland Security from terrorists!
Go to the top of the WTC on September 9, 2001. LEAVE NEW YORK THE NEXT DAY.
Sure, Bush is passing hundreds of millions of dollars for research into hydrogen fuel cell technology to halt dependence on oil. But what about experts' claims that supplies of The Internet will run dry by 2018? Do you, as America's foremost lobbyist to Congress, know of any pending legislation to address this threat?
Aside from my nostalgia for this list (I had a 32X and Sega CD, and still have my Virtual Boy), I have to take sincere issue with the writer mentioning Captain Quazar as one of the decent games for the 3DO.
Captain Quazar? That game was crap! And I should know, I worked on it! The company that developed it, Cyclone Studios (bought by 3DO near the end of the game's production cycle) split their initial development efforts between that game and the best game made for the 3DO, Battlesport. Now THAT was a good game. Intuitive controls, fast action, quick rounds; everything I want in a round-robin multiplayer blast fest.
But no, Captain Quazar was just an ambitious mistake. I was a high-school student who played football with the company president, and they brought me in for some simple playtesting and initial level design. Captain Quazar's biggest problem was the fact that you could only get ammo by breaking open crates, but there wasn't enough RAM for them to include a melee weapon animation, so the only way to break crates was with the gun. If you ran out of your very limited ammo, you were screwed.
I heard it had a lot of bugs on release. I guess you can blame me for that, I was always playing Battlesport (or Tekken on the new import Playstation we had), and I never bothered to test Captain Quazar enough.
I think you're giving them too much credit. My money's on that they simply have 52 playing cards on a play area, and claim that there are 32,000 possible card game variants. Either that, or the console is only capable of 32K colors, and changing a pixels color is considered an entire new game!
I disagree, I've found two jobs (1 perm and 1 internship) off of dice.com. Jobtrak.com, which affiliates with particular schools (probably yours) was also very helpful, got me three internships. I have never gotten a job through networking or through pounding the pavement.
But my best advice goes out to those still in school: DO AN INTERNSHIP!!!!
I was a crap student. I got Cs the whole way through college. But I kept at it, got my degree, and focused all of my efforts on getting good references from internships and getting experience. Now that I'm out of school, I'm making far more money doing docs than my engineer friends, and I have much brighter prospects for the future, since I can switch careers at a whim. Job experience in school (and if you work hard enough, your bosses at internships will say in your reference that you passed the level of intern, into a real employee) gave me the requisite 2+ years that everyone needs to have flexibility.
Do not be fooled by the establishment's dictum that you must get straight As to be successful. It's a lot more than that, as my 3.96GPA friend working as a secretary will note.
Yeah. I think you're a goddamn pinko commie homo.
Of course, your kids will never know what that means, since I will soon successfully block them from searching for those terms, and they'll kill themselves off by age 10 anyway playing with guns they got at school (go NRA!)
As a techwriter, this article is of immediate use to me. Among the companies at which I've worked, there's been a growing movement away from providing explanatory documentation, and a movement towards procedural documentation. I've been running into particular problems documenting our API, which is intended to be used by relatively novice programmers working for law offices or large companies with legal departments. It's been difficult trying to convince the developers why we need to explain the interaction between our UI layers, our functional layers, and our security layers; they are of the opinion that the whole point of our providing these APIs is to prevent clients from having to examine our system's architecture. But what if the client wants to add a non-standard UI component, or impersonate a different user with different rights?
So the question is, is documentation the answer to the abstration problem? If we always present a cohesive view of the reasoning and implementation of the abstraction in documentation, can this forgive any leaks we may produce?
Does anyone know what stance the more indie labels (KRS, K Records, 5RC, Matador, etc.) are taking on copy protection schemes? They seem to be much more interested in online music distribution, and generally supportive of digital music, but I don't see many indie labels putting entire CDs online.
It just has too many people accessing it. Keep refreshing, I got in.
Naw, it's just that the money vault he does his daily swimming laps in was running low. He needed the gold dubloons, not the cash.
Blogckdown!
Since it's not a planet, wouldn't it be more like a cousin than a brother.
More like a red-headed stepkid, from the size of it.
Yes, well, that's wonderful, but this is a public forum that addresses concerns of the geek community. Anything said here means less than a public radio personality bitching at you during a pledge drive. The important thing is that people who do matter may read from this forum, and realize that people DO care about their rights and current freedoms. Small errors from these people do not, in the end, matter; what matters is the general atmosphere of concern. Listen less to the words and more to the meaning.
Or just lighten up. Slashdotters are inconsequential.