I think this is Capcom's first big multi-player game, no? Let's cut them some freaking slack for testing and responding to the test, instead of bagging on them for what was (or wasn't) in a non-final product. (Who knows, those fixes may have been on the change list before the beta, or they may have been in a "wishlist, but let's see if they bitch about it because it's a pain to implement" category. I think Capcom's incredibly open development process with Lost Planet has been an awesome experiment, and I hope it's really successful for them -- it's a freaking great looking game.
You are my new best friend. I was wondering why my laptop stopped hibernating reliably after I installed Skype... I also installed 2GB that same day. Thanks!
It's easier to just turn off the water. You can have the city do it, but it's just as easy to do it at the point where the water enters your house (there should be a turn off there). (It's unlikely but possible the pipes will freeze and burst between the city hook up and your house if you dont have the city turn the water off at the street -- this is an enormous pain in the ass if it happens.)
When we close up our cabin, that's what we do (turn it off at the house and drain the water -- leave those taps open, too). We also leave the heater on at 55 degrees, but that's more because my dad is crazy and hates the environment. There's no reason to.
An alarm and a web cam won't hurt, and neither will some good timers for the lights. Still, don't leave anything valuable there, because everyone will know you're gone. At our cabin, there's very little worth stealing. We also have a guy check it out weekly (just a walk around).
The point of the law isn't to create a lottery system for retards who download/are infected with spyware. The point is to make it too expensive for spyware companies to do business in WA state. The victims get made whole (at least) and the company pays a lot. I'd much rather fund future enforcement with penalties and legal fees than tax dollars -- let the spyware guys pay the lawyers so they can go after the next offenders.
Start small, with a dicrete component, and emphasize the PR benefit. "MegaCom Gives Back" will raise some goodwill for the company. Talk to someone in PR/Marketing -- they are always looking for new press release to do. Now is a great time too, "MegaCom gives back for the Holidays!"
Hey uh... they didn't merge with PCXL. PCXL folded and everyone got subscriptions to PC Gamer instead. I don't think *any* PCXL staff went to PCGamer following that folding, except for maybe Greg Vederman... but no, actually I think he started at PCGamer to begin with.
Actually, in games today there is a real correlatoin between bad art and bad gameplay. If the art sucks, chances are the budget was low, which means the development time was short, the project was understaffed, and the gameplay suffered. The converse is not necessarily true: there isn't necessarily a correlation between good art and good gameplay. But from where i sit, there is no necessariy inverse relationship between art and gamplay quality.
But anyway, Greg Costikyan is high. He acts like one of those guys who get off on bagging the game industry constantly, regardless of reality. Without reading TFA (I mean, common, this is slashdot), I think it's retarded to assume that a studio like Capcom either a) isn't know for making good games (in fact, they are know for generally making very good games); and b) that studios are profitable enough to absorb the enormous expense of a pure vanity studio. Games cost a lot of money to make. Publishing is a risky, low-margin business. You'd have to be nuts to intentionally make games that you knew would be unprofitable.
The real issue is that the game industry needs a new model, where you can make "risky" games AND make a profit on modest sales; something more similar to the "art house" movie model. That's what we should be agitating for (and, to be fair, I think it's what Greg Costikyan is trying to do right now on the business side), not yelling at Capcom for making a totally sensible business decision.
Finally the comparison to Nintendo doesn't wash: they don't pay themselves a royalty per unit as all third parties do, so their business model is vastly different to third parties', and enables them to spend more on their internal games, which has a direct effect on quality. This isn't to take anything away from the awesome quality of Nintendo's games or developers, but it is a factor.
One example talks about nazis, the other about nazi-ism. Both statements can be true! And, IMHO, both are true: The nazis were a bunch of assholes who didn't even have a totally coherent ideology. Historian B's description is a pretty precise definition of an asshole, anyway.
Maybe the reason productivity is going down is the need to attach fashion to computing. My problem isn't so much too much information, it's the fact that both Windows and Macintosh OSes waste precious processing cycles and seconds trying to play stupid, pointless, animations when I want to do things like close a window or drop down a menu bar. The "fade in" menu bar is probably responsible for a significant, measurable drop in human productivity.
And yes, I know that on Widnows at least, you can turn all that shit off, but many people don't. (If anyone knows how to make a window in OSX actually just vanish when you close it, instead of playing an animation, please let me know.)
No, no, I just picked 256 colors as an arbitrary number. My math has 256 bits per dot (256 colors). I don't need to worry about how you display the colors onscreen (where 256 colors = 8 bit color), since we're dealing with pigment on paper, not pixels.
You're thinking of the Cauzin Softstrip. It was basically just 2D barcodes. It totally worked though; my computer teacher in middle school had one and it worked well.
If you assume an 8.5 x 10 inch sheet of paper (85 square inches), 300 x 300 dpi x 256 colors, you end up with 1.95 billion bits of info you can put on a page. Divided by 8 (to get bytes), you end up with something like 244GB of potential info. But you'll need to have some good error correction and registration. if you look at the original link (which is a link from tfa), it basically looks like a colorful, 2D bar code. I guess the color could make it a 3D barcode.
So despite the "fake" and "scam" tags on this article, there's no reason IMHO to doubt the theory, although I don't know if the application would be super practical.
No one has mentioned the feature that lost Zune to me: the video plays in horizontal format, but all the media listings are vertical. So you keep having to turn it 90 degrees. That sucks. How about an option to do all the listings horizontally?
Actually, to be really cynical, someone with a long-distance relationship is the ideal tech hire. They have a girlfriend, so they don't feel any obligation to go out and socialize and try to find a girlfriend, and instead can concentrate, most of the time, entirely on work. I had a big discussion about this with the guy in question, and he felt that he did far more work (measured as spending time at the office, which is of course not actually equal to work performed in most cases, but there is usually a reasonable correlation between them) than he would if he didn't have a gf, and probably somewhat more than he would do if he had one who was local. He's one of those superstar guys, however, so he can work like 20 hour weeks and still show everyone up.
Good managers should be able to tell when they're being flim-flammed, regardless of their technical expertise, by the way their team responds to them. That said, they should also be able to suss out when they should let something go, because they're being flim-flammed for a reason (such as: the original request was retarded, and it's easier to flim-flam than actually implement something dumb, or some other reason).
Not at all saying I'm a good manager, but I once asked someone to do something, and they explained to me very earnestly that it couldn't be done until some other guy did something (and that guy was gone for the weekend). Since "other guy" was way more junior, and this guy was very talented and generally very eager to tackle any task, I knew something was up, and it was -- his girlfriend was coming in from out of town about 20 minutes later and he wanted to get out of Dodge. That was when he was new (now he'd be like "dude, gf coming to town, can't do it now") but it does illustrate the scenario I'm presenting.
On the larger issue, I always like it when my managers have at least a vague clue about what I'm talking about. They don't need to know details, but they should get the general idea of what we do and how we do it.
Re:Platform/Technology limited competitor options
on
In Search of Stupidity
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I remember being at company in the early 1990s which was developing products for Windows 3.0, OS/2 and Macintosh. OS/2... There was just no one steering that boat. Windows 3.0... I didn't believe, until we got our retail copies, that it would ship with those horrid fonts. It was sooo not ready for prime time. Apple... they just fucking hated us, because we weren't Apple, or Claris, or Apple. From my perspective, they pretty much did everything they could to dissuade us from developing our products for the Mac.
Then Windows 3.1 came out, and even though it was *well* below the Mac in quality and ease of use, I can easily see why the suits made the decision to support it and forgoe the Mac and OS/2.
Of course, the irony is that not much later, Microsoft developed a very similar product to theirs and ate their lunch! But they'd have failed if they'd supported OS/2 or the Mac instead of Windows. The climate was such that you had to be kind of stupid *not* to support MS, given the environment at the time, regardless of the fact that almost anything (GEOS for PC, anyone?) had better quality than Windows, espcially in the 3.0 days.
I see a lot of arguments about this at my work. Some people feel "geek" is a good term, and "nerd" is a bad term; others feel "nerd" is a good term and "geek" is a pejorative one. The fact is, anyone arguing about this is likely one or the orther, or both. Personaly, I couldn't care what you call me, as long as you brought over those Atari 2600 games and comics you said you found in your mother's basement.
It's especially apropos to discuss O'Reilly becuase he's probably never played a videogame in his life. So, its not like he said "I've played games, they're bad" instead he just spouted off like some sad old guy... a sad old guy who's himself totally out of touch with reality.
It's a joke! Back in the day you defended your machine against all comers. All the systems had plusses and minuses, so everyone had an angle. The Apple II was more expandable, and had a faster disk drive; the C64 had sprites and better graphics; the TRS-80 had... well, I'm sure it had something, but everyone I know just called it the Trash 80 and was done with it. In reflection today, owning all the 8-bits as an avid collector, I can say that the Atari 800 walked all over the C64 and the Apple II, but it was also released later than either of them, so of course it would be better.
This book though is the real deal. It's easy to learn the history of Apple, we all know about Steve and Steve, and any halfway avid nerd knows about the legend of Breakout, the Steve's selling blue boxes to raise money, Atari & HP turning down the Apple, etc.
Commodore's story has been way less well told, and that's why this book is so great. The C64 was really the first PC that was in reach for the average consumer, yet if you just look at the popular press, it's as if it never existed.
A POKE could get you slapped on the PET -- it had "killer pokes" that would totally brick the machine. They're discussed in the book. Which, by the way, is fantastic. I am an Apple fan since the early days, but I though the book was really really fascinating, even if the C64 did totally pale next to the Apple IIe.
The "rental" movies will expire -- 30 days after you d/l them, and/or 24 hours after you start watching them, whichever comes first. From what I can tell, the content you buy will not expire, and if it's like other MS Live content, if you buy it, and then delete it, you can later redownload it for free. This is how XBLA games work. If you buy Time Pilot, and delete it, you can re-download it later for no charge.
This isn't as ideal as having a good size HDD to start with, but it seems reasonably fair, and better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
The black arrow rules. No room for debate about "voter intent" and you can read the ballots electronically for quick tabulation, while still having an easy to interpret yet difficult to alter paper record. Alameda County in CA has ditched (at least for now) its Diebold machines in favor of the black arrow ballots and it made me feel much more comfortable that my ballot would be counted. Also, the machine into which you insert your ballot will reject it if you do something stupid like try to vote "yes" and "no" on the same ballot issue.
Actually the scandal with the gay preacher dude... the prostitute said he came out with the allegations specifically because he realized who the preacher was, and that he (the preacher) was out stumping for an anti-gay marriage initiative.
So that one was quite clearly election-related. And also fucking stupidity related, and hypocrisy related, on the part of the preacher.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this is Capcom's first big multi-player game, no? Let's cut them some freaking slack for testing and responding to the test, instead of bagging on them for what was (or wasn't) in a non-final product. (Who knows, those fixes may have been on the change list before the beta, or they may have been in a "wishlist, but let's see if they bitch about it because it's a pain to implement" category. I think Capcom's incredibly open development process with Lost Planet has been an awesome experiment, and I hope it's really successful for them -- it's a freaking great looking game.
You are my new best friend. I was wondering why my laptop stopped hibernating reliably after I installed Skype... I also installed 2GB that same day. Thanks!
When we close up our cabin, that's what we do (turn it off at the house and drain the water -- leave those taps open, too). We also leave the heater on at 55 degrees, but that's more because my dad is crazy and hates the environment. There's no reason to.
An alarm and a web cam won't hurt, and neither will some good timers for the lights. Still, don't leave anything valuable there, because everyone will know you're gone. At our cabin, there's very little worth stealing. We also have a guy check it out weekly (just a walk around).
The point of the law isn't to create a lottery system for retards who download/are infected with spyware. The point is to make it too expensive for spyware companies to do business in WA state. The victims get made whole (at least) and the company pays a lot. I'd much rather fund future enforcement with penalties and legal fees than tax dollars -- let the spyware guys pay the lawyers so they can go after the next offenders.
Start small, with a dicrete component, and emphasize the PR benefit. "MegaCom Gives Back" will raise some goodwill for the company. Talk to someone in PR/Marketing -- they are always looking for new press release to do. Now is a great time too, "MegaCom gives back for the Holidays!"
I like the Vede, but I really miss Bill Trotter, or The Colonel, or whatever his name is. I never play(ed) war games, but I loved reading about them.
Hey uh... they didn't merge with PCXL. PCXL folded and everyone got subscriptions to PC Gamer instead. I don't think *any* PCXL staff went to PCGamer following that folding, except for maybe Greg Vederman... but no, actually I think he started at PCGamer to begin with.
But anyway, Greg Costikyan is high. He acts like one of those guys who get off on bagging the game industry constantly, regardless of reality. Without reading TFA (I mean, common, this is slashdot), I think it's retarded to assume that a studio like Capcom either a) isn't know for making good games (in fact, they are know for generally making very good games); and b) that studios are profitable enough to absorb the enormous expense of a pure vanity studio. Games cost a lot of money to make. Publishing is a risky, low-margin business. You'd have to be nuts to intentionally make games that you knew would be unprofitable.
The real issue is that the game industry needs a new model, where you can make "risky" games AND make a profit on modest sales; something more similar to the "art house" movie model. That's what we should be agitating for (and, to be fair, I think it's what Greg Costikyan is trying to do right now on the business side), not yelling at Capcom for making a totally sensible business decision.
Finally the comparison to Nintendo doesn't wash: they don't pay themselves a royalty per unit as all third parties do, so their business model is vastly different to third parties', and enables them to spend more on their internal games, which has a direct effect on quality. This isn't to take anything away from the awesome quality of Nintendo's games or developers, but it is a factor.
One example talks about nazis, the other about nazi-ism. Both statements can be true! And, IMHO, both are true: The nazis were a bunch of assholes who didn't even have a totally coherent ideology. Historian B's description is a pretty precise definition of an asshole, anyway.
And yes, I know that on Widnows at least, you can turn all that shit off, but many people don't. (If anyone knows how to make a window in OSX actually just vanish when you close it, instead of playing an animation, please let me know.)
No, no, I just picked 256 colors as an arbitrary number. My math has 256 bits per dot (256 colors). I don't need to worry about how you display the colors onscreen (where 256 colors = 8 bit color), since we're dealing with pigment on paper, not pixels.
300 dpi x 300 dpi is 90,000 dots, which can each be one of 256 colors, so that's 23 million possibilities per square inch, times 85 inches.
This math could be all wrong, because I'm not especially smart, but I think it's ok.
The issue isn't paper... it's toner. Even the best paper will lose laser printer toner if you bend it. And ink jet is less accurate.
If you assume an 8.5 x 10 inch sheet of paper (85 square inches), 300 x 300 dpi x 256 colors, you end up with 1.95 billion bits of info you can put on a page. Divided by 8 (to get bytes), you end up with something like 244GB of potential info. But you'll need to have some good error correction and registration. if you look at the original link (which is a link from tfa), it basically looks like a colorful, 2D bar code. I guess the color could make it a 3D barcode.
So despite the "fake" and "scam" tags on this article, there's no reason IMHO to doubt the theory, although I don't know if the application would be super practical.
No one has mentioned the feature that lost Zune to me: the video plays in horizontal format, but all the media listings are vertical. So you keep having to turn it 90 degrees. That sucks. How about an option to do all the listings horizontally?
Actually, to be really cynical, someone with a long-distance relationship is the ideal tech hire. They have a girlfriend, so they don't feel any obligation to go out and socialize and try to find a girlfriend, and instead can concentrate, most of the time, entirely on work. I had a big discussion about this with the guy in question, and he felt that he did far more work (measured as spending time at the office, which is of course not actually equal to work performed in most cases, but there is usually a reasonable correlation between them) than he would if he didn't have a gf, and probably somewhat more than he would do if he had one who was local. He's one of those superstar guys, however, so he can work like 20 hour weeks and still show everyone up.
Not at all saying I'm a good manager, but I once asked someone to do something, and they explained to me very earnestly that it couldn't be done until some other guy did something (and that guy was gone for the weekend). Since "other guy" was way more junior, and this guy was very talented and generally very eager to tackle any task, I knew something was up, and it was -- his girlfriend was coming in from out of town about 20 minutes later and he wanted to get out of Dodge. That was when he was new (now he'd be like "dude, gf coming to town, can't do it now") but it does illustrate the scenario I'm presenting.
On the larger issue, I always like it when my managers have at least a vague clue about what I'm talking about. They don't need to know details, but they should get the general idea of what we do and how we do it.
Then Windows 3.1 came out, and even though it was *well* below the Mac in quality and ease of use, I can easily see why the suits made the decision to support it and forgoe the Mac and OS/2.
Of course, the irony is that not much later, Microsoft developed a very similar product to theirs and ate their lunch! But they'd have failed if they'd supported OS/2 or the Mac instead of Windows. The climate was such that you had to be kind of stupid *not* to support MS, given the environment at the time, regardless of the fact that almost anything (GEOS for PC, anyone?) had better quality than Windows, espcially in the 3.0 days.
I see a lot of arguments about this at my work. Some people feel "geek" is a good term, and "nerd" is a bad term; others feel "nerd" is a good term and "geek" is a pejorative one. The fact is, anyone arguing about this is likely one or the orther, or both. Personaly, I couldn't care what you call me, as long as you brought over those Atari 2600 games and comics you said you found in your mother's basement.
It's especially apropos to discuss O'Reilly becuase he's probably never played a videogame in his life. So, its not like he said "I've played games, they're bad" instead he just spouted off like some sad old guy... a sad old guy who's himself totally out of touch with reality.
This book though is the real deal. It's easy to learn the history of Apple, we all know about Steve and Steve, and any halfway avid nerd knows about the legend of Breakout, the Steve's selling blue boxes to raise money, Atari & HP turning down the Apple, etc.
Commodore's story has been way less well told, and that's why this book is so great. The C64 was really the first PC that was in reach for the average consumer, yet if you just look at the popular press, it's as if it never existed.
[ducks]
This isn't as ideal as having a good size HDD to start with, but it seems reasonably fair, and better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
The black arrow rules. No room for debate about "voter intent" and you can read the ballots electronically for quick tabulation, while still having an easy to interpret yet difficult to alter paper record. Alameda County in CA has ditched (at least for now) its Diebold machines in favor of the black arrow ballots and it made me feel much more comfortable that my ballot would be counted. Also, the machine into which you insert your ballot will reject it if you do something stupid like try to vote "yes" and "no" on the same ballot issue.
So that one was quite clearly election-related. And also fucking stupidity related, and hypocrisy related, on the part of the preacher.