You need a contractor to put in a new outlet? Hell, unless we're talking about cutting open the wall to run wiring, there's nothing to it. (And, if we are opening up the wall, it's just tedious and time-consuming. If the wall's already open, you throw the breaker on the circuit you're adding the outlet to, add a junction box, splice in the new run of wire, run the wire to the box for the outlet, wire up the outlet, tie up the splices in the junction box, seal up the boxes, et voila: new outlet. As long as you're not overloading the breaker, using too small a guage of wire, or really sloppy in your splices, there really shouldn't be anything to worry about. On the other hand, I'm not an electrician: too bad, really. They make good money.)
Anyway, he's obviously referring to the fact that you don't pay your local P&L per outlet in your home, much as you don't pay your broadband provider per computer on your internal network (although, I'm pretty sure your broadband provider's contract is written such that you're supposed to. Whatever.). Plenty of people don't run their own network cable or set up the network themselves. Those sorts of folks keep people I know in business.
Actually, math is a perfectly acceptable means of expressing computer science concepts. You've heard of, say, lambda calculus? (Granted, expressing the average program is impractical, to say nothing of esoteric.) If you're going to really carry through on this metaphore, at least admit the existence of software engineers, who are to computer scientists as engineers are to physicists. Programmers are to software engineers as mechanics are to mechanical engineers.
Still, the de-emphasis of programming does bother me: there isn't much you can do with a purely abstract understanding of computer science (or of physics, for that matter, which is why we have experimental physicists), AFAIK. Research or teach, I guess. Or learn some programming, but is there really anything stopping them from teaching programming with the theory?
Well, okay. I don't actually wish ill on game devs, but I am kinda blase about the hardware end of the business. And the article fails to note that Nintendo doesn't sell its hardware at a loss, correct?
I switched to Dvorak four or five years ago. (I actually use a Das Keyboard II at work, but I have a remapped Model M here at home.) It takes a little time to reacquaint myself with QWERTY any time I have to really use it (i. e., whenever my login passowrd changes), but that's because I haven't used QWERTY significantly in multiple years. When I was using QWERTY at work and Dvorak at home, it always took a few minutes to sort out, but only a few minutes. No biggie.
Truth is, the thing that screws me up the most is actually the caps-lock key, since I usually remap that for use as a Ctrl key.
Actually, two (Optimized, Turbo) of Fasterfox's four presets enable prefetching. I don't see any indication in the interface that this is so; I had to visit their website, where the information is in a PDF linked from the FAQ.
Even if that's all true, China's going to be staring down a pretty serious demographic within the same time period. It's entirely probably that they peak within twenty years and decline thereafter. Whether they will really wield more power or influence than the US in that timeframe is going to be very difficult to predict. I can't say I'd bet on it.
A salary isn't really by the hour, of course. If you're salaried, you get paid the same, no matter how many hours you work. The to this argument is not that it will save money, but that you can do more. Unfortunately, the increase in productivity needs demonstration.
It's not a monetary issue. Unless you think that public school monies are only taken out your paycheck if you've got kids in school. In which case, I have very bad news for you.
I think you missed the point, although you're very, very close.
In your earlier post, you say: I guess liberty and options come only at a very high price. So, I elucidated: of course, they do (at what point does citing Jefferson mean I was making any reference to George Bush, or to something dealing with America only?). I also pointed out that liberty has never entailed a lack of consequences for your actions. If you wish to steal bread because you are hungry, you had best be prepared to be arrested if you should be caught, and to suffer whatever penalties come with petty theft. That the mercy and patience of others may allow you to avoid those things does not, in fact, give you the right to do them. But this is still a bit misleading. There are reasonable justifications for stealing bread, like starvation.
You said, just now, I seriously, SERIOUSLY doubt the patriots gave their life for my country so I can but songs on iTunes. And, you know what? You're right! They didn't! (Or I assume not, unless yours were astonishingly farsighted.) Presumably, they didn't give their lives so you could steal it, either. (Or are you liberating it? These semantic differences always cause me such trouble.) If it's important enough that you think you should be allowed to break the law to do it, surely you'll be willing to pay any fines or do any jail time that's entailed as punishment?
I'll let you have the last word here, if you want it: I don't intend to respond further, but I do want to say one last thing before I go:
I'm not sure I could care less about karma points, but it's a nice bit of ad hominem, and a really keen way to dodge the point. Hey, you're not making a serious argument in good faith: you're just karma-whoring! Of course, I won't be able to make a meaningful distinction between the two, but I'll be sure to apply this sort of trick the next time I go fishing for karma points. (Might I suggest you put Schopenhauer back on the shelf?) Even if that had been what I was doing, would it have justified your equating the ability to copyright violation with essential liberty?
I know I'm not sold on convergence, anyway, and I don't see the reasoning (from the consumer side) for keeping my music and photographs on my phone. I trade out my phone every couple of years. Cameras don't improve that significantly from year-to-year. Hell, neither do MP3 players.
Gimme a phone with black-and-white display, a simple addressbook, Bluetooth, speaker phone and good sound quality. A couple time-related apps would be nice, but I really don't need much else. I don't need color everything with Intarweb access, a googol-pixel camera and MP3-player that connects directly to my brain. I do need battery life, a screen I can read in the dark and in the sun, the ability to make and receive calls, and probably a readable clock, since I've given up on wearing a watch. (I can maybe justify polyphonic ringtones, if only to escape the usually-awful ones that come with most phones.)
1. Liberty does come at a very high price: the blood of partriots. 2. Every choice you make, and the actions entailed in carrying it out, has consequences. If you find that you are unable to stomach the consequences, perhaps you chose poorly, eh? In the meantime, suck it up. Nobody ever said you were entitled to something just because you wanted it.
I do recall having multiple, overlong, involved conversations with users explaining that, no, the computer could not simply round a particular digit up, just because. (I forget at the moment if the particular digit had fallen prey to banker's rounding--thank you, Microsoft, for *that* headache!--or if it was rounded correctly, and they just wanted the number to be that extra hundredth of a percent higher.)
Or the conversation in which I explained the problems inherent in data duplication and during which I was assured that a particular piece of information would always be entered once, in one level of the data hierarchy. And then having to go back a month later and code around their unwillingness to stick it in the correct level of the hierarchy.
Or... But the problem is multifold. Your users are used to software doing things 'wrong'. They are used to your department doing things 'wrong', and they may even be used to you doing things 'wrong'. Fixing that attitude can be a trick, and will require work on both ends (yours especially, since you must change their perception of you). Try to be transparent and up front about what can or cannot be done. Exercise due diligence in error reports--it may be your fault! Admit mistakes and fix them quickly. Make sure that your users understand the importance of requirements and specifications, i.e. if the report behaves as specified, but it's still 'wrong', then the problem is not with the report but with the specifications for same. Get user sign-off and buy-in at the design phase (this will be very difficult). When you get sign-off, hold them to it. It's their report: they need to take some responsibility for making sure that business changes are communicated to you clearly and in a timely fashion so that you can keep it up to date. So on and so forth. Push back when necessary, and be humble.
Oh, and tact, charm, patience, and humility at all times. I pretty much fail at those, but you need anybody who deals directly with users to have a lot of them and at will.
This all assumes that buck-passing isn't just SOP at your workplace, though. If that's the case, it's going to take a lot more to not be saddled with blame for every possible thing that can be shoved on you.
I don't even see how this is relevant, but I wonder if Google's policy wrt temps isn't just that, if they aren't willing to hire you after a year, you're probably not worth keeping around?
Well, you'd be wrong. But keep rebelling against the man, and, I'm sure, someday you'll be right, justifying, long after the fact, all those long years of paranoid delusion.
Just because development is only paid for once, you can't assume that it's actually free. This isn't like Big-O notation, constant values don't necessarily amortize out to nothing just because you sold several hundred thousand units. Development costs on games are exceeding twenty million dollars for AAA titles. Supposing you sell 10 million copies (and that's a lot of copies--Super Mario Brothers sold 40 million, but most of the top 20 best selling video games sold well under 10 million), that gets down to $2/unit. Supposing you sell only 500 thousand, though, it's more like $40/unit. Not many titles will break a million units, so these costs can't be hand-waved away.
They're probably average figures. If you want to talk about extreme scenarios, then, yes, a game that fails to sell will probably spend over 100% of revenue on development, and a game that sells like mad will spend much less. In fact, if your game sells really poorly, you probably take a loss on almost everything that isn't strictly per-unit-sold. And, contra that, if you make Halo, your costs, even if astronomical in terms of absolute dollars, will be far outweighed by revenues.
Up-front costs (development time, art, design, etc) are probably scaled according to sales estimates, and probably some of the other costs (marketing, say) scale similarly in terms of absolute dollars. Others (licensing, publishing, distribution) are or include per unit, rather than per title, fees or are so far amortized (hardware, management) that the number of units of a particular title sold will probably not greatly change the amount they affect the price.
But this is probably all Business 101-type stuff, and you're attempting to argue against a generality with specifics. It's like claiming that the existence of the Manx means that cats don't have tails.
From the article: 45% of revenue goes to development costs of various sorts: art, programming, engineering, design, etc. Everything that it takes to get from having nothing at all to having a salable product. Retailers get about 20%, or $12. Of the retailer's $12, at least $11 goes to cover various operating costs associated with having a storefront. That shouldn't be a surprise: it's been known for a while now that videogames are a loss leader for many stores, and that the real money in video game sales is in used games, not in new ones.
There's another 11.5% in console licensing fees. The article implies that these may be waived for exclusivity of the title. I'd bet the fee varies depending on which console you're looking at, but it's probably comparable across the board. Marketing will eat up another 12% of the revenue, licensing an additional 5% (expect that amount to wind up in the marketing budget if the property is original), packaging 5%, publisher and distributer 3% between them (about a buck each per unit sold, it looks like), management and corporate overhead.3% and hardware development costs.05%. Retailers take a large chunk, but it's not the largest chunk.
The point at which a developer can rake in money on their own is when they successfully establish an original property. When that happens, they get the smaller marketing budget associated with a licensable property, but they're essentially licensing it from themselves, so they can pocket that 5% that would otherwise go to, e.g., LucasArts or Marvel Entertainment.
I don't think you realize the cost of what you are suggesting.. Not entirely, no. That is in keeping with Slashdot's long and storied traditions, of course.
The article doesn't actually say what pressure the air will be stored under, only that "90m3 [sic] of compressed air [will be] stored in fibre tanks." Someone a bit sharper than I could probably make a reasonable guess, though. I mostly figure that (until infrastructure builds up, and I think that major infrastructure for compressed air cars is a somewhat dubious proposition) the air compressor would pay for itself in gas not burned in the car.
who saw the headline and thought they were talking about the Moller Aircar? Did no-one else experience the small spasm in disappointment when they realised that flying cars were not, in fact, the order of the day?
Actually, just having a hefty air compressor at home would take care of the commuting scenario. Air it up each evening. Otherwise, though, you are pretty much stuck, unless you're going to take a load of quarters anywhere you go to operate the air pumps at the gas station. (I'm not sure a portable air compressor is likely to do the PSI needed.) Should have pretty of spare mileage to get the groceries, but long trips are a no-no unless the infrastructure builds up some.
Let us assume, for the moment, that I'm not in the business of killing off one or more hemispheres' worth of people. Or, at least, that I have some ulterior motive for not wanting the super-volcano to go kerplooie, like not wanting to die or something equally mundane.
Please rest assured that I have learned well from the examples of my forebears in the villainy biz and will not be revealing my plan until after I have shot the super-spy and properly disposed of his body by feeding it through a power mulcher and then into an incinerator.
I've been wondering about that for a while. Seems like it would be far preferable to open up a couple of normal volcanos as pressure releases on the hot spot below, even assuming they'd go, day and night, for centuries. Don't know enough about it to guess whether or not that would just blow the whole thing wide open, though, like popping a balloon. That would be a sub-optimal result.
Slashdot Mirror
You need a contractor to put in a new outlet? Hell, unless we're talking about cutting open the wall to run wiring, there's nothing to it. (And, if we are opening up the wall, it's just tedious and time-consuming. If the wall's already open, you throw the breaker on the circuit you're adding the outlet to, add a junction box, splice in the new run of wire, run the wire to the box for the outlet, wire up the outlet, tie up the splices in the junction box, seal up the boxes, et voila: new outlet. As long as you're not overloading the breaker, using too small a guage of wire, or really sloppy in your splices, there really shouldn't be anything to worry about. On the other hand, I'm not an electrician: too bad, really. They make good money.)
Anyway, he's obviously referring to the fact that you don't pay your local P&L per outlet in your home, much as you don't pay your broadband provider per computer on your internal network (although, I'm pretty sure your broadband provider's contract is written such that you're supposed to. Whatever.). Plenty of people don't run their own network cable or set up the network themselves. Those sorts of folks keep people I know in business.
Actually, math is a perfectly acceptable means of expressing computer science concepts. You've heard of, say, lambda calculus? (Granted, expressing the average program is impractical, to say nothing of esoteric.) If you're going to really carry through on this metaphore, at least admit the existence of software engineers, who are to computer scientists as engineers are to physicists. Programmers are to software engineers as mechanics are to mechanical engineers.
Still, the de-emphasis of programming does bother me: there isn't much you can do with a purely abstract understanding of computer science (or of physics, for that matter, which is why we have experimental physicists), AFAIK. Research or teach, I guess. Or learn some programming, but is there really anything stopping them from teaching programming with the theory?
Sign me up!
Well, okay. I don't actually wish ill on game devs, but I am kinda blase about the hardware end of the business. And the article fails to note that Nintendo doesn't sell its hardware at a loss, correct?
I switched to Dvorak four or five years ago. (I actually use a Das Keyboard II at work, but I have a remapped Model M here at home.) It takes a little time to reacquaint myself with QWERTY any time I have to really use it (i. e., whenever my login passowrd changes), but that's because I haven't used QWERTY significantly in multiple years. When I was using QWERTY at work and Dvorak at home, it always took a few minutes to sort out, but only a few minutes. No biggie.
Truth is, the thing that screws me up the most is actually the caps-lock key, since I usually remap that for use as a Ctrl key.
Actually, two (Optimized, Turbo) of Fasterfox's four presets enable prefetching. I don't see any indication in the interface that this is so; I had to visit their website, where the information is in a PDF linked from the FAQ.
Wait, didn't we already do that? Last century?
Wait, wait: I got it. He means the Marx Brothers, not Karl Marx. Clearly, Groucho will lead us into a new age of enlightenment. And cigars.
Just FWIW, white roads would be hell to drive on in the sunshine. A medium gray would probably be sufficient.
Out of curiosity, where do you find tar that isn't black?
Even if that's all true, China's going to be staring down a pretty serious demographic within the same time period. It's entirely probably that they peak within twenty years and decline thereafter. Whether they will really wield more power or influence than the US in that timeframe is going to be very difficult to predict. I can't say I'd bet on it.
A salary isn't really by the hour, of course. If you're salaried, you get paid the same, no matter how many hours you work. The to this argument is not that it will save money, but that you can do more. Unfortunately, the increase in productivity needs demonstration.
Red Steel was a launch title with (apparently) an okay sword-fighting interface. IIRC, you play a yakuza member.
It's not a monetary issue. Unless you think that public school monies are only taken out your paycheck if you've got kids in school. In which case, I have very bad news for you.
I think you missed the point, although you're very, very close.
In your earlier post, you say: I guess liberty and options come only at a very high price. So, I elucidated: of course, they do (at what point does citing Jefferson mean I was making any reference to George Bush, or to something dealing with America only?). I also pointed out that liberty has never entailed a lack of consequences for your actions. If you wish to steal bread because you are hungry, you had best be prepared to be arrested if you should be caught, and to suffer whatever penalties come with petty theft. That the mercy and patience of others may allow you to avoid those things does not, in fact, give you the right to do them. But this is still a bit misleading. There are reasonable justifications for stealing bread, like starvation.
You said, just now, I seriously, SERIOUSLY doubt the patriots gave their life for my country so I can but songs on iTunes. And, you know what? You're right! They didn't! (Or I assume not, unless yours were astonishingly farsighted.) Presumably, they didn't give their lives so you could steal it, either. (Or are you liberating it? These semantic differences always cause me such trouble.) If it's important enough that you think you should be allowed to break the law to do it, surely you'll be willing to pay any fines or do any jail time that's entailed as punishment?
I'll let you have the last word here, if you want it: I don't intend to respond further, but I do want to say one last thing before I go:
I'm not sure I could care less about karma points, but it's a nice bit of ad hominem, and a really keen way to dodge the point. Hey, you're not making a serious argument in good faith: you're just karma-whoring! Of course, I won't be able to make a meaningful distinction between the two, but I'll be sure to apply this sort of trick the next time I go fishing for karma points. (Might I suggest you put Schopenhauer back on the shelf?) Even if that had been what I was doing, would it have justified your equating the ability to copyright violation with essential liberty?
I know I'm not sold on convergence, anyway, and I don't see the reasoning (from the consumer side) for keeping my music and photographs on my phone. I trade out my phone every couple of years. Cameras don't improve that significantly from year-to-year. Hell, neither do MP3 players.
Gimme a phone with black-and-white display, a simple addressbook, Bluetooth, speaker phone and good sound quality. A couple time-related apps would be nice, but I really don't need much else. I don't need color everything with Intarweb access, a googol-pixel camera and MP3-player that connects directly to my brain. I do need battery life, a screen I can read in the dark and in the sun, the ability to make and receive calls, and probably a readable clock, since I've given up on wearing a watch. (I can maybe justify polyphonic ringtones, if only to escape the usually-awful ones that come with most phones.)
1. Liberty does come at a very high price: the blood of partriots.
2. Every choice you make, and the actions entailed in carrying it out, has consequences. If you find that you are unable to stomach the consequences, perhaps you chose poorly, eh? In the meantime, suck it up. Nobody ever said you were entitled to something just because you wanted it.
Get some perspective.
I do recall having multiple, overlong, involved conversations with users explaining that, no, the computer could not simply round a particular digit up, just because. (I forget at the moment if the particular digit had fallen prey to banker's rounding--thank you, Microsoft, for *that* headache!--or if it was rounded correctly, and they just wanted the number to be that extra hundredth of a percent higher.)
... But the problem is multifold. Your users are used to software doing things 'wrong'. They are used to your department doing things 'wrong', and they may even be used to you doing things 'wrong'. Fixing that attitude can be a trick, and will require work on both ends (yours especially, since you must change their perception of you). Try to be transparent and up front about what can or cannot be done. Exercise due diligence in error reports--it may be your fault! Admit mistakes and fix them quickly. Make sure that your users understand the importance of requirements and specifications, i.e. if the report behaves as specified, but it's still 'wrong', then the problem is not with the report but with the specifications for same. Get user sign-off and buy-in at the design phase (this will be very difficult). When you get sign-off, hold them to it. It's their report: they need to take some responsibility for making sure that business changes are communicated to you clearly and in a timely fashion so that you can keep it up to date. So on and so forth. Push back when necessary, and be humble.
Or the conversation in which I explained the problems inherent in data duplication and during which I was assured that a particular piece of information would always be entered once, in one level of the data hierarchy. And then having to go back a month later and code around their unwillingness to stick it in the correct level of the hierarchy.
Or
Oh, and tact, charm, patience, and humility at all times. I pretty much fail at those, but you need anybody who deals directly with users to have a lot of them and at will.
This all assumes that buck-passing isn't just SOP at your workplace, though. If that's the case, it's going to take a lot more to not be saddled with blame for every possible thing that can be shoved on you.
I don't even see how this is relevant, but I wonder if Google's policy wrt temps isn't just that, if they aren't willing to hire you after a year, you're probably not worth keeping around?
It's just an efficient hashing algorithm.
Well, you'd be wrong. But keep rebelling against the man, and, I'm sure, someday you'll be right, justifying, long after the fact, all those long years of paranoid delusion.
Just because development is only paid for once, you can't assume that it's actually free. This isn't like Big-O notation, constant values don't necessarily amortize out to nothing just because you sold several hundred thousand units. Development costs on games are exceeding twenty million dollars for AAA titles. Supposing you sell 10 million copies (and that's a lot of copies--Super Mario Brothers sold 40 million, but most of the top 20 best selling video games sold well under 10 million), that gets down to $2/unit. Supposing you sell only 500 thousand, though, it's more like $40/unit. Not many titles will break a million units, so these costs can't be hand-waved away.
They're probably average figures. If you want to talk about extreme scenarios, then, yes, a game that fails to sell will probably spend over 100% of revenue on development, and a game that sells like mad will spend much less. In fact, if your game sells really poorly, you probably take a loss on almost everything that isn't strictly per-unit-sold. And, contra that, if you make Halo, your costs, even if astronomical in terms of absolute dollars, will be far outweighed by revenues.
Up-front costs (development time, art, design, etc) are probably scaled according to sales estimates, and probably some of the other costs (marketing, say) scale similarly in terms of absolute dollars. Others (licensing, publishing, distribution) are or include per unit, rather than per title, fees or are so far amortized (hardware, management) that the number of units of a particular title sold will probably not greatly change the amount they affect the price.
But this is probably all Business 101-type stuff, and you're attempting to argue against a generality with specifics. It's like claiming that the existence of the Manx means that cats don't have tails.
From the article: 45% of revenue goes to development costs of various sorts: art, programming, engineering, design, etc. Everything that it takes to get from having nothing at all to having a salable product. Retailers get about 20%, or $12. Of the retailer's $12, at least $11 goes to cover various operating costs associated with having a storefront. That shouldn't be a surprise: it's been known for a while now that videogames are a loss leader for many stores, and that the real money in video game sales is in used games, not in new ones.
.3% and hardware development costs .05%. Retailers take a large chunk, but it's not the largest chunk.
There's another 11.5% in console licensing fees. The article implies that these may be waived for exclusivity of the title. I'd bet the fee varies depending on which console you're looking at, but it's probably comparable across the board. Marketing will eat up another 12% of the revenue, licensing an additional 5% (expect that amount to wind up in the marketing budget if the property is original), packaging 5%, publisher and distributer 3% between them (about a buck each per unit sold, it looks like), management and corporate overhead
The point at which a developer can rake in money on their own is when they successfully establish an original property. When that happens, they get the smaller marketing budget associated with a licensable property, but they're essentially licensing it from themselves, so they can pocket that 5% that would otherwise go to, e.g., LucasArts or Marvel Entertainment.
I don't think you realize the cost of what you are suggesting..
Not entirely, no. That is in keeping with Slashdot's long and storied traditions, of course.
The article doesn't actually say what pressure the air will be stored under, only that "90m3 [sic] of compressed air [will be] stored in fibre tanks." Someone a bit sharper than I could probably make a reasonable guess, though. I mostly figure that (until infrastructure builds up, and I think that major infrastructure for compressed air cars is a somewhat dubious proposition) the air compressor would pay for itself in gas not burned in the car.
who saw the headline and thought they were talking about the Moller Aircar? Did no-one else experience the small spasm in disappointment when they realised that flying cars were not, in fact, the order of the day?
Actually, just having a hefty air compressor at home would take care of the commuting scenario. Air it up each evening. Otherwise, though, you are pretty much stuck, unless you're going to take a load of quarters anywhere you go to operate the air pumps at the gas station. (I'm not sure a portable air compressor is likely to do the PSI needed.) Should have pretty of spare mileage to get the groceries, but long trips are a no-no unless the infrastructure builds up some.
Let us assume, for the moment, that I'm not in the business of killing off one or more hemispheres' worth of people. Or, at least, that I have some ulterior motive for not wanting the super-volcano to go kerplooie, like not wanting to die or something equally mundane.
Please rest assured that I have learned well from the examples of my forebears in the villainy biz and will not be revealing my plan until after I have shot the super-spy and properly disposed of his body by feeding it through a power mulcher and then into an incinerator.
I've been wondering about that for a while. Seems like it would be far preferable to open up a couple of normal volcanos as pressure releases on the hot spot below, even assuming they'd go, day and night, for centuries. Don't know enough about it to guess whether or not that would just blow the whole thing wide open, though, like popping a balloon. That would be a sub-optimal result.