You know, if games, much like smoking, overeating, narcotics, and STDs throw a little chlorine in the gene pool, what's the problem? We're all ultimately better off that they aren't breeding.
Perhaps 10 years is a bit too soon, but at some point people are going to be less willing to deal with *ANY* UI. Voice activation all the way. (yes, yes, and it's been right around the corner for the last 30 years)
Not to belittle the mass readership of slashdot, but this is probably the wrong place to ask for usability advice. I make this statement because "technical" people are often more willing to adapt themselves to their tools vs ordinary users that demand their tools be adapted to them. Read the Tufte trio and other usability guides.
I would also suggest that anybody that uses UNIX by choice is not primarily concerned with usability.
Right on the money. I have problems with the gameplay, but they are minor. (500,000 culture and I still can't convert a level 1 city!) My big problem is performance. Even Civ3 was butt slow, but it played. I have a very new PC with a gig of ram and reasonable vid and I still have to have almost every graphical option turned off or down to stay playable.
For me to get 5 channels of HD, it would cost me $35/month, and that's just locals and ESPN. Discovery HD - $8/mo HBO HD $17/mo Showtime HD $15/mo. (pulled from memory, so may not be exactly right) Thankfully my aerial gets good reception, but my Tivo only records off cable. Grr...
IMHO, you got in a bit too late in the game. There is no place now for a local video game store, and your situation is only going to get worse unless you improvise, adapt and overcome.
Your biggest problem is that electronic distributio is now a matter of "when" and not "if." All the majors are going to cut out the middlemen and start selling games music and movies direct via broadband. Sony has already said that this is an important part of it's strategy for years to come, nd nintendo has promised it in THIS generation of games.
Your next problem is that the bit retailers have better profit margins and vendor relations. If the distributor has to choose between you getting your new Xboxes and Best buy getting them, you WILL lose.
Is it all bleak? Certainly not. Consider value-added services. Cyber-cafes make money, lots of it. You have people come in and use computers/games for $???/hr and you have a "pro shop" where they can buy their own to take home. Make it something akin to a bar where people can hang out and spend money, paying for the "ambiance." Retail is hard, and getting harder. Best of luck
It's awesome that people come up with all these great ideas to percieved social problems, but it's such a laughably unsafe idea that you have to scratch your head and wonder how this made it off the drawing board. The government of canada is *not capable* of determining the appropriate speed for people to be driving. Only a driver can make the decision in a given circumstance, and preventing them from doing so only makes the roads more dangerous.
In my grad school T/A school days, I had this problem. I had the easiest solution ever. No computers in the class. I can't imagine a lecture class where students are required to do something on a laptop, so nobody had one. Paper and pencil work just fine for taking notes.
Just stick with Office 97/2000/2002 Cheap, fully compatibility, and the features missing in 2003 are almost non-existant if you don't use sharepoint. Office 2000 is still on something like 65% of all corporate desktops worldwide according to microsoft.
Sure, poor nations don't need to spend a lot on software, but they sure as hell don't have a pool of talented administrators that can handle Unix. Outsourcing high-tech jobs is political suicide for poor countries, so they need people that can run their systems. I don't think that anybody here would dispute the fact that windows administrators can be trained faster, starting with less experience than unix admins.
I'll leave the curriculum to you, but I would suggest you teach the class from a business perspective, not as a preacher to a congregation. It's demeaning and unprofessional. It's important to make note that there are good reasons to use non-oss software, and that OSS is about the source, not the cost.
You can make a lot more money, but only if you have the business sense to do it. Get a lawyer and make sure that you own your code so you can sell it multiple times. That's how independant contractors make the big bank.
1a) Apple has sued a multitude of fan sites for distributing information ahead of schedule. 1b) The RIAA has sued fans, (many with no facts to back up their case) for activity that, while likely illegal certainly fits in a legal grey area at the moment.
2a) Apple has a long and tragic history of half-baked products and recalls of defective or just plain crappy parts. (laptop batteries, ipod batteries, ipod screens, superdrives, etc. They have alienated their developers and driven just about everybody off the platform except themselves. 2b) Te music industry put out a constrant stream of low-quality products. Yes this is my opinion, but declining sales and concert attendance can be interpreted as market agreement.
3) Apple computers routinely cost 1.5 - 2 x as much as a comparable PC, and have a library that is tragically limited in scope. They use their "monopoly" over their niche to charge premium prices. 3b)The record company has inflated prices far faster than inflation for no reason other than that they can and nobody is competing with them.
Sure, there is a healthy dose of opinion here, but I like to think that I'm not off on some wild tangent where a reasonable person can't follow.
Think worstcase scenario. A small nuclear explosion releases significant microwave radiation. Nt only that, but some electronic detection gear does not do good things to flash RAM. I would suggest a CD-ROM backup at some reasonable interval.
Well I can happily say that I would be just fine with both Apple and the music industry being destroyed. Both put out mediocre yet overpriced products, and take every opportunity to tighten their stranglehold on their own customers. They both fight innovaton and litigate against their own customers. Yes I'd be just fine with their collapse, but I'm also not holding my breath.
and have to clean up all the years of sloppy work that the "old guys" did. Spaghetti code, custom craplications, rewritten interpreters, bah. If knowing "how things work" means that you can narf it up better, then I'll go with my common sense and off the shelf software.
Why is it so hard to make AI in strategy games?
on
Ask Sid Meier
·
· Score: 1
Civilization has always had a very poor AI mechanism. Is "smart" AI something that you feel is impossible for strategy games more complex than Chess? Has adaptive AI ever been implemented well in a strategy game?
And while I'm on the topic, have you ever won a fair game of Civ 3 on "sid" difficulty?
The grass is always greenest over the septic tank
on
Pay vs. Happiness
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There is no reason to stick around for a job you don't like. If you can't find another job that you will like, then you aren't looking hard enough.
That said, perhaps you need to step back and ponder your situation a bit. Is it really the job that you don't like? Could it be that you just aren't good at it? Do your coworkers not like you? Do they have a good reason? Why do you think it's the company's job to make you happy?
These and other questions sound silly, but are crucialy important. You may like your job just fine, but be unhappy with your personal life. You may not mesh with others in your office. Maybe you would be happier starting your own business. Don't automatically assume that all your problems are the fault of someone else. The only consistant feature of every unsatisfying relationship that you have ever had is you. Something to ponder.
Did you all have one? Man, it was COOL! stereographic 3D was a great idea but way ahead of it's time. I'm gonna laugh when the PS4 comes standard with a stereo head-mounted display.
Sure it gave you headaches and the red got annoying real fast, but the concept was solid and innovative.
If you need a server, fine. Otherwise get yourself a wireless laptop with a bright screen and a comfy chaise lounge. Go outside. The fresh air will do you good.
Americans aren't perfect, but I don't think that ANYBODY could reasonably think that we are collectively lazy.
The US work week is tied for first as the longest in the industrialized world at an average of 2040 hours. (France is around 1400 by comparison)
Screwing around at work for 2 hours is extremely reasonable considering that tens of millions of Americans go home after work and keep on working. Then there's overrepresentation of young people by virtue of the fact that it's a web survey. Young people have a strong representation in the retail sector, where screwing off causes little to no economic loss to companies.
*In general*, if you work hard, you can get ahead. That's the American Dream, and people here are pretty good at it. Just check out the GNP.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, if games, much like smoking, overeating, narcotics, and STDs throw a little chlorine in the gene pool, what's the problem? We're all ultimately better off that they aren't breeding.
Perhaps 10 years is a bit too soon, but at some point people are going to be less willing to deal with *ANY* UI. Voice activation all the way. (yes, yes, and it's been right around the corner for the last 30 years)
I dunno, I always find it funny when the back cover advertizes a game that the magazine slams a few pages back. It happens all the time.
I would also suggest that anybody that uses UNIX by choice is not primarily concerned with usability.
Right on the money. I have problems with the gameplay, but they are minor. (500,000 culture and I still can't convert a level 1 city!) My big problem is performance. Even Civ3 was butt slow, but it played. I have a very new PC with a gig of ram and reasonable vid and I still have to have almost every graphical option turned off or down to stay playable.
...and Joe twelvepack gets the royaly screwjob
Your biggest problem is that electronic distributio is now a matter of "when" and not "if." All the majors are going to cut out the middlemen and start selling games music and movies direct via broadband. Sony has already said that this is an important part of it's strategy for years to come, nd nintendo has promised it in THIS generation of games.
Your next problem is that the bit retailers have better profit margins and vendor relations. If the distributor has to choose between you getting your new Xboxes and Best buy getting them, you WILL lose.
Is it all bleak? Certainly not. Consider value-added services. Cyber-cafes make money, lots of it. You have people come in and use computers/games for $???/hr and you have a "pro shop" where they can buy their own to take home. Make it something akin to a bar where people can hang out and spend money, paying for the "ambiance." Retail is hard, and getting harder. Best of luck
It's awesome that people come up with all these great ideas to percieved social problems, but it's such a laughably unsafe idea that you have to scratch your head and wonder how this made it off the drawing board. The government of canada is *not capable* of determining the appropriate speed for people to be driving. Only a driver can make the decision in a given circumstance, and preventing them from doing so only makes the roads more dangerous.
I have to totally disagree with the premise here. Windows 2000 runs *Just fine* on my K62-200
In my grad school T/A school days, I had this problem. I had the easiest solution ever. No computers in the class. I can't imagine a lecture class where students are required to do something on a laptop, so nobody had one. Paper and pencil work just fine for taking notes.
Just stick with Office 97/2000/2002
Cheap, fully compatibility, and the features missing in 2003 are almost non-existant if you don't use sharepoint. Office 2000 is still on something like 65% of all corporate desktops worldwide according to microsoft.
Sure, poor nations don't need to spend a lot on software, but they sure as hell don't have a pool of talented administrators that can handle Unix. Outsourcing high-tech jobs is political suicide for poor countries, so they need people that can run their systems. I don't think that anybody here would dispute the fact that windows administrators can be trained faster, starting with less experience than unix admins.
I'll leave the curriculum to you, but I would suggest you teach the class from a business perspective, not as a preacher to a congregation. It's demeaning and unprofessional. It's important to make note that there are good reasons to use non-oss software, and that OSS is about the source, not the cost.
You can make a lot more money, but only if you have the business sense to do it. Get a lawyer and make sure that you own your code so you can sell it multiple times. That's how independant contractors make the big bank.
1a) Apple has sued a multitude of fan sites for distributing information ahead of schedule.
1b) The RIAA has sued fans, (many with no facts to back up their case) for activity that, while likely illegal certainly fits in a legal grey area at the moment.
2a) Apple has a long and tragic history of half-baked products and recalls of defective or just plain crappy parts. (laptop batteries, ipod batteries, ipod screens, superdrives, etc. They have alienated their developers and driven just about everybody off the platform except themselves.
2b) Te music industry put out a constrant stream of low-quality products. Yes this is my opinion, but declining sales and concert attendance can be interpreted as market agreement.
3) Apple computers routinely cost 1.5 - 2 x as much as a comparable PC, and have a library that is tragically limited in scope. They use their "monopoly" over their niche to charge premium prices. 3b)The record company has inflated prices far faster than inflation for no reason other than that they can and nobody is competing with them.
Sure, there is a healthy dose of opinion here, but I like to think that I'm not off on some wild tangent where a reasonable person can't follow.
Think worstcase scenario. A small nuclear explosion releases significant microwave radiation. Nt only that, but some electronic detection gear does not do good things to flash RAM. I would suggest a CD-ROM backup at some reasonable interval.
Well I can happily say that I would be just fine with both Apple and the music industry being destroyed. Both put out mediocre yet overpriced products, and take every opportunity to tighten their stranglehold on their own customers. They both fight innovaton and litigate against their own customers. Yes I'd be just fine with their collapse, but I'm also not holding my breath.
and have to clean up all the years of sloppy work that the "old guys" did. Spaghetti code, custom craplications, rewritten interpreters, bah. If knowing "how things work" means that you can narf it up better, then I'll go with my common sense and off the shelf software.
And while I'm on the topic, have you ever won a fair game of Civ 3 on "sid" difficulty?
That said, perhaps you need to step back and ponder your situation a bit.
Is it really the job that you don't like?
Could it be that you just aren't good at it?
Do your coworkers not like you?
Do they have a good reason?
Why do you think it's the company's job to make you happy?
These and other questions sound silly, but are crucialy important. You may like your job just fine, but be unhappy with your personal life. You may not mesh with others in your office. Maybe you would be happier starting your own business. Don't automatically assume that all your problems are the fault of someone else. The only consistant feature of every unsatisfying relationship that you have ever had is you. Something to ponder.
It's called a Ski Mask. 100% protection from snooping cameras. Plus, you should see how much fun it is to go into the liquor store wearing it.
Sure it gave you headaches and the red got annoying real fast, but the concept was solid and innovative.
If you need a server, fine. Otherwise get yourself a wireless laptop with a bright screen and a comfy chaise lounge. Go outside. The fresh air will do you good.
At 26, I have a $600k home, 2 cars, a beautiful wife and a rewarding job, yet I don't know if I call myself happy.
I think that the drive that got me where I am is being overwhelemd by "old age" and the realization that "things" arent as important as having fun.
The US work week is tied for first as the longest in the industrialized world at an average of 2040 hours. (France is around 1400 by comparison)
Screwing around at work for 2 hours is extremely reasonable considering that tens of millions of Americans go home after work and keep on working. Then there's overrepresentation of young people by virtue of the fact that it's a web survey. Young people have a strong representation in the retail sector, where screwing off causes little to no economic loss to companies.
*In general*, if you work hard, you can get ahead. That's the American Dream, and people here are pretty good at it. Just check out the GNP.