This is a very extreme example. Also this employer was behaving criminally, which is very different from most people in bad job situations. The OP is unhappy in his job, not his career. If I'm not happy with my job. (like now) I start looking for a new job. (like I am now) I've already had one interview that is looking really good, and I have two more lined up. So I'll be able to make a nice seamless transition. No financial trauma, no unemployment. In your friend's situation he was in an intolerable situation with criminal employers. He needed to leave, damn the consequences. If my employers start change everything to make it a job I don't want to do, I just look for a new one. Very different situations.
Amen to the quick fix problem. Our management hates The Right Way and loves the quick (cheap) fix. If we had done things right three years ago instead of just putting things off with quick fixes things would not be the clusterfuck they are now. Suffice to say that when you have five customers "oh, just recode the xml by hand when things change" works great. Three years later, when you have fifty, you're going to really wish you had listened to all your people that said that time and money needed to be invested in a dynamic system and integrated back end. Now you are stuck with every customer deliverable working in a totally different way, hand coded to serve specific needs. Support is a nightmare and its going to cost a fortune to try and kludge The Right Way on to an old quick fix. Oh, and the "just share a license for photoshop until there's money for more seats" is great for two people in creative. But now you have 20, and its going to cost fifty grand to get compliant. ARRRRRGH managers! But I guess this is just my own OT bitching....
It isn't that big of a reach. People forget that iTunes started with an aquisition: Soundjam MP. Why start from scratch with a set top box when someone else has done most of the grunt work? Given that Tivo runs on linux PPC and MIPS (series I & II) I would imagine the code is fairly portable. And getting it to run on darwin would likely be fairly trivial. If Tivo is a good buy Apple can really save money and time to market by aquiring them.
I know this is slightly OT, but our office has a multifunction device (page breaks in firefox. get with the program canon!) that really is great at all tasks. The scanner is only useful for documents/ocr, but it works great for that. It is a great printer and the fax and photocopier features are superior to our old copier and fax machine. Perhaps the crappy consumer grade multifuntion machines suck, but I think the scanner/copier/printer is a great solution for most small offices.
Hmmm. You know what? This is the most worthless analogy I've read in a while. Microsoft and the Soviet Union have just about nothing in common. People have called them both "The Evil Empire". But I think that is it. But at least you got your pointless dig on the "Democratic Senators" and the New York Times. Good for you.
Unless, of course, said degree is offered at a four year university that requires a diverse array of general education requirements...I agree with you 100%, but USC is not a trade school. They do try to produce well rounded grads. (but then again, I went there...)
This is a flame bait, right? Because you can't be serious. US News ranks USC as the #30 in america's best colleges...(yes, I am a usc grad. A usc cinema grad, no less)
I agree with you on this. My company does e-learning with flash and it is a great tool (just don't use it for your website people, its not a good way to deliver static content). Flex looks amazing as well. But I must say that I hope it fails because I don't want one company to control so much. I'd rather have web-based apps use XUL.
They are a very old Libertarian think tank. They have an agenda and an axe to grind. They believe that all legislation regulating the economy is bad. It would be unlikely that they would reach a conclusion that anti-trust laws are a good thing.
Photoshop has no competition. They live in a monopoly and can charge whatever they want. Maya has dropped in price about 92% (really) since the 1.0 release, largely in response to competition. I don't think Alias has very high margins on that product....your analogy is very poor.
The difference here is a)This article is not a claim, its a poor distillation of a patent app and b) This other company is involved. This list seems to indicate they might know something about fast processors. And possibly more than the average slashdot poster.
For those people who are jumping on some sort of strange psychosexual projecting with this thing (it looks like a tampon! it looks like a dildo! Its the iphallus!). It has corners. It is rectangular. Has the stick of gum become the new shape of male virility? When the hell did that happen? And how?
I wish there was a level editor that had an interface like maya. I could build a simple level in about ten minutes with maya that would take hours with radiant. The 3d views are universally very difficult to navigate, selection tools suck and working in the 3d view in near impossible.
Why do conservatives assume that their pesonal success is 100% a result of their own effort and that those who aren't succesful can be blamed for their own failures? Oh, and by the way, your analogy sucks.
I think we actually do need to unionize. The reason that SAG was formed was that actors were facing a similar situation. They had highly desirable jobs and as a result they were being exploited because in an employment market like that the worker has no leverage at all. SAG has also worked it out so that overseas production does not hurt them, because if one cast member is union the whole show has to be union. (and union rules and wages).
HAHAHAHAHA. OVertime?! What overtime? We are all overtime exempt. We don't get shit for working over time. Management just expects us to do it or sets goals that can't be met otherwise. All we get is a handshake and to keep our jobs.
If you're a game studio, and you demand sane milestones, the publishing house won't sign the contract. And that means you don't even get into the buffet line, let alone eat.
And this is CRAZY. The system is just going to break itself. Actually it probably won't. It will just ship overseas to cheaper wages. This is something that is happening in the US economy that is frankly unsustainable. It already happened to manufacturing. Retailers (walmart, target, best buy) drove prices down and down. If suppliers could make a profit at the price point the retailers set too bad for them. This has driven most manufacturing overseas. The same thing happens with video games. (and movies, and tv production, and call centers and everything else) The publishers want to make profits. If the studios can't also make a profit they are screwed.
Basically companies are driven very hard to make huge profits and they do what it takes to achieve that goal. If it fucks everyone else in the process, too bad.
Well the problem with crunch time is that management saw that they could get people to work twice the hours for the same pay. To them it sounds like they are doubling (or at least increasing) productiviy for free. Quarterly profits are up, stock price is up and damn the consequences. Welcome to corporate america.
My feeling about artists (I am also a 3d artist) being expected to work at least 50 hours a week on any job and then 80 at crunch time: fuck that.
I'm sorry, but that is just plain exploitation. I think as a group we need to realize that we have a skill, not everyone can do what we do and we should not have to put up with low salaries and crazy hours. At my company the new approach is to hire the youngest most inexperienced people available, pay them $30k and work them into the ground. At places like EA they find young, inexperienced and very talented people and suck out their will to live. I have known a lot of people that have gone off to find new careers about the time they got married or had kids because they could not afford to work at a job that paid pretty low for a skilled job and required hours that are incompatible with having a life.
There was a panel on this at SIGGRAPH and the basic conclusion of the panel (except the australian) was that if you don't want to make your work your life you are in the wrong business. The australian thought that artists ought to be able to have a life too. I don't have a conclusion, but I must say that it really pisses me off the way workers are treated in our industry. The feeling seems to be that our jobs are so great we should just be happy to have them and if we don't like it there are "hundreds of people just waiting to get your job". Unless we get together and put our collective foot down nothing is going to change.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a very extreme example. Also this employer was behaving criminally, which is very different from most people in bad job situations. The OP is unhappy in his job, not his career. If I'm not happy with my job. (like now) I start looking for a new job. (like I am now) I've already had one interview that is looking really good, and I have two more lined up. So I'll be able to make a nice seamless transition. No financial trauma, no unemployment. In your friend's situation he was in an intolerable situation with criminal employers. He needed to leave, damn the consequences. If my employers start change everything to make it a job I don't want to do, I just look for a new one. Very different situations.
Amen to the quick fix problem. Our management hates The Right Way and loves the quick (cheap) fix. If we had done things right three years ago instead of just putting things off with quick fixes things would not be the clusterfuck they are now. Suffice to say that when you have five customers "oh, just recode the xml by hand when things change" works great. Three years later, when you have fifty, you're going to really wish you had listened to all your people that said that time and money needed to be invested in a dynamic system and integrated back end. Now you are stuck with every customer deliverable working in a totally different way, hand coded to serve specific needs. Support is a nightmare and its going to cost a fortune to try and kludge The Right Way on to an old quick fix. Oh, and the "just share a license for photoshop until there's money for more seats" is great for two people in creative. But now you have 20, and its going to cost fifty grand to get compliant. ARRRRRGH managers! But I guess this is just my own OT bitching....
It isn't that big of a reach. People forget that iTunes started with an aquisition: Soundjam MP. Why start from scratch with a set top box when someone else has done most of the grunt work? Given that Tivo runs on linux PPC and MIPS (series I & II) I would imagine the code is fairly portable. And getting it to run on darwin would likely be fairly trivial. If Tivo is a good buy Apple can really save money and time to market by aquiring them.
I know this is slightly OT, but our office has a multifunction device (page breaks in firefox. get with the program canon!) that really is great at all tasks. The scanner is only useful for documents/ocr, but it works great for that. It is a great printer and the fax and photocopier features are superior to our old copier and fax machine. Perhaps the crappy consumer grade multifuntion machines suck, but I think the scanner/copier/printer is a great solution for most small offices.
Nope. Doesn't work. Itunes is too smart for that.
Hmmm. You know what? This is the most worthless analogy I've read in a while. Microsoft and the Soviet Union have just about nothing in common. People have called them both "The Evil Empire". But I think that is it. But at least you got your pointless dig on the "Democratic Senators" and the New York Times. Good for you.
Unless, of course, said degree is offered at a four year university that requires a diverse array of general education requirements...I agree with you 100%, but USC is not a trade school. They do try to produce well rounded grads. (but then again, I went there...)
This is a flame bait, right? Because you can't be serious. US News ranks USC as the #30 in america's best colleges...(yes, I am a usc grad. A usc cinema grad, no less)
Reputable electronics shop? Tottenham Court Road? Does not compute...
I agree with you on this. My company does e-learning with flash and it is a great tool (just don't use it for your website people, its not a good way to deliver static content). Flex looks amazing as well. But I must say that I hope it fails because I don't want one company to control so much. I'd rather have web-based apps use XUL.
They are a very old Libertarian think tank. They have an agenda and an axe to grind. They believe that all legislation regulating the economy is bad. It would be unlikely that they would reach a conclusion that anti-trust laws are a good thing.
Photoshop has no competition. They live in a monopoly and can charge whatever they want. Maya has dropped in price about 92% (really) since the 1.0 release, largely in response to competition. I don't think Alias has very high margins on that product....your analogy is very poor.
The difference here is a)This article is not a claim, its a poor distillation of a patent app and b) This other company is involved. This list seems to indicate they might know something about fast processors. And possibly more than the average slashdot poster.
For those people who are jumping on some sort of strange psychosexual projecting with this thing (it looks like a tampon! it looks like a dildo! Its the iphallus!). It has corners. It is rectangular. Has the stick of gum become the new shape of male virility? When the hell did that happen? And how?
How did you get the software update already?
I wish there was a level editor that had an interface like maya. I could build a simple level in about ten minutes with maya that would take hours with radiant. The 3d views are universally very difficult to navigate, selection tools suck and working in the 3d view in near impossible.
Alright, here we go. A new slashdot running gag. How long before it gets old?
Really? That is good news. Where did you hear that?
Why do conservatives assume that their pesonal success is 100% a result of their own effort and that those who aren't succesful can be blamed for their own failures? Oh, and by the way, your analogy sucks.
I think we actually do need to unionize. The reason that SAG was formed was that actors were facing a similar situation. They had highly desirable jobs and as a result they were being exploited because in an employment market like that the worker has no leverage at all. SAG has also worked it out so that overseas production does not hurt them, because if one cast member is union the whole show has to be union. (and union rules and wages).
your health is worth more than the overtime.
HAHAHAHAHA. OVertime?! What overtime? We are all overtime exempt. We don't get shit for working over time. Management just expects us to do it or sets goals that can't be met otherwise. All we get is a handshake and to keep our jobs.
If you're a game studio, and you demand sane milestones, the publishing house won't sign the contract. And that means you don't even get into the buffet line, let alone eat.
And this is CRAZY. The system is just going to break itself. Actually it probably won't. It will just ship overseas to cheaper wages. This is something that is happening in the US economy that is frankly unsustainable. It already happened to manufacturing. Retailers (walmart, target, best buy) drove prices down and down. If suppliers could make a profit at the price point the retailers set too bad for them. This has driven most manufacturing overseas. The same thing happens with video games. (and movies, and tv production, and call centers and everything else) The publishers want to make profits. If the studios can't also make a profit they are screwed.
Basically companies are driven very hard to make huge profits and they do what it takes to achieve that goal. If it fucks everyone else in the process, too bad.
Well the problem with crunch time is that management saw that they could get people to work twice the hours for the same pay. To them it sounds like they are doubling (or at least increasing) productiviy for free. Quarterly profits are up, stock price is up and damn the consequences. Welcome to corporate america.
My feeling about artists (I am also a 3d artist) being expected to work at least 50 hours a week on any job and then 80 at crunch time: fuck that.
I'm sorry, but that is just plain exploitation. I think as a group we need to realize that we have a skill, not everyone can do what we do and we should not have to put up with low salaries and crazy hours. At my company the new approach is to hire the youngest most inexperienced people available, pay them $30k and work them into the ground. At places like EA they find young, inexperienced and very talented people and suck out their will to live. I have known a lot of people that have gone off to find new careers about the time they got married or had kids because they could not afford to work at a job that paid pretty low for a skilled job and required hours that are incompatible with having a life.
There was a panel on this at SIGGRAPH and the basic conclusion of the panel (except the australian) was that if you don't want to make your work your life you are in the wrong business. The australian thought that artists ought to be able to have a life too. I don't have a conclusion, but I must say that it really pisses me off the way workers are treated in our industry. The feeling seems to be that our jobs are so great we should just be happy to have them and if we don't like it there are "hundreds of people just waiting to get your job". Unless we get together and put our collective foot down nothing is going to change.
...If it's truth you're interested in, Doctor Tyree's Philosophy class is right down the hall