When you make this argument, it may get a rah-rah from the slashdot crowd, but the people making the decisions think they are doing the right thing by their own criteria.
Exactly. They THINK they are doing the right thing. But they've been so out of touch with what's going on in the trenches they don't really know what's going on. They're more interested in reporting to the CFO, CTO, etc to say "yeah, everything is ok". And maybe I should stop saying "they" considering I was one of those decision-makers. I've been under them, I've been one, I've been consulting them. I've seen it from all sides. Many times, corporate politics play more into these decisions than actual performance.
Studies show that an increase in the volume of traffic in LA County highways has lead to more congestion and longer commute times and slower driving. Profound!
Well, except when O.J. is driving. Then it's just slow driving.
It's sad...for now at least...that so many people in the IT world know all this. For us, it's a "yeah...I've seen this article or one like it a dozen times in the past month or two". All very good points are made. But the problem, or problems still exist. We still have to get all this knowledge to Corporate America. And even once that's done, we have to convince IT Directors that this is the way to go. There are many reasons they would fight this...they're still going on what they know about pre-OS X Mac technologies and implementations (which sucked compared to what they are now), job security, fighting THEIR bosses, and so forth. It's all a worthy fight, and it seems like such a black-and-white "no shit" solution to us...but "us" is a different group and we still have businessmen, stubborn IT Directors, etc to fight with to get these points known.
Great...now we have to wait a whole week just to see what is released. iTunes sounds good, but what else do they have up their sleeve?
The bigger wait though is maybe a month or so...to see just how well it does. iTunes Music Store was a wild success the first day, the time to their milestone song sales, and so forth. All done on machines that command a mere 5% of the market share. So...what happens when the other 95% gets to play?
Sounds good and all, but my skeptical side is about to come out again. Are we really going to go with the cheap $1.00 solution? I'm guessing NASA (or some other agency) will spend about $2.5 million on testing to make sure all the components of the brush are safe, will withstand radiation in space, won't react with the glue or the tiles, etc. Then all of a sudden we're up to $200 brushes (which are really exactly the same as the painter's brushes). Don't get me wrong...I like the fact we found a nice cheap solution and can repair on the fly (theoretically), but we know how the government is...
They best thing about the RIAA's strategy is that their heavy-handed tactics have brought them to the mainstream press and now has A LOT of people pissed at them. Before, it was just rumbling amongst the geeks and a few other industry players. But suing 12-year olds, suing thousands of people, going after anyone and everyone with reckless abandon, has forced even the most average news-reading Joe to go "man...what a bunch of sleezeballs". Had the RIAA kept this an underground fight and sued more discriminately, they may have succeeded in their scare campaign. Luckily they didn't and now that it's in the mainstream press maybe something will be done to halt their actions.
Let's see what happens after a year or so. First, the whole security thing is a BIG issue now. It's no longer a discussion amongst geeks. As more and more companies and the government buckle down on their security initiatives, they will either force Microsoft to have a secure browser (anyone want to predict the probability this will happen?) or they will abandon IE for more secure browsers.
Safari is making (understatement?) inroads on the Mac side and Macs are picking up momentum. Safari can tandem on that aspect alone.
Let's not forget...the tide really can change. Remember when Netscape was the undeniable champion? Look where they are now. Who's to say this can't happen to IE?
There are TWO issues here - people treating games as art, and game developers treating games as art. If the latter does not happen, then there's no reason to expect the former to. In today's industry, I would argue that the latter happens "sometimes".
This quote right here is the one that caught my attention. It had me thinking to other industries though. For instance...wine labels. Art or simple packaging? There are some nice wine labels out there that I would classify as art in a heartbeat. Others are just labels smacked on with pretty pictures. I myself think that games have the potential to have every aspect of them treated as art. The visuals. The sounds and music. The interaction...they can all be viewed as art. If done correctly, that is. My opinion though is that it's got to be a blatant abuse of the system to not be considered art. There's a lot of creativity that goes into making a game, not just coding. And in my opinion, if it requires creativity it can be viewed as art.
I like to think of myself as old school when it comes to research. I can find most anything I want at the library and find exactly what I need. I find the Internet to be rather time-consuming at times and sometimes a big crap shoot.
However...the Internet is my main source of info because I don't have an encyclopedia lying around the house. I seemed to have lost my dictionary and thesaurus on my last move too. Hence...the net is where I go. Given the fact you can search for info at home or work, it makes it convenient. Plus you can always ask your friends to search the Internet too and send you the results. I still like encyclopedias though...they're cool.
Oh great. Does that mean all those soccer moms driving around in their Ticonderoga Class SUVs chatting away on the phone will get into accidents quicker now? Yay! "I'm just out shopping. I've got a splitting headache though. Oh look, I just ran over a small car. Quick! Get out of here!" Egads...
Man...I know of people who have found some way cool stuff in dumpsters. TVs, computers, furniture, other office equipment, etc. Does that mean you can get arrested now for divin' if you're in NH? Not cool.
Imagine the irony of ironies though...what if you were divin', a cop catches ya, finds marijuana, but it's from the dumpster. Oh the humanity...
Standards are nice. It's a cryin' shame nobody follows them though. Sure, it takes considerably longer to make your site standards-compliant and geeze, we can't cut into our bottome line, can we? We gotta get that site out right away. Screw Mac users. Or screw AOL users. Let's just code for IE. It's a nice dream but unfortunately I don't see it being used in the real world.
Another unfortunate tidbit...I work for one of those places. I know the aggrivation of trying to get compliance through to people who just won't listen. *sigh*
This poses quite an interesting dilema for Microsoft. Yes, they are indeed losing money on every XBox sold. But that's not a concern for them...they have deep pockets and what they really want to do is populate the land with XBox units. But...would they fare better by reducing the price? Yes, they would lose more money on each unit sold, but if their ultimate goal is to gain market share, why not? PS2 is already kicking their ass and if they expect to have any chance, they better do something different. Their current business model isn't doing it for them yet.
We just have to give it time. Yeah, right now, ion propulsion isn't the most efficient or fastest way of travel. But given more use, more people will be interested in perfecting it. Remember when solar panels had such low energy converstion rates? They're much better now. I could give a million other examples, but you get my point. We can't rely on the old methods of travel forever.
It would be nice to use all these nice, clean, efficient methods of generating electricity but I can't help having a little skepticism. It's amazing what a little political involvement, some lobbying, and big bucks can do. It's really sad that we can't truly preserve the planet because of the deep pockets of some major oil companies.
"Oops, our tanker just leaked some crude and it somehow sank down and ruined your generators. sorry"
Quite quite ironic. After everyone (me included) posted how great it is to snag a Mac update the minute it comes out and how Windows updates usually go for days or weeks until they are installed for fear of breaking something that isn't broken. Guess we should all keep our mouths shut and stop jinxing ourselves. Damnit! (luckily mine seems to be fine on a 500 MHz TiBook *knock on wood*)
You are exactly right. I still have the little "update is needed" icon up on my computer at work (Win2000). I just don't feel safe installing those things as soon as they pop up (which is ironic, 'cause that's what everyone was bitching about with the Blaster Worm. "You have to install these things right away". Suuuuure...). Yet I got home last night, checked mail and Slashdot and saw the update. So I promptly prepped my TiBook for the update without even thinking twice about it.
And here I am back at work...I'm still not going to do that Windows update. It scares me...
I pretty much expected to see the PS2 numbers squashing XBox, especially in Japan and such. I wanted to see the numbers, ponder marketing, social differences, etc. But when I saw the GBA sales also crushing XBox, that's what surprised me. I remember when Game Boy was just a fun little portable thing to play Tetris on. To see it blowing away the XBox in sales is cool...interesting and cool. Now to ponder what this all means in the grand scheme of things and if there will ever be another competitor to GBA (well, Game Boy had some at least).
That's a toughie. I'm all about my privacy. Yet it would be nice knowing I could be safe. Could this be a criminal deterrent? Maybe. But damn...if I get a bit drunk and decide to walk home instead of driving and then someone notices me on the camera and nabs me for public intoxication, that's no fun.
I kinda agree that "it's in the public domain so act accordingly". I definitely think we need to discuss this more. Am I off my rocker here?
Yeah...people are cutting down on music filesharing. Sure. Just like people stopped drinking during Prohibition. Riiiight. People just don't do it as blatantly and openly as they used to.
Yipee! Soon they'll have a way to hook up my solar powered scientific calculator. Then I can trade formulas and answers (wait...that would be wrong) with friends from Carnegie Mellong AND MIT. Awww yeah!
"and when we can force them to become productive members of society?"
We're not going to be able to force anyone to be productive members of society. "Hey, you. Stop spamming. Do good". Won't happen.
I also believe the so called "white collar criminals" that bilk millions of dollars from corporations and investors and such should get jail time too, along with the other criminals. Who knows how many lives they've ruined by their greed. Hell, their negligence probably CAUSED some down-and-out fathers to resort to crime. Just because they didn't use a gun doesn't mean they don't deserve jail time. Perhaps the same is true for spammers. Just because they aren't violent doesn't mean they don't deserve to be punished or have enough of a threat of a nasty punishment to deter them.
I noticed they can get jail time in Italy. Cool. So jail time and fines in Italy. Fines in the UK. I wonder what the US will do besides say "spam is bad...don't do it" or "spam is bad. It's not spam if you have an opt-out option". Oh I hope these set good precedents.
Slashdot Mirror
When you make this argument, it may get a rah-rah from the slashdot crowd, but the people making the decisions think they are doing the right thing by their own criteria.
Exactly. They THINK they are doing the right thing. But they've been so out of touch with what's going on in the trenches they don't really know what's going on. They're more interested in reporting to the CFO, CTO, etc to say "yeah, everything is ok". And maybe I should stop saying "they" considering I was one of those decision-makers. I've been under them, I've been one, I've been consulting them. I've seen it from all sides. Many times, corporate politics play more into these decisions than actual performance.
Studies show that an increase in the volume of traffic in LA County highways has lead to more congestion and longer commute times and slower driving. Profound!
Well, except when O.J. is driving. Then it's just slow driving.
Seriously though...WTF? Duh.
It's sad...for now at least...that so many people in the IT world know all this. For us, it's a "yeah...I've seen this article or one like it a dozen times in the past month or two". All very good points are made. But the problem, or problems still exist. We still have to get all this knowledge to Corporate America. And even once that's done, we have to convince IT Directors that this is the way to go. There are many reasons they would fight this...they're still going on what they know about pre-OS X Mac technologies and implementations (which sucked compared to what they are now), job security, fighting THEIR bosses, and so forth. It's all a worthy fight, and it seems like such a black-and-white "no shit" solution to us...but "us" is a different group and we still have businessmen, stubborn IT Directors, etc to fight with to get these points known.
Great...now we have to wait a whole week just to see what is released. iTunes sounds good, but what else do they have up their sleeve?
The bigger wait though is maybe a month or so...to see just how well it does. iTunes Music Store was a wild success the first day, the time to their milestone song sales, and so forth. All done on machines that command a mere 5% of the market share. So...what happens when the other 95% gets to play?
Sounds good and all, but my skeptical side is about to come out again. Are we really going to go with the cheap $1.00 solution? I'm guessing NASA (or some other agency) will spend about $2.5 million on testing to make sure all the components of the brush are safe, will withstand radiation in space, won't react with the glue or the tiles, etc. Then all of a sudden we're up to $200 brushes (which are really exactly the same as the painter's brushes). Don't get me wrong...I like the fact we found a nice cheap solution and can repair on the fly (theoretically), but we know how the government is...
They best thing about the RIAA's strategy is that their heavy-handed tactics have brought them to the mainstream press and now has A LOT of people pissed at them. Before, it was just rumbling amongst the geeks and a few other industry players. But suing 12-year olds, suing thousands of people, going after anyone and everyone with reckless abandon, has forced even the most average news-reading Joe to go "man...what a bunch of sleezeballs". Had the RIAA kept this an underground fight and sued more discriminately, they may have succeeded in their scare campaign. Luckily they didn't and now that it's in the mainstream press maybe something will be done to halt their actions.
Let's see what happens after a year or so. First, the whole security thing is a BIG issue now. It's no longer a discussion amongst geeks. As more and more companies and the government buckle down on their security initiatives, they will either force Microsoft to have a secure browser (anyone want to predict the probability this will happen?) or they will abandon IE for more secure browsers.
Safari is making (understatement?) inroads on the Mac side and Macs are picking up momentum. Safari can tandem on that aspect alone.
Let's not forget...the tide really can change. Remember when Netscape was the undeniable champion? Look where they are now. Who's to say this can't happen to IE?
There are TWO issues here - people treating games as art, and game developers treating games as art. If the latter does not happen, then there's no reason to expect the former to. In today's industry, I would argue that the latter happens "sometimes".
This quote right here is the one that caught my attention. It had me thinking to other industries though. For instance...wine labels. Art or simple packaging? There are some nice wine labels out there that I would classify as art in a heartbeat. Others are just labels smacked on with pretty pictures. I myself think that games have the potential to have every aspect of them treated as art. The visuals. The sounds and music. The interaction...they can all be viewed as art. If done correctly, that is. My opinion though is that it's got to be a blatant abuse of the system to not be considered art. There's a lot of creativity that goes into making a game, not just coding. And in my opinion, if it requires creativity it can be viewed as art.
I like to think of myself as old school when it comes to research. I can find most anything I want at the library and find exactly what I need. I find the Internet to be rather time-consuming at times and sometimes a big crap shoot.
However...the Internet is my main source of info because I don't have an encyclopedia lying around the house. I seemed to have lost my dictionary and thesaurus on my last move too. Hence...the net is where I go. Given the fact you can search for info at home or work, it makes it convenient. Plus you can always ask your friends to search the Internet too and send you the results. I still like encyclopedias though...they're cool.
"subjects had better memory and reaction times"
Oh great. Does that mean all those soccer moms driving around in their Ticonderoga Class SUVs chatting away on the phone will get into accidents quicker now? Yay! "I'm just out shopping. I've got a splitting headache though. Oh look, I just ran over a small car. Quick! Get out of here!" Egads...
Man...I know of people who have found some way cool stuff in dumpsters. TVs, computers, furniture, other office equipment, etc. Does that mean you can get arrested now for divin' if you're in NH? Not cool.
Imagine the irony of ironies though...what if you were divin', a cop catches ya, finds marijuana, but it's from the dumpster. Oh the humanity...
Standards are nice. It's a cryin' shame nobody follows them though. Sure, it takes considerably longer to make your site standards-compliant and geeze, we can't cut into our bottome line, can we? We gotta get that site out right away. Screw Mac users. Or screw AOL users. Let's just code for IE. It's a nice dream but unfortunately I don't see it being used in the real world.
Another unfortunate tidbit...I work for one of those places. I know the aggrivation of trying to get compliance through to people who just won't listen. *sigh*
I saw that Microsoft actually CHARGES money for their products. Good googly!
Now for the question...am I a troll or funny? Or just a funny looking troll? Wait...I think we all are. Crap.
This poses quite an interesting dilema for Microsoft. Yes, they are indeed losing money on every XBox sold. But that's not a concern for them...they have deep pockets and what they really want to do is populate the land with XBox units. But...would they fare better by reducing the price? Yes, they would lose more money on each unit sold, but if their ultimate goal is to gain market share, why not? PS2 is already kicking their ass and if they expect to have any chance, they better do something different. Their current business model isn't doing it for them yet.
We just have to give it time. Yeah, right now, ion propulsion isn't the most efficient or fastest way of travel. But given more use, more people will be interested in perfecting it. Remember when solar panels had such low energy converstion rates? They're much better now. I could give a million other examples, but you get my point. We can't rely on the old methods of travel forever.
It would be nice to use all these nice, clean, efficient methods of generating electricity but I can't help having a little skepticism. It's amazing what a little political involvement, some lobbying, and big bucks can do. It's really sad that we can't truly preserve the planet because of the deep pockets of some major oil companies.
"Oops, our tanker just leaked some crude and it somehow sank down and ruined your generators. sorry"
First there is "Like something out of the Jetsons"
then it says "Europe and Asia have several already."
So Europe and Asia are far ahead in time, with cool futuristic things and the US is in the Stone Age still?
Quite quite ironic. After everyone (me included) posted how great it is to snag a Mac update the minute it comes out and how Windows updates usually go for days or weeks until they are installed for fear of breaking something that isn't broken. Guess we should all keep our mouths shut and stop jinxing ourselves. Damnit! (luckily mine seems to be fine on a 500 MHz TiBook *knock on wood*)
You are exactly right. I still have the little "update is needed" icon up on my computer at work (Win2000). I just don't feel safe installing those things as soon as they pop up (which is ironic, 'cause that's what everyone was bitching about with the Blaster Worm. "You have to install these things right away". Suuuuure...). Yet I got home last night, checked mail and Slashdot and saw the update. So I promptly prepped my TiBook for the update without even thinking twice about it.
And here I am back at work...I'm still not going to do that Windows update. It scares me...
I pretty much expected to see the PS2 numbers squashing XBox, especially in Japan and such. I wanted to see the numbers, ponder marketing, social differences, etc. But when I saw the GBA sales also crushing XBox, that's what surprised me. I remember when Game Boy was just a fun little portable thing to play Tetris on. To see it blowing away the XBox in sales is cool...interesting and cool. Now to ponder what this all means in the grand scheme of things and if there will ever be another competitor to GBA (well, Game Boy had some at least).
That's a toughie. I'm all about my privacy. Yet it would be nice knowing I could be safe. Could this be a criminal deterrent? Maybe. But damn...if I get a bit drunk and decide to walk home instead of driving and then someone notices me on the camera and nabs me for public intoxication, that's no fun.
I kinda agree that "it's in the public domain so act accordingly". I definitely think we need to discuss this more. Am I off my rocker here?
Yeah...people are cutting down on music filesharing. Sure. Just like people stopped drinking during Prohibition. Riiiight. People just don't do it as blatantly and openly as they used to.
Yipee! Soon they'll have a way to hook up my solar powered scientific calculator. Then I can trade formulas and answers (wait...that would be wrong) with friends from Carnegie Mellong AND MIT. Awww yeah!
"and when we can force them to become productive members of society?"
We're not going to be able to force anyone to be productive members of society. "Hey, you. Stop spamming. Do good". Won't happen.
I also believe the so called "white collar criminals" that bilk millions of dollars from corporations and investors and such should get jail time too, along with the other criminals. Who knows how many lives they've ruined by their greed. Hell, their negligence probably CAUSED some down-and-out fathers to resort to crime. Just because they didn't use a gun doesn't mean they don't deserve jail time. Perhaps the same is true for spammers. Just because they aren't violent doesn't mean they don't deserve to be punished or have enough of a threat of a nasty punishment to deter them.
I noticed they can get jail time in Italy. Cool. So jail time and fines in Italy. Fines in the UK. I wonder what the US will do besides say "spam is bad...don't do it" or "spam is bad. It's not spam if you have an opt-out option". Oh I hope these set good precedents.