The potential of IM is largely in cross-department and cross-company applications. When I IM Amazon asking about an order, Amazon is going to want to have a record of what they said, who said it, and when. And this goes even more so for commercial transactions. It will be important to retain, search, and re-use conversations.
Finally, in the financial services arena, this is required by law.
Of course, the next Arthur Andersen scandal will relate to the shredding of IM logs.
Heck, we survived the internet and solitaire. I think we will survive IM.
More suggestive is the "serious" use of IM happening on trading desks. Logged, secure, time critical IM. These are the folks who do not screw around. At least not at work. (;
You raise an interesting point in regard to my rather flip statement.
I think you have cites some interesting spots where this could be employed. However, I think, the games industry does not rise to that level. There is nothing going on that is not entirely optional, and further, any appropriate sanctions should be and are addressed by federal labor law.
A broader question, unaddressed, is what rises to the level that I as a consumer should pay attention. Certainly development process does not. Corrupt labor practices, unchecked by law, might.
While I'll grant that adverstising is a waste of resources on the grand scale [...]
No way. Advertising is about helping people find product. It's grease in the wheels of capitalism. It's only a waste in the sense that the cost of processing a check is a waste.
Some advertising is done poorly, and yes, I get spam too, but a lot of advertising is useful to me.
Just because the products are good doesn't mean the process is good. Look at sausage.
I disagree. There are two perspectives here, and we are switching between them. As a gamer, I could care less how screwed up the development process is (barring major immorality/illegality) as long as they make good games.
Further, I don't care if 99/100 games suck. I'll depend on friends, slashdot, gamespy, and sales figures and so forth to screen the wheat from the chaff.
And there is plenty of wheat out there. Counterstrike for goodness sake. WCIII and Starcraft. Civ, Sims. Everquest and all the clones. More than any serious person can ever play.
From the perspective of the developers, I sympathize. But I'd be a lot more interested in hearing how the WCIII add-in is going.
Conceptualizing Aliens
on
Ask Larry Niven
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
One of the aspects I enjoy about your fiction is that aliens (and other cultures) can be different without being one dimensional or stupid.
This is the basis for the famous George Carlin skit:
I enjoy comparing baseball and football:
Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.
Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park!
Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.
Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.
In football you wear a helmet.
In baseball you wear a cap.
Among other benefits, 64-bit chips let computer makers put more than 4GB of memory into computers, the current ceiling for 32-bit systems. More memory lets a computer run more ornate applications such as complex databases or graphically intense software.
A new standard for applications. Not effective, light weight, maintainable, fast, open source, secure, or easy to use. Ornate!
I have read a lot of studies that indicate piracy does not detract from corporate profits whatsoever.
This is a HUGE assertion. Let's see some links. This is the web!
I'm not buying the conflict of interest arguement. It's like arguing that obviously people must not be using cells instead of long distance because ATT is selling wireless.
The question is how important is what you're doing?
If Google screws up 1 in 1000 requests, I wouldn't even notice. Refresh and on my way.
Citibank trades roughly $1 Trillion in currency a day. If they had 5 9's accuracy, they would be misplacing $10,000,000 a day. In that environment, commodity machines are unacceptable.
And it scales down: paychecks? billing records? The video check-out at Blockbuster?
Re:What is an example that can't run in parallel?
on
Forget Moore's Law?
·
· Score: 1
Large scale Oracle databases, especially those supporting transactional information, don't parallelize well into multiple system images.
Making the systems parrallel radically increases the complexity. This is a necessary outgrowth of the need for transaction consistency. (ie: you can't withdraw the same money from the same account from two ATMs)
Trying to get everything possible away from the DBMS box is the key reason we have N-tier computing instead of 2 tier or host-based computing. (Cheap PCs being the other reason)
And this is the market where people spend millions on systems.
In your example, the mode would be 5, because the six scores (6-11) would be 5, and there would be only five -1's.
Heck, for that matter, a -1 or 5 poster would be Babe Ruth, home runs or strikeouts. Mod that person up because they make the conversation interesting.
In the real world, the difference would be small anyway. I agree with the basic sentiment though.
Maybe the base should be the standard deviation of the previous modifications. That would block the Karma whores and contribute to risk taking.
Sony makes roughly a bazillion lines, priced from the bottom to the near top. Check out a quality retailer like Crutchfield for the ES models, featuring a 10 year warranty and tank like construction.
Sony is like the Toyota of audio. The bottom of the line stuff is cheap, but good cheap, and the top of the line stuff is great, but not amazing. Lexus != Ferrari.
Still, I'd be pretty happy in a Lexus, and annoyed by the Ferrari drivers' criticism.
One more surprising result: Apple is shifting from a high-end graphics computer company to a low-end consumer electronics company. Ibooks and imacs are replacing powermacs.
The meaning of Apple is changing from the best, to the slickest packaging.
Den Beste makes a good analogy, when he says Apple is appealing to the AOL consumer.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me be the first to concede non-rocket-science-ness. But the sames goes for about 98% of commercial (useful) software.
The potential of IM is largely in cross-department and cross-company applications. When I IM Amazon asking about an order, Amazon is going to want to have a record of what they said, who said it, and when. And this goes even more so for commercial transactions. It will be important to retain, search, and re-use conversations.
Finally, in the financial services arena, this is required by law.
Of course, the next Arthur Andersen scandal will relate to the shredding of IM logs.
More suggestive is the "serious" use of IM happening on trading desks. Logged, secure, time critical IM. These are the folks who do not screw around. At least not at work. (;
IM is exciting because you can tell who to contact, and whether they are hearing.
(can't help noting: slashdot shows up #2 in the google search for this topic. Ahead again!)
Even cooler, check out what they are doing for Ford and the Model U at www.mbdc.com
I think you have cites some interesting spots where this could be employed. However, I think, the games industry does not rise to that level. There is nothing going on that is not entirely optional, and further, any appropriate sanctions should be and are addressed by federal labor law.
A broader question, unaddressed, is what rises to the level that I as a consumer should pay attention. Certainly development process does not. Corrupt labor practices, unchecked by law, might.
New Engine != bad game
Go figure.
All things equal though
better graphics --> better game
Seriously.
I'm not going to check on that issue before I buy a game though.
How about per mile? I don't know. I just think it means we shouldn't panic.
If that prick Carmack would give back his Ferrari, we could have some good games.
Seriously though, like democracy, the free market is the worst way to develop games, except for all of the other ways.
No way. Advertising is about helping people find product. It's grease in the wheels of capitalism. It's only a waste in the sense that the cost of processing a check is a waste.
Some advertising is done poorly, and yes, I get spam too, but a lot of advertising is useful to me.
I disagree. There are two perspectives here, and we are switching between them. As a gamer, I could care less how screwed up the development process is (barring major immorality/illegality) as long as they make good games.
Further, I don't care if 99/100 games suck. I'll depend on friends, slashdot, gamespy, and sales figures and so forth to screen the wheat from the chaff.
And there is plenty of wheat out there. Counterstrike for goodness sake. WCIII and Starcraft. Civ, Sims. Everquest and all the clones. More than any serious person can ever play.
From the perspective of the developers, I sympathize. But I'd be a lot more interested in hearing how the WCIII add-in is going.
How do you go about coceptualizing an alien race?
A new standard for applications. Not effective, light weight, maintainable, fast, open source, secure, or easy to use. Ornate!
Dude, that application is ORNATE!
I know that's why I'm going to switch to 64 bit.
As the distinction between a home stereo and the TV erodes, more music and DVDs are going to be played through the same system.
Imagine, convergence in our lifetimes!
This is a HUGE assertion. Let's see some links. This is the web!
I'm not buying the conflict of interest arguement. It's like arguing that obviously people must not be using cells instead of long distance because ATT is selling wireless.
If Google screws up 1 in 1000 requests, I wouldn't even notice. Refresh and on my way.
Citibank trades roughly $1 Trillion in currency a day. If they had 5 9's accuracy, they would be misplacing $10,000,000 a day. In that environment, commodity machines are unacceptable.
And it scales down: paychecks? billing records? The video check-out at Blockbuster?
Making the systems parrallel radically increases the complexity. This is a necessary outgrowth of the need for transaction consistency. (ie: you can't withdraw the same money from the same account from two ATMs)
Trying to get everything possible away from the DBMS box is the key reason we have N-tier computing instead of 2 tier or host-based computing. (Cheap PCs being the other reason)
And this is the market where people spend millions on systems.
Heck, for that matter, a -1 or 5 poster would be Babe Ruth, home runs or strikeouts. Mod that person up because they make the conversation interesting.
In the real world, the difference would be small anyway. I agree with the basic sentiment though.
Maybe the base should be the standard deviation of the previous modifications. That would block the Karma whores and contribute to risk taking.
It leads to walking a delicate line between keeping a "good" email address secret, and receiving emails that I want to get.
Examples of ambiguous sites:
/.
E-commerce
Online resume posting
Legitimate content sites
I want to get email from slashdot, except when I don't. Certainly, I want to receive email from amazon when my books ship.
Dick van Dyke -- Who could be more harmless, or more likely to be screened?
Sony is like the Toyota of audio. The bottom of the line stuff is cheap, but good cheap, and the top of the line stuff is great, but not amazing. Lexus != Ferrari.
Still, I'd be pretty happy in a Lexus, and annoyed by the Ferrari drivers' criticism.
The meaning of Apple is changing from the best, to the slickest packaging.
Den Beste makes a good analogy, when he says Apple is appealing to the AOL consumer.