I myself log about 10+ hours a week on games - no pay. My roommate logs about 40+ hours a week - no pay - this on top of a full time job. (I know, I know....) Why are these people complaining again??? The rest of the world has long hours and probably less job satisfaction than these "game testers".
I think there's a flip-side to this. Here we have hundreds of thousands of man&woman&child/hours beind wasted.
Here's the idea:
Every game should have a big red button in the corner of the screen. When you hold down the button, a sound recorder records what you're saying at the moment. I know I've spend hundreds of hours bitching to myself about how this or that sucks, etc. Stuff like "What moron forgot to include dynamic key binding" or "God this lag sucks" or "This is a really neat feature, I wish all games had this". Then all these little sound-bytes would be packaged, and sent to:
a) The companies testing division b) The appropriate alt.games.*
via e-mail, http, or whatever is easily automated.
I'm sure it would be a snap to implement this on windows. It's one thing to test for critical errors, but there are so many blunders in game-play that escape these professional game testers.
Well, I are many of us are still recovering from the dot-com meltdown. Very traumatic events can take years to re-surface, so maybe it's time for all of us to reflect(again).
There was such a deluge of wishful thinking and optimism about how "tele-presense", for lack of a better term, would change the world. By now I expected to be raking in 6 figures while telecommuting from my mountain cabin in Alaska. All over my 100Mbps satellite internet connection.
Obviously I've had to endure my share of reality checks the last few years. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.
R&D helps to increase productivity, and improve services as we all know. But there is no incentive for an organization to invest dollars into the R&D machine.
Spending money to make a better product only works as long as your competition is not also doing the same. Said another way, R&D provodes no clear competitive advantage for companies unless the competition cannot afford to finance R&D spending.
Successful companies(like Microsoft) can afford R&D spending because they have no significant competition in thier dominated market(OS). Concurrently, most of thier R&D money is spent trying to take over other markets.
Programmers, engineers and scientists are (mostly) mercenaries who sell themselves to the highest bidder. This puts the best and brightest into the hands of the monopolists. The capitalistic basis of "fair competition" is becoming more and more scarce as a result.
The increasing efficiency of these organizations is also reducing the pool of independant competing companies. There are very real examples of how individual programs have replaced the function of entire companies. As our economy becomes dominated by fewer, and more powerful companies the competetive gap between companies within the same market segment will become so prohibitive, as to render "free market capitalism" a thing of the past.
The current rash of IP and patent sweeps being declared by established companies will only exacerbate the problem further, ensuring an almost dynastic future for key blue-chip american businesses.
Bottom line, R&D expenditure is a luxury like never before. Only the top companies can afford to make R&D expenditures, and the number of such companies is getting fewer and fewer. Programmers, engineers and scientists trying to sell the merits of research are going to be largely ignored.
This is what happens when you read too much Gibson. The idea that a fly corpse with a Webserver chip and two LED's stuck in it is a "cybernetic being in a state of attempted reanimation" is ludicrous, since the system would behave exactly the same without the fly corpse.
Relax. How many times have you tried to convince someone how cool nanotechnology is? 99% of the planet still doesn't "get" nanotech. This exhibit is a great way of bridging the gap between theory and application. It's a very concrete demonsration of how technology can go all kinds of places.
For instance:
"After that, I am planning on trying to build user-controlled living cockroaches mounted with cameras (which is completely possible from a technical perspective)."
Fab processes keep getting smaller, we have a proliferation of 802X devices, miniturized parts, etc. I'd say we're real close. Can you imagine having your own remote-controlled swarm of bees, each equipped with GPS and a camera? Talk about fun.:)
Besides, Gibson was dead-on(or Stephenson if you prefer). We're just a bit behind schedule is all.
In short, what the page is trying to make clear is that these guys put a tiny IC, capable of functioning as a webserver, together with a LED in a dead fly
Yes, but he also mentions the following:
"After that, I am planning on trying to build user-controlled living cockroaches mounted with cameras (which is completely possible from a technical perspective)."
I wonder if he ever got anywhere with this...or if the CIA would let us know about it if he did.
Apple bought the rights to go to Palo Alto and take whatever they wanted. It was a major coup, and it was mostly because the Xerox execs were clueless about what they had
Or weren't shallow enough to forsee a time of "one-click shopping" patents and other nonsense that's so prevalent today.
This guy is correct. So let's just do something very simple. Give us about half of what the military have portioned off as "thier" wireless space. And then let the commodity market build the roads.
That's correct, goodbye forever to the ISP. Smart devices that route, and link, and mesh over the wireless domain. Owned and operated exclusively by the customer base. Oh and it's free. And yes, these devices are available at costs which are not at all prohibitive.
But as soon as anyone tries to license the wireless domain for commercial interest, then we as the voting public get to drop bombs on thier corperate HQ. Not mail bombs, real ones. I've had it with bumbling greed of this government, and this U.S. of A. corporate culture. Telecommunications have become too important, and we now have the capabilities to leave the ISP behind forever.
We very quickly nail people who are sucking down ridiculous amounts of bandwidth sharing files, simply because they are slowing down the network connection for everyone else.
Isn't there a reasonble way to share bandwidth without having to "nail" people?
Can't you just impose bandwidth caps during peak times, but give the file-sharers a break during off times like 4am?
The biggest problems with Civ III were the ten minute turns of 50 tanks slowly moving across the continent to your enemy.
Ya that was bad, but what about the 100 housekeeping workers on automatic. Every round you had to see what they were doing, each worker stack at a time. If I cared what they were doing, they wouldn't be on automatic! Oh the humanity!
Still not really correct. The begginings of civilization - and the invention of the wheel and writing - in the area were initiated by the Sumerians, a linguistically unique group.
In all seriousness, I think we should refer the the Clerks maxim here. Do personal politics enter into this situation?
In the current climate it's entirely understandable to need to resort to projects which might otherwise be turned down, solely due to the neccesity of making a living. Those of us who have families to care for, or very large student loans that need repaying, have less luxury in determining the types of work which is suitable.
I would urge anyone considering these types of projects to think twice however. Deeply consider what it is you're contributing to. Every link in the chain of a particular technology is essential to its operation. Perhaps the new missle targetting system which seeks human body heat requires a particularly brilliant solution in software. Perhaps there are only 5 people in the country who are U.S. citizens with clearance, and posses the technical expertise to perform the programming work. These hypothetical 5 people could be anyone, as brilliance it seems isn't very descriminatory. I would hope however that those individuals would wiegh personal politics in considering whether or not to develop such a device.
Every new magical killing technology was built by an engineer. Polititians, generals, and the other segments of the working politicians are incapable of developing these technologies. Somehow, somewhere they need to persuade a talented engineer to make such a device.
Times are very difficult right now. And it's very naive to impose moral ideals in the face of such difficult economic circumstances. But please remember that these devices are cabable of killing with such impunity, and lack of regard, that they are almost perfect. Men with swords, or rifles, were still men. They had hearts, and compassion, and families who mourned there loss. Without the means of compassion, modern weapons are wholely removed from humanity. They only require a policy to be unleashed. A policy dictated by an individual that does not have to answer to the enemy's families.
These are real people who will be dying as a result of software that guides these weapons. They have sons, daughters, brothers, mothers, and community that they love. Please, please consider who you are giving the power to kill.
1) Legislative branch(according to your link) 35% of the house 53% of the senate
2) Executive branch(according to this link) historically over 50% of this branch has been held by lawyers.
3) Judicial branch 100%
Total:
40% *.33333333 55% *.33333333 100% *.33333333 ---
64% of the 3 branches of government have been held by lawyers(historically). I'll concede my 90% figure in my original post. But I will not concede anything else. The problem is endemic, and not at all make-believe.
When will the patent office get a clue? Doesn't *anyone* there make even the slightest attempt to search for prior art? A 5 minute google search should have invalidated this patent.
1) Leniency in granting patents can only benefit lawyers who prosecute/defend patent infringment cases. There's no money to be made in "checking prior art".
2) Over 90% of the serving members of the 3 branches of government were lawyers. Lawyers and old-money own the government(now more than ever). Do you think they will regulate themselves?
It is one big money-making feedback cycle. We may hate MS for monopolizing the IT industry. But what about those who monopolize our own "for the people, by the people" US government? There's no mystery here, just a severe crisis.
This is really cool stuff, but their website is a bit lite on demographic info. Where are these devices flourishing? If I buy one I'd like to know that I'm in a location where I'll find likeminded peers.
Slashdot Mirror
I myself log about 10+ hours a week on games - no pay. My roommate logs about 40+ hours a week - no pay - this on top of a full time job. (I know, I know....) Why are these people complaining again??? The rest of the world has long hours and probably less job satisfaction than these "game testers".
I think there's a flip-side to this. Here we have hundreds of thousands of man&woman&child/hours beind wasted.
Here's the idea:
Every game should have a big red button in the corner of the screen. When you hold down the button, a sound recorder records what you're saying at the moment. I know I've spend hundreds of hours bitching to myself about how this or that sucks, etc. Stuff like "What moron forgot to include dynamic key binding" or "God this lag sucks" or "This is a really neat feature, I wish all games had this". Then all these little sound-bytes would be packaged, and sent to:
a) The companies testing division
b) The appropriate alt.games.*
via e-mail, http, or whatever is easily automated.
I'm sure it would be a snap to implement this on windows. It's one thing to test for critical errors, but there are so many blunders in game-play that escape these professional game testers.
Our education system is very broken in this country and will only get worse if Bush has his way.
I have yet to hear a single Texan praise Bush.
Well, I are many of us are still recovering from the dot-com meltdown.
Should read,
Well, I'm sure there are many of us are still recovering from the dot-com meltdown.
And yes I did preview it, I just forgot how to read.
Since when Slashdot the master of the obvious?
Well, I are many of us are still recovering from the dot-com meltdown. Very traumatic events can take years to re-surface, so maybe it's time for all of us to reflect(again).
There was such a deluge of wishful thinking and optimism about how "tele-presense", for lack of a better term, would change the world. By now I expected to be raking in 6 figures while telecommuting from my mountain cabin in Alaska. All over my 100Mbps satellite internet connection.
Obviously I've had to endure my share of reality checks the last few years. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.
R&D helps to increase productivity, and improve services as we all know. But there is no incentive for an organization to invest dollars into the R&D machine.
Spending money to make a better product only works as long as your competition is not also doing the same. Said another way, R&D provodes no clear competitive advantage for companies unless the competition cannot afford to finance R&D spending.
Successful companies(like Microsoft) can afford R&D spending because they have no significant competition in thier dominated market(OS). Concurrently, most of thier R&D money is spent trying to take over other markets.
Programmers, engineers and scientists are (mostly) mercenaries who sell themselves to the highest bidder. This puts the best and brightest into the hands of the monopolists. The capitalistic basis of "fair competition" is becoming more and more scarce as a result.
The increasing efficiency of these organizations is also reducing the pool of independant competing companies. There are very real examples of how individual programs have replaced the function of entire companies. As our economy becomes dominated by fewer, and more powerful companies the competetive gap between companies within the same market segment will become so prohibitive, as to render "free market capitalism" a thing of the past.
The current rash of IP and patent sweeps being declared by established companies will only exacerbate the problem further, ensuring an almost dynastic future for key blue-chip american businesses.
Bottom line, R&D expenditure is a luxury like never before. Only the top companies can afford to make R&D expenditures, and the number of such companies is getting fewer and fewer. Programmers, engineers and scientists trying to sell the merits of research are going to be largely ignored.
Filtering is a good idea, but mandatory filtering is not. Let people filter what they want to filter...As a parent myself
So, it's OK to be a filterer but not a filteree?
What do your kids think about this? Plan on doing this until they're 18?
The ISPs are merely compelled to provide approved filtering software to their customers at cost.
Thankyou for removing the FUD.
Note to editors: Please be more gentle.
This is what happens when you read too much Gibson. The idea that a fly corpse with a Webserver chip and two LED's stuck in it is a "cybernetic being in a state of attempted reanimation" is ludicrous, since the system would behave exactly the same without the fly corpse.
:)
Relax. How many times have you tried to convince someone how cool nanotechnology is? 99% of the planet still doesn't "get" nanotech. This exhibit is a great way of bridging the gap between theory and application. It's a very concrete demonsration of how technology can go all kinds of places.
For instance:
"After that, I am planning on trying to build user-controlled living cockroaches mounted with cameras (which is completely possible from a technical perspective)."
Fab processes keep getting smaller, we have a proliferation of 802X devices, miniturized parts, etc. I'd say we're real close. Can you imagine having your own remote-controlled swarm of bees, each equipped with GPS and a camera? Talk about fun.
Besides, Gibson was dead-on(or Stephenson if you prefer). We're just a bit behind schedule is all.
In short, what the page is trying to make clear is that these guys put a tiny IC, capable of functioning as a webserver, together with a LED in a dead fly
Yes, but he also mentions the following:
"After that, I am planning on trying to build user-controlled living cockroaches mounted with cameras (which is completely possible from a technical perspective)."
I wonder if he ever got anywhere with this...or if the CIA would let us know about it if he did.
What's really gross is that my mouth started watering before I read this twice.
Apple bought the rights to go to Palo Alto and take whatever they wanted. It was a major coup, and it was mostly because the Xerox execs were clueless about what they had
Or weren't shallow enough to forsee a time of "one-click shopping" patents and other nonsense that's so prevalent today.
I loved Dungeon Master.
Ya he was a cute little guy.
As long as greed or fame is the fuel for development, there will be no real progress.
It's no coincidence that Linus Torvalds grew up in socialist Finland, and from that upbringing went on to do the work he did.
The U.S. is just not capable of producing people like him.
This guy is a developer? That's pathetic, this looks like something a ten year old posted.
Maybe he's a ten year old developer.
dis is tha FUD matcheen mein.
This guy is correct. So let's just do something very simple. Give us about half of what the military have portioned off as "thier" wireless space. And then let the commodity market build the roads.
That's correct, goodbye forever to the ISP. Smart devices that route, and link, and mesh over the wireless domain. Owned and operated exclusively by the customer base. Oh and it's free. And yes, these devices are available at costs which are not at all prohibitive.
But as soon as anyone tries to license the wireless domain for commercial interest, then we as the voting public get to drop bombs on thier corperate HQ. Not mail bombs, real ones. I've had it with bumbling greed of this government, and this U.S. of A. corporate culture. Telecommunications have become too important, and we now have the capabilities to leave the ISP behind forever.
We very quickly nail people who are sucking down ridiculous amounts of bandwidth sharing files, simply because they are slowing down the network connection for everyone else.
Isn't there a reasonble way to share bandwidth without having to "nail" people?
Can't you just impose bandwidth caps during peak times, but give the file-sharers a break during off times like 4am?
The biggest problems with Civ III were the ten minute turns of 50 tanks slowly moving across the continent to your enemy.
Ya that was bad, but what about the 100 housekeeping workers on automatic. Every round you had to see what they were doing, each worker stack at a time. If I cared what they were doing, they wouldn't be on automatic! Oh the humanity!
That took at least 30secs per round.
So how many people reading /. this morning can explain how a battery works? How it really works?
OK, you asked for it.
Still not really correct. The begginings of civilization - and the invention of the wheel and writing - in the area were initiated by the Sumerians, a linguistically unique group.
OK, so who invented this?
Or these?
In all seriousness, I think we should refer the the Clerks maxim here. Do personal politics enter into this situation?
In the current climate it's entirely understandable to need to resort to projects which might otherwise be turned down, solely due to the neccesity of making a living. Those of us who have families to care for, or very large student loans that need repaying, have less luxury in determining the types of work which is suitable.
I would urge anyone considering these types of projects to think twice however. Deeply consider what it is you're contributing to. Every link in the chain of a particular technology is essential to its operation. Perhaps the new missle targetting system which seeks human body heat requires a particularly brilliant solution in software. Perhaps there are only 5 people in the country who are U.S. citizens with clearance, and posses the technical expertise to perform the programming work. These hypothetical 5 people could be anyone, as brilliance it seems isn't very descriminatory. I would hope however that those individuals would wiegh personal politics in considering whether or not to develop such a device.
Every new magical killing technology was built by an engineer. Polititians, generals, and the other segments of the working politicians are incapable of developing these technologies. Somehow, somewhere they need to persuade a talented engineer to make such a device.
Times are very difficult right now. And it's very naive to impose moral ideals in the face of such difficult economic circumstances. But please remember that these devices are cabable of killing with such impunity, and lack of regard, that they are almost perfect. Men with swords, or rifles, were still men. They had hearts, and compassion, and families who mourned there loss. Without the means of compassion, modern weapons are wholely removed from humanity. They only require a policy to be unleashed. A policy dictated by an individual that does not have to answer to the enemy's families.
These are real people who will be dying as a result of software that guides these weapons. They have sons, daughters, brothers, mothers, and community that they love. Please, please consider who you are giving the power to kill.
OK, let's go by your figures.
.33333333 .33333333 .33333333
We start with 3 branches.
1) Legislative branch(according to your link)
35% of the house
53% of the senate
2) Executive branch(according to this link)
historically over 50% of this branch has been held by lawyers.
3) Judicial branch
100%
Total:
40% *
55% *
100% *
---
64% of the 3 branches of government have been held by lawyers(historically). I'll concede my 90% figure in my original post. But I will not concede anything else. The problem is endemic, and not at all make-believe.
Absolutely correct.
When will the patent office get a clue? Doesn't *anyone* there make even the slightest attempt to search for prior art? A 5 minute google search should have invalidated this patent.
1) Leniency in granting patents can only benefit lawyers who prosecute/defend patent infringment cases. There's no money to be made in "checking prior art".
2) Over 90% of the serving members of the 3 branches of government were lawyers. Lawyers and old-money own the government(now more than ever). Do you think they will regulate themselves?
It is one big money-making feedback cycle. We may hate MS for monopolizing the IT industry. But what about those who monopolize our own "for the people, by the people" US government? There's no mystery here, just a severe crisis.
This is really cool stuff, but their website is a bit lite on demographic info. Where are these devices flourishing? If I buy one I'd like to know that I'm in a location where I'll find likeminded peers.
Is there a map available? Links appreciated.