You should know though that the same job in France will typically pay less (in IT at least). Yes, you get a lot more vacation, you get full medical benefits for free (state mandated for any permanent job), and the food is better than in the US (sp. the bread), but you do make much less money. The 35h weeks just translates to more vacations for many professions (i.e. IT), so it's not like you have shorter weeks.
There's a company that makes keyboard "skins" for laptop keyboard... I've been using one to type on my laptop in a language I'm learning. They have a DVORAK skin on their site (http://www.speedskin.com/shop.html). Sure not as nice as a real keyboard, but cheaper...
He is absolutely right in saying that there is a major conflict of interest between the content providers and the technology companies. Both are led by large corporations, and both serve "the public" to different extents (content producers and consumers). He is also right in pointing out that fair use is necessary for all, acknowledging that "so much of what we create is built on the art that came before".
He also makes a couple of interesting points: first, that downloading is illegal and immoral (the opposite view being an "extremist position"); and second that the new fair use will stop artists from producing content because there would be no economic advantage. And IMHO both of these points are flawed and misleading.
For the first one, there is no mention of what makes it an extremist view (other than his obvious agenda), and the opposite view is just as extreme. Downloading is not illegal everywhere, and it certainly is not immoral - there is no morality on the reordering of a bunch of 0 and 1s on magnetic storage. Nothing was lost on the other side.
But the second one is more interesting. It is simply not true that artists will stop producing content if people are free to use the technology as they see fit. This is already happening, and the attempts to outlaw it is a proof of that. But the impact won't necessarily be worse than today if allowed to happen.
I think that these are hiding another, deeper, threat for content companies: the fact that technology companies serve both consumers and content creators, and it scares the crap out of them because of the implications.
In other words, technology massively lowers the barriers of entry for new artists. Massive distribution technologies allow users to bypass the traditional and oligarchic "means of production". Cheaper equipment means more talented people can reach the eyes and ears of listeners, which will cause money to be distributed more broadly, and more fairly - at the expense of the traditional players of the content industry. An example of this is how, given a specific content, some illegal copies manage to release something of a better quality (no ads, multiple subtitles in different languages, better size/quality ratio, etc).
Content industries have a history of perverting technology for their own economic ends. DVD zoning is an example of this. I can understand the marketing drives to do it - artificial market segmentation, and so on. But in a increasingly global world they become as annoying as they are obsolete.
So yes, the technology companies have a lot to profit from this. But guess what - their best economic interest is to allow the people (artist and consumers) to be able to do more with their gear, not less. So if I have to choose my side, I'll go with the technology companies, not with the people who would like to "license" things to a given item of hardware and still charge as much as possible.
Some people are getting it... these guys are trying to offer a free HD TV show on the net. In other areas such as gaming, there are many examples of freely available software, which are free yet fun to play. This is the future, IMHO, and is arriving sooner or later. Yes, in part, I like it because I get a free ride, but that's because I'm given one by people who have the means of doing so. And those means are given by technology.
Not the most visible parts of a working system, but quite essential ones.
Which is sadly a good example that most people overvalue the shiny bits in software, over the gritty details that are good precisely for being invisible...:-(
What strikes me odd is that (in my ignorant opinion) a hardware TCP/IP stack should not be too hard to implement. This thing is heavily overpriced to try to get money from ppl who will throw $500+ at a GPU; so if it does work I imagine that several NIC manufacturers will start offering the feature at a much cheaper price. So... wait & see...
I find Flash (or Director) to be a good spiritual successor of Hypercard. They are much more expensive (HC shipped for free with a new Mac IIRC), but Flash's language is very powerful and quite fast. And still accessible to beginner programmers. The "Stack" of Hypercard has been replaced by a "Timeline", but you can quickly set it up to have the same paradigm.
It's sad that Flash is often dismissed as an animation tool and nothing else. There are open source compilers for it, but the best part of it is the IDE which, while not the best for coding, blends in quite a lot of graphical manipulation tools.
I personally would teach Flash to introduce programming concepts, but only if there was a freely available version of the IDE... as I would like kids to be able to bring it home and play with it without having to pay for a license.
Then about getting stuck, there is the Net... a lot of FAQs for old games are lying around. It's a bit cheating, true, but if you are really stuck to the point of the game not being fun anymore, it can get you out of there. Same can be said about number of lives... there are many cheating devices / software that allow you to make things easier. As long as you have fun (which is the point of a game), it doesn't matter if you cheat or not (if in solo play - multiplayer is another story).
This thing *could* get off depending on its price. Would this result in PCs much cheaper than today's, for the average person?
Maybe not about generic computer... but what about company-paid small form factor PCs that can play a few movies, play a few musics, and then would allow installing some office programs for productivity. Instead of a "personal" computer, it would be a "disposable" computer that comes with the purchase of 5 movies.
Of course that will never happen unless the chips become cheaper than printing the wrapping paper...
I'm a bit confused... reading the document, it seems that the difference between XML and SOP is just where the data is:
XML:
<mylabel>(text)</mylabel> <mydata>(stuff in binary)</mydata>
XOP:
<mylabel>(text)</mylabel> <mydata>"hey, there's stuff in binary here, id 1!"</mydata> ---- MIME --- Binary ID 1: (stuff in binary)
Is this right? So the benefit is just standardizing the binary representation using MIME? But that doesn't make the tags less verbose... so how is this faster than XML?
Richard Garriot runs NC Soft USA, a subsidiary of the Korean company that made and runs Lineage I and II, and City of Heroes. AFAIK he's preparing an MMORPG called Tabula Rasa (which may have been released already).
AFAIK (journalism class from long time ago) "public persons" have less right to privacy than "private" citizens. The reason being that public people have willingly put themselves in the "vortex of public debate" and thus the law recognizes that they'll get called all sorts of names. This is called the "vortex rule" IIRC.
Ironically, I wonder if in this case the guy could classify as public person for making such a ruckus...:) If that fails somebody call the supreme court and say that such ruling will have a "chilling effect on the free flow of information".
"Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" for Playstation. You have to hear it to believe how bad it. It even starts horrible: "DIE MONSTER, you don't belong in this world!"
The game itself is fantastic, it's just a shame that they haven't kept the original voices with subtitles as an option.
Find out what's really bothering you. Is it really the stress and responsibility, or is it the money, the lack of advancement, or something else? This is very important, because if it's really the stress then it means that (e.g.) no matter how much they pay you, you would feel the same.
Once you know what really bothers you start thinking what you can do about it. Maybe a lack of advancement is because maybe you didn't finish college (I don't know you - I just know several people that work in IT in that exact situation). Maybe the stress is because you have several bosses that ask stuff for yesterday and you just need to come up with a way to prioritize everything effectively. And so on and so forth.
Changing job fields like that is risky because you don't know what awaits you. And if you don't address the core problem and make sure that changing job is the best solution, then it's going to come up again in any job that you do.
I read the title as "attack of the miniature clippies". Imagine a gazillion of "I see you're typing a word, would you like..." messages reaching your eyeballs at once (visual slashdotting?).
I've played some games in Asian servers (e.g. Lineage II) and I made a few local friends who explained me several 'social dynamics' of the game.
The most noteworthy thing was that there were these clans of players who completely monopolized a dungeon or a given area (to get all the respawns monsters). And it was weird because usually clans left room for other people. I asked my virtual friends about it and they told me those were Chinese gangs, out there to make real money by reselling their items/characters on auction sites.
A lot of people were complaining because they couldn't get to the "good" monsters - if you tried to get too close you got PK'ed by one of them on sight.
The last line of the article summarizes it all with one line: "mass customization". It's the next step after mass consumption, with the added benefit that the buyer is in control of getting a truly unique product.
The article explores a way to achieve this through software, but there are many more ways to pull it off. For example, a sport shoes company has a corporate website in which you order a customized pair of sneakers, allowing you to change a lot of details (there are more than 8 colors in 10 items, IIRC, plus other items with fewer choices).
The old idea (mass consumption) was that you buy whatever fits your lifestyle, that you could really define yourself through buying a different mix of products from different brands. The new idea (customization) is that you keep the same brand but you adapt it to your lifestyle. The advantage (for the company) is that you don't need to look for another brand if you don't like such and such feature, and (for you) that you have a more unique product.
Though as several companies start having it, customization won't guarantee success either. It will probably become necessary but clearly not sufficient. You will always see a real-life version of "attack of the clones" when teenage girls roam the mall in packs clothed exactly the same (who probably won't use customization as much). And you will always see "open-architecture" platforms fail miserably (e.g. 3DO).
I would venture that this is a good thing after all, because it gives the control back to the buyer. If you really want to be different, you have to do a bit of thinking and research yourself, instead of relying on what the company tells you is new/hip/unique but sells in thousands.
The future of the film industry is going to be amazing as filmmakers are finally unshackled from the limitations of physics in creating special effects
This reminds me of an MPAA propaganda/commercial that was shown last time I went to the movies: We see a stuntman describing how he does an exciting but dangerous job. And then he says something like 'see, so don't download MP3 because it puts guys like me out of work and insults all our hard work'.
I had two immediate thoughts on it: first, "what has mp3 have to do with movie stunts?". But more importantly, my second thought was: "too bad CGI will have your job way before that, sponsored by the same organization you now support".
Ironic, isn't it? This was probably not the way the ad creators intended the message to come through. Oops.
There is a (far-fetched) point to that link though. Several reports of "alien" abductions turn out to be nothing more than traumatizing experiences of regular abductions (by humans) during either childhood, teenage years, or under the influence of some drug or alcohol.
For some reason "ambiguous" characters are very popular in Japanese games and anime. It's usually unclear whether they are gay or not, although they clearly are by western standards.
Take for example Benimaru from SNK/Playmore King of Fighter's series, or Benten from Cyber City OEDO 808 (guy paints his nails and wears lipstick).
Slashdot Mirror
You should know though that the same job in France will typically pay less (in IT at least). Yes, you get a lot more vacation, you get full medical benefits for free (state mandated for any permanent job), and the food is better than in the US (sp. the bread), but you do make much less money. The 35h weeks just translates to more vacations for many professions (i.e. IT), so it's not like you have shorter weeks.
What's next... an MMORPG where you have to spot trains?
There's a company that makes keyboard "skins" for laptop keyboard... I've been using one to type on my laptop in a language I'm learning. They have a DVORAK skin on their site (http://www.speedskin.com/shop.html). Sure not as nice as a real keyboard, but cheaper...
I don't think I've seen DNS mentioned on TFA. Did a quick search and got nothing.
The article says that Youtube took down the video...
He is absolutely right in saying that there is a major conflict of interest between the content providers and the technology companies. Both are led by large corporations, and both serve "the public" to different extents (content producers and consumers). He is also right in pointing out that fair use is necessary for all, acknowledging that "so much of what we create is built on the art that came before".
He also makes a couple of interesting points: first, that downloading is illegal and immoral (the opposite view being an "extremist position"); and second that the new fair use will stop artists from producing content because there would be no economic advantage. And IMHO both of these points are flawed and misleading.
For the first one, there is no mention of what makes it an extremist view (other than his obvious agenda), and the opposite view is just as extreme. Downloading is not illegal everywhere, and it certainly is not immoral - there is no morality on the reordering of a bunch of 0 and 1s on magnetic storage. Nothing was lost on the other side.
But the second one is more interesting. It is simply not true that artists will stop producing content if people are free to use the technology as they see fit. This is already happening, and the attempts to outlaw it is a proof of that. But the impact won't necessarily be worse than today if allowed to happen.
I think that these are hiding another, deeper, threat for content companies: the fact that technology companies serve both consumers and content creators, and it scares the crap out of them because of the implications.
In other words, technology massively lowers the barriers of entry for new artists. Massive distribution technologies allow users to bypass the traditional and oligarchic "means of production". Cheaper equipment means more talented people can reach the eyes and ears of listeners, which will cause money to be distributed more broadly, and more fairly - at the expense of the traditional players of the content industry. An example of this is how, given a specific content, some illegal copies manage to release something of a better quality (no ads, multiple subtitles in different languages, better size/quality ratio, etc).
Content industries have a history of perverting technology for their own economic ends. DVD zoning is an example of this. I can understand the marketing drives to do it - artificial market segmentation, and so on. But in a increasingly global world they become as annoying as they are obsolete.
So yes, the technology companies have a lot to profit from this. But guess what - their best economic interest is to allow the people (artist and consumers) to be able to do more with their gear, not less. So if I have to choose my side, I'll go with the technology companies, not with the people who would like to "license" things to a given item of hardware and still charge as much as possible.
Some people are getting it... these guys are trying to offer a free HD TV show on the net. In other areas such as gaming, there are many examples of freely available software, which are free yet fun to play. This is the future, IMHO, and is arriving sooner or later. Yes, in part, I like it because I get a free ride, but that's because I'm given one by people who have the means of doing so. And those means are given by technology.
Not the most visible parts of a working system, but quite essential ones.
:-(
Which is sadly a good example that most people overvalue the shiny bits in software, over the gritty details that are good precisely for being invisible...
Or just stop working there... and go somewhere else.
Yes, easier said than done, but it doesn't hurt to polish that resume and start looking around.
IMHO many controllers had the joystick on the left to make it harder for right-handed people...
What strikes me odd is that (in my ignorant opinion) a hardware TCP/IP stack should not be too hard to implement. This thing is heavily overpriced to try to get money from ppl who will throw $500+ at a GPU; so if it does work I imagine that several NIC manufacturers will start offering the feature at a much cheaper price. So... wait & see...
I find Flash (or Director) to be a good spiritual successor of Hypercard. They are much more expensive (HC shipped for free with a new Mac IIRC), but Flash's language is very powerful and quite fast. And still accessible to beginner programmers. The "Stack" of Hypercard has been replaced by a "Timeline", but you can quickly set it up to have the same paradigm.
It's sad that Flash is often dismissed as an animation tool and nothing else. There are open source compilers for it, but the best part of it is the IDE which, while not the best for coding, blends in quite a lot of graphical manipulation tools.
I personally would teach Flash to introduce programming concepts, but only if there was a freely available version of the IDE... as I would like kids to be able to bring it home and play with it without having to pay for a license.
A lot of the "old games" issues can be addressed via remakes or emulators with throttling. For example, here's a very nice remake of Head over Heels for PC, Mac and Linux.
Then about getting stuck, there is the Net... a lot of FAQs for old games are lying around. It's a bit cheating, true, but if you are really stuck to the point of the game not being fun anymore, it can get you out of there.
Same can be said about number of lives... there are many cheating devices / software that allow you to make things easier. As long as you have fun (which is the point of a game), it doesn't matter if you cheat or not (if in solo play - multiplayer is another story).
This thing *could* get off depending on its price. Would this result in PCs much cheaper than today's, for the average person?
Maybe not about generic computer... but what about company-paid small form factor PCs that can play a few movies, play a few musics, and then would allow installing some office programs for productivity. Instead of a "personal" computer, it would be a "disposable" computer that comes with the purchase of 5 movies.
Of course that will never happen unless the chips become cheaper than printing the wrapping paper...
The president ordered the law to be suspended, following national and international reactions to it:
x Se ccion=100438
http://infobae.com/notas/nota.php?Idx=177281&Id
(fish obviously needed)
XML:XOP:Is this right? So the benefit is just standardizing the binary representation using MIME? But that doesn't make the tags less verbose... so how is this faster than XML?
Richard Garriot runs NC Soft USA, a subsidiary of the Korean company that made and runs Lineage I and II, and City of Heroes. AFAIK he's preparing an MMORPG called Tabula Rasa (which may have been released already).
AFAIK (journalism class from long time ago) "public persons" have less right to privacy than "private" citizens. The reason being that public people have willingly put themselves in the "vortex of public debate" and thus the law recognizes that they'll get called all sorts of names. This is called the "vortex rule" IIRC.
:) If that fails somebody call the supreme court and say that such ruling will have a "chilling effect on the free flow of information".
Ironically, I wonder if in this case the guy could classify as public person for making such a ruckus...
"Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" for Playstation. You have to hear it to believe how bad it. It even starts horrible: "DIE MONSTER, you don't belong in this world!"
The game itself is fantastic, it's just a shame that they haven't kept the original voices with subtitles as an option.
Find out what's really bothering you. Is it really the stress and responsibility, or is it the money, the lack of advancement, or something else? This is very important, because if it's really the stress then it means that (e.g.) no matter how much they pay you, you would feel the same.
Once you know what really bothers you start thinking what you can do about it. Maybe a lack of advancement is because maybe you didn't finish college (I don't know you - I just know several people that work in IT in that exact situation). Maybe the stress is because you have several bosses that ask stuff for yesterday and you just need to come up with a way to prioritize everything effectively. And so on and so forth.
Changing job fields like that is risky because you don't know what awaits you. And if you don't address the core problem and make sure that changing job is the best solution, then it's going to come up again in any job that you do.
I read the title as "attack of the miniature clippies". Imagine a gazillion of "I see you're typing a word, would you like..." messages reaching your eyeballs at once (visual slashdotting?).
I've played some games in Asian servers (e.g. Lineage II) and I made a few local friends who explained me several 'social dynamics' of the game.
The most noteworthy thing was that there were these clans of players who completely monopolized a dungeon or a given area (to get all the respawns monsters). And it was weird because usually clans left room for other people. I asked my virtual friends about it and they told me those were Chinese gangs, out there to make real money by reselling their items/characters on auction sites.
A lot of people were complaining because they couldn't get to the "good" monsters - if you tried to get too close you got PK'ed by one of them on sight.
Except if Joe doesn't want to pay at all, he won't pay for any of both games. So nohing would prevent him from getting both!
Besides, if the cheaper game is not a basic clone of the other, there's no reason why having one will prevent playing the other.
The last line of the article summarizes it all with one line: "mass customization". It's the next step after mass consumption, with the added benefit that the buyer is in control of getting a truly unique product.
The article explores a way to achieve this through software, but there are many more ways to pull it off. For example, a sport shoes company has a corporate website in which you order a customized pair of sneakers, allowing you to change a lot of details (there are more than 8 colors in 10 items, IIRC, plus other items with fewer choices).
The old idea (mass consumption) was that you buy whatever fits your lifestyle, that you could really define yourself through buying a different mix of products from different brands. The new idea (customization) is that you keep the same brand but you adapt it to your lifestyle. The advantage (for the company) is that you don't need to look for another brand if you don't like such and such feature, and (for you) that you have a more unique product.
Though as several companies start having it, customization won't guarantee success either. It will probably become necessary but clearly not sufficient. You will always see a real-life version of "attack of the clones" when teenage girls roam the mall in packs clothed exactly the same (who probably won't use customization as much). And you will always see "open-architecture" platforms fail miserably (e.g. 3DO).
I would venture that this is a good thing after all, because it gives the control back to the buyer. If you really want to be different, you have to do a bit of thinking and research yourself, instead of relying on what the company tells you is new/hip/unique but sells in thousands.
The future of the film industry is going to be amazing as filmmakers are finally unshackled from the limitations of physics in creating special effects
This reminds me of an MPAA propaganda/commercial that was shown last time I went to the movies: We see a stuntman describing how he does an exciting but dangerous job. And then he says something like 'see, so don't download MP3 because it puts guys like me out of work and insults all our hard work'.
I had two immediate thoughts on it: first, "what has mp3 have to do with movie stunts?". But more importantly, my second thought was: "too bad CGI will have your job way before that, sponsored by the same organization you now support".
Ironic, isn't it? This was probably not the way the ad creators intended the message to come through. Oops.
There is a (far-fetched) point to that link though. Several reports of "alien" abductions turn out to be nothing more than traumatizing experiences of regular abductions (by humans) during either childhood, teenage years, or under the influence of some drug or alcohol.
For some reason "ambiguous" characters are very popular in Japanese games and anime. It's usually unclear whether they are gay or not, although they clearly are by western standards.
Take for example Benimaru from SNK/Playmore King of Fighter's series, or Benten from Cyber City OEDO 808 (guy paints his nails and wears lipstick).