Only the lack of hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital prevents us from opening our own employee-friendly gaming companies. I'm sure the venture capitalists will help us out with that, right? Anybody know any who just got unfrozen from 1998?
Macroeconomics matters, and the poor results of laissez-faire was responsible for the original advent of unions in this country. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to post cyberlibertarian tripe to slashdot...
Unfortunately, macroeconomics matters - the effect of all those other cyberlibertarians makes it almost impossible for those of us who are sane to have the Magic Of The Market solve this for us.
Good luck getting a job based on a three-hour learning session and no real-world experience. 99% of all employers do NOT believe in the CS aphorism that you've "learned how to learn" or that "any language can be picked up in X hours".
That's a self-correcting problem. There is a demand for IT workers, programmers, administrators, but the demand is for good ones.
That would only be a self-correcting problem in a fairly free and fair market. Neither one applies in the US, since employers have been and are contnuing to game the system by getting the government to artificially increase the supply of labor through H1-B and other such measures.
Yes, I do know all of that - and the difference is that the old model of "keep current and you'll probably be able to stay employed" no longer applies.
To say nothing of the simple economics involved. If one must, as I pointed out, spend a ton of money to retrain every N years, at some point it turns into an economic loser.
Also, your comment kind of reeks of the idea that we can all be top-1%ers. Frankly, most jobs in our field never were and never will be the kinds where you can feasibly publish, attend conferences, etc.
People have been spouting your brand of nonsense for decades now. The difference (now) is that not only must one retrain constantly to stay in IT, but that one faces the likelihood that one must retrain one's self to work OUTSIDE of IT, since the IT jobs are going away.
If I could pass two lessons on to you, son, it would be:
1. Macroeconomics matters.
2. Don't buy the CS degree nonsense that you "learned how to learn" and that "any good computer scientist can pick up a language in a week". The job market doesn't buy either one of those aphorisms.
It's not a good thing for our country when people who went to college for a Real Degree, spending XX,000 dollars and 4-5 years to do so, find out they need to go back and retrain again every few years (I know! Biotechnology! Go take night classes at Ye Olde State U for another XX,000 dollars!)
2000/XP drivers that don't work on ME is expected - no NT-class driver is going to work on a 9x-class OS. ME was the last version built on, essentially, the DOS kernel. XP, despite being pushed to consumers, is built on the NT kernel, as was 2000.
So you're dealing with TWO OSs there, not just one. And in many cases, the driver DOES work across versions of the same OS.
95/98/ME drivers working across each is not serendipity - it's expected. The only real differences in the three were minor packaging changes - I've had plenty of drivers that worked on all 3 (including several I worked on).
On the other hand, the next reply which complains that 2000/XP drivers don't work on ME is expected - no NT-class driver is going to work on a 9x-class OS. And the move from 2000 to XP in driver model was more of a change than any of the 9x changes.
The answer is no =- the end user cannot switch between one computer and another and not see too much difference in the applications. Your entire argument rests on this flawed premise.
Consider what happened around the year '00, when the supply of COBOL programmers was much lower than the demand for COBOL programmers. Did the quality per hired programmer go up? Are you kidding me?
When your favorite tool is LISP, every problem looks like a set of parentheses.
I don't think we're talking about the same level of problem here. I'm just opening little flyers sent out by the office manager - one page at most, no special fonts, perhaps an image or two. That's it.
I have not experienced that level of problem with regular Word, although I agree that Word is a steaming pile in many other respects. The problem here is that OpenOffice is even more useless. (I'd say even less useful, except that might lead you to think I found Word useful).
but you won't actually be using it. Every time I open a.doc file with the thing, I wonder in what new and exciting ways it's going to look goofy, or even be unreadable.
Biggest problem with S3's drivers was the fact that the hardware guys still thought it was 1996, and that you could expose new features in hardware and the driver would just sort of make it work with Direct3D.
Like what 3dfx used to do, except that they had their own API that they could actually convince game developers to write to.
The reason NVidia destroyed 3dfx was their decision to implement Microsoft's reference rasterizer as fast as they could in hardware. S3, on the other hand, tried to design their way around cost-cutting decisions in ways which were arguably incompatible with D3D and then pitch the flaming turd over the fence to the driver guys, who were left looking like crap when the driver either went really slow or really buggy.
The S3 stock you had turned into SonicBlue; the real "old S3" graphics business was turned into a pseudo-joint-venture between SB and VIA, called S3 Graphics Inc.
Since then, of course, SB went bankrupt and was distributed at fire-sale; the original S3 graphics is the only thing that remains, as effectively a small division of Via.
I'd like to see data that supports your claim that Opera has a similar browser-share to Apple's computer-share (and I hope you meant personal-computer-share).
Slashdot Mirror
It's even worse: Americans work MORE hours than the Japanese, and have for quite some time.
Only the lack of hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital prevents us from opening our own employee-friendly gaming companies. I'm sure the venture capitalists will help us out with that, right? Anybody know any who just got unfrozen from 1998?
Macroeconomics matters, and the poor results of laissez-faire was responsible for the original advent of unions in this country. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to post cyberlibertarian tripe to slashdot...
Game development can't be offshored easily. Which is not to say that somebody won't try...
1. The old days when a programmer or two could write a game themselves, and distribution/marketing wasn't as critical
2. 1998, when you could get a venture capitalist to fund you even if you were just a couple of programmers.
Barriers to entry aren't just a problem at the local club, pal.
Unfortunately, macroeconomics matters - the effect of all those other cyberlibertarians makes it almost impossible for those of us who are sane to have the Magic Of The Market solve this for us.
Good luck getting a job based on a three-hour learning session and no real-world experience. 99% of all employers do NOT believe in the CS aphorism that you've "learned how to learn" or that "any language can be picked up in X hours".
To say nothing of the simple economics involved. If one must, as I pointed out, spend a ton of money to retrain every N years, at some point it turns into an economic loser.
Also, your comment kind of reeks of the idea that we can all be top-1%ers. Frankly, most jobs in our field never were and never will be the kinds where you can feasibly publish, attend conferences, etc.
People have been spouting your brand of nonsense for decades now. The difference (now) is that not only must one retrain constantly to stay in IT, but that one faces the likelihood that one must retrain one's self to work OUTSIDE of IT, since the IT jobs are going away.
If I could pass two lessons on to you, son, it would be:
1. Macroeconomics matters. 2. Don't buy the CS degree nonsense that you "learned how to learn" and that "any good computer scientist can pick up a language in a week". The job market doesn't buy either one of those aphorisms.
It's not a good thing for our country when people who went to college for a Real Degree, spending XX,000 dollars and 4-5 years to do so, find out they need to go back and retrain again every few years (I know! Biotechnology! Go take night classes at Ye Olde State U for another XX,000 dollars!)
So you're dealing with TWO OSs there, not just one. And in many cases, the driver DOES work across versions of the same OS.
95/98/ME drivers working across each is not serendipity - it's expected. The only real differences in the three were minor packaging changes - I've had plenty of drivers that worked on all 3 (including several I worked on). On the other hand, the next reply which complains that 2000/XP drivers don't work on ME is expected - no NT-class driver is going to work on a 9x-class OS. And the move from 2000 to XP in driver model was more of a change than any of the 9x changes.
Tee Hee, Ain't You The Dickens!
The answer is no =- the end user cannot switch between one computer and another and not see too much difference in the applications. Your entire argument rests on this flawed premise.
Consider what happened around the year '00, when the supply of COBOL programmers was much lower than the demand for COBOL programmers. Did the quality per hired programmer go up? Are you kidding me?
When your favorite tool is LISP, every problem looks like a set of parentheses.
I have not experienced that level of problem with regular Word, although I agree that Word is a steaming pile in many other respects. The problem here is that OpenOffice is even more useless. (I'd say even less useful, except that might lead you to think I found Word useful).
but you won't actually be using it. Every time I open a .doc file with the thing, I wonder in what new and exciting ways it's going to look goofy, or even be unreadable.
Like what 3dfx used to do, except that they had their own API that they could actually convince game developers to write to.
The reason NVidia destroyed 3dfx was their decision to implement Microsoft's reference rasterizer as fast as they could in hardware. S3, on the other hand, tried to design their way around cost-cutting decisions in ways which were arguably incompatible with D3D and then pitch the flaming turd over the fence to the driver guys, who were left looking like crap when the driver either went really slow or really buggy.
Since then, of course, SB went bankrupt and was distributed at fire-sale; the original S3 graphics is the only thing that remains, as effectively a small division of Via.
Casting accusations of "ulterior motive"s is not merely a "difference of opinion". Some day, you might learn the difference.
Lazy linking.
IE down to a mere 94.16% of US market.
I had a screaming baby keeping me up last night and am obviously paying for it; I apologize for the previous posting's error.
I found this while looking for Apple market share figures:
http://news.com.com/IE+usage+drop--slip+or+blip%3F /2100-1032_3-5267858.html
Note that the article was written with the general context of noting Opera's increase in share.
Listen, jackass: when you accused me of having ulterior motives, you lost the high ground. And I'm done with you.
I'd like to see data that supports your claim that Opera has a similar browser-share to Apple's computer-share (and I hope you meant personal-computer-share).
Thanks.