While top officials at Paramount were unavailable for comment at press time, William Shatner has released this official statement in regards to Paramount's dismissal of his show concept: "KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN"
While I'm not disagreeing that U.S. Developers may not spend enough time in design before starting to build, I don't think that the blame always lies with the developers.
My personal experience has been that, for every missing design doc or spec, there is someone in sales who shaved a week off of the estimate the developers gave them for building the solution.
If MIT is studying the Software Development Processes, maybe Harvard should do a study on the Software Development Sales process, and on why US companies have developed the mentality that it is ok to give developers less time than they need to complete development, and even better to base the timeline of a project on developers working 65 hour weeks when they know damn well that they are salaried employees and thus get no overtime.
I have actually found Gamefly to be a better service overall than Netflix, but it's not for everyone.
On the up side, their turnaround is pretty quick, the games come well protected in their packaging, and the ability to keep the games you have out in one click (and have the case & materials shipped to you along with your next game) are all great.
However, at about $20 a month, you have to be a pretty avid game player to get the most out of the service. They let you keep 2 games at once, so as long as you are beating 1 game a month on average, it is a sound choice.
We primarily use the service for games that have little replay value, or to try games that aren't a sure thing. That alone has saved us a ton of cash.:)
Wouldn't that be a refreshing take on these foolish lawsuits? Have the game developer team up with Social Services and sue the parents for doing such a poor job raising their children that they would commit murder. Having the parents suggest that a video game could cause them to commit such an act only strengthens the case that they were unfit parents.
I wonder why they don't just write each vote to a harddisk locked safely away at the base of the booth. It would be simple enough to have secured panel access from the outside of the booth that contained the drive and an interface (take your pick) which could be used to extract the data once the polls had closed. Upload all the results at once and wipe the drives when complete.
I can go to a store, buy a CD, go home, burn it, then go and sell that CD. Yes, I made a copy, which I believe is legal to do at the time I owned the CD. No, I'm not going to destroy it once I sell the CD. Typically when you sell a CD back to a store or another individual, search warrants aren't exercised on your home to ensure you get rid of any copies. I admit I have never used iTunes, and thus am not familiar with their policies, but it seems that an argument could be made for the case that one should be able to apply the same prinicples to their ownership of that MP3. So long as the transaction takes place in a 1 to 1 relationship, the owner of a legally purchased MP3 should be able to transfer said ownership to someone else without stressing about whether a copy exists. If the original owner starts selling the same song multiple times, then you have something to worry about. Maybe the RIAA should try to create some P2P software that facilitates the transfer & sale of legal content between lawful owners instead of trying to extort $50,000 from single mothers of 14 year old kids.
Just my 2 cents.
If he wins, I wonder if the ships' lifecycle will resemble those of his games? I can see it allready: 1) Carmack devises a ship that excells in performance, but requires very costly componenets in order to deliver on its full functionality. 2) After a years' worth of excellent operational records, other countries license the engine design and build their own ships off of it 3) 2 years after launch a thriving Spaceship MOD community is launching new ships into space every couple of months....
I think that M$, and now the Phantom console have both taken a theoretical step in the right direction by making it easier to move games developed in their environment to the PC, creating a greater audience for a lot less work than developing a game across consoles.
While I am not suggesting that Sony & Nintendo move to a Windows based OS anytime soon, maybe persuing a framework based on Linux could yield similar results for them without giving M$ a hand up.
I also think that the Xbox Live service is a good thing for smaller developers. With online play such an important part of a game players decision to buy now, the Live service allows the smaller shops to facilitate online play without incurring the cost of hosting facilities for the online componenet themselves. I don't know if M$ biases the bandwidth given to large v.s small developers on the Live service (it wouldn't suprise me if they did), but at least they provide it.
Free features & functionality provided by the platform will help level the playing field between large and small developers.
One of the things that does help set a good GUI apart from an OK one is extensive, focused usability testing. While the underpinnings of KDE and Gnome continue to advance, I doubt a great deal is being spent along the lines of usability for the GUI. Whatever your feelings may be towards M$, one thing that can't be argued is the amount of research & testing they put into the design of their UI. Maybe the next logical step for one of these platforms would be to have a build that focuses on UI design for the non-technical users that makeup the majority of the Windows clientel. Until that happens, I fear these products will fall into the realm of "techie stuff", as my father puts it, for the less sophisticated users.
At the risk of taking M$'s side...... This seems to be another example in an alarming trend of individuals or companies who had the forsight to patent an "idea" in technology for which they take no steps to develop, sit on it until they see that idea manifested and realized in someone elses work, and then sue them to make their money.
It seems to me that a better way to quantify these patents would be to require some set of initial source code, architecture or methods of arriving at a techinical solution for the idea being patented rather than allowing the patenting of an idea whose makeup & implementation are left floating in a technological ether.
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While top officials at Paramount were unavailable for comment at press time, William Shatner has released this official statement in regards to Paramount's dismissal of his show concept:
"KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN"
While I'm not disagreeing that U.S. Developers may not spend enough time in design before starting to build, I don't think that the blame always lies with the developers. My personal experience has been that, for every missing design doc or spec, there is someone in sales who shaved a week off of the estimate the developers gave them for building the solution. If MIT is studying the Software Development Processes, maybe Harvard should do a study on the Software Development Sales process, and on why US companies have developed the mentality that it is ok to give developers less time than they need to complete development, and even better to base the timeline of a project on developers working 65 hour weeks when they know damn well that they are salaried employees and thus get no overtime.
I have actually found Gamefly to be a better service overall than Netflix, but it's not for everyone. On the up side, their turnaround is pretty quick, the games come well protected in their packaging, and the ability to keep the games you have out in one click (and have the case & materials shipped to you along with your next game) are all great. However, at about $20 a month, you have to be a pretty avid game player to get the most out of the service. They let you keep 2 games at once, so as long as you are beating 1 game a month on average, it is a sound choice. We primarily use the service for games that have little replay value, or to try games that aren't a sure thing. That alone has saved us a ton of cash. :)
Wouldn't that be a refreshing take on these foolish lawsuits? Have the game developer team up with Social Services and sue the parents for doing such a poor job raising their children that they would commit murder. Having the parents suggest that a video game could cause them to commit such an act only strengthens the case that they were unfit parents.
I wonder why they don't just write each vote to a harddisk locked safely away at the base of the booth. It would be simple enough to have secured panel access from the outside of the booth that contained the drive and an interface (take your pick) which could be used to extract the data once the polls had closed. Upload all the results at once and wipe the drives when complete.
I can go to a store, buy a CD, go home, burn it, then go and sell that CD. Yes, I made a copy, which I believe is legal to do at the time I owned the CD. No, I'm not going to destroy it once I sell the CD. Typically when you sell a CD back to a store or another individual, search warrants aren't exercised on your home to ensure you get rid of any copies.
I admit I have never used iTunes, and thus am not familiar with their policies, but it seems that an argument could be made for the case that one should be able to apply the same prinicples to their ownership of that MP3. So long as the transaction takes place in a 1 to 1 relationship, the owner of a legally purchased MP3 should be able to transfer said ownership to someone else without stressing about whether a copy exists. If the original owner starts selling the same song multiple times, then you have something to worry about.
Maybe the RIAA should try to create some P2P software that facilitates the transfer & sale of legal content between lawful owners instead of trying to extort $50,000 from single mothers of 14 year old kids.
Just my 2 cents.
If he wins, I wonder if the ships' lifecycle will resemble those of his games?
I can see it allready:
1) Carmack devises a ship that excells in performance, but requires very costly componenets in order to deliver on its full functionality.
2) After a years' worth of excellent operational records, other countries license the engine design and build their own ships off of it
3) 2 years after launch a thriving Spaceship MOD community is launching new ships into space every couple of months....
I think that M$, and now the Phantom console have both taken a theoretical step in the right direction by making it easier to move games developed in their environment to the PC, creating a greater audience for a lot less work than developing a game across consoles.
While I am not suggesting that Sony & Nintendo move to a Windows based OS anytime soon, maybe persuing a framework based on Linux could yield similar results for them without giving M$ a hand up.
I also think that the Xbox Live service is a good thing for smaller developers. With online play such an important part of a game players decision to buy now, the Live service allows the smaller shops to facilitate online play without incurring the cost of hosting facilities for the online componenet themselves. I don't know if M$ biases the bandwidth given to large v.s small developers on the Live service (it wouldn't suprise me if they did), but at least they provide it.
Free features & functionality provided by the platform will help level the playing field between large and small developers.
One of the things that does help set a good GUI apart from an OK one is extensive, focused usability testing.
While the underpinnings of KDE and Gnome continue to advance, I doubt a great deal is being spent along the lines of usability for the GUI. Whatever your feelings may be towards M$, one thing that can't be argued is the amount of research & testing they put into the design of their UI.
Maybe the next logical step for one of these platforms would be to have a build that focuses on UI design for the non-technical users that makeup the majority of the Windows clientel. Until that happens, I fear these products will fall into the realm of "techie stuff", as my father puts it, for the less sophisticated users.
At the risk of taking M$'s side......
This seems to be another example in an alarming trend of individuals or companies who had the forsight to patent an "idea" in technology for which they take no steps to develop, sit on it until they see that idea manifested and realized in someone elses work, and then sue them to make their money.
It seems to me that a better way to quantify these patents would be to require some set of initial source code, architecture or methods of arriving at a techinical solution for the idea being patented rather than allowing the patenting of an idea whose makeup & implementation are left floating in a technological ether.