"With a budget of $1-$2 million dollars, 10 staffers could be hired to work on 'creatively ambitious and forward-thinking projects.'"
10 staffers that would constantly generate great game ideas that actually sell? Never going to happen, you need fresh ideas often and that takes fresh blood. What you need to do is take a page from venture capital firms: throw a little money out to anyone that come out with an idea that sounds promising.
Example: I come to you with this great game idea. You ask for a sample and I throw something together, maybe just a proof of concept. It looks promising, so you send me a money (whatever seems reasonable, between $X,XXX and $XXX,XXX) for a more polished copy. I now have a few bucks to throw around and find freelancer programmers and designers and throw money at them and come up with a decent alpha. You really like it, so you either buy the idea off me or hire me and maybe even the freelancers to continue working on the game with your professional developers. Now a real game comes out and it all started with some guy's idea.
The article is extremely light on details, we dont know how elaborate the scam got. For example, if I noticed a few priests (aka actors off craigslist) following me over the course of months or years and you told me Opus Dei was out to get me I'd probably start believing it too.
Just because he fell for it doesn't make him a dumbass. Sure it sounds silly in one paragrah but they had 6 years to elaborate on the story. A few well placed actors every few months would be enough to convince almost anyone of a conspiracy. Reminds me of that Michael Douglas movie The Game.
And I'm sure you'd have better luck with multiple cameras: Of the 89 reviews, 35 gave it 1 out of 5 stars. That's a very poor score, who would buy something where nearly half the reviews are 1 out of 5 stars?
"The unemployment rate for college graduates is 4.7 percent [bls.gov] this year. That essentially means that, for college graduates, there is no recession: 5 percent unemployment is the national rate you see during boom years. What's more, three years ago the unemployment rate for college graduates was two percent"
This does not mean college graduates are getting careers, it just means they're graduating and finding a job: 43% of recent college grads are underemployed, meaning they accepted a job that do not utilize their degree, and 67% of grads with degrees in arts and sciences (that means you computer science grads) are underemployed.
If you're worried about children taking inappropriate photos or videos and uploading them it's too late, cameras have been marketed to kids for many years and I haven't heard any stories about young children uploading inappropriate videos. More fear mongering at it's best, what's next souping and trampolining?
Hey Microsoft, instead of fighting your customers like the RIAA (which has worked so well for them), why don't you just offer a version with drivers and charge double or triple?
"Funny you mention Darwin though.. .
The guy traveled around the world, visiting remote deserted places for years at a time in a era where such voyages were still the equivalent of playing Russian roulette. Also gross stupidity?"
"the physical strength and stamina to climb one of the toughest mountains on earth several times, not to mention the mental fitness, flexibility and willpower one needs in large quantities in order to do something like that."
It's just another tourist attraction for thrill seekers. The reason that guy was able to pass on his seed probably had more to do with having money to burn buying $25,000 Mt Everest climbing permits then it had to do with his physical strength or stamina.
"I have a beam-angle-adjustment mechanism already. It's called a neck;)"
Some people no longer have these "neck" things you speak of, so we have to find alternatives. Fortunately the people without necks just happen to have fingers the size of sausages so putting a Maglite in there is no problem.
So the newspaper for the official ruling Communist party in China says bad things about the iPad.... isn't this a good thing? I'd be more concerned if they praised the device, the fact that they don't like it must mean it's wonderful.
I was a bit concerned by the large variety of ports, could they all work at the same time or was I stuck using buying a not-yet-available DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport hub?
Seems this image clears that question right up: two monitors are connected to DVI and 4 are connected through a hub, so I see no reason why I can't purchase two cheap DisplayPort to DVI adaptors and have up to four monitors connected by the very common DVI port.
one $180 video card, one PCI-E 16x slot, 4+ LCDs. Sounds good.
This is what I'm interested in:"....six display controllers offering six TMDS links. This lets users connect up to six displays to as independent display heads, or span display heads across multiple physical displays using the Eyefinity technology. The new HDMI 1.4a connector standard is made use of, which gives you support for stereoscopic 3D standards such as Blu-ray 3D, the two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 connectors support Multi-Stream technology that let you daisy-chain 3 physical displays per connector, letting you wrap up a 6-display Eyefinity array using just those two connectors."
Sounds great! Tired of selling an old monitor to buy a new one that's 2" larger and a few hundred more pixels, much rather just get a second (or third, or fourth, etc) same-sized LCD and double the pixels.
"Thanks for perfectly illustrating why we are in this situation. "This is America!" is a meaningless phrase."
Acutally according to the article he might be on to something: "U.S. rare earth companies have begun looking to reopen old mines and search for new deposits, but industry experts say that relaunching an independent U.S. supply chain could take 15 years."
I know it says 15 years, but I have a feeling that if China really decided to withhold rare earth minerals for an extended time we'd find a supply a bit faster.
But we have plenty to mine:"the U.S. holds rare earth ore reserves of up to 13 million metric tons. By contrast, the entire world produced just 124,000 metric tons in 2009". That means we have roughly 104 years worth of rare earth ore reserves, I think we'll be just fine.
China's kind of like the neighbor kid that knocks on my door and offers to mow the lawn for $20. It's not that I can't mow myself, but when it's so cheap to pay someone else why do it myself? If he ever didn't show up for a couple weeks I'd just do it myself, but as long as he's offering I'll keep paying him.
Because the price of the PC is usually important in the corporate world... actually that's the entire reason for this article, author doesn't want to spend $1000 on sub-par Dell PCs.
"However, it's important to understand your bottleneck, and dedicate more money on it.... I could use an SSD with a cost around 150 Euros."
It's also important to remember to spend the right amount to alleviate those bottlenecks. An SSD makes a lot of sense in a laptop because SSDs are expensive per gigabyte but you're not typically using a laptop for huge files and SSDs use less power so the battery should last longer, but I've seen people put SSDs in their desktops to load games faster. I suppose the half second faster loading time might be worth it to a very few, but I believe the large majority might be better off spending that $150+ on something else and they're being suckered into buying SSDs based on unrealistic benchmarks.
Case in point: I went with a 15000rpm SCSI after reading how amazing they were years ago. Despite an access time nearly 3x as fast as an SATA drive I didn't really notice a huge difference. I'd imagine most SSD owners feel the same.
I agree. "Parents at St. Vincent Euphrasia elementary school in Meaford, Ont., voted to ban Wi-Fi transmitters, after some students reported feeling ill after they were installed."
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one that saw "McGill University" and thought it said McGrill?
"With a budget of $1-$2 million dollars, 10 staffers could be hired to work on 'creatively ambitious and forward-thinking projects.'"
10 staffers that would constantly generate great game ideas that actually sell? Never going to happen, you need fresh ideas often and that takes fresh blood. What you need to do is take a page from venture capital firms: throw a little money out to anyone that come out with an idea that sounds promising.
Example: I come to you with this great game idea. You ask for a sample and I throw something together, maybe just a proof of concept. It looks promising, so you send me a money (whatever seems reasonable, between $X,XXX and $XXX,XXX) for a more polished copy. I now have a few bucks to throw around and find freelancer programmers and designers and throw money at them and come up with a decent alpha. You really like it, so you either buy the idea off me or hire me and maybe even the freelancers to continue working on the game with your professional developers. Now a real game comes out and it all started with some guy's idea.
Sure beats a dozen sequels of the same old crap.
The article is extremely light on details, we dont know how elaborate the scam got. For example, if I noticed a few priests (aka actors off craigslist) following me over the course of months or years and you told me Opus Dei was out to get me I'd probably start believing it too.
Just because he fell for it doesn't make him a dumbass. Sure it sounds silly in one paragrah but they had 6 years to elaborate on the story. A few well placed actors every few months would be enough to convince almost anyone of a conspiracy. Reminds me of that Michael Douglas movie The Game.
"More useful... Is simply multiple cameras."
And I'm sure you'd have better luck with multiple cameras: Of the 89 reviews, 35 gave it 1 out of 5 stars. That's a very poor score, who would buy something where nearly half the reviews are 1 out of 5 stars?
And the complaints aren't just "I can't set it up". Many of the complaints are Battery only has a 10 minute charge, no customer service, Broke after 2 months, no customer service.
One customer even managed to fix his using internet instructions after WowWee said it was broken forever: " I followed the recovery steps outlined in the link, and ended up with a functioning Rovio. This was after several emails with WowWee where they ended up saying "sorry, there is no way to recover from this problem". Basically "too bad"; no warranty because I had owned it for more than 180 days.
Obviously the biggest problem isn't setup or software, it's poor relibility added with poor customer service.
"The unemployment rate for college graduates is 4.7 percent [bls.gov] this year. That essentially means that, for college graduates, there is no recession: 5 percent unemployment is the national rate you see during boom years. What's more, three years ago the unemployment rate for college graduates was two percent"
This does not mean college graduates are getting careers, it just means they're graduating and finding a job: 43% of recent college grads are underemployed, meaning they accepted a job that do not utilize their degree, and 67% of grads with degrees in arts and sciences (that means you computer science grads) are underemployed.
So just because the unemployment rate for college grads is 4.7% does not mean they're getting jobs, even back in 2004 18% of recent college grads were underemployed.
Even now, 317,000 US waiters and waitresses have at least a bachelor's degree. Clearly we have enough highly educated college grads in this country but even they can not find careers that match their degrees.
Sounds like a win for the iPhone
February called, they want their news back
Also your link doesn't say a word about pedophiles, and Fisher Price already makes little pink video cameras for toddlers 3 and up and the Nintendo DS has had a camera since 2008. Fisher Price even had a camera for kids 8 and up way back in 1987
If you're worried about children taking inappropriate photos or videos and uploading them it's too late, cameras have been marketed to kids for many years and I haven't heard any stories about young children uploading inappropriate videos. More fear mongering at it's best, what's next souping and trampolining?
Hey Microsoft, instead of fighting your customers like the RIAA (which has worked so well for them), why don't you just offer a version with drivers and charge double or triple?
The Kinect is amazing, I'd easily pay $300-$450 for on if it meant I could control my PC like the Minority Report but I'm not paying $150 to dance in front of my Xbox
"Funny you mention Darwin though.. . The guy traveled around the world, visiting remote deserted places for years at a time in a era where such voyages were still the equivalent of playing Russian roulette. Also gross stupidity?"
Um.... what? Don't you know why it's called the Darwin award?? HAND IN YOUR GEEK CARD IMMEDIATELY!
"the physical strength and stamina to climb one of the toughest mountains on earth several times, not to mention the mental fitness, flexibility and willpower one needs in large quantities in order to do something like that."
And the corporate sponsors!
Think I'm joking? Children climb Mt. Everest, but not without a long list of corporate sponsers like Energizer and Mary Kay (have to look nice in the photos!). The elderly also climb Mt Everest.
Climbing Mount Everest isn't impressive anymore, As of 2008 over 4,000 people have climbed Mount Everest and it's become a significant tourist attraction for Nepal: "Climbers are a significant source of tourist revenue for Nepal, whose government also requires all prospective climbers to obtain an expensive permit, costing up to US $ 25,000 per person."
It's just another tourist attraction for thrill seekers. The reason that guy was able to pass on his seed probably had more to do with having money to burn buying $25,000 Mt Everest climbing permits then it had to do with his physical strength or stamina.
"I have a beam-angle-adjustment mechanism already. It's called a neck ;)"
Some people no longer have these "neck" things you speak of, so we have to find alternatives. Fortunately the people without necks just happen to have fingers the size of sausages so putting a Maglite in there is no problem.
"getting rid of the screen on your phone and stick it in your palm or forearm"
No thanks, I hand my phone to other people too often, besides I don't want to go through surgery for a new phone every 2 years.
now we just need a internal power source....
So the newspaper for the official ruling Communist party in China says bad things about the iPad.... isn't this a good thing? I'd be more concerned if they praised the device, the fact that they don't like it must mean it's wonderful.
FPS is over-rated. Cards are so fast now days they have to throw everything at them plus the kitchen sink just to get them down to 30fps.
Here's the 5850 still pulling off 23fps at 1920x1200 4x AA 16x Aniso running the newest game possible (released Feb 2010), Aliens vs Predator. I'm a mild gamer and I'm even sure what the 4x AA and 16x Aniso is, does something with making it look nicer, turn them off and the fps improves significantly. If you're like me and you're stuck playing a game released way back in Nov 2009 then enjoy 58fps
I'm more interested in the ability to run half a dozen monitors. That I'll use every day, that 23 or 58fps, maybe a few hours a week.
I was a bit concerned by the large variety of ports, could they all work at the same time or was I stuck using buying a not-yet-available DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport hub?
Seems this image clears that question right up: two monitors are connected to DVI and 4 are connected through a hub, so I see no reason why I can't purchase two cheap DisplayPort to DVI adaptors and have up to four monitors connected by the very common DVI port.
one $180 video card, one PCI-E 16x slot, 4+ LCDs. Sounds good.
This is what I'm interested in: "....six display controllers offering six TMDS links. This lets users connect up to six displays to as independent display heads, or span display heads across multiple physical displays using the Eyefinity technology. The new HDMI 1.4a connector standard is made use of, which gives you support for stereoscopic 3D standards such as Blu-ray 3D, the two mini-DisplayPort 1.2 connectors support Multi-Stream technology that let you daisy-chain 3 physical displays per connector, letting you wrap up a 6-display Eyefinity array using just those two connectors."
Sounds great! Tired of selling an old monitor to buy a new one that's 2" larger and a few hundred more pixels, much rather just get a second (or third, or fourth, etc) same-sized LCD and double the pixels.
"The Radeon HD 6870 and Radeon HD 6850 drop in at $239 and $179 MSRP, respectively. "
NPR has been wrong a lot lately
those are in English? The text is English but it doesn't sound like any English I've ever heard, only thing I understood was "Ah....."
I've seen dogs that spoke better English
"Thanks for perfectly illustrating why we are in this situation. "This is America!" is a meaningless phrase."
Acutally according to the article he might be on to something: "U.S. rare earth companies have begun looking to reopen old mines and search for new deposits, but industry experts say that relaunching an independent U.S. supply chain could take 15 years."
I know it says 15 years, but I have a feeling that if China really decided to withhold rare earth minerals for an extended time we'd find a supply a bit faster.
The only reason we use China's rare earth minerals is because they mine it and ship it to the US cheaper than we can mine it ourselves: "many U.S. companies have not jumped into the market because China's state-owned mines keep rare earth prices artificially low."
But we have plenty to mine: "the U.S. holds rare earth ore reserves of up to 13 million metric tons. By contrast, the entire world produced just 124,000 metric tons in 2009". That means we have roughly 104 years worth of rare earth ore reserves, I think we'll be just fine.
China's kind of like the neighbor kid that knocks on my door and offers to mow the lawn for $20. It's not that I can't mow myself, but when it's so cheap to pay someone else why do it myself? If he ever didn't show up for a couple weeks I'd just do it myself, but as long as he's offering I'll keep paying him.
"Lol why would price matter."
Because the price of the PC is usually important in the corporate world... actually that's the entire reason for this article, author doesn't want to spend $1000 on sub-par Dell PCs.
"However, it's important to understand your bottleneck, and dedicate more money on it.... I could use an SSD with a cost around 150 Euros."
It's also important to remember to spend the right amount to alleviate those bottlenecks. An SSD makes a lot of sense in a laptop because SSDs are expensive per gigabyte but you're not typically using a laptop for huge files and SSDs use less power so the battery should last longer, but I've seen people put SSDs in their desktops to load games faster. I suppose the half second faster loading time might be worth it to a very few, but I believe the large majority might be better off spending that $150+ on something else and they're being suckered into buying SSDs based on unrealistic benchmarks.
Case in point: I went with a 15000rpm SCSI after reading how amazing they were years ago. Despite an access time nearly 3x as fast as an SATA drive I didn't really notice a huge difference. I'd imagine most SSD owners feel the same.
Don't get me wrong the time for SSDs will come soon, but some people that bought SSDs back in 2008 or before when the prices were $300+ for 32gb really got ripped off.
I agree. "Parents at St. Vincent Euphrasia elementary school in Meaford, Ont., voted to ban Wi-Fi transmitters, after some students reported feeling ill after they were installed."
Of course banning wifi is silly but I applaud the school for listening to the majority of the parents. I just wish local schools allowed parents so much control over what the schools do, pretty sure parents wouldn't have voted to allow the school to spy on students through webcams