As for me? I expose myself to every input, at every venue I possibly can. Whether I disagree with the source is another matter, but *ignoring* the source is tantamount to saying that "I have made up my mind, and I believe your opinions are of utter disinterest."
It is perfectly ok to make up your mind at some point, and once you realize that creationism is meaningless drivel you really don't need to expose yourself to it again and again and again in the faint hope that it might all somehow make sense one day. Isn't that the definition of madness, doing the same thing over and over again in the hope of a different outcome?
Besides, you go on a roadtrip to have fun, not to be subjected to endless fundamentalist stupidity. I'd say skipping creationism-oriented museums is a perfectly valid approach.
Well, that turned out to be easier than expected: the slowdown is caused by AdBlock! Disabling it in the FireFox preferences brings up a heavily populated map in about 7 seconds.
Leaving it enabled, but disabling it using its own menu raises that time to about 11-14 seconds (seems a bit variable). Disabling it for all of geocaching.com has no effect on timing.
Confirming what Dylan said - it's realtime in lowly Firefox 3.0.2 Ok, so the bottom half of the map was white for 5ms while it loaded the image, but that's the only weak link. Zooming in and out 5 steps in either direction continues to show instantanious use. This is on a 2.4ghz core 2 on XP SP3 with 2GB of ram (an "average" computer for the last two years)
Fascinating. As a test, I've disabled all extensions I've got installed and tried it again. While it is not nearly instantaneous with 467 caches visible, the waiting time is now down to a more reasonable seven seconds. I'll try to figure out if any specific extension is causing this slowdown next.
However, I must stress that the problem occurs only with a large number of caches in the display; with a smaller number it works in realtime for me too. The fact that you claim to be able to zoom out five steps suggests that you are looking at a less-densely populated area.
Hmmm. There must be something wrong with your setup there. I'm running a dual core 2ghz machine with 3gb of ram and the page you mentioned ran in total real time. I was able to scroll around the map as fast as my connection could download the map. Pretty neat site. Never thought of combining google maps with geocaching......kinda takes a lot of the challenge out of it to be honest.
Try this: for the address, type "Rheine". Then zoom out two steps. Processing on Firefox 3.5: about 20 seconds. Processing for the same area on Chrome: about 1 second.
Now, this is almost certainly the fault of GC.com: they retrieve at most 500 caches at a time, so whatever processing they do is probably O(n^2), and could probably easily be done in O(log(n)). But for now we are stuck with it, and a faster Javascript engine really does make a big difference when scouting out an area for a cache trip.
As for the challenge being lost, I'm not sure I understand that remark? Surely you (assuming you are also a geocacher) also select caches based on proximity to where you are (or intend to go) before visiting them?
I'm not sure what they include in rendering a page, but if I open a bunch of slashdot articles in different tabs it slows down noticably after I open more than four or five. And this is on a machine that has 3GB of RAM and a dual core / 2.6GHz CPU.
Also, the geocaching.com map is still pretty unusable on FireFox; only Chrome has enough oomph to actually make it work in anything approaching realtime.
How does a company that makes $1,000,000 in profit over 1 full year, get 465 Million dollars in loans from our government?? How will they pay that back in a reasonable time?
The same way that companies that make billions in losses get billions of loans from your government, I suspect...
First, that's a very inaccurate description of what FOSS is. There are FOSS developers who make a living just doing FOSS, for example, charging for support, training, prioritization of bug fixes/feature requests, et cetera.
There is a handful of people who do that, yes. And then there are tens of thousands not making a dime, who have dayjobs that pay their bills, and do programming for fun at night. Should their hobby suddenly make them liable for large damages? Should they be excluded from doing what they love just because of legal fears?
And before you answer that, keep in mind that we are talking in the context of production of free software here.
Second, and most importantly, what has that got to do with basic fairness?
Whether you charge for software or do not charge for software should not affect your liability in the legal system for issues with that software.
It damn well should. If you are not in any kind of relationship with the person using the software, i.e. if he should not have any expectation of service from you, that should also limit his ability to sue you for not meeting his expectations.
The fairness comes from the developer having zero benefit, and (with the proposed law) significant risk. This is different from a commercial company, which takes a risk (investing money, taking on legal liability) in return for a chance at significant benefit.
If you read to the end of the article, they are suggesting that instead of a law, what is needed might be agency regulation. I'm not really sure which of the two is more frightening, or more stifling for the industry...
I'm not anti-FOSS in any way, I'm just wondering why it would be exempted...
Would you spend years of your life making something useful, then give it away freely, and subsequently be sued to the point of losing your house, just for fun? At least commercial businesses are actively trading risk for gain; the open source developer only gets the risk part of the equation here.
I can see an entire industry spring up around finding bugs and sueing the maker of the software (much like the patent-sharks of today). You don't even have to read the source, just download a copy of whatever you want to hit and look in its Bugzilla tracker...
Then there's the modern day examples. Ever own a Volkswagen? Repairs on them will typically cost you 200% to 300% more than they would on the equivalent Japanese or American automobile. Whether that's because of over-engineering or other factors (proprietary parts) is open to debate but the fact remains that the American or Japanese model is going to be cheaper to keep on the road. In the end that's the most important factor for a lot of people.
I have no idea if any of your assertions have any basis in truth, but the notion that an American car is cheaper on the road than anything else is completely laughable. Where I live, "American" is a synonym for "you will not be able to afford enough gas to get it home in the first place".
This is important since all the receiving parties are using the metric system, and you wouldn't want them to be confused about this.
"Published reports today say the Pentagon is rattling swords in the direction of North Korea and Iran by speeding the development a 6 m, 14968 kg bomb known as Massive Ordnance Penetrator. This weapon is intended to annihilate underground bunkers and other hardened sites (read: long-range missile or underground nuke development) up to 61 m underground. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which has overseen the development of this monster since 2007, says it is designed to be carried aboard B-2.21 and B-53.638 bombers and deployed at high altitudes, from which it would strike the ground at speeds well beyond twice the speed of sound to penetrate the below-ground target." Reuters has more specifics on the MOP's chances for deployment by 2010, and the detail that the bomb's load of explosives weighs in at 2404 kg.
Re:There is no such thing as ten-round AES-256
on
Another New AES Attack
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Do you know why AES-256 is apparently more vulnerable than AES-128? Reading the article, attacks on AES-256 have apparently reduced the search time far more (to 2^119) than they have for AES-128 (which still stands at 2^128). Shouldn't a longer key make the attack more difficult as well because it increases the search space?
I mean... really? I don't even have a lame/wildly inaccurate car analogy to throw at this one, I'm just in awe of how dumb this is.
"If you put petrol in your car, do you expect it to last forever? So why would you expect the music in your Zune to last forever? Just as you need to fill up your car to keep it running, so do you need to fill up your mp3-player to keep listening to music."
I'd wager in 20 years there will be a booming business in wind turbine demolition as it becomes painfully clear, even to many wind power advocates, that their efficiency is lousy and the ongoing maintenance, especially as the turbines age, far larger than inticipated; many will be glad to see the eyesores turn down.
I live in the Netherlands, and I can tell you that windfarms can be turned into a thriving tourist business after a couple of centuries.
So while you may not be able to make it to the Escher Museum (chapter 29) in The Hague, Netherlands; the information on how M.C. Escher used impossible shapes in which the chapter describes is a fascinating read on its own.
That's only 15km from my house! It's quite easy to reach!
Anyway, I notice a rather strong focus on English-speaking countries. Why only five sites in Germany? Why is the Boerhave Museum in Leiden (in the Netherlands) missing (with its fascinating exhibit of the first-ever helium liquification system)?
And why is the Atomium in Brussels there? Talk about a crummy museum...
The Russian/Soviet space program has never had a launch failure that resulted in fatalities to crew aboard the ship.
True. Of course, there was the small matter of the 120 or so people incinerated in the Nedelin disaster, but they were on the ground.
When I visited the Kennedy Space Center a couple of years ago, they explained that NASA was extremely proud to never have lost an astronaut in space. Apparently, astronauts lost while on their way to space, or coming back from space, or just rehearsing going to space, don't really count...
For the good of this country, we need to concentrate on making sure our best students get the best education. This should be a higher priority than trying to make scientists out of juvenile criminals and bullies. Society doesn't need, and will never get 100% genius-status for all students, anyway. Attempts to make this happen will likely drag us all down.
Whereas society definitely does need smart people. Trying to drag them down by putting them in the same class as the stupid kids only results in endless frustration for them. Worse, as their school days will likely be filled with frustration and bullying, you risk them dropping out of school (or at least, never reaching their potential) as well.
But do you have a plan for those juvenile criminals and bullies? Or are you just going to let them grow into adult criminals and get stacked into the already-overpopulated prisons?
Yes, we can preventively stick them in already-overpopulated prisons before they ever reach adulthood.
For all I care Belgium can disintegrate. If wallonia wants to join France, so be it. If Eupen want to join Germany, so be it. If both want to stay independent, so be it. I don't care. But Flanders will become an independent republic. It would never join the Netherlands. You would have to pry Brussel from our cold dead hands, before we would let it join Wallonia. Or it could go to the EU as the DC capital of europe, which is also fine. Fighting over Brussel costs too much money, and we are a peaceful people anyway. But sending billions of euros to wallonia, while they spit on our culture and threaten our territorial integrity, has to stop.
Bonus point if you guess which side I am from.
Oh, come on! The Netherlands really isn't that bad. We love our southern neighbours, their chocolate, their beer, their friendly demeanor... And you might enjoy our liberal drug-policies and cheap, fast internet. When you join, we will (as a bonus) finally get around to fixing the access to the Antwerp harbor, as well as the railway to Germany that you have been craving for such a long time.
On the other hand, we wouldn't want to share a border with France, so I'm in favor of keeping at least something of a buffer zone...
Re:Didn't need a book to know this
on
Why New Systems Fail
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You make a good point, but it is totally unrealistic. Let me demonstrate where it will fail:
A more realistic approach is to get the best requirements you can, and build enough time into the project to handle 1.5-2 years worth of scope creep because that's what's going to happen with any huge system.
If you overbid by 1.5-2 years, you are sure to be outbid by a competitor who will stick to the "rigid requirements" method. So you will never receive a contract in the first place.
If you try to hardline your users by forcing them into a corner with rigid up front requirements that they cannot possibly help you formulate, they'll simply go outside the company and work with someone who knows how to run a project better and you'll get laid off.
Yes, but if you let the schedule slip those very same users will suddenly remember that you have a contract and force you into a corner with rigid contract stipulations about deadlines. If you want to avoid that, you'd better act first.
Don't forget, "the users" is not a single homogenous group, they are a collection of individuals, each with their own ideas and agenda, about half of which will hate your guts on principle (you mess with their computer, their routine, and their certainty about the future for no good reason they can think of). If you listen to them, they will tug you into a hundred different directions, roughly half of which are on the wrong side of a tall cliff.
I've been doing this for 20 years and I've seen the approach you are talking about fail over and over even with PM's that have 30 years experience. They knew better but corporate policy forced them to operate this way.
They just know that rigid requirements don't work. But do they have an actual alternative? You've apparently chosen to work on failing projects for the last 20 years, that tells me something about how difficult it is to find a project that's managed differently.
Inevitably the requirements were hopelessly incomplete and the users were pissed off when they had to sign off the project as complete because of what they agreed to, and in the end, the product did not meet their needs. The whole idea is to give the users the product they need. So even if you succeed in beating them on paper, and they are forced to sign off complete, you've failed.
Actually, the whole idea is to make money building something to specification. That is (apparently) what you were hired to do. If you don't like it, set up your own company, make your own rules, and fail to get _any_ customers because you are consequently overbidding and customers cannot tell the difference between you and the huge number of penny-pinching nitwits that define the rest of the industry.
Know what happens when you do this to your users? They hire contractors, who will be more flexible and give them what they want, and fire you.
Contractors will either work on a fixed budget, in which case they will either demand fixed requirements or stop working once the budget has run out, or they will work on time and materials basis, in which case they will be happy sitting on your premises and drinking coffee (and the occasional bit of programming) until the sun goes out.
You are better off with a "Look this is a big system and it's going to take a while to get it right. Lets figure out what you think you need now, we'll build it, and use that as a starting point to flesh out your system."
And you really claim to have 20 years of experience? First of all, a lowly peon will never get to sit down with the people who make the decisions and have this sort of talk with them. If you somehow managed to do it anyway, they will smile and say that they cannot budget for an open-ended development project (which is what you are proposing), so they are just going to go with a fixed set of requirements and the associated f
Give em the newest rpg(or jrpg grinder if you like). Make the story and game so it updates their world with earth's servers on par with the delays and there you go. Next thing you know they wouldn't want to leave the ship. Or if rts is their fancy... well you got the idea...
RTS?
Look, I need to explain something to you. Colonies have this way of becoming independent, in the end, and we should _not_ be training to think of conquest as their most important hobby for when that time comes.
They can have a copy of Animal Crossing if they want.
Just because we're used to greater graphics now doesn't mean the gameplay is shit and only great gameplay is in 2D ASCII games we're you have to have good imagination to go with things.
Yeah, I *totally* said that... (rolls eyes)
To avoid troll-mods, next time try responding to what I actually said.
In an indirect way this also showed me that current games aren't just about graphics and innovative gameplay would had been forgotten. Portal could had been done years ago the same way its done here. However it was new kind of game and had good and fitting graphics, so the usual thought that new games aren't innovative doesn't really cut.
I'd argue that there are still innovative games around, but most are derivate crap. In that sense nothing has changed from the good ol' days of 8- and 16-bit. What has changed, however, is that games are now more locked into specific presentation formats: everything has to be 3D, and abstract graphics have just about died out. In some ways, this limits what can be done (some gameplay mechanics depend on 2D or fake-3D presentation). We've lost some of the richness of the early game landscape because of that, I think.
Because it was just a first person shooter! It was advertized as so much more... In SS2 you have freedom of movement (Bioshock is on rails), you get to make some real choices about how to approach the game (and it matters greatly for gameplay), and it has some fantastic storytelling (of which Bioshock is a pale ripoff).
I've not played System Shock 2
Well, that's your problem right there. Shame it is so hard to find, it is well worth playing, even today.
Slashdot Mirror
As for me? I expose myself to every input, at every venue I possibly can. Whether I disagree with the source is another matter, but *ignoring* the source is tantamount to saying that "I have made up my mind, and I believe your opinions are of utter disinterest."
It is perfectly ok to make up your mind at some point, and once you realize that creationism is meaningless drivel you really don't need to expose yourself to it again and again and again in the faint hope that it might all somehow make sense one day. Isn't that the definition of madness, doing the same thing over and over again in the hope of a different outcome?
Besides, you go on a roadtrip to have fun, not to be subjected to endless fundamentalist stupidity. I'd say skipping creationism-oriented museums is a perfectly valid approach.
Well, that turned out to be easier than expected: the slowdown is caused by AdBlock! Disabling it in the FireFox preferences brings up a heavily populated map in about 7 seconds.
Leaving it enabled, but disabling it using its own menu raises that time to about 11-14 seconds (seems a bit variable). Disabling it for all of geocaching.com has no effect on timing.
Confirming what Dylan said - it's realtime in lowly Firefox 3.0.2 Ok, so the bottom half of the map was white for 5ms while it loaded the image, but that's the only weak link. Zooming in and out 5 steps in either direction continues to show instantanious use. This is on a 2.4ghz core 2 on XP SP3 with 2GB of ram (an "average" computer for the last two years)
Fascinating. As a test, I've disabled all extensions I've got installed and tried it again. While it is not nearly instantaneous with 467 caches visible, the waiting time is now down to a more reasonable seven seconds. I'll try to figure out if any specific extension is causing this slowdown next.
However, I must stress that the problem occurs only with a large number of caches in the display; with a smaller number it works in realtime for me too. The fact that you claim to be able to zoom out five steps suggests that you are looking at a less-densely populated area.
Hmmm. There must be something wrong with your setup there. I'm running a dual core 2ghz machine with 3gb of ram and the page you mentioned ran in total real time. I was able to scroll around the map as fast as my connection could download the map. Pretty neat site. Never thought of combining google maps with geocaching......kinda takes a lot of the challenge out of it to be honest.
Try this: for the address, type "Rheine". Then zoom out two steps. Processing on Firefox 3.5: about 20 seconds. Processing for the same area on Chrome: about 1 second.
Now, this is almost certainly the fault of GC.com: they retrieve at most 500 caches at a time, so whatever processing they do is probably O(n^2), and could probably easily be done in O(log(n)). But for now we are stuck with it, and a faster Javascript engine really does make a big difference when scouting out an area for a cache trip.
As for the challenge being lost, I'm not sure I understand that remark? Surely you (assuming you are also a geocacher) also select caches based on proximity to where you are (or intend to go) before visiting them?
I'm not sure what they include in rendering a page, but if I open a bunch of slashdot articles in different tabs it slows down noticably after I open more than four or five. And this is on a machine that has 3GB of RAM and a dual core / 2.6GHz CPU.
Also, the geocaching.com map is still pretty unusable on FireFox; only Chrome has enough oomph to actually make it work in anything approaching realtime.
So speed improvements are definitely appreciated.
How does a company that makes $1,000,000 in profit over 1 full year, get 465 Million dollars in loans from our government?? How will they pay that back in a reasonable time?
The same way that companies that make billions in losses get billions of loans from your government, I suspect...
First, that's a very inaccurate description of what FOSS is. There are FOSS developers who make a living just doing FOSS, for example, charging for support, training, prioritization of bug fixes/feature requests, et cetera.
There is a handful of people who do that, yes. And then there are tens of thousands not making a dime, who have dayjobs that pay their bills, and do programming for fun at night. Should their hobby suddenly make them liable for large damages? Should they be excluded from doing what they love just because of legal fears?
And before you answer that, keep in mind that we are talking in the context of production of free software here.
Second, and most importantly, what has that got to do with basic fairness?
Whether you charge for software or do not charge for software should not affect your liability in the legal system for issues with that software.
It damn well should. If you are not in any kind of relationship with the person using the software, i.e. if he should not have any expectation of service from you, that should also limit his ability to sue you for not meeting his expectations.
The fairness comes from the developer having zero benefit, and (with the proposed law) significant risk. This is different from a commercial company, which takes a risk (investing money, taking on legal liability) in return for a chance at significant benefit.
If you read to the end of the article, they are suggesting that instead of a law, what is needed might be agency regulation. I'm not really sure which of the two is more frightening, or more stifling for the industry...
I'm not anti-FOSS in any way, I'm just wondering why it would be exempted...
Would you spend years of your life making something useful, then give it away freely, and subsequently be sued to the point of losing your house, just for fun? At least commercial businesses are actively trading risk for gain; the open source developer only gets the risk part of the equation here.
I can see an entire industry spring up around finding bugs and sueing the maker of the software (much like the patent-sharks of today). You don't even have to read the source, just download a copy of whatever you want to hit and look in its Bugzilla tracker...
In fact, it looks just like an Amiga demo from 20+ years ago!
Then there's the modern day examples. Ever own a Volkswagen? Repairs on them will typically cost you 200% to 300% more than they would on the equivalent Japanese or American automobile. Whether that's because of over-engineering or other factors (proprietary parts) is open to debate but the fact remains that the American or Japanese model is going to be cheaper to keep on the road. In the end that's the most important factor for a lot of people.
I have no idea if any of your assertions have any basis in truth, but the notion that an American car is cheaper on the road than anything else is completely laughable. Where I live, "American" is a synonym for "you will not be able to afford enough gas to get it home in the first place".
This is important since all the receiving parties are using the metric system, and you wouldn't want them to be confused about this.
"Published reports today say the Pentagon is rattling swords in the direction of North Korea and Iran by speeding the development a 6 m, 14968 kg bomb known as Massive Ordnance Penetrator. This weapon is intended to annihilate underground bunkers and other hardened sites (read: long-range missile or underground nuke development) up to 61 m underground. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which has overseen the development of this monster since 2007, says it is designed to be carried aboard B-2.21 and B-53.638 bombers and deployed at high altitudes, from which it would strike the ground at speeds well beyond twice the speed of sound to penetrate the below-ground target." Reuters has more specifics on the MOP's chances for deployment by 2010, and the detail that the bomb's load of explosives weighs in at 2404 kg.
Do you know why AES-256 is apparently more vulnerable than AES-128? Reading the article, attacks on AES-256 have apparently reduced the search time far more (to 2^119) than they have for AES-128 (which still stands at 2^128). Shouldn't a longer key make the attack more difficult as well because it increases the search space?
I mean... really? I don't even have a lame/wildly inaccurate car analogy to throw at this one, I'm just in awe of how dumb this is.
"If you put petrol in your car, do you expect it to last forever? So why would you expect the music in your Zune to last forever? Just as you need to fill up your car to keep it running, so do you need to fill up your mp3-player to keep listening to music."
I'd wager in 20 years there will be a booming business in wind turbine demolition as it becomes painfully clear, even to many wind power advocates, that their efficiency is lousy and the ongoing maintenance, especially as the turbines age, far larger than inticipated; many will be glad to see the eyesores turn down.
I live in the Netherlands, and I can tell you that windfarms can be turned into a thriving tourist business after a couple of centuries.
So while you may not be able to make it to the Escher Museum (chapter 29) in The Hague, Netherlands; the information on how M.C. Escher used impossible shapes in which the chapter describes is a fascinating read on its own.
That's only 15km from my house! It's quite easy to reach!
Anyway, I notice a rather strong focus on English-speaking countries. Why only five sites in Germany? Why is the Boerhave Museum in Leiden (in the Netherlands) missing (with its fascinating exhibit of the first-ever helium liquification system)?
And why is the Atomium in Brussels there? Talk about a crummy museum...
I won't believe it until Netcraft confirms it!
The Russian/Soviet space program has never had a launch failure that resulted in fatalities to crew aboard the ship.
True. Of course, there was the small matter of the 120 or so people incinerated in the Nedelin disaster, but they were on the ground.
When I visited the Kennedy Space Center a couple of years ago, they explained that NASA was extremely proud to never have lost an astronaut in space. Apparently, astronauts lost while on their way to space, or coming back from space, or just rehearsing going to space, don't really count...
For the good of this country, we need to concentrate on making sure our best students get the best education. This should be a higher priority than trying to make scientists out of juvenile criminals and bullies. Society doesn't need, and will never get 100% genius-status for all students, anyway. Attempts to make this happen will likely drag us all down.
Whereas society definitely does need smart people. Trying to drag them down by putting them in the same class as the stupid kids only results in endless frustration for them. Worse, as their school days will likely be filled with frustration and bullying, you risk them dropping out of school (or at least, never reaching their potential) as well.
But do you have a plan for those juvenile criminals and bullies? Or are you just going to let them grow into adult criminals and get stacked into the already-overpopulated prisons?
Yes, we can preventively stick them in already-overpopulated prisons before they ever reach adulthood.
Hah, you hadn't thought of -that- now had you?
For all I care Belgium can disintegrate. If wallonia wants to join France, so be it. If Eupen want to join Germany, so be it. If both want to stay independent, so be it. I don't care.
But Flanders will become an independent republic. It would never join the Netherlands. You would have to pry Brussel from our cold dead hands, before we would let it join Wallonia. Or it could go to the EU as the DC capital of europe, which is also fine. Fighting over Brussel costs too much money, and we are a peaceful people anyway. But sending billions of euros to wallonia, while they spit on our culture and threaten our territorial integrity, has to stop.
Bonus point if you guess which side I am from.
Oh, come on! The Netherlands really isn't that bad. We love our southern neighbours, their chocolate, their beer, their friendly demeanor... And you might enjoy our liberal drug-policies and cheap, fast internet. When you join, we will (as a bonus) finally get around to fixing the access to the Antwerp harbor, as well as the railway to Germany that you have been craving for such a long time.
On the other hand, we wouldn't want to share a border with France, so I'm in favor of keeping at least something of a buffer zone...
You make a good point, but it is totally unrealistic. Let me demonstrate where it will fail:
A more realistic approach is to get the best requirements you can, and build enough time into the project to handle 1.5-2 years worth of scope creep because that's what's going to happen with any huge system.
If you overbid by 1.5-2 years, you are sure to be outbid by a competitor who will stick to the "rigid requirements" method. So you will never receive a contract in the first place.
If you try to hardline your users by forcing them into a corner with rigid up front requirements that they cannot possibly help you formulate, they'll simply go outside the company and work with someone who knows how to run a project better and you'll get laid off.
Yes, but if you let the schedule slip those very same users will suddenly remember that you have a contract and force you into a corner with rigid contract stipulations about deadlines. If you want to avoid that, you'd better act first.
Don't forget, "the users" is not a single homogenous group, they are a collection of individuals, each with their own ideas and agenda, about half of which will hate your guts on principle (you mess with their computer, their routine, and their certainty about the future for no good reason they can think of). If you listen to them, they will tug you into a hundred different directions, roughly half of which are on the wrong side of a tall cliff.
I've been doing this for 20 years and I've seen the approach you are talking about fail over and over even with PM's that have 30 years experience. They knew better but corporate policy forced them to operate this way.
They just know that rigid requirements don't work. But do they have an actual alternative? You've apparently chosen to work on failing projects for the last 20 years, that tells me something about how difficult it is to find a project that's managed differently.
Inevitably the requirements were hopelessly incomplete and the users were pissed off when they had to sign off the project as complete because of what they agreed to, and in the end, the product did not meet their needs. The whole idea is to give the users the product they need. So even if you succeed in beating them on paper, and they are forced to sign off complete, you've failed.
Actually, the whole idea is to make money building something to specification. That is (apparently) what you were hired to do. If you don't like it, set up your own company, make your own rules, and fail to get _any_ customers because you are consequently overbidding and customers cannot tell the difference between you and the huge number of penny-pinching nitwits that define the rest of the industry.
Know what happens when you do this to your users? They hire contractors, who will be more flexible and give them what they want, and fire you.
Contractors will either work on a fixed budget, in which case they will either demand fixed requirements or stop working once the budget has run out, or they will work on time and materials basis, in which case they will be happy sitting on your premises and drinking coffee (and the occasional bit of programming) until the sun goes out.
You are better off with a "Look this is a big system and it's going to take a while to get it right. Lets figure out what you think you need now, we'll build it, and use that as a starting point to flesh out your system."
And you really claim to have 20 years of experience? First of all, a lowly peon will never get to sit down with the people who make the decisions and have this sort of talk with them. If you somehow managed to do it anyway, they will smile and say that they cannot budget for an open-ended development project (which is what you are proposing), so they are just going to go with a fixed set of requirements and the associated f
Give em the newest rpg(or jrpg grinder if you like). Make the story and game so it updates their world with earth's servers on par with the delays and there you go. ... well you got the idea...
Next thing you know they wouldn't want to leave the ship.
Or if rts is their fancy
RTS?
Look, I need to explain something to you. Colonies have this way of becoming independent, in the end, and we should _not_ be training to think of conquest as their most important hobby for when that time comes.
They can have a copy of Animal Crossing if they want.
Just because we're used to greater graphics now doesn't mean the gameplay is shit and only great gameplay is in 2D ASCII games we're you have to have good imagination to go with things.
Yeah, I *totally* said that... (rolls eyes)
To avoid troll-mods, next time try responding to what I actually said.
In an indirect way this also showed me that current games aren't just about graphics and innovative gameplay would had been forgotten. Portal could had been done years ago the same way its done here. However it was new kind of game and had good and fitting graphics, so the usual thought that new games aren't innovative doesn't really cut.
I'd argue that there are still innovative games around, but most are derivate crap. In that sense nothing has changed from the good ol' days of 8- and 16-bit. What has changed, however, is that games are now more locked into specific presentation formats: everything has to be 3D, and abstract graphics have just about died out. In some ways, this limits what can be done (some gameplay mechanics depend on 2D or fake-3D presentation). We've lost some of the richness of the early game landscape because of that, I think.
Because it was just a first person shooter! It was advertized as so much more... In SS2 you have freedom of movement (Bioshock is on rails), you get to make some real choices about how to approach the game (and it matters greatly for gameplay), and it has some fantastic storytelling (of which Bioshock is a pale ripoff).
I've not played System Shock 2
Well, that's your problem right there. Shame it is so hard to find, it is well worth playing, even today.