GEC Marconi in the UK ran Software Engineering Apprenticeship programs 25 years ago; they were sick of getting COBOL programmers from schools and universities so made a more technically oriented program that taught fun stuff like C, Pascal, LISP, Ada alongside computer operations, QA, project management, hardware design and electronics.
I bought a PS3 and all it does is play Blueray discs or stream video to the projector. Games on PC 100% of the time in my house; that way I get to use a keyboard and a mouse and not a bolt-on keypad and gaming controller.
I've done this many times. It boils down to simple stuff and its all a trade off; time vs money vs quality. Time is usually the key where I work as the environment is a highly changing one.
Deploying new hardware is generally less risk and faster than upgrading software, and uses different people from the (always too busy) software teams. So it buys you time which is often fine for the business folks that don't care about how inefficient that algorithm or SQL query is as long as the business needs are met. However, there's only so many times you can band-aid this stuff until hardware cannot solve it.
When you do new software, its a full development cycle. If it requires major rethink on the design you can bet new issues are raised in production when it goes live; the business do care about this and you have to do some extra preparation to deal with these new risks as the new software is rolled out.
Having gone all through is, the goal-posts change again. New activity happens from business that drives software in ways you didn't imagine or get the chance to implement for ahead of time. You're back to square one on the hardware versus software again.
Yes I have been through what you're asking. 18 years into software development it got boring. I'd managed teams up to 50 with long life cycles, demanding apps like commodity trading and radar processing, really wasn't much else challenging on the software front.
I approached a customer that used our services and made it clear I wanted to not do IT but do business analysis and business development in their operations department. 5 years later it's all good, no regrets on the career change. With this change it's not possible to totally get away from software development, instead I leverage the previous knowledge to businesses advantage but day-to-day sort out business problems rather than code.
EVE today is very different to EVE during its first 6 months of life. Your opinions of it are dated and in some cases invalid with today's game.
6 months after release I quit for 6 months having played from beta and into the initial game opening. There was no content. It was boring and open to griefing or exploitation. I saw the vision but realised they had a ways to get there. When I came back various bugs were fixed, gameplay strategy and tactics had been modified and content was added. I've been subscribed ever since.
EVE today is not to be compared to EVE at opening date.
The real concern we had in a similar conversion was trusting what actualy ended up as the last checked in code, and how to track contention on common code being worked on. In reality, even with decent sized teams, its easy to know in general who is working where in the code base - the managers and team leads should know, people paying attention to a check-in log should see the traffic too (assuming the change notices go to a distribution email list).
For knowing what is last in still works as intended, update to latest checked-in code prior to doing your own check-in, establish a process to run a unit test case suite for the project; these must pass 100% before checking in the new code. This is good practice anyways regardless of this situation.
Also, encourage check in early and often to minimize changes between source tree updates.
Have an automated build and/or a unit test runner, email a VIP list and the culprit that broke the build. This finds the issues early if people aren't actually using the process described above, which will help to enforce it.
I've used a process like this on teams with 20 people running for a year or more with 3-5 branches on the go at once. The problems are minimal. The hardest part is running 2 very active branches together for an extended duration; the merge is hell but all source systems will have this as an issue.
EVE is the most open ended game out there. It rewards ruthless capitalism, industrialism, piracy, bureaucracy. It doesn't hand the fun to you on a plate like the fantasy RPGs do, and that's where many people just don't get it. No new level or uber item every day or so and people lose interest. Not for your average gamer for sure, but I for one love it.
The gameplay is good. But the patching and quality assurance sucks.
Major patch 1 week before Xmas was not a good move. They have a lot to learn about patch timing.
BitTorrent downloader sucks by popular consensus. Either you're uploading faster than downloading, or not connecting at all. It downloads full patches every time, it should be incremental to save a 10 minute install once you've got the whole patch. The HTTP alternative couldn't connect either. People are resorting to hosting it themselves. With 2 PCs behind a firewall I have to use different connection types for each system to patch; it's very intrusive. Everquest beleive it or not got it right, would like something along the lines of its patcher.
The client scripting support tools (lua) if installed made class training inaccessible. Needed to do some forum searching to find a solution.
My system now reboots spontaneously with WoW. Forums pointing the finger at latest NVidia drivers and recommending a rollback of those instead of a fix to WoW. Didn't get reboots before this patch.
WoW client crash error #132 and #131 have hit me too with this patch.
Login servers down 8 hours last night.
Low FPS for many users now (15 FPS). Still being looked at. Some people sayinng to turn off hardware cursor to solve it.
We used that 2 or 3 years back as part of some volume testing on a product and got back some "please stop, you're killing us" email from the site admin.
Something as core as how the Jedi system works being revamped tells me once again that SOE have no clue when it comes to effective game design and making sure they get it right first time. It's one of the reasons I stopped playing Everquest, and is a big factor in me not playing any more of their games.
The gaming audience is just as fickle as the Hollywood audiences. All over the new release on week one then next to nothing on week two. There are consequently many failures in the gaming world, ever-selling titles like Half-Life or Everquest are few and far between leaving the prospect of any gaming company doing consistently well between game launches very tenuous.
Diablo and UT2003 are a hit with my wife. Diablo because it's co-operative so we can play and advance together, it's an OK mix of hack'n'slash, roleplay (well not really, but close enough) and some strategy on the encounters. UT2003 because she likes to swear like a teenager and blast anything that moves in Powerball.
EVE owes much of its being to Elite. Multiplayer mind you, with player conflict sorting out space territories. It's not bad assuming you can handle the PK aspect of the game. www.eve-online.com for the official web presence.
I have XBox running with Linksys wireless routers and bridge. It had some firmware issues, the latest versions in February broke XBox connectivity, earlier ones worked fine so that's what I left it running with. It just works.
The MS stuff is way way too pricey. Also, why use the g protocol? How many XBox users need more than the 10Mb/s b protocol with their cable/dsl setup? Using a b only chip-set would be a way to reduce the retail cost I would assume and the consumer would not lose anything by it.
The idea behind Steam is good - using the proliference of broadband to allow game companies to publish and manage their own games. Bye bye Sierra hopefully.
Dial-up users will suffer pain on updates, difficult to get away from unless there are options to disable automatic updates to Steam.
Steam's state right now - well, once started it is OK. However, it can take a few seconds to several minutes to actually appear as a window, often leaving you wondering where the heck it is, or did you double click like you thought you did. Pain in the ass if you like positive confirmation something is running.
I just look at degrees as a piece of paper that shows someone has learnt some discipline towards accomplishing goals. The subject and type of degree are secondary, it's the process the degree program puts you through that is important to me.
PHDs - generally show a (perceived) higher IQ and ability to theorise and write copious amounts. It will make you stand out from that bunch of resumes, but it also raises a red flag over you; are you too intellectual to be pratical? Only an interview can find that one out.
We did hire a guy with a PHD once, he applied for a systems administrator job. He quickly got promoted a few levels as he was unbelievably bright and 'wasted' doing Unix installs and the like. Now he's director of IT at a brokerage.
Sony are in a good position to move to a combined pricing scheme - they have EQ and its various franchises, Planetside and Star Wars Galaxies. It would make some sense to have a subscription across all, after all you want your customers locked into your content.
Older games, such as Ultima Online, Everquest maybe, have already payed for their hardware and development. Ever dollar income now is just gravy in the corporate profits.
The downloads page on their beta boards works a treat.
The in-game auto-patcher I have yet to get to work. But that's not a big deal for beta, the patches are easily named with from-to build numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
GEC Marconi in the UK ran Software Engineering Apprenticeship programs 25 years ago; they were sick of getting COBOL programmers from schools and universities so made a more technically oriented program that taught fun stuff like C, Pascal, LISP, Ada alongside computer operations, QA, project management, hardware design and electronics.
I bought a PS3 and all it does is play Blueray discs or stream video to the projector. Games on PC 100% of the time in my house; that way I get to use a keyboard and a mouse and not a bolt-on keypad and gaming controller.
I've done this many times. It boils down to simple stuff and its all a trade off; time vs money vs quality. Time is usually the key where I work as the environment is a highly changing one. Deploying new hardware is generally less risk and faster than upgrading software, and uses different people from the (always too busy) software teams. So it buys you time which is often fine for the business folks that don't care about how inefficient that algorithm or SQL query is as long as the business needs are met. However, there's only so many times you can band-aid this stuff until hardware cannot solve it. When you do new software, its a full development cycle. If it requires major rethink on the design you can bet new issues are raised in production when it goes live; the business do care about this and you have to do some extra preparation to deal with these new risks as the new software is rolled out. Having gone all through is, the goal-posts change again. New activity happens from business that drives software in ways you didn't imagine or get the chance to implement for ahead of time. You're back to square one on the hardware versus software again.
Yes I have been through what you're asking. 18 years into software development it got boring. I'd managed teams up to 50 with long life cycles, demanding apps like commodity trading and radar processing, really wasn't much else challenging on the software front. I approached a customer that used our services and made it clear I wanted to not do IT but do business analysis and business development in their operations department. 5 years later it's all good, no regrets on the career change. With this change it's not possible to totally get away from software development, instead I leverage the previous knowledge to businesses advantage but day-to-day sort out business problems rather than code.
"Not really a mistake but... how did Griffyndorf's sword got away from the goblins?"
In times of need the sorting hat will get what the user requires. Neville had it on his head.
The series nees an end point otherwise it becomes like X-Files which ends up having no point in being made each week.
EVE today is very different to EVE during its first 6 months of life. Your opinions of it are dated and in some cases invalid with today's game. 6 months after release I quit for 6 months having played from beta and into the initial game opening. There was no content. It was boring and open to griefing or exploitation. I saw the vision but realised they had a ways to get there. When I came back various bugs were fixed, gameplay strategy and tactics had been modified and content was added. I've been subscribed ever since. EVE today is not to be compared to EVE at opening date.
The real concern we had in a similar conversion was trusting what actualy ended up as the last checked in code, and how to track contention on common code being worked on. In reality, even with decent sized teams, its easy to know in general who is working where in the code base - the managers and team leads should know, people paying attention to a check-in log should see the traffic too (assuming the change notices go to a distribution email list).
For knowing what is last in still works as intended, update to latest checked-in code prior to doing your own check-in, establish a process to run a unit test case suite for the project; these must pass 100% before checking in the new code. This is good practice anyways regardless of this situation.
Also, encourage check in early and often to minimize changes between source tree updates.
Have an automated build and/or a unit test runner, email a VIP list and the culprit that broke the build. This finds the issues early if people aren't actually using the process described above, which will help to enforce it.
I've used a process like this on teams with 20 people running for a year or more with 3-5 branches on the go at once. The problems are minimal. The hardest part is running 2 very active branches together for an extended duration; the merge is hell but all source systems will have this as an issue.
EVE is the most open ended game out there. It rewards ruthless capitalism, industrialism, piracy, bureaucracy. It doesn't hand the fun to you on a plate like the fantasy RPGs do, and that's where many people just don't get it. No new level or uber item every day or so and people lose interest. Not for your average gamer for sure, but I for one love it.
The gameplay is good. But the patching and quality assurance sucks.
Major patch 1 week before Xmas was not a good move. They have a lot to learn about patch timing.
BitTorrent downloader sucks by popular consensus. Either you're uploading faster than downloading, or not connecting at all. It downloads full patches every time, it should be incremental to save a 10 minute install once you've got the whole patch. The HTTP alternative couldn't connect either. People are resorting to hosting it themselves. With 2 PCs behind a firewall I have to use different connection types for each system to patch; it's very intrusive. Everquest beleive it or not got it right, would like something along the lines of its patcher.
The client scripting support tools (lua) if installed made class training inaccessible. Needed to do some forum searching to find a solution.
My system now reboots spontaneously with WoW. Forums pointing the finger at latest NVidia drivers and recommending a rollback of those instead of a fix to WoW. Didn't get reboots before this patch.
WoW client crash error #132 and #131 have hit me too with this patch.
Login servers down 8 hours last night.
Low FPS for many users now (15 FPS). Still being looked at. Some people sayinng to turn off hardware cursor to solve it.
We used that 2 or 3 years back as part of some volume testing on a product and got back some "please stop, you're killing us" email from the site admin.
Something as core as how the Jedi system works being revamped tells me once again that SOE have no clue when it comes to effective game design and making sure they get it right first time. It's one of the reasons I stopped playing Everquest, and is a big factor in me not playing any more of their games.
I think I bought only 3 CDs that were released last year. Bad year for new music, a great year for filling up on older stuff.
welcome to LA, have a nice day.
The gaming audience is just as fickle as the Hollywood audiences. All over the new release on week one then next to nothing on week two. There are consequently many failures in the gaming world, ever-selling titles like Half-Life or Everquest are few and far between leaving the prospect of any gaming company doing consistently well between game launches very tenuous.
Diablo and UT2003 are a hit with my wife. Diablo because it's co-operative so we can play and advance together, it's an OK mix of hack'n'slash, roleplay (well not really, but close enough) and some strategy on the encounters. UT2003 because she likes to swear like a teenager and blast anything that moves in Powerball.
I think behind Musicmatch front name is RCA/Thomson as an investor. Their not strictly a start-up.
Is this the first thread to be linked on the front page summary in Google News? I wonder if /. will be /.ed via a reference from Google.
EVE owes much of its being to Elite. Multiplayer mind you, with player conflict sorting out space territories. It's not bad assuming you can handle the PK aspect of the game. www.eve-online.com for the official web presence.
I have XBox running with Linksys wireless routers and bridge. It had some firmware issues, the latest versions in February broke XBox connectivity, earlier ones worked fine so that's what I left it running with. It just works.
The MS stuff is way way too pricey. Also, why use the g protocol? How many XBox users need more than the 10Mb/s b protocol with their cable/dsl setup? Using a b only chip-set would be a way to reduce the retail cost I would assume and the consumer would not lose anything by it.
The idea behind Steam is good - using the proliference of broadband to allow game companies to publish and manage their own games. Bye bye Sierra hopefully.
Dial-up users will suffer pain on updates, difficult to get away from unless there are options to disable automatic updates to Steam.
Steam's state right now - well, once started it is OK. However, it can take a few seconds to several minutes to actually appear as a window, often leaving you wondering where the heck it is, or did you double click like you thought you did. Pain in the ass if you like positive confirmation something is running.
I just look at degrees as a piece of paper that shows someone has learnt some discipline towards accomplishing goals. The subject and type of degree are secondary, it's the process the degree program puts you through that is important to me. PHDs - generally show a (perceived) higher IQ and ability to theorise and write copious amounts. It will make you stand out from that bunch of resumes, but it also raises a red flag over you; are you too intellectual to be pratical? Only an interview can find that one out. We did hire a guy with a PHD once, he applied for a systems administrator job. He quickly got promoted a few levels as he was unbelievably bright and 'wasted' doing Unix installs and the like. Now he's director of IT at a brokerage.
Sony are in a good position to move to a combined pricing scheme - they have EQ and its various franchises, Planetside and Star Wars Galaxies. It would make some sense to have a subscription across all, after all you want your customers locked into your content. Older games, such as Ultima Online, Everquest maybe, have already payed for their hardware and development. Ever dollar income now is just gravy in the corporate profits.
The downloads page on their beta boards works a treat. The in-game auto-patcher I have yet to get to work. But that's not a big deal for beta, the patches are easily named with from-to build numbers.