In agreement with the poster above, the last thing you want to deal with especially when you are nearing retirement, is to continue on with the stress and drama of the office politics. If you love to code, by all means go all out and start doing it 'full-time.'
That way you can do all the work you loved doing previously, and at the same time you can free your hands of all the nitty gritty/dirty world of business that prevents/slows you from doing the stuff you love in the first place. You can perfect your code and not worry about shipping a half-assed product because of impossible time restraints or other considerations.
Unless of course, you're into that:-)
if it's incentive or motivation that prevents you from getting any 'work' done(because you have all the time in the world to do it, no deadlines, nobody breathing down your neck), then perhaps something else is on your mind, but you're not letting yourself admit it.
Or maybe you're just lazy. (not that there is anything wrong with it!):-P
once you're retired, you have the opportunity to create whatever you want to create! Do it the way you want to do it!
never underestimate the power of my laziness. And my ADD-like compulsive bahavior:-)
when I last had some excessive free time about 18 months back, I used to be the bittorrent junkie like everybody else. Downloaded Rome after hearing good reviews about it here on/. actaully. I think it took several hours for several gigs. Then I started downloading everything I could get my hands on After being on bittorrent long enough, my service provider caught on and throttled down my download to unacceptable levels. While it was easily corrected, it was a pain in the ass to take care of.
to be honest, while the appeal of downloading whatever I want was there, I didn't feel like being hassled with a throttled down connection, and any more slaps on the hand from my isp. Plus when I'm looking forward to a video or something, I want to watch it Right Now TM instead of Hours Later TM.
If I like a certain movie or video enough (for example, the Firefly series) then I'll go ahead and purchase their fancy box set, and have a (relatively) hardcopy for my collection. Otherwise it's probably not worth my time (or money) in the first place. That's just my lazy consumeristic thinking.
Besides, I don't really have time to watch that much tv, I'm too busy playing WoW.:-P
we're talking about the majority of the US population, you know: the people that type in their search queries in their browser URL field because they can't tell the difference. These are the people that are confused by the big blue lowercase 'e', when internet is spelled with an 'i' ("I want to get on the internet - what? click on the lowercase e? That's totally retarded!"). They don't know how to check their hotmail account. They don't know how whether or not their computer is already hijacked. They can't tell the difference between the internet and American Online. You expect these people to start installing p2p software and start downloading files for their use (nevermind the fact that to go looking for the stuff in the first place)?
I'm suprised by the age bracket, I totally suspected it would be lower, mostly consisting of teenagers and college kids, ages 13-22. I'm 29 myself, and to be honest, with my current lifestyle, I really don't have the time to fuck around with semi-corrupt files and the arduous process of assembling multiple files from different sources, just to get a cracked copy of a computer game or a movie file. It's much more convenient to take a few bucks and buy the stuff. Why go thru all that hassle? Especially at 29 years old? Sure, when I was in college I had all the time in the world to wait for that ultra-rare mp3 to finish downloading from Germany. But I'm used to fast now and more importantly if it costs a few more bucks for the convenience, I don't mind shelling out. I've got income, and I will pay for my fast-paced (or some would just call it lazy) lifestyle. So sue me. I pay for the service, not the art.
initial offput associations of video game music from people that don't have a clue is that it is always some dude sitting in a room playing around with a synthesizer up untill he comes up with something 'cool,' and then proceeds to build it up from there. It's just a stereotype of a computer geek or programmer posing as a 'real' artist just so that something could be produced, to fulfill a gaping home. after all, you don't even know if the music is being made with a syntisizer at all, it could be just a series of nobs and whatnot, especially considering the majority of the time you are hearing the music, is out of your video game console, which "clearly are not real musical instruments."
I feel composers of video game music fall into the same realm as composers of movie music. Is it fair to say that someone like Nobuo Uematsu (who wrote all the music for final fantasy - including the old NES FFI) is not a 'real' composer, but John Williams and James Horner would be respected as such? Or perhaps Aaron Copland ("Appalachian Spring" as well as the "Beef! It's what's for dinner!" commercials, if you are not familiar), isn't he considered a 'real' composer?
The lack of respect for vg music clearly comes from the early context that video games are nothing more than entertainment for children, while movies are more oriented towards adults, or at the very least people of a certain maturity/education.
vg music is very much evolved back from the early days of the bleeps and zings the machines were capable of producing. It's mostly people that haven't bothered to watch the change in the video game era to see that evolution happen. I got a nongamer to listen to the music produced for the World of Warcraft promo trailers (like the recent Burning Crusade trailer, for example), and he was blown away, saying "jesus, is this a movie or something?"
Now, I'm not going to say that all vg music is like all good; there are clearly crappy vg music, just like there is clearly crappy music just like everything else. It just happens that the people remember music (composed for music's sake) based on it's own merit, and vg music has the fallback of being dependent on the video game to make it known. So an awesome video game is going to make that crappy video game soundtrack famous. Or infamous. But crapping musical compositions made long ago are going to disappear, because nobody wants to remember them in the first place.
when I read your post my immediate digg-like fanboy reaction was to say, "For shame! Who is Jay Behmke that he can steal quotes from the web and use it as his own?!"
Then I look a look at the/. poster's ID number:
(Score:5, Informative)
by jmbehmke1 (1050394) Alter Relationship on Friday January 12, @02:23PM (#17578608)
oh.
Then I proceeded to wipe the egg that was on my face. The internet has made me a little too on edge.:-(
(I am very biased in this opinion as I initially was an art student (SVA) that transferred to an academic school, so please bear with me)
The mind of an artist is a completely different beast compared to the mind of an academic. If you are looking for technical ability in a fine arts program, there is only one way to get good: practice practice practice(just like learning a musical instrument).
In my third year in art school I've decided to concentrate my studies in graphic design. I've mostly trained in illustration and painting and I was pretty good technical abilitywise, but graphic design was a new dept in my school and it looked more promising in terms of future living lifestyle than the others mentioned. Suffice to say, I was not that good. My professor, not wanting to discourage me too much, told me one thing that I'll never forget.
"Check out a big book of successful graphic design examples, and copy them. Exactly as you see it. Every single one. Cover to cover. See what pieces you like more than others, and examine them in more detail. Tell me why you think you like the pieces you chose. Check out their relationship between the form of the page, the form of the visual objects, and the form the body of text. Check out the forms of the typography, and understand the decisions made on why they decided to use a certain typeface over another. Now after you've done all that, make me something and show it to me."
The professor was trying to have me swimming in good graphic design so I could start to understand why certain things were made they were. I've had very good technical ability, but poor design sense. Eventually, after doing that and being sick to death of it in the process, graphic design became second nature to me.
I understand this mostly pertains to print - as we didn't really use 'thar intarweb' back when I was in school - but I'm pretty sure the principle is exactly the same:
Step 1: Look at a lot of good websites. Look at a lot of artist creations. Look at a lot of commercial sites as well, like microsoft.com (I'm serious) and nytimes.com. Look at sites that won design awards. Look at awesome fancy graphics. Look at blogs (don't look at myspace:-P). Copy them in your favorite art app (not need for html), from absolute scratch. Go back to step 1. Superimpose your image in an image of a webbrowser (or just display the image in a browser if you like) Write about what you like about them. What you don't like about them. Go back to step 1. Grab a pencil and paper, draw out your website. Criticise yourself (this is more difficult than you know especially with subjective material). Remember the process of creation of certain things (nothing wrong with looking up tutorials on the web) and apply it to your own creativity. Go back to step 1. Sorry, there is no shortcut. Go back to step 1.
Remember: good artists copy. Wanna be real good? Copy a lot. Don't steal tho. Just copy for your own benefit. It keeps the brain active and your creativity fresh.
Sorry, there IS no shortcut.
If that is what you are looking for, I suggest you stop reading now as my mental credibility may go out the window(along with my karma):-P
If you are looking for something beyond that and want to expand your mind to enhance your creative ability (cue the drug jokes), you have to do something completely different. I wish there was a more comprehensive answer to this, but from my limited experience (+10 years in an all arts program in addition to doing the whole starting artist thing) the only way is to *ahem* 'think like an artist.' Now wtf does THAT mean? The closest way I could probably answer that is to (remember, this is all claptrap is there is absolutely NO scientific basis on what I'm about to say) pretend your some kind of idiot savant with an interest with nothing but shapes and forms from a 2D perspective. Pretend your eyes are like a television screen (or maybe more appropriatly,
you misinterpret what I mean by low commitment. What I mean by low commitment I mean games that don't require an extended learning curve or extended set of rules just to grok the gameplay the designers had in mind. You can pick up and learn the rules for tetris within 5 minutes of play. Same thing with pong. Along with various card games. Computer role playing games like final fantasy or Oblivion, not so much.
You can play a round of tetris, for example while waiting for the bus. Not with RPGs, or even rogues like Diablo. Games like that require a commitment to the gaming session, and/or require you to save that gaming session to continue progress. Those types of games will not be popular, especially for the intended market the games are trying to target.
for now, mobile games are going to continue sticking with the 'little' apps - solitaire, poker, tetris, things like that. While there are some hack-n-slash games out there, I suspect that they don't do as well as the developers would like, especially compared to low commitment games like the above mentioned.
I'm pretty sure the industry is keenly aware and waiting for the day the market for online games to begin showing up on mobile devices. But the tech still isn't there yet. I can't imagine latency over the cellphone being considered a cheap commodity. So things that require twitch gaming (fighters, racers, rogues, co-op shooters) would be unplayable in a mobile online environment. Plus imagine the battery life? How long do you think you can play before your cell phone dies?
The first thing mentioned when my coworkers and I saw the iphone widescreen was, "dude, can you imagine games on that thing?" But what kind of games can you really play? I'm gonna need tactile feedback, flexible controls, and quick reaction time (framerate or latency) in addition to the nice graphics and sound. And considering the price of the device itself, mass market is not really an option, as nobody is going to buy this thing for their children. Remember rpgs for the palm? They did good enough for the 1-man developer, but it wasn't enough to begin to drive an industry to that direction.
iphone gaming isn't goign to make anybody rich - well, that's not true. It will make _somebody_ rich.
Untill something happens with phone companies where bandwidth and latency become dirt dirt cheap, I say the future is still in (currently) wifi gaming. The DS (and the PSP too!) still have a huge potential in that field. A pokemon MMO on the DS or Final Fantasy Online for the PSP == parents worst nightmare. I don't think we are still aware of what the DS/PSP can actaully do. Give it a little more time, and somebody will think of a killer app for those gaming devices. But in the mean time, gaming on the phone will stay small untill the market begins to take notice. And it hasn't noticed yet.
Because walking down the street while talking on the phone or listening to music or watching video or checking email or using googlemaps is a good idea when you are blind? By the way, how do blind people currently use the phonebook features now on their cell phones? or text messages for that matter?
I don't know many blind people that own PDAs, either.
I have a friend who just turned 30. Then I met his girlfriend. She just entered college, and she was 19.
I would tease them saying stupid things like, "You know Jim, did you ever stop to think that when you got your driver's license at 17, you would be driving up to the local middle school, pointing at a random 6 year old who just started kindergarten and be saying to yourself, 'I'm gonna bang that chic someday'? Or when you just graduated college at 22, you would be checking out the jr high student who will be starting 8th grade the following year, and be saying, 'I'm gonna have SEX with that one right there, baby!'?" They would both give me the dirties looks while my other friends and I would be laughing our asses off.
I have no clue why that came in my mind. Something about the big age differential in context always has more of an impact on others moreover than some. And while things may be obvious from a logical perspective, sometimes all it takes is a little introspection to recognize the vastness the differential is meant to provide.
People are very quick to predict the doom and gloom of sony. What they all fail to recognize is that sony (and anybody else that had a clue on how the trends are moving) knew that this is going to happen. For months. The only thing they would not be able to anticipate is the negative public backlash from the hype machine that tried to imitate from the success of the 360 last year. This is a planned risk, as they are essentially taking on two fronts. One front is the video area, with Nintendo coming out guns blazing, and on top of that, the Microsoft juggernaut attempting to brute force their way through the market.
The bigger front that I see, is the movie industry. How long have DVDs been out? something like less than 10 years? How long did it take for them to make VHS obsolete? While it's completely understandable that Blu-ray Discs are probably not going to dominate DVDs at the rate that DVD did VHS, higher definition picture quality WILL win it over. The big question is: will Blu-ray Disc be the new DVDs of the future? Or will HDDVD? Or some other format?
This is the wild frontier that sony has been eyeing. They want their format to win, and is using the PS3 as their foothold. The PS3 is nothing more than collateral damage. Ever wonder why sony isn't making as big a push to produce games out for the ps3 as much as MS or NIN (aside from the fact that nobody really knows how to maximize the ps3 as of yet)? Their goal is to have as many bluray disk players in as many homes as possible(and for $599 for early adapters, that's pretty damn cheap). Once they get a decent foothold, and especially when prices begin to drop to decent levels, say $299? is when we're going to see frightningly high levels of market dominance by sony.
That's a great amount of storage and a great price, but what about some REAL information: Speed, heat, power consumption.
I don't think marketers will even care about all that, their only benefit will be the low cost, high density factor. Why?
Because SSD are coming. And HDD manufacturers know this. SSD are such a humongous threat to their business, HDD are going to be obsolete tech the moment SSDs come out, so that is why manufacturers are playing their last trump card: the fact that they can hold gobs and gobs of data. Their only hope is to find a foothold in the archiving business.
that is untill we start seeing cheap high density SSD. But that won't be for a while.
with the advent of solid state harddrives coming out soon enough, how often will users be need all that data at their fingertips? Harddrives are being split into two tiers:
1: the fast, expensive type (solid state)
2: the slow, cheap type (conventional platter)
We've all seen the signs for years, only now has the tech finally been able to catch up. From a home use perspective, here's an easy prediction: SSD will store system data(OS, apps, that kinda stuff) and the HDD will store media (pictures, music, and movies movies movies). Don't really need fast seek times for media, after all.
that they don't have money already invested in associations with their visibility of their ads. Sure they can do it now, but the minute someone's dollar -and job- is on the line, someone is going to step in to protect their own welfare.
I would say the vast majority of science has come about through the work of people who are deeply rooted in the real world for the purpose of solving the real world problems they came across.
Wikipedia is not designed to solve problems, it's primary goal is to share the knowledge of the world, with the world with NPOV in mind. While there is huge potential for marketability, you run into the very real possibility that by doing so compromises key objective to share knowledge in a neutral fashion, dollars start to dictate what is appropriate or not. The soft drink article that has ads by cocacola and pepsi start to lose parts of the article that put critisisms on soda(not because wikipedia sold itself out, but because CocaCola and Pepsi marketing decided to log in and change it, now having vested interested in the page itself), for example.
usefulness can be a real subjective word. IMO I don't think wikipedia would be classified as being 'useful,' but I go to it every day to find out more stuff about things I haven't even thought about. How would you be able to translate that into dollars? moreover how would you be able to translate that into 'helping the real world?'
you could start entering the real of marketers tailoring the wiki article to suit consumer driven needs. For example: let's say Coke and Pepsi have ads on the article regarding soft drinks. Slowly, over time you see certain aspects of the article keep getting deleted, noticably
'Studies showing a correlation between soft drinks and obesity'
'Soft drinks linked to weight gain and type 2 diabetes'
While these articles can never be completely removed, it's a total PITA for volunteers to be looking after vandals and monitoring them, whom are getting paid by these companies to stay evermore vigilant.
While I wouldn't put wikipedia in some kind of holy light, if wikipedia decides to take in advertising it soon enters the realm of the the dollar being mightier than the knowledge it is designed to support.
What I'm really afraid of is when advertising dollars begin to dictate the direction of wikipedia. And that is very very very very not cool.
Generally, there are two main ways of making sparkling wine:
1: the classic sparkling wine method, a double fermentation process made by taking wine, adding in more yeast and sugar resulting in a natural formation of the gas from within.
2: the soda pop method, where you literally inject CO2 into your wine. This is the cheapest way to make your wine sparkle.
Merely based on my observation, sparkling wine made via gas injection will always result in larger bubbles than sparkling wines made the classic way. Ever notice how big your bubbles get from your can of soda(in glass, that is)? Classic made sparkling wine bubbles are significantly smaller than those. Also, (I can't say this as fact as I just drink the stuff) I see that the C02 escapes at a much faster rate in injected wines - probably based on the fact that the bubbles are bigger, and rise to the top much faster as well. Temp of the wine will also affect the rate of escape too-its classic chemistry: colder temp results in lower gas pressure, the gas itself hasn't gone anywhere - I suppose that's why we generally do not drink warm sparkling wine as it will 'fade' much more quickly warm.:-P
seriously, it's nothing real new. It just sounds like MS is playing catchup.
Besides, some of those targeted ads are pretty handy for the senseless emails I've been sending out about 'planning trips with friends' and whatnot - I wonder why people are still screaming for blood about their privacy, I figured by this time the majority of the population have gone to learn not to email their ssn, bank statements or tax info around.
People can get pretty stressed over video games, why should this be considered any different? They *knew* it was a computer in the back. Maybe it just shows that humans are capable of exhibiting empathy and are emotional? Maybe the opposite: perhaps it shows that some humans are a little more coldblooded than others and are capable of committing acts society considers not appropriate(regardless of the human/synthesized element? *insert something about Jack Thompson here*
How about horror themed video games? Or horror movies themselves? Would those be considered 'unethical' because it messes with your mind?
Slashdot Mirror
In agreement with the poster above, the last thing you want to deal with especially when you are nearing retirement, is to continue on with the stress and drama of the office politics. If you love to code, by all means go all out and start doing it 'full-time.'
That way you can do all the work you loved doing previously, and at the same time you can free your hands of all the nitty gritty /dirty world of business that prevents/slows you from doing the stuff you love in the first place. You can perfect your code and not worry about shipping a half-assed product because of impossible time restraints or other considerations.
Unless of course, you're into that :-)
if it's incentive or motivation that prevents you from getting any 'work' done(because you have all the time in the world to do it, no deadlines, nobody breathing down your neck), then perhaps something else is on your mind, but you're not letting yourself admit it.
Or maybe you're just lazy. (not that there is anything wrong with it!) :-P
once you're retired, you have the opportunity to create whatever you want to create! Do it the way you want to do it!
The upside is that that smell can apply thruout the entire state, not just the shore!
you're post would have been modded up funny if GP was modded up other than funny.
my post is going to be offtopic because I'm trying to explain the meta-humor, which has nothing to do with this Ellen Feiss article.
maybe I'll be lucky and people won't bother mod me.
never underestimate the power of my laziness. And my ADD-like compulsive bahavior :-)
when I last had some excessive free time about 18 months back, I used to be the bittorrent junkie like everybody else. Downloaded Rome after hearing good reviews about it here on /. actaully. I think it took several hours for several gigs. Then I started downloading everything I could get my hands on After being on bittorrent long enough, my service provider caught on and throttled down my download to unacceptable levels. While it was easily corrected, it was a pain in the ass to take care of.
to be honest, while the appeal of downloading whatever I want was there, I didn't feel like being hassled with a throttled down connection, and any more slaps on the hand from my isp. Plus when I'm looking forward to a video or something, I want to watch it Right Now TM instead of Hours Later TM.
If I like a certain movie or video enough (for example, the Firefly series) then I'll go ahead and purchase their fancy box set, and have a (relatively) hardcopy for my collection. Otherwise it's probably not worth my time (or money) in the first place. That's just my lazy consumeristic thinking.
Besides, I don't really have time to watch that much tv, I'm too busy playing WoW. :-P
we're talking about the majority of the US population, you know: the people that type in their search queries in their browser URL field because they can't tell the difference. These are the people that are confused by the big blue lowercase 'e', when internet is spelled with an 'i' ("I want to get on the internet - what? click on the lowercase e? That's totally retarded!"). They don't know how to check their hotmail account. They don't know how whether or not their computer is already hijacked. They can't tell the difference between the internet and American Online. You expect these people to start installing p2p software and start downloading files for their use (nevermind the fact that to go looking for the stuff in the first place)?
I'm suprised by the age bracket, I totally suspected it would be lower, mostly consisting of teenagers and college kids, ages 13-22. I'm 29 myself, and to be honest, with my current lifestyle, I really don't have the time to fuck around with semi-corrupt files and the arduous process of assembling multiple files from different sources, just to get a cracked copy of a computer game or a movie file. It's much more convenient to take a few bucks and buy the stuff. Why go thru all that hassle? Especially at 29 years old? Sure, when I was in college I had all the time in the world to wait for that ultra-rare mp3 to finish downloading from Germany. But I'm used to fast now and more importantly if it costs a few more bucks for the convenience, I don't mind shelling out. I've got income, and I will pay for my fast-paced (or some would just call it lazy) lifestyle. So sue me. I pay for the service, not the art.
yeah but that has a few requirements:
Oh, you mean like, from a girl? This is /. man, you're chances are much better off in prison.
This was way ahead of the second highest activity reported, listening to music, which garnered 52 percent.'"
shouldn't have mentioned that, now the RIAA will have plans to go after us gamers who don't buy their crappy music at all :-(
freakin goatse trolls!
initial offput associations of video game music from people that don't have a clue is that it is always some dude sitting in a room playing around with a synthesizer up untill he comes up with something 'cool,' and then proceeds to build it up from there. It's just a stereotype of a computer geek or programmer posing as a 'real' artist just so that something could be produced, to fulfill a gaping home. after all, you don't even know if the music is being made with a syntisizer at all, it could be just a series of nobs and whatnot, especially considering the majority of the time you are hearing the music, is out of your video game console, which "clearly are not real musical instruments."
I feel composers of video game music fall into the same realm as composers of movie music. Is it fair to say that someone like Nobuo Uematsu (who wrote all the music for final fantasy - including the old NES FFI) is not a 'real' composer, but John Williams and James Horner would be respected as such? Or perhaps Aaron Copland ("Appalachian Spring" as well as the "Beef! It's what's for dinner!" commercials, if you are not familiar), isn't he considered a 'real' composer?
The lack of respect for vg music clearly comes from the early context that video games are nothing more than entertainment for children, while movies are more oriented towards adults, or at the very least people of a certain maturity/education.
vg music is very much evolved back from the early days of the bleeps and zings the machines were capable of producing. It's mostly people that haven't bothered to watch the change in the video game era to see that evolution happen. I got a nongamer to listen to the music produced for the World of Warcraft promo trailers (like the recent Burning Crusade trailer, for example), and he was blown away, saying "jesus, is this a movie or something?"
Now, I'm not going to say that all vg music is like all good; there are clearly crappy vg music, just like there is clearly crappy music just like everything else. It just happens that the people remember music (composed for music's sake) based on it's own merit, and vg music has the fallback of being dependent on the video game to make it known. So an awesome video game is going to make that crappy video game soundtrack famous. Or infamous. But crapping musical compositions made long ago are going to disappear, because nobody wants to remember them in the first place.
when I read your post my immediate digg-like fanboy reaction was to say, "For shame! Who is Jay Behmke that he can steal quotes from the web and use it as his own?!"
Then I look a look at the /. poster's ID number:
(Score:5, Informative)
by jmbehmke1 (1050394) Alter Relationship on Friday January 12, @02:23PM (#17578608)
oh.
Then I proceeded to wipe the egg that was on my face. The internet has made me a little too on edge. :-(
(I am very biased in this opinion as I initially was an art student (SVA) that transferred to an academic school, so please bear with me)
The mind of an artist is a completely different beast compared to the mind of an academic. If you are looking for technical ability in a fine arts program, there is only one way to get good: practice practice practice(just like learning a musical instrument).
In my third year in art school I've decided to concentrate my studies in graphic design. I've mostly trained in illustration and painting and I was pretty good technical abilitywise, but graphic design was a new dept in my school and it looked more promising in terms of future living lifestyle than the others mentioned. Suffice to say, I was not that good. My professor, not wanting to discourage me too much, told me one thing that I'll never forget.
The professor was trying to have me swimming in good graphic design so I could start to understand why certain things were made they were. I've had very good technical ability, but poor design sense. Eventually, after doing that and being sick to death of it in the process, graphic design became second nature to me.
I understand this mostly pertains to print - as we didn't really use 'thar intarweb' back when I was in school - but I'm pretty sure the principle is exactly the same:
Step 1: Look at a lot of good websites. Look at a lot of artist creations. Look at a lot of commercial sites as well, like microsoft.com (I'm serious) and nytimes.com. Look at sites that won design awards. Look at awesome fancy graphics. Look at blogs (don't look at myspace:-P). Copy them in your favorite art app (not need for html), from absolute scratch. Go back to step 1. Superimpose your image in an image of a webbrowser (or just display the image in a browser if you like) Write about what you like about them. What you don't like about them. Go back to step 1. Grab a pencil and paper, draw out your website. Criticise yourself (this is more difficult than you know especially with subjective material). Remember the process of creation of certain things (nothing wrong with looking up tutorials on the web) and apply it to your own creativity. Go back to step 1. Sorry, there is no shortcut. Go back to step 1.
Remember: good artists copy. Wanna be real good? Copy a lot. Don't steal tho. Just copy for your own benefit. It keeps the brain active and your creativity fresh.
Sorry, there IS no shortcut.
If that is what you are looking for, I suggest you stop reading now as my mental credibility may go out the window(along with my karma) :-P
If you are looking for something beyond that and want to expand your mind to enhance your creative ability (cue the drug jokes), you have to do something completely different. I wish there was a more comprehensive answer to this, but from my limited experience (+10 years in an all arts program in addition to doing the whole starting artist thing) the only way is to *ahem* 'think like an artist.' Now wtf does THAT mean? The closest way I could probably answer that is to (remember, this is all claptrap is there is absolutely NO scientific basis on what I'm about to say) pretend your some kind of idiot savant with an interest with nothing but shapes and forms from a 2D perspective. Pretend your eyes are like a television screen (or maybe more appropriatly,
you misinterpret what I mean by low commitment. What I mean by low commitment I mean games that don't require an extended learning curve or extended set of rules just to grok the gameplay the designers had in mind. You can pick up and learn the rules for tetris within 5 minutes of play. Same thing with pong. Along with various card games. Computer role playing games like final fantasy or Oblivion, not so much.
You can play a round of tetris, for example while waiting for the bus. Not with RPGs, or even rogues like Diablo. Games like that require a commitment to the gaming session, and/or require you to save that gaming session to continue progress. Those types of games will not be popular, especially for the intended market the games are trying to target.
for now, mobile games are going to continue sticking with the 'little' apps - solitaire, poker, tetris, things like that. While there are some hack-n-slash games out there, I suspect that they don't do as well as the developers would like, especially compared to low commitment games like the above mentioned.
I'm pretty sure the industry is keenly aware and waiting for the day the market for online games to begin showing up on mobile devices. But the tech still isn't there yet. I can't imagine latency over the cellphone being considered a cheap commodity. So things that require twitch gaming (fighters, racers, rogues, co-op shooters) would be unplayable in a mobile online environment. Plus imagine the battery life? How long do you think you can play before your cell phone dies?
The first thing mentioned when my coworkers and I saw the iphone widescreen was, "dude, can you imagine games on that thing?" But what kind of games can you really play? I'm gonna need tactile feedback, flexible controls, and quick reaction time (framerate or latency) in addition to the nice graphics and sound. And considering the price of the device itself, mass market is not really an option, as nobody is going to buy this thing for their children. Remember rpgs for the palm? They did good enough for the 1-man developer, but it wasn't enough to begin to drive an industry to that direction.
iphone gaming isn't goign to make anybody rich - well, that's not true. It will make _somebody_ rich.
Untill something happens with phone companies where bandwidth and latency become dirt dirt cheap, I say the future is still in (currently) wifi gaming. The DS (and the PSP too!) still have a huge potential in that field. A pokemon MMO on the DS or Final Fantasy Online for the PSP == parents worst nightmare. I don't think we are still aware of what the DS/PSP can actaully do. Give it a little more time, and somebody will think of a killer app for those gaming devices. But in the mean time, gaming on the phone will stay small untill the market begins to take notice. And it hasn't noticed yet.
Because walking down the street while talking on the phone or listening to music or watching video or checking email or using googlemaps is a good idea when you are blind? By the way, how do blind people currently use the phonebook features now on their cell phones? or text messages for that matter?
I don't know many blind people that own PDAs, either.
I have a friend who just turned 30. Then I met his girlfriend. She just entered college, and she was 19.
I would tease them saying stupid things like, "You know Jim, did you ever stop to think that when you got your driver's license at 17, you would be driving up to the local middle school, pointing at a random 6 year old who just started kindergarten and be saying to yourself, 'I'm gonna bang that chic someday'? Or when you just graduated college at 22, you would be checking out the jr high student who will be starting 8th grade the following year, and be saying, 'I'm gonna have SEX with that one right there, baby!'?" They would both give me the dirties looks while my other friends and I would be laughing our asses off.
I have no clue why that came in my mind. Something about the big age differential in context always has more of an impact on others moreover than some. And while things may be obvious from a logical perspective, sometimes all it takes is a little introspection to recognize the vastness the differential is meant to provide.
People are very quick to predict the doom and gloom of sony. What they all fail to recognize is that sony (and anybody else that had a clue on how the trends are moving) knew that this is going to happen. For months. The only thing they would not be able to anticipate is the negative public backlash from the hype machine that tried to imitate from the success of the 360 last year. This is a planned risk, as they are essentially taking on two fronts. One front is the video area, with Nintendo coming out guns blazing, and on top of that, the Microsoft juggernaut attempting to brute force their way through the market.
The bigger front that I see, is the movie industry. How long have DVDs been out? something like less than 10 years? How long did it take for them to make VHS obsolete? While it's completely understandable that Blu-ray Discs are probably not going to dominate DVDs at the rate that DVD did VHS, higher definition picture quality WILL win it over. The big question is: will Blu-ray Disc be the new DVDs of the future? Or will HDDVD? Or some other format?
This is the wild frontier that sony has been eyeing. They want their format to win, and is using the PS3 as their foothold. The PS3 is nothing more than collateral damage. Ever wonder why sony isn't making as big a push to produce games out for the ps3 as much as MS or NIN (aside from the fact that nobody really knows how to maximize the ps3 as of yet)? Their goal is to have as many bluray disk players in as many homes as possible(and for $599 for early adapters, that's pretty damn cheap). Once they get a decent foothold, and especially when prices begin to drop to decent levels, say $299? is when we're going to see frightningly high levels of market dominance by sony.
I don't think marketers will even care about all that, their only benefit will be the low cost, high density factor. Why?
Because SSD are coming. And HDD manufacturers know this. SSD are such a humongous threat to their business, HDD are going to be obsolete tech the moment SSDs come out, so that is why manufacturers are playing their last trump card: the fact that they can hold gobs and gobs of data. Their only hope is to find a foothold in the archiving business.
that is untill we start seeing cheap high density SSD. But that won't be for a while.
with the advent of solid state harddrives coming out soon enough, how often will users be need all that data at their fingertips? Harddrives are being split into two tiers:
1: the fast, expensive type (solid state)
2: the slow, cheap type (conventional platter)
We've all seen the signs for years, only now has the tech finally been able to catch up. From a home use perspective, here's an easy prediction: SSD will store system data(OS, apps, that kinda stuff) and the HDD will store media (pictures, music, and movies movies movies). Don't really need fast seek times for media, after all.
that they don't have money already invested in associations with their visibility of their ads. Sure they can do it now, but the minute someone's dollar -and job- is on the line, someone is going to step in to protect their own welfare.
I would say the vast majority of science has come about through the work of people who are deeply rooted in the real world for the purpose of solving the real world problems they came across.
Wikipedia is not designed to solve problems, it's primary goal is to share the knowledge of the world, with the world with NPOV in mind. While there is huge potential for marketability, you run into the very real possibility that by doing so compromises key objective to share knowledge in a neutral fashion, dollars start to dictate what is appropriate or not. The soft drink article that has ads by cocacola and pepsi start to lose parts of the article that put critisisms on soda(not because wikipedia sold itself out, but because CocaCola and Pepsi marketing decided to log in and change it, now having vested interested in the page itself), for example.
usefulness can be a real subjective word. IMO I don't think wikipedia would be classified as being 'useful,' but I go to it every day to find out more stuff about things I haven't even thought about. How would you be able to translate that into dollars? moreover how would you be able to translate that into 'helping the real world?'
you could start entering the real of marketers tailoring the wiki article to suit consumer driven needs. For example: let's say Coke and Pepsi have ads on the article regarding soft drinks. Slowly, over time you see certain aspects of the article keep getting deleted, noticably
'Studies showing a correlation between soft drinks and obesity'
'Soft drinks linked to weight gain and type 2 diabetes'
While these articles can never be completely removed, it's a total PITA for volunteers to be looking after vandals and monitoring them, whom are getting paid by these companies to stay evermore vigilant.
While I wouldn't put wikipedia in some kind of holy light, if wikipedia decides to take in advertising it soon enters the realm of the the dollar being mightier than the knowledge it is designed to support.
What I'm really afraid of is when advertising dollars begin to dictate the direction of wikipedia. And that is very very very very not cool.
Generally, there are two main ways of making sparkling wine:
1: the classic sparkling wine method, a double fermentation process made by taking wine, adding in more yeast and sugar resulting in a natural formation of the gas from within.
2: the soda pop method, where you literally inject CO2 into your wine. This is the cheapest way to make your wine sparkle.
Merely based on my observation, sparkling wine made via gas injection will always result in larger bubbles than sparkling wines made the classic way. Ever notice how big your bubbles get from your can of soda(in glass, that is)? Classic made sparkling wine bubbles are significantly smaller than those. Also, (I can't say this as fact as I just drink the stuff) I see that the C02 escapes at a much faster rate in injected wines - probably based on the fact that the bubbles are bigger, and rise to the top much faster as well. Temp of the wine will also affect the rate of escape too-its classic chemistry: colder temp results in lower gas pressure, the gas itself hasn't gone anywhere - I suppose that's why we generally do not drink warm sparkling wine as it will 'fade' much more quickly warm. :-P
seriously, it's nothing real new. It just sounds like MS is playing catchup.
Besides, some of those targeted ads are pretty handy for the senseless emails I've been sending out about 'planning trips with friends' and whatnot - I wonder why people are still screaming for blood about their privacy, I figured by this time the majority of the population have gone to learn not to email their ssn, bank statements or tax info around.
People can get pretty stressed over video games, why should this be considered any different? They *knew* it was a computer in the back. Maybe it just shows that humans are capable of exhibiting empathy and are emotional? Maybe the opposite: perhaps it shows that some humans are a little more coldblooded than others and are capable of committing acts society considers not appropriate(regardless of the human/synthesized element? *insert something about Jack Thompson here*
How about horror themed video games? Or horror movies themselves? Would those be considered 'unethical' because it messes with your mind?
I'm just curious