You know there are other things you can read that praise globalization too, lots of them in Forbes magazine or other equally dubious sources. None of it adds up, none of it is good for the majority of the US. I see that book on a lot of managers desks here, they're encouraged to read it every time the company announces a new overseas design house. The only people that benefit are the people at the top. The only reason they can't be outsourced or don't want to live overseas is that their financial (or physical) protection is not guaranteed. The only jobs left for the rest of us will be serving those people, in one way or another.
You can't encourage higher education and innovation/R&D if you are taking jobs that require that, and sending them somewhere else. People will find jobs in other areas that are more plentiful, and most of which that can't ever be outsourced (service industry) don't require higher ed. I would not have blown almost $100K of someones money on college degrees without which I could not have been employed at my present salary level. I don't need an MBA to know that doesn't pay out. Already yearly salary improvements have dropped dramatically, with our most senior people (after all the layoffs) making not much more than I make. It's questionable that I'm going to see a payoff on that investment equal to what I could have made elsewhere.
The people who benefit from outsourcing have a long tradition of not trusting R&D, and not spending money on it ahead of the "near and clear". They want an immediate return on investment, that usually comes at the expense of high risk pursuits.
I've heard it the other way, if the Chinese are too cheap, hire the Indians. All I know is I'm buying lots of property in Africa to catch the next wave.
Just wait for the damn thing to come out already. Does it really matter if it's got 26 super nano vector spline processing engines with 18 pixel flushers and a quantum video output if it is still vapor? Will it make the games any better if it DOES? No, just prettier with more depth. Boring.
It's a waste of breath, any of thsoe features can disappear between now and then. Further, I've done HW design long enough to know that the only people who actually know what will and will not work on launch are 2-3 HW guys who actually work on it, and 2-3 SW guys who actually work on it. Their managers, coworkers, beta customers, that guy in procurement? They only know some post-processed garbage that the engineers came up with to get some sleep, or worse, some counter-garbage politics devised by unfriendly managers to look for an excuse for why they can't make a commitment (look up the term "estoppel").
WoW and Galactic Civilizations 2 should be able to tide all of us over until the console wars v4 have subsided enough to make a buying decision.
Actually this is even better than not censoring. You'd be surprised at how many young chinese don't even know what is being censored. Telling them, but also not letting them have it, is probably more likely to produce results than just giving it to them outright.
Except it's likely to be like XP, where the only useful version for anyone to have (outside of servers) will be the XP Pro corporate version. Of course, everyone will get starter or basic with their new PCs so they'll have to buy (or pirate) the good one.
I've never met a good autorouter, although I've only seen the Orcad one and whatever it is that's built into Allegro. In every place I've worked they've been forbidden to use with good reason.
There's some magical force at play where the more complex the board, where routing by hand gets more painful, the more likely an autorouter will screw you up and cause a respin. At home, if I'm going to pay hundreds out of pocket just to get the board fabbed I'd rather not risk it. (Cost aside, there's the agony of hand solder, the blatant bribery and/or questionable ethics of convincing our contract mfg that it's "part of our high volume project, do it for free, please?", and the difficulty convincing my wife I've got to spin again rather than buy that couch she wanted...)
Routing by hand is almost always better, and once you get good at it, doesn't take all that long. The thing that NEEDS automation is creating schematic symbols & footprints. For real now, there's just no excuse for that.
1. It's always ok to Kill The Bad Guys (*almost* every game ever made) 2. I'll get the girl in the end, by just being myself, regardless of my deficiencies [most every JRPG] 3. I can't kill certain bears, they will give me bad druid faction [Everquest] 4. Stealing cars & beating hookers is OK, because the government is out to get us [GTA] 5. It's better to be part of a gang, because they can protect me from urban violence [UO] 6. The only important factor in building a great plane, is being a great pilot and having a dream [Grandia 3]. Oh yeah, also something nebulous about being able to cut out portions of wing "if it weighs too much" 7. Befriend your enemies, so that you can subjugte them militarily or culturally when you are resource starved, but not have to defend yourself in the mean time. Other people are my pawns, move them with skill. [Civilization 4] 8. Working Harder >> Working Smarter. I will eventually obtain all my goals if I spend a long time at it, while using my brain is always cheating. [Every MMOG ever made] 9. High twitch skills designate me a superior person who Gets Laid Often [FPSs, and a few MMOGers who don't get it yet] 10. Ancient relics are always of higher quality and provide better AC/DMG/Mana than new goods bought from modern vendors [Most RPGs]....
Lesson Infinity +1 - Perhaps video games are not exactly a good place to learn life skills after all
They wouldn't today, primarily because Christians are as a whole content and feel like they're in control, for the moment. Their governments are largely freely elected, and they have some representation. On the world scene Christian countries are the most dominant powers. Not true for most Muslim countries, in fact my understanding is those governments preach that democracy is a "western idea", with connotations that it's evil. There are exceptions, like Kuwait which is at least somewhat democratic. Historically, Christians have been equally prone to violence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition (they'd kill you if they thought you may have secretly found a cartoon of jesus funny!), etc. The list is long and disgusting. Obviously, anyone should see that anything Christ has come to represent in the bible is exactly opposite to whatever motivated those acts. However, church going Christians perpetrated them, often in the name of God. It's easy to be peaceful when you have what you want.
Not a whole lot different than the muslims right now. Don't get me wrong, there's no excuse for any of it, but we shouldn't pretend that our shit smells any sweeter.
There are plenty of self-proclaimed Christians who would do violence on people who violate the letter, or perceived spirit of the Bible. They are, of course, not good christians if they actually did it, but historically that sort of argument has not held much water. At times they've been pretty brutal to other religions.
If they're not organized and perpetuating acts of mass destruction now, it's because most feel they have a voice in government, and thus only a few of the most extreme actually go out and kill people. It doesn't make the world news because it's just another murder. In the middle east, that's not so true, they feel the western world is actively aligned against them, and their governments encourage this belief. Why? Because if the people are worried about "Westerners" they're not worried about how badly their own governments are treating them.
You know what's not working for me? Starting alts at level 1. If I'm spent the hours to get to 30, start me with a level 10 alt. If I'm 40, give me a level 15 alt. Max it out at say level 20 alts for level 60 main characters, and make it an option upon character creation. Nothing sucks like having to wade through the 20 hours of repetitive "I'm a newbie who can't play WoW" every time I want to get at alt out of the baby area and into the main part of the game.
I agree with most of what you said, until that. I don't agree there, in fact the ONLY fun I personally have is starting up a newb and playing the "fun part" of the game (levels 1-35ish). If my experience with the game were only those levels, I wouldn't understand your post at all, because it's very fun. By the time my characters get to around 35, the problems you describe above make the game unfun. I don't care for instances or raids, been there, done that in EQ, don't have time now. Personally I'm game for the quests if there were some unifying theme or story behind them, and enough of them that I don't have to play exactly the same way for all my alts. From levels 1-35, this isn't a problem, I've never played those levels the same way, and only after 8 characters I think I've done almost all those quests at least once (for Alliance! I can go play horde for even more). The only thing missing from the low levels is some underlying theme. There's something sorta there, but it could be made better. Further, each class is a little different, playing from newb->mid level is valuable experience, even if you sorta know what you're doing already. As you get skills/spells/talents, one or two at a time, you try stuff out and learn how they can be used effectively. Much better than reading a play guide and taking the authors word for it.
What might be better is if levels 35-60 didn't suck so hard and there were enough solo/non-instance quests such that you never have to group/instance, and you can pick and choose which ones to do or not do, together with a motivating story-line for each race that keeps you interested. Plus, not making you have to run all over the world a half dozen times helps a lot. Travel is important, but travel is boring (still, it beats EQ pre-POP stones). I feel like by level 35 I've just started to have a developed character, but the game ends and I want more, but ahead is only frustration and boredom.
WoW is the best mmog I've played, but it's got weaknesses. This article doesn't seem to highlight any of those, even those quite a few of his bullets are in fact WoW faults (1,5,**7**,9). Most of the people I know that made it to 60 either a) love instance grinding or b) play from work, and thus anything is fun.
I'd say protest Washington, they're the ones enabling censorship & other human rights violations in China. The entire corporate world is focusing on "globalization", which by negotiation with Beijing means they have to move some of their jobs and some of their IT infrastructure to China. All of it is subject to Chinese law, and hence censorship.
These companies didn't arrange these deals by themselves, it was all proxied by the US government (across many administrations, Rep & Dem).
To answer the question, you need to approach a semiconductor fab: TSMC, IBM, LSI, etc. I haven't done ASICs in a while, but those were the ones we dealt with most. That said, the parent poster is right, unless you want to do a purely analog design.
The only drawback to FPGAs is component cost, it will always be higher than a custom IC. On the other hand you can get them from anywhere from $1, to $500, depending on how big of an FPGA you need. The real advantage is that you can develop your idea, mostly for free, prototype it and then convert to a custom IC later when you get funding. It's a great way to go that many very well funded companies start with.
Building a custom IC has a very high NRE. It requires lots of expensive tools (Simulation, Synthesis, Verification, Floorplanning) and you almost certainly won't get it right on your first rev. Respins aren't free. If you want to do a fully analog design, it's even harder and I suggest you try to sell your idea to companies that specialize in this.
If you can develop and prove your idea in an FPGA, and put together a believable business case, you can probably get the funding you need. Otherwise, especially right now, it'd be very hard.
We've used an embedded linux (powerpc) for over 6 years, deployed in millions of units. No one needs to even know that it's there, in fact people think the company I work for is 0wn3d by MS...but linux has been lying there all the while doing things no one really wants to mess with (management GUIs etc.) It's survived through high attrition and remains up to date.
The only issue are still device drivers, that is always the achilles heel of open source. MS does a good job of helping certain companies not release datasheets & programming info, so certain video chips and other devices may be challenging. However you can still bypass that if you are just doing an x86-like embedded system.
Most embedded systems don't have this problem...just some specific applications and marketing requests I have come across ("Add 3D Graphics to a set top box!")
Clearly this ability stems from a global oil shortage and an oppressed Tibet. Once the sharks are touched by His Noodly Appendage, things will be put right.
Google has more to lose by the Bell's blocking them, than the Bell's have to lose by blocking google. People would be really pissed at not having google, but there's essentially nowhere to turn. Cable perhaps, but they'll align themselves with the Bells, why not? There's only gain...
I'd be very interested to hear what Carmack had to say. Any reasonable person would listen to someone who has been there, and been successful, more than once. Unfortunately he's not speaking, and that's the point.
Carmack said the playstation 3 wasn't mature enough to work with, that says nothing at all to support the headline of the article, or the slashdot summary. It doesn't say it's hard, it doesn't say it's easy, or that there is any sort of predicament. In reality his name was almost certainly invoked to give support to the headline, and the quote chosen because it is vague enough that it may sound like support.
There is no conflict, there is no data to support programming difficulties, there is no established predicament. I'd have been interested to read an article where there was actual data. We're supposed to be smart people here, it's acceptable for us to be tricked into going to a "news article" with so many banner ads (because we couldn't see it coming), but it's not acceptable to be tricked into believing what's there, particularly since the lack of data is so evident.
The guy was an ARTIST fired for for saying less than flattering things not only about an early development box, but the product he was working on. His opinion about how hard it is to program counts for nothing, he's not doing it, everything was heresay. His primarily complaint was that his game was not taking advantage of the PS3 because they were putting schedule before quality. Anecdotally he referred to other companies that may be doing the same. Nor do I give any attention at all to someones COMPETITOR who claims it is "a nightmare".
I wouldn't give him much air time, I'd rather hear from developers actually working with it. Those who have detailed architectural drawings, APIs etc. Even (especially) if they have to go to great lengths to achieve anonymity. Those guys would know what potential may or may not exist. This article does not give us information on that, the closest we come is a chief architect at a game haus who says he likes it. He's probably closer to development than the others, but still not reliable (since he's on record) and unless title inflation has gone mad, not someone directly doing the work.
Slashdot Mirror
You know there are other things you can read that praise globalization too, lots of them in Forbes magazine or other equally dubious sources. None of it adds up, none of it is good for the majority of the US. I see that book on a lot of managers desks here, they're encouraged to read it every time the company announces a new overseas design house. The only people that benefit are the people at the top. The only reason they can't be outsourced or don't want to live overseas is that their financial (or physical) protection is not guaranteed. The only jobs left for the rest of us will be serving those people, in one way or another. You can't encourage higher education and innovation/R&D if you are taking jobs that require that, and sending them somewhere else. People will find jobs in other areas that are more plentiful, and most of which that can't ever be outsourced (service industry) don't require higher ed. I would not have blown almost $100K of someones money on college degrees without which I could not have been employed at my present salary level. I don't need an MBA to know that doesn't pay out. Already yearly salary improvements have dropped dramatically, with our most senior people (after all the layoffs) making not much more than I make. It's questionable that I'm going to see a payoff on that investment equal to what I could have made elsewhere. The people who benefit from outsourcing have a long tradition of not trusting R&D, and not spending money on it ahead of the "near and clear". They want an immediate return on investment, that usually comes at the expense of high risk pursuits.
I've heard it the other way, if the Chinese are too cheap, hire the Indians. All I know is I'm buying lots of property in Africa to catch the next wave.
Just wait for the damn thing to come out already. Does it really matter if it's got 26 super nano vector spline processing engines with 18 pixel flushers and a quantum video output if it is still vapor? Will it make the games any better if it DOES? No, just prettier with more depth. Boring.
It's a waste of breath, any of thsoe features can disappear between now and then. Further, I've done HW design long enough to know that the only people who actually know what will and will not work on launch are 2-3 HW guys who actually work on it, and 2-3 SW guys who actually work on it. Their managers, coworkers, beta customers, that guy in procurement? They only know some post-processed garbage that the engineers came up with to get some sleep, or worse, some counter-garbage politics devised by unfriendly managers to look for an excuse for why they can't make a commitment (look up the term "estoppel").
WoW and Galactic Civilizations 2 should be able to tide all of us over until the console wars v4 have subsided enough to make a buying decision.
It also does not mention where these jobs were physically located. 70-80k in say, Austin, goes a whole lot farther than it does in San Jose or Boston.
Actually this is even better than not censoring. You'd be surprised at how many young chinese don't even know what is being censored. Telling them, but also not letting them have it, is probably more likely to produce results than just giving it to them outright.
He hasn't emerge --update --system --world in a long time maybe. Or maybe it's just still running........
Except it's likely to be like XP, where the only useful version for anyone to have (outside of servers) will be the XP Pro corporate version. Of course, everyone will get starter or basic with their new PCs so they'll have to buy (or pirate) the good one.
I've never met a good autorouter, although I've only seen the Orcad one and whatever it is that's built into Allegro. In every place I've worked they've been forbidden to use with good reason.
There's some magical force at play where the more complex the board, where routing by hand gets more painful, the more likely an autorouter will screw you up and cause a respin. At home, if I'm going to pay hundreds out of pocket just to get the board fabbed I'd rather not risk it. (Cost aside, there's the agony of hand solder, the blatant bribery and/or questionable ethics of convincing our contract mfg that it's "part of our high volume project, do it for free, please?", and the difficulty convincing my wife I've got to spin again rather than buy that couch she wanted...)
Routing by hand is almost always better, and once you get good at it, doesn't take all that long. The thing that NEEDS automation is creating schematic symbols & footprints. For real now, there's just no excuse for that.
Just more agents of the government. Just outrun them or get a paint job and all sins are forgiven!
It's a long list, here's a snippet:
....
1. It's always ok to Kill The Bad Guys (*almost* every game ever made)
2. I'll get the girl in the end, by just being myself, regardless of my deficiencies [most every JRPG]
3. I can't kill certain bears, they will give me bad druid faction [Everquest]
4. Stealing cars & beating hookers is OK, because the government is out to get us [GTA]
5. It's better to be part of a gang, because they can protect me from urban violence [UO]
6. The only important factor in building a great plane, is being a great pilot and having a dream [Grandia 3]. Oh yeah, also something nebulous about being able to cut out portions of wing "if it weighs too much"
7. Befriend your enemies, so that you can subjugte them militarily or culturally when you are resource starved, but not have to defend yourself in the mean time. Other people are my pawns, move them with skill. [Civilization 4]
8. Working Harder >> Working Smarter. I will eventually obtain all my goals if I spend a long time at it, while using my brain is always cheating. [Every MMOG ever made]
9. High twitch skills designate me a superior person who Gets Laid Often [FPSs, and a few MMOGers who don't get it yet]
10. Ancient relics are always of higher quality and provide better AC/DMG/Mana than new goods bought from modern vendors [Most RPGs]
Lesson Infinity +1 - Perhaps video games are not exactly a good place to learn life skills after all
They wouldn't today, primarily because Christians are as a whole content and feel like they're in control, for the moment. Their governments are largely freely elected, and they have some representation. On the world scene Christian countries are the most dominant powers. Not true for most Muslim countries, in fact my understanding is those governments preach that democracy is a "western idea", with connotations that it's evil. There are exceptions, like Kuwait which is at least somewhat democratic. Historically, Christians have been equally prone to violence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition (they'd kill you if they thought you may have secretly found a cartoon of jesus funny!), etc. The list is long and disgusting. Obviously, anyone should see that anything Christ has come to represent in the bible is exactly opposite to whatever motivated those acts. However, church going Christians perpetrated them, often in the name of God. It's easy to be peaceful when you have what you want.
Not a whole lot different than the muslims right now. Don't get me wrong, there's no excuse for any of it, but we shouldn't pretend that our shit smells any sweeter.
There are plenty of self-proclaimed Christians who would do violence on people who violate the letter, or perceived spirit of the Bible. They are, of course, not good christians if they actually did it, but historically that sort of argument has not held much water. At times they've been pretty brutal to other religions.
If they're not organized and perpetuating acts of mass destruction now, it's because most feel they have a voice in government, and thus only a few of the most extreme actually go out and kill people. It doesn't make the world news because it's just another murder. In the middle east, that's not so true, they feel the western world is actively aligned against them, and their governments encourage this belief. Why? Because if the people are worried about "Westerners" they're not worried about how badly their own governments are treating them.
I agree with most of what you said, until that. I don't agree there, in fact the ONLY fun I personally have is starting up a newb and playing the "fun part" of the game (levels 1-35ish). If my experience with the game were only those levels, I wouldn't understand your post at all, because it's very fun. By the time my characters get to around 35, the problems you describe above make the game unfun. I don't care for instances or raids, been there, done that in EQ, don't have time now. Personally I'm game for the quests if there were some unifying theme or story behind them, and enough of them that I don't have to play exactly the same way for all my alts. From levels 1-35, this isn't a problem, I've never played those levels the same way, and only after 8 characters I think I've done almost all those quests at least once (for Alliance! I can go play horde for even more). The only thing missing from the low levels is some underlying theme. There's something sorta there, but it could be made better. Further, each class is a little different, playing from newb->mid level is valuable experience, even if you sorta know what you're doing already. As you get skills/spells/talents, one or two at a time, you try stuff out and learn how they can be used effectively. Much better than reading a play guide and taking the authors word for it.
What might be better is if levels 35-60 didn't suck so hard and there were enough solo/non-instance quests such that you never have to group/instance, and you can pick and choose which ones to do or not do, together with a motivating story-line for each race that keeps you interested. Plus, not making you have to run all over the world a half dozen times helps a lot. Travel is important, but travel is boring (still, it beats EQ pre-POP stones). I feel like by level 35 I've just started to have a developed character, but the game ends and I want more, but ahead is only frustration and boredom.
WoW is the best mmog I've played, but it's got weaknesses. This article doesn't seem to highlight any of those, even those quite a few of his bullets are in fact WoW faults (1,5,**7**,9). Most of the people I know that made it to 60 either a) love instance grinding or b) play from work, and thus anything is fun.
I'd say protest Washington, they're the ones enabling censorship & other human rights violations in China. The entire corporate world is focusing on "globalization", which by negotiation with Beijing means they have to move some of their jobs and some of their IT infrastructure to China. All of it is subject to Chinese law, and hence censorship.
These companies didn't arrange these deals by themselves, it was all proxied by the US government (across many administrations, Rep & Dem).
To answer the question, you need to approach a semiconductor fab: TSMC, IBM, LSI, etc. I haven't done ASICs in a while, but those were the ones we dealt with most. That said, the parent poster is right, unless you want to do a purely analog design.
The only drawback to FPGAs is component cost, it will always be higher than a custom IC. On the other hand you can get them from anywhere from $1, to $500, depending on how big of an FPGA you need. The real advantage is that you can develop your idea, mostly for free, prototype it and then convert to a custom IC later when you get funding. It's a great way to go that many very well funded companies start with.
Building a custom IC has a very high NRE. It requires lots of expensive tools (Simulation, Synthesis, Verification, Floorplanning) and you almost certainly won't get it right on your first rev. Respins aren't free. If you want to do a fully analog design, it's even harder and I suggest you try to sell your idea to companies that specialize in this.
If you can develop and prove your idea in an FPGA, and put together a believable business case, you can probably get the funding you need. Otherwise, especially right now, it'd be very hard.
We've used an embedded linux (powerpc) for over 6 years, deployed in millions of units. No one needs to even know that it's there, in fact people think the company I work for is 0wn3d by MS...but linux has been lying there all the while doing things no one really wants to mess with (management GUIs etc.) It's survived through high attrition and remains up to date.
The only issue are still device drivers, that is always the achilles heel of open source. MS does a good job of helping certain companies not release datasheets & programming info, so certain video chips and other devices may be challenging. However you can still bypass that if you are just doing an x86-like embedded system.
Most embedded systems don't have this problem...just some specific applications and marketing requests I have come across ("Add 3D Graphics to a set top box!")
Be careful what you wish for. He may get into the remake biz, Casa Blancaer, Ex-Citizen Kane, Gone With The Hurricane, etc.
Pfft, obviously terrorists blog all their plans.
Damn you mods, hot chicks are NEVER off topic.
They do not have control of the last mile. That's the part that is near and dear to most of us, and the part SBC, Verizon, etc. control.
Clearly this ability stems from a global oil shortage and an oppressed Tibet. Once the sharks are touched by His Noodly Appendage, things will be put right.
Google has more to lose by the Bell's blocking them, than the Bell's have to lose by blocking google. People would be really pissed at not having google, but there's essentially nowhere to turn. Cable perhaps, but they'll align themselves with the Bells, why not? There's only gain...
I'd be very interested to hear what Carmack had to say. Any reasonable person would listen to someone who has been there, and been successful, more than once. Unfortunately he's not speaking, and that's the point.
Carmack said the playstation 3 wasn't mature enough to work with, that says nothing at all to support the headline of the article, or the slashdot summary. It doesn't say it's hard, it doesn't say it's easy, or that there is any sort of predicament. In reality his name was almost certainly invoked to give support to the headline, and the quote chosen because it is vague enough that it may sound like support.
There is no conflict, there is no data to support programming difficulties, there is no established predicament. I'd have been interested to read an article where there was actual data. We're supposed to be smart people here, it's acceptable for us to be tricked into going to a "news article" with so many banner ads (because we couldn't see it coming), but it's not acceptable to be tricked into believing what's there, particularly since the lack of data is so evident.
The guy was an ARTIST fired for for saying less than flattering things not only about an early development box, but the product he was working on. His opinion about how hard it is to program counts for nothing, he's not doing it, everything was heresay. His primarily complaint was that his game was not taking advantage of the PS3 because they were putting schedule before quality. Anecdotally he referred to other companies that may be doing the same. Nor do I give any attention at all to someones COMPETITOR who claims it is "a nightmare".
I wouldn't give him much air time, I'd rather hear from developers actually working with it. Those who have detailed architectural drawings, APIs etc. Even (especially) if they have to go to great lengths to achieve anonymity. Those guys would know what potential may or may not exist. This article does not give us information on that, the closest we come is a chief architect at a game haus who says he likes it. He's probably closer to development than the others, but still not reliable (since he's on record) and unless title inflation has gone mad, not someone directly doing the work.
A non-story.