Our primary measurement for quality is customer satisfaction. That's really how we decide whether or not something is good- does it do what the customer wants it to do?
As usual, when I posted something here on Slashdot, I got a lot of negative knee-jerk reaction from people who think I am a 'tryant' who is going 'burn out' my team. That's fine with me, because usually when I get this response it is from someone who has never managed a team, or a project and their point of view is very narrow- always focused solely on the programmer, as though he/she operates in a bubble.
I do care about the programmers that work for me, and that is one reason I push the deadlines and we get things done. Most people do NOT want to sit around a drag a job out longer than it should take, but sadly, given the chance, most of us would do exactly that.
Studies have shown that these are the things that most employees want most from their employer:
1. Interesting work 2. Being appreciated 3. Being involved in things 4. Job security 5. High wages 6. Promotion and growth 7. Working conditions 8. Loyalty of supervisor 9. Help with personal problems 10. Tactful discipline
(List stolen from a Utah State University study, although the same type of study can be found in many places)
By pushing my team a little bit, and keeping them busy, I believe I am giving them all of those things.
My team gets to do a lot of interesting work. They are APPRECIATED because our productivity is so high. We/they get involved in so many things because we are a team that can DELIVER. High wages, job security and growth come from being recognized for what we do.
As a manager I make sure that they have good working conditions. I am LOYAL to my team because I NEED them. I do not have room in my schedule for people who are un-productive so I make sure they have what they need.
I don't have discipline problems, because my team is motivated.
So when I see all of the negative responses to my earlier post, I know those people are not motivated in their jobs, and it is probably their supervisor's fault for not making the job interesting.
As far as being a tyrant and burning my team out- well, that's just a matter of perspective. I think I am a good leader who is motivating a winning team. We know that today's success will be a springboard to our next opportunity.
I manage a small programming team, and one of my jobs is to set up deadlines. The nature of where we work means that we don't really HAVE deadlines at all (gubment) but we need to make progress.
So, I impose deadlines on my team. Usually they are fairly aggressive, but we always meet them. Two days before the last deadline, my team was all working frantically trying to get things done. One of the guys asked, "Why the hell did you make the deadline so early? Why not just push it out two more months?"
My answer was the same as always: "If I had pushed this deadline out two months, we'd be going through this same exact crunch time, just two months later."
It's just a fact, if we have six months to do a job, we'll finish in exactly six months. If we're given 12 months to do the same job, we'll finish in exactly 12 months.
I had a Fairchild- I think my dad must have been pretty interested in it. We spent a lot of time at Sears looking at Pong, but the Fairchild was SO much cooler. And in color!
I had some sort of 'drawing' game that I would use to draw out a race-track, then see how fast I could move my cursor through it without erasing any blocks. I spent hours on that, breakout, and baseball.
I'm just glad to see that some people realize that video game consoles did not start with the Atari 2600, or even worse, the NES.
Thank you for linking to the PIII comparison article.
It was filled with pearls of wisdom such as:
"Purchase you up E-Bay a used 1Ghz PC with 384MB RAM and 40GB plate, that if much 100 with accessories costs, and consumption is more performanter less river. "
Yeah, Phil also talks about this new-found idea that Sony has: connect your games to an on-line system, then you can add more to the game later on- like more maps, gametypes, multiplayer that works, etc.
Thank god Sony invented this whole idea of games being played online. Thank god for Sony, they've rescued us again!
The sad thing is that some people actually listen to this company, and believe what they say...
You describe illegal immigrants as: "i.e. foreign-born criminals who are not citizens, and did not earn their place in our society".
Personally, I did absolutely NOTHING to earn citizenship, other than to be passed through my mother's vagina while she was located in the United States.
MOST citizens do nothing to earn their citizenship. In fact, most illegals have done far more work to become part of this society than those who feel they have EARNED something just by being here.
Contrary to what some people may think- the United States does not have any sort of 'official' language. The situation is even more muddy in California, where the original state constitution was written in both English and Spanish.
We are way beyond the point of insisting that the 'immigrants' learn to read/write/speak the majority language (English).
I've been writing web apps for about 8 solid (full-time, that's what I do for a living) years now.
I have very few cross-browser/platform problems. They should all be caught during the development/testing phase.
One of the things I have always done is to avoid things like drop down menus. I personally don't like them, and I have not found a good implementation that *IS* fully compatible with all the users out in the world.
So if the developers don't use drop-downs, and instead come up with a different method of navigation or website organization, that problem is solved.
Another thing I do is to always ensure functionality 1.5 browser generations behind what is currently available. Or, at least I make sure it WORKS in those browsers. So I test on these different combinations:
Mac: Firefox and Safari. (Thank god IE 5.5 is gone) Windows: Firefox 1, 2, IE 5.5 (very rough, but make sure it can display), 6, 7 Netscape 6, 7, & 8(?), Opera which I don't follow the version number on because it sits on someone elses machine
I do NOT have any browser detection scripts running. Nothing is ever coded differently for different browsers. To me that is hokey as hell because a lot of times the code is not updated quickly enough, or written in a way that allows for future transitions.
When I started using IE 7 during the beta, I went to a lot of sites that told me that my browser was not iFrames compatible. Obviously they had an idiot style browser detection that was not updated. That's weak..real weak.
The way I see it, 'coding to web standards' is stupid. I code to the reality of what is out in the world. My clients don't give a shit whether or not a project is 'standards compliant', they just want to know why it doesn't work on their (or their customers) computer. Telling them that their browser doesn't follow standards just isn't a plausible argument. But it is also my job to inform them about screen readers, ADA, and the fact that not everyone is on 23" lcds.
Really, getting the whole thing right isn't that hard. You may find the 'standards' to be 'byzantine', but why bother with them? The W3C doesn't make a browser (that I know of). Avoid doing things that you know aren't going to work. And test everything thoroughly.
Lastly- really, I have been doing this full time for 8 years. And I still can't understand most of the pages on the W3C site.
So if something functions on 99.9% of the 'implementations' out in the world, doesn't that mean it follows the 'standards' set? (de facto standards can be much more powerful than standards set by some arbitrary governing body)
The W3C has no real authority. They are the tech industry's version of Esperanto.
ADA type of compliance for websites gets a lot of publicity because of Section 508.
I work on a lot of websites of the State of California. We do try to ensure 508 compliance (because, well, we have to). But I frequently wonder about how many people we are losing because of the language of the websites?
We have more people who primarily speak Spanish, Hmong, Vietnamese, Russian, Cantonese (etc. etc.) than who are blind- the group most often associated with 508 compliance.
So what about these other people? Do we translate everything in order to serve them? Are the blind getting a better deal than immigrants?
Just asking because I think about this at work all the time.
As I mentioned a few posts above- the developers were using Firefox.
So many people assume that whenever there is a problem like this, it is just the Microsoft Borg machine pushing their own lack-of-standards on the rest of the world.
Nope- it's just that these developers happened to create something that didn't work with this guys browser/computer combination.
Someday people will figure out that Internet Explorer is not to blame for IE only sites. It is the developers that are to blame.
"It's possible that enough people will get sick of the pointless upgrade cycle..."
Yes, that has already happened to me.
So I went out and bought a gaming system that runs its games at a standard resolution, anti-aliasing, etc. etc. Of course it's an Xbox...
Seriously- I was tired of the upgrade treadmill, and wondering if my set-up would run the most recent game on the quality settings I wanted to use. Once I switched to the Xbox I never looked back (except with disdain).
My only upgrade was from the original Xbox, to a 360.
Your post was interesting. Your writing skills remind me of the opening few paragraphs in all of the game FAQs I've read: like a 14 year old attempting to appear intelligent and worldly.
The post started out with a bang by providing an explanation of who owns the Xbox Live Marketplace. I don't believe anyone here was questioning that fact. And yes, as in your hypothetical comic book store, the owner makes the rules of what will go on sale because it is their store. (But if you really think a successful business bases its stock availability on whether someone is 'nice', you're nuts. They will offer whatever they believe people will buy.) (Yes, I know your comic book store has its own guidelines, but I said 'successful.')
In the next few paragraphs of your post you pontificate upon which games are worth the price Microsoft charges, and which are not. You state your opinions as though they are fact.
Just as in your ill-fated comic book store merchandising plan, you make the false assumption that the entirety of the XBLA population feels exactly the same as you do. This *might* not be true. In fact, some people may feel that Contra was a great bargain, while their overall feeling toward Small Arms may have been, "Fuck you and the wires you rode in on."
Lastly, I applaud your efforts to craft an interesting and well-written post. While you succeeded in a few cases, (I particularly liked your use of 'rubble') you failed miserably in others. Most notably your repeated misspelling of the word 'boon' exposes a weakness in your facade. But most importantly, thank you very much for putting so much thought into your post.
One game a week is enough- possibly more than enough.
Part of the whole plan is to actually make XBLA developer friendly. If Microsoft pushed out loads and loads of games each week, then the resulting sales for each would be much lower.
With even XBLA games taking 8-12 months, the developers need to get a return on their games, otherwise it just doesn't make sense as a platform. So, limit the number of games, and each will sell a little better.
Personally, I check the system every Wednesday to see if the new game appeals to me. About half of the time, it does. (RoboBlitz is decent, I really liked Cloning Clyde...I hated Small Arms)
The worst thing Microsoft could do for me is to open the gates and release 3 or 4 games a week. I wouldn't even bother checking for games anymore.
I use Cingular- but I think they are a bunch of asshats, and I'm currently looking for a company to switch to.
About 2 years ago they started telling me that I need to upgrade my SIM card. They kept sending me new ones in the mail- none of which worked.
Finally I went into the store, and got the new card. I was assured that it would improve my reception. Okay, cool, nothing wrong with that. (it would switch me from their older system to the new one they bought from AT&T)
Now I can't use my phone in my house, or even in my backyard. Previously this worked perfectly. So I called Cingular and talked to the customer service person.
"Well sir, that's impossible. The new SIM card is supposed to improve your reception..."
Great, but it doesn't. After 10 minutes of me insisting that it got worse, she shuffled me off to technical support.
The guy brought up the REAL tower maps and told me that my old SIM card used a tower 'less than a mile' from my house. The new SIM card couldn't use that tower- now it tries to use one a few miles away.
"Well, can I switch back?"
"No...there is nothing we can do about it."
"So my service got a whole lot worse..."
"Yeah, it happens."
I wrote Cingular a few letters about it. No response at all.
Last year the big rumor was that Microsoft was purposely holding back 360s to create a pent-up demand that would theoretically explode. (The idea that they wouldn't release them prior to Xmas was lost on most of the morons who supported this theory)
I wonder if Sony has the same genius plan...or if anyone is accusing them of it.
Unfortunately I had reason to deal with Xbox service on my 360 TWICE.
Yes, it was an absolute bummer that I had two problems.
BUT- both times the process was easy and quick. And the second time I had a problem, my Xbox was out of warranty. But they still covered the problem for free. Did not cost me a penny, including shipping.
Microsoft has said they would cover these bricked 360s for free, and my experience is that they do a good job on that.
I understand the appeal of a lot of weapons, but I was totally confused in GRAW. Does Rainbow Six have the same weapons? Personally, I would need a chart to understand the subtle differences between the 15 different automatics. I am not a 'gun buff' at all, so I really don't know anything about them.
Unfortunately for the Clancy games, they can't really come up with interesting and unique weapons (ie Needler). That operate differently, and have a signature look. And, why DOESN'T the Army put chainsaws on the end of rifles? I think that is a great idea whose time has come.
I LOVE 4 on 4. It's so much better than 12 on 12 (Call of Duty 3) or any other big game.
Most big games have so much chaos going on, that it becomes difficult to really come up with a strategy. The game becomes:
1 - Kill one guy 2 - Die 3 - Respawn 4 - Repeat
Gear of War brings the game down to a 'Survival of the Fittest' mentality. The rounds are short enough that waiting isn't a problem, but trying to stay alive is important.
They could not have done it this way with games with too many people.
Also, small maps means that the last guy standing can't go and hide in a corner waiting for the timer to run out.
As Major Nelson (and other from Microsoft) have said many times, blocking people from getting content based on their location is not their (MS) idea. It's the content providers.
Microsoft would love to sell more movies to people all around the world, but the distributors in the other countries generally have an exclusive agreement. So, they had to start blocking the Silver accounts with fake locations.
Some industries design things to break on purpose- but usually in a smart way.
I used to own a print-shop, and with that came printing presses of course.
Most manufacturers designed their printing presses with 4 or 5 'weak points'. These would be gears, cams, or other parts on the press that were made of aluminum, copper or some other weak metal that was sure to break. And break they did. In fact, a good 80% of the time when I needed to get a press repaired, it was one of these pieces that would break- frustrating the hell out of me.
So the repair guy would come out and replace the part, charging me a few hundred dollars, and keeping us out of production for a few hours. Obviously I asked him, "Why the hell do they make these things out of aluminum, when all of the other pieces are made of steel?"
I was ignorant, but his answer made perfect sense. The manufacturer would put these weak parts on the outermost parts of the press, where they could be easily accessed. Also, one of these parts would be part of each important system on the press. So, when something went wrong- a bad paper jam, or rollers stuck together, or something fell into the press (like a hand), then these weak points would break, and thereby protect the rest of the press. So instead of the repairman coming out and tearing apart the entire press; taking days and tens of thousands of dollars; he would come out and replace one simple part in just a matter of minutes.
I wonder if there could ever be a similar way of engineering electronics.
Replaceable batters on MP3 players would be a good start....
Slashdot Mirror
Our primary measurement for quality is customer satisfaction. That's really how we decide whether or not something is good- does it do what the customer wants it to do?
As usual, when I posted something here on Slashdot, I got a lot of negative knee-jerk reaction from people who think I am a 'tryant' who is going 'burn out' my team. That's fine with me, because usually when I get this response it is from someone who has never managed a team, or a project and their point of view is very narrow- always focused solely on the programmer, as though he/she operates in a bubble.
I do care about the programmers that work for me, and that is one reason I push the deadlines and we get things done. Most people do NOT want to sit around a drag a job out longer than it should take, but sadly, given the chance, most of us would do exactly that.
Studies have shown that these are the things that most employees want most from their employer:
1. Interesting work
2. Being appreciated
3. Being involved in things
4. Job security
5. High wages
6. Promotion and growth
7. Working conditions
8. Loyalty of supervisor
9. Help with personal problems
10. Tactful discipline
(List stolen from a Utah State University study, although the same type of study can be found in many places)
By pushing my team a little bit, and keeping them busy, I believe I am giving them all of those things.
My team gets to do a lot of interesting work. They are APPRECIATED because our productivity is so high. We/they get involved in so many things because we are a team that can DELIVER. High wages, job security and growth come from being recognized for what we do.
As a manager I make sure that they have good working conditions. I am LOYAL to my team because I NEED them. I do not have room in my schedule for people who are un-productive so I make sure they have what they need.
I don't have discipline problems, because my team is motivated.
So when I see all of the negative responses to my earlier post, I know those people are not motivated in their jobs, and it is probably their supervisor's fault for not making the job interesting.
As far as being a tyrant and burning my team out- well, that's just a matter of perspective. I think I am a good leader who is motivating a winning team. We know that today's success will be a springboard to our next opportunity.
I manage a small programming team, and one of my jobs is to set up deadlines. The nature of where we work means that we don't really HAVE deadlines at all (gubment) but we need to make progress.
So, I impose deadlines on my team. Usually they are fairly aggressive, but we always meet them. Two days before the last deadline, my team was all working frantically trying to get things done. One of the guys asked, "Why the hell did you make the deadline so early? Why not just push it out two more months?"
My answer was the same as always: "If I had pushed this deadline out two months, we'd be going through this same exact crunch time, just two months later."
It's just a fact, if we have six months to do a job, we'll finish in exactly six months. If we're given 12 months to do the same job, we'll finish in exactly 12 months.
I had a Fairchild- I think my dad must have been pretty interested in it. We spent a lot of time at Sears looking at Pong, but the Fairchild was SO much cooler. And in color!
I had some sort of 'drawing' game that I would use to draw out a race-track, then see how fast I could move my cursor through it without erasing any blocks. I spent hours on that, breakout, and baseball.
I'm just glad to see that some people realize that video game consoles did not start with the Atari 2600, or even worse, the NES.
Thank you for linking to the PIII comparison article.
It was filled with pearls of wisdom such as:
"Purchase you up E-Bay a used 1Ghz PC with 384MB RAM and 40GB plate, that if much 100 with accessories costs, and consumption is more performanter less river. "
More perfomanter, less river! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Yeah, Phil also talks about this new-found idea that Sony has: connect your games to an on-line system, then you can add more to the game later on- like more maps, gametypes, multiplayer that works, etc.
Thank god Sony invented this whole idea of games being played online. Thank god for Sony, they've rescued us again!
The sad thing is that some people actually listen to this company, and believe what they say...
This is a really safe bet though-
/.ed so I couldn't read it...so maybe he said something else...if so, sorry!)
Will anyone use 100% of the CPU(s)?
AND 100% of the GPU?
AND 100% of the RAM?
If not, Sony can always say they aren't using 100% of the system- so they game didn't live up to its potential.
Show me a game on any system that uses 100% of the resources, and I'll show you a game that hangs like mad and runs like crap.
Once again Sony comes out with an idiotic statement that they think will impress the public.
(Admittedly, the article was
You describe illegal immigrants as: "i.e. foreign-born criminals who are not citizens, and did not earn their place in our society".
Personally, I did absolutely NOTHING to earn citizenship, other than to be passed through my mother's vagina while she was located in the United States.
MOST citizens do nothing to earn their citizenship. In fact, most illegals have done far more work to become part of this society than those who feel they have EARNED something just by being here.
Contrary to what some people may think- the United States does not have any sort of 'official' language. The situation is even more muddy in California, where the original state constitution was written in both English and Spanish.
We are way beyond the point of insisting that the 'immigrants' learn to read/write/speak the majority language (English).
I've been writing web apps for about 8 solid (full-time, that's what I do for a living) years now.
I have very few cross-browser/platform problems. They should all be caught during the development/testing phase.
One of the things I have always done is to avoid things like drop down menus. I personally don't like them, and I have not found a good implementation that *IS* fully compatible with all the users out in the world.
So if the developers don't use drop-downs, and instead come up with a different method of navigation or website organization, that problem is solved.
Another thing I do is to always ensure functionality 1.5 browser generations behind what is currently available. Or, at least I make sure it WORKS in those browsers. So I test on these different combinations:
Mac: Firefox and Safari. (Thank god IE 5.5 is gone)
Windows: Firefox 1, 2, IE 5.5 (very rough, but make sure it can display), 6, 7 Netscape 6, 7, & 8(?), Opera which I don't follow the version number on because it sits on someone elses machine
I do NOT have any browser detection scripts running. Nothing is ever coded differently for different browsers. To me that is hokey as hell because a lot of times the code is not updated quickly enough, or written in a way that allows for future transitions.
When I started using IE 7 during the beta, I went to a lot of sites that told me that my browser was not iFrames compatible. Obviously they had an idiot style browser detection that was not updated. That's weak..real weak.
The way I see it, 'coding to web standards' is stupid. I code to the reality of what is out in the world. My clients don't give a shit whether or not a project is 'standards compliant', they just want to know why it doesn't work on their (or their customers) computer. Telling them that their browser doesn't follow standards just isn't a plausible argument. But it is also my job to inform them about screen readers, ADA, and the fact that not everyone is on 23" lcds.
Really, getting the whole thing right isn't that hard. You may find the 'standards' to be 'byzantine', but why bother with them? The W3C doesn't make a browser (that I know of). Avoid doing things that you know aren't going to work. And test everything thoroughly.
Lastly- really, I have been doing this full time for 8 years. And I still can't understand most of the pages on the W3C site.
'standards' is a crock of shit.
So if something functions on 99.9% of the 'implementations' out in the world, doesn't that mean it follows the 'standards' set? (de facto standards can be much more powerful than standards set by some arbitrary governing body)
The W3C has no real authority. They are the tech industry's version of Esperanto.
Thanks for the correction on CRN and CERN, my mistake.
ADA type of compliance for websites gets a lot of publicity because of Section 508.
I work on a lot of websites of the State of California. We do try to ensure 508 compliance (because, well, we have to). But I frequently wonder about how many people we are losing because of the language of the websites?
We have more people who primarily speak Spanish, Hmong, Vietnamese, Russian, Cantonese (etc. etc.) than who are blind- the group most often associated with 508 compliance.
So what about these other people? Do we translate everything in order to serve them? Are the blind getting a better deal than immigrants?
Just asking because I think about this at work all the time.
As I mentioned a few posts above- the developers were using Firefox.
So many people assume that whenever there is a problem like this, it is just the Microsoft Borg machine pushing their own lack-of-standards on the rest of the world.
Nope- it's just that these developers happened to create something that didn't work with this guys browser/computer combination.
Someday people will figure out that Internet Explorer is not to blame for IE only sites. It is the developers that are to blame.
Did you read the part of the story where they comment on which browser the developers were using?
It was not Internet Explorer. It was Firefox. (read the article)
So should we go go through your post and replace every instance of 'IE' with Firefox?
The FSF site links to a CERN article about the 25 shortcomings.
One of the shortcomings they list is 'Lack of AppleTalk support.'
Is support for a dying, proprietary protocol something we'll really miss?
"It's possible that enough people will get sick of the pointless upgrade cycle..."
Yes, that has already happened to me.
So I went out and bought a gaming system that runs its games at a standard resolution, anti-aliasing, etc. etc. Of course it's an Xbox...
Seriously- I was tired of the upgrade treadmill, and wondering if my set-up would run the most recent game on the quality settings I wanted to use. Once I switched to the Xbox I never looked back (except with disdain).
My only upgrade was from the original Xbox, to a 360.
Your post was interesting. Your writing skills remind me of the opening few paragraphs in all of the game FAQs I've read: like a 14 year old attempting to appear intelligent and worldly.
The post started out with a bang by providing an explanation of who owns the Xbox Live Marketplace. I don't believe anyone here was questioning that fact. And yes, as in your hypothetical comic book store, the owner makes the rules of what will go on sale because it is their store. (But if you really think a successful business bases its stock availability on whether someone is 'nice', you're nuts. They will offer whatever they believe people will buy.) (Yes, I know your comic book store has its own guidelines, but I said 'successful.')
In the next few paragraphs of your post you pontificate upon which games are worth the price Microsoft charges, and which are not. You state your opinions as though they are fact.
Just as in your ill-fated comic book store merchandising plan, you make the false assumption that the entirety of the XBLA population feels exactly the same as you do. This *might* not be true. In fact, some people may feel that Contra was a great bargain, while their overall feeling toward Small Arms may have been, "Fuck you and the wires you rode in on."
Lastly, I applaud your efforts to craft an interesting and well-written post. While you succeeded in a few cases, (I particularly liked your use of 'rubble') you failed miserably in others. Most notably your repeated misspelling of the word 'boon' exposes a weakness in your facade. But most importantly, thank you very much for putting so much thought into your post.
One game a week is enough- possibly more than enough.
Part of the whole plan is to actually make XBLA developer friendly. If Microsoft pushed out loads and loads of games each week, then the resulting sales for each would be much lower.
With even XBLA games taking 8-12 months, the developers need to get a return on their games, otherwise it just doesn't make sense as a platform. So, limit the number of games, and each will sell a little better.
Personally, I check the system every Wednesday to see if the new game appeals to me. About half of the time, it does. (RoboBlitz is decent, I really liked Cloning Clyde...I hated Small Arms)
The worst thing Microsoft could do for me is to open the gates and release 3 or 4 games a week. I wouldn't even bother checking for games anymore.
I use Cingular- but I think they are a bunch of asshats, and I'm currently looking for a company to switch to.
About 2 years ago they started telling me that I need to upgrade my SIM card. They kept sending me new ones in the mail- none of which worked.
Finally I went into the store, and got the new card. I was assured that it would improve my reception. Okay, cool, nothing wrong with that. (it would switch me from their older system to the new one they bought from AT&T)
Now I can't use my phone in my house, or even in my backyard. Previously this worked perfectly. So I called Cingular and talked to the customer service person.
"Well sir, that's impossible. The new SIM card is supposed to improve your reception..."
Great, but it doesn't. After 10 minutes of me insisting that it got worse, she shuffled me off to technical support.
The guy brought up the REAL tower maps and told me that my old SIM card used a tower 'less than a mile' from my house. The new SIM card couldn't use that tower- now it tries to use one a few miles away.
"Well, can I switch back?"
"No...there is nothing we can do about it."
"So my service got a whole lot worse..."
"Yeah, it happens."
I wrote Cingular a few letters about it. No response at all.
To sum it up- Cingular sucks.
Last year the big rumor was that Microsoft was purposely holding back 360s to create a pent-up demand that would theoretically explode. (The idea that they wouldn't release them prior to Xmas was lost on most of the morons who supported this theory)
I wonder if Sony has the same genius plan...or if anyone is accusing them of it.
Unfortunately I had reason to deal with Xbox service on my 360 TWICE.
Yes, it was an absolute bummer that I had two problems.
BUT- both times the process was easy and quick. And the second time I had a problem, my Xbox was out of warranty. But they still covered the problem for free. Did not cost me a penny, including shipping.
Microsoft has said they would cover these bricked 360s for free, and my experience is that they do a good job on that.
I understand the appeal of a lot of weapons, but I was totally confused in GRAW. Does Rainbow Six have the same weapons? Personally, I would need a chart to understand the subtle differences between the 15 different automatics. I am not a 'gun buff' at all, so I really don't know anything about them.
Unfortunately for the Clancy games, they can't really come up with interesting and unique weapons (ie Needler). That operate differently, and have a signature look. And, why DOESN'T the Army put chainsaws on the end of rifles? I think that is a great idea whose time has come.
I LOVE 4 on 4. It's so much better than 12 on 12 (Call of Duty 3) or any other big game.
Most big games have so much chaos going on, that it becomes difficult to really come up with a strategy. The game becomes:
1 - Kill one guy
2 - Die
3 - Respawn
4 - Repeat
Gear of War brings the game down to a 'Survival of the Fittest' mentality. The rounds are short enough that waiting isn't a problem, but trying to stay alive is important.
They could not have done it this way with games with too many people.
Also, small maps means that the last guy standing can't go and hide in a corner waiting for the timer to run out.
Possibly during that time- but not anymore: http://www.majornelson.com/archive/2006/11/28/xbox -live-security.aspx
As Major Nelson (and other from Microsoft) have said many times, blocking people from getting content based on their location is not their (MS) idea. It's the content providers.
Microsoft would love to sell more movies to people all around the world, but the distributors in the other countries generally have an exclusive agreement. So, they had to start blocking the Silver accounts with fake locations.
Some industries design things to break on purpose- but usually in a smart way.
I used to own a print-shop, and with that came printing presses of course.
Most manufacturers designed their printing presses with 4 or 5 'weak points'. These would be gears, cams, or other parts on the press that were made of aluminum, copper or some other weak metal that was sure to break. And break they did. In fact, a good 80% of the time when I needed to get a press repaired, it was one of these pieces that would break- frustrating the hell out of me.
So the repair guy would come out and replace the part, charging me a few hundred dollars, and keeping us out of production for a few hours. Obviously I asked him, "Why the hell do they make these things out of aluminum, when all of the other pieces are made of steel?"
I was ignorant, but his answer made perfect sense. The manufacturer would put these weak parts on the outermost parts of the press, where they could be easily accessed. Also, one of these parts would be part of each important system on the press. So, when something went wrong- a bad paper jam, or rollers stuck together, or something fell into the press (like a hand), then these weak points would break, and thereby protect the rest of the press. So instead of the repairman coming out and tearing apart the entire press; taking days and tens of thousands of dollars; he would come out and replace one simple part in just a matter of minutes.
I wonder if there could ever be a similar way of engineering electronics.
Replaceable batters on MP3 players would be a good start....