In general, I've made two predictions about the success of a product that I was really really sure of in my professional life: 1. While working at Berkeley Systems, I remember the first time I saw a prototype of You Don't Know Jack. So wait, it's a quiz-show format with a 'host' that insults you? Yeah, that's going to sell. End result: YDKJ is the only product that survived BSI's ending, having gone on to become physical games and even, shortly, a TV show; 2. While working at Macromedia, I remember seeing the first Dreamweaver demos. Now, I'd seen other WYSIWYG HTML editors -- you know, HotMetal (however it's capitalized) and Frontpage. They sucked. People who really cared about their HTML used vi (or vim or Emacs) like God intended them to! And anyway, *HOW* much were we going to charge for this? Insanity! Dreamweaver's going to be the biggest commercial failure in our history!
And... the rest is history. For what it's worth, I use Dreamweaver for the majority of my HTML creation. It's relatively fast, easy, and powerful, and I say this as someone who hasn't worked at Macromedia for more than three years now.
There are friends of mine who have asked me to let them know next time I'm sure a product's going to fail, just in case they've got some money they can invest in it.
Running this on my parents' PC, I find that it has, in fact, found spyware that neither adaware nor spybot has found.
Only problem is that it's TightVNC. I can understand that -- I mean, someone could use that to access your computer! The weird thing is, it didn't flag Remote Assistance as spyware. Totally missed it.
Having watched the video (ironic, really -- I just watched an 80 minute M$ promo video because I hate them), I can't help but feel that Gates was working off of a teleprompter buried in the floor in front of him -- he seems to regularly look down at the floor while he's talking. Could be just his demeanor, but...
Once when I was responsible for infrastructure for a major company, my boss the CIO said to me "OK, people are talking about how they'd like the servers to be faster. This is good, because they're no longer saying they'd like the servers to stay up -- they just assume they will."
I don't need a cellphone that takes pictures and plays MP3s, but I'm looking for one; and I don't need an iPod that can store 40Gb of music, but it sure is nice not to have to worry about what to transfer over to the iPod and just put _everything_ there so I can access it.
It's natural, when what we actually _need_ is taken care of, to start looking at the next step -- the things we'd really, really like.
The truth is (well, the truth filtered through my liberal biases) that people need to feel secure in their person, that they need to have a way to make sure they'll have food on their table tomorrow, and a way to exercise a certain sense of autonomy. A roof over their head would be nice too.
While in much of the world the above can't be taken for granted, most of us who read Slashdot already have this. We're probably not going to get shot in the street; we probably don't have to worry about being able to afford a loaf of bread tomorrow. So we start looking at the next, more optional stuff. That's OK -- there's nothing wrong with wanting more out of life than the bare necessities -- as long as we don't confuse "Man, I'd really like to be able to play 'Baby One More Time' as my ringtone" with a need:)
Google and Others
on
Defining Google
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
First, the others:
Back in August, on a Tuesday (you'll see the days matter in a second) I did a phone interview with a hiring manager; I did well enough that toward the end of the interview she asked me when I could come in; I said Thursday would be earliest (I was unemployed). After shouting over to some people, Thursday turned out to be OK. Lets call this Day 0
Day 0+2: I came in on Thursday and was interviewed for about three hours. Four teams, two singletons and two pairs. Oh, and I hate pair interviews. I remember distinctly that I managed to establish an amazing rapport with the hiring manager fairly early on and had an interview that left me feeling like a million bucks (this is probably the only interview where I've ever said, in response to a salary question, "you can't pay me what I'm worth" and meant it:) ).
Day 0+3: On Friday, I was contacted by another company and told they wanted to bring me in. We arranged the interview to occur Tuesday (so a week after the first phone interview).
Day 0+4: Company A calls me and wants to hire me. I tell them I've got to check out Company B and we negotiate to have me give them an answer by Thursday (0+9, or 5 days hence). Due to the sensitivity of the project, I agree to come in for a meeting at work on Wednesday (0+8) so I can be up to speed if I take the job (this also let me see what kind of work environment they've got).
Day 0+7: I interview at company B. Process is also about three hours. They're aware of my situation, and so the last person to talk to me is the hiring manager, with an offer in hand. I tell him I'll let them know by Thursday.
Day 0+8: I come in for a meeting at company A and fall in love with the company culture -- remember, this isn't "let's tell the interviewee what the culture's like," but rather a real business meeting I'm attending, so it allows me the sort of inside intelligence that's often lacking in our decisions. It also allows me to see that, e.g., everyone dislikes the company-provided laptops, which allows me to...
Day 0+9: I call company B and politely decline, I call company A to enthusiastically accept and negotiate a better laptop (the 'negotiation' process wasn't exactly lengthy -- "I'd like a laptop, but your standards suck. What can we do about this?" "Yeah, we're not happy with the standard. Can you work with the IT Director to come up with something better?").
As for the Google process... I probably got in due to the fact I was an internal reference. I had a phone interview that was actually pretty cool -- my interviewer felt engaged, asked intelligent questions, and seemed really interested in me. It was a back-and-forth process, and I really liked it. I also did well enough, apparently, to qualify for a face-to-face interview.
The face-to-face happened about 15 days later. It was about 3-3.5 hours (fairly standardized for Google, apparently). I was lucky enough (ref internal referral) to eat at the Google cafeteria ahead of time, which definitely rocked.
_That_ interview process was... a little disappointing (can you tell I didn't get the job?:) ). It felt very one-sided. Forgive the fuzzy wording here -- I tend to be one of the more fuzzy, Myers-Briggs EIFPish, geeks out there.
I think it's natural, really -- Google goes through so many of these interviews that the first step is by necessity an emotionally disengaged "show us you're worthy of breathing Google Air[tm]" process. One of the things missing from the interview, for example, was any sort of discussion of the Google side of things, or what the job or work relationships or technology are like.
I left the interview drained. I'm actually pretty pleased with my performance -- I'd probably want to change two or three things, but overall I'd say I probably performed at about 85% or better of my optimal capacity.
Site's characteristically slow, and they intentionally spread out the article over three pages for the page views. Screw it, here's the text:
The year has come to an end, and before we think of New Year's resolutions we can't meet, take a step back and reminisce all that was wrong this past year in gaming.
20) Half-Life 2 Collector's Edition Big and Empty; Steam Sputters After being delayed for over year, and Valve's bouts with VU Games over Steam distribution, gamers awaited for the release of Half-Life 2 with tingled anxiety and exuberance. The Collector's Edition turned out to be an $80 disappointment--the included original Half-Life was largely unchanged from the original, the tiny hint/art book paled in comparison to the $90 online version's book, and it came in a giant box which could only be justified by a XL T-shirt that only the most socially dejected would care to wear. To top it off, many had to endure hours of waiting for the game to be authenticated on its launch day, with Steam often unable to even register users.
19) Duke Nukem--A Decade in the Making Just when everybody forgot the existence of Duke Nukem, 3D Realms announces that it signed Swedish firm Meqon to handle the physics engine for its vaporous sequel, Duke Nukem Forever. While 3D Realms has a reassuring "it's done when it's done" stance for the shooter, the numerous delays either signals a new Half-Life--or the new Daikatana.
18) Microsoft Axes First-Party Sports Titles Realizing that not much else than Halo 2 proves to be very successful, Microsoft Game Studios slashed its internal sports game development team, laying off 76 employees--seeing the effective end of NFL Fever, NHL Rivals, and Inside Drive. Those who read the signs saw it as no surprise, as an announcement was made previously that it would not release any sports titles in fall '04. EA denied any connection with the move, who was fresh from an agreement with Microsoft that would see EA Sports titles support Xbox Live.
17) Fallout RPG Canned, Reopened Black Isle Studios saw its tragic end last year, and this year saw the disappointing release of Brotherhood of Steel, which like a long lost evil twin separated from birth, only served to tank the once brilliant franchise further. Hardcore fans hoped that the game would be picked up by Troika or Obsidian, but instead was nabbed by Bethesda, who plans to restart development from scratch--putting their own perks into the series.
16) Video Games Make You Fat In an announcement as surprising as the super-sized realization that too much McDonalds will kill you, Swedish lobby groups that decry the ill effects of video games said that kids typically eat potato chips and drink soda while playing games, making them fat. On the flip side, man-powered PlayStations were announced, with kids able to play games by powering them with their feet.
15) THQ Wrestles for Franchise Jakks might've had a couple of weapons stashed under the ring to get the edge, as WWE has sued THQ and Jakks for allegedly scheming together to win an exclusive licensing deal, unfairly beating out other publishers such as Activision. Former WWE senior vice president of licensing and merchandising James Bell, now one of Jakks' top executives, is accused of taking over $100,000 in bribes. THQ issues a statement denying the allegation, saying with corporate tact that "if it's anybody's fault, it's Jakks'."
14) Gran Turismo 4 Stalls at Start Line Although Yamauchi said the game was "complete" in November 2004, the game still found itself delayed to 2005. With the doubly-disappointing announcement that it won't have online play, Yamauchi consoled fans with a feature that would enable you to take pictures of your car in scenic locations. On a slightly more positive note, it seems Gran Turismo 5 will finally include damage modeling--but long after the release of Forza. Meanwhile, Enthusia continues to jump up and down for attention in the pit stop.
The best Rock and Roll is US-made The best firearms are _NOT_ Asian-made (I happen to have warm fuzzies about the venerable M16s, but also about the Glock -- and while it isn't American, it sure as hell isn't Asian) The best software is US-made [some would argue that] the best pizza is US-made (though I'll let Neal Stephenson fight that fight) We make the best fighter aircraft too, I'd say.
You can't really bitch and moan about Asian manufacturers doing a better job making LCDs than the American manufacturers -- there *ARE* no American manufacturers, I believe. We've chosen to outsource this stuff to the Asians.
BTW, 99%+ of the desktop/laptop/server CPUs out there are American-branded CPUs.
BTW, I think you forgot "Raping a Crying Girl Porn." The Japanese have that market cornered.
In general, hand-made stuff was always highly prized when the hands involved were those of a master artisan -- the industrial revolution wasn't about producing something better than the best artisans could do, but something more _cheaply_ (and still pretty good -- the old 'bang for the buck' thing) than it would cost a master artisan to do.
That this practice continues to today (A few years back I was looking into getting a sword commissioned as a wedding gift and only seriously looked at hand-made swords, because there are no good factory-made swords -- there's not enough of a volume for good swords to justify an entire factory) is not regression.
Oh, and with regards to your sig, I think you want to say "woman-centric." The hyphen makes a difference.
I don't know whether to say "well, it's OK if my parents read my mail after I'm dead... but only if it's digitally signed!" or "In Korea, giving your passwords to your loved ones in case you die is only for old people."
It's actually tremendously difficult to achieve 9 movies a week on the 3 movies at once plan -- in my experience, it requires no shipping screwups and for you to actually return the movie on the same day you got it: Monday: Netflix sends you three movies Tuesday: You get them, send them back Wednesday: Netflix gets them, sends you three more Thur: You send them back Fri: They get them, send you three more Sat: You get them, send them back Monday: Repeat
The additional problem is that it means you have to rip all three movies on Saturday before your post office stops pickup (which is typically earlier on Saturdays). The only time I managed to approximate 9 movies a week was when I was unemployed for a while -- and on average, during two of those months, I still only did about 24 movies a month, or a movie every 1.mumble days. I did have a month I managed to achieve >30, but it's not at all reliable.
I live pretty close to two distribution points for Netflix, and it still takes one day -- I've not heard of anyone who gets their movies from Netflix the same day that Netflix sends them.
This, of course, only disagrees with a specific supporting fact of your case -- I still agree with your overall assertion regarding the usefulness of Netflix. As a point of reference, in the 418 days since I became a member, I've rented 260 movies. If I was at all inclined to pirate movies (which of course I'm not, because it's illegal and immoral and I wouldn't want to deprive starving artists like Tom Cruise and Will Smith of their fair wages), why, I'd have one of those huge CD wallets STACKED with DVDs, and already have additional CD wallets on order from Amazon!
So lets all agree for the moment that in the area of security (well, in most areas, really) Microsoft sucks.
On the other hand, the fact they make no guarantees about suitability of their products is a red herring. I believe the OpenBSD people _do_ actually care about security. Have you seen the BSD license (under which OpenBSD is licensed)? It uses exactly the same verbiage.
iPod announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on, there are a ton of mp3 players, including these CD-MP3 players which are the wave of the future. And $400? Another Apple lunacy that won't sell!"
iPod mini announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on, it's $250! And a third the capacity of the $300 version! I'd pay $50 more to get three times the capacity! Another Apple lunacy that won't sell."
iPod flash announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on! It's $200! And the market's already saturated with flash players! I don't see the point. Another apple lunacy that won't sell."
It's... weird, it's almost as though Apple understands their market better than Slashdot geeks do, though obviously that _couldn't_ be the case.
Look, I sympathize. I've twice in my life looked at products my own company was developing and said "that's stupid, it'll never sell!" The first time was when working at Berkeley Systems and looking at the first You Don't Know Jack demo (you know, the only product originally made by BSI that's still around to one degree or another?); the other was at Macromedia, looking at Dreamweaver "Oh come on, anyone who really wants to code HTML uses vi/emacs! Who'd pay $400 for another WYSIWYG HTML editor when they can get hotmetal for free?" Turned out? A ton of people who wanted a good one.
Face it -- we're just not very good at predicting market success for some products:)
Hey cool, I think we finally have the news equivalent to "yeah, but as long as it doesn't play Ogg files, I know I and three of my friends will never buy it"!
Paying people overtime is not the panacea to all their woes.
True story: I once worked for a company whose name I won't mention. I won't even mention the particular business they were in, because clearly there are people here smart enough to find me, look at my resume, and extrapolate:)
They had a bunch of people who were classified as hourly and eligible for overtime, including the bottom-tier IT developers. They also required everyone to work 50 hours a week (ten hours a day). A naive person at this point my say "hey, cool, overtime pay!"
Except that if you _know_ you're going to be paying someone for ten hours of overtime a week, you can work back from what you want to pay them per year and offer them a new hourly wage.
In other words, if your average receptionist gets paid $10/hr, his yearly salary would be $20,800. But if you know you want to pay your receptionist $20,800 AND force them to work ten hours of overtime per week, you plug it into your favourite worksheet and find out all you need to do is offer them $7.27/hr -- and then, lo and behold, you end up STILL paying them $20,800/yr, AND forcing them to work overtime.
It's easy to extrapolate this to a game developer -- pulling numbers out of my ass here for a moment, assuming your game developer gets paid $80K/yr and you want to not pay them more AND make them work 80 hours a week AND give them overtime, you figure out how many hours this ends up translating to (40 + 40*1.5 = 100) in a week, multiply this by the number of weeks (52), giving you 5200 hours in a year, and simply offer the programmer $15.38/hr. The beautiful thing, of course, is that if you _do_ manage to cut down on overtime (as you undoubtedly will once you start paying for it), then you'll end up saving even more -- and the programmer ends up with less than $80K/yr in her pocket.
So what's the lesson here? Well, my opinion -- and it'll end up being somewhat off-topic for this particular discussion -- is that it's awefully hard to regulate ethics. In the end, you've got to put in a real mess of laws to compensate for the fact that some entities are just going to try to screw everyone they're in business with. In general, with smart enough people (and EA has a bunch of smart people, including in management), whatever laws you'll put in, there'll be a bunch of ways to go around them -- it's the old "technical solution for a social problem" issue. The real answer is to find a company that will treat you fairly and with whom you don't have to have an adversarial relationship. I know that, given this economy and given especially this sector (game development), this is easier said than done. As someone whose partners have had to endure "I'm sorry, I've got a server catastrophe -- you won't see me for three days," I sympathize with those developers and their spouses.
Err... I think you're wrong. an HTTP Location: header just means that when you GET the page, you'll get as one of the headers the 'Location:' header. The client is still responsible for going "Oh, OK, I'll go over there," which means that the client can (and, unless you specifically tell it not to, will) just ignore the Location: header.
Yeah yeah, a ton of people all saying "but you shouldn't need to buy a book!"
I'm on my second iPod now, having just upgraded from a 1st gen 5Gb to a 4th gen 40Gb. I've never even opened the manuals to operate the iPod, nor would I expect my non-tech-versed sister to, once I give her my 1G-5Gb iPod. Why are these books useful?
Well, for one thing, because it'd have been nice to figure out how to hack iTunes this weekend when I had to change a whole bunch of song titles from "Artist - Album - Song title" to "Song title", and being able to do this programmatically would have saved me a bunch of time;
Because I could have fixed a bunch of other ID3 information on my iTunes DB if I could access it easily (and could easily find the info on how);
Because I'd love to see if I could, in fact, hack the iPod to have a stopwatch on it (for exercising. They give you a calendar and a clock but no stopwatch? WHY?).
For the people who just want to do their simple stuff, these books aren't useful, but then... I don't think that's the intended audience for these books.
I wouldn't know. I got hired to do Software Testing despite the fact my last job was in Development and the 13 years previous to this were in IT. Asked in the interview "why would you want to do software testing if you've never done it before," I said "well... because I've never done it before." It was, apparently, the right answer.
What I ended up doing, of course, was a different matter, but that's only because they punish competence here ("Hey, you're really good. Want more stuff to do?"):)
Someone with a modicum of detective skills. Congratulations -- If you submitted your own resume, I promise I'd make sure it got looked at:)
I should note, however, that I no longer work for Fisher Investments (the resume is old), and... how shall I put this in a way that won't get me sued? FI is not very similar to my current workplace, and it... probably requires a unique sort of IT person to work and be happy there.
I don't think I can say any more about FI without violating my NDA, getting their lawyer (who's a nice guy, but would have my balls for breakfast) involved, or having them dispatch assassins after me:)
I think I'm a little insulted at the suggestion I'm a corporate exec:)
But seriously, look, there's a reason I don't mention where I work here. I don't want my behavior here to be at all attached to my company, or for my company's behavior elsewhere to be at all attached to perceptions of what I write here. I'm not writing here as a company representative, I'm here as an IT (now software-testing/project management/whatever) guy on his personal time.
So get off the "you must be lying about the jobs" thing. What could I possibly gain? What, you're going to move to the bay area only to find out I lied about the jobs I know about just so I can point at you and say "<nelson>Ha-ha!</nelson>"?
Slashdot Mirror
What is this "phone" you're yammering about?
In general, I've made two predictions about the success of a product that I was really really sure of in my professional life:
... the rest is history. For what it's worth, I use Dreamweaver for the majority of my HTML creation. It's relatively fast, easy, and powerful, and I say this as someone who hasn't worked at Macromedia for more than three years now.
1. While working at Berkeley Systems, I remember the first time I saw a prototype of You Don't Know Jack. So wait, it's a quiz-show format with a 'host' that insults you? Yeah, that's going to sell. End result: YDKJ is the only product that survived BSI's ending, having gone on to become physical games and even, shortly, a TV show;
2. While working at Macromedia, I remember seeing the first Dreamweaver demos. Now, I'd seen other WYSIWYG HTML editors -- you know, HotMetal (however it's capitalized) and Frontpage. They sucked. People who really cared about their HTML used vi (or vim or Emacs) like God intended them to! And anyway, *HOW* much were we going to charge for this? Insanity! Dreamweaver's going to be the biggest commercial failure in our history!
And
There are friends of mine who have asked me to let them know next time I'm sure a product's going to fail, just in case they've got some money they can invest in it.
Running this on my parents' PC, I find that it has, in fact, found spyware that neither adaware nor spybot has found.
Only problem is that it's TightVNC. I can understand that -- I mean, someone could use that to access your computer! The weird thing is, it didn't flag Remote Assistance as spyware. Totally missed it.
I think I'll submit a bug.
Having watched the video (ironic, really -- I just watched an 80 minute M$ promo video because I hate them), I can't help but feel that Gates was working off of a teleprompter buried in the floor in front of him -- he seems to regularly look down at the floor while he's talking. Could be just his demeanor, but ...
Anyone agree/disagree?
Once when I was responsible for infrastructure for a major company, my boss the CIO said to me "OK, people are talking about how they'd like the servers to be faster. This is good, because they're no longer saying they'd like the servers to stay up -- they just assume they will."
:)
I don't need a cellphone that takes pictures and plays MP3s, but I'm looking for one; and I don't need an iPod that can store 40Gb of music, but it sure is nice not to have to worry about what to transfer over to the iPod and just put _everything_ there so I can access it.
It's natural, when what we actually _need_ is taken care of, to start looking at the next step -- the things we'd really, really like.
The truth is (well, the truth filtered through my liberal biases) that people need to feel secure in their person, that they need to have a way to make sure they'll have food on their table tomorrow, and a way to exercise a certain sense of autonomy. A roof over their head would be nice too.
While in much of the world the above can't be taken for granted, most of us who read Slashdot already have this. We're probably not going to get shot in the street; we probably don't have to worry about being able to afford a loaf of bread tomorrow. So we start looking at the next, more optional stuff. That's OK -- there's nothing wrong with wanting more out of life than the bare necessities -- as long as we don't confuse "Man, I'd really like to be able to play 'Baby One More Time' as my ringtone" with a need
First, the others:
:) ).
...
... I probably got in due to the fact I was an internal reference. I had a phone interview that was actually pretty cool -- my interviewer felt engaged, asked intelligent questions, and seemed really interested in me. It was a back-and-forth process, and I really liked it. I also did well enough, apparently, to qualify for a face-to-face interview.
... a little disappointing (can you tell I didn't get the job? :) ). It felt very one-sided. Forgive the fuzzy wording here -- I tend to be one of the more fuzzy, Myers-Briggs EIFPish, geeks out there.
Back in August, on a Tuesday (you'll see the days matter in a second) I did a phone interview with a hiring manager; I did well enough that toward the end of the interview she asked me when I could come in; I said Thursday would be earliest (I was unemployed). After shouting over to some people, Thursday turned out to be OK. Lets call this Day 0
Day 0+2: I came in on Thursday and was interviewed for about three hours. Four teams, two singletons and two pairs. Oh, and I hate pair interviews. I remember distinctly that I managed to establish an amazing rapport with the hiring manager fairly early on and had an interview that left me feeling like a million bucks (this is probably the only interview where I've ever said, in response to a salary question, "you can't pay me what I'm worth" and meant it
Day 0+3: On Friday, I was contacted by another company and told they wanted to bring me in. We arranged the interview to occur Tuesday (so a week after the first phone interview).
Day 0+4: Company A calls me and wants to hire me. I tell them I've got to check out Company B and we negotiate to have me give them an answer by Thursday (0+9, or 5 days hence). Due to the sensitivity of the project, I agree to come in for a meeting at work on Wednesday (0+8) so I can be up to speed if I take the job (this also let me see what kind of work environment they've got).
Day 0+7: I interview at company B. Process is also about three hours. They're aware of my situation, and so the last person to talk to me is the hiring manager, with an offer in hand. I tell him I'll let them know by Thursday.
Day 0+8: I come in for a meeting at company A and fall in love with the company culture -- remember, this isn't "let's tell the interviewee what the culture's like," but rather a real business meeting I'm attending, so it allows me the sort of inside intelligence that's often lacking in our decisions. It also allows me to see that, e.g., everyone dislikes the company-provided laptops, which allows me to
Day 0+9: I call company B and politely decline, I call company A to enthusiastically accept and negotiate a better laptop (the 'negotiation' process wasn't exactly lengthy -- "I'd like a laptop, but your standards suck. What can we do about this?" "Yeah, we're not happy with the standard. Can you work with the IT Director to come up with something better?").
As for the Google process
The face-to-face happened about 15 days later. It was about 3-3.5 hours (fairly standardized for Google, apparently). I was lucky enough (ref internal referral) to eat at the Google cafeteria ahead of time, which definitely rocked.
_That_ interview process was
I think it's natural, really -- Google goes through so many of these interviews that the first step is by necessity an emotionally disengaged "show us you're worthy of breathing Google Air[tm]" process. One of the things missing from the interview, for example, was any sort of discussion of the Google side of things, or what the job or work relationships or technology are like.
I left the interview drained. I'm actually pretty pleased with my performance -- I'd probably want to change two or three things, but overall I'd say I probably performed at about 85% or better of my optimal capacity.
About ten days later I got a phone call fr
Site's characteristically slow, and they intentionally spread out the article over three pages for the page views. Screw it, here's the text:
The year has come to an end, and before we think of New Year's resolutions we can't meet, take a step back and reminisce all that was wrong this past year in gaming.
20) Half-Life 2 Collector's Edition Big and Empty; Steam Sputters
After being delayed for over year, and Valve's bouts with VU Games over Steam distribution, gamers awaited for the release of Half-Life 2 with tingled anxiety and exuberance. The Collector's Edition turned out to be an $80 disappointment--the included original Half-Life was largely unchanged from the original, the tiny hint/art book paled in comparison to the $90 online version's book, and it came in a giant box which could only be justified by a XL T-shirt that only the most socially dejected would care to wear. To top it off, many had to endure hours of waiting for the game to be authenticated on its launch day, with Steam often unable to even register users.
19) Duke Nukem--A Decade in the Making
Just when everybody forgot the existence of Duke Nukem, 3D Realms announces that it signed Swedish firm Meqon to handle the physics engine for its vaporous sequel, Duke Nukem Forever. While 3D Realms has a reassuring "it's done when it's done" stance for the shooter, the numerous delays either signals a new Half-Life--or the new Daikatana.
18) Microsoft Axes First-Party Sports Titles
Realizing that not much else than Halo 2 proves to be very successful, Microsoft Game Studios slashed its internal sports game development team, laying off 76 employees--seeing the effective end of NFL Fever, NHL Rivals, and Inside Drive. Those who read the signs saw it as no surprise, as an announcement was made previously that it would not release any sports titles in fall '04. EA denied any connection with the move, who was fresh from an agreement with Microsoft that would see EA Sports titles support Xbox Live.
17) Fallout RPG Canned, Reopened
Black Isle Studios saw its tragic end last year, and this year saw the disappointing release of Brotherhood of Steel, which like a long lost evil twin separated from birth, only served to tank the once brilliant franchise further. Hardcore fans hoped that the game would be picked up by Troika or Obsidian, but instead was nabbed by Bethesda, who plans to restart development from scratch--putting their own perks into the series.
16) Video Games Make You Fat
In an announcement as surprising as the super-sized realization that too much McDonalds will kill you, Swedish lobby groups that decry the ill effects of video games said that kids typically eat potato chips and drink soda while playing games, making them fat. On the flip side, man-powered PlayStations were announced, with kids able to play games by powering them with their feet.
15) THQ Wrestles for Franchise
Jakks might've had a couple of weapons stashed under the ring to get the edge, as WWE has sued THQ and Jakks for allegedly scheming together to win an exclusive licensing deal, unfairly beating out other publishers such as Activision. Former WWE senior vice president of licensing and merchandising James Bell, now one of Jakks' top executives, is accused of taking over $100,000 in bribes. THQ issues a statement denying the allegation, saying with corporate tact that "if it's anybody's fault, it's Jakks'."
14) Gran Turismo 4 Stalls at Start Line
Although Yamauchi said the game was "complete" in November 2004, the game still found itself delayed to 2005. With the doubly-disappointing announcement that it won't have online play, Yamauchi consoled fans with a feature that would enable you to take pictures of your car in scenic locations. On a slightly more positive note, it seems Gran Turismo 5 will finally include damage modeling--but long after the release of Forza. Meanwhile, Enthusia continues to jump up and down for attention in the pit stop.
13) Legislators Move to Restrict Sales of Mat
The best Rock and Roll is US-made
The best firearms are _NOT_ Asian-made (I happen to have warm fuzzies about the venerable M16s, but also about the Glock -- and while it isn't American, it sure as hell isn't Asian)
The best software is US-made
[some would argue that] the best pizza is US-made (though I'll let Neal Stephenson fight that fight)
We make the best fighter aircraft too, I'd say.
You can't really bitch and moan about Asian manufacturers doing a better job making LCDs than the American manufacturers -- there *ARE* no American manufacturers, I believe. We've chosen to outsource this stuff to the Asians.
BTW, 99%+ of the desktop/laptop/server CPUs out there are American-branded CPUs.
BTW, I think you forgot "Raping a Crying Girl Porn." The Japanese have that market cornered.
In general, hand-made stuff was always highly prized when the hands involved were those of a master artisan -- the industrial revolution wasn't about producing something better than the best artisans could do, but something more _cheaply_ (and still pretty good -- the old 'bang for the buck' thing) than it would cost a master artisan to do.
That this practice continues to today (A few years back I was looking into getting a sword commissioned as a wedding gift and only seriously looked at hand-made swords, because there are no good factory-made swords -- there's not enough of a volume for good swords to justify an entire factory) is not regression.
Oh, and with regards to your sig, I think you want to say "woman-centric." The hyphen makes a difference.
In Korea, iRiver H10s are only for old people.
I don't know whether to say "well, it's OK if my parents read my mail after I'm dead ... but only if it's digitally signed!" or "In Korea, giving your passwords to your loved ones in case you die is only for old people."
What to do, what to do?
It's actually tremendously difficult to achieve 9 movies a week on the 3 movies at once plan -- in my experience, it requires no shipping screwups and for you to actually return the movie on the same day you got it:
Monday: Netflix sends you three movies
Tuesday: You get them, send them back
Wednesday: Netflix gets them, sends you three more
Thur: You send them back
Fri: They get them, send you three more
Sat: You get them, send them back
Monday: Repeat
The additional problem is that it means you have to rip all three movies on Saturday before your post office stops pickup (which is typically earlier on Saturdays). The only time I managed to approximate 9 movies a week was when I was unemployed for a while -- and on average, during two of those months, I still only did about 24 movies a month, or a movie every 1.mumble days. I did have a month I managed to achieve >30, but it's not at all reliable.
I live pretty close to two distribution points for Netflix, and it still takes one day -- I've not heard of anyone who gets their movies from Netflix the same day that Netflix sends them.
This, of course, only disagrees with a specific supporting fact of your case -- I still agree with your overall assertion regarding the usefulness of Netflix. As a point of reference, in the 418 days since I became a member, I've rented 260 movies. If I was at all inclined to pirate movies (which of course I'm not, because it's illegal and immoral and I wouldn't want to deprive starving artists like Tom Cruise and Will Smith of their fair wages), why, I'd have one of those huge CD wallets STACKED with DVDs, and already have additional CD wallets on order from Amazon!
So lets all agree for the moment that in the area of security (well, in most areas, really) Microsoft sucks.
On the other hand, the fact they make no guarantees about suitability of their products is a red herring. I believe the OpenBSD people _do_ actually care about security. Have you seen the BSD license (under which OpenBSD is licensed)? It uses exactly the same verbiage.
God damn, I love how history repeats itself.
... weird, it's almost as though Apple understands their market better than Slashdot geeks do, though obviously that _couldn't_ be the case.
:)
iPod announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on, there are a ton of mp3 players, including these CD-MP3 players which are the wave of the future. And $400? Another Apple lunacy that won't sell!"
iPod mini announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on, it's $250! And a third the capacity of the $300 version! I'd pay $50 more to get three times the capacity! Another Apple lunacy that won't sell."
iPod flash announced: Slashdot crowd says "Oh come on! It's $200! And the market's already saturated with flash players! I don't see the point. Another apple lunacy that won't sell."
It's
Look, I sympathize. I've twice in my life looked at products my own company was developing and said "that's stupid, it'll never sell!" The first time was when working at Berkeley Systems and looking at the first You Don't Know Jack demo (you know, the only product originally made by BSI that's still around to one degree or another?); the other was at Macromedia, looking at Dreamweaver "Oh come on, anyone who really wants to code HTML uses vi/emacs! Who'd pay $400 for another WYSIWYG HTML editor when they can get hotmetal for free?" Turned out? A ton of people who wanted a good one.
Face it -- we're just not very good at predicting market success for some products
Hey cool, I think we finally have the news equivalent to "yeah, but as long as it doesn't play Ogg files, I know I and three of my friends will never buy it"!
Paying people overtime is not the panacea to all their woes.
:)
True story: I once worked for a company whose name I won't mention. I won't even mention the particular business they were in, because clearly there are people here smart enough to find me, look at my resume, and extrapolate
They had a bunch of people who were classified as hourly and eligible for overtime, including the bottom-tier IT developers. They also required everyone to work 50 hours a week (ten hours a day). A naive person at this point my say "hey, cool, overtime pay!"
Except that if you _know_ you're going to be paying someone for ten hours of overtime a week, you can work back from what you want to pay them per year and offer them a new hourly wage.
In other words, if your average receptionist gets paid $10/hr, his yearly salary would be $20,800. But if you know you want to pay your receptionist $20,800 AND force them to work ten hours of overtime per week, you plug it into your favourite worksheet and find out all you need to do is offer them $7.27/hr -- and then, lo and behold, you end up STILL paying them $20,800/yr, AND forcing them to work overtime.
It's easy to extrapolate this to a game developer -- pulling numbers out of my ass here for a moment, assuming your game developer gets paid $80K/yr and you want to not pay them more AND make them work 80 hours a week AND give them overtime, you figure out how many hours this ends up translating to (40 + 40*1.5 = 100) in a week, multiply this by the number of weeks (52), giving you 5200 hours in a year, and simply offer the programmer $15.38/hr. The beautiful thing, of course, is that if you _do_ manage to cut down on overtime (as you undoubtedly will once you start paying for it), then you'll end up saving even more -- and the programmer ends up with less than $80K/yr in her pocket.
So what's the lesson here? Well, my opinion -- and it'll end up being somewhat off-topic for this particular discussion -- is that it's awefully hard to regulate ethics. In the end, you've got to put in a real mess of laws to compensate for the fact that some entities are just going to try to screw everyone they're in business with. In general, with smart enough people (and EA has a bunch of smart people, including in management), whatever laws you'll put in, there'll be a bunch of ways to go around them -- it's the old "technical solution for a social problem" issue. The real answer is to find a company that will treat you fairly and with whom you don't have to have an adversarial relationship. I know that, given this economy and given especially this sector (game development), this is easier said than done. As someone whose partners have had to endure "I'm sorry, I've got a server catastrophe -- you won't see me for three days," I sympathize with those developers and their spouses.
*hides his interest in mail-order brides from his lawful wife, Melinda Gates*, perhaps?
Err ... I think you're wrong. an HTTP Location: header just means that when you GET the page, you'll get as one of the headers the 'Location:' header. The client is still responsible for going "Oh, OK, I'll go over there," which means that the client can (and, unless you specifically tell it not to, will) just ignore the Location: header.
Yeah yeah, a ton of people all saying "but you shouldn't need to buy a book!"
... I don't think that's the intended audience for these books.
I'm on my second iPod now, having just upgraded from a 1st gen 5Gb to a 4th gen 40Gb. I've never even opened the manuals to operate the iPod, nor would I expect my non-tech-versed sister to, once I give her my 1G-5Gb iPod. Why are these books useful?
Well, for one thing, because it'd have been nice to figure out how to hack iTunes this weekend when I had to change a whole bunch of song titles from "Artist - Album - Song title" to "Song title", and being able to do this programmatically would have saved me a bunch of time;
Because I could have fixed a bunch of other ID3 information on my iTunes DB if I could access it easily (and could easily find the info on how);
Because I'd love to see if I could, in fact, hack the iPod to have a stopwatch on it (for exercising. They give you a calendar and a clock but no stopwatch? WHY?).
For the people who just want to do their simple stuff, these books aren't useful, but then
Err, for what it's worth, I recharge my iPod through the USB2 port w/o problems.
Unfortunately, he _still_ can't pound a 6" spike into a 2x4 with his penis. And everyone knows, a girl's got to have her standards.
I wouldn't know. I got hired to do Software Testing despite the fact my last job was in Development and the 13 years previous to this were in IT. Asked in the interview "why would you want to do software testing if you've never done it before," I said "well ... because I've never done it before." It was, apparently, the right answer.
:)
What I ended up doing, of course, was a different matter, but that's only because they punish competence here ("Hey, you're really good. Want more stuff to do?")
Someone with a modicum of detective skills. Congratulations -- If you submitted your own resume, I promise I'd make sure it got looked at :)
... how shall I put this in a way that won't get me sued? FI is not very similar to my current workplace, and it ... probably requires a unique sort of IT person to work and be happy there.
:)
I should note, however, that I no longer work for Fisher Investments (the resume is old), and
I don't think I can say any more about FI without violating my NDA, getting their lawyer (who's a nice guy, but would have my balls for breakfast) involved, or having them dispatch assassins after me
I think I'm a little insulted at the suggestion I'm a corporate exec :)
But seriously, look, there's a reason I don't mention where I work here. I don't want my behavior here to be at all attached to my company, or for my company's behavior elsewhere to be at all attached to perceptions of what I write here. I'm not writing here as a company representative, I'm here as an IT (now software-testing/project management/whatever) guy on his personal time.
So get off the "you must be lying about the jobs" thing. What could I possibly gain? What, you're going to move to the bay area only to find out I lied about the jobs I know about just so I can point at you and say "<nelson>Ha-ha!</nelson>"?
Software. Focus on server products. C, Java, Python.