I'm sorry, which of those items on the list is the internet? Oh, none of them. hmmm, what was your point again?
So are you saying you beleive the internet is a library? Is that what it prrovides?
Spelling is cool!
PS If you can't tell I'm having a hard time taking you seriously. Part of that is that you are posting this on a message board on the internet; the medium most likely to be full of shit.
Dear.edu domain linker, Please leave the discussions to the adults. When going to the library, please don't confuse the student union with the library. TV's are sometimes provided in the student center for poor students, but this does not make it a library. Please see my previous post for the definition of a library.
Actually I am going to have to say that the internet is both a commercial and non-commerical entity and neither. I'll meet you halfway and agree that providing machines that provide dedicated access Wikipedia or Guttenburg and couldn't browse to beyond that (one website per machine, though multiple machines for each is more than reasonable) would be a good thing, but I don't at all feel obliged for my tax dollars to go to feeding someone's public child porn addiction.
But yes, the internet = TV. Its all only entertainment no matter how serious an individual thinks it is.
Please do it now before these two turn the U.S. citizens into entertainment industry criminals and slaves...
This statement exposes your fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. Even if I accept the notion that "stealing" music would make me a "criminal" and buying music makes me a "slave" (riiiiiiiiiiiiiight, like buying food makes me a slave to farmers), there is still option #3 - be neither. Don't listen to any of it at all. Make your own. You won't die if you don't hear the newest Metallica song. If their business model is truly obsolete, let it die. Don't consume their product for free or for fee. The fact that people still do both only goes to prove them still viable.
Been doing the QA thing for quite some time. Much longer than I intended actually, but they pay me too much to up and leave now.
Spot on. Though you paint a bit of a bleak picture and I want to polish it off a bit. Yes there is a high turnover rate for testers. Testers are hired generally on a temp basis, and they know full well what they are getting into when they apply. Being the one in a million long-shot cliche here guy to "make it" is rare. This is typical, though we are hiring a little more than we had been lately. Business is good. =)
Who comes in? Kids right out of high school or college looking for a fun gig before starting college or a career. Some guys make the rounds and seem to bounce from publisher to publisher. Then there is always just the random avid gamer who really really really wants to make games but doesn't have any qualifications other than they are good that them. I personally got hooked in out of school. Just applyed on a laugh. Got it, turns out Im good at it, and Im still here 4 years later. Though the whole bust and everything. HA!
Mostly though turnover is high. Some leave because that thing they were waiting for comes through. Others don't work out. And sometimes there is just no work. The best stay, the rest go, sometimes the medium guys get asked back next year.
Good QA is hard. Its not a BS job nor is it a fun job, but its fun-ish. Its fun for me because I actually enjoy the process more than the gaming. In fact I've pretty much been promoted out of actually playing them!
Are you going to come into a publisher, design a sweet game on their time, sell it back to him and become the next Will Wright? Hell no. Be realistic. Enjoy the job, take it serious, try hard, learn the many levels of the job and yes there are opportunities. Many of my good friends are now designers at various developers all over the US. I look at my AIM list and I can contact devs from coast to coast just to bullcrap. Some others are in production here. They all got hired based on their work right here in QA. Others went on to higher positions in other QA departments.
What's this all about? I don't know anymore. Just that yes, turnover is high in QA, but its because so many people want to do it. Not because it sucks or its not worth it. And some of that turnover is to fill a seat of someone who just got their dream job.
They know plenty about making money. That was my point. Thats it. Thats all. The grandparent post was about MS being able compete. I briefly demonstrated that they are actually quite good at beating and even crushing the competition and I used their incredible success as an example of that. To abuse their monopoly position they first had to achieve a monopoly position. Pretty simple concepts really.
That, however, is not the goal of the open source movement. You speak for every single member of the "open source movement"? Hey congrats, you're, like, bigger than Jesus.
A tip for all you kids out there. When you want to argue a counter-point, at least directly address the point. You didn't even try to show that their success does not prove an ability to compete. Please make sure you actually have something worth saying before you continue to annoy be further.
Wow, I heard a story once where someone said something about attacks only resulting from announced and patched vulnerabilities. Of course, that claim was quickly "debunked" by the slashbots. Weird.
Slightly OT, but to allow everyone to better educate themselves, do check out Puzzle Pirates. Amazing stuff. They give you a nice long free (no-CC) demo too. Spot on with that comment. All the social aspect, but you can participate with anyone at level and still be successful. It even has PvP! Worthy of any MMORPG discussion.
The plumber goes home from work and washes his hands. No more shit. The McDonald's clerk goes home from work secure in the knowledge that all them assholes can no longer get to him. No more shit.
Ah the blinders of "superiority". Spoken like a rich white kid who didn't have to work at a movie theater to pay his way through college. At the theater we had something called the "concessions dream". After someone first two weeks of working behind the concessions stand one would begin to experience nightmares about being late for work and arriving only to find out that it was impossible to perform one's tasks fast enough or well enough to satisfy even a single customer.
People who belittle the effects of this sort of thing are unable to integrate the fact that identical stimuli will have differing effects on different people, and in their ignorance of the actualities of the situation can only make things worse overall.
Yeah, so don't downplay other people's work either hypocrite.
Its always Xbox and never XBox or X-Box or X-box. One would look silly opining about certain fruits and repeatedly using terms like A-pples and O-ranges. There, that's my slashdot good deed for the day.
That's perhaps the most ignorant thing I have ever read. You just 100% equated the state of being of African descent with a person operating a business of the person's choosing.
Hey, I commend you, you got modded +5 for it.
P.S. That arguement always falls apart when it can be shown to be "applicable" to anything including murder, rape, property theft or well anything you want. Clearly we have some laws and these exist for some valid reason. One doesn't have to agree with the grandparent post to see how ignorant your statement was.
Let's try it: We should have laws against murder, people could be killed. We should have laws against being black, people could be killed.
People don't cheat solely to be as powerful they can be. Some cheat because for them it gives them the same thrill as winning fair and square. They have no sense of fair play. Others cheat only to ruin the game for other people. These cheaters would still flock to the "good set" because thats where these two kinds of cheaters need to be to get their fix.
I work at a local mom and pop computer store, and it seems like somewhere around half of all PCs brought in with problems stem from broadband used improperly.
Ah yes, the terminal disconnect of the geek from the skill of marketing. If you truly work in a independent shop that sells PCs, and you see this is a recurring problem, turn the problem into profit. Why not upsell them that anti-virus? The firewall? An anti-spyware solution? The non-AOL ISP? And you don't even have to be evil about it. Just tell them the truth. The internet is a wacky place and you need the following tools to keep you safe-ish. It sells itself. Man, maybe people who sell PC's are the ones who need to be licensed.
#1 If you want to appeal to Americans at least try to act like one. We write dates in the format of MM/DD/YYYY. Putting the date before the month makes you look like a euro wannabe. I was put off immediately. You are not better than anyone; you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
#2 What's a 'technical' fact? Are these facts or not? A 'technical' fact sounds like something Comic Book Guy would pop in to point out. "Well technically Spider-man is a mutant, but not the same as the X-Men." WTF?
Clearly I have no interest in this conference, but if you want to generate interest, why not cease talking down to people? The alarmist fear-mongering crap could probably stand to go as well. You catch alot more flies with honey then with vinegar.
Yeah, my 1973 Nova passes smog here in California every year it is required to be tested. Its heavily customized inside, outside and under the hood.
The catch is that THESE CARS ARE NEVER REQUIRED TO BE TESTED. That makes things just a tiny bit easier. Most states exempt cars that are 25 years old from testing. I wouldn't put too much stock in all this "could" talk. Unless of course they are actually subjecting themselves to SMOGII laws. You fail twice, that car can't be registered anymore...
I could be completely wrong, but I don't remember a single one of the Quake games themselves shipping with seperate executables for single and multiplayer. Even Quake more or less launched a server (though not attached to the network) for a single player game.
Not to be a dick, but please don't correct me and then admit you might be wrong. This is pretty bad form. First off, notice I was speaking of Quake3 as was the parent post. Second, as evidence that I know what I am talking about I will provide you a simple test: if you have any modern Quake3 engine game installed on a windows system (Call of Duty seems to be the big one, so I'm sure you have that), notice that the start menu includes seperate shortcuts for single and multiplayer. These shortcuts point to two seperate.exe's. If thats not good enough browse the folders for yourself.
Many engines are implemented this way, most of them make all games network games even if only 1 person is playing (i.e. Quake 3).
I agree its more about design than tech, but I want to illustrate one point. Even Q3 engine games, with the possible exception of Quake3 itself, ship with seperate executables for single and multiplayer. But this is still about design. Even when the weapons, powers, etc. are all the same, what works for the single player portion doesn't translate directly to multi or co-op. Design a good single player game AND design a good multiplayer game, don't do one that goes both sorta well. This is just to point out that even when the tech is there, "slapping on" commercial quality co-op play is much more than trivial.
Johnny gets a time-out and a talk about how we're all different people, and we need to accept those who are different from us.
Isn't being intolerant of intolerance still intolerance? The smart kid isn't the problem, true, but neither are the "bullies" (whatever that means). Turns out there are alot of reasons why someone might be perceived as a "bully".
I was in a situation in high school where I got a 5 on my AP Calculus test AND lettered 5 times in sports. I got to see both sides. Your notion that people fall into one category or the other is basically ignorant. One can be whatever one wants. If one wants to be both mentally and physically strong, this is possible. Being the butt of the joke, to an extent, is helpful. It probably means that the individual is not just outside of "normal" but so outside of the norm that they draw the attention of every other human on the planet.
Everyone needs to learn to enjoy losing. If an individual has left high school without both the ability to kick someone's arse and to accept an arse whooping, than person missed out the what little there is to be gained from the public school experience.
Just because you are Different doesn't mean you aren't Wrong. If your hair looks stupid and someone tells you so, thank them. There are whole industries based on providing the proper image to people. Check them out sometime. It IS ok to "pick on" (whatever that means) other people. This is one way of learning. Don't expect people to fall into the little boxes of "jock" and "nerd" that you have created for yourself to help you cope with life. Hey, this would seem to indicate that you are actually part of the problem. I can't wait until my kid is applying for the same job as yours and my kid makes fun of yours until they leave the lobby in tears before even going in for the interview. Suh-weet.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, which of those items on the list is the internet? Oh, none of them. hmmm, what was your point again?
So are you saying you beleive the internet is a library? Is that what it prrovides?
Spelling is cool!
PS If you can't tell I'm having a hard time taking you seriously. Part of that is that you are posting this on a message board on the internet; the medium most likely to be full of shit.
Dear .edu domain linker,
Please leave the discussions to the adults. When going to the library, please don't confuse the student union with the library. TV's are sometimes provided in the student center for poor students, but this does not make it a library. Please see my previous post for the definition of a library.
PS You look pretty stupid in that picture.
Actually I am going to have to say that the internet is both a commercial and non-commerical entity and neither. I'll meet you halfway and agree that providing machines that provide dedicated access Wikipedia or Guttenburg and couldn't browse to beyond that (one website per machine, though multiple machines for each is more than reasonable) would be a good thing, but I don't at all feel obliged for my tax dollars to go to feeding someone's public child porn addiction.
But yes, the internet = TV. Its all only entertainment no matter how serious an individual thinks it is.
Even better, who's to say libraries should provide internet access?
As long as you are going to argue the arbitrary content banning route, I'll argue the screw it all route. My local library doesn't provide TV access for anyone to come in and watch, why should it automatically provide the internet?
Yeah, cause Japan isn't guilty of churning out sequels...
Mario
Zelda
Metroid
Sonic
Street Fighter
King Of Fighters
Pokemon (hell this year they are just re-releasing Red/Blue!)
Final Fantasy
Metal Gear
I could go on, but the point stands. And I'm tired of typing for today. Silly AC.
Please do it now before these two turn the U.S. citizens into entertainment industry criminals and slaves...
This statement exposes your fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. Even if I accept the notion that "stealing" music would make me a "criminal" and buying music makes me a "slave" (riiiiiiiiiiiiiight, like buying food makes me a slave to farmers), there is still option #3 - be neither. Don't listen to any of it at all. Make your own. You won't die if you don't hear the newest Metallica song. If their business model is truly obsolete, let it die. Don't consume their product for free or for fee. The fact that people still do both only goes to prove them still viable.
For your personal reference:
False Dilemma
And whining about his whining is?
Not many of opportunites to be both "official" and stay at home. Step one is move to LA. Step two is check the publisher's websites. Good luck!
Been doing the QA thing for quite some time. Much longer than I intended actually, but they pay me too much to up and leave now.
Spot on. Though you paint a bit of a bleak picture and I want to polish it off a bit. Yes there is a high turnover rate for testers. Testers are hired generally on a temp basis, and they know full well what they are getting into when they apply. Being the one in a million long-shot cliche here guy to "make it" is rare. This is typical, though we are hiring a little more than we had been lately. Business is good. =)
Who comes in? Kids right out of high school or college looking for a fun gig before starting college or a career. Some guys make the rounds and seem to bounce from publisher to publisher. Then there is always just the random avid gamer who really really really wants to make games but doesn't have any qualifications other than they are good that them. I personally got hooked in out of school. Just applyed on a laugh. Got it, turns out Im good at it, and Im still here 4 years later. Though the whole bust and everything. HA!
Mostly though turnover is high. Some leave because that thing they were waiting for comes through. Others don't work out. And sometimes there is just no work. The best stay, the rest go, sometimes the medium guys get asked back next year.
Good QA is hard. Its not a BS job nor is it a fun job, but its fun-ish. Its fun for me because I actually enjoy the process more than the gaming. In fact I've pretty much been promoted out of actually playing them!
Are you going to come into a publisher, design a sweet game on their time, sell it back to him and become the next Will Wright? Hell no. Be realistic. Enjoy the job, take it serious, try hard, learn the many levels of the job and yes there are opportunities. Many of my good friends are now designers at various developers all over the US. I look at my AIM list and I can contact devs from coast to coast just to bullcrap. Some others are in production here. They all got hired based on their work right here in QA. Others went on to higher positions in other QA departments.
What's this all about? I don't know anymore. Just that yes, turnover is high in QA, but its because so many people want to do it. Not because it sucks or its not worth it. And some of that turnover is to fill a seat of someone who just got their dream job.
They know plenty about making money.
That was my point. Thats it. Thats all. The grandparent post was about MS being able compete. I briefly demonstrated that they are actually quite good at beating and even crushing the competition and I used their incredible success as an example of that. To abuse their monopoly position they first had to achieve a monopoly position. Pretty simple concepts really.
That, however, is not the goal of the open source movement.
You speak for every single member of the "open source movement"? Hey congrats, you're, like, bigger than Jesus.
A tip for all you kids out there. When you want to argue a counter-point, at least directly address the point. You didn't even try to show that their success does not prove an ability to compete. Please make sure you actually have something worth saying before you continue to annoy be further.
Yeah, someone needs to teach those MS guys a lesson. They clearly don't know anything about making money.
Damn guy, what kind of jerk players did you have that you need such security just to roll for damage? Gaming builds social skills my ass.
Wow, I heard a story once where someone said something about attacks only resulting from announced and patched vulnerabilities. Of course, that claim was quickly "debunked" by the slashbots. Weird.
Slightly OT, but to allow everyone to better educate themselves, do check out Puzzle Pirates. Amazing stuff. They give you a nice long free (no-CC) demo too. Spot on with that comment. All the social aspect, but you can participate with anyone at level and still be successful. It even has PvP! Worthy of any MMORPG discussion.
The plumber goes home from work and washes his hands. No more shit. The McDonald's clerk goes home from work secure in the knowledge that all them assholes can no longer get to him. No more shit.
Ah the blinders of "superiority". Spoken like a rich white kid who didn't have to work at a movie theater to pay his way through college. At the theater we had something called the "concessions dream". After someone first two weeks of working behind the concessions stand one would begin to experience nightmares about being late for work and arriving only to find out that it was impossible to perform one's tasks fast enough or well enough to satisfy even a single customer.
People who belittle the effects of this sort of thing are unable to integrate the fact that identical stimuli will have differing effects on different people, and in their ignorance of the actualities of the situation can only make things worse overall.
Yeah, so don't downplay other people's work either hypocrite.
Its always Xbox and never XBox or X-Box or X-box. One would look silly opining about certain fruits and repeatedly using terms like A-pples and O-ranges. There, that's my slashdot good deed for the day.
That's perhaps the most ignorant thing I have ever read. You just 100% equated the state of being of African descent with a person operating a business of the person's choosing.
Hey, I commend you, you got modded +5 for it.
P.S. That arguement always falls apart when it can be shown to be "applicable" to anything including murder, rape, property theft or well anything you want. Clearly we have some laws and these exist for some valid reason. One doesn't have to agree with the grandparent post to see how ignorant your statement was.
Let's try it:
We should have laws against murder, people could be killed.
We should have laws against being black, people could be killed.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
People don't cheat solely to be as powerful they can be. Some cheat because for them it gives them the same thrill as winning fair and square. They have no sense of fair play. Others cheat only to ruin the game for other people. These cheaters would still flock to the "good set" because thats where these two kinds of cheaters need to be to get their fix.
I work at a local mom and pop computer store, and it seems like somewhere around half of all PCs brought in with problems stem from broadband used improperly.
Ah yes, the terminal disconnect of the geek from the skill of marketing. If you truly work in a independent shop that sells PCs, and you see this is a recurring problem, turn the problem into profit. Why not upsell them that anti-virus? The firewall? An anti-spyware solution? The non-AOL ISP? And you don't even have to be evil about it. Just tell them the truth. The internet is a wacky place and you need the following tools to keep you safe-ish. It sells itself. Man, maybe people who sell PC's are the ones who need to be licensed.
#1 If you want to appeal to Americans at least try to act like one. We write dates in the format of MM/DD/YYYY. Putting the date before the month makes you look like a euro wannabe. I was put off immediately. You are not better than anyone; you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
#2 What's a 'technical' fact? Are these facts or not? A 'technical' fact sounds like something Comic Book Guy would pop in to point out. "Well technically Spider-man is a mutant, but not the same as the X-Men." WTF?
Clearly I have no interest in this conference, but if you want to generate interest, why not cease talking down to people? The alarmist fear-mongering crap could probably stand to go as well. You catch alot more flies with honey then with vinegar.
Weird, I read your post then hit up Drudge where I found this story about unions.
Lets see, "suffer" without a cell phone or unionize and drive the boss right out of town. Check.
Yeah, my 1973 Nova passes smog here in California every year it is required to be tested. Its heavily customized inside, outside and under the hood.
The catch is that THESE CARS ARE NEVER REQUIRED TO BE TESTED. That makes things just a tiny bit easier. Most states exempt cars that are 25 years old from testing. I wouldn't put too much stock in all this "could" talk. Unless of course they are actually subjecting themselves to SMOGII laws. You fail twice, that car can't be registered anymore...
I could be completely wrong, but I don't remember a single one of the Quake games themselves shipping with seperate executables for single and multiplayer. Even Quake more or less launched a server (though not attached to the network) for a single player game.
.exe's. If thats not good enough browse the folders for yourself.
Not to be a dick, but please don't correct me and then admit you might be wrong. This is pretty bad form. First off, notice I was speaking of Quake3 as was the parent post. Second, as evidence that I know what I am talking about I will provide you a simple test: if you have any modern Quake3 engine game installed on a windows system (Call of Duty seems to be the big one, so I'm sure you have that), notice that the start menu includes seperate shortcuts for single and multiplayer. These shortcuts point to two seperate
Many engines are implemented this way, most of them make all games network games even if only 1 person is playing (i.e. Quake 3).
I agree its more about design than tech, but I want to illustrate one point. Even Q3 engine games, with the possible exception of Quake3 itself, ship with seperate executables for single and multiplayer. But this is still about design. Even when the weapons, powers, etc. are all the same, what works for the single player portion doesn't translate directly to multi or co-op. Design a good single player game AND design a good multiplayer game, don't do one that goes both sorta well. This is just to point out that even when the tech is there, "slapping on" commercial quality co-op play is much more than trivial.
Johnny gets a time-out and a talk about how we're all different people, and we need to accept those who are different from us.
Isn't being intolerant of intolerance still intolerance? The smart kid isn't the problem, true, but neither are the "bullies" (whatever that means). Turns out there are alot of reasons why someone might be perceived as a "bully".
I was in a situation in high school where I got a 5 on my AP Calculus test AND lettered 5 times in sports. I got to see both sides. Your notion that people fall into one category or the other is basically ignorant. One can be whatever one wants. If one wants to be both mentally and physically strong, this is possible. Being the butt of the joke, to an extent, is helpful. It probably means that the individual is not just outside of "normal" but so outside of the norm that they draw the attention of every other human on the planet.
Everyone needs to learn to enjoy losing. If an individual has left high school without both the ability to kick someone's arse and to accept an arse whooping, than person missed out the what little there is to be gained from the public school experience.
Just because you are Different doesn't mean you aren't Wrong. If your hair looks stupid and someone tells you so, thank them. There are whole industries based on providing the proper image to people. Check them out sometime. It IS ok to "pick on" (whatever that means) other people. This is one way of learning. Don't expect people to fall into the little boxes of "jock" and "nerd" that you have created for yourself to help you cope with life. Hey, this would seem to indicate that you are actually part of the problem. I can't wait until my kid is applying for the same job as yours and my kid makes fun of yours until they leave the lobby in tears before even going in for the interview. Suh-weet.