I did specify that my example was a worst-case scenario. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and all that. This being said, I don't think it's sufficient to find your company's "best writers" and put them on the task of documenting technical subjects. That'd be like asking a magazine columnist to write a novel. Technical Writing is a profession in and of itself, and the professionals who have dedicated themselves to this field know better than others what makes good documentation.
I should have clarified, but I meant to specify a degree specifically in Technical Communication. I took a post-grad in this field, bolstering an undergrad in network administration. Some of my classmates had backgrounds in engineering, chemistry, veterinary medicine, and auto repair. All these backgrounds are partly applied and partly academic, but the post-grad education in effectively expressing and educating people on these subjects is a valuable and rare skill.
That's a pretty sweet setup, and I read about that TripleHead2Go technology being invisible to most software, and that it "just works". The first thing I thought of was the bezel situation (well, the second.. the first thing being the cost of 3 monitors).
Glad to see it works so well with some games, but is that true of the majority of games? I'm the skeptical type - I waited a long time to even get a widescreen monitor because I valued my legacy app support so much.
I can't stress this enough. There are professionals who have post-graduate education and vast experience documenting and communicating technical procedures. Hire one of these people.
If you don't hire a technical writer you will face all kinds of problems. You'll have technical people with poor English skills writing incomplete directions because they make assumptions about what the reader knows. You'll have 50 manuals with 50 different writing styles. You'll have 10 instructions in one sentence with no commas. You'll have unfortunate typos and grammatical errors which change the meaning of the sentence.
Technical writers are both technical and writers. Hire one (and not the cheapest one you can find) to do the job right and chock the expense up to preventive maintenance. The alternatives are putting faith in poor documentation and, in the best case, spending needless cycles working out the kinks, or, in the worst case, spending needless money on a settlement to your injured customers because your staff were improperly trained.
You may be right, but in the end the technology is rendering it all irrelevant. Simply put, the business model used by media companies overha the last century are untenable. It isn't the first time in history that new technology has rendered traditional methods obsolete, and it won't be the last.
Amen!! Big media companies used to be a necessary evil because artists needed them to proliferate their works. Now that the internet is in the average household it gives John Doe just as much broadcasting power as NBC or Sony Records.
The ramifications of this are so much greater than the tawdry cries of outdated businesses. The internet is mankind's sixth sense. It is criminal to stifle it and push our race backwards just so that some suits can line their coffins with mink instead of chinchilla.
I read the comment with my monitor and I clicked the link with my mouse. Look out, Viewsonic and Microsoft, you've just "made available" this potentially infringing activity!
IKEA might be an accomplice too since they made this desk...
I remember a time when "legal" meant "law abiding". Today it means more like something along the lines of "finding a loophole in the law books".
What's the difference? It's not about morality or greed or any of that stuff. Being law-abiding means the actions you perform are permissible under the letter of the law.
In my opinion it's the duty of all citizens to question these laws and push them to their limits. Attack them from all angles in order to set precedent. Put them through trial by fire so that nothing remains but that kernel of truth. Without this process the laws will become antiquated and will lose contemporary relevance.
Google responds to take down requests, sometimes reluctantly if the take down is clearly unfair but nonetheless legal (as with the Scientologists), but they do do it.
In those examples Google was actually hosting the illegal content (on Youtube). This is the major difference. The Pirate Bay is only hosting.torrent files which, in and of themselves, are not copyrighted.
With piracy online of music, movies, and software, you're not really sharing, since both people can use the "object" at the same time.
That doesn't really make sense. If I invite my friend to play Monopoly with me am I not sharing my game? After all, we're playing at the same time. Personally, I would have made the inverse argument you just made, using the exact same examples.
What about PC manufacturers? People buy PCs so that they can run software made by entirely different companies!
What about TV manufacturers? People buy televisions so that they can watch shows that Panasonic didn't even write! How dare they!
The fact of the matter is that TPB provides a framework, and without the community that framework is empty. People use sites like TPB so that they can interact and share with others. The service itself, like a PC running software or a television displaying shows, is just incidental. If anyone is breaking the law it's the community, not the providers of the framework.
If a TV show taught you how to make your own dynamite, would you sue Panasonic for making the TV?
Well, I tried installing my old copy a few weekends ago, updated it to the latest version, and could only choose 4:3 resolutions. It didn't even support 1280x1024.
Right you are. I used both my thumb buttons in the original game (for bullet time and grenades) but apparently they couldn't be bothered this time around.
Be forewarned, the original FEAR doesn't support widescreen and it doesn't really hold up so well by modern standards. For its time it was quite groundbreaking but today it seems a pretty average corridor/flashlight shooter that was stretched out unnecessarily.
They butchered the engine. Low resolution textures, DirectX 9, and no dynamic shadows. A lot of what made the original game unique is missing from the sequel, and has been replaced with horror cliches featuring grungy film effects. It's a very console-feeling game and it disappointed me greatly.
It seemed immediately obvious to me which platform FEAR2 was designed for the first time the interface prompted me to answer a yes/no question. Instead of displaying 2 buttons it simply showed ">". It takes 2 clicks to answer no.
The graphics (which aren't mentioned at all in this review for some reason) are very dated which means they run at a great frame rate but seem obviously optimized for underpowered consoles. The screen aspect ratio is locked at 16:9 even though no such monitor exists for PC, so whether your monitor is 4:3, 5:4, or 16:10, you will always see black bars. The font size is unnecessarily huge and the HUD is simplified and also too large.
I found nothing compelling or innovative about this game, but I found it insulting that it's so obviously such a half-assed console port. This is a disappointing anticlimax after the first game which was lauded so positively for its groundbreaking game engine. The end result is a budget game on sale for full price.
P.s., there's no mouse sensitivity slider so it's lucky my laser mouse has adjustable resolution or the controls would be ridiculously sensitive.
I love the DS's educational games, and they certainly are educational. My favourites include Brain Age, Teach Yourself French, Spelling Challenge, and Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat?
Maybe they're not as educational as homework but so what? I love increasing my French vocabulary a little while I'm on a plane to Quebec. If I'm going to play a fun little diversion why not learn a little something in the mean time?
The real benefit is keeping yourself engaged. That's the benefit of Wii Fit as well - it's only stretching and light aerobics at best, but it keeps your heart rate up. Same with educational DS games - they keep the gears of your mind twirling.
So what happens when Google OS is released in the EU? Will they be required to bundle IE?
What exactly is the point of all this? Web browsers haven't had a retail value in over a decade. The EU certainly knows how to stage an exciting race for zero revenue. I guess they have to keep their lawyers employed somehow.
Microsoft releases plenty of free compatibility fixes and free readers, and they allow new versions of their products to save in legacy formats. They really don't lock you in to any one version.
Also, their file formats haven't changed very much at all since Office 97. For example the new DOCX extension is just a DOC file that's been stored as XML and zipped. You can open it with any ZIP archive manager.
We probably got about 14 hours of game time over those 11 days. Between travel and lounging in the hotel after an exhausting day it was nice to unwind with some games. I was really astounded that we squeezed so much battery life out of our DS.
CD-ROMs really had the 'CD Key' as their main form of copy protection. No one had to pay any amount get a pirated CD if they couldn't download it. You could even purchase a CDR for pennies and burn a copy if there was no CD Key. That's hardly exorbitant amounts of money.
CD games didn't always have CD keys. The earlier games like Myst and The 7th Guest had no product key or copy protection at all. That's because CD burners cost over $1000 for a 2x burner and blank media cost $15/disk. This was back in 1993, mind you, and obviously prices plummeted before long. At the time this seemed like the perfect copy protection, and it was a welcome change for end users who had to endure manual lookups, code wheels, and other obnoxious activities before they could play floppy-based games.
Slashdot Mirror
I did specify that my example was a worst-case scenario. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and all that. This being said, I don't think it's sufficient to find your company's "best writers" and put them on the task of documenting technical subjects. That'd be like asking a magazine columnist to write a novel. Technical Writing is a profession in and of itself, and the professionals who have dedicated themselves to this field know better than others what makes good documentation.
I should have clarified, but I meant to specify a degree specifically in Technical Communication. I took a post-grad in this field, bolstering an undergrad in network administration. Some of my classmates had backgrounds in engineering, chemistry, veterinary medicine, and auto repair. All these backgrounds are partly applied and partly academic, but the post-grad education in effectively expressing and educating people on these subjects is a valuable and rare skill.
That's a pretty sweet setup, and I read about that TripleHead2Go technology being invisible to most software, and that it "just works". The first thing I thought of was the bezel situation (well, the second.. the first thing being the cost of 3 monitors).
Glad to see it works so well with some games, but is that true of the majority of games? I'm the skeptical type - I waited a long time to even get a widescreen monitor because I valued my legacy app support so much.
I meant this Scientology case, not realizing there was another one. Oopsie.
I can't stress this enough. There are professionals who have post-graduate education and vast experience documenting and communicating technical procedures. Hire one of these people.
If you don't hire a technical writer you will face all kinds of problems. You'll have technical people with poor English skills writing incomplete directions because they make assumptions about what the reader knows. You'll have 50 manuals with 50 different writing styles. You'll have 10 instructions in one sentence with no commas. You'll have unfortunate typos and grammatical errors which change the meaning of the sentence.
Technical writers are both technical and writers. Hire one (and not the cheapest one you can find) to do the job right and chock the expense up to preventive maintenance. The alternatives are putting faith in poor documentation and, in the best case, spending needless cycles working out the kinks, or, in the worst case, spending needless money on a settlement to your injured customers because your staff were improperly trained.
You may be right, but in the end the technology is rendering it all irrelevant. Simply put, the business model used by media companies overha the last century are untenable. It isn't the first time in history that new technology has rendered traditional methods obsolete, and it won't be the last.
Amen!! Big media companies used to be a necessary evil because artists needed them to proliferate their works. Now that the internet is in the average household it gives John Doe just as much broadcasting power as NBC or Sony Records.
The ramifications of this are so much greater than the tawdry cries of outdated businesses. The internet is mankind's sixth sense. It is criminal to stifle it and push our race backwards just so that some suits can line their coffins with mink instead of chinchilla.
I read the comment with my monitor and I clicked the link with my mouse. Look out, Viewsonic and Microsoft, you've just "made available" this potentially infringing activity!
IKEA might be an accomplice too since they made this desk...
Before TPB were ShareReactor and SuprNova. After TPB there will be others. Let the little lawyers play whack-a-mole. It's how they get paid.
I remember a time when "legal" meant "law abiding". Today it means more like something along the lines of "finding a loophole in the law books".
What's the difference? It's not about morality or greed or any of that stuff. Being law-abiding means the actions you perform are permissible under the letter of the law.
In my opinion it's the duty of all citizens to question these laws and push them to their limits. Attack them from all angles in order to set precedent. Put them through trial by fire so that nothing remains but that kernel of truth. Without this process the laws will become antiquated and will lose contemporary relevance.
Google responds to take down requests, sometimes reluctantly if the take down is clearly unfair but nonetheless legal (as with the Scientologists), but they do do it.
In those examples Google was actually hosting the illegal content (on Youtube). This is the major difference. The Pirate Bay is only hosting .torrent files which, in and of themselves, are not copyrighted.
BTW, try searching google.com for "torrent".
With piracy online of music, movies, and software, you're not really sharing, since both people can use the "object" at the same time.
That doesn't really make sense. If I invite my friend to play Monopoly with me am I not sharing my game? After all, we're playing at the same time. Personally, I would have made the inverse argument you just made, using the exact same examples.
What about PC manufacturers? People buy PCs so that they can run software made by entirely different companies!
What about TV manufacturers? People buy televisions so that they can watch shows that Panasonic didn't even write! How dare they!
The fact of the matter is that TPB provides a framework, and without the community that framework is empty. People use sites like TPB so that they can interact and share with others. The service itself, like a PC running software or a television displaying shows, is just incidental. If anyone is breaking the law it's the community, not the providers of the framework.
If a TV show taught you how to make your own dynamite, would you sue Panasonic for making the TV?
Holy moly that's awesome. 3 monitors, eh? Did you have them aligned or did you angle them inward, around you?
Right you are. My mistake.
Well, I tried installing my old copy a few weekends ago, updated it to the latest version, and could only choose 4:3 resolutions. It didn't even support 1280x1024.
Right you are. I used both my thumb buttons in the original game (for bullet time and grenades) but apparently they couldn't be bothered this time around.
Er, sorry about the sloppy tag. The yes/no prompt looks like:
<< YES >>
Be forewarned, the original FEAR doesn't support widescreen and it doesn't really hold up so well by modern standards. For its time it was quite groundbreaking but today it seems a pretty average corridor/flashlight shooter that was stretched out unnecessarily.
They butchered the engine. Low resolution textures, DirectX 9, and no dynamic shadows. A lot of what made the original game unique is missing from the sequel, and has been replaced with horror cliches featuring grungy film effects. It's a very console-feeling game and it disappointed me greatly.
It seemed immediately obvious to me which platform FEAR2 was designed for the first time the interface prompted me to answer a yes/no question. Instead of displaying 2 buttons it simply showed ">". It takes 2 clicks to answer no.
The graphics (which aren't mentioned at all in this review for some reason) are very dated which means they run at a great frame rate but seem obviously optimized for underpowered consoles. The screen aspect ratio is locked at 16:9 even though no such monitor exists for PC, so whether your monitor is 4:3, 5:4, or 16:10, you will always see black bars. The font size is unnecessarily huge and the HUD is simplified and also too large.
I found nothing compelling or innovative about this game, but I found it insulting that it's so obviously such a half-assed console port. This is a disappointing anticlimax after the first game which was lauded so positively for its groundbreaking game engine. The end result is a budget game on sale for full price.
P.s., there's no mouse sensitivity slider so it's lucky my laser mouse has adjustable resolution or the controls would be ridiculously sensitive.
I love the DS's educational games, and they certainly are educational. My favourites include Brain Age, Teach Yourself French, Spelling Challenge, and Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat?
Maybe they're not as educational as homework but so what? I love increasing my French vocabulary a little while I'm on a plane to Quebec. If I'm going to play a fun little diversion why not learn a little something in the mean time?
The real benefit is keeping yourself engaged. That's the benefit of Wii Fit as well - it's only stretching and light aerobics at best, but it keeps your heart rate up. Same with educational DS games - they keep the gears of your mind twirling.
So what happens when Google OS is released in the EU? Will they be required to bundle IE?
What exactly is the point of all this? Web browsers haven't had a retail value in over a decade. The EU certainly knows how to stage an exciting race for zero revenue. I guess they have to keep their lawyers employed somehow.
Microsoft releases plenty of free compatibility fixes and free readers, and they allow new versions of their products to save in legacy formats. They really don't lock you in to any one version.
Also, their file formats haven't changed very much at all since Office 97. For example the new DOCX extension is just a DOC file that's been stored as XML and zipped. You can open it with any ZIP archive manager.
You underestimate our nerdiness!
We probably got about 14 hours of game time over those 11 days. Between travel and lounging in the hotel after an exhausting day it was nice to unwind with some games. I was really astounded that we squeezed so much battery life out of our DS.
CD-ROMs really had the 'CD Key' as their main form of copy protection. No one had to pay any amount get a pirated CD if they couldn't download it. You could even purchase a CDR for pennies and burn a copy if there was no CD Key. That's hardly exorbitant amounts of money.
CD games didn't always have CD keys. The earlier games like Myst and The 7th Guest had no product key or copy protection at all. That's because CD burners cost over $1000 for a 2x burner and blank media cost $15/disk. This was back in 1993, mind you, and obviously prices plummeted before long. At the time this seemed like the perfect copy protection, and it was a welcome change for end users who had to endure manual lookups, code wheels, and other obnoxious activities before they could play floppy-based games.