A game's quality should be independant of it's controller, but they're always still limited by those controls. FPS games will never be as good on a standard console controller as they are with a mouse, in the same way that an oversize crayon will never be as good for writing as a simple pencil. A simple hack-and-slash game will generally do best with a console controller, due to simplicity.
A new controller design, with new capabilities and layout, is simply a new opportunity for improvements. If people end up not liking the new controllers, it's a sure bet that they'll get aftermarket controllers with a more conservative design.
As for current designs, I personally prefer the Playstation-style controllers. They're more comfortable, simpler to use, well designed. The XBox controllers, on the other hand, are designed by crackheads. I am convinced of this. The current Nintendo controllers... aren't worthy of comment.
FreeBSD never had the same publicity as Linux. I never heard of it until long after I'd been exposed to linux, and I know very few who have even tried it. It's a little like comparing OS/2's popularity to Windows. In a great many ways OS/2 was superior, but it never had the user base and wasn't marketed well. The same is true of FreeBSD, which will always be seen as the watered-down version of BSD (even though I never saw that great a difference).
btw: I feel honored to receive my first ever Flamebait rating for that previous post, and I don't take back a single thing I said. I'm primarily a linux user, at least professionally, and still consider it my first and last choice for any server I run. But Win2003 is catching eyes more and more, and the increasingly corporate vibe I'm getting from the major distros and old software favorites has me re-evaluating my opinions at work.
This is an example of when politics gets in the way of progress.
While it'd be great for hardware manufacturers to opensource/GPL their drivers, the restrictions that fanatics put on Linux are holding it back. The fervent beliefs of a few keep making it difficult for Linux to go more maintstream, with full hardware support, a wider array of software, etc.
Back when the emphasis was on the concept of building an excellent operating system, the strict nature of GPL was an asset - it kept things fair, and forced participants to be more productive for the group. Now, in the days of "OMG we HAVE to beat Microsoft any way we can!", the old rules keep clashing with the new impetus (one which is misplaced, IMO).
People have to make up their minds. Do they want Linux to be a shining example of an ideal, or an aggressive commercial competitor to the dominant operating system?
* Uhm... No? Mature gamers don't need mature games to prove how mature they are.
* Define "mature"
Think in terms of movies. "Mature subject matter". Think about game ratings - "M for Mature".
Except for simply looking for something to argue about, I don't see how people halfway familiar with the game industry can misunderstand a commonly used industry label like "mature" as applied to entertainment.
When you tell someone to act mature, you mean one thing. When you talk about movies, books, games, and other media, "mature" has a very clear alternate meaning, even if the boundries are arguable.
I do the screening because... erm... my sister's judgement isn't always the best out there. Last time we let her decide, she figured "Evil Dead: Fistfull of Boomstick" was appropriate for a 5 year old. Her husband's time is more limited than mine... and I'm far quicker to punish transgressions ("please" doesn't work on me when I'm walking out the door with a confiscated Playstation).
You've got a point. I meant "immature" as in kid-friendly (ie just about anything that doesn't involve bimbos, demons, heads getting cut off, and rivers of blood and bullets).
What would you call it? Neutral? Non-violent? (that last doesn't work as many of the Playboy-ish games fall under that category).
Maybe there just isn't a clear dichotomy, though there does seem to be a general friendly/hostile division. For instance, Tetris is more friendly than anything else - imagine it with darker music, shades of grey and red, and similar gameplay but a harsher look at feel. It would attract a slightly difference balance of audience).
It must just be a matter of taste. I never enjoyed that game, and rarely enjoyed side-scrollers at all. I think the closest thing to SMB I ever got a kick out of was... Commander Keen. Every last one of them. Metroid and Thexder as well, to an extent.
As for options... I've been exposed to a wider array of games over the past few years than I have been since high school, mostly because now I have to "preview" for a niece and nephew (who are forbidden to play anything on their playstation until their uncle has validated it first).
One of the best kid-friendly games I've seen so far... even if it seems to be unknown: Herdie Gerdie (may be mispelled). A kid has to sheperd animals in what turns into a large-scale puzzle game (third-person perspective, each animal has different behavior, and the threats aren't all that threatening). The most violence that ever came out of that game was me cussing out my controller and abusing furniture while I was "playtesting" it.
I'm a firm believer that there should be virtually no restrictions on what's allowed in games, but also that an adult has to take responsibility for what kids play - at least to the limits of reasonable supervision.
Beyond that- anyone who equates violence with maturity is either 13 or really needs to see professional help. If anything overt violence is a sign of immaturity.
I don't agree with that statement. Look at movies - there are two primary ways to get an R rating: sex and violence. The more explosions you add to a movie, the higher your box office draw. The more skin you show, the more adults will flock to your movie. Neither of these add anything to the plot or content of a movie, but without them it's harder for a movie to attact an audience.
Then you have movies like Seven, Silence of the Lambs, and other classics. These movies are built almost entirely around violence, and not of an immature kind either.
Violence is a part of everyone's life. Even in our relatively sheltered 21st century lives, it's a day to day fact - if not in person (and at some point it IS in person for most people), then by proxy. It's also a mature subject, in that you try to shelter the young from it as best you can - and in that it takes an adult to understand it as a story mechanism and not the central focus.
I also don't agree about most violent games having violence purely because of poor gameplay. I haven't seen many truly bad violent games, except for those copying far superior violent games. Grand Theft Auto required violence for it's storyline to work at all, yet the same gameplay worked well for Simpson's Hit and Run (a far less violent game). First Person Shooters require violence, and the greatest of them all have been some of the most violent games ever to exist. Also, like movies, fiction-based follow-the-story games have usually been at their best when the plot was "mature" - simply because sex and violence are visceral. Just ask Shakespeare. Virtually all of the major classics of literature have involved shock of one sort or another, even when that shock isn't as gaudy as less talented hands make it.
In other words, there is nothing intrinsically immature about violence. Glorifying it as something it's not is a sign of an immature mind that has neither truly experienced nor understands violence, but accepting it as a reality, and something that gives fictional events and experiences a deeper sense of reality, is a sign of maturity. Whether that person abhors it and avoids it wherever possible, or whether that person can sit back and enjoy a good tragedy without the "cool" factor, both are signs of maturity, not immaturity.
(Imagine Hamlet without the murder, vice, insanity, incest, and blood? Or Henry V, or Julius Ceasar, or Macbeth)
I never, even back when it was comming out, understood the rabid popularity of Super Mario Bros. I thought it was cute, but never any comparison with Metroid and other games on the NES.
SMB is one of those games that has me seriously wondering if, while I may personally be a fan of ultra-violent games, it may be easier for a more neutral game... something safe, secure, and guiltily cute... might always have a better chance of achieving lasting fame.
Think about the most "famous" games of the past few decades. It seems with few exceptions that it's only recently that violent games have become the dominant ones, and I'd bet much of that is due to the publishers, not the audience. Mature gamers automatically are drawn to mature subjects, but it seems that immature games have usually had the longest run.
The main difference is that while the PGG is legal in most of the more liberal parts of the galaxy, Romulan Ale is illegal, which is part of it's attraction (much like a Cuban cigar - it's the law that makes them taste so damned good).
On the other hand, Romulan Ale doesn't leave you reeling like a man being mugged in a meadow, doesn't eat through the table when spilled, and never ever made anyone yell Pheoww in minor thirds.
Synthahol got you drunk in Star Trek, but it was described as something that could be shaken off more easily than true alchohol (ie you can actually get sober quickly, as opposed to just thinking you're sober) and having "less" hangover afterwards. It was also suggested multiple times that it was primarily a shipboard/on-base beverage meant for off-duty Starfleet and other personell... with the real thing being in common consumption for civilians.
As for taste, I get the feeling it didn't simulate it all that well (considering Scotty's reaction to it on that TNG episode. I'm a geek, but not geek enough to know the episode number).
I leverage the synergistic aspects of my virtualized neural net architecture, generating a value-added bleeding-edge e-ternative for actionable actions within it's core competencies, thus empowering me with less desktime, and all this through increased effectivity within it's downline-oriented architecture.
That is all part of regular programming as well, though. Unless you're a drone working in a large team, you're forced to plan (which includes delineating the requirements), work out the life cycle (and usually end up departing from it the first day), testing (it's not done until it's tested), and maintenance.
One co-worker described a software engineer as someone who utilizes class libraries for an application. Of course, he views Microsoft-sponsored methods of programming as *The* way to program.
There has to be considerably more than specific methods and standard preparation and maintenance. Perhaps a matter of scale? The general requirements people give are all part and parcel of any real programming job, yet most programmers are not engineers.
I'm not sure that analogy works well. You do have programmers who are "construction workers". Someone else lays out the plan and blueprints, and they just fill it in with material (code). There's skill involved, but those skills are primarily devoted to the details, not the big picture.
I'm assuming most programmers are in my position... they know what the problems are, but have to come up with the solution, the method, the architecture, and the implementation themselves.
In that case... where can one find a (meaningful) list of descriptions of the various titles that people throw around like candy? I've gotten so used to people claiming to be this or that (and not even knowing what the title means), that I wonder how much they really do mean.
On the other hand, it's hard for me to describe exactly what I do when I have no real way of knowing what I can honestly claim to be. System Administrator was the last task I've had where I knew exactly what I was, and even then I didn't know what it was called when it involved about 70 servers.
So what exactly constitutes a "software engineer"?
At my job, I have to write software (varying from simple quickie scripts to complex neural-net based adaptive administration controls) to handle the administration and maintenance of a few tens of thousands of servers. I have to be able to work with 5 different languages and be familiar with developing for four different architectures.
I'm rarely ever given the chance to plan anything in advance (that's just how this place works) and "testing" is often done hot - launch once operational, and quickly work out the bugs while it's in use. I usually work either entirely alone, or with our admins to give them tools to their specifications and needs. No team, little oversight, and full responsibility for failures.
Does that make me a Software Engineer? Or just a two-bit coder?
Personally, I'd much prefer speech that used metaphor and nuance, beauty and artistry, to increase the impact of the truth and meaning it presents.
ACT IV SCENE I
Venice. A corporate boardroom.
ENTER Investor Shylock, CEO Antonio, assorted Board Members
SHYLOCK:
I have possess'd your grace of what I purpose;
And by our holy Commerce have I sworn
To have the due and Return On my Investment:
If you deny it, let the danger light
Upon your charter and your corporation's freedom.
You'll ask me, why I rather choose to have
A weight of carrion shares than to receive
Three thousand dollars: I'll not answer that:
But, say, it is my humour: is it answer'd?
What if my server be troubled with a crash
And I be pleased to give ten thousand dollars
To have it restored? What, are you answer'd yet?
The usual result of letting morality get in the way of (regular) business is... bankruptcy, or at the very least being surpassed. This doesn't include outright immoral acts (such as Enron, etc), but anyone with a soul would feel bad abusing human weaknesses, twisting the truth, and spinning alternate logic. However... because of those weaknesses, the best products and the best services can (usually) only compete with even grossly inferior ones if they get their hands at least a little dirty. The larger the scale, the more extreme the methods tend to get just to stay afloat.
The fact that most of the larger corporations seem to revel in C-Speak might suggest that while C-Speak might have it's flaws, the mindset it produces seems to be a better competitor than wholesome from-the-heart lets-do-business, or the more direct (and vicious) eat-their-lunch mentality that dominated the 80's.
Of course, it could just as easily be that C-Speak is just a social disease that carries best in a corporate environment.
Either way, when a "consumate professional" abuses C-Speak to communicate better with his peers than the direct but more communicatively challenged (oh lord now I'm doing it) techie who's behind a project, and does so to steal that tech's thunder... it is the tech's job to quietly and efficiently demonstrate how the C-Speaker's hijacking is detrimental to the morale (and more imporantly, loyalty) of the technicians that even most middle-managers (silently) realize is what's driving much of their company.
I think you're missing the point of that corporate-speke sentence.
One of the biggest reasons why techies misunderstand C-Speke so often is because they are playing a different game. They want performance, they want efficiency, and they apply skill and acumen as a business tool. Therefore direct non-abstract literalism is the preferred (and for their line of work, only) medium of exchange.
Now put yourself in the mindset of a business strategist. He was not saying that applying a particular technology will improve their business. The most literal meaning would be "We can make use of the hype around this new technology, the nature of which may be irrelevant to our concerns, to do things marketing-wise that are bluntly obvious to everyone in this room but that we don't want to say on the record.".
C-Speke is very rarely about the technologies or concepts it talks about - it's a way for a different industry (marketing, analysis, and general business operations) to invoke shared abstractions without having to spell out the complexities on the spot. It's to a great extent a set of euphemisms that describe the realities of business without the perceived vulgarity of clearly stating the obvious. It's also very often a means of incorporating technical concepts that you cannot assume the target has an understanding of, and instead allows you to skip to the applicable part - the results.
For instance... without business speak, many innocuous statements would be forced to say exactly what they mean... such as:
"It is the belief of our marketing department that the tactics we will shortly propose will take advantage of the inherent weaknesses in the judgement of our clientele, as per our extensive research and marketing experiments, driving a wedge between them and our competition. Such a result can be taken advantage of with quick manuevering and specifically targetted activity. This action is quasi-legal according to our legal department, but with enough obfuscation we can get away with it. Covering this up requires a significant change in our business practices, which we must find a confusing means of portraying in a positive light."
The fun part for the rest of you is to convert that honest statement into classic Corporate Speke. Remember, other C-Speakers should be able to get the gist of it, but you can't actually SAY what you mean.
It may just be doable. I've already modded the Quake I source once to set a treadmill for forward motion. Didn't work out as well as a I hoped though due to turning issues. Maybe combine that with a gun...
But it's got to be a light gun... not a gyro mouse. I tend to start smashing things when the aim isn't perfect.
Do you have any idea how many people I'd be willing to kill for a GOOD light-gun game at home?
The arcade games are all rail-shooters. No control.
Standard FPS games give you control, but lack the realism of actually aiming and firing (only your entire view aims - not your hand alone).
I would do obscene things for something on the level of say Quake, but with a light gun for my firing (and view independant of gun). I'd sit in front of my big screen, jerry-rig whatever control system I had to, and bask in the heavenly glow of light-gun ultraviolence.
And I liked Duck Hunt, dammit. Utterly hated Halo for that matter - it's one of the few games I got tired of before I could even finish it.
I don't know, but there was an article on here yesterday. Someone has a new compression format that can shrink ANY form of data by a factor of 25.
ANY form of data. The article said so.
Therefore, I suggest we requisition their algorithm for national security, and being zipping the lesser-used contents of our Server. For instance, Antarctica. We can unzip it as needed, of course we'd have to re-zip something else to make room (how about Greenland? Nothing useful there, and we can temporarily relocate it's user base).
I'm just waiting for our Developer to come out with that new Expansion Pack they've been promising, Earth II: Second Comming. Though I hear it starts off with a nasty purge of the less savory users.
We all know what this is. They've more or less claimed it as a prime mantra behind their business logic.
Embrace and "Extend".
The Embracing has started, but that Extension is going to be considerably less fun.
We're an ice age species, but we're adapted primarily to extremely hot, arid, waterless and otherwise hostile environments. Africa turned into a hellhole during the last ice age, and the areas where most of our (suspected) recent linear antecedents are found (ie not Steinholm or Heidelbergensis) were in areas that, judging by the fauna and flora around them, bordered on hellish - around the same time Neanderthals were dealing with the freeze-out up north.
We're an ice age species, but we deffinitely adapted to more varied climates. Just compare a bushman to an innuit. I'm pretty sure much of our strength as a species has come from our ability to adapt rapidly (because our intelligence allows us a buffer between rapid extinction and time to adapt, and primate physiology is one of the most flexible among higher mammals).
Slashdot Mirror
A game's quality should be independant of it's controller, but they're always still limited by those controls. FPS games will never be as good on a standard console controller as they are with a mouse, in the same way that an oversize crayon will never be as good for writing as a simple pencil. A simple hack-and-slash game will generally do best with a console controller, due to simplicity.
A new controller design, with new capabilities and layout, is simply a new opportunity for improvements. If people end up not liking the new controllers, it's a sure bet that they'll get aftermarket controllers with a more conservative design.
As for current designs, I personally prefer the Playstation-style controllers. They're more comfortable, simpler to use, well designed. The XBox controllers, on the other hand, are designed by crackheads. I am convinced of this. The current Nintendo controllers... aren't worthy of comment.
FreeBSD never had the same publicity as Linux. I never heard of it until long after I'd been exposed to linux, and I know very few who have even tried it. It's a little like comparing OS/2's popularity to Windows. In a great many ways OS/2 was superior, but it never had the user base and wasn't marketed well. The same is true of FreeBSD, which will always be seen as the watered-down version of BSD (even though I never saw that great a difference).
btw: I feel honored to receive my first ever Flamebait rating for that previous post, and I don't take back a single thing I said. I'm primarily a linux user, at least professionally, and still consider it my first and last choice for any server I run. But Win2003 is catching eyes more and more, and the increasingly corporate vibe I'm getting from the major distros and old software favorites has me re-evaluating my opinions at work.
This is an example of when politics gets in the way of progress.
While it'd be great for hardware manufacturers to opensource/GPL their drivers, the restrictions that fanatics put on Linux are holding it back. The fervent beliefs of a few keep making it difficult for Linux to go more maintstream, with full hardware support, a wider array of software, etc.
Back when the emphasis was on the concept of building an excellent operating system, the strict nature of GPL was an asset - it kept things fair, and forced participants to be more productive for the group. Now, in the days of "OMG we HAVE to beat Microsoft any way we can!", the old rules keep clashing with the new impetus (one which is misplaced, IMO).
People have to make up their minds. Do they want Linux to be a shining example of an ideal, or an aggressive commercial competitor to the dominant operating system?
* Uhm... No? Mature gamers don't need mature games to prove how mature they are.
* Define "mature"
Think in terms of movies. "Mature subject matter". Think about game ratings - "M for Mature".
Except for simply looking for something to argue about, I don't see how people halfway familiar with the game industry can misunderstand a commonly used industry label like "mature" as applied to entertainment.
When you tell someone to act mature, you mean one thing. When you talk about movies, books, games, and other media, "mature" has a very clear alternate meaning, even if the boundries are arguable.
I do the screening because... erm... my sister's judgement isn't always the best out there. Last time we let her decide, she figured "Evil Dead: Fistfull of Boomstick" was appropriate for a 5 year old. Her husband's time is more limited than mine... and I'm far quicker to punish transgressions ("please" doesn't work on me when I'm walking out the door with a confiscated Playstation).
You've got a point. I meant "immature" as in kid-friendly (ie just about anything that doesn't involve bimbos, demons, heads getting cut off, and rivers of blood and bullets).
What would you call it? Neutral? Non-violent? (that last doesn't work as many of the Playboy-ish games fall under that category).
Maybe there just isn't a clear dichotomy, though there does seem to be a general friendly/hostile division. For instance, Tetris is more friendly than anything else - imagine it with darker music, shades of grey and red, and similar gameplay but a harsher look at feel. It would attract a slightly difference balance of audience).
It must just be a matter of taste. I never enjoyed that game, and rarely enjoyed side-scrollers at all. I think the closest thing to SMB I ever got a kick out of was... Commander Keen. Every last one of them. Metroid and Thexder as well, to an extent.
As for options... I've been exposed to a wider array of games over the past few years than I have been since high school, mostly because now I have to "preview" for a niece and nephew (who are forbidden to play anything on their playstation until their uncle has validated it first).
One of the best kid-friendly games I've seen so far... even if it seems to be unknown: Herdie Gerdie (may be mispelled). A kid has to sheperd animals in what turns into a large-scale puzzle game (third-person perspective, each animal has different behavior, and the threats aren't all that threatening). The most violence that ever came out of that game was me cussing out my controller and abusing furniture while I was "playtesting" it.
I'm a firm believer that there should be virtually no restrictions on what's allowed in games, but also that an adult has to take responsibility for what kids play - at least to the limits of reasonable supervision.
Beyond that- anyone who equates violence with maturity is either 13 or really needs to see professional help. If anything overt violence is a sign of immaturity.
I don't agree with that statement. Look at movies - there are two primary ways to get an R rating: sex and violence. The more explosions you add to a movie, the higher your box office draw. The more skin you show, the more adults will flock to your movie. Neither of these add anything to the plot or content of a movie, but without them it's harder for a movie to attact an audience.
Then you have movies like Seven, Silence of the Lambs, and other classics. These movies are built almost entirely around violence, and not of an immature kind either.
Violence is a part of everyone's life. Even in our relatively sheltered 21st century lives, it's a day to day fact - if not in person (and at some point it IS in person for most people), then by proxy. It's also a mature subject, in that you try to shelter the young from it as best you can - and in that it takes an adult to understand it as a story mechanism and not the central focus.
I also don't agree about most violent games having violence purely because of poor gameplay. I haven't seen many truly bad violent games, except for those copying far superior violent games. Grand Theft Auto required violence for it's storyline to work at all, yet the same gameplay worked well for Simpson's Hit and Run (a far less violent game). First Person Shooters require violence, and the greatest of them all have been some of the most violent games ever to exist. Also, like movies, fiction-based follow-the-story games have usually been at their best when the plot was "mature" - simply because sex and violence are visceral. Just ask Shakespeare. Virtually all of the major classics of literature have involved shock of one sort or another, even when that shock isn't as gaudy as less talented hands make it.
In other words, there is nothing intrinsically immature about violence. Glorifying it as something it's not is a sign of an immature mind that has neither truly experienced nor understands violence, but accepting it as a reality, and something that gives fictional events and experiences a deeper sense of reality, is a sign of maturity. Whether that person abhors it and avoids it wherever possible, or whether that person can sit back and enjoy a good tragedy without the "cool" factor, both are signs of maturity, not immaturity.
(Imagine Hamlet without the murder, vice, insanity, incest, and blood? Or Henry V, or Julius Ceasar, or Macbeth)
I never, even back when it was comming out, understood the rabid popularity of Super Mario Bros. I thought it was cute, but never any comparison with Metroid and other games on the NES.
SMB is one of those games that has me seriously wondering if, while I may personally be a fan of ultra-violent games, it may be easier for a more neutral game... something safe, secure, and guiltily cute... might always have a better chance of achieving lasting fame.
Think about the most "famous" games of the past few decades. It seems with few exceptions that it's only recently that violent games have become the dominant ones, and I'd bet much of that is due to the publishers, not the audience. Mature gamers automatically are drawn to mature subjects, but it seems that immature games have usually had the longest run.
The main difference is that while the PGG is legal in most of the more liberal parts of the galaxy, Romulan Ale is illegal, which is part of it's attraction (much like a Cuban cigar - it's the law that makes them taste so damned good).
On the other hand, Romulan Ale doesn't leave you reeling like a man being mugged in a meadow, doesn't eat through the table when spilled, and never ever made anyone yell Pheoww in minor thirds.
Synthahol got you drunk in Star Trek, but it was described as something that could be shaken off more easily than true alchohol (ie you can actually get sober quickly, as opposed to just thinking you're sober) and having "less" hangover afterwards. It was also suggested multiple times that it was primarily a shipboard/on-base beverage meant for off-duty Starfleet and other personell... with the real thing being in common consumption for civilians.
As for taste, I get the feeling it didn't simulate it all that well (considering Scotty's reaction to it on that TNG episode. I'm a geek, but not geek enough to know the episode number).
The Great White Handkerchief is comming. Is your nose prepared?
I leverage the synergistic aspects of my virtualized neural net architecture, generating a value-added bleeding-edge e-ternative for actionable actions within it's core competencies, thus empowering me with less desktime, and all this through increased effectivity within it's downline-oriented architecture.
My brain is bleeding.
That is all part of regular programming as well, though. Unless you're a drone working in a large team, you're forced to plan (which includes delineating the requirements), work out the life cycle (and usually end up departing from it the first day), testing (it's not done until it's tested), and maintenance.
One co-worker described a software engineer as someone who utilizes class libraries for an application. Of course, he views Microsoft-sponsored methods of programming as *The* way to program.
There has to be considerably more than specific methods and standard preparation and maintenance. Perhaps a matter of scale? The general requirements people give are all part and parcel of any real programming job, yet most programmers are not engineers.
I'm not sure that analogy works well. You do have programmers who are "construction workers". Someone else lays out the plan and blueprints, and they just fill it in with material (code). There's skill involved, but those skills are primarily devoted to the details, not the big picture.
I'm assuming most programmers are in my position... they know what the problems are, but have to come up with the solution, the method, the architecture, and the implementation themselves.
In that case... where can one find a (meaningful) list of descriptions of the various titles that people throw around like candy? I've gotten so used to people claiming to be this or that (and not even knowing what the title means), that I wonder how much they really do mean.
On the other hand, it's hard for me to describe exactly what I do when I have no real way of knowing what I can honestly claim to be. System Administrator was the last task I've had where I knew exactly what I was, and even then I didn't know what it was called when it involved about 70 servers.
So what exactly constitutes a "software engineer"?
At my job, I have to write software (varying from simple quickie scripts to complex neural-net based adaptive administration controls) to handle the administration and maintenance of a few tens of thousands of servers. I have to be able to work with 5 different languages and be familiar with developing for four different architectures.
I'm rarely ever given the chance to plan anything in advance (that's just how this place works) and "testing" is often done hot - launch once operational, and quickly work out the bugs while it's in use. I usually work either entirely alone, or with our admins to give them tools to their specifications and needs. No team, little oversight, and full responsibility for failures.
Does that make me a Software Engineer? Or just a two-bit coder?
Personally, I'd much prefer speech that used metaphor and nuance, beauty and artistry, to increase the impact of the truth and meaning it presents.
ACT IV SCENE I
Venice. A corporate boardroom. ENTER Investor Shylock, CEO Antonio, assorted Board Members
SHYLOCK:
I have possess'd your grace of what I purpose;
And by our holy Commerce have I sworn
To have the due and Return On my Investment:
If you deny it, let the danger light
Upon your charter and your corporation's freedom.
You'll ask me, why I rather choose to have
A weight of carrion shares than to receive
Three thousand dollars: I'll not answer that:
But, say, it is my humour: is it answer'd?
What if my server be troubled with a crash
And I be pleased to give ten thousand dollars
To have it restored? What, are you answer'd yet?
Willie, I sincerely apologize...
The usual result of letting morality get in the way of (regular) business is... bankruptcy, or at the very least being surpassed. This doesn't include outright immoral acts (such as Enron, etc), but anyone with a soul would feel bad abusing human weaknesses, twisting the truth, and spinning alternate logic. However... because of those weaknesses, the best products and the best services can (usually) only compete with even grossly inferior ones if they get their hands at least a little dirty. The larger the scale, the more extreme the methods tend to get just to stay afloat.
The fact that most of the larger corporations seem to revel in C-Speak might suggest that while C-Speak might have it's flaws, the mindset it produces seems to be a better competitor than wholesome from-the-heart lets-do-business, or the more direct (and vicious) eat-their-lunch mentality that dominated the 80's.
Of course, it could just as easily be that C-Speak is just a social disease that carries best in a corporate environment.
Either way, when a "consumate professional" abuses C-Speak to communicate better with his peers than the direct but more communicatively challenged (oh lord now I'm doing it) techie who's behind a project, and does so to steal that tech's thunder... it is the tech's job to quietly and efficiently demonstrate how the C-Speaker's hijacking is detrimental to the morale (and more imporantly, loyalty) of the technicians that even most middle-managers (silently) realize is what's driving much of their company.
I think you're missing the point of that corporate-speke sentence.
One of the biggest reasons why techies misunderstand C-Speke so often is because they are playing a different game. They want performance, they want efficiency, and they apply skill and acumen as a business tool. Therefore direct non-abstract literalism is the preferred (and for their line of work, only) medium of exchange.
Now put yourself in the mindset of a business strategist. He was not saying that applying a particular technology will improve their business. The most literal meaning would be "We can make use of the hype around this new technology, the nature of which may be irrelevant to our concerns, to do things marketing-wise that are bluntly obvious to everyone in this room but that we don't want to say on the record.".
C-Speke is very rarely about the technologies or concepts it talks about - it's a way for a different industry (marketing, analysis, and general business operations) to invoke shared abstractions without having to spell out the complexities on the spot. It's to a great extent a set of euphemisms that describe the realities of business without the perceived vulgarity of clearly stating the obvious. It's also very often a means of incorporating technical concepts that you cannot assume the target has an understanding of, and instead allows you to skip to the applicable part - the results.
For instance... without business speak, many innocuous statements would be forced to say exactly what they mean... such as:
"It is the belief of our marketing department that the tactics we will shortly propose will take advantage of the inherent weaknesses in the judgement of our clientele, as per our extensive research and marketing experiments, driving a wedge between them and our competition. Such a result can be taken advantage of with quick manuevering and specifically targetted activity. This action is quasi-legal according to our legal department, but with enough obfuscation we can get away with it. Covering this up requires a significant change in our business practices, which we must find a confusing means of portraying in a positive light."
The fun part for the rest of you is to convert that honest statement into classic Corporate Speke. Remember, other C-Speakers should be able to get the gist of it, but you can't actually SAY what you mean.
It may just be doable. I've already modded the Quake I source once to set a treadmill for forward motion. Didn't work out as well as a I hoped though due to turning issues. Maybe combine that with a gun...
But it's got to be a light gun... not a gyro mouse. I tend to start smashing things when the aim isn't perfect.
Do you have any idea how many people I'd be willing to kill for a GOOD light-gun game at home?
The arcade games are all rail-shooters. No control.
Standard FPS games give you control, but lack the realism of actually aiming and firing (only your entire view aims - not your hand alone).
I would do obscene things for something on the level of say Quake, but with a light gun for my firing (and view independant of gun). I'd sit in front of my big screen, jerry-rig whatever control system I had to, and bask in the heavenly glow of light-gun ultraviolence.
And I liked Duck Hunt, dammit. Utterly hated Halo for that matter - it's one of the few games I got tired of before I could even finish it.
I don't know, but there was an article on here yesterday. Someone has a new compression format that can shrink ANY form of data by a factor of 25.
ANY form of data. The article said so.
Therefore, I suggest we requisition their algorithm for national security, and being zipping the lesser-used contents of our Server. For instance, Antarctica. We can unzip it as needed, of course we'd have to re-zip something else to make room (how about Greenland? Nothing useful there, and we can temporarily relocate it's user base).
I'm just waiting for our Developer to come out with that new Expansion Pack they've been promising, Earth II: Second Comming. Though I hear it starts off with a nasty purge of the less savory users.
We all know what this is. They've more or less claimed it as a prime mantra behind their business logic. Embrace and "Extend". The Embracing has started, but that Extension is going to be considerably less fun.
We're an ice age species, but we're adapted primarily to extremely hot, arid, waterless and otherwise hostile environments. Africa turned into a hellhole during the last ice age, and the areas where most of our (suspected) recent linear antecedents are found (ie not Steinholm or Heidelbergensis) were in areas that, judging by the fauna and flora around them, bordered on hellish - around the same time Neanderthals were dealing with the freeze-out up north.
We're an ice age species, but we deffinitely adapted to more varied climates. Just compare a bushman to an innuit. I'm pretty sure much of our strength as a species has come from our ability to adapt rapidly (because our intelligence allows us a buffer between rapid extinction and time to adapt, and primate physiology is one of the most flexible among higher mammals).