I too am a software engineer, have been for some years, so I have a bit of exterience in this area. It's well known and well documented that the longer a programer works the more bugs he produces. Also for every three bugs fixed, under optimal conditions, one new bug is introduced into the system. With a little extrapolation, one can see how an over worked developer can actually produce 2 bugs for everyone fixed (Sorry I didn't want to get into the full statitics and math behind it)
Now the problem is that the poor output is not really that big of a deal when nitpicking penies on a small scale. Though over all the company overworking it's employees is actually costing themselves extra, it does not apear that way when each person or team is looked at seperatly. Most developers are exempt (salary) employees, therefor the company is paying them x per year worked. If the company gets them to work more hours then the amount per our goes down, which makes it apear that you can get more for your dollar if you have less people work more hours. And it gets even worse if those making the decisions see each hour over forty as free. Making anything produced after hours as an infinite return on investment, so it doesn't mater how little is accomplished.
That's just my take on it, from experience on both sides of the fence.
Though as a software Developer I agree wholeheartedly that poor work enviroments, long hours and undue stress cause inferior products I do think their is another important point to consider. What is happening in game development is nothing new, it's happended in other industries, and in those industries it has changed. The reason it changed because the people being misstreated refused to be mistreated and the customers of the products they built became dissatisfied with the products.
In the game industry this is not happening for a few reasons which debunk the idea that the issues are holding back the industry. First game developers have what they consider a "Dream Job." It's like being an actor or screen writer or any other form of entertainment profesional. There is a bit of fame involved and that makes people feel good, and must be making the hours and quality of life issues worth dealing with. In other software development , most programers quit and look for other jobs before the situation gets so bad they have to spread there complaints across the internet.
On the other side of things the customers, you and I, are still satisfied with the products, even if they are not excelerating at the rate they could. Games continue to get better, in general, they still get excelent reviews, and here is the real kicker to the whole problem, they still get purchased.
Personaly I don't have a problem with so called experienced developers leaving th industry. If they were really as good as they would lead us to belive they would not have to leave, they would simply say, "give me what I want or I'm out of here." So the fact that they are leaving is a good sign that they are not that great at it. I know this from perosnal experience, where I have been asked to work long hours and weekends and have simply said that I wouldn't do it, and I still work for the company that asked. Length of time in an industry does not necessarily mean you are any good at it. Sometimes it is benificial to get some fresh blood into an industry, especialy a young industry like game development.
30 years from now this whole situation will be a none point. It will just be one of those things that happens in an industry until it stablizes and matures.
We cannot (and should not) expect Bush to be able to enforce tax breaks in each state without violating the state's rights.
Ah but we can expect Bush and his regime to enforce christian dogmatic policy on the states, say by adding rights restricting amendments to the constitution. Come on, you can't possible be a support of Bush (notice I'm not bashing the republican party as a whole) and still some how stand up act like you support the rights of the states to maintain legal standards.
Any time you want to play with the simple rule that you only ever get 72o let me know, I'm always looking for the better of a sucker bet. Heck I'd even take the bet if you'd play ever hand to the river, regardless of the cards.
As a skilled player myself I can say that my mathmatical skills, used in programing if not gained from it, have helped alot. Though it is true that no amount of statistics knowledge will be the final word in a poker hand, it is usefull when determining betting for value, and dealing with those bad beats when they come along. So every time you win with that 72o hand be well aware that you are give the loser a large value bet, even a 73o is making a few penies on each dollar bet.
From what I know, and I could be wrong in this case , the demo, as you put it, is a full os, in so much as it can be used to run other software. The 1.44 floppy version of QNX has the ability to store, retrieve and execute files, which is really all an OS needs to need. The so called Demo does alot more than that as well making it a capable OS. But I guess this is what should be expected from an OS built from the ground up for Real Time Embeded systems.
Thanks to the shody implementation of XUL in the most recent release of Mozilla/Firefox, us OS X user have nothing to fear. Try it on a mac and you will notice that the menu bar does not appear, at all, let alone correctly.
This is not entirely a Mozilla only problem. With enough knowledge of DHTML one can easily do the same thing in IE, and potential other browsers on windows. As a matter of fact IE may be even easier to spoof because the would be no need to know what theme a user is using (atleast on pre XP os). Also, unlike mozilla IE will allow you to execute harmful code with out any notification to the user.
In anycase this could probably be easily solved by having mozzila give some sort of notification when XUL is loaded.
Not sure why you were not able to verify the validity of these messages. I just took a quick look at the source for each one and figured out which were obvious frauds. True I had to go as far as check the who is on some of the links to make sure they were fraudulent, but that's what any smart person should do before offering any personal information based on an unsolicited message (email, phone call, snail mail etc.)
Having worked for a few years for a major phone company I am well aware of social Enginering and know that this type of phishing has been around alot longer than the internet. So just as a general warning to everyone is NEVER give out information when someone contacts you, simply let them know that you will contact the office and get the information update if you need to.
Contrary to popular belief there does not need to a contract in place for most works create by employees, at the request of an employer. Here is a quote from the U.S. Copyright Office, which does cover Sun's Java Copyrights.
In the case of works made for hire, the employer and not the employee is considered to be the author. Section 101 of the copyright law defines a "work made for hire" as:
* (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment;
Sadly enough you are correct some companies do require certain credentials to get in the door. Luckily certifications work well a large part of the time, at least at newer companies or those that deal with experimental and cutting edge technology (Lockheed Martin for example will surely look at a Software Developer as long as they have the right certs). I on the other hand don't let people filter my resume.
Sending out resumes and not following up is the best way to not get a job. Many companies, even those that do filter will give you a chance as long as you make the effort. Actually taking the time to find the company, research who you need to talk to, and then go see them, will often get you a fair interview even if you don't have the credentials (hence why I have no degree and no certs and still lead a team of all degreed and certified individuals).
Getting an interview and interviewing well are the keys to getting a good job. Knowning your audiance is also key. Never tell a company you want a certain job, let them know you want to work for them and why! Also be sure to control the interview, most interviewers won't know that you didn't answer certain questions if you never give them a chance to get to them. Just be sure what you do say is relevant to the position you want.
The point I was making is as much as it seems people with degrees have more drive than those with out, my experience has shown me that self educated employees tend to be more self motivated.
Yes it's true some companies do filter resumes based on education, luckily that's a trend that is changing, atleast in companies that are predominantly software development based, governmental or eductation (I presume that is because they know the crap they turn out). Now that IT has actually been around long enough for there to be experienced employees in the work force, experience is becoming more important than education. For those in the work force, or trying to enter it, who are self educated, this is a very good thing because experience is easier to fake than education (just gather a couple buddies to vouch for you).
So if your company only hires people with degrees then you admit you have over-paid under-skilled, and way under-motivated employees.
I am the Chief Engineer for a Government funded project (by way of contract) and have no degree at all. The team that works UNDER me all have degrees, but that's only because they were hired before me.
Point being don't let a lack of degree hold you back, either in finding a job or in hiring employees. Must of the quality developers I have worked with, for or had work for me, have no degree. Also, at least in development, Certs tend to go a little further than Degree's because they show that you know your stuff, not that you showed up to class everyday.
This is where any programer or person with any technical knowledge begins to laugh. The Vector Units of the PS2 are not it's graphics engine. These units are general purpose vector units. Yes it is true that in typical game design one of the two VUs is dedicated for Graphics processing, this is not only not required nor is it always done.
There is a reason that more than one major US university has a project to use a PS2, or PS2 cluster, for scientific computing, and none have atempted this with an xbox (not sure about the game cube, which also has decent vector procssing) . The power and flexibility of the VUs is the reason why PS2 games have better AI and Physics (when comparing the best of console games, all systems have their crappy games). The fact that the VUs are not dedicated to graphics processing is why PS2 graphics are not what they could be, because most developers, especialy american developers, have never programed on such a system. But as I have said before Lazyness is no reason knock a system.
The real ignorance is shown with statements about the PS2s RAM bottle neck. If you ever looked at the arcitecture of the PS2 you will see it was built for high process Multimedia. It is capable of moving it's entire main memory store in a single cycle to any one of it's processing units. The key is keeping the pipeline full. Typical programing has been done by filling large memory stores, cache, and letting it tricle out to the processing units. Do your self a favor and research the technology before you try and talk about it.
After reading this article, the response to it, and knowing a bit about the hardware behind the PS2 the only thing I need to know is when did the average Software Engineer get so lazy? I have been a Software Engineer for many years now and I, for one, would never have complaints about a complex system. Part of the joy of being a Software Engineer is figuring out how to get the most out of what you are given. The PS2 is a complex machine designed from the ground up to do what it does, execute dynamic multi-media. This is so different than most other computer systems out there that it does take some change in thought as to how to get the most out of it and it seems that game developers (I have a hard time calling them Software Engineers) are just being lazy and sticking to what they know rather than changing with the times.
I'm not going to speculate as to the numbers of games written for which console first I can say that it really doesn't mater. As has been pointed out in other responses to this article, there are no Compilers that effectively use the PS2s VUs, so even if the game is original executed on a PS2 it is being most likely designed by these lazy developers that don't want to put in the effort necessary to utilize the VUs. Even out side of the VUs there are other differences in design that developers aren't used too, such as continual utilization of the internal bandwidth(an article I read just over a year ago stated that most games are utilizing less than 10% of the internal bandwidth of the PS2 at most times).
I'm not going to argue over with machine is better (it would be similar to arguing analog vs. digital), I just think people need to realize that the PS2 uses newer technology than the other systems and that takes time for developers to get used to. Luckily for us there are companies out there, such as Naughty Dog, that are willing to try and learn this new system if for no other reason than to be a step ahead when the next generation of consoles come out, and archaic technologies like DirectX are not able to keep up with system demands.
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Now the problem is that the poor output is not really that big of a deal when nitpicking penies on a small scale. Though over all the company overworking it's employees is actually costing themselves extra, it does not apear that way when each person or team is looked at seperatly. Most developers are exempt (salary) employees, therefor the company is paying them x per year worked. If the company gets them to work more hours then the amount per our goes down, which makes it apear that you can get more for your dollar if you have less people work more hours. And it gets even worse if those making the decisions see each hour over forty as free. Making anything produced after hours as an infinite return on investment, so it doesn't mater how little is accomplished.
That's just my take on it, from experience on both sides of the fence.
In the game industry this is not happening for a few reasons which debunk the idea that the issues are holding back the industry. First game developers have what they consider a "Dream Job." It's like being an actor or screen writer or any other form of entertainment profesional. There is a bit of fame involved and that makes people feel good, and must be making the hours and quality of life issues worth dealing with. In other software development , most programers quit and look for other jobs before the situation gets so bad they have to spread there complaints across the internet.
On the other side of things the customers, you and I, are still satisfied with the products, even if they are not excelerating at the rate they could. Games continue to get better, in general, they still get excelent reviews, and here is the real kicker to the whole problem, they still get purchased.
Personaly I don't have a problem with so called experienced developers leaving th industry. If they were really as good as they would lead us to belive they would not have to leave, they would simply say, "give me what I want or I'm out of here." So the fact that they are leaving is a good sign that they are not that great at it. I know this from perosnal experience, where I have been asked to work long hours and weekends and have simply said that I wouldn't do it, and I still work for the company that asked. Length of time in an industry does not necessarily mean you are any good at it. Sometimes it is benificial to get some fresh blood into an industry, especialy a young industry like game development.
30 years from now this whole situation will be a none point. It will just be one of those things that happens in an industry until it stablizes and matures.
- We cannot (and should not) expect Bush to be able to enforce tax breaks in each state without violating the state's rights.
Ah but we can expect Bush and his regime to enforce christian dogmatic policy on the states, say by adding rights restricting amendments to the constitution. Come on, you can't possible be a support of Bush (notice I'm not bashing the republican party as a whole) and still some how stand up act like you support the rights of the states to maintain legal standards.As a skilled player myself I can say that my mathmatical skills, used in programing if not gained from it, have helped alot. Though it is true that no amount of statistics knowledge will be the final word in a poker hand, it is usefull when determining betting for value, and dealing with those bad beats when they come along. So every time you win with that 72o hand be well aware that you are give the loser a large value bet, even a 73o is making a few penies on each dollar bet.
From what I know, and I could be wrong in this case , the demo, as you put it, is a full os, in so much as it can be used to run other software. The 1.44 floppy version of QNX has the ability to store, retrieve and execute files, which is really all an OS needs to need. The so called Demo does alot more than that as well making it a capable OS. But I guess this is what should be expected from an OS built from the ground up for Real Time Embeded systems.
And to think, QNX, a full OS with a windowing Graphic Interface runs from a 1.44 MB floppy disk.
Thanks to the shody implementation of XUL in the most recent release of Mozilla/Firefox, us OS X user have nothing to fear. Try it on a mac and you will notice that the menu bar does not appear, at all, let alone correctly.
This is not entirely a Mozilla only problem. With enough knowledge of DHTML one can easily do the same thing in IE, and potential other browsers on windows. As a matter of fact IE may be even easier to spoof because the would be no need to know what theme a user is using (atleast on pre XP os). Also, unlike mozilla IE will allow you to execute harmful code with out any notification to the user.
In anycase this could probably be easily solved by having mozzila give some sort of notification when XUL is loaded.
Not sure why you were not able to verify the validity of these messages. I just took a quick look at the source for each one and figured out which were obvious frauds. True I had to go as far as check the who is on some of the links to make sure they were fraudulent, but that's what any smart person should do before offering any personal information based on an unsolicited message (email, phone call, snail mail etc.)
Having worked for a few years for a major phone company I am well aware of social Enginering and know that this type of phishing has been around alot longer than the internet. So just as a general warning to everyone is NEVER give out information when someone contacts you, simply let them know that you will contact the office and get the information update if you need to.
- In the case of works made for hire, the employer and not the employee is considered to be the author. Section 101 of the copyright law defines a "work made for hire" as:
To read more go to http://www.copyright.gov/* (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment;
Sending out resumes and not following up is the best way to not get a job. Many companies, even those that do filter will give you a chance as long as you make the effort. Actually taking the time to find the company, research who you need to talk to, and then go see them, will often get you a fair interview even if you don't have the credentials (hence why I have no degree and no certs and still lead a team of all degreed and certified individuals).
Getting an interview and interviewing well are the keys to getting a good job. Knowning your audiance is also key. Never tell a company you want a certain job, let them know you want to work for them and why! Also be sure to control the interview, most interviewers won't know that you didn't answer certain questions if you never give them a chance to get to them. Just be sure what you do say is relevant to the position you want.
The point I was making is as much as it seems people with degrees have more drive than those with out, my experience has shown me that self educated employees tend to be more self motivated.
Yes it's true some companies do filter resumes based on education, luckily that's a trend that is changing, atleast in companies that are predominantly software development based, governmental or eductation (I presume that is because they know the crap they turn out). Now that IT has actually been around long enough for there to be experienced employees in the work force, experience is becoming more important than education. For those in the work force, or trying to enter it, who are self educated, this is a very good thing because experience is easier to fake than education (just gather a couple buddies to vouch for you).
I am the Chief Engineer for a Government funded project (by way of contract) and have no degree at all. The team that works UNDER me all have degrees, but that's only because they were hired before me.
Point being don't let a lack of degree hold you back, either in finding a job or in hiring employees. Must of the quality developers I have worked with, for or had work for me, have no degree. Also, at least in development, Certs tend to go a little further than Degree's because they show that you know your stuff, not that you showed up to class everyday.
This is where any programer or person with any technical knowledge begins to laugh. The Vector Units of the PS2 are not it's graphics engine. These units are general purpose vector units. Yes it is true that in typical game design one of the two VUs is dedicated for Graphics processing, this is not only not required nor is it always done.
There is a reason that more than one major US university has a project to use a PS2, or PS2 cluster, for scientific computing, and none have atempted this with an xbox (not sure about the game cube, which also has decent vector procssing) . The power and flexibility of the VUs is the reason why PS2 games have better AI and Physics (when comparing the best of console games, all systems have their crappy games). The fact that the VUs are not dedicated to graphics processing is why PS2 graphics are not what they could be, because most developers, especialy american developers, have never programed on such a system. But as I have said before Lazyness is no reason knock a system.
The real ignorance is shown with statements about the PS2s RAM bottle neck. If you ever looked at the arcitecture of the PS2 you will see it was built for high process Multimedia. It is capable of moving it's entire main memory store in a single cycle to any one of it's processing units. The key is keeping the pipeline full. Typical programing has been done by filling large memory stores, cache, and letting it tricle out to the processing units. Do your self a favor and research the technology before you try and talk about it.
I'm not going to speculate as to the numbers of games written for which console first I can say that it really doesn't mater. As has been pointed out in other responses to this article, there are no Compilers that effectively use the PS2s VUs, so even if the game is original executed on a PS2 it is being most likely designed by these lazy developers that don't want to put in the effort necessary to utilize the VUs. Even out side of the VUs there are other differences in design that developers aren't used too, such as continual utilization of the internal bandwidth(an article I read just over a year ago stated that most games are utilizing less than 10% of the internal bandwidth of the PS2 at most times).
I'm not going to argue over with machine is better (it would be similar to arguing analog vs. digital), I just think people need to realize that the PS2 uses newer technology than the other systems and that takes time for developers to get used to. Luckily for us there are companies out there, such as Naughty Dog, that are willing to try and learn this new system if for no other reason than to be a step ahead when the next generation of consoles come out, and archaic technologies like DirectX are not able to keep up with system demands.