"Buried" would of have been more appropriate. Why would anyone use FM in this day and age? I mean you have InDesign on one hand and word processors with more advanced futures on the other. What is the benefit of using that program? Aeons ago I was told by someone on a sun box that is was useful for large documents. Is that still the rationale?
At this point Microsoft is only ever going to die the way the fat-man in the restaurant sketch in the Python's Meaning of Life, i.e. gluttony. I believe that the best thing that could of ever of happened to Microsoft, and every computer using consumer on the planet, would have been for them to split their OS division. But the way they are set-up now, one poison pill can make the entire organism sick. Knowing how AOL is run, the only reasonable course of action would be to shut it all down and switch them over to MSN otherwise it's a tar baby they won't be able to get unstuck from.
I'm all for Microsoft getting as big as possible. That way people will know, in lump fashion, what technology to avoid and obviously see the benefits of the alternatives. Also, at some point Microsoft is going to compete with more and more businesses - if you are a competitor, even tangentially, with Microsoft - would you trust 100% a company as aggressive as Microsoft to be the technology foundation of your business?
Working with people you are close to (family and friends) can either be 10x better or 10x worse than working with people you don't know. On one hand you have someone you (hopefully) trust and who knows you and your verbal shorthand and on the other you have someone who knows how to emotionally push your buttons and get under your skin. With an employee if you have to reprimand or fire them you don't have to sit across the dinner table from them at Christmas. However, you don't really need to worry about leaving a family member alone with your valuable gear.
It really is a toss up. I've had it 10x better and 10x worse. Remember all business relationships (esp. partnerships) always end in either death or divorce, in other words there is RARELY ever a happy ending - I'd make sure everyone in the family is aware of that.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories but... Knowing a few folks at Macromedia and their economic woes AND knowing that M$ has been drooling over their product line for quite some time, I wouldnt be a bit surprised if Macromedia were making these public statements in order to push M$ into an acquisition frenzy.
Nothing says 'BOO' to M$ more than Linux these days.
Interesting. I wonder if we'll ever see an Xbox2 emu for the Macintosh? If memory serves, wasnt the first commercial Playstation emulator for the Mac?
The other good thing about this, is that the more chips business IBM gets the more incentive they have to make (more/better/faster) PPC chips - which bodes well for us Mac users.
This is good news, but I'm curious if anyone knows what Intel did to piss microsoft off so much that they turn to IBM?
I've never heard one Ferrari owner complain about how Ford has greater market share.
Apple is a hardware company - they don't compete on cost - they compete on quality. Whereas with Linux, not a hardware company mostly competes on cost. The nice thing is that both platforms have quality software and many of the applications for Linux run on OS X.
Why does an OS have to be all things for all people? Why do Linux lovers wish that Linux was as borg-ish as windows?
Don't get me wrong, we develop on Macs and design on macs and use Linux (sometimes Solaris) to serve. The only PCs we have are basically for 3D. So, I'm an honest platform agnostic driven by what tool is best for the job.
I think the reason that some Linux people get all weird about Mac/OSX is that it messes with the whole Linux vs. Microsoft dialectic. Remember Apple's slogan was not "Think Opposite" - it was "Think Different".
It's a game of GO not chess. There are more than two sides to the board.
You know I hate spam more than just about anything. But here is my prediction: Tougher anti-spam legislation will be used as a power-grab by the US feds. I can't wait to see what privacy sucking, corporate loving "provisions" will be added. Everyone hates spam so much that I'm sure our government will try and use it to sneak in the most egregious legislation.
Most of the people encoding audio and video and playing games are running x86.
I'll take the bait. You sir are incredibly ill-informed. You confuse the needs of the home-fiddler with the needs of the media professional.
I'm sure most audio encoding that takes place in people's homes is PC based, while most audio encoding, recording and mixing done in professional studios is mac based.
I'm sure most wedding videos, bar mitzvahs and "baby's first steps" videos are editied on PCs while more independent films, music videos and documentarys are editied, composited and compressed on Macs (Powerbooks even!).
You mention that mac people are folks who are more interested in doing normal everyday things. And on that point, it wins hands down in terms of user experience. Speed is important there as well I might add.
I own a crap-can of computers running a variety of OSes and when people ask me what I prefer I always tell them "I love them all 'cause they all make me money!". Macs suck for games and they don't run 3DSMAX. Macs arent good choices for low-cost render machines either.
I thought I'd share something I've observed about outsourcing and it's cyclic nature. I base my comments on having seen this from the design/marketing side as well as the technology side.
On one hand you have frightened entrenched management reacting to what they think is the best fiscal course of action. They are making decisions out of fear. They will outsource like crazy and force domestic rates for similar services to drop as a result.
What will then happen is that the supplying companies will start raising their rates as their clients become more dependent. Additionally, companies will become frightened about increased project management burdens, tying important business-critical development to minimally invested 3rd parties and decreased savings.
Even when the economy is good, we all used to laugh about Coke and IBM who both did the following: One manager gets hired, wanted to pee on every post in sight and exclaim "Oh my god! We need to get rid of these people and outsource it all. It's not our core business. We can save tons in HR costs. We'll save BIG!". Then the next person who sits in his chair comes in, wants to pee on every post in sight and exclaim "Oh my god! Do you realize how much our vendors are ripping us for? We need to bring this work in-house. We can hire the best people for a fraction of the rate their consultants/programmers/etc charge! We'll save BIG!". Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
I think there will be a great balancing out soon. As soon as people get-over the knee-jerk reaction of outsourcing, esp. to India, you'll see things settle down a bit. It's so not the cure-all that desperate managers think it is, but it does have it place.
Being someone naturally predisposed to despise SciFi for what they did to Farscape, I was really surprised by how much I liked it. The one thing that hit me over the head was how much the simulated hand-held camera worked for space-battles. I know its about to be the 'next-big-overused-effect', but MAN it really enhances space battles. Makes them feel more like live reporting from war zones. Wouldnt mind a series I must confess.
Too many people seem to think that NWN is some sort of MMORPG toolkit, which it is not.
Why is that a problem? If too many people think that shouldnt Bioware support that? Are you advocating that customers conform to the dictates of the company that makes a product? Business that adapt their products to the needs of their customers do better IMHO.
I feel you support my point. What I am saying is that BIOWARE needs to acknowledge that a huge number of people are using it to creat mini-MMORPGs. Ignoring the needs of your customers is a fatal mistake and expecting your audience to adapt to your product rather than you adapting your product to your customer is a classic mistake. It is huge missed opportunity.
I am one of the founders of Dor Maeglin, which is one of the more popular persisant/modded worlds for NWN. I've got to tell you that the expansion pack process has been a series of consecutive nightmares where features are added simply to move product and not fix systemic and persistent problems with the game and its performance (especially the server!). People on our team have practically rewritten the entire game to make it a fun experience for players.
We have spent thousands of development and content creating hours to make our world/mod what it is today.
What I really wish would happen is that BIOWARE would change NWN to a subscription based service - more like a channel.
The reason this would be beneficial is that instead of having to spend millions of dollars in marketing to the same audience and convince them to buy your sequels - you keep that audience and solidify their brand loyalty while generating enough revenue to constantly improving the core product. Why constantly re-convince the fantasy RPG people to come back when you can make it profitable for them to never leave? Especially since NWN allows folks to create world that they themselves want to play in!
IMHO, these expansion packs are nothing more than them trying to squeeze every dollar they can get out of a decreasing user base and destroying any remaining brand loyalty in the process. Make it $9 a month. Hell, I bet they would make tons of more money. I have no problem spending more money if I get real value for it. It's like cutting down the apple trees after every harvest - why not just let the trees grow instead of replanting them each year. [bad analogy mode off]
For folks not familiar with NWN, NWN is somewhat unique in that it's not a MMORPG - but allows for many smaller worlds to exist that can be completely 'modded' to the tastes of the world-builder. It's wonderful because you can find the world you like and not be saddled with one-big corporately mandated rule-set. We have typically around 80-100 active players (35-40 online at any given time) and they love our server so much that they actually donated money to buy a dual linux server for us.
In general the player support is amazing, the 3rd party support is phenomenal (Avliss MySQL connector is amazing ), the community creativity is amazing - but Bioware doesn't want to take advantage of this. If they stopped viewing NWN as a shrink wrapped product and viewed it as channel, like in television, they could clean-up financially and make a lot of folks happy. What used to be D&D module on pen-and-paper is now a mini-persistent world.
It's all such wasted potential I want to cry. (if you would like to play and visit us, please visit www.mntl.com)
Thats a great link. All kidding aside, that is speicifically (that link) what people refer to when they discuss the standards software needs to meet to be used by the military? It was written in 1985 as well!
Still, what does "military grade" mean in general? Is there a standards body for military that determines what the base standards are for software, weapons and paper-clips. "We can't use those staples - they aint military grade!". Just curious, since I've seen the word use so much during our current 'security-bubble'.
Is there any official definition of what "Military Grade" means? Does the fact that it is used by the Military automatically mean it is "Military Grade".
I'm starting to think that "Military Grade" is about to join the ranks of such descriptors as "Low-Fat", "Broadcast Quality", "New and Improved" and "Internet Ready".
Is it just me or does a lot of what Sun is doing remind you of what SGI went through in the high-end visualization market a few years back?
Obviously things are not DIRECTLY equatable but I can't stop thinking about the comparison.
Couldnt you say that in both cases that their niche erroded due to low or no cost competitors?
Both had some great software. Could Sun having Solaris and Java be somewhat equateble to SGI's OpenGL and Irix?
Both companies had hardware at the heart of their business models at one point.
Sun seems to be doing what SGI did in trying to do a bunch of different things to pull itself out while in the process losing focus and STILL having hardware at the heart of the business model.
SGI is obviously still around. If you look at their website now, you can see they are targetting a much smaller niche than they used to (supercomputers). The day of thinking that an o2 will be on the desk of every college student has long passed. I'm sure SGI never thought they would be promoting Linux-based supercomputers on their homepage 5 years ago - lord only knows what Sun will have on theirs homepage 5 years hence.
Wow. This is simplistic as hell but making choices makes people smarter. Think about it. You have to engage in critical thinking within the context of your needs before choosing a solution and you are forced to question.
Talking to students at university and meeting folks in technology in general, I've really started to notice a braindrain away from Microsoft products. I'm really not trying to flamebait, but it seems that people who are really into computer science and doing innovative things with computers are staying away from Microsoft products in droves.
I also mention this because we were looking at hiring Jr. developers and kept observing a incredibly different mindset between those who were.NET developers and those who were not (usually Java guys). The personality difference was startling. Has anyone else ever had to compare MS and non-MS people side by side? I'm serious, the non MS people seemed more creative, inventive and - well - smart. Meanwhile the MS.NET people seemed more like, I hate to say this,managers? If you are in a corporate environment and need to do everything the MS way - the whole "managerial" vibe is a positive trait. You need someone to impliment MS solutions, not create solutions. But the huge side-effect IMHO is that all the smart people doing cool stuff are running as fast as they can away from MS.
I think this impacts MS future big-time. Has anyone else had this experience or read an article about this?
I'm just curious but has anyone ever heard of or considered creating a search engine that was not tied to any specific commerical interest?
I would think that having a search engine that was not tied into a corporate synergistic or advertising revenue model would serve a public good. I'd love to have the ability to search 'non-commercial' sites for information as well.
http://www.charleston.net/stories/060103/wor_01jai lbirds.shtml
Read that if you want to see where we are in terms of people in prison. And if you don't think that the trend to put people in jail for victemless crimes is receding - you are sadly misinformed. Re-read the article post. Watch the news about people searching highschool students at gun point.
What the hell, most of the people aren't voting anyway and wouldn't notice a difference.
I've got to pull this anecdote out of my hat at least once a week because it totally changed my view of the political process and made me a hell of lot less apathetic.
I had the opportunity to work with a senator on creating web-based application and designs for his website. He told me basically what he does when people contact him.
First, he checks to see if they are regestered to vote. If not - screw 'em.
Second, do they live in his district. If not - screw 'em.
If they can vote and live in his district - he really does pay attention.
What amazes me is that the people he talks to is such a small group of people. He cares about them because they care about the process. And he responds. But if you don't participate - screw you.
They'll get to that. You've got to remember that the Republicans use Christianity in the U.S. as a power base to push through corporate interests. Keeping Christians agitated puts Republicans in seats. Think about it: If the Republicans didnt have the Christian right in their court - they would be in big big trouble. Why? Because the Christian right's demographic is typically the same group of people who are hurt the most by the Republicans domestic policy.
The agitation is important because these are the same people who will get laid off from a factory job (thanks to some free trade agreement) and STILL VOTE republican because they think Abortion is a mortal sin.
Don't think for a second the Republican party puts Jesus over Business. They've been coopting that poor old carpenter so badly for decades now you'd think he'd come back to earth as Rush Limbaugh with a 'Fuck 'em all' T-Shirt.
Slashdot Mirror
We wouldnt have Microsoft...we'd have Microsofts and they would collectively kick-ass and we'd thank them for it.
We also probably have holographic web-browsers by now if there was no Microsoft.
"Buried" would of have been more appropriate. Why would anyone use FM in this day and age? I mean you have InDesign on one hand and word processors with more advanced futures on the other. What is the benefit of using that program? Aeons ago I was told by someone on a sun box that is was useful for large documents. Is that still the rationale?
At this point Microsoft is only ever going to die the way the fat-man in the restaurant sketch in the Python's Meaning of Life, i.e. gluttony. I believe that the best thing that could of ever of happened to Microsoft, and every computer using consumer on the planet, would have been for them to split their OS division. But the way they are set-up now, one poison pill can make the entire organism sick. Knowing how AOL is run, the only reasonable course of action would be to shut it all down and switch them over to MSN otherwise it's a tar baby they won't be able to get unstuck from.
I'm all for Microsoft getting as big as possible. That way people will know, in lump fashion, what technology to avoid and obviously see the benefits of the alternatives. Also, at some point Microsoft is going to compete with more and more businesses - if you are a competitor, even tangentially, with Microsoft - would you trust 100% a company as aggressive as Microsoft to be the technology foundation of your business?
Working with people you are close to (family and friends) can either be 10x better or 10x worse than working with people you don't know. On one hand you have someone you (hopefully) trust and who knows you and your verbal shorthand and on the other you have someone who knows how to emotionally push your buttons and get under your skin. With an employee if you have to reprimand or fire them you don't have to sit across the dinner table from them at Christmas. However, you don't really need to worry about leaving a family member alone with your valuable gear.
It really is a toss up. I've had it 10x better and 10x worse. Remember all business relationships (esp. partnerships) always end in either death or divorce, in other words there is RARELY ever a happy ending - I'd make sure everyone in the family is aware of that.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories but...
Knowing a few folks at Macromedia and their economic woes AND knowing that M$ has been drooling over their product line for quite some time, I wouldnt be a bit surprised if Macromedia were making these public statements in order to push M$ into an acquisition frenzy.
Nothing says 'BOO' to M$ more than Linux these days.
Interesting. I wonder if we'll ever see an Xbox2 emu for the Macintosh? If memory serves, wasnt the first commercial Playstation emulator for the Mac? The other good thing about this, is that the more chips business IBM gets the more incentive they have to make (more/better/faster) PPC chips - which bodes well for us Mac users. This is good news, but I'm curious if anyone knows what Intel did to piss microsoft off so much that they turn to IBM?
Listen buddy, I love the 'foo-foo' theme and I dare anyone to give me any guff about it.
I've never heard one Ferrari owner complain about how Ford has greater market share.
Apple is a hardware company - they don't compete on cost - they compete on quality. Whereas with Linux, not a hardware company mostly competes on cost. The nice thing is that both platforms have quality software and many of the applications for Linux run on OS X.
Why does an OS have to be all things for all people? Why do Linux lovers wish that Linux was as borg-ish as windows?
Don't get me wrong, we develop on Macs and design on macs and use Linux (sometimes Solaris) to serve. The only PCs we have are basically for 3D. So, I'm an honest platform agnostic driven by what tool is best for the job.
I think the reason that some Linux people get all weird about Mac/OSX is that it messes with the whole Linux vs. Microsoft dialectic. Remember Apple's slogan was not "Think Opposite" - it was "Think Different".
It's a game of GO not chess. There are more than two sides to the board.
I don't get it - why would you use Linux on a powerbook?
You know I hate spam more than just about anything. But here is my prediction: Tougher anti-spam legislation will be used as a power-grab by the US feds. I can't wait to see what privacy sucking, corporate loving "provisions" will be added. Everyone hates spam so much that I'm sure our government will try and use it to sneak in the most egregious legislation.
On one hand you have frightened entrenched management reacting to what they think is the best fiscal course of action. They are making decisions out of fear. They will outsource like crazy and force domestic rates for similar services to drop as a result.
What will then happen is that the supplying companies will start raising their rates as their clients become more dependent. Additionally, companies will become frightened about increased project management burdens, tying important business-critical development to minimally invested 3rd parties and decreased savings.
Even when the economy is good, we all used to laugh about Coke and IBM who both did the following: One manager gets hired, wanted to pee on every post in sight and exclaim "Oh my god! We need to get rid of these people and outsource it all. It's not our core business. We can save tons in HR costs. We'll save BIG!". Then the next person who sits in his chair comes in, wants to pee on every post in sight and exclaim "Oh my god! Do you realize how much our vendors are ripping us for? We need to bring this work in-house. We can hire the best people for a fraction of the rate their consultants/programmers/etc charge! We'll save BIG!". Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
I think there will be a great balancing out soon. As soon as people get-over the knee-jerk reaction of outsourcing, esp. to India, you'll see things settle down a bit. It's so not the cure-all that desperate managers think it is, but it does have it place.
NE QUID NIMIS
Being someone naturally predisposed to despise SciFi for what they did to Farscape, I was really surprised by how much I liked it. The one thing that hit me over the head was how much the simulated hand-held camera worked for space-battles. I know its about to be the 'next-big-overused-effect', but MAN it really enhances space battles. Makes them feel more like live reporting from war zones. Wouldnt mind a series I must confess.
I am one of the founders of Dor Maeglin, which is one of the more popular persisant/modded worlds for NWN. I've got to tell you that the expansion pack process has been a series of consecutive nightmares where features are added simply to move product and not fix systemic and persistent problems with the game and its performance (especially the server!). People on our team have practically rewritten the entire game to make it a fun experience for players.
We have spent thousands of development and content creating hours to make our world/mod what it is today.
What I really wish would happen is that BIOWARE would change NWN to a subscription based service - more like a channel.
The reason this would be beneficial is that instead of having to spend millions of dollars in marketing to the same audience and convince them to buy your sequels - you keep that audience and solidify their brand loyalty while generating enough revenue to constantly improving the core product. Why constantly re-convince the fantasy RPG people to come back when you can make it profitable for them to never leave? Especially since NWN allows folks to create world that they themselves want to play in!
IMHO, these expansion packs are nothing more than them trying to squeeze every dollar they can get out of a decreasing user base and destroying any remaining brand loyalty in the process. Make it $9 a month. Hell, I bet they would make tons of more money. I have no problem spending more money if I get real value for it. It's like cutting down the apple trees after every harvest - why not just let the trees grow instead of replanting them each year. [bad analogy mode off]
For folks not familiar with NWN, NWN is somewhat unique in that it's not a MMORPG - but allows for many smaller worlds to exist that can be completely 'modded' to the tastes of the world-builder. It's wonderful because you can find the world you like and not be saddled with one-big corporately mandated rule-set. We have typically around 80-100 active players (35-40 online at any given time) and they love our server so much that they actually donated money to buy a dual linux server for us.
In general the player support is amazing, the 3rd party support is phenomenal (Avliss MySQL connector is amazing ), the community creativity is amazing - but Bioware doesn't want to take advantage of this. If they stopped viewing NWN as a shrink wrapped product and viewed it as channel, like in television, they could clean-up financially and make a lot of folks happy. What used to be D&D module on pen-and-paper is now a mini-persistent world.
It's all such wasted potential I want to cry. (if you would like to play and visit us, please visit www.mntl.com)
Thats a great link. All kidding aside, that is speicifically (that link) what people refer to when they discuss the standards software needs to meet to be used by the military? It was written in 1985 as well!
Still, what does "military grade" mean in general? Is there a standards body for military that determines what the base standards are for software, weapons and paper-clips. "We can't use those staples - they aint military grade!". Just curious, since I've seen the word use so much during our current 'security-bubble'.
Is there any official definition of what "Military Grade" means? Does the fact that it is used by the Military automatically mean it is "Military Grade".
I'm starting to think that "Military Grade" is about to join the ranks of such descriptors as "Low-Fat", "Broadcast Quality", "New and Improved" and "Internet Ready".
Is it just me or does a lot of what Sun is doing remind you of what SGI went through in the high-end visualization market a few years back?
Obviously things are not DIRECTLY equatable but I can't stop thinking about the comparison.
Couldnt you say that in both cases that their niche erroded due to low or no cost competitors?
Both had some great software. Could Sun having Solaris and Java be somewhat equateble to SGI's OpenGL and Irix?
Both companies had hardware at the heart of their business models at one point.
Sun seems to be doing what SGI did in trying to do a bunch of different things to pull itself out while in the process losing focus and STILL having hardware at the heart of the business model.
SGI is obviously still around. If you look at their website now, you can see they are targetting a much smaller niche than they used to (supercomputers). The day of thinking that an o2 will be on the desk of every college student has long passed. I'm sure SGI never thought they would be promoting Linux-based supercomputers on their homepage 5 years ago - lord only knows what Sun will have on theirs homepage 5 years hence.
Wow. This is simplistic as hell but making choices makes people smarter. Think about it. You have to engage in critical thinking within the context of your needs before choosing a solution and you are forced to question.
Talking to students at university and meeting folks in technology in general, I've really started to notice a braindrain away from Microsoft products. I'm really not trying to flamebait, but it seems that people who are really into computer science and doing innovative things with computers are staying away from Microsoft products in droves.
.NET developers and those who were not (usually Java guys). The personality difference was startling. Has anyone else ever had to compare MS and non-MS people side by side? I'm serious, the non MS people seemed more creative, inventive and - well - smart. Meanwhile the MS .NET people seemed more like, I hate to say this,managers? If you are in a corporate environment and need to do everything the MS way - the whole "managerial" vibe is a positive trait. You need someone to impliment MS solutions, not create solutions. But the huge side-effect IMHO is that all the smart people doing cool stuff are running as fast as they can away from MS.
I also mention this because we were looking at hiring Jr. developers and kept observing a incredibly different mindset between those who were
I think this impacts MS future big-time. Has anyone else had this experience or read an article about this?
I would think that having a search engine that was not tied into a corporate synergistic or advertising revenue model would serve a public good. I'd love to have the ability to search 'non-commercial' sites for information as well.
Just so it gets said. Walmart is right up there with Microsoft - they just sell the stuff people run on not what computers run on.
http://www.charleston.net/stories/060103/wor_01jai lbirds.shtml
Read that if you want to see where we are in terms of people in prison. And if you don't think that the trend to put people in jail for victemless crimes is receding - you are sadly misinformed. Re-read the article post. Watch the news about people searching highschool students at gun point.
They'll get to that. You've got to remember that the Republicans use Christianity in the U.S. as a power base to push through corporate interests. Keeping Christians agitated puts Republicans in seats. Think about it: If the Republicans didnt have the Christian right in their court - they would be in big big trouble. Why? Because the Christian right's demographic is typically the same group of people who are hurt the most by the Republicans domestic policy.
The agitation is important because these are the same people who will get laid off from a factory job (thanks to some free trade agreement) and STILL VOTE republican because they think Abortion is a mortal sin.
Don't think for a second the Republican party puts Jesus over Business. They've been coopting that poor old carpenter so badly for decades now you'd think he'd come back to earth as Rush Limbaugh with a 'Fuck 'em all' T-Shirt.