Instead of just being busted for having copies of Penthouse etc. under the mattress, poor young Johnny is now equally liable for PC Gamer? Not to mention the stress his Quake IV CD would cause his parents.....
Anyway, what stops kids seeing the games in arcades? In the main street in Sydney you're able to see gun games all the time from the street without going in at all. (Although lately they've been overshadowed by those dancing / drum playing machine things)...
I remember at one stage you couldn't walk down the street ever without hearing "Nice shootin', try another one!" from some Western game which was bleeding edge arcade technology at the time.
You know, Chuck. I think we'd better Chuck your name Chuck, into every sentence we can Chuck it into...
I mean Chuck, don't you find that everyone carrys on a bit Chuck, especially about how much wood can a woodChuck Chuck if a woodChuck would Chuck wood.
Pity the people that live here were too incompetent to vote for a republic when they had a chance (no offence intended, I just think Australia could stand on it's own two feet in writing, it does in every other way)
I don't think the majority didn't want a republic - they just didn't want the model set forward by the current government, and therefore rejected it in order to vote for a more reasonable model next time around. (For example: Where the people actually get to choose the president, not the current government).
Again, more bone-headedness from Australian politicians, but one the whole I don't think they're any better or worse on average than anywhere else in the world, even if their local policies aren't attractive to MS...
For the record, Australian, (and indifferent as far as patriotism goes).
Also for the record, keep in mind the following
this is a summary by a journalist who probably hasn't read the report themselves, and is reporting snippets - potentially also out of context?
In global terms, Australia is quite a small market and due to the population distribution it is extremely expensive to roll out high bandwidth to everyone. The market is simply not big enough to allow what Microsoft would deem sufficient competition.
John Howard is probably the least charismatic prime minister I've seen in my lifetime.
In terms of internet usage and technology adoption in general, Australia is one of the forerunners.
This reply actually assumes you've read the article(!)
Insufficient investment incentives:
Totally agree, reducing the concession rate was a very bad move (not just for IT, in general). As others have pointed out, this is *business* R&D - Australia is very competitive on the academic side. We do occasionally come up with some good stuff, but end up selling out to overseas due to lack of local support.
Inadequate infrastructure and bandwith:
Cable prices have been a lot more reasonable since about Feb. last year (2000) once there were two players. ASDL is now rolling out with a lot more people becoming able to access the 'net at reasonable speeds. As pointed out elsewhere in the article "...other studies had found that Australians had good access to bandwidth and a high level of Internet penetration."
Insufficient support for information economy R&D:
Redundant, should be rolled into point 1 - Investment incentives
Failure to create local centres of excellence:
Again, probably partly due to population levels / distribution. Without a resonable definition on exactly how we failed its hard to responds to this point. Anyone would benefit from carrying out MS's generic suggestion, USA included.
Failure to protect against piracy:
Don't know enough to respond to this aside from the fact its probably partly due to Australia being a target market for Asian pirates due to its locality. Why they supposedly think our laws make it easier to counterfeit stuff I have no idea...?
A skills shortage:
And who doesn't have a skills shortage?
Technology security:
More meaningless waffle no more or less relevant to Australia than anywhere else in the world.
Lack of access to capital:
Journalist is getting desperate at this point I think. More meaningless, generic stuff. Again, can be equally true for anywhere in the world. We've actually recently had the corporate tax rate reduced by 3% anyway? Just because MS doesn't see us as an attractive investment doesn't mean we should change "Australia's banking and finance laws". Sheesh.
Inability of some groups to have Internet access:
Woo, even more generic, unsubstantied stuff - which groups? Where? Who? Oh, and thanks for the tip, never would have thought of that....
Again, this is journalism at its finest, rush something to press, make it sound good, hope the reader doesn't actually critically think about what they've written and whether its meaningful or not.
The only potential good thing about this is that the Australian Government might do something positive about this (but then again, they might turn round and do something stupid, they've done it before....).
Re:I'd rather hire a BA in history or indust-desig
on
CS vs CIS
·
· Score: 1
Its more useful to be a non-linear thinker. Read books by Victor deBono and try to retain some originality despite what the system's about to do to you.
I think you probably mean Edward de Bono?
A couple of other interesting related books:
The Logic of Failure - Dietrich Dorner (et al)
The Art of Systems Thinking - Joseph O'Connor, Ian McDermott (good introductory level stuff)
I think you're asking the wrong question, you really need to ask something along the lines of "I would like to do X, Y, or Z as a job - which would be more suitable : CS / CIS / Something else?"
Instead you could consider picking something you enjoy and take technical subjects. As long as you have a (semi-)relevant qualification for the field of interest you'd like to work in you should be better off.
Work out what you want to do, what sort of company you want to work for (ie. Big Financial Corporations or Consultancy firms or fims into hardware level stuff etc.) and then work out which degree is most relevant.
Also, keep in mind a lot can change in the time between starting and finishing your degree...
but hopefully you can adapt to the change.
One day a new TV and video arrived in the building and guess what the only videos in the building were....So as soon as we tuned in the video we were looking at a black and white spaced table of I think 16x16 blocks at a rate of at most 4 blocks a second
In my first job I had to program on Alpha Micros, and do the backups to video tape as well. Due to the 'reliability' of the media, I think the backup process effectively recorded the same block of information numerous times in a row to make sure at least one was correct!?!
I wonder whether this would be a more valid solution to help drastically reduce the error rate mentioned in another post? (Obviously it would reduce the amount of storage in multiples given how reliable you wanted it to be).
However, our company didn't have the greatest VCR or tape brands either, (although we had a large number of tapes). I don't think we ever had to reinstall anything though.
One other amusing sidenote was the fact that the fridge sized machine ran on a 680x0 (10 or 20?), and my Amiga at home had roughly the same computing power. The stupidest thing was that the guy who owned the system sold half the memory in it, and then wondered why it took us a lot longer for the payroll software to complete running........
I fail to see the relevant usefulness of this to anyone....?
A lot of the replies seem to assume that they're part of the 1% and on top of that, that the remaining 1% of the net also contains all the sites they normally visit.
* If it does happen, the reason behind it happening (catastrophe of some sort or other) will be much more of a concern, so basically, who cares?
* If 99% of the 'Net goes down, on average it loses 99% of its value - It depends on what 1% of info. is left. (ie. is the 1% entirely pr0n, or something vaguely useful like global climate statistics?)
* If it goes down to a major exploit or bug / 'feature' it will be fixed in a reasonably timely manner. (Even if you have to use the phone to book your airline tickets to reach an unaffected part of the 'net, solve the problem and then begin a mass sneakernet / replication strategy to get everyone else back up).
About the only useful thing is in theory the Eskimo's and Greenlanders will be able to talk to the Tasmanian's & New Zealanders about a solution to the alien invasion / meteor hit / whatever.
Chances are us remaining 99% have other things to worry about.
(1) Lack of respect. The scenario I've seen over and over again over the years is the ego tripping manager whose internal narrative is "I get things done despite the miserable cretins who work for me." The people you want to retain do not put up with nonsense like that.
I actually think this can apply both ways. I've currently just taken up a new position at slightly lower pay because I have no respect for my (ex-)current manager (or her manager, or the manager above that even). Lots of decisions being made without any proper thought or planning applied, and she's constantly at meetings which have little to no impact on the work we're actually doing. What's more after the latest restructure, she'll now be managing even more people....
Having a manager that you can actually talk to makes a big difference, especially if they're interested in developing their staffs' careers (This has been confirmed by a lot of the other posts in an indirect way...).
One has to wonder about the statistics a little bit...
"Surprisingly, more than 99 percent of the local councils responded. While the company has yet to finalize its tally, it now believes there are as many as 13,000 public toilets in the country, or 4.4 per square mile."
Considering Australia is 90% desert, I don't think this quite holds true... what's more, we don't have miles, we have kilometers(!).
A couple of other useful statistics could include:
- Occupancy rate (% change its occupied when you need to go).
- Cleanliness factor (Maybe you don't need to go THAT badly after all...)
- Graffiti rating (how much interesting reading material is provided to pass the time).
(Hmmm, Does that mean we have to do away with our wonderful "Last Aussie Dunny for 350kms" signs?)
Another reviewer (local to us Aussies), basically comes up with the same opinion. The review has some nice pictures, a good discussion as to the pro's (negligible) and con's (many) of RDRAM,
why Rambus is evil, and a lot of links for further info as to why.
One other point to make about the graphics is that they're dynamically morphing over time into a representation of whether your actions are preceived as being evil or good (hence the name black and white).
If you're evil the landscape will blacken, trees will die, people will wander around moaning etc. etc, and if you're good, there'll be lush green grass, flowers, bunnies etc.
The key thing is as mentioned above its all gradual - so you might currently be perceived by the game as slightly evil, so there'll just be the occasional dead tree and patch of bare earth, or in the opposite case a flower here and there..
Its a pity the original poster didn't actual give a brief overview on what the real boundaries the game is trying to push... It's quite understandable that a lot of people will simply check out the screenshots and think they're pretty much in line with todays games. Shrug and move elsewhere...
The boundaries that the game is pushing are mainly on the AI side and user interface side as well - its definitely worth checking out the articles, comments, interviews and particularly some of the later movies if you have the bandwidth.
One other point to make about the graphics is that they're dynamically morphing over time into a representation of whether your actions are evil or good (hence the name black and white). The landscape will blacken and people will wander around moaning if your evil, and the place
Your creature is also the same - there's an oldish animation of a lion morphing from good to evil out there as well.
Other interesting features which weren't mentioned by others at the time of writing:
- The graphics engine maintains a constant frame rate. In order to do this it may lose detail, but it basically allows you to zoom in and out of the game very smoothly from the above the clouds right down to close ups of your followers.
- Depending on the software on your machine, your followers may end up with the names of people in your address book (annoyed at Joe Bloggs at the moment? Relieve your stress by finding him in the game and throwing him off a cliff..)
- Your creature will at some stage start building its own homepage which can be published on the web with what it thinks the major happenings were in its life etc. etc.
- Your creature can also 'interface' to the 'outside world' and check and read your email to you and do other weird and wonderful things...
- You can 'train' your creature to like (and dance to) or hate certain music. (Peter mentions one of his creature liked Moby and hated the Spice Girls....)
- The Gesture recognition stuff - to cast spells you have to 'draw' a symbol with your mouse (eg. a star), with your drawing ability possibly affecting how successful the spell will be...
- On the multiplayer side the creature / creature interaction is potentially even more interesting where they can trade, teach each other stuff as well as the usual beat each other up approach...
The game is basically interaction and exploration with a loose RPG'ish storyline to follow when and if you wish... You're god - you do what you want.
As mentioned by Kevin Kelly in Out of Control - playing 'god' can be very addictive.
Slashdot Mirror
Can you imagine....
Instead of just being busted for having copies of Penthouse etc. under the mattress, poor young Johnny is now equally liable for PC Gamer? Not to mention the stress his Quake IV CD would cause his parents.....
Anyway, what stops kids seeing the games in arcades? In the main street in Sydney you're able to see gun games all the time from the street without going in at all. (Although lately they've been overshadowed by those dancing / drum playing machine things)...
I remember at one stage you couldn't walk down the street ever without hearing "Nice shootin', try another one!" from some Western game which was bleeding edge arcade technology at the time.
You know, Chuck. I think we'd better Chuck your name Chuck, into every sentence we can Chuck it into...
I mean Chuck, don't you find that everyone carrys on a bit Chuck, especially about how much wood can a woodChuck Chuck if a woodChuck would Chuck wood.
Huh, Chuck? ....Chuck???
I don't think the majority didn't want a republic - they just didn't want the model set forward by the current government, and therefore rejected it in order to vote for a more reasonable model next time around. (For example: Where the people actually get to choose the president, not the current government).
Again, more bone-headedness from Australian politicians, but one the whole I don't think they're any better or worse on average than anywhere else in the world, even if their local policies aren't attractive to MS...
Also for the record, keep in mind the following
Insufficient investment incentives:
Totally agree, reducing the concession rate was a very bad move (not just for IT, in general). As others have pointed out, this is *business* R&D - Australia is very competitive on the academic side. We do occasionally come up with some good stuff, but end up selling out to overseas due to lack of local support.
Inadequate infrastructure and bandwith:
Cable prices have been a lot more reasonable since about Feb. last year (2000) once there were two players. ASDL is now rolling out with a lot more people becoming able to access the 'net at reasonable speeds. As pointed out elsewhere in the article "...other studies had found that Australians had good access to bandwidth and a high level of Internet penetration."
Insufficient support for information economy R&D:
Redundant, should be rolled into point 1 - Investment incentives
Failure to create local centres of excellence:
Again, probably partly due to population levels / distribution. Without a resonable definition on exactly how we failed its hard to responds to this point. Anyone would benefit from carrying out MS's generic suggestion, USA included.
Failure to protect against piracy:
Don't know enough to respond to this aside from the fact its probably partly due to Australia being a target market for Asian pirates due to its locality. Why they supposedly think our laws make it easier to counterfeit stuff I have no idea...?
A skills shortage:
And who doesn't have a skills shortage?
Technology security:
More meaningless waffle no more or less relevant to Australia than anywhere else in the world.
Lack of access to capital:
Journalist is getting desperate at this point I think. More meaningless, generic stuff. Again, can be equally true for anywhere in the world. We've actually recently had the corporate tax rate reduced by 3% anyway? Just because MS doesn't see us as an attractive investment doesn't mean we should change "Australia's banking and finance laws". Sheesh.
Inability of some groups to have Internet access:
Woo, even more generic, unsubstantied stuff - which groups? Where? Who? Oh, and thanks for the tip, never would have thought of that....
Again, this is journalism at its finest, rush something to press, make it sound good, hope the reader doesn't actually critically think about what they've written and whether its meaningful or not.
The only potential good thing about this is that the Australian Government might do something positive about this (but then again, they might turn round and do something stupid, they've done it before....).
I think you probably mean Edward de Bono?
A couple of other interesting related books:
I think you're asking the wrong question, you really need to ask something along the lines of "I would like to do X, Y, or Z as a job - which would be more suitable : CS / CIS / Something else?"
Instead you could consider picking something you enjoy and take technical subjects. As long as you have a (semi-)relevant qualification for the field of interest you'd like to work in you should be better off.
Work out what you want to do, what sort of company you want to work for (ie. Big Financial Corporations or Consultancy firms or fims into hardware level stuff etc.) and then work out which degree is most relevant.
Also, keep in mind a lot can change in the time between starting and finishing your degree... but hopefully you can adapt to the change.
In my first job I had to program on Alpha Micros, and do the backups to video tape as well. Due to the 'reliability' of the media, I think the backup process effectively recorded the same block of information numerous times in a row to make sure at least one was correct!?!
I wonder whether this would be a more valid solution to help drastically reduce the error rate mentioned in another post? (Obviously it would reduce the amount of storage in multiples given how reliable you wanted it to be).
However, our company didn't have the greatest VCR or tape brands either, (although we had a large number of tapes). I don't think we ever had to reinstall anything though.
One other amusing sidenote was the fact that the fridge sized machine ran on a 680x0 (10 or 20?), and my Amiga at home had roughly the same computing power. The stupidest thing was that the guy who owned the system sold half the memory in it, and then wondered why it took us a lot longer for the payroll software to complete running........
I fail to see the relevant usefulness of this to anyone....?
A lot of the replies seem to assume that they're part of the 1% and on top of that, that the remaining 1% of the net also contains all the sites they normally visit.
* If it does happen, the reason behind it happening (catastrophe of some sort or other) will be much more of a concern, so basically, who cares?
* If 99% of the 'Net goes down, on average it loses 99% of its value - It depends on what 1% of info. is left. (ie. is the 1% entirely pr0n, or something vaguely useful like global climate statistics?)
* If it goes down to a major exploit or bug / 'feature' it will be fixed in a reasonably timely manner. (Even if you have to use the phone to book your airline tickets to reach an unaffected part of the 'net, solve the problem and then begin a mass sneakernet / replication strategy to get everyone else back up).
About the only useful thing is in theory the Eskimo's and Greenlanders will be able to talk to the Tasmanian's & New Zealanders about a solution to the alien invasion / meteor hit / whatever.
Chances are us remaining 99% have other things to worry about.
I actually think this can apply both ways. I've currently just taken up a new position at slightly lower pay because I have no respect for my (ex-)current manager (or her manager, or the manager above that even). Lots of decisions being made without any proper thought or planning applied, and she's constantly at meetings which have little to no impact on the work we're actually doing. What's more after the latest restructure, she'll now be managing even more people....
Having a manager that you can actually talk to makes a big difference, especially if they're interested in developing their staffs' careers (This has been confirmed by a lot of the other posts in an indirect way...).
"Surprisingly, more than 99 percent of the local councils responded. While the company has yet to finalize its tally, it now believes there are as many as 13,000 public toilets in the country, or 4.4 per square mile."
Considering Australia is 90% desert, I don't think this quite holds true... what's more, we don't have miles, we have kilometers(!).
A couple of other useful statistics could include:
- Occupancy rate (% change its occupied when you need to go).
- Cleanliness factor (Maybe you don't need to go THAT badly after all...)
- Graffiti rating (how much interesting reading material is provided to pass the time).
(Hmmm, Does that mean we have to do away with our wonderful "Last Aussie Dunny for 350kms" signs?)
Another reviewer (local to us Aussies), basically comes up with the same opinion. The review has some nice pictures, a good discussion as to the pro's (negligible) and con's (many) of RDRAM,
why Rambus is evil, and a lot of links for further info as to why.
http://www.dansdata.com/p4.htm
The (key) bit that went missing
One other point to make about the graphics is that they're dynamically morphing over time into a representation of whether your actions are preceived as being evil or good (hence the name black and white).
If you're evil the landscape will blacken, trees will die, people will wander around moaning etc. etc, and if you're good, there'll be lush green grass, flowers, bunnies etc.
The key thing is as mentioned above its all gradual - so you might currently be perceived by the game as slightly evil, so there'll just be the occasional dead tree and patch of bare earth, or in the opposite case a flower here and there..
Its a pity the original poster didn't actual give a brief overview on what the real boundaries the game is trying to push... It's quite understandable that a lot of people will simply check out the screenshots and think they're pretty much in line with todays games. Shrug and move elsewhere...
The boundaries that the game is pushing are mainly on the AI side and user interface side as well - its definitely worth checking out the articles, comments, interviews and particularly some of the later movies if you have the bandwidth.
One other point to make about the graphics is that they're dynamically morphing over time into a representation of whether your actions are evil or good (hence the name black and white). The landscape will blacken and people will wander around moaning if your evil, and the place
Your creature is also the same - there's an oldish animation of a lion morphing from good to evil out there as well.
Other interesting features which weren't mentioned by others at the time of writing:
- The graphics engine maintains a constant frame rate. In order to do this it may lose detail, but it basically allows you to zoom in and out of the game very smoothly from the above the clouds right down to close ups of your followers.
- Depending on the software on your machine, your followers may end up with the names of people in your address book (annoyed at Joe Bloggs at the moment? Relieve your stress by finding him in the game and throwing him off a cliff..)
- Your creature will at some stage start building its own homepage which can be published on the web with what it thinks the major happenings were in its life etc. etc.
- Your creature can also 'interface' to the 'outside world' and check and read your email to you and do other weird and wonderful things...
- You can 'train' your creature to like (and dance to) or hate certain music. (Peter mentions one of his creature liked Moby and hated the Spice Girls....)
- The Gesture recognition stuff - to cast spells you have to 'draw' a symbol with your mouse (eg. a star), with your drawing ability possibly affecting how successful the spell will be...
- On the multiplayer side the creature / creature interaction is potentially even more interesting where they can trade, teach each other stuff as well as the usual beat each other up approach...
The game is basically interaction and exploration with a loose RPG'ish storyline to follow when and if you wish... You're god - you do what you want.
As mentioned by Kevin Kelly in Out of Control - playing 'god' can be very addictive.