You can teach them most aspects of game development without making them write a single line of code. My recommendation to you is to use Atmosphir for your project which allows users to make their own virtual worlds and levels very easily using a simple, yet very flexible design tool. In that site i've seen creations by 12 yo kids that would blow your mind.
I'm not sure if you're claiming to be paid 150 ARS (= $47 US) an hour or $150 US an hour, but both seem high, the latter unbelievably so.
It's hard to believe you make $47/hr (almost $100K/yr) in a country with such a cheap cost of living, since that would also be a decent salary in the US where a house might cost you $4-500K. I charge 150 ARS (47.32 US) an hour and most of my work is from offshore companies (currently i do work for only one "local" company which is owned by a big financial group in Germany), that's why i'm "worth" so much. Some people realize that they can get the same experience for half (or less) the price and that's why they call me, or an indian or a chinese guy.
I'm located in South America (AR) and i charge $150 (in our local currency, which is pesos) an hour for my work.
For other companies living in the same country as me that's an outrageous amount of money, but for an offshore company with a currency worth 3 times more (or 5 times, if it pays in euros) is very cheap.
That the currency is favorable for us, third-world countries, is not our fault, nor it demonstrates a lack of "expertise" nor "quality" in our fields.
Oh, and one more thing. I've been programming for 9 long years but i have never earned a degree but when i work with engineers or computer scientists from my country or others that are less experienced they usually don't know what they are doing very well. They usually have a lot of problems understanding that theory is VERY different from practice.
But i have to tell you though, even i agree that it's a very dumb thing to do to put a 25 year old as an IT Manager.
AFAIK the acronym FVWM means "Fucking Virtual Windows Manager", or something like that. I recall reading that in the source code a couple of years ago.
I may be wrong, but from what i have gathered from the article i have come to this conclusion:
If this new law get passed on to the congress, you can say bye bye to the following industries:
Movie Studios: If they play a movie at a theater, the theater becomes the owner of the intellectual property that THEY are broadcasting. So..no more movies AT ALL.
Movie and Music Channels: Say goodbye to HBO, MTV (Well, i would'nt mind about that one:P) Movie City, Cinemax, just to name a few, unless musicians and actors are willing to resign to their IP.
Music Radios: As musicians would be the ones willing to keep THEIR IP, radios would not be able to play ANY music at all.
TiVo: Obvious reasons.
Multimedia Internet Websites: YouTube, Google Video, iTunes, the upcoming URGE...even MySpace...and i could go on all day long naming websites that use copyrighted multimedia content.
Even News channels/radios/newspapers/websites like CNN or the NYT would be limited to broadcast THEIR news only. And say goodbye to Google News too...
I can't believe that your goverment is so fucking paranoid to even THINK in something like this. This is definitelly NOT the way to go.
Wake up America, you are shooting yourself in the foot. You have to find some sort of limitation for this thing, even a two year old can tell you how wrong this is in so many levels.
What happened to "the land of the free"? Or is it "the land where big companies have free will"? (I know it doesn't rhyme but i'm no rapper either)
Before the year 2000 one peso was worth one dollar. When a political crisis ocurred in december of that year, the dollar went to 3 pesos, but the income rates stayed the same.
To us, the costs tripled because they remained in their dollar values, so if you had 50.000 in your bank account 6 years ago, after december of the year 2000, you lost 100.000 pesos.
Logic or not, that's how economy works in this country.
Down here in Argentina, 1 dollar costs about 3 pesos (our local currency), so let's say that i am the owner of an small startup company that needs to produce things (in this case graphics).
What's the price tag for photoshop in the US? 450? 500 USD? Well, multiply that by 3 and you are paying 3 times more (1500 pesos) for ONE piece of software. If i get 4500 pesos per month and after paying all the bills (let's say 2 employees) i only keep 1500 in my pocket, do you think that anyone in their right mind would pay all that money (1500 * 3 machines, just for photoshop alone) for just one piece of software?
And sorry, but no, in the professional graphics world you can't use GIMP to make your productions.
Here's a list of all the software you need to be a professional web developer, just to give you an idea of what i'm talking about:
Macromedia Studio (Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver): US $999
Adobe Illustrator: US $499
Adobe Photoshop: US $649
Zend Studio: US $249
Navicat SQL Client: US $168.00
That's US $2564, or in our local currency: $7692, plus taxes (21%) = $9307 pesos, plus the import costs...calculate a total of 10.000 pesos in production software licenses..
Imagine what the exchange prices are in poorer countries like Vietnam or Indonesia where 1 dollar costs like 20 in their local currency.
The world would be a perfect place if we all had the same currency, unfortunatelly that's not the case and to my opinion, that's the main reason why people pirate software.
Me and my friends run a fairly successful gaming site in spanish (alkon.com.ar, 250.000 visitors a month) and the reason why we make game previews is to give our users insights of how a game is going to look like.
Example, let's say we got a letter from Game Developer X about a game called Y. We test it and then we post our thoughts about it, for instance. "We like the weapon models and the stages, but there's something about the story that made us feel like we are playing yet another first person shooter like Half Life. This game would totally rock if they relate A to B".
We never say anything about the bugs we find because, after all, it's a preview, not the final release.
We usually turn down the offers of Company X that pays us to make really good comments about an upcoming game, but that's just us. Other companies may follow more greedy philosophies.
Not to mention the fact that it means fewer calls to you for tech support because they can't get rid of bonzai buddy. Or fewer attack zombies wandering the internet to bring down your company's network.
It's Bonzi Buddy, buddy, and he's my best friend, so watch your words.
You mean that they knew how to make a kick ass search engine but they didn't know HTML? Look at the google logo, you think they didn't know how to use the GIMP?
My opinion is that thought in the functionality over the "eye candy".
I'm sure you are from Argentina, i am argentinian too and i know people that works in the construction business. There is a clearly difference between an architect and a "civil engineer". The difference is that architects makes the structural calculations and the design (including the water and gas pipes locations) and the civil engineer chooses the materials to use (concrete density, etc.), supervises the construction and, sometimes, he also is in charge of making the electrical installations. They are both meant to work together as a team.
btw, 20% of my family members are civil engineers.
Well, what can i say? it uses the IE engine (the one embedded on windows, of course, so it's not "standalone" as they claim it to be) so from a security point of view is useless, so i'm sorry tech support guys, you'll continue to get calls from people with spyware and viruses problems.
On the other hand, this thing is really easy to use and it looks great on every aspect. I don't know if you have noticed that there's a plus sign on the top left-hand corner, which can be used to open a new tab.
If you are looking for eye candy and ease of use, download it, it won't let you down. But beware, remember that it uses the IE engine so be careful when you browse.
Now, the bad thing about it is that there is no option to disable the installation of the desktop search feature, i already have google desktop and i didn't want it to get installed on my system.
From a developer's point of view, it's nothing more than a visual basic application with nifty graphics branded by AOL, but i have to admit that i love the theme. Too bad they didn't use gecko, i don't know why they bought netscape after all.
This machine (the one i'm using right now) is running Windows XP Pro, on a very low quality (the brand name is Mercury) motherboard, a 900 mhz duron processor overclocked to 1.2 Ghz and 312 Megs of RAM. It's one of the cheapest boxes you can get on the market. It has been online for more than a year without rebooting, i don't have SP2 installed, i don't have a firewall, both FTP and HTTP ports are open and i use it every single day to browse the net (which includes p0rn sites full of dialers and spyware programs, of course), listen to music, download files, music, videos, etc. and develop and test my web applications.
All this facts should make my machine to be unusable at this point, but hey, i have all the visual themes enabled (i love eye-candy applications), no spyware or viruses whatsoever and it's really REALLY fast.
The only thing i did was to disable the RPC service which solved almost all my virus-related problems (Sasser, Blaster, etc.) and i obviously use firefox as my default web browser.
Don't get me wrong, i'm no windows fan, i use it because i have to (and because iTunes, Flash and 3D Studio MAX are not availible for Linux) but i didn't have any problems for almost an entire year.
On the other hand, i have another machine running Fedora Core 3 and some times i get hardware compatibily problems and both xfce and gnome likes to freeze once in a while (i know it's not a linux kernel problem, but i'm taking the linux word as the whole system).
I'm no IT pro, but most of the slashdot crowd is, so why is it that i don't have any problems with windows at all and most people had so many bad experiences with it? Am i the only lucky guy that never had a single (SERIOUS) problem with windows on earth?
The Phantom Game Service will be delivered over broadband to a Windows XP Embedded-based receiver that sits with other devices in the room where family members go for entertainment.
I have seen a video demonstrating the latest products from "Redmond's finest" and that sounds a lot like Windows Media Center edition. Of course, if the device needs Windows MCE in order to operate, Microsoft also has to be there to show up their product to the public. If this is correct, the phantom will only work if windows mce works, but that's just a theory.
it only seems to be a patent describing ways to view or manipulate 3 dimensional images in a web brower
That sounds like VRML. That plugin allows you to import a file made in 3D Studio Max and show it in a website using an interface that allows you to rotate, zoom and move around a 3D Viewport of the 3D Model. It would be a shame if that technology is no longer compatible with IExplorer because it doesn't work with mozilla products.
It also may affect many macromedia shockwave/flash games/applications.
Slashdot Mirror
You can teach them most aspects of game development without making them write a single line of code. My recommendation to you is to use Atmosphir for your project which allows users to make their own virtual worlds and levels very easily using a simple, yet very flexible design tool. In that site i've seen creations by 12 yo kids that would blow your mind.
I didn't read TFA but let me guess: This "IceCube" telescope is being built by Doctor Dre, funded by an Arabian Prince and it should be Eazy-E.
Yella(t) your friends about this, looks pretty cool.
They get the same "expertise" for less money.
I'm located in South America (AR) and i charge $150 (in our local currency, which is pesos) an hour for my work.
For other companies living in the same country as me that's an outrageous amount of money, but for an offshore company with a currency worth 3 times more (or 5 times, if it pays in euros) is very cheap.
That the currency is favorable for us, third-world countries, is not our fault, nor it demonstrates a lack of "expertise" nor "quality" in our fields.
Oh, and one more thing. I've been programming for 9 long years but i have never earned a degree but when i work with engineers or computer scientists from my country or others that are less experienced they usually don't know what they are doing very well. They usually have a lot of problems understanding that theory is VERY different from practice.
But i have to tell you though, even i agree that it's a very dumb thing to do to put a 25 year old as an IT Manager.
AFAIK the acronym FVWM means "Fucking Virtual Windows Manager", or something like that. I recall reading that in the source code a couple of years ago.
I may be wrong, but from what i have gathered from the article i have come to this conclusion:
:P) Movie City, Cinemax, just to name a few, unless musicians and actors are willing to resign to their IP.
If this new law get passed on to the congress, you can say bye bye to the following industries:
Movie Studios: If they play a movie at a theater, the theater becomes the owner of the intellectual property that THEY are broadcasting. So..no more movies AT ALL.
Movie and Music Channels: Say goodbye to HBO, MTV (Well, i would'nt mind about that one
Music Radios: As musicians would be the ones willing to keep THEIR IP, radios would not be able to play ANY music at all.
TiVo: Obvious reasons.
Multimedia Internet Websites: YouTube, Google Video, iTunes, the upcoming URGE...even MySpace...and i could go on all day long naming websites that use copyrighted multimedia content.
Even News channels/radios/newspapers/websites like CNN or the NYT would be limited to broadcast THEIR news only. And say goodbye to Google News too...
I can't believe that your goverment is so fucking paranoid to even THINK in something like this. This is definitelly NOT the way to go.
Wake up America, you are shooting yourself in the foot. You have to find some sort of limitation for this thing, even a two year old can tell you how wrong this is in so many levels.
What happened to "the land of the free"? Or is it "the land where big companies have free will"? (I know it doesn't rhyme but i'm no rapper either)
Just my two cents.
Andrew.
Before the year 2000 one peso was worth one dollar. When a political crisis ocurred in december of that year, the dollar went to 3 pesos, but the income rates stayed the same.
To us, the costs tripled because they remained in their dollar values, so if you had 50.000 in your bank account 6 years ago, after december of the year 2000, you lost 100.000 pesos.
Logic or not, that's how economy works in this country.
Down here in Argentina, 1 dollar costs about 3 pesos (our local currency), so let's say that i am the owner of an small startup company that needs to produce things (in this case graphics). What's the price tag for photoshop in the US? 450? 500 USD? Well, multiply that by 3 and you are paying 3 times more (1500 pesos) for ONE piece of software. If i get 4500 pesos per month and after paying all the bills (let's say 2 employees) i only keep 1500 in my pocket, do you think that anyone in their right mind would pay all that money (1500 * 3 machines, just for photoshop alone) for just one piece of software?
And sorry, but no, in the professional graphics world you can't use GIMP to make your productions.
Here's a list of all the software you need to be a professional web developer, just to give you an idea of what i'm talking about:
Macromedia Studio (Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver): US $999
Adobe Illustrator: US $499
Adobe Photoshop: US $649
Zend Studio: US $249
Navicat SQL Client: US $168.00
That's US $2564, or in our local currency: $7692, plus taxes (21%) = $9307 pesos, plus the import costs...calculate a total of 10.000 pesos in production software licenses..
Imagine what the exchange prices are in poorer countries like Vietnam or Indonesia where 1 dollar costs like 20 in their local currency.
The world would be a perfect place if we all had the same currency, unfortunatelly that's not the case and to my opinion, that's the main reason why people pirate software.
Me and my friends run a fairly successful gaming site in spanish (alkon.com.ar, 250.000 visitors a month) and the reason why we make game previews is to give our users insights of how a game is going to look like.
Example, let's say we got a letter from Game Developer X about a game called Y. We test it and then we post our thoughts about it, for instance. "We like the weapon models and the stages, but there's something about the story that made us feel like we are playing yet another first person shooter like Half Life. This game would totally rock if they relate A to B".
We never say anything about the bugs we find because, after all, it's a preview, not the final release.
We usually turn down the offers of Company X that pays us to make really good comments about an upcoming game, but that's just us. Other companies may follow more greedy philosophies.
Andy.
C# can be compiled without any problems in almost all platforms
Don't forget that we also talk of alternative ways of making profit in 3-5 simple steps.
Not to mention the fact that it means fewer calls to you for tech support because they can't get rid of bonzai buddy. Or fewer attack zombies wandering the internet to bring down your company's network.
It's Bonzi Buddy, buddy, and he's my best friend, so watch your words.
Why did they call it that way? Because it's a magnet for viruses and spyware? (Insert bad joke music )
You mean that they knew how to make a kick ass search engine but they didn't know HTML? Look at the google logo, you think they didn't know how to use the GIMP?
My opinion is that thought in the functionality over the "eye candy".
The name of that movie is Swordfish.
Fuck Australia. Fuck America. I'm going somewhere where the government has integrity.
Good luck finding that.
I'm sure you are from Argentina, i am argentinian too and i know people that works in the construction business. There is a clearly difference between an architect and a "civil engineer". The difference is that architects makes the structural calculations and the design (including the water and gas pipes locations) and the civil engineer chooses the materials to use (concrete density, etc.), supervises the construction and, sometimes, he also is in charge of making the electrical installations.
They are both meant to work together as a team.
btw, 20% of my family members are civil engineers.
geekypedia sound even better.
I can't wait to put my hands on this baby, buy a really BIG BIG cooler and overclock it!
Well, what can i say? it uses the IE engine (the one embedded on windows, of course, so it's not "standalone" as they claim it to be) so from a security point of view is useless, so i'm sorry tech support guys, you'll continue to get calls from people with spyware and viruses problems. On the other hand, this thing is really easy to use and it looks great on every aspect. I don't know if you have noticed that there's a plus sign on the top left-hand corner, which can be used to open a new tab.
If you are looking for eye candy and ease of use, download it, it won't let you down. But beware, remember that it uses the IE engine so be careful when you browse.
Now, the bad thing about it is that there is no option to disable the installation of the desktop search feature, i already have google desktop and i didn't want it to get installed on my system.
From a developer's point of view, it's nothing more than a visual basic application with nifty graphics branded by AOL, but i have to admit that i love the theme. Too bad they didn't use gecko, i don't know why they bought netscape after all.
This is why Java is both safe and fast.
Safe... maybe, but since when Java is FAST?
This machine (the one i'm using right now) is running Windows XP Pro, on a very low quality (the brand name is Mercury) motherboard, a 900 mhz duron processor overclocked to 1.2 Ghz and 312 Megs of RAM. It's one of the cheapest boxes you can get on the market.
It has been online for more than a year without rebooting, i don't have SP2 installed, i don't have a firewall, both FTP and HTTP ports are open and i use it every single day to browse the net (which includes p0rn sites full of dialers and spyware programs, of course), listen to music, download files, music, videos, etc. and develop and test my web applications.
All this facts should make my machine to be unusable at this point, but hey, i have all the visual themes enabled (i love eye-candy applications), no spyware or viruses whatsoever and it's really REALLY fast.
The only thing i did was to disable the RPC service which solved almost all my virus-related problems (Sasser, Blaster, etc.) and i obviously use firefox as my default web browser.
Don't get me wrong, i'm no windows fan, i use it because i have to (and because iTunes, Flash and 3D Studio MAX are not availible for Linux) but i didn't have any problems for almost an entire year.
On the other hand, i have another machine running Fedora Core 3 and some times i get hardware compatibily problems and both xfce and gnome likes to freeze once in a while (i know it's not a linux kernel problem, but i'm taking the linux word as the whole system).
I'm no IT pro, but most of the slashdot crowd is, so why is it that i don't have any problems with windows at all and most people had so many bad experiences with it? Am i the only lucky guy that never had a single (SERIOUS) problem with windows on earth?
The Phantom Game Service will be delivered over broadband to a Windows XP Embedded-based receiver that sits with other devices in the room where family members go for entertainment.
I have seen a video demonstrating the latest products from "Redmond's finest" and that sounds a lot like Windows Media Center edition.
Of course, if the device needs Windows MCE in order to operate, Microsoft also has to be there to show up their product to the public.
If this is correct, the phantom will only work if windows mce works, but that's just a theory.
Just my $0.02
Transparent electronics is an emerging technology which aims to produce invisible electronic circuits
As far as i know, air is invisible, oxigen is invisible, radiation is invisible..Electronic circuits are just tranparent.
it only seems to be a patent describing ways to view or manipulate 3 dimensional images in a web brower
That sounds like VRML. That plugin allows you to import a file made in 3D Studio Max and show it in a website using an interface that allows you to rotate, zoom and move around a 3D Viewport of the 3D Model. It would be a shame if that technology is no longer compatible with IExplorer because it doesn't work with mozilla products.
It also may affect many macromedia shockwave/flash games/applications.