Thanks for the headsup on Bink. It's interesting that I didn't get a spam from Smacker announcing their new goods since, as a licensee, they've got all my info... or maybe they're waiting to complete Beta...
Anybody in-the-know technically out there that can give us a blow-by-blow of how SMJPEG compares to Smacker, the current "standard" for video in games?
I'm curious as to why they decided to develop their own codec (which has got to be more than a couple of nights' coca cola-frenzied hacking) instead of going with the tried-and-true. Smacker licenses only cost around $1K last I knew...
Whoa. I obviously failed to make my point. My bad.
It's the BIG projects that DO require efficient, accurate communication. And, as I think more about my experience in this particular area, the more I believe that there is really a communication problem with foreign workers.
Software is not assembly line work, regardless of how many clueless managers out there treat it as such. You can't show some Chinese or Indian person "here's how you assemble this widget, watch me" then turn him/her loose to crank em out by the bushel.
Let me quote what I consider to be a brilliant passage from Fred Brooks: "Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human construct, because no two parts are alike... In this respect software systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where repeated elements abound. ... scaling-up of a software entity is not merely a repetition of the same elements in larger size; it is necessarily an increase in the number of different elements. In most cases, the elements interact with each other in some nonlinear fashion, and the complexity of the whole increases much more than linearly."
When you say "churning out function after function" you're describing a state of development antithetical to Brooks' depiction. Which is not to say there aren't plenty of clueless shops out there doing exactly that, producing seriously gnarly software.
In order to AVOID the assembly line mentality, we need good communication between team members. Good communication does not reside purely in language skills either, like I suggested in my original post. A plethora of subtle, non-verbal communication cues are continuously being exchanged during conversation, and cultural context has enormous impact on the transmission and reception of these cues. Let me quote from Negroponte "Spoken words carry a vast amount of information beyond the words themselves. While talking, one can convey passion, carcasm, exasperation, equivocation, subservience, and exhaustion--all with the exact same words."
I'm thinking of a specific instance from experience where I had major trouble communicating with one of my contractors (we'll give him the fictitious name Alvin.) Alvin was literally FOB -- fresh off the boat. Now, from a certain standpoint you could say that Alvin was reasonably fluent in English, in the sense that he understood the factual content and literal meaning of most of my speech. But the real problem was that *I* could never tell if he was really following what I was saying because Alvin continuously transmitted confusing non-verbal body cues to me. He would bobble his head a certain way, he would make weird hand gestures, etc. which were completely alien to me, and as it turns out, my non-verbal cues were probably alien to him as well.
Now in our biz where we have ENOUGH trouble already making sure that everybody understands (to his or her technical limits) what's going on, where we're going, and how we're going to get there, this type of relationship was TOTALLY FRUSTRATING for me, and ultimately a complete failure because Alvin never accomplished much. Whether the fault was his or mine (probably both culpable), the fact of the matter was that we were NOT good at communicating with each other.
So let's tie this diatribe back into the main point: are these guys UNDERPAID? Well the whole concept of whether someone is underpaid or overpaid derives directly from the value the individual contributes to the organization.
The empirical evidence that I've seen suggests that foreign workers make LESS. But I think that's partly a function of the fact that integrating such a worker into an existing team is a tougher proposition.
>>WO
P.S. The "linguistic style" of my earlier post seems to have provoked quite a response LOLOL. It was probably a result of having been on some Quake/HL boards immediately prior to writing it, so I waz in dat gamez mode, u know, d00d?:o) Whatever.
I'm always on the lookout to beef up my crew -- therez always more work than we can deal with -- and the word in the singles-barz-of-the-techjob-scene iz definitely that the H1B guyz are cheaper and willing and able to do the coding sweat shop scene. Yessir, this ain't no myth.
Now the exact causez/rationalez/reasonz/theoriez for WHY thatz true are not self-evident. No doubt each such hypothesis bringz its own element of truth and relevance.
The problem with these guyz from my perspective is that, on an elite dev team, communication between team memberz is vital vital vital. Did I say vital?? And lotz of these guyz, their Eengleesh, eetz not zo gud.
Devt vets know that on bigger projects, inter-team relationz r just as important as raw size of ur technical schlong. Just look at the data from DeMarco, McConnell, Constantine, DeGrace, Pressman, etc etc etc for those who know how 2 read.
So thatz why I've held off bringing any on board here, although I've interviewed a couple of them.
While I'm on the subject, this may be naughtynaughty and feel free to spank my ass if so, but let me just say that there are always slotz open on my elite core team for web devheads that rocknroll. And I mean u dream in SQL or whatever. (Remind me to tell u about the nightmare I had a few dayz ago about triple indirected pointers... and no it wasn't MY design...)
>>Waxon dudes
Re:Bean was cool, but what about Alai?
on
Ender's Shadow
·
· Score: 2
Mazer Rackham was my personal favorite "supporting cast." Here you have a man faced with the prospect of guiding a presumably brilliant child -- Ender -- who is also presumably mankind's last hope for survival -- to full fruition of Ender's potential.
Is that a job from hell or what? In a very real sense then, mankind's hope for survival REALLY rests with Mazer, because Mazer is the man who will make or break Ender. In other words, from a certain point of view Ender is the weapon that humanity has developed to defend themselves, but Mazer must "wield" that weapon properly.
That intense part-adversarial, part-mentor/father-figure psychological relationship between Mazer and Ender was highly intriguing and, imho, could have been more fully explored. Another book would have been a great vehicle for that . . . now Bean, it seems it's just like Ender all over again. With Mazer we get a TOTALLY different story.
After all, Mazer was certainly not in the dark about any part of the situation like Ender was. And yet he has to, in some way, subordinate his own brilliant ability to that of Ender. It would take a pretty remarkable individual to do that effectively. The whole situation is similar to the storyline in the film "Searching for Bobby Fisher."
Re:Ender's Game - The Movie
on
Ender's Shadow
·
· Score: 1
Dozens of ~6 to ~14 year olds running around in a movie that probably can't help but turn itself into one aimed at children.
It doesn't necessarily have to be like this. Dead Poet's Society was mostly kids (although older than 6-14) and it was not a "kiddie" film. Searching for Bobby Fisher focused on a brilliant kid and it was not a "kiddie" film.
More generally there have been one or two films based on well known novels that didn't turn out to well (harhar). We pretty much have to rely on the creative minds behind the film to adapt the strengths of the medium to the strengths of the story.
The superstructure of the plot development in E.G. reminds me quite a bit of . . .
Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.
Both E.G. and FMJ are conglomerations of two almost entirely separate stories -- a "boot camp" story and a "war" story (although E.G. ties its second act to its first one better than FMJ does, imho.) And another parallel I draw is that, in both works, I found the "boot camp" story more compelling and better written than the followup. The Battle School that Ender attends is a very involving piece of psychological drama. Not everybody will agree, merely stating my personal reaction to it.
Out of all of Mr. Card's works (and I've read nearly all of them) my personal favorite is "Worthing Saga." Now this is a GREAT book. IMHO I think Worthing Saga would make a better film or film series than the Ender storyline (and in fact I have a screenplay I'm working on heavily influenced by W.S.)
Worthing Saga takes tons of "typical" SF concepts and spins them in extremely interesting ways. For example, lots of SF lean on the "crygenic sleep" life-suspension device for space travel and other purposes. Card really explores this -- he creates an entire society around the impact such a technology would have on a culture, and the individuals within that culture. I haven't seen any other SF writers really think through the consequences of what is, on reflection, a form of limited immortality.
Another example is ESP powers -- surely nothing new by Card's time. But again he writes from a highly intriguing psychological standpoint of how such powers would affect individuals that had these powers, and how they might be viewed by others who didn't. And how such a collection of empowered people might evolve over a very long period of time. And interesting -- and of course intentional -- religious parallels (In this respect Julian May's Many-Colored Land series is a good exploration of a future society that revolves around esper-type abilities -- but let's not wander off the main point!)
Yet another example is mind-storage -- the ability to save your consciousness to a "deep freeze" for recall later. The protagonist reaches a very interesting moral crossroads with respect to a decision he must make engenered by this technology. You'll know what I mean when you read to that point.
First let me say, there was SUPPOSE to be a SMILEY attached to my last comment, meant as a light ending -- but without the smiley I came off looking like a self-righteous asshole -- SORRY!:o):o):o) Ok, repeat after me... RBL is not a government, nor is it a law, nor is it implimented by either of the above. The Black-holing of NSI will be a public action taken by the public.
This is exactly what I'm talking about - doesn't this seem precisely like mob lynching?
--
I would actually like to pose a question to clarify a point here: Suppose my ISP was an RBL "member." I go to NSI to try to register a new domain, and those of you who are familiar with the registration process know that you have to send an email based on their template.
Normally, the NSI automails a response indicating the success/failure of your registration request.
But if NSI was blocked, I would not receive this confirmation. Is that correct?
"They are pretty much daring us to blackhole them. The board of MAPS, LLC will make its final determination in the next few days, and if we do decide to blackhole NSI it's going to get ugly. As an interested party, we want you all to know what's happening."
Is Paul an attorney? I don't think so. Interpreting Emery's email as a "dare" strikes me as a somewhat juvenile attitude. The real danger of a weapon like RBL is, the more time and effort spent on creating such a weapon, the greater the temptation to resort to it. In other words, you spend years and ten thousand bucks training your Rottweiler attack dog, you naturally want to sic the dog on something to see how all that work paid off.
The additional danger of the juvenile attitudes of both Emery and Vixie here is the dick-measuring element. Without a doubt a lot of unsuspecting people will be confused, inconvenienced, and possibly hurt by an NSI blockade -- this would amount essentially to conviction without trial IMHO.
And when it comes down to it, I own many domains and I get the NSI spam, and is it SUCH a hardship to delete it? What kind of a geek are you if you can't figure out how to operate your own bloody mail filters?
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the headsup on Bink. It's interesting that I didn't get a spam from Smacker announcing their new goods since, as a licensee, they've got all my info ... or maybe they're waiting to complete Beta ...
I'll definitely check it out.
Anybody in-the-know technically out there that can give us a blow-by-blow of how SMJPEG compares to Smacker, the current "standard" for video in games?
...
I'm curious as to why they decided to develop their own codec (which has got to be more than a couple of nights' coca cola-frenzied hacking) instead of going with the tried-and-true. Smacker licenses only cost around $1K last I knew
Whoa. I obviously failed to make my point. My bad.
... In this respect software systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where repeated elements abound.
:o) Whatever.
It's the BIG projects that DO require efficient, accurate communication. And, as I think more about my experience in this particular area, the more I believe that there is really a communication problem with foreign workers.
Software is not assembly line work, regardless of how many clueless managers out there treat it as such. You can't show some Chinese or Indian person "here's how you assemble this widget, watch me" then turn him/her loose to crank em out by the bushel.
Let me quote what I consider to be a brilliant passage from Fred Brooks:
"Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human construct, because no two parts are alike
... scaling-up of a software entity is not merely a repetition of the same elements in larger size; it is necessarily an increase in the number of different elements. In most cases, the elements interact with each other in some nonlinear fashion, and the complexity of the whole increases much more than linearly."
When you say "churning out function after function" you're describing a state of development antithetical to Brooks' depiction. Which is not to say there aren't plenty of clueless shops out there doing exactly that, producing seriously gnarly software.
In order to AVOID the assembly line mentality, we need good communication between team members. Good communication does not reside purely in language skills either, like I suggested in my original post. A plethora of subtle, non-verbal communication cues are continuously being exchanged during conversation, and cultural context has enormous impact on the transmission and reception of these cues. Let me quote from Negroponte "Spoken words carry a vast amount of information beyond the words themselves. While talking, one can convey passion, carcasm, exasperation, equivocation, subservience, and exhaustion--all with the exact same words."
I'm thinking of a specific instance from experience where I had major trouble communicating with one of my contractors (we'll give him the fictitious name Alvin.) Alvin was literally FOB -- fresh off the boat. Now, from a certain standpoint you could say that Alvin was reasonably fluent in English, in the sense that he understood the factual content and literal meaning of most of my speech. But the real problem was that *I* could never tell if he was really following what I was saying because Alvin continuously transmitted confusing non-verbal body cues to me. He would bobble his head a certain way, he would make weird hand gestures, etc. which were completely alien to me, and as it turns out, my non-verbal cues were probably alien to him as well.
Now in our biz where we have ENOUGH trouble already making sure that everybody understands (to his or her technical limits) what's going on, where we're going, and how we're going to get there, this type of relationship was TOTALLY FRUSTRATING for me, and ultimately a complete failure because Alvin never accomplished much. Whether the fault was his or mine (probably both culpable), the fact of the matter was that we were NOT good at communicating with each other.
So let's tie this diatribe back into the main point: are these guys UNDERPAID? Well the whole concept of whether someone is underpaid or overpaid derives directly from the value the individual contributes to the organization.
The empirical evidence that I've seen suggests that foreign workers make LESS. But I think that's partly a function of the fact that integrating such a worker into an existing team is a tougher proposition.
>>WO
P.S. The "linguistic style" of my earlier post seems to have provoked quite a response LOLOL. It was probably a result of having been on some Quake/HL boards immediately prior to writing it, so I waz in dat gamez mode, u know, d00d?
LOL!!!!!!
That brightened my day. Seriously.
I'm always on the lookout to beef up my crew -- therez always more work than we can deal with -- and the word in the singles-barz-of-the-techjob-scene iz definitely that the H1B guyz are cheaper and willing and able to do the coding sweat shop scene. Yessir, this ain't no myth.
... and no it wasn't MY design ...)
Now the exact causez/rationalez/reasonz/theoriez for WHY thatz true are not self-evident. No doubt each such hypothesis bringz its own element of truth and relevance.
The problem with these guyz from my perspective is that, on an elite dev team, communication between team memberz is vital vital vital. Did I say vital?? And lotz of these guyz, their Eengleesh, eetz not zo gud.
Devt vets know that on bigger projects, inter-team relationz r just as important as raw size of ur technical schlong. Just look at the data from DeMarco, McConnell, Constantine, DeGrace, Pressman, etc etc etc for those who know how 2 read.
So thatz why I've held off bringing any on board here, although I've interviewed a couple of them.
While I'm on the subject, this may be naughtynaughty and feel free to spank my ass if so, but let me just say that there are always slotz open on my elite core team for web devheads that rocknroll. And I mean u dream in SQL or whatever. (Remind me to tell u about the nightmare I had a few dayz ago about triple indirected pointers
>>Waxon dudes
Mazer Rackham was my personal favorite "supporting cast." Here you have a man faced with the prospect of guiding a presumably brilliant child -- Ender -- who is also presumably mankind's last hope for survival -- to full fruition of Ender's potential.
Is that a job from hell or what? In a very real sense then, mankind's hope for survival REALLY rests with Mazer, because Mazer is the man who will make or break Ender. In other words, from a certain point of view Ender is the weapon that humanity has developed to defend themselves, but Mazer must "wield" that weapon properly.
That intense part-adversarial, part-mentor/father-figure psychological relationship between Mazer and Ender was highly intriguing and, imho, could have been more fully explored. Another book would have been a great vehicle for that . . . now Bean, it seems it's just like Ender all over again. With Mazer we get a TOTALLY different story.
After all, Mazer was certainly not in the dark about any part of the situation like Ender was. And yet he has to, in some way, subordinate his own brilliant ability to that of Ender. It would take a pretty remarkable individual to do that effectively. The whole situation is similar to the storyline in the film "Searching for Bobby Fisher."
Dozens of ~6 to ~14 year olds running around in a movie that probably can't help but turn itself into one aimed at children.
It doesn't necessarily have to be like this. Dead Poet's Society was mostly kids (although older than 6-14) and it was not a "kiddie" film. Searching for Bobby Fisher focused on a brilliant kid and it was not a "kiddie" film.
More generally there have been one or two films based on well known novels that didn't turn out to well (harhar). We pretty much have to rely on the creative minds behind the film to adapt the strengths of the medium to the strengths of the story.
The superstructure of the plot development in E.G. reminds me quite a bit of . . .
Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.
Both E.G. and FMJ are conglomerations of two almost entirely separate stories -- a "boot camp" story and a "war" story (although E.G. ties its second act to its first one better than FMJ does, imho.) And another parallel I draw is that, in both works, I found the "boot camp" story more compelling and better written than the followup. The Battle School that Ender attends is a very involving piece of psychological drama. Not everybody will agree, merely stating my personal reaction to it.
Out of all of Mr. Card's works (and I've read nearly all of them) my personal favorite is "Worthing Saga." Now this is a GREAT book. IMHO I think Worthing Saga would make a better film or film series than the Ender storyline (and in fact I have a screenplay I'm working on heavily influenced by W.S.)
Worthing Saga takes tons of "typical" SF concepts and spins them in extremely interesting ways. For example, lots of SF lean on the "crygenic sleep" life-suspension device for space travel and other purposes. Card really explores this -- he creates an entire society around the impact such a technology would have on a culture, and the individuals within that culture. I haven't seen any other SF writers really think through the consequences of what is, on reflection, a form of limited immortality.
Another example is ESP powers -- surely nothing new by Card's time. But again he writes from a highly intriguing psychological standpoint of how such powers would affect individuals that had these powers, and how they might be viewed by others who didn't. And how such a collection of empowered people might evolve over a very long period of time. And interesting -- and of course intentional -- religious parallels (In this respect Julian May's Many-Colored Land series is a good exploration of a future society that revolves around esper-type abilities -- but let's not wander off the main point!)
Yet another example is mind-storage -- the ability to save your consciousness to a "deep freeze" for recall later. The protagonist reaches a very interesting moral crossroads with respect to a decision he must make engenered by this technology. You'll know what I mean when you read to that point.
Okay time to stop leaking at the mouth!
WaxOn
we finally switch from crazy-feature-addition mode to bug fixing :)
Any other veteran developers here as disturbed by that comment as I am?
First let me say, there was SUPPOSE to be a SMILEY attached to my last comment, meant as a light ending -- but without the smiley I came off looking like a self-righteous asshole -- SORRY! :o) :o) :o) Ok, repeat after me... RBL is not a government, nor is it a law, nor is it implimented by either of the above. The Black-holing of NSI will be a public action taken by the public.
This is exactly what I'm talking about - doesn't this seem precisely like mob lynching?
--
I would actually like to pose a question to clarify a point here:
Suppose my ISP was an RBL "member." I go to NSI to try to register a new domain, and those of you who are familiar with the registration process know that you have to send an email based on their template.
Normally, the NSI automails a response indicating the success/failure of your registration request.
But if NSI was blocked, I would not receive this confirmation. Is that correct?
I find this part of Paul Vixie's mail disturbing:
"They are pretty much daring us to blackhole them. The board of MAPS, LLC will make its final determination in the next few days, and if we do decide to blackhole NSI it's going to get ugly. As an interested party, we want you all to know what's happening."
Is Paul an attorney? I don't think so. Interpreting Emery's email as a "dare" strikes me as a somewhat juvenile attitude. The real danger of a weapon like RBL is, the more time and effort spent on creating such a weapon, the greater the temptation to resort to it. In other words, you spend years and ten thousand bucks training your Rottweiler attack dog, you naturally want to sic the dog on something to see how all that work paid off.
The additional danger of the juvenile attitudes of both Emery and Vixie here is the dick-measuring element. Without a doubt a lot of unsuspecting people will be confused, inconvenienced, and possibly hurt by an NSI blockade -- this would amount essentially to conviction without trial IMHO.
And when it comes down to it, I own many domains and I get the NSI spam, and is it SUCH a hardship to delete it? What kind of a geek are you if you can't figure out how to operate your own bloody mail filters?
Wax-On dudes.