My coworkers and I were sharing stories at lunch the other day; thankfully, my office is blissfuly absent of corporate culture ("professional, but relaxed"). A coworker who has a daughter my age said that when her daughter started working as a receptionist at a hospital, she came home after a few months on the job and said "Mom...you never told me Dilbert was real..."
Enter the "IT SUCKS BECAUSE IT'S POPULAR" crowd. Less than a dozen comments in this thread thus far and half of them are people who hate WoW because it's "dumbed down."
Listen up, guys, WoW has 5.5 million+ subscribers because what it's doing is good, not bad. It's not dumbed down, and if - like me - you spent hardcore-style hours raiding to get the best stuff, you'd know that.
But no, like the guys at Vanguard, you can't get past appearance. If it's popular, it must be bad.
The argument about the enormous bug count in Windows isn't really about every last bug being fixed. The article fails to address a separate question: whether you're allowing the public to do your beta testing for you.
The idea of QC/testing/beta/whatever the heck you want to call it is that you get as many bugs as you can fix while accepting the ones that will remain behind. That's absolutely correct. However, there are companies - like Microsoft - that are notorious for either being sloppy and not getting bugs they should have, or just straight up not caring at all and rushing a product to market that legitimately shouldn't be there.
The argument can even be extended to good coding practices, like worrying about security fron start to finish rather than after you've entered beta (another well known Microsoft flaw, though they're getting better at it). That reduces the number of bugs to begin with, which in turn gives a better product.
Terra Nova has absolutely no clue what the word "lore" means. The entire premise of both the links in the story are patently incorrect. The Horde is not inherently evil, nor is the Alliance inherently good; yes, there are definitely cultural stereotypes behind many of the races, but attempting to dredge up bullshit by making this link is insane. The only inherently, directly "evil" race in all of WoW is the Forsaken (undead). As an Alliance player, I don't know the Troll leader, but I can vouch for both Thrall (the Orcs) and Cairne Bloodhoof (the Tauren) as wise, intelligent, brave leaders. Both kick ass, and neither are severely vulnerable to hubris. The same goes for King Magni Bronzebeard (the Dwarves). However, the leader of the Cenarion Circle (Stormrage), linked to the Night Elves, is arrogant, self-righteous, and condescending. The leader of the Undead is cunning and greedy.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that this story starts out by implying Blizzard is racist by saying Native Americans and Jamaicans are evil, yet if anything Terra Nova has the entire thing backwards.
Actually, that's a very cultural thing. It's not really out of place here, and it's read differently in the author's native French than English, where emphasis can be more effectively communicated through inflection.
Look for a tie in. It's easier to squeeze it in the nonprofit sector. I did the exact opposite of your question (leveraged other skills to get into development), but I suppose the concepts are the same. I have a dregree in history from Penn State, but since I was wee ittle I've been tinkering with computers. Hell, I broke the computer so many times when I was little my Mom had to have her company's tech guy come out and lock it down so I couldn't screw it up again.
At this point - pretty much 15 years later (8-23) - I'm an experienced network admin and web developer regardless of whether or not I've had formal instruction in them (I took Intro to C++ at Penn State before getting forced out of the Computer Science program due to low grades - I went and got myself addicted to a MUD. But that's a differnet story. Heh.)
Anyhow. My specialization in history? The US Civil War. My job? I'm the one man IT department for these guys.
Dranei became shamanistic after settling on Draenor, before its destruction and transformation into Outworld. They are a highly magical race, and their history fits perfectly into giving them Paladins, Priests, and Mages as their three primary classes, as they were originally saved from being corrupted into the demonic Eredar (as Archimonde) by the Naaru, who are somehow related to the Holy Light that gives Paladins their power.
Apologies to those who aren't familiar with the Warcraft Universe. I'm not typing out the novel that would be required to explain that.;)
Great 'Live' blog-style Joystiq coverage here too (IMO better than the Game Daily one). They seemed exceptionally impressed with everything but the eye candy. And by that I mean it sounds like they and everyone else in the audience wanted to be onstage playing. Night and day difference from Sony's conference.
Wasn't it just a couple weeks ago we were lamenting "what could have been"? Microsoft capitulates and disables large chunks of Vista security by default in order to appease corporate customers. People are up in arms. Microsoft rewrites architecture to make things more secure. People are up in arms.
Me, I'm with the "Good!" crowd. Make things more difficult for me when I transition. It'll make things easier later on.
There was a geek bag set posted late last year. I can't for the life of me remember what it was. But it sounds like you could use it, at least in addition to a good laptop case. It was a modular bag system that allowed to you carry it in any of a number of configurations, even James Bond style underneath a suit.
Gah, and I was even gonna buy one and it's just out of my memory. Anyone?
This isn't true. For either OS. Either you're running a highly exotic hardware setup, or you're choosing to do the installer's work for it. Installing Windows XP from scratch on a freshly formatted hard drive is nigh hands off; every now and then, Dell puts out a driver that isn't included with Win XP, so you go to dell.com and download it. No biggie. Then...I'm not a real Nix fan, but I was very impressed with the Debian install I did. I expected it to be a horrid experience. Instead, it was quite pleasant. Everything except the video card drivers installed itself, and a quick question to a nix using friend helped me find xvidtune and everything was all set.
Usually, people don't give company names in Ask/. questions. Why's this guy supposed to be different?
That said, we do use Brightmail. I must say that this IT department must not be technically minded: Brightmail was an SOB to install, but after that it's been literally running for *looks at calendar* 9 months with zero interaction, has had a total of -one- false positive, and has something like a 99.9% detection rate, with one message that consistently got through for 2 days or so until it was added to the Brightmail filters.
Astounding. You've taken a sane, logical article and replied to it in the exact illogical, impassioned manner it criticizes. You, sir, are a poster child for a Linux snob. The article encourages you to stop talking, essentially. Read it again, because it is wholly and entirely accurate.
My story, aside from parent: I'm trying to install Mailman a year or so back. I have a base Debian install. I'm stuck. I RTFM. It's not that I can't, or that I don't want to, it's that I quite simply don't understand what it's telling me to do. I don't know what an Exim director is, and the manual thingy doesn't really care to say, only that I need to configure Mailman to work with it. (Since then, it's been updated to be a bit more descriptive. I just checked.)
So, I ask. The response? A snub. Worded from a community member to a third person for me to read: "Maybe the problem isn't Mailman or any of the other awesome software he's running, it's the user not reading all the available documentation." I note that I read it, but I don't understand it. No response at all.
These days, I have one Debian box with ZoneMinder and Mailman sitting here and everything else is still Windows. I'm quite happy with that.
To be totally honest, if I had developed Garry's Mod, I would sit down one day and say "I'd be insane not to sell this." It's fully featured, well done, and allows you to explore the exact mechanisms of the fantastic Source physics engine. If i were still into it hardcore, I'd probably throw down the $10 for the extra features in the pay version.
This is the beauty of Steam and how independent publishing works - the same way everything else does. Have a good product that people like and enjoy using? Sell.
There was a Wired article on this a couple days ago. Choice quote:
Comic Books
"Many adults think that the crimes described in comic books are so far removed from the child's life that for children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are connected. A bank robbery is easily translated into the rifling of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to adults are increasingly committed by young people and children... All child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were inveterate comic-book readers This kind of thing is not good mental nourishment for children!"
- Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 1954
I think that about covers the legitimacy of this study.
...don't miss the accompanying video, in which Chen, like every proficient player, makes it all look far too easy to produce a surprisingly nice tune in just seconds
Ain't that the truth. I wish I had that much talent - if I tried that it'd just be a random sequence of sounds. Awesome proof of concept.
Heheh. I work for a 501(c)(3) org. My boss was once asked why we chose to locate within Washington DC, what with us being essentially a charity, and the costs here being so high. The response: "Uncle Sam is the largest donor to nonprofit organizations in the United States, and we know exactly where he lives."
I was addicted to a MUD my freshman year of college. My parents were the ones who rescued me. And I do mean rescued. This is a heartbreaking situation. You cannot help those who are not willing to help themselves, and that is the first step: getting your friend to realize he needs to help himself. Next step: getting him to realize you can help him, too.
Think traditional addiction programs - interventions, counseling. Contact a drug addiction counselor or psychologist who specializes in addiction in your area; many of the techniques involved in breaking addiction are universal. Avoid AA-type pseudoreligious programs. They have been proven not to work (no flames, please, go google the study yourself).
Keep in mind that this is not an easy process. It took me two solid years to bring my social life back to where it once was; now, another four years later, I'm "addicted" to wow in that playfully, not clinically, addicted way. But stand by your friend. Understand that your friendship means less to him than the game does. Addiction is powerful, and ugly, and hard to understand and overcome. But he's got guys (girls maybe?) like you to help him. He's better off than many.
Morrowind was my first TES game. And I loved it. The greatest kick I got out of it wasn't even the game - it was screwing with the system and the dev kit, building my own house, doing crazy superhero-like things in game with my character, fucking with the physics and the game's backend - and, of course, playing through the storyline. It was really cool. The best part of the whole thing was the total freedom. And while I didn't follow this example, I remember seeing a quote from one of the Morrowind devs that summed up how I actually played the game (I must have gone through the main story line half a dozen times with different characters). He said something like "If you want to spend $50 on a game and create yourself an invincible sword and beat it in a few hours, that's your perrogative."
I don't believe it cost us anything - though the BBB insisted we hadn't given them the proper documentation when it was literally sitting on the table in from of them. That's a different story for a different thread, though.
There are two dots that are not connected in this article: the little "blue ribbon" thing and the de facto tax. The author claims that the fee would become a de facto tax due to less pressure on AOL itself to fix problems. The connection not made is that there is another reason it would become a de facto tax. I work for a nonprofit organization. If an AOL user knows that organizations and companies who have become certified get a blue ribbon, and we don't pay up, then the customer's question becomes this: Why don't you have a blue ribbon, too? That hurts us. And it's yet another reason this amounts to extortion.
That's what ticked me off the most - dirty telemarketers faking their caller ID #s as 000-000-0000 and calling my cell phone. Bleive it or not, there are a ton of rules guiding telemarketers, and most follow them. But I called up Cingular and they said "sorry."
That said, I'm overall very, very happy with Cingular. The good: they've always been happy to correct mistakes and talk through any questions. They're good about changing plans - for the more expensive and the cheaper - and with the occasional question. And, of course, their equipment is fanfuckingtastic. The bad: I went through hell relocating my account and contract 'tween markets (NE Ohio to DC/east coast). Overall: Cingualr customer for life.
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My coworkers and I were sharing stories at lunch the other day; thankfully, my office is blissfuly absent of corporate culture ("professional, but relaxed"). A coworker who has a daughter my age said that when her daughter started working as a receptionist at a hospital, she came home after a few months on the job and said "Mom...you never told me Dilbert was real..."
Enter the "IT SUCKS BECAUSE IT'S POPULAR" crowd. Less than a dozen comments in this thread thus far and half of them are people who hate WoW because it's "dumbed down."
Listen up, guys, WoW has 5.5 million+ subscribers because what it's doing is good, not bad. It's not dumbed down, and if - like me - you spent hardcore-style hours raiding to get the best stuff, you'd know that.
But no, like the guys at Vanguard, you can't get past appearance. If it's popular, it must be bad.
The argument about the enormous bug count in Windows isn't really about every last bug being fixed. The article fails to address a separate question: whether you're allowing the public to do your beta testing for you.
The idea of QC/testing/beta/whatever the heck you want to call it is that you get as many bugs as you can fix while accepting the ones that will remain behind. That's absolutely correct. However, there are companies - like Microsoft - that are notorious for either being sloppy and not getting bugs they should have, or just straight up not caring at all and rushing a product to market that legitimately shouldn't be there.
The argument can even be extended to good coding practices, like worrying about security fron start to finish rather than after you've entered beta (another well known Microsoft flaw, though they're getting better at it). That reduces the number of bugs to begin with, which in turn gives a better product.
Thanks. I was trying to say that and didn't succeed very well, I think.
Terra Nova has absolutely no clue what the word "lore" means. The entire premise of both the links in the story are patently incorrect. The Horde is not inherently evil, nor is the Alliance inherently good; yes, there are definitely cultural stereotypes behind many of the races, but attempting to dredge up bullshit by making this link is insane.
The only inherently, directly "evil" race in all of WoW is the Forsaken (undead). As an Alliance player, I don't know the Troll leader, but I can vouch for both Thrall (the Orcs) and Cairne Bloodhoof (the Tauren) as wise, intelligent, brave leaders. Both kick ass, and neither are severely vulnerable to hubris. The same goes for King Magni Bronzebeard (the Dwarves). However, the leader of the Cenarion Circle (Stormrage), linked to the Night Elves, is arrogant, self-righteous, and condescending. The leader of the Undead is cunning and greedy.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that this story starts out by implying Blizzard is racist by saying Native Americans and Jamaicans are evil, yet if anything Terra Nova has the entire thing backwards.
Actually, that's a very cultural thing. It's not really out of place here, and it's read differently in the author's native French than English, where emphasis can be more effectively communicated through inflection.
Look for a tie in. It's easier to squeeze it in the nonprofit sector.
I did the exact opposite of your question (leveraged other skills to get into development), but I suppose the concepts are the same. I have a dregree in history from Penn State, but since I was wee ittle I've been tinkering with computers. Hell, I broke the computer so many times when I was little my Mom had to have her company's tech guy come out and lock it down so I couldn't screw it up again.
At this point - pretty much 15 years later (8-23) - I'm an experienced network admin and web developer regardless of whether or not I've had formal instruction in them (I took Intro to C++ at Penn State before getting forced out of the Computer Science program due to low grades - I went and got myself addicted to a MUD. But that's a differnet story. Heh.)
Anyhow. My specialization in history? The US Civil War. My job? I'm the one man IT department for these guys.
Dranei became shamanistic after settling on Draenor, before its destruction and transformation into Outworld. They are a highly magical race, and their history fits perfectly into giving them Paladins, Priests, and Mages as their three primary classes, as they were originally saved from being corrupted into the demonic Eredar (as Archimonde) by the Naaru, who are somehow related to the Holy Light that gives Paladins their power.
;)
Apologies to those who aren't familiar with the Warcraft Universe. I'm not typing out the novel that would be required to explain that.
Great 'Live' blog-style Joystiq coverage here too (IMO better than the Game Daily one). They seemed exceptionally impressed with everything but the eye candy. And by that I mean it sounds like they and everyone else in the audience wanted to be onstage playing. Night and day difference from Sony's conference.
That's not an option. Adults make their own decisions. There's nothing else to it.
Wasn't it just a couple weeks ago we were lamenting "what could have been"?
Microsoft capitulates and disables large chunks of Vista security by default in order to appease corporate customers. People are up in arms.
Microsoft rewrites architecture to make things more secure. People are up in arms.
Me, I'm with the "Good!" crowd. Make things more difficult for me when I transition. It'll make things easier later on.
Awww, first comment beat me to it ;)
Seriously, life imitates Family Guy with the Al-Zarqaqi outtakes video and now Futurama with alcohol-powered robots. I love it.
There was a geek bag set posted late last year. I can't for the life of me remember what it was. But it sounds like you could use it, at least in addition to a good laptop case. It was a modular bag system that allowed to you carry it in any of a number of configurations, even James Bond style underneath a suit.
Gah, and I was even gonna buy one and it's just out of my memory. Anyone?
This isn't true. For either OS. Either you're running a highly exotic hardware setup, or you're choosing to do the installer's work for it.
Installing Windows XP from scratch on a freshly formatted hard drive is nigh hands off; every now and then, Dell puts out a driver that isn't included with Win XP, so you go to dell.com and download it. No biggie. Then...I'm not a real Nix fan, but I was very impressed with the Debian install I did. I expected it to be a horrid experience. Instead, it was quite pleasant. Everything except the video card drivers installed itself, and a quick question to a nix using friend helped me find xvidtune and everything was all set.
Usually, people don't give company names in Ask /. questions. Why's this guy supposed to be different?
That said, we do use Brightmail. I must say that this IT department must not be technically minded: Brightmail was an SOB to install, but after that it's been literally running for *looks at calendar* 9 months with zero interaction, has had a total of -one- false positive, and has something like a 99.9% detection rate, with one message that consistently got through for 2 days or so until it was added to the Brightmail filters.
It's been an absolutely beautiful product.
Astounding. You've taken a sane, logical article and replied to it in the exact illogical, impassioned manner it criticizes. You, sir, are a poster child for a Linux snob. The article encourages you to stop talking, essentially. Read it again, because it is wholly and entirely accurate.
My story, aside from parent: I'm trying to install Mailman a year or so back. I have a base Debian install. I'm stuck. I RTFM. It's not that I can't, or that I don't want to, it's that I quite simply don't understand what it's telling me to do. I don't know what an Exim director is, and the manual thingy doesn't really care to say, only that I need to configure Mailman to work with it. (Since then, it's been updated to be a bit more descriptive. I just checked.)
So, I ask. The response? A snub. Worded from a community member to a third person for me to read: "Maybe the problem isn't Mailman or any of the other awesome software he's running, it's the user not reading all the available documentation."
I note that I read it, but I don't understand it. No response at all.
These days, I have one Debian box with ZoneMinder and Mailman sitting here and everything else is still Windows. I'm quite happy with that.
To be totally honest, if I had developed Garry's Mod, I would sit down one day and say "I'd be insane not to sell this." It's fully featured, well done, and allows you to explore the exact mechanisms of the fantastic Source physics engine. If i were still into it hardcore, I'd probably throw down the $10 for the extra features in the pay version.
This is the beauty of Steam and how independent publishing works - the same way everything else does. Have a good product that people like and enjoy using? Sell.
There was a Wired article on this a couple days ago. Choice quote:
... All child drug addicts, and all children drawn into the narcotics traffic as messengers, with whom we have had contact, were inveterate comic-book readers This kind of thing is not good mental nourishment for children!"
- Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 1954
Comic Books "Many adults think that the crimes described in comic books are so far removed from the child's life that for children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are connected. A bank robbery is easily translated into the rifling of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to adults are increasingly committed by young people and children
I think that about covers the legitimacy of this study.
...don't miss the accompanying video, in which Chen, like every proficient player, makes it all look far too easy to produce a surprisingly nice tune in just seconds
Ain't that the truth. I wish I had that much talent - if I tried that it'd just be a random sequence of sounds. Awesome proof of concept.
Heheh. I work for a 501(c)(3) org. My boss was once asked why we chose to locate within Washington DC, what with us being essentially a charity, and the costs here being so high. The response: "Uncle Sam is the largest donor to nonprofit organizations in the United States, and we know exactly where he lives."
I was addicted to a MUD my freshman year of college. My parents were the ones who rescued me. And I do mean rescued. This is a heartbreaking situation. You cannot help those who are not willing to help themselves, and that is the first step: getting your friend to realize he needs to help himself. Next step: getting him to realize you can help him, too.
Think traditional addiction programs - interventions, counseling. Contact a drug addiction counselor or psychologist who specializes in addiction in your area; many of the techniques involved in breaking addiction are universal. Avoid AA-type pseudoreligious programs. They have been proven not to work (no flames, please, go google the study yourself).
Keep in mind that this is not an easy process. It took me two solid years to bring my social life back to where it once was; now, another four years later, I'm "addicted" to wow in that playfully, not clinically, addicted way. But stand by your friend. Understand that your friendship means less to him than the game does. Addiction is powerful, and ugly, and hard to understand and overcome. But he's got guys (girls maybe?) like you to help him. He's better off than many.
Good luck.
Morrowind was my first TES game. And I loved it. The greatest kick I got out of it wasn't even the game - it was screwing with the system and the dev kit, building my own house, doing crazy superhero-like things in game with my character, fucking with the physics and the game's backend - and, of course, playing through the storyline. It was really cool. The best part of the whole thing was the total freedom. And while I didn't follow this example, I remember seeing a quote from one of the Morrowind devs that summed up how I actually played the game (I must have gone through the main story line half a dozen times with different characters). He said something like "If you want to spend $50 on a game and create yourself an invincible sword and beat it in a few hours, that's your perrogative."
And I remember thinking YES! Someone gets it!
I don't believe it cost us anything - though the BBB insisted we hadn't given them the proper documentation when it was literally sitting on the table in from of them. That's a different story for a different thread, though.
There are two dots that are not connected in this article: the little "blue ribbon" thing and the de facto tax. The author claims that the fee would become a de facto tax due to less pressure on AOL itself to fix problems.
The connection not made is that there is another reason it would become a de facto tax. I work for a nonprofit organization. If an AOL user knows that organizations and companies who have become certified get a blue ribbon, and we don't pay up, then the customer's question becomes this:
Why don't you have a blue ribbon, too?
That hurts us. And it's yet another reason this amounts to extortion.
That's what ticked me off the most - dirty telemarketers faking their caller ID #s as 000-000-0000 and calling my cell phone. Bleive it or not, there are a ton of rules guiding telemarketers, and most follow them. But I called up Cingular and they said "sorry."
That said, I'm overall very, very happy with Cingular. The good: they've always been happy to correct mistakes and talk through any questions. They're good about changing plans - for the more expensive and the cheaper - and with the occasional question. And, of course, their equipment is fanfuckingtastic. The bad: I went through hell relocating my account and contract 'tween markets (NE Ohio to DC/east coast). Overall: Cingualr customer for life.