Re:how about for non-comic viewers?
on
Review: Spiderman
·
· Score: 2
I never read the comic book, and the extent of my Spider Man knowledge was that of conventional wisdom -- that he dug this redhead named Mary Jane and that he was bitten by a spider.
Mostly I'm thinking about Empire Earth & Warcraft III, where Ctl+# and Alt+# are used to mark a group of units and call those units up. Your point, referring to FPSs, is quite valid though...I'm in the same boat as you.
Kudos, btw, on the left-hand-on-the-mouse... lefties unite!
Sorry -- I'm a bit ahead of where you think I am. I did start a company, with my own money. I did pay my employees with my own money, and I did work for no salary for the first year. I grew the company to 31 people and sold it in February for a lot of money.
And you know what? I never ONCE considered implementing draconian policies like this. My employees played games (after hours, when they knew it was OK), used IM, surfed the web, and got all of their work done. The ones that didn't got canned (usually for more complex, but similar issues), and you know what else? My former employees constantly tell me that they'd work for me and my partners again in a SECOND and that they wish all jobs were as great as the ones they had.
I think my attitude is not shallow in the slightest.
Your company sounds miserable -- do you like it? I'd never _ever_ tolerate working at or running an organization that has such a draconian attitude towards its workers. Firing people for playing games (unless they didn't do their jobs ever) is wrong.
Likewise, web surfing is a tool -- not just a waste of time (though there are plenty of ways to waste time). If the company _really_ wants to prevent time wasting, they can install censorware that blocks the commonly-used time-wasters (match.com, lotsoftimewastinggames.com, etc.).
Anyway, sorry...I just hate reading about companies that still think that the stick is a more valuable tool than positive motivation.
Your point is well-made (perhaps even funny), but I think you don't give younger readers enough credit. Just because something is before one's time doesn't mean that one is completely (or even partially) blind to what it is.
I'm 23 - born in '78 - and I know what a MITS Altair is (I was -3 then), a TRS-80 (-1), and yes, a TI-99/4A (a toddling 1 year old).
....look no further than the semi-underground world of DirecTV hackers. Right now (spot-beam limitations aside), it's possible to get local channels from many of the major markets around the country. And (from what I've heard), it's pretty cool. Yes, the Simpsons are available in 3 time zones, as is Senfeld and any other oft-repeated show, so an enterprising Tivo holder could theoretically pull in several hours of original content per day. Neat-o....
The spot beam technology, as described in a post above, physically restricts which markets can see which channels, but I know that in Boston its possible to receive New York, L.A., and several other local markets.
For some interesting info on how this is done (all illegal hacking issues aside) on the DirecTivo systems, take a look at the following threads on one of the popular hacking sites:
Indeed, the oddities do exist. In fact, there were, I think, 3 girls in my graduating class who were by all standards "HOT".
That's 3.
Out of well over 1,000 kids (~450 girls).
In fact, one of the 3 was so hot that when I was in Cancun over spring break sophomore year, she actually didn't look out of place next to all the other bikini-clad women on the beach. She didn't stand out by any means, but she didn't look out of place (i.e. like us.)
Here here -- I feel the same way. I'll never forget the time when I was about 6 that I saved up my allowance for well over a months to buy this new Commodore 64 game "Robocop" -- the graphics looked amazing, the game looked fun and......it absolutley sucked. Toys R Us wouldn't take it back, and I was pissed. From that point on, I too have pirated games before I bought them.
I should also mention, however, that the industry has done a much better job in recent years of releasing playable demos, which in most cases is more than enough to get a good feel for the game and convince me to buy it.
Allow me to move this conversation a bit over to the technical side...I found the fact that a "regular guy" can simply set up shop and begin global satellite broadcasts pretty amazing. I just didn't know this was possible (and that companies like Eutelsat even existed with for-hire sats).
Can someone explain the technology required to uplink, how much it costs, and how:
"the cheapest way to reach the United States and Western Europe -- cheaper even than shortwave radio -- was satellite television." ?
The article goes on to say that it costs $90k a month for sat fees (not including the uplink equipment, I assume) I have an HF ham radio in my room in NYC that cost $500 and an antenna that cost another $100 and I can get pretty much global coverage with my signal. Add a linear amp for another $1k or $2k and it's a pretty loud global signal. Make that antenna a bit bigger and it's a really loud global signal. So what's so "cheap" about $90k a month? Yes, I realize that we're talking radio vs. TV here, but still....it seems like a fairly large disparity...
More relevant, however, is the question about how exactly it works (what is that $90k paying for?)
This is not entirely accurate information. There may or may not be a "large overhang" of stock. Companies NEVER sell all of their shares in a public offering, because the original owners/investors of a company will continue to retain their stake. While there is probably some amount of excess unissued stock out of those 54.4M remaining shares, it CERTAINLY isn't 54.4M shares -- most of those are owned by the VCs who have been funding paypal so far, and some of them are owned by founders.
When a company goes public, it's not really becomming a fully public entity, rather it's just using public markets to set a price and value the company.
And this "growing literature" you speak of is called basic economic theory...it's not some grand evil corporate scheme to defraud the everyday investor. Companies ALWAYS have sold a very modest (10 - 20%) stake to the public, and when their stock appreciates they'll issue more to raise more capital. It's a balance between supply and demand -- if they issue too many shares, there will be excess supply and the price will stay flat. If they issue too few (1 - 2%), it will artificially inflate the price and the stock will suffer (making the CEO and other managers look bad) when it drops later on.
Me, i'd rather see 5 banner ads on CNN than have to pay for CNN. Its not 1992 anymore, and websites carry a LOT more data than before. The internet has become a part of our economy
Well, you make a good point here, but I have mixed feelings on this issue. Yes, advertisements are a necessary evil and I too would rather see 5 banner ads (and, perhaps, even pay attention to them on occasion) than pay for CNN, but the trend that Taco points out in the article - that of "sneaky" promotion-as-news - is what I'm more concerned about.
In this case, we saw Yahoo slipping in links to unsuspecting users. In the CNN + ABC cases, we see a concerted effort by news organizations to promote products/movies/services by _artificially_ hyping them up. THAT's what I consider unacceptable: Harry Potter, while it may be a consumer phenom that merrit's some attention, is only given such phenom status when it gets (and keeps) front-page status on CNN for weeks on end.
Just this morning, in fact, I forwarded this article to a friend during a similar discussion. CNN is actually promoting Survivor's "lack of being cool anymore" as a TOP news story, right on the front page. Of course they included the time and station where people can catch the finale, but that was just as a service to their readers... right?
The worst example I can remember recently was this one, which was in the "top news" section on the front page when it was published -- basically a meanlingless and contentless article about a lead in the JonBenet case, but one that mentioned AOL and therefore got front-page CNN coverage. No other news organizations covered the story, for obvious reasons...(it wasn't newsworthy).
While I understand that organizations need new and better ways to promote products, the trend for supposedly impartial news organizations to allow corporate promotions to taint story content is worrysome.
Ah, a wise question. Allow me to enlighten: (from the IFTHP page @ mit):
"The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and 'ethical' prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!)....hardly a term goes by without strange objects appearing in odd places."
In other words, "hacking" in the MIT-sense of it has developed as an internal term that's gotten mixed-in with with mainstream usage. In the same way that traditional hackers tinker with computers and mechanical things, MIT hackers tinker with the campus itself -- they put 'strange objects in odd places'.
Also, look up the phrase: "Institute for Hacks, Tomfoolery, and Pranks." for more info...;)
This is a very interesting point -- I imagine that a lot of modern game development has to do with squeezing as much as possible out of each frame....and for the same reasons that 3D graphics programming is more than just "calculate primative, raterize, clip scene, etc." but actually uses well-designed algorithms to make this process more efficient.
Do you have any links/books/info on the "trickery and non-traditional techniques" that game developers might use?
I have two suggestions (or three depending on how you look at them), based on recent experiences.
One is legal, the other isn't quite (unless you're in Canada)
1) TiVo: As has been discussed quite often on here, the TiVo is a fun little toy that you can get for ~$200 at your local electronics megastore. It's a linux box inside, and you can do lots with it (drop it to shell, add additional hard drives, install Ethernet (TiVoNet) and stream stored MPEG files to your other PCs on a LAN, etc.). Check out these links for more info:
2) DirecTV. This is slightly shady, but still loads of fun. There's a large community of people out there (mostly in Canada, where they don't sell DirecTV service so they're forced to hack it) who spend inordinate amounts of time learning about the DirecTV datastream and how to do crazy things with it. For ~$400, you can get a complete setup tha includes an 'Emulator' that allows you to unlock all channels. The more interesting part is how emulators work (they involve having a Pentium-class PC emulate some functions of the DirecTV access card).
For $80 (for the dish and IRD) + $300 (for an H-Card, emulator hardware, and a cheap $30 emulator PC from eBay) you can have the whole thing, wires, bare circuit boards and all, sitting in your living room. Check these:
3) This is the hybrid: There's a box out there called a DirecTiVo that combines a TiVo and a DirecTV box (hence the name). If you wish, you can combine these two hacks into one piece of hardware (DirecTiVo boxes support both TiVo tinkering and DirecTV emulation). Neat-o.
So they've now acquired a high-profile guy to add to their board (which is generally a good thing), which means that Mitch probably invested some money in them (and which also means they're blazing through their $15M at a nice clip).
So my question is, now that they've got some more brains, more cash, and more product, how are they planning to actually make some money again?
My guess is that the Predators will regularly fly over the mountains of Afghanistan for recon, and if they happen to come across an opportunistic target (i.e. tent camp, marching fighters, convoy of vehicles, horses, etc.) they can take a few targets out before they scatter and run into the caves.
Re:This is starting to become a pattern...
on
Simsville Canceled
·
· Score: 2
Companies are cancelling projects that don't meet their standards. They seem to think the loss of big money already thrown into the project is less important than the loss of reputation due to a shoddy product.
Welcome to the world of "sunk costs" -- remember, if a company has already spent the money on a project, it's gone. Period. They can't "get it back" or do anything about it.
As my old HS economics teacher used to say, "every decision is made on the margin" -- in other words, the game companies must make a decision at one point looking only at the future, ignoring what's already been done.
Kinda like when you're in a movie theater and you're thinking about walking out becuase the movie's really bad, and your friend says "But you'd be wasting the $10 you spent!" If the movie sucks, leave, cause either way your $10 is gone. Likewise with the game.
Slashdot Mirror
I never read the comic book, and the extent of my Spider Man knowledge was that of conventional wisdom -- that he dug this redhead named Mary Jane and that he was bitten by a spider.
The movie still rocked...:)
nlh
Mostly I'm thinking about Empire Earth & Warcraft III, where Ctl+# and Alt+# are used to mark a group of units and call those units up. Your point, referring to FPSs, is quite valid though...I'm in the same boat as you.
... lefties unite!
Kudos, btw, on the left-hand-on-the-mouse
nlh
Sorry -- I'm a bit ahead of where you think I am. I did start a company, with my own money. I did pay my employees with my own money, and I did work for no salary for the first year. I grew the company to 31 people and sold it in February for a lot of money.
And you know what? I never ONCE considered implementing draconian policies like this. My employees played games (after hours, when they knew it was OK), used IM, surfed the web, and got all of their work done. The ones that didn't got canned (usually for more complex, but similar issues), and you know what else? My former employees constantly tell me that they'd work for me and my partners again in a SECOND and that they wish all jobs were as great as the ones they had.
I think my attitude is not shallow in the slightest.
--noah
My god. This is actually be some of the most useful information I've gotten about Windows in a long time.
Finally I've realized the friggin' Windows key has a function other than messing up lots of games when I accidently hit it instead of Alt.
nlh
Your company sounds miserable -- do you like it? I'd never _ever_ tolerate working at or running an organization that has such a draconian attitude towards its workers. Firing people for playing games (unless they didn't do their jobs ever) is wrong.
Likewise, web surfing is a tool -- not just a waste of time (though there are plenty of ways to waste time). If the company _really_ wants to prevent time wasting, they can install censorware that blocks the commonly-used time-wasters (match.com, lotsoftimewastinggames.com, etc.).
Anyway, sorry...I just hate reading about companies that still think that the stick is a more valuable tool than positive motivation.
--noah
Your point is well-made (perhaps even funny), but I think you don't give younger readers enough credit. Just because something is before one's time doesn't mean that one is completely (or even partially) blind to what it is.
I'm 23 - born in '78 - and I know what a MITS Altair is (I was -3 then), a TRS-80 (-1), and yes, a TI-99/4A (a toddling 1 year old).
Long live dorks who know their history!
nlh
The spot beam technology, as described in a post above, physically restricts which markets can see which channels, but I know that in Boston its possible to receive New York, L.A., and several other local markets.
For some interesting info on how this is done (all illegal hacking issues aside) on the DirecTivo systems, take a look at the following threads on one of the popular hacking sites:
here,
here,
and here
--noah
brilliant ... my first out-loud laugh on slashdot today ... :)
Indeed, the oddities do exist. In fact, there were, I think, 3 girls in my graduating class who were by all standards "HOT".
That's 3.
Out of well over 1,000 kids (~450 girls).
In fact, one of the 3 was so hot that when I was in Cancun over spring break sophomore year, she actually didn't look out of place next to all the other bikini-clad women on the beach. She didn't stand out by any means, but she didn't look out of place (i.e. like us.)
--noah
Here here -- I feel the same way. I'll never forget the time when I was about 6 that I saved up my allowance for well over a months to buy this new Commodore 64 game "Robocop" -- the graphics looked amazing, the game looked fun and......it absolutley sucked. Toys R Us wouldn't take it back, and I was pissed. From that point on, I too have pirated games before I bought them.
I should also mention, however, that the industry has done a much better job in recent years of releasing playable demos, which in most cases is more than enough to get a good feel for the game and convince me to buy it.
--noah
A skillfully executed troll ... inflamatory, yet comprehendable. Well done.
Give it to the hot chick down the hall
Ahh...herein lies mistake #1...you seem to have forgotten at which school this was done...
Allow me to move this conversation a bit over to the technical side...I found the fact that a "regular guy" can simply set up shop and begin global satellite broadcasts pretty amazing. I just didn't know this was possible (and that companies like Eutelsat even existed with for-hire sats).
Can someone explain the technology required to uplink, how much it costs, and how:
"the cheapest way to reach the United States and Western Europe -- cheaper even than shortwave radio -- was satellite television." ?
The article goes on to say that it costs $90k a month for sat fees (not including the uplink equipment, I assume) I have an HF ham radio in my room in NYC that cost $500 and an antenna that cost another $100 and I can get pretty much global coverage with my signal. Add a linear amp for another $1k or $2k and it's a pretty loud global signal. Make that antenna a bit bigger and it's a really loud global signal. So what's so "cheap" about $90k a month? Yes, I realize that we're talking radio vs. TV here, but still....it seems like a fairly large disparity...
More relevant, however, is the question about how exactly it works (what is that $90k paying for?)
Any ideas?
--noah
This is not entirely accurate information. There may or may not be a "large overhang" of stock. Companies NEVER sell all of their shares in a public offering, because the original owners/investors of a company will continue to retain their stake. While there is probably some amount of excess unissued stock out of those 54.4M remaining shares, it CERTAINLY isn't 54.4M shares -- most of those are owned by the VCs who have been funding paypal so far, and some of them are owned by founders.
When a company goes public, it's not really becomming a fully public entity, rather it's just using public markets to set a price and value the company.
And this "growing literature" you speak of is called basic economic theory...it's not some grand evil corporate scheme to defraud the everyday investor. Companies ALWAYS have sold a very modest (10 - 20%) stake to the public, and when their stock appreciates they'll issue more to raise more capital. It's a balance between supply and demand -- if they issue too many shares, there will be excess supply and the price will stay flat. If they issue too few (1 - 2%), it will artificially inflate the price and the stock will suffer (making the CEO and other managers look bad) when it drops later on.
Well, you make a good point here, but I have mixed feelings on this issue. Yes, advertisements are a necessary evil and I too would rather see 5 banner ads (and, perhaps, even pay attention to them on occasion) than pay for CNN, but the trend that Taco points out in the article - that of "sneaky" promotion-as-news - is what I'm more concerned about.
In this case, we saw Yahoo slipping in links to unsuspecting users. In the CNN + ABC cases, we see a concerted effort by news organizations to promote products/movies/services by _artificially_ hyping them up. THAT's what I consider unacceptable: Harry Potter, while it may be a consumer phenom that merrit's some attention, is only given such phenom status when it gets (and keeps) front-page status on CNN for weeks on end.
Just this morning, in fact, I forwarded this article to a friend during a similar discussion. CNN is actually promoting Survivor's "lack of being cool anymore" as a TOP news story, right on the front page. Of course they included the time and station where people can catch the finale, but that was just as a service to their readers ... right?
The worst example I can remember recently was this one, which was in the "top news" section on the front page when it was published -- basically a meanlingless and contentless article about a lead in the JonBenet case, but one that mentioned AOL and therefore got front-page CNN coverage. No other news organizations covered the story, for obvious reasons...(it wasn't newsworthy).
While I understand that organizations need new and better ways to promote products, the trend for supposedly impartial news organizations to allow corporate promotions to taint story content is worrysome.
or, this answer, which is better. :)
nlh
Ah, a wise question. Allow me to enlighten: (from the IFTHP page @ mit):
"The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and 'ethical' prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!)....hardly a term goes by without strange objects appearing in odd places."
In other words, "hacking" in the MIT-sense of it has developed as an internal term that's gotten mixed-in with with mainstream usage. In the same way that traditional hackers tinker with computers and mechanical things, MIT hackers tinker with the campus itself -- they put 'strange objects in odd places'.
Also, look up the phrase: "Institute for Hacks, Tomfoolery, and Pranks." for more info...;)
nlh
Oh, c'mon...nobody else on here gets that? Isn't this full of MIT folks???
I'm with ya sulli....:)
nlh
This is a very interesting point -- I imagine that a lot of modern game development has to do with squeezing as much as possible out of each frame....and for the same reasons that 3D graphics programming is more than just "calculate primative, raterize, clip scene, etc." but actually uses well-designed algorithms to make this process more efficient.
Do you have any links/books/info on the "trickery and non-traditional techniques" that game developers might use?
--Noah
I have two suggestions (or three depending on how you look at them), based on recent experiences.
One is legal, the other isn't quite (unless you're in Canada)
1) TiVo: As has been discussed quite often on here, the TiVo is a fun little toy that you can get for ~$200 at your local electronics megastore. It's a linux box inside, and you can do lots with it (drop it to shell, add additional hard drives, install Ethernet (TiVoNet) and stream stored MPEG files to your other PCs on a LAN, etc.). Check out these links for more info:
http://www.tivofaq.com/hack/
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=TiVo
2) DirecTV. This is slightly shady, but still loads of fun. There's a large community of people out there (mostly in Canada, where they don't sell DirecTV service so they're forced to hack it) who spend inordinate amounts of time learning about the DirecTV datastream and how to do crazy things with it. For ~$400, you can get a complete setup tha includes an 'Emulator' that allows you to unlock all channels. The more interesting part is how emulators work (they involve having a Pentium-class PC emulate some functions of the DirecTV access card).
For $80 (for the dish and IRD) + $300 (for an H-Card, emulator hardware, and a cheap $30 emulator PC from eBay) you can have the whole thing, wires, bare circuit boards and all, sitting in your living room. Check these:
http://www.hackhu.com/
http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=DirecTV
3) This is the hybrid: There's a box out there called a DirecTiVo that combines a TiVo and a DirecTV box (hence the name). If you wish, you can combine these two hacks into one piece of hardware (DirecTiVo boxes support both TiVo tinkering and DirecTV emulation). Neat-o.
--noah
So they've now acquired a high-profile guy to add to their board (which is generally a good thing), which means that Mitch probably invested some money in them (and which also means they're blazing through their $15M at a nice clip).
So my question is, now that they've got some more brains, more cash, and more product, how are they planning to actually make some money again?
nlh
HF radio waves bounce off the ionosphere, not the atmosphere, though some would argue that the former is merely a subset of the latter.
Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller), the four-time Male Model of the Year winner
*ahem* -- he was the three-time winner. Rememeber when they showed the banner with the 4 crossed out?
My guess is that the Predators will regularly fly over the mountains of Afghanistan for recon, and if they happen to come across an opportunistic target (i.e. tent camp, marching fighters, convoy of vehicles, horses, etc.) they can take a few targets out before they scatter and run into the caves.
Companies are cancelling projects that don't meet their standards. They seem to think the loss of big money already thrown into the project is less important than the loss of reputation due to a shoddy product.
Welcome to the world of "sunk costs" -- remember, if a company has already spent the money on a project, it's gone. Period. They can't "get it back" or do anything about it.
As my old HS economics teacher used to say, "every decision is made on the margin" -- in other words, the game companies must make a decision at one point looking only at the future, ignoring what's already been done.
Kinda like when you're in a movie theater and you're thinking about walking out becuase the movie's really bad, and your friend says "But you'd be wasting the $10 you spent!" If the movie sucks, leave, cause either way your $10 is gone. Likewise with the game.
nlh