The benefit of going this route instead of the dreary old slog-through-the-demos route is that you might find a one-in-a-million inexperienced young hack out there who can knock together some impressive stuff, is surprised that he has any skills marketable to a game company, and then pay him a crap salary for the "opportunity" to work for them.
So the company gets a cheap, eager, bright eyed new recruit for a few years while the product goes through its life cycle and the guy either moves on once he figures he's got enough experience to get a decent gig somewhere else, or the whole project flounders and the entire development team gets laid off anyway. I'm not sure if this is a profitable business model or not, but I do know that it will probably suck to be on the lower end of things.
The fact is that the vast majority of users don't need a hog like Vista for anything they don't already use XP for, making an incentive to upgrade almost nonexistent aside from having the latest Shiny New Thing(tm). Making Vista seem more attractive would be the only way to get grandma to pay $500 just to be able to send the same emails at the same speed.
Whenever I hear the phrase "passionate about what you do" I get this eery feeling that they're going to offer up far more "passion" in their compensation package than "salary". Passion is all and well, and enjoying work is naturally important, but a large number of employers (especially in tech sectors) love to use the "passion" card as a way of underpaying their staff. If employees ever complain about meagre wages the employer can always counter with "But you LOVE this work! You should be glad to be doing this for a living!"
There's a fine line between passion and simple exploitation of that passion to get stuff done for cheap. And I don't trust most businessmen to look out for my best interests when cutting a deal.
Well if you're already stuck in a 60 hour work week maybe it wouldn't make a difference, but what kind of hours do these people need to put in to get their stuff done? Are they given all of their amenities so they never need to leave? Vacation? Go outside?
Whenever a potential employer starts racking up the extra 'amenities', I start to wonder what kind of thing they want in exchange.
The fact is that people can now go to a preferred site on the net and read about current events with exactly the same bias as they have - in other words, while the democratization of the news that the internet has provided may be a good thing for different points of view, those points of view are becoming more polarized as news agencies go after niche markets.
No one needs to encounter things on the news that might challenge their perceptions anymore, or inform them of an event in an impartial manner. As news agencies struggle to maintain their profit margins, they're losing the same journalistic standards they claim are lost on 'amateur' internet sites.
It's another bitter battle against 'old' and 'new' media. Unfortunately the winner in this case may not be the consumer, because as we gain more and more niche markets we gain a less balanced perspective of the world and its events. Deep divisions in opinion are what have really defined the beginning of this new era, rather than a sharing of information.
Kodak has been trying to eliminate some aspects of their film manufacturing sector, specifically old super-8 film. However, a large protest by film teachers that super-8 film is -the- way to teach students about film production has kept the film alive.
Cottage industries and film fanatics keep film stock going, and I really can't doubt that someone will begin to manufacture old audio stock again in small batches. Old technology like this always resurges one way or another.
That's gotta be one of the bigger stories over, well, the past two years or so: EA and Vivendi constantly 'consolidating' development studios as they eat them up and shut them down. The industry is turning into an arena of untouchable behemoths and tiny indy groups who can't hope for decent sales, but can hope to get rich by being bought out and shut down by the large corporations.
That's a bigger scandal than EA's bad work policies, is their constant takeovers of mid-size developers only to drive them out of business.
RIP Westwood, Origin, Acclaim, Sierra, Maxis.....
It really burns my butt to see all these fancy-pants cards being released every few months but since no motherboard manufacturer makes dual-AGP motherboards you can't use your 'old' card as a secondary display and the new one in tandem; you just gotta throw it out, or stick to PCI cards which sucks.
Am I the only person who is surrounded by at least 4 monitors at one time and wants more AGP power to the other two?
Recently, researchers successfully sent data from Switzerland to Tokyo at speeds of 7.21 gigabits per second. That was enough speed to transfer a full-length DVD anywhere in the world in less than five seconds, researchers said.
So does that mean with this new technology that hollywood movies might get cheaper to purchase using this sort of streaming technology? Anyone? Anyone?
Sure he played by the rules but I would have preferred to see them win it with, you know, the three people required instead of 'ballast' in their place. Call me picky, but hey.....
Slashdot Mirror
The benefit of going this route instead of the dreary old slog-through-the-demos route is that you might find a one-in-a-million inexperienced young hack out there who can knock together some impressive stuff, is surprised that he has any skills marketable to a game company, and then pay him a crap salary for the "opportunity" to work for them.
So the company gets a cheap, eager, bright eyed new recruit for a few years while the product goes through its life cycle and the guy either moves on once he figures he's got enough experience to get a decent gig somewhere else, or the whole project flounders and the entire development team gets laid off anyway. I'm not sure if this is a profitable business model or not, but I do know that it will probably suck to be on the lower end of things.
The fact is that the vast majority of users don't need a hog like Vista for anything they don't already use XP for, making an incentive to upgrade almost nonexistent aside from having the latest Shiny New Thing(tm). Making Vista seem more attractive would be the only way to get grandma to pay $500 just to be able to send the same emails at the same speed.
Whenever I hear the phrase "passionate about what you do" I get this eery feeling that they're going to offer up far more "passion" in their compensation package than "salary". Passion is all and well, and enjoying work is naturally important, but a large number of employers (especially in tech sectors) love to use the "passion" card as a way of underpaying their staff. If employees ever complain about meagre wages the employer can always counter with "But you LOVE this work! You should be glad to be doing this for a living!"
There's a fine line between passion and simple exploitation of that passion to get stuff done for cheap. And I don't trust most businessmen to look out for my best interests when cutting a deal.
King's Quest came out in the mid 80's. Are you telling me that you've been in highschool for the past twenty years?
That's not a good endorsement of "casual gaming".
Back in 1989?
You gotta be kidding me.... people have been covering Super Mario for over a decade at least.
- Ma rio-Bros-Theme.html
My favourite version is Mr. Bungle's.
http://mp3download.01-mp3search.com/top53-Super
Well if you're already stuck in a 60 hour work week maybe it wouldn't make a difference, but what kind of hours do these people need to put in to get their stuff done? Are they given all of their amenities so they never need to leave? Vacation? Go outside?
Whenever a potential employer starts racking up the extra 'amenities', I start to wonder what kind of thing they want in exchange.
I'll just take the money, thank you very much.
Some guy from Microsoft was telling girls in grade nine that he'd really like them in the cubicle next to him?
Aren't there laws against this?
I've got a beer in my hand and three slices of pizza on a plate in front of me. I can also breathe without a helmet and can't bounce around.
So unless my version of Quicktime is missing a few extra plugins.....
The fact is that people can now go to a preferred site on the net and read about current events with exactly the same bias as they have - in other words, while the democratization of the news that the internet has provided may be a good thing for different points of view, those points of view are becoming more polarized as news agencies go after niche markets. No one needs to encounter things on the news that might challenge their perceptions anymore, or inform them of an event in an impartial manner. As news agencies struggle to maintain their profit margins, they're losing the same journalistic standards they claim are lost on 'amateur' internet sites. It's another bitter battle against 'old' and 'new' media. Unfortunately the winner in this case may not be the consumer, because as we gain more and more niche markets we gain a less balanced perspective of the world and its events. Deep divisions in opinion are what have really defined the beginning of this new era, rather than a sharing of information.
I don't really know about that, but with the right serving of beans I know that I can do a low-octave morse code imitation with my rectal cells....
Does Lindsay run a Linux box?
Are there more hot girls like her running linux?
Maybe it's time to finally try that new pickup line of mine: "What's your distro, baby?"
Kodak has been trying to eliminate some aspects of their film manufacturing sector, specifically old super-8 film. However, a large protest by film teachers that super-8 film is -the- way to teach students about film production has kept the film alive.
Cottage industries and film fanatics keep film stock going, and I really can't doubt that someone will begin to manufacture old audio stock again in small batches. Old technology like this always resurges one way or another.
That's gotta be one of the bigger stories over, well, the past two years or so: EA and Vivendi constantly 'consolidating' development studios as they eat them up and shut them down. The industry is turning into an arena of untouchable behemoths and tiny indy groups who can't hope for decent sales, but can hope to get rich by being bought out and shut down by the large corporations. That's a bigger scandal than EA's bad work policies, is their constant takeovers of mid-size developers only to drive them out of business. RIP Westwood, Origin, Acclaim, Sierra, Maxis.....
the MPAA and RIAA decide to sue game companies, citinglost revenue.
Anyone have a link to a torrent for it?
Dear All, ---- addressing people 'en masse', strike 1
Hope you enjoy the presents that I sent out!---- advertising and self-promotion of products, strike 2
With Sincerity, ---- blatant lies, strike 3
arrested
It really burns my butt to see all these fancy-pants cards being released every few months but since no motherboard manufacturer makes dual-AGP motherboards you can't use your 'old' card as a secondary display and the new one in tandem; you just gotta throw it out, or stick to PCI cards which sucks. Am I the only person who is surrounded by at least 4 monitors at one time and wants more AGP power to the other two?
I'm -still- trying to find a job with my Turtle Logo skills.....
Can I remove my head and put it on the bottom of my foot and hop around like that?
From TFA:
Recently, researchers successfully sent data from Switzerland to Tokyo at speeds of 7.21 gigabits per second. That was enough speed to transfer a full-length DVD anywhere in the world in less than five seconds, researchers said.
So does that mean with this new technology that hollywood movies might get cheaper to purchase using this sort of streaming technology? Anyone? Anyone?
's what I thought....
Really, when your shortened acronym comes out to 'bs', it's best not to use it.
Why so much? I only need 15 seconds worth.
You followed the election last week, didn't you?
Sure he played by the rules but I would have preferred to see them win it with, you know, the three people required instead of 'ballast' in their place. Call me picky, but hey.....