This is partially true, but I just went through an interview binge and I got the same salary offer for a position in Poughkeepsie, NY as I did for working in downtown Manhattan as I did for working in Seattle. Same position, same responsibilities, different companies. Salaries usually only differ by a few thousand to offset cost of living, and at that point it's not worth bickering over 2 or 3 grand which will get gobbled up in taxes anyways.
The opening line of the article was "I was speaking to some MIT students."
So basically, these salaries are probably inflated because they're from MIT and can fetch top dollar. I just graduated with an MS in CS (not from MIT) and I was getting offers in the high 60's,low 70's from Microsoft, IBM and the like. I didn't talk to any game companies so I can't say anything about that, but don't expect to go into CS and come out from any school other than an MIT or CMU and fetch high 70s. If you're going for a BS, I wouldn't get my hopes past 60, MS past 75. There is a ton of hiring going on right now though, so you might get lucky. Everyone and their brother is hiring.
You also (quite stupidly, i might add) assume that such a city run network would be paid for with taxes. Did it not occur to you that they could charge fees for those that want to hook up and those that don't won't have to pay anything? We're about to get FTTH from Burlington, and I can't wait until they move into my area of the city. They are offering better service for cheaper and not using your tax dollars.
In defense of the grandparent, I did mention that I would rather pay taxes. However, you do make a good point and I think that more people might accept city-wide wireless if it's an optional service, kind of like trash pickup in some towns and villages.
Yeah, while I understand that they only did the comparison for fun because that's what they had lying around, I'd really like to see the differences between the Dell Centrino laptops and the MacBooks with similar specs for video, HDD, and RAM.
I also wonder if this will make it easier for game developers to quickly release games for OS X. This is probably the primary reason why I don't use a Mac for my laptop or desktop now. That, and I prefer to run Linux anyways so before it wasn't worth the added cost in my opinion. This might change my mind.
Forget BPL, let's get some of the Municipal Wireless programs implemented first. I think that it's a little more likely to happen once people start to pressure their politicians not to give into the demands of the telecom providers. Personally, I think the telecom arguments can be fought with the argument that the municipal contracts will go to them anyways, so it is a semi-moot point. Of course, IANAL nor a legislator, or anyone with any relevant information on the topic whatsoever. But, I've heard about BPL for years and there apparently are other problems with it besides just rolling it out. Municipal Wirelss could be made available tomorrow with proper infrastructure and legislative support. It's really the politics that keeps it out of our hands at the moment. New Orleans was a great example of how fast this could be rolled out and how helpful and necessary it is.
I personally wouldn't mind paying higher taxes if it meant I could surf the web anywhere, anytime without worry. According to Time Warner, right now I can't even run an internet webserver on my home network, and there's nothing I can do about it because it's their network. If it's the government, political pressure could possibly let this happen.
Interesting idea but I think that you'd run the risk of the geekiest students in the class taking over each team and the other kids not participating. Obviously this assignment was designed so that each student could prove they knew a little bit about portscanning and such. I think if you modified your approach to require like rounds where one student from each team launched an attack and another student had to respond it might guarantee more participation.
I'll believe the 2Q-2006 release date when I see it. Ghost has been in development for something like 6-8 years now. Started on PC, moved to Xbox, now on the 360? I bet John Romero is a consultant to the project.
I hate to say it but the Xbox controller was probably the number one reason why I got back into console gaming. For years after the SNES I never touched a console, mostly due to lack of funds (I was a teen at the time). Junior year of college, my friend got one and we played halo forever. Personally, I think Halo is a mediocre or average game at best as far as FPS's go. However, the control scheme of the Xbox was just so similar to the SNES that I almost picked it up immediately. In fact, if you think about it, they have a lot in common. The Xbox controller has a similar layout, plus the two black/white buttons and the analog sticks. The triggers are similar to the L/R buttons on SNES. Anywho, after that I actually ended up buying one myself. I could never figure the other consoles out - nintendo's controllers baffled me and the dreamcast had a weird hole in the middle. The playstation 2 was so small and I never really actually played the PSone. I also think the fact that the control scheme for bond was not intuitive and that led to me being turned off as well to consoles for a while, but that's more a game design thing than a controller issue.
2. the revolution allowing me to download old snes games from my past sealed the deal.
Okay enough about the old game downloads already. It's as much crap as those who keep their PSP's at firmware 1.0 so they can play hacked roms on the new hardware. As cool as that is, does it really make sense? I have a ton of old videogames that I never play even though I could and why would you even buy a $300+ device just so you can play 10 year old games on it? Not to mention the fact that Nintendo isn't going to let you play without paying so there's a whole other paying for the same content in multiple media argument. I mean, with the Revolution you can play new games as well, but will the old games be playable with their fancy remote control thingy?
While the article mentions that it was all upstream, I'll take a second to point out that it might not actually be in the individual distro's interest to always be the same as everyone else. If you offer something that's different and it catches on, you've differentiated yourself from the pack. That leads to increased market share and higher revenues. From a developer/user point of view, it's not a good idea. However, from a business standpoint, selling more and increasing your bottom line is eventually going to take precedent. The community mentality will only go so far for so long I think. I don't see Debian or Gentoo doing something like this, but I definitely see Novell, Red Hat, or even IBM eventually trying to do something to impress the shareholders. It's just human nature.
Don't ignore it like Mama Bell did way back when or there may be baby Apples (Applets? lol) competing against each other with Mac users completely confused as to which flavor of Apple they want.
God forbid Mac users get confused by multiple flavors of the same product. They might as well buy PC's at that point. And what about the Intel platform Apple is in the process of releasing? While most would argue it's better to buy that from a pure support standpoint then any of the PPC-based Macs since Apple is notorious for horrible warranty support (30-day warranties on the IPod anyone?), I can guarantee that Joe Schmoe still has no clue what the difference is and Apple's Black-shirted Salesforce of Doom is sure not going to help.
Okay, I might have laid it on a little thick there, but I am a little afraid of the mindwarping powers that Apple posesses.
All they need to do is create a device that burns UMDs to DVDs, and I'd consider buying a UMD movie more regularly. But they won't because god forbid I'm allowed to make a legal copy of something I bought from them, so I guess I'm just dreaming.
You don't buy pirated software. That's kinda the point of it being pirated.
Every day during the commute to work on the NYC Subway, there's always an Asian woman who walks from train to train (in between the trains when they move) selling ripped DVD's in fake cases. If you can buy pirated DVD's in the subways (and Battery Park on the weekends I believe) then I'm sure somewhere in the world, someone is selling pirated software.
If I could get investors to pay me million to make silly films, I'd do it. I'd even try to make the scripts decent.
I think you just argued against your point. By making the scripts decent, wouldn't that make the movie almost watchable? And as a result, the movie would be better than what he makes? So, in essence, the point should be that he's really doing it for the money and not for "his art" because if he cared he'd attempt to make the movie a little better than when he started. Of course, maybe he's already doing that and the movies are really really crappy to begin with...but I doubt it.
BTW, the Gnome menu's not hard to edit unless you're afraid of a text editor.;)
Kind of true, but not really. When the release occurred, you had to edit the XML files using a text editor. However, it was XML and I really didn't have time to sit down and figure out what entry did. Plus, the MIME editor was gone as well so all my icons got screwed up and trying to find that file was a pain as well. There was little to no documentation whatsoever. That's what really pissed me off.
E17, on the other hand, has utilities for creating icons and stuff, but the utility for editing the menu doesn't work very well. So, you basically have to use the terminal to copy the files by hand to whichever menu directory you want. Then there's a simple file that lists the icons in order by filename. How much more simple can you get? Plus, get-e.org has an excellent manual that describes the whole process.
E17 is hard to configure if you're afraid of the command line. They just released a nice configuration tool that allows you to create an icon for any window that isn't recognized just by left clicking the upper left of the window. E17 is hard to get around at first, but once you figure out where everything is, it's not too bad. Plus the animated backgrounds and cool eye candy is worth it for me. Coincidentally, I switched off GNOME months ago to go to E17 because I got pissed when I found out that GNOME changed the file format for the applications menu but didn't create a front-end for editing them. Who seriously does that and releases it as a final release? After that, I haven't touched GNOME since and plan not to. E17 is in alpha and they admit it. GNOME released that little trinket of user interface design gone bad as part of 2.10 or 2.8 I think.
I dont use it regularly over my laptop, but sometimes it's quicker to switch on the PSP then sit there and wait for linux to boot up. It can be a bit cumbersome if you're going to be checking email and whatnot, but for just plain reference or time-killing, it's not too bad of a distraction. Of course, I don't think it's meant to be a full-on solution anyways. As for the podcasts, I don't even have an iPod so I've never actually gotten into the whole podcast movement. Wouldn't even know where to start if I did have 2.6.
Sure it sold well...I myself have a copy. However, good sales aren't always a good prediction of future performance. While I think it would be dumb to say that Halo 3 won't sell well, I will be surprised if it outsells Halo 2.
The article is more analysis of what's happened in the last year than prediction forward. However, the projections made aren't over the top. I was skeptical when I first started reading (because it seems that everyone wants to jump on the Nintendo trumps Sony bandwagon nowadays) but I think the author did a good job of taking the current state of console gaming and projecting into the future. While I'm sure he's going to be correct when he says that the Revolution will make a good compliment to a 360 or PS3, I don't know what percentage of people actually buy more than one system. I never played enough console games for it to make sense. I'm also a bit skeptical about the 360 price drop / Halo 3 launch. Halo 2 met with lukewarm reception IMO. I haven't even finished the game myself. My cousin (who's 10) told me he doesn't want an Xbox 360 because it's too expensive and isn't worth it for one game. Right. While he might not be telling the truth, I've talked to a lot of people who are going to sit back and wait to see what the PS3 is going to give out versus the Xbox 360. I can tell you that after Halo 2, I'm definitely not looking forward to more in Halo 3. At the same time, I haven't even touched GTA:SA yet either. At a $400 price point, I'm going to have to be mighty impressed before I buy any next-generation console.
I game on my PC and my PSP currently. I have an Xbox but haven't touched it in about 5 months. The reason I don't touch the Xbox is that the PC has better games and my PSP has turned into my portable console. A lot of people bash the PSP because it basically is taking the console games in most cases and porting them to the handheld. This is true and a valid point, but if you are like me and don't own a PS2, then games like Katamari haven't been available to you so buying them for PSP is not like spending your money over again. Personally, I don't plan on buying either a PS3 or an Xbox360 because I have my PSP with really good console games. I'm not necessarily looking for innovation in game design, I just want something I can take on the road wherever I go (I do alot of traveling so a PS3 or Xbox360 won't help me there). Plus, the PSP handles MP3's and movies as well, so I don't need a handheld game device, MP3 player, and DVD player to cart around with me. I take my laptop and my PSP on the road. I'm actually extremely excited about the upcoming Megaman games and this collection looks awesome as well. I loved classic console gaming of yore (never played strider, but I loved 1941). I have something like 8 games for my PSP and I always have something to play. Sure the DS might have games that appeal to the game designers in the crowd, but I'm not one of those. I want a mini-console experience that I can take on the road with me, and the PSP gives me just that.
I use Steam on my laptop and my Desktop with no problems. It lets me install any game I own on either machine. In most cases I almost prefer it because I can just sit back and let it download rather than doing the 65-CD swap trot. The DRM software that I really am opposed to is stuff like Starforce which apparently modifies the way your DVD or CD drive reads discs. I think that that is just as bad as what Sony has dreamed up and it gets almost no press whatsoever. I'm holding off buying X3:Reunion because of it.
The mirrordot link didn't have any information for me (maybe it's too early?). A nice article with a picture of the thing is located here (coral cache).
Yeah, I think StarCraft is actually one game from the late 90's that could arguably be in there. Everquest is debatable. As one post above said, it did launch the MMO as we know it, addiction and all. On the other hand, I think there were other games that possibly could have been inducted before it. However, the same could be said for StarCraft, which didn't define a genre but definitely re-defined it. The fact that the game is still so huge in its original form 8 years after it's release (1997?) says a lot. Even Half-Life, released in 1996(?), never had as big a following. Sure, the mods like TFC, CS, and DoD had a huge following, but HL MP itself wasn't that big, IMO. The singleplayer game is what defined the HL experience.
I didn't actually say that Nintendo was only for kids, I said it targeted children better than the others. I think there's a big difference between the two.
Nintendo, of the three, targets children better than any other of the big three console developers. The average parent doesn't want to spend $400 to keep their child happy (nevermind that the odds that the child will use the majority space of the harddrive on the xbox360 is slim to none). They did it with the DS (unintentionally?) and it's helped them as well. It's now a semi-proven model of competition for them that works.
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This is partially true, but I just went through an interview binge and I got the same salary offer for a position in Poughkeepsie, NY as I did for working in downtown Manhattan as I did for working in Seattle. Same position, same responsibilities, different companies. Salaries usually only differ by a few thousand to offset cost of living, and at that point it's not worth bickering over 2 or 3 grand which will get gobbled up in taxes anyways.
The opening line of the article was "I was speaking to some MIT students."
So basically, these salaries are probably inflated because they're from MIT and can fetch top dollar. I just graduated with an MS in CS (not from MIT) and I was getting offers in the high 60's,low 70's from Microsoft, IBM and the like. I didn't talk to any game companies so I can't say anything about that, but don't expect to go into CS and come out from any school other than an MIT or CMU and fetch high 70s. If you're going for a BS, I wouldn't get my hopes past 60, MS past 75. There is a ton of hiring going on right now though, so you might get lucky. Everyone and their brother is hiring.
In defense of the grandparent, I did mention that I would rather pay taxes. However, you do make a good point and I think that more people might accept city-wide wireless if it's an optional service, kind of like trash pickup in some towns and villages.
Yeah, while I understand that they only did the comparison for fun because that's what they had lying around, I'd really like to see the differences between the Dell Centrino laptops and the MacBooks with similar specs for video, HDD, and RAM.
I also wonder if this will make it easier for game developers to quickly release games for OS X. This is probably the primary reason why I don't use a Mac for my laptop or desktop now. That, and I prefer to run Linux anyways so before it wasn't worth the added cost in my opinion. This might change my mind.
Forget BPL, let's get some of the Municipal Wireless programs implemented first. I think that it's a little more likely to happen once people start to pressure their politicians not to give into the demands of the telecom providers. Personally, I think the telecom arguments can be fought with the argument that the municipal contracts will go to them anyways, so it is a semi-moot point. Of course, IANAL nor a legislator, or anyone with any relevant information on the topic whatsoever. But, I've heard about BPL for years and there apparently are other problems with it besides just rolling it out. Municipal Wirelss could be made available tomorrow with proper infrastructure and legislative support. It's really the politics that keeps it out of our hands at the moment. New Orleans was a great example of how fast this could be rolled out and how helpful and necessary it is.
I personally wouldn't mind paying higher taxes if it meant I could surf the web anywhere, anytime without worry. According to Time Warner, right now I can't even run an internet webserver on my home network, and there's nothing I can do about it because it's their network. If it's the government, political pressure could possibly let this happen.
Interesting idea but I think that you'd run the risk of the geekiest students in the class taking over each team and the other kids not participating. Obviously this assignment was designed so that each student could prove they knew a little bit about portscanning and such. I think if you modified your approach to require like rounds where one student from each team launched an attack and another student had to respond it might guarantee more participation.
I'll believe the 2Q-2006 release date when I see it. Ghost has been in development for something like 6-8 years now. Started on PC, moved to Xbox, now on the 360? I bet John Romero is a consultant to the project.
I hate to say it but the Xbox controller was probably the number one reason why I got back into console gaming. For years after the SNES I never touched a console, mostly due to lack of funds (I was a teen at the time). Junior year of college, my friend got one and we played halo forever. Personally, I think Halo is a mediocre or average game at best as far as FPS's go. However, the control scheme of the Xbox was just so similar to the SNES that I almost picked it up immediately. In fact, if you think about it, they have a lot in common. The Xbox controller has a similar layout, plus the two black/white buttons and the analog sticks. The triggers are similar to the L/R buttons on SNES. Anywho, after that I actually ended up buying one myself. I could never figure the other consoles out - nintendo's controllers baffled me and the dreamcast had a weird hole in the middle. The playstation 2 was so small and I never really actually played the PSone. I also think the fact that the control scheme for bond was not intuitive and that led to me being turned off as well to consoles for a while, but that's more a game design thing than a controller issue.
Okay enough about the old game downloads already. It's as much crap as those who keep their PSP's at firmware 1.0 so they can play hacked roms on the new hardware. As cool as that is, does it really make sense? I have a ton of old videogames that I never play even though I could and why would you even buy a $300+ device just so you can play 10 year old games on it? Not to mention the fact that Nintendo isn't going to let you play without paying so there's a whole other paying for the same content in multiple media argument. I mean, with the Revolution you can play new games as well, but will the old games be playable with their fancy remote control thingy?
While the article mentions that it was all upstream, I'll take a second to point out that it might not actually be in the individual distro's interest to always be the same as everyone else. If you offer something that's different and it catches on, you've differentiated yourself from the pack. That leads to increased market share and higher revenues. From a developer/user point of view, it's not a good idea. However, from a business standpoint, selling more and increasing your bottom line is eventually going to take precedent. The community mentality will only go so far for so long I think. I don't see Debian or Gentoo doing something like this, but I definitely see Novell, Red Hat, or even IBM eventually trying to do something to impress the shareholders. It's just human nature.
God forbid Mac users get confused by multiple flavors of the same product. They might as well buy PC's at that point. And what about the Intel platform Apple is in the process of releasing? While most would argue it's better to buy that from a pure support standpoint then any of the PPC-based Macs since Apple is notorious for horrible warranty support (30-day warranties on the IPod anyone?), I can guarantee that Joe Schmoe still has no clue what the difference is and Apple's Black-shirted Salesforce of Doom is sure not going to help.
Okay, I might have laid it on a little thick there, but I am a little afraid of the mindwarping powers that Apple posesses.
All they need to do is create a device that burns UMDs to DVDs, and I'd consider buying a UMD movie more regularly. But they won't because god forbid I'm allowed to make a legal copy of something I bought from them, so I guess I'm just dreaming.
Every day during the commute to work on the NYC Subway, there's always an Asian woman who walks from train to train (in between the trains when they move) selling ripped DVD's in fake cases. If you can buy pirated DVD's in the subways (and Battery Park on the weekends I believe) then I'm sure somewhere in the world, someone is selling pirated software.
I think you just argued against your point. By making the scripts decent, wouldn't that make the movie almost watchable? And as a result, the movie would be better than what he makes? So, in essence, the point should be that he's really doing it for the money and not for "his art" because if he cared he'd attempt to make the movie a little better than when he started. Of course, maybe he's already doing that and the movies are really really crappy to begin with...but I doubt it.
Kind of true, but not really. When the release occurred, you had to edit the XML files using a text editor. However, it was XML and I really didn't have time to sit down and figure out what entry did. Plus, the MIME editor was gone as well so all my icons got screwed up and trying to find that file was a pain as well. There was little to no documentation whatsoever. That's what really pissed me off.
E17, on the other hand, has utilities for creating icons and stuff, but the utility for editing the menu doesn't work very well. So, you basically have to use the terminal to copy the files by hand to whichever menu directory you want. Then there's a simple file that lists the icons in order by filename. How much more simple can you get? Plus, get-e.org has an excellent manual that describes the whole process.
E17 is hard to configure if you're afraid of the command line. They just released a nice configuration tool that allows you to create an icon for any window that isn't recognized just by left clicking the upper left of the window. E17 is hard to get around at first, but once you figure out where everything is, it's not too bad. Plus the animated backgrounds and cool eye candy is worth it for me. Coincidentally, I switched off GNOME months ago to go to E17 because I got pissed when I found out that GNOME changed the file format for the applications menu but didn't create a front-end for editing them. Who seriously does that and releases it as a final release? After that, I haven't touched GNOME since and plan not to. E17 is in alpha and they admit it. GNOME released that little trinket of user interface design gone bad as part of 2.10 or 2.8 I think.
I dont use it regularly over my laptop, but sometimes it's quicker to switch on the PSP then sit there and wait for linux to boot up. It can be a bit cumbersome if you're going to be checking email and whatnot, but for just plain reference or time-killing, it's not too bad of a distraction. Of course, I don't think it's meant to be a full-on solution anyways. As for the podcasts, I don't even have an iPod so I've never actually gotten into the whole podcast movement. Wouldn't even know where to start if I did have 2.6.
Sure it sold well...I myself have a copy. However, good sales aren't always a good prediction of future performance. While I think it would be dumb to say that Halo 3 won't sell well, I will be surprised if it outsells Halo 2.
The article is more analysis of what's happened in the last year than prediction forward. However, the projections made aren't over the top. I was skeptical when I first started reading (because it seems that everyone wants to jump on the Nintendo trumps Sony bandwagon nowadays) but I think the author did a good job of taking the current state of console gaming and projecting into the future. While I'm sure he's going to be correct when he says that the Revolution will make a good compliment to a 360 or PS3, I don't know what percentage of people actually buy more than one system. I never played enough console games for it to make sense. I'm also a bit skeptical about the 360 price drop / Halo 3 launch. Halo 2 met with lukewarm reception IMO. I haven't even finished the game myself. My cousin (who's 10) told me he doesn't want an Xbox 360 because it's too expensive and isn't worth it for one game. Right. While he might not be telling the truth, I've talked to a lot of people who are going to sit back and wait to see what the PS3 is going to give out versus the Xbox 360. I can tell you that after Halo 2, I'm definitely not looking forward to more in Halo 3. At the same time, I haven't even touched GTA:SA yet either. At a $400 price point, I'm going to have to be mighty impressed before I buy any next-generation console.
I game on my PC and my PSP currently. I have an Xbox but haven't touched it in about 5 months. The reason I don't touch the Xbox is that the PC has better games and my PSP has turned into my portable console. A lot of people bash the PSP because it basically is taking the console games in most cases and porting them to the handheld. This is true and a valid point, but if you are like me and don't own a PS2, then games like Katamari haven't been available to you so buying them for PSP is not like spending your money over again. Personally, I don't plan on buying either a PS3 or an Xbox360 because I have my PSP with really good console games. I'm not necessarily looking for innovation in game design, I just want something I can take on the road wherever I go (I do alot of traveling so a PS3 or Xbox360 won't help me there). Plus, the PSP handles MP3's and movies as well, so I don't need a handheld game device, MP3 player, and DVD player to cart around with me. I take my laptop and my PSP on the road. I'm actually extremely excited about the upcoming Megaman games and this collection looks awesome as well. I loved classic console gaming of yore (never played strider, but I loved 1941). I have something like 8 games for my PSP and I always have something to play. Sure the DS might have games that appeal to the game designers in the crowd, but I'm not one of those. I want a mini-console experience that I can take on the road with me, and the PSP gives me just that.
I use Steam on my laptop and my Desktop with no problems. It lets me install any game I own on either machine. In most cases I almost prefer it because I can just sit back and let it download rather than doing the 65-CD swap trot. The DRM software that I really am opposed to is stuff like Starforce which apparently modifies the way your DVD or CD drive reads discs. I think that that is just as bad as what Sony has dreamed up and it gets almost no press whatsoever. I'm holding off buying X3:Reunion because of it.
The mirrordot link didn't have any information for me (maybe it's too early?). A nice article with a picture of the thing is located here (coral cache).
Yeah, I think StarCraft is actually one game from the late 90's that could arguably be in there. Everquest is debatable. As one post above said, it did launch the MMO as we know it, addiction and all. On the other hand, I think there were other games that possibly could have been inducted before it. However, the same could be said for StarCraft, which didn't define a genre but definitely re-defined it. The fact that the game is still so huge in its original form 8 years after it's release (1997?) says a lot. Even Half-Life, released in 1996(?), never had as big a following. Sure, the mods like TFC, CS, and DoD had a huge following, but HL MP itself wasn't that big, IMO. The singleplayer game is what defined the HL experience.
I didn't actually say that Nintendo was only for kids, I said it targeted children better than the others. I think there's a big difference between the two.
Nintendo, of the three, targets children better than any other of the big three console developers. The average parent doesn't want to spend $400 to keep their child happy (nevermind that the odds that the child will use the majority space of the harddrive on the xbox360 is slim to none). They did it with the DS (unintentionally?) and it's helped them as well. It's now a semi-proven model of competition for them that works.