It's also skewed towards people who use flickr as a photo dumping ground. Some people put up on flickr every single picture that comes out of their camera; some just put up the shots they'd like others to see.
Oh, and:
Of course, the data may be skewed, since some users might unknowingly be stripping off EXIF data from their photos before uploading to Flickr (say, if the photos were resized using an editor that didn't save the EXIF along with the resized image). Also, notice that Sony cameras are marked by "CYBERSHOT," and not by exact model-likely, photos were taken with phone-cams.
What about those of us who intentionally strip off EXIF data?
Guru meditations were awesome, and I fondly remember that flashing red border.
But Amiga wasn't first. The Mac "Bomb" preceded it, and was notoriously useless for troubleshooting.
Still, most Windows XP users haven't seen a BSOD ever. Go ahead and ask them. See, Windows XP solved that. But mysteriously, their power supply is unreliable, and "trips" on the slightest whim.
You gotta love that. "BSOD is bad for marketing, and most people don't know what to do with the information anyway. Let's just reset the computer and pretend it's a power spike."
I'd advise people to change their default settings, but one time I had "write memory contents to log file on BSOD" enabled when I was moving data about, and hand less free memory on my HD than in RAM.
You basically brought up two points that argue for a "niche":
PC Gaming requires specialized hardware. In 1994, it really didn't. That golden age lasted from when the Amiga and Atari ST stopped being valid platforms to when the first 3D accelerator cards came out. 3D accelerators are huge money, but they segmented the market: those computers with gaming graphics capability, and those without. So now, you have to buy a computer specifically for gaming. The huge price spread in the PC games market has also been a curse. Ever since I started paying attention (ca. 1988), game developers have always had the sweetest hardware, and seem to develop for something that runs acceptably on top-level systems. Now more than ever, we have a huge shear between "Dev Systems" and what most people have in their house. You've got a dual-core Controe, a couple of Radeon 1900XTXs in SLI, a couple of 10,000 RPM SATAs in RAID 0, 2 GB of TerrorRAM, an X-Fire sound card, big-ass monitor, and all that. I have a laptop with a single 60 gig 5400 RPM drive, Radeon 9600, and a 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4D to keep me warm at nights. You can develop games, and play them. I can't buy them -- it's simply not worth it.
So all these PCs are pushed towards "Casual Games". "Casual Games" is now the catch-all for anything that doesn't require top-o'-line specs.
Now, a console dweeb buys into a system with a known lifespan, and a reasonable price. The games cost, but everone knows what they're getting.
So what's left for PCs, besides "Casual Games"? As you said, World of Warcraft. PCs are by far better for socializing than any console. Simulations are also great, since simulation geeks tend to follow a different arc than console gamers: they buy little software, and more interesting hardware (well, some do).
Personally, I've never owned console, and am not tempted by the current crop. Well, if I had a TV, I might consider the Wii, just to see if it really is as fun as it looks.
TFA suggests that FUD is a strong weapon against "Forward-looking" clients, and uses SCO as an example of that. The counter position is that Linux (and OSS in general) needs "strategic partners" -- large organizations (governments and corporations) who adopt for security or competitive reasons.
From my perspective, the biggest threat to OSS adoption right now isn't precisely FUD, but the increasing conflict between how people use ideas and how governments regulate them. TFA points out that OSS is attractive because OSS developers like to collaborate and to share ideas; in fact, free exchange of information is a basic human trait. Even the costs incurred in the discipline and training needed to evaluate such information (=education) makes people uneasy. Intellectual Property as a concept came pretty late. But that's where the threat is: apply/change the law to legislate F/OSS out of existence.
The rest of the article is pretty straightforward: large institutions, such as governments, have it in their interest to use F/OSS, since non-proprietary, open code is cheaper to maintain (vendor lock-in does not occur). But governments do not have perfect access to the information: by its market position, Microsoft (and, mutatis mutandis, big ISPs in their anti-net Neutrality bids, and so on) has a privileged voice in legislation.
And that is where FUD is useful: not to discourage "forward-looking" clients, as to use legislation to change the playing field to their advantage. With the right targets, F/OSS jsut disappears.
There are plenty of questions that will be asked. The director that resigned (Perkins), didn't resign because of pretexting, but because the chairman unilaterally ordered an investigation of the board of directors, and only informed the directors when the "leak" was found. As head of the Nominating and Governance committee, he was, or felt he was, the one responsible for the Governance of the board.
That the other directors didn't resign doesn't say anything about their position on the matter, especially since they did not have Perkins' unique position.
The "pretexting" allegation came after Perkins resigned, and hired counsel to investigate the investigation. Perkins informed HP counsel, and they didn't act.
Dunn's now made the dumb-ass mistake of calling this a personal issue, a power struggle between Perkins and herself. Undoubtedly it is, but that doesn't make the matter any less severe. In a power struggle, when one side strikes publicly, you have to respond to the public, not to the person.
Did the other directors let Dunn take the "High Ground"? No -- they didn't follow her advice and remove the leak. So what does that give us? One alleged leaker, Dunn with an investigation on it, and now the Directors find they've been the victims of fraud, along with a bunch of reporters and a geophysicist.
She still has a job until tomorrow. Directors are directors because they're insulated from management. Management spied on the directors, without their consent, at the unilateral behest of Patricia Dunn. Patricia Dunn tried to use the results of this espionage to alter the composition of the board of directors. Nobody contests these facts. During the investigation, someone may have "exceeded the bounds of legality" without their superiors' knowledge or authorization, but their results were used, and were used unquestionably.
Well, heck. Ever look at any studies for approximately how long someone usually plays a game? Content is not the same as game length, either. But it is all the creative data that goes into a game. And, if you've been following the news, content is causing trouble for the gaming industry. Each generation facilitates bigger and better content: more complicated textures, sounds, 3D scenes, larger spaces -- all that. Bigger and better content means higher development costs. In an expanding market, these dev. costs could be offset by the increasing number of sales. That's not the case any more. So you have "the next generation" video game that allows "next-generation" content, but with a "last-generation" market. So, sure, if you're developing "Urban Hell Raisers", you can afford big content, but you'll see fewer and fewer games following this business model. Instead, you'll see the exploration of other ways to deliver titles, episodic content and specialty mods being two of them.
HD Price is "constantly dropping", but it still isn't cheap. And the market is screwed up because buyer perception of what HD is and how it works is hopelessly confused. People will buy an EDTV set and think it's HD; People already think DVDs are HD, and don't see the need for HD-DVD; ask anyone on the street the difference between 720p, 1080i and 1080p, and see if you get a sensible answer. Ask them what they have in their house, and they probably won't know. Heck, you'll even find plenty of HD sets wired up to play only normal-definition content.
Another company goes and makes the mistakes of getting in an arms race, confusing engineering prestige with marketability, and selling themselves on it by believing projections of a growing market. So they make the biggest, baddest thing out there, a real technological wonder, and at the same time the market shows little interest in growing that way, all those technological improvements create bottlenecks in their supply chain so they can't even deliver to those few who would buy it.
HD media market is a market that doesn't really exist. Developers might claim that 8 gigs or whatnot isn't enough, but they're probably wrong: Big Content Kills, driving up development costs for marginal returns in unit sales. Home users might like the idea of HDTV, but it's so expensive and screwed up as a market that most people aren't interested.
Well, you may not have seen it, but I have. Someone else linked perseus. I have an Italian dictionary on CD Rom that does this too. Linking prepositions and pronouns is also part of the deal. It's not just prior art; it's obvious.
So explain to me, how does 56% of the content is submitted by the top 100 Digg users relate to the assertion here that the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia content is not controlled by the "Wiki-Elite."
Personally, I think this policy of focusing on total edits for Wikiality is brilliant: it keeps the generalists/prestige mongers focusing on copy editing -- where they can help -- and away from content creation -- where they usually can't. Wikipedia is largely the creation of a bunch of specialist nuts. The "Wiki-Elite" are the nuts whose speciality is Wikipedia. Better to keep them away from the content; otherwise, it's akin to having someone with a degree in journalism reporting on a technical issue.
I hate to point you to the article, but hte "schools" they talked to were DigiPen and Guildhall. Can't speak for Guildhall, but DigiPen is a 4-year institution, and they do teach a broader curriculum then simply Video Game vocational training. And people do "wash out" as well.
Of course, with a few changes, what you say could be applied to State Universities: I've seen a lot of people go through them without any real effort or motivation, and go into something they're not particularly interested in. But then, some people apply themselves and work wonders. College just provides the opportunity; most students anywhere don't have the drive to do much with it.
Personally, I don't think college should be vocational training. But if someone is truly inspired to do video games as a calling, by all means check out the specialised schools. 4 years of game development as part of a college curriculum means something: and the portfolio can show fairly quickly what kind of talent the person has, individually and as part of a team.
But, sure, I suspect most people who want to write games don't really know what they're setting themselves up for: an underpaid, overworked sector of the market with a high burnout rate. You have to _really_ want it, and really drive for it.
Why are we so judgmental of Mac users? I dunno, probably 'cos every time anyone mentions "chip on the shoulder" and Macintosh in the same sentence, they get modded as flamebait. Probably because the whole ad campaign expresses this "chip on shoulder" attitude.
Hey, I agree Macintosh ownership represents a whole different philosophical approach to computers than that sported by Windows. And I've spent a good deal of my life being frustrated to hell by both of them. But all I'm saying here is that if Macintosh wants to move product and to gain converts, the best way is not to get in a pissing match with Windows. They've been trying that line for years, and it hasn't given Apple much of the PC market share.
Think of it this way: the iPod didn't make it to market dominance by comparing its features to every other MP3 player that was available on the market. The iPod sold because Apple was able to convince people it wasn't just a gadget, but a lifestyle and a fashion choice, and they did that through marketing. Now Microsoft and its Plays for Sure (sic) program explicitly targets Apple, publishing slick brochures comparing features of various players to the iPod. And guess what? That ad campaign isn't working either. If anything, it reinforces the dominance of Apple.
That's the underlying semantic problem: every statement brings to mind its opposite. If you state "Product A is better than Product B", you also concede to the viewer the possibility of considering "Product B is better than Product A", and if there's reason to believe it is (such as the neighbor bitching that he has to pay $200 to upgrade his laptop from 10.1 to 10.2 just to get on the WLAN, or motherboard problems, or lack of games, or what have you), then the message is weak. If you ignore Product B altogether, and sell "Product A is what you want", then the audience may consider whether they really want it, but they won't conceive of the competition.
I'm sorry, it's the classic marketing mistake. Apple's competitors make the same one when they market their "not-an-iPods". You don't build market share by capitalizing on the fact that you don't have market share. In other words, you don't insult your potential market. Macintosh has a lot of image they can sell, sell simply, and sell well, and yet they focus on the PC's problems?
Just because a large portion of Mac users seem to spend every waking hour mocking Windows doesn't mean that obsession is marketable (or is even what sensible Mac Fans do).
Yeah, and as an aside, I wouldn't be investing in any "Laptop Fuel Cell" tech just yet. You can build systems that concentrate large amounts of energy in small spaces, then deliver them at impressive rates, but don't come crying to me when they catch fire or explode.
And plenty of people are buying steamer tickets. Why should we worry about Jet transport?
Sure, the click-fests of RTSs and strategy games sell copies, but that doesn't mean they exploit the market potential to the fullest. I'll still enjoy a game like Battlefront's Combat Mission series, but most people won't, and the reason is because they're forced to micromanage a battalion down at the squad level. When I describe a game afterwards, I don't talk about the individual squads most of the time, but about how the companies and sometimes platoons moved. A game that simulated higher-level combat command, with the same granularity as Combat Mission, but that behaved intelligently with far less user input, would be a game that kicked ass.
Of course, there's a pragmatic reason why this grand theory of mouse-clicks hasn't gotten hold: AI is hard. Unless your "seven objects" include humans in the loop, you need someone to write really fancy code to predict what it is the person wants to do. The Author's claim that programmers have trouble dealing with abstract objects is a red herring: the problem isn't permitting abstractions such as "the railroad project" to exist, but rather giving them in the game the conceptual value they have for the user.
To borrow an example from my buddy from Cordova, imagine a game where you command a team of building contractors. You want to build a bathtub. The bathtub, when it is built, is a concrete object in the gamespace. It can have properties and all that, but more importantly, the game has authority on what the bathtub is: to the user, it looks about 4 feet long, has claw feet, is white; to the game, and thus in the underlying reality, the tub uses this polygon model in this space, and this orientation, this texture map, and resides in this block of memory. Here, the user can know something about the bathtub, and will, in time, learn some of the quirks of its underlying reality: If I instruct my virtual demo guy to set off a crate of dynamite in the bathtub, the tub will not be damaged; the user will find this dissonance disappointing, but not a deal breaker. Now consider the abstraction "building the bathtub". In the mind of the user, this means certain things: Bob, Fred and John bring in a tub, orient it in a certain way, attach claw feet and plumbing, drink a few cokes, charge the owner $2000, and crack a tile. The computer, on the other hand, has to know all this. In particular, it has to know that it's Bob, Fred and John; that working on the bathtub is more important than weatherproofing the front deck, that the bathtub is assembled in a certain way, and in a certain order. You can link all these things to an abstract logic with a list of things to do, and it'll probably "work". But with abstractions, the amount of work required to put the entities in being is much higher, and the number of points of dissonance increases: If the AI pulls in Jose from installing the toilet, and leaves Bob out varnishing the deck, the user's going to be upset in a way that a non-destructable bathtub won't make him.
So you're back to allowing micromanagement, which then invokes what the author claims is Gresham's Law (well, it is, but not from the player's side: Gresham's Law works here because, when you insert two "currencies" in circulation: automated and manual fall-back, most programmers are going to do a half-assed job on the automated version, since "those really interested can always switch over to manual" -- so, the sonar operator never hears long-range propellers the human ear can; Bob gets stuck in a closest until the human comes over to free him).
I dunno. I agree with the principle, but not the solution. Perhaps there isn't any single one: in some cases, an intelligent interface and some finite-state AI would go a long way; in others, multiplayer could fill out the hierarchies with humans in the loop; in still others, a stateless neural network might make things interesting.
I hate to say it, but it's one of the perverse effects of the "open source mentality": dedicated amateurs will always do a better job at technologically-interesting tasks than professionals. Why? Well, you have to hire professionals; the internet, on the other hand, is the great enabler for addicts of all kinds, including those addicted to getting the best data compression out there.
Sure, these guys get the accolades, and see their files copied across the world, but the bug that drives the true nuts isn't mass approval; it's knowing that nobody else can squeeze the bits like they can.
Paying jobs don't give that: neither the big media corps nor the big media pirates need an ace at this job.
so while they disdain the preponderance of brain-dead pirates who benefit most from their work, they take heart in the few cognoscenti who admire their art.
Yes, it's a sick world we live in. What gives me most fear is the notion that the "Open Source Mentality" itself is to blame, rather than an inefficient marketplace.
The percentage system is something of a mystery, but it does correlate fairly closely to how the US A-F system, translated to the 100 point scale, is supposed to be applied to grades in big US Universities.
The center of the distribution is supposed to be around the high 70s/low 80s. (C+/B-). Back when I was the TA monkey handing out grades, the recommended distribution was 40% Cs (70s) 33% Bs (80s) 10% As (90s), and, well, the Fs ( The distribution looks pretty much like that. Incidentally, the same system can be seen for wines as well.
Bottom line, these guys are tough graders; or the industry pumps out a lot of schlock.
I prefer the Michelin system: if it's worth bothering with, describe the game. If it's particularly good, use the star system: * - A good game in its category. ** - worth ordering *** - worth a trip to the store
...or wait, those more cynical could use pirating/buying.
parchment is expensive, and the economy of Constantinople 1229 was pretty bad. Most of the Greek aristocracy had relocated, the Latin Emperor had never been strong, but now was so ineffective, they were having trouble appointing people to do it, and in a few years the "Empire" would be reduced to the town of Constantinople itself. Add to that the Greek Patriarchs and a good deal of the bishops (but not all) had left Latin-dominated areas and were with the "Empire in Exiile", and you've got a seriously impoverished Greek clergy.
Dude, the "monk" wrote in Greek, in Constantinople. Whether it actually was a "monk", or just a scribe, or a priest, who scrubbed and copied that thing, is a different story. Anyway, 1229 Constantinople was a pretty rough place, and the Greek clergy wouldn't have been terribly rich; they've never been very interested in pagan Greek literature in the Eastern Church anyway. Now, in Paris, at the same time, there are plenty of priests, monks and friars who would be very eager to see what that text said (at least in translation). And there were active centers of Greek-Latin and Arabic-Latin translation of scientific texts at the time, especially in Spain.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and:
What about those of us who intentionally strip off EXIF data?
Guru meditations were awesome, and I fondly remember that flashing red border.
But Amiga wasn't first. The Mac "Bomb" preceded it, and was notoriously useless for troubleshooting.
Still, most Windows XP users haven't seen a BSOD ever. Go ahead and ask them. See, Windows XP solved that. But mysteriously, their power supply is unreliable, and "trips" on the slightest whim.
You gotta love that. "BSOD is bad for marketing, and most people don't know what to do with the information anyway. Let's just reset the computer and pretend it's a power spike."
I'd advise people to change their default settings, but one time I had "write memory contents to log file on BSOD" enabled when I was moving data about, and hand less free memory on my HD than in RAM.
Don't ever, ever do that.
You basically brought up two points that argue for a "niche":
PC Gaming requires specialized hardware. In 1994, it really didn't. That golden age lasted from when the Amiga and Atari ST stopped being valid platforms to when the first 3D accelerator cards came out. 3D accelerators are huge money, but they segmented the market: those computers with gaming graphics capability, and those without. So now, you have to buy a computer specifically for gaming.
The huge price spread in the PC games market has also been a curse. Ever since I started paying attention (ca. 1988), game developers have always had the sweetest hardware, and seem to develop for something that runs acceptably on top-level systems. Now more than ever, we have a huge shear between "Dev Systems" and what most people have in their house. You've got a dual-core Controe, a couple of Radeon 1900XTXs in SLI, a couple of 10,000 RPM SATAs in RAID 0, 2 GB of TerrorRAM, an X-Fire sound card, big-ass monitor, and all that. I have a laptop with a single 60 gig 5400 RPM drive, Radeon 9600, and a 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4D to keep me warm at nights. You can develop games, and play them. I can't buy them -- it's simply not worth it.
So all these PCs are pushed towards "Casual Games". "Casual Games" is now the catch-all for anything that doesn't require top-o'-line specs.
Now, a console dweeb buys into a system with a known lifespan, and a reasonable price. The games cost, but everone knows what they're getting.
So what's left for PCs, besides "Casual Games"? As you said, World of Warcraft. PCs are by far better for socializing than any console. Simulations are also great, since simulation geeks tend to follow a different arc than console gamers: they buy little software, and more interesting hardware (well, some do).
Personally, I've never owned console, and am not tempted by the current crop. Well, if I had a TV, I might consider the Wii, just to see if it really is as fun as it looks.
TFA suggests that FUD is a strong weapon against "Forward-looking" clients, and uses SCO as an example of that. The counter position is that Linux (and OSS in general) needs "strategic partners" -- large organizations (governments and corporations) who adopt for security or competitive reasons.
From my perspective, the biggest threat to OSS adoption right now isn't precisely FUD, but the increasing conflict between how people use ideas and how governments regulate them. TFA points out that OSS is attractive because OSS developers like to collaborate and to share ideas; in fact, free exchange of information is a basic human trait. Even the costs incurred in the discipline and training needed to evaluate such information (=education) makes people uneasy. Intellectual Property as a concept came pretty late.
But that's where the threat is: apply/change the law to legislate F/OSS out of existence.
The rest of the article is pretty straightforward: large institutions, such as governments, have it in their interest to use F/OSS, since non-proprietary, open code is cheaper to maintain (vendor lock-in does not occur). But governments do not have perfect access to the information: by its market position, Microsoft (and, mutatis mutandis, big ISPs in their anti-net Neutrality bids, and so on) has a privileged voice in legislation.
And that is where FUD is useful: not to discourage "forward-looking" clients, as to use legislation to change the playing field to their advantage. With the right targets, F/OSS jsut disappears.
Oh come on, always the same whining.
Look, this is how it works:
The article was Digged yesterday.
Slashdot picked it up today.
and will dupe tomorrow.
There are plenty of questions that will be asked.
The director that resigned (Perkins), didn't resign because of pretexting, but because the chairman unilaterally ordered an investigation of the board of directors, and only informed the directors when the "leak" was found. As head of the Nominating and Governance committee, he was, or felt he was, the one responsible for the Governance of the board.
That the other directors didn't resign doesn't say anything about their position on the matter, especially since they did not have Perkins' unique position.
The "pretexting" allegation came after Perkins resigned, and hired counsel to investigate the investigation. Perkins informed HP counsel, and they didn't act.
Dunn's now made the dumb-ass mistake of calling this a personal issue, a power struggle between Perkins and herself. Undoubtedly it is, but that doesn't make the matter any less severe. In a power struggle, when one side strikes publicly, you have to respond to the public, not to the person.
Did the other directors let Dunn take the "High Ground"? No -- they didn't follow her advice and remove the leak. So what does that give us? One alleged leaker, Dunn with an investigation on it, and now the Directors find they've been the victims of fraud, along with a bunch of reporters and a geophysicist.
She still has a job until tomorrow. Directors are directors because they're insulated from management. Management spied on the directors, without their consent, at the unilateral behest of Patricia Dunn. Patricia Dunn tried to use the results of this espionage to alter the composition of the board of directors. Nobody contests these facts. During the investigation, someone may have "exceeded the bounds of legality" without their superiors' knowledge or authorization, but their results were used, and were used unquestionably.
You can't tolerate that in a boardroom.
Maybe because nobody believes that a major portion of the PCs connected to the internet next year will suddenly start running MacOS X or Linux?
Nor does anyone believe, for that matter, that many PCs currently running Linux or MacOS will be "upgraded" to Vista.
Well, heck. Ever look at any studies for approximately how long someone usually plays a game?
Content is not the same as game length, either. But it is all the creative data that goes into a game. And, if you've been following the news, content is causing trouble for the gaming industry. Each generation facilitates bigger and better content: more complicated textures, sounds, 3D scenes, larger spaces -- all that. Bigger and better content means higher development costs. In an expanding market, these dev. costs could be offset by the increasing number of sales. That's not the case any more. So you have "the next generation" video game that allows "next-generation" content, but with a "last-generation" market. So, sure, if you're developing "Urban Hell Raisers", you can afford big content, but you'll see fewer and fewer games following this business model. Instead, you'll see the exploration of other ways to deliver titles, episodic content and specialty mods being two of them.
HD Price is "constantly dropping", but it still isn't cheap. And the market is screwed up because buyer perception of what HD is and how it works is hopelessly confused. People will buy an EDTV set and think it's HD; People already think DVDs are HD, and don't see the need for HD-DVD; ask anyone on the street the difference between 720p, 1080i and 1080p, and see if you get a sensible answer. Ask them what they have in their house, and they probably won't know. Heck, you'll even find plenty of HD sets wired up to play only normal-definition content.
Another company goes and makes the mistakes of getting in an arms race, confusing engineering prestige with marketability, and selling themselves on it by believing projections of a growing market. So they make the biggest, baddest thing out there, a real technological wonder, and at the same time the market shows little interest in growing that way, all those technological improvements create bottlenecks in their supply chain so they can't even deliver to those few who would buy it.
HD media market is a market that doesn't really exist. Developers might claim that 8 gigs or whatnot isn't enough, but they're probably wrong: Big Content Kills, driving up development costs for marginal returns in unit sales. Home users might like the idea of HDTV, but it's so expensive and screwed up as a market that most people aren't interested.
Well, you may not have seen it, but I have. Someone else linked perseus. I have an Italian dictionary on CD Rom that does this too. Linking prepositions and pronouns is also part of the deal. It's not just prior art; it's obvious.
So explain to me, how does 56% of the content is submitted by the top 100 Digg users relate to the assertion here that the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia content is not controlled by the "Wiki-Elite."
Personally, I think this policy of focusing on total edits for Wikiality is brilliant: it keeps the generalists/prestige mongers focusing on copy editing -- where they can help -- and away from content creation -- where they usually can't. Wikipedia is largely the creation of a bunch of specialist nuts. The "Wiki-Elite" are the nuts whose speciality is Wikipedia. Better to keep them away from the content; otherwise, it's akin to having someone with a degree in journalism reporting on a technical issue.
...because Sony wants the PS3 with Blu-Ray to copy the success of the PSP with UMD, but on a bigger scale?
I hate to point you to the article, but hte "schools" they talked to were DigiPen and Guildhall. Can't speak for Guildhall, but DigiPen is a 4-year institution, and they do teach a broader curriculum then simply Video Game vocational training. And people do "wash out" as well.
Of course, with a few changes, what you say could be applied to State Universities: I've seen a lot of people go through them without any real effort or motivation, and go into something they're not particularly interested in. But then, some people apply themselves and work wonders. College just provides the opportunity; most students anywhere don't have the drive to do much with it.
Personally, I don't think college should be vocational training. But if someone is truly inspired to do video games as a calling, by all means check out the specialised schools. 4 years of game development as part of a college curriculum means something: and the portfolio can show fairly quickly what kind of talent the person has, individually and as part of a team.
But, sure, I suspect most people who want to write games don't really know what they're setting themselves up for: an underpaid, overworked sector of the market with a high burnout rate. You have to _really_ want it, and really drive for it.
Why are we so judgmental of Mac users? I dunno, probably 'cos every time anyone mentions "chip on the shoulder" and Macintosh in the same sentence, they get modded as flamebait. Probably because the whole ad campaign expresses this "chip on shoulder" attitude.
Hey, I agree Macintosh ownership represents a whole different philosophical approach to computers than that sported by Windows. And I've spent a good deal of my life being frustrated to hell by both of them. But all I'm saying here is that if Macintosh wants to move product and to gain converts, the best way is not to get in a pissing match with Windows. They've been trying that line for years, and it hasn't given Apple much of the PC market share.
Think of it this way: the iPod didn't make it to market dominance by comparing its features to every other MP3 player that was available on the market. The iPod sold because Apple was able to convince people it wasn't just a gadget, but a lifestyle and a fashion choice, and they did that through marketing. Now Microsoft and its Plays for Sure (sic) program explicitly targets Apple, publishing slick brochures comparing features of various players to the iPod. And guess what? That ad campaign isn't working either. If anything, it reinforces the dominance of Apple.
That's the underlying semantic problem: every statement brings to mind its opposite. If you state "Product A is better than Product B", you also concede to the viewer the possibility of considering "Product B is better than Product A", and if there's reason to believe it is (such as the neighbor bitching that he has to pay $200 to upgrade his laptop from 10.1 to 10.2 just to get on the WLAN, or motherboard problems, or lack of games, or what have you), then the message is weak. If you ignore Product B altogether, and sell "Product A is what you want", then the audience may consider whether they really want it, but they won't conceive of the competition.
I'm sorry, it's the classic marketing mistake. Apple's competitors make the same one when they market their "not-an-iPods". You don't build market share by capitalizing on the fact that you don't have market share.
In other words, you don't insult your potential market. Macintosh has a lot of image they can sell, sell simply, and sell well, and yet they focus on the PC's problems?
Just because a large portion of Mac users seem to spend every waking hour mocking Windows doesn't mean that obsession is marketable (or is even what sensible Mac Fans do).
Yeah, and as an aside, I wouldn't be investing in any "Laptop Fuel Cell" tech just yet. You can build systems that concentrate large amounts of energy in small spaces, then deliver them at impressive rates, but don't come crying to me when they catch fire or explode.
Cf. Malinowski, 1915, 1922.
Come on, guys....
Uh--so let me get this right, "Malware" now includes anything that does not "register" with Microsoft and adhere to unconscionable DRM schemes?
You're right.
And plenty of people are buying steamer tickets. Why should we worry about Jet transport?
Sure, the click-fests of RTSs and strategy games sell copies, but that doesn't mean they exploit the market potential to the fullest. I'll still enjoy a game like Battlefront's Combat Mission series, but most people won't, and the reason is because they're forced to micromanage a battalion down at the squad level. When I describe a game afterwards, I don't talk about the individual squads most of the time, but about how the companies and sometimes platoons moved. A game that simulated higher-level combat command, with the same granularity as Combat Mission, but that behaved intelligently with far less user input, would be a game that kicked ass.
Of course, there's a pragmatic reason why this grand theory of mouse-clicks hasn't gotten hold: AI is hard. Unless your "seven objects" include humans in the loop, you need someone to write really fancy code to predict what it is the person wants to do. The Author's claim that programmers have trouble dealing with abstract objects is a red herring: the problem isn't permitting abstractions such as "the railroad project" to exist, but rather giving them in the game the conceptual value they have for the user.
To borrow an example from my buddy from Cordova, imagine a game where you command a team of building contractors. You want to build a bathtub. The bathtub, when it is built, is a concrete object in the gamespace. It can have properties and all that, but more importantly, the game has authority on what the bathtub is: to the user, it looks about 4 feet long, has claw feet, is white; to the game, and thus in the underlying reality, the tub uses this polygon model in this space, and this orientation, this texture map, and resides in this block of memory.
Here, the user can know something about the bathtub, and will, in time, learn some of the quirks of its underlying reality: If I instruct my virtual demo guy to set off a crate of dynamite in the bathtub, the tub will not be damaged; the user will find this dissonance disappointing, but not a deal breaker.
Now consider the abstraction "building the bathtub". In the mind of the user, this means certain things: Bob, Fred and John bring in a tub, orient it in a certain way, attach claw feet and plumbing, drink a few cokes, charge the owner $2000, and crack a tile. The computer, on the other hand, has to know all this. In particular, it has to know that it's Bob, Fred and John; that working on the bathtub is more important than weatherproofing the front deck, that the bathtub is assembled in a certain way, and in a certain order. You can link all these things to an abstract logic with a list of things to do, and it'll probably "work". But with abstractions, the amount of work required to put the entities in being is much higher, and the number of points of dissonance increases: If the AI pulls in Jose from installing the toilet, and leaves Bob out varnishing the deck, the user's going to be upset in a way that a non-destructable bathtub won't make him.
So you're back to allowing micromanagement, which then invokes what the author claims is Gresham's Law (well, it is, but not from the player's side: Gresham's Law works here because, when you insert two "currencies" in circulation: automated and manual fall-back, most programmers are going to do a half-assed job on the automated version, since "those really interested can always switch over to manual" -- so, the sonar operator never hears long-range propellers the human ear can; Bob gets stuck in a closest until the human comes over to free him).
I dunno. I agree with the principle, but not the solution. Perhaps there isn't any single one: in some cases, an intelligent interface and some finite-state AI would go a long way; in others, multiplayer could fill out the hierarchies with humans in the loop; in still others, a stateless neural network might make things interesting.
I hate to say it, but it's one of the perverse effects of the "open source mentality": dedicated amateurs will always do a better job at technologically-interesting tasks than professionals. Why? Well, you have to hire professionals; the internet, on the other hand, is the great enabler for addicts of all kinds, including those addicted to getting the best data compression out there.
Sure, these guys get the accolades, and see their files copied across the world, but the bug that drives the true nuts isn't mass approval; it's knowing that nobody else can squeeze the bits like they can.
Paying jobs don't give that: neither the big media corps nor the big media pirates need an ace at this job.
so while they disdain the preponderance of brain-dead pirates who benefit most from their work, they take heart in the few cognoscenti who admire their art.
Yes, it's a sick world we live in. What gives me most fear is the notion that the "Open Source Mentality" itself is to blame, rather than an inefficient marketplace.
Yeah, but it used to be CERT, not "CERT, a division of the DHS"
The percentage system is something of a mystery, but it does correlate fairly closely to how the US A-F system, translated to the 100 point scale, is supposed to be applied to grades in big US Universities.
The center of the distribution is supposed to be around the high 70s/low 80s. (C+/B-).
Back when I was the TA monkey handing out grades, the recommended distribution was 40% Cs (70s) 33% Bs (80s) 10% As (90s), and, well, the Fs (
The distribution looks pretty much like that. Incidentally, the same system can be seen for wines as well.
Bottom line, these guys are tough graders; or the industry pumps out a lot of schlock.
I prefer the Michelin system: if it's worth bothering with, describe the game. If it's particularly good, use the star system:
* - A good game in its category.
** - worth ordering
*** - worth a trip to the store
...or wait, those more cynical could use pirating/buying.
parchment is expensive, and the economy of Constantinople 1229 was pretty bad. Most of the Greek aristocracy had relocated, the Latin Emperor had never been strong, but now was so ineffective, they were having trouble appointing people to do it, and in a few years the "Empire" would be reduced to the town of Constantinople itself. Add to that the Greek Patriarchs and a good deal of the bishops (but not all) had left Latin-dominated areas and were with the "Empire in Exiile", and you've got a seriously impoverished Greek clergy.
Dude, the "monk" wrote in Greek, in Constantinople. Whether it actually was a "monk", or just a scribe, or a priest, who scrubbed and copied that thing, is a different story. Anyway, 1229 Constantinople was a pretty rough place, and the Greek clergy wouldn't have been terribly rich; they've never been very interested in pagan Greek literature in the Eastern Church anyway. Now, in Paris, at the same time, there are plenty of priests, monks and friars who would be very eager to see what that text said (at least in translation). And there were active centers of Greek-Latin and Arabic-Latin translation of scientific texts at the time, especially in Spain.
...Oh I wanna be on that Rhumba, oh when the Saints go over there!