Unfortunately, they are almost exclusively coming from www.shockwave.com.
She can't handle a game that has any jumping in it, or any action. She doesn't like any games that put a lot of pressure on the player. She doesn't like violence. She doesn't like games that are too complex. She doesn't like games that take too long to beat. She doesn't like games that don't have any story. She doesn't like games that take too long to learn.
This is not to say that she doesn't like all games, there are a handful of mainstream games that fit the bill (Elite Beat Agents, Plants vs. Zombies, some RPGs). But the vast majority are simply not for her. She pretty much exclusively plays variants of Diner Dash and HOG (Hidden Object Games). They're more or less just reskins of the same game wrapped in different backstories. But hey, she enjoys them, and that's pretty much the bottomline in gaming isn't it?
Not that it was particularly innovative overall (though well-polished), but it did push a completely in-game GUI so that the player is never removed from the environment except to enter or exit the game. A pretty impressive implementation.
No big effect on gameplay, but a notable design achievement that is particularly useful to the game's genre.
One of the interesting points made in the study was that the most important characteristic of "being available" is a simple and achievable goal.
"Once Google had its list, the company started teaching it in training programs, as well as in coaching and performance review sessions with individual employees. It paid off quickly.
âoeWe were able to have a statistically significant improvement in manager quality for 75 percent of our worst-performing managers,â Mr. Bock says.
He tells the story of one manager whose employees seemed to despise him. He was driving them too hard. They found him bossy, arrogant, political, secretive. They wanted to quit his team.
âoeHeâ(TM)s brilliant, but he did everything wrong when it came to leading a team,â Mr. Bock recalls.
Because of that heavy hand, this manager was denied a promotion he wanted, and was told that his style was the reason. But Google gave him one-on-one coaching â" the company has coaches on staff, rather than hiring from the outside. Six months later, team members were grudgingly acknowledging in surveys that the manager had improved.
âoeAnd a year later, itâ(TM)s actually quite a bit better,â Mr. Bock says. âoeItâ(TM)s still not great. Heâ(TM)s nowhere near one of our best managers, but heâ(TM)s not our worst anymore. And he got promoted.â
"
Being "good with people" is pretty tough for some people. Socializing doesn't come naturally to everyone. But they can make time to hear other people out, so they can connect with people on a professional level, even if they are slow to make connections on a personal level.
Anecdotally, I know my morale definitely improves when I know my boss and I are on the same page with regards to what's important, and what needs to be done. It takes away a lot of uncertainty and anxiety about when my work gets reviewed.
More likely it has to do with other passengers believing a rogue cellphone might crash the plane and may complain to the flight attendant if they see another passenger using a cellphone. The other passenger has no idea if airplane mode is in use.
Rather than risking a headache of explanation or calming down snippy passengers, it's easier for the attendant to just tell everyone to turn them all off. They don't really stand to gain anything by splitting hairs over with someone over what's ok and what's not ok.
As cynical as I am, a hive mind would bring the understanding needed for previously unreachable levels of sympathy and social order.
Stepping on people becomes harder when you feel the consequences of your actions.
I don't know what it's like to live in poverty. I have some vague sense that it sucks, but I don't understand the hardship in a meaningful way (i.e, in a way that I'd modify my own lifestyle to attempt to relieve the poverty).
In business, there is no room for trust. Everyone is against you, unless your goals happen to temporarily align. But if I could link with someone, and see that he really does plan on keeping his word, I don't have to draw up a huge contract written in legalese.
A hive mind could grease the gears of society in interesting ways.
That just blew me away. Instead of weeks of painful recovery and permanent disfigurement, the burn victim is treated in about a week with little or no scarring.
Yes, this is the strategy I've been using as well.
I set the expectations of others by not responding immediately to these messages. They know that I'm not shunning them or insulting them personally by jumping to answer everything. I ignore them unilaterally until I feel like checking them.
Of course, this doesn't work on the wifey, since it's my responsibility to be available when she needs me. Thus, she gets her own ringtone.
Phone, Ipod touch, multi-tool, Gum, pen/pencil, inhaler, chapstick, a cloth for glasses, bus schedule, stain remover stick, eyedrops, purell, wallet & keys(and note that my pockets are NOT bulging with wallet and keys because they're in the bag instead). Plus room for items I need to carry specifically for that day, like snacks, documents
It's more masculine to be prepared, than to not be prepared because of fashion-based fears.
Whatever you think of Jobs from a technical or creative standpoint...it would be foolish to dismiss his success.
There's plenty of room for debate on how he achieved that success, but what's clear from his string of repeated success across multiple projects, is that he's making a little of his own luck.
Even if you think apple products are overpriced locked-down garbage...you should still recognize the fact that he's managing to sell such products in tremendous volumes.
He's saying keeping millions of people employed provides them with income (let's say by ordering lots of roads/bridges to be built).
That provides construction workers with taxable income that goes back to the government. Obviously, that share will be a fraction of what the government spent to get those workers working.
However, the rest of that workers money goes towards buying a bike for a christmas gift that he didn't buy last year because he was unemployed. That gives money to the bike-maker. That bike-maker income is taxable. Now that the bike maker is selling more bikes, he can order more stock from his parts vendors, like the tire manufacturer.
That tire manufacturer's income is taxable. That tire manufacturer now needs more rubber, and will have to order more. The rubber supplier's income is taxable.
The money cycles from one person's hands to another and the economy is pushed in multiple steps. This "money-multiplier" effect increases demand across multiple industries and spurs economic forecasts forward. When manufacturers see more demand they can hire even more people and keep the economic benefits rolling forward.
That's what he's saying. It's intro to macroeconomics.
In a nutshell, imagine the pool of potential hires all standing next to each other in a big auditorium. It's just a giant faceless mass of people who/might/ be "intelligent".
But how do you know? Should HR just start from the front and work to the back going over every single one just in case they're intelligent?
The pool of potential hires are competing to get hired, so they will work to get noticed. So some of them might get a certification, the equivalent of raising your hand in the air and saying "look at me! I'm different!". The others will probably say, "Well I've got one too! You should look at me too!"
And so the process of whittling down goes until you find the people with the most "hands" in the air. That's where you start. If they don't pan out, you work downwards until you find the qualified candidates.
(Obviously other more insightful indicators like a referral from a trusted employee will move a candidate to the front of the line)
A "Natural Monopoly" is a market in which the costs of getting started are so high that no one can hope to compete with the incumbent power. In a situation where no competitors can realistically enter, the incumbent power naturally has monopoly power to do what they wish.
Free markets are good because of competitive pressure. But a free market can gravitate towards monopolies where no competitive pressure exists. In such cases, regulation is needed as a last resort to kick-start a competitive process.
"Such a process happened in the water industry in nineteenth century Britain. Up until the mid-nineteenth century, Parliament discouraged municipal involvement in water supply; in 1851, private companies had 60% of the market. Competition amongst the companies in larger industrial towns lowered profit margins, as companies were less able to charge a sufficient price for installation of networks in new areas. In areas with direct competition (with two sets of mains), usually at the edge of companies' territories, profit margins were lowest of all. Such situations resulted in higher costs and lower efficiency, as two networks, neither used to capacity, were used. With a limited number of households that could afford their services, expansion of networks slowed, and many companies were barely profitable. With a lack of water and sanitation claiming thousands of lives in periodic epidemics, municipalisation proceeded rapidly after 1860, and municipalities were able to raise finance for investment, which private companies often could not. A few well-run private companies that worked together with local towns and cities (gaining legal monopolies and thereby the financial security to invest as required) did survive, providing around 20% of the population with water even today. The rest of the water industry in England and Wales was reprivatised in the form of 10 regional monopolies in 1989."
This sort of thing is exactly why I don't have a smart phone. Like many other/.ers I'm fascinated with new technology and gadgets, but my cellphone is ancient. The most advanced feature it supports is 16-bit color. I don't want texts at a ridiculous monthly rate, or even the absurd.10cents per text rate(I've got texts completely disabled). I don't want to take pictures on a phone if I can't get it off the phone or send it to anyone without an expensive data plan. I don't want an expensive data plan when the caps are so low that I can't enjoy using it because of constantly worrying about getting nailed with a huge overuse bill.
However, hearing that some companies are offering to cut off your data instead of just letting you rack up a ridiculous bill gives me at least some comfort. I might be willing to try it out under such circumstances.
I suppose I'm just trucking along on the belief that there's no way this implementation can stay this primitive forever, and that a worthy package is right around the corner...somewhere. But maybe I'm just wrong, maybe it really is just that expensive to support a mobile data network.
Shipping margins are pretty thin, so it's taken time for pirate pressures to drive up market prices on shipping containers on that route, allowing for greater security measures.
Ideally, the companies would rather have governments spend the money on stopping the pirates so that they don't have to spend as much of their own money.
My wife brought some fried maggot back from work. Some coworker had come back with a bag of them from thailand.
She was telling all about how it tasted and what the texture was like. So clearly I had to immediately eat one, or else I'd be a bitch for wimping out even though my wife already ate them. So I popped'em in my mouth without even blinking.
Good god that was/awful/ it was like eating chalk. Dry and powdery, gumming up between your teeth, with horrible little legs getting stuck everywhere in your mouth.
She was impressed...because she hadn't eaten any. She had only heard what it tasted like from her friends.
Took 3 mouthrinses to get that maggot residue out.
A relatively high net income is nice (albeit unaudited!), there are other factors to weigh into valuation.
While the numbers in the financial statements are important, this is only part of the overall picture of a company's present and future.
I think for a company like Facebook, the risks stemming from competition and legal liability are tremendous. While Facebook is the biggest social media network out there, you can't be sure it'll be the last. It can get slammed by legal conflicts over privacy issues. Facebook benefits tremendously from the network effect of having so many users, but it can't coast on mere size.
Facebook needs to strike a careful balance between monetizing its resources and erosion of the user experience. There is a lot of risk involved when you put money into a company walking on such a fine line.
The way the Kinect system menu works is that you do a specific arcing "hello"-style wave from one side of the body to the other to get a lock on your hand. It's never picked me up accidentally.
It definitely "sees" you do all those things, but until you begin with the recognition gesture, it won't respond to any of those things. In a specific game, Kinect Sports, it asks you to raise a hand over your head if you want to be recognized as the primary operator. In other games like Dance Central where players hop in and out to play, you just step in and it'll pick you up immediately, and respond only when you fully extend an arm to the left or right. In Kinect Adventures, it will lock onto either player automatically, but only give control to the player standing furthest to the front.
The main drawback it faces is response time. It can measure the movement accurately, but not quickly. It's far faster to use a mouse cursor or arrow keys to navigate menus because of the cumulative delays in waiting for the cursor to keep up with my hand.
This is actually the standard work environment at mid-large size accounting firms.
The system is called hoteling. Since audit/assurance employees are constantly out at the client site, we just setup at one of the empty cubicles on the occasional days where we get to work in the office rather than at the client.
We dial a number into the phone to get calls routed to our desk, and sign off when we leave. All necessary documentation is kept in archives at the office, and documentation we need at the client is mailed in a big steel trunk(or driven over by courier).
Essentially, our office is just what we can cram into a laptop bag and whatever supplies we mailed in the trunk. Only senior managers and partners get a permanent place to sit.
Incidentally, about 40-50% of new hires quit within 2-3 years in this industry.
Six days in Fallujah was interesting as a serious attempt to portray a current war:
Quote: "In an interview with Atomic Games president, Peter Tamte, he stated that "One of the divisions in our company was developing training tools for the United States Marine Corps, and they assigned some Marines from Third Battalion First Marines to help us out."[2] However, a few months into development, Third Battalion, First Marines was deployed in Iraq and participated in the Battle of Fallujah.[2] Tamte later stated that "When they came back from Fallujah, they asked us to create a videogame about their experiences there, and it seemed like the right thing to do."[2] Tamte further stated that the goal of Six Days in Fallujah is to create the most realistic military shooter possible, and that "Ultimately, all of us are curious about what it would really be like to be in a war. I've been playing military shooters for ages, and at a certain point when I'm playing the game, I know it's fake. You can tell a bunch of guys sat in a room and designed it. That's always bothered me.".[4] Tamte further elaborated in an interview with Joystiq that, "The words I would use to describe the game—first of all, it's compelling. And another word I use—insight. There are things that you can do in video games that you cannot do in other forms of media. And a lot of that has to do with presenting players with the dilemmas that the Marines saw in Fallujah and then giving them the choice of how to handle that dilemma. And I think at that point, you know - when you watch a movie, you see the decisions that somebody else made. But when you make a decision yourself, then you get a much deeper level of understanding.""
Sounds like an honest attempt to advance the medium, but it got killed off as soon as Fox news heard of it.
I can home in on things I'm looking for very quickly, but I think my attention to detail suffers as a result of always tackling large volumes of information breadth-first instead of depth-first.
For example if I'm scanning a page of information with a lot of critical information, I skim it and miss what I'm looking for, skim again and miss it again, and it takes awhile before I realize I'm never going to find what I'm looking for this way. Eventually I settle down and read it carefully from the top and find what I needed.
Yes, I'm using text as the situation while the article discusses visual information, but I feel that I use the same mental "search-mode" for both situations. I tune out the immediate situation slightly and bring everything into equal portions of general awareness. Then the mind does all the unconscious processing, and I snap directly to points of interest.
Being highly attuned to distraction is useful in games. Hearing the faint report of a footstep/gunshot in the distance is a clue that most people don't pick up on when there's a tornado of gunfire and explosions right next to them. I log all that information in and prepare for my second and third steps while others are completely consumed by their immediate situation.
But it's a big hindrance when I'm trying to parse a long complex concept from my books, and my attention snaps to a car trunk being closed 2 houses down. Or tracking a truck going down the highway. Or the ping of the metal flexing in the hot air vent. It takes me a long time to focus, and it's easy for me to lose that focus too.
I think having concentration and single-minded focus will take most people farther in life than a broad and light attention span. The economy is really geared to favor specialists who have to absorb large amounts of complex detail, be it from a book, or from a craft.
Slashdot Mirror
My wife consumes a huge volume of games...
Unfortunately, they are almost exclusively coming from www.shockwave.com.
She can't handle a game that has any jumping in it, or any action. She doesn't like any games that put a lot of pressure on the player. She doesn't like violence. She doesn't like games that are too complex. She doesn't like games that take too long to beat. She doesn't like games that don't have any story. She doesn't like games that take too long to learn.
This is not to say that she doesn't like all games, there are a handful of mainstream games that fit the bill (Elite Beat Agents, Plants vs. Zombies, some RPGs). But the vast majority are simply not for her. She pretty much exclusively plays variants of Diner Dash and HOG (Hidden Object Games). They're more or less just reskins of the same game wrapped in different backstories. But hey, she enjoys them, and that's pretty much the bottomline in gaming isn't it?
Not that it was particularly innovative overall (though well-polished), but it did push a completely in-game GUI so that the player is never removed from the environment except to enter or exit the game. A pretty impressive implementation.
No big effect on gameplay, but a notable design achievement that is particularly useful to the game's genre.
One of the interesting points made in the study was that the most important characteristic of "being available" is a simple and achievable goal.
"
Being "good with people" is pretty tough for some people. Socializing doesn't come naturally to everyone. But they can make time to hear other people out, so they can connect with people on a professional level, even if they are slow to make connections on a personal level.
Anecdotally, I know my morale definitely improves when I know my boss and I are on the same page with regards to what's important, and what needs to be done. It takes away a lot of uncertainty and anxiety about when my work gets reviewed.
Awesome, this will make it easier to filter out the malicious porn spam websites when I'm doing my...research.
Sorry, I don't see this solution out there, and ISPs will do their darnedest to prevent it from happening. They make a a pretty penny on
More likely it has to do with other passengers believing a rogue cellphone might crash the plane and may complain to the flight attendant if they see another passenger using a cellphone. The other passenger has no idea if airplane mode is in use.
Rather than risking a headache of explanation or calming down snippy passengers, it's easier for the attendant to just tell everyone to turn them all off. They don't really stand to gain anything by splitting hairs over with someone over what's ok and what's not ok.
As cynical as I am, a hive mind would bring the understanding needed for previously unreachable levels of sympathy and social order.
Stepping on people becomes harder when you feel the consequences of your actions.
I don't know what it's like to live in poverty. I have some vague sense that it sucks, but I don't understand the hardship in a meaningful way (i.e, in a way that I'd modify my own lifestyle to attempt to relieve the poverty).
In business, there is no room for trust. Everyone is against you, unless your goals happen to temporarily align. But if I could link with someone, and see that he really does plan on keeping his word, I don't have to draw up a huge contract written in legalese.
A hive mind could grease the gears of society in interesting ways.
This reminds me of spray-on skin for burn victims
http://gizmodo.com/#!5749968/spray+on-skin-is-a-reality?comment=36596030
That just blew me away. Instead of weeks of painful recovery and permanent disfigurement, the burn victim is treated in about a week with little or no scarring.
Yes, this is the strategy I've been using as well.
I set the expectations of others by not responding immediately to these messages. They know that I'm not shunning them or insulting them personally by jumping to answer everything. I ignore them unilaterally until I feel like checking them.
Of course, this doesn't work on the wifey, since it's my responsibility to be available when she needs me. Thus, she gets her own ringtone.
Yeah, I just call mine a purse too.
Phone, Ipod touch, multi-tool, Gum, pen/pencil, inhaler, chapstick, a cloth for glasses, bus schedule, stain remover stick, eyedrops, purell, wallet & keys(and note that my pockets are NOT bulging with wallet and keys because they're in the bag instead). Plus room for items I need to carry specifically for that day, like snacks, documents
It's more masculine to be prepared, than to not be prepared because of fashion-based fears.
Whatever you think of Jobs from a technical or creative standpoint...it would be foolish to dismiss his success.
There's plenty of room for debate on how he achieved that success, but what's clear from his string of repeated success across multiple projects, is that he's making a little of his own luck.
Even if you think apple products are overpriced locked-down garbage...you should still recognize the fact that he's managing to sell such products in tremendous volumes.
You don't understand him correctly.
He's saying keeping millions of people employed provides them with income (let's say by ordering lots of roads/bridges to be built).
That provides construction workers with taxable income that goes back to the government. Obviously, that share will be a fraction of what the government spent to get those workers working.
However, the rest of that workers money goes towards buying a bike for a christmas gift that he didn't buy last year because he was unemployed. That gives money to the bike-maker. That bike-maker income is taxable. Now that the bike maker is selling more bikes, he can order more stock from his parts vendors, like the tire manufacturer.
That tire manufacturer's income is taxable. That tire manufacturer now needs more rubber, and will have to order more. The rubber supplier's income is taxable.
The money cycles from one person's hands to another and the economy is pushed in multiple steps. This "money-multiplier" effect increases demand across multiple industries and spurs economic forecasts forward. When manufacturers see more demand they can hire even more people and keep the economic benefits rolling forward.
That's what he's saying. It's intro to macroeconomics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)
In a nutshell, imagine the pool of potential hires all standing next to each other in a big auditorium. It's just a giant faceless mass of people who /might/ be "intelligent".
But how do you know? Should HR just start from the front and work to the back going over every single one just in case they're intelligent?
The pool of potential hires are competing to get hired, so they will work to get noticed. So some of them might get a certification, the equivalent of raising your hand in the air and saying "look at me! I'm different!". The others will probably say, "Well I've got one too! You should look at me too!"
And so the process of whittling down goes until you find the people with the most "hands" in the air. That's where you start. If they don't pan out, you work downwards until you find the qualified candidates.
(Obviously other more insightful indicators like a referral from a trusted employee will move a candidate to the front of the line)
Just to play Devil's advocate:
What if they made sequels that were actually good?
Many of course would say that they shouldn't, but the films will get made anyway.
With the assumption that the films will get made, what would you want them to make?
Sheesh, they might as well have asked:
"Have you ever put off doing something that sucks in favor of doing something you like?"
A) Yes
B) I'm an addict
C) I have a problem
D) I have mental health issues.
E) All of the above
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
A "Natural Monopoly" is a market in which the costs of getting started are so high that no one can hope to compete with the incumbent power. In a situation where no competitors can realistically enter, the incumbent power naturally has monopoly power to do what they wish.
Free markets are good because of competitive pressure. But a free market can gravitate towards monopolies where no competitive pressure exists. In such cases, regulation is needed as a last resort to kick-start a competitive process.
"Such a process happened in the water industry in nineteenth century Britain. Up until the mid-nineteenth century, Parliament discouraged municipal involvement in water supply; in 1851, private companies had 60% of the market. Competition amongst the companies in larger industrial towns lowered profit margins, as companies were less able to charge a sufficient price for installation of networks in new areas. In areas with direct competition (with two sets of mains), usually at the edge of companies' territories, profit margins were lowest of all. Such situations resulted in higher costs and lower efficiency, as two networks, neither used to capacity, were used. With a limited number of households that could afford their services, expansion of networks slowed, and many companies were barely profitable. With a lack of water and sanitation claiming thousands of lives in periodic epidemics, municipalisation proceeded rapidly after 1860, and municipalities were able to raise finance for investment, which private companies often could not. A few well-run private companies that worked together with local towns and cities (gaining legal monopolies and thereby the financial security to invest as required) did survive, providing around 20% of the population with water even today. The rest of the water industry in England and Wales was reprivatised in the form of 10 regional monopolies in 1989."
This sort of thing is exactly why I don't have a smart phone. Like many other /.ers I'm fascinated with new technology and gadgets, but my cellphone is ancient. The most advanced feature it supports is 16-bit color. I don't want texts at a ridiculous monthly rate, or even the absurd .10cents per text rate(I've got texts completely disabled). I don't want to take pictures on a phone if I can't get it off the phone or send it to anyone without an expensive data plan. I don't want an expensive data plan when the caps are so low that I can't enjoy using it because of constantly worrying about getting nailed with a huge overuse bill.
However, hearing that some companies are offering to cut off your data instead of just letting you rack up a ridiculous bill gives me at least some comfort. I might be willing to try it out under such circumstances.
I suppose I'm just trucking along on the belief that there's no way this implementation can stay this primitive forever, and that a worthy package is right around the corner...somewhere. But maybe I'm just wrong, maybe it really is just that expensive to support a mobile data network.
Shipping margins are pretty thin, so it's taken time for pirate pressures to drive up market prices on shipping containers on that route, allowing for greater security measures.
Ideally, the companies would rather have governments spend the money on stopping the pirates so that they don't have to spend as much of their own money.
My wife brought some fried maggot back from work. Some coworker had come back with a bag of them from thailand.
She was telling all about how it tasted and what the texture was like. So clearly I had to immediately eat one, or else I'd be a bitch for wimping out even though my wife already ate them. So I popped'em in my mouth without even blinking.
Good god that was /awful/ it was like eating chalk. Dry and powdery, gumming up between your teeth, with horrible little legs getting stuck everywhere in your mouth.
She was impressed...because she hadn't eaten any. She had only heard what it tasted like from her friends.
Took 3 mouthrinses to get that maggot residue out.
A relatively high net income is nice (albeit unaudited!), there are other factors to weigh into valuation.
While the numbers in the financial statements are important, this is only part of the overall picture of a company's present and future.
I think for a company like Facebook, the risks stemming from competition and legal liability are tremendous. While Facebook is the biggest social media network out there, you can't be sure it'll be the last. It can get slammed by legal conflicts over privacy issues. Facebook benefits tremendously from the network effect of having so many users, but it can't coast on mere size.
Facebook needs to strike a careful balance between monetizing its resources and erosion of the user experience. There is a lot of risk involved when you put money into a company walking on such a fine line.
The way the Kinect system menu works is that you do a specific arcing "hello"-style wave from one side of the body to the other to get a lock on your hand. It's never picked me up accidentally.
It definitely "sees" you do all those things, but until you begin with the recognition gesture, it won't respond to any of those things. In a specific game, Kinect Sports, it asks you to raise a hand over your head if you want to be recognized as the primary operator. In other games like Dance Central where players hop in and out to play, you just step in and it'll pick you up immediately, and respond only when you fully extend an arm to the left or right. In Kinect Adventures, it will lock onto either player automatically, but only give control to the player standing furthest to the front.
The main drawback it faces is response time. It can measure the movement accurately, but not quickly. It's far faster to use a mouse cursor or arrow keys to navigate menus because of the cumulative delays in waiting for the cursor to keep up with my hand.
This is actually the standard work environment at mid-large size accounting firms.
The system is called hoteling. Since audit/assurance employees are constantly out at the client site, we just setup at one of the empty cubicles on the occasional days where we get to work in the office rather than at the client.
We dial a number into the phone to get calls routed to our desk, and sign off when we leave. All necessary documentation is kept in archives at the office, and documentation we need at the client is mailed in a big steel trunk(or driven over by courier).
Essentially, our office is just what we can cram into a laptop bag and whatever supplies we mailed in the trunk. Only senior managers and partners get a permanent place to sit.
Incidentally, about 40-50% of new hires quit within 2-3 years in this industry.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2414-Facing-Controversy
This link contains a discussion on gaming controversy, and provides a detailed look at what happened to Six Days in Fallujah.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Days_in_Fallujah
Six days in Fallujah was interesting as a serious attempt to portray a current war:
Quote:
"In an interview with Atomic Games president, Peter Tamte, he stated that "One of the divisions in our company was developing training tools for the United States Marine Corps, and they assigned some Marines from Third Battalion First Marines to help us out."[2] However, a few months into development, Third Battalion, First Marines was deployed in Iraq and participated in the Battle of Fallujah.[2] Tamte later stated that "When they came back from Fallujah, they asked us to create a videogame about their experiences there, and it seemed like the right thing to do."[2] Tamte further stated that the goal of Six Days in Fallujah is to create the most realistic military shooter possible, and that "Ultimately, all of us are curious about what it would really be like to be in a war. I've been playing military shooters for ages, and at a certain point when I'm playing the game, I know it's fake. You can tell a bunch of guys sat in a room and designed it. That's always bothered me.".[4] Tamte further elaborated in an interview with Joystiq that, "The words I would use to describe the game—first of all, it's compelling. And another word I use—insight. There are things that you can do in video games that you cannot do in other forms of media. And a lot of that has to do with presenting players with the dilemmas that the Marines saw in Fallujah and then giving them the choice of how to handle that dilemma. And I think at that point, you know - when you watch a movie, you see the decisions that somebody else made. But when you make a decision yourself, then you get a much deeper level of understanding.""
Sounds like an honest attempt to advance the medium, but it got killed off as soon as Fox news heard of it.
I can home in on things I'm looking for very quickly, but I think my attention to detail suffers as a result of always tackling large volumes of information breadth-first instead of depth-first.
For example if I'm scanning a page of information with a lot of critical information, I skim it and miss what I'm looking for, skim again and miss it again, and it takes awhile before I realize I'm never going to find what I'm looking for this way. Eventually I settle down and read it carefully from the top and find what I needed.
Yes, I'm using text as the situation while the article discusses visual information, but I feel that I use the same mental "search-mode" for both situations. I tune out the immediate situation slightly and bring everything into equal portions of general awareness. Then the mind does all the unconscious processing, and I snap directly to points of interest.
Being highly attuned to distraction is useful in games. Hearing the faint report of a footstep/gunshot in the distance is a clue that most people don't pick up on when there's a tornado of gunfire and explosions right next to them. I log all that information in and prepare for my second and third steps while others are completely consumed by their immediate situation.
But it's a big hindrance when I'm trying to parse a long complex concept from my books, and my attention snaps to a car trunk being closed 2 houses down. Or tracking a truck going down the highway. Or the ping of the metal flexing in the hot air vent. It takes me a long time to focus, and it's easy for me to lose that focus too.
I think having concentration and single-minded focus will take most people farther in life than a broad and light attention span. The economy is really geared to favor specialists who have to absorb large amounts of complex detail, be it from a book, or from a craft.