I worked as a videogame reviewer for a number of years and the amount of bought and paid for "reviews" in that game is just silly. I once panned MGS3 (for being all hype and cutscene and little substance) and got a nasty letter from them stating they would not continue to reimburse me or advertise for our site... we were a totally independent site and took no money or ads in the first place.
I've worked in a fairly large bank IT dept. where the woman in charge had zero credentials but "people liked her" she eventually admitted she knew nothing and took a slight demotion but that was after 19 years there. I've worked in a mid-sized private university network dept. where the manager and sr. guy had 2-year trade school "diplomas" and ruled everything with an iron fist so they wouldn't be shown up as incompetent. I was pushed out because I actually knew what I was doing, they hired a middle-aged guy with no experience to replace me. Those kids paying a lot of money are losing out big time.
Agreed, which is why most companies farm out their IT hiring to recruiters/headhunters with tech specialization. The problem are the legions of unskilled parasite IT people that are currently employed and there is no way to unseat them. Without tangible products it is very hard to find the bullshit artists and ferret them out.
That's why regular jobs that produce or create something physical (even if it is paper) are better policed and handled. Information and knowledge is not so easy for the uninformed or blind.
I've been a system builder since the 486DX2 66MHz days and of all the case designs I've seen come, go, and be claimed to be the next coming, the only one to ever be a perfect blend of form and function is the Mac Pro cases by Apple. I'm not even a fanboy, and most of those cases probably were never even cracked, but there is no denying them. This thing is just dumb.
While I never expected massive paychecks or bleeding edge technology, there was a time when it was at least valued similarly as other departments, that is gone. The dot com bubble brought in a ton of people students and carer changers who had nothing but dollar signs and free pac-man in their eyes. After the bust, sadly most of these folks were not driven out as well. So now we have far too many clueless IT workers/managers who work on fear and CYA alone and it drags the whole profession down.
I'd love to see undercover IT workers be introduced in the workplace. So many IT workers are as clueless or more so than these people. So many companies are being taken for a ride and wasting tons of money due to sheer incompetence. This has a bigger impact on prices and wage than any of these cases by far but goes on in virtually every company. Without tangible products and management with some sort of tech background it all goes on unchecked. I'm so tired of this commonality that I may look to change careers rather than suffer through more of this.
Actually the GPU in both the Gamecube and Wii are phenomenal and actually outpace most current videocards in some ways... they are just horribly limited by the surrounding architecture. They can do like 8 layers of rendering on all surfaces at once. So you can have texture, bump map, lighting, etc. all at once on every surface. I've seen tech demos of it's capabilities that just blow the mind.
Heh, yes, but their stuff is expensive to begin with no matter who designed the interface. The thing I was getting at is that Art Lebedev is just one such company, I actually think there are better firms out there for a thing like this. Even better let a few young and hungry firms work on it and see what they can come up with.
The big picture is to get away from coders and techies creating interfaces, they aren't good at it. We like to think we have skillz in this area but the reality is just as much dedication and effort as it takes to design code is required to be even decent at design and layout. Artists have a big place in software design, we've just kept them out of it mostly thinking we can do it all. Apple has taken this approach and it has paid off in spades.
Microsoft gets hate from geeks and Apple-types both. No matter what Microsoft designs those folks will hate it. But if you make a big deal out of a partnership with some well-respected design firm or hip new one, then you will win over some of those people and start to change your image.
The best place to start is their website: http://www.artlebedev.com/ you will see that they do indeed do design work for UI's like the GPS navigation system and T&C Amplifier on the front page. They have a store link which has a bunch of their work.
A design firm, even the likes of Art Lebedev Studios is a drop in the bucket compared to the R&D and design work that goes into something like this. Just because Art Lebedev has created expensive items directly (which was never meant for production and housed over a hundred OLED screens) doesn't mean that everything they do is expensive to that level. Lots of major companies do this kind of design work outside of their normal product lines.
umm, that is exactly what haptic feedback is. It would allow the screen to have feel to it. Ex: raised bumps for each key that have a click to them when depressed (sort of like the BB Storm screen), or a raised ridge on the "F" and "J" just like a real keyboard for orientation, or tons of other unique and new methods.
Ergonomics of it is no different than current laptop keyboards or Apple keyboards with very thin keys. Those tolerances are within specs of what a feedback enabled screen could do.
The big advantage comes from new and creative interfaces which can be designed for each app/game using the lower screen like a DS on crack. You could have perfectly customized controls instead of key bindings and "gaming" keyboards. No more: "is the fireball spell on Q or 4?" you could touch the little fireball icon.
I've always been a huge proponent of a dual screen laptop. A ton of people cry about the lack of a tactile keyboard and it always ends there. Haptic feedback is getting better and I can see that as the future but for now something like this is needed. A single screen tablet just isn't useful or natural and they never truly caught on. This type of device is. I think it should actually be oriented as a regular laptop with a simple sensor to know the orientation change to portrait mode and function as shown in the demo videos. Just having the option is better than making it a portrait only device for no real reason.
My other concern is that Microsoft is not good at UI design. Occasionally they have flashes of brilliance but on the whole they fail miserably in this regard. Apple is not always better, so this isn't some fanboy argument. What they should do it farm out the UI to a design firm, something along the lines of Art Lebedev. Let it be truly revolutionary instead of being handcuffed by old ideas and methodologies.
Foe me, you give me those two things and make it a bit thinner but strong and I'm totally sold. I don't think it needs to be netbook cheap even, a fair range of $1200-$1600 and I think it is a winner. Teachers, students, professionals, ebooks, etc. in one device is a disruptive technology.
I've given up on desktop Linux completely. I use it for servers where it makes sense, and I will continue to but as a Linux user since 1995 I can honestly say that the biggest issue is the lack of oversight and steering. Just as with the Kernel the basic foundation needs to be unified and oversaw. Chaos is great but it is not good for a foundation. Linus needs to step up and accept that the reason the kernel has come along so well is because of the central clearing house and oversight. It's time the base system was the same way. Then let people tweak and change it to make all their various distros to their hearts content. But at least there is a single unified foundation. We've had issues last years that could have been snuffed out in weeks if the base system had some structure across the board. I will never understand why people fight this so hard, look at OSX they have come so far so fast with a tiny fraction of the talent because they are working to one goal. There is a happy medium and we need to find it quick.
Contradictions and free passes galore. I've worked as a game reviewer and this has all the hallmarks of a rookie trying to cover a massive title like an MMO. Major UI lag, poor quest structuring, lack of starting areas, etc. yet all is forgiven each time and the game still pulls away an 8/10? 7/10 maybe would be a truer reflection based on the text given here, max. Some of the issues raised can be fixed fairly easily via patches, some may be more laborious, but once they have been addressed then maybe an 8/10 is more in order.
People underestimate the time required for even modest length titles, and MMOs often take weeks of play - not levelling or playing for fun, but dedicated review work where many characters are created and every nook/cranny/feature is tested - and obviously if the reviewer is sitting on a lvl 31 none of this was done. Slashdot has always failed miserably on game reviews and I think it is one of those things better left to the places that do them best.
that the average U.S. college graduate is capable of little more than constantly text messaging on their cell phone, updating facebook/twitter, and balking at the notion of actually working? Taxes are the least of my concerns.
I worked at a university and hired a number of student workers and full time employees , and out of the 14 I had exactly ONE was a solid worker. He had no background in IT and was a philosophy grad student who actually had little in the way of interest in computers even. He worked circles around the B.S. holding IT graduates I had.
In case you may think this anecdotal from one experience, previously I managed an IT dept. for a bank and after wading through hundreds of ITT Tech and 4-year college applicants I still had to sacrifice things to hire TWO people. Of those two one turned out to have serious mental health issues and war-related PTSD and had to be let go, and the other was a hipster Apple/iPhone/facebook/twitter/non-worker type. And he was actually the best of the lot.
The current economic crisis will seem like a walk in the park compared to when this generation takes the reigns. Entitlement, self-absorption, lack of work ethic, and all around lack of ownership will not keep things afloat.
Wow, you're actually defending this by trying to say hooking up your cell phone to a TV is a viable solution? So if you are near a TV, and have the requisite cables... you can then output your Office files and still have a tiny keyboard. Brilliant! Or not.
What could be so pressing that you have no laptop, or access to a computer, yet you have a cell phone, proprietary AV cables, and a TV. This is some alternate reality isn't it?
If you want/need to type a Word doc or Excel spreadsheet on your damn phone then put down the phone, quit the ridiculous job that is consuming your life, and go enjoy life. A tiny screen and keyboard is no way to go through life, son.
I guess I am throwing in the towel on my geek cred here, but seriously as many IT jobs as I've had and this has never been a need (or want).
Only in the US, and also it is largely us geeks' fault, are we so dumb that we happily set our prices high. We do it with tons of things. We act like we are so special to have the latest whizz-bang device/service and the more we pay the "cooler" it makes us. People used to be proud of driving a good bargain, getting a deal, or putting some pressure on a company... now we queue in line for weeks to pay top dollar and stupidly glorify it much to the big companies chagrin.
Maybe people should start to balk at overpriced devices and services and make the companies do a little sweating. Notice how during the "economic meltdown" companies were actually giving decent deals on things? It's purely that Americans have too much money and the consumer mindset has been implanted to the point where fanbois can't rant enough how it is a sheer pleasure to buy overpriced products like Apple's and that it makes them somehow elite and special to be above the unwashed masses who won't pay exorbitant prices for their well designed kit. Eh, fuck it, no one cares... keep throwing money at companies willingly and paying the highest prices for everything.
1. Throw out and stop reading the stupid marriage/relationship guides. That alone will put you miles ahead. 2. Instead, pick up a solid conflict resolution book.
The greatest single piece of knowledge I ever learned was in a conflict resolution class in college. It is the Three Argument Rule (I named it that), if you have the exact same argument with resolution three times or more over any period of time, then the argument is NOT actually about what you are arguing about and you need to stop and dig deeper into it. Most relationships (business, love, family, etc.) will have these ongoing arguments that will chip away and wear on things. People continue to fight them out time and time again just to have them rear their ugly heads later. The real argument is ALWAYS something else but coming out as this familiar argument. Both parties knowing this and stopping to figure it out finally and being honest with the REAL issue instantly ends them completely, but they can be difficult or deep-seeded issues so it requires effort. It will change your life though, not just in love but in every aspect.
Wow. Well stated. I think this may be an Intelligent Slashdot Post of the Year 2009 candidate.
Couldn't agree more. Many other countries are just now entering into this same folly whereby they push college heavily and are facing a glut of unemployed "educated" young people. Everyone is not cut out for technical work, even if they have a degree and middling grades. The world needs unskilled and skilled labor, it is not a dirty reprehensible thing to actually work for a paycheck. A trade would probably fit this girl in question better than a no-name IT degree. She isn't an excellent student, she probably isn't heavily vested and interested in IT, she probably has some skillset that would lend itself to a trade quite well.
We have to stop acting like college is some holy grail. It has been dumbed down to the point that anyone with the money and time (or ability to get a loan) will graduate and with increasingly meaningless areas of study and lack of actual skill.
I meant a real trade. Electrician, plumber, welder, carpentry, culinary, etc. Colleges and crap IT schools like this one are churning out garbage graduates like this one left and right, but there is a true lack of skilled trades and will be for many years to come.
Slashdot Mirror
I worked as a videogame reviewer for a number of years and the amount of bought and paid for "reviews" in that game is just silly. I once panned MGS3 (for being all hype and cutscene and little substance) and got a nasty letter from them stating they would not continue to reimburse me or advertise for our site... we were a totally independent site and took no money or ads in the first place.
I've worked in a fairly large bank IT dept. where the woman in charge had zero credentials but "people liked her" she eventually admitted she knew nothing and took a slight demotion but that was after 19 years there. I've worked in a mid-sized private university network dept. where the manager and sr. guy had 2-year trade school "diplomas" and ruled everything with an iron fist so they wouldn't be shown up as incompetent. I was pushed out because I actually knew what I was doing, they hired a middle-aged guy with no experience to replace me. Those kids paying a lot of money are losing out big time.
Agreed, which is why most companies farm out their IT hiring to recruiters/headhunters with tech specialization. The problem are the legions of unskilled parasite IT people that are currently employed and there is no way to unseat them. Without tangible products it is very hard to find the bullshit artists and ferret them out.
That's why regular jobs that produce or create something physical (even if it is paper) are better policed and handled. Information and knowledge is not so easy for the uninformed or blind.
I've been a system builder since the 486DX2 66MHz days and of all the case designs I've seen come, go, and be claimed to be the next coming, the only one to ever be a perfect blend of form and function is the Mac Pro cases by Apple. I'm not even a fanboy, and most of those cases probably were never even cracked, but there is no denying them. This thing is just dumb.
Truer words have not been spoken in a long time. I wish I couldn't relate to pretty much that whole thing.
While I never expected massive paychecks or bleeding edge technology, there was a time when it was at least valued similarly as other departments, that is gone. The dot com bubble brought in a ton of people students and carer changers who had nothing but dollar signs and free pac-man in their eyes. After the bust, sadly most of these folks were not driven out as well. So now we have far too many clueless IT workers/managers who work on fear and CYA alone and it drags the whole profession down.
I'd love to see undercover IT workers be introduced in the workplace. So many IT workers are as clueless or more so than these people. So many companies are being taken for a ride and wasting tons of money due to sheer incompetence. This has a bigger impact on prices and wage than any of these cases by far but goes on in virtually every company. Without tangible products and management with some sort of tech background it all goes on unchecked. I'm so tired of this commonality that I may look to change careers rather than suffer through more of this.
Actually the GPU in both the Gamecube and Wii are phenomenal and actually outpace most current videocards in some ways... they are just horribly limited by the surrounding architecture. They can do like 8 layers of rendering on all surfaces at once. So you can have texture, bump map, lighting, etc. all at once on every surface. I've seen tech demos of it's capabilities that just blow the mind.
Heh, yes, but their stuff is expensive to begin with no matter who designed the interface. The thing I was getting at is that Art Lebedev is just one such company, I actually think there are better firms out there for a thing like this. Even better let a few young and hungry firms work on it and see what they can come up with.
The big picture is to get away from coders and techies creating interfaces, they aren't good at it. We like to think we have skillz in this area but the reality is just as much dedication and effort as it takes to design code is required to be even decent at design and layout. Artists have a big place in software design, we've just kept them out of it mostly thinking we can do it all. Apple has taken this approach and it has paid off in spades.
Microsoft gets hate from geeks and Apple-types both. No matter what Microsoft designs those folks will hate it. But if you make a big deal out of a partnership with some well-respected design firm or hip new one, then you will win over some of those people and start to change your image.
The best place to start is their website: http://www.artlebedev.com/ you will see that they do indeed do design work for UI's like the GPS navigation system and T&C Amplifier on the front page. They have a store link which has a bunch of their work.
A design firm, even the likes of Art Lebedev Studios is a drop in the bucket compared to the R&D and design work that goes into something like this. Just because Art Lebedev has created expensive items directly (which was never meant for production and housed over a hundred OLED screens) doesn't mean that everything they do is expensive to that level. Lots of major companies do this kind of design work outside of their normal product lines.
umm, that is exactly what haptic feedback is. It would allow the screen to have feel to it. Ex: raised bumps for each key that have a click to them when depressed (sort of like the BB Storm screen), or a raised ridge on the "F" and "J" just like a real keyboard for orientation, or tons of other unique and new methods.
Ergonomics of it is no different than current laptop keyboards or Apple keyboards with very thin keys. Those tolerances are within specs of what a feedback enabled screen could do.
The big advantage comes from new and creative interfaces which can be designed for each app/game using the lower screen like a DS on crack. You could have perfectly customized controls instead of key bindings and "gaming" keyboards. No more: "is the fireball spell on Q or 4?" you could touch the little fireball icon.
I've always been a huge proponent of a dual screen laptop. A ton of people cry about the lack of a tactile keyboard and it always ends there. Haptic feedback is getting better and I can see that as the future but for now something like this is needed. A single screen tablet just isn't useful or natural and they never truly caught on. This type of device is. I think it should actually be oriented as a regular laptop with a simple sensor to know the orientation change to portrait mode and function as shown in the demo videos. Just having the option is better than making it a portrait only device for no real reason.
My other concern is that Microsoft is not good at UI design. Occasionally they have flashes of brilliance but on the whole they fail miserably in this regard. Apple is not always better, so this isn't some fanboy argument. What they should do it farm out the UI to a design firm, something along the lines of Art Lebedev. Let it be truly revolutionary instead of being handcuffed by old ideas and methodologies.
Foe me, you give me those two things and make it a bit thinner but strong and I'm totally sold. I don't think it needs to be netbook cheap even, a fair range of $1200-$1600 and I think it is a winner. Teachers, students, professionals, ebooks, etc. in one device is a disruptive technology.
I've given up on desktop Linux completely. I use it for servers where it makes sense, and I will continue to but as a Linux user since 1995 I can honestly say that the biggest issue is the lack of oversight and steering. Just as with the Kernel the basic foundation needs to be unified and oversaw. Chaos is great but it is not good for a foundation. Linus needs to step up and accept that the reason the kernel has come along so well is because of the central clearing house and oversight. It's time the base system was the same way. Then let people tweak and change it to make all their various distros to their hearts content. But at least there is a single unified foundation. We've had issues last years that could have been snuffed out in weeks if the base system had some structure across the board. I will never understand why people fight this so hard, look at OSX they have come so far so fast with a tiny fraction of the talent because they are working to one goal. There is a happy medium and we need to find it quick.
Contradictions and free passes galore. I've worked as a game reviewer and this has all the hallmarks of a rookie trying to cover a massive title like an MMO. Major UI lag, poor quest structuring, lack of starting areas, etc. yet all is forgiven each time and the game still pulls away an 8/10? 7/10 maybe would be a truer reflection based on the text given here, max. Some of the issues raised can be fixed fairly easily via patches, some may be more laborious, but once they have been addressed then maybe an 8/10 is more in order.
People underestimate the time required for even modest length titles, and MMOs often take weeks of play - not levelling or playing for fun, but dedicated review work where many characters are created and every nook/cranny/feature is tested - and obviously if the reviewer is sitting on a lvl 31 none of this was done. Slashdot has always failed miserably on game reviews and I think it is one of those things better left to the places that do them best.
You've got two empty halves of coconuts and you're bangin' 'em together!
Gah! No one else mentioned this yet... major bummer. Now if I could just get real data on the new power draw of the slim.
I are one, and I stand by my statement.
that the average U.S. college graduate is capable of little more than constantly text messaging on their cell phone, updating facebook/twitter, and balking at the notion of actually working? Taxes are the least of my concerns.
I worked at a university and hired a number of student workers and full time employees , and out of the 14 I had exactly ONE was a solid worker. He had no background in IT and was a philosophy grad student who actually had little in the way of interest in computers even. He worked circles around the B.S. holding IT graduates I had.
In case you may think this anecdotal from one experience, previously I managed an IT dept. for a bank and after wading through hundreds of ITT Tech and 4-year college applicants I still had to sacrifice things to hire TWO people. Of those two one turned out to have serious mental health issues and war-related PTSD and had to be let go, and the other was a hipster Apple/iPhone/facebook/twitter/non-worker type. And he was actually the best of the lot.
The current economic crisis will seem like a walk in the park compared to when this generation takes the reigns. Entitlement, self-absorption, lack of work ethic, and all around lack of ownership will not keep things afloat.
Wow, you're actually defending this by trying to say hooking up your cell phone to a TV is a viable solution? So if you are near a TV, and have the requisite cables... you can then output your Office files and still have a tiny keyboard. Brilliant! Or not.
What could be so pressing that you have no laptop, or access to a computer, yet you have a cell phone, proprietary AV cables, and a TV. This is some alternate reality isn't it?
If you want/need to type a Word doc or Excel spreadsheet on your damn phone then put down the phone, quit the ridiculous job that is consuming your life, and go enjoy life. A tiny screen and keyboard is no way to go through life, son.
I guess I am throwing in the towel on my geek cred here, but seriously as many IT jobs as I've had and this has never been a need (or want).
Only in the US, and also it is largely us geeks' fault, are we so dumb that we happily set our prices high. We do it with tons of things. We act like we are so special to have the latest whizz-bang device/service and the more we pay the "cooler" it makes us. People used to be proud of driving a good bargain, getting a deal, or putting some pressure on a company... now we queue in line for weeks to pay top dollar and stupidly glorify it much to the big companies chagrin.
Maybe people should start to balk at overpriced devices and services and make the companies do a little sweating. Notice how during the "economic meltdown" companies were actually giving decent deals on things? It's purely that Americans have too much money and the consumer mindset has been implanted to the point where fanbois can't rant enough how it is a sheer pleasure to buy overpriced products like Apple's and that it makes them somehow elite and special to be above the unwashed masses who won't pay exorbitant prices for their well designed kit. Eh, fuck it, no one cares... keep throwing money at companies willingly and paying the highest prices for everything.
1. Throw out and stop reading the stupid marriage/relationship guides. That alone will put you miles ahead.
2. Instead, pick up a solid conflict resolution book.
The greatest single piece of knowledge I ever learned was in a conflict resolution class in college. It is the Three Argument Rule (I named it that), if you have the exact same argument with resolution three times or more over any period of time, then the argument is NOT actually about what you are arguing about and you need to stop and dig deeper into it. Most relationships (business, love, family, etc.) will have these ongoing arguments that will chip away and wear on things. People continue to fight them out time and time again just to have them rear their ugly heads later. The real argument is ALWAYS something else but coming out as this familiar argument. Both parties knowing this and stopping to figure it out finally and being honest with the REAL issue instantly ends them completely, but they can be difficult or deep-seeded issues so it requires effort. It will change your life though, not just in love but in every aspect.
You're welcome.
Wow. Well stated. I think this may be an Intelligent Slashdot Post of the Year 2009 candidate.
Couldn't agree more. Many other countries are just now entering into this same folly whereby they push college heavily and are facing a glut of unemployed "educated" young people. Everyone is not cut out for technical work, even if they have a degree and middling grades. The world needs unskilled and skilled labor, it is not a dirty reprehensible thing to actually work for a paycheck. A trade would probably fit this girl in question better than a no-name IT degree. She isn't an excellent student, she probably isn't heavily vested and interested in IT, she probably has some skillset that would lend itself to a trade quite well.
We have to stop acting like college is some holy grail. It has been dumbed down to the point that anyone with the money and time (or ability to get a loan) will graduate and with increasingly meaningless areas of study and lack of actual skill.
I meant a real trade. Electrician, plumber, welder, carpentry, culinary, etc. Colleges and crap IT schools like this one are churning out garbage graduates like this one left and right, but there is a true lack of skilled trades and will be for many years to come.