On the "preview" submit of a story (editors do have to click "preview" right?) parse out any links from the summary. Check the summaries from all stories in the last three days to see if any of them contain those strings. If any of those strings are contained, toss an error and a link to that story so that the editor can quickly check the other story to tell if it is in-fact a dupe that they were about to post.
The effect of cash, lobbying, and lawyers. The corporations will win because they have the money.
I disagree with the court findings involving some of the P2P networks. The one's that got what they deserved were the ones that either advertised for copyrighted material sharing, or the ones that knew of, and had the ability to stop, the sharing of the majority of copyrighted material, but failed to do so (negligence).
The industry will always come down on the side of the issue that results in the best economic outcome for them, regardless of where the responsibility lies. I would much rather see thousands more lawsuits against individuals for sharing music, than see software companies destroyed for some user's inappropriate use of their systems.
Fair dig. My first online classes I believe were "Multicultural studies" and "Public Relations". MCS turned into yet another "How the white Anglo-Saxon male has ruined the world" class. Public Relations I had high hopes for though. The class sucked. Expectations were low, grades were inflated, and the teacher's interaction was severely limited. But I worked my ass off anyways because PR is loosely related to the direction I am going with my career. I learned a lot in that class, because I wanted to. I did research, I found alternative sources, I argued differing theories and provoked conversations in the forums.
I agree with you, if you have no desire to learn, you will not learn anything in the class. But if you have a desire to learn, just because you did learn does not mean it was the teacher who taught you.
That should read: Zune's Music Sharing Features Will Allow Users to Violate Creative Commons.
The Zune is an inanimate object. It isn't doing anything. It allows the USERS to share music in a DRM'd format. It is the user's responsibility to know that THEY are violating CC by distributing a piece of media with out complying with that media's license.
If you think BlackBoard is bad, you should see CLEGA! CLEGA makes Black Board look like a golden app.
My apologies If I have offended any online instructors as well. Although, there are a good number of online instructors who aught to to be offended. I went to a private college (thank you GI Bill!!!), my freshman courses had maybe 30-40 students, we graduated the Assoc degree with 7. Two cohorts combined for the bach degree and we graduated 8. Another cohort jumped in and we graduated the 2nd bach degree with 5. So, having the experience of classes with huge amount of student-teacher time (classes were block scheduled 3-5 hours at a time, twice per week for 8 weeks each) was a great learning environment. Some classes (non-lab classes) I took online to save myself an hour of commuting to school twice a week.
From what I saw online, most of my teachers had 6+ classes with 20-40 students in each class. Many teachers depended on automated tools to check that you posted and graded papers purely on MS Office's grammar and spell checker. With the huge student - teacher ratio (1 teacher for 240 students!!) independent help was a joke, there was little educational interaction with the instructors, and all round the education was purely limited to what you were willing to teach yourself.
Now, I'm no lazy bastard, I worked my ass off in those online classes just as I did in my campus classes. But the fact remains that I could turn in a paper that I knew my campus instructors would fail me for, knowing that it would get a C in the online classes. My very last class online was of such poor quality that I decided to do just that. My GPA was pretty much locked at 3.85, as long as I didn't fail the course it wouldn't change more than.05 or so. I aced all of the homework (preset labs from the book that were graded for completion, not quality), I commented in all of the discussions (the post's date stamps were used in an automated system that gave us grades based on when we posted, not what we posted), and put together a top notch final project (a vector based logo for an ACME fish company). Then came the final paper. I wrote a paper so bad it was painful. I cited Fark as my primary source and didn't include the reference list. I used lewd and inappropriate images as subject matter for the paper. Had I turned that paper into any campus instructor, their either would have given it back to me, or given me a failing grade. The score came back from my online instructor as a 70%. That specific class was one of the worst experiences I have had in online classes. But my best experiences aren't a whole lot better.
There are some teachers out there that I think can use the web as a teaching Aid. I had one campus instructor who was picking up a mixed class (online assignments, on campus labs, lectures on both). He was a meticilous man with a history in IT management and a solid grasp of his subject matter. I would be very interested to see how his online work turns out.
In short, I find the teacher-student interaction online to be limited, the expectations to be lower, and the completion to be easier in online classes. With a few gems of teachers scattered about.
I just wrapped up a degree and I took a handful of classes online (mostly ones I didn't actually care about learning in as I have found most online classes to be almost humorous in their education value). And I have to say, BlackBoard is a decent web application. That's it. There is absolutely nothing in it that I have not seen in some other piece of software. There is no unique combination of functionality. It is just a series of forums, file managers, and a grading page. It is configured in a solid way, and is laid out to be relatively easy to navigate, but as the parent said, there is nothing Patently Original about the software.
sqrt is a slightly advanced fundamental mathematical function.
rational (as in it is possible to express the value as a fraction) is an advanced concept. That concept, while it takes logic to prove, also requires education. And I have yet to see anyone here prove that sqrt(2) is not rational using a line by line algebraic proof.
Someone threw out the bogus age of 10 for this material. I'd like to know what school district they grew up in, because I'm pretty damn sure we didn't get into algebraic proofs until 8th grade in my school system. I don't remember even hitting the proof of rational numbers until Algebra 2 in high school. For most students, that would have been Junior year (alg I-frosh, geometry-soph, agl II-junior, pre-calc-seniors), although some of us crammed geometry and algebra II into sophomore year so we could hit Calc or AP Calc senior year.
Any ways, it matters on what you want to test. If you want to test a person's ability to handle logic, then proving that sqrt(2) is irrational is a poor question. There are two possible ways to solve it. 1) Remembering the formula and proofing process from high school, or 2) Logically producing the proof on the spot, not from memory. The first option makes this a poor question because, as I have stated, you are testing the person's memory and education, NOT THEIR LOGIC ABILITY. The second option sucks because it will likely take the person a long period of time to devise a theory and a way to test that theory. But hey, if your interview process is a year long, includes peer review, and you promise not to drown the applicant at the end of their proof, then yes, this could be a great question. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_root_of_two)
You want to know a great logic question? I just ran into it the other day while playing with my son on the computer. Someplace buried in http://pbskids.org/ there is a train game. You have 10 rail road sections in incremental sizes from.1 to 1. As each screen loads, there is one or more sections of track missing. Your job is to combine the sections of track to come up with a specific combination that exactly fills all of the gaps in the track. It's a simple little game that requires only basic math, but a great amount of logic skill to identify the best (and sometimes only) possible solution. A cleaned up version of that game with a timer would make an excellent choice for a logic test.
It took me months to track down the entire Quest for Glory series. I would have much prefered a low cost digital provider copy than spending months monitoring e-bay and used game shops.
I was never much into models. I did a pair of back yard rockets in scouts one year. And after my parent got divorced my Dad and I joined the local remote control car racing association. But I was never much for the acetone and plastic. I was much more of the nuts, bolts, legos, gears, etc... kind of kid. The joys of growing up in a family full of engineers.
When I was 10 I tried teaching myself Turbo Pascal, and failed miseralbly. When I was 13 I took my HS's first programming class, in Basic, another Basic class the year after that, then Turbo Pascal the year after that. Eventually wound up learning ADA in MOS school for the Marine Corps, but I wound up working in VB5/6 for four years. Ever since then it's been a mix of VB6, Java, PHP, and for the last two years primarily VB.Net, ASP.Net and HTML.
"The same chilling effect has hit model building. Why build a model of a corvette or a P-51 when you can fire up Grand Turismo 4 or FS?"
When I was in high school and the military I spent a lot of time doing amateur work on models for Doom, Quake, and Need For Speed. I remember making my first NFS2 car model. I think the high poly count model had 600 polygons, and that was well above the other cars, the low poly count model had like 40 or less polygons.
Last week I went to a seminar where the project lead from Prey (Human Head game studio) talked about the development of Prey. The LOD models in Prey were upwards of 7000 polygons, the HOD models were 20,000. Not that the 20k models where used in game, they were used to create textures, bump mapping, and other effects at design time for the LOD models.
But still, I can't imagine the tools or work that are required to make a 7,000 poly model, let alone a 20,000 poly model while looking back at my 600 poly model.
Let's say you're hiring a senior developer with 10 years experience in application development, and accounting systems to write a new leasing application. The knowledge of this specific mathematical formula is in no way related to what that applicant needs to know, nor is it as some people here believe "common knowledge". Asking this question on an application exam for a position that is not geared for math majors would be the same as asking you to find the implicit rate of return on a lease. Sure, IRR calcs are baby math, something taught in pre-frosh accounting classes, but that hardly means they are common logic.
Point being, the sqrt(2) problem requires logic to solve, but it also requires significant education to be able to solve. It is there for testing your applicants education in a specific field (that may or may not be related to job duties) in addition to the logic abilities.
Go down to your local military recruiting office some day, ask them if you can take the ASVAB for practice. The ASVAB has tons of pure logic questions that are designed to test your logical and general technical abilities. I would hire someone with a 130 GT score on the ASVAB long before I would hire someone who could prove sqrt(2) is irrational.
What would be a great addition to this would be to publish a list of politicians (senators, house members, district members, judges, goveners, etc...) that are on one side or the other of this debate.
Exactly, but with out having the quadratic formula memorized, how are you going to test if they can derive it? If you provided them the formula and instructions for deriving it, it'll weed out those who can't read instructions, but most people can follow instructions. If you don't provide it, it will skew the timing and results in favor of those who have it memorized, regardless of their logical abilities.
If the goal of the question is to universally test someones logic ability it would be better to focus on questions that assume an 8th grade education level. Or if the goal of the question is to test someones ability of a specific talent, then it should focus on that talent.
If I, as a job applicant, took an entrance exam for an employer and came across a large number of non-basic math questions, I would assume that the job entailed a large amount of math. If the test contains lots of "Which design pattern should be used?" questions, relating to different code snippets and outcome goals, I would assume that the job requires a lot of software architecture. If the test had numerous pattern recognition questions (visual and numeric 'which comes next') and problem solving questions (Jim has twice the apples as Jane...) I would assume that it is just a standard logic test.
Like you, I may be able to struggle through that question (although probably not in 4 minutes!) trying to recall classes from 10+ years ago, but even if I did, like you, I would not be real interested in the job.
While I appreciate the unforgiving rock solid logic that is math, asking someone who has been out of math based education for a number of years to prove the irrationality of sqrt(2) is a bit of a stretch.
I'd much rather go with a series of standardized logic questions (pattern recognition, basic math story problems, etc...) and one question buried in the test that is intentionally vague or poorly worded. Because well defined problems are easy, it's the problems that are not well defined that really test us in IT. Seeing how a potential employee handles themselves in a confusing situation is just as critical as how they handle themselves in a well defined situation. I would stay away from anything that depends on a complex understanding of any given topic, because at this point, we're not looking for someone who has the quadratic formula memorized, we're looking at someone who can look at a situation and pull values from that situation to plug into a formula.
3 million subscribers paying $13.95/month for a full year = $502 million per year.
Even if that number drops off dramatically after three years, they're still set to gross well over a billion dollars on the WoW franchise. With expansions and a continued fan base, they'll have have no problem pulling down billions more.
Calling PC Gaming "niche" is like calling Microsoft "niche". Like whys, calling console gaming "niche" is just as blind. Both will continue to exist, both will thrive and stumble, but the headline "Video game market expected to continue on." just doesn't pull in the crowds like something sensational like "Your favorite band sucks!"
Lets say for an extra $2000 (either software or development time) you can improve the UI to the extent that it would save users an average of 5 minutes per day. If you have 20 users, that's over an hour an a half of labor saved each day. That 416 hours and 40 minutes in labor savings per year. If your median employee cost is $30/hour it would be a savings of $12,500 per year. So ask your boss if they still don't think it's worth it.
And the same holds true for larger solutions too. A $40,000 discount is worthless when you need to have a 3 man dev team spend 2 years on customizing the solution.
Because there is no reason for the last mile providers to do so. The last mile providers can negotiate with each of the online services providers to maximize their payout rather than getting a dividend of the big brand QoS fee.
Not to mention, can you imagine being Google? You would have literally a million people call you up and demand payment for 1st tiered QoS. Not that there are a million ISPs in the US, but the fraud would run rampant.
If the economy was a perfectly fair place, yes, QoS would work, and work well. But it's not. Cable and phone companies would shut down Skype and all other VoIP providers. P2P networks would get throttled to crap. All consumer-to-consumer traffic would get dropped to lower(est!) tiers, unless you want to negotiate with all of the ISPs and trunk owners. Low latency companies with large pipes (as in Blizzard and WoW) would get fiscally raped as they need to either pay up huge fees to keep their pipes QoS, or lose players who get frustrated by constant lag.
The alternative to tiering the Internet is just a matter of charging consumers and online service providers more. Sure, it may be 6 one way 1/2 a dozen the other for the consumer's check book. But Net Neutrality will at least guarantee that the playing field is even for all online service providers. I would guess that in the end NN would be the cheaper solution, while the TI solution would likely create new jobs (corporate sales and negotiation mostly).
Kinda off topic, but I've been tossing around the idea of a BT based MMO. Uptime and seeding are used to determine property ownership. Higher up time on seeds would result in players owning buildings that they seed. Groups of players (or a single player with near 100% up time on the seed) could own land used to host other player's properties. No idea on what the point of the game would be, the danger is that the data is always going to be in the enemy's hands, so it would have to be socially based instead of competetively based.
Anyway, I just thought it could be a fun way to use existing technology for a legal purpose.
Slashdot Mirror
The real battle will begin when the RIAA and the NRA go head to head.
RIAA: People don't pirate music, sharing software does!
NRA: Guns don't kill people, people kill people!
Two powerful lobbying groups on the opposite side of the personal responsibility argument.
-Rick
Do you have a link?
-Rick
On the "preview" submit of a story (editors do have to click "preview" right?) parse out any links from the summary. Check the summaries from all stories in the last three days to see if any of them contain those strings. If any of those strings are contained, toss an error and a link to that story so that the editor can quickly check the other story to tell if it is in-fact a dupe that they were about to post.
-Rick
The effect of cash, lobbying, and lawyers. The corporations will win because they have the money.
I disagree with the court findings involving some of the P2P networks. The one's that got what they deserved were the ones that either advertised for copyrighted material sharing, or the ones that knew of, and had the ability to stop, the sharing of the majority of copyrighted material, but failed to do so (negligence).
The industry will always come down on the side of the issue that results in the best economic outcome for them, regardless of where the responsibility lies. I would much rather see thousands more lawsuits against individuals for sharing music, than see software companies destroyed for some user's inappropriate use of their systems.
-Rick
Fair dig. My first online classes I believe were "Multicultural studies" and "Public Relations". MCS turned into yet another "How the white Anglo-Saxon male has ruined the world" class. Public Relations I had high hopes for though. The class sucked. Expectations were low, grades were inflated, and the teacher's interaction was severely limited. But I worked my ass off anyways because PR is loosely related to the direction I am going with my career. I learned a lot in that class, because I wanted to. I did research, I found alternative sources, I argued differing theories and provoked conversations in the forums.
I agree with you, if you have no desire to learn, you will not learn anything in the class. But if you have a desire to learn, just because you did learn does not mean it was the teacher who taught you.
-Rick
That should read: Zune's Music Sharing Features Will Allow Users to Violate Creative Commons.
The Zune is an inanimate object. It isn't doing anything. It allows the USERS to share music in a DRM'd format. It is the user's responsibility to know that THEY are violating CC by distributing a piece of media with out complying with that media's license.
-Rick
If you think BlackBoard is bad, you should see CLEGA! CLEGA makes Black Board look like a golden app.
.05 or so. I aced all of the homework (preset labs from the book that were graded for completion, not quality), I commented in all of the discussions (the post's date stamps were used in an automated system that gave us grades based on when we posted, not what we posted), and put together a top notch final project (a vector based logo for an ACME fish company). Then came the final paper. I wrote a paper so bad it was painful. I cited Fark as my primary source and didn't include the reference list. I used lewd and inappropriate images as subject matter for the paper. Had I turned that paper into any campus instructor, their either would have given it back to me, or given me a failing grade. The score came back from my online instructor as a 70%. That specific class was one of the worst experiences I have had in online classes. But my best experiences aren't a whole lot better.
My apologies If I have offended any online instructors as well. Although, there are a good number of online instructors who aught to to be offended. I went to a private college (thank you GI Bill!!!), my freshman courses had maybe 30-40 students, we graduated the Assoc degree with 7. Two cohorts combined for the bach degree and we graduated 8. Another cohort jumped in and we graduated the 2nd bach degree with 5. So, having the experience of classes with huge amount of student-teacher time (classes were block scheduled 3-5 hours at a time, twice per week for 8 weeks each) was a great learning environment. Some classes (non-lab classes) I took online to save myself an hour of commuting to school twice a week.
From what I saw online, most of my teachers had 6+ classes with 20-40 students in each class. Many teachers depended on automated tools to check that you posted and graded papers purely on MS Office's grammar and spell checker. With the huge student - teacher ratio (1 teacher for 240 students!!) independent help was a joke, there was little educational interaction with the instructors, and all round the education was purely limited to what you were willing to teach yourself.
Now, I'm no lazy bastard, I worked my ass off in those online classes just as I did in my campus classes. But the fact remains that I could turn in a paper that I knew my campus instructors would fail me for, knowing that it would get a C in the online classes. My very last class online was of such poor quality that I decided to do just that. My GPA was pretty much locked at 3.85, as long as I didn't fail the course it wouldn't change more than
There are some teachers out there that I think can use the web as a teaching Aid. I had one campus instructor who was picking up a mixed class (online assignments, on campus labs, lectures on both). He was a meticilous man with a history in IT management and a solid grasp of his subject matter. I would be very interested to see how his online work turns out.
In short, I find the teacher-student interaction online to be limited, the expectations to be lower, and the completion to be easier in online classes. With a few gems of teachers scattered about.
-Rick
I just wrapped up a degree and I took a handful of classes online (mostly ones I didn't actually care about learning in as I have found most online classes to be almost humorous in their education value). And I have to say, BlackBoard is a decent web application. That's it. There is absolutely nothing in it that I have not seen in some other piece of software. There is no unique combination of functionality. It is just a series of forums, file managers, and a grading page. It is configured in a solid way, and is laid out to be relatively easy to navigate, but as the parent said, there is nothing Patently Original about the software.
-Rick
sqrt is a slightly advanced fundamental mathematical function.
.1 to 1. As each screen loads, there is one or more sections of track missing. Your job is to combine the sections of track to come up with a specific combination that exactly fills all of the gaps in the track. It's a simple little game that requires only basic math, but a great amount of logic skill to identify the best (and sometimes only) possible solution. A cleaned up version of that game with a timer would make an excellent choice for a logic test.
rational (as in it is possible to express the value as a fraction) is an advanced concept. That concept, while it takes logic to prove, also requires education. And I have yet to see anyone here prove that sqrt(2) is not rational using a line by line algebraic proof.
Someone threw out the bogus age of 10 for this material. I'd like to know what school district they grew up in, because I'm pretty damn sure we didn't get into algebraic proofs until 8th grade in my school system. I don't remember even hitting the proof of rational numbers until Algebra 2 in high school. For most students, that would have been Junior year (alg I-frosh, geometry-soph, agl II-junior, pre-calc-seniors), although some of us crammed geometry and algebra II into sophomore year so we could hit Calc or AP Calc senior year.
Any ways, it matters on what you want to test. If you want to test a person's ability to handle logic, then proving that sqrt(2) is irrational is a poor question. There are two possible ways to solve it. 1) Remembering the formula and proofing process from high school, or 2) Logically producing the proof on the spot, not from memory. The first option makes this a poor question because, as I have stated, you are testing the person's memory and education, NOT THEIR LOGIC ABILITY. The second option sucks because it will likely take the person a long period of time to devise a theory and a way to test that theory. But hey, if your interview process is a year long, includes peer review, and you promise not to drown the applicant at the end of their proof, then yes, this could be a great question. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_root_of_two)
You want to know a great logic question? I just ran into it the other day while playing with my son on the computer. Someplace buried in http://pbskids.org/ there is a train game. You have 10 rail road sections in incremental sizes from
-Rick
It took me months to track down the entire Quest for Glory series. I would have much prefered a low cost digital provider copy than spending months monitoring e-bay and used game shops.
-Rick
I was never much into models. I did a pair of back yard rockets in scouts one year. And after my parent got divorced my Dad and I joined the local remote control car racing association. But I was never much for the acetone and plastic. I was much more of the nuts, bolts, legos, gears, etc... kind of kid. The joys of growing up in a family full of engineers.
When I was 10 I tried teaching myself Turbo Pascal, and failed miseralbly. When I was 13 I took my HS's first programming class, in Basic, another Basic class the year after that, then Turbo Pascal the year after that. Eventually wound up learning ADA in MOS school for the Marine Corps, but I wound up working in VB5/6 for four years. Ever since then it's been a mix of VB6, Java, PHP, and for the last two years primarily VB.Net, ASP.Net and HTML.
-Rick
"The same chilling effect has hit model building. Why build a model of a corvette or a P-51 when you can fire up Grand Turismo 4 or FS?"
When I was in high school and the military I spent a lot of time doing amateur work on models for Doom, Quake, and Need For Speed. I remember making my first NFS2 car model. I think the high poly count model had 600 polygons, and that was well above the other cars, the low poly count model had like 40 or less polygons.
Last week I went to a seminar where the project lead from Prey (Human Head game studio) talked about the development of Prey. The LOD models in Prey were upwards of 7000 polygons, the HOD models were 20,000. Not that the 20k models where used in game, they were used to create textures, bump mapping, and other effects at design time for the LOD models.
But still, I can't imagine the tools or work that are required to make a 7,000 poly model, let alone a 20,000 poly model while looking back at my 600 poly model.
-Rick
Let's say you're hiring a senior developer with 10 years experience in application development, and accounting systems to write a new leasing application. The knowledge of this specific mathematical formula is in no way related to what that applicant needs to know, nor is it as some people here believe "common knowledge". Asking this question on an application exam for a position that is not geared for math majors would be the same as asking you to find the implicit rate of return on a lease. Sure, IRR calcs are baby math, something taught in pre-frosh accounting classes, but that hardly means they are common logic.
Point being, the sqrt(2) problem requires logic to solve, but it also requires significant education to be able to solve. It is there for testing your applicants education in a specific field (that may or may not be related to job duties) in addition to the logic abilities.
Go down to your local military recruiting office some day, ask them if you can take the ASVAB for practice. The ASVAB has tons of pure logic questions that are designed to test your logical and general technical abilities. I would hire someone with a 130 GT score on the ASVAB long before I would hire someone who could prove sqrt(2) is irrational.
-Rick
What would be a great addition to this would be to publish a list of politicians (senators, house members, district members, judges, goveners, etc...) that are on one side or the other of this debate.
-Rick
Exactly, but with out having the quadratic formula memorized, how are you going to test if they can derive it? If you provided them the formula and instructions for deriving it, it'll weed out those who can't read instructions, but most people can follow instructions. If you don't provide it, it will skew the timing and results in favor of those who have it memorized, regardless of their logical abilities.
-Rick
If the goal of the question is to universally test someones logic ability it would be better to focus on questions that assume an 8th grade education level. Or if the goal of the question is to test someones ability of a specific talent, then it should focus on that talent.
If I, as a job applicant, took an entrance exam for an employer and came across a large number of non-basic math questions, I would assume that the job entailed a large amount of math.
If the test contains lots of "Which design pattern should be used?" questions, relating to different code snippets and outcome goals, I would assume that the job requires a lot of software architecture.
If the test had numerous pattern recognition questions (visual and numeric 'which comes next') and problem solving questions (Jim has twice the apples as Jane...) I would assume that it is just a standard logic test.
Like you, I may be able to struggle through that question (although probably not in 4 minutes!) trying to recall classes from 10+ years ago, but even if I did, like you, I would not be real interested in the job.
-Rick
WTS /. User account, excellent karma, 4 digit ID. No journal entries, friends list of pro-linux advocates, many fans, no freaks.
Starting bid of $500.
-Rick
While I appreciate the unforgiving rock solid logic that is math, asking someone who has been out of math based education for a number of years to prove the irrationality of sqrt(2) is a bit of a stretch.
I'd much rather go with a series of standardized logic questions (pattern recognition, basic math story problems, etc...) and one question buried in the test that is intentionally vague or poorly worded. Because well defined problems are easy, it's the problems that are not well defined that really test us in IT. Seeing how a potential employee handles themselves in a confusing situation is just as critical as how they handle themselves in a well defined situation. I would stay away from anything that depends on a complex understanding of any given topic, because at this point, we're not looking for someone who has the quadratic formula memorized, we're looking at someone who can look at a situation and pull values from that situation to plug into a formula.
-Rick
4-digit /. UID's on EBAY? Wow! That's way cooler than $5/20 per year for this stupid name database.
-Rick
http://www.amazon.com/Command-Conquer-Generals-Del uxe-DVD-Rom/dp/B000EP3GEI/sr=1-1/qid=1158010141/re f=sr_1_1/103-0395572-9242219?ie=UTF8&s=videogames
-Rick
So 14 million copies at $40 = $560 million.
7 million copies at $40 = $280 million.
3 million subscribers paying $13.95/month for a full year = $502 million per year.
Even if that number drops off dramatically after three years, they're still set to gross well over a billion dollars on the WoW franchise. With expansions and a continued fan base, they'll have have no problem pulling down billions more.
Calling PC Gaming "niche" is like calling Microsoft "niche". Like whys, calling console gaming "niche" is just as blind. Both will continue to exist, both will thrive and stumble, but the headline "Video game market expected to continue on." just doesn't pull in the crowds like something sensational like "Your favorite band sucks!"
-Rick
Lets say for an extra $2000 (either software or development time) you can improve the UI to the extent that it would save users an average of 5 minutes per day. If you have 20 users, that's over an hour an a half of labor saved each day. That 416 hours and 40 minutes in labor savings per year. If your median employee cost is $30/hour it would be a savings of $12,500 per year. So ask your boss if they still don't think it's worth it.
And the same holds true for larger solutions too. A $40,000 discount is worthless when you need to have a 3 man dev team spend 2 years on customizing the solution.
-Rick
That why my mod is based in the "Hey-lo" universe. ;)
-Rick
Because there is no reason for the last mile providers to do so. The last mile providers can negotiate with each of the online services providers to maximize their payout rather than getting a dividend of the big brand QoS fee.
Not to mention, can you imagine being Google? You would have literally a million people call you up and demand payment for 1st tiered QoS. Not that there are a million ISPs in the US, but the fraud would run rampant.
If the economy was a perfectly fair place, yes, QoS would work, and work well. But it's not. Cable and phone companies would shut down Skype and all other VoIP providers. P2P networks would get throttled to crap. All consumer-to-consumer traffic would get dropped to lower(est!) tiers, unless you want to negotiate with all of the ISPs and trunk owners. Low latency companies with large pipes (as in Blizzard and WoW) would get fiscally raped as they need to either pay up huge fees to keep their pipes QoS, or lose players who get frustrated by constant lag.
The alternative to tiering the Internet is just a matter of charging consumers and online service providers more. Sure, it may be 6 one way 1/2 a dozen the other for the consumer's check book. But Net Neutrality will at least guarantee that the playing field is even for all online service providers. I would guess that in the end NN would be the cheaper solution, while the TI solution would likely create new jobs (corporate sales and negotiation mostly).
-Rick
Kinda off topic, but I've been tossing around the idea of a BT based MMO. Uptime and seeding are used to determine property ownership. Higher up time on seeds would result in players owning buildings that they seed. Groups of players (or a single player with near 100% up time on the seed) could own land used to host other player's properties. No idea on what the point of the game would be, the danger is that the data is always going to be in the enemy's hands, so it would have to be socially based instead of competetively based.
Anyway, I just thought it could be a fun way to use existing technology for a legal purpose.
-Rick