"..the holy grail has always been a helium-filled drive. Helium offers several advantages arising from its very low density and very high thermal conductivity. It takes much less power to run the spindles; cooling of the VCM and preamp is greatly improved; and temperature differentials within the drive almost disappear. The most important gain is from the reduction of internal turblulence and buffeting of the actuator and disks."
-- from "Future hard disk drive systems," Roger Wood, Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 321 (2009) 555-561
Actually, Susan is my boss, but I'm going to assume you paid attention to where I indicated that in my original post, and are addressing your comments rhetorically. For the record Susan's been in journalism for decades, is a frequent judge for journalism awards, lectured at NYU's journalism school, etc, etc., and been the EIC of Spectrum for over six years. So drop the patronizing smarm. Finding your own angle on a story that's going around is one thing: failing to give adequate attribution is another, and is violation of, e.g., the Washington Post's ethics policy:
Attribution of material from other newspapers and other media must be total.... It is the policy of this newspaper to give credit to other publications that develop exclusive stories worthy of coverage by The Post.
Certainly, for example, digging up Matthew Patton was an element of the VCF story that was exclusive to Spectrum's coverage, as Patton had not appeared in other media outlets before or since Spectrum's coverage until today.
Even when publications are chasing the same story, when one publication gets something unique it is normal to see lines such as "As first reported in the New York Times..." etc in stories in other outlets. A similar attribution in passing in the text was all that would have been required: instead the only attempt at attribution by the Post article is buried in the credits list for the accompanying timeline graphic, where the "Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers" is credited as a source, which is a) insufficient and b) wrong (the source was "IEEE Spectrum Magazine". Crediting the IEEE is like crediting General Electric for information taken from a "Today Show" segment.)
As a concrete example, let's look at the recent Sony-BMG DRM rootkit controversy. I did a story on that, interviewing many of the people involved, people who got interviewed by a lot of media outlets at the same time, but when I found a nugget that had been exclusivey reported by one other news outlet--a video of a DHS offcial talking to a local buisiness group about the issue--I gave credit where credit where was due. To the Washington Post in fact: "One party that cares is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes cybersecurity as part of its portfolio. On 10 November, as reported by the Washington Post, Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for homeland security, made a pointed reference to the Sony BMG protection system..." [Emphasis added]
Speaking personally as someone who hires freelancers, and who's been a staff journalist and editor for somewhat more than a week myself, if your post is indicative of your grasp of the ethical standards of journalism, you can be sure this is one editor who wouldn't call on your abilities as a stringer, or anything else.
I'm an editor at IEEE Spectrum. Spectrum laid out out this story in September '05. (I submitted a link to Slashdot at the time, but the editors in their Infinite Wisdom rejected it). Despite our story being prominently featured in google, wikipedia, winning awards, etc, and using similar sources, and so on, the Washington Post didn't acknowledge any of Spectrum's reporting, which has prompted Spectrum's Editor-in-Chief to complain to the Washington's Post's Ombusdman thusly:
Dear Ms. Howell,
We were startled to see that the article "The FBI Upgrade that Wasn't" by Eggen and Witte in today's Washington Post is taken directly from an article we did in September 2005 called "Who Killed the Virtual Case File," by Harry Goldstein (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/sep05/1455). His article has won 5 major magazine awards. Neither Harry or Spectrum gets credit or attribution in the Washington Post piece.
Your writers reinterviewed all our sources, including Matthew Patton, whose only press interview until your story today was in the Spectrum article. They filed the same FOIA, etc.
Is this plagiarism? Not exactly. Is it shoddy, lazy journalism? You bet.
I would say that when the barycenter is below the surface of body A, body B can be considered to be orbiting body A. When the barycenter is above the surface of both bodies, they are orbiting each other. So it's not just a question of mass, but, crudely speaking, of density too.
I've never claimed that or thought that [150k is an average middle class salary].
Sorry, that's exactly what you did. Go back and read your comment:
150k per year seems pretty damn nice to me. That would not make you solidly middle class.[Spoke the grandparent]
What something 'seems' to you doesn't make much real difference. The fact is, for a college educated professional (the very definition of middle class) - that's an average salary with a decades or so experience..
I don't see any of the equivocations or qualifications you now claim to have offered. Unless you want you argue what exactly the definition of "that is" is...:)
The fact is, for a college educated professional (the very definition of middle class) - [150K a year is] an average salary with a decades or so experience.
In certain industries, perhaps. But look at the salary stats for say, teachers, or veterinarians (two established middle-class professions which require college educations). Way less than 150k.
Seriously, if you think 150k is an average middle class salary, you're leading an insular existence. In fact, if you look a the historical stats on income from the US Census Bureau, you'll see that you're coming in at the lower limit of the the top 5 percent. Now, unless you're going to argue that only people in your income bracket are truely solidly middle class, and so redefine the problem away, you have to admit that you are, at the very least, upper middle class.
Yes, the original Elite rocked, although the post Ian-Bell sequels were disappointing (interestingly enough for the exact same reason Quake wasn't as much fun as Doom II. The later game had prettier graphics, but failed to deliver the bursts of frenetic action that could be found in the orginal. Finishing up a massive dogfight in Elite, with no missiles, no shields, no energy bomb left, and a hull a budgie's fart away from failure, while you crusie through the debris field of your last opponent, rotating smoothly to capture his cargo pod full of alien goods in one motion--that was something. Ian Bell has a great page about the original Elite BTW, including source code.) But only a year of game play?:)My best friend and I clocked up about two and a half years on his C64: he'd man the joystick (a Boss 2-axis microswitch stick, tweaked for maximum sensitivity. The best thing about it was that the handle rotated, so for rear or side laser action, he'd rotate the base appropriately.) I manned the keyboard: missiles, speed, navigation. Lot of fun. The hidden stuff was fun, especially the 'trumbles', but the game was still excellent without it: a little secret stuff goes a long way. Today, I won't even look at a Gran Turismo game, because I have better things to do than spend about as much time getting a particular fake license as it would take to get a real one. Even stuff like Halo 2 can be a pain, because I don't have hours to find and practice all the superjumps, or learn to crouch jump on a particular pixel-wide ledge to get out of the geometry.
Sorry. The average age of a gamer is 28 -- or at least it was three years ago when I needed that stat for a story. The Entertainment Software Association has been showing a steady increase in the average age of gamers for years, due to the fact that the original Gen X gamers are getting older but actually don't stop playing games, according to the head of ESA (who made this point a centerpiece of his keynote address at E3 in, oh, 2001), so I'm willing to bet the average age has risen by a year or two already. The ESA's current stats indicate that 39% of frequent players are over 35 years old. So if the majority of gamers aren't over the age of thirty already, it won't be long before they are. Therefore, by your own logic, it'll be even more important to hang on to designers in their thirties.
just because I'm cynical, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm wrong.
Most of them have long since lost that creative spark by the time they're thirty anyway.
This would make video game design almost unique in the annals of human creativity. I think the only field were the phenomenon of people doing their most creative work by 30 is actually well substantiated and documented is in mathematics, a very different field to game design and one much closer to programming, which you state is not subject to this effect anyway (and even in math, there are exceptions, c.f. Andrew Wiles.
As the article points out, how crazy would it be if movies or books were only made by twenty somethings with less than five years experience? Speilberg never would have made E.T., let alone Schindler's List. And I'm sorry, I just have difficultly believing that the creative spark required for video games is so much more intense that that which burned in Picasso when he painted Guernica at age 56, or in Bach when he wrote his Mass in B Minor in his sixties. Heck, the guy who created Tetris was 29 when he did it, around the time his mojo should had been well on the way out in your thesis.
I think we must be careful not to engage in circular reasoning: i.e. "There are no good game designers over thirty because there are no good game designers over thirty." Before positing a mysterious intrinsic evaporation in game design skills, would it not make more sense to examine the substantive causes discussed in the article: immature work practices contributing to early burnout? If a programmer gets sick of video games, there are many other applications areas they can get stuck into and still be programming, and even programming at the bleeding edge: the fundamental nature of their job has not changed. And they still have the option to return to games, perhaps seasoned with alternate approaches. But for a game designer, well, there's not much for it but to change careers, and it's very hard to return after developing an alternative career -- even if they're still in the game industry, the fundamental nature of their job will have changed considerably.
I would suggest that if video game developers adopted more mature work practices, we would start to see great designs by thirty somethings in a few years, as the current crop of designers don't burn out, but continue innovating, and probably in very surprising ways when they bring not just a wealth of design experience, but are in a better position to integrate life and cultural experience too because they haven't been chained to their keyboards the whole time.
Loved the dogfights, and the storylines were good too. My only nit was that the scripting engine was brittle: e.g. you'd dock a station to talk to someone, then if Marauders happened to randomly attack, you were screwed. If you undocked, the script wouldn't resume the rest of the dialogue necessary to unlock the next mission stage when you redocked after destroying the Marauders, and if you didn't undock you stood a good chance of getting killed as a sitting duck. Still, I see there's a total conversion available for IW2 now, Torn Stars, -- must give it a go!
Re:Independence war and IW2 "Edge of chaos"
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GDC - Ron Moore Keynote
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Man, I loved the IW physics engines, especially those missions in both games that relied on some deft decoupled maneuvering, such as when you would put a cargo container on a collision course with a station, or wanted to drift silently by an object with all thrusters off but needed to turn to inspect it.
Sort of like George Lucas thinking that he invented science fiction and suing everyone he spots making too much money.
You're refering to the (original) Battlestar Galactica law suit aren't you?
Re:Another "Fun fact about business"
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Woz On Apple's Success
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The problem with that approach -- as fashionable as it may (and I think it's popularity may have peaked) -- is that after you've finished spinning off every highly profitable division of your company, all you're left with are the unprofitable or marginally-profitable divisions, plus some nasty overheads, which is not normally a recipie for staying in buisiness. The parent organization closing up shop ideally wouldn't matter too much, except that some of those unprofitable or marginal divisions can often be important for the long term profitability of all those currently high-performing divisions/spin-offs, as customer experience suffers because of integration or legacy support issues, or the well of innovation dries up (R&D divisions are rarely profit centers in themselves) and there's less room for experimentation. Also, without the easily-accessed combined financial resources of the whole, spun-off divisions can find themselves without the reserves needed to weather temporary downturns. Unlocking value is a great short term strategy, but I'm not so sure it makes sense for companies planning for the long haul, such as Apple, especially when Apple's branding and premium pricing relies so heavily on integration and a seamless user experience.
if we ever get to the point where we just let them fail and replace them with another one.
Actually, except for a few satellites recovered/serviced by the shuttle (the total number of which could be counted on the fingers of one hand!), this is in fact the modus operandii for all satellites since sputnik. Generally, if it's an important enough constelation, a few 'spares' will even be kept on orbit so that service can be maintained even in the even of a premature failure, without waiting for a new satellite to be built and launched. Satellites towards the end of their lives are usually junked by either parking them in higher orbits, or deorbited and burn up in the atmosphere (for those too big to burn up completely, there's a big patch of the Pacific that's become a orbital graveyard of sorts)
The games allow you kill opponents, so I'm okay with any synoyms for that. The games don't allow you rape people -- that's something people have brought in from the outside, and is disturbing in that it is often using in an explicity sexual context: "I'm going to rape you up the ass, fag" being a not unreasonable sample. Nor is rape used as a synonym for simply fragging -- it's a meta term, that translates to "I have achieved a comphrensive victory over you". If you can't see that 'rape' is a disturbing choice of synonym for that, I worry for you. Also note that real murder, let alone mass murder, is rare in developed countries where online video games tend to be played. Real rape is not.
Bollox. The word "fag" has by no means lost its association with homosexual, even just based on the context in which it's used in voice chat, let alone the fact that if you ask people, they all know that 'fag' can be used a word for gay, unlike 'idiot,' where most people genuinely don't know it's origin in the scientific racism of the 19th and 20th centuries. It's apologists like you that drive me especially nuts -- you may like to think you're not being grossly offensive, that you're a good guy, but ask an actual gay person what they think of the term 'fag' and its use in chat, I'll think you'll find you are being a best offensive, at worst conducting verbal assualt. If you're sincere in not wanting to spread bigotry, you'll stop. The turning of certain words from specific insults into generic ones make the situation worse, not better -- you're declaring that an entire class of people are inferior -- that any gay is crap, or trivilizing some of the worst violence around -- rape is equated with winng a game? And why is it okay to consider 'gay' as an insult in the first place? Believe it or not, unless you're gay, black or been raped, you really have no right to declare "these insults are okay, they're meaningless." Almost the only people who think those words are meaningless, are white, straight males who haven't been the victim of sexual assault, and if you can't see an perpepuation of abuse and injuctice in that privilege, you're living a very insular life indeed.
I agree -- the swearing's fine, it's all the racism, misogyny and homophobia that's really starting to get old. I've attended press conferences with video game execs[1] and when I ask them about the dichotomoy between wanting to be treated like a legitimate, mainstream activity on the one hand and the hostile and exclusionary nature of an average morning on X-Box they, at best, shrug their shoulders with a "what can you do?" attitude or, at worst, fail to even understand the basis of the question. How about enforcing your damn ToS??? For younger players Xbox live requires a credit card to use, so there's supposed to be some adult around -- why capture a few seconds of the audio stream and send them a damn letter with a link explaining why their son has been banned? A few hundred "Notes home to the Parents" would have a definite chilling effect -- at the very least, it would finally say, "You know what guys, this isn't okay" instead of the wink, wink bullshit from the game companies that happens now, to point where some kids don't even understand why anyone would object when they spout some of this garbage.
And just in case any of those kids are reading, let me spell it out: it's not okay to use "gay" as a synonym for "crap", "fag" as a synonym for "asshole", "rape" as a synonym for "achieve victory over" or "nigger" as a synonym for, well, anything.
[1] These are often the same execs who mouth platitudes about wanting the industry to be less male oriented, and more welcoming to women, while surrounded by giant advertising placards featuring anatomically impossible women with heavy weaponry.
It might not have been written by an IEEE staff member, but it is definitely a de facto endorsement because of IEEE publishing it.
There's a long tradition of organizations, especially media organizations, publishing opinion pieces without those pieces being considered "de facto endorsements," let alone official positions. When, say, an activist or politician advocates for their point of view from the Op-Ed pages of The Boston Globe, it is not considered an endorsement by the The New York Times Company. And even beyond expert opinion pieces in Spectrum, the IEEE prints a vast amount of other literature -- every single article in say, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine does not automatically become the official position of the IEEE!
And note again the disclaimer than runs in Spectrum, and that we've run several pieces espousing very different, and often conflicting, views on software patents. Could the IEEE really be endorsing them all simultaneously?
By drawing a clear distinction between Religion and Science. Religion is based on faith, and so, whether your believe in God(s) or not, religious experience lies outside the scope of science (and is therefore not appropriate in a science class). QED.
rall aspects of human behavior that are related to rational decision making
Journalism often contends with the irrational, both in the subject matter and in the method of reporting. Scienctific articles are not intended to stir emotion: emtional appeals are out of place in such a venue. But journalists often strive to reach their readers emotionally as well as intellectually. Haven't you ever gotten angry, or sad, or cheered by an article? That didn't happen just by accident, or just because of the nature of the subject matter. Trying to use science as one-size-fits-all approach to humanity is at best blinkered, at worst, leads to horrible injustices.
I don't have to prove anything, I merely have to say "I don't believe you; I think journalists are fabricating". The burden of proof is on you, and so far, you have failed to produce anything.
To quote Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Here though, I'd settle for ordinary evidence. Is is you who are making a claim. The burden of proof is yours.
Maybe there's a patent attorney who has a brother-in-law in the IEEE group that proposed this, or something.
I submitted a correction to/. about this, but The Powers That Be didn't bother to fix the headline, so I'll try do it here: (this is a repost of a comment I've posted elsewhere)
I'm the IEEE Spectrum editor of this article, and for the record the IEEE has made no such proposal. To quote the disclaimer we run with every issue: "The editorial content of IEEE Spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the IEEE or its organizational units."
Prof Hollaar's article is funtionally equivalent to an Op-Ed -- as a respected, knowledgedable, and articulate individual, he was given space in the magazine to share a proposal we found noteworthy. We've actually run a lot of articles on the "What To Do With Patents" theme recently, as our contribution to the patent reform debate, with authors advocating ideas ranging from replacing software patents completely with copyright, to more-or-less leaving well enough alone. I think it's great/. is debating Prof. Hollaar's idea, just note that it's not an official IEEE proposal.
I submitted a correction to/. about this, but The Powers That Be didn't bother to fix the headline, so I'll try do it here: (this is a repost of a comment I've posted elsewhere)
I'm the IEEE Spectrum editor of this article, and for the record the IEEE has made no such proposal. To quote the disclaimer we run with every issue: "The editorial content of IEEE Spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the IEEE or its organizational units."
Prof Hollaar's article is funtionally equivalent to an Op-Ed -- as a respected, knowledgedable, and articulate individual, he was given space in the magazine to share a proposal we found noteworthy. We've actually run a lot of articles on the "What To Do With Patents" theme recently, as our contribution to the patent reform debate, with authors advocating ideas ranging from replacing software patents completely with copyright, to more-or-less leaving well enough alone. I think it's great/. is debating Prof. Hollaar's idea, just note that it's not an official IEEE proposal.
I submitted a correction to/. about this, but The Powers That Be didn't bother to fix the headline, so I'll try do it here: (this is a repost of this comment)
I'm the IEEE Spectrum editor of this article, and for the record the IEEE has made no such proposal. To quote the disclaimer we run with every issue: "The editorial content of IEEE Spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the IEEE or its organizational units."
Prof Hollaar's article is funtionally equivalent to an Op-Ed -- as a respected, knowledgedable, and articulate individual, he was given space in the magazine to share a proposal we found noteworthy. We've actually run a lot of articles on the "What To Do With Patents" theme recently, as our contribution to the patent reform debate, with authors advocating ideas ranging from replacing software patents completely with copyright, to more-or-less leaving well enough alone. I think it's great/. is debating Prof. Hollaar's idea, just note that it's not an official IEEE proposal.
I submitted a correction to/. about this, but The Powers That Be didn't bother to fix the headline, so I'll try do it here:
I'm the IEEE Spectrum editor of this article, and for the record the IEEE has made no such proposal. To quote the disclaimer we run with every issue: "The editorial content of IEEE Spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the IEEE or its organizational units."
Prof Hollaar's article is funtionally equivalent to an Op-Ed -- as a respected, knowledgedable, and articulate individual, he was given space in the magazine to share a proposal we found noteworthy. We've actually run a lot of articles on the "What To Do With Patents" theme recently, as our contribution to the patent reform debate, with authors advocating ideas ranging from replacing software patents completely with copyright, to more-or-less leaving well enough alone. I think it's great/. is debating Prof. Hollaar's idea, just note that it's not an official IEEE proposal.
1) A link to the index page of an media watch dog is not putting up some numbers. Is this part of your scientifically rigourous approach to facts? I'm familiar with the FAIR website -- just where does it give numbers that show the proportion of journalists that fabricate stories, let alone indicate that it's "lots" of them? In fact, FAIR clearly doesn't believe that journalists "fabricat[e], or close to it" articles, or that the journalistic profession is endemically corrupt, or they wouldn't (from their "About Us" page) "defend working journalists [and work] with both activists and journalists. We maintain a regular dialogue with reporters at news outlets across the country, providing constructive critiques when called for and applauding exceptional, hard-hitting journalism." And many current and former subscribers to FAIR (including myself) are journalists, and FAIR is regularly quoted by journalists in both the mainstream and alternative press.
2) Pointing to scientfic literature is a non sequitor. Scientific papers, to have any value at all, confine themseleves to science. As the recent court case against intelligent design showed, attempting to broaden science to cover the full spectrum of human experience and thought is antithetical to what science is. Trying to compare scientific literaure with journalism is apples to oranges. Journalists, even when striving to be as accurate, well-researched and fair as humanely possible, don't write articles like scientific papers because it would be wholly inappropriate. Journalism has different objectives, with different audience demands. Scientific reportage of facts is designed to allow other scientists to recreate those the process by which those facts were derived. Journalists don't do that -- for example, because Woodruff and Bernstein didn't tell every reader of the Washington Post exactly how they too could reproduce their reporting, should readers have rejected the evidence of corruption within the Nixon administration?
3) By the way, if you're looking for universal factual purity in scientific comunity, you're on a fools errand: scientists are heavily incentivized to "make a name for themselves" too, with direct inducements in the form of academic and institutional positions and grant monies. Here's a hard statistic: The Journal of Cell Biology recently reported that some 25% of manuscripts submitted to it have had images that were manipulated in some way that violates their guidelines. This isn't to attack cell biology as a crock, just to let you know that science isn't some totem that you can fetishize into a gold standard by which to weigh journalism.
4) "I'm not talking about the deliberate deceptions that a number of journalists have been caught at, I'm talking about journalism itself" Ah, just as predicted, weasling. You originally wrote; "that's what a lot of [journalists] do. The bad part is that a lot of the effort that goes into their stories is fabrication or close to it.". A fabrication is a deliberate deception. Non-deliberate deception is usually covered under the terms 'bias' or 'error'-- the FAIR website can tell you more about this. And you weren't talking about journalism, you were talking about journalists, so you were talking about deliberate deceptions commited by a (still unspecified) number of individuals. You were also dismissing a commenter's opinion on the basis that they hadn't met any journalists. And again, if meeting journalists is your criteria for the worth of an opinion, just how many have you met?
So how many journalists have you met? One? Two? Three? Four? Five? How many do you think is a lot? How many journalists can you show fabricate stories "or close to it?" ("close to it" being a pure weasel phrase if I ever heard one -- i.e. lets make an outrageous statement, and then when it can't be backed up, expand "close" to whatever definition will make the original statement true.).
Or maybe you're just slurring an entire profession based on the well publicized problems of a few. Intellectual rigour does not spring from generalizing from anecdotal evidence. So put up some numbers, or shut up.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually --
"..the holy grail has always been a helium-filled drive. Helium offers several advantages arising from its very low density and very high thermal conductivity. It takes much less power to run the spindles; cooling of the VCM and preamp is greatly improved; and temperature differentials within the drive almost disappear. The most important gain is from the reduction of internal turblulence and buffeting of the actuator and disks."
-- from "Future hard disk drive systems," Roger Wood, Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 321 (2009) 555-561
Actually, Susan is my boss, but I'm going to assume you paid attention to where I indicated that in my original post, and are addressing your comments rhetorically. For the record Susan's been in journalism for decades, is a frequent judge for journalism awards, lectured at NYU's journalism school, etc, etc., and been the EIC of Spectrum for over six years. So drop the patronizing smarm. Finding your own angle on a story that's going around is one thing: failing to give adequate attribution is another, and is violation of, e.g., the Washington Post's ethics policy:
... It is the policy of this newspaper to give credit to other publications that develop exclusive stories worthy of coverage by The Post.
Attribution of material from other newspapers and other media must be total.
Certainly, for example, digging up Matthew Patton was an element of the VCF story that was exclusive to Spectrum's coverage, as Patton had not appeared in other media outlets before or since Spectrum's coverage until today.
Even when publications are chasing the same story, when one publication gets something unique it is normal to see lines such as "As first reported in the New York Times..." etc in stories in other outlets. A similar attribution in passing in the text was all that would have been required: instead the only attempt at attribution by the Post article is buried in the credits list for the accompanying timeline graphic, where the "Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers" is credited as a source, which is a) insufficient and b) wrong (the source was "IEEE Spectrum Magazine". Crediting the IEEE is like crediting General Electric for information taken from a "Today Show" segment.)
As a concrete example, let's look at the recent Sony-BMG DRM rootkit controversy. I did a story on that, interviewing many of the people involved, people who got interviewed by a lot of media outlets at the same time, but when I found a nugget that had been exclusivey reported by one other news outlet--a video of a DHS offcial talking to a local buisiness group about the issue--I gave credit where credit where was due. To the Washington Post in fact: "One party that cares is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes cybersecurity as part of its portfolio. On 10 November, as reported by the Washington Post, Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for homeland security, made a pointed reference to the Sony BMG protection system..." [Emphasis added]
Speaking personally as someone who hires freelancers, and who's been a staff journalist and editor for somewhat more than a week myself, if your post is indicative of your grasp of the ethical standards of journalism, you can be sure this is one editor who wouldn't call on your abilities as a stringer, or anything else.
I'm an editor at IEEE Spectrum. Spectrum laid out out this story in September '05. (I submitted a link to Slashdot at the time, but the editors in their Infinite Wisdom rejected it). Despite our story being prominently featured in google, wikipedia, winning awards, etc, and using similar sources, and so on, the Washington Post didn't acknowledge any of Spectrum's reporting, which has prompted Spectrum's Editor-in-Chief to complain to the Washington's Post's Ombusdman thusly:
Dear Ms. Howell,
We were startled to see that the article "The FBI Upgrade that Wasn't" by
Eggen and Witte in today's Washington Post is taken directly from an article
we did in September 2005 called "Who Killed the Virtual Case File," by Harry
Goldstein (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/sep05/1455). His article has won 5
major magazine awards. Neither Harry or Spectrum gets credit or attribution
in the Washington Post piece.
Your writers reinterviewed all our sources, including Matthew Patton, whose
only press interview until your story today was in the Spectrum article.
They filed the same FOIA, etc.
Is this plagiarism? Not exactly. Is it shoddy, lazy journalism? You bet.
Sincerely yours,
Susan Hassler
I would say that when the barycenter is below the surface of body A, body B can be considered to be orbiting body A. When the barycenter is above the surface of both bodies, they are orbiting each other. So it's not just a question of mass, but, crudely speaking, of density too.
I've never claimed that or thought that [150k is an average middle class salary].
:)
Sorry, that's exactly what you did. Go back and read your comment:
150k per year seems pretty damn nice to me. That would not make you solidly middle class.[Spoke the grandparent]
What something 'seems' to you doesn't make much real difference. The fact is, for a college educated professional (the very definition of middle class) - that's an average salary with a decades or so experience. .
I don't see any of the equivocations or qualifications you now claim to have offered. Unless you want you argue what exactly the definition of "that is" is...
The fact is, for a college educated professional (the very definition of middle class) - [150K a year is] an average salary with a decades or so experience.
In certain industries, perhaps. But look at the salary stats for say, teachers, or veterinarians (two established middle-class professions which require college educations). Way less than 150k.
Seriously, if you think 150k is an average middle class salary, you're leading an insular existence. In fact, if you look a the historical stats on income from the US Census Bureau, you'll see that you're coming in at the lower limit of the the top 5 percent. Now, unless you're going to argue that only people in your income bracket are truely solidly middle class, and so redefine the problem away, you have to admit that you are, at the very least, upper middle class.
Yes, the original Elite rocked, although the post Ian-Bell sequels were disappointing (interestingly enough for the exact same reason Quake wasn't as much fun as Doom II. The later game had prettier graphics, but failed to deliver the bursts of frenetic action that could be found in the orginal. Finishing up a massive dogfight in Elite, with no missiles, no shields, no energy bomb left, and a hull a budgie's fart away from failure, while you crusie through the debris field of your last opponent, rotating smoothly to capture his cargo pod full of alien goods in one motion--that was something. Ian Bell has a great page about the original Elite BTW, including source code.) But only a year of game play? :)My best friend and I clocked up about two and a half years on his C64: he'd man the joystick (a Boss 2-axis microswitch stick, tweaked for maximum sensitivity. The best thing about it was that the handle rotated, so for rear or side laser action, he'd rotate the base appropriately.) I manned the keyboard: missiles, speed, navigation. Lot of fun. The hidden stuff was fun, especially the 'trumbles', but the game was still excellent without it: a little secret stuff goes a long way. Today, I won't even look at a Gran Turismo game, because I have better things to do than spend about as much time getting a particular fake license as it would take to get a real one. Even stuff like Halo 2 can be a pain, because I don't have hours to find and practice all the superjumps, or learn to crouch jump on a particular pixel-wide ledge to get out of the geometry.
The older you get, the less you play games. .
:)
Sorry. The average age of a gamer is 28 -- or at least it was three years ago when I needed that stat for a story. The Entertainment Software Association has been showing a steady increase in the average age of gamers for years, due to the fact that the original Gen X gamers are getting older but actually don't stop playing games, according to the head of ESA (who made this point a centerpiece of his keynote address at E3 in, oh, 2001), so I'm willing to bet the average age has risen by a year or two already. The ESA's current stats indicate that 39% of frequent players are over 35 years old. So if the majority of gamers aren't over the age of thirty already, it won't be long before they are. Therefore, by your own logic, it'll be even more important to hang on to designers in their thirties.
just because I'm cynical, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm wrong.
It doesn't make you right either.
Most of them have long since lost that creative spark by the time they're thirty anyway.
This would make video game design almost unique in the annals of human creativity. I think the only field were the phenomenon of people doing their most creative work by 30 is actually well substantiated and documented is in mathematics, a very different field to game design and one much closer to programming, which you state is not subject to this effect anyway (and even in math, there are exceptions, c.f. Andrew Wiles.
As the article points out, how crazy would it be if movies or books were only made by twenty somethings with less than five years experience? Speilberg never would have made E.T., let alone Schindler's List. And I'm sorry, I just have difficultly believing that the creative spark required for video games is so much more intense that that which burned in Picasso when he painted Guernica at age 56, or in Bach when he wrote his Mass in B Minor in his sixties. Heck, the guy who created Tetris was 29 when he did it, around the time his mojo should had been well on the way out in your thesis.
I think we must be careful not to engage in circular reasoning: i.e. "There are no good game designers over thirty because there are no good game designers over thirty." Before positing a mysterious intrinsic evaporation in game design skills, would it not make more sense to examine the substantive causes discussed in the article: immature work practices contributing to early burnout? If a programmer gets sick of video games, there are many other applications areas they can get stuck into and still be programming, and even programming at the bleeding edge: the fundamental nature of their job has not changed. And they still have the option to return to games, perhaps seasoned with alternate approaches. But for a game designer, well, there's not much for it but to change careers, and it's very hard to return after developing an alternative career -- even if they're still in the game industry, the fundamental nature of their job will have changed considerably.
I would suggest that if video game developers adopted more mature work practices, we would start to see great designs by thirty somethings in a few years, as the current crop of designers don't burn out, but continue innovating, and probably in very surprising ways when they bring not just a wealth of design experience, but are in a better position to integrate life and cultural experience too because they haven't been chained to their keyboards the whole time.
Loved the dogfights, and the storylines were good too. My only nit was that the scripting engine was brittle: e.g. you'd dock a station to talk to someone, then if Marauders happened to randomly attack, you were screwed. If you undocked, the script wouldn't resume the rest of the dialogue necessary to unlock the next mission stage when you redocked after destroying the Marauders, and if you didn't undock you stood a good chance of getting killed as a sitting duck. Still, I see there's a total conversion available for IW2 now, Torn Stars, -- must give it a go!
Man, I loved the IW physics engines, especially those missions in both games that relied on some deft decoupled maneuvering, such as when you would put a cargo container on a collision course with a station, or wanted to drift silently by an object with all thrusters off but needed to turn to inspect it.
Sort of like George Lucas thinking that he invented science fiction and suing everyone he spots making too much money.
You're refering to the (original) Battlestar Galactica law suit aren't you?
The problem with that approach -- as fashionable as it may (and I think it's popularity may have peaked) -- is that after you've finished spinning off every highly profitable division of your company, all you're left with are the unprofitable or marginally-profitable divisions, plus some nasty overheads, which is not normally a recipie for staying in buisiness. The parent organization closing up shop ideally wouldn't matter too much, except that some of those unprofitable or marginal divisions can often be important for the long term profitability of all those currently high-performing divisions/spin-offs, as customer experience suffers because of integration or legacy support issues, or the well of innovation dries up (R&D divisions are rarely profit centers in themselves) and there's less room for experimentation. Also, without the easily-accessed combined financial resources of the whole, spun-off divisions can find themselves without the reserves needed to weather temporary downturns. Unlocking value is a great short term strategy, but I'm not so sure it makes sense for companies planning for the long haul, such as Apple, especially when Apple's branding and premium pricing relies so heavily on integration and a seamless user experience.
if we ever get to the point where we just let them fail and replace them with another one.
Actually, except for a few satellites recovered/serviced by the shuttle (the total number of which could be counted on the fingers of one hand!), this is in fact the modus operandii for all satellites since sputnik. Generally, if it's an important enough constelation, a few 'spares' will even be kept on orbit so that service can be maintained even in the even of a premature failure, without waiting for a new satellite to be built and launched. Satellites towards the end of their lives are usually junked by either parking them in higher orbits, or deorbited and burn up in the atmosphere (for those too big to burn up completely, there's a big patch of the Pacific that's become a orbital graveyard of sorts)
The games allow you kill opponents, so I'm okay with any synoyms for that. The games don't allow you rape people -- that's something people have brought in from the outside, and is disturbing in that it is often using in an explicity sexual context: "I'm going to rape you up the ass, fag" being a not unreasonable sample. Nor is rape used as a synonym for simply fragging -- it's a meta term, that translates to "I have achieved a comphrensive victory over you". If you can't see that 'rape' is a disturbing choice of synonym for that, I worry for you. Also note that real murder, let alone mass murder, is rare in developed countries where online video games tend to be played. Real rape is not.
Bollox. The word "fag" has by no means lost its association with homosexual, even just based on the context in which it's used in voice chat, let alone the fact that if you ask people, they all know that 'fag' can be used a word for gay, unlike 'idiot,' where most people genuinely don't know it's origin in the scientific racism of the 19th and 20th centuries. It's apologists like you that drive me especially nuts -- you may like to think you're not being grossly offensive, that you're a good guy, but ask an actual gay person what they think of the term 'fag' and its use in chat, I'll think you'll find you are being a best offensive, at worst conducting verbal assualt. If you're sincere in not wanting to spread bigotry, you'll stop. The turning of certain words from specific insults into generic ones make the situation worse, not better -- you're declaring that an entire class of people are inferior -- that any gay is crap, or trivilizing some of the worst violence around -- rape is equated with winng a game? And why is it okay to consider 'gay' as an insult in the first place? Believe it or not, unless you're gay, black or been raped, you really have no right to declare "these insults are okay, they're meaningless." Almost the only people who think those words are meaningless, are white, straight males who haven't been the victim of sexual assault, and if you can't see an perpepuation of abuse and injuctice in that privilege, you're living a very insular life indeed.
I agree -- the swearing's fine, it's all the racism, misogyny and homophobia that's really starting to get old. I've attended press conferences with video game execs[1] and when I ask them about the dichotomoy between wanting to be treated like a legitimate, mainstream activity on the one hand and the hostile and exclusionary nature of an average morning on X-Box they, at best, shrug their shoulders with a "what can you do?" attitude or, at worst, fail to even understand the basis of the question. How about enforcing your damn ToS??? For younger players Xbox live requires a credit card to use, so there's supposed to be some adult around -- why capture a few seconds of the audio stream and send them a damn letter with a link explaining why their son has been banned? A few hundred "Notes home to the Parents" would have a definite chilling effect -- at the very least, it would finally say, "You know what guys, this isn't okay" instead of the wink, wink bullshit from the game companies that happens now, to point where some kids don't even understand why anyone would object when they spout some of this garbage.
And just in case any of those kids are reading, let me spell it out: it's not okay to use "gay" as a synonym for "crap", "fag" as a synonym for "asshole", "rape" as a synonym for "achieve victory over" or "nigger" as a synonym for, well, anything.
[1] These are often the same execs who mouth platitudes about wanting the industry to be less male oriented, and more welcoming to women, while surrounded by giant advertising placards featuring anatomically impossible women with heavy weaponry.
It might not have been written by an IEEE staff member, but it is definitely a de facto endorsement because of IEEE publishing it.
There's a long tradition of organizations, especially media organizations, publishing opinion pieces without those pieces being considered "de facto endorsements," let alone official positions. When, say, an activist or politician advocates for their point of view from the Op-Ed pages of The Boston Globe, it is not considered an endorsement by the The New York Times Company. And even beyond expert opinion pieces in Spectrum, the IEEE prints a vast amount of other literature -- every single article in say, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine does not automatically become the official position of the IEEE!
And note again the disclaimer than runs in Spectrum, and that we've run several pieces espousing very different, and often conflicting, views on software patents. Could the IEEE really be endorsing them all simultaneously?
Showed? How?
By drawing a clear distinction between Religion and Science. Religion is based on faith, and so, whether your believe in God(s) or not, religious experience lies outside the scope of science (and is therefore not appropriate in a science class). QED.
rall aspects of human behavior that are related to rational decision making
Journalism often contends with the irrational, both in the subject matter and in the method of reporting. Scienctific articles are not intended to stir emotion: emtional appeals are out of place in such a venue. But journalists often strive to reach their readers emotionally as well as intellectually. Haven't you ever gotten angry, or sad, or cheered by an article? That didn't happen just by accident, or just because of the nature of the subject matter. Trying to use science as one-size-fits-all approach to humanity is at best blinkered, at worst, leads to horrible injustices.
I don't have to prove anything, I merely have to say "I don't believe you; I think journalists are fabricating". The burden of proof is on you, and so far, you have failed to produce anything.
To quote Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Here though, I'd settle for ordinary evidence. Is is you who are making a claim. The burden of proof is yours.
Maybe there's a patent attorney who has a brother-in-law in the IEEE group that proposed this, or something.
/. about this, but The Powers That Be didn't bother to fix the headline, so I'll try do it here: (this is a repost of a comment I've posted elsewhere)
/. is debating Prof. Hollaar's idea, just note that it's not an official IEEE proposal.
I submitted a correction to
I'm the IEEE Spectrum editor of this article, and for the record the IEEE has made no such proposal. To quote the disclaimer we run with every issue: "The editorial content of IEEE Spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the IEEE or its organizational units."
Prof Hollaar's article is funtionally equivalent to an Op-Ed -- as a respected, knowledgedable, and articulate individual, he was given space in the magazine to share a proposal we found noteworthy. We've actually run a lot of articles on the "What To Do With Patents" theme recently, as our contribution to the patent reform debate, with authors advocating ideas ranging from replacing software patents completely with copyright, to more-or-less leaving well enough alone. I think it's great
even has a huge body (IEEE) behind him.
/. about this, but The Powers That Be didn't bother to fix the headline, so I'll try do it here: (this is a repost of a comment I've posted elsewhere)
/. is debating Prof. Hollaar's idea, just note that it's not an official IEEE proposal.
I submitted a correction to
I'm the IEEE Spectrum editor of this article, and for the record the IEEE has made no such proposal. To quote the disclaimer we run with every issue: "The editorial content of IEEE Spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the IEEE or its organizational units."
Prof Hollaar's article is funtionally equivalent to an Op-Ed -- as a respected, knowledgedable, and articulate individual, he was given space in the magazine to share a proposal we found noteworthy. We've actually run a lot of articles on the "What To Do With Patents" theme recently, as our contribution to the patent reform debate, with authors advocating ideas ranging from replacing software patents completely with copyright, to more-or-less leaving well enough alone. I think it's great
In the proposed IEEE system...
/. about this, but The Powers That Be didn't bother to fix the headline, so I'll try do it here: (this is a repost of this comment)
/. is debating Prof. Hollaar's idea, just note that it's not an official IEEE proposal.
I submitted a correction to
I'm the IEEE Spectrum editor of this article, and for the record the IEEE has made no such proposal. To quote the disclaimer we run with every issue: "The editorial content of IEEE Spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the IEEE or its organizational units."
Prof Hollaar's article is funtionally equivalent to an Op-Ed -- as a respected, knowledgedable, and articulate individual, he was given space in the magazine to share a proposal we found noteworthy. We've actually run a lot of articles on the "What To Do With Patents" theme recently, as our contribution to the patent reform debate, with authors advocating ideas ranging from replacing software patents completely with copyright, to more-or-less leaving well enough alone. I think it's great
I submitted a correction to /. about this, but The Powers That Be didn't bother to fix the headline, so I'll try do it here:
/. is debating Prof. Hollaar's idea, just note that it's not an official IEEE proposal.
I'm the IEEE Spectrum editor of this article, and for the record the IEEE has made no such proposal. To quote the disclaimer we run with every issue: "The editorial content of IEEE Spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the IEEE or its organizational units."
Prof Hollaar's article is funtionally equivalent to an Op-Ed -- as a respected, knowledgedable, and articulate individual, he was given space in the magazine to share a proposal we found noteworthy. We've actually run a lot of articles on the "What To Do With Patents" theme recently, as our contribution to the patent reform debate, with authors advocating ideas ranging from replacing software patents completely with copyright, to more-or-less leaving well enough alone. I think it's great
Easy: go to fair.org
1) A link to the index page of an media watch dog is not putting up some numbers. Is this part of your scientifically rigourous approach to facts? I'm familiar with the FAIR website -- just where does it give numbers that show the proportion of journalists that fabricate stories, let alone indicate that it's "lots" of them? In fact, FAIR clearly doesn't believe that journalists "fabricat[e], or close to it" articles, or that the journalistic profession is endemically corrupt, or they wouldn't (from their "About Us" page) "defend working journalists [and work] with both activists and journalists. We maintain a regular dialogue with reporters at news outlets across the country, providing constructive critiques when called for and applauding exceptional, hard-hitting journalism." And many current and former subscribers to FAIR (including myself) are journalists, and FAIR is regularly quoted by journalists in both the mainstream and alternative press.
2) Pointing to scientfic literature is a non sequitor. Scientific papers, to have any value at all, confine themseleves to science. As the recent court case against intelligent design showed, attempting to broaden science to cover the full spectrum of human experience and thought is antithetical to what science is. Trying to compare scientific literaure with journalism is apples to oranges. Journalists, even when striving to be as accurate, well-researched and fair as humanely possible, don't write articles like scientific papers because it would be wholly inappropriate. Journalism has different objectives, with different audience demands. Scientific reportage of facts is designed to allow other scientists to recreate those the process by which those facts were derived. Journalists don't do that -- for example, because Woodruff and Bernstein didn't tell every reader of the Washington Post exactly how they too could reproduce their reporting, should readers have rejected the evidence of corruption within the Nixon administration?
3) By the way, if you're looking for universal factual purity in scientific comunity, you're on a fools errand: scientists are heavily incentivized to "make a name for themselves" too, with direct inducements in the form of academic and institutional positions and grant monies. Here's a hard statistic: The Journal of Cell Biology recently reported that some 25% of manuscripts submitted to it have had images that were manipulated in some way that violates their guidelines. This isn't to attack cell biology as a crock, just to let you know that science isn't some totem that you can fetishize into a gold standard by which to weigh journalism.
4) "I'm not talking about the deliberate deceptions that a number of journalists have been caught at, I'm talking about journalism itself" Ah, just as predicted, weasling. You originally wrote; "that's what a lot of [journalists] do. The bad part is that a lot of the effort that goes into their stories is fabrication or close to it.". A fabrication is a deliberate deception. Non-deliberate deception is usually covered under the terms 'bias' or 'error'-- the FAIR website can tell you more about this. And you weren't talking about journalism, you were talking about journalists, so you were talking about deliberate deceptions commited by a (still unspecified) number of individuals. You were also dismissing a commenter's opinion on the basis that they hadn't met any journalists. And again, if meeting journalists is your criteria for the worth of an opinion, just how many have you met?
So how many journalists have you met? One? Two? Three? Four? Five? How many do you think is a lot? How many journalists can you show fabricate stories "or close to it?" ("close to it" being a pure weasel phrase if I ever heard one -- i.e. lets make an outrageous statement, and then when it can't be backed up, expand "close" to whatever definition will make the original statement true.).
Or maybe you're just slurring an entire profession based on the well publicized problems of a few. Intellectual rigour does not spring from generalizing from anecdotal evidence. So put up some numbers, or shut up.