I will admit that I don't know much about the hardcopy game magazines. Those definitely seem to be pretty substance-free, at least from the few times I've glanced through one. However, I think that some of the online game sites are actually quite good. For example, Gamespot, which I've seen trashed here in a few comments on other topics, does as excellent job of reviewing most games. They tend to be pretty harsh as well. For example, in their most recent 14 reviews, they gave an average score of 5.8 (out of 10) which represents the craptacular quality of recent games. Like Hollywood, the gaming industry has fallen into a pretty serious funk, with little or no innovation.
I also give Gamespot a lot of credit for pointing out such gems as Darwinia, which they reviewed in import form long before it was available in the US. And, while they certainly did their fair share of hyping the Xbox 360, I think much of the aversion to that on Slashdot stems from the cultural bias here against Microsoft. As the owner of a (thus far) non-crashing, non-scratching Xbox 360, I have been pretty impressed with the interface and initial set of games. The ability to download new content, including entire games, is a major step forward for consoles and may herald the further decline of PC gaming. That's assuming the gaming industry as a whole doesn't continue to screw itself...but I digress.
As another example of this article's general inaccuracy, I refer to the author's statements about how Half-Life 2 reviews were more concerned with the gravity gun and water reflection than the gaming environment. Gamespot's Half-Life 2 review spent exactly one paragraph talking about the gravity gun. They spent the majority of the article talking about the game's environments, AI, storyline and pacing. They also went over the game's engine in a fair amount of detail, which is particularly relevant given the original Half-Life's heavy modder following.
Anyway, this article points out a legitimate problem in much of our media--namely that of reporters and reviewers who seem little more than drones for the entertainment industry and similar interests--but neglects to point out how easy it is to find honest sources of information out there, particularly in electronic form.
You're correct. They've added "Group Alerts" and RSS feeds since I first looked at Gmail. Nevertheless, their offering is still comprised of a number of half-finished, perpetual "beta" products.
Also, in looking at their Google Earth product, I'd have to say that there's nothing quite as crass as clicking on a neighborhood DVD rental video store and getting a "sponsored link" to Netflix.
Google's problem, though, is that they have a tendancy not to follow up on things, but rather leave them in indefinite beta or some other limbo. Take "Hello" (a photo-sharing and chat program which is part of the Picasa offering) for example. It's a fairly cool, though very specialized product. Shouldn't that be part of their new chat service? Yahoo has already built similar real-time photo-sharing into their Messenger product. While I'll admit that Yahoo overbrands, they at least try to have some consistency in their offering. When is Google going to start integrating some of their separate products into more useful platforms? Integration can weigh a product suite down, but right now there are some glaring opportunities: For example, why not integrate Google Groups (which has been in "beta" now for years) with GMail? What about integrating Picasa with Google Desktop (both of which offer search/organization functionality for photos)?
Aspirin, escalator, elevator and zipper were all trademarked words originally, but are now considered generic names. Kleenex is another good example, though "facial tissue" is their way of trying to keep their name from becoming genericized.
First off, the wealth was that of his family, not his wealth personally--he was one of many children of a wealthy father. Second, if he already has that wealth, buying less oil will not take away what he already has. Most importantly, I'm talking about the "budget"--how much needs to be spent each year to keep terrorist organizations running--not the "cash reserves" of those organizations. In any case, my fundamental claim that al Qaida was funded by low tens of millions is backed up (link). Admittedly, al Qaida does not represent the whole of global terrorism, but the fact is that terrorism is relatively cheap to fund.
While I have no love for the regimes of oil-producing countries in the Middle East and South America, the notion that importing less oil will seriously affect the funding of global terrorism is nonsense. According to the 9/11 commission, the attacks on the US were funded with only about $500,000 (link). I would venture that the global "budget" for terrorism is only in the low tens of millions of dollars, which is a drop in the barrel compared to the many billions of dollars oil exporters are making.
A better argument for importing less oil is that we should not support the prosperity of regimes that have turned a blind eye on terrorism and that deprive their populations of democratic institutions (even if free democracy might result in theocratic leadership in the short term). However, I think that just working to ensure that the income generated by oil is more evenly distributed among the populations of exporters would go much further toward eliminating terrorism than trying to indirectly strangle the funding of groups that can already do quite a bit of damage on a shoe-string budget.
It's up to $100,000 *per violation*, so it remains to be seen whether the entire act Sony committed constitutes a single violation, or whether each infected computer is considered a separate violation. In the latter case, the penalty could actually be quite high.
As a trader and former developer on Wall St., I can tell you that the problem is that current grads have too little fundamental computer science, not that they have too much. I agree that knowing about some real-world programming languages (which does not include Lisp!) and real IDEs, databases, etc., makes one better prepared for the job market. However, being analytically deficient (no numerical methods, machine learning, graphics, etc.) will cut one's earning potential on Wall St. by 50% or more. Knowing about design patterns but not understanding how a hash table is implemented (and therefore not knowing whether the time complexity of insertion, traversal, etc.) makes one completely useless. While Wall St. is certainly not going to employ the entire pool of CS grads, there is still a place for people to earn a large amount of money who have strong grounding in traditional CS fundamentals.
Slashdot Mirror
I will admit that I don't know much about the hardcopy game magazines. Those definitely seem to be pretty substance-free, at least from the few times I've glanced through one. However, I think that some of the online game sites are actually quite good. For example, Gamespot, which I've seen trashed here in a few comments on other topics, does as excellent job of reviewing most games. They tend to be pretty harsh as well. For example, in their most recent 14 reviews, they gave an average score of 5.8 (out of 10) which represents the craptacular quality of recent games. Like Hollywood, the gaming industry has fallen into a pretty serious funk, with little or no innovation.
I also give Gamespot a lot of credit for pointing out such gems as Darwinia, which they reviewed in import form long before it was available in the US. And, while they certainly did their fair share of hyping the Xbox 360, I think much of the aversion to that on Slashdot stems from the cultural bias here against Microsoft. As the owner of a (thus far) non-crashing, non-scratching Xbox 360, I have been pretty impressed with the interface and initial set of games. The ability to download new content, including entire games, is a major step forward for consoles and may herald the further decline of PC gaming. That's assuming the gaming industry as a whole doesn't continue to screw itself...but I digress.
As another example of this article's general inaccuracy, I refer to the author's statements about how Half-Life 2 reviews were more concerned with the gravity gun and water reflection than the gaming environment. Gamespot's Half-Life 2 review spent exactly one paragraph talking about the gravity gun. They spent the majority of the article talking about the game's environments, AI, storyline and pacing. They also went over the game's engine in a fair amount of detail, which is particularly relevant given the original Half-Life's heavy modder following.
Anyway, this article points out a legitimate problem in much of our media--namely that of reporters and reviewers who seem little more than drones for the entertainment industry and similar interests--but neglects to point out how easy it is to find honest sources of information out there, particularly in electronic form.
You're correct. They've added "Group Alerts" and RSS feeds since I first looked at Gmail. Nevertheless, their offering is still comprised of a number of half-finished, perpetual "beta" products. Also, in looking at their Google Earth product, I'd have to say that there's nothing quite as crass as clicking on a neighborhood DVD rental video store and getting a "sponsored link" to Netflix.
Google's problem, though, is that they have a tendancy not to follow up on things, but rather leave them in indefinite beta or some other limbo. Take "Hello" (a photo-sharing and chat program which is part of the Picasa offering) for example. It's a fairly cool, though very specialized product. Shouldn't that be part of their new chat service? Yahoo has already built similar real-time photo-sharing into their Messenger product. While I'll admit that Yahoo overbrands, they at least try to have some consistency in their offering. When is Google going to start integrating some of their separate products into more useful platforms? Integration can weigh a product suite down, but right now there are some glaring opportunities: For example, why not integrate Google Groups (which has been in "beta" now for years) with GMail? What about integrating Picasa with Google Desktop (both of which offer search/organization functionality for photos)?
I'd substitute the Perl Cookbook for Learning Perl.
Aspirin, escalator, elevator and zipper were all trademarked words originally, but are now considered generic names. Kleenex is another good example, though "facial tissue" is their way of trying to keep their name from becoming genericized.
Indeed, this was in the press before the movie. Discover posted the original article on their website when the movie came out.
First off, the wealth was that of his family, not his wealth personally--he was one of many children of a wealthy father. Second, if he already has that wealth, buying less oil will not take away what he already has. Most importantly, I'm talking about the "budget"--how much needs to be spent each year to keep terrorist organizations running--not the "cash reserves" of those organizations. In any case, my fundamental claim that al Qaida was funded by low tens of millions is backed up (link). Admittedly, al Qaida does not represent the whole of global terrorism, but the fact is that terrorism is relatively cheap to fund.
While I have no love for the regimes of oil-producing countries in the Middle East and South America, the notion that importing less oil will seriously affect the funding of global terrorism is nonsense. According to the 9/11 commission, the attacks on the US were funded with only about $500,000 (link). I would venture that the global "budget" for terrorism is only in the low tens of millions of dollars, which is a drop in the barrel compared to the many billions of dollars oil exporters are making. A better argument for importing less oil is that we should not support the prosperity of regimes that have turned a blind eye on terrorism and that deprive their populations of democratic institutions (even if free democracy might result in theocratic leadership in the short term). However, I think that just working to ensure that the income generated by oil is more evenly distributed among the populations of exporters would go much further toward eliminating terrorism than trying to indirectly strangle the funding of groups that can already do quite a bit of damage on a shoe-string budget.
It's up to $100,000 *per violation*, so it remains to be seen whether the entire act Sony committed constitutes a single violation, or whether each infected computer is considered a separate violation. In the latter case, the penalty could actually be quite high.
As a trader and former developer on Wall St., I can tell you that the problem is that current grads have too little fundamental computer science, not that they have too much. I agree that knowing about some real-world programming languages (which does not include Lisp!) and real IDEs, databases, etc., makes one better prepared for the job market. However, being analytically deficient (no numerical methods, machine learning, graphics, etc.) will cut one's earning potential on Wall St. by 50% or more. Knowing about design patterns but not understanding how a hash table is implemented (and therefore not knowing whether the time complexity of insertion, traversal, etc.) makes one completely useless. While Wall St. is certainly not going to employ the entire pool of CS grads, there is still a place for people to earn a large amount of money who have strong grounding in traditional CS fundamentals.