I didn't realize how bad it was until I had accidentally left the cable unplugged as I'd used that port for another non-Wifi equipped PC. When I started the Xbox 360 again I was blown away by how much more pleasant it was.
Unfortunately, my Xbox is used for streaming my ripped DVD/Blu-ray collection from my media server, so that's not an option. As joemck indicated, a better solution for me is to perform some filtering, but honestly, my annoyance level isn't quite high enough to bother with that yet. Besides, as I mentioned, a large part of my beef is the lost screen real estate, and blocking the ads really doesn't address that.
I'd argue that an employer's duty is both to compensate you monetarily AND to provide a safe and comfortable working environment. Beyond that one nitpick, I completely agree with you.
Even as a temporary contract programmer, when my project with Microsoft was cancelled, I was treated very well. They kept me on for another month as an unofficial "severance" even though there was no work to be done, and arranged for a few other internal interviews for me. My project lead also bought me an Xbox (the first one, which had recently come out) and some games out of his own pocket.
Obviously, that was a while ago, but from what I've heard, MS still generally treats its people pretty well, and that experience was borne out several times while working for them in contract positions. Note that this isn't completely altruistic - part of it is to avoid wrongful termination lawsuits (I've been given severance pay by another employer in exchange for promising not to sue, which was fine with me), and part of it is simple competition with others who might treat their employees better. And of course, part of it is that most people aren't complete jerkwads, and understand that helping out someone with a severance package is simply the right thing to do, as being laid off is already a mildly traumatic experience.
Too bad adblock doesn't work on my Xbox 360. Microsoft has really gone over the edge with cramming advertising down its customers throats. At this point, quite literally, MOST of the screen now is taken up by advertisements of one form or another on the main navigation pages. What's really irksome is that this was a post-purchase change that we were required to get if we wanted to continue to play with friends online, not to mention I'm already paying them $60 a year for the privilege of watching their advertisements.
I honestly don't mind the adverts about the new games or other available content coming out, as that's obviously relevant and appropriate for the platform, but I really wish they wouldn't advertising general products or take up so damn much of the screen real-estate, which is already rather precious on a TV screen. It's not one of those "frothing-at-the-mouth-angry" dealbreakers, but rather one of those "slow-burn grumbling" issues that are irritating enough for me to complain about on Slashdot, but not quite enough to cancel my service and ditch my Xbox. Although, when I finally purchase a next-gen console, I'm much more likely to look favorably at a PS4. Essentially, the Xbox one already has another negative tick against it because of the ads.
Basically, you see there a great example of what many companies would *like* to do to the web. It's up to consumers to demand that they be kept to reasonable levels of intrusiveness.
You've got a very good point. If you don't have a mathematical background in a particular field, you might not even know that there was a potential solution to a problem you were working on.
In a more general case, I consider this to be a something of a minor problem in the videogaming industry. In general, I haven't seen a lot of cross-pollination between videogame programmers and other industry professionals. This is partially because this job has some fairly specialized skillset requirements, and partly because the pay is lower and the hours worse for the privilege of working on a videogame rather than business software. I've noticed the general trends and techniques tend to be a bit behind the times. A conservative approach is not necessarily a bad thing, because programming a high-definition real-time virtual simulation on commodity hardware is an incredibly demanding task and sometimes requires performance-oriented priorities. Still, sometimes it can make things more difficult than they need to be when more modern techniques and methodologies can be appropriately applied.
BTW, it's a shame that some people won't see your comment simply because you're posting as an AC. No account, or did you use mod point in this thread already?
For crippled or time limited apps, we have a term that applies for that: demo. That moniker should be required, because simply calling it a free app is completely disingenuous.
If the free app is only ad-supported, I think it should still qualify as "free". After all, broadcast TV, radio, and the internet is largely ad-supported, and we talk about that being "free" as well. However, I think apps should be required to indicate whether they are ad supported or not, or whether they offer purchase of a "premium" version.
Maybe Free/Ad-supported instead of just Free? That would really let people distinguish between the truly free apps and the ones that are trying to earn advertising revenue.
I took nothing past Calculus either and up until two or three years ago never even used trigonometry in my professional programming. The last few years I've been writing satellite simulations, which has forced me to knock the rust off some of my old math skills. Most programmers can get away with very little math a lot of the time. A lot of very interesting programming involves a fair bit of math. That programming is generally being done by some guy with a Ph.D. in another field, and he's usually doing it in Fortran.
You're touching on what I consider to be the ultimate fallacy of this question. If someone asks the question "how much math does a programmer need to know?", I'd answer with "a programmer of what?"
My profession happens to be videogame programming. In my own experience, higher-level calculus is largely unused, but geometry, linear algebra, and matrix math are the bedrock of 2D and 3D simulations. Even then, the level of competence required depends largely on your specialty. A graphics programmer requires more mathematical savvy than an AI or general gameplay programmer, for example.
Programming, unless you're a theoretical computer scientist, is typically about solving practical, real world problems rather than problems specific to the domain of computer science. The problem domain the programmer is trying to solve is what determines the mathematical requirements, not the programming itself. In fact, you can go a bit farther than this and simply call mathematics part of the general "domain knowledge" which may or may not be required for a particular programming task. It's no different than when knowledge of accounting and bookkeeping is required when programming financial software, or a knowledge of music theory when writing music composition software.
So, the question only becomes meaningful when you attach it to a specific programming job or industry.
Yeah, because single point of failure is exactly how you want to perform security.
Just make that point of failure a modern, well-vetted encryption algorithm. Those algorithms are, despite serious effort by every cryptologist on the planet, still completely unbreakable. The math is solid. Properly implemented, the only chink in the armor is then the password, and that's something in my control.
So, yes, I'm fine with a single point of failure, so long as it's intelligently chosen. A mathematical model will not suddenly break or stop working like a hard drive or router, barring some revolutionary crypto breakthrough. It's sort of like worrying that an airplane's wings or fuselage are "single points of failure". Technically true, but those components are built robustly enough that it's not really worth worrying about, and the realities of trying to mitigate that would be horrendously impractical.
Hey, now, Origin performs a vital service to the community - it keeps EA games off out Steam, so that folks don't accidentally buy one!
Heh, yeah, it's sort of inadvertently had that effect for me. I wasn't necessarily trying to boycott EA altogether, but that was the end result for PC titles at least. It probably hasn't hurt them much, though. The increased profits from their own store probably offset losses from people like me.
Honestly, though, Valve isn't necessarily the white knight in the Steam/Origin powerplay either. They already take a pretty massive cut of the game's initial purchase price. Then on top of that, Steam's DLC policy basically means that companies that rely on large amounts of DLC for additional revenue and use their own in-game DLC store won't be publishing on Steam. It's a somewhat draconian policy, except perhaps if the game in question was completely free to play, in which case it makes some sense to share the revenue. After all, what business is it of Valve's what DLC transactions are made inside a game that they sell? Were they hemorrhaging money from lost DLC sales? Pfft, hardly - they just wanted a cut of that action, and since it's their store, they make the rules.
I'd argue it demonstrates why it's probably a bad thing in the long run to have a single company completely dominate any field, like... oh, Comcast, perhaps?
I listened to the whole thing. It was amazing, and not in a good way. Keep in mind that this was also TEN MINUTES into the conversation already when he started the conversation. Unbelievable. I'm guessing these guys are financially rewarded for re-subscribing customers who call to cancel. It should be blindingly obvious that this would be the inevitable result of that.
It reminds me of an experience I had with EA when trying to unsubscribe to the wholly unremarkable MMO "Earth and Beyond". I was bored to tears with the game and no longer wished to pay each month for the privilege of not playing, but soon discovered I actually had to call and talk with a "customer representative" (i.e. someone paid to convince me not to cancel my subscription), rather than simply allowing me to do it over the internet as when I signed up. While the experience was nowhere near as bad as this poor schlub's, it was not a comfortable or pleasant experience either, and I vowed that I would never sign up for an EA MMO or ever give them my credit card again. It will be a cold day in hell before Origin is ever installed on my system.
It's probably true that such a system can convince a certain number of customers to continue subscribing, but it's harder to factor in how such a poor customer service experience will damage a company's reputation in the long run. Fortunately for gamers, the videogame industry is still reasonably competitive compared to the cable industry, and as such, has a harder time devolving into the infuriating sorts of customer experience witnessed here.
>You're telling us not to trust a web based service, but then tell us you keep your data shared like google drive or dropbox? I see no appreciable difference in practice there. Lastpass is essentially Keepass + a specialized dropbox-type service. Your advice is especially ironic given the spotty security dropbox is known for [zdnet.com].
The problem is not in the remote storage. It's in the local client that does the work to turn your clicks and typing into a secured file that doesn't need to trust the storage medium to do anything except store.
The 'web integration' puts your password manager in a really bad place - in the browser. What could possibly go wrong? Surely no one attacks web browsers.
Yep, that's very true. At this point, though, most attacks are directed at Java, Flash, or the browser's Javascript interpreter. These vectors are still dangerous because of potentially malicious content being served by untrustworthy servers. I uninstalled Flash some time ago, and make good use of noscript to prevent untested scripts from running, as that's still a dangerous attack vector. Keep in mind that plugins are run in separate processes, which affords some natural protection and isolation. Note that the attack mentioned in this article was not possible when using the plugin, which nearly everybody actually does, according to Lastpass statistics.
I well understand how it sounds extremely risky to trust your password database to a third-party service, but I feel that Lastpass itself has been built very carefully with security as the primary concern. After all, that's their first and only business. This makes it a bit different than many other web-based services, for whom security is often a distant secondary issue, or one which was hastily implemented or improved only after a disastrous breach. Still, if there's ever a massive security breach at Lastpass, feel free to send me a big "I told you so". Security can be only really validated over the course of time and many determined attacks, and so far, Lastpass has proven itself to be secure.
Keepass is a fine product, and there's nothing wrong with keeping your password database more directly in your own control. Security is always a tradeoff between protection versus convenience, and obviously, using a third-party database escrow service leans too far in the "convenience" direction for some. There's nothing wrong with that, as you can never get bitten by leaning in the "protection" direction.
You're telling us not to trust a web based service, but then tell us you keep your data shared like google drive or dropbox? I see no appreciable difference in practice there. Lastpass is essentially Keepass + a specialized dropbox-type service. Your advice is especially ironic given the spotty security dropbox is known for.
At some point, you have to make informed decisions about the tradeoffs between security and convenience. For me, using Lastpass is a convenient way to synchronize the strongest possible unique passwords - essentially gibberish - across my multiple computers. I feel that having strong, unique passwords across the web is critical to keeping my numerous accounts secure.
Incidentally, as it turns out, this attack is apparently only applicable to those not using a browser plugin. That's not to discount the seriousness, but I was never actually vulnerable to this attack, since I only use Lastpass from my PC using Firefox + Lastpass plugin.
Oddly enough, I'm pretty impressed with my local waste hauling company. I was getting overcharged for the size of garbage can I had for a number of years without me noticing after containers had been switched out to different types. I placed a single call to my utility company, and they told me they'd have to contact city hall, who manages the city-wide contract and billing. "Great, I'll never see that money", I thought, with quotes about "fighting city hall" coming to mind. A few weeks later, I see a full refund in my online account for the overcharged amount. The employee had followed through and taken care of things for me with just that single phone call. WTF? Excellent customer service from a utility? Mind blown.
In general, I rarely complain when mistakes are made. After all, we all make mistakes. What really counts to me is how those mistakes are dealt with. I think I might write a letter thanking their customer service department. It's probably a rare enough occurrence in an otherwise relatively thankless job, so it would be nice to know that their efforts are actually appreciated.
So yeah, thumbs up for my local waste disposal utility.
I can't comment on the file format issue in Office, as I'm not familiar with that.
As far as DirectX goes, I do recall how they released DX 10 on newer platforms (Vista and up). Personally, I think it was a stupid decision, because it limited the potential adoption of DX10 rather than providing an incentive to upgrade to Vista as they hoped. They're pulling the same boneheaded decision to limit the latest DX release to the Windows 8.1, if I recall correctly. Again, trying to shore up a crappy OS release using DirectX will do nothing but cause DirectX to stagnate. The OS's will be replaced in their own sweet time. This seems to be a more recent trend of Microsoft's, and it's a bad one.
I think that the examples you cite are bad decisions on Microsoft's part, not because of what they did, but because they simply did it too soon. I think it's reasonable for them to stop developing software and platform updates for their older software at some point, but with DirectX 10 it sort of had a backlash effect. Even today, overall DX11 use is often paired with a DX9 compatible rendering engine simply for legacy WinXP support, even though any modern video card has long had DX11 support in silicon. We're only now seeing a trickle of DX11-only games starting to come out, all because of that decision. Well, that and the fact that the Xbox 360 was roughly a DX9-equivalent machine.
So yeah, some good examples there. I was thinking mostly in terms of 3rd party application compatibility, for which they have a really good record (i.e. you can pretty much play any DirectX videogame ever as long as it was properly written, which I think is pretty amazing). But they've done some fairly silly things with releasing their own software and platform updates.
Yeah, that was the weird part. I lived close enough to feel the blast, but the winds blew all the ash east (I lived north of it), so didn't see a bit of the stuff. Felt bad for some folks in eastern Washington, who got blanketed by several inches of ash, if I recall. Fortunately, they're much better equipped for snow removal than in Western Washington, so that was fortunate. I'm guessing by the time it got to Texas it was a much lighter dusting? Still pretty impressive.
After all, no volcano in the world today can really compare to the potential of that one.
I disagree. I can think of two, just in the US - the Long Valley caldera in eastern California and the Raton hotspot of New Mexico. Further, the largest volcanic eruption of the past 20 million years occurred at Lake Toba in Indonesia. What is special about that site (perhaps a large, geologically "rapidly" replenished reservoir of high viscosity, high volatile content magma?) may occur elsewhere in the Ring of Fire and other subduction zones.
Sorry, I meant currently active volcano. Unless I missed a major geological event, I'm presuming there aren't any currently active supervolcanoes.
Agreed. The flat, ugly UI is just nasty, and they tried to justify it by explaining how the shared UI would save on battery life. My desktop and it's insanely powerful video card doesn't give a shit about battery life on some Windows phone, and that's not a valid reason to uglify your desktop OS. It was a stupid excuse then, and they still haven't retracted it.
I'm sort of looking for a revival of an attractive UI as a touchstone to see if MS is really recanting all the idiocy involved with Windows 8. It probably won't prevent me from buying Windows 9 if I get new hardware, but I'll be damned if I pay for an upgrade to an OS I can't stand looking at. Call me shallow, but when you spend ALL DAY EVERY DAY on the damned OS, I'd like to at least not cringe when I look at it. Besides, there isn't a real compelling technical reason to upgrade at this point either.
Only to about 90% of home computer users who still run Windows applications and such that don't work on other operating systems. On the server, it's a bit more balanced, but Windows is still a major player. And of course, Windows is a relatively small player in the smart device market (a bit more than Linux on the home desktop, for comparison).
If you think Windows isn't relevant, you're living in a *nix or apple bubble. Good for you, but don't mistakenly project your version of reality onto the rest of the world.
BTW, when has MS ever created incompatibilities with old versions for no reason? I assume you're talking old versions of software? They've historically jumped through ridiculous hoops to provide backward compatibility. It's an area in which they've actually done a rather outstanding job, in my opinion. There's plenty of reason to criticize MS, but seriously, backward compatibility is not one of them.
While it is nice to see Microsoft undo a horrific mistake for once, lets not be too quick to forgive and forget.
Why? I'm not in some personal relationship with them. I buy operating systems and other products from them. If they're good, I buy them. If not, I don't, and wait to see if they'll improve, or find an alternative. Why should I worry about their long-term survivability? It's not as though someone wouldn't fill up the market share should they disappear tomorrow. And let's not kid ourselves - MS could completely stop developing new products and they'd probably be around for another decade at least.
Also, as much as I disliked Windows 8 personally, calling it a "horrific mistake" and a "monster" smacks a bit of hyperbole. Many users actually like Windows 8, and honestly, the ones most hurt by the product was MS's bottom line. Other than the UI and usability blunders (and let's not kid ourselves - they're huge blunders), it's actually a fine OS.
Microsoft doesn't know the meaning of the term "focus group testing". Although I guess it is sort of pointless if you already know the masses are going to eat whatever shit you dish out.
I'm betting they did a lot of focus testing, but ignored the result of them at a very high level. There was too much momentum in the wrong direction (the idea that touch/metro should supplant the "legacy" desktop in their main OS) to change it by the time consumers got in front of it.
In the end, the market forced them to acknowledge what the focus groups were probably telling them all along.
You're conflating the issue, because there are two different products and two different markets (game developer kits are typically NOT the exact same hardware as the final product). It makes no sense to expand the developer supply (at potentially enormous cost) to meet the consumer demand. The issue is that developer kits are being taken out of the developer market and being sold to consumers, where it does the company absolutely no good at all.
Developer kits are produced in limited supply at greater costs because the final hardware is likely not ready for manufacturing yet, or else large-scale manufacturing facilities are still being set up. Don't forget that the laws of supply and demand don't exist in some abstract form, especially for manufactured goods. You seem to be ignoring the realities involved in the massive initial infrastructure costs in setting up physical assembly lines, and the inevitable ramp-up time that involves.
I'm not sure how to explain this any more clearly.
"Monster Volcano" is perhaps a bit overstated, but comparing it to a super-volcano-potential such as the Yellowstone Caldera is perhaps a bit unfair. After all, no volcano in the world today can really compare to the potential of that one.
I live nearby (relatively speaking), and got a chance to see the devastation first-hand within the first year or two after it occurred. The forest service built a viewing station where you could look out over the devastated landscape, and, even neater, watch the forest start to grow back. It's easier to dismiss it as geologically minor when you haven't personally seen the miles and miles of trees snapped and laid down like so many matchsticks. On a human scale, it's incredibly massive, and was damn impressive to see.
I live within the blast radius (Portland) of the majestic Mt St Helens. I saw the 1980 eruption from my back yard. 24 explosions around the mountain? What could go wrong?!
I lived quite a bit further away, about an hour north of Seattle, but we actually felt the blast as a minor tremor. Someone in my family actually joked "Well, there went Mt St Helens". There was quite a bit of news about a possible pending eruption, of course. We were pretty shocked when we heard what had actually happened though.
Or for a reason why every other entertainment industry profession in California(whose Hollywood friendly laws EA was exploiting) is unionized.
The last thing I want is my industry to become unionized. I'd prefer to negotiate my own salary rather than be paid some standard scale based on seniority, etc, and pay union dues for the privilege. Maybe that's attractive to some, but not to me. But then again, I'm okay with a higher risk-reward ratio than many, since I threw away a very attractive and well-paying job for a chance to make my own game.
Keep in mind that not every company is like EA. While "crunch time" horror stories abound, there are companies out there that promote a healthy work-life balance as a selling feature of the company, like my last company. I think that more companies are realizing that forcing your best people to burn out on death marches doesn't produce better products and simply makes your best talent flee. From those inside EA, I heard that the "EA Spouse" story helped to turn things around inside the company, although I've only heard this third-hand. I've witnessed myself how a team forced through an insane crunch all but disintegrated at the conclusion of the project. I had a friend who worked at Sierra On-Line, and suffered for many years under incredibly poor and abusive management practices. Eventually, there tends to be something of a Darwinian process at work, where a company will get a very bad reputation inside the industry, and it suffers as a result. I think that this is one of the reasons EA had to clean up its act - you couldn't have paid me or a number of my friends any amount of money to work there.
Many former devs have started at companies with these stupid policies, and have vowed not to make the same mistakes (like my last company, in fact). They understand that "crunch time" is really nothing more than an admittance of poor planning at the management level, or poor execution at the developer level, or even simple exploitation. In well run shops, a certain amount of ramping up is inevitable at the conclusion of a project, but extended death marches are all but an admittance of a poorly run development cycle.
I'm fortunately at a point in my career where I can afford to pick and choose my employer, and can ask questions such as "what's your company policy on work-life balance and extended crunches without overtime pay?". It's harder for someone trying to break into the industry.
What's worse, to me, is when I hear other developers bragging about their death marches as though it's some sort of fucking rite-of-passage or some heroic war story. No, idiots, it just means you were being exploited. Granted, some developers (especially young, single devs) don't seem to mind having no life outside of work, but that's not acceptable to many of us. The sooner that permissive mentality dies a quick death, the better off the industry will be.
I guess I can speak only for myself as a relatively new indie developer. I've been at both ends of the spectrum of game development. My last commercial project before I left was enormous - almost 100 million in development costs and well over a two hundred developers. It was a great job and I had good friends there. It was not an easy decision to leave. I'm now head of my own one-man studio, developing my own game for the past year.
The reason I started my own company was pretty simple. I wanted to chart my own course - make the games that *I* wanted to develop. I'm in this industry because I love games and love making games. I could have made a lot more money by working at Google or Microsoft, but it's hard to beat really enjoying your work. And for me, the ultimate expression of that is to not only program games that someone else designed, but to try my hand at creating the entire thing by myself.
It's an incredibly risky endeavor - I figure I only have about a 50/50 shot at making it past the first game to continue with a sequel. But I'd rather regret trying this and failing then not failing at all. I harbor no illusions about becoming super successful like Notch - it's not wise to plan on lightning striking, but hell, I sure wouldn't mind, because that would let me continue doing this indefinitely. Rather, I'm hoping to be successfully enough to continue self-development. I require only a modest amount of success because I have reasonably low overhead, being just me developing the game. So, that's my definition of success - just successful enough to make a sequel, and I can start building my company from the ground up that way.
When I talked to my colleagues at work, I was surprised to hear how envious they were at what I was attempting. After all, they're working at what I'd consider to be one of the top game companies in the world, and probably the best place I've ever worked in my career over fifteen years. It's not that they were unhappy there, but it seems like every game developer has the same sort of desire - to try their own hand at creating their own game, with no strings attached.
After over a year of working on my own, I'm still loving being independent. I work long hours, but I set those hours myself, of course. It's hard to stay motivated all the time, except that I see my savings slowly draining to zero (I'm funding my own game). When I run into a technical problem, I can't walk over and ask one of my colleagues for advice. Nor can I really do that when making a design decision (a new job for me, as I'm a programmer by profession), and that's sort of difficult. But overall, I wouldn't have traded this experience for anything. If I do have to go back to work for someone else, I know that I'll be a much better programmer as a result of broadening my experience like this (having to build a modern game by myself from start to finish).
Slashdot Mirror
Unplug the network cable, poof, advertising gone.
I didn't realize how bad it was until I had accidentally left the cable unplugged as I'd used that port for another non-Wifi equipped PC. When I started the Xbox 360 again I was blown away by how much more pleasant it was.
Unfortunately, my Xbox is used for streaming my ripped DVD/Blu-ray collection from my media server, so that's not an option. As joemck indicated, a better solution for me is to perform some filtering, but honestly, my annoyance level isn't quite high enough to bother with that yet. Besides, as I mentioned, a large part of my beef is the lost screen real estate, and blocking the ads really doesn't address that.
I'd argue that an employer's duty is both to compensate you monetarily AND to provide a safe and comfortable working environment. Beyond that one nitpick, I completely agree with you.
Even as a temporary contract programmer, when my project with Microsoft was cancelled, I was treated very well. They kept me on for another month as an unofficial "severance" even though there was no work to be done, and arranged for a few other internal interviews for me. My project lead also bought me an Xbox (the first one, which had recently come out) and some games out of his own pocket.
Obviously, that was a while ago, but from what I've heard, MS still generally treats its people pretty well, and that experience was borne out several times while working for them in contract positions. Note that this isn't completely altruistic - part of it is to avoid wrongful termination lawsuits (I've been given severance pay by another employer in exchange for promising not to sue, which was fine with me), and part of it is simple competition with others who might treat their employees better. And of course, part of it is that most people aren't complete jerkwads, and understand that helping out someone with a severance package is simply the right thing to do, as being laid off is already a mildly traumatic experience.
Too bad adblock doesn't work on my Xbox 360. Microsoft has really gone over the edge with cramming advertising down its customers throats. At this point, quite literally, MOST of the screen now is taken up by advertisements of one form or another on the main navigation pages. What's really irksome is that this was a post-purchase change that we were required to get if we wanted to continue to play with friends online, not to mention I'm already paying them $60 a year for the privilege of watching their advertisements.
I honestly don't mind the adverts about the new games or other available content coming out, as that's obviously relevant and appropriate for the platform, but I really wish they wouldn't advertising general products or take up so damn much of the screen real-estate, which is already rather precious on a TV screen. It's not one of those "frothing-at-the-mouth-angry" dealbreakers, but rather one of those "slow-burn grumbling" issues that are irritating enough for me to complain about on Slashdot, but not quite enough to cancel my service and ditch my Xbox. Although, when I finally purchase a next-gen console, I'm much more likely to look favorably at a PS4. Essentially, the Xbox one already has another negative tick against it because of the ads.
Basically, you see there a great example of what many companies would *like* to do to the web. It's up to consumers to demand that they be kept to reasonable levels of intrusiveness.
You've got a very good point. If you don't have a mathematical background in a particular field, you might not even know that there was a potential solution to a problem you were working on.
In a more general case, I consider this to be a something of a minor problem in the videogaming industry. In general, I haven't seen a lot of cross-pollination between videogame programmers and other industry professionals. This is partially because this job has some fairly specialized skillset requirements, and partly because the pay is lower and the hours worse for the privilege of working on a videogame rather than business software. I've noticed the general trends and techniques tend to be a bit behind the times. A conservative approach is not necessarily a bad thing, because programming a high-definition real-time virtual simulation on commodity hardware is an incredibly demanding task and sometimes requires performance-oriented priorities. Still, sometimes it can make things more difficult than they need to be when more modern techniques and methodologies can be appropriately applied.
BTW, it's a shame that some people won't see your comment simply because you're posting as an AC. No account, or did you use mod point in this thread already?
For crippled or time limited apps, we have a term that applies for that: demo. That moniker should be required, because simply calling it a free app is completely disingenuous.
If the free app is only ad-supported, I think it should still qualify as "free". After all, broadcast TV, radio, and the internet is largely ad-supported, and we talk about that being "free" as well. However, I think apps should be required to indicate whether they are ad supported or not, or whether they offer purchase of a "premium" version.
Maybe Free/Ad-supported instead of just Free? That would really let people distinguish between the truly free apps and the ones that are trying to earn advertising revenue.
I took nothing past Calculus either and up until two or three years ago never even used trigonometry in my professional programming. The last few years I've been writing satellite simulations, which has forced me to knock the rust off some of my old math skills. Most programmers can get away with very little math a lot of the time. A lot of very interesting programming involves a fair bit of math. That programming is generally being done by some guy with a Ph.D. in another field, and he's usually doing it in Fortran.
You're touching on what I consider to be the ultimate fallacy of this question. If someone asks the question "how much math does a programmer need to know?", I'd answer with "a programmer of what?"
My profession happens to be videogame programming. In my own experience, higher-level calculus is largely unused, but geometry, linear algebra, and matrix math are the bedrock of 2D and 3D simulations. Even then, the level of competence required depends largely on your specialty. A graphics programmer requires more mathematical savvy than an AI or general gameplay programmer, for example.
Programming, unless you're a theoretical computer scientist, is typically about solving practical, real world problems rather than problems specific to the domain of computer science. The problem domain the programmer is trying to solve is what determines the mathematical requirements, not the programming itself. In fact, you can go a bit farther than this and simply call mathematics part of the general "domain knowledge" which may or may not be required for a particular programming task. It's no different than when knowledge of accounting and bookkeeping is required when programming financial software, or a knowledge of music theory when writing music composition software.
So, the question only becomes meaningful when you attach it to a specific programming job or industry.
Yeah, because single point of failure is exactly how you want to perform security.
Just make that point of failure a modern, well-vetted encryption algorithm. Those algorithms are, despite serious effort by every cryptologist on the planet, still completely unbreakable. The math is solid. Properly implemented, the only chink in the armor is then the password, and that's something in my control.
So, yes, I'm fine with a single point of failure, so long as it's intelligently chosen. A mathematical model will not suddenly break or stop working like a hard drive or router, barring some revolutionary crypto breakthrough. It's sort of like worrying that an airplane's wings or fuselage are "single points of failure". Technically true, but those components are built robustly enough that it's not really worth worrying about, and the realities of trying to mitigate that would be horrendously impractical.
Hey, now, Origin performs a vital service to the community - it keeps EA games off out Steam, so that folks don't accidentally buy one!
Heh, yeah, it's sort of inadvertently had that effect for me. I wasn't necessarily trying to boycott EA altogether, but that was the end result for PC titles at least. It probably hasn't hurt them much, though. The increased profits from their own store probably offset losses from people like me.
Honestly, though, Valve isn't necessarily the white knight in the Steam/Origin powerplay either. They already take a pretty massive cut of the game's initial purchase price. Then on top of that, Steam's DLC policy basically means that companies that rely on large amounts of DLC for additional revenue and use their own in-game DLC store won't be publishing on Steam. It's a somewhat draconian policy, except perhaps if the game in question was completely free to play, in which case it makes some sense to share the revenue. After all, what business is it of Valve's what DLC transactions are made inside a game that they sell? Were they hemorrhaging money from lost DLC sales? Pfft, hardly - they just wanted a cut of that action, and since it's their store, they make the rules.
I'd argue it demonstrates why it's probably a bad thing in the long run to have a single company completely dominate any field, like... oh, Comcast, perhaps?
I listened to the whole thing. It was amazing, and not in a good way. Keep in mind that this was also TEN MINUTES into the conversation already when he started the conversation. Unbelievable. I'm guessing these guys are financially rewarded for re-subscribing customers who call to cancel. It should be blindingly obvious that this would be the inevitable result of that.
It reminds me of an experience I had with EA when trying to unsubscribe to the wholly unremarkable MMO "Earth and Beyond". I was bored to tears with the game and no longer wished to pay each month for the privilege of not playing, but soon discovered I actually had to call and talk with a "customer representative" (i.e. someone paid to convince me not to cancel my subscription), rather than simply allowing me to do it over the internet as when I signed up. While the experience was nowhere near as bad as this poor schlub's, it was not a comfortable or pleasant experience either, and I vowed that I would never sign up for an EA MMO or ever give them my credit card again. It will be a cold day in hell before Origin is ever installed on my system.
It's probably true that such a system can convince a certain number of customers to continue subscribing, but it's harder to factor in how such a poor customer service experience will damage a company's reputation in the long run. Fortunately for gamers, the videogame industry is still reasonably competitive compared to the cable industry, and as such, has a harder time devolving into the infuriating sorts of customer experience witnessed here.
>You're telling us not to trust a web based service, but then tell us you keep your data shared like google drive or dropbox? I see no appreciable difference in practice there. Lastpass is essentially Keepass + a specialized dropbox-type service. Your advice is especially ironic given the spotty security dropbox is known for [zdnet.com].
The problem is not in the remote storage. It's in the local client that does the work to turn your clicks and typing into a secured file that doesn't need to trust the storage medium to do anything except store.
The 'web integration' puts your password manager in a really bad place - in the browser. What could possibly go wrong? Surely no one attacks web browsers.
Yep, that's very true. At this point, though, most attacks are directed at Java, Flash, or the browser's Javascript interpreter. These vectors are still dangerous because of potentially malicious content being served by untrustworthy servers. I uninstalled Flash some time ago, and make good use of noscript to prevent untested scripts from running, as that's still a dangerous attack vector. Keep in mind that plugins are run in separate processes, which affords some natural protection and isolation. Note that the attack mentioned in this article was not possible when using the plugin, which nearly everybody actually does, according to Lastpass statistics.
I well understand how it sounds extremely risky to trust your password database to a third-party service, but I feel that Lastpass itself has been built very carefully with security as the primary concern. After all, that's their first and only business. This makes it a bit different than many other web-based services, for whom security is often a distant secondary issue, or one which was hastily implemented or improved only after a disastrous breach. Still, if there's ever a massive security breach at Lastpass, feel free to send me a big "I told you so". Security can be only really validated over the course of time and many determined attacks, and so far, Lastpass has proven itself to be secure.
Keepass is a fine product, and there's nothing wrong with keeping your password database more directly in your own control. Security is always a tradeoff between protection versus convenience, and obviously, using a third-party database escrow service leans too far in the "convenience" direction for some. There's nothing wrong with that, as you can never get bitten by leaning in the "protection" direction.
You're telling us not to trust a web based service, but then tell us you keep your data shared like google drive or dropbox? I see no appreciable difference in practice there. Lastpass is essentially Keepass + a specialized dropbox-type service. Your advice is especially ironic given the spotty security dropbox is known for.
At some point, you have to make informed decisions about the tradeoffs between security and convenience. For me, using Lastpass is a convenient way to synchronize the strongest possible unique passwords - essentially gibberish - across my multiple computers. I feel that having strong, unique passwords across the web is critical to keeping my numerous accounts secure.
This is exactly how security is supposed to work - a researcher discovers a potential flaw, discloses it to the vulnerable companies, who then promptly fix it and discloses this fact in detail to it's customers. The system is arguably more secure than before, not less.
Incidentally, as it turns out, this attack is apparently only applicable to those not using a browser plugin. That's not to discount the seriousness, but I was never actually vulnerable to this attack, since I only use Lastpass from my PC using Firefox + Lastpass plugin.
Oddly enough, I'm pretty impressed with my local waste hauling company. I was getting overcharged for the size of garbage can I had for a number of years without me noticing after containers had been switched out to different types. I placed a single call to my utility company, and they told me they'd have to contact city hall, who manages the city-wide contract and billing. "Great, I'll never see that money", I thought, with quotes about "fighting city hall" coming to mind. A few weeks later, I see a full refund in my online account for the overcharged amount. The employee had followed through and taken care of things for me with just that single phone call. WTF? Excellent customer service from a utility? Mind blown.
In general, I rarely complain when mistakes are made. After all, we all make mistakes. What really counts to me is how those mistakes are dealt with. I think I might write a letter thanking their customer service department. It's probably a rare enough occurrence in an otherwise relatively thankless job, so it would be nice to know that their efforts are actually appreciated.
So yeah, thumbs up for my local waste disposal utility.
I can't comment on the file format issue in Office, as I'm not familiar with that.
As far as DirectX goes, I do recall how they released DX 10 on newer platforms (Vista and up). Personally, I think it was a stupid decision, because it limited the potential adoption of DX10 rather than providing an incentive to upgrade to Vista as they hoped. They're pulling the same boneheaded decision to limit the latest DX release to the Windows 8.1, if I recall correctly. Again, trying to shore up a crappy OS release using DirectX will do nothing but cause DirectX to stagnate. The OS's will be replaced in their own sweet time. This seems to be a more recent trend of Microsoft's, and it's a bad one.
I think that the examples you cite are bad decisions on Microsoft's part, not because of what they did, but because they simply did it too soon. I think it's reasonable for them to stop developing software and platform updates for their older software at some point, but with DirectX 10 it sort of had a backlash effect. Even today, overall DX11 use is often paired with a DX9 compatible rendering engine simply for legacy WinXP support, even though any modern video card has long had DX11 support in silicon. We're only now seeing a trickle of DX11-only games starting to come out, all because of that decision. Well, that and the fact that the Xbox 360 was roughly a DX9-equivalent machine.
So yeah, some good examples there. I was thinking mostly in terms of 3rd party application compatibility, for which they have a really good record (i.e. you can pretty much play any DirectX videogame ever as long as it was properly written, which I think is pretty amazing). But they've done some fairly silly things with releasing their own software and platform updates.
Yeah, that was the weird part. I lived close enough to feel the blast, but the winds blew all the ash east (I lived north of it), so didn't see a bit of the stuff. Felt bad for some folks in eastern Washington, who got blanketed by several inches of ash, if I recall. Fortunately, they're much better equipped for snow removal than in Western Washington, so that was fortunate. I'm guessing by the time it got to Texas it was a much lighter dusting? Still pretty impressive.
After all, no volcano in the world today can really compare to the potential of that one.
I disagree. I can think of two, just in the US - the Long Valley caldera in eastern California and the Raton hotspot of New Mexico. Further, the largest volcanic eruption of the past 20 million years occurred at Lake Toba in Indonesia. What is special about that site (perhaps a large, geologically "rapidly" replenished reservoir of high viscosity, high volatile content magma?) may occur elsewhere in the Ring of Fire and other subduction zones.
Sorry, I meant currently active volcano. Unless I missed a major geological event, I'm presuming there aren't any currently active supervolcanoes.
Agreed. The flat, ugly UI is just nasty, and they tried to justify it by explaining how the shared UI would save on battery life. My desktop and it's insanely powerful video card doesn't give a shit about battery life on some Windows phone, and that's not a valid reason to uglify your desktop OS. It was a stupid excuse then, and they still haven't retracted it.
I'm sort of looking for a revival of an attractive UI as a touchstone to see if MS is really recanting all the idiocy involved with Windows 8. It probably won't prevent me from buying Windows 9 if I get new hardware, but I'll be damned if I pay for an upgrade to an OS I can't stand looking at. Call me shallow, but when you spend ALL DAY EVERY DAY on the damned OS, I'd like to at least not cringe when I look at it. Besides, there isn't a real compelling technical reason to upgrade at this point either.
Is Windows relevant to anything anymore?
Only to about 90% of home computer users who still run Windows applications and such that don't work on other operating systems. On the server, it's a bit more balanced, but Windows is still a major player. And of course, Windows is a relatively small player in the smart device market (a bit more than Linux on the home desktop, for comparison).
If you think Windows isn't relevant, you're living in a *nix or apple bubble. Good for you, but don't mistakenly project your version of reality onto the rest of the world.
You forgot to quote "improvements".
BTW, when has MS ever created incompatibilities with old versions for no reason? I assume you're talking old versions of software? They've historically jumped through ridiculous hoops to provide backward compatibility. It's an area in which they've actually done a rather outstanding job, in my opinion. There's plenty of reason to criticize MS, but seriously, backward compatibility is not one of them.
While it is nice to see Microsoft undo a horrific mistake for once, lets not be too quick to forgive and forget.
Why? I'm not in some personal relationship with them. I buy operating systems and other products from them. If they're good, I buy them. If not, I don't, and wait to see if they'll improve, or find an alternative. Why should I worry about their long-term survivability? It's not as though someone wouldn't fill up the market share should they disappear tomorrow. And let's not kid ourselves - MS could completely stop developing new products and they'd probably be around for another decade at least.
Also, as much as I disliked Windows 8 personally, calling it a "horrific mistake" and a "monster" smacks a bit of hyperbole. Many users actually like Windows 8, and honestly, the ones most hurt by the product was MS's bottom line. Other than the UI and usability blunders (and let's not kid ourselves - they're huge blunders), it's actually a fine OS.
Microsoft doesn't know the meaning of the term "focus group testing". Although I guess it is sort of pointless if you already know the masses are going to eat whatever shit you dish out.
I'm betting they did a lot of focus testing, but ignored the result of them at a very high level. There was too much momentum in the wrong direction (the idea that touch/metro should supplant the "legacy" desktop in their main OS) to change it by the time consumers got in front of it.
In the end, the market forced them to acknowledge what the focus groups were probably telling them all along.
You're conflating the issue, because there are two different products and two different markets (game developer kits are typically NOT the exact same hardware as the final product). It makes no sense to expand the developer supply (at potentially enormous cost) to meet the consumer demand. The issue is that developer kits are being taken out of the developer market and being sold to consumers, where it does the company absolutely no good at all.
Developer kits are produced in limited supply at greater costs because the final hardware is likely not ready for manufacturing yet, or else large-scale manufacturing facilities are still being set up. Don't forget that the laws of supply and demand don't exist in some abstract form, especially for manufactured goods. You seem to be ignoring the realities involved in the massive initial infrastructure costs in setting up physical assembly lines, and the inevitable ramp-up time that involves.
I'm not sure how to explain this any more clearly.
"Monster Volcano" is perhaps a bit overstated, but comparing it to a super-volcano-potential such as the Yellowstone Caldera is perhaps a bit unfair. After all, no volcano in the world today can really compare to the potential of that one.
I live nearby (relatively speaking), and got a chance to see the devastation first-hand within the first year or two after it occurred. The forest service built a viewing station where you could look out over the devastated landscape, and, even neater, watch the forest start to grow back. It's easier to dismiss it as geologically minor when you haven't personally seen the miles and miles of trees snapped and laid down like so many matchsticks. On a human scale, it's incredibly massive, and was damn impressive to see.
I live within the blast radius (Portland) of the majestic Mt St Helens. I saw the 1980 eruption from my back yard. 24 explosions around the mountain? What could go wrong?!
I lived quite a bit further away, about an hour north of Seattle, but we actually felt the blast as a minor tremor. Someone in my family actually joked "Well, there went Mt St Helens". There was quite a bit of news about a possible pending eruption, of course. We were pretty shocked when we heard what had actually happened though.
Or for a reason why every other entertainment industry profession in California(whose Hollywood friendly laws EA was exploiting) is unionized.
The last thing I want is my industry to become unionized. I'd prefer to negotiate my own salary rather than be paid some standard scale based on seniority, etc, and pay union dues for the privilege. Maybe that's attractive to some, but not to me. But then again, I'm okay with a higher risk-reward ratio than many, since I threw away a very attractive and well-paying job for a chance to make my own game.
Keep in mind that not every company is like EA. While "crunch time" horror stories abound, there are companies out there that promote a healthy work-life balance as a selling feature of the company, like my last company. I think that more companies are realizing that forcing your best people to burn out on death marches doesn't produce better products and simply makes your best talent flee. From those inside EA, I heard that the "EA Spouse" story helped to turn things around inside the company, although I've only heard this third-hand. I've witnessed myself how a team forced through an insane crunch all but disintegrated at the conclusion of the project. I had a friend who worked at Sierra On-Line, and suffered for many years under incredibly poor and abusive management practices. Eventually, there tends to be something of a Darwinian process at work, where a company will get a very bad reputation inside the industry, and it suffers as a result. I think that this is one of the reasons EA had to clean up its act - you couldn't have paid me or a number of my friends any amount of money to work there.
Many former devs have started at companies with these stupid policies, and have vowed not to make the same mistakes (like my last company, in fact). They understand that "crunch time" is really nothing more than an admittance of poor planning at the management level, or poor execution at the developer level, or even simple exploitation. In well run shops, a certain amount of ramping up is inevitable at the conclusion of a project, but extended death marches are all but an admittance of a poorly run development cycle.
I'm fortunately at a point in my career where I can afford to pick and choose my employer, and can ask questions such as "what's your company policy on work-life balance and extended crunches without overtime pay?". It's harder for someone trying to break into the industry.
What's worse, to me, is when I hear other developers bragging about their death marches as though it's some sort of fucking rite-of-passage or some heroic war story. No, idiots, it just means you were being exploited. Granted, some developers (especially young, single devs) don't seem to mind having no life outside of work, but that's not acceptable to many of us. The sooner that permissive mentality dies a quick death, the better off the industry will be.
I guess I can speak only for myself as a relatively new indie developer. I've been at both ends of the spectrum of game development. My last commercial project before I left was enormous - almost 100 million in development costs and well over a two hundred developers. It was a great job and I had good friends there. It was not an easy decision to leave. I'm now head of my own one-man studio, developing my own game for the past year.
The reason I started my own company was pretty simple. I wanted to chart my own course - make the games that *I* wanted to develop. I'm in this industry because I love games and love making games. I could have made a lot more money by working at Google or Microsoft, but it's hard to beat really enjoying your work. And for me, the ultimate expression of that is to not only program games that someone else designed, but to try my hand at creating the entire thing by myself.
It's an incredibly risky endeavor - I figure I only have about a 50/50 shot at making it past the first game to continue with a sequel. But I'd rather regret trying this and failing then not failing at all. I harbor no illusions about becoming super successful like Notch - it's not wise to plan on lightning striking, but hell, I sure wouldn't mind, because that would let me continue doing this indefinitely. Rather, I'm hoping to be successfully enough to continue self-development. I require only a modest amount of success because I have reasonably low overhead, being just me developing the game. So, that's my definition of success - just successful enough to make a sequel, and I can start building my company from the ground up that way.
When I talked to my colleagues at work, I was surprised to hear how envious they were at what I was attempting. After all, they're working at what I'd consider to be one of the top game companies in the world, and probably the best place I've ever worked in my career over fifteen years. It's not that they were unhappy there, but it seems like every game developer has the same sort of desire - to try their own hand at creating their own game, with no strings attached.
After over a year of working on my own, I'm still loving being independent. I work long hours, but I set those hours myself, of course. It's hard to stay motivated all the time, except that I see my savings slowly draining to zero (I'm funding my own game). When I run into a technical problem, I can't walk over and ask one of my colleagues for advice. Nor can I really do that when making a design decision (a new job for me, as I'm a programmer by profession), and that's sort of difficult. But overall, I wouldn't have traded this experience for anything. If I do have to go back to work for someone else, I know that I'll be a much better programmer as a result of broadening my experience like this (having to build a modern game by myself from start to finish).