On a side note, I thought the US was build on people coming from bad situations to live the American dream, you guys sure have changed your mindset lately.
Well, unlike many countries, we pick a number of green-card recipients (many of which go on to become citizens) based on a lottery, and make it relatively easy to become an American and even hold dual citizenship. Many Americans are concerned with the current issue of *illegal* immigration, but I don't think you should necessarily interpret that debate as a referendum on immigration itself (it's often painted that way).
I think you'd probably be surprised at how many people buy Flight Simulator. It's not a traditional game, so it probably doesn't sell well among those you know and game with. There are many, many non-gamers with PCs who spend a lot of money on this game, expensive peripherals, and software add-ons.
When discussing this among my co-workers today, most of us were under the impression that Flight Simulator had been a consistent money-maker for Microsoft. I couldn't find any corroborating evidence for this (although I didn't look all that hard), so I left that speculation out of the summary. To me, that's what made this so surprising. I would have thought that any product was consistently profitable would be a no-brainer to keep, especially one that had such a long history. It could be that my information is outdated and Flight Simulator is no longer profitable - it would certainly help to explain the cuts.
I have this sneaking suspicion (and a smidge of insider info from a co-worker lended credence to this theory) that MS is somewhat myopically focused on casual games at the moment, which makes a certain amount of sense given the success of the Wii, the recent ridiculousness of Xbox's mii-too "avatars", etc. Thus, their statement about continued development of Live makes sense, since Live games are more easily "monetized", a market-speak term for shoving ads down our throats. It could be that anything that doesn't currently fit that paradigm has likely gotten the axe.
Thank you, jcnnghm. Excellent post. It's hard to refute facts such as these.
It's hilarious when people blame this on the "unregulated market", when the exact opposite is true. This was caused by government meddling in the private sector. It was not a problem caused by "a lack of oversight". This was caused by insanely stupid policies that were almost guaranteed to be a financial train wreck in the long term. And no, this was not unforeseen by everyone. Plenty of people were plenty worried about this issue. But the people who were trying to prevent this mess happen to belong to a currently unpopular political party now mostly out of power.
Of course, you know that Barney Frank and his cohorts are pretty much untouchable at this point. I'm certainly not expecting any one of them to pay any sort of political price for this. But damn, at the very least, we DO need to see criminal investigations of the fraud going on at Fanny and Freddy. Tell me, why the blistering reactions to what Enron did, but not a peep about these guys running these institutions into the ground? I'll have a much better opinion of Obama if he actually sics the Justice department on these guys.
Buahahahahha.....oh wait you were serious let me laugh even harder.
I'm reminded, completely coincidentally of course, of something I've been meaning to ask for a while now... Can someone explain to me the difference between 'Troll' and 'Flamebait'?
Honestly, I think you're giving these guys more credit than they deserve. "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.", Napoleon famously stated once, and I think this fits a lot of politicians perfectly - good intentions with horrible unintended consequences.
"Everyone should be able to afford to buy a house." That's the premise under which all these programs started, and it sounds compassionate and reasonable, if you don't give it much analytical thought, or have a clear understanding of causes and effects in a free market. So, all sorts of government-sponsored machinations were put into place in order to coerce the free market into doing something it wouldn't have naturally done - that is, providing inexpensive loans to high-risk individuals. Now that these loans have defaulted and taken entire companies with them, even now, people still refuse to see the root cause of this.
It's a bit alarming that so many of our citizens have no understanding of how liberty, free enterprise, and limited government are inexorably linked together, or how a large and powerful government can turn to tyranny, oppression, and abuse as easily as it can be used for magnanimous purposes. Yet time and time again those same individuals who lament the government's intrusion into our personal privacy will gladly seek to give up our collective right and responsibility to provide for our own well-being. We ignore clear and unambiguous Constitutional limitations on the federal government's power at our peril.
Current graphics technology lets developers create highly detailed but fairly modestly-sized environments, or a moderately detailed but broad landscapes. Further increases in graphical horsepower will allow developers to render very large, very detailed scenes. It will also allow them to render very large numbers of characters at a time while still rendering this large-scale environment, in addition to performing AI and physics processing on all of them. Currently, you can see all of these elements in current-generation console games, but generally not all at the same time. Believe it or not, here are still very real limitations of hardware that developers run up against all the time, even today, and each game has to make tradeoffs.
Examples: * Dead Rising was one of the first games to show off the current generation's power by focusing on large numbers of enemies, but generally at the expense of detailed models or environments. * Gears of War was recognized for it's highly detailed models and environments, but the palette was very muted, and the environments were relatively small and constrained. * Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, likewise, was visually stunning with amazing models and colorful environments. However, the environments were rather small, and the number of enemies on screen was kept fairly low. * Oblivion renders broad and expansive outdoor environments, but you can see obviously low resolution textures and models in the distance. Indoor environments are more detailed, but are so at the expense of a loading screen. Additionally, you rarely see large number of creatures or people on the screen at one time.
At the point when developers can, quite literally, render any scene they wish without giving too much thought to whether the hardware can handle it, then we'll have peaked on rendering power. Even though the next generation won't be much visually improved at a certain level of detail, they'll have the capability of showing much more.
Is all this necessary, or going to make games magically more fun? No, of course not. But don't kid yourselves either - cool visuals are just as much a part of the modern videogaming experience as good gameplay. It's the hook that gets you playing - you just stay for the gameplay.
The sad truth of the matter is that many will simply blame the "underregulated American financial sector", while never stopping to consider that if the government hadn't mandated high-risk loans (with guarantees by the government), we would never have had a mortgage crisis to begin with. It's a convenient mantra that fits nicely into a pre-conceived viewpoint, but I have a hard time understanding how people can't connect the dots logically. How does one view the cooked books at Fanny & Freddy, the bribes and back-room deals, etc, and not come to the conclusion that this collapse was triggered by government interference into the natural checks and balances of a healthy free market for social engineering purposes?
Remember when it was actually pretty hard to get a home loan? It was hard because private institutions, when they take on all the risk of the loan, want to ensure there's a very good chance you'll be paying it all back. When you remove those natural safeguards via a government mandate / insurance policy, it's inevitable that the system will eventually implode under its own weight when, not all that surprisingly, too many people with high-risk loans end up defaulting.
No one wants to talk about this, but a number of Republicans (McCain was one) have been warning of an impending sub-prime-loan-based disaster for years. But our esteemed Democrat leaders such as Barney Frank wouldn't hear of it. And now the country is trusting the same guys who precipitated this mess to fix it? The Republicans have their share of issues, but they certainly seem to have a better handle on the reality of a free-market-based economy than most Democrats.
Because I'm a thinking being engaged with the world around me, not a navel-gazing mystic.
get modded insightful 3??? It isn't insightful, it's an avoidance of the question being asked. Even if you read into the comment meaning that isn't there, but might reasonably be thought to have been intended, it still isn't insightful. Sheesh.
I suppose maybe because it's an acknowledgment, however unsubtly expressed, that there's a degree of impracticality inherent in the notion of questioning fundamental principles of our existence and universe that doesn't really help the advancement of hard science. For instance, questions such as whether or not the universe actually exists, or whether I'm the only real being in the universe and all of you are illusions or very clever algorithms don't have much practical application when you get right down to it. Science has, arguably, improved our lives in very real and very practical ways. It's a bit harder to make that case for philosophy.
As such, I tend to view the relationship between modern science and philosophy as rather flimsy at best. Or, put another way, I suppose you could say is that science is about finding answers to interesting questions, where philosophy seems mostly delight in coming up with interesting questions and scenarios to which no one can come up with a reasonable answer.
While she may be a media icon and corporate power in her own right, do you think her handlers are silly enough to let her counter attack this guy?
You seriously think Oprah has "handlers"? That's a term typically used for managers of brain-dead music or media stars who can perform on stage but otherwise are fairly helpless in the real world without a script. Hint: someone who creates and manages a billion dollar media empire from nothing doesn't have "handlers".
No, they are doing it to save the power distribution infrastructure in the state. There is only so much carrying capacity, the population is increasing and I think they are starting to realize that plug-in hybrids are not that far off. By reducing the base usage by utilities, the current infrastructure lasts longer, and can support more cars, which reduces pollution, which is a big issue in many areas and a public benefit.
If that were the actual intention, then the most logical way of doing this would be to simply price electricity based on market demand instead of regulating it to keep the price artificially low. When demand skyrockets in the face of dwindling supply, the price also goes up dramatically as well (just like any scarce good), and people would be encouraged to use less. Then, industry would be encouraged to build new power plants to meet that demand, since it would be very profitable to do so. Hence, balance in the market, and stable power for everyone. Or, if California collectively felt that it was more important to be green than to have cheap power, they'd have that choice as well, but at least it would be an honest choice.
The problem is, though, they'd be seen as the bad guys for doing that, because it would negatively impact poor folks, retired people, working families, etc, as the price fluctuated upward. They want to have low consumption AND low energy prices. Frankly, there's only one way this will realistically happen, and that's through government coercion. Even so, piecemeal regulations won't do a thing to curb overall demand, and they know it, but it gives them an out: "See, we're doing something! We're trying to save the planet!" And of course, you see people even in here applauding their effort, and demanding more of the same. Not because it's going to be any more effective, but because it will help to assuage their collective guilt over their perceived contribution to the imminent destruction of the planet.
Of course, most politicians haven't got a clue how basic supply-and-demand economic principles work (or, they simply reject those principles in favor of central planning / socialism), so you can see what a financial mess they've made of the state, despite having all the advantages one would think you'd need to prosper (rich agricultural lands, prime geographical location, tourist hot spot, high-tech industry, trade hub, you name it).
Yeah, she's not going to publicize this. It's too technical for the masses, and people have a 'guilty until proven innocent' attitude these days, especially with digital media. I'm thinking she sweeps this under the rug, maybe settles out of court.
I really, really hope she doesn't settle this out of court, and does the world a favor by stepping on this rat for everyone to see. It's not like she's on the verge of bankruptcy and can't afford a few dozen high-powered lawyers to launch a counterattack.
This is like hijacking cases. If you give in and pay the money, you'll only encourage more of the same behavior. Send in the Marines / black ops / ninja death squad / pirates of penzance each time it happens, and suddenly it doesn't seem like such a hot idea.
First, and probably most germane to the issue: cutting staff is pretty much guaranteed to improve profitability over the short term, since employee overhead is probably the most significant expense of any sort of tech company by a very large margin. You wouldn't see any negative effects for a longer period of time, as software development is a long-term endeavor.
Secondly, I guess it's probably based on the premise that there are *always* do-nothing or disruptive employees that can and should be let go in a large organization (it's hard to disagree with that if you've ever worked in a very large organization).
Given these facts, it sort of makes sense that Wall Street would typically reward cost-cutting measures with a stock-price bump. I'm not saying I agree with the notion or methodology, but I *think* that's the logic behind it.
I didn't really mean to imply that he was completely wrong, just that he was a bit early with some of his predictions in terms of time / adoption rates. For instance, the idea of wearable computers is probably spot on, but I don't think that's going to be common until a decade from now.
Also, I did cherry pick the items that were most significantly/obviously off, since that would make more interesting discussion. Obviously, he got quite a few of them right as well (such as your example of digital encrpytion - but I could also argue that most Internet traffic is still *unencrypted*). I probably should have made more emphasis on that.
Regarding the conservative nature, I guess what I meant to say was that the direction of the technology advancements were fairly incremental (although maybe this is in hindsight). I didn't see (or at least I don't recall) any predictions of any fundamentally new technologies, although for a ten year span, maybe that's to be expected.
Let me just confirm your suspicion from someone inside the game industry. Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Great ones go for about a buck fifty.
I listen to people (or read online) all the time who believe they have a million dollar game idea, and somehow have the notion that this idea alone is worth anything. True value is realized in building your game from concept to prototype to finished project, and the thousands of adjustments you have to make along the way. All the ideas in the world won't do you a bit of good if you don't have a talented team with the artistic vision and technical prowess to execute it.
Even in my day to day experience, I'll sometimes come up with a cool idea for a game I'm currently working on, and mention it to the lead designer. For some reason, I'm still surprised by how often the designer had the same idea, but hadn't gotten around to formally incorporating it into the design document yet.
This isn't to say there aren't a lot of people with great ideas, but people tend to overvalue them significantly. If you can actually turn that game idea into a playable prototype, the value increases by about a thousand-fold. See: Narbacular Drop / Portal.
the graphics on FF XII and Burnout: Revenge are comparable to early PS3 graphics, as long as you don't have an HDTV) games...
Ugh... I was right with you (I've been doing the same thing), but I couldn't let this one slide. I run my games in standard resolution (all three current-gen consoles + PS2), but on a reasonably large screen (it's pre HDMI, and the component-based HD modes flicker, so I can't really use them). Yes, I've played FF XII, and it's a great looking game on the PS2, but...
There is a MASSIVE different between the worst looking PS3 / Xbox 360 games and the best PS2 games in terms of graphics. Keep in mind, this is using 480p on the PS2 with component cables, so it's as good as it gets for that system. Games on the PS3 and 360 are rendered internally at higher resolutions before being scaled down, as well as employing full screen anti-aliasing, advanced shader effects, better lighting, etc. So, just because the screen resolution is the same doesn't mean you can't see a significant difference.
I'm not saying you shouldn't enjoy your PS2. Goodness knows I still do - I still have a backlog of JRPGs I'm planning to play at some point, after all. But don't kid yourself about how much better the new high-end consoles look, even at the lowest available resolution.
Most all the predictions I read in this article have roughly the same problem - it still assumes technology is much more ubiquitous than it is in the real world. I'd say he was probably off by a five to ten years in many of those predictions. Let's see:
Computers: Personal computers are available in a wide range of sizes and shapes, and are commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry such as wristwatches, rings, earrings, and other body ornaments... The majority of text is created using continuous speech recognition (CSR) dictation software.
Getting there, but we're not quite at the point of wearing computers in common objects. Keyboard and mouse are still king.
Education: Students of all ages typically have a computer of their own, which is a thin tabletlike device weighing under a pound with a very high resolution display suitable for reading... Intelligent courseware has emerged as a common means of learning.
Closer, but education still seems largely clueless about how to effectively use computers. Intelligent teaching software is making strides, but still really can't be called "intelligent" by any stretch of the imagination.
Communication: "Telephone" communication is primarily wireless, and routinely includes high-resolution moving images... Virtually all communication is digital and encrypted, with public keys available to government authorities.
Technologists always want that video phone, and the market continually says "no thanks, voice is good enough". In fact, it's gone backwards a bit, with text messaging being rather popular.
Business and Economics: Intelligent assistants which combine continuous speech recognition, natural-language understanding, problem solving, and animated personalities routinely assist with finding information, answering questions, and conducting transactions... Most purchases of books, musical "albums," videos, games, and other forms of software do not involve any physical object.
Again, the overestimation of natural interfaces. And as of right now, a large percentage of software (especially games) is still attached to a physical disk, although digital downloads are gaining Steam... (sorry)
Politics and Society: Privacy has emerged as a primary political issue. The virtually constant use of electronic communication technologies is leaving a highly detailed trail of every person's every move.... There is a growing neo-Luddite movement...
This one's pretty close regarding privacy concerns. As far as neo-Luddite, I haven't seen any such movement emerge in large numbers. There are some anti-technologists, but it's usually a secondary effect of some other philosophical argument.
The Arts: The high quality of computer screens, and the facilities of computer-assisted visual rendering software, have made the computer screen a medium of choice for visual art.
Another one technologists always get wrong is the idea that people are eager to throw away traditional art mediums. I think Star Trek was closer on this one, about how people will always enjoy timeless "classical" entertainment right alongside their "high-tech" (holodeck) entertainment. The two need not be mutually exclusive.
Etc, etc... I'd say the predictions were generally on the right track, but perhaps just a bit too optimistic in the rate of adoption. Still, overall it was fairly insightful, if somewhat conservative. I'm not sure I could have done nearly as well.
How can any cognitively sound person seriously believe government statistics anymore, especially the unemployment rate? It never ceases to amaze me how when confronted with "Who you gonna believe, the government or your lying eyes?" so many people doubt their own eyes.
Exactly what am I supposed to see when I look around? Am I supposed to somehow turn news stories into percentages of unemployed people? Conduct my own poll? What formula did you use to arrive at your numbers? Ask your friends and family, and then extrapolate that to the whole of the United States?
I'll concede a significant point, though: I should have stated these figures are typically calculated based on unemployment claims. The actual figure is undoubtedly higher, but the important point is not so much the actual percentage, so long as it's calculated in a consistent manner. This gives a solid baseline for which direction the jobless rate is moving in, and by how much.
The numbers you quote seem pretty high to me (for instance, some people think prisoners should count towards unemployment), but I'd like to keep an open mind. Any studies to back that up?
I'm sorry to take this out on the parent but it really bugs me when people sitting in their safe little employment foxholes never lift their heads to look around and consequently think that everyone else must be ok too.
It's ok... I can take it. I understand that this is a touchy topic for people as well, since livelihoods are on the line. Let's look at what else I wrote:
It sounds about right - I've been unemployed for about 5 percent of my career. It doesn't take much - a six month stretch in an otherwise employed 10 year career.
I fudged the numbers a bit, I admit, in order to make the math work out nicely. I was unemployed closer to nine months (one year in length, with 3 months of contract work in the middle). And, this was just after I bought a house with a pretty hefty mortgage. In fact, I wouldn't have counted in the government statistics, because I didn't take any unemployment benefits (I started working on a book while looking for a job, and that paid a small amount, but certainly not enough to pay the mortgage). I ended up completely draining my bank account. If I hadn't found a job when I did, I would have had to sell my house in the next few months. So, please believe me, I know how frightening it can be to lose your job and not be able to find another.
I work in a blue collar city in a prosperous northeastern state. I see good people every day who are only a few rungs above the walking dead and the ladder is getting more crowded every day. These bullshit exercises in trying to explain how everything really isn't that bad just piss me off.
I think you really misinterpreted what I was trying to get at. My family's business is construction-related, and is dangerously close to going bankrupt after 30+ years in business. I would be careful about making assumptions about the personal lives of others. Yes, I happen to be extremely fortunate in that I'm not currently feeling the economic crunch right now too badly myself, but please don't think I don't see what's going on.
But I'm still going to stand by my general position. I think it's just as detrimental to overstate the impact of a recession as it is to understate it. I'm not trying to say everything is roses, but despite everything that's happened, most people I know can still house themselves and put food on the table, and, while nervous about the state of the economy, are still employed or otherwise earning a living. Oh, and speaking of food...
Especially since they always come from someone who hasn't missed a meal in 20 years.
I haven't missed a meal in 20 years (because I couldn't afford it, which I assume was the silent
I've never really understood why. Taken to the extreme, it implies that if they fired all of their employees they'd be even more profitable.
Not all function curves are linear. Think "local maximum" of the function curve consisting of employee overhead on one axis and productivity on the other. It's the same how pricing works in a free market system. You can't just raise prices and expect revenues to increase - it might, but it could also theoretically reduce your profits if the price point exceeds the desire of customers to purchase your products or services.
I give it 30years and things like this will start to make a come back. The technology we have now(and will have) is fine and grand and all that, but sometimes you just want to sit down and play other times you want to see that bit of mechanical technology do it on it's own.
I'm not so sure. That would be a pretty expensive item for a ride down memory lane. Besides, it's not like the concept is lost forever. It's just taken a slightly different form.
Console disclosure: own all three current gen systems, and still play my PS2.
I own the 40GB non-PS2 compatible PS3, though, and so have to switch over to my PS2 to play older games. About a year ago, I purchased a number of late generation PS2 JRPGs, since I had a hankering for them and had already played those that looked interesting to me on the more modern consoles (they seem to all be coming to the 360 now). Persona 4 was recently released, I'm currently wavering on whether I should pick it up (never played the Persona games before, and I'm not sure if I'd like the game's high-school setting, being an old fogey now).
Sorry but I cant think of a single company/brand/product that had its origins in the Great Depression.
Hewlett-Packard is one.
Spending on sex, gambling and drugs goes up in hard times, but, the first two are a done deal as far a software is concerned and the third is in a market so free that the competition will kill you.
Apparently, people also still tend to buy video games, lucky for me. Naturally, no industry is *completely* free of belt-tightening, but among my circle of friends and colleagues, the market appears to be reasonably stable.
You also have to keep in mind that *most* people, even in this economy, are employed and still doing well. The US unemployment rate is at,what, around 6.7 percent or so, or about one in every fifteen people? Around 4 percent of the country is ALWAYS employed, generally due to some chronic issue (can't or won't work for some reason) or just due to normal between-job transitions. It sounds about right - I've been unemployed for about 5 percent of my career. It doesn't take much - a six month stretch in an otherwise employed 10 year career.
The economy slows down not necessarily when people are in dire straits, but when they reign in their spending for fear their job may be next on the cutting block. Expenses may go up a bit, the belts get a bit tighter, which propagates to others. But even in good times, businesses try not to spend money frivolously anyhow. Besides, there are always going to be businesses and people that are surviving, even thriving during these times.
But the low hanging fruit is gone and IT departments are just another big budget item that needs cutting. Particularly in the current cluster f***ed economy -- can you think of any software that would get you easier, indeed any, credit from the bank, or, software that would help you sell your latest high tech gizmo to someone who just lost thier job and is having thier mortgage foreclosed?
What makes software and IT so special that it can be cut before everything else? Businesses of all types and sizes are more reliant on computers than ever before, and those needs don't disappear during a slow economy. Sure, you won't see an orgy of tech spending like during dot-com booms, but no company in their right minds would just axe their IT department any more than they'd eliminate their accounting department.
Spending on sex, gambling and drugs goes up in hard times, but, the first two are a done deal as far a software is concerned and the third is in a market so free that the competition will kill you.
Apparently, people also still tend to buy video games, lucky for me. Naturally, no industry is *completely* free of belt-tightening, but among my circle of friends and colleagues, the market appears to be reasonably stable. And our companies all purchase other software on a regular basis. The economy still works in lean times, just a little more slowly and a little less comfortably.
Slashdot Mirror
On a side note, I thought the US was build on people coming from bad situations to live the American dream, you guys sure have changed your mindset lately.
Well, unlike many countries, we pick a number of green-card recipients (many of which go on to become citizens) based on a lottery, and make it relatively easy to become an American and even hold dual citizenship. Many Americans are concerned with the current issue of *illegal* immigration, but I don't think you should necessarily interpret that debate as a referendum on immigration itself (it's often painted that way).
I think you'd probably be surprised at how many people buy Flight Simulator. It's not a traditional game, so it probably doesn't sell well among those you know and game with. There are many, many non-gamers with PCs who spend a lot of money on this game, expensive peripherals, and software add-ons.
When discussing this among my co-workers today, most of us were under the impression that Flight Simulator had been a consistent money-maker for Microsoft. I couldn't find any corroborating evidence for this (although I didn't look all that hard), so I left that speculation out of the summary. To me, that's what made this so surprising. I would have thought that any product was consistently profitable would be a no-brainer to keep, especially one that had such a long history. It could be that my information is outdated and Flight Simulator is no longer profitable - it would certainly help to explain the cuts.
I have this sneaking suspicion (and a smidge of insider info from a co-worker lended credence to this theory) that MS is somewhat myopically focused on casual games at the moment, which makes a certain amount of sense given the success of the Wii, the recent ridiculousness of Xbox's mii-too "avatars", etc. Thus, their statement about continued development of Live makes sense, since Live games are more easily "monetized", a market-speak term for shoving ads down our throats. It could be that anything that doesn't currently fit that paradigm has likely gotten the axe.
Thank you, jcnnghm. Excellent post. It's hard to refute facts such as these.
It's hilarious when people blame this on the "unregulated market", when the exact opposite is true. This was caused by government meddling in the private sector. It was not a problem caused by "a lack of oversight". This was caused by insanely stupid policies that were almost guaranteed to be a financial train wreck in the long term. And no, this was not unforeseen by everyone. Plenty of people were plenty worried about this issue. But the people who were trying to prevent this mess happen to belong to a currently unpopular political party now mostly out of power.
Of course, you know that Barney Frank and his cohorts are pretty much untouchable at this point. I'm certainly not expecting any one of them to pay any sort of political price for this. But damn, at the very least, we DO need to see criminal investigations of the fraud going on at Fanny and Freddy. Tell me, why the blistering reactions to what Enron did, but not a peep about these guys running these institutions into the ground? I'll have a much better opinion of Obama if he actually sics the Justice department on these guys.
Good times, good times...
It's the same diffrence as funny and insightful but only applies to people you disagree with.
Oh well, at least your answer nicely demonstrates the different between 'Interesting' and 'Informative'...
Buahahahahha.....oh wait you were serious let me laugh even harder.
I'm reminded, completely coincidentally of course, of something I've been meaning to ask for a while now... Can someone explain to me the difference between 'Troll' and 'Flamebait'?
So they engineered a crisis
Honestly, I think you're giving these guys more credit than they deserve. "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.", Napoleon famously stated once, and I think this fits a lot of politicians perfectly - good intentions with horrible unintended consequences.
"Everyone should be able to afford to buy a house." That's the premise under which all these programs started, and it sounds compassionate and reasonable, if you don't give it much analytical thought, or have a clear understanding of causes and effects in a free market. So, all sorts of government-sponsored machinations were put into place in order to coerce the free market into doing something it wouldn't have naturally done - that is, providing inexpensive loans to high-risk individuals. Now that these loans have defaulted and taken entire companies with them, even now, people still refuse to see the root cause of this.
It's a bit alarming that so many of our citizens have no understanding of how liberty, free enterprise, and limited government are inexorably linked together, or how a large and powerful government can turn to tyranny, oppression, and abuse as easily as it can be used for magnanimous purposes. Yet time and time again those same individuals who lament the government's intrusion into our personal privacy will gladly seek to give up our collective right and responsibility to provide for our own well-being. We ignore clear and unambiguous Constitutional limitations on the federal government's power at our peril.
Current graphics technology lets developers create highly detailed but fairly modestly-sized environments, or a moderately detailed but broad landscapes. Further increases in graphical horsepower will allow developers to render very large, very detailed scenes. It will also allow them to render very large numbers of characters at a time while still rendering this large-scale environment, in addition to performing AI and physics processing on all of them. Currently, you can see all of these elements in current-generation console games, but generally not all at the same time. Believe it or not, here are still very real limitations of hardware that developers run up against all the time, even today, and each game has to make tradeoffs.
Examples:
* Dead Rising was one of the first games to show off the current generation's power by focusing on large numbers of enemies, but generally at the expense of detailed models or environments.
* Gears of War was recognized for it's highly detailed models and environments, but the palette was very muted, and the environments were relatively small and constrained.
* Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, likewise, was visually stunning with amazing models and colorful environments. However, the environments were rather small, and the number of enemies on screen was kept fairly low.
* Oblivion renders broad and expansive outdoor environments, but you can see obviously low resolution textures and models in the distance. Indoor environments are more detailed, but are so at the expense of a loading screen. Additionally, you rarely see large number of creatures or people on the screen at one time.
At the point when developers can, quite literally, render any scene they wish without giving too much thought to whether the hardware can handle it, then we'll have peaked on rendering power. Even though the next generation won't be much visually improved at a certain level of detail, they'll have the capability of showing much more.
Is all this necessary, or going to make games magically more fun? No, of course not. But don't kid yourselves either - cool visuals are just as much a part of the modern videogaming experience as good gameplay. It's the hook that gets you playing - you just stay for the gameplay.
The sad truth of the matter is that many will simply blame the "underregulated American financial sector", while never stopping to consider that if the government hadn't mandated high-risk loans (with guarantees by the government), we would never have had a mortgage crisis to begin with. It's a convenient mantra that fits nicely into a pre-conceived viewpoint, but I have a hard time understanding how people can't connect the dots logically. How does one view the cooked books at Fanny & Freddy, the bribes and back-room deals, etc, and not come to the conclusion that this collapse was triggered by government interference into the natural checks and balances of a healthy free market for social engineering purposes?
Remember when it was actually pretty hard to get a home loan? It was hard because private institutions, when they take on all the risk of the loan, want to ensure there's a very good chance you'll be paying it all back. When you remove those natural safeguards via a government mandate / insurance policy, it's inevitable that the system will eventually implode under its own weight when, not all that surprisingly, too many people with high-risk loans end up defaulting.
No one wants to talk about this, but a number of Republicans (McCain was one) have been warning of an impending sub-prime-loan-based disaster for years. But our esteemed Democrat leaders such as Barney Frank wouldn't hear of it. And now the country is trusting the same guys who precipitated this mess to fix it? The Republicans have their share of issues, but they certainly seem to have a better handle on the reality of a free-market-based economy than most Democrats.
How the hell does
Because I'm a thinking being engaged with the world around me, not a navel-gazing mystic.
get modded insightful 3??? It isn't insightful, it's an avoidance of the question being asked. Even if you read into the comment meaning that isn't there, but might reasonably be thought to have been intended, it still isn't insightful. Sheesh.
I suppose maybe because it's an acknowledgment, however unsubtly expressed, that there's a degree of impracticality inherent in the notion of questioning fundamental principles of our existence and universe that doesn't really help the advancement of hard science. For instance, questions such as whether or not the universe actually exists, or whether I'm the only real being in the universe and all of you are illusions or very clever algorithms don't have much practical application when you get right down to it. Science has, arguably, improved our lives in very real and very practical ways. It's a bit harder to make that case for philosophy.
As such, I tend to view the relationship between modern science and philosophy as rather flimsy at best. Or, put another way, I suppose you could say is that science is about finding answers to interesting questions, where philosophy seems mostly delight in coming up with interesting questions and scenarios to which no one can come up with a reasonable answer.
Funny that the suicide bombers always seem to come from theocracies.
One word for you: Kamikaze
Also, you might even be wrong about more contemporary events as well.
While she may be a media icon and corporate power in her own right, do you think her handlers are silly enough to let her counter attack this guy?
You seriously think Oprah has "handlers"? That's a term typically used for managers of brain-dead music or media stars who can perform on stage but otherwise are fairly helpless in the real world without a script. Hint: someone who creates and manages a billion dollar media empire from nothing doesn't have "handlers".
No, they are doing it to save the power distribution infrastructure in the state. There is only so much carrying capacity, the population is increasing and I think they are starting to realize that plug-in hybrids are not that far off. By reducing the base usage by utilities, the current infrastructure lasts longer, and can support more cars, which reduces pollution, which is a big issue in many areas and a public benefit.
If that were the actual intention, then the most logical way of doing this would be to simply price electricity based on market demand instead of regulating it to keep the price artificially low. When demand skyrockets in the face of dwindling supply, the price also goes up dramatically as well (just like any scarce good), and people would be encouraged to use less. Then, industry would be encouraged to build new power plants to meet that demand, since it would be very profitable to do so. Hence, balance in the market, and stable power for everyone. Or, if California collectively felt that it was more important to be green than to have cheap power, they'd have that choice as well, but at least it would be an honest choice.
The problem is, though, they'd be seen as the bad guys for doing that, because it would negatively impact poor folks, retired people, working families, etc, as the price fluctuated upward. They want to have low consumption AND low energy prices. Frankly, there's only one way this will realistically happen, and that's through government coercion. Even so, piecemeal regulations won't do a thing to curb overall demand, and they know it, but it gives them an out: "See, we're doing something! We're trying to save the planet!" And of course, you see people even in here applauding their effort, and demanding more of the same. Not because it's going to be any more effective, but because it will help to assuage their collective guilt over their perceived contribution to the imminent destruction of the planet.
Of course, most politicians haven't got a clue how basic supply-and-demand economic principles work (or, they simply reject those principles in favor of central planning / socialism), so you can see what a financial mess they've made of the state, despite having all the advantages one would think you'd need to prosper (rich agricultural lands, prime geographical location, tourist hot spot, high-tech industry, trade hub, you name it).
Yeah, she's not going to publicize this. It's too technical for the masses, and people have a 'guilty until proven innocent' attitude these days, especially with digital media. I'm thinking she sweeps this under the rug, maybe settles out of court.
I really, really hope she doesn't settle this out of court, and does the world a favor by stepping on this rat for everyone to see. It's not like she's on the verge of bankruptcy and can't afford a few dozen high-powered lawyers to launch a counterattack.
This is like hijacking cases. If you give in and pay the money, you'll only encourage more of the same behavior. Send in the Marines / black ops / ninja death squad / pirates of penzance each time it happens, and suddenly it doesn't seem like such a hot idea.
First, and probably most germane to the issue: cutting staff is pretty much guaranteed to improve profitability over the short term, since employee overhead is probably the most significant expense of any sort of tech company by a very large margin. You wouldn't see any negative effects for a longer period of time, as software development is a long-term endeavor.
Secondly, I guess it's probably based on the premise that there are *always* do-nothing or disruptive employees that can and should be let go in a large organization (it's hard to disagree with that if you've ever worked in a very large organization).
Given these facts, it sort of makes sense that Wall Street would typically reward cost-cutting measures with a stock-price bump. I'm not saying I agree with the notion or methodology, but I *think* that's the logic behind it.
I didn't really mean to imply that he was completely wrong, just that he was a bit early with some of his predictions in terms of time / adoption rates. For instance, the idea of wearable computers is probably spot on, but I don't think that's going to be common until a decade from now.
Also, I did cherry pick the items that were most significantly/obviously off, since that would make more interesting discussion. Obviously, he got quite a few of them right as well (such as your example of digital encrpytion - but I could also argue that most Internet traffic is still *unencrypted*). I probably should have made more emphasis on that.
Regarding the conservative nature, I guess what I meant to say was that the direction of the technology advancements were fairly incremental (although maybe this is in hindsight). I didn't see (or at least I don't recall) any predictions of any fundamentally new technologies, although for a ten year span, maybe that's to be expected.
Let me just confirm your suspicion from someone inside the game industry. Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Great ones go for about a buck fifty.
I listen to people (or read online) all the time who believe they have a million dollar game idea, and somehow have the notion that this idea alone is worth anything. True value is realized in building your game from concept to prototype to finished project, and the thousands of adjustments you have to make along the way. All the ideas in the world won't do you a bit of good if you don't have a talented team with the artistic vision and technical prowess to execute it.
Even in my day to day experience, I'll sometimes come up with a cool idea for a game I'm currently working on, and mention it to the lead designer. For some reason, I'm still surprised by how often the designer had the same idea, but hadn't gotten around to formally incorporating it into the design document yet.
This isn't to say there aren't a lot of people with great ideas, but people tend to overvalue them significantly. If you can actually turn that game idea into a playable prototype, the value increases by about a thousand-fold. See: Narbacular Drop / Portal.
the graphics on FF XII and Burnout: Revenge are comparable to early PS3 graphics, as long as you don't have an HDTV) games...
Ugh... I was right with you (I've been doing the same thing), but I couldn't let this one slide. I run my games in standard resolution (all three current-gen consoles + PS2), but on a reasonably large screen (it's pre HDMI, and the component-based HD modes flicker, so I can't really use them). Yes, I've played FF XII, and it's a great looking game on the PS2, but...
There is a MASSIVE different between the worst looking PS3 / Xbox 360 games and the best PS2 games in terms of graphics. Keep in mind, this is using 480p on the PS2 with component cables, so it's as good as it gets for that system. Games on the PS3 and 360 are rendered internally at higher resolutions before being scaled down, as well as employing full screen anti-aliasing, advanced shader effects, better lighting, etc. So, just because the screen resolution is the same doesn't mean you can't see a significant difference.
I'm not saying you shouldn't enjoy your PS2. Goodness knows I still do - I still have a backlog of JRPGs I'm planning to play at some point, after all. But don't kid yourself about how much better the new high-end consoles look, even at the lowest available resolution.
Style improvement and automatic editing software is widely used to improve the quality of writing."
So close, and yet so, so far...
Most all the predictions I read in this article have roughly the same problem - it still assumes technology is much more ubiquitous than it is in the real world. I'd say he was probably off by a five to ten years in many of those predictions. Let's see:
Computers: Personal computers are available in a wide range of sizes and shapes, and are commonly embedded in clothing and jewelry such as wristwatches, rings, earrings, and other body ornaments... The majority of text is created using continuous speech recognition (CSR) dictation software.
Getting there, but we're not quite at the point of wearing computers in common objects. Keyboard and mouse are still king.
Education: Students of all ages typically have a computer of their own, which is a thin tabletlike device weighing under a pound with a very high resolution display suitable for reading... Intelligent courseware has emerged as a common means of learning.
Closer, but education still seems largely clueless about how to effectively use computers. Intelligent teaching software is making strides, but still really can't be called "intelligent" by any stretch of the imagination.
Communication: "Telephone" communication is primarily wireless, and routinely includes high-resolution moving images... Virtually all communication is digital and encrypted, with public keys available to government authorities.
Technologists always want that video phone, and the market continually says "no thanks, voice is good enough". In fact, it's gone backwards a bit, with text messaging being rather popular.
Business and Economics: Intelligent assistants which combine continuous speech recognition, natural-language understanding, problem solving, and animated personalities routinely assist with finding information, answering questions, and conducting transactions... Most purchases of books, musical "albums," videos, games, and other forms of software do not involve any physical object.
Again, the overestimation of natural interfaces. And as of right now, a large percentage of software (especially games) is still attached to a physical disk, although digital downloads are gaining Steam... (sorry)
Politics and Society: Privacy has emerged as a primary political issue. The virtually constant use of electronic communication technologies is leaving a highly detailed trail of every person's every move.... There is a growing neo-Luddite movement...
This one's pretty close regarding privacy concerns. As far as neo-Luddite, I haven't seen any such movement emerge in large numbers. There are some anti-technologists, but it's usually a secondary effect of some other philosophical argument.
The Arts: The high quality of computer screens, and the facilities of computer-assisted visual rendering software, have made the computer screen a medium of choice for visual art.
Another one technologists always get wrong is the idea that people are eager to throw away traditional art mediums. I think Star Trek was closer on this one, about how people will always enjoy timeless "classical" entertainment right alongside their "high-tech" (holodeck) entertainment. The two need not be mutually exclusive.
Etc, etc... I'd say the predictions were generally on the right track, but perhaps just a bit too optimistic in the rate of adoption. Still, overall it was fairly insightful, if somewhat conservative. I'm not sure I could have done nearly as well.
Still, it is nice to know we're not in the pipsqueak galaxy. Hoorah!?!?
The Miiilky Waaay... Fuck, yeah!
How can any cognitively sound person seriously believe government statistics anymore, especially the unemployment rate? It never ceases to amaze me how when confronted with "Who you gonna believe, the government or your lying eyes?" so many people doubt their own eyes.
Exactly what am I supposed to see when I look around? Am I supposed to somehow turn news stories into percentages of unemployed people? Conduct my own poll? What formula did you use to arrive at your numbers? Ask your friends and family, and then extrapolate that to the whole of the United States?
I'll concede a significant point, though: I should have stated these figures are typically calculated based on unemployment claims. The actual figure is undoubtedly higher, but the important point is not so much the actual percentage, so long as it's calculated in a consistent manner. This gives a solid baseline for which direction the jobless rate is moving in, and by how much.
The numbers you quote seem pretty high to me (for instance, some people think prisoners should count towards unemployment), but I'd like to keep an open mind. Any studies to back that up?
I'm sorry to take this out on the parent but it really bugs me when people sitting in their safe little employment foxholes never lift their heads to look around and consequently think that everyone else must be ok too.
It's ok... I can take it. I understand that this is a touchy topic for people as well, since livelihoods are on the line. Let's look at what else I wrote:
It sounds about right - I've been unemployed for about 5 percent of my career. It doesn't take much - a six month stretch in an otherwise employed 10 year career.
I fudged the numbers a bit, I admit, in order to make the math work out nicely. I was unemployed closer to nine months (one year in length, with 3 months of contract work in the middle). And, this was just after I bought a house with a pretty hefty mortgage. In fact, I wouldn't have counted in the government statistics, because I didn't take any unemployment benefits (I started working on a book while looking for a job, and that paid a small amount, but certainly not enough to pay the mortgage). I ended up completely draining my bank account. If I hadn't found a job when I did, I would have had to sell my house in the next few months. So, please believe me, I know how frightening it can be to lose your job and not be able to find another.
I work in a blue collar city in a prosperous northeastern state. I see good people every day who are only a few rungs above the walking dead and the ladder is getting more crowded every day. These bullshit exercises in trying to explain how everything really isn't that bad just piss me off.
I think you really misinterpreted what I was trying to get at. My family's business is construction-related, and is dangerously close to going bankrupt after 30+ years in business. I would be careful about making assumptions about the personal lives of others. Yes, I happen to be extremely fortunate in that I'm not currently feeling the economic crunch right now too badly myself, but please don't think I don't see what's going on.
But I'm still going to stand by my general position. I think it's just as detrimental to overstate the impact of a recession as it is to understate it. I'm not trying to say everything is roses, but despite everything that's happened, most people I know can still house themselves and put food on the table, and, while nervous about the state of the economy, are still employed or otherwise earning a living. Oh, and speaking of food...
Especially since they always come from someone who hasn't missed a meal in 20 years.
I haven't missed a meal in 20 years (because I couldn't afford it, which I assume was the silent
I've never really understood why. Taken to the extreme, it implies that if they fired all of their employees they'd be even more profitable.
Not all function curves are linear. Think "local maximum" of the function curve consisting of employee overhead on one axis and productivity on the other. It's the same how pricing works in a free market system. You can't just raise prices and expect revenues to increase - it might, but it could also theoretically reduce your profits if the price point exceeds the desire of customers to purchase your products or services.
I give it 30years and things like this will start to make a come back. The technology we have now(and will have) is fine and grand and all that, but sometimes you just want to sit down and play other times you want to see that bit of mechanical technology do it on it's own.
I'm not so sure. That would be a pretty expensive item for a ride down memory lane. Besides, it's not like the concept is lost forever. It's just taken a slightly different form.
Console disclosure: own all three current gen systems, and still play my PS2.
I own the 40GB non-PS2 compatible PS3, though, and so have to switch over to my PS2 to play older games. About a year ago, I purchased a number of late generation PS2 JRPGs, since I had a hankering for them and had already played those that looked interesting to me on the more modern consoles (they seem to all be coming to the 360 now). Persona 4 was recently released, I'm currently wavering on whether I should pick it up (never played the Persona games before, and I'm not sure if I'd like the game's high-school setting, being an old fogey now).
My personal time percentages would probably be:
Xbox 360: 75%
PS2: 15%
PS3: 10%
Wii: 5%
PC: 5%
Call the Department of Redundancy Department... copy and paste error. Whoops.
Sorry but I cant think of a single company/brand/product that had its origins in the Great Depression.
Hewlett-Packard is one.
Spending on sex, gambling and drugs goes up in hard times, but, the first two are a done deal as far a software is concerned and the third is in a market so free that the competition will kill you.
Apparently, people also still tend to buy video games, lucky for me. Naturally, no industry is *completely* free of belt-tightening, but among my circle of friends and colleagues, the market appears to be reasonably stable.
You also have to keep in mind that *most* people, even in this economy, are employed and still doing well. The US unemployment rate is at,what, around 6.7 percent or so, or about one in every fifteen people? Around 4 percent of the country is ALWAYS employed, generally due to some chronic issue (can't or won't work for some reason) or just due to normal between-job transitions. It sounds about right - I've been unemployed for about 5 percent of my career. It doesn't take much - a six month stretch in an otherwise employed 10 year career.
The economy slows down not necessarily when people are in dire straits, but when they reign in their spending for fear their job may be next on the cutting block. Expenses may go up a bit, the belts get a bit tighter, which propagates to others. But even in good times, businesses try not to spend money frivolously anyhow. Besides, there are always going to be businesses and people that are surviving, even thriving during these times.
But the low hanging fruit is gone and IT departments are just another big budget item that needs cutting. Particularly in the current cluster f***ed economy -- can you think of any software that would get you easier, indeed any, credit from the bank, or, software that would help you sell your latest high tech gizmo to someone who just lost thier job and is having thier mortgage foreclosed?
What makes software and IT so special that it can be cut before everything else? Businesses of all types and sizes are more reliant on computers than ever before, and those needs don't disappear during a slow economy. Sure, you won't see an orgy of tech spending like during dot-com booms, but no company in their right minds would just axe their IT department any more than they'd eliminate their accounting department.
Spending on sex, gambling and drugs goes up in hard times, but, the first two are a done deal as far a software is concerned and the third is in a market so free that the competition will kill you.
Apparently, people also still tend to buy video games, lucky for me. Naturally, no industry is *completely* free of belt-tightening, but among my circle of friends and colleagues, the market appears to be reasonably stable. And our companies all purchase other software on a regular basis. The economy still works in lean times, just a little more slowly and a little less comfortably.