Console gaming is golfing with nothing but a putter. PC gaming lets you use whatever clubs you can afford, and competitive PC gaming makes sure that everyone has equally nice clubs and that nobody's using a guided missile to drop their ball a foot from the hole when nobody's looking. If you want to keep playing mini-golf, be my guest, I'm sure it's a good time. However, if you run around screaming about how pro golfers are only good because they have nice clubs, and that you'd show them who the real pro is if they came to your mini-golf course for a few games, you WILL be ridiculed, and deservedly so.
There's plenty of variables in console gaming. Some people have nicer TVs and sound systems, and others buy fancy controllers. I certainly had a set of fancy Nintendo and Super Nintendo controllers when I was younger.
I think a better analogy would be saying that console gaming is like a cheap, public golf course; and PC gaming is like an expensive private golf course. Or, you could say that console gaming is like using "regulation" clubs & balls, and PC gaming is like using unregulated clubs and balls.
Another analogy is that console gaming is like mini-golf, and PC gaming is like real golf. In the case of mini-golf, there are pleny of variables; yet the barrier-to-entry is much lower then real golf.
I have a significant amount of missing teeth; it's genetic, my mother has the same missing teeth, but my sister does not. In order to fix the missing teeth with implants, I'll need to spend about 30-40k. Being selective about the genes I pass will ensure that my descendants don't need to spend lots of money on dental work like I do.
So differences in genetic-neurological profile would be seen in the context of 2 gene pools, rather than in the context of an entire society like today. I mean, I didn't speak till age 3, nor did my son, nor did my dad... In a "classical" society my family would just say "yeah, boys don't talk till age 3". In modern society, you have Autism speaks making unfounded claims that If your child doesn't speak by age 3,
I have to agree with you on the whole "grandmother" thing. My cousin has a child who is a little odd, and my grandmother is ripe with advice. It's kind of funny, she used to tell a story about how one of my father's cousins defecated in the middle of a room when she baby-sat him; and then she firmly claims that he's on my grandfather's side of the family.
I'm glad the autism scare hasn't hit my family. My nephew was recently diagnosed with a speech impediment; yet he's very talented in math. When he was 2-3 years old, he'd flip light switches on and off for 30-40 minutes at a time. As a family, we just thought it was cute! Another time, I watched him open and close a closet door for 20 minutes straight. My nephew will be completely fine in life.
I do know an autisic who really shouldn't be living independantly, although he's a bit of an extreme case. It's a shame the "cure autism" community can't tell the difference between people who are just a little different and other people who really can't take care of themselves. Of the 1 in 160 children who have autism, how many truly are incapable of caring for themselves?
In the fall of 2002, I decided that I needed some form of a PDA to allow me to take a few notes and manage a calendar. I obtained one of the inexpensive Palms. (Its name began with a Z, although I can't remember the exact name.)
The Palm was very basic, and it did what I needed it to do. It even charged from the USB port, so I put the power brick away and forgot about it. I was happy!
After 4-5 months, it stopped working. I was tired of carrying two devices. Ultimately, I replaced the Palm and my cell phone with a very basic cell phone that had the same features as the Palm.
Needless to say, my experience with Palm is that their devices are unreliable and easily duplicated by inexpensive phones. Today, the iPhone does everything that I wanted a basic Palm for, is more reliable, and takes up less space in my pockets!
I've noticed that Firefox 3 is much less forgiving of self-signed certs than other browsers. There's a lot more hoops that one has to jump through to get a page to load.
On Mac, Firefox 3 only complains once. Afterwards, it always accepts the certificate, even if I quit Firefox and reboot. This, IMO, is a nice tradeoff then the typical approach.
On Windows XP (Not sure about Vista), you can type certmgr at the command-line to bring up a utility that will allow you to install a trusted root server. This will allow you to have an internal root server and avoid issues that occur with browser pop-ups.
Simply sticking a box between a client victim and server victim is not enough, you have to actively compromise one of the four groups above in order to spy on secured traffic.
I kinda see it as the opposite. This guy is a coward who isn't capable of dealing with his problems in a mature manner and so he's concocted this weird scheme to try and finance him running away from his problems.
Why not? I'd gladly walk away from my life for $400K... As long as I could keep a 1TB hard drive!
Note though, that user-generated content is consistently improving in quality. Ad a viable revenue stream and as advertising dollars continue to shift from mainstream media to user generated content, the market becomes a lot more interesting.
The studios screwed themselves on this one.
Have you ever watched any really old silent or early sound movies? Some of the "classics" are about the same quality that I see on YouTube.
What I essentially do is keep all of my photos and movies in Perforce, and then use Perforce on all of my computers to sync the data. It comes in handy when moving between computers, because all of my data shows up automatically. In addition, on my desktop, (which acts like a server,) I have an automated nightly script that copies my Perforce depot to another drive. Unlike you; I only generate about a gig or two of data per year, which is very reasonable.
When I do a project that generates a few gigs of data, I burn it to 2-3 DVDs. If one (or all) get corrupted, I'll still be able to get the data back by combining the readable files. It will be very easy for you to get into such a habit; when burning a DVD, just burn 1-2 extras and stick them in a temperature/humidity stable closet.
For my music collection, I have an automated nightly script that copies it to a second drive, and I manually copy it to my work computer. The collection is 80 gigs; and it's survived many hard drive crashes. I also keep backups of purchased music on burnt DVD or pressed CDs.
Another thing to consider is purchasing a 100+ gig solid state drive. It'll be pricey; but it's unlikely to loose your data.
I have to call bullshit and a half on this line of reasoning.
Lets go with a famous slashdot car analogy, that happens to fit perfectly well.
My car's hood is not locked requiring a special key that only the dealer has.
My TV has plenty of open connectors. The power plug on my wall is an open standard. I'm perfectly free to plug in whatever I want.
To further your car analogy: Honda provides no support if I choose to reprogram my Civic hybrid. Yes, there are people who probably do it; but openness only goes so far! I can replace my car stereo, but expecting Honda to make their stereo in such a way that I can add custom software to it is just silly.
There are plenty of open devices that can plug into the TV. The Wii is a $250 device... Must it be open when I can find plenty of open devices to plug into my TV?
What are you going to ask for next, a way to boot Linux on a $150 GPS?
Indeed. I think there may be no way at all to differentiate between a router left open deliberately and one left open purposefully.
In Silicon Valley, there are a lot of networks with the name "free" or "open" in them. When browsing for the first time, the browser is directed to a TOS page.
It's really convenient when waiting for a haircut downtown.
Good software is written by good people. There is no general rules you can follow to automagically make your software good.
Sure some rules will tend to make your software a little bit better: KISS design principle, release early release often, unit tests, etc. But fundamentally it's all about people.
Then you might ask "what makes a good developer good". Well's that's not so easy to answer.
Agreed. Sometimes very smart people don't follow KISS. Often times it takes a few "average" people in a team to encourage KISS. My current project leader is a great guy to bounce ideas off of, because if they don't follow KISS, I can figure it out based on the look of his face.
Furthermore, it's important to get a variety of backgrounds and expertise. A team full of C# experts witing C# code might bork interoperability. A team with no C# experts writing C# code might not take advantage of powerful features of the language.
Finally, the attitude that "computers are getting faster, memory is getting cheaper, so I don't need to worry about performance," is misleading. Such a statement is true when it comes to error checking, caching, bounds enforcement, ect. It is not true when it comes to accessing data from a database or disk; because bottlenecks will always be bottlenecks.
It's still difficult to program with large amounts of persistant data. Object/Relational mapping needs to be much better; and this might mean blending aspects of SQL into traditional OO languages; and making relational databases a little more friendly to objects.
There seems to be plenty of blame to go around, but I think it's rather disingenuous for consultants to be rewriting code in Java instead of [original obscure language]. The comparison has no value, and I hope they didn't bill their client for the time. Unless they were brought in to do a Java rewrite, and that doesn't appear to be the case, they should have been spending their time working in [original obscure language].
Some points:
One popular technique is to use a Domain Specific Language (DSL) where one invents a language to solve the given problem. If the original project used a poor DSL, then ripping it out was a good choice.
In my first job out of college, I often had to fix bugs in code written by horrible coders. (Once, some guy passed around all his values as untyped arguments for methods instead of using private class fields!) When code is so bad that it's incomrehensible; the fastest way to fix a bug is to work back to the method's, class's, module's, program's, ect inputs and outputs; and then rewrite it! There's no point in reverse-engineering bubblegum & ducttape when it's faster and easier to write something correctly.
Java, compared to [some obscure language], has some advantages. For starters; it's much easier to hire people to maintain a project written in Java as opposed to [some ocscure language]. Java also has plenty more IDEs, debuggers, support, and communities then [some obscure language].
Simply put, the ROI of rewriting a bloated, buggy, and unmaintainable program written in [some obscure language] in Java was realized very quickly.
Even though it's an Ethernet cable, it's not for Ethernet. For a long time, there was no way to digitally connect a DVD-A or SACD player to the amp. It looks like Denon's proprietary technology uses an ethernet plug.
That being stated, my combo DVD-A / SACD player cost me $250, and sounds excellent. Considering that ordinary Ethernet makes great speaker cable in a pinch; I find the benefits of this cable to be dubious. If anyone ever tried to sell it to me, my response would be "I'm not stupid."
I continuously hear complaints about VWs not being worth the trouble, especially from people much younger and hipper than me (I am 46) who prefer much lighter weight forms of interaction
I had dinner with Bruce about a week and a half ago, shortly before his article was posted. I mentioned to him that "Virtual Worlds appear to be more for entertainment; if I want to communicate with someone, I use Skype or the real world. I see Virtual Worlds eventually becoming mainstream when we get augmented reality."
There are other reasons to go onto iTunes, although I'm not sure if Radiohead's releases take advantage of it, AAC files can be created from 24-bit, 48khz sources at the same bitrate as those from 16-bit, 44.1khz sources.
Netflix is dipping their toe into the water of internet-based video-on-demand. From a business sense, it makes sense to start with a simple system and apply the "lessons learned" when moving to high-bandwidth, and then HD systems. Things like multiple languages, surround sound, optional subtitles add complexity to an implementation and thus leave the possibility for bugs.
Furthermore, when does the system become "good enough" that most customers will use it more then 50% of the time? Most of the content that my DVR records is about as good quality as Netflix's appliance; how many people who's DVRs are full of reruns will opt for this device?
Copyright shouldn't enable a new landowning class. What's happening with American copyright laws is that they are being used by a small group of people to own and charge rent on American culture.
Copyright law needs to be modified to strike a compromise between the need for an information worker or artist to make a living, and the need for a people to freely exchange their shared culture. If copyright owners want strong restrictions; they should also have to release works into the Public Domain in 5-10 years. Copyright owners need to demonstrate that they really need 100+ years to make a profit on their works.
Don't let the stupid warning dialogs lull you into a false sense of security. These were a bad idea when Microsoft started using them, and it doesn't make it any better for Apple to follow.
Hopefully the "stupid security warnings" prevent a nephew from messing with my settings or "accidentally" installing freebie cursors!
Origin, Looking Glass Studios, Black Isle come immediately to mind. LucasArts also went bankrupt, and laid everyone off. There is a company today called LucasArts, but it is a new company that operates out of ILM. Some companies like Maxis and Sierra are shells of their former selves, with the parent company folded basically, and a large publisher buying the name.
And talk to any game dev. I used to be a real forum rat for various game development forums. There is a reason that game houses prefer to develop for consoles. Sales on consoles are higher, not because there are more consoles on the market than PCs, but because PC higher is far higher than console piracy.
Don't just point the finger at piracy. I always had trouble getting PC games to run due to poor drivers, weird hardware conflicts, or games that needed me to upgrade to the latest and greatest hardware. After a few dissapointments, I realized that consoles are cheaper and more reliable for games.
There's another way to say it: A game that needs a $2000 machine to run it will always have a smaller audience then one that needs a $400 machine.
Of course, UML used for communication like design and documentation, especially at a high level, is a good thing. Just don't go UML crazy and think that every little detail of the system has to be documented in UML. You'll probably end up spending more time doing UML than you will making the actual system.
I completely agree with you. I've only used UML to communicate class structure and flow with co-workers; and I tend to be one of the few people who makes regular (semi-anual) use of it. To me, it's shocking that there's an 800-page spec, because I only use a small subset of it.
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Console gaming is golfing with nothing but a putter. PC gaming lets you use whatever clubs you can afford, and competitive PC gaming makes sure that everyone has equally nice clubs and that nobody's using a guided missile to drop their ball a foot from the hole when nobody's looking. If you want to keep playing mini-golf, be my guest, I'm sure it's a good time. However, if you run around screaming about how pro golfers are only good because they have nice clubs, and that you'd show them who the real pro is if they came to your mini-golf course for a few games, you WILL be ridiculed, and deservedly so.
There's plenty of variables in console gaming. Some people have nicer TVs and sound systems, and others buy fancy controllers. I certainly had a set of fancy Nintendo and Super Nintendo controllers when I was younger.
I think a better analogy would be saying that console gaming is like a cheap, public golf course; and PC gaming is like an expensive private golf course. Or, you could say that console gaming is like using "regulation" clubs & balls, and PC gaming is like using unregulated clubs and balls.
Another analogy is that console gaming is like mini-golf, and PC gaming is like real golf. In the case of mini-golf, there are pleny of variables; yet the barrier-to-entry is much lower then real golf.
I have a significant amount of missing teeth; it's genetic, my mother has the same missing teeth, but my sister does not. In order to fix the missing teeth with implants, I'll need to spend about 30-40k. Being selective about the genes I pass will ensure that my descendants don't need to spend lots of money on dental work like I do.
So differences in genetic-neurological profile would be seen in the context of 2 gene pools, rather than in the context of an entire society like today. I mean, I didn't speak till age 3, nor did my son, nor did my dad... In a "classical" society my family would just say "yeah, boys don't talk till age 3". In modern society, you have Autism speaks making unfounded claims that If your child doesn't speak by age 3,
I have to agree with you on the whole "grandmother" thing. My cousin has a child who is a little odd, and my grandmother is ripe with advice. It's kind of funny, she used to tell a story about how one of my father's cousins defecated in the middle of a room when she baby-sat him; and then she firmly claims that he's on my grandfather's side of the family.
I'm glad the autism scare hasn't hit my family. My nephew was recently diagnosed with a speech impediment; yet he's very talented in math. When he was 2-3 years old, he'd flip light switches on and off for 30-40 minutes at a time. As a family, we just thought it was cute! Another time, I watched him open and close a closet door for 20 minutes straight. My nephew will be completely fine in life.
I do know an autisic who really shouldn't be living independantly, although he's a bit of an extreme case. It's a shame the "cure autism" community can't tell the difference between people who are just a little different and other people who really can't take care of themselves. Of the 1 in 160 children who have autism, how many truly are incapable of caring for themselves?
In the fall of 2002, I decided that I needed some form of a PDA to allow me to take a few notes and manage a calendar. I obtained one of the inexpensive Palms. (Its name began with a Z, although I can't remember the exact name.)
The Palm was very basic, and it did what I needed it to do. It even charged from the USB port, so I put the power brick away and forgot about it. I was happy!
After 4-5 months, it stopped working. I was tired of carrying two devices. Ultimately, I replaced the Palm and my cell phone with a very basic cell phone that had the same features as the Palm.
Needless to say, my experience with Palm is that their devices are unreliable and easily duplicated by inexpensive phones. Today, the iPhone does everything that I wanted a basic Palm for, is more reliable, and takes up less space in my pockets!
On Mac, Firefox 3 only complains once. Afterwards, it always accepts the certificate, even if I quit Firefox and reboot. This, IMO, is a nice tradeoff then the typical approach.
On Windows XP (Not sure about Vista), you can type certmgr at the command-line to bring up a utility that will allow you to install a trusted root server. This will allow you to have an internal root server and avoid issues that occur with browser pop-ups.
What about a box that can spoof Windows Update?
Why not? I'd gladly walk away from my life for $400K... As long as I could keep a 1TB hard drive!
Have you ever watched any really old silent or early sound movies? Some of the "classics" are about the same quality that I see on YouTube.
What I essentially do is keep all of my photos and movies in Perforce, and then use Perforce on all of my computers to sync the data. It comes in handy when moving between computers, because all of my data shows up automatically. In addition, on my desktop, (which acts like a server,) I have an automated nightly script that copies my Perforce depot to another drive. Unlike you; I only generate about a gig or two of data per year, which is very reasonable.
When I do a project that generates a few gigs of data, I burn it to 2-3 DVDs. If one (or all) get corrupted, I'll still be able to get the data back by combining the readable files. It will be very easy for you to get into such a habit; when burning a DVD, just burn 1-2 extras and stick them in a temperature/humidity stable closet.
For my music collection, I have an automated nightly script that copies it to a second drive, and I manually copy it to my work computer. The collection is 80 gigs; and it's survived many hard drive crashes. I also keep backups of purchased music on burnt DVD or pressed CDs.
Another thing to consider is purchasing a 100+ gig solid state drive. It'll be pricey; but it's unlikely to loose your data.
My TV has plenty of open connectors. The power plug on my wall is an open standard. I'm perfectly free to plug in whatever I want.
To further your car analogy: Honda provides no support if I choose to reprogram my Civic hybrid. Yes, there are people who probably do it; but openness only goes so far! I can replace my car stereo, but expecting Honda to make their stereo in such a way that I can add custom software to it is just silly.
There are plenty of open devices that can plug into the TV. The Wii is a $250 device... Must it be open when I can find plenty of open devices to plug into my TV?
What are you going to ask for next, a way to boot Linux on a $150 GPS?
In Silicon Valley, there are a lot of networks with the name "free" or "open" in them. When browsing for the first time, the browser is directed to a TOS page.
It's really convenient when waiting for a haircut downtown.
Agreed. Sometimes very smart people don't follow KISS. Often times it takes a few "average" people in a team to encourage KISS. My current project leader is a great guy to bounce ideas off of, because if they don't follow KISS, I can figure it out based on the look of his face.
Furthermore, it's important to get a variety of backgrounds and expertise. A team full of C# experts witing C# code might bork interoperability. A team with no C# experts writing C# code might not take advantage of powerful features of the language.
Finally, the attitude that "computers are getting faster, memory is getting cheaper, so I don't need to worry about performance," is misleading. Such a statement is true when it comes to error checking, caching, bounds enforcement, ect. It is not true when it comes to accessing data from a database or disk; because bottlenecks will always be bottlenecks.
It's still difficult to program with large amounts of persistant data. Object/Relational mapping needs to be much better; and this might mean blending aspects of SQL into traditional OO languages; and making relational databases a little more friendly to objects.
Some points:
One popular technique is to use a Domain Specific Language (DSL) where one invents a language to solve the given problem. If the original project used a poor DSL, then ripping it out was a good choice.
In my first job out of college, I often had to fix bugs in code written by horrible coders. (Once, some guy passed around all his values as untyped arguments for methods instead of using private class fields!) When code is so bad that it's incomrehensible; the fastest way to fix a bug is to work back to the method's, class's, module's, program's, ect inputs and outputs; and then rewrite it! There's no point in reverse-engineering bubblegum & ducttape when it's faster and easier to write something correctly.
Java, compared to [some obscure language], has some advantages. For starters; it's much easier to hire people to maintain a project written in Java as opposed to [some ocscure language]. Java also has plenty more IDEs, debuggers, support, and communities then [some obscure language].
Simply put, the ROI of rewriting a bloated, buggy, and unmaintainable program written in [some obscure language] in Java was realized very quickly.
I try to honk as lightly as possible after 2-3 seconds. Sometimes the light turns green when I'm staring at a hottie on the side of the road!
Stopping, yes stopping at the end of a merge ramp on to the highway you redneck motherfucker.I hold my hand on the horn as far as away as possible and hope that the other driver gets the message that stopping on merge ramps is f*cking stupid.
Perhaps it would make a good alternative to a mouse?
In a pinch = When you're setting up a haunted house and don't have 30 minutes to drive to Best Buy to get real speaker wire.
Even though it's an Ethernet cable, it's not for Ethernet. For a long time, there was no way to digitally connect a DVD-A or SACD player to the amp. It looks like Denon's proprietary technology uses an ethernet plug.
That being stated, my combo DVD-A / SACD player cost me $250, and sounds excellent. Considering that ordinary Ethernet makes great speaker cable in a pinch; I find the benefits of this cable to be dubious. If anyone ever tried to sell it to me, my response would be "I'm not stupid."
I had dinner with Bruce about a week and a half ago, shortly before his article was posted. I mentioned to him that "Virtual Worlds appear to be more for entertainment; if I want to communicate with someone, I use Skype or the real world. I see Virtual Worlds eventually becoming mainstream when we get augmented reality."
There are other reasons to go onto iTunes, although I'm not sure if Radiohead's releases take advantage of it, AAC files can be created from 24-bit, 48khz sources at the same bitrate as those from 16-bit, 44.1khz sources.
Netflix is dipping their toe into the water of internet-based video-on-demand. From a business sense, it makes sense to start with a simple system and apply the "lessons learned" when moving to high-bandwidth, and then HD systems. Things like multiple languages, surround sound, optional subtitles add complexity to an implementation and thus leave the possibility for bugs.
Furthermore, when does the system become "good enough" that most customers will use it more then 50% of the time? Most of the content that my DVR records is about as good quality as Netflix's appliance; how many people who's DVRs are full of reruns will opt for this device?
Copyright shouldn't enable a new landowning class. What's happening with American copyright laws is that they are being used by a small group of people to own and charge rent on American culture.
Copyright law needs to be modified to strike a compromise between the need for an information worker or artist to make a living, and the need for a people to freely exchange their shared culture. If copyright owners want strong restrictions; they should also have to release works into the Public Domain in 5-10 years. Copyright owners need to demonstrate that they really need 100+ years to make a profit on their works.
Hopefully the "stupid security warnings" prevent a nephew from messing with my settings or "accidentally" installing freebie cursors!
Don't just point the finger at piracy. I always had trouble getting PC games to run due to poor drivers, weird hardware conflicts, or games that needed me to upgrade to the latest and greatest hardware. After a few dissapointments, I realized that consoles are cheaper and more reliable for games.
There's another way to say it: A game that needs a $2000 machine to run it will always have a smaller audience then one that needs a $400 machine.
I completely agree with you. I've only used UML to communicate class structure and flow with co-workers; and I tend to be one of the few people who makes regular (semi-anual) use of it. To me, it's shocking that there's an 800-page spec, because I only use a small subset of it.