That was my first thought when I read the summary. I'm happy, and I watch a good amount of TV right now... But it's all shows I actively want to see, and I watch them when I want to. (And without commercials.) In fact, I generally end up fitting TV in around everything else in my life. If there came a time when TV was what I had to fit things around, I just wouldn't watch TV. (I know, because I was there a few years ago... I actually didn't watch TV for about a year, and then I got cable with a DVR and things suddenly worked again.)
I wouldn't necessarily say 'socialization' has anything to do with it, though.
"There are many people out there doing scientific studies of human behavior. They're working against thousands of years of assumptions, some right, some wrong. It's going to take some time."
Those are your own words. That's the long way of saying, "They're guessing."
I think it's more important to note how long they were expected to last, and how long they actually lasted. From 90 days to 5 years is... Extraordinary. Did the others perform as well?
This shows the difference between today and the rest of the last week. The month version looks largely the same... Spikes every day until today, which is low.
You want them to use bugzilla to share documentation? Seriously? Or do you want them to use bugzilla to report bugs, and an entirely different application to share the documents? Either way, your way is a lot harder than theirs.
I've seen plenty of second-hand goods that are indistinguishable from first-hand goods, including cars and houses. In addition, games aren't necessarily as good second-hand. Wear and tear on the box, scratches on the disk, fewer online players for online games... They line up pretty good with other goods on how they age.
I agree. At $20, I'd probably stop renting and just buy every game I wanted. I'd spend more per month, but I'd have a library of games afterwards that I can play with no hassles. I certainly wouldn't be buying used games, not even for $5.
But then, at $20, the profit for GameStop would likely be even closer to nil than it already is. GS makes their money on used games. That means that without them, GameStop wouldn't exist... And it would be that much harder to buy games from a decent store. I absolutely abhor the electronics and games policies of Walmart, KMart, Target, etc. Enough that I just refuse to shop there. Amazon's pre-order system is ass, too. I tried it.
But then, if there's no profit in it, why would Walmart/etc bother selling them, either? It seems to me that it would get ugly quick.
I think the obviously thing to do for the game developers would be to just accept that the market is the way it is and not try to screw over their customers. Gamers are already pissed about the DLC that's actually -on- the disc, but you have to go online and pay for it to access it. If they had to pay extra just to complete the game, they'd blow their lid. I'd certainly never buy from that company again without full reviews, including what's needed to complete the game. At that point, the game has lost so much of its mystery that I probably wouldn't be interested anyhow.
You'd have to pick your control group very carefully for this. It'd have to be someone that didn't change DST -and- has the same local environment.
For instance: Comparing Indiana with Michigan is bad because there are more car enthusiasts in Michigan due to the factories there. This means there are probably more people with electric cars. Also, the cities in Michigan tend to be bigger, meaning electric cars are more useful there, and there would be more because of that, too.
That's just the first example that came to mind. It might not even be a valid example, but it shows that you can't just pick 2 states and pray they are similar enough to compare them.
And you can't just compare to last year because technology increases at an unsteady rate.
While LBP doesn't -technically- meet the non-violent requirement, the 'violence' is limited to hitting a purple bubble on a moving 'enemy'. The majority (95+%) of the game is getting through the level by triggering switches or running and jumping.
In addition, you can make your own levels and share them with others, or play levels made by others. Some are already quite interesting. I even found a Film Noir one, The Case of the Crying Sackgirl. It needed a little work, but it was worth playing through.
I'm a little slower about it. The second time I have to write code, I take a serious look at it and decide whether I will ever use it again. If I get to a third time, I refactor.
There are exceptions to this... Notably, code that's very hard to refactor because each version needs some edge case. (Actually, thinking about that, I can see ways to refactor some of that code now... I sense work in my future.)
Oh, and before anyone says "You wouldn't really do that," I really did have a boss who would do things like this. The answer was to show him that he was wasting your time and his money. The few times that didn't work, the answer was to make it clear that you didn't like wasting your time, and you realize it might be better spent elsewhere. I believe I worked there about 6 different times while looking for another job. He always called me back (with a raise) because he couldn't find anyone else who was competent.
I actually stopped working there finally because the last raise I demanded was in excess of what the business could support. I knew that at the time, but he had insulted me pretty good on the last round.
I disagree. They aren't irrelevant. Without him, they -would- have to go back to doing it all by hand. He keeps it running. With what he's been asked, it's just as valid to calculate it that was as any other. (I'm assuming he isn't overpaid. If he is, well... he's in trouble.)
Personally, my attitude would be: So you want me to stop being productive and start doing accounting work that I'm not qualified for? If they said yes, I'd start looking for another job. It's obvious big changes are afoot, and the job will like suck quite a bit more afterwards.
Wait, you don't ask questions of the customer before you start designing? You just take whatever they give, ask -no- questions, and plan it all out? THEN you go back and ask the customer if that's what they wanted?
That would be a nightmare.
Nothing will stop the customer from changing their mind about what they want, but getting enough information ahead of the planning stage will save you a world of hassle later.
I'll add my own anecdotal evidence, too. I've long said that I'm a good coder because I'm lazy. I absolutely abhor doing something over and over, so I'll make sure I can reuse as much as possible when coding, and automate as much as possible when doing system stuff. When one of my fellow employees quit, I took the majority of his work and turned into Perl scripts. Literally. What used to take him hours each day now takes minutes... And because I've made it so easy, others can do it as well.
Programmed correctly, it's easy to take someone's vote and mark their account 'voted' and not actually link the vote to their account specifically. Yes, it's possible to modify that code and not tell anyone, but they could also fingerprint that piece of paper I turned in and have the info as well.
They are always long, but this year is a record turnout. Maybe it's the internet, maybe it's the choice (or lack thereof) of candidates, but there are definitely more people voting this year than ever before. In fact, 3 people in my family are voting for the first time this year out of 4. (I think the other isn't voting at all, as usual.)
Personally, I'm voting because I wish I'd voted in the last election. 4 years of 'Oh man, I should have voted' are enough for me. My parents are voting because they want to make sure a particular candidate is elected. It all ends up the same.
The line at my center was already about 20 minutes long when I got there 5 minutes before they opened. It slimmed down to about 10 minutes after about half an hour, though. It will probably pick up worse later. The early voting centers in my area were swamped, though. They each served a much wider area, and everyone was trying to avoid the rush on election day.
Personally, I think they need to work on a way I can vote from the privacy of my own home. In this day and age, there's no reason I should have to physically go somewhere and have someone inexpertly check that I am me and haven't voted already. Someday, maybe the government will catch up to civilian technology.
I keep saying, "If my vote counts, I'll vote for who I want to be President. If it doesn't, I won't vote at all" every time someone tells me that I'm throwing away my vote. If more people would vote this way, we could fix the system instead of prolonging this idiocy.
I've always said, "The best thing that ever happened to me was my father's belt." I was a bored little smartass punk in elementary school. This let to misbehavior all the time, with teacher-given paddlings. Eventually my father got wind of it and used the belt. I got -one- paddling after that in 8th grade over something that was being done by half the class at the time.
I've now got a healthy respect for authority. Not blind obedience, mind... Just respect.
Like all things, if done to excess, punishment is bad for you. But handled properly, it will be the correction that's needed when "Oh honey, you shouldn't do that" fails.
I was very sad the day that schools stopped paddling. I knew it was a bad move. I see that it was just the first of many.
"Think about it. Wouldn't you claim that your account was incorrectly debited $500 from an ATM transaction that you didn't make if you could get away with it? Sure you would. So would everyone else in your city."
No. Not everyone would. I will agree that a majority would, but not all. I, personally, would not. I don't need money so bad that I'm willing to go against my own ethics.
I disagree. I think cyberdemons would be very interested in environmental and economic policies. It might be the exact wrong kind of interest, but then, how could we tell the difference between them and the current government when it comes to that?
Slashdot Mirror
That was my first thought when I read the summary. I'm happy, and I watch a good amount of TV right now... But it's all shows I actively want to see, and I watch them when I want to. (And without commercials.) In fact, I generally end up fitting TV in around everything else in my life. If there came a time when TV was what I had to fit things around, I just wouldn't watch TV. (I know, because I was there a few years ago... I actually didn't watch TV for about a year, and then I got cable with a DVR and things suddenly worked again.)
I wouldn't necessarily say 'socialization' has anything to do with it, though.
"There are many people out there doing scientific studies of human behavior. They're working against thousands of years of assumptions, some right, some wrong. It's going to take some time."
Those are your own words. That's the long way of saying, "They're guessing."
The physicists have progressed beyond that. By your own admission, psychologists haven't.
I repeat: Psychologists haven't figured it out yet. They are just guessing. Best-guesses, but still guesses.
I think it's more important to note how long they were expected to last, and how long they actually lasted. From 90 days to 5 years is ... Extraordinary. Did the others perform as well?
More importantly: http://www.spamcop.net/spamgraph.shtml?spamweek
This shows the difference between today and the rest of the last week. The month version looks largely the same... Spikes every day until today, which is low.
You want them to use bugzilla to share documentation? Seriously? Or do you want them to use bugzilla to report bugs, and an entirely different application to share the documents? Either way, your way is a lot harder than theirs.
I've seen plenty of second-hand goods that are indistinguishable from first-hand goods, including cars and houses. In addition, games aren't necessarily as good second-hand. Wear and tear on the box, scratches on the disk, fewer online players for online games... They line up pretty good with other goods on how they age.
Since... Oh, since they've been making it. Every gamer I know knows what DLC is.
Here, I'll help you out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLC
It's the first one.
I agree. At $20, I'd probably stop renting and just buy every game I wanted. I'd spend more per month, but I'd have a library of games afterwards that I can play with no hassles. I certainly wouldn't be buying used games, not even for $5.
But then, at $20, the profit for GameStop would likely be even closer to nil than it already is. GS makes their money on used games. That means that without them, GameStop wouldn't exist... And it would be that much harder to buy games from a decent store. I absolutely abhor the electronics and games policies of Walmart, KMart, Target, etc. Enough that I just refuse to shop there. Amazon's pre-order system is ass, too. I tried it.
But then, if there's no profit in it, why would Walmart/etc bother selling them, either? It seems to me that it would get ugly quick.
I think the obviously thing to do for the game developers would be to just accept that the market is the way it is and not try to screw over their customers. Gamers are already pissed about the DLC that's actually -on- the disc, but you have to go online and pay for it to access it. If they had to pay extra just to complete the game, they'd blow their lid. I'd certainly never buy from that company again without full reviews, including what's needed to complete the game. At that point, the game has lost so much of its mystery that I probably wouldn't be interested anyhow.
You'd have to pick your control group very carefully for this. It'd have to be someone that didn't change DST -and- has the same local environment.
For instance: Comparing Indiana with Michigan is bad because there are more car enthusiasts in Michigan due to the factories there. This means there are probably more people with electric cars. Also, the cities in Michigan tend to be bigger, meaning electric cars are more useful there, and there would be more because of that, too.
That's just the first example that came to mind. It might not even be a valid example, but it shows that you can't just pick 2 states and pray they are similar enough to compare them.
And you can't just compare to last year because technology increases at an unsteady rate.
While LBP doesn't -technically- meet the non-violent requirement, the 'violence' is limited to hitting a purple bubble on a moving 'enemy'. The majority (95+%) of the game is getting through the level by triggering switches or running and jumping.
In addition, you can make your own levels and share them with others, or play levels made by others. Some are already quite interesting. I even found a Film Noir one, The Case of the Crying Sackgirl. It needed a little work, but it was worth playing through.
I'm a little slower about it. The second time I have to write code, I take a serious look at it and decide whether I will ever use it again. If I get to a third time, I refactor.
There are exceptions to this... Notably, code that's very hard to refactor because each version needs some edge case. (Actually, thinking about that, I can see ways to refactor some of that code now... I sense work in my future.)
Oh, and before anyone says "You wouldn't really do that," I really did have a boss who would do things like this. The answer was to show him that he was wasting your time and his money. The few times that didn't work, the answer was to make it clear that you didn't like wasting your time, and you realize it might be better spent elsewhere. I believe I worked there about 6 different times while looking for another job. He always called me back (with a raise) because he couldn't find anyone else who was competent.
I actually stopped working there finally because the last raise I demanded was in excess of what the business could support. I knew that at the time, but he had insulted me pretty good on the last round.
I disagree. They aren't irrelevant. Without him, they -would- have to go back to doing it all by hand. He keeps it running. With what he's been asked, it's just as valid to calculate it that was as any other. (I'm assuming he isn't overpaid. If he is, well... he's in trouble.)
Personally, my attitude would be: So you want me to stop being productive and start doing accounting work that I'm not qualified for? If they said yes, I'd start looking for another job. It's obvious big changes are afoot, and the job will like suck quite a bit more afterwards.
Netflix actually just went to Silverlight instead of ActiveX, and works on IE/FF for Windows, and Safari/FF on OSX... So it's probably a bad example.
I can't actually think of any other websites I visit that require IE any more... Netflix was the last for me.
2500, I think you mean. If it died in less than a year, I'd be upset. 10 years is a lot better.
Wait, you don't ask questions of the customer before you start designing? You just take whatever they give, ask -no- questions, and plan it all out? THEN you go back and ask the customer if that's what they wanted?
That would be a nightmare.
Nothing will stop the customer from changing their mind about what they want, but getting enough information ahead of the planning stage will save you a world of hassle later.
I'll add my own anecdotal evidence, too. I've long said that I'm a good coder because I'm lazy. I absolutely abhor doing something over and over, so I'll make sure I can reuse as much as possible when coding, and automate as much as possible when doing system stuff. When one of my fellow employees quit, I took the majority of his work and turned into Perl scripts. Literally. What used to take him hours each day now takes minutes... And because I've made it so easy, others can do it as well.
Programmed correctly, it's easy to take someone's vote and mark their account 'voted' and not actually link the vote to their account specifically. Yes, it's possible to modify that code and not tell anyone, but they could also fingerprint that piece of paper I turned in and have the info as well.
They are always long, but this year is a record turnout. Maybe it's the internet, maybe it's the choice (or lack thereof) of candidates, but there are definitely more people voting this year than ever before. In fact, 3 people in my family are voting for the first time this year out of 4. (I think the other isn't voting at all, as usual.)
Personally, I'm voting because I wish I'd voted in the last election. 4 years of 'Oh man, I should have voted' are enough for me. My parents are voting because they want to make sure a particular candidate is elected. It all ends up the same.
The line at my center was already about 20 minutes long when I got there 5 minutes before they opened. It slimmed down to about 10 minutes after about half an hour, though. It will probably pick up worse later. The early voting centers in my area were swamped, though. They each served a much wider area, and everyone was trying to avoid the rush on election day.
Personally, I think they need to work on a way I can vote from the privacy of my own home. In this day and age, there's no reason I should have to physically go somewhere and have someone inexpertly check that I am me and haven't voted already. Someday, maybe the government will catch up to civilian technology.
I keep saying, "If my vote counts, I'll vote for who I want to be President. If it doesn't, I won't vote at all" every time someone tells me that I'm throwing away my vote. If more people would vote this way, we could fix the system instead of prolonging this idiocy.
I've always said, "The best thing that ever happened to me was my father's belt." I was a bored little smartass punk in elementary school. This let to misbehavior all the time, with teacher-given paddlings. Eventually my father got wind of it and used the belt. I got -one- paddling after that in 8th grade over something that was being done by half the class at the time.
I've now got a healthy respect for authority. Not blind obedience, mind... Just respect.
Like all things, if done to excess, punishment is bad for you. But handled properly, it will be the correction that's needed when "Oh honey, you shouldn't do that" fails.
I was very sad the day that schools stopped paddling. I knew it was a bad move. I see that it was just the first of many.
System requirements clearly state IE6 or FF2+. There's no theory about it.
http://www.netflix.com/WiMessage?msg=51
"Think about it. Wouldn't you claim that your account was incorrectly debited $500 from an ATM transaction that you didn't make if you could get away with it? Sure you would. So would everyone else in your city."
No. Not everyone would. I will agree that a majority would, but not all. I, personally, would not. I don't need money so bad that I'm willing to go against my own ethics.
I disagree. I think cyberdemons would be very interested in environmental and economic policies. It might be the exact wrong kind of interest, but then, how could we tell the difference between them and the current government when it comes to that?