Assuming the 1 million figure is even actually valid, that's still only 16 people going for each job, with one getting each job, and of course 15 not.
Fundamentally though, my point is that the jobs are there, it's just up to people to get them- I wont pretend that everyone is employable though, that's certainly not what I was suggesting, but ultimately whether you are employable or not is something that's down to you as an individual, and is something you can change.
In the UK after many of the mines shut down in the 70s and 80s there were two camps of ex-miners, there were those who simply took it upon themselves to retrain and went on to do just fine even after the mines, and there were those with an attitude that they were entitled to a mining job for life, and whilst they went for other jobs to satisfy requirements for benefits and charity they were never going to get them because they had the wrong attitude.
The point is this, it's not that the jobs aren't there, it's that the only reason you'll remain unemployed and wont get them is if you simply do not have the right attitude to job hunting, and to preparing yourself to get a particular job. The fact McDonalds had more people apply than there are jobs is largely irrelevant, as those who didn't get McDonalds jobs could equally have been turned away from other firms too- that is, even if McDonalds had 1 million jobs going, they wouldn't have employed all those people regardless because many of them really would still not be fit for the job, and this is not an issue of can't get a job for those people, beyond the fact they only have themselves to blame. I don't disagree that in times of recession the bar is often raised as to how competent and individual you have to be to get a job, but nevertheless no one has some inherent issue preventing them rising above that bar yet many still fail to do so.
Unless you can show that each of those 938,000 who didn't get a job at McDonalds, also didn't get a job elsewhere, and yet were all of an employable mindset in the first place, then it's largely irrelevant how many people did and didn't get a job at one company. If you are a proactive individual willing to do the preparation before an interview and spend your spare time reskilling if need be, and possibly even commute or relocate, then there is no reason you should be unemployed. If you are not such an individual then you cannot expect those who are to subsidise you. That is my fundamental point.
As an illustration of the point, Canada only some months back was mentioned as a country that truly does now have more job openings than workers, yet it's still got over 7% unemployment rate, clearly there's always going to be a good proportion of the population who are unemployable, and it's only them that can help themselves. One final point I'll make is that I even sympathise that when you lose your job that can in itself be a massive demotivating kick in the teeth that will make it hard for you to get back on your feet, I do sympathise very much with that situation, but ultimately it is a problem only they can solve, and taxing the better off because they have not, or sometimes will not solve that problem is absolutely not the solution, as it only bolsters their view that there's no point trying to make themselves employable.
So yes there will always be some people who are unemployed, I don't dispute that, all I dispute is simply the idea that the solution lies with anyone but themselves so the only help that should be given to such people is help to help themselves, not subsidy for things like entertainment and the likes.
It's mostly games that aren't first party that are the problem on Steam, Dawn of War II for example was £30 on Steam for over a year after it was discounted to around £15 in bricks and mortar stores and at places like Amazon. Even now after a quick check the gold edition with the first expansion is £10 on Amazon, and £20 on Steam + £20 for the expansion- this seems a general trend with many of Steam's retail games vs. bricks and mortar stores, at least here in the UK. It's rarely ever cheap, often very expensive unless what you want happens to be in a particular sale.
I wont disagree it's good for old games you can't get anywhere else, and for indie titles however, absolutely it's great they've built a distribution system that's willing to cater to such content.
Blah blah, you know what I meant, McDonalds is one of thousands of restaurants, then as I said, there's all the supermarket jobs, warehouse jobs etc. too. Fact is the jobs are out there, whether people want to take such jobs or not is a different story.
Sorry, are you implying I'm a libertarian? did you really also suggest I work in tech support? You know I'm just the right age to have jumped on the IT sector in it's infancy? You know the guy I responded to is a "kid"?
I find it quite scary that someone who supposedly has a doctorate would not understand the basic principle that you cannot build a reasonable argument on so much speculation. The conclusions you jumped to are mostly absurd and nonsensical because you simply cannot extrapolate my political leanings, my age, and my job from so little information, nor is it particularly likely that someone with a 6 figure UID is still in anyway classed as a "kid". If you stick to the facts in future you may make a little more sense, if you want to know my political leanings, age, or job then feel free to ask. If I similarly take a stab at things based on your post I could guess that you're actually a fairly low paid person who doesn't really have a doctorate and is in fact quite young and naive- go on, really, how close did I get? Not very? There's a suprise.
FWIW, I'm from the UK and very much agree that the have-nots of society do deserve some subsidy, and I'm a big fan of our NHS, as such I'm probably far more "socialist" that 90% of Americans ever will be. Because however I have been brought up in a fairly socialist swaying nation I also recognise the problems of socialism and have seen plenty of examples of it going too far. I wouldn't deny medical care, police protection, food, or shelter on anyone and am quite content paying taxes into social programmes for such things, and with such high tax rates in the UK I think I pay my fair share. But making luxury products more expensive for the better off and cheaper for the less well off so they can all equally afford them? That isn't socialism, that's effectively just communism dressed up as capitalism and is absolutely just a step too far.
Steam has nothing to do with reasonable pricing, if it was, they wouldn't have given foreign currencies a massive price hike by moving away from USD pricing globally, nor would they have higher prices than classic bricks and mortar stores often have for the same product. Steam brings convenience and a unified way of managing your games and friends list, and that's pretty much it.
"Credit protection works only in the US because in most other places, people are immune to such problems. Rather than taking the point that credit protection is US only to mean that Sony is attacking the rest of the world, you should be noting that no one else needing credit protection indicates that the banks in the US have waged a war against their customers and won. In the US, you have to protect yourself against the banks libeling you and blaming you for letting them do it. But the rest of the world doesn't have that problem..."
This is wrong, you clearly state things don't work this way in most other countries, that is completely and utterly wrong. You were wrong, end of, get over it.
Right, so if a student is too lazy to get a job I should pay a greater proportion of my recompense for having spent years working extremely hard to pay for his entertainment?
There's no "can't" get a job, there's ALWAYS McDonalds, Wal-Mart jobs and the like, if a student doesn't want to get one because they think they're better than that then tough fucking shit, they do without.
I worked full time hours whilst doing my degree and came out of university completely debt free, it's not my fault if others are too lazy to do the same, I'm not paying more to subsidise them because they're lazy, else I might as well stop working hard, and start being lazy myself so I can get entertainment subsidised by everyone else too. I don't think that'll work when everyone else does the same because there's no longer any point working hard in the first place because the lazy get all the perks of the hard working, but without having to put in any of the effort.
Make no mistake, if games go up for me personally, I'll just resort to piracy, and there wont be any money for subsidised games for the lazy anyway.
Your original assertion was that it's not like this anywhere else in the world.
It's like this pretty much everywhere in the world, don't try and twist the argument to suit your mistake, just accept that you were wrong, it's easier for everyone.
Would they even care if it was true? Osama sent someone to find him a wife, and he wanted them to be around 16 years old, they came back with a 17 year old which isn't so bad, but let's face it, someone in his 50s asking for a 16 year old wife? It's quite obvious he was a dirty old man from that alone, but judging by various stories over the years of rape of young girls (and boys for that matter) by the Taliban I don't think it's something they'd be that ashamed about, they have a belief that they can do what they want with women anyway, so why would porn phase them? I think amongst the Taliban/Al Qaeda group rape and so forth are deemed pretty acceptable so I doubt they have much of a problem with porn.
Sorry but you're simply wrong. It's just the same here in the UK, and it's just the same pretty much anywhere in the world.
I'm not really a fan of the US anymore if I'm honest, but in this case it's certainly not something that can be lumped as a problem merely with the US.
"As an aside I've always wondered about the hardware and OS requirements for major MMO server software. Perhaps they can't release it because the hardware and environment requirements are so specific that the average Joe simply couldn't get a server running if they wanted to..."
That's rarely, if ever the case. Dark Age of Camelot for example ran on plain old commodity hardware and used MySQL for it's persistent storage, there's an article somewhere on the net about it, probably at Gamasutra I believe. There was an anecdote from Mythic, the company that ran it, that at one point they even used a plain old desktop PC to run part of it because they didn't have anything else lying around and because it did the trick.
Whilst I don't disagree with you about the problem, you seem to naively believe that only Microsoft partake in this.
It was only a few weeks ago we had two stories about Samsung in as many days that turned out complete and utter bullshit, just at the same time Samsung's phones and tablet was stealing a fair bit of the limelight from Apple at last. We regularly get feel stories about how Apple gave a free iPad to a guy whose wife told him to take it back, or how an iPhone survived a fall out a plane, or saved little Timmy who fell down a well or whatever without there ever seeming to be any evidence these things really did actually happen in most cases, and where there is evidence it seems weak.
Make no mistake, this is likely almost industry standard practice to spread FUD about the competition and try and get feel good stories about your own products out there. Facebook, Microsoft, Apple are quite blatant offenders to name a few but I have no doubt it stretches far beyond just those three as even they become victim of such stories sometimes, sometimes simply because it's warranted, other times perhaps not so, and it's quite possible there's some funding behind those stories too.
I'd say something about just ignoring FUD and making your own mind up with various products out there, but that message is probably already in the minds of those capable of thinking for themselves anyway whilst it'll still be lost on the fanboys and likely your average Joe in the street who read in the Daily Mail about how Blackberrys kill your puppy or whatever.
But this is really a fault of coders, in this respect they're their own worst enemy.
If you implement one of the various decent Agile methodologies like Scrum then this is precisely what happens, when done right, with a team full of developers capable of being rather introspective and accepting where things went wrong then they really can learn off each other and their mistakes particularly at each retrospective stage.
Get a good Scrum with say a couple of really good programmers, then a few not so good programmers and over time the standard of the weaker programmers get pulled up towards that of the good programmers in terms of ability. The problem is all too many developers are so up their own arses they're just not willing to accept there are things they can do to improve, even those who are actually quite shit.
The attitude is rife, you only have to look at Slashdot for the blatant fanboyism on different topics that flows through to their jobs, and I have seen many programmers like this, there is a suggestion that perhaps the tool or methodology they've been using for the last 10 years isn't the best for the particular task at hand, but no, they just can't cope with that concept, the tool or concept they've always used is clearly the best thing in the entire universe and perfect for doing everything ever.
Ultimately the problem is a recruitment issue, and whilst I disagree that there is a shortage of developers in general, I think there's an absolutely crippling shortage of competent developers, who may not be the best initially, but at least have the mindset required to learn, to improve, and to consider other ways of doing things.
Generic drivers for webcams? Webcams are far from all the same, it's not something you can reliably do generically.
The new slim 360 supports standard SATA hard drives just like the PS3, or you can use USB storage, and no, there's no size limit.
It is worth pointing out that it was Sony's allowance of generic USB support beyond things like storage devices that ended up as the vector that completely and utterly destroyed every semblance of security. Whilst the XBox has been hacked to allow pirated games, Microsoft has at least kept it's live service rather secure in that the few cheats that do make it onto Live are eliminated extremely quickly, whilst it's now technically impossible for Sony to be certain as to whether people are cheating or not due to the fact their root keys have been leaked meaning people can cheat without detection- something that still to date isn't possible on XBL where even if you do manage to cheat, you'll get caught and banned permanently.
This is the price I was referring to of allowing too much openness on a closed gaming platform, it's the cost of it all, and in Microsoft's favour limiting the products people can use has helped them keep the platform much more secure.
Your final paragraph is rather odd though, the XBox is unnecessarily expensive as a platform because of bespoke addons, yet people who buy it buy it because they couldn't afford a PS3? It sounds like you're suggesting that sure the XBox might be a rip off in some areas, but the PS3 is clearly even more so when it's proven no more capable as a gaming system.
Maybe they're just going to integrate it wih their Live platform- XBL, Windows Messenger, WP7 and so forth? Skype would seem a reasonable choice in this respect because it's proven to work across a lot of different hardware and software platforms, so Microsoft should be able to integrate it well allowing you to integrate your communications platform across all your Microsoft devices better than their current offering - Messenger - allows.
Of course as you say it's an expensive buy, so there must be more to it than that because Microsoft could easily develop similar for far less than $8.5bn, so as you mention the existing userbase is probably a major part of it.
My bet is they'll just try and take the best bits of Skype to link up their existing communication offerings and bring them together better and try and merge the existing Skype userbase into the Microsoft ecosystem in the process.
How well that goes is anyone's guess, but those types of integrations I don't think have ever historically gone very well.
Yes using either Kinect or the older Live Vision Camera.
"I assume that MS would charge you for a special Xbox webcam rather than just letting you use any peripherals you want"
Well what are they supposed to do? Spend an absolute fortune providing device drivers for cameras they haven't made and don't make any profit from? Allow an option to install drivers which creates a massive potential for security vulnerabilities on their platform? Both devices are well understood and use standard USB so there's no reason other firms can't create XBox compatible hardware themselves in this respect if they choose, but they don't because it wouldn't be profitable, Microsoft is years ahead on R&D and production with Kinect and the Live Vision camera probably just doesn't make any sales anymore.
I've noticed that with the 2100 cards only, but if you buy points directly via Live then you pick denominations that are much more easily divisible, the highest option being 6000 into which values like 1200, 800 and 400 fit quite well.
As I say I don't disagree that those things can happen, just that in 5 years they haven't, which is a pretty decent track record.
I don't find it too hard understanding how much I'm paying for things with Microsoft points, you know how much you bought them for in your local currency, and with fixed price points on most things you buy like XBLA games of 400, 800 and 1200 points it's not hard to divide up your points and get a rough idea of how much you're paying although I fully accept some people aren't savvy enough to do that.
I know they can be, but quite often they're not, and rarely are they ever to a fair extent and that's the fundamental point. At current exchange rates you're still paying â0.10 euros more per app than Americans, when the dollar was even weaker and the euro stronger that was exagerated even more greatly. My point is that historically Microsoft has been very very good at minimising exchange rate differences using Microsoft points- more so than stores that just change currencies to suit, which, for some god unknown reason seem to take the opportunity to charge the tax difference and then a whole bunch more on top to boot. Microsoft for all their other faults, have generally done a very good job of avoiding this problem with MS points, and have been pretty good in ensuring people get as fair a deal across the globe as possible.
The issue isn't of currency variations in themselves, it's about how far companies go in abusing currency variations for charging higher regional pricing. Or in other words, thus far, Microsoft have been very good at using Microsoft points to provide a much fairer reflection of real differences in exchange rates, something companies who charge real currency values to date simply have not- Apple with iTunes included where Apple was even ruled against over the issue with the gross disparity between GBP and Euro pricing at one point.
Yes, we've been through this whole Microsoft points thing here previously about 10 times, and as I pointed out then the cost of Microsoft points means purchases made in currencies such as the British pound are, depending on exchange rates, sometimes even better than the US pricing, but generally fairly close.
This is far better than online stores that use real money and charge the same numeric value in pounds as they do dollars which can be a 60% or more hike in price for those of us in the UK.
Whatever you think of Microsoft, and whatever conspiracy theory people have for Microsoft points, what can't be denied is that Microsoft points have generally offered much closer parity in global pricing than real currency purchase options have for online transactions from the likes of Steam, and iTunes et al. When Steam removed the option to buy games in US dollars for people here in the UK for example, it amounted to a massive price hike, to the point of in some cases even doubling the price of things.
Personally I'll vote with my wallet, and sure if Microsoft points become a rip off I wont bother with them, but until then they're still a far better deal than most other offerings out there.
Yet they've still some degree of success in illustrating some important online causes, and have had some pretty good successes in dealing with bad people, and bad companies.
Which is far more than you'll ever achieve whinging about them on Slashdot at least.
On the contrary, I agree that fixing the problem is extremely hard. Once you've made this big a fuckup I completely agree that cleaning up is a major headache.
What is relatively easy is, as I said, making sure things don't go this badly wrong in the first place. Sony clearly have no way to tell when security was breached on different systems, and what was breached, hence why it took them so long to find the deeper intrusion, and hence why the cleanup now is so difficult, because literally everything has to be checked because they simply had no way of knowing what was clean which they should have.
The problem isn't what's going on now, as I quite clearly said, it's that Sony wasn't doing things right before, and that is why I wouldn't go and work somewhere like Sony because when you have that level of incompetence in management it's infuriating for those who want to do it right. I've no doubt Sony has some good staff in exactly this situation who did warn of the issues, but that incompetent management got in their way- I say this because I've seen it before first hand, and I got out of such companies ASAP. This is also precisely why I can comment on this, because I develop distributed systems for a living and currently work somewhere where we can and do do things right, such that we don't have to deal with such horrendous fuckups. I dare say this is also why other Slashdot commenters say the same- because unlike you they're talking from actual cold hard experience.
If you're attacking those who say the cleanup is difficult then I agree with you, I think it probably is, but this does not absolve Sony of blame- it's only difficult because they didn't have the policies and procedures in place and in action to prevent this being so difficult. The news said this morning Sony wont have things up and running until the end of the month now- that stinks of a systemic lack of security procedures, a systemic lack of auditing, and a lack of disaster recovery plan from the outset- my point isn't that things are easy to restore for them now, it's that things WOULD be easy to restore for them now if they'd done it right, and done it competently in the first place. Sony isn't the first and wont be the last to get themselves in this situation- GOA and Valve are two examples that went through exactly the same beforehand again, through sheer incompetence, but they are in this situation and they can be forgiven for the hack, but the fuckup of a recovery is a problem of their own creation.
I agree, many games always have and still do have mod tools built into them.
The problem is the learning curve has drastically steepened, back then anyone could pick up the tools with a little bit of effort, now it takes a much bigger investment in time to learn and be able to produce something, and just as AAA development costs have increased the burden on modders has increased- you now need bigger mod teams than ever before and historically it was often difficult enough to find even 5 trustworthy people for a TC, let alone 50.
Except many people are extremely nervous in interviews, and wont possibly be able to show off their ability under such conditions.
A better option is to alert candidates that you will be e-mailing them a problem a day or two, or even a week (depending on the size of the problem you want to set) before the interview and to come with a solution and that they will need to explain the solution they came up with. It's not perfect but at least then they can work in an environment they're comfortable and show you their best work. I've seen some very very good developers struggle to solve problems in situations where they're that nervous, and it's not the same as working under pressure due to time constraints either so doesn't demonstrate an ability to work under pressure even.
The problem with throwing out a problem in the interview is you either make it so simple to cater to the fact people are nervous such that it wont be of any value anyway, or you make it hard and risk losing some of the better applicants who simply aren't comfortable in interview situations. Doing the problem outside the interview I've found to be very effective- you'd be suprised how many decide to pull out because they know they couldn't solve it, and if someone solved it for them they couldn't blag an explanation in the interview.
I do a two stage interview, which I make candidates aware of before they come for the first one. The first interview I do in a very informal manner, sat on comfy sofa chairs, and really just try to get to know the candidates, make them feel at ease, but importantly try and sell the job to them, and it is here I give them the problem and then a week later they come for the second interview with their solution which they explain through.
I feel when I've done my job well- making them want the job by making them feel at ease with me as an interviewer and selling the job to them, then those that then really like the role and company come forward with some really excellent problem solutions, and those who don't want the job or really can't do the job and were hoping for an easy ride don't waste my time or theirs further after the first interview. It's effective so far, and since we moved from traditional single formal interviews I've found it far easier to pull in really really high quality candidates.
Perhaps because he wasn't actually a "star programmer"?
Let's be honest, any programmer worth their salt can do network administration without having to ask Slashdot where to start. The process of becoming a good programmer in itself involves knowing where to look to find things out, an ability one could not have if they have to ask slashdot and wait on the question to be published then rummage for a reply that actually helps through the comments.
I think realistically what we have here is a bodge job billy, who didn't really know what the fuck he was doing with software development, and so figured he'd try his hand at networking, something he also clearly knows not the slightest fuck about.
For what it's worth I personally did system/network admin and then moved into software development, if you have to ask for help to move in the other direction you are not a "star" programmer.
Knowing what something is is different from knowing someone has it, or knowing how to create it.
If you saw someone teleport star trek style across the room right now after walking into a transparent cubicle then turning up in another one you'd really say "Oh, that's hardly top-secret technology, because I know what it is, it's a teleporter!".
A lot of this stuff was seen on past projects like the RAH-66 Comanche, but just because people have seen these sorts of things before doesn't mean we realised it was actually workable or in production. The Comanche was cancelled due to cost overruns related to precisely this type of technology, so it's not suprising that people are suprised to see that yes, actually this sort of tech was kept in production with some hidden budget, and yes they did seemingly get it to a working state after all.
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming the 1 million figure is even actually valid, that's still only 16 people going for each job, with one getting each job, and of course 15 not.
Fundamentally though, my point is that the jobs are there, it's just up to people to get them- I wont pretend that everyone is employable though, that's certainly not what I was suggesting, but ultimately whether you are employable or not is something that's down to you as an individual, and is something you can change.
In the UK after many of the mines shut down in the 70s and 80s there were two camps of ex-miners, there were those who simply took it upon themselves to retrain and went on to do just fine even after the mines, and there were those with an attitude that they were entitled to a mining job for life, and whilst they went for other jobs to satisfy requirements for benefits and charity they were never going to get them because they had the wrong attitude.
The point is this, it's not that the jobs aren't there, it's that the only reason you'll remain unemployed and wont get them is if you simply do not have the right attitude to job hunting, and to preparing yourself to get a particular job. The fact McDonalds had more people apply than there are jobs is largely irrelevant, as those who didn't get McDonalds jobs could equally have been turned away from other firms too- that is, even if McDonalds had 1 million jobs going, they wouldn't have employed all those people regardless because many of them really would still not be fit for the job, and this is not an issue of can't get a job for those people, beyond the fact they only have themselves to blame. I don't disagree that in times of recession the bar is often raised as to how competent and individual you have to be to get a job, but nevertheless no one has some inherent issue preventing them rising above that bar yet many still fail to do so.
Unless you can show that each of those 938,000 who didn't get a job at McDonalds, also didn't get a job elsewhere, and yet were all of an employable mindset in the first place, then it's largely irrelevant how many people did and didn't get a job at one company. If you are a proactive individual willing to do the preparation before an interview and spend your spare time reskilling if need be, and possibly even commute or relocate, then there is no reason you should be unemployed. If you are not such an individual then you cannot expect those who are to subsidise you. That is my fundamental point.
As an illustration of the point, Canada only some months back was mentioned as a country that truly does now have more job openings than workers, yet it's still got over 7% unemployment rate, clearly there's always going to be a good proportion of the population who are unemployable, and it's only them that can help themselves. One final point I'll make is that I even sympathise that when you lose your job that can in itself be a massive demotivating kick in the teeth that will make it hard for you to get back on your feet, I do sympathise very much with that situation, but ultimately it is a problem only they can solve, and taxing the better off because they have not, or sometimes will not solve that problem is absolutely not the solution, as it only bolsters their view that there's no point trying to make themselves employable.
So yes there will always be some people who are unemployed, I don't dispute that, all I dispute is simply the idea that the solution lies with anyone but themselves so the only help that should be given to such people is help to help themselves, not subsidy for things like entertainment and the likes.
It's mostly games that aren't first party that are the problem on Steam, Dawn of War II for example was £30 on Steam for over a year after it was discounted to around £15 in bricks and mortar stores and at places like Amazon. Even now after a quick check the gold edition with the first expansion is £10 on Amazon, and £20 on Steam + £20 for the expansion- this seems a general trend with many of Steam's retail games vs. bricks and mortar stores, at least here in the UK. It's rarely ever cheap, often very expensive unless what you want happens to be in a particular sale.
I wont disagree it's good for old games you can't get anywhere else, and for indie titles however, absolutely it's great they've built a distribution system that's willing to cater to such content.
Blah blah, you know what I meant, McDonalds is one of thousands of restaurants, then as I said, there's all the supermarket jobs, warehouse jobs etc. too. Fact is the jobs are out there, whether people want to take such jobs or not is a different story.
Sorry, are you implying I'm a libertarian? did you really also suggest I work in tech support? You know I'm just the right age to have jumped on the IT sector in it's infancy? You know the guy I responded to is a "kid"?
I find it quite scary that someone who supposedly has a doctorate would not understand the basic principle that you cannot build a reasonable argument on so much speculation. The conclusions you jumped to are mostly absurd and nonsensical because you simply cannot extrapolate my political leanings, my age, and my job from so little information, nor is it particularly likely that someone with a 6 figure UID is still in anyway classed as a "kid". If you stick to the facts in future you may make a little more sense, if you want to know my political leanings, age, or job then feel free to ask. If I similarly take a stab at things based on your post I could guess that you're actually a fairly low paid person who doesn't really have a doctorate and is in fact quite young and naive- go on, really, how close did I get? Not very? There's a suprise.
FWIW, I'm from the UK and very much agree that the have-nots of society do deserve some subsidy, and I'm a big fan of our NHS, as such I'm probably far more "socialist" that 90% of Americans ever will be. Because however I have been brought up in a fairly socialist swaying nation I also recognise the problems of socialism and have seen plenty of examples of it going too far. I wouldn't deny medical care, police protection, food, or shelter on anyone and am quite content paying taxes into social programmes for such things, and with such high tax rates in the UK I think I pay my fair share. But making luxury products more expensive for the better off and cheaper for the less well off so they can all equally afford them? That isn't socialism, that's effectively just communism dressed up as capitalism and is absolutely just a step too far.
Steam has nothing to do with reasonable pricing, if it was, they wouldn't have given foreign currencies a massive price hike by moving away from USD pricing globally, nor would they have higher prices than classic bricks and mortar stores often have for the same product. Steam brings convenience and a unified way of managing your games and friends list, and that's pretty much it.
This is what you said:
"Credit protection works only in the US because in most other places, people are immune to such problems. Rather than taking the point that credit protection is US only to mean that Sony is attacking the rest of the world, you should be noting that no one else needing credit protection indicates that the banks in the US have waged a war against their customers and won. In the US, you have to protect yourself against the banks libeling you and blaming you for letting them do it. But the rest of the world doesn't have that problem..."
This is wrong, you clearly state things don't work this way in most other countries, that is completely and utterly wrong. You were wrong, end of, get over it.
Right, so if a student is too lazy to get a job I should pay a greater proportion of my recompense for having spent years working extremely hard to pay for his entertainment?
There's no "can't" get a job, there's ALWAYS McDonalds, Wal-Mart jobs and the like, if a student doesn't want to get one because they think they're better than that then tough fucking shit, they do without.
I worked full time hours whilst doing my degree and came out of university completely debt free, it's not my fault if others are too lazy to do the same, I'm not paying more to subsidise them because they're lazy, else I might as well stop working hard, and start being lazy myself so I can get entertainment subsidised by everyone else too. I don't think that'll work when everyone else does the same because there's no longer any point working hard in the first place because the lazy get all the perks of the hard working, but without having to put in any of the effort.
Make no mistake, if games go up for me personally, I'll just resort to piracy, and there wont be any money for subsidised games for the lazy anyway.
Your original assertion was that it's not like this anywhere else in the world.
It's like this pretty much everywhere in the world, don't try and twist the argument to suit your mistake, just accept that you were wrong, it's easier for everyone.
Would they even care if it was true? Osama sent someone to find him a wife, and he wanted them to be around 16 years old, they came back with a 17 year old which isn't so bad, but let's face it, someone in his 50s asking for a 16 year old wife? It's quite obvious he was a dirty old man from that alone, but judging by various stories over the years of rape of young girls (and boys for that matter) by the Taliban I don't think it's something they'd be that ashamed about, they have a belief that they can do what they want with women anyway, so why would porn phase them? I think amongst the Taliban/Al Qaeda group rape and so forth are deemed pretty acceptable so I doubt they have much of a problem with porn.
Sorry but you're simply wrong. It's just the same here in the UK, and it's just the same pretty much anywhere in the world.
I'm not really a fan of the US anymore if I'm honest, but in this case it's certainly not something that can be lumped as a problem merely with the US.
"As an aside I've always wondered about the hardware and OS requirements for major MMO server software. Perhaps they can't release it because the hardware and environment requirements are so specific that the average Joe simply couldn't get a server running if they wanted to..."
That's rarely, if ever the case. Dark Age of Camelot for example ran on plain old commodity hardware and used MySQL for it's persistent storage, there's an article somewhere on the net about it, probably at Gamasutra I believe. There was an anecdote from Mythic, the company that ran it, that at one point they even used a plain old desktop PC to run part of it because they didn't have anything else lying around and because it did the trick.
Whilst I don't disagree with you about the problem, you seem to naively believe that only Microsoft partake in this.
It was only a few weeks ago we had two stories about Samsung in as many days that turned out complete and utter bullshit, just at the same time Samsung's phones and tablet was stealing a fair bit of the limelight from Apple at last. We regularly get feel stories about how Apple gave a free iPad to a guy whose wife told him to take it back, or how an iPhone survived a fall out a plane, or saved little Timmy who fell down a well or whatever without there ever seeming to be any evidence these things really did actually happen in most cases, and where there is evidence it seems weak.
Make no mistake, this is likely almost industry standard practice to spread FUD about the competition and try and get feel good stories about your own products out there. Facebook, Microsoft, Apple are quite blatant offenders to name a few but I have no doubt it stretches far beyond just those three as even they become victim of such stories sometimes, sometimes simply because it's warranted, other times perhaps not so, and it's quite possible there's some funding behind those stories too.
I'd say something about just ignoring FUD and making your own mind up with various products out there, but that message is probably already in the minds of those capable of thinking for themselves anyway whilst it'll still be lost on the fanboys and likely your average Joe in the street who read in the Daily Mail about how Blackberrys kill your puppy or whatever.
But this is really a fault of coders, in this respect they're their own worst enemy.
If you implement one of the various decent Agile methodologies like Scrum then this is precisely what happens, when done right, with a team full of developers capable of being rather introspective and accepting where things went wrong then they really can learn off each other and their mistakes particularly at each retrospective stage.
Get a good Scrum with say a couple of really good programmers, then a few not so good programmers and over time the standard of the weaker programmers get pulled up towards that of the good programmers in terms of ability. The problem is all too many developers are so up their own arses they're just not willing to accept there are things they can do to improve, even those who are actually quite shit.
The attitude is rife, you only have to look at Slashdot for the blatant fanboyism on different topics that flows through to their jobs, and I have seen many programmers like this, there is a suggestion that perhaps the tool or methodology they've been using for the last 10 years isn't the best for the particular task at hand, but no, they just can't cope with that concept, the tool or concept they've always used is clearly the best thing in the entire universe and perfect for doing everything ever.
Ultimately the problem is a recruitment issue, and whilst I disagree that there is a shortage of developers in general, I think there's an absolutely crippling shortage of competent developers, who may not be the best initially, but at least have the mindset required to learn, to improve, and to consider other ways of doing things.
Generic drivers for webcams? Webcams are far from all the same, it's not something you can reliably do generically.
The new slim 360 supports standard SATA hard drives just like the PS3, or you can use USB storage, and no, there's no size limit.
It is worth pointing out that it was Sony's allowance of generic USB support beyond things like storage devices that ended up as the vector that completely and utterly destroyed every semblance of security. Whilst the XBox has been hacked to allow pirated games, Microsoft has at least kept it's live service rather secure in that the few cheats that do make it onto Live are eliminated extremely quickly, whilst it's now technically impossible for Sony to be certain as to whether people are cheating or not due to the fact their root keys have been leaked meaning people can cheat without detection- something that still to date isn't possible on XBL where even if you do manage to cheat, you'll get caught and banned permanently.
This is the price I was referring to of allowing too much openness on a closed gaming platform, it's the cost of it all, and in Microsoft's favour limiting the products people can use has helped them keep the platform much more secure.
Your final paragraph is rather odd though, the XBox is unnecessarily expensive as a platform because of bespoke addons, yet people who buy it buy it because they couldn't afford a PS3? It sounds like you're suggesting that sure the XBox might be a rip off in some areas, but the PS3 is clearly even more so when it's proven no more capable as a gaming system.
Maybe they're just going to integrate it wih their Live platform- XBL, Windows Messenger, WP7 and so forth? Skype would seem a reasonable choice in this respect because it's proven to work across a lot of different hardware and software platforms, so Microsoft should be able to integrate it well allowing you to integrate your communications platform across all your Microsoft devices better than their current offering - Messenger - allows.
Of course as you say it's an expensive buy, so there must be more to it than that because Microsoft could easily develop similar for far less than $8.5bn, so as you mention the existing userbase is probably a major part of it.
My bet is they'll just try and take the best bits of Skype to link up their existing communication offerings and bring them together better and try and merge the existing Skype userbase into the Microsoft ecosystem in the process.
How well that goes is anyone's guess, but those types of integrations I don't think have ever historically gone very well.
"Can't you already do that with the Xbox?"
Yes using either Kinect or the older Live Vision Camera.
"I assume that MS would charge you for a special Xbox webcam rather than just letting you use any peripherals you want"
Well what are they supposed to do? Spend an absolute fortune providing device drivers for cameras they haven't made and don't make any profit from? Allow an option to install drivers which creates a massive potential for security vulnerabilities on their platform? Both devices are well understood and use standard USB so there's no reason other firms can't create XBox compatible hardware themselves in this respect if they choose, but they don't because it wouldn't be profitable, Microsoft is years ahead on R&D and production with Kinect and the Live Vision camera probably just doesn't make any sales anymore.
I've noticed that with the 2100 cards only, but if you buy points directly via Live then you pick denominations that are much more easily divisible, the highest option being 6000 into which values like 1200, 800 and 400 fit quite well.
As I say I don't disagree that those things can happen, just that in 5 years they haven't, which is a pretty decent track record.
I don't find it too hard understanding how much I'm paying for things with Microsoft points, you know how much you bought them for in your local currency, and with fixed price points on most things you buy like XBLA games of 400, 800 and 1200 points it's not hard to divide up your points and get a rough idea of how much you're paying although I fully accept some people aren't savvy enough to do that.
I know they can be, but quite often they're not, and rarely are they ever to a fair extent and that's the fundamental point. At current exchange rates you're still paying â0.10 euros more per app than Americans, when the dollar was even weaker and the euro stronger that was exagerated even more greatly. My point is that historically Microsoft has been very very good at minimising exchange rate differences using Microsoft points- more so than stores that just change currencies to suit, which, for some god unknown reason seem to take the opportunity to charge the tax difference and then a whole bunch more on top to boot. Microsoft for all their other faults, have generally done a very good job of avoiding this problem with MS points, and have been pretty good in ensuring people get as fair a deal across the globe as possible.
The issue isn't of currency variations in themselves, it's about how far companies go in abusing currency variations for charging higher regional pricing. Or in other words, thus far, Microsoft have been very good at using Microsoft points to provide a much fairer reflection of real differences in exchange rates, something companies who charge real currency values to date simply have not- Apple with iTunes included where Apple was even ruled against over the issue with the gross disparity between GBP and Euro pricing at one point.
Yes, we've been through this whole Microsoft points thing here previously about 10 times, and as I pointed out then the cost of Microsoft points means purchases made in currencies such as the British pound are, depending on exchange rates, sometimes even better than the US pricing, but generally fairly close.
This is far better than online stores that use real money and charge the same numeric value in pounds as they do dollars which can be a 60% or more hike in price for those of us in the UK.
Whatever you think of Microsoft, and whatever conspiracy theory people have for Microsoft points, what can't be denied is that Microsoft points have generally offered much closer parity in global pricing than real currency purchase options have for online transactions from the likes of Steam, and iTunes et al. When Steam removed the option to buy games in US dollars for people here in the UK for example, it amounted to a massive price hike, to the point of in some cases even doubling the price of things.
Personally I'll vote with my wallet, and sure if Microsoft points become a rip off I wont bother with them, but until then they're still a far better deal than most other offerings out there.
Yet they've still some degree of success in illustrating some important online causes, and have had some pretty good successes in dealing with bad people, and bad companies.
Which is far more than you'll ever achieve whinging about them on Slashdot at least.
On the contrary, I agree that fixing the problem is extremely hard. Once you've made this big a fuckup I completely agree that cleaning up is a major headache.
What is relatively easy is, as I said, making sure things don't go this badly wrong in the first place. Sony clearly have no way to tell when security was breached on different systems, and what was breached, hence why it took them so long to find the deeper intrusion, and hence why the cleanup now is so difficult, because literally everything has to be checked because they simply had no way of knowing what was clean which they should have.
The problem isn't what's going on now, as I quite clearly said, it's that Sony wasn't doing things right before, and that is why I wouldn't go and work somewhere like Sony because when you have that level of incompetence in management it's infuriating for those who want to do it right. I've no doubt Sony has some good staff in exactly this situation who did warn of the issues, but that incompetent management got in their way- I say this because I've seen it before first hand, and I got out of such companies ASAP. This is also precisely why I can comment on this, because I develop distributed systems for a living and currently work somewhere where we can and do do things right, such that we don't have to deal with such horrendous fuckups. I dare say this is also why other Slashdot commenters say the same- because unlike you they're talking from actual cold hard experience.
If you're attacking those who say the cleanup is difficult then I agree with you, I think it probably is, but this does not absolve Sony of blame- it's only difficult because they didn't have the policies and procedures in place and in action to prevent this being so difficult. The news said this morning Sony wont have things up and running until the end of the month now- that stinks of a systemic lack of security procedures, a systemic lack of auditing, and a lack of disaster recovery plan from the outset- my point isn't that things are easy to restore for them now, it's that things WOULD be easy to restore for them now if they'd done it right, and done it competently in the first place. Sony isn't the first and wont be the last to get themselves in this situation- GOA and Valve are two examples that went through exactly the same beforehand again, through sheer incompetence, but they are in this situation and they can be forgiven for the hack, but the fuckup of a recovery is a problem of their own creation.
I agree, many games always have and still do have mod tools built into them.
The problem is the learning curve has drastically steepened, back then anyone could pick up the tools with a little bit of effort, now it takes a much bigger investment in time to learn and be able to produce something, and just as AAA development costs have increased the burden on modders has increased- you now need bigger mod teams than ever before and historically it was often difficult enough to find even 5 trustworthy people for a TC, let alone 50.
Except many people are extremely nervous in interviews, and wont possibly be able to show off their ability under such conditions.
A better option is to alert candidates that you will be e-mailing them a problem a day or two, or even a week (depending on the size of the problem you want to set) before the interview and to come with a solution and that they will need to explain the solution they came up with. It's not perfect but at least then they can work in an environment they're comfortable and show you their best work. I've seen some very very good developers struggle to solve problems in situations where they're that nervous, and it's not the same as working under pressure due to time constraints either so doesn't demonstrate an ability to work under pressure even.
The problem with throwing out a problem in the interview is you either make it so simple to cater to the fact people are nervous such that it wont be of any value anyway, or you make it hard and risk losing some of the better applicants who simply aren't comfortable in interview situations. Doing the problem outside the interview I've found to be very effective- you'd be suprised how many decide to pull out because they know they couldn't solve it, and if someone solved it for them they couldn't blag an explanation in the interview.
I do a two stage interview, which I make candidates aware of before they come for the first one. The first interview I do in a very informal manner, sat on comfy sofa chairs, and really just try to get to know the candidates, make them feel at ease, but importantly try and sell the job to them, and it is here I give them the problem and then a week later they come for the second interview with their solution which they explain through.
I feel when I've done my job well- making them want the job by making them feel at ease with me as an interviewer and selling the job to them, then those that then really like the role and company come forward with some really excellent problem solutions, and those who don't want the job or really can't do the job and were hoping for an easy ride don't waste my time or theirs further after the first interview. It's effective so far, and since we moved from traditional single formal interviews I've found it far easier to pull in really really high quality candidates.
Perhaps because he wasn't actually a "star programmer"?
Let's be honest, any programmer worth their salt can do network administration without having to ask Slashdot where to start. The process of becoming a good programmer in itself involves knowing where to look to find things out, an ability one could not have if they have to ask slashdot and wait on the question to be published then rummage for a reply that actually helps through the comments.
I think realistically what we have here is a bodge job billy, who didn't really know what the fuck he was doing with software development, and so figured he'd try his hand at networking, something he also clearly knows not the slightest fuck about.
For what it's worth I personally did system/network admin and then moved into software development, if you have to ask for help to move in the other direction you are not a "star" programmer.
Knowing what something is is different from knowing someone has it, or knowing how to create it.
If you saw someone teleport star trek style across the room right now after walking into a transparent cubicle then turning up in another one you'd really say "Oh, that's hardly top-secret technology, because I know what it is, it's a teleporter!".
A lot of this stuff was seen on past projects like the RAH-66 Comanche, but just because people have seen these sorts of things before doesn't mean we realised it was actually workable or in production. The Comanche was cancelled due to cost overruns related to precisely this type of technology, so it's not suprising that people are suprised to see that yes, actually this sort of tech was kept in production with some hidden budget, and yes they did seemingly get it to a working state after all.