To be fair, here in the UK you can do worse than to get a job as a.NET or Java programmer after graduation, it'll net you a £20k - £30k starting salary depending on how good you are and how lucky you get. It's not brilliant, but it's a pretty good wage range for a fresh graduate and better than ending up in an IT support role at £16k like I've seen many graduates do. As jobs go, this level of graduate developer role is usually quite cushy- not too bad hours, sat in a nice warm office, 25 days annual leave, not particularly stressful, and as it's.NET or Java, not particularly hard either. It's not brilliant, but again, as it's a first job, you can (and many graduates certainly do) do a lot worse.
The problem is when you get to the high end, you need to find a niche and be fucking good in that niche to start raking in the real money.
Getting above the average starting salary should be a pushover in this type of role though, it's the type of job that will easily sit you in the middle class bracket without too much stress etc. but it's not going to make you rich. Getting a job on £35k in about 5 years should be pretty easy- iirc the national average salary in the UK is around £25k.
Or to answer the original question- it's not bad, but if you want to become really well off as early in life as possible, then here in the UK at least, it's banking, law or becoming a doctor. Either that or win the lottery.
"Price gouging? If you'd bothered to find out, you'd know that the game distributor is responsible for the pricing of the games, not Steam."
Well, that's not entirely true. It was Valve's decision to make Steam multi-currency leading to increase prices in the process. It's also very possibly Valve's decision to block and create the various problems that have arisen for people importing hard copies etc. I also doubt that Valve has no say in pricing, particularly when it has to compete with classic retail which certainly does have a say in pricing, hence why prices on Amazon are sometimes as much as 50% of those on Steam.
"Randomly downloads updates? Again, if you'd bothered to find out, you'd know that you can turn off automatic updating of games."
I don't want to prat around turning it on and off, I want to schedule it. Example: I go to bed at 10pm on a work day as I have to be up at 6am to set off to work at 7am, but my peak time restrictions and bandwidth cap lasts until midnight and starts again at 8am. I can't stay up just to re-enable updating and can't turn up an hour late to work to disable it again, but I don't want to leave it on and have it chew up my bandwidth cap. I just want to be able to set it to download from midnight to 8am.
I'm amazed after all this time Valve hasn't implemented a scheduler when it's fairly trivial and when many people in many countries face this problem nowadays as the promise of unlimited broadband drifts further and further away.
1) Whether the US cares more about the people depends on whether the people are happy with the ability to walk out easier with much lower job security. Being able to sack at any time without question seems to be a much more business oriented law than a people oriented law.
2) As mentioned in my original post, Europe has much better employee protection in that most of it includes the protections I mentioned, and yet has a much stronger economy than the US.
Steam prices are far from competitive, they're standard maximum retail prices sure, but in the UK games that sell for around £20 - £23 on Amazon etc. brand new are £29.99 or £34.99 Steam.
Steam prices do mirror those in retail stores like GAME and HMV, but these places are rediculously overpriced too when again compared to places like Amazon.
I really dislike Steam, because even games bought in store that use it depend on Valve deciding whether or not you're allowed to play the game. See people who imported Modern Warfare 2 which is perfectly legal to do but Valve revoking their access to the game because they didn't buy it from the retail channels Valve/Activision wanted them to buy it through or didn't just buy it through Steam.
Other than that, I just don't like the way Valve is going. It started off great- bare minimum DRM, fixed prices in US dollars worldwide. Nowadays however, the DRM has gotten worse and Valve has got to the point where they're leveraging their strong downloadable games platform to try and price gouge (see above MW2 example) which is not a good thing.
I hate the fact Steam just randomly downloads updates chewing up every last byte of my bandwidth with no way to control it too meaning it eats up some of my peak time bandwidth allowance that I have to suffer in the UK. For this reason I keep Steam closed most the time.
Personally I still just order disc-based games online to come through the post where I can, I really don't want to deal with companies that try and remove my ability to shop around for a lower price, and who force me to register with them to play, and who force me to let them choose when I can/can't play.
"I always keep wishing I could do the same with my PS3 or 360, but they usually only have the smaller games in their stores and I have to order the "real" games via post."
The XBox 360 has sold retail games from the marketplace for about 6 months now, but I don't know about the PS3. The selection isn't as big as it could be, but it's got plenty of top games on there. I don't know if they intend to ramp this up or not to start including the latest releases, but it'd be nice if they did.
I didn't realise the US job market was quite that "flexible".
I should add that contract workers here have less rights too, I was referring to the rights of permanent staff. Here contractors can indeed have their contract terminated at the drop of a hat also.
You can easily afford mass transit (have you seen your military budget?), the problem is, for most Americans it's not a priority and so it goes into things like the military.
You don't need mass transit to every town in America- that's not even how it works here in little old England. You just connect up the major cities with trains and coaches and have local bus services to towns close to those central hubs. Anything further away than that can just drive to the closest city with a coach/train depot and park there- if the goal is cutting road deaths then this is no big deal, if a town is large enough to have heavy traffic, it's large enough to support mass transit, if it's not, large enough to support mass transit, it's small enough that there's only so few cars that road accidents aren't such a problem.
It has economic benefits too as it often allows people to commute further, for example, including traffic, it would take me 4hrs to get to London from where I live, by the train I can get there in 1hr 50mins- I still wouldn't go that far every day personally, but you get my point. The fact it gets traffic off the road improves things for vehicles that do need to be on the road- emergency services, trucks, etc. and it also means people are less prone to delays getting to work, getting to clients and so forth improving efficiency through less lost employee time sat waiting in a vehicle.
"I don't know what country you live in, but if it is a Western European country, chances are you have similar laws, so this isn't a problem of 'USA,' it is a problem of living in a world where countries still want to destroy other countries."
Whilst we have export restrictions on weapons and materials that may be used to build weapons (i.e. metal tubes) we don't have anything as stupid as the US restrictions on Cuba, a country that is completely harmless and has done nothing wrong on an international level in about 50 years. It's particularly hypocritical when you note that the US doesn't have similar restrictions on Venezuela and yet Venezuela has been illegaly seizing foreign companies, importing large amounts of weaponry and so forth now for years. Tell me, do you really believe Cuba or even Syria for that matter has any interest in destroying or even attacking the US?
Oh my, I sincerely hope you're not American, preaching to others about harbouring terrorists.
You do realise the US acted as a safe haven, training grounds and turned a blind eye to funding of IRA terrorists guilty of terrorist attacks on Britain right?
Yes, they are cowardly. They may not be able to change it, but quietly whimpering away with their tail between their legs without making a very public fuss and complaining about it is the worst thing they could do.
"On the other hand, it's a little inconsistent to call SourceForge "cowardly" for not standing up the government. (Note that the wording of any OS agreement they adhere to is irrelevant -- no agreement to act illegally is valid.)"
This is a legal quagmire. Whilst you're right that anyone in the US would not get in trouble for this, if someone in Europe were to say, fork a GPL project and then host it on SF then they could very well be in breach. The reason is because Europe does not have embargos on all these countries, so the license is not in conflict with the law for Europeans, if they host projects on SF knowing about the embargos, hence meaning they have put the forked GPL code somewhere where it is not equally available to all then they are certainly in breach of the GPL.
As you can see, this is a major problem, and if SF can't/won't relocate, then developers working with the GPL from outside of the US would probably be best served moving to a platform other than SF to ensure that they are adhering to the GPL.
I'm not sure about elsewhere, but in the UK, you'd have good grounds for an employment tribunal. Specifically you'd be looking for an unfair dismissal (if sacked) or constructive dismissal (if you were forced to quite) case. For what it's worth, most companies don't even seem to bother fighting these now if they are in fact justified, purely because they have come to accept that you can't treat employees like that. They will most likely just settle with you if you find yourself in this situation.
Companies can't just sack people, and even making up excuses doesn't work for them if the employee chooses to fight it. They have to be able to justify why you were sacked, whilst you're right that being late 3 times may be justification, it is not justification if others have also been late 3 times and yet only you have been sacked. If you had been late 3 times, constantly under-performend and so forth then they could again justify this, but they would need to prove you've under-performed, this might include bringing up past appraisals and so forth, but this is why it's a good idea to make sure you agree with your appraisal outcomes.
The key is that the company has to be able to show that you were worse than other employees, and that if you were worse, it's not because you'd been treated differently and set up to fail.
I believe the US has slightly less employee protections than this, but this is certainly the case in Europe. Whilst someone whose hated by the whole company can be sacked, employees here have a lot of protection against bad bosses who would sack them out of sheer malice or incompetence. If anyone is wondering why we have such laws, it's because we don't want unemployment stats and unemployment benefit costs raised unnecessarily by having people perfectly able and competent enough to do the job sacked unfairly.
Regardless though, if you are in such a situation, and taking the matter to a higher level of management if one exists doesn't solve it, then you're better off going elsewhere anyway, because although they may not be able to get rid of you, they can at least kill off your career by preventing you getting promotions and payrises although even that's subject to some protections if everyone else gets a rise, or the interviews for promotion were carried out in a provably unfair manner for example.
Why would say Iranian and Syrian developers, of which there truly are some great people want to work on projects on a site that actively supports isolation of their homeland?
Why would anyone who appreciates the contribution these countries can make want to host a project on SF when it clearly puts profits ahead of the open source ideology of free access to source for everyone that it's meant to support?
But perhaps most prominently, for people outside the US, but using SF as their host, what message does it send to say European developers if SF is imposing a US embargo against Cuba on their project?
The Cuba one is particularly prominent as hatred of Cuba is a very American thing- here in Europe, and certainly over in Canada feelings towards Cuba seem to be similar to pretty much any other Atlantic island nation such as those in the Carribean- sure they have problems, but they're certainly not embargo worthy, particularly when the US has no similar embargo on the likes of Venezuela or China, which are guilty of far, far worse things. So European and Canadian contributors and projects for example are being forced to disallow access to countries like Cuba with which they have no argument if they choose to host on SF.
I'm not saying SF doesn't have the right to do what they've done, they're a company after all, nor am I saying you're wrong in that it's easy to work around on a technical level. What I'm saying though is that it raises serious questions about SF as a viable hosting platform if it takes this decision over considering legitimate ways to work around it such as overseas hosting. I do not think SF has done the right thing here, and would certainly not choose it for any of my projects now. Sometimes the message is important as the technical reality of the situation, and in this case, SF have sent entirely the wrong message IMO.
It is, as they're still losing money on the hardware and 99% of these systems will be used to pirate games meaning Sony wont even make the money back on games.
Effectively then, Sony is left with a choice of putting the price up, or taking a financial hit if it becomes popular to have modded PS3s that can play pirated games.
Re:Blame Sony, not the hacker
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PS3 Hacked?
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I both agree and disagree with you.
I disagree, because there are a lot of people- the vast majority of owners I would wager, who don't want their consoles to be open platforms due to the inevitable influx of cheating online. It's also the case that even now Sony is supposedly making a loss on the console with the hope of making it up on games, but of course if people buy a console and just pirate the games then the price of the console has to go up to compensate meaning people aren't getting high end hardware subsidised by games anymore.
But, I also agree, because as you say, you can do some really cool shit with console hardware when you have open access. So I wonder then, perhaps the solution would be for console manufacturers to release open versions of their system, kind of like the old Net Yaroze? It would have to come at a slightly higher price due to not being game subsidised, but of course, it'd still be good for manufacturers as it would bring per-unit price down for the processor and so forth.
I suspect it wont happen though as, let's be realistic, people would still hack the closed version of the console because piracy really is the main driving force at the end of the day 90% of the time, and having an open version of the hardware out there may provide too many clues to break the closed version.
I can see why manufacturers don't open up their systems more and I'm inclined to agree with them- I much prefer online console gaming nowadays because I know I'm playing on an even footing, but similarly I think you're right, homebrew is very cool, often providing things that aren't officially available that make the system better. Being able to have an MSN client on my DS for example was pretty awesome.
In some cases yep, such as ignoring robots.txt as it's been known to do. But in other cases no, it goes well beyond the public internet, also, as I say, what about when someone else publishes about you without your permission and no way to remove it as it remains indexed by Google forever? We've also had cases where data has been stored on the private, protected internet but that has been hacked and put on a site that was not protected well and indexed forever by Google also. I was using Google goggles on my Android handset the other day and denied it access to send my location based on GPS to Google, yet noticed GPS was still being checked when it needn't have been. Suspicious of this, I looked into it and found that it was outright ignoring the option I selected and reporting my location anyway. This is one of many examples of Google farming data silently, in the background- from Google analytics, to Google mail, to Google apps, they are farming data about you and most people don't even realise it, precisely because Google do it silently in the background.
I don't disagree with your premise of the best way to protect your information is to not publish it, but similarly this doesn't mean Google is somehow absolved of any blame- especially when it harvests data it's not even supposed to. What Google should really be doing is being more pro-active in telling you in an obvious manner when it is taking data, and what it intends to do with it. Effectively it's the old opt-in vs. opt-out argument. People shouldn't have to be constantly on the alert for an opt-out which may be ignored anyway, they should instead be given the choice to opt-in. It doesn't do that of course, because it'd be able to harvest data on far less people which would cut into it's bottom line. Many people seem to think Google is a magical ultra-good entity that never does wrong, but the reality is it's like any other company- it'll put profits above anything else, even being willing to bend the rules to do so sometimes (i.e. ignoring opt-outs).
I like what they produce (hence why I'm a Nokia fanboy turned Android user/developer), I believe in personal responsibility like you, but I still don't think Google play as fair as they should because even the most alert responsible person can miss 1 in 100 opt-outs and then it's game over, their data is all out there then.
The problem is that Google goes looking for data, sometimes even where it shouldn't, sometimes in places you would never expect it too, and sometimes without you realising it will be looking there. There's also the other problem of other people giving Google my information.
So it's not so much don't tell Google your information, it's more, keep looking over your back with everything you ever do online, just in case Google is watching. So no, it's not that easy, and no, using the internet should not have to be like that.
Actually model hacks and wallhacks potentially are or at least were possible with modded systems.
Unless things have changed, which is quite possible, the XBox 360 only checked the validity of a games executable code and not content, content checking is game specific so all the XBox can do is check the executable code is valid and let the executable check the content. The issue is, lots of developers haven't done this, so on a system with a modded optical drive, you could insert a disk that had modified textures/models/maps on. This included increasing the size of models so that they were easier to see- i.e. you could stretch their belly so you'd see it sticking out round a corner when you otherwise wouldn't have. I believe this was successfully pulled off against the first Gears of War game.
But of course, providing game developers check the content with the executable this isn't a problem, but most importantly, the real place the XBox 360 shines is that you have none of the really stupidly annoying cheats like aimbots, radar and so forth because these require code level modifications.
This is why I prefer gaming on the XBox 360- it's really a closed platform, whilst the PC (and PS3 now it would seem!) are open platforms, which makes them great for things like ripping through stupid DRM to access content you've paid for without problem using cracks and so forth, but not so great for gaming because these platforms are just inherently more vulnerable to cheating for the very fact they are open.
So yeah, for me, it's closed platform for gaming, open platform for everything else, that way you get the best of both worlds, rather than having to suffer the disadvantages from just trying to do everything on either one or the other.
I agree but I think his point was that it's time some companies start taking a stand on the problem.
Perhaps if companies started doing this more prominently- releasing full feature versions outside the US, and crippled versions in the US, it'd make the US government reconsider software patents.
This is already happening to an extent, but not prominently enough. Some Android phones have multi-touch outisde of the US, but have it disabled in the US because Apple holds a patent on it such that the US ends up with crippled versions.
Of course, a lot of companies wont do this because they are themselves American and don't want to give themselves a crippled version and so work around the problem even if that means ending up with a solution that is not as good as it could be. The problem with that idea is that it just means they are supporting the US' stupid software patent regime and strengthening it's existence.
The government wont do anything unless enough voices complain, but no voices will complain if they're just given half-assed workarounds that mask the fact the solution that they're getting is inferior to what it could be. People need to be given a reason to complain, and the likes of Mozilla are at least in a position to do so.
The guy was responding to someone who was talking about the iPhone, and in those cases he's mostly right. I agree that cameras in Nokia phones are really good for example, but the iPhones camera is really shit, in fact most phone cameras are- Nokia is about the only one that's ever had decent phone cameras. Similarly regarding games consoles, yes, your N900 has a keyboard, but the iPhone doesn't, it's got a lot of good games but it's still limited in the genre of games it can possibly have purely because of such a lack of decent input for those sorts of applications. I do a bit of indie game dev in my spare time and I'm never short on ideas for a game, but it's amazing sitting down and thinking about game ideas for my HTC Magic which similarly has limited controls how many ideas are dampered by the inability to implement a decent control scheme with little more than a touch screen.
"How so? I used my phone while running, riding my bike (dirty downhill trough mud), playing diverse ball games in the park, etc."
I think you've simply been lucky. My Nokia 6210 navigator's screen cracked just because of a little bit of pressure when I was carrying a bag of grit from the garage to the garden and the phone was only 9 months old. For what it's worth it was the first phone I had break having use mobiles for over 10 years, but it proves the point and demonstrates why phone manufacturers in their care guides recommend taking your phone out your pocket when you sit down or do sports etc. - precisely because they can, and as I found out the hard way, do break in these kind of circumstances. Also, the issue is of course, because I didn't follow that guidance it wasn't even a warranty repair, so I had to buy a new screen and fix it myself (either that or pay a fortune for someone else to). Honestly, again, I'm talking from experience- please don't assume your phone will survive in those conditions indefinitely, it could cost you one day as it did me.
"I use my phone as a music player every day. Sure it takes a bit of power. But it's far from a power drain. I never had trouble with it during the day. (I usually recharge it in the evening or when going to bed.)"
I largely agree with this about playing music, in contrast though, try using GPS, talking for an hour and playing music/video, you'll be lucky if it lasts the day. He's right in that if you use all the features of the phone in a day that the battery will struggle to last certainly, but not right with the idea that music/video alone will be enough to drain it in a day. There are circumstances where this is a problem. A 4hr drive down to Heathrow with satnav on, listening to music/watching video/playing games on a 7hr flight to the US or Canada will leave just about all smartphones with barely the battery left to phone and say I've arrived, let alone last until I make it to whereever I'm staying which could be another hour or two journey away after waiting to pick up my luggage from the luggage arrival section and collect the hire car, or to look up hotel details on the internet and so on, let alone make a call home to say I've made it there safely. You can get a plethora of chargers certainly to help yourself in this situation, but it's really no less convenient than just packing my satnav for the car and my netbook for the plane in the first place and having my phone fresh and ready to use when I'm on the move on my feet on the other side of the atlantic and don't have the time, room and space to flip out my netbook etc.
I think that's probably the case too to be honest. Judging by the EU saying PostgreSql is a viable alternative even they accept it's a possibility.
At the time, as it always does, building an abstraction layer on my projects for database access seemed like one of those things you feel you have to do but might not ever end up being useful.
But things like this are one of the many reasons we do those sorts of chores- at least a switch to PostgreSql will be amazingly trivial for me on the projects which I've used MySql on now, and the goodbye wont be quite as hard as it would have been.
This still raises an interesting point though, if Oracle does kill MySql, has the EU factored in the damage this will do to those European companies that haven't had this foresight in terms of lost developer time re-writing everything? In a way you can say it's their own fault of course for not using some database abstraction layer. Having an alternative available is one thing, but switching to that alternative can still be very costly.
It's not that they like capability, it's that the capability is often half-arsed in other IDEs.
Yes a lot of IDEs have code completion for example, but they're nearly all hopeless at jumping to the item you want, so slow at doing so that you've typed it before the suggestions come up, or fail to even suggest anything at all.
Visual Studio jumps to exactly what you want in the drop down list 99% of the time so you can just type the first couple of characters and hit enter, then do the same with the next block- basically you can code so much faster.
This is further boosted by the refactoring tools of Visual Studio, they both exist, and work, two points which many IDEs fail to implement.
But it goes on and on like this, whilst other IDEs have these features, it's pretty much the case that other IDEs don't have ALL the features, and those they do have just aren't as good as the implementations in Visual Studio.
Simply put, Visual Studio lets you be far more productive, particularly if you use all the tools in it.
That really depends, in some cases if you run an intimidating job interview you may risk pushing away people with the qualities you require.
Intimidating job interviews risk pushing away people who are technically brilliant, but not socially brilliant. That doesn't mean they can't communicate, but it might mean that under pressure of intimidation, something they wouldn't usually suffer in the normal workplace (well, that they shouldn't- if they do it's a shit workplace anyway) that they will struggle and not be able to show their best. What you will get though is a lot of mediocre people who can talk the talk but not walk the walk, if you're really lucky you may get people who are capable of both, but is it worth the gamble? Of course all things in moderation of course- on the other side of it there are some people that are simply too quiet and wont communicate anything which can be problematic in itself unless the role really is one that doesn't need communication.
It's best to make the candidates feel comfortable, give them the opportunity to show what they can do in a more friendly environment where they feel confident enough to open up and show off their true abilities. In some roles you may prefer the more sociable people, for example, in customer facing jobs, but for kernel development? it'd be stupid to scare off some brilliant but shy people and just risk filling the team with mouthy incompetent developers that sounded good in their interview because they weren't scared off by intimidation but couldn't deliver in the job.
Eclipse certainly isn't a Visual Studio replacement, it doesn't even come close.
In fact, I found Netbeans even nicer to work with than Eclipse which is certainly saying something.
Issues with Eclipse are far and wide, but it doesn't help that even from the get go it's not promising, the Windows install basically involves just copying the Eclipse folder and making your own shortcuts. The plugin system seems to create countless conflicts such that your best bet is to have multiple copies of Eclipse for different environments. Both these two things are not too big a deal, but they're such 1990s problems, they're problems that most companies solved with their products over 10 years ago. So you get all that done, it's all installed, you load it up and it takes a minute or two to load, it's slow as hell. Once you do get going though you find the toolbars lacking, where are my block increase and decrease indent buttons? Sure you can tab to increase, but what's the shortcut to decrease? Oh it's there, but you have to Google and jump through hoops to find it. Why? You continue anyway, but autocomplete just doesn't flow well, you spend as much time fighting it as you do getting benefit out of it, Visual Studio's autocomplete just flows amazingly in comparison, it's far more "intelligent". Even many of the plugins aren't great, hell I had the misfortune of having to use Zend Studio the other week- talk about horrifically bad.
Now, I can't fault Eclipse because it's free, what they're trying to do with Eclipse is most certainly commendable, but the idea that it's even close to Visual Studio is a joke. It's not all the fault of Eclipse of course, for example ASP.NET MVC is so amazingly quick and easy to work with when used with the Visual Studio tools for it compared to any other MVC framework out there, but being such a young framework lacks features of many of the older ones, plus you're stuck with the Windows platform to host it which in itself is a problem sometimes. I would love nothing more than a Visual Studio quality IDE to work with the likes of Zend, Spring, Android and so forth and I really do hope that Eclipse gets there some day, it's just not there yet.
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To be fair, here in the UK you can do worse than to get a job as a .NET or Java programmer after graduation, it'll net you a £20k - £30k starting salary depending on how good you are and how lucky you get. It's not brilliant, but it's a pretty good wage range for a fresh graduate and better than ending up in an IT support role at £16k like I've seen many graduates do. As jobs go, this level of graduate developer role is usually quite cushy- not too bad hours, sat in a nice warm office, 25 days annual leave, not particularly stressful, and as it's .NET or Java, not particularly hard either. It's not brilliant, but again, as it's a first job, you can (and many graduates certainly do) do a lot worse.
The problem is when you get to the high end, you need to find a niche and be fucking good in that niche to start raking in the real money.
Getting above the average starting salary should be a pushover in this type of role though, it's the type of job that will easily sit you in the middle class bracket without too much stress etc. but it's not going to make you rich. Getting a job on £35k in about 5 years should be pretty easy- iirc the national average salary in the UK is around £25k.
Or to answer the original question- it's not bad, but if you want to become really well off as early in life as possible, then here in the UK at least, it's banking, law or becoming a doctor. Either that or win the lottery.
"Price gouging? If you'd bothered to find out, you'd know that the game distributor is responsible for the pricing of the games, not Steam."
Well, that's not entirely true. It was Valve's decision to make Steam multi-currency leading to increase prices in the process. It's also very possibly Valve's decision to block and create the various problems that have arisen for people importing hard copies etc. I also doubt that Valve has no say in pricing, particularly when it has to compete with classic retail which certainly does have a say in pricing, hence why prices on Amazon are sometimes as much as 50% of those on Steam.
"Randomly downloads updates? Again, if you'd bothered to find out, you'd know that you can turn off automatic updating of games."
I don't want to prat around turning it on and off, I want to schedule it. Example: I go to bed at 10pm on a work day as I have to be up at 6am to set off to work at 7am, but my peak time restrictions and bandwidth cap lasts until midnight and starts again at 8am. I can't stay up just to re-enable updating and can't turn up an hour late to work to disable it again, but I don't want to leave it on and have it chew up my bandwidth cap. I just want to be able to set it to download from midnight to 8am.
I'm amazed after all this time Valve hasn't implemented a scheduler when it's fairly trivial and when many people in many countries face this problem nowadays as the promise of unlimited broadband drifts further and further away.
Two points:
1) Whether the US cares more about the people depends on whether the people are happy with the ability to walk out easier with much lower job security. Being able to sack at any time without question seems to be a much more business oriented law than a people oriented law.
2) As mentioned in my original post, Europe has much better employee protection in that most of it includes the protections I mentioned, and yet has a much stronger economy than the US.
Or were you being sarcastic?
Steam prices are far from competitive, they're standard maximum retail prices sure, but in the UK games that sell for around £20 - £23 on Amazon etc. brand new are £29.99 or £34.99 Steam.
Steam prices do mirror those in retail stores like GAME and HMV, but these places are rediculously overpriced too when again compared to places like Amazon.
I really dislike Steam, because even games bought in store that use it depend on Valve deciding whether or not you're allowed to play the game. See people who imported Modern Warfare 2 which is perfectly legal to do but Valve revoking their access to the game because they didn't buy it from the retail channels Valve/Activision wanted them to buy it through or didn't just buy it through Steam.
Other than that, I just don't like the way Valve is going. It started off great- bare minimum DRM, fixed prices in US dollars worldwide. Nowadays however, the DRM has gotten worse and Valve has got to the point where they're leveraging their strong downloadable games platform to try and price gouge (see above MW2 example) which is not a good thing.
I hate the fact Steam just randomly downloads updates chewing up every last byte of my bandwidth with no way to control it too meaning it eats up some of my peak time bandwidth allowance that I have to suffer in the UK. For this reason I keep Steam closed most the time.
Personally I still just order disc-based games online to come through the post where I can, I really don't want to deal with companies that try and remove my ability to shop around for a lower price, and who force me to register with them to play, and who force me to let them choose when I can/can't play.
"I always keep wishing I could do the same with my PS3 or 360, but they usually only have the smaller games in their stores and I have to order the "real" games via post."
The XBox 360 has sold retail games from the marketplace for about 6 months now, but I don't know about the PS3. The selection isn't as big as it could be, but it's got plenty of top games on there. I don't know if they intend to ramp this up or not to start including the latest releases, but it'd be nice if they did.
I didn't realise the US job market was quite that "flexible".
I should add that contract workers here have less rights too, I was referring to the rights of permanent staff. Here contractors can indeed have their contract terminated at the drop of a hat also.
You can easily afford mass transit (have you seen your military budget?), the problem is, for most Americans it's not a priority and so it goes into things like the military.
You don't need mass transit to every town in America- that's not even how it works here in little old England. You just connect up the major cities with trains and coaches and have local bus services to towns close to those central hubs. Anything further away than that can just drive to the closest city with a coach/train depot and park there- if the goal is cutting road deaths then this is no big deal, if a town is large enough to have heavy traffic, it's large enough to support mass transit, if it's not, large enough to support mass transit, it's small enough that there's only so few cars that road accidents aren't such a problem.
It has economic benefits too as it often allows people to commute further, for example, including traffic, it would take me 4hrs to get to London from where I live, by the train I can get there in 1hr 50mins- I still wouldn't go that far every day personally, but you get my point. The fact it gets traffic off the road improves things for vehicles that do need to be on the road- emergency services, trucks, etc. and it also means people are less prone to delays getting to work, getting to clients and so forth improving efficiency through less lost employee time sat waiting in a vehicle.
"I don't know what country you live in, but if it is a Western European country, chances are you have similar laws, so this isn't a problem of 'USA,' it is a problem of living in a world where countries still want to destroy other countries."
Whilst we have export restrictions on weapons and materials that may be used to build weapons (i.e. metal tubes) we don't have anything as stupid as the US restrictions on Cuba, a country that is completely harmless and has done nothing wrong on an international level in about 50 years. It's particularly hypocritical when you note that the US doesn't have similar restrictions on Venezuela and yet Venezuela has been illegaly seizing foreign companies, importing large amounts of weaponry and so forth now for years. Tell me, do you really believe Cuba or even Syria for that matter has any interest in destroying or even attacking the US?
Oh my, I sincerely hope you're not American, preaching to others about harbouring terrorists.
You do realise the US acted as a safe haven, training grounds and turned a blind eye to funding of IRA terrorists guilty of terrorist attacks on Britain right?
Yes, they are cowardly. They may not be able to change it, but quietly whimpering away with their tail between their legs without making a very public fuss and complaining about it is the worst thing they could do.
"On the other hand, it's a little inconsistent to call SourceForge "cowardly" for not standing up the government. (Note that the wording of any OS agreement they adhere to is irrelevant -- no agreement to act illegally is valid.)"
This is a legal quagmire. Whilst you're right that anyone in the US would not get in trouble for this, if someone in Europe were to say, fork a GPL project and then host it on SF then they could very well be in breach. The reason is because Europe does not have embargos on all these countries, so the license is not in conflict with the law for Europeans, if they host projects on SF knowing about the embargos, hence meaning they have put the forked GPL code somewhere where it is not equally available to all then they are certainly in breach of the GPL.
As you can see, this is a major problem, and if SF can't/won't relocate, then developers working with the GPL from outside of the US would probably be best served moving to a platform other than SF to ensure that they are adhering to the GPL.
I'm not sure about elsewhere, but in the UK, you'd have good grounds for an employment tribunal. Specifically you'd be looking for an unfair dismissal (if sacked) or constructive dismissal (if you were forced to quite) case. For what it's worth, most companies don't even seem to bother fighting these now if they are in fact justified, purely because they have come to accept that you can't treat employees like that. They will most likely just settle with you if you find yourself in this situation.
Companies can't just sack people, and even making up excuses doesn't work for them if the employee chooses to fight it. They have to be able to justify why you were sacked, whilst you're right that being late 3 times may be justification, it is not justification if others have also been late 3 times and yet only you have been sacked. If you had been late 3 times, constantly under-performend and so forth then they could again justify this, but they would need to prove you've under-performed, this might include bringing up past appraisals and so forth, but this is why it's a good idea to make sure you agree with your appraisal outcomes.
The key is that the company has to be able to show that you were worse than other employees, and that if you were worse, it's not because you'd been treated differently and set up to fail.
I believe the US has slightly less employee protections than this, but this is certainly the case in Europe. Whilst someone whose hated by the whole company can be sacked, employees here have a lot of protection against bad bosses who would sack them out of sheer malice or incompetence. If anyone is wondering why we have such laws, it's because we don't want unemployment stats and unemployment benefit costs raised unnecessarily by having people perfectly able and competent enough to do the job sacked unfairly.
Regardless though, if you are in such a situation, and taking the matter to a higher level of management if one exists doesn't solve it, then you're better off going elsewhere anyway, because although they may not be able to get rid of you, they can at least kill off your career by preventing you getting promotions and payrises although even that's subject to some protections if everyone else gets a rise, or the interviews for promotion were carried out in a provably unfair manner for example.
Why would say Iranian and Syrian developers, of which there truly are some great people want to work on projects on a site that actively supports isolation of their homeland?
Why would anyone who appreciates the contribution these countries can make want to host a project on SF when it clearly puts profits ahead of the open source ideology of free access to source for everyone that it's meant to support?
But perhaps most prominently, for people outside the US, but using SF as their host, what message does it send to say European developers if SF is imposing a US embargo against Cuba on their project?
The Cuba one is particularly prominent as hatred of Cuba is a very American thing- here in Europe, and certainly over in Canada feelings towards Cuba seem to be similar to pretty much any other Atlantic island nation such as those in the Carribean- sure they have problems, but they're certainly not embargo worthy, particularly when the US has no similar embargo on the likes of Venezuela or China, which are guilty of far, far worse things. So European and Canadian contributors and projects for example are being forced to disallow access to countries like Cuba with which they have no argument if they choose to host on SF.
I'm not saying SF doesn't have the right to do what they've done, they're a company after all, nor am I saying you're wrong in that it's easy to work around on a technical level. What I'm saying though is that it raises serious questions about SF as a viable hosting platform if it takes this decision over considering legitimate ways to work around it such as overseas hosting. I do not think SF has done the right thing here, and would certainly not choose it for any of my projects now. Sometimes the message is important as the technical reality of the situation, and in this case, SF have sent entirely the wrong message IMO.
It is, as they're still losing money on the hardware and 99% of these systems will be used to pirate games meaning Sony wont even make the money back on games.
Effectively then, Sony is left with a choice of putting the price up, or taking a financial hit if it becomes popular to have modded PS3s that can play pirated games.
I both agree and disagree with you.
I disagree, because there are a lot of people- the vast majority of owners I would wager, who don't want their consoles to be open platforms due to the inevitable influx of cheating online. It's also the case that even now Sony is supposedly making a loss on the console with the hope of making it up on games, but of course if people buy a console and just pirate the games then the price of the console has to go up to compensate meaning people aren't getting high end hardware subsidised by games anymore.
But, I also agree, because as you say, you can do some really cool shit with console hardware when you have open access. So I wonder then, perhaps the solution would be for console manufacturers to release open versions of their system, kind of like the old Net Yaroze? It would have to come at a slightly higher price due to not being game subsidised, but of course, it'd still be good for manufacturers as it would bring per-unit price down for the processor and so forth.
I suspect it wont happen though as, let's be realistic, people would still hack the closed version of the console because piracy really is the main driving force at the end of the day 90% of the time, and having an open version of the hardware out there may provide too many clues to break the closed version.
I can see why manufacturers don't open up their systems more and I'm inclined to agree with them- I much prefer online console gaming nowadays because I know I'm playing on an even footing, but similarly I think you're right, homebrew is very cool, often providing things that aren't officially available that make the system better. Being able to have an MSN client on my DS for example was pretty awesome.
In some cases yep, such as ignoring robots.txt as it's been known to do. But in other cases no, it goes well beyond the public internet, also, as I say, what about when someone else publishes about you without your permission and no way to remove it as it remains indexed by Google forever? We've also had cases where data has been stored on the private, protected internet but that has been hacked and put on a site that was not protected well and indexed forever by Google also. I was using Google goggles on my Android handset the other day and denied it access to send my location based on GPS to Google, yet noticed GPS was still being checked when it needn't have been. Suspicious of this, I looked into it and found that it was outright ignoring the option I selected and reporting my location anyway. This is one of many examples of Google farming data silently, in the background- from Google analytics, to Google mail, to Google apps, they are farming data about you and most people don't even realise it, precisely because Google do it silently in the background.
I don't disagree with your premise of the best way to protect your information is to not publish it, but similarly this doesn't mean Google is somehow absolved of any blame- especially when it harvests data it's not even supposed to. What Google should really be doing is being more pro-active in telling you in an obvious manner when it is taking data, and what it intends to do with it. Effectively it's the old opt-in vs. opt-out argument. People shouldn't have to be constantly on the alert for an opt-out which may be ignored anyway, they should instead be given the choice to opt-in. It doesn't do that of course, because it'd be able to harvest data on far less people which would cut into it's bottom line. Many people seem to think Google is a magical ultra-good entity that never does wrong, but the reality is it's like any other company- it'll put profits above anything else, even being willing to bend the rules to do so sometimes (i.e. ignoring opt-outs).
I like what they produce (hence why I'm a Nokia fanboy turned Android user/developer), I believe in personal responsibility like you, but I still don't think Google play as fair as they should because even the most alert responsible person can miss 1 in 100 opt-outs and then it's game over, their data is all out there then.
The problem is that Google goes looking for data, sometimes even where it shouldn't, sometimes in places you would never expect it too, and sometimes without you realising it will be looking there. There's also the other problem of other people giving Google my information.
So it's not so much don't tell Google your information, it's more, keep looking over your back with everything you ever do online, just in case Google is watching. So no, it's not that easy, and no, using the internet should not have to be like that.
Actually model hacks and wallhacks potentially are or at least were possible with modded systems.
Unless things have changed, which is quite possible, the XBox 360 only checked the validity of a games executable code and not content, content checking is game specific so all the XBox can do is check the executable code is valid and let the executable check the content. The issue is, lots of developers haven't done this, so on a system with a modded optical drive, you could insert a disk that had modified textures/models/maps on. This included increasing the size of models so that they were easier to see- i.e. you could stretch their belly so you'd see it sticking out round a corner when you otherwise wouldn't have. I believe this was successfully pulled off against the first Gears of War game.
But of course, providing game developers check the content with the executable this isn't a problem, but most importantly, the real place the XBox 360 shines is that you have none of the really stupidly annoying cheats like aimbots, radar and so forth because these require code level modifications.
This is why I prefer gaming on the XBox 360- it's really a closed platform, whilst the PC (and PS3 now it would seem!) are open platforms, which makes them great for things like ripping through stupid DRM to access content you've paid for without problem using cracks and so forth, but not so great for gaming because these platforms are just inherently more vulnerable to cheating for the very fact they are open.
So yeah, for me, it's closed platform for gaming, open platform for everything else, that way you get the best of both worlds, rather than having to suffer the disadvantages from just trying to do everything on either one or the other.
I agree but I think his point was that it's time some companies start taking a stand on the problem.
Perhaps if companies started doing this more prominently- releasing full feature versions outside the US, and crippled versions in the US, it'd make the US government reconsider software patents.
This is already happening to an extent, but not prominently enough. Some Android phones have multi-touch outisde of the US, but have it disabled in the US because Apple holds a patent on it such that the US ends up with crippled versions.
Of course, a lot of companies wont do this because they are themselves American and don't want to give themselves a crippled version and so work around the problem even if that means ending up with a solution that is not as good as it could be. The problem with that idea is that it just means they are supporting the US' stupid software patent regime and strengthening it's existence.
The government wont do anything unless enough voices complain, but no voices will complain if they're just given half-assed workarounds that mask the fact the solution that they're getting is inferior to what it could be. People need to be given a reason to complain, and the likes of Mozilla are at least in a position to do so.
The guy was responding to someone who was talking about the iPhone, and in those cases he's mostly right. I agree that cameras in Nokia phones are really good for example, but the iPhones camera is really shit, in fact most phone cameras are- Nokia is about the only one that's ever had decent phone cameras. Similarly regarding games consoles, yes, your N900 has a keyboard, but the iPhone doesn't, it's got a lot of good games but it's still limited in the genre of games it can possibly have purely because of such a lack of decent input for those sorts of applications. I do a bit of indie game dev in my spare time and I'm never short on ideas for a game, but it's amazing sitting down and thinking about game ideas for my HTC Magic which similarly has limited controls how many ideas are dampered by the inability to implement a decent control scheme with little more than a touch screen.
"How so? I used my phone while running, riding my bike (dirty downhill trough mud), playing diverse ball games in the park, etc."
I think you've simply been lucky. My Nokia 6210 navigator's screen cracked just because of a little bit of pressure when I was carrying a bag of grit from the garage to the garden and the phone was only 9 months old. For what it's worth it was the first phone I had break having use mobiles for over 10 years, but it proves the point and demonstrates why phone manufacturers in their care guides recommend taking your phone out your pocket when you sit down or do sports etc. - precisely because they can, and as I found out the hard way, do break in these kind of circumstances. Also, the issue is of course, because I didn't follow that guidance it wasn't even a warranty repair, so I had to buy a new screen and fix it myself (either that or pay a fortune for someone else to). Honestly, again, I'm talking from experience- please don't assume your phone will survive in those conditions indefinitely, it could cost you one day as it did me.
"I use my phone as a music player every day. Sure it takes a bit of power. But it's far from a power drain. I never had trouble with it during the day. (I usually recharge it in the evening or when going to bed.)"
I largely agree with this about playing music, in contrast though, try using GPS, talking for an hour and playing music/video, you'll be lucky if it lasts the day. He's right in that if you use all the features of the phone in a day that the battery will struggle to last certainly, but not right with the idea that music/video alone will be enough to drain it in a day. There are circumstances where this is a problem. A 4hr drive down to Heathrow with satnav on, listening to music/watching video/playing games on a 7hr flight to the US or Canada will leave just about all smartphones with barely the battery left to phone and say I've arrived, let alone last until I make it to whereever I'm staying which could be another hour or two journey away after waiting to pick up my luggage from the luggage arrival section and collect the hire car, or to look up hotel details on the internet and so on, let alone make a call home to say I've made it there safely. You can get a plethora of chargers certainly to help yourself in this situation, but it's really no less convenient than just packing my satnav for the car and my netbook for the plane in the first place and having my phone fresh and ready to use when I'm on the move on my feet on the other side of the atlantic and don't have the time, room and space to flip out my netbook etc.
Yeah, Netbeans is my first choice of Java IDE, I do like it a lot.
I was reading about Stripes the other day but haven't had time to look into it much in depth yet.
Yeah, I'd really miss Netbeans, it's definitely my favourite IDE after Visual Studio on any platform and my first choice for Java development also.
I think that's probably the case too to be honest. Judging by the EU saying PostgreSql is a viable alternative even they accept it's a possibility.
At the time, as it always does, building an abstraction layer on my projects for database access seemed like one of those things you feel you have to do but might not ever end up being useful.
But things like this are one of the many reasons we do those sorts of chores- at least a switch to PostgreSql will be amazingly trivial for me on the projects which I've used MySql on now, and the goodbye wont be quite as hard as it would have been.
This still raises an interesting point though, if Oracle does kill MySql, has the EU factored in the damage this will do to those European companies that haven't had this foresight in terms of lost developer time re-writing everything? In a way you can say it's their own fault of course for not using some database abstraction layer. Having an alternative available is one thing, but switching to that alternative can still be very costly.
It's not that they like capability, it's that the capability is often half-arsed in other IDEs.
Yes a lot of IDEs have code completion for example, but they're nearly all hopeless at jumping to the item you want, so slow at doing so that you've typed it before the suggestions come up, or fail to even suggest anything at all.
Visual Studio jumps to exactly what you want in the drop down list 99% of the time so you can just type the first couple of characters and hit enter, then do the same with the next block- basically you can code so much faster.
This is further boosted by the refactoring tools of Visual Studio, they both exist, and work, two points which many IDEs fail to implement.
But it goes on and on like this, whilst other IDEs have these features, it's pretty much the case that other IDEs don't have ALL the features, and those they do have just aren't as good as the implementations in Visual Studio.
Simply put, Visual Studio lets you be far more productive, particularly if you use all the tools in it.
That really depends, in some cases if you run an intimidating job interview you may risk pushing away people with the qualities you require.
Intimidating job interviews risk pushing away people who are technically brilliant, but not socially brilliant. That doesn't mean they can't communicate, but it might mean that under pressure of intimidation, something they wouldn't usually suffer in the normal workplace (well, that they shouldn't- if they do it's a shit workplace anyway) that they will struggle and not be able to show their best. What you will get though is a lot of mediocre people who can talk the talk but not walk the walk, if you're really lucky you may get people who are capable of both, but is it worth the gamble? Of course all things in moderation of course- on the other side of it there are some people that are simply too quiet and wont communicate anything which can be problematic in itself unless the role really is one that doesn't need communication.
It's best to make the candidates feel comfortable, give them the opportunity to show what they can do in a more friendly environment where they feel confident enough to open up and show off their true abilities. In some roles you may prefer the more sociable people, for example, in customer facing jobs, but for kernel development? it'd be stupid to scare off some brilliant but shy people and just risk filling the team with mouthy incompetent developers that sounded good in their interview because they weren't scared off by intimidation but couldn't deliver in the job.
Eclipse certainly isn't a Visual Studio replacement, it doesn't even come close.
In fact, I found Netbeans even nicer to work with than Eclipse which is certainly saying something.
Issues with Eclipse are far and wide, but it doesn't help that even from the get go it's not promising, the Windows install basically involves just copying the Eclipse folder and making your own shortcuts. The plugin system seems to create countless conflicts such that your best bet is to have multiple copies of Eclipse for different environments. Both these two things are not too big a deal, but they're such 1990s problems, they're problems that most companies solved with their products over 10 years ago. So you get all that done, it's all installed, you load it up and it takes a minute or two to load, it's slow as hell. Once you do get going though you find the toolbars lacking, where are my block increase and decrease indent buttons? Sure you can tab to increase, but what's the shortcut to decrease? Oh it's there, but you have to Google and jump through hoops to find it. Why? You continue anyway, but autocomplete just doesn't flow well, you spend as much time fighting it as you do getting benefit out of it, Visual Studio's autocomplete just flows amazingly in comparison, it's far more "intelligent". Even many of the plugins aren't great, hell I had the misfortune of having to use Zend Studio the other week- talk about horrifically bad.
Now, I can't fault Eclipse because it's free, what they're trying to do with Eclipse is most certainly commendable, but the idea that it's even close to Visual Studio is a joke. It's not all the fault of Eclipse of course, for example ASP.NET MVC is so amazingly quick and easy to work with when used with the Visual Studio tools for it compared to any other MVC framework out there, but being such a young framework lacks features of many of the older ones, plus you're stuck with the Windows platform to host it which in itself is a problem sometimes. I would love nothing more than a Visual Studio quality IDE to work with the likes of Zend, Spring, Android and so forth and I really do hope that Eclipse gets there some day, it's just not there yet.