You're being disingenuous now, ignoring the fact that you're probably wrong (Apple looks to have taken the crown again given latest trajectories: http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm...) we're not talking about all phone sales, we were talking about comparative smartphone sales- i.e. Samsung's high powered models vs. Apple's high powered models, like for like you get more power with Samsung, yet Apple shifts more units.
You can't simply throw some random extra figures in the mix to try and make a point when in fact it just makes no sense. Samsung has a range of phones, but their phones that are more powerful that Apple's never outsell Apple's - the additional power you get with the Samsung phone just isn't a selling point when the phones are riddle with crappy Samsung software that ruins the Android experience and leaves the Apple experience a superior option in terms of ease and pleasantness of use.
So before screaming hypocrisy you might want to try and understand the discussion you're entering. You don't get to just reframe it by muddying the waters with figures irrelevant to the discussion just because you don't like the facts being put forward and want to disagree with the general point just because.
"Simple fact is the screens is running at one resolution and up-scaling a lower one will bring artifacts and less sharpness."...and better FPS, more polygon detail and greater responsiveness.
It's a trade-off, it's not a one way thing like you're implying. You can't simply up to 1080p native without a cost and that cost isn't always inherently a negative - it's entirely dependent on what you're doing.
Though I don't know why you suggest less sharpness and artifacts are a given of upscaling, the whole point in upscaling is to increase sharpness, and artifacts aren't an inherent flaw of upscaling. What upscaling does is reduce per-pixel detail and whether that even notices depends on the game- you'd never notice it in a game with simple graphics like Minecraft for example.
I agree things have changed, but the earlier 360 models were really the exception, everything else since has been pretty quiet compared to the cooling required in a decent gaming PC.
"The last instant-on console was the Nintendo 64. Every console since then has included system software that takes longer to start than my laptop takes to come out of suspend and pop up the password box."
Not really true, instant-on mode on the Xbox One is instant-on and the Wii U is quick to boot.
"The Steam client in Big Picture mode can be navigated with a USB gamepad. Beyond that, if you can text, you can use a Lenovo N5901 Bluetooth handheld keyboard with trackball."
Agreed, Valve seems to be the only PC gaming company that really gets what PC gaming needs to grow into the current gaming market place. It's got a way to go but there is definitely movement in that direction. The problem is that even with big picture mode that's just the launcher, most of the games are still very much built around the mouse/keyboard combo which is an ill fit for the sofa in the living room.
"Where does that leave people who want to mod platformers or play indie platformers?"
I don't know. Mario Maker on the Wii U maybe? This sounds like an incredibly small market - effectively you're bringing a statistical outlier into a discussion about general cases. It's not really meaningful. Certainly I'm not saying that outliers don't exist, that people don't like to play platformers on PCs, just like some people are happy to play RTS games and MMOs on consoles (I'm not), but there's not much of a market for this, hence why you don't see much of it - nothings going to change the fact that the PC is typically ill suited to that genre just as consoles are ill suited to other genres.
It's no different to the tablet vs. PC argument. Many pundits argued tablets were going to completely kill off the PC but it didn't take much to realise that that was nonsense - no one's going to do serious software development on a tablet for example, but that doesn't mean that tablets aren't great for things like reading the news. It's not surprising therefore that tablet sales numbers are now along way off from the sales predictions those folks gave whilst PC sales are climbing- the markets are reaching an equilibrium related to the types of task they both serve best.
Different platforms and input methods are better suited to different types of game and application, there's not really much more to it than that, it's just a simple fact and you'll never get a do-everything system and eliminate every other type of system - some might disappear, for example satnavs have been all but superseded by smartphones and tablets now, but convergence can only go so far before you end up with a mess that tries to do too much and ends up doing too much of it poorly.
Honestly, I'm from the UK myself but I try not to listen to the gaming media. I've been aware for many many years now how the gaming media is effectively a protection racket. I've seen great games get poor reviews because they didn't pay their protection money and vice versa. Mostly where I've encountered this attitude is here in the comments section of Slashdot. I was late to even hear about the whole Gamergate thing for exactly this reason. When it filtered through to me on the media I do pay attention to it reinforced my view that visiting gaming sites is still a waste of time because they're still just fervent pits of rent seeking that provide nothing of actual value to the world of gaming. If I want to get a realistic idea of the quality of a game I just go and look for combined average user ratings across a decent size review set and that's about it.
I've probably been hypocritical myself, I got too caught up in the fanboy wars myself last gen back around 2006 or so as a 360 fanboy, but nowadays I can see how meaningless it was, and how pointless it was. I'm not sure if this is a sign of getting old, or growing personal financial security, but nowadays I just don't see the point, I have an Xbox One and a Wii U, but my PC is really dated now and there's not enough unique to the PS4 that takes my interest yet, if there was I'd just go out and buy one- I think all systems have their pros and cons, but I can't see much point complaining about them. You either like a system enough to buy it or you don't, I don't really see what there is to argue about beyond that, hence why I find articles like this one to be pointless vitriol - it tells us nothing useful, it achieves nothing useful, it's not informative, it's not interesting, it's just childish bickering.
I think there's some truth in what you say though, I've seen the exact argument you cite before too and I couldn't tell if it was sarcasm or seriousness, that someone preferred the PC because pirating games is easier, yet then went on to complain that devs are focussing too much on consoles. I just could not get my head around the sort of mindset that leads to such absurd obliviousness to how stupid an argument that is.
At the end of the day gaming markets are determined entirely by where the money is. I understand it's frustrating if your platform isn't where the money is, god only knows having bought an X1 it's frustrating to hear that Street Fighter has gone PS4 exclusive but I don't see much point getting too wound up about it. All platforms have their exclusives and as I've said before if one has enough to attract you to it, then save up your pennies and buy it, if not then it doesn't seem worth trolling the internet over it - it's almost as if there's an attitude of entitlement whereby some people feel they should have the right to have everything they want, when they want it, in the way they want it. It'd be nice for sure, but it's not the way the world works, and I doubt it's the way the world will ever work.
"Disingenuous, since you know what I meant, and proved that full well in the next sentence."
Not really, my point was that there's no obligation that because a console can do something, that it should do something for every game. I agree that this generation should be more capable of hitting 1080p on more occasions than last gen, but I don't agree that it should be expected as a given. I couldn't give a toss if something like Minecraft is only 720p if it means I get better draw distances and bigger worlds for example because 1080p would add no practical benefit to the game.
"It's not all about you."
No, and that was my point, it's not all about you either, it's about the market, and guess what? my view is representative of the market and that's why they're doing what suits the market (which happens to coincide with what suits me), and not what suits you. They're making a game with more poly based detail and less actual pixels rendered, because it turns out that that's what most of their target customer base wants - no one's going to buy an FPS like BF if they gunned for 1080p, hit 60fps but the world is devoid of detail, or full of detail but only runs at 30fps.
"I'd much rather they fixed the bugs and I could play at 1080p. The hardware's capabilities are known before the game hits the street, they decide how to tune it, it's their decision."
Agreed that it's their decision, so why are you complaining that sometimes devs are deciding other things are more important than 1080p? At the end of the day some games are going to gun for 1080p and look great and play great because it's all about the graphics, but others want to flow smoothly and 1080p just isn't a concern at that point. On the PC I tend to crank up RTS games to max details, because I don't need 60fps, 30fps is plenty for that type of game, but an FPS? I definitely want 60fps. If you agree it's their decision I really don't understand what your complaint is.
"You could also have just not made your purchasing decision until after it was demonstrated whether it would be a good one."
Yes I could have and should have and was an idiot for not doing so - I thought that given that the past 6, 7, 8 or however many ACs there have been have been stable and looked good that this one might be too, more fool me - lesson well and truly learnt. Like you, I've given up on preorders altogether now because it's clear that even track record doesn't mean anything anymore in the games industry.
We don't buy 1080p consoles full stop. We just buy consoles.
The fact they can do 1080p in theory is neither here nor there, last gen could do 1080p in theory but struggled in practice. This gen can do 4k in theory, but will struggle in practice.
There's a lot of things consoles can theoretically do but suck at in practice, it seems silly to get caught up on one more so than another.
I personally prefer gameplay over graphics, and if this game is notably fun then I couldn't care what it looks like. I remember back in the days of Quake 1 when GLQuake came out and graphics cards got better so that we could run it in 640x480, 800x600, and eventually 1024x768 if we were lucky I pretty much always dropped to 320x200 software (no GL) - the speed and smoothness of it was just so much more preferable, the game was way better when it ran smooth and fast, than slow and pretty.
Of course in a perfect world we'd have everything, but we don't live in a perfect world. There are balances and tradeoffs to be had and for most people the tradeoff of being fun is going to be more important than being pretty. Being pretty but not playable is what movies are for.
Assassins Creed Unity was full of bugs, regularly crashed, and ran like shit, but hey at least it was pretty and ran at 1080p right? No, I'd much rather they'd just dropped it to 720p and spent the time making it actually playable rather than fighting to get it to run at 1080p instead. That way I wouldn't have wasted £40 on a turd.
Vanilla Android is fine, but frankly Samsung's phones are so full of poorly written clutter that they're not easier to use and that's the problem. The same is true of a number of other Android manufacturers like HTC- the crap they install just ruins the Android experience.
You've made the mistake of assume that number of people whining on a forum is representative of a democratic value.
I've never used the Feedback forum but I have e-mailed them feedback. Perhaps the feedback forum just isn't representative of anything like a democratic mandate?
They probably just started at 720p and walked their way up to 1080p in various stages to see what they could get away with without sacrificing the 60fps "holy grail".
It's probably just that that's as far as they got. At the end of the day, 20% more is 20% more. No point dropping 20% detail to 720p if there's no benefit because they're aiming to sync to 60fps regardless of resolution.
Well yeah, but you have to bear in mind that no actual console gamer fears 720p at all. The only people who claim they fear that are people who still haven't gotten over the fact that AAA attention was primarily switched to consoles about 10 years ago now and think that by spreading such falsehoods the AAA world will suddenly jump up and switch their allegiance to PC and only PC making it the one true master race gaming platform.
It wont though of course, because those devs will just go where the money and player base is. The only company that actually seems to get that this is the real problem facing PC gaming and is working to solve it is Valve, hence why they've been expending so much effort on making Steam living room friendly to try and increase the PC gaming playerbase beyond those who are simply happy to game at a desk and onto those who prefer to game in the living room, which like it or not, is the majority of the market nowadays (or, well, it might be mobile now, but either way the market has clearly changed away from desktop gaming).
Right, but more people are buying console games, just as more people bought iPhones compared to much more powerful Samsung phones, what does that tell you?
I'll give you a hint: people don't care about power, they care about things like ease of use and polish.
I don't even like Sony or Apple and I can tell you this. It's not rocket science that raw underlying power isn't everything to the consumer. More often they just want something that's quick and easy to use and reliable. As much as I love Android it's not lost on me that all the clutter and tat that Samsung added on top of vanilla Android killed the experience of their devices regardless of the power advantage they have often had over equivalent iPhones.
It shouldn't be surprising that it's the same when it comes to playing games either- no one wants a big buzzing PC in their living room that takes a bit of time to boot up, typically requires navigation with a mouse and keyboard and so forth when they can just chuck a console under the TV, have it fire up almost instantly and jump straight into a game with a controller purpose built for slouching on the sofa than a mouse and keyboard that are typically horrible on anything other than a desk.
Though no one should be gloating about anything, PCs and consoles both have great games that work well for their respective input styles. MMOs tend to be terrible on consoles, but platformers tend to be awful on PCs for example. Ultimately it's going to depend on what type of game you like to play and where you play it, any talk of power is just pointless if you're not having much fun.
Some countries get difficult about using different passports anyway so it makes a lot of sense to just stick to one regardless. My partner has Canadian and British passports and got a telling off from Canadian customs once when she left on her British passport and entered again on her Canadian when we went back once.
Apparently it fucks up their ability to track who has left the country and who hasn't and they don't like that.
"As stated by the parent they can always renounce citizenship later and avoid the tax and selective service issues, but this is expensive (about $2500USD)."
I guess that depends on whether you ever want to return to the US. If it was up to a country whether you were a citizen or not countries could state arbitrarily claiming people were citizens and that their laws applied to them, which would obviously be stupid and cause all sorts of drama.
It's part of the universal declaration of human rights that you can renounce or change citizenship, (though a state can't legally force you to become stateless under international law, even though some have in practice).
I suspect the worst they could do is try and charge you if you went back to the US. If you were in any European nation for example the European Court of Human Rights would have to uphold the law as they're bound by the ECHR and prevent any member state from allowing the US to apply penalties to you as if you were a citizen - what the US thinks you are would be irrelevant at that point, because if you were willing to testify to the court that you were no longer a citizen then the US couldn't do jack shit unless it could prove you'd made such a testament under duress and did really want to retain citizenship.
So ultimately it depends on your reasons for renouncing I guess. If you're pissed off and never want to go back I can't see how you could be forced to pay anything, but if you want to leave open the door to visit or return their and perhaps try and obtain citizenship once again one day then it probably makes sense to pay it.
"The only way around it is to find the one sherrif's office in the country who considers a signed affadavit to be sufficient to wed (all of the others disagree)."
That sounds more like an Icelandic problem than anything. If Iceland doesn't accept another country's designated paperwork then how is that a US problem?
It's a bit like going to a country that doesn't allow gay marriage, trying to arrange a gay marriage, having it refused, and then blaming your home country rather than the country that refused it. The US has a procedure for getting the necessary documentation to act as proof of being free to marry and that's to gain that affidavit which you can do at the embassy, or via a US lawyer, it's not preventing you getting married, Iceland's bureaucrats are.
The US can't control what other countries do and don't accept, and nor should it. Similarly the US shouldn't have to change it's legal framework because one of the smallest and most unimportant countries in the world is being difficult to someone about something - especially when most other countries have no problem with the US affidavit.
99% of roaming charges were nothing more than pure profit.
All this does is cuts out the ability to use the somewhat arbitrary national borders within the EU as an excuse for profiteering.
If someone wants to set up their single mast mobile telco they're more than welcome too, they'll still have to pay the standard rate for connecting people to other networks that covers costs and grants some profit. They just can't charge or be charged exhorbitant profiteering profits now that's all.
Banning roaming charges doesn't ban providers from charging each other reasonable amounts to connect between networks, the problem is that roaming charges have always been unreasonable made up numbers that bear no resemblance to the actual cost of connecting a call.
"All it takes is the one company that is designing and building the installation to hide the real issues and, because it is "green", the installation get built. No conspiracy necessary."
That IS a conspiracy, because it assumes the company can hide that from everyone, or keep it hidden from everyone. It assumes the company has an extraordinary power to prevent any external focus or criticism, and they can keep every environmental aspect of the plan firmly under their control. It would require that the company can deny all access to the proposed area to prevent anyone having a look to see what species are there, and to see what might change, or if they do, having the power to silence them. This is frankly nonsense and the proposed Severn barrier not so far away was evidence enough that there's enough people in the area willing to examine the impacts and as I said already, guess what? they're really not concerned by them - it's not the company making the proposal saying that, it's the very people that have scrutinised the proposal saying okay, where the same people have said no to numerous other previous projects in the region. That means there is a conspiracy and they've all been bought off or silenced, or it is what it is - they're actually okay with it and see no real impact.
"Lets throw another variable into the grid balancing act. Engineers on individual production projects just don't care what issues they cause the grid and that is a problem."
Again, where is the evidence for this? Have you got evidence that we've had cases of too much power or too little power for the grid to handle? The only issues we've seen on the grid have been the unexpected shutdown of numerous base load plants due to a series of unfortunate events at those reactors, but even with that shutdown of a number of major plants we're still doing fine.
Tidal isn't unpredictable like wind, it's incredibly predictable, so factoring it into the grid is far easier. In fact, it's even more predictable than hydro, because even hydro can suffer drought or heavy rainfall problems- the seas levels and tidal patterns remain far closer to constant.
I was thinking the same whilst I was both reading and posting in this thread.
It did cross my mind that whilst the GP was complaining about home workers being unproductive that he was quite probably sat in an office himself being, well, unproductive:)
Right, but none of that stops it being a potential driver issue. Depending on how the data is passed to the card some cards might cough and others might not.
I'm not saying it isn't badly written either, it may well be a bit of both or just badly written by itself in such a way that certain systems struggle, but I'm saying that I can play it find on my relatively old and low powered computers even with bumped up draw distances and a decent resolution, whilst I'm well aware that others with more powerful PCs see their machines struggle, whilst some do not.
If clones work fine all that tells us is that they're written differently. Maybe they are written better, maybe whilst they work on your system well they wont work on mine, I've no idea and nor am I particularly bothered enough to dig too deeply into it.
But I was just making the point that whilst your point is well known, well documented and certainly fairly widespread, that it doesn't effect everyone, and last I checked the jury is out on whose at fault because no one has managed to find the root cause and explain why it's fine on some systems and not others seemingly without system capabilities being in any way relevant to why.
Yes, you're right, the problem here in the UK is indeed overcrowding more than anything, but the problem is that it doesn't take £50bn to solve the problem and that £50bn is being spent such that it wont solve the problem.
For example, the line connecting the UK's 3rd and 4th biggest cities (Leeds and Sheffield) still isn't fully electrified, so you've got this absurd situation where it takes 50 minutes to travel the roughly 30 miles between them on 40 year old diesel trains that regularly break down, sometimes on the part of the line that is electrified and carries the East Coast mainline traffic to London delaying more major transit routes. This problem is repeated in other parts of the country like some of the lines around Manchester.
Then with HS2 itself you've got the further problem that it's not even clear what it achieves. You can save half an hour in practice from London to Sheffield for example, but the Sheffield stop will be at an out of town shopping centre from where it'll take you 30minutes (including walking/waiting time) to get a connecting tram, taxi, bus or train back into the centre meaning you lost any benefit of the increased speed. When the project was originally proposed there were two times listed - the theoretical maximum if the new trains ran full pelt from A to B with no stops and the actual times in practice with stops at each station. Nowadays all mention of the actual times have been deleted and only the theoretical times are mentioned by the government, but they're bullshit and will never ever be achieved in practice.
The issue is the busy lines aren't the East Coast line and the Sheffield - St Pancras Line - I've caught these many a time working between Leeds, Sheffield and London both off-peak and on peak. I've never once seen them full, and the only time people have ever had to stand for a few stops is when you've had a cancelled service and everyone's had to pack onto one train. Where we have actual persistent overcrowding is on the relatively short-haul intercity commuter lines.
So it's not clear what exactly HS2 is trying to do, it's a phenomenal amount of money to give you no real time benefit due to requiring new out of town stations from where you have to get back into town whilst failing to resolve any actual practical overcrowding problem and capacity isn't currently an issue on the existing route it will cover (any current capacity spikes, and future needs can be dealt with by simply eliminating or reducing cancelled services, and by putting more trains on the existing lines- there's still plenty of scope for that).
You could resolve the real local commuter overcrowding problems with only hundreds of millions - it's widely known what needs doing and relatively cheap and easy to do. Instead we're blowing £50bn on a boondoggle that solves no actual problems in practice.
There are some major rail projects that make sense- Birmingham to London does need major work to speed it up, but for the rest of the North, like Sheffield and Leeds it's mostly just electrification and maybe a few Sheffield line / East coast line trunk line to connect the two in case of idiots on the line or similar major delays (though I'm still convinced idiots on the line is better solved by sticking meat grinders or chainsaws on the front of the trains).
Finally as I say though, even if HS2 was the right choice, there's still the glaring question of quite how they're managing to make it cost many multiples more than things that are far bigger, more complex projects requiring far more expensive materials and far greater logistics. For the price of HS2 we can have two cutting edge nuclear power stations, two multi-acre aircraft carriers and still have change left to ensure every single household in the UK has fibre optic broadband. Whatever the merits of the project - if the MoD which is known for it's inefficiency can manage far more complex projects for a fraction of the price then something is very wrong with HS2.
I think the problem with Minecraft performance is probably more to do with some incompatibility between JNI and some hardware drivers to be honest.
The reason I say that is that Java is perfectly capable of running a game like Minecraft well, and because I've never seen any performance issues in Minecraft even on my now 7 year old PC, or my 3 year old laptop but I am fully aware that some people have issues with it.
Minecraft performance problems certainly don't seem to be global and that's why it has to be down to some kind of hardware incompatibility somewhere along the line.
Yes, it basically means she never washed, and so was incredibly unhygienic, she never ate and so was suffering from severe malnutrition, or never slept which meant she was suffering the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation.
It has to be one of these things, because no one is super-human and can actually live under those conditions and still be healthy and useful.
So even if she did "work" for 130 hours, she'll have been a horrendous employee to have around, either smelling like crap and likely always getting ill or being permanently tired and unable to focus on anything.
If someone told me they did 130 hours a week I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole, having someone that unhealthy on your team would be a massive liability.
Again, like what? People are saying it'll have an impact without explaining what that impact is and providing any evidence. This covers a relatively tiny section of the tidal zone, and even then doesn't in any way destroy the section it does touch only changes it somewhat. It creates a habitat much more similar to places like Spurn Point.
There's no evidence that just the couple of miles affected will have a net negative impact on any particular species, and it's clear that the increase in ecosystem diversity will create an inherent increase in biodiversity creating a more healthy ecosystem as a whole.
"Because many of these actual professionals just want the investment money so they can line their pockets."
That's just conspiracy theory though. If it's true then how do we ever get anything done ever? If everyone is just making stuff up for money then why is the world not in tatters? If your suggestion is that this industry is more prone to this, then I'd love to see some evidence for it.
Most likely engineers in this field are like engineers in every field and they do it because they enjoy solving problems, and would like to solve this problem as much as any other. I doubt they're any more a bunch of lying cut-throats just out for cash than in any other field.
"Maybe the wool has bell pulled over their eyes by professionals."
Again though why in this case when they were so able to see through similar bullshit in every other case from the badger cull through to the Severn tidal barrier project? Are you suggesting the environmentalists just lost all ability to think rationally, research and challenge things in the face of the word "lagoon" or something?
I think you've been drinking too much conspiracy juice, this is a fine example of the need for Occam's razor, why jump to some assumption of a massive lie based conspiracy when the alternative is more simple and likely, that it simply is what it is? That this is a decent new idea that solves some of the problems of other past ideas (again, like the Severn tidal barrier).
You have to understand that they've been looking at tidal energy in this region for a long long time - many decades. Many proposals have been put forward and shot down but with each learning from the last and improving. It's not impossible that lessons have been learnt over all those subsequent iterations and we're finally at the point that we have something decent and workable. This hasn't just been pulled out of thin air- it's the result of many decades worth of effort and research in the region including many decades of back and forth with environmentalists to try and deal with their concerns.
Well from what I can tell they seem to be complaining about this impacting fish moving upstream from the sea (I wasn't even under the impression many fish even do this given that most either stick to either salt water or fresh water- the species that move between are I believe incredibly small in number).
I'm having a hard time too seeing how this will have any real impact. That's why I get the impression that the supposed anglers are just a bunch of nimbys making up an excuse for the hell of it because change scares them. If there was any merit to their argument you can guarantee the sometimes almost militant (especially in this region) environmentalists would be right on it and that's largely why I think their argument has no weight.
On the plan I saw there was no obvious river the lagoon encompassed anyway, but even if it did the plan is that the turbines are open during the times the tide comes in (which is when fish would go upstream) and closed when it goes out, to create the differential in water levels that's then used to power the turbines.
Couple this with the fact that the lagoon itself would create a safe breeding ground for the fish which larger predators couldn't easily penetrate and that the area round the lagoon would similarly be a fairly safe reef like environment and I can't see how the few fish that get caught when the water is going out would make any real impact on overall populations.
"Telecommuting was a nice experiment, but it doesn't work for people whose work is not easily quantified."
And who are those people? I've always quantified my home working staff's work based on results. Have they got done what I've expected them to do in the time I expect them to be able to do it? It's not really rocket science.
"In theory, it may be possible to identify the people that are more productive, but that takes a lot of management effort"
Yes, it's so effortful to determine who is and isn't pulling their weight. Honestly, please don't become a manager. Ever. If you can't even begin to understand how you might gauge which of your staff are effective and not calling such understanding merely "theory" then you're really not cut out for such a role. If you've any experience managing people then it's fairly easy to see who does and doesn't get done what they need to do. Dealing with the problem is often the hard part, because you can often be hamstrung by company or national policies on the issue depending on who you work for and where you live.
"since, obviously, the people that do NO work at home are the people that like telecommuting the most."
Yes obviously. Thank you for the wealth of proof you provided for your assertion.
"Although it wasn't popular, Marissa was right to end the practice at Yahoo."
Yes, if by right you mean she found it easier to lose talent than actually do a job of managing any real or perceived problem. The problem is there are as equally unproductive amounts of people as your pulled out of thin air numbers in the office too. Unproductive people are unproductive, it doesn't matter where you make them turn up for work. It doesn't fix the root problem- they're unproductive because they're not motivated, and they're not motivated for any number of reasons- unhappy with compensation package, being managed by a hopeless manager that demotivates people, being repeatedly given the most boring work, being forced to do things not in their contract that they don't want to do, not being given a fair shot at career progression or training and so on and so forth. If you don't fix the root issues your people will still be entirely demotivated and unproductive. Some of these things are your fault as a leader and you can fix, others you can do little about- someone has to do the boring work and the best you can do is help them move on.
Meyer's actual claimed reason for getting rid of it was because she wanted people in the office bouncing ideas off of people to try and spur on innovation. I agree with this to a degree, I think during product conception phase this is absolutely right, but the problem is this whole bouncing ideas off each other open plan office mindset falls apart when it's time to stop coming up with ideas and start implementing them. Once those ideas have formed a product, and you've got down on paper what your bounds for this product are, and you need to start planning and building it, people need a few days a week to actually get on and do that in the environment they're most comfortable in where they're not going to be repeatedly distracted. For some people this is the office, some this is the local cafe, some it's in the park, and for others it's at home.
And that's why Meyer's blanket ban was bad. There's no question she'll have lost some talent doing it as she did. But when you claim your goal is to stem the flow of talent out of the company, then such blanket actions are doomed to fail. It's short sighted lazy management that makes great headlines, whilst shedding you real actual talent, and doing nothing to stem any apparent company wide problem of poor motivation. Even if she has got more people into the office coming up with more ideas, she's not enabling an environment that ever lets all her people put those ideas into practice- the only ones that will be productive are those who can be productive in an office environment, which isn't even close to the whole of the human race, maybe like you I'll make up a percentage, I'l
Slashdot Mirror
You're being disingenuous now, ignoring the fact that you're probably wrong (Apple looks to have taken the crown again given latest trajectories: http://www.idc.com/prodserv/sm...) we're not talking about all phone sales, we were talking about comparative smartphone sales- i.e. Samsung's high powered models vs. Apple's high powered models, like for like you get more power with Samsung, yet Apple shifts more units.
You can't simply throw some random extra figures in the mix to try and make a point when in fact it just makes no sense. Samsung has a range of phones, but their phones that are more powerful that Apple's never outsell Apple's - the additional power you get with the Samsung phone just isn't a selling point when the phones are riddle with crappy Samsung software that ruins the Android experience and leaves the Apple experience a superior option in terms of ease and pleasantness of use.
So before screaming hypocrisy you might want to try and understand the discussion you're entering. You don't get to just reframe it by muddying the waters with figures irrelevant to the discussion just because you don't like the facts being put forward and want to disagree with the general point just because.
"Simple fact is the screens is running at one resolution and up-scaling a lower one will bring artifacts and less sharpness." ...and better FPS, more polygon detail and greater responsiveness.
It's a trade-off, it's not a one way thing like you're implying. You can't simply up to 1080p native without a cost and that cost isn't always inherently a negative - it's entirely dependent on what you're doing.
Though I don't know why you suggest less sharpness and artifacts are a given of upscaling, the whole point in upscaling is to increase sharpness, and artifacts aren't an inherent flaw of upscaling. What upscaling does is reduce per-pixel detail and whether that even notices depends on the game- you'd never notice it in a game with simple graphics like Minecraft for example.
I agree things have changed, but the earlier 360 models were really the exception, everything else since has been pretty quiet compared to the cooling required in a decent gaming PC.
"The last instant-on console was the Nintendo 64. Every console since then has included system software that takes longer to start than my laptop takes to come out of suspend and pop up the password box."
Not really true, instant-on mode on the Xbox One is instant-on and the Wii U is quick to boot.
"The Steam client in Big Picture mode can be navigated with a USB gamepad. Beyond that, if you can text, you can use a Lenovo N5901 Bluetooth handheld keyboard with trackball."
Agreed, Valve seems to be the only PC gaming company that really gets what PC gaming needs to grow into the current gaming market place. It's got a way to go but there is definitely movement in that direction. The problem is that even with big picture mode that's just the launcher, most of the games are still very much built around the mouse/keyboard combo which is an ill fit for the sofa in the living room.
"Where does that leave people who want to mod platformers or play indie platformers?"
I don't know. Mario Maker on the Wii U maybe? This sounds like an incredibly small market - effectively you're bringing a statistical outlier into a discussion about general cases. It's not really meaningful. Certainly I'm not saying that outliers don't exist, that people don't like to play platformers on PCs, just like some people are happy to play RTS games and MMOs on consoles (I'm not), but there's not much of a market for this, hence why you don't see much of it - nothings going to change the fact that the PC is typically ill suited to that genre just as consoles are ill suited to other genres.
It's no different to the tablet vs. PC argument. Many pundits argued tablets were going to completely kill off the PC but it didn't take much to realise that that was nonsense - no one's going to do serious software development on a tablet for example, but that doesn't mean that tablets aren't great for things like reading the news. It's not surprising therefore that tablet sales numbers are now along way off from the sales predictions those folks gave whilst PC sales are climbing- the markets are reaching an equilibrium related to the types of task they both serve best.
Different platforms and input methods are better suited to different types of game and application, there's not really much more to it than that, it's just a simple fact and you'll never get a do-everything system and eliminate every other type of system - some might disappear, for example satnavs have been all but superseded by smartphones and tablets now, but convergence can only go so far before you end up with a mess that tries to do too much and ends up doing too much of it poorly.
Honestly, I'm from the UK myself but I try not to listen to the gaming media. I've been aware for many many years now how the gaming media is effectively a protection racket. I've seen great games get poor reviews because they didn't pay their protection money and vice versa. Mostly where I've encountered this attitude is here in the comments section of Slashdot. I was late to even hear about the whole Gamergate thing for exactly this reason. When it filtered through to me on the media I do pay attention to it reinforced my view that visiting gaming sites is still a waste of time because they're still just fervent pits of rent seeking that provide nothing of actual value to the world of gaming. If I want to get a realistic idea of the quality of a game I just go and look for combined average user ratings across a decent size review set and that's about it.
I've probably been hypocritical myself, I got too caught up in the fanboy wars myself last gen back around 2006 or so as a 360 fanboy, but nowadays I can see how meaningless it was, and how pointless it was. I'm not sure if this is a sign of getting old, or growing personal financial security, but nowadays I just don't see the point, I have an Xbox One and a Wii U, but my PC is really dated now and there's not enough unique to the PS4 that takes my interest yet, if there was I'd just go out and buy one- I think all systems have their pros and cons, but I can't see much point complaining about them. You either like a system enough to buy it or you don't, I don't really see what there is to argue about beyond that, hence why I find articles like this one to be pointless vitriol - it tells us nothing useful, it achieves nothing useful, it's not informative, it's not interesting, it's just childish bickering.
I think there's some truth in what you say though, I've seen the exact argument you cite before too and I couldn't tell if it was sarcasm or seriousness, that someone preferred the PC because pirating games is easier, yet then went on to complain that devs are focussing too much on consoles. I just could not get my head around the sort of mindset that leads to such absurd obliviousness to how stupid an argument that is.
At the end of the day gaming markets are determined entirely by where the money is. I understand it's frustrating if your platform isn't where the money is, god only knows having bought an X1 it's frustrating to hear that Street Fighter has gone PS4 exclusive but I don't see much point getting too wound up about it. All platforms have their exclusives and as I've said before if one has enough to attract you to it, then save up your pennies and buy it, if not then it doesn't seem worth trolling the internet over it - it's almost as if there's an attitude of entitlement whereby some people feel they should have the right to have everything they want, when they want it, in the way they want it. It'd be nice for sure, but it's not the way the world works, and I doubt it's the way the world will ever work.
"Disingenuous, since you know what I meant, and proved that full well in the next sentence."
Not really, my point was that there's no obligation that because a console can do something, that it should do something for every game. I agree that this generation should be more capable of hitting 1080p on more occasions than last gen, but I don't agree that it should be expected as a given. I couldn't give a toss if something like Minecraft is only 720p if it means I get better draw distances and bigger worlds for example because 1080p would add no practical benefit to the game.
"It's not all about you."
No, and that was my point, it's not all about you either, it's about the market, and guess what? my view is representative of the market and that's why they're doing what suits the market (which happens to coincide with what suits me), and not what suits you. They're making a game with more poly based detail and less actual pixels rendered, because it turns out that that's what most of their target customer base wants - no one's going to buy an FPS like BF if they gunned for 1080p, hit 60fps but the world is devoid of detail, or full of detail but only runs at 30fps.
"I'd much rather they fixed the bugs and I could play at 1080p. The hardware's capabilities are known before the game hits the street, they decide how to tune it, it's their decision."
Agreed that it's their decision, so why are you complaining that sometimes devs are deciding other things are more important than 1080p? At the end of the day some games are going to gun for 1080p and look great and play great because it's all about the graphics, but others want to flow smoothly and 1080p just isn't a concern at that point. On the PC I tend to crank up RTS games to max details, because I don't need 60fps, 30fps is plenty for that type of game, but an FPS? I definitely want 60fps. If you agree it's their decision I really don't understand what your complaint is.
"You could also have just not made your purchasing decision until after it was demonstrated whether it would be a good one."
Yes I could have and should have and was an idiot for not doing so - I thought that given that the past 6, 7, 8 or however many ACs there have been have been stable and looked good that this one might be too, more fool me - lesson well and truly learnt. Like you, I've given up on preorders altogether now because it's clear that even track record doesn't mean anything anymore in the games industry.
We don't buy 1080p consoles full stop. We just buy consoles.
The fact they can do 1080p in theory is neither here nor there, last gen could do 1080p in theory but struggled in practice. This gen can do 4k in theory, but will struggle in practice.
There's a lot of things consoles can theoretically do but suck at in practice, it seems silly to get caught up on one more so than another.
I personally prefer gameplay over graphics, and if this game is notably fun then I couldn't care what it looks like. I remember back in the days of Quake 1 when GLQuake came out and graphics cards got better so that we could run it in 640x480, 800x600, and eventually 1024x768 if we were lucky I pretty much always dropped to 320x200 software (no GL) - the speed and smoothness of it was just so much more preferable, the game was way better when it ran smooth and fast, than slow and pretty.
Of course in a perfect world we'd have everything, but we don't live in a perfect world. There are balances and tradeoffs to be had and for most people the tradeoff of being fun is going to be more important than being pretty. Being pretty but not playable is what movies are for.
Assassins Creed Unity was full of bugs, regularly crashed, and ran like shit, but hey at least it was pretty and ran at 1080p right? No, I'd much rather they'd just dropped it to 720p and spent the time making it actually playable rather than fighting to get it to run at 1080p instead. That way I wouldn't have wasted £40 on a turd.
Vanilla Android is fine, but frankly Samsung's phones are so full of poorly written clutter that they're not easier to use and that's the problem. The same is true of a number of other Android manufacturers like HTC- the crap they install just ruins the Android experience.
You've made the mistake of assume that number of people whining on a forum is representative of a democratic value.
I've never used the Feedback forum but I have e-mailed them feedback. Perhaps the feedback forum just isn't representative of anything like a democratic mandate?
They probably just started at 720p and walked their way up to 1080p in various stages to see what they could get away with without sacrificing the 60fps "holy grail".
It's probably just that that's as far as they got. At the end of the day, 20% more is 20% more. No point dropping 20% detail to 720p if there's no benefit because they're aiming to sync to 60fps regardless of resolution.
Well yeah, but you have to bear in mind that no actual console gamer fears 720p at all. The only people who claim they fear that are people who still haven't gotten over the fact that AAA attention was primarily switched to consoles about 10 years ago now and think that by spreading such falsehoods the AAA world will suddenly jump up and switch their allegiance to PC and only PC making it the one true master race gaming platform.
It wont though of course, because those devs will just go where the money and player base is. The only company that actually seems to get that this is the real problem facing PC gaming and is working to solve it is Valve, hence why they've been expending so much effort on making Steam living room friendly to try and increase the PC gaming playerbase beyond those who are simply happy to game at a desk and onto those who prefer to game in the living room, which like it or not, is the majority of the market nowadays (or, well, it might be mobile now, but either way the market has clearly changed away from desktop gaming).
Right, but more people are buying console games, just as more people bought iPhones compared to much more powerful Samsung phones, what does that tell you?
I'll give you a hint: people don't care about power, they care about things like ease of use and polish.
I don't even like Sony or Apple and I can tell you this. It's not rocket science that raw underlying power isn't everything to the consumer. More often they just want something that's quick and easy to use and reliable. As much as I love Android it's not lost on me that all the clutter and tat that Samsung added on top of vanilla Android killed the experience of their devices regardless of the power advantage they have often had over equivalent iPhones.
It shouldn't be surprising that it's the same when it comes to playing games either- no one wants a big buzzing PC in their living room that takes a bit of time to boot up, typically requires navigation with a mouse and keyboard and so forth when they can just chuck a console under the TV, have it fire up almost instantly and jump straight into a game with a controller purpose built for slouching on the sofa than a mouse and keyboard that are typically horrible on anything other than a desk.
Though no one should be gloating about anything, PCs and consoles both have great games that work well for their respective input styles. MMOs tend to be terrible on consoles, but platformers tend to be awful on PCs for example. Ultimately it's going to depend on what type of game you like to play and where you play it, any talk of power is just pointless if you're not having much fun.
Some countries get difficult about using different passports anyway so it makes a lot of sense to just stick to one regardless. My partner has Canadian and British passports and got a telling off from Canadian customs once when she left on her British passport and entered again on her Canadian when we went back once.
Apparently it fucks up their ability to track who has left the country and who hasn't and they don't like that.
"As stated by the parent they can always renounce citizenship later and avoid the tax and selective service issues, but this is expensive (about $2500USD)."
I guess that depends on whether you ever want to return to the US. If it was up to a country whether you were a citizen or not countries could state arbitrarily claiming people were citizens and that their laws applied to them, which would obviously be stupid and cause all sorts of drama.
It's part of the universal declaration of human rights that you can renounce or change citizenship, (though a state can't legally force you to become stateless under international law, even though some have in practice).
I suspect the worst they could do is try and charge you if you went back to the US. If you were in any European nation for example the European Court of Human Rights would have to uphold the law as they're bound by the ECHR and prevent any member state from allowing the US to apply penalties to you as if you were a citizen - what the US thinks you are would be irrelevant at that point, because if you were willing to testify to the court that you were no longer a citizen then the US couldn't do jack shit unless it could prove you'd made such a testament under duress and did really want to retain citizenship.
So ultimately it depends on your reasons for renouncing I guess. If you're pissed off and never want to go back I can't see how you could be forced to pay anything, but if you want to leave open the door to visit or return their and perhaps try and obtain citizenship once again one day then it probably makes sense to pay it.
"The only way around it is to find the one sherrif's office in the country who considers a signed affadavit to be sufficient to wed (all of the others disagree)."
That sounds more like an Icelandic problem than anything. If Iceland doesn't accept another country's designated paperwork then how is that a US problem?
It's a bit like going to a country that doesn't allow gay marriage, trying to arrange a gay marriage, having it refused, and then blaming your home country rather than the country that refused it. The US has a procedure for getting the necessary documentation to act as proof of being free to marry and that's to gain that affidavit which you can do at the embassy, or via a US lawyer, it's not preventing you getting married, Iceland's bureaucrats are.
The US can't control what other countries do and don't accept, and nor should it. Similarly the US shouldn't have to change it's legal framework because one of the smallest and most unimportant countries in the world is being difficult to someone about something - especially when most other countries have no problem with the US affidavit.
99% of roaming charges were nothing more than pure profit.
All this does is cuts out the ability to use the somewhat arbitrary national borders within the EU as an excuse for profiteering.
If someone wants to set up their single mast mobile telco they're more than welcome too, they'll still have to pay the standard rate for connecting people to other networks that covers costs and grants some profit. They just can't charge or be charged exhorbitant profiteering profits now that's all.
Banning roaming charges doesn't ban providers from charging each other reasonable amounts to connect between networks, the problem is that roaming charges have always been unreasonable made up numbers that bear no resemblance to the actual cost of connecting a call.
"All it takes is the one company that is designing and building the installation to hide the real issues and, because it is "green", the installation get built. No conspiracy necessary."
That IS a conspiracy, because it assumes the company can hide that from everyone, or keep it hidden from everyone. It assumes the company has an extraordinary power to prevent any external focus or criticism, and they can keep every environmental aspect of the plan firmly under their control. It would require that the company can deny all access to the proposed area to prevent anyone having a look to see what species are there, and to see what might change, or if they do, having the power to silence them. This is frankly nonsense and the proposed Severn barrier not so far away was evidence enough that there's enough people in the area willing to examine the impacts and as I said already, guess what? they're really not concerned by them - it's not the company making the proposal saying that, it's the very people that have scrutinised the proposal saying okay, where the same people have said no to numerous other previous projects in the region. That means there is a conspiracy and they've all been bought off or silenced, or it is what it is - they're actually okay with it and see no real impact.
"Lets throw another variable into the grid balancing act. Engineers on individual production projects just don't care what issues they cause the grid and that is a problem."
Again, where is the evidence for this? Have you got evidence that we've had cases of too much power or too little power for the grid to handle? The only issues we've seen on the grid have been the unexpected shutdown of numerous base load plants due to a series of unfortunate events at those reactors, but even with that shutdown of a number of major plants we're still doing fine.
Tidal isn't unpredictable like wind, it's incredibly predictable, so factoring it into the grid is far easier. In fact, it's even more predictable than hydro, because even hydro can suffer drought or heavy rainfall problems- the seas levels and tidal patterns remain far closer to constant.
I was thinking the same whilst I was both reading and posting in this thread.
It did cross my mind that whilst the GP was complaining about home workers being unproductive that he was quite probably sat in an office himself being, well, unproductive :)
Right, but none of that stops it being a potential driver issue. Depending on how the data is passed to the card some cards might cough and others might not.
I'm not saying it isn't badly written either, it may well be a bit of both or just badly written by itself in such a way that certain systems struggle, but I'm saying that I can play it find on my relatively old and low powered computers even with bumped up draw distances and a decent resolution, whilst I'm well aware that others with more powerful PCs see their machines struggle, whilst some do not.
If clones work fine all that tells us is that they're written differently. Maybe they are written better, maybe whilst they work on your system well they wont work on mine, I've no idea and nor am I particularly bothered enough to dig too deeply into it.
But I was just making the point that whilst your point is well known, well documented and certainly fairly widespread, that it doesn't effect everyone, and last I checked the jury is out on whose at fault because no one has managed to find the root cause and explain why it's fine on some systems and not others seemingly without system capabilities being in any way relevant to why.
Yes, you're right, the problem here in the UK is indeed overcrowding more than anything, but the problem is that it doesn't take £50bn to solve the problem and that £50bn is being spent such that it wont solve the problem.
For example, the line connecting the UK's 3rd and 4th biggest cities (Leeds and Sheffield) still isn't fully electrified, so you've got this absurd situation where it takes 50 minutes to travel the roughly 30 miles between them on 40 year old diesel trains that regularly break down, sometimes on the part of the line that is electrified and carries the East Coast mainline traffic to London delaying more major transit routes. This problem is repeated in other parts of the country like some of the lines around Manchester.
Then with HS2 itself you've got the further problem that it's not even clear what it achieves. You can save half an hour in practice from London to Sheffield for example, but the Sheffield stop will be at an out of town shopping centre from where it'll take you 30minutes (including walking/waiting time) to get a connecting tram, taxi, bus or train back into the centre meaning you lost any benefit of the increased speed. When the project was originally proposed there were two times listed - the theoretical maximum if the new trains ran full pelt from A to B with no stops and the actual times in practice with stops at each station. Nowadays all mention of the actual times have been deleted and only the theoretical times are mentioned by the government, but they're bullshit and will never ever be achieved in practice.
The issue is the busy lines aren't the East Coast line and the Sheffield - St Pancras Line - I've caught these many a time working between Leeds, Sheffield and London both off-peak and on peak. I've never once seen them full, and the only time people have ever had to stand for a few stops is when you've had a cancelled service and everyone's had to pack onto one train. Where we have actual persistent overcrowding is on the relatively short-haul intercity commuter lines.
So it's not clear what exactly HS2 is trying to do, it's a phenomenal amount of money to give you no real time benefit due to requiring new out of town stations from where you have to get back into town whilst failing to resolve any actual practical overcrowding problem and capacity isn't currently an issue on the existing route it will cover (any current capacity spikes, and future needs can be dealt with by simply eliminating or reducing cancelled services, and by putting more trains on the existing lines- there's still plenty of scope for that).
You could resolve the real local commuter overcrowding problems with only hundreds of millions - it's widely known what needs doing and relatively cheap and easy to do. Instead we're blowing £50bn on a boondoggle that solves no actual problems in practice.
There are some major rail projects that make sense- Birmingham to London does need major work to speed it up, but for the rest of the North, like Sheffield and Leeds it's mostly just electrification and maybe a few Sheffield line / East coast line trunk line to connect the two in case of idiots on the line or similar major delays (though I'm still convinced idiots on the line is better solved by sticking meat grinders or chainsaws on the front of the trains).
Finally as I say though, even if HS2 was the right choice, there's still the glaring question of quite how they're managing to make it cost many multiples more than things that are far bigger, more complex projects requiring far more expensive materials and far greater logistics. For the price of HS2 we can have two cutting edge nuclear power stations, two multi-acre aircraft carriers and still have change left to ensure every single household in the UK has fibre optic broadband. Whatever the merits of the project - if the MoD which is known for it's inefficiency can manage far more complex projects for a fraction of the price then something is very wrong with HS2.
I think the problem with Minecraft performance is probably more to do with some incompatibility between JNI and some hardware drivers to be honest.
The reason I say that is that Java is perfectly capable of running a game like Minecraft well, and because I've never seen any performance issues in Minecraft even on my now 7 year old PC, or my 3 year old laptop but I am fully aware that some people have issues with it.
Minecraft performance problems certainly don't seem to be global and that's why it has to be down to some kind of hardware incompatibility somewhere along the line.
Yes, it basically means she never washed, and so was incredibly unhygienic, she never ate and so was suffering from severe malnutrition, or never slept which meant she was suffering the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation.
It has to be one of these things, because no one is super-human and can actually live under those conditions and still be healthy and useful.
So even if she did "work" for 130 hours, she'll have been a horrendous employee to have around, either smelling like crap and likely always getting ill or being permanently tired and unable to focus on anything.
If someone told me they did 130 hours a week I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole, having someone that unhealthy on your team would be a massive liability.
Again, like what? People are saying it'll have an impact without explaining what that impact is and providing any evidence. This covers a relatively tiny section of the tidal zone, and even then doesn't in any way destroy the section it does touch only changes it somewhat. It creates a habitat much more similar to places like Spurn Point.
There's no evidence that just the couple of miles affected will have a net negative impact on any particular species, and it's clear that the increase in ecosystem diversity will create an inherent increase in biodiversity creating a more healthy ecosystem as a whole.
"Because many of these actual professionals just want the investment money so they can line their pockets."
That's just conspiracy theory though. If it's true then how do we ever get anything done ever? If everyone is just making stuff up for money then why is the world not in tatters? If your suggestion is that this industry is more prone to this, then I'd love to see some evidence for it.
Most likely engineers in this field are like engineers in every field and they do it because they enjoy solving problems, and would like to solve this problem as much as any other. I doubt they're any more a bunch of lying cut-throats just out for cash than in any other field.
"Maybe the wool has bell pulled over their eyes by professionals."
Again though why in this case when they were so able to see through similar bullshit in every other case from the badger cull through to the Severn tidal barrier project? Are you suggesting the environmentalists just lost all ability to think rationally, research and challenge things in the face of the word "lagoon" or something?
I think you've been drinking too much conspiracy juice, this is a fine example of the need for Occam's razor, why jump to some assumption of a massive lie based conspiracy when the alternative is more simple and likely, that it simply is what it is? That this is a decent new idea that solves some of the problems of other past ideas (again, like the Severn tidal barrier).
You have to understand that they've been looking at tidal energy in this region for a long long time - many decades. Many proposals have been put forward and shot down but with each learning from the last and improving. It's not impossible that lessons have been learnt over all those subsequent iterations and we're finally at the point that we have something decent and workable. This hasn't just been pulled out of thin air- it's the result of many decades worth of effort and research in the region including many decades of back and forth with environmentalists to try and deal with their concerns.
Well from what I can tell they seem to be complaining about this impacting fish moving upstream from the sea (I wasn't even under the impression many fish even do this given that most either stick to either salt water or fresh water- the species that move between are I believe incredibly small in number).
I'm having a hard time too seeing how this will have any real impact. That's why I get the impression that the supposed anglers are just a bunch of nimbys making up an excuse for the hell of it because change scares them. If there was any merit to their argument you can guarantee the sometimes almost militant (especially in this region) environmentalists would be right on it and that's largely why I think their argument has no weight.
On the plan I saw there was no obvious river the lagoon encompassed anyway, but even if it did the plan is that the turbines are open during the times the tide comes in (which is when fish would go upstream) and closed when it goes out, to create the differential in water levels that's then used to power the turbines.
Couple this with the fact that the lagoon itself would create a safe breeding ground for the fish which larger predators couldn't easily penetrate and that the area round the lagoon would similarly be a fairly safe reef like environment and I can't see how the few fish that get caught when the water is going out would make any real impact on overall populations.
"Telecommuting was a nice experiment, but it doesn't work for people whose work is not easily quantified."
And who are those people? I've always quantified my home working staff's work based on results. Have they got done what I've expected them to do in the time I expect them to be able to do it? It's not really rocket science.
"In theory, it may be possible to identify the people that are more productive, but that takes a lot of management effort"
Yes, it's so effortful to determine who is and isn't pulling their weight. Honestly, please don't become a manager. Ever. If you can't even begin to understand how you might gauge which of your staff are effective and not calling such understanding merely "theory" then you're really not cut out for such a role. If you've any experience managing people then it's fairly easy to see who does and doesn't get done what they need to do. Dealing with the problem is often the hard part, because you can often be hamstrung by company or national policies on the issue depending on who you work for and where you live.
"since, obviously, the people that do NO work at home are the people that like telecommuting the most."
Yes obviously. Thank you for the wealth of proof you provided for your assertion.
"Although it wasn't popular, Marissa was right to end the practice at Yahoo."
Yes, if by right you mean she found it easier to lose talent than actually do a job of managing any real or perceived problem. The problem is there are as equally unproductive amounts of people as your pulled out of thin air numbers in the office too. Unproductive people are unproductive, it doesn't matter where you make them turn up for work. It doesn't fix the root problem- they're unproductive because they're not motivated, and they're not motivated for any number of reasons- unhappy with compensation package, being managed by a hopeless manager that demotivates people, being repeatedly given the most boring work, being forced to do things not in their contract that they don't want to do, not being given a fair shot at career progression or training and so on and so forth. If you don't fix the root issues your people will still be entirely demotivated and unproductive. Some of these things are your fault as a leader and you can fix, others you can do little about- someone has to do the boring work and the best you can do is help them move on.
Meyer's actual claimed reason for getting rid of it was because she wanted people in the office bouncing ideas off of people to try and spur on innovation. I agree with this to a degree, I think during product conception phase this is absolutely right, but the problem is this whole bouncing ideas off each other open plan office mindset falls apart when it's time to stop coming up with ideas and start implementing them. Once those ideas have formed a product, and you've got down on paper what your bounds for this product are, and you need to start planning and building it, people need a few days a week to actually get on and do that in the environment they're most comfortable in where they're not going to be repeatedly distracted. For some people this is the office, some this is the local cafe, some it's in the park, and for others it's at home.
And that's why Meyer's blanket ban was bad. There's no question she'll have lost some talent doing it as she did. But when you claim your goal is to stem the flow of talent out of the company, then such blanket actions are doomed to fail. It's short sighted lazy management that makes great headlines, whilst shedding you real actual talent, and doing nothing to stem any apparent company wide problem of poor motivation. Even if she has got more people into the office coming up with more ideas, she's not enabling an environment that ever lets all her people put those ideas into practice- the only ones that will be productive are those who can be productive in an office environment, which isn't even close to the whole of the human race, maybe like you I'll make up a percentage, I'l