Because, if you read the article (yeah, I know, this is Slashdot, what am I thinking?), it's because the Altair was the machine that Allen and Gates used to write their version of BASIC, and hence was the start of Microsoft. Which is certainly a pretty significant turn of events in home computing.
For rule 4, I think you mean the ratio of perimeter to the square-root of the area must be no more than Y.
It's difficult to set Y meaningully, of course, because population is not uniformly distributes, and states and counties are sometimes fairly long and skinny in the first place. Setting a value of Y large enough to encompass all the reasonable cases might still allow significant gerrymandering in others.
Stop being an apologist for Bill Gates. When he pays for clean water and sanitation for every human being on the planet {and he wouldn't even notice it} or performs some similar act for the greater human good {this would not include hara-kiri - given the mess he would be leaving behind, that would be too much like a coward's way out} then he'll have earned a little of my respect.
Maybe this is a troll, but I'll bite...
Last I checked, Bill Gates was performing similar acts for the greater human good. He's one of the most prolific charitable contributors in history. If you check out the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation you'll notice that they have poured billions of dollars into global health projects. According to their annual financial report for 2002 they gave away over $1Bn last year alone.
1) What Fries is saying is that was a necessary hedge strategy at launch, because they weren't sure how much 3rd party support they would get, but that it isn't necessary any more and that they're changing direction. Doesn't sound like idiocy to me.
2) The controller was certainly the cause of much mirth among the press, but I think the level of vitriol was out of all proportion to the actual weakness of the device. Believe it or not, there are some people (myself included) who prefer the bigger controller, and yes, I own all three major consoles, and have both the original and (smaller) controller-S for Xbox - I choose to use the bigger controller when I can.
3) That cost is amortized across every Live game you play, of course. So unless your customer is going to be buying Live just to play your game, it's not really a factor. Most game developers I know (and I know quite a few) like Live quite a lot, because it handles a whole bunch of stuff for them. It's easier to bring an online title to market, because you don't have to worry about matchmaking and voice-chat and cross-game invitation, because it's all handled by the Live service. Now, maybe if you're EA you have a different perspective, because you pissed hundreds of millions of dollars down the tubes on EA.com and probably think that should entitle you to some kind of competitive advantage for having shelled out on that infrastructure, but for other developers Live is a pretty good thing.
4) Voice acting should be used where it's appropriate, and hopefully done well when it is used. I think proscribing that it's okay in this genre but not in that one is a bit too rigid. Fries's is bemoaning the fact that quite often the decision is not based on whether it's right for the game, but on cost.
Microsoft, like all businesses, cares about their own success. Just like Sony. Just like Nintendo. What's your point?
Having a large amount of cash makes you easier to buy, because the purchaser can use your cash reserve to finance the takeover - once they've bought you, the cash is theirs. The effective amount of money you need to raise to purchase a firm outright is the market cap minus the cash reserves of the target company.
All very well, but belief != religion. Webster's defines religion thus (references omitted for concision):
1. The outward act or form by which men indicate their recognition of the existence of a god or of gods having power over their destiny, to whom obedience, service, and honor are due; the feeling or expression of human love, fear, or awe of some superhuman and overruling power, whether by profession of belief, by observance of rites and ceremonies, or by the conduct of life; a system of faith and worship; a manifestation of piety; as, ethical religions; monotheistic religions; natural religion; revealed religion; the religion of the Jews; the religion of idol worshipers.
2. Specifically, conformity in faith and life to the precepts inculcated in the Bible, respecting the conduct of life and duty toward God and man; the Christian faith and practice.
3. (R. C. Ch.) A monastic or religious order subject to a regulated mode of life; the religious state; as, to enter religion.
4. Strictness of fidelity in conforming to any practice, as if it were an enjoined rule of conduct. [R.]
Note: Religion, as distinguished from theology, is subjective, designating the feelings and acts of men which relate to God; while theology is objective, and denotes those ideas which man entertains respecting the God whom he worships, especially his systematized views of God. As distinguished from morality, religion denotes the influences and motives to human duty which are found in the character and will of God, while morality describes the duties to man, to which true religion always influences. As distinguished from piety, religion is a high sense of moral obligation and spirit of reverence or worship which affect the heart of man with respect to the Deity, while piety, which first expressed the feelings of a child toward a parent, is used for that filial sentiment of veneration and love which we owe to the Father of all. As distinguished from sanctity, religion is the means by which sanctity is achieved, sanctity denoting primarily that purity of heart and life which results from habitual communion with God, and a sense of his continual presence.
So, atheism is a category of belief, but it is specifically not a religion. Religion does not require belief in God, but does require at least some "strictness of fidelity in conforming to any practice..." (definition 4, above). Athesim does proscribe any system of behavior, nor a belief in God.
Arguments that proceed along the lines of "but isn't atheism a religion, blah blah blah" are therefore flawed at their outset.
As others have mentioned, the phrase "under God" was a 1950s addition to the Pledge that was not present in the original wording. So your historical argument is shaky at best.
The Constitution outlaws state religion, and enforces the separation of Church and State. If there are laws which require State institutions (in this case schools) to lead citizens in recitals including religious phrases, then those laws are clearly un-Constitutional. That's what this case is about.
Big surprise.:) You are a very well known Microsoft Apologist despite your carefully crafted fantasies involving running *NIX and *BSD and whatnot.
Uh, what's with this crap? If someone has an opinion on a subject, and their posting history reveals them to be fairly consistent about it, does that make their point any more or less valuable? Replace 'Microsoft' with 'Linux' and '*NIX' with 'Windows' in the above sentance and see whether is still seems like sound reasoning.
I shall be happy to look out for the posts of Sven, the "very well known Linux apologist", with his "carefully crafted fantasies of running Windows", and warn Slashdot users of your dangerous posting history.
PS. When trying to make a point about what the majority of users can or cannot use, arguing by example carries little weight. For every mother who gets on just grand with Linux, there is another mother who has difficulty even turning on her computer. Neither example proves anything about the user population as a whole.
Nobody is saying that you have to stop using 'hacker' in it's original meaning (i.e. one who fells objects using a crude chopping motion, oh, wait...). It's that the level of indignation displayed when others use it 'incorrectly' is not justified.
and i hate to break the news to you but just because australians and brits use the word "chips" in a different meaning doesnt mean that burger king is going to ask if you want chips with your whopper. thats not how this works, despite what the monoculture blind media wants.
Doesn't this validate my point? Even Brits (of which I happen to be one) understand what is meant by the term 'fries', even if we would prefer the term 'chips'. We're probably fighting a globally losing battle on that one, at least in the context of fast food. As a Brit living in America, I think I have a pretty good perspective on this issue.
More to the point, the fact that there are regional dialect differences reinforces my point that there are not 'correct' and 'incorrect' meanings for words, but merely 'accepted' meanings for words. And what is accepted is determined by the population you find yourself in, not by the distant etymology of the word in question. The average American (or Brit) tends to synonymise 'hacker' with 'computer criminal', thus that is what the word means for general communication purposes.
mainstream american culture doesnt control everything despite how much some people would like it to, as such i will continue using the word as it was meant to be used. and correcting all those whom use it incorrectly. much to the ire of some.
This isn't an Americans versus Rest-of-World thing, although you do appear to have a chip (or is it a fry?) on your shoulder about it. The British media also, I would note, tends to synonimise 'hacker' with 'computer criminal'. You go right ahead 'correcting' people in their usage, but realise that what you are doing is giving them a history, not an English, lesson.
I think you're missing the point. The mechanism by which the common meaning of a word changes is not relevant. What is relevant is that once a word attains a de facto new meaning, then like it or not, that's what sticks. That's how language works.
Language is about communication. To the average man on the street, "hacker" is synonymous with "computer criminal". And when the average man on the street says "hacker" to you, you probably think he means "computer criminal" even as you're itching to correct him. If you can communicate effectively with most people by using "hacker" to mean "computer criminal", then doesn't that mean that "hacker" really does mean "computer criminal" as the de facto new standard?
The fact that this change is based on a misconception rather than on an "evolution" (however you make that dubious distinction), is not relevant. You might not like it, but that's just the way it is.
And while we're at it, should force everybody to revert to the old usages of common words from the middle ages? Should people stop using "awful" to mean "bad", and instead revert to using it to mean "inspiring awe"?
Or should we just accept that languages evolve, and that many terms which started out life as sub-culture jargon may have their meanings broadened or altered as they enter mainstream usage?
Your friend at EA was smoking crack. The Xbox development tools are bad compared to what, exactly? The compiler and debugger is Visual Studio, which is a pretty decent environment. The libraries are the familiar DirectX libraries from the PC, and there are some nice other tools in there (including a totally kick-ass audio tool).
The PS2, now there is a platform with a shitty toolset. Heck, initially Sony didn't even provide libraries for the damn thing.
I have no idea about the Gamecube, but I've never heard game developers raving about the toolset there.
General consensus seems to be that Xbox has the best toolset of the consoles.
However, one of the things which inspires people to buy games is mods.
Fair point. However, I think the people who are inspired to buy games by the mods significantly overlap with the people who read the forums anyway. Don't get me wrong, mods are cool, and definitely add significant value to a game, but most customers are more casual and tend to play the game the way it came in the box. With the exception of Counterstrike, I can't think of a mod which is truly a 'must have' game seller.
Marweas's outburst was without doubt unprofessional, and certainly hurt the game and the company image. In this case it's also more damaging because it was picked up by the press. However, I think it's fair to say that hardcore gamers tend to overestimate their importance, both in terms of the sales they account for and their ability to influence non-hardcore gamers.
In what type of business is it ever sensible to start flaming your customer base? This isn't a games versus other business issue, as far as I can see, it's generic community relations issue.
The only difference with the games business is that your customer base contains a larger (although not as large as you'd think) contingent of teenage boys, who are more prone to be obnoxious jackasses in public forums.
You're both right and wrong. Firstly, some disclosure: I am a game developer, and I post on public forums about my game.
You're right in that we can't blame 14 year old fanboys for being jackasses. That's what they do. You're also right that being belligerent towards the public (i.e. your customers) is not sound business sense. That's why my policy is that I just ignore the jackasses and stick to answering sane questions or responding to reasoned criticism without blowing up at anybody.
On the other hand, as the article pointed out, the forum fanboys represent merely a tiny loudmouthed fraction of your total customer base, and they tend to vastly overestimate their importance and influence. Which means that games developers can usually get by quite well without having to keep them happy. When a forum starts becoming too noisy or abusive, the developers tend to just leave quietly (again, as the article observed), only occasionally do they snap and blow up on their way out. The losers when that happens are the forum users, not the game developer.
So yes, game developers should act like calm professionals when dealing with public forums. Same as the representative of any business. On the other hand, forum fanboys should realise that posting on public forums is often something developers do because they want to, not because they have to, and that driving them away by being pointlessly abusive is not exactly smart behaviour either.
It also protects trade secrets. This is how it is used in connection with decss, for instance.
Trade secrets are also nothing to do with patent law. Indeed, a trade secret is almost the exact opposite of a patent. Perhaps if you layed off the caffeine and stopped incoherently slamming together the first legal terms that popped into your head, you might come across as a slightly more level-headed critic?
These guys clearly don't understand the meaning of the word 'security'. Literally. They say that security has not been compromised because there was no server break-in, and yet all these game-wrecking events are happening. Sounds like a security problem to me.
The deal here is that security is an end-to-end process. It's not a single lock that gets picked, or a server that gets hacked. It's a whole system, which may involve a large number of human factors. It doesn't matter how security was breached, but if the assets are compromised (in this case game integrity), then there has been a security failure. Even if this didn't involve a direct attack on the server, it's no less of a security failure.
Although the end itself in Halo was pretty average, the final level, with the warthog romp was an awful lot of fun - definitely felt like a good finale.
No, because Red Hat and SuSE don't indemnify their customers against that legal risk. (Interestingly, Microsoft do indemnify their customers against similar legal risks, perhaps that's a selling point for their software?)
Slashdot Mirror
Because, if you read the article (yeah, I know, this is Slashdot, what am I thinking?), it's because the Altair was the machine that Allen and Gates used to write their version of BASIC, and hence was the start of Microsoft. Which is certainly a pretty significant turn of events in home computing.
For rule 4, I think you mean the ratio of perimeter to the square-root of the area must be no more than Y.
It's difficult to set Y meaningully, of course, because population is not uniformly distributes, and states and counties are sometimes fairly long and skinny in the first place. Setting a value of Y large enough to encompass all the reasonable cases might still allow significant gerrymandering in others.
Maybe this is a troll, but I'll bite...
Last I checked, Bill Gates was performing similar acts for the greater human good. He's one of the most prolific charitable contributors in history. If you check out the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation you'll notice that they have poured billions of dollars into global health projects. According to their annual financial report for 2002 they gave away over $1Bn last year alone.
2) The controller was certainly the cause of much mirth among the press, but I think the level of vitriol was out of all proportion to the actual weakness of the device. Believe it or not, there are some people (myself included) who prefer the bigger controller, and yes, I own all three major consoles, and have both the original and (smaller) controller-S for Xbox - I choose to use the bigger controller when I can.
3) That cost is amortized across every Live game you play, of course. So unless your customer is going to be buying Live just to play your game, it's not really a factor. Most game developers I know (and I know quite a few) like Live quite a lot, because it handles a whole bunch of stuff for them. It's easier to bring an online title to market, because you don't have to worry about matchmaking and voice-chat and cross-game invitation, because it's all handled by the Live service. Now, maybe if you're EA you have a different perspective, because you pissed hundreds of millions of dollars down the tubes on EA.com and probably think that should entitle you to some kind of competitive advantage for having shelled out on that infrastructure, but for other developers Live is a pretty good thing.
4) Voice acting should be used where it's appropriate, and hopefully done well when it is used. I think proscribing that it's okay in this genre but not in that one is a bit too rigid. Fries's is bemoaning the fact that quite often the decision is not based on whether it's right for the game, but on cost.
Microsoft, like all businesses, cares about their own success. Just like Sony. Just like Nintendo. What's your point?
Having a large amount of cash makes you easier to buy, because the purchaser can use your cash reserve to finance the takeover - once they've bought you, the cash is theirs. The effective amount of money you need to raise to purchase a firm outright is the market cap minus the cash reserves of the target company.
1. The outward act or form by which men indicate their recognition of the existence of a god or of gods having power over their destiny, to whom obedience, service, and honor are due; the feeling or expression of human love, fear, or awe of some superhuman and overruling power, whether by profession of belief, by observance of rites and ceremonies, or by the conduct of life; a system of faith and worship; a manifestation of piety; as, ethical religions; monotheistic religions; natural religion; revealed religion; the religion of the Jews; the religion of idol worshipers.
2. Specifically, conformity in faith and life to the precepts inculcated in the Bible, respecting the conduct of life and duty toward God and man; the Christian faith and practice.
3. (R. C. Ch.) A monastic or religious order subject to a regulated mode of life; the religious state; as, to enter religion.
4. Strictness of fidelity in conforming to any practice, as if it were an enjoined rule of conduct. [R.]
Note: Religion, as distinguished from theology, is subjective, designating the feelings and acts of men which relate to God; while theology is objective, and denotes those ideas which man entertains respecting the God whom he worships, especially his systematized views of God. As distinguished from morality, religion denotes the influences and motives to human duty which are found in the character and will of God, while morality describes the duties to man, to which true religion always influences. As distinguished from piety, religion is a high sense of moral obligation and spirit of reverence or worship which affect the heart of man with respect to the Deity, while piety, which first expressed the feelings of a child toward a parent, is used for that filial sentiment of veneration and love which we owe to the Father of all. As distinguished from sanctity, religion is the means by which sanctity is achieved, sanctity denoting primarily that purity of heart and life which results from habitual communion with God, and a sense of his continual presence.
So, atheism is a category of belief, but it is specifically not a religion. Religion does not require belief in God, but does require at least some "strictness of fidelity in conforming to any practice..." (definition 4, above). Athesim does proscribe any system of behavior, nor a belief in God.
Arguments that proceed along the lines of "but isn't atheism a religion, blah blah blah" are therefore flawed at their outset.
The Constitution outlaws state religion, and enforces the separation of Church and State. If there are laws which require State institutions (in this case schools) to lead citizens in recitals including religious phrases, then those laws are clearly un-Constitutional. That's what this case is about.
Uh, what's with this crap? If someone has an opinion on a subject, and their posting history reveals them to be fairly consistent about it, does that make their point any more or less valuable? Replace 'Microsoft' with 'Linux' and '*NIX' with 'Windows' in the above sentance and see whether is still seems like sound reasoning.
I shall be happy to look out for the posts of Sven, the "very well known Linux apologist", with his "carefully crafted fantasies of running Windows", and warn Slashdot users of your dangerous posting history.
PS. When trying to make a point about what the majority of users can or cannot use, arguing by example carries little weight. For every mother who gets on just grand with Linux, there is another mother who has difficulty even turning on her computer. Neither example proves anything about the user population as a whole.
Nobody is saying that you have to stop using 'hacker' in it's original meaning (i.e. one who fells objects using a crude chopping motion, oh, wait...). It's that the level of indignation displayed when others use it 'incorrectly' is not justified.
Doesn't this validate my point? Even Brits (of which I happen to be one) understand what is meant by the term 'fries', even if we would prefer the term 'chips'. We're probably fighting a globally losing battle on that one, at least in the context of fast food. As a Brit living in America, I think I have a pretty good perspective on this issue.
More to the point, the fact that there are regional dialect differences reinforces my point that there are not 'correct' and 'incorrect' meanings for words, but merely 'accepted' meanings for words. And what is accepted is determined by the population you find yourself in, not by the distant etymology of the word in question. The average American (or Brit) tends to synonymise 'hacker' with 'computer criminal', thus that is what the word means for general communication purposes.
mainstream american culture doesnt control everything despite how much some people would like it to, as such i will continue using the word as it was meant to be used. and correcting all those whom use it incorrectly. much to the ire of some.
This isn't an Americans versus Rest-of-World thing, although you do appear to have a chip (or is it a fry?) on your shoulder about it. The British media also, I would note, tends to synonimise 'hacker' with 'computer criminal'. You go right ahead 'correcting' people in their usage, but realise that what you are doing is giving them a history, not an English, lesson.
Language is about communication. To the average man on the street, "hacker" is synonymous with "computer criminal". And when the average man on the street says "hacker" to you, you probably think he means "computer criminal" even as you're itching to correct him. If you can communicate effectively with most people by using "hacker" to mean "computer criminal", then doesn't that mean that "hacker" really does mean "computer criminal" as the de facto new standard?
The fact that this change is based on a misconception rather than on an "evolution" (however you make that dubious distinction), is not relevant. You might not like it, but that's just the way it is.
And while we're at it, should force everybody to revert to the old usages of common words from the middle ages? Should people stop using "awful" to mean "bad", and instead revert to using it to mean "inspiring awe"?
Or should we just accept that languages evolve, and that many terms which started out life as sub-culture jargon may have their meanings broadened or altered as they enter mainstream usage?
Your friend at EA was smoking crack. The Xbox development tools are bad compared to what, exactly? The compiler and debugger is Visual Studio, which is a pretty decent environment. The libraries are the familiar DirectX libraries from the PC, and there are some nice other tools in there (including a totally kick-ass audio tool).
The PS2, now there is a platform with a shitty toolset. Heck, initially Sony didn't even provide libraries for the damn thing.
I have no idea about the Gamecube, but I've never heard game developers raving about the toolset there.
General consensus seems to be that Xbox has the best toolset of the consoles.
Galileo itself is ineligble; Nobel prizes are never awarded posthumously.
Fair point. However, I think the people who are inspired to buy games by the mods significantly overlap with the people who read the forums anyway. Don't get me wrong, mods are cool, and definitely add significant value to a game, but most customers are more casual and tend to play the game the way it came in the box. With the exception of Counterstrike, I can't think of a mod which is truly a 'must have' game seller.
Marweas's outburst was without doubt unprofessional, and certainly hurt the game and the company image. In this case it's also more damaging because it was picked up by the press. However, I think it's fair to say that hardcore gamers tend to overestimate their importance, both in terms of the sales they account for and their ability to influence non-hardcore gamers.
The only difference with the games business is that your customer base contains a larger (although not as large as you'd think) contingent of teenage boys, who are more prone to be obnoxious jackasses in public forums.
You're right in that we can't blame 14 year old fanboys for being jackasses. That's what they do. You're also right that being belligerent towards the public (i.e. your customers) is not sound business sense. That's why my policy is that I just ignore the jackasses and stick to answering sane questions or responding to reasoned criticism without blowing up at anybody.
On the other hand, as the article pointed out, the forum fanboys represent merely a tiny loudmouthed fraction of your total customer base, and they tend to vastly overestimate their importance and influence. Which means that games developers can usually get by quite well without having to keep them happy. When a forum starts becoming too noisy or abusive, the developers tend to just leave quietly (again, as the article observed), only occasionally do they snap and blow up on their way out. The losers when that happens are the forum users, not the game developer.
So yes, game developers should act like calm professionals when dealing with public forums. Same as the representative of any business. On the other hand, forum fanboys should realise that posting on public forums is often something developers do because they want to, not because they have to, and that driving them away by being pointlessly abusive is not exactly smart behaviour either.
Trade secrets are also nothing to do with patent law. Indeed, a trade secret is almost the exact opposite of a patent. Perhaps if you layed off the caffeine and stopped incoherently slamming together the first legal terms that popped into your head, you might come across as a slightly more level-headed critic?
He makes a good point. If I had mod points, I'd use em...
The deal here is that security is an end-to-end process. It's not a single lock that gets picked, or a server that gets hacked. It's a whole system, which may involve a large number of human factors. It doesn't matter how security was breached, but if the assets are compromised (in this case game integrity), then there has been a security failure. Even if this didn't involve a direct attack on the server, it's no less of a security failure.
Benny Hill wasn't a BBC show. It was shown on ITV and made by the (now defunct) Thames Television (my father was a cameraman on it for a while).
What are you talking about? This is the man who brought us Trespasser, one of the greatest video games of all time. Oh, wait...
Although the end itself in Halo was pretty average, the final level, with the warthog romp was an awful lot of fun - definitely felt like a good finale.
No, because Red Hat and SuSE don't indemnify their customers against that legal risk. (Interestingly, Microsoft do indemnify their customers against similar legal risks, perhaps that's a selling point for their software?)
No, that's Lost Toys. Different company.