I'm going to go ahead and assume that if you're being pushed through an intersection by a car that has rear-ended you, the cameras aren't going to be able to pick up your license place number. You seem to be forgetting the car that is currently pushing your license plate into your trunk.
Honestly, a good technical sales job can be very rewarding (emphasis on good). First of all, the comp is usually better than most development jobs. And you can have a LOT more freedom in your schedule and work habits. Usually, as long as you're closing sales, good managers will let you work in whatever way is best for you. And you actually get repaid for the hard work you do, as well as for you successes. It's easy to stay motivated when closing a deal nets you enough to buy that new, big flat-screen you been eying.
In addition, knowledgeable, technical-minded salesmen are in high demand because they are hard to find. Most people who claim to be of this breed are either social trolls or their knowledge and experience proves very thin upon further examination. Someone who can really understand a technical product and then do both jobs of conveying the value of that product to a project manager (layman) AND speaking on even footing with a project engineer is very rare indeed.
You might have to spend some time bolstering your sales resume (ie, working inside sales for a year or so), but it will turn into real money in no time.
I, for one, received my CS degree 4 years ago, and sold my soul about 3 years ago. Right now I'm making 6 figures easy (mostly commission, and still growing. I'll probably max out at $170k-$200k) and I work from home. Our developers appreciate that I can engage them in real discussion and that my development background means I don't promise clients functionality which does not exist, nor do I promise unrealistic release dates for features which will soon exist.
Agreed. My father failed out of college playing bridge. I came damn close to failing out of college playing MUDs. And I'm sure my son will almost fail out of college playing Third Life (which will be an in-game escape from Second Life). Of course, then, he can go to school inside Third Life, get a paying job programming Fourth Life, and somehow probably make more real life money than me...
"So, we can break an HD image in to horizontal strips and work on them on separate cores, but we enjoy the cache locality of working on data within our range if we don't make our strips too small. Each thread working on an individual line in the image would be silly, as the overhead for the thread management would go up but cache coherency would go down."
Actually, you're dead-on talking about video encoding. A start-up company called Kula has developed a solution for using multi-core/multi-processor systems to speed up video encoding beyond levels that were thought possible. I saw their demonstration at IBC this year, and they had a 16-processor machine encode great quality H.264 SD using 2-pass VBR at over 6x realtime, which is ridiculous for a software solution. And their solution is scalable, so it could probably take advantage of 80 cores, given the proper attention.
Though, as I understand it, they don't break down the video spacially, but rather temporally (ie, each core is given a GOP to encode, then they are pieced back together). I'm not sure what this means for audio sync on longer movies, but these guys seem pretty bright. Hopefully they'll figure it out, if they haven't already.
No doubt as soon as he posted it. However, it is unlikely that Lockheed Martin will litigate, as this would be an admission that the video contains confidential information. Their official stance is that the video is BS, meaning that no confidential information was leaked. Thus he has a sort of immunity to this avenue of litigation. Lockheed Martin could never recoup the losses they would incur by admitting to these failures, especially not from one man.
It makes much more sense for them to pursue the libel avenue of silencing him. In this case, they are no worse off than if they did nothing, and have the chance to debunk the contents of this video if they are successful.
Seriously, though, the problem with a lot of devs is that they don't realize that, like it or not, some people don't want to spend their time dodging 250 lightning bolts to gain the Venus Sigil which couples with the Venus Crest to power up the Union Knight to create Lulu's Ultimate Weapon.
Granted, you didn't need to do this to make beating FFX possible, but there are some games that seem impossible unless you go online, find a walkthrough, explore the most random secret areas ever created with invisible crap everywhere, then do some ridiculously difficult, repetetive task that only pre-teens with large bottles of Ritilin can acheive.
I just want to pop the disc in the console/computer and be entertained. Sure, I don't mind if a game is hard, and I don't even mind doing some crazy stupid crap so I can own on some baddies. But don't make it required. There's a chance that I may simply want to enjoy *gasp* the storyline.
Danny Elfman is amazing, but his mainstay is, and always has been, movie scores. Most of the soundtracks from the Simpsons games simply ripped the music from the show. Yes, it's his music, but it isn't exactly composed with the gamer in mind. While Jesper Kyd's credits consist almost entirely of video games. I think that qualifies him as a video game music composer over Elfman.
90% of the naysayers here either have or will download the game and play it.;)
To throw my 2 cents in, I don't think it's appropriate to make a game about a specific incident such as Columbine. Maybe it's splitting hairs, but I think it would have the same impact with or without the name Columbine attached to it.
Which is, very little.
It seems to me that "to create dialogue" is a very thin cover. I struggle to see what kind of productive dialogue that hasn't already been beaten to death repeatedly can come out of this game.
From the article..."as well as the presence of a locked-out art file or 'skin' that, if accessed through a third party modification to the PC version of the game, allows the user to play with topless versions of female characters"
I think the problem is that the content in question is actually included in the game itself, though locked out. I'm not exactly sure what the developers were thinking, including those skins. After the whole Hot Coffee fiasco, you think they'd have learned.
ALL cutscenes should be skippable at ANY time. There's nothing worse than replaying a game and having to watch cutscene after cutscene that you already have memorized.
I hate cutscenes that interrupt gameplay. Especially when they do so in an unrealistic way (I'm in the middle of a battle and I trip the cutscene, rendering my character temporarily invulnerable as monsters hack away at me). These days, these are usually pre-set scenarios rendered by the normal game engine.
Back in the day, when FMV was possible but before 3d engines were as advanced as they are now, cutscenes were great milestone rewards. During a break in the gameplay, after the player has accomplished some feat or mission, it's a great time to sit back, congratulate yourself, and watch the fireworks. Final Fantasy 7 had a few very memorable and very enjoyable cutscenes. However, Half-Life 2 played much better without them.
I guess it mostly depends on how immersive you want the game experience to be. Some games (a bunch of RPGs come to mind) aren't meant to be that immersive.
I find it highly unlikely that this company, who tried to muscle Steve Jobs into doubling the per-download price of iTunes, would suggest such a pricing scheme with any intentions of following through.
No offense to anyone intended, but this entire article seems like some serious wishful thinking.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to go ahead and assume that if you're being pushed through an intersection by a car that has rear-ended you, the cameras aren't going to be able to pick up your license place number. You seem to be forgetting the car that is currently pushing your license plate into your trunk.
$120/month for a 97 Civic? You must be a male under the age of 25...I pay less to insure my 2006 Civic.
Don't worry...it will go down one day.
I was happy to find that my insurance also went down when I got married.
You need to make more friends.
My internet friends e-mail me all the time, telling me how I can "turn my banana in to a steel pole"! They're always looking out for me...
Honestly, a good technical sales job can be very rewarding (emphasis on good). First of all, the comp is usually better than most development jobs. And you can have a LOT more freedom in your schedule and work habits. Usually, as long as you're closing sales, good managers will let you work in whatever way is best for you. And you actually get repaid for the hard work you do, as well as for you successes. It's easy to stay motivated when closing a deal nets you enough to buy that new, big flat-screen you been eying.
In addition, knowledgeable, technical-minded salesmen are in high demand because they are hard to find. Most people who claim to be of this breed are either social trolls or their knowledge and experience proves very thin upon further examination. Someone who can really understand a technical product and then do both jobs of conveying the value of that product to a project manager (layman) AND speaking on even footing with a project engineer is very rare indeed.
You might have to spend some time bolstering your sales resume (ie, working inside sales for a year or so), but it will turn into real money in no time.
I, for one, received my CS degree 4 years ago, and sold my soul about 3 years ago. Right now I'm making 6 figures easy (mostly commission, and still growing. I'll probably max out at $170k-$200k) and I work from home. Our developers appreciate that I can engage them in real discussion and that my development background means I don't promise clients functionality which does not exist, nor do I promise unrealistic release dates for features which will soon exist.
The money is great here!
Agreed. My father failed out of college playing bridge. I came damn close to failing out of college playing MUDs. And I'm sure my son will almost fail out of college playing Third Life (which will be an in-game escape from Second Life). Of course, then, he can go to school inside Third Life, get a paying job programming Fourth Life, and somehow probably make more real life money than me...
"So, we can break an HD image in to horizontal strips and work on them on separate cores, but we enjoy the cache locality of working on data within our range if we don't make our strips too small. Each thread working on an individual line in the image would be silly, as the overhead for the thread management would go up but cache coherency would go down."
Actually, you're dead-on talking about video encoding. A start-up company called Kula has developed a solution for using multi-core/multi-processor systems to speed up video encoding beyond levels that were thought possible. I saw their demonstration at IBC this year, and they had a 16-processor machine encode great quality H.264 SD using 2-pass VBR at over 6x realtime, which is ridiculous for a software solution. And their solution is scalable, so it could probably take advantage of 80 cores, given the proper attention.
Though, as I understand it, they don't break down the video spacially, but rather temporally (ie, each core is given a GOP to encode, then they are pieced back together). I'm not sure what this means for audio sync on longer movies, but these guys seem pretty bright. Hopefully they'll figure it out, if they haven't already.
Maybe we'll finally be able to run the Doom3 engine with decent framerates...
No doubt as soon as he posted it. However, it is unlikely that Lockheed Martin will litigate, as this would be an admission that the video contains confidential information. Their official stance is that the video is BS, meaning that no confidential information was leaked. Thus he has a sort of immunity to this avenue of litigation. Lockheed Martin could never recoup the losses they would incur by admitting to these failures, especially not from one man.
It makes much more sense for them to pursue the libel avenue of silencing him. In this case, they are no worse off than if they did nothing, and have the chance to debunk the contents of this video if they are successful.
you mean random lawsuit generator: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/03/03 13250&tid=123
*makes a masturbation joke*
Seriously, though, the problem with a lot of devs is that they don't realize that, like it or not, some people don't want to spend their time dodging 250 lightning bolts to gain the Venus Sigil which couples with the Venus Crest to power up the Union Knight to create Lulu's Ultimate Weapon.
Granted, you didn't need to do this to make beating FFX possible, but there are some games that seem impossible unless you go online, find a walkthrough, explore the most random secret areas ever created with invisible crap everywhere, then do some ridiculously difficult, repetetive task that only pre-teens with large bottles of Ritilin can acheive. I just want to pop the disc in the console/computer and be entertained. Sure, I don't mind if a game is hard, and I don't even mind doing some crazy stupid crap so I can own on some baddies. But don't make it required. There's a chance that I may simply want to enjoy *gasp* the storyline.
Danny Elfman is amazing, but his mainstay is, and always has been, movie scores. Most of the soundtracks from the Simpsons games simply ripped the music from the show. Yes, it's his music, but it isn't exactly composed with the gamer in mind. While Jesper Kyd's credits consist almost entirely of video games. I think that qualifies him as a video game music composer over Elfman.
90% of the naysayers here either have or will download the game and play it. ;)
To throw my 2 cents in, I don't think it's appropriate to make a game about a specific incident such as Columbine. Maybe it's splitting hairs, but I think it would have the same impact with or without the name Columbine attached to it.
Which is, very little.
It seems to me that "to create dialogue" is a very thin cover. I struggle to see what kind of productive dialogue that hasn't already been beaten to death repeatedly can come out of this game.
From the article..."as well as the presence of a locked-out art file or 'skin' that, if accessed through a third party modification to the PC version of the game, allows the user to play with topless versions of female characters"
I think the problem is that the content in question is actually included in the game itself, though locked out. I'm not exactly sure what the developers were thinking, including those skins. After the whole Hot Coffee fiasco, you think they'd have learned.
ALL cutscenes should be skippable at ANY time. There's nothing worse than replaying a game and having to watch cutscene after cutscene that you already have memorized.
-Oser
...it depends.
I hate cutscenes that interrupt gameplay. Especially when they do so in an unrealistic way (I'm in the middle of a battle and I trip the cutscene, rendering my character temporarily invulnerable as monsters hack away at me). These days, these are usually pre-set scenarios rendered by the normal game engine.
Back in the day, when FMV was possible but before 3d engines were as advanced as they are now, cutscenes were great milestone rewards. During a break in the gameplay, after the player has accomplished some feat or mission, it's a great time to sit back, congratulate yourself, and watch the fireworks. Final Fantasy 7 had a few very memorable and very enjoyable cutscenes. However, Half-Life 2 played much better without them.
I guess it mostly depends on how immersive you want the game experience to be. Some games (a bunch of RPGs come to mind) aren't meant to be that immersive.
-Oser
I find it highly unlikely that this company, who tried to muscle Steve Jobs into doubling the per-download price of iTunes, would suggest such a pricing scheme with any intentions of following through.
No offense to anyone intended, but this entire article seems like some serious wishful thinking.
-Oser