I work 3 days at home, 2 in the office. That way I get the best of both worlds, collegue face time for meetings plus at home I get extra hours and save commute costs. My commute is 1.5-2hrs each way so I can start earlier at home, get more done and finish earlier to spend time with my family. It also makes things easier for the rare times I need to work weekends or fix something, no more hours on the train to do a 5 min fix. My employer was quite keen on telecommuting to save having such big buildings to stuff us all in so they pay £500 to let us build our home office (chair, desk etc) then pay a % of the electric/gas bills after that. Or team is all over the place anyway at different sites so it really makes very little difference as most work is done via remote logins, phone based meetings etc.
Back in the day pre torrents etc, the best thing for me was searching for a track then being able to browse that person's hard disk for their other shared tracks. I used to find all manner of cool stuff I never knew existed or artists I'd never heard of. I'd *never* have bought them via iTunes or whatever because I simply didn't know they were there. This happened a lot with people from other countries who typically had their local bands mixed in there that you'd never find in your own country. I've lost count of the amount of albums/tracks I've bought because of that ability to dig around. Sure, some sites try and offer 'if you liked this, what about that?' but it rarely produces anything of note and misses out completely on stuff that's way outside your normal listening area. These days, most of my 'discovering' is done via obscure podcasts but it's not very efficient.
Clearly a newbie. The game industry is littered with people being sued for selling clones right back to pacman and earlier. Didn't you do any research before doing this? Not exactly a great advert for your thoroughness and professionalism and now you've announced it to the world to prove the point.
I see they've hired some 3rd party firm to do it. That stuff, both kit and data will turn up in a year or so's time. Guaranteed. Laptops on eBay and the data sold to ID thieves.
From another Dr Ben item, research has found that if a given tried and tested drug shows say 80% effectiveness in patients and a new 'improved' one comes out, the previous one stops being so effective by quite a margin. Only the latest newest one works best.
I've been boycotting Sony for years (as much as possible). Once they got knee deep in the hardware AND software side, I got nervous. They're other shennanigans with rootkits etc was just the icing on the cake for me.
It's a Dean Koontz book, to be sure. Science goes unexpectedly wrong in horrific ways. Being a Koontz book it would also need the compulsory pet dog and a strong woman the (loner/damaged) hero gets attached to.
>poor state of games journalism.
Or more accurately, the poor pay these days. 15 years ago I got paid £300 to review a package. Now it's about £30-£50. Before I spent a day+ on it. Now it gets a couple of hours.
Fair point but I don't for a moment imagine any games reviewers play the game to the end. At best they'll use cheats supplied by the developer to jump to key points. If you're being paid say $100 to write a review, you're not going to spend 20 hours playing the games first as the $/hour rate would be ludicrous.
What might be an idea is to do game reviews in two waves, the first lot in advance or just after release based on the above and a second after much more gameplay if the writer happens to like the game and be happy playing it in their own time.
As someone who writes reviews (of games, hardware, apps etc) I have certainly come across the issues cited here although it does seem to be more of a problem with American writers/publishers Even back in the 80s/early 90's fellow writers moaned about US publications where the editors and writers were pressured by the advertising department to up ratings as said product's developer wanted to place ads. Other countries were less prone to this and in the UK where I have most experience, the editors used to delight in telling the ad department to 'go away' if they tried that stunt. Sure, some magazines did fall for that sort of pressure and most writers knew who they were and stayed well clear for reputational reasons.
The bottom line is that 80-90% of anything you get sent to review is a 6 or 8 out of 10. Really crap stuff just doesn't get to market unless something's gone horribly wrong. In the main, stuff works well enough to fullfill its requirement in a reasonably well implemented way. Every now and then something truly bad would come along and that was wonderful, a chance to give a lower rating and hopefully some inciteful reasons as to why the product sucked. I've got a book here on the 'to be reviewed' pile right now that's going to get marked down because frankly, the title is a total lie. The content is OK but it's not what the title says it is. There is also the occassional item that is truly exception and will earn a 9 or very rarely a 10 but these are once or twice a year things.
The web doesn't seem to have changed the overall dynamic much with writers producing copy that will attract clicks rather than do the job. Many publishers have dropped the per-word basis for paying writers and moved to a per-click basis. If your article gets lots of clicks, you earn more.
>Basically the MOD is looking for the best value for the money they can get
Always a great way to plan for wars. I'm sure Churchill took value for money into account when trying to fight off Germany.
Slashdot Mirror
>2. A pinch of dissappointment
The considerably less lethal version of Spock's death grip.
I work 3 days at home, 2 in the office. That way I get the best of both worlds, collegue face time for meetings plus at home I get extra hours and save commute costs. My commute is 1.5-2hrs each way so I can start earlier at home, get more done and finish earlier to spend time with my family. It also makes things easier for the rare times I need to work weekends or fix something, no more hours on the train to do a 5 min fix. My employer was quite keen on telecommuting to save having such big buildings to stuff us all in so they pay £500 to let us build our home office (chair, desk etc) then pay a % of the electric/gas bills after that. Or team is all over the place anyway at different sites so it really makes very little difference as most work is done via remote logins, phone based meetings etc.
Back in the day pre torrents etc, the best thing for me was searching for a track then being able to browse that person's hard disk for their other shared tracks. I used to find all manner of cool stuff I never knew existed or artists I'd never heard of. I'd *never* have bought them via iTunes or whatever because I simply didn't know they were there. This happened a lot with people from other countries who typically had their local bands mixed in there that you'd never find in your own country. I've lost count of the amount of albums/tracks I've bought because of that ability to dig around. Sure, some sites try and offer 'if you liked this, what about that?' but it rarely produces anything of note and misses out completely on stuff that's way outside your normal listening area. These days, most of my 'discovering' is done via obscure podcasts but it's not very efficient.
Curing Gay people? Whatever next? Curing blonds? Curing tall people? Curing (insert the way you were born here)?
That was my first thought, as in 'Didn't we do this in the eighties with X-Terminals?'
When an exec starts to talk about games as being a 'piece of experience', they've lost the point of it all and gone over to the dark side.
Clearly a newbie. The game industry is littered with people being sued for selling clones right back to pacman and earlier. Didn't you do any research before doing this? Not exactly a great advert for your thoroughness and professionalism and now you've announced it to the world to prove the point.
Did you just hear a wooshing sound?
It's 3D - that's bad enough.
I see they've hired some 3rd party firm to do it. That stuff, both kit and data will turn up in a year or so's time. Guaranteed. Laptops on eBay and the data sold to ID thieves.
From another Dr Ben item, research has found that if a given tried and tested drug shows say 80% effectiveness in patients and a new 'improved' one comes out, the previous one stops being so effective by quite a margin. Only the latest newest one works best.
>Neither of the former faced true adversity like Nelson Mandela.
Yep, none of them were married to Winnie Madela
HMV posted another disasterous quarter and are closing 60 stores in the UK. Sales aren't that great.
>They're
/Their. (Hangs head in shame.)
I've been boycotting Sony for years (as much as possible). Once they got knee deep in the hardware AND software side, I got nervous. They're other shennanigans with rootkits etc was just the icing on the cake for me.
They have big flappy mouths and moist faces, you must remember them? Season 2 episode 7 "the clitoris incident"
It's a Dean Koontz book, to be sure. Science goes unexpectedly wrong in horrific ways. Being a Koontz book it would also need the compulsory pet dog and a strong woman the (loner/damaged) hero gets attached to.
Does it run Linux?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these
1. Create Bacteria
2. program it
3. ????
4. Profit!
In Soviet Russia Bacteria programs YOU!
Think that covers everything.
Intellectual Vultures more like.
>Huh? Were you playing on a 486 or something?
And was it the DX version rather than the SX? Those floaty numbers do take time to crunch, you know.
>poor state of games journalism.
Or more accurately, the poor pay these days. 15 years ago I got paid £300 to review a package. Now it's about £30-£50. Before I spent a day+ on it. Now it gets a couple of hours.
Or switch to private browsing mode first.
Fair point but I don't for a moment imagine any games reviewers play the game to the end. At best they'll use cheats supplied by the developer to jump to key points. If you're being paid say $100 to write a review, you're not going to spend 20 hours playing the games first as the $/hour rate would be ludicrous.
What might be an idea is to do game reviews in two waves, the first lot in advance or just after release based on the above and a second after much more gameplay if the writer happens to like the game and be happy playing it in their own time.
As someone who writes reviews (of games, hardware, apps etc) I have certainly come across the issues cited here although it does seem to be more of a problem with American writers/publishers Even back in the 80s/early 90's fellow writers moaned about US publications where the editors and writers were pressured by the advertising department to up ratings as said product's developer wanted to place ads. Other countries were less prone to this and in the UK where I have most experience, the editors used to delight in telling the ad department to 'go away' if they tried that stunt. Sure, some magazines did fall for that sort of pressure and most writers knew who they were and stayed well clear for reputational reasons.
The bottom line is that 80-90% of anything you get sent to review is a 6 or 8 out of 10. Really crap stuff just doesn't get to market unless something's gone horribly wrong. In the main, stuff works well enough to fullfill its requirement in a reasonably well implemented way. Every now and then something truly bad would come along and that was wonderful, a chance to give a lower rating and hopefully some inciteful reasons as to why the product sucked. I've got a book here on the 'to be reviewed' pile right now that's going to get marked down because frankly, the title is a total lie. The content is OK but it's not what the title says it is. There is also the occassional item that is truly exception and will earn a 9 or very rarely a 10 but these are once or twice a year things.
The web doesn't seem to have changed the overall dynamic much with writers producing copy that will attract clicks rather than do the job. Many publishers have dropped the per-word basis for paying writers and moved to a per-click basis. If your article gets lots of clicks, you earn more.
>Basically the MOD is looking for the best value for the money they can get
Always a great way to plan for wars. I'm sure Churchill took value for money into account when trying to fight off Germany.