I'm doing the interviewing and hiring decisions for my group currently. I pay almost no attention to where a degree comes from unless it's someplace extraordinary - MIT, RPI, etc. I pay some attention to what the degree is in; I have a bias in favor for math degrees and ee degrees over cs degrees. I'm also perfectly fine hiring people without a degree. On the other hand, I'm technical, and I conduct a technical interview, so I don't worry too much about degrees because I'm more confident I can directly evaluate ability.
MMOs have live teams. City of Heroes has had only one expansion, but they've released 10 free updates so far with more content... new classes, new powers, new areas, new "raids", etc. I want more, and if optional ads are a way to get it, excellent. Ultimately though, someone who shares your opinion can disable ads in the option menu. Pretty nice.
Some people (including myself) think that having some "real world" ads wouldn't just be a revenue stream, it would add to the immersion. City of Heroes is supposed to be located in a modern city - Paragon City - a "metropolis" in Rhode Island. I like some of the fake ads, but I'd personally like to see a mix. This is a win/win situation to me. Making it optional means even if you don't share that view, your experience is unchanged.
Meanwhile, while the game is actually improved by ads (potentially), NCSoft makes more money which they can use to better the game. (NCSoft recently bought out Cryptic Studios and has been hiring devs like mad for City of, and they have a bunch more jobs open. So the investment in the game is real. I'm expecting boxes will likely hit shelves too to subsidize it.)
... of draining the battery in record time. For example, turn on Bluetooth with the iPhone, and you can't even get by with moderate use on a 24 hr charge cycle.
No background apps - even the ability to consume cycles periodically - means no instant messenger, no salesforce client notifications, no ebay price watcher, etc, etc, etc.
It won't hurt the phone's ability as a game platform much, but social and communication apps take a huge hit.
Apple needs to give a phone user the ability to enable background use of an application as an option for the phone user. Even if it was more of a cron style thing; if the phone had to run a binary that was the "background" portion of the app and the main part could not remain active, that should be sufficient for a periodic interaction, which is the critical part that's missing. We don't want our phones calculating pi or folding space in the background, but I do want to keep my IM client for my phone logged in with periodic keepalives, and a beep when I get a new IM.
I wish I could mod this comment even higher, because frankly, this story reads like it was submitted by Sony or something. This generation of consoles was basically behind the technology curve either right as they were released, or they were within a year. Already a $200 gfx card can outperform, and this is years before we see the next gen of consoles.
It would be trivial to add a signature to files so you could easily find "official" distributions of shows and songs.
My problem with the $5 a month thing is that it may be a disincentive to content creators, especially if the RIAA just pockets it. I also disagree with mandatory fees for things you may not use - I certainly would be thrilled to pay $5/mo for unlimited downloadable content. I easily spend more than that now that there are drm-free choices like amazon and itunes plus available.
I think the Firefox/Opera thing is bogus. As for Skype over EDGE, that's entirely reasonable. Listen, we know the phone is not designed to be a mobile broadband connection, so it's just a bad idea to try to use it that way.
Find them through buzz or word of mouth, by recommendation or via groups. Contact them when they write articles in the press, or when you learn about their open source project. Then offer them substantially more than they're making, and let them know the offer will stay open.
In my current job, I did some consulting for a client, turned down an offer but stayed in touch, and accepted a (better) offer a couple years later when I was more ready for a change.
Gameplay changes made merely to punish player ingenuity and enforce his 'vision', and pointless choices and grinds simply for their own sake. The number of quality-of-life changes that have been made to City Of... since NCSoft bought it (and hired most of its devs) is simply staggering.
This isn't really fair. The devs did underestimate the extent to which people would minmax and the extent to which it would break the game. However, despite that, the game is CLEARLY a better game post-ED and post-GDN, where each AT can actually contribute something. While it did make you feel slightly less superheroic by comparison to your starting newb self, good builds can still be monstrously good. (ie, good builds can still solo archvillains or 8-man spawns)
Also, there have been only 2 real patches since NCSoft bought them out - the first was purely I11 bugfixes. It took them until February to even fix most of the I11 bugs - for example, Purple IOs were still broken when exemplaring until the most recent patch. And Jack Emmert was still creative director when they implemented the invention system, which was an unmitigated success.
I do expect great things from NCSoft and what we've seen so far is a good sign.
(And hey, people who have not - try City of Heroes! Best character creation EVER, you feel heroic right out of the gate (no kill 10 rats).)
There are plenty of measurements beyond number of hours that are pertinent to game value. $20 for 2-3 hours of entertainment is not unreasonable if people enjoy it that much. (And compares favorably against plenty of choices for entertainment, from fine dining to sports games to concerts)
That's too bad. The one time I was a contractor, they bought out my contract to hire me full time immediately; I suppose to avoid any chance I'd be committed if they moved later.
When I offer contract to hire, since now I'm hiring people, it's usually because I'm an optimistic skeptic about their potential and want to see how they fit in, either technically or personality wise, without having to "fire" someone if they don't work out. We're at will, so I could just get them full time and punt them if it doesn't work out, but I prefer C2H so that everyone knows what's going on.
But also, that advice wasn't purely as a suggestion to specifically go for that; just saying, "I'm sure enough that I can do X for you that I'll happily take a contract-to-hire position and prove it to you," can go a long way toward telling an employer that you're not just talking the talk. (This may backfire if your resume is a string of 6-12 month gigs)
Nice post. Let me add that some young people may be caught up in the "credit card culture" we have. If you are in debt, slaving away to your student loans, massive credit card debts, and so on, and can't AFFORD to be out of work, that may be part of the problem. The ability to push the boundaries of what you can make requires that you be able to turn down work that isn't meeting your standards.
Another thing a lot of people don't do is simple examine what employers need, what they can provide, and how much they are "worth". Put yourself in your employer's shoes, and ask why you're worth more than the alternative - whether that's outsourcing, another employee, boxed software that may not do quite what they need but is close, etc. Ask how you impact the bottom line. Preferably do that BEFORE an interview, because if you can tell them why you will make them or save them money, that is a big help.
If you're confident in yourself, be creative, too. Offer to work contract for hire just to prove your worth.
Elsewhere in the thread, someone complained about having Doctor's hours but not making doctor's money. I'd wager that person didn't spend 8 years in school and then had to fight to get a residency at a decent place, while wondering why their 35-40k/year for 3-7 years of residency is less money that some junior sysadmin is making. And at the end of that 11-15 years and are miserable fighting HMOs to let them actually treat patients. And that's what they do for 120-150k after 11-15 extra years of effort? hmm.
Just when you thought Sony couldn't demonstrate any more incompetence in the marketplace...
Let's make our product:
* Hard to get * More expensive than the (legal!) competition * Packaged in bundles consumers don't want * Install dangerous malware on our customers' computers (and get sued)
Sony once again proves adept at charting a beeline directly for the scrapheap of history. About what you'd expect from the company that thought up the "Ringle".
(1) Even Apple's lawyers don't just whip out kid's college fund numbers. (2) The EFF would never say that. (3) If Lyons has a contract to continue the blog, then his employer would most certainly be fielding the lawyers, because if anything were actionable, they'd be liable too. (duh) So his "I've already paid a ton for a lawyer" was another giveaway.
What's hilarious is that Real Steve Jobs (or at least someone acting on his behalf) took the time to reply to a few angry readers who emailed him.
If you get killed because you get run over by a truck, they're unsafe.
Midsize cars, large cars, minivans, and import luxury cars are all statistically safer for the driver than an SUV. Subcompacts are more dangerous for the driver, but because SUVs and pickups are more than twice as likely to kill someone else in an accident, that's only because of all the SUVs on the road. Obviously SUVs and trucks have their place, but the exemption in fuel efficiency standards for them should be removed, and they should be taxed like any gas guzzler.
The point, though, is that you can drive a midsize car, and you're just as safe as you would be in an SUV, and you're not putting the OTHER drivers at risk to get your safety. If you *really* want to be safe, then you want an import luxury car or a minivan, both of which are also significantly safer for other drivers than SUVs.
Even if the information about vulnerability counts were pristine, it still wouldn't be useful, and anyone who has been involved in security knows it.
Over the years, there's nearly one flaw in the methodology for every one of these surveys ever released:
* Counting vulnerabilities in services installed by default the same as a service that is optional and not frequently enabled * Subjective rating of impact (mild/severe) * Treating remote code execution the same when on one system it is as uid nobody, and on the other, it is as administrator * Ignoring the ease of use of tools that can actually verify a system's integrity (e.g., tripwire with signatures on RO media and booted off CD) * Ignoring what a user may have to do to trigger a vulnerability (ie, visit a web page with a malicious image, vs downloading a dmg file, running an install, and giving your password to elevate to root) * Ignoring how an operating system enables or discourages user stupidity (ie, hordes of useless, "This program wants to do something, yes/no?" vs rare requests for a password)
And on and on and on. The average PC has over 25 different pieces of Malware installed. I know dozens of people with macs, and I don't know anyone who has had a single piece of malware, ever. I've been running linux for 12 years, desktop and server, and I've had two compromises ever, and both were via wu-ftpd.
5 kilowatts is a heck of a lot to have on a single rack - assuming you're actually utilizing that. I recently interviewed a half dozen data centers to plan a 20-odd server deployment, and we ended up using 2 cabinets in order to ensure our heat dissipation was sufficient. Since data centers are usually supplying 20 amp, 110 or 120v power, you get 2200-2400 watts available per drop; although it's considered a bad idea to draw more than 15 amps per circuit. We have redundant power supplies in everything, so we keep ourselves at 37.5% of capacity on the drops, and each device is fed from a 20amp drop coming from a distinct data center pdu. That way even if one if the data center pdus implodes, we're still up and at 75%- capacity.
Almost no data center we spoke to would commit to cooling more than 4800 watts of power at an absolute maximum per rack, and those were facilities with hot/cool row setups to maximize airflow. But that meant they didn't want to drop more than 2x20amp power drops, plus 2x20 for backup, if you agreed to maintain 50% utilization across all 4 drops. But since you'd really want to maintain 75%- even in the case of failure, you'd only be using 3600watts. (In the facility we ended up in, we have a total of 6 20 amp drops, and we only actually utilize ~4700 watts.
Ultimately, though, the important thing is that cooling systems should be on generator/battery backup power. Otherwise, as this notes, your battery backup won't be useful.
The question is: how will new artists be able to use this model in the future if they haven't built a fan base in the millions in the years leading up to the release of their album under the pay what you'd like model
I'm just speculating here, but my guess would be that those artists will suck it up and survive on less than $8-10 million per album while they grow their fanbase.
Even people who download the album for free can become fans. I've never listened to Radiohead, but I picked up In Rainbows. I even paid $4 because I wanted to pay something to support the experiment. But then my download links were broken, so I "bought" it again for $0 trying to actually download it. Did I count as a freeloader? I only ended up actually downloading it once. I am someone who would NEVER have paid $10 or $14 for this album. If I love it, I'll go back and pay $6 more, though, perhaps. If this becomes really common practice, I'll probably download a lot of albums for a dollar or two, and then go back and pay more for the ones I like, under the idea that I'm paying for the download the first time around, and paying for the album if I like it.
I'd say the model is looking pretty good. For THAT matter, doesn't mp3 support metadata? Why not just have a tipjar metadata node? Then you can float the music via bittorrent, let anyone grab it, reduce your costs massively, and after people listen, if they like it, they pay.
And if someone pays $0, but likes it, maybe they pay in the future, or maybe they pay for a concert ticket and buy a t-shirt.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm doing the interviewing and hiring decisions for my group currently. I pay almost no attention to where a degree comes from unless it's someplace extraordinary - MIT, RPI, etc. I pay some attention to what the degree is in; I have a bias in favor for math degrees and ee degrees over cs degrees. I'm also perfectly fine hiring people without a degree. On the other hand, I'm technical, and I conduct a technical interview, so I don't worry too much about degrees because I'm more confident I can directly evaluate ability.
MMOs have live teams. City of Heroes has had only one expansion, but they've released 10 free updates so far with more content... new classes, new powers, new areas, new "raids", etc. I want more, and if optional ads are a way to get it, excellent. Ultimately though, someone who shares your opinion can disable ads in the option menu. Pretty nice.
Some people (including myself) think that having some "real world" ads wouldn't just be a revenue stream, it would add to the immersion. City of Heroes is supposed to be located in a modern city - Paragon City - a "metropolis" in Rhode Island. I like some of the fake ads, but I'd personally like to see a mix. This is a win/win situation to me. Making it optional means even if you don't share that view, your experience is unchanged.
Meanwhile, while the game is actually improved by ads (potentially), NCSoft makes more money which they can use to better the game. (NCSoft recently bought out Cryptic Studios and has been hiring devs like mad for City of, and they have a bunch more jobs open. So the investment in the game is real. I'm expecting boxes will likely hit shelves too to subsidize it.)
... of draining the battery in record time. For example, turn on Bluetooth with the iPhone, and you can't even get by with moderate use on a 24 hr charge cycle.
No background apps - even the ability to consume cycles periodically - means no instant messenger, no salesforce client notifications, no ebay price watcher, etc, etc, etc.
It won't hurt the phone's ability as a game platform much, but social and communication apps take a huge hit.
Apple needs to give a phone user the ability to enable background use of an application as an option for the phone user. Even if it was more of a cron style thing; if the phone had to run a binary that was the "background" portion of the app and the main part could not remain active, that should be sufficient for a periodic interaction, which is the critical part that's missing. We don't want our phones calculating pi or folding space in the background, but I do want to keep my IM client for my phone logged in with periodic keepalives, and a beep when I get a new IM.
I wish I could mod this comment even higher, because frankly, this story reads like it was submitted by Sony or something. This generation of consoles was basically behind the technology curve either right as they were released, or they were within a year. Already a $200 gfx card can outperform, and this is years before we see the next gen of consoles.
It would be trivial to add a signature to files so you could easily find "official" distributions of shows and songs.
My problem with the $5 a month thing is that it may be a disincentive to content creators, especially if the RIAA just pockets it. I also disagree with mandatory fees for things you may not use - I certainly would be thrilled to pay $5/mo for unlimited downloadable content. I easily spend more than that now that there are drm-free choices like amazon and itunes plus available.
I think the Firefox/Opera thing is bogus. As for Skype over EDGE, that's entirely reasonable. Listen, we know the phone is not designed to be a mobile broadband connection, so it's just a bad idea to try to use it that way.
Find them through buzz or word of mouth, by recommendation or via groups. Contact them when they write articles in the press, or when you learn about their open source project. Then offer them substantially more than they're making, and let them know the offer will stay open.
In my current job, I did some consulting for a client, turned down an offer but stayed in touch, and accepted a (better) offer a couple years later when I was more ready for a change.
This isn't really fair. The devs did underestimate the extent to which people would minmax and the extent to which it would break the game. However, despite that, the game is CLEARLY a better game post-ED and post-GDN, where each AT can actually contribute something. While it did make you feel slightly less superheroic by comparison to your starting newb self, good builds can still be monstrously good. (ie, good builds can still solo archvillains or 8-man spawns)
Also, there have been only 2 real patches since NCSoft bought them out - the first was purely I11 bugfixes. It took them until February to even fix most of the I11 bugs - for example, Purple IOs were still broken when exemplaring until the most recent patch. And Jack Emmert was still creative director when they implemented the invention system, which was an unmitigated success.
I do expect great things from NCSoft and what we've seen so far is a good sign.
(And hey, people who have not - try City of Heroes! Best character creation EVER, you feel heroic right out of the gate (no kill 10 rats).)
Even people who are stuck with craptastic telcos in the US thank the heavens they're not stuck in Oz with Telstra.
Bandwidth is cheap. Sell your own music, and keep 100%.
There are plenty of measurements beyond number of hours that are pertinent to game value. $20 for 2-3 hours of entertainment is not unreasonable if people enjoy it that much. (And compares favorably against plenty of choices for entertainment, from fine dining to sports games to concerts)
is millions of bittorrent clients firing back up. Good work, record labels.
Given the discrepancy, it was a good idea to check.
That's too bad. The one time I was a contractor, they bought out my contract to hire me full time immediately; I suppose to avoid any chance I'd be committed if they moved later.
When I offer contract to hire, since now I'm hiring people, it's usually because I'm an optimistic skeptic about their potential and want to see how they fit in, either technically or personality wise, without having to "fire" someone if they don't work out. We're at will, so I could just get them full time and punt them if it doesn't work out, but I prefer C2H so that everyone knows what's going on.
But also, that advice wasn't purely as a suggestion to specifically go for that; just saying, "I'm sure enough that I can do X for you that I'll happily take a contract-to-hire position and prove it to you," can go a long way toward telling an employer that you're not just talking the talk. (This may backfire if your resume is a string of 6-12 month gigs)
Nice post. Let me add that some young people may be caught up in the "credit card culture" we have. If you are in debt, slaving away to your student loans, massive credit card debts, and so on, and can't AFFORD to be out of work, that may be part of the problem. The ability to push the boundaries of what you can make requires that you be able to turn down work that isn't meeting your standards.
Another thing a lot of people don't do is simple examine what employers need, what they can provide, and how much they are "worth". Put yourself in your employer's shoes, and ask why you're worth more than the alternative - whether that's outsourcing, another employee, boxed software that may not do quite what they need but is close, etc. Ask how you impact the bottom line. Preferably do that BEFORE an interview, because if you can tell them why you will make them or save them money, that is a big help.
If you're confident in yourself, be creative, too. Offer to work contract for hire just to prove your worth.
Elsewhere in the thread, someone complained about having Doctor's hours but not making doctor's money. I'd wager that person didn't spend 8 years in school and then had to fight to get a residency at a decent place, while wondering why their 35-40k/year for 3-7 years of residency is less money that some junior sysadmin is making. And at the end of that 11-15 years and are miserable fighting HMOs to let them actually treat patients. And that's what they do for 120-150k after 11-15 extra years of effort? hmm.
If you're getting minimum wage in a tech job, you're a moron.
Just when you thought Sony couldn't demonstrate any more incompetence in the marketplace...
Let's make our product:
* Hard to get
* More expensive than the (legal!) competition
* Packaged in bundles consumers don't want
* Install dangerous malware on our customers' computers (and get sued)
Sony once again proves adept at charting a beeline directly for the scrapheap of history. About what you'd expect from the company that thought up the "Ringle".
(1) Even Apple's lawyers don't just whip out kid's college fund numbers.
(2) The EFF would never say that.
(3) If Lyons has a contract to continue the blog, then his employer would most certainly be fielding the lawyers, because if anything were actionable, they'd be liable too. (duh) So his "I've already paid a ton for a lawyer" was another giveaway.
What's hilarious is that Real Steve Jobs (or at least someone acting on his behalf) took the time to reply to a few angry readers who emailed him.
Nice posts though. FSJ rocks.
Midsize cars, large cars, minivans, and import luxury cars are all statistically safer for the driver than an SUV. Subcompacts are more dangerous for the driver, but because SUVs and pickups are more than twice as likely to kill someone else in an accident, that's only because of all the SUVs on the road. Obviously SUVs and trucks have their place, but the exemption in fuel efficiency standards for them should be removed, and they should be taxed like any gas guzzler.
The point, though, is that you can drive a midsize car, and you're just as safe as you would be in an SUV, and you're not putting the OTHER drivers at risk to get your safety. If you *really* want to be safe, then you want an import luxury car or a minivan, both of which are also significantly safer for other drivers than SUVs.
Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab study on safety.
Even if the information about vulnerability counts were pristine, it still wouldn't be useful, and anyone who has been involved in security knows it.
Over the years, there's nearly one flaw in the methodology for every one of these surveys ever released:
* Counting vulnerabilities in services installed by default the same as a service that is optional and not frequently enabled
* Subjective rating of impact (mild/severe)
* Treating remote code execution the same when on one system it is as uid nobody, and on the other, it is as administrator
* Ignoring the ease of use of tools that can actually verify a system's integrity (e.g., tripwire with signatures on RO media
and booted off CD)
* Ignoring what a user may have to do to trigger a vulnerability (ie, visit a web page with a malicious image, vs downloading a dmg file, running an install, and giving your password to elevate to root)
* Ignoring how an operating system enables or discourages user stupidity (ie, hordes of useless, "This program wants to do something, yes/no?" vs rare requests for a password)
And on and on and on. The average PC has over 25 different pieces of Malware installed. I know dozens of people with macs, and I don't know anyone who has had a single piece of malware, ever. I've been running linux for 12 years, desktop and server, and I've had two compromises ever, and both were via wu-ftpd.
The shackles of tyranny are engraved with the phrase, "Do it for the children." (The other side reads, "Do it for your safety.")
5 kilowatts is a heck of a lot to have on a single rack - assuming you're actually utilizing that. I recently interviewed a half dozen data centers to plan a 20-odd server deployment, and we ended up using 2 cabinets in order to ensure our heat dissipation was sufficient. Since data centers are usually supplying 20 amp, 110 or 120v power, you get 2200-2400 watts available per drop; although it's considered a bad idea to draw more than 15 amps per circuit. We have redundant power supplies in everything, so we keep ourselves at 37.5% of capacity on the drops, and each device is fed from a 20amp drop coming from a distinct data center pdu. That way even if one if the data center pdus implodes, we're still up and at 75%- capacity.
Almost no data center we spoke to would commit to cooling more than 4800 watts of power at an absolute maximum per rack, and those were facilities with hot/cool row setups to maximize airflow. But that meant they didn't want to drop more than 2x20amp power drops, plus 2x20 for backup, if you agreed to maintain 50% utilization across all 4 drops. But since you'd really want to maintain 75%- even in the case of failure, you'd only be using 3600watts. (In the facility we ended up in, we have a total of 6 20 amp drops, and we only actually utilize ~4700 watts.
Ultimately, though, the important thing is that cooling systems should be on generator/battery backup power. Otherwise, as this notes, your battery backup won't be useful.
I'm just speculating here, but my guess would be that those artists will suck it up and survive on less than $8-10 million per album while they grow their fanbase.
Even people who download the album for free can become fans. I've never listened to Radiohead, but I picked up In Rainbows. I even paid $4 because I wanted to pay something to support the experiment. But then my download links were broken, so I "bought" it again for $0 trying to actually download it. Did I count as a freeloader? I only ended up actually downloading it once. I am someone who would NEVER have paid $10 or $14 for this album. If I love it, I'll go back and pay $6 more, though, perhaps. If this becomes really common practice, I'll probably download a lot of albums for a dollar or two, and then go back and pay more for the ones I like, under the idea that I'm paying for the download the first time around, and paying for the album if I like it.
I'd say the model is looking pretty good. For THAT matter, doesn't mp3 support metadata? Why not just have a tipjar metadata node? Then you can float the music via bittorrent, let anyone grab it, reduce your costs massively, and after people listen, if they like it, they pay.
And if someone pays $0, but likes it, maybe they pay in the future, or maybe they pay for a concert ticket and buy a t-shirt.
A law that revokes their FCC licenses.