Did you follow the link in TFS and offer your expertise to those having problems? Did you disclose your hardware configuration? We could all degenerate into a Microsoft flame fest or the solution could come to light and put the whole thing to bed.
Video games? Art? Not really. I've only seen maybe a handful of games that I would call "art" versus just a pasttime. My short short list includes Rez and Flow.
The problem is that while film gets artsy fartsy conventions and festivals, game festivals are all about marketability and anything even remotely controvertial gets slammed (Super Columbine RPG anyone?).
I mean, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and co have all stated in one way or another that they wouldn't license games exceeding M ratings. Imagine if the companies that build and sell movie projectors had the means to lock-out "unlicensed" film and wouldn't license anything with material they were not comfortable with!
All this combined with useful idiots like Ebert declaring that games cannot be art means there won't be any expansion of thought on gaming until the companies involved grow some balls.
Personally, I'd take issue with that analogy since Nvidia and ATI both routinely cheated in their drivers to make inflated benchmark scores. This was done by trying to detect what application was running at a given time and intentionally disregarding quality options in favor of performance options, using substitute trig. calculations, using alternate blending modes, etc.
At least a 45nm processor will run code just as well as a 65nm one*.
* If we ignore errata and such that always seem to creep their out. Didn't Core 2 Duo have a major errata recently that forced operating systems to code around?
While difficult, big dramatic problems that occur due to programming error (like exposing 100K patients' hospital records) can get traced down. That's part of the investigative process.
Like a bridge that fails. It gets investigated. People get interviewed. Documentation gets reviewed. Maybe the blueprints asked for Steel formulation ABC that meets certain specifications but a vendor decided to be a cheapskate and provide Steel formulation XYZ which fails to meet them (or minus the conspiracy: steel rated less than the lab-tested ratings due to some error).
So, after software investigation, it's learned that a particular module caused the error. The legally bound programmer, though interview and investigation, discloses the use of library A and that it ought to adhere to the specifications that the library's vendor published. If it falls short then it's not THAT programmer but someone else at the other vendor.
Code doesn't just materialize (even if it comes out of a wizard or compiler or whatever) and thus can be traced back to an individual. It all depends, I suppose, on how badly it's wanted. If my mouse goes wonky that get fixed by rebooting it's a waste to investigate like this, naturally.
It's nice that there's a call option that's home-grown, and there isn't a push for using the web/email for customer service, and all... but, did they have to cut e-mail out of the loop altogether?
DVDs by mail isn't such a big hairy deal that I need to jump on the phone and hold for who knows how long to express that I never got a disc that was sent when I can just shoot off an email saying "It's been a week, the disc you sent never got here, could you try again?" and forget about it.
(Partial disclosure: I am not a Netflix subscriber, but of another DVD-by-mail rental company (Full disclosure: Greencine) and never had any problems using e-mail only, although I think they've got an 1-800 number, too.)
I think you missed the point. If Engineers are legally liable for their work that can put people at risk, perhaps Programmers should be legally liable for their work that can put people at risk. Maybe instead of figuring out how to line their pockets with money with their "certifications," Novell, Microsoft, Cisco, et al. could pool resources and lobby for a legally-weighty certification for Software Engineers much conventional Engineers already have. Perhaps an Engineer could enlighten me on the history of how those things evolved for them.
You could have a Class-C license to code and that would mean you know how to develop without buffer-overrun vulnerabilities, SQL-injection vulnerabilities, things like that. A top Class-A license to architect secure designs and robust inter-system communications.
CEOs and board members only know how to run a company: you know, management, budgets, allocations, etc. I'd be very surprised if Widgets, Inc. CEOs know the exact procedure and design decisions that lead to Widget Model 3928 being the way it is.
Of course, the court system will help determine whether it was a renegade programmer or whether board-imposed policies and procedures lead to the hiring of an unlicensed one.
Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation for stamping out homebrew is that an owner spending time on a homebrew game isn't spending time on a game that earned them any money. Also, opening the doors for homebrew also opens the doors for copy protection circumvention and, again, no earned money on game time.
Sony doesn't make emulators for competing systems and there's not a wick of litigation that could even be twisted to suggest that.
Remember Net Yaroze? How about Linux for the PS2? Both given blessings to the public by Sony thanks to gimped functionality and inability to be used for piracy. They're not opposed to hobbyist development per se, they're opposed to it happening without getting a fistful of c-notes for it.
It's just blind pretension to assume that the restricted moderation model is actually working any better. The point of categorizing moderation is that it allows you to go into your preferences and modify scores to suit your reading. I personally add modifiers to Troll modded comments to make sure they come on in my reading because a lot of them are pretty amusing. B)
+ and - wouldn't let you have that kind of control.
. . . when the truth of the matter they are just like you and me. Funny you should mention that.
Recently in my area, Broward (FL) deputy Chris Reyka was killed. There's a massive manhunt underweigh to find the perp and rain down cold justice. Just this morning I was watching the news and the quote was "this guy has no respect for the life of someone in the uniform, they certainly wouldn't have respect for anyone else."
Pre-emptive strike: I do NOT disagree. Murder in cold blood ought to be dealt with swifly and it's a completely justifiable response. The deputy wasn't even being careless, he was [reportedly] collecting license plate numbers on some parked cars to run them against the theft database. The killer ought to fry.
That said, murder isn't exactly a rare occurance. People get killed all the time and I have NEVER seen that kind of response. EVER. If they were really just like you and me, they'd have the same zeal for finding the murderers of common folk.
Yes their job is dangerous and yes they're needed, as someone who isn't as privilaged as you are to have an officer in the family I can't share your sentinents that they don't think they're better than the non-badged.
Indeed. Those things are generally kept secret for a reason. Imagine how their sales dropped off once word got out that the exact same items will become cheaper three days later?
Yes Microsoft is huger than Adobe. And use of "cash-cow" is perhaps overblown compared to just a business unit that's consistantly profitable.
I'd have to say that software just simply doesn't have barrier of entry to speak of, as far as any company with just a million in capitalization. The market is flooded with software. I'm hard pressed just to even thing of anything else with a lower cost of entry that still results in a product (as opposed to a service). But you seem pretty smart so I'm sure I'll get some examples.:)
Suppose hypothetically Microsoft is already the graphics leader. Competition has been extinguished. They let their flagship graphics suite stagnate. There really isn't anything stopping new talented blood from making their own. If it truly is a superior product, pros will pick it up. Once that happens, Microsoft would obviously start throwing chairs at it in the form of FUD, giving away their products for free, advertising, you name it. If the upstarts could resist the siren of a Microsoft buyout, they'll have a lock. Then Microsoft would be forced to try and 1up them. Hell, even if they do get bought out the superior features would find themselves in a new product that would be brought to market to capture the last of the holdouts still using the old software.
And browser wars? After browsers were free for "forever" in computing terms, Opera hit the scene and (gasp) charging for their browser and they're still around.
Just from the facts we already know and the huge problems and delays other UE3 projects are having Silicon Knights' case is very, very strong. I find Epic filing a counterclaim instead of settling out of court to be telling that the case isn't "very, very" strong.
What about the developer that gives your media outlet "exclusive" access only to be burned by a bad review? Will they continue to open those doors to that journalism group? Maybe they'll give those big scoops to those who are more forgiving and generous with the reviews.
Of course, what happens if they wipe out the market competition and later leave the market by taking the same sort of lark that brought them there in the first place? If they succeed in wiping out the competition, they wouldn't leave since they'd be sitting on a cash cow. Innovation wouldn't exactly dry up, either, since they'd have to sell people on buying a latest greatest version so they could have growth: and you can't do that by stagnating.
There are a lot of comments like parent but I chose this one because it sounds the most like a complaint of having too much stuff to play.
"Release Date" doesn't mean a whole lot to me ever since I've been working full time. I don't think I'll ever understand the need, particularly in gaming, for a 0-day experience.
I stay off the spoiler sites, stay away from FAQs, and even with stuff slipping through the cracks I can still thoroughly enjoy a game. I mean, just two weeks ago I bought Final Fantasy XII and I'm having a good time with it. Saved a bit of cash on it, too: picked up a copy for like $25 (presumably since there were so many damn copies pressed).
Don't get me wrong. I can understand why cutting edge computing, cutting edge cars, cutting edge just about everything else is worth it and important to jump in early on if you're into that sort of thing because of how quickly they stop being cutting edge. But games? If 50 great games come out at the same time you pick your priorities and play the games in that order.
Games are supposed to be fun, after all. Not something you have to rush through.
TFA:
This new version of HTML--usually called HTML 5, although it also goes under the name Web Applications 1.0--would be instantly recognizable to a Web designer frozen in ice in 1999 and thawed today. If you were like me with all the talk about Web 2.0, what happened to Web 1.0, well, here it is. Neat, kind of like Merlyn aging backwards.
I'm looking forward to Web RC1 in the next 5 years.
So, how does vote swapping help anything other than make sure parties rule politics instead of individuals? I mean, Bush and McCain are of the same party, Obama and Lieberman are of the same party.
I understand the point of political parties is to get elected and to collectively wield power, but vote swapping seems to undermine the actual election of individuals who are ultimately each responsible for their own upholding of their constitutional oaths.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you follow the link in TFS and offer your expertise to those having problems? Did you disclose your hardware configuration? We could all degenerate into a Microsoft flame fest or the solution could come to light and put the whole thing to bed.
Video games? Art? Not really. I've only seen maybe a handful of games that I would call "art" versus just a pasttime. My short short list includes Rez and Flow.
The problem is that while film gets artsy fartsy conventions and festivals, game festivals are all about marketability and anything even remotely controvertial gets slammed (Super Columbine RPG anyone?).
I mean, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and co have all stated in one way or another that they wouldn't license games exceeding M ratings. Imagine if the companies that build and sell movie projectors had the means to lock-out "unlicensed" film and wouldn't license anything with material they were not comfortable with!
All this combined with useful idiots like Ebert declaring that games cannot be art means there won't be any expansion of thought on gaming until the companies involved grow some balls.
Personally, I'd take issue with that analogy since Nvidia and ATI both routinely cheated in their drivers to make inflated benchmark scores. This was done by trying to detect what application was running at a given time and intentionally disregarding quality options in favor of performance options, using substitute trig. calculations, using alternate blending modes, etc.
At least a 45nm processor will run code just as well as a 65nm one*.
* If we ignore errata and such that always seem to creep their out. Didn't Core 2 Duo have a major errata recently that forced operating systems to code around?
Does it also work on short term memories?
While difficult, big dramatic problems that occur due to programming error (like exposing 100K patients' hospital records) can get traced down. That's part of the investigative process.
Like a bridge that fails. It gets investigated. People get interviewed. Documentation gets reviewed. Maybe the blueprints asked for Steel formulation ABC that meets certain specifications but a vendor decided to be a cheapskate and provide Steel formulation XYZ which fails to meet them (or minus the conspiracy: steel rated less than the lab-tested ratings due to some error).
So, after software investigation, it's learned that a particular module caused the error. The legally bound programmer, though interview and investigation, discloses the use of library A and that it ought to adhere to the specifications that the library's vendor published. If it falls short then it's not THAT programmer but someone else at the other vendor.
Code doesn't just materialize (even if it comes out of a wizard or compiler or whatever) and thus can be traced back to an individual. It all depends, I suppose, on how badly it's wanted. If my mouse goes wonky that get fixed by rebooting it's a waste to investigate like this, naturally.
It's nice that there's a call option that's home-grown, and there isn't a push for using the web/email for customer service, and all... but, did they have to cut e-mail out of the loop altogether?
DVDs by mail isn't such a big hairy deal that I need to jump on the phone and hold for who knows how long to express that I never got a disc that was sent when I can just shoot off an email saying "It's been a week, the disc you sent never got here, could you try again?" and forget about it.
(Partial disclosure: I am not a Netflix subscriber, but of another DVD-by-mail rental company (Full disclosure: Greencine) and never had any problems using e-mail only, although I think they've got an 1-800 number, too.)
I think you missed the point. If Engineers are legally liable for their work that can put people at risk, perhaps Programmers should be legally liable for their work that can put people at risk. Maybe instead of figuring out how to line their pockets with money with their "certifications," Novell, Microsoft, Cisco, et al. could pool resources and lobby for a legally-weighty certification for Software Engineers much conventional Engineers already have. Perhaps an Engineer could enlighten me on the history of how those things evolved for them.
You could have a Class-C license to code and that would mean you know how to develop without buffer-overrun vulnerabilities, SQL-injection vulnerabilities, things like that. A top Class-A license to architect secure designs and robust inter-system communications.
CEOs and board members only know how to run a company: you know, management, budgets, allocations, etc. I'd be very surprised if Widgets, Inc. CEOs know the exact procedure and design decisions that lead to Widget Model 3928 being the way it is.
Of course, the court system will help determine whether it was a renegade programmer or whether board-imposed policies and procedures lead to the hiring of an unlicensed one.
Free and relatively easy under hypervisor. You don't have access to the important bits to do anything that threatens their game sales model.
There is a great difference between playing with the sand on a beach and playing with the sand in a sandbox, after all.
... without a galactic space bookie? I'm feelin' lucky!
Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation for stamping out homebrew is that an owner spending time on a homebrew game isn't spending time on a game that earned them any money. Also, opening the doors for homebrew also opens the doors for copy protection circumvention and, again, no earned money on game time.
Sony doesn't make emulators for competing systems and there's not a wick of litigation that could even be twisted to suggest that.
Remember Net Yaroze? How about Linux for the PS2? Both given blessings to the public by Sony thanks to gimped functionality and inability to be used for piracy. They're not opposed to hobbyist development per se, they're opposed to it happening without getting a fistful of c-notes for it.
+ and - wouldn't let you have that kind of control.
How about a (+1 Everyone Is Special) moderation?
Recently in my area, Broward (FL) deputy Chris Reyka was killed. There's a massive manhunt underweigh to find the perp and rain down cold justice. Just this morning I was watching the news and the quote was "this guy has no respect for the life of someone in the uniform, they certainly wouldn't have respect for anyone else."
Pre-emptive strike: I do NOT disagree. Murder in cold blood ought to be dealt with swifly and it's a completely justifiable response. The deputy wasn't even being careless, he was [reportedly] collecting license plate numbers on some parked cars to run them against the theft database. The killer ought to fry.
That said, murder isn't exactly a rare occurance. People get killed all the time and I have NEVER seen that kind of response. EVER. If they were really just like you and me, they'd have the same zeal for finding the murderers of common folk.
Yes their job is dangerous and yes they're needed, as someone who isn't as privilaged as you are to have an officer in the family I can't share your sentinents that they don't think they're better than the non-badged.
Indeed. Those things are generally kept secret for a reason. Imagine how their sales dropped off once word got out that the exact same items will become cheaper three days later?
Yes Microsoft is huger than Adobe. And use of "cash-cow" is perhaps overblown compared to just a business unit that's consistantly profitable.
:)
I'd have to say that software just simply doesn't have barrier of entry to speak of, as far as any company with just a million in capitalization. The market is flooded with software. I'm hard pressed just to even thing of anything else with a lower cost of entry that still results in a product (as opposed to a service). But you seem pretty smart so I'm sure I'll get some examples.
Suppose hypothetically Microsoft is already the graphics leader. Competition has been extinguished. They let their flagship graphics suite stagnate. There really isn't anything stopping new talented blood from making their own. If it truly is a superior product, pros will pick it up. Once that happens, Microsoft would obviously start throwing chairs at it in the form of FUD, giving away their products for free, advertising, you name it. If the upstarts could resist the siren of a Microsoft buyout, they'll have a lock. Then Microsoft would be forced to try and 1up them. Hell, even if they do get bought out the superior features would find themselves in a new product that would be brought to market to capture the last of the holdouts still using the old software.
And browser wars? After browsers were free for "forever" in computing terms, Opera hit the scene and (gasp) charging for their browser and they're still around.
What about the developer that gives your media outlet "exclusive" access only to be burned by a bad review? Will they continue to open those doors to that journalism group? Maybe they'll give those big scoops to those who are more forgiving and generous with the reviews.
There are a lot of comments like parent but I chose this one because it sounds the most like a complaint of having too much stuff to play.
"Release Date" doesn't mean a whole lot to me ever since I've been working full time. I don't think I'll ever understand the need, particularly in gaming, for a 0-day experience.
I stay off the spoiler sites, stay away from FAQs, and even with stuff slipping through the cracks I can still thoroughly enjoy a game. I mean, just two weeks ago I bought Final Fantasy XII and I'm having a good time with it. Saved a bit of cash on it, too: picked up a copy for like $25 (presumably since there were so many damn copies pressed).
Don't get me wrong. I can understand why cutting edge computing, cutting edge cars, cutting edge just about everything else is worth it and important to jump in early on if you're into that sort of thing because of how quickly they stop being cutting edge. But games? If 50 great games come out at the same time you pick your priorities and play the games in that order.
Games are supposed to be fun, after all. Not something you have to rush through.
I'm looking forward to Web RC1 in the next 5 years.
It is much better to light a candle than damn the darkness.
DOSBox
So, how does vote swapping help anything other than make sure parties rule politics instead of individuals? I mean, Bush and McCain are of the same party, Obama and Lieberman are of the same party.
I understand the point of political parties is to get elected and to collectively wield power, but vote swapping seems to undermine the actual election of individuals who are ultimately each responsible for their own upholding of their constitutional oaths.
Drinking juice is still pretty oral an activity.
:D
Unless you inhale it or can diffuse it through the skin.