Comment Re:Entire world covered with the bacteria (Score 1) 248
Yeah um.... I was worried about that.
Comment Accidents.... (Score 1) 85
Hey Vinny, give Tommy a little ride....... make sure it looks like an accident.
Comment It's not news (Score 5, Insightful) 650
until it actually happens....
This is more like a press-release rather than actual news.
Comment About management.... (Score 1) 592
Management is not comfy.
You need to lead people AND keep yourself updated. Just don't bite off more than you can chew, otherwise, your employees will hate you for being incompetent management.
Comment Re:It's a matter of perspective. (Score 1) 895
I guess people only conform to achieve their own individual ambitions.
Submission + - New job, new software, new problem?
Nicros writes: So I just got a good paying job as a senior software engineer at a biotech company. When I was hired, I was told that I would be leading a project, coding and re-architecting a legacy application which they wanted to 'productize'. Sounded cool! So then I started, and discovered that although all of those things are factually correct, the reality is a bit different.
The code base is over 180,000 lines of really complex unmaintainable code. Several files (this is C# btw) have over 25,000 lines per file (!). And that is for 1 class with 125 methods- so you can do the math how big each method is. Additionally, this is scientific software, so it is very, very complex.
I'm having a hard time even running metrics on these things because they are such memory hogs for the tools available.
So okay, thats a lot of work to refactor and rearchitect that, maybe even for a team. Oh yeah, I have probably less than a year.
I came from a position where I was a project lead, technical lead and a manager. This new position would seem to be me, coding, alone, for a very long time. Not learning that much, and Im not seeing much career enhancement other than becoming a crack C# programmer (which would be one good thing anyway). So I guess Im still a lead. But overall, I feel I have taken a step back career wise. The company is also, of course, resource limited so I may or may not be able to hire some help.
So, I would be very interested in hearing what others thing about this situation, and possible ways to deal with it in a positive manner. Are there career risks here? I do need the job, so I cant just bail. I also would not like to let them down, they hired me to do a job and I accepted- I want to do it well. So I really would like to make the best of this and help my career at the same time, but Im having a hard time seeing any path that leads to success.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
The code base is over 180,000 lines of really complex unmaintainable code. Several files (this is C# btw) have over 25,000 lines per file (!). And that is for 1 class with 125 methods- so you can do the math how big each method is. Additionally, this is scientific software, so it is very, very complex.
I'm having a hard time even running metrics on these things because they are such memory hogs for the tools available.
So okay, thats a lot of work to refactor and rearchitect that, maybe even for a team. Oh yeah, I have probably less than a year.
I came from a position where I was a project lead, technical lead and a manager. This new position would seem to be me, coding, alone, for a very long time. Not learning that much, and Im not seeing much career enhancement other than becoming a crack C# programmer (which would be one good thing anyway). So I guess Im still a lead. But overall, I feel I have taken a step back career wise. The company is also, of course, resource limited so I may or may not be able to hire some help.
So, I would be very interested in hearing what others thing about this situation, and possible ways to deal with it in a positive manner. Are there career risks here? I do need the job, so I cant just bail. I also would not like to let them down, they hired me to do a job and I accepted- I want to do it well. So I really would like to make the best of this and help my career at the same time, but Im having a hard time seeing any path that leads to success.
Thoughts? Suggestions?
Comment Re:Well duh... (Score 1) 895
They're not glorified IRC clients.
There's a certain degree of skill involved when doing certain activities inside the game. When you do certain activities inside the game, you meet individuals doing similar activities to yours.
It's a matter of meeting those who like to do the same virtual things you do.
There's people who treat MMOs like glorified IRC clients, but there's many other activities as well than just chatting and idling.
Comment It's a matter of perspective. (Score 1) 895
I think players in City of Heroes wanted conformity, instead competing for individual ambition like in EVE Online.
Comment Re:Things I am glad to be missing out on (Score 1) 81
I could spout off comments that boil down to accusations of "denial" but that's just too easy and simple. Instead, I will attack your logic of statement.
The bad analogy statement is "Humans get AIDS." But I am human, and I don't have AIDS, therefore AIDS is not a human problem, but only the problem of those who have it. Yes, I see there are logical problems with my bad analogy, but I think you can see the point.
You are taking a generalization that I have made "personally" and stating that because it may not be personally true for you that it is not generally true. That's just stupid.
The point has been made that MMORPGs create their own economies which affect the real world. At this point it is no longer "just a game." The desires of people to build wealth and power is one common to "most" of humanity. (It is true because history bears this out. It does not matter if it does not apply to you individually.) MMORPGs supplement this human desire "virtually" if you will. (I may not be king of the world, but I am king of the nerds! Sound familiar?) When you break down the psychology of the activity, it really starts to bring to light many facets of human society that generally go unnoticed or taken for granted.
As I said before. I play games. But I am reluctant to play games that I cannot play by myself. Many of the more ugly aspects of people come to light too quickly. In gaming, I appreciate "fairness and balance" as do many others. (Let's call those who appreciate fairness and balance "Type A") Some people, however, prefer to cheat and take advantage of others for their own gain... gain which is usually a thrill, a position in some arbitrary hierarchy system or ladder or a reputation or some other such thing. (Let's call these people "Type B") Some people truly live for that sort of thing. While those of Type B exist (and they will ALWAYS exist as it is a part of the human condition) Type A people will always fall victim to them in some way or another. In the case of MMORPGs, they try to police themselves, (as a player of EVE, I am sure you are aware of how some developers have been identified in some pretty dubious activities?) write software code to thwart cheats and exploits and on and on even resulting in high profile court cases and "DMCA" actions. This stuff has escalated WELL BEYOND the status of "just a game."
They aren't just games any more than social networking sites are "just virtual" and have no impact on "real life." They are all parts of "real life" now. When interactive humanity seeps into a game, all the ugliness of humanity is packaged right along with it.
If you're having this much problems with MMOs, you're playing it all wrong and playing with the wrong people.
Comment Re:Things I am glad to be missing out on (Score 3, Insightful) 81
I have never played a game like EVE or WoW or any of these. They are complicated and involving. I have personally witnessed one man who had his middle-class lifestyle -- his house, wife and kids, job -- all lost because he couldn't stop playing games like these. I'm not going to suggest that everyone is vulnerable to such demise from gaming addiction but there are unquestionably some that are. But that's not the main reason I don't get involved in that stuff. It's not "fun" when it's a source of additional stress and frustration.
I play games. Make no mistake about it. I play them and I get locked in and I become like a dog who is busy eating so don't interrupt me when I am into it. But I also feel the difference between the importance of reality and "the here and now" of things.
When I see serious business, strife and even killing and suicides stem from these types of games, I have to wonder or even worry about what is really going on. If I were one of those anti-game crusaders, I would target these MMORPGs rather than "violent" games. I see a lot more tragedy associated with those types of games rather than those that are based on violent themes. But thankfully, these are "worlds" that are completely opt-in and there are certainly worse worlds to get hooked on -- drugs, sex, gambling -- more examples of "addictive" and obsessive activities that can lead to some serious life consequences. These things will always exist in humanity. Try to control them and they will go underground and form dangerous sub-cultures. Try to legalize and regulate them and you find yourself serving as referee in matters that are best for government not to be involved in.
It's a part of crazy-town that I am glad I don't live in.
If you have an addiction, that's your problem. I play EVE and I don't have this addiction.
Submission + - New study casts doubt on Twitter hype
krou writes: A new study by a Harvard Business School-based team indicates that the excitement surrounding Twitter may not be as valid as previously thought. According to their research, 90% of Twitter's content is generated only by 10% of its users. Most users only "tweet" once in their lifetime, and half only update their page once every 74 days. Graduate Bill Heil who took part in the work, comments that, "Based on the numbers, Twitter is certainly not a service where everyone has seen it has instantly loved it." The team also note that "This implies that Twitter's resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network". Other interesting data from the study revealed that "men have 15% more followers than women", "an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman", and "An average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman." This is interesting because they claim that, on typical online social networks, "most of the activity is focused around women".
Submission + - What is an uninstall worth as a retaliation?
eric.brasseur writes: "When the main developers of an open source project go mean, other developers can fork it, to preserve the project and their good work. But what can a lambda user do? Many Linux distros maintain statistics of the software installed by the users. Uninstalling a software, echoes in the charts and exerts an infinitesimal democratic pressure on the project. I did this recently on purpose, because I was disappointed by the sarcastic and selfish attitude of a developer that had bluntly removed a feature. Trying to argue on the forum seemed useless, for example to beg to get the feature reimplemented but disabled by default. Compiling a previous version didn't work. I had to do something... I finally resorted to uninstall the software and begin to learn using another one. Is this a model for tomorrow's democracy of the software or am I being delusional?"
A Case Study of RMTs In EVE Online 81
Kheldon writes with an article at MMO Gamer which explores how well real money transactions work in online games, using EVE Online as a test case. Quoting:
"... My next problem came from trying to sell the [Game Time cards] through the 'Time Code Bazaar' on the forums. While I quickly found buyers, none of them actually went through with the deal. This is the inherent problem with developer sanctioned RMT. Unless true, unfettered, player-to-player transactions are allowed without developer 'regulation,' the market will inevitably be operating inefficiently. Consider gold-farmers for a moment. Setting aside the moral or legal aspects of the trade, and considering from a purely economic standpoint, gold-farmers are the RMT equivalent of large corporations. They operate on the concept of 'economies-of-scale,' which basically means that up to a certain point, the larger a company is, the cheaper they can produce that product. Of course, companies that can produce a product more cheaply can undercut the competition while maintaining the same profit margin; meaning they'll make more sales, giving them more overall profit, and supporting the corporate growth, which furthers the economy of scale. This is the market at its most pure."
Submission + - 100,000 websites destroyed by hackers (theregister.co.uk) 2
Joshua.Niland writes: "A zero day exploit in Lxlabs HyperVM software has lead to 100,000 website being destroyed, some of which have no backups.
From the article: "Data for about half of the websites hosted on Vaserv was destroyed all at once sometime Sunday evening, shortly after administrators noticed "strangeness" on the system. The attackers had the ability to execute sensitive Unix commands on the system, including "rm -rf," which forces a recursive delete of all files.
Some 50 percent of Vaserv's customers signed up for unmanaged service, which doesn't include data backup, Foster said. It remains unclear of those website owners will ever be able to retrieve their lost data, he said. As a result, at least half the websites that were hosted on the site remain offline.""
From the article: "Data for about half of the websites hosted on Vaserv was destroyed all at once sometime Sunday evening, shortly after administrators noticed "strangeness" on the system. The attackers had the ability to execute sensitive Unix commands on the system, including "rm -rf," which forces a recursive delete of all files.
Some 50 percent of Vaserv's customers signed up for unmanaged service, which doesn't include data backup, Foster said. It remains unclear of those website owners will ever be able to retrieve their lost data, he said. As a result, at least half the websites that were hosted on the site remain offline.""
Submission + - One Tweet Wonders
theodp writes: "TIME has seen-the-future-and-it-is-Twitter. Slate, on the other hand, is more fascinated with the phenomenon of Orphaned Tweets, the messages left by people who sign up for Twitter, post once, then never return (not unlike one-blog-post-wonders). While many orphan tweets betray skepticism about microblogging ('I don't get it... what's the point of this thing?'), other one-and-done Twitterers demonstrate keen enthusiasm before disappearing (I'm here!), and some tweets hint that tragedy has cut a promising Twittering-life short ('it hurts to breathe. should I go to the hospital?'). Slate notes that studies of Twitter accounts by Harvard and Nielsen suggest the service has been better at signing up users than keeping them, including the one-tweet-wonders."
