Yawn,
Andrew you are becoming as predictable as a one-note Samba.
OK, I have time just now... let's really start to dance and see what
moves you got beyond boyish bluster. Clear the floor, everyone.
Thermal suits and flame-throwers at the ready?
On Sep 11, 2006, at 10:39 AM, Andrew Crystall wrote:
On 11 Sep 2006 at 9:49, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
My, AndrewC, you are a prickly one aren't you?
You come out all fire and scorching brimstone from the get-go on this
topic.
Expect push-back.
It's called reason, applied, and a defence of a tolerant view. And
Except what I'm getting from you isn't push-back, it's mudslinging.
LoL... my, aren't we full of ourselves?
Wasn't your first sentence something about "blithering retards"?
Your "defense" of "tolerance" is just a silly offensive attempt to
distract from a weak position. Charging into the thread with bipolar
words of IN-tolerance is a sure way to win an argument - NOT. Your
obviously keen to inflame, or is English a second language for you in
order to plead ignorance? Explain in your own caustic words just how
this approach is reasonable.
Mudslinging it might actually be if I'd told everyone something like...
PC-minded developers are micro-cephalic cretins who are simply too
congenitally scared to venture beyond the safety fencing of the Gates
herd... and can you prove you don't have a MicroSoft brand seared on
your hindquarters?
If I was mudslinging.
As much fun a dance partner as you may turn out to be, up to now I've
seen little reason to give you much more than a few throw away lines.
You're boring me, frankly, but I'm toe-stepping bravely on hoping to
salvage a conversation out of this in spite of your two left feet.
By the standards of clerks, teachers, bus drivers, cooks, you sir, are
a technophile. Let's call them Normals for this conversation. Your
Absolute rubbish. A lot of them these days have digital cameras, have
digiboxes, have ipods. I don't have any camera, I don't have a TV
whatsoever, I don't have a MP3 player. None of these things are
USEFUL to me.
Tech is a pure tool - that I have kepy skills as a tech is because
those skills are purely useful, it gets me cheaper PC's and is
considered a useful skill by others.
Monkeys can also push colored buttons and make sign language, but they
aren't uplifted - yet. Riddle me this: can regular folk program such
devices? Do they have a working understand of hardware substrates?
Read functional flow diagrams of how it works? Open the instructions
and follow along?
Face it: If your making games you've forgotten more computer technology
than regular folk will ever know exists. Assuming this isn't your
first game job.
WARNING: You maintain a stale air about you & might want to check your
sell-by date because you appear to be peddling old goods. Good thing
your proud of being so damn cheap.
Tech is a means to an end. I don't care if you paint chapel ceilings
with cherubs farting rainbows when your not spouting off about your
critically superior abilities: to most people what little you've
described of yourself counts as a techie. Too bad if this bursts some
thin bubble you hold dear, but its the relative scale I'm talking about
that you can't seem to address. Widen the topic if your so offended by
the expectation you yourself have created here.
It begs the question: Why are you ashamed of having technical knowledge?
Isn't it just another hat you can wear?
there are vast technical reaches remain unexplored - you are in fact
in
that specialized subspecies known as the Game Developer.
There is no subspecies called Game Developer when it comes to views
of technology. The vast majority are technophile, I am not. Games are
just ONE medium, and the medium is not the message.
I simply found your claim of ignorance odd and wondered why.
Interest, not ignorance.
Got your Marshall Macluhan memorized yet? I haven't heard anybody spew
his good words so much since... college. Put it up there on a shelf
next to Edward Tufte when you think you've got it down pat.
All you've said about yourself is in tech terms within a tech
conversation. You said you where NOT a techie as prelude to a
technical explanation. I simply differ on your terms. You were
pleading ignorance of the deep technology one COULD be conversant with.
You know, there's always someone richer and thinner than oneself. I
was pointing out a lack of perspective on where along that tech
spectrum you might actually sit.
I read your words - the first time.
Some people think an enormous HVAC system hanging on the outside off
building is an engineering solution whereas I'd call it an eyesore
that
reflects poor planning and design.
That's nice. I don't care - if it works better than the other
soloutions, then aesthetics can take the back seat. Again, function
and not flash is what I care about.
What a limited web we weave...
Your assertion that function is the measure of all that is good & right
would have our lives as full of ducting as the movie Brazil - but you
are no DeNiro swooping in. "Works", and "Better" are subjective terms
easily altered for different arguments and various needs. One man's
elixir is another man's poison, and all. You've regularly missed my
point: Sure, function is important, but I simply argue it's best to
have both. Your arguing it's either-or.
LoL, neither-nor?
Your lack of caring is a sorry excuse to ignore my point. My example
of add-on engineering shows how expensive a cheap expedient solution
can end up being if it is ill-made for the tasks at hand. Retrofitting
buildings is hardly a case for "function" winning over design... which
is different than "flash". Your fixation is admirable for it's
religious ferocity. All your heat is no substitute for a comprehensive
analysis & proper designs that don't get tossed because the creator
couldn't be bothered with how others might actually use it.
This topic is exactly why people are responding to well-designed items
like the iPod: in the face of brain-dead designs offered by people who
think a japanese button-festooned stereo is a fine idea for an
interface the iPod success proves Ease Of Use is a term with teeth.
Sure, it could be better, Sure, it could be cheaper. So what? Time
will do that.
that irked so many, myself included. For instance, do you really
care
if your iPod Nano isn't expandable {yet}? Damn things even look a
tad
I don't have a MP3 player. There's nothing wrong with my minidisk
recorder (which I was given ages back for recording lectures in
University, since I'm dyslexic) for listening to music on the go.
Tender spot rubbed wrong?
Hey, stop jumping at shadows. I love mini-disc, but you have to admit
No Moving Parts makes more sense long term. Welcome to the new
millennia!
No, welcome to a waste of cash. As long as the minidisk recorder
works, it makes absolutely zero sense to waste cash on something
which can't even record, has battery life issues compared and are
extremely fragile.
YOU'RE the one jumping because I don't share your technophile
outlook. This is normal.
I just don't get your techno hang-up.
I'd use my mini-disc too, if it wasn't broken. Or even my old DAT
machine, but again, time has taken it's toll on moving parts.
Normal... funny. What do you base this on?
You have failed to explain yourself clearly - especially for someone
with such pride over self-proclaimed reasoning skills and purity of
functionality.
C'mon Atlas, shrug!
To reduce the ignorance factor you wear so prominently on your sleeve
let me give a little history: I am first and foremost an artist from a
multigenerational family of them. I'm steeped in it, but have a knack
for technology and keen nose for nerds trying to pull fast ones over
management trying to ship product. I can program if I have to, but
it's been a while and I prefer to make images that move people {I know,
horribly non-functional to some: pretty colors, moods, all those
ephemerals of style}. I bring out-of-box thinking that cuts Gordian
Knots which appear intractable to typical work-flow operations or
time-fixed productions. This has been valuable to our executive class
and why I find myself in management more often these days instead of
line work producing bits that flash and move. I've painted enormous
murals single-handedly, started several tech companies and recently
have hopes to bring some IP to market in the form of a novel and game
{may-haps a movie deal}.
Only an interest in the intersection of creative art and digital
technology pulled me out of a career in architecture. Your silly
pigeon-holing me only embarrasses yourself. Seriously.
In case you really are as clueless as you appear to be let me h{URL}
another item at you, my company is called Form And Function - for a
reason. One without the other is half a solution and a has-been
product before it ships. Your fooling nobody but yourself with this
usefulness-only mantra.
You might want to check your ends-v-means list at the door for
conflicts of interest... Gods man, your all hot about the be-all and
end-all of FUNCTIONALITY, but your trying to ship a frivolous,
time-sucking, distraction of a game no-less!
That's damn funny!
You're heir to the entire technophile snob legacy, the entire "It
looks good so it must be superior" class who are either gamers who go
for the PC with the blue LED's or the non-gamers who go for Mac's.
Rubbish. I'll thank you to not project your own shadows upon me. I
save my admiration for those designs that are the best of both worlds.
There's one technophile world, and your snobbery is the so-called
shadow which is entirely your own..from your nose, as you look down
at me for not sharing your views.
Wow, what a clever, um, analogy, you tried pulling from your arse.
I first heard something like that around ninth grade.
Been saving it for me?
What a mess of a statement... try using a dictionary and thesaurus and
make this, er, pronouncement, work with a bit more detail. Hopefully
logic will flow from your oh-so functional and brilliant mind. What
I've been objecting to is not that you don't share my views, but that
you are so sure I'm mocking you. Well, not before this missive anyway.
You apparently can't take criticism w/o bristling over insults real and
imagined. In fact you have the distinct tone of someone who seeks out
conflict and this appears to be the handy one for you just now. Don't
let any feelings of inferiority get in the way of embarrassing yourself
further. Please go ahead!
Anybody can, and they do, design swiss army knife dood-ads hastily
attached to a box trying to grab attention, but getting multiple uses
out of a single feature simplifies the overall design, makes for
greater product longevity, and fewer COG parts or repairs.
Multi-uses can make something more complex, generalising is worse
than useless. Look at the IBM PS/2 for a good example of that. Also,
longevity is utterly unrelated to multi-use, a single use tool in
many cases is more robust since it only has to be designed for the
stress of that single use, and so on.
Your still missing the point.
I'm talking about multi-use with minimal parts and design - not
afterthought add-ons that ad complexity and bulk trying to meet some
marketing guys idea of extra features. I'm arguing that good products
encompass both while you blandly assert only one aspect is ideal.
I use the tools that are more "functional" to me. Function = price
according to what you've offered to this conversation. I take a wider
view because I need versatile image generation & easy media
integration: found primarily on Macs since the dawn of this multimedia
era. Microsoft has been playing catchup a long time on this one.
Even as basic a notion as Plug-n-Play was left dangling unfinished for
years and years and years and years {and stop!} behind what Apple
shipped from day one. Seeing what Apple already had the PC market
screamed for the same {for years}, but when it {kept} never arriving
there was serious egg on MS face {and money lost by 3rd parties meeting
the so-called spec}.
Try this: It's the difference between an old Craftsman nail puller and
Dead On... they both work, but Dead On products have style... things
like bottle openers built in which is damn nice at the end of a work
day. It doesn't cost any more to make it more versatile, it doesn't
subtract from the purity of their purpose, has the same price with more
elements of style built in.
Bonus Round: Guess which one has gotten the girls' attention - it
isn't the plain-jane item from your father's woodshed. So, even at a
biological level here's an argument that shows elegant design is more
successful. Unless your a eunich.
Your rebuttal?
You do user testing of that game your working on don't you? Or, do
you
let the programmers self-test in a vacuum
Of course I do. This has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Just how long have you been in this business?
Getting outside yourself is essential to good product design whatever
Functionality means to you, du jour. The real world has a funny way of
making a mess of neat little bubble diagrams drawn up by cloistered
game designers who think they KNOW ALL about how a game ought to play.
Re-iterative design cycles are there for a reason and user testing and
feedback {multiple cycles, I said} is essential to ship a product the
market responds well to. Independent testers are your window to a
wider world than the development teams' own limited view & multiple
passes through this dev cycle is essential for product longevity. If
your not, then your wasting the investors money in some sort of
white-collar welfare program as you kid yourself about what a great gig
you have. For now.
Clued in yet?
Router with comprehensive firewall (on a linux core), check. Free
antivirus, check. Free anti-spyware, check. There we go! (Oh, there's
spam, but I haven't used Outlook in a decade at home)
Nice. Apple's is pretty good out the box as well.
And if it was the majority system it would have a lot of attacks as
well. You know fullwell it's a pure self-generated popularity issue.
Ahh, the smugness in numbers.
Hmm, I do recall Apple ships with Ports closed, but MS does not.
I guarantee that Apple is more concerned with addressing security than
Microsoft ever has been and would handle it better. In fact they have
and they are. MS is a pathetic joke, except we are the fools for
allowing this Trojan beast into all reaches of our government and
business.
Tech-as-a-tool is NOT popular in todays society, as you prove. Shrug,
that doesn't bother me either.
This makes no sense.
Explain yourself with some clarity - if you can.
Take your time, use the backside of this page if you need the room.
Surprise, this isn't a pub pissing-match. Are you going to converse
-or- keep ranting like some "enfant terrible" who needs the stage
spotlight? I'll read your next letter, but if it's of the same vein as
your previous ones then your going to be bouncing in a solo echo
chamber Real Soon Now. Adrenaline junkies are a dime a dozen. I'll
check back in tomorrow just to see if you can string a few sentences
together enough to make a point. You've gotten downright boring. Do
better, or it's Shine-On time.
Scratching my head wondering why you bother to hang here at all.
- Jonathan -
BTW - thanks for the warm-up, if I had more time I would have written
less.
Your my breakfast snack as I dig into the morning novel writing period.
PS - Gauntlet thrown - are you up to the challenge of making real
conversation?
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
