juicebox's comments

You mean the "scheme" of economic survivability?

I didn't read where Grove was proud of how Intel behaved during the '90s. In fact, I got the opposite impression from this article: Grove is writing from the pain and tragedy caused by competing with the Chinese on entirely Chinese terms. Where was the US during those years? Absent. Like a drunk staring into a Vegas slot machine in the wee hours of the morning going through the motions, but not really being there.

Call it whatever you want, sweetie.

Looking like a duck and quacking like a duck doesn't depend on your silly definition of "war." What China is effectively doing is waging war on the US. Whether we wake up to this fact or not will determine whether the US becomes a nation of the rich in fortified castles sitting amongst the poor and desperate, or whether we return to the American Dream.

You need to give a programmer a task, then let him get back to you in a day or two. Give him something that you can't find a solution to on Google, but isn't so hard that it couldn't be done in an hour or two.

Sitting there putting pressure on the programmer working is just a prick move. If you gave the same test to a carpenter and asked him to build a bird house and the outcome would decide whether he could pay rent this month, he would cut his damn hand off. Guaranteed.

"Everyone is nervous during tests and interviews."

Yes, but what you're missing is the degree certain people are nervous. Some people lock up completely due to performance anxiety, which has nothing to do with how difficult the problem is. Those people are also more likely to be found in the computer engineering profession due to the nature of the job.

So if you want a charismatic person with strong social skills, then you're just going to have to accept the bullshit artist who is more PR than talent over the painfully anxious and shy person who knows how to program.

That, or deal with hunting down the very few people who are both social and vastly knowledgeable. Good luck with that.

This is why I'm entirely skeptical of this whole OnLive business.

If you're having trouble with a mouse cursor, then no video game that requires interaction will be playable. QuakeWorld, IIRC, was the first real game to solve the latency problem. And they did it with prediction that lets the UI maintain responsiveness while hiding latency. That game was playable up to maybe a 200ms ping time and with a dial-up modem. That's impressive. But it was also a lot of client-side magic, which is what VNC is doing with the mouse.

In addition to that, no Wii game will be playable with this thing, no FPS, no World of Warcraft, etc. etc. I think this is why serious game companies aren't even commenting on it. It doesn't even register to them. I can really only see OnLive taking business away from the Appstore or Android handheld markets. Extreme casual gamers that don't know the difference between an Xbox controller, a Wii nunchuk, and a 1980s joystick will be the market here.

With programming, it was a combination of boredom and having copious amounts of free time after school and on summer breaks. Not having much of a social life and poor self-esteem also helped. Add in a good amount of social anxiety and well... there is your answer.

Can't say it wasn't fun, and it definitely pays the bills now. But I would trade it all to be in a mediocre rock band that plays crappy hole-in-the-wall clubs in tiny godforsaken midwest US towns on Tuesday with a midnight time slot. But I was never good at guitar.

"nobody really thinks it's the future"

Yes, well people did really believe we would have flying cars and biodomes on the moon by now. So I don't invest too much faith in future wishes and hopes.

Short of unfeasible and economically devastating projects such as solar panels covering the earth and turning water into wine, er hydrogen, we don't have much reason for hope. I think we're all adults here and we all get how important it is to find alternatives to oil. But smarter people have thought about this well before Al Gore was born. You can't invent sources of energy. You can only discover what is already there.

"Europe and China are going to kick our ass at this unless we step it up"

That's an odd bit of protectionism to throw into the mix there. I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter one way or another who gets there first. What matters is that someone does. But I don't think tossing federal funding at a dartboard is the way to go about it.

Drug dealers make some of the best apps.

Heard of Farmville or World of Warcraft?

WoW even borrows the first-hit-is-free, by encouraging each purchaser to share the software with their friends. The entire universe of WoW is a streamlined treadmill, for keeping players addicted. From depreciating gear, inflation, achievements, status symbols... it has it all.

Tongue-in-cheek, I know. But I can see how combining the drug dealing experience with video games could lead to insights such as Blizzard and WoW.