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We believe this stuff matters, so please take a few minutes to read our updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service at http://www.google.com/policies. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012. 

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good programmers

Joel on Software

Hitting the High Notes

by Joel Spolsky

Monday, July 25, 2005

In March, 2000, I launched this site with the shaky claim that most people are wrong in thinking you need an idea to make a successful software company:

The common belief is that when you're building a software company, the goal is to find a neat idea that solves some problem which hasn't been solved before, implement it, and make a fortune. We'll call this the build-a-better-mousetrap belief. But the real goal for software companies should be converting capital into software that works.

For the last five years I've been testing that theory in the real world. The formula for the company I started with Michael Pryor in September, 2000 can be summarized in four steps:

Best Working Conditions

→

Best Programmers

→

Best Software

→

Profit!

It's a pretty convenient formula, especially since our real goal in starting Fog Creek was to create a software company where we would want to work. I made the claim, in those days, that good working conditions (or, awkwardly, "building the company where the best software developers in the world would want to work") would lead to profits as naturally as chocolate leads to chubbiness or cartoon sex in video games leads to gangland-style shooting sprees.

Skype is trying hard not to be treated like a phone company

In 2009 it was reported that organised criminals, arms and drugs traffickers, and prostitution rings in Milan, Italy, were using Skype in order to frustrate investigators who regularly tapped their phones.
Mr Geddes says the encryption of Skype has brought about a "fundamental change in the balance of power between governments and people" because they cannot tap or bug VoIP calls.
That may explain why India, China and Saudi Arabia have been threatening to close down Skype services.
Other countries too want the power of lawful intercept for anti-terror purposes or, like Germany, for local police reasons, according to Mr Wolff. But Skype is resisting.
"Skype is trying hard from a regulatory perspective not to be treated like a phone company," he says.
In future, he foresees Skype or one of its rivals developing a record button which would allow a witness to record images from the other side of the world in an emergency situation.
But for now, Martin Geddes says: "Skype and all these other companies are getting away without having to address the ethical and moral issues, which they like to brush under the carpet.

restore point

To create a restore point

1. Open System by clicking the Start button , right-clicking Computer, and then clicking Properties.
2. In the left pane, click System protection.  If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
3. Click the System Protection tab, and then click Create.
4. In the System Protection dialog box, type a description, and then click Create.

For more information about System Restore, see What is System Restore?

videojuego para Wii del Chavo del 8

Tras las múltiples reacciones al articulo sobre el lanzamiento del videojuego para Wii del Chavo del 8, en particular por la afirmación de que es el primer video­juego mexicano para una consola, algunos desarrolladores contactaron a este reportero y negaron la información.
“La industria de los videojuegos tiene años en existencia en México por más pequeña o grande que parezca y se han desarrollado muchos más videojuegos desde hace años, por lo tanto, me parece un insulto dichas afirmaciones”, opinó Mike Olvera, CEO de Alebrije Estudios.
Por su parte, Jorge Morales, CEO de Larva Game Studios, explicó: “Antes de Kaxan ya hemos desarrollado juegos para distintas plataformas en México. Hemos participado en ocho juegos, dos de ellos desarrollos completos para Xbox360, PS3, Wii, iPhone y Facebook”.
Incluso Morales aseguró: “Actualmente desarrollamos uno nuevo con propiedad intelectual para Xbox360 y PS3. Además, hay empresas como Slang Studio, Gran Tiki Games y Xibalba que también tienen experiencia”.
Sin embargo, Ricardo Gómez Quiñones, CEO de Kaxan Media Group, aseguró que son la primer empresa en hacer un videojuego 100% mexicano.
“Hay muchas compañías que hacen videojuegos, principalmente para teléfonos móviles, existen algunas de animación o que colaboran con compañías extranjeras que producen materiales para consolas… Pero nosotros, con El Chavo del 8, somos la primer compañía mexicana en desarrollar un videojuego completo”.
Algunos de los desarrolladores inconformes (y leyendo los comentarios en eleconomista.com.mx) ponen como ejemplos del “error” dos videojuegos “mexicanos”, que por cierto, tampoco lo son. Es el caso de Lucha Libre AAA: Héroes del Ring, que se hizo entre Colombia y Argentina.
Otro es Atrévete a soñar para Wii, una producción de Slang y Televisa Home Entertainment, pero no lo es a 100%, pues la historia y personajes es una adaptación de un concepto argentino.
En México se desarrollan video­juegos desde finales de los 90 y en la actualidad existen más de 30 estudios que se dedican a ello.
Donde más desarrolladores existen es en los estados de Baja California Norte, Jalisco, ciudad de México y Nuevo León.
El de México es el mercado de videojuegos más importante de América Latina y alcanza un valor superior a los 750 millones de dólares.
En el país existen más de 300 puntos de venta especializados en videojuegos, como son Game Rush, Game Planet y Gamers.
Lo relevante de toda la polémica generada por El Chavo del 8 es que la industria de los videojuegos en México se encuentra en crecimiento, cada vez hay más talento y más empresas comienzan a producir contenido de alta calidad. Tal vez no sea importante decidir si El Chavo del 8 para Wii es el primer videojuego 100% mexicano o si ya existen otros que puedan presumir lo mismo… ¿O usted cree que sí?
EN NÚMEROS
Los videojuegos en México
3 millones de dólares es la inversión de El Chavo del 8 para Wii.
750 millones de dólares es el valor aproximado del mercado de los videojuegos en México.
150 millones de pesos es el fondo de Promedia.
30 estudios mexicanos producen videojuegos para distintas plataformas.
300 puntos de venta de video­juegos existen en el país. En Blockbuster, 40% de los ingresos proviene de los videojuegos, no de la renta y venta de películas.
vgutierrez@eleconomista.com.mx

X Window Server

Xming is the leading X Window Server for Microsoft XP/2008/Windows7. It is a fully featured X Server and is lean, fast, current, simple to install and because it is standalone native Microsoft Windows®, easily made portable (not needing a machine-specific installation).
Xming is totally secure when used with SSH and optionally includes an enhanced PuTTY Link SSH client and a portable PuTTY replacement package. Xming can work completely independent of the Window's registry when used with Xming-portablePuTTY.

http://www.ece.uvic.ca/computing/win-xsessions.shtml

In Search of Lost Time

information technology

‘For a long time I would to go to bed early. Sometimes, the candle barely out, my eyes closed so quickly that I did not have the time to tell myself: I’m falling asleep.’  

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

Taking the code literally

The performers are reading the machine-code version of Marcel Proust’s novel. During the eight hours of a working day the humans are playing computer. For these purposes the text is first deconstructed into its individual parts -- the letter and characters -- which in turn are decoded into the Ascii-code -- a code underlying digital text processing. Each letter is represented by an individual sequence of signs, consisting of zeros and ones. The performance is situated in an ironic lab situation and attempts to find beauty inside of the microstructures of the digital. During the act of reading, interpreting and presenting the work of art emerges, posing questions about the nature of the digital and the analogue, of work and art, time and beauty.

From the analog to the digital and back again

The sequence of events of the performance is described in this manual.
Starting from the ASCII-Version of Marcel Proust’s novel ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’ it is then re-coded into zeros and ones and then read by two performers alternately (one is reading the zeros, the other one the ones). The third person is CPU (the Central Processing Unit): She interprets the zeros and ones with the aid of an ASCII allocation table, cuts out the corresponding letter from the prepared sheets and turns it over to Display, who sticks it onto the wall panel.

After eight hours of performance about 250 characters can be processed.

Concept: Karl Heinz Jeron and Valie Djordjevic



A five minute extract from the performance "A la recherche du temps perdu" on 20 March 2006 in SPACE, London, during the xxxx festival 2006 (http://1010.co.uk/xxxxx_arch.html). Performance by Karl Heinz Jeron and Valie Djordjevic. More info on http://khjeron.de/alarecherche