Slashdot Mirror

I do not really know what you mean with "a computer" here; I suppose you're trying to say "a device with a smaller screen."

Exactly, The general public, that is, non-geeks, see a "computer" as something that sits on a desk in another room, not something in the living room. Please see previous comments by FunkSoulBrother and CronoCloud.

words "HTPC" and "multi-screen setup" should provide more than enough counter-argument.

"HTPC? Isn't that a company that makes smartphones?" The general public tends not to appreciate the advantages of an HTPC over dedicated "consumer electronics devices".

You imply a claim that "free apps" doesn't have to mean "adware". So how do you recommend funding the development of free (as in beer) applications without advertisements, especially in categories historically underserved by free (as in speech) software or on platforms hostile to copyleft licensing?

Tetris is far from the only puzzle game. Take any game in the pipe-panic genre [or] Bejeweled

I've split puzzle games into building games and switching games. Apart from Pipe Dream and its clones, the games that work well on a touch screen are switching games like Bejeweled. Anything using the falling blocks paradigm of Tetris, Columns, Dr. Mario, Puyo Pop, or Lumines will fail. I just want to make sure that you're not trying to imply that Pipe Dream and switching games are the only worthwhile puzzle games and that falling block games deserve to wither.

But what you are doing is asking how particular games designed with indirect control through buttons and joysticks would work on a touch screen.

I agree that the control scheme would differ. But how exactly should it work in some of the genres more commonly associated with gamepads? Donkey Kong and every other platformer since would have handled very differently had they been designed for a touch screen instead of a joystick. How would you have designed a control scheme for a touch-only platformer?

The best games are designed with the particular platform's control method(s) in mind.

So how should an indie developer earn the right to develop on a platform that includes physical buttons, without having to move the whole family to Seattle, Austin, or Boston just to find a job as an intern in a developer that's established enough to qualify for a PSVita or 3DS license? The association of gamepads with established developers just seems so arbitrary and artificial to me.

Why do all notebook displays suck in dpi?

Because so many applications suck in DPI. Vertical market applications may not have been tested at any DPI other than the Windows default of 96. So if you set your window system's DPI so that text remains readable, your applications are likely to become ugly at best or unusable at worst. This has caused a lack of demand for laptop-sized high-DPI panels.

Connecting your PC to your TV through VGA or HDMI has its own set of problems, which is why the general non-geek public tends not to do it.

Move back and forth?

Yes, because a lot of people "already have a computer" and aren't willing to buy a second to put in the TV room for various reasons.

low overall cost: connect it to your computer with an HDMI cable.

Which would require buying a new computer for the room with the TV. A lot of people aren't willing to do that.

Because reading a normal desktop's output from 15 feet away on the couch is hard.

How so, once you've set the window system DPI to account for your TV size and seating arrangement? For a 1080p TV, take 80 times the TV's diagonal measure (e.g. 42") divided by the seating distance (e.g. 84") and tell the OS to use that DPI.

So I don't see why you'd want one of these things when HTPCs have frankly never been cheaper.

Because people expect to walk into Best Buy and walk out with something. If you have to buy it as separate parts and install them all into a case, it's already a non-starter except for dedicated geeks.

at best a tetris tech demo

Would you consider a polished falling block game to be still a "tech demo"? If so, I used to make falling block games for the NES and GBA: Lockjaw (PC, GBA) is like Tetris but you can change a lot of the rules, and Luminesweeper (GBA) proves that the PSP's flagship launch title underused the PSP. This is in addition to a collection I'm making of some worthwhile homebrew games for the NES. And have you tried Super Bat Puncher yet?

Part of the problem keeping freeware games developed by hobbyists at roughly the complexity of calculator games or 1985 NES games is what I've been calling the "complexity wall". Games need more art than other kinds of software, and there aren't as many ready-made art libraries available to hobbyists as, say, code libraries. It's the rare developer who has skills in both coding and art or the ability to work together on a fairly complex project. But if there's a chance to sell copies of a game, developers skilled in one area will put more effort into hiring people skilled in other areas. This, of course, requires an indie-friendly market. For consoles, there's Xbox Live Indie Games. For touch-screen handhelds, there are Android Market, AppsLib, and the like. But what for handhelds with buttons?

at best a tetris tech demo

Would you consider a polished falling block game to be still a "tech demo"? If so, I used to make falling block games for the NES and GBA: Lockjaw (PC, GBA) is like Tetris but you can change a lot of the rules, and Luminesweeper (GBA) proves that the PSP's flagship launch title underused the PSP. This is in addition to a collection I'm making of some worthwhile homebrew games for the NES. And have you tried Super Bat Puncher yet?

Part of the problem keeping freeware games developed by hobbyists at roughly the complexity of calculator games or 1985 NES games is what I've been calling the "complexity wall". Games need more art than other kinds of software, and there aren't as many ready-made art libraries available to hobbyists as, say, code libraries. It's the rare developer who has skills in both coding and art or the ability to work together on a fairly complex project. But if there's a chance to sell copies of a game, developers skilled in one area will put more effort into hiring people skilled in other areas. This, of course, requires an indie-friendly market. For consoles, there's Xbox Live Indie Games. For touch-screen handhelds, there are Android Market, AppsLib, and the like. But what for handhelds with buttons?

at best a tetris tech demo

Would you consider a polished falling block game to be still a "tech demo"? If so, I used to make falling block games for the NES and GBA: Lockjaw (PC, GBA) is like Tetris but you can change a lot of the rules, and Luminesweeper (GBA) proves that the PSP's flagship launch title underused the PSP. This is in addition to a collection I'm making of some worthwhile homebrew games for the NES. And have you tried Super Bat Puncher yet?

Part of the problem keeping freeware games developed by hobbyists at roughly the complexity of calculator games or 1985 NES games is what I've been calling the "complexity wall". Games need more art than other kinds of software, and there aren't as many ready-made art libraries available to hobbyists as, say, code libraries. It's the rare developer who has skills in both coding and art or the ability to work together on a fairly complex project. But if there's a chance to sell copies of a game, developers skilled in one area will put more effort into hiring people skilled in other areas. This, of course, requires an indie-friendly market. For consoles, there's Xbox Live Indie Games. For touch-screen handhelds, there are Android Market, AppsLib, and the like. But what for handhelds with buttons?

Each should have applications thought out, from the ground up, for their respective platforms.

You, like many other people who have posted comments to Slashdot, appear to have forgotten about the model-view abstraction. There are two parts of a program: the part that manipulates data (the model) and the part that presents the data to the user (the view). If you can share 100% of the model and half of the view code across platforms, you're way ahead. For example, the Firefox web browser has one HTML/CSS/JavaScript model and several rendering front-ends, one for each platform. But this is possible only if all platforms support the same language in which to write the model, which means unless your program is written in C#, you can't port it to Windows Phone 7 or Xbox Live Indie Games.

I wrote more about this.

PC gamers dont want the same kind of restrictions and dumbed down games that appear on consoles.

Then keep the PC capable of running everything that a PC can run, but just promote it as a console that actually "does everything", unlike what the PS3 fails to deliver. "You don't just have Twitter and Facebook; you have all of Twitter and Facebook. Even FarmVille. You don't just have streaming video; you have all of streaming video. You can even get Hulu for free." Then figure out how to express what mods are in a sound bite. The only "consolization" applied to the Aspire X1 is that it's in a smaller case.

The problem so far is that I've been told console-style games sell poorly on PCs because so few people want to connect a PC to a TV, and indie developers can't get a console-style game published at all because they first have to develop and publish a successful game in a genre more traditionally associated with PCs.

Posting anon to preserve mod upvotes for the article.

It makes sense, and I kinda laughed when I saw the comment and instantly knew it was Tepples. The guy has coded the most configurable version of Tetris I've ever seen after all.

one by Hasbro on copyright infringement [...] "The YUMMY DOUGH product was promoted in the United Kingdom as 'The edible play dough'"

I don't see copyright infringement there, just trademark infringement, despite that the two have been conflated of late into "intellectual property".

Page 3 reviews Comodo Dragon. What it doesn't mention is that if an HTTPS site uses a certificate that's domain validated, Dragon raises a warning "that the organization operating it may not have undergone trusted third-party validation that it is a legitimate business." Might this just be a way to threaten small-time webmasters, especially those who only started offering HTTPS to join EFF's HTTPS Everywhere initiative or to offer user accounts without running the risk of getting Firesheeped, into buying pricier EV certificates?

By far most of the multiplayer these days on a console happens just like it does on PCs: one gamer with one console connecting to other players through the internet.

So nowadays, do most families with more than one gamer buy a set of Xbox 360 consoles, one for each player?

And for that, the PC is superior to the console in every way, except ease-of-use.

I want to help fix PCs' ease of use. What needs to be done for this other than what I've already listed in the second half of my article?

Ah yes, but see, the "90%" have this magical thing called the "vote."

Too many people, especially people who do not use the Internet daily, vote based on what they hear in MPAA-controlled media.

The advertising market for video played back on a desktop PC and that for video played back on a television are very different. Incumbent professional video providers see a version of Firefox designed for desktop (as opposed to set-top) use and assume that it must not be someone in a recliner, because conventional wisdom is that only a tiny minority of people have media center PCs, home theater PCs, set-top PCs, or whatever you're calling them this week.

Or because the majority of the populace are so apathetic that they won't research the candidates on their own, instead believing what MPAA-controlled TV news tells them so that they end up voting in advertisers' interests.

The last thing our government wants is the average Joe living for 1000 years.

Of course the MPAA-controlled government wants that. It would mean that an individually-owned copyright would last 1,070 years.

can somebody explain why computer attached to tv is worse

Home theater PCs have proven to be for geeks only for several reasons:

• No major PC maker ships affordable PCs with competent media center software already installed. Windows Media Center isn't really a match for XBMC. Microsoft wants people to buy an Xbox 360 and use that as a Windows Media Center extender, and Apple wants people to buy an Apple TV and use that as an iTunes extender.
• Spouse acceptance factor. Ordinary tower PCs are so big that they look out of place next to a TV, and they generate too much heat to fit in an enclosed space.
• As CronoCloud put it: "Because of tradition." There's a misconception widespread among the general public that PCs are for desks, and dedicated devices are for the living room, and never the twain shall meet.

A PC is not made into a console by plugging in a TV and a game controller. The UI is totally wrong for that usage

What about the UI is wrong? I agree that the Start Menu as seen in Windows XP through 7 is not the correct UI to launch games on a TV, and the font size often needs to be set for the seating distance and screen size. PC game launchers designed for the 10-foot experience already exist; XBMC includes one.

The argument is that all else equal, open will win over closed.

I want to help make all else equal, to help make gaming PCs more appropriate for the set-top environment. To accomplish this, what other steps need taken to help open win over closed in this context?

A PC is not made into a console by plugging in a TV and a game controller. The UI is totally wrong for that usage

What about the UI is wrong? I agree that the Start Menu as seen in Windows XP through 7 is not the correct UI to launch games on a TV, and the font size often needs to be set for the seating distance and screen size. PC game launchers designed for the 10-foot experience already exist; XBMC includes one.

The argument is that all else equal, open will win over closed.

I want to help make all else equal, to help make gaming PCs more appropriate for the set-top environment. To accomplish this, what other steps need taken to help open win over closed in this context?

How is that possible when the copyright lobby controls which candidates get any press?

I thought from your previous few posts that you were merely asking questions about how to go about it, and I was just giving you ideas how to make a bit more money.

And thank you for it. I've updated my article with your suggestions and their caveats.

Now with this last question (which has no basis in anything I said)

I admit that the comment about choosing an employer is not directly related to what you said. But I do seem to remember some other posters (not you) in other contexts saying things to the effect: "If your employer mistreats you, why do you continue to work there?" I was trying to anticipate someone's rebuttal, but it ended up not being your own.

I think you've been trolling me all along.

I humbly apologize for coming off that way. But back when I was working for a company that didn't offer direct deposit, a low-dollar-amount checking account at a bank that requires a direct deposit to avoid an annual fee wasn't really an option, especially when borrowing against that $1,500 cushion would cost $12 per month. Perhaps it's my thorough approach; my experience as a programmer causes my thoughts to be drawn to possible corner cases that could break an algorithm. So I want my arguments to cover all bases, including any corner cases that I imagine are likely to occur in a representative sample. I see addressing corner cases early as like the stitch in time that saves nine or the ounce of prevention that saves a pound of cure. (See the graph of relative costs of a bug fix.) And again, I apologize for not making this clearer.

that doesn't work for the first release, only for ongoing costs.

I think h4rr4r was referring to the so-called street performer protocol for episodic works. The developer releases world 1 for free and then releases world 2 after having received enough donations to cover the development of world 1, etc. This assumes a work is episodic enough to be broken into such "worlds". Stephen King tried this with one of his novels but ended up abandoning it.

Yes, each copy does have a direct attached cost. One the is determined by the IP owner

The validity of "ownership" of Internet Protocol addresses is in dispute. But I understand that by "IP" you meant "copyright". Still, a lot of these discussions about business models for free software take place without assuming copyright because their goal is to find means "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" other than the amortization of the first copy's cost over subsequent copies that copyright enables.

There are several niches of applications that free software has historically had a very hard time filling for one reason or another. These include games, software to watch rented videos, and software to prepare tax returns.

Or I could apply Occam's razor and say the mall Santas deliver the presents.

Because online tends to have a 15% restocking fee for products that the customer finds unusably unergonomic but which are technically not "defective". See my rant about mail order.

As do I. I have a separate dumbphone and laptop because of smartphone data plan costs. It's just that some pundits have predicted that as tablets take over, laptops will become harder to get. For example, Dell recently stopped making 10" laptops.

without a bulky laptop (or pants, for that matter)

Who needs pants?

Well, many of us don't like the MSM, and are now getting our news raw and unfiltered.

Provided they have the time to sit in front of a computer desk. A lot of people have trouble giving up the MSM for video because they don't want to buy another PC for the HDTV or worse yet both buy a PC and replace the SDTV in the living room with an HDTV. Other people have trouble giving up the MSM for music because only smartphones can play Internet radio in the car or on the bus, and they aren't willing to pay for smartphone service.

I don't care that the MSM controls 90% of the content, because it is the same old crappy content they've always controlled. With the internet, there is a whole new world of content waiting to be discovered.

Until the MSM starts suing Internet artists on trumped-up charges of plagiarism.

The 90% of the people can't really appreciate the finer nuanced artistic works, let them have the MSM.

Are you sure that we'd want that? If 90 percent have the MSM, then 90 percent are letting the MSM tell them for whom to vote and on which issues to choose a candidate. For example, which MSM source has thoroughly covered opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act?

"Personal Identification Number number."

Why do pedants complain about this one so much, when it's really just a way to distinguish "PIN" from "pin" and "pen"? Compare to dialects that say "ink pen" because "pin" and "pen" vowels are already close together.

With taskbar
Without taskbar

With taskbar
Without taskbar

The mysql_escape_string, mysql_real_escape_string, mysql_i_mean_it_this_time_escape_string thing probably has a lot to do with the sql injection vulnerabilities

Which is why MySQLi has the object-oriented style $db->escape_string() to escape a string correctly for a given connection.

not to mention that before mysqli, you couldn't even use prepared statements.

And even with MySQLi, you still can't use prepared statements with a variable number of ? placeholders, such as statements using operator IN or produced through a query-by-example engine, without a lot of pain.

Add that to the fact that PHP is what is avaiable on cheap web hosts

Not to mention MySQL. All the popular PHP blog, forum, etc. apps target MySQL because too many cheap web hosts decline to offer PostgreSQL.

we *choose* what kinds of behaviour we wish to encourage

No, the MPAA-owned* news channels choose for us by choosing which candidates for federal office are deemed electable, and the MPAA-owned news channels choose what kinds of behavior we are even aware of when we step into the voting booth. Copyright expands because it benefits the owners of the medium by which people learn about the officials who expand copyright.

* And foreign counterparts.

If you want a computer spscificly built as a media center, you're going to spend more for less just for the fancy case.

Except a fancy case has a much better spouse acceptance factor than a big, loud tower. What's the most cost-effective way to address media center PC aesthetics?

Hiding the PC in a cabinet or closet somewhere is a great option, especially with HDMI and SPDIF, both of which can be quite long without major signal loss. You'll just need an IR extender for the remote capabilities though. As for cost-effectiveness with an HTPC case, here's a good looking somewhat inexpensive HTPC case. Thermaltake and SilverStone are, IMHO, the two to look at. Their cases are both beautiful and very well built.

Singular is playing a single player game, plural if playing a multi player game.

Provided the game even supports multiple controllers. Console games are historically much more likely to support this sort of multiplayer than major-label PC games. Otherwise, no matter how many controllers I have plugged into a hub, the game is going to see only one and expect the other players to be using their own computers and their own copies of the game.

Yeah, that could be a problem with PC games. Not many of them support multi players on the same system. Then, again, most of the popular console games are single player locally as well. Like I said though, I'm not a hard core gamer, so I could be wrong on this. It just seems to me that most of the multi local player games are for kids, and that seems to be changing as well. The trend now seems to be network gaming - something where they can siphon even more money out of the players wallet with monthly or yearly fees.

If you want a computer spscificly built as a media center, you're going to spend more for less just for the fancy case.

Except a fancy case has a much better spouse acceptance factor than a big, loud tower. What's the most cost-effective way to address media center PC aesthetics?

Singular is playing a single player game, plural if playing a multi player game.

Provided the game even supports multiple controllers. Console games are historically much more likely to support this sort of multiplayer than major-label PC games. Otherwise, no matter how many controllers I have plugged into a hub, the game is going to see only one and expect the other players to be using their own computers and their own copies of the game.

You don't have to move the computer, just use the tv as a second monitor via hdmi.

Provided the PC and TV are in the same room. Otherwise, you may end up having to do a complicated, expensive HDMI-repeater setup.

As far as controllers, almost all of them are usb these days. So you're limited to the number of usb ports available.

Which can be expanded with hubs, as long as your favorite game supports more than one controller. I've plugged in four before, just like on a console. The problem is that a lot of PC games don't support more than one controller; their only multiplayer is LAN or online.

Now the TV can stream anything you can access online, might as well cancel cable

Not if you're into sports. And not if your cable Internet provider offers basic TV for $5 more per month than Internet alone.

The current generation of consoles are old and nowhere near the capability of a modern PC.

Yet a lot of console games still support two, and in some cases four, players per machine while most PC games (with a handful of exceptions) support only one despite the fact that PC-compatible TVs have been affordable for the past half decade. Part of this capability comes from a mental set among gamers against connecting a PC to an HDTV, and part comes from publishers wanting to sell multiple copies to a single household.

Damn you're off today.

Stop shopping online. Shop local.

I visited three local stores in a row, and none carried the product I want to try. Now what should I do? Should I get on an airplane and fly to where the product is available? Nope; a lot of people report that they can't buy tickets with cash anymore.

Linux (and any OS worth its salt) has plenty of [applications].

GNU/Linux has plenty of free applications but not a lot of well-known non-free applications. There are some kinds of applications for which nobody has figured out how to make a free software model work. Let me know when these applications get ported.

Oh not one of these again. Let me fix that for you.

Netflix Watch Instantly - Admittedly limited (VM or Duelboot, Use Hulu)

Adobe Photoshop, including those high-end features that distinguish it from GIMP mods such as GIMPshop - wine

Adobe Flash CS3 - wine

TurboTax - wine

Stone Edge Order Manager - wine

Sonic 3 & Knuckles - wine

Diablo II - wine

Starcraft - wine

Street Fighter IV - wine

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - wine

According to WineHQ these applications don't present a problem. Here's your precious photoshop

http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?appId=17

Gold/Silver consistently!

Was that hard?

Linux (and any OS worth its salt) has plenty of [applications].

GNU/Linux has plenty of free applications but not a lot of well-known non-free applications. There are some kinds of applications for which nobody has figured out how to make a free software model work. Let me know when these applications get ported.

Instead of adapting laws to apply the same principles to digital IP as are to physical IP draconian laws are being written to be completely one sided in favor of business taking no consideration for the consumer like the law did/does for physical IP.

So how can this be fixed? Voting out the bastards responsible for the draconian new laws won't work because nobody gets elected without MPAA help.

Can't children have their cosplay parties on some day other than one with roots in Druidry? It's like birthdays and Christmas: neither is biblical, but giving throughout the year is.

Can't children have their cosplay parties on some day other than one with roots in Druidry? It's like birthdays and Christmas: neither is biblical, but giving throughout the year is.