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Just to inform, it's only a google search and driver install away from getting a PS3 controller to work on your PC.

So where should people learn in the first place that it's even possible to connect a PS3 controller to a PC so that they can Google how?

Even if the hardware can talk to each other, the users can't.

Tell me about it. All four buttons are X. The easiest way I've seen to fix the tower of Babel that is PC gaming input is to autoconfigure XInput and the most popular DirectInput gamepads and for the rest, ask users something like "Player 2: Press up, down, left, right, jump, fire, and special, in that order."

ou guys are all wrong! The buttons should be O, U, Y, and A!

I wonder how much of that comes from working around other console makers' trademarks.

Now prepare for a mind screw:

1. What letter looks like the CROSS? X.
2. What's made of cardboard and SQUARE? Box.
3. How many degrees in a CIRCLE? 360.

What does that spell?

get a job you damn hippy :)

I have a job. It doesn't pay as much as I'd want. Internet at home already costs me hundreds of dollars per year; why should I pay hundreds more for Internet away from home? I can't just drop Internet at home and use mobile Internet while at home because my usage pattern on one device alone would exceed the typical 5 GB per month cap for Internet away from home.

also do you really need wifi access at the mall?

Occasionally I do while waiting for public transit. And only recently did I discover the hotspot inside the Barnes and Noble store.

and mall!! who buys stuff in person anymore

People who don't want to have to pay return shipping for something that doesn't fit, be it clothes or a computer keyboard.

Seriously, they just port the same code over anyway, why the hell can't you plug two USB game controllers into a PC and play a local multiplayer match? Never seen a single game support that

I'll show you more than "a single game". Street Fighter IV supports couch multiplayer, as does the (2 years delayed) port of Mortal Kombat (2011). So do a lot of the games on this page and on another page that nschubach pointed out. Look for indie and amateur games, as their developers are less likely to have console licenses to fall back on.

Based on the number of notes that it has been seen to take to count as copying, there are only a few million distinct songs. This means there'd be no need for a specific "homemade music prohibition act". When the major music publishers want to attack an indie artist, they could just try to dig up existing copyrighted songs that sound like the artist's songs. George Harrison, for example, lost a lawsuit for having subconsciously plagiarized a Chiffons song on his solo debut album (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music). The only reason you haven't seen music plagiarism lawsuits more often, given the prevalence of plagiarism in popular music, is that disputes among major labels are often settled with a cross-license, something not as easily available to indies.

If you want the real URL, you need to click the link and copy the result out of the address bar.

That's sort of hard for PDFs in some browsers because when you click the link, the result never appears in the address bar. Instead, the "Open With Adobe/Foxit/Sumatra Reader or Save File" dialog box appears. I had to break out Python.

So you're cheap, lazy, superficial (you could always hide the case and run an IR repeater) and for some reason cant do any of the research yourself.

This describes the general public well.

so show some level of intelligence and at least make an attempt to come up with a solution on your own

I myself can come up with a solution; I just lack the business experience to bring my solution to market. I have listed some principles for an attractive HTPC. But the majority of the general public can't come up with a solution, as evidenced by twistedsymphony's comment among others listed here. Economies of scale tend to favor the general public, which may be part of why major manufacturers haven't engineered products based on these principles and brought them to market.

We could simply stop accepting recordings and start insisting on sheet music, but the only thing that really does is close out submissions of improvised music -- it doesn't increase the amount of "source" available.

One thing you could try is using a pitch detection algorithm to come up with a notated approximation. If Auto-Tune can recognize what notes T-Pain is trying to sing, and if your phone's GSM speech encoder can compress your voice into fewer bits, a similar pitch detector can recognize what notes your musician improvised, provided the instrument was miked in a way that reasonably isolates a solo performance from other band members' instruments. So you could stop accepting fully mixed improvised recordings and insist on multitrack masters and reward someone else for notating it.

Give the midi file to a random person with a computer and it's going to sound like it's being played on a gameboy.

Which Game Boy? The Game Boy Advance is capable of playing an orchestral recording. I even wrote a music player app for it back when I was in the GBA homebrew scene. There's a huge difference in capability between a Game Boy Color, which compares to a Nintendo Entertainment System, and a Game Boy Advance, which compares to a PC with an old 8-bit stereo Sound Blaster.

That's why smartphones, tablets and consoles are popular - they're good at the "get your stuff done" part and hiding away the crap people don't care about.

Why are all applications banned from smartphones and tablets and games whose developers don't qualify for a console license necessarily "crap people don't care about"?

And hell, let's say you wanted to learn Linux, so you install Ubuntu

You'd need a computer to do that first. A high school student who has only a smartphone and/or a tablet may not have any way to earn money to buy a computer.

One general problem with app stores that carry only free software is that not everything can be free. Repositories like F-Droid and Ubuntu main/universe don't have players for rented videos because the movie studios require compliance and robustness rules that are fundamentally incompatible with free software licensing. And their selection of things like video games is anemic because creating games requires a lot of skills other than programming for which there isn't much of a counterpart to the free software movement. Without video games, users end up driven to consoles, whose policies tend to be even worse for free software.

Windows 7 uses the Windows XP flag, not the different flag used for Windows 3.1 through Windows 2000. The XP flag has two curves in it and no dots; the Windows 3.1 flag has one curve in the flag and one curve in the dots.

Godwin's law anyone?

most people won't really care until it becomes a talking point beaten to death by demagogues on TV.

And the movie studios, which own the channels where these demagogues appear, have been doing their best to keep this from becoming a talking point because they benefit from expansion of copyright.

People can do their "consumption" media (browsing, videos, etc) on tablets or phones. Don't need a PC for that.

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There are plenty of things that won't play on a device running iOS or Android. This includes games on Newgrounds or Kongregate, YouTube videos with certain kinds of music, the entirety of Hulu Free, anything uploaded to Vimeo by a user who doesn't subscribe to Vimeo Plus, and Pandora past a few hours a month.

To me Comp. Sci is stuff like Boyer-Moore, MIT-HAKMEM, cryptography, compression, IP routing

But more and more, it seems like kids have iPhones, iPads, and game consoles. These use "cryptography" to prevent users from "routing" publishers' "IP" to people who haven't paid,* but this also has the effect of keeping amateurs from using these devices to practice implementing the other "exotic algorithmic stuff" that you mention or even the "software development" stuff. If all a kid has is a locked down appliance, and child labor laws prohibit him from working to buy a real computer, how is he going to get any practice in implementing algorithms and seeing them run?

* It's a pun. I understand the difference between IP and the other IP.

Proprietary software has no advantages [and] is always crap.

I agree with you that free software has proven itself excellent for libraries and frameworks. But there are a few kinds of software that free software hasn't been able to match, such as video games, playback software for digitally restricted motion pictures, and tax preparation software. As I've said before, he "year of the FOSS desktop" is the year when these get ported.

the fragmentation [of the Android platform]

is a feature! not a bug!

It's a bug when it includes the habit on the part of certain device manufacturers and wireless carriers of not compiling, testing, and shipping security updates for devices that they have sold and which are still under a two-year contract. It's a bug when one finds an application unusable because of an oversight in how Android was implemented on a particular device.

a PS3 will take any generic USB controller.

How does the PS3 know in what order the buttons appear so that games know which button number to map to X, which to Square, etc.? For example, a Logitech controller has the buttons in a different order compared to a SteelSeries controller.

reserving manual escaping for things like the right side of operator IN that would need a large, variable number of placeholders.

It can lead to the parameters getting out of order relative to the placeholders; the care needed to keep the order straight is close to the care needed to escape all dynamic arguments.

SQL::String

Oh, you were using PHP? Sucks to be you.

Nobody is going to make an Android-exclusive software

"Nobody" is a strong word. Consider these three scenarios:

One could develop an Android-exclusive application and use the revenue to buy a Mac, an iTrinket, and a developer certificate on which to port the application to iOS.

One could develop an Android-exclusive application in one of the categories that Apple is known to ban.

One could develop an Android-exclusive application that requires a gamepad. The forthcoming Ouya game console runs Android, and for game genres that aren't point-and-click, an on-screen gamepad isn't really a substitute for physical buttons. Let me know when Apple even ships a standard game controller for its current iBaubles.

Doesn't matter that the screen is "small", or that the processor is barely 1GHz, if that, or it has 512MB of RAM, and ships with 2.3.

Server Name Indication (SNI) allows name-based virtual hosting to work on SSL sites. The only remaining major web browsers that aren't compatible with SNI are Internet Explorer on Windows XP and Android Browser on Android 2.2 or 2.3. Try visiting SNI Test or Pin Eight on Chrome, Firefox on desktop, Safari on recent Mac OS X, or IE on recent Windows. Then try visiting it on your Android 2.x device.

escape_string_no_we_mean_it_this_time_why_are_you_laughing_v2

My rule of thumb is that if the escape function is a method of a database connection object, such as the $conn->escape_string() of MySQLi, it's the real deal. But most of the time, I just use prepared statements, reserving manual escaping for things like the right side of operator IN that would need a large, variable number of placeholders.

There is an important distinction in that, due to the way computers access each form of media

The distinction here is between word-addressed and block-addressed memory. Cartridges were more often word-addressed, but it isn't quite a reliable predictor of this. TG16 "cards" were word-addressed and allowed execution in place. Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Advance "cartridges" had seek-and-read protocols, which were a compromise between word-addressed and block storage but allowed execution in place through caching (N64) or lots of wait states (GBA). Later systems were more likely to use block devices because RAM had become so cheap and block devices require fewer pins on the connector.

Cartridges could include hardware that extends the capabilities of the console such as the SuperFX chip, while Cards simply contain the game data and player's save data.

The "system cards" used with the TurboGrafx-CD expand the TurboGrafx-16's capabilities. And any SPI peripheral can be put on a DS Game Card. Most often it's used for a serial flash memory for save data, but the Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Game Cards for DS also include an infrared transceiver for communication with a "Pokewalker" pedometer that the player uses to take one of his party members on walks.

In practice, there is also the distinction in that cartridge based game consoles expected a cartridge to be there, and there were no user operations permitted without one being inserted.

If no Mega Cartridge or Sega Card was inserted into certain revisions of the Master System, the player could launch the built-in Snail Maze game by holding Up + 1 + 2.

Switch user agent to iPad, it works in 95% of the time.

And the other 5% of the time, it's either A. not a video but a vector animation (which Flash still does better than HTML5), B. available in H.264 (which the Free browsers don't support) and not VP8, or C. intentionally unavailable on iPad because the publisher is a...

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They want to be able to buy software and install it, e.g. games.

What keeps professional developers of Windows applications from porting their applications to use the framework formerly known as Metro and sell games through the Windows Store? "They work only with Windows 8 and Windows RT, and most users have Windows 7." In that case, what keeps professional developers of Windows games from offering their games through GOG and Steam?

Buy a tablet or etch-a-sketch instead, or perhaps a Chromebook.

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I'm pretty sure there are enough different companies who are looking to make money that there can be more than just two platforms for games.

Two, yes. Six, not so much. Wii U, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Ouya, Steam boxes that ship with Windows, and Steam boxes that ship with Linux make six.

And by the way, how do you know what "most people want"?

Mostly comments on Slashdot and elsewhere to the effect "You are a geek stuck in the Slashdot echo chamber, and the preferences of Slashdot users are by no means representative of those of the public." See, for example, the posts linked from this collection of "nobody wants a PC in the living room" posts. I've been collecting arguments for and against living-room PC gaming here.

But of course, 1201 prohibits decrypting the installer, not running the software, which is still permitted under 117

You need to decrypt the executable out of the installer package to get a usable copy onto a PC's primary storage before you can run anything, and "the authority of the copyright owner" under 1201 is conditioned on assent to the EULA.

if you'd like to discuss the necessity for greater consumer protection and the concordant need for abolishing that whole chapter, by all means, let's.

I think that's one of the reasons for copyleft, to make it less attractive for big developers to apply that sort of bullcrap in the first place. It's certainly why the FSF added a specific anti-WIPO-1996 provision as section 3 of the GPLv3 and transformed GPLv2's "scripts used to control [...] installation" into more explicit "Installation Information". But how would one go about pushing for repeal of a statute that has broad support among the five movie studios that control televised news in the United States?

If you don't like how the law works, then work to change it.

How would you recommend going about that when the MPAA owns the television news media through which the majority of the U.S. electorate learns about candidates?

If her parents were able to get her an iPad, they can almost certainly afford to get her a low end PC.

Unless they're still paying off the iPad. Or unless they follow the practice of delaying the purchase of new computer hardware until mid-December, a practice that I find harmful but which is common in the United States.

i wonder how many websites and programs are now NOT supporting XP??

https://pineight.com/ loads in Firefox on Windows XP and Chrome on Windows XP, but it gives a certificate error in IE on Windows XP because IE on Windows XP doesn't support Server Name Indication, a feature required to use SSL with name-based virtual hosting.

NolaPro. Or KmyMoney. Or Gmoney

These sound like alternatives to Quicken, not alternatives to TurboTax. Do they come with annual updates to conform to annual changes to the U.S. federal tax code and the respective tax codes of the several states?

As I've said before, the year of the Linux desktop is the year all these get ported.

There are a bunch more in Switched at Birth.

In addition to the visual resemblances of characters and settings illustrated in the article, I'm compiling a list of resemblances of background music. One includes a three-way among Lode Runner, Bomberman, and the first Katamari Damacy.

There are a bunch more in Switched at Birth.

In addition to the visual resemblances of characters and settings illustrated in the article, I'm compiling a list of resemblances of background music. One includes a three-way among Lode Runner, Bomberman, and the first Katamari Damacy.

Perhaps they're complaining about not being able to access a particular web site because Internet Explorer for Windows XP and Android Browser for Android 2.x can see only the first SSL certificate on port 443 of a given IP address. These browsers don't support Server Name Indication, which is required for name-based virtual hosting with HTTPS. For example, https://pineight.com/ works on most browsers but gives a certificate error on IE/XP and Android 2 because pineight.com shares an IPv4 address with other customers of the same hosting company. So either they have to log in insecurely or the site has to put up a paywall or other source of revenue in order to be able to afford a dedicated IPv4 address for use with pre-SNI SSL stacks. IPv6 would make name-based virtual hosting (and thus Server Name Indication) less critical.

I wish to point out that whitelisting may work for some users who use a limited number of applications

BasilBrush and other iOS advocates would point out that the commercially relevant majority of users do in fact "use a limited number of applications". Because nobody needs an app to do any of these tasks. "Ha ha ha, boom boom."

myself eating at my desk in silence

In other words, like Magibon. Unfortunately, such videos might be the only videos allowed on YouTube if Big Copyright gets its way.

you just shoot off a message to "J. Doe" on your list of contacts and can be reasonably sure that you're talking to the right Doe (because you can click their profile to look it up) but also not send it to the wrong Doe (your boss, say).

So one service that Facebook provides is identity disambiguation. I never thought of it that way.

I still see [10" laptops] for $300, but they aren't movers anymore as for $100 more, you get a glitzier tablet with larger screen

And a limited application selection. The advantage of a netbook is that it runs pretty much every PC application, up to and including developer tools, and I use my Dell Inspiron mini 1012 to work on hobby coding projects while riding the city bus to and from work. With the iPad, on the other hand, it has come to my attention that Apple maintains a list of several categories of application that it will never approve. Such applications can be used only remotely, and having to connect to the Internet to do so defeats the purpose of mobility unless you're willing to pay hundreds more per year for cellular broadband. A lot of other Slashdot users have given Apple a free pass on this, claiming that "nobody" needs any of those applications, but if even 1 percent of the population wants each of 15 things that a policy bans, the policy has hurt 15 percent of users. (Incidentally, that's why the feature creep in Microsoft Office has continued: though people tend to use only about 1 percent of the advanced features, each user has his own 1 percent.) Even Android, which is far more open about where the user can get applications, lacks a 1 percent that I use regularly: the ability to split the screen down the middle and see two different things.

But for personal stuff? Outlook requires a corporate server to be effective (as would most office productivity suites which want to integrate properly), which puts it at a disadvantage over stuff like facebook where it's available everywhere and the "server" is provided.

Microsoft recently rebranded Hotmail as "Outlook.com", probably to overcome just that disadvantage.

APK is a staunch advocate of using the hosts file to block DNS lookups of sites known to host malware and rich-media advertisements. I wrote an article that briefly explains the situation.

Microsoft tried to kill the Start button, but it failed as the open-source Classic Shell struck it to the ground.

Microsoft could try to kill the .../drivers/etc/hosts file, but it'll fail as the developer of an open-source DNS resolver incorporating efficient hosts file lookup throws it to the ground.

(Apologies to Tenacious D)

one of the things which makes ouya feel overhyped to the max is that android running tv boxes have been available for ages

Have these Android-running TV boxes had a standard button layout for the user controls? In my research, just about no two brands of USB game controllers had the buttons in the same order. In one of my games, I've decided to store recommended configurations for all controllers that I happen to own, including Xbox and Logitech controllers, and default to whatever matches the connected controller's make and model.

And has one been able to try or buy them in brick-and-mortar stores? I imagine that a lot of parents are unwilling to buy toys from Amazon or eBay that they've never seen.

But in which direction will my thumbs "naturally" point when I rest my hands on the device? If I've been playing a lot of Xbox 360, my thumbs will "naturally" point in a somewhat different direction than if I've been playing a lot of PlayStation 3. And different people's thumbs are different sizes. Furthermore, hands will shift somewhat during gameplay.

The direction your thumbs point doesn't matter, as the iPad doesn't calculate the orientation of your fingers, merely where on screen they touch. If you want to put them on a 45 degree angle, that's fine. Naturally, up is still going to be towards the top of the screen, but with the bevel as a sort of guide this isn't difficult to maintain without looking at all.

Are you talking about the system described here and used for directional control in Super Mario 64 DS (2004), where the thumbstick recenters each time the thumb is lifted and replaced? If so, how easily do players adapt to "right thumb swipe up == jump"?

I don't play a lot of games, so I can't really say what the typical scenario is. However, from the ones I have which have some sort of "jump" feature, this is usually given a dedicated button, with the virtual gamepad acting more for direction than discrete actions. Different control surface requires a different input paradigm.

The best games also provide a system whereby when plugged into a TV or connected wirelessly to an external display they display their gaming graphics on the external display, and the entire mobile device becomes nothing but status information and the control surface. Really quite slick.

Was this before the Wii U was first publicly demonstrated?

This functionality was demonstrated at the iPad 2 launch on March 2nd, 2011. According to Wikipedia, the Wii U was first announced in April 2011. So it seems like it was indeed.

Yaz

on-screen controls where your hands will naturally rest when holding the device

But in which direction will my thumbs "naturally" point when I rest my hands on the device? If I've been playing a lot of Xbox 360, my thumbs will "naturally" point in a somewhat different direction than if I've been playing a lot of PlayStation 3. And different people's thumbs are different sizes. Furthermore, hands will shift somewhat during gameplay.

Effectively, parts of the sides and corners of the display become your control pad.

I've tried that in Nesoid on a Nexus 7. Too often, I ended up "whiffing", or pressing the wrong button or no button at all, because my hands had shifted.

others use a sort of virtual thumbstick

Are you talking about the system described here and used for directional control in Super Mario 64 DS (2004), where the thumbstick recenters each time the thumb is lifted and replaced? If so, how easily do players adapt to "right thumb swipe up == jump"?

The best games also provide a system whereby when plugged into a TV or connected wirelessly to an external display they display their gaming graphics on the external display, and the entire mobile device becomes nothing but status information and the control surface. Really quite slick.

Was this before the Wii U was first publicly demonstrated?

Before this becomes a big APK bitchfest, I'm trying to summarize arguments for and against hostname-based DNS filtering scoped to a single machine on this page.

if anyone could read the word of God, why would they come to (and tithe) their church?

The Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses has produced modern-language translations of the Bible in dozens of languages, funded by voluntary donations. But even with an understandable Bible, it's still a good idea for a congregation to meet regularly.--Hebrews 10:24-25.

The vast majority of genres work better on a keyboard and mouse. In fact, the only genre I can think of that definitely works better with a gamepad is fighting games (ie. Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter).

How would a platformer like Mega Man series work with a keyboard and mouse? Or a racing game? Better yet, how would cooperative platformers such as Contra or Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers or The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon work? As I see it, each player would have to buy a separate PC and a separate copy.

But as for PC exclusives that make good use of a gamepad, with a little research I'm quite confident I can make a list that's longer than any list of exclusives you can make for any console.

I'd love for you to show me a list of worthwhile controller-friendly PC exclusives. If you don't want to do so on Slashdot, you could always do so here.

I'll admit that Android has a "phone state" permission that's far too coarse-grained. But I see that as a minor flaw compared to the big flaw in iOS: Apple deliberately left out some parts of HTML5 as well as native APIs needed for applications to perform wireless network troubleshooting. Several categories of applications are completely excluded.

I program games for iOS and Android

What's the best way to emulate a gamepad on these systems? Is the solution described here any good?

That's when you visit a site like this to see what sort of crappy knock-offs are available [link to list including PolyStation]

Yeah, you'd probably have to be on PCP to appreciate the PCP Station or any of the other Game & Watch style products in that list. But don't be too quick to knock the PolyStation or any other NES-compatible console. NES games are still being developed in the 2010s. You can play Battle Kid, LAN Master, Nomolos, Streemerz, Thwaite, Zooming Secretary, and other new NES games on it with the right memory card. In fact, they've figured out how to read up and down coordinates from the light gun, so if your NES-compatible console supports the Zapper (like the eXtreme Box on page 3 of your list) and you still have a CRT TV, you can play a passable facsimile of Wii Play Laser Hockey.

Is this really about $99?

And about the fact that it self-destructs after 365 days. If it were a lifetime sub, I'd say "an iPad mini costs $428".

Assume that the iOS developer SDK were included for free within XCode would that solve the problem?

That and port Xcode to iPad. Right now, someone who owns an iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard can't develop an application directly on the iPad, except within things like Codea that Apple was at first reluctant to approve.

It is not the specific policies of the prison that are the issue, which are rather liberal

I have issues with the prison's specific policies as well.

People love to make the claim you can not create content on the iPad but its been proven time and again for the most part to be false beyond a few exceptions you can create just fine. People code on them

Several years ago, Apple pulled a Commodore 64 game from the App Store when it was discovered that the user could reboot the emulated Commodore 64 into the BASIC prompt. Apple didn't want a BASIC prompt because users could key in programs that Apple had not approved. What caused Apple to change its mind and allow things like Codea?

Apple doesn't in any way prevent a people from creating a good app uploading it to the store for free

How are a Mac and a developer license available "for free"?

and let people download it for free.

Of course it does. If your application falls into one of the banned categories, which you're not even officially allowed to see until you've already bought a $650 Mac and a $99 per year developer license, Apple won't let you distribute it.

I don't know what grandparent is opposed to, but I'm opposed to the fact that every platform that ships with a gamepad appears to require a digital signature before a game will run, and qualifying to get your game signed requires experience in the commercial video game industry. The indie-friendly stationary gaming platform (PC) ships with a mouse and keyboard, and the indie-friendly handheld platform (mobile phones) ships with a flat sheet of glass. These stock controllers work well for some genres but not for others, and Slashdot users have told me that people aren't willing to buy what's needed to play an indie game in a gamepad genre (a second PC for the TV room, or a clip-on Bluetooth gamepad for a phone).

I don't know what grandparent is opposed to, but I'm opposed to the fact that every platform that ships with a gamepad appears to require a digital signature before a game will run, and qualifying to get your game signed requires experience in the commercial video game industry. The indie-friendly stationary gaming platform (PC) ships with a mouse and keyboard, and the indie-friendly handheld platform (mobile phones) ships with a flat sheet of glass. These stock controllers work well for some genres but not for others, and Slashdot users have told me that people aren't willing to buy what's needed to play an indie game in a gamepad genre (a second PC for the TV room, or a clip-on Bluetooth gamepad for a phone).

This of course assumes that you are yet another sheep who thinks that the only phone in the universe is an Apple product.

Where did I say Apple? High-end Android phones, such as the Galaxy S 4, can be just as expensive as any iPhone.

The apps are now virtually identical on both markets anyways.

The most popular third-party applications are on both platforms, but there are a few notable exceptions. I'm told that games from established developers tend to hit iOS first and Android later if at all, and some applications are Android-exclusive by Apple's choice.