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Free, open-source games will always be relegated to the corners of the gaming industry. They lack the marketing and dedicated resources that a "professional" gaming company offers. Again, the music analogy is apt - there may be some popular indie bands on indie labels, your favorite bands may all be indie bands on indie labels, but 95% of all sales and audience will still flock to the professionally written, produced, and marketed songs. It's the long tail at work...

Heh, I like this article about the incident: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,5732-0.html

Edward Tufte said it best - "Powerpoint is Evil"

Powerpoint is Evil - Wired 11/03

Nothing like teaching children to use tools that effectively make them more dumb.

I have seen arguments that Digg will take over slashdot. But when a site grows, it always faces these types of issues, and editorial oversight is the only defense.

"Resist the pace of urgency"
These are the wise words from the Director of my department. She has a lot of experience dealing with kids with Attention Deficit Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder, who believe it or not, resemble many geeks. For those of us who provide technical support this doesn't mean ignore or stall. It means prioritize and set reasonable boundaries for yourself. Some people seem to think better after they've articulated their problem in an email. Half the time, given some perculation time- they can actually solve their own problem. So stay focused, do your work, and deal with emails as you see fit. If you are one of those who may have high functioning ASD tendancies, don't worry, you are in good company.

The world record manned submersible depth is 35,800 feet

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/dive.html

And they saw a fish.

The deepest recorded ocean depth is 36,201 feet.

You telling me that there is no life in that last 400 feet and beyond ?

This article by Wired might have some arguments for the panel. According to the article the problem really is the management model and revenue distribution. This economic model favors the artist without cutting the management people out of revenues (of course the problem is in the end that big music companies don't want to cut profits and keep absurd percentages - witch ends up in so few peoples pockets that its a ridiculous disadvantage for any society). It also solves the DRM problem since any artist (or a group of artist) can choose to make any song Linux playable if the want (and of course they do want as many as possible to hear their songs). http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/nettwerk.html ?pg=2&topic=nettwerk&topic_set=

As far as I'm aware, Greenpeace had little to do with this story, more like grassroot protesters and Apple's own shareholders, who rightly said Dell and HP had both better policies. Apple did appear with a bad score in a Greenpeace report, but that's one voice amongst many.

Recycling is important, Apple is flush with cash and rides on the image of a modern, innovative, user-friendly company. It should be recycling more, but doesn't. In particular, currently its recycling program is limited to the continental US. I think this is not good enough. Fortunately, other companies have much better policies, whose goal is to become global.

It's interesting so watch what happens when reality intrudes harshly on the image Apple wants to give of itself.

I don't think that anybody there is all that worried.

They damn well should be as they're not in terribly good shape. Have you read the Wired.com article? Unfortunately they didn't include the charts from the print article, but there are still some choice quotations:

Only once in the past five years has Sony's all-important electronics division posted a profit; during that same period, the company's share price has fallen by nearly half.

Yet Sony has to face Microsoft not just in videogames but across the entire panoply of home electronics, which Microsoft is determined to control through software. And Sony has to do this with cash reserves of $6 billion - compared to Microsoft's $38 billion hoard - while losing hundreds of dollars in manufacturing costs alone for every PS3 sold. Eventually, Sony's costs will come down. But in the meantime, Goldman Sachs projects, Sony will lose nearly $2 billion on the PS3 by the end of this fiscal year in March.

So, by March Sony will have burned through a third of its cash reserves due to losses from the PS3. I hate to think what that number's going to look like when you factor in the losses due to Blu-Ray players.

Now, before you label me a Nintendo or XBox fanboy, understand that I own a PS1 and PS2 along with several hundred games for each system and the fact that the PS2 played DVDs did factor into my decision to buy it first before I got a Gamecube. However, despite the fact that I earn a nice salary, $600 is way too much to pay for a console that I might play two or three times in a week. And Blu-Ray? Please. I already have a DVD player with a huge movie library and it's good enough for me. I think Sony's throwing their weight behind the PS3 + Blu-Ray because it's their last chance at survival.

According to an article in Wired this month, Sony is banking heavily on the success of the PS3 and overall is not doing very well. The article is online too, check it out here.

things like the game for bliss at http://www.gamesforloving.com/ can be a sure fire marital aide. you might try regina lynn's articles on http://blog.wired.com/sex/ for other uses;)

I would have to say it is a bad thing.

Negroponte has consistently said the price would start above $100 and migrate below that price point.

2006 April 4th http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70584-0.htm l?tw=rss.index

"In time, Negroponte expects the $100 laptop to be a misnomer. For one thing, he believes the cost -- which is actually about $135 now and isn't expected to hit $100 until 2008 -- can drop to $50 by 2010 as more and more are produced."

They did cut him a check for $10,000.

And software HAS caused people to die

The used power would be charged from the diesel while cruising, it's not "free". Case in point - idling at a light yesterday I watched my average MPG for that trip drop 1.5MPG just from the 2minute idle. This on a 15mile trip. That was from 47MPG downwards BTW so it's not like I was running around stomping on it. I'd imagine that idling overnight uses more fuel than you realize since idling in traffic is knocking my MPG down a noticable amount on a more effecient engine. I'd bet that if I turned the engine off at each light and then cranked it up to leave I'd add noticable MPG - yes recharging my cranking battery from the engine. As an aside - the A/C knocks off about 5MPG it seems, still testing.

Accelerating from a light is where the diesel is LEAST effecient (just like gas), even doing it slowly it's not unusual to see single digit MPG until you're up to at least 15-25MPH. Now, suppose that the car was powered by electric up to a reasonable cruising speed and *then* the diesel kicked in - just as it does today with gas engines. To think there would be no MPG gain is silly, Diesels may be more effecient than gas engines but that doesn't mean there are no ineffeciencies to be overcome. Manufacturers are already looking into diesel hybrids and I'll bet we see them so argue against them all you want but there are gains to be had despite the added weight. One of the reasons it's not already here is the perception that diesels are smelly and if you've ever visited a pump to fill one you can understand why not everyone might want it in their driveway. http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,66949,00 .html Hrm, 20%+ more effecient than a comparable diesel in OEM testing, still think there are *no* gains to be had?? I told you earlier the OEMs were looking at it and more than one is.... http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid /27514/story.htm

As for plugging in, sure why not? Prius owners are already modifying their cars to allow this and I'd be willing to do so too. A drive to work for me could almost be done fully electric in a modified car except for some sprints at highway speeds where a diesel could kick in at it's most effecient. Probably not a high powered fun ride but for commuting I wouldn't care. As it is I came close to purchasing a hybrid but went diesel for the added room\comfort and MPG that was somewhat close city and often better highway. Getting the best of both worlds would be fine by me!

Dont forget you can do the same with bike locks and a pen. It seems people find more obvious ways to break things every day.

We're out of superlatives, but it's even worse than that. There's already an effective, well-tested electronic voting system available. It's called EVACS and was developed in Australia in 2001. You can download the source here:
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html
Wired's story here:
http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.htm l

would I have imagined that this game would come to Xbox Live. Furthermore, outside of Slashdot (and even here), there's going to be a huge amount of people who are going to say... "What?"

I know it's de rigueur to mention "The Long Tail", but this is a great example of it; the Long Tail is a theory that in the future, businesses will need to sell small amounts of a huge variety.

Ideally, Catan fever will spread worldwide to a brand new audience. But also, putting a game like this on a console really sets it apart to big Catan fans. Xbox Live Arcade has the possibility to do that by releasing niche games that the target audience really wants. I loathe anecdotal evidence, but I know of two people that have bought an Xbox simply for one of the arcade games (Geometry Wars and Street Fighter).

Microsoft does seem to be serious about this. At Leipzig they also announced that they will "own football" by making Pro Evolution Soccer 6 and FIFA 07 Xbox 360 exclusives. Sony's own Winning Eleven series is of course not affected.

Now, if they'd only give Europe what they really want: fairly priced hardware and software.

That's a good question. A company that produces faulty machines with all sorts of blunders and glitches in the past and present - since this is a free market surely market pressure should eradicate this company. Yet it seems the government that should look into such irregularities (especially since free market is (supposed to be) one of the pillars of the GOP) apparently has no interest in doing so.. Could it be because Diebold not only supported the Bush campaign financially, but not only had the ability, but also the intention to to deliver the victory to their crony buddies? - Noo, that would be too outlandish and could never happen; the vigilant public would easily find out about it.

The Romans had a saying: Bis peccare in bello non licet. To blunder twice is not allowed in war. Thank god big business isn't warfare or after all these blunders heads would be a'rollin (and piling up).

That's a good question. A company that produces faulty machines with all sorts of blunders and glitches in the past and present - since this is a free market surely market pressure should eradicate this company. Yet it seems the government that should look into such irregularities (especially since free market is (supposed to be) one of the pillars of the GOP) apparently has no interest in doing so.. Could it be because Diebold not only supported the Bush campaign financially, but not only had the ability, but also the intention to to deliver the victory to their crony buddies? - Noo, that would be too outlandish and could never happen; the vigilant public would easily find out about it.

The Romans had a saying: Bis peccare in bello non licet. To blunder twice is not allowed in war. Thank god big business isn't warfare or after all these blunders heads would be a'rollin (and piling up).

As featured a couple of weeks ago in this article on Wired, these RFID chips have already been hacked. From TFA:

LAS VEGAS -- A German computer security consultant has shown that he can clone the electronic passports that the United States and other countries are beginning to distribute this year.

The controversial e-passports contain radio frequency ID, or RFID, chips that the U.S. State Department and others say will help thwart document forgery. But Lukas Grunwald, a security consultant with DN-Systems in Germany and an RFID expert, says the data in the chips is easy to copy.

"The whole passport design is totally brain damaged," Grunwald says. "From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They're not increasing security at all."

From an article on Wired (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/gizmos/0,716 26-0.html?tw=rss.index):
"McCarthy says he's not using his claims to raise money, at least not yet. Steorn is privately funded, but is not seeking new investment until after the tests have been done, he contends."

Reminds me of that story from India about the police being sent to confiscate some computers, and returning with just the monitors.

how is this new drug different than bupe? http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/bupe.html ?pg=1&topic=bupe&topic_set=

Everything about money? NEVER. China might as well just give up the whole Socialist act they've been a raging capitalist country for awhile now.

The link got eaten, probably by a dragon.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,71 617-0.html?tw=wn_index_3

..... That make firms with rec rooms, fun company outings, enforced breaks during the workday (to read, improve your IT education, etc.), and subsidized memberships to gyms and the like the ones to work for. I would suspect that those companies have IT staff that are less stressed and they have less retention issues..... Not to mention they lower the risk of some overstressed IT person going postal. More examples can be found here:

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,20972,00. html
http://self-help.vocaboly.com/archives/495/value-y our-employees-by-offering-company-perks/

The wiretapping "violates the Separation of Powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Title III (of the Constitution)," according to Taylor's injunction.

Reads more like a current UK based most popular rather than a most influential; myspace & youtube are enjoying their 15 minutes but whether they will have long term impact remains to be seen.

What was significant about Napster was the P2P software not its website.

Hotmail should be in the list for pioneering web based email.

Much as I hate to say it eBay would be nothing if Paypal hadn't created an secure system for small online payments.

The BBC is one of my most visited sites and certainly the best news site, but not sure it has been influential.

Salon? Good but just another on-line magazine Wired News http://www.wired.com/ was probably more influential before it went corporate.

Finally multimap.com pioneered on line mapping at - least in the UK.

Seeing as though the #1 clip on YouTube is of a 79-year-old man who posts "just to bitch and grumble about life in general from the perspective of an old person who's been there and done that," you're on to something. Have some venture capital!

"Rather naive, to believe that North Korea and Iran would abide by this "No Military Use" restriction."

Or that the UK or USA militaries would let license agreements prevent them doing whatever they wanted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

e.g. remember the guy whose patented invention was used by the US Navy without being compensated for it? http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68894, 00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2

According to this Wired story, Xerox "successfully defended their legal ownership."

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,53040-0.html

Sony lost its "walkman" trademark for just the same reason: It became an everyday word for a portable cassette player with earphones, so everyone may call his product "walkman".

While it's true that Sony lost the Walkman trademark in Austria due to technicalities, it remains under their control everywhere else.

It is the Apple IIGS desktop, the FIRST APPLE color desktop! with QuickDraw II (first color API), first usage of ADB, adb keyboard, adb mouse, etc etc. Not only that, it's a very old version of the GUI. Give these guy some credit!

This is a much better gallery of Apple GUIs.

GEM seems to be left out, as well as all the other "desktops" that predate MacOS, and were just as significant in contributions.

I do miss the multi-colored Apple menu as well as the a taking a byte out of the multi-colored Apple logo that made so much sense. Damn Beatles!

Insightful mod parent up, and add that we would not have Jazz at all if there had been strong "intellectual property" laws at the turn of the century. For most all Jazz is variations of standards and most Jazz musicians were too poor buy sheet music for everything they played.
Screw the asset planners those are the people John Lennon fought against all his life from "money can't buy you love," to "give peace a chance." The asset planners never created anything in their whole lives and act like vampires on the truly creative person.

I'll end with a little quote from Thomas Jefferson on how absurd the whole idea of intellectual property is:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

Thomas Jefferson

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.id eas_pr.html

The rest of this essay might teach you something as well.

Interesting article in august's wired magazine: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.08/spamking. html [wired.com] It talks about the life and death of a "russian spam king", discussing the infamy as well as the money that spam brought him.

This jagoff from Wired says my speech was uninspiring and that I looked "very thin, almost gaunt." Let me tell you something, you'd look gaunt too if you'd spent a weekend having Jerry York shout at you from close range. The guy's got dog breath, by the way, and he spits when he gets mad. Not fun when you're sitting like two feet away from him. Anyway, Wired sucks. Honestly. We're pulling them out of our stores, immediamente if not sooner. Also, on the "Why did Steve look so gaunt" theme, let me share something with you. The friggin 7 Day Miracle Cleanse turns out to have some seriously bad side effects. I don't want to get too graphic but let me give you a one-word hint: Leakage. Yeah. So I called Paris DeAguero, aka the Health Man, aka the a-hole who sells that crap on TV, and he's like, Steve, Steve, it's the herbs, Steve, the herbs, you can't do the program over and over like that, there's a disclaimer right on the box. So I look and sure enough, you turn the box over and there's this thing that looks like a bar code but if you put a magnifying glass on it there's a warning saying, like, don't use this stuff too much or it will cause your organs to liquefy and leak out of your butt. Paris DeAguero goes, Steve, Steve, look, don't get mad, don't put this on your blog, okay, let's keep this quiet, and I'm like, My blog? Frig the blog, pal, I'm gonna fly to Maui and bury you up to your neck on the beach at low tide. Seriously. And all this is happening on Sunday night, like hours before the keynote. So my doctor comes over with four kinds of medicine and a box of Depends. And I'm like, No way. No. Friggin. Way. He says they're not really diapers, more like a sanitary pad. And I'm like, Oh, well, that's a lot better. Really. Now I'm not freaked out at all. He tells me I can suit myself but if you get jeans that are one size too big nobody can tell. So I call Andy Grove, who is the one who put me on to the 7 Day Miracle Cleanse in the first place, and I tell him what's going on, and he goes, So what's the big deal, I wear those things all the time, makes life a lot easier, believe me. So what if a little tobacco juice squirts out of my hoo-ha, what do I care? But I'll tell you what, Steve, nobody wants to go swimming when I'm in the pool, I have noticed that.

So yeah. I was feeling a little gaunt on Monday. I wasn't at the top of my form. Like, sue me.

I've also seen complaints about us not announcing many products. The answer is yes, we did have more products to announce, but we held them back. Why? Mostly just to frig with that fat-ass know-it-all Scoble, who I'm happy to say had to issue an apology on his stupid blog. You know what? I honestly cannot believe that guy is a vice president of something or other at a real company. Can you? I mean look at the photo on his blog. He looks like a dishwasher at Denny's. And yet in the wonderful world of Web 2.0 he's a friggin guru, a media mogul, and a book author to boot. Hey, note to you, Scoble: Your book blows. So does your blog. Everybody at Microsoft used to laugh at you behind your back. And when this bubble bursts and the world regains its sanity you'll be back working out back at a Mexican restaurant where you belong.

Okay, sorry folks. I'm in a cranky mood. I'm living on vegetable broth and carrot juice. And then there's still the options crap hovering over us. I'm trying not to think about that too much. Hope you all do the same. Just think about products. Beautiful, shiny products that restore a sense of childlike wonder to your life. Peace out.

"640k should be enough for anybody".

You might want to look again, Nat demoed it for a large audience first time in March of 05, with a targetted release in 06, while Apple demoed it in July 2004, and released it in 2005. Microsoft has been talking about their search functionality for a couple of years as well (with regards to WinFS) So Apple & Microsoft had talked about it before Beagle, Apple demoed it almost a year before Beagle, and Apple released the finished product in their OS just a few months after Beagle's first major demo (Suse officially released Suse 10 just last month). You you like to try again?

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,64069,00.html ?tw=wn_tophead_4
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS9210850677.html

SGI buys Cray in 1996...

http://news.com.com/SGI+buys+supercomputer+vendor+ Cray/2100-1023_3-206180.html

SGI sells Cray in 2000..

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,34698,00 .html

Most of those reactions have to be activated. Still your point is right...who knows what kind of chemicals could be in there...

On the other hand, some of the claims here are going to be realities we face in the future. Whether we decide to deal with them now and get it over with, possibly even conserving some oil and prolonging our ability to have air travel, or whether we wait until the last minute to decide is totally up to us. It just may be that with the rising price of oil/its decreasing reserves left in the earth, it's time to consider train travel convenient again. Hell, it's like traveling first class on a plane.

Also, you just might want to consider the amount of jet fuel you're using just to transport you. Wired recently reported at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/carbon.ht ml that on a round-trip cross-country flight, you'll expel half as much CO2 into the atmosphere as a Corolla will expel by driving 9,000 miles (i.e. # of miles a person might drive in a year). Consider that and then think about how many flights people now take that connect.

On the other hand, if our government really wanted to actually safeguard transit, they might think about putting even a fraction of the cost of the iraq war into developing new security techniques...honestly, I myself, a normal person with no plans to destroy anything wondered why they didn't do this earlier.

I think that this is the article you are referring to: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/columbia. html It also made the final product stronger. Interesting article, the U.S. government also played a major role during the Clinton Administration.

The government of the USA has already shown a proclivity towards watching its citizens. To be fair, this phenomenon isn't limited to the USA, but Bush has taken it to new levels.

We now know that the government secretly had printer manufacturers embed hidden ID codes on printer's output, thereby removing any possibility of anonymous document creation.

I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising Bush-ite didn't see the possibility here of having *every* keyboard manufactured with some form of this technology embedded. Imagine if the government could tell what you were typing just by listening to your traffic.

Think of the terrorists we could stop! Think of the children!

This interview on Wired is pretty informative:

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/software/0,71 558-0.html?tw=wn_index_2

-- talks about plans for supporting FP 9 on Linux, and 64-bit architectures.

"Does anyone know how game devs can recover their costs and make a profit (on good games) withou~~ ~ ~blah blah"

Micropayments.
To answer your question, yes i do know how devs can profit AFTER making a good game for free. (i had to mod your question a bit. sorry) Any gamer that is up on new releases could tell you the same.
www.gamengame.com - one of the best gaming sites on the net. FREE quality games
Download Silkroad Online for FREE.

Silkroad gets you to play for free, & because the game is good you then tell your friends, and there friends.. Because the game is quality... you stay playing it. If you do not like it, you go and download (free) one of the other games they offer.

After you lvl a bit in SR, you want to buy a monkey to run around and pick up loots for you. It costs about 2$ cash. On average this stuff will run you about 10-15 a month if you are seriously playing the game.
Alot of the asian games are fueled in a similar way (asian countries have more women gamers, and a higher % out of total population)

Check out this old article from Wired here.

...a cofounder and chief scientist at Sun Microsystems. Wrote this article: Very interesting, and given his experience, its credible. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

If you'll recall, a similar terrorism futures market was planned by DARPA; it fell victim to political pressure, got deep-sixed, and the proponent, John Poindexter, resigned in a cloud. But the truth is that the idea works well. Here's a summary of the controversy: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59818,00 .html.

So far, they've only managed to produce alpha quality software at best, after more than three years. I always felt that they made some bad technology decisions from the start, like Python is probably not the best language for writing a PIM.

The requirements for this project have gone all over the place. Initially, it was touted as "exchange without the server," using some P2P method. Then it became an "outlook killer," then a "repository," and now they even have a "higher ed version," thats been talked about for some time.

Instead of trying to do a few things really well to start with, this project has become the poster boy for scope creep.

Try googling carbon-neutral gore, and hang your carbon filled head in shame. The man is more consistant and does more to act on his convictions than probably anyone here. (Of course if you still are buying the "invented the internet" misquote there's not much chance you're looking for real information.)

One thing I'm curious about though. What do you people who spout this non-sense think Gore's motivation is? Trying to drum up business for his fat-cat environmentalist friends that he's in the pocket of? Surreptitiously trying to destroy the United States, covert operative for The Terrorists that he is? Ah no, i remember now. Sorry, I'd forgotten the 2000 election smear campaign. He's just simply a raving lunatic (raving in a wooden, personality-less sort of way, that is, of course).

Sigh. Go see the movie. At least you'll have some idea what you're talking about then. (Of course it will do no good to mention that scientists, all except the one prominently being funded by the oil companies, seem to think the movie was pretty much, with just a few quibbles, completely accurate.)

Well, sorry to have bothered you. I'll let you get back to your stem-cell research now.