Team review? Well sure... except that we can't really expect everyone on the team to be objective and fair about the whole thing, especially with potentially large sums of money at stake.
Additionally, in a large project, team members may not know each other, and may never have met each other face to face. It's unrealistic to expect them to be able to evaluate each other satisfactorily.
The "share" concept proposed in the article sounds good, but then who decides exactly how many "shares" any given task merits? How can we really evaluate the relative difficulty of doing anything? Everyone has different abilities and skills. What might be considered worthy of many "shares" for one person might be a trivial task for someone else. Do we want to penalize those who do their work brilliantly but relatively effortlessly?
It seems to me that this is a very thorny -- and perhaps insurmountable -- problem, that may prove to be the death of this idea.
This sounds like a good idea on paper, but in practice, wouldn't it be difficult to quantify the value of an individual's contribution to a project?
You could always try to use a simplistic yardstick such as lines of code written. But even ignoring the difficulty in keeping track of that in a large shared project, can (and should) we honestly value code by its mere size? I think not -- in fact, often, quite the opposite would make more sense.
Reminds me of an old story about the development of OS/2. The IBM programmers were evaluated by their superiors according to the number of lines of code they wrote in a day. When the code began to be passed back and forth between IBM and Microsoft, the IBM people began to get very upset, because the Microsoft coders were actually reducing the lines of code in the source! Negative productivity! Auuuughhh!
I apologize if my post may not be 100% on-topic, but while we're on the subject of mental health, there is something I have been wondering about for some time.
Point one: Although I have never been profesionally diagnosed, I believe I have a mild to moderate case of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). I am in my mid-twenties, and I can remember my symptoms going back as far as when I was four or five years old.
Point two: I also believe I am unusually intelligent. One possible indicator: Over the years, I have taken several "IQ" tests. (Binet's standard disclaimer: What is IQ? It's what an IQ test measures.) In every case, I finished with a perfect score, and thus "off the scale", or beyond the test's ability to gauge my IQ. My IQ is thus quoted as, for example, "145+", "160+", or "175+", depending on the specific test's upper bound. I estimate my IQ to be actually somewhere around 180.
My question is this: Is there a correlation between intelligence and OCD? I have several friends who are highly intelligent, and also confess to having some symptoms of OCD. It would be interesting to hear whether Slashdot readers have observed such a connection in their own selves. A poll might be very illuminating -- but then again we all know how seriously Slashdot readers take the polls.
On a more general note, it would also be interesting to learn whether there is a correlation between intelligence and mental disorders in general. I suspect the correlation might be rather strong, but hard data would be great.
Whether one transmits at 1500 mW or 4000 mW is not really relevant. My point is that when there are enough people trying to do this long-range stuff (even at 1500 mW), the bandwidth will eventually get clogged enough to cause chaos.
Remember what happened to analog 900MHz cordless phones? Ever try to use one in a crowded apartment complex or dorm? There are only ten "channels" (bandwidth slices), and it can sometimes get frustratingly difficult to find a free channel.
I admit I don't know much about the inner workings about the AirPort, but I do know that it uses radio, and I know that there's a finite amount of radio bandwidth out there. I'm guessing here, but I imagine that the chunk of bandwidth reserved for the AirPort can't be very fat.
If everyone started extending the AirPort's range beyond what is allowed (the article quotes 4000 mW), then wouldn't the available bandwidth get congested really fast, causing collisions, and thus breaking connectivity?
Getting the AirPort to work at great ranges would be great at the very beginning, but everything would soon come crashing down. Those regulations and limits are there for a reason, you know.
You're beginning to get into the issue of cheats vs. exploits. There is a world of a difference. Your friend's boat trick was an exploit of an existing (albeit unintentional) "feature" in the system. These undocumented features happen all the time, especially in the more complex games out there. I believe that in general, as long as a game allows something, it's fair game.
Cheats, on the other hand, involve some kind of external manipulation or modification of the game. I don't think this should be allowed, as it tends to create an uneven playing field. In the case of exploits, anyone who is clever enough to figure out the exploit (or knows about the exploit through word of mouth) can take advantage; in the case of cheats, only those who are willing to download and install the latest unauthorized hack can gain the upper hand.
One gray area comes to mind: "cheat codes". Although cheat codes are built into the game, and might thus technically be considered exploits, I don't think they should be used -- unless all participants are aware that the codes are available and can be used, and all participants want the codes available.
Should "cheat codes" be considered exploits or cheats? Well, consider their origin. In most cases, they are simply debugging aids that are left in the final game out of laziness -- or just for the hell of it.
Cheat codes are intended to be used for debugging, and not during actual gameplay; they can be seen as "external" to the game itself. In this light, a "cheat code" is really nothing more than a "trainer" that happens to be conveniently built into the game. This puts cheat codes squarely in the category of "cheats". In my book, cheats are almost always something to stay away from -- if only because they tend to ruin the fun.
Charlie Chaplin was not used in the IBM ad campaigns. It was Chaplin's character, "Little Tramp", that was used -- played by some actor, and not Chaplin himself.
As an earlier post stated, Macrovision is easily removed using one of the many video "stabilizers" out on the market.
Since there are several types of Macrovision protection (at least two types for DVD-Video, as well as other types for VHS tapes and even CD-ROM), it's important that you ensure that the stabilizer you're buying is appropriate for the device/format that you're going to be using it with.
When I bought my DVD player last year, I was incensed that I could not hook it up through my VCR (I hook up everything through my VCR, because I like the convenience of its A/V selection controls.) After doing some research on the Net, I decided to play it safe and get the most feature-rich (and expensive) box on the market. I thus chose SCC ColorCorrector Pro Series from Sima Corporation. It retails for $169.99, but I was able to get a great deal from cameraworld.com: $99, with no tax and free shipping (within the US only, I think).
I absolutely love the SCC. Not only does it perfectly strip Macrovision protection from everything I've thrown at it (both DVD-Video discs and VHS tapes), but it provides an array of controls for tweaking the video signal to your liking. This is great for improving contrast and color balance on video coming from a marginal source. It even supports S-video connectors to ensure minimal signal degradation (FWIW, I don't notice any degradation, and I'm pretty picky.).
Disclaimer: I don't work for either Sima or cameraworld.com, but I just thought I'd pass on this tip to those interested in defeating that infernal Macrovision protection once and for good.
Is publicizing the theft/loss the right thing to do in this situation? What could MI5 possibly gain by announcing to the entire world that one of its bumbling agents has lost a laptop containing "sensitive government information"? If nothing else, the information might make the person who found (or stole) the machine realize that he has something really valuable in his hands, and decide to fence the sensitive information to MI5 enemies, or demand a huge reward, or even hold it for ransom. The saying goes, "There's no such thing as bad publicity," but I wonder if this might be an exception.
Armonk (AP) -- IBM CEO Lou Gerstner today expressed dismay at Microsoft Corporation's announcement that it would attempt to secure trademark protection on the color colloquially known as "BSOD Blue".
Gerstner indignantly asserted that "BSOD Blue" was actually developed by top-level IBM engineers in the early 1980s for use in IBM's CGA (Color Graphics Adapter) display upgrade board.
"'BSOD Blue' is nothing other than CGA BIOS color number 0x01," said Gerstner, in an inexplicable attempt to appear technically savvy by needlessly expressing the number "one" in hexadecimal.
Although the CGA board has long been obsolete, its legacy is carried on in today's VGA (Video Graphics Array)-compatible boards, which produce the color when invoked in character-based "text mode". Text mode is currently used primarily for displaying boot diagnostics as well as error messages.
Faced with the question of whether the "BSOD Blue" background color is actually still used for anything other than Windows error messages, Gerstner snorted, "Nonsense. I use the color everyday on my Volkswriter word processor. What is this "Windows" that everyone is getting all hot and bothered about anyway? If it's a graphical interface you want, I've got a scoop for you. IBM is hard at work developing a sophisticated next-generation object-oriented graphical operating system called OS/2 that will satisfy all your GUI needs."
Gerstner expects a usable version of OS/2 to be released sometime in in the next eight years, with the first wave of applications arriving as soon as a decade afterwards.
Gerstner added, "One more thing: Future releases of OS/2 will make exclusive use of this so-called "BSOD Blue" for error messages! Who says Microsoft has a monopoly on innovative technology?"
I don't see how this decision could be used to thwart Apple's attempts to protect the iMac design and "look" by design patent.
According to the decision, product design cannot obtain protection unless it has "acquired distinctiveness such that the marketplace naturally perceives the design to be a designation of product source".
Correct me if I'm wrong, but when the iMac was first released, it was truly an original and unique design -- older "designer" computers (such as the Acer Aspire series) notwithstanding. When you saw translucent white-and-fruity-colored-plastic, you thought "iMac".
When the first peripherals started coming out that mimicked the iMac design, they were immediately recognizeable as having done so. In fact, many (most?) of them were aggressively marketed as "for the iMac", in a blatant attempt to capitalize on the iMac's runaway success. I don't suppose Apple had any problems with these peripherals, since they indirectly promoted the iMac and its original design.
When the iMac look-alike computers started coming out, Apple began to have a problem. Apple did not want its original design to be used to manufacture and market products that directly compete against Apple's own products. And I tend to agree; by this point, the design had already been established in the minds of the people as being "iMac". I believe that this satisfies the above-stated requirement that the product have "acquired distinctiveness" so that it may obtain protection.
Therefore, I believe that in light of this ruling, Apple should in fairness be allowed to obtain patent protection for its design.
Disclaimers:
I do not necessarily agree that the ruling is "right" and that Apple really should be allowed to obtain protection for its design. I am merely asserting that according to the ruling, Apple is probably entitled to this protection.
I loathe the iMac and much of what it stands for -- especially that fruity design (not to mention that ridiculous mouse). It never ceases to amaze me when tech people that I normally respect tell me that they actually want an iMac "because it's so cute!". Ugh.
...actively using their position as a filter to prevent their customers from finding out about the critizism.
Not exactly. If Mattel were trying to prevent its customers from finding out about the issue, then it would be blocking all the tech news sites that carry the story.
What Mattel is doing is desperately trying to protect the integrity of its software. Once the "crack" is widely available to all CyberPatrol users, CyberPatrol will cease to have any value to either Mattel or its customers.
If we really wanted to be of some help to the CyberPatrol customers (e.g. parents), we could take down all of our mirrors, and replace them with mirrors of the article that do not contain executables or full source code. If such mirrors existed, CyberPatrol customers would then be able to read the article to get a fuller understanding of the issues involved, while being reassured to some degree that their protectees (e.g. children) would not have trivially easy access to the "crack" software.
If we did this, Mattel would be hard-pressed to come up with a rationalization for blocking the mirrors. The mirrors would be merely educational/informational, and would no longer directly threaten the integrity of the CyberPatrol software. This might keep Mattel happy -- or at least appeased.
Keeping Mattel happy is of dubious value, of course, but a more important consequence of doing this is that it would keep the CyberPatrol customers happy. Think about it: Do we really want to screw all of these customers over just because they happened to purchase software from a company that really didn't know what it was doing when it was trying to "protect" its product by obfuscation?
No, the sites may not contain any nudity, but they do contain information that will enable one to access all the CyberPatrol-blocked sites -- including those with lots and lots of nudity. So the mirrors are being treated as a "special case".
Not that I agree by any means with anything that Mattel is doing on this matter, but I do understand why the rebel mirror sites are being tagged the way they are.
RLL stands for "run length limited". If memory serves, RLL was actually a special case (2,9) of MFM (modified frequency modulation).
I once had an old 80MB Seagate ST4096 (5.25", full-height!) that I was able to format to 120MB by using an RLL controller (26 sectors per track instead of 17). It was unsupported, and probably voided the warranty, but it worked like a charm (it was faster, too!). I never had a single problem with it for the three or four years that I used the drive before I sold it.
I believe that was the first time I ever "overclocked" (overdrove?) any computer hardware I owned.
Does "15000rpm" strike anyone else as odd, considering that mainstream drives have spindle speeds that are multiples of 1800rpm (e.g. 5400, 7200)?
I have a feeling that this new drive actually has a 14400rpm spindle speed -- especially since the article mentions "7,500-rpm drives". Is there actually such a thing as a 7500rpm drive, or is the author of the article just plain clueless?
If the new drives are in fact 14400rpm, and not 15000rpm, and Seagate has the gall to market them as 15000rpm, then we might actually have a nice juicy class action lawsuit on our hands. (But then again, look at the so-called "56kbps" modems...)
You quote a paragraph from the original article about "slapping new make-up on the whore and sending her back out", and claim that it's the most "accurate quote" you've heard in a while.
I don't know if you were being sarcastic or even just ironic, but in case you weren't being either, I must very strongly disagree.
The quote is a sad reflection of the state of the game industry today. Most of the time, games seem to be almost purely technology-driven, with little regard for gameplay or even originality.
Why is it necessary for a new game to have a completely new game engine in order for it to be worth of being called a new game and not a "mere" expansion pack or add-on?
In the "good old days", game developers would release many games based on basically the same engine. Infocom's classic text adventures were all based on variations of their Z-Machine interpreter. Sierra On-Line created literally dozens of terrific adventure games using their AGI engine -- and when they switched to SCI0 in the late eighties, they stuck with that for at least a dozen more games.
Infocom and Sierra are just two examples of the many companies that used to be able to create many games using the same engine. I don't recall Sierra or Infocom ever being accused of releasing mere "expansion packs" or games that were not worthy of being called sequels, simply because they happened to use the same engine.
To use a more contemporary example, take Looking Glass Technologies' Thief: The Dark Project. Their Dark Engine did not exactly have state-of-the-art graphics even at Thief's time of release. Yet, very few people who played the game complained that the game was "bad" simply because it wasn't as gorgeous to look at as, say, Unreal. For what it's worth, I personally consider Thief to be one of the finest gaming experiences I have ever had in my two decades of gaming.
More importantly, the upcoming Thief 2: The Metal Age is being created with what is at best described as an incremental upgrade to the original Dark Engine. Even Thief 2 will not look as good as the best games did at the time of the original Thief's release. But I'm hardly complaining, and neither are most of Thief's fans. Why? Because I know that Looking Glass's use of an existing game engine is allowing them to devote much more time and energy to the game itself, making for a much deeper, better-crafted, and more robust product than would have been possible if they had been forced to create a brand-new engine again from scratch.
It is an unfortunate reality that most of today's gamers do demand over everything else that their games look cutting edge. Developers are not to blame for the demands of their customers -- although I should point out that it is probably id Software that is to blame for starting this trend in the first place. Perhaps in the mindless shooter genre, graphics do make the game, to some extent; however, in other genres, it may be desirable, and possibly even crucial, to relegate the "engine arms race" to a back burner in favor of the all-important Gameplay.
To actually get people to use this on a regular basis, I think they're going to need a smoother, more natural sounding text to speech engine than what is currently available. I wonder if the technology is ready for this...
First, listen to the pre-recorded samples (in several languages!); then use the Web demo to plug in your own text (I recommend a random article off a news site such as CNN). Ignore the "30-word limit"; it's bogus. For best results, listen to it read an article that you haven't read, and don't read along. I think you'll be amazed by the quality.
The voice is not quite convincing as belonging to an actual human being, but I still think it's a monumental achievement, especially considering the level of expressiveness it achieves with plain-text English (no hard-coded phonemes or stress codes). What's more, it's by far the most comprehensible and pleasant-sounding TTS engine I've ever encountered -- and, being a TTS nut, I've played with a lot of them, as far back as "Speech by Andy Maguire" on the IBM PC internal speaker and even S.A.M. on the Apple ][.
No, I don't work for L&H, but I find their latest TTS engine exciting, and I plan to snap up a copy (as well as the SDK) as soon as it's released in the form of a mainstream commercial product. I can only hope that Ananova sounds as good as RealSpeak.
I've gone through the Avanova Web site, and all I've seen is a bunch of PR text and what appears to be conceptual artwork. (The images certainly don't look real-time rendered by today's standards, PSX2 notwithstanding.)
The Web site appears to be of the "coming soon" variety that has been around for an indeterminate amount of time. Is this really news? How long has the site actually been up and in this state?
In any case, I for one find the Avanova idea fascinating, and would really like to see it in action, if only via a video clip. Slick press-release-type text and pretty pictures are nice, but if someone could provide any pointers to real demos or clips of Avanova at work, that would be really interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Team review? Well sure... except that we can't really expect everyone on the team to be objective and fair about the whole thing, especially with potentially large sums of money at stake.
Additionally, in a large project, team members may not know each other, and may never have met each other face to face. It's unrealistic to expect them to be able to evaluate each other satisfactorily.
The "share" concept proposed in the article sounds good, but then who decides exactly how many "shares" any given task merits? How can we really evaluate the relative difficulty of doing anything? Everyone has different abilities and skills. What might be considered worthy of many "shares" for one person might be a trivial task for someone else. Do we want to penalize those who do their work brilliantly but relatively effortlessly?
It seems to me that this is a very thorny -- and perhaps insurmountable -- problem, that may prove to be the death of this idea.
This sounds like a good idea on paper, but in practice, wouldn't it be difficult to quantify the value of an individual's contribution to a project?
You could always try to use a simplistic yardstick such as lines of code written. But even ignoring the difficulty in keeping track of that in a large shared project, can (and should) we honestly value code by its mere size? I think not -- in fact, often, quite the opposite would make more sense.
Reminds me of an old story about the development of OS/2. The IBM programmers were evaluated by their superiors according to the number of lines of code they wrote in a day. When the code began to be passed back and forth between IBM and Microsoft, the IBM people began to get very upset, because the Microsoft coders were actually reducing the lines of code in the source! Negative productivity! Auuuughhh!
I apologize if my post may not be 100% on-topic, but while we're on the subject of mental health, there is something I have been wondering about for some time.
Point one: Although I have never been profesionally diagnosed, I believe I have a mild to moderate case of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). I am in my mid-twenties, and I can remember my symptoms going back as far as when I was four or five years old.
Point two: I also believe I am unusually intelligent. One possible indicator: Over the years, I have taken several "IQ" tests. (Binet's standard disclaimer: What is IQ? It's what an IQ test measures.) In every case, I finished with a perfect score, and thus "off the scale", or beyond the test's ability to gauge my IQ. My IQ is thus quoted as, for example, "145+", "160+", or "175+", depending on the specific test's upper bound. I estimate my IQ to be actually somewhere around 180.
My question is this: Is there a correlation between intelligence and OCD? I have several friends who are highly intelligent, and also confess to having some symptoms of OCD. It would be interesting to hear whether Slashdot readers have observed such a connection in their own selves. A poll might be very illuminating -- but then again we all know how seriously Slashdot readers take the polls.
On a more general note, it would also be interesting to learn whether there is a correlation between intelligence and mental disorders in general. I suspect the correlation might be rather strong, but hard data would be great.
Comments, anyone?
Whether one transmits at 1500 mW or 4000 mW is not really relevant. My point is that when there are enough people trying to do this long-range stuff (even at 1500 mW), the bandwidth will eventually get clogged enough to cause chaos.
Remember what happened to analog 900MHz cordless phones? Ever try to use one in a crowded apartment complex or dorm? There are only ten "channels" (bandwidth slices), and it can sometimes get frustratingly difficult to find a free channel.
I admit I don't know much about the inner workings about the AirPort, but I do know that it uses radio, and I know that there's a finite amount of radio bandwidth out there. I'm guessing here, but I imagine that the chunk of bandwidth reserved for the AirPort can't be very fat.
If everyone started extending the AirPort's range beyond what is allowed (the article quotes 4000 mW), then wouldn't the available bandwidth get congested really fast, causing collisions, and thus breaking connectivity?
Getting the AirPort to work at great ranges would be great at the very beginning, but everything would soon come crashing down. Those regulations and limits are there for a reason, you know.
You're beginning to get into the issue of cheats vs. exploits. There is a world of a difference. Your friend's boat trick was an exploit of an existing (albeit unintentional) "feature" in the system. These undocumented features happen all the time, especially in the more complex games out there. I believe that in general, as long as a game allows something, it's fair game.
Cheats, on the other hand, involve some kind of external manipulation or modification of the game. I don't think this should be allowed, as it tends to create an uneven playing field. In the case of exploits, anyone who is clever enough to figure out the exploit (or knows about the exploit through word of mouth) can take advantage; in the case of cheats, only those who are willing to download and install the latest unauthorized hack can gain the upper hand.
One gray area comes to mind: "cheat codes". Although cheat codes are built into the game, and might thus technically be considered exploits, I don't think they should be used -- unless all participants are aware that the codes are available and can be used, and all participants want the codes available.
Should "cheat codes" be considered exploits or cheats? Well, consider their origin. In most cases, they are simply debugging aids that are left in the final game out of laziness -- or just for the hell of it.
Cheat codes are intended to be used for debugging, and not during actual gameplay; they can be seen as "external" to the game itself. In this light, a "cheat code" is really nothing more than a "trainer" that happens to be conveniently built into the game. This puts cheat codes squarely in the category of "cheats". In my book, cheats are almost always something to stay away from -- if only because they tend to ruin the fun.
Charlie Chaplin was not used in the IBM ad campaigns. It was Chaplin's character, "Little Tramp", that was used -- played by some actor, and not Chaplin himself.
Many people seem to confuse Little Tramp with Chaplin, but Chaplin was much more than his "silly" character. He was an accomplished and influencial film actor, writer, director, editor, composer, and producer.
This is funny now, but just wait until DVD-Audio comes along, and we'll see who's laughing.
As an earlier post stated, Macrovision is easily removed using one of the many video "stabilizers" out on the market.
Since there are several types of Macrovision protection (at least two types for DVD-Video, as well as other types for VHS tapes and even CD-ROM), it's important that you ensure that the stabilizer you're buying is appropriate for the device/format that you're going to be using it with.
When I bought my DVD player last year, I was incensed that I could not hook it up through my VCR (I hook up everything through my VCR, because I like the convenience of its A/V selection controls.) After doing some research on the Net, I decided to play it safe and get the most feature-rich (and expensive) box on the market. I thus chose SCC ColorCorrector Pro Series from Sima Corporation. It retails for $169.99, but I was able to get a great deal from cameraworld.com: $99, with no tax and free shipping (within the US only, I think).
I absolutely love the SCC. Not only does it perfectly strip Macrovision protection from everything I've thrown at it (both DVD-Video discs and VHS tapes), but it provides an array of controls for tweaking the video signal to your liking. This is great for improving contrast and color balance on video coming from a marginal source. It even supports S-video connectors to ensure minimal signal degradation (FWIW, I don't notice any degradation, and I'm pretty picky.).
Disclaimer: I don't work for either Sima or cameraworld.com, but I just thought I'd pass on this tip to those interested in defeating that infernal Macrovision protection once and for good.
Is publicizing the theft/loss the right thing to do in this situation? What could MI5 possibly gain by announcing to the entire world that one of its bumbling agents has lost a laptop containing "sensitive government information"? If nothing else, the information might make the person who found (or stole) the machine realize that he has something really valuable in his hands, and decide to fence the sensitive information to MI5 enemies, or demand a huge reward, or even hold it for ransom. The saying goes, "There's no such thing as bad publicity," but I wonder if this might be an exception.
Armonk (AP) -- IBM CEO Lou Gerstner today expressed dismay at Microsoft Corporation's announcement that it would attempt to secure trademark protection on the color colloquially known as "BSOD Blue".
Gerstner indignantly asserted that "BSOD Blue" was actually developed by top-level IBM engineers in the early 1980s for use in IBM's CGA (Color Graphics Adapter) display upgrade board.
"'BSOD Blue' is nothing other than CGA BIOS color number 0x01," said Gerstner, in an inexplicable attempt to appear technically savvy by needlessly expressing the number "one" in hexadecimal.
Although the CGA board has long been obsolete, its legacy is carried on in today's VGA (Video Graphics Array)-compatible boards, which produce the color when invoked in character-based "text mode". Text mode is currently used primarily for displaying boot diagnostics as well as error messages.
Faced with the question of whether the "BSOD Blue" background color is actually still used for anything other than Windows error messages, Gerstner snorted, "Nonsense. I use the color everyday on my Volkswriter word processor. What is this "Windows" that everyone is getting all hot and bothered about anyway? If it's a graphical interface you want, I've got a scoop for you. IBM is hard at work developing a sophisticated next-generation object-oriented graphical operating system called OS/2 that will satisfy all your GUI needs."
Gerstner expects a usable version of OS/2 to be released sometime in in the next eight years, with the first wave of applications arriving as soon as a decade afterwards.
Gerstner added, "One more thing: Future releases of OS/2 will make exclusive use of this so-called "BSOD Blue" for error messages! Who says Microsoft has a monopoly on innovative technology?"
I don't see how this decision could be used to thwart Apple's attempts to protect the iMac design and "look" by design patent.
According to the decision, product design cannot obtain protection unless it has "acquired distinctiveness such that the marketplace naturally perceives the design to be a designation of product source".
Correct me if I'm wrong, but when the iMac was first released, it was truly an original and unique design -- older "designer" computers (such as the Acer Aspire series) notwithstanding. When you saw translucent white-and-fruity-colored-plastic, you thought "iMac".
When the first peripherals started coming out that mimicked the iMac design, they were immediately recognizeable as having done so. In fact, many (most?) of them were aggressively marketed as "for the iMac", in a blatant attempt to capitalize on the iMac's runaway success. I don't suppose Apple had any problems with these peripherals, since they indirectly promoted the iMac and its original design.
When the iMac look-alike computers started coming out, Apple began to have a problem. Apple did not want its original design to be used to manufacture and market products that directly compete against Apple's own products. And I tend to agree; by this point, the design had already been established in the minds of the people as being "iMac". I believe that this satisfies the above-stated requirement that the product have "acquired distinctiveness" so that it may obtain protection.
Therefore, I believe that in light of this ruling, Apple should in fairness be allowed to obtain patent protection for its design.
Disclaimers:
Not exactly. If Mattel were trying to prevent its customers from finding out about the issue, then it would be blocking all the tech news sites that carry the story.
What Mattel is doing is desperately trying to protect the integrity of its software. Once the "crack" is widely available to all CyberPatrol users, CyberPatrol will cease to have any value to either Mattel or its customers.
If we really wanted to be of some help to the CyberPatrol customers (e.g. parents), we could take down all of our mirrors, and replace them with mirrors of the article that do not contain executables or full source code. If such mirrors existed, CyberPatrol customers would then be able to read the article to get a fuller understanding of the issues involved, while being reassured to some degree that their protectees (e.g. children) would not have trivially easy access to the "crack" software.
If we did this, Mattel would be hard-pressed to come up with a rationalization for blocking the mirrors. The mirrors would be merely educational/informational, and would no longer directly threaten the integrity of the CyberPatrol software. This might keep Mattel happy -- or at least appeased.
Keeping Mattel happy is of dubious value, of course, but a more important consequence of doing this is that it would keep the CyberPatrol customers happy. Think about it: Do we really want to screw all of these customers over just because they happened to purchase software from a company that really didn't know what it was doing when it was trying to "protect" its product by obfuscation?
No, the sites may not contain any nudity, but they do contain information that will enable one to access all the CyberPatrol-blocked sites -- including those with lots and lots of nudity. So the mirrors are being treated as a "special case".
Not that I agree by any means with anything that Mattel is doing on this matter, but I do understand why the rebel mirror sites are being tagged the way they are.
Simply, because it's a benchmark!
I think you mean a "landmark" or a "milestone". A "benchmark" is a performance measurement tool.
Um, 4.79MHz -- are you sure about that? I owned a NEC V20, and it ran at a solid 10MHz!
RLL stands for "run length limited". If memory serves, RLL was actually a special case (2,9) of MFM (modified frequency modulation).
I once had an old 80MB Seagate ST4096 (5.25", full-height!) that I was able to format to 120MB by using an RLL controller (26 sectors per track instead of 17). It was unsupported, and probably voided the warranty, but it worked like a charm (it was faster, too!). I never had a single problem with it for the three or four years that I used the drive before I sold it.
I believe that was the first time I ever "overclocked" (overdrove?) any computer hardware I owned.
Does "15000rpm" strike anyone else as odd, considering that mainstream drives have spindle speeds that are multiples of 1800rpm (e.g. 5400, 7200)?
I have a feeling that this new drive actually has a 14400rpm spindle speed -- especially since the article mentions "7,500-rpm drives". Is there actually such a thing as a 7500rpm drive, or is the author of the article just plain clueless?
If the new drives are in fact 14400rpm, and not 15000rpm, and Seagate has the gall to market them as 15000rpm, then we might actually have a nice juicy class action lawsuit on our hands. (But then again, look at the so-called "56kbps" modems...)
Don't you mean Blame Shelbyville?
What Would Troy McClure Do?
How about: What Would Waylon Smithers Do?
Bart's Mom's a Big Fat Bitch
More like Ralph's mom. Bart's mom is hot! (God, did I just type that? Oh well -- I could be worse.)
Sorry, "12" is not a digit.
However, "1" is a digit, and "2" is a digit -- and "1" is most decidedly not even.
One reason the group that devises the SAT questions is so small is that secrecy is paramount.
If the SAT were "open source", as you propose, how could we possibly prevent questions and answers being leaked to prospective examinees?
You quote a paragraph from the original article about "slapping new make-up on the whore and sending her back out", and claim that it's the most "accurate quote" you've heard in a while.
I don't know if you were being sarcastic or even just ironic, but in case you weren't being either, I must very strongly disagree.
The quote is a sad reflection of the state of the game industry today. Most of the time, games seem to be almost purely technology-driven, with little regard for gameplay or even originality.
Why is it necessary for a new game to have a completely new game engine in order for it to be worth of being called a new game and not a "mere" expansion pack or add-on?
In the "good old days", game developers would release many games based on basically the same engine. Infocom's classic text adventures were all based on variations of their Z-Machine interpreter. Sierra On-Line created literally dozens of terrific adventure games using their AGI engine -- and when they switched to SCI0 in the late eighties, they stuck with that for at least a dozen more games.
Infocom and Sierra are just two examples of the many companies that used to be able to create many games using the same engine. I don't recall Sierra or Infocom ever being accused of releasing mere "expansion packs" or games that were not worthy of being called sequels, simply because they happened to use the same engine.
To use a more contemporary example, take Looking Glass Technologies' Thief: The Dark Project. Their Dark Engine did not exactly have state-of-the-art graphics even at Thief's time of release. Yet, very few people who played the game complained that the game was "bad" simply because it wasn't as gorgeous to look at as, say, Unreal. For what it's worth, I personally consider Thief to be one of the finest gaming experiences I have ever had in my two decades of gaming.
More importantly, the upcoming Thief 2: The Metal Age is being created with what is at best described as an incremental upgrade to the original Dark Engine. Even Thief 2 will not look as good as the best games did at the time of the original Thief's release. But I'm hardly complaining, and neither are most of Thief's fans. Why? Because I know that Looking Glass's use of an existing game engine is allowing them to devote much more time and energy to the game itself, making for a much deeper, better-crafted, and more robust product than would have been possible if they had been forced to create a brand-new engine again from scratch.
It is an unfortunate reality that most of today's gamers do demand over everything else that their games look cutting edge. Developers are not to blame for the demands of their customers -- although I should point out that it is probably id Software that is to blame for starting this trend in the first place. Perhaps in the mindless shooter genre, graphics do make the game, to some extent; however, in other genres, it may be desirable, and possibly even crucial, to relegate the "engine arms race" to a back burner in favor of the all-important Gameplay.
If Barbie were her own toy corporation, she would be the largest toy corporation in the world.
Interesting; I didn't know that. So what you're saying is actually two things:
1. Mattel is the largest toy corporation in the world.
2. The Barbie portion of Mattel alone is still larger than the second-largest toy corporation in the world.
Did I understand you right?
To actually get people to use this on a regular basis, I think they're going to need a smoother, more natural sounding text to speech engine than what is currently available. I wonder if the technology is ready for this...
You might want to look into Lernout & Hauspie's new text-to-speech engine, RealSpeak.
First, listen to the pre-recorded samples (in several languages!); then use the Web demo to plug in your own text (I recommend a random article off a news site such as CNN). Ignore the "30-word limit"; it's bogus. For best results, listen to it read an article that you haven't read, and don't read along. I think you'll be amazed by the quality.
The voice is not quite convincing as belonging to an actual human being, but I still think it's a monumental achievement, especially considering the level of expressiveness it achieves with plain-text English (no hard-coded phonemes or stress codes). What's more, it's by far the most comprehensible and pleasant-sounding TTS engine I've ever encountered -- and, being a TTS nut, I've played with a lot of them, as far back as "Speech by Andy Maguire" on the IBM PC internal speaker and even S.A.M. on the Apple ][.
No, I don't work for L&H, but I find their latest TTS engine exciting, and I plan to snap up a copy (as well as the SDK) as soon as it's released in the form of a mainstream commercial product. I can only hope that Ananova sounds as good as RealSpeak.
I've gone through the Avanova Web site, and all I've seen is a bunch of PR text and what appears to be conceptual artwork. (The images certainly don't look real-time rendered by today's standards, PSX2 notwithstanding.)
The Web site appears to be of the "coming soon" variety that has been around for an indeterminate amount of time. Is this really news? How long has the site actually been up and in this state?
In any case, I for one find the Avanova idea fascinating, and would really like to see it in action, if only via a video clip. Slick press-release-type text and pretty pictures are nice, but if someone could provide any pointers to real demos or clips of Avanova at work, that would be really interesting.