Second Life isn't a game. It's a technology and communications platform that allow users to create and host 3D models and interactive scripts in a 3D environment. While there are games in it it's no more a game than the Web or IRC. I've 'attended' club meetups, donated charity events that then give money to real world charities, read an entire book in-world and watched video feeds of the news on Reuters' island.
It's a shame the high profile failure wasn't actually a Ponzi scheme. The insanely high interest rate was supported by the massive profits of in-game gambling. The bank failed when gambling was banned (or seriously reigned in).
Yeah, there's nothing good about the resolution for this screen. I mean, seriously, who would build an obviously expensive, niche screen these days that doesn't have at least 1080 lines?
I'm on a 3840x1024 triple-head system at the moment and Gigabyte's whacky SLI-on-one-card 6600GT SLI solution can manage WoW at around 30FPS if I don't turn on anti-aliasing. My other triplehead is 3072x768 and I have a 6200 running that, though it only manages 15-20 FPS in WoW with most of the options dialed down.
I can't imagine modern cards have any problems driving it. It is, however, a stupid resolution on which I will no doubt comment elsewhere.
If they hadn't cocked up the transition to SACD then maybe people would still care about physical objects. Instead, a format war and idiotic DRM derailed the next obvious upgrade and nobody bothered. Combine that with the ability to download single tracks rather than being forced to purchase a bundle of crap and is anyone really surprised at the outcome?
I can't help but think that Microsoft are hoping for the same thing to happen with the HD video formats so their Live-based download service benefits like Apple's Itunes store did.
Microsoft should release a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360. I bet the drive would sell very well (even if they sold it at a profit), Xbox 360 sales would increase, the high-def war would be declared over and we could all get on with life.
I stopped running Distributed.Net because I didn't want to leave my PC running when I wasn't using it, and when I was using it I didn't want all the fan noise caused by the CPU running hot.
There should be a minimum performance required for these applications so people don't run old inefficient PCs 24/7 while achieving bugger all.
Here's a quicky timeline of a work DRM experience:
Organisation acquires vendor's DRM-protected video disc, gets temporary license to try it out.
Staff member sits on it 'cause she's busy, temp license runs out.
Second temp license requested, IT manager attempts to get videos playing. Any attempt on the laptop he's current using results in a crash.
IT manager puts it aside long enough for the second temp license to expire, then hands it to me.
I don't know any of the above as I try to get it working. Ironically, since I'm on a Vista PC all the Media Player DRM works perfectly, but the license isn't current.
Call vendor to try and get license sorted out, they refuse to help saying we've already had plenty of time to try it.
I explain DRM to the involved staff here.
We contact the vendor to say that since we've never been able to get it working, we don't want it.
Vendor panics at missed sale, gives us third trial license.
We get videos playing, finally, on a laptop that can be used for presentations.
We buy product (sigh).
I should find out if it's still working or if it's fallen over in the few months since I last saw it.
Here's the article from BoingBoing, which has been up a day or so. It's got a different quote and a bunch of comments. Unfortunately, the full story is in my cache at home and I'm at work.
From memory, the high interest rate offered by the "bank" was made possible due to the highly lucrative SL gambling industry. When Linden Labs suddenly killed the industry (by outlawing gambling? certainly restricting it greatly), this bank was immediately nailed to the wall.
As I understand it, it was not a pyramid scheme, as such. Basically, SL residents were giving unsecured loans to one guy's casino business.
As I go through my DVD haul this xmas on an old 68cm CRT, I find it very difficult to justify the cost of upgrading to high def, regardless of format. In a year or so, when my mother retires and starts doing the ebay selling thing again, I'm going to use the proceeds from selling all the crap I've collected over the years to fund a nice home cinema built around an HD projector. Until then I'll mostly be renting on DVD the stuff I want to see.
I'm currently working at a local zoo. One eeeeePC was bought so the keepers could easily go around to all the dataloggers in various enclosures and download readings easily. I tossed WinXP on it the day after it was purchased (using my Asus USB DVD drive) and it was handed to the department in question while I had some time off.
(The second eeeeeePC is just for IT to screw around with. Err, I mean, it's for IT to better evaluate potential applications. I can categorically state that I will not be buying a 16Gig USB flash drive for playing WoW on it. At least, not until I renew my subscription.)
If it includes the serial number of the software in the format needed during installation, then I hope nobody has an ISP with underpaid staff that can access the logs for their transparent proxy.
I'm certainly headed for a projector. I've seen a normal old DVD projected onto a wall with a nothing special projector driven by a Macbook Pro. The picture was about two meters across and it looked great. There is absolutely no point in getting HD and having the picture any smaller.
Of course, to actually make use of a HD projector I also need to re-arrange a room, get better curtains, install a screen, buy one piece of new furniture, upgrade my amp to (at least) 5.1, buy a sub-woofer, re-cable some stuff and, oh yeah, buy a high-def player of one or both flavours. It make take some time.
In 2008 some twit with a soapbox (magazine column, TV show, whatever) will lose 3TB or more in a single failure and rant about how digital is so much worse than analogue. I bet he'll mention Laserdiscs in there somewhere and possibly The Domesday Book if he's from the UK.
What's more, even from the description I'm sure some of what's being described is non-trivial. If they can get this sort of thing working properly, they deserve a patent.
And is "no cable or satellite service" actually at risk? (Heck, I fit into that category.) Ignoring the fact that a DTV set-top box is trivially cheap, what are they at risk from? They'd have to be without an Internet connection to be 'at risk' of missing the news, such as it is. They'd have to be without a VCR, DVD player or video game console to be 'at risk' of their old TV not having any use.
Last time I checked here in Australia, digital TV had some serious signal issues and no content worth bothering about. They're basically cloning the current system onto a new set of frequencies, and there's nothing to watch now.
Slashdot Mirror
To get the fix for this you have to install a patch that activates a little mechanical leg that kicks you in the beanbag.
Seriously people, stop buying Dell's crap.
Where does it say "ponzi" or even "pyramid" in the blog post?
Photos on Facebook can be made publicly accessible, even if the profile is private. Ta-da.
Second Life isn't a game. It's a technology and communications platform that allow users to create and host 3D models and interactive scripts in a 3D environment. While there are games in it it's no more a game than the Web or IRC. I've 'attended' club meetups, donated charity events that then give money to real world charities, read an entire book in-world and watched video feeds of the news on Reuters' island.
It's a shame the high profile failure wasn't actually a Ponzi scheme. The insanely high interest rate was supported by the massive profits of in-game gambling. The bank failed when gambling was banned (or seriously reigned in).
Yeah, there's nothing good about the resolution for this screen. I mean, seriously, who would build an obviously expensive, niche screen these days that doesn't have at least 1080 lines?
I'm on a 3840x1024 triple-head system at the moment and Gigabyte's whacky SLI-on-one-card 6600GT SLI solution can manage WoW at around 30FPS if I don't turn on anti-aliasing. My other triplehead is 3072x768 and I have a 6200 running that, though it only manages 15-20 FPS in WoW with most of the options dialed down.
I can't imagine modern cards have any problems driving it. It is, however, a stupid resolution on which I will no doubt comment elsewhere.
If they hadn't cocked up the transition to SACD then maybe people would still care about physical objects. Instead, a format war and idiotic DRM derailed the next obvious upgrade and nobody bothered. Combine that with the ability to download single tracks rather than being forced to purchase a bundle of crap and is anyone really surprised at the outcome?
I can't help but think that Microsoft are hoping for the same thing to happen with the HD video formats so their Live-based download service benefits like Apple's Itunes store did.
Microsoft should release a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360. I bet the drive would sell very well (even if they sold it at a profit), Xbox 360 sales would increase, the high-def war would be declared over and we could all get on with life.
Yeah. Hence the sigh. Dollars to donuts, none of the videos we bought will be used before the first year's subscription expires.
I stopped running Distributed.Net because I didn't want to leave my PC running when I wasn't using it, and when I was using it I didn't want all the fan noise caused by the CPU running hot.
There should be a minimum performance required for these applications so people don't run old inefficient PCs 24/7 while achieving bugger all.
- Organisation acquires vendor's DRM-protected video disc, gets temporary license to try it out.
- Staff member sits on it 'cause she's busy, temp license runs out.
- Second temp license requested, IT manager attempts to get videos playing. Any attempt on the laptop he's current using results in a crash.
- IT manager puts it aside long enough for the second temp license to expire, then hands it to me.
- I don't know any of the above as I try to get it working. Ironically, since I'm on a Vista PC all the Media Player DRM works perfectly, but the license isn't current.
- Call vendor to try and get license sorted out, they refuse to help saying we've already had plenty of time to try it.
- I explain DRM to the involved staff here.
- We contact the vendor to say that since we've never been able to get it working, we don't want it.
- Vendor panics at missed sale, gives us third trial license.
- We get videos playing, finally, on a laptop that can be used for presentations.
- We buy product (sigh).
I should find out if it's still working or if it's fallen over in the few months since I last saw it.Here's the article from BoingBoing, which has been up a day or so. It's got a different quote and a bunch of comments. Unfortunately, the full story is in my cache at home and I'm at work.
Please mod parent up.
From memory, the high interest rate offered by the "bank" was made possible due to the highly lucrative SL gambling industry. When Linden Labs suddenly killed the industry (by outlawing gambling? certainly restricting it greatly), this bank was immediately nailed to the wall.
As I understand it, it was not a pyramid scheme, as such. Basically, SL residents were giving unsecured loans to one guy's casino business.
As I go through my DVD haul this xmas on an old 68cm CRT, I find it very difficult to justify the cost of upgrading to high def, regardless of format. In a year or so, when my mother retires and starts doing the ebay selling thing again, I'm going to use the proceeds from selling all the crap I've collected over the years to fund a nice home cinema built around an HD projector. Until then I'll mostly be renting on DVD the stuff I want to see.
I'm currently working at a local zoo. One eeeeePC was bought so the keepers could easily go around to all the dataloggers in various enclosures and download readings easily. I tossed WinXP on it the day after it was purchased (using my Asus USB DVD drive) and it was handed to the department in question while I had some time off.
(The second eeeeeePC is just for IT to screw around with. Err, I mean, it's for IT to better evaluate potential applications. I can categorically state that I will not be buying a 16Gig USB flash drive for playing WoW on it. At least, not until I renew my subscription.)
If it includes the serial number of the software in the format needed during installation, then I hope nobody has an ISP with underpaid staff that can access the logs for their transparent proxy.
I'm certainly headed for a projector. I've seen a normal old DVD projected onto a wall with a nothing special projector driven by a Macbook Pro. The picture was about two meters across and it looked great. There is absolutely no point in getting HD and having the picture any smaller.
Of course, to actually make use of a HD projector I also need to re-arrange a room, get better curtains, install a screen, buy one piece of new furniture, upgrade my amp to (at least) 5.1, buy a sub-woofer, re-cable some stuff and, oh yeah, buy a high-def player of one or both flavours. It make take some time.
In 2008 some twit with a soapbox (magazine column, TV show, whatever) will lose 3TB or more in a single failure and rant about how digital is so much worse than analogue. I bet he'll mention Laserdiscs in there somewhere and possibly The Domesday Book if he's from the UK.
What's more, even from the description I'm sure some of what's being described is non-trivial. If they can get this sort of thing working properly, they deserve a patent.
And here's a scanjet playing something classical. Sorry for being peasant and not knowing the tune.
And is "no cable or satellite service" actually at risk? (Heck, I fit into that category.) Ignoring the fact that a DTV set-top box is trivially cheap, what are they at risk from? They'd have to be without an Internet connection to be 'at risk' of missing the news, such as it is. They'd have to be without a VCR, DVD player or video game console to be 'at risk' of their old TV not having any use.
Last time I checked here in Australia, digital TV had some serious signal issues and no content worth bothering about. They're basically cloning the current system onto a new set of frequencies, and there's nothing to watch now.