It's not that complicated: If you write something and someone else reads it, that other person is perfectly capable of telling you what it was you wrote.
If what you wrote isn't what you meant, that's your problem.
See, you weren't talking about icon management (nor was the article), you were just saying that 64GB isn't enough space for thousands of games. I say it is. 64MB is bigger than most Nintendo DS games, and it's bigger than downloadable WiiWare or XBLA games. 64MB gets eaten up pretty quickly once you throw in a lot of media like video clips or even audio - but in terms of what kind of game you can make in 64MB, it's plenty...
If you want to talk about how to organize a thousand game icons - it is not an insurmountable problem by any means. If you say the iPhone OS isn't up to the task... Well, I can't necessarily say you're wrong. I have a great deal of apathy with regard to the platform.:)
Tons of comments here about how it's a waste to use a $500 computer to play a simple board game... And rightly so, I'd say. It seems like a real stretch, looking for a defense of the iPad. But... if you ignore the cost issue and look beyond traditional board games I think this is an interesting idea.
Basically - you could play a "board-game" style game on just about any kind of computer - but some are better than others. If I play chess or scrabble with someone next to me, using my phone as the game board, then we pretty much have to switch back and forth - meaning that when one person is taking their turn, it's difficult for other people to think about theirs. A game console like the Wii or PS3 also works, but these tend to be fixed in location, which isn't ideal - plus everyone's focus is directed toward the single monitor, it diffuses the social aspect a bit, I think. A tablet-style machine like this presents a very tactile experience - a game board that's easy to gather around (as long as the display has a good viewing angle range), turn, move, etc. as necessary. In terms of how the interaction works, it is uniquely capable of presenting a game in the same way as a board game is presented.
Where this could be really neat, I think, is in terms of how this could potentially lead to different kinds of board-game-style games... Things that still work kind of like board games but take advantage of the computer's involvement, too. It'd be interesting to see how that could play out.
Thirdly, the biggest iPAD is 64GB which means that to get a "thousand" games on it, each game would need to average no more than 65MB.
Oh, shit! The world is ending! How are we ever going to create a fun game that takes less than 65MB of storage space? It's impossible, I tell you! Any decent game must at least fill up a CD-ROM or it's no good at all!
So what do you do with your cardboard monopoly or chess board when you are half way through a game and the captain says to return to your seats, place the tray tables in the upright locked position and prepare for landing? I guess it's game over.
You know, I can't say I know a good, non-electronic solution for Monopoly - but for Chess or Scrabble, you could buy a "travel" set - and when you've got to put it away, you just fold it up and put it away, and the game's still there when you come back to it.
My mom had this great old travel Scrabble from the 1960s or something - letters were vinyl or something, it folded very thin. Main problem with it was the letters wouldn't always stick to the board, or (when folding the board) could stick to the opposite side of the board, upside-down. The current travel scrabble seems rather more reliable (if a lot larger) - the letter tiles pop into square recesses in the board surface...
Analogy time: You can raise the tastiest pigs in the world, and cure the awesomest bacon ever known to man, but if I keep kosher, I can't eat it. See, Apple is rabbinical law, and the i~Device hardware is the bacon. Apple only wants you to eat Apple-cured bacon, which isn't made from pigs at all. It's made from hipsters in Apple's secret Cupertino rent-controlled hipster abbatoir. You can't have the regular bacon, which is unfettered hardware.
Wait... The iPad hardware is bacon, and the bacon isn't bacon, but bacon is hardware, and Apple wants you to eat kosher and...
I think you lost me. Could you try this as a car analogy?
Don't forget the number of white and other americans who didn't see the skin color obscured by the clown makeup like his predecessors, Carter and Clinton. I think you'll find it to be an overwhelmingly larger demographic.
You totally lost me here. So you're saying Obama didn't have clown makeup, or that he did and people didn't see it? And that the same, or opposite, is true of Carter and Clinton?
1) The news does not show a random sampling of people, they hand-pick people who will make for good TV. People who are disproportionately excited about what's going on make for better TV than ordinary, sensible people. 2) This was not my experience.
This thing was probably made last decade, and Fujitsu wanted to patent the name THEN.
It came out in 2002. It's an example of an archaic device which at the time was known as a "Personal Digital Assistant". Its 802.11b was even better than the irDA or Bluetoothh connectivity offered by other models...
People are saying the name is a ripoff of Apple's iPod name - and since the iPad came out in 2002, a year after iPod, this is possible. But don't forget the iPAQ, which was one of the most successful Windows CE-based PDAs of that era... And which predates the iPod (but not, of course, the iMac...) I'd say Fujitsu was ripping off both names.:)
Well, there wouldn't be anything eerie about Fujitsu's lawsuit, except that their lawyer is a ghost pirate representing the Haunted Amusement Park lawfirm...
Am I the only to think that if a project doesn't get a grip at all it's MAYBE because it is not that useful to people?
Sometimes this will be the case. However, no matter how good a piece of code is, it's useless if people don't use it...
Using a piece of software is more than just fetching it from a repository, installing it, and running it. A user has to invest themselves in the software before they'll really begin to understand it and what it has to offer them. This is an investment of their time and attention as they familiarize themselves with the software. A new programming language, for instance: users won't generally have any idea of whether that language is good for them until they've done a few projects using it. If I were to switch my website to Drupal or something, I think I would have to run the site on the new software for a while before I could feel comfortable and confident with it.
Getting people to invest themselves in a project can be difficult: people will resist investing their effort into using something that they think may not continue to serve them well in the future (neglected or badly maintained projects, etc.) There's no way really to prove that a project that's active now will continue to be active in the future, so the best you can do is minimize that initial investment: do everything you can to simplify the process by which people can learn about the project and try it out, so that more people who may be on the fence with regard to using it actually will try it.
I seriously doubt that developers getting hit by busses is a serious problem for FOSS users.
Unfortunately FOSS developers are notoriously prone to wandering out into the street in front of fast-moving buses... I'm not sure what it is, that makes jaywalkers such good free software developers, or that makes free software developers so eager to go wandering out into the street at the wrong moment...
However such a one-shot, 50,000 downloads shot, could be the break such a project needs. Though considering the current size mentioned unless he's hosting on sourceforge or so it may just as well break his server. If it's any good that is of course. It's enough to get a crowd big enough that word-of-mouth starts to spread, that it gets mentioned elsewhere on the Internet, etc. Too bad for the submitter that there is no link in TFS, not even a project name or so.
If it's a one-shot, you've got to think about when's the right time to use it. If you suddenly have another 50,000 people downloading your release, you don't want it to be a buggy release. You don't want it to be hosted on a site that can't handle the traffic... Basically, if you get one good shot at getting a bunch of people using your program, you want to try to make a good first impression with it... If someone reads the article and downloads the software, even if (or, perhaps, especially if) they don't go on using it, that first impression is going to stick with them. It will continue to color their perception of that program any time they consider using it again, and any time they discuss it with other people.
So I would definitely say the project should be in a very polished state before you subject it to exposure on Slashdot, if promoting adoption is your goal.
I remember when I first heard of Bayesian filters (here on Slashdot, as I recall) the article was very optimistic about how the filter would be nearly unstoppable... Something to the effect of "to beat this adaptive filtering system, spam would have to stop looking like spam, to the point that it would also cease to be effective" - as if any spam message had some intrinsic "spammy character" inherent in its word chains, and any attempt to change this would also prevent spammers from formulating an effective advertisement... This obviously failed to account for all the ways spammers have found to undermine Bayes filters over the past several years, but I was very impressed with the idea at the time.
How does this solve the problem? If a computer system that has the authentication necessary to send mail is compromised, then it can send out spam as easily as it could now.
I'm not looking to defend SMTP in particular, here - but I'm not clear on what an alternate protocol could do differently that would have a major impact.
Slashdot Mirror
How many kilos of moon can be transferred to earth before the orbits are affected?
Well... anything >0.
Hell, you don't even need to land - Just fly on the right trajectory past the moon and you can steal some of its kinetic energy...
"This female surgeon can't even cook bacon and eggs, what makes the bitch think she can take out my kidney?"
Hey, you laugh, but this happened to me. Sure enough, kidney was burnt to a crisp on one side, and all runny on the other...
Oh, now somebody is telling me what I wrote...
It's not that complicated: If you write something and someone else reads it, that other person is perfectly capable of telling you what it was you wrote.
If what you wrote isn't what you meant, that's your problem.
See, you weren't talking about icon management (nor was the article), you were just saying that 64GB isn't enough space for thousands of games. I say it is. 64MB is bigger than most Nintendo DS games, and it's bigger than downloadable WiiWare or XBLA games. 64MB gets eaten up pretty quickly once you throw in a lot of media like video clips or even audio - but in terms of what kind of game you can make in 64MB, it's plenty...
If you want to talk about how to organize a thousand game icons - it is not an insurmountable problem by any means. If you say the iPhone OS isn't up to the task... Well, I can't necessarily say you're wrong. I have a great deal of apathy with regard to the platform. :)
Tons of comments here about how it's a waste to use a $500 computer to play a simple board game... And rightly so, I'd say. It seems like a real stretch, looking for a defense of the iPad. But... if you ignore the cost issue and look beyond traditional board games I think this is an interesting idea.
Basically - you could play a "board-game" style game on just about any kind of computer - but some are better than others. If I play chess or scrabble with someone next to me, using my phone as the game board, then we pretty much have to switch back and forth - meaning that when one person is taking their turn, it's difficult for other people to think about theirs. A game console like the Wii or PS3 also works, but these tend to be fixed in location, which isn't ideal - plus everyone's focus is directed toward the single monitor, it diffuses the social aspect a bit, I think. A tablet-style machine like this presents a very tactile experience - a game board that's easy to gather around (as long as the display has a good viewing angle range), turn, move, etc. as necessary. In terms of how the interaction works, it is uniquely capable of presenting a game in the same way as a board game is presented.
Where this could be really neat, I think, is in terms of how this could potentially lead to different kinds of board-game-style games... Things that still work kind of like board games but take advantage of the computer's involvement, too. It'd be interesting to see how that could play out.
Thirdly, the biggest iPAD is 64GB which means that to get a "thousand" games on it, each game would need to average no more than 65MB.
Oh, shit! The world is ending! How are we ever going to create a fun game that takes less than 65MB of storage space? It's impossible, I tell you! Any decent game must at least fill up a CD-ROM or it's no good at all!
So what do you do with your cardboard monopoly or chess board when you are half way through a game and the captain says to return to your seats, place the tray tables in the upright locked position and prepare for landing? I guess it's game over.
You know, I can't say I know a good, non-electronic solution for Monopoly - but for Chess or Scrabble, you could buy a "travel" set - and when you've got to put it away, you just fold it up and put it away, and the game's still there when you come back to it.
My mom had this great old travel Scrabble from the 1960s or something - letters were vinyl or something, it folded very thin. Main problem with it was the letters wouldn't always stick to the board, or (when folding the board) could stick to the opposite side of the board, upside-down. The current travel scrabble seems rather more reliable (if a lot larger) - the letter tiles pop into square recesses in the board surface...
Analogy time: You can raise the tastiest pigs in the world, and cure the awesomest bacon ever known to man, but if I keep kosher, I can't eat it. See, Apple is rabbinical law, and the i~Device hardware is the bacon. Apple only wants you to eat Apple-cured bacon, which isn't made from pigs at all. It's made from hipsters in Apple's secret Cupertino rent-controlled hipster abbatoir. You can't have the regular bacon, which is unfettered hardware.
Wait... The iPad hardware is bacon, and the bacon isn't bacon, but bacon is hardware, and Apple wants you to eat kosher and...
I think you lost me. Could you try this as a car analogy?
Don't forget the number of white and other americans who didn't see the skin color obscured by the clown makeup like his predecessors, Carter and Clinton. I think you'll find it to be an overwhelmingly larger demographic.
You totally lost me here. So you're saying Obama didn't have clown makeup, or that he did and people didn't see it? And that the same, or opposite, is true of Carter and Clinton?
Nice anecdote...
1) The news does not show a random sampling of people, they hand-pick people who will make for good TV. People who are disproportionately excited about what's going on make for better TV than ordinary, sensible people.
2) This was not my experience.
Am I the only person who sees this as an excellent opportunity for Apple to ditch the unfortunate moniker and go with something like iSlate?
Didn't iFred iFlintstone have one of those?
This thing was probably made last decade, and Fujitsu wanted to patent the name THEN.
It came out in 2002. It's an example of an archaic device which at the time was known as a "Personal Digital Assistant". Its 802.11b was even better than the irDA or Bluetoothh connectivity offered by other models...
People are saying the name is a ripoff of Apple's iPod name - and since the iPad came out in 2002, a year after iPod, this is possible. But don't forget the iPAQ, which was one of the most successful Windows CE-based PDAs of that era... And which predates the iPod (but not, of course, the iMac...) I'd say Fujitsu was ripping off both names. :)
Must be this time of the month where most people - especially the mods - loose their sense humor about the obvious.
You know, I think what you just said actually has the exact opposite meaning of what you intended...
Pity the cows and chickens.
Supercow AL RESCATE!
There's nothing eerie about this situation.
Well, there wouldn't be anything eerie about Fujitsu's lawsuit, except that their lawyer is a ghost pirate representing the Haunted Amusement Park lawfirm...
Ipad as a name is about as bad as it can get for apple, due to all the jokes and the SNL skit. Is itablet also trademarked?
It's actually a MAD TV Skit
...And a fine example of how dreadfully unfunny Mad TV was, too. Still, they get bonus points for the fact that Apple used the name.
Install Windows 7, run Linux in a VM.
Still doesn't solve the problem of Linux window management, though, does it? :)
Am I the only to think that if a project doesn't get a grip at all it's MAYBE because it is not that useful to people?
Sometimes this will be the case. However, no matter how good a piece of code is, it's useless if people don't use it...
Using a piece of software is more than just fetching it from a repository, installing it, and running it. A user has to invest themselves in the software before they'll really begin to understand it and what it has to offer them. This is an investment of their time and attention as they familiarize themselves with the software. A new programming language, for instance: users won't generally have any idea of whether that language is good for them until they've done a few projects using it. If I were to switch my website to Drupal or something, I think I would have to run the site on the new software for a while before I could feel comfortable and confident with it.
Getting people to invest themselves in a project can be difficult: people will resist investing their effort into using something that they think may not continue to serve them well in the future (neglected or badly maintained projects, etc.) There's no way really to prove that a project that's active now will continue to be active in the future, so the best you can do is minimize that initial investment: do everything you can to simplify the process by which people can learn about the project and try it out, so that more people who may be on the fence with regard to using it actually will try it.
1) Post a message to slashdot
2) ????
3) Profit
Except in this rare case the mystery step 2 is easy to identify:
1) Post a message to slashdot
2) Include a link to your project
3) Profit!
This is exactly what the submitter did!
First they did step one. With that complete, they're bound to move on to step two.
I seriously doubt that developers getting hit by busses is a serious problem for FOSS users.
Unfortunately FOSS developers are notoriously prone to wandering out into the street in front of fast-moving buses... I'm not sure what it is, that makes jaywalkers such good free software developers, or that makes free software developers so eager to go wandering out into the street at the wrong moment...
However such a one-shot, 50,000 downloads shot, could be the break such a project needs. Though considering the current size mentioned unless he's hosting on sourceforge or so it may just as well break his server. If it's any good that is of course. It's enough to get a crowd big enough that word-of-mouth starts to spread, that it gets mentioned elsewhere on the Internet, etc. Too bad for the submitter that there is no link in TFS, not even a project name or so.
If it's a one-shot, you've got to think about when's the right time to use it. If you suddenly have another 50,000 people downloading your release, you don't want it to be a buggy release. You don't want it to be hosted on a site that can't handle the traffic... Basically, if you get one good shot at getting a bunch of people using your program, you want to try to make a good first impression with it... If someone reads the article and downloads the software, even if (or, perhaps, especially if) they don't go on using it, that first impression is going to stick with them. It will continue to color their perception of that program any time they consider using it again, and any time they discuss it with other people.
So I would definitely say the project should be in a very polished state before you subject it to exposure on Slashdot, if promoting adoption is your goal.
UNR--Ubuntu Netbook Remix. This is straight from the summary, bless your illiterate soul.
XP--Nobody actually knows what this stands for, but you can call it Windows 5.1 if that makes you feel better.
It's Microsoft giving you the raspberry!
HAHA LOL BUY WINDOWS XP
So how are you enjoying Virtua Fighter?
If ever there was a game worth buying a Saturn for, that was it...
I rented this game called "Bug" for it once, though - it was awful!
I remember when I first heard of Bayesian filters (here on Slashdot, as I recall) the article was very optimistic about how the filter would be nearly unstoppable... Something to the effect of "to beat this adaptive filtering system, spam would have to stop looking like spam, to the point that it would also cease to be effective" - as if any spam message had some intrinsic "spammy character" inherent in its word chains, and any attempt to change this would also prevent spammers from formulating an effective advertisement... This obviously failed to account for all the ways spammers have found to undermine Bayes filters over the past several years, but I was very impressed with the idea at the time.
How does this solve the problem? If a computer system that has the authentication necessary to send mail is compromised, then it can send out spam as easily as it could now.
I'm not looking to defend SMTP in particular, here - but I'm not clear on what an alternate protocol could do differently that would have a major impact.