The patent system needs to change such that the obvious and trivial can no longer be patented.
I wonder if a more easily achieved middle-goal would be to make the licensing of patents (which is really, presumably, how the system is supposed to work) be relatively affordable. Perhaps relative to the amount of effort demonstrated in the invention of the patent, which could be part of the application - which for a lot of this nonsense would be practically nil.
Well, pretty well all engines CAN run at 60fps all the time, the difficulty is in either having an environment so constrained that you always know what you're going to be rendering, or artists so far under-shooting the 60fps target that your art is lower quality than it might otherwise be. It's a massive balancing act, and entrusting the framerate to non-technical artists would scare the hell out of me.:-) Certainly I've seen it done, but not often, and I'm skeptical of the relative benefits.
means that it is easier to do enough pixels for 480p mode versus 480i
OK... unless you can 100% guarantee you game will run over 60fps all of the time, you will get nasty interlacing artifacts unless you have a full 640x480 display buffer available at all times. From that standpoint, 480p and 480i are exactly the same as far as the number of pixels they need to render. 480p games were available on every single console last generation too...
...things cost exactly what they're worth, which is whatever the market will bear.
Unless they're admitting to being a price-fixing monopoly Or admitting they are stupid, and actually could charge more without seeing a reduction in sales.
Now that you mention it... I wonder why they don't do that? Studio logos and name always get top billing in any film, obviously they believe that studio/brand awareness is important. What could be better than associating the film with the studio right in the URL? It gives a level of authenticity to the site as well, making it obvious it is the official site.
I usually try to leave at least a 2-second gap. That generally means that if anyone does pull in front, I don't have to jam on the brakes. The people you find annoying are probably also obsessive lane-changers, and will be gone in a moment anyway.
It's also comforting to remind yourself that, for a 20-mile trip, the difference between 50mph and 55mph is about 2 minutes. I'm about 10 miles from work, or about a 1 minute difference. An accident will mess up your whole day / week / life.
I shoot for whatever the traffic is flowing at (which is often above the posted limit, but also often under) and try not to freak out at the maniacs crossing three lanes of traffic without signalling so they can get stuck two cars ahead of me.
it costs the county of Iraq more money to kill him than it does to imprison him for life. That is the only real problem with the death penalty in the U.S.
I thought the problems with the death penalty were that it makes the state hypocritical, is occasionally carried out on the innocent, and yes, usually does not make financial sense. Silly me.
Yep. All you have to do is proceed from the assumption that there's nothing wrong, and nobody's trying to cheat the election. I think that's a fairly lousy assumption.
I seem to recall some off-the-record statements last time around to the effect of, "We didn't cheat! And even if we did, it wouldn't matter, because everybody cheats!" It seems like a very lousy assumption indeed.
I've been wondering when someone will create a device which requires no input surface (either voice, or something like this) with something that projects its output as well (presumably something such as this could be made to do it). At that point, there is no particular limitation to how small the device itself can actually get. My Palm would be much more convenient to carry around if it were, say, the size of my watch.
I imagine the academic uses are more of the motivation than consumer interests. The data from a single particle collision experiment can be several gigabytes in size, so accessing a remote database of them makes high bandwidth quite desirable.
My grade 8 teacher was always one of the most reasonable people I have ever met, primarily because, as he said, he never forgot what it was like to be a kid.
I have tried as best as I can to do the same, and one thing I remember is this: at age 14, every one of my peers was responsible and self-aware enough to think that being absolved of responsibility for our actions because of our age was an absolute joke. We knew what we should and should not do and were fully in control of our actions (despite the imminent doom 80's heavy metal was going to bring upon us all).
Kids sometimes do stupid things, but they do it with their eyes wide open and full comprehension of the possible consequences. There are bad kids just as there are bad adults. Not holding them responsible for their actions is a disservice to everyone.
they'll conspicuously advertise a contact phone number and staff it 14 hours a day
Why do I get the image of a single employee sitting in a room with a single phone line and phone, answering calls from irate people who have been getting a busy signal for the last 14 hours?
P.S. I have a PS2 gathering dust somewhere, maybe i should fish it out and get a copy of Lego Star Wars to see how we go.
We got Lego Star Wars for the PC sortly after it came out a year and a half ago. It's still the 5-year-old's favorite game, and the 3-year-old is starting to get it figured out (and starting to compete for play time - fortunately they have their own PC). I spent many late nights myself unlocking everything after they went to bed.:-)
Lego Star Wars II is out in a couple weeks, we'll be picking it up for sure.
Well, I'm a semi-dormant gamer. I make them for a living, but because of that and family pressure don't really have time to play them nearly as much as I used to.
I've spent a lot more time in PC FPS's than most other genres, mostly because they're easy to get into and out of, you can save anywhere, and the kids find them much more interesting than, say, an RTS or text-heavy RPG.
Lego Star Wars has been a fabulous game for this segment I think - good for the entire family, great co-op mode, not terribly demanding on time, and just plain fun. If more games were as accessable as that one there would be a whole new market to sell to.
I'm going to watch the Wii with great interest, because that's exactly who they're trying to sell to. I wasn't terribly interested at first, until it occurred to me that it wasn't for me, it was for my family, and then it just sounded like a whole lot of fun.
Re:"You are a pirate!" - Microsoft
on
Computer Voodoo?
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· Score: 1
Exactly the same thing happened to me... of course, after a couple (miserably) failed attempts at using the voice recognition, it informed me I could just use the keypad to enter the serial number. That worked flawlessly and much more quickly. Then they asked me if it was being installed on a different machine, I said no, they gave me a new code.
Still it's a bit strange. Somehow it thought I had a different network card, even though the only one I have is the built-in one on the motherboard. I noticed later it was now listed as network adapter #2, so I'm not sure if there might have been a way to flip it back to #1 or not.
The main point is that it is impossible to access the mini-game through any mechanism provided by the game as distributed - you need to either modify the game or the save file. It's not something you can stumble across accidentally. Unless you are intentionally looking for it, you'll never see it.
If you are intentionally looking for such things, it's vastly easier to find something racier on the net than what is effectively a Ken and Barbie doll suggestively animated. Regardless of any wrongdoing, the whole issue has been blown so far out of proportion it boggles the mind.
I use the GIMP from time to time in game development (as much as a programmer needs to anyway).
Likes:
-Supports a wide range of file formats
-Tons of image editing and processing options
-Understands the concept of an alpha channel
-Free!
Dislikes:
-Alpha channel support is "inadequate" (to be kind)
-8 bits per channel max
-Starts up very slowly
I don't hate the interface as much as some people, but then I don't work with it all day either. I imagine the bits-per-channel thing could be a pain to fix, depending on how things have been designed. It seems that most problems with it are known and fixable, why is it exactly that they aren't?
I live in Canada, and I'm a bit baffled as well. Who exactly is the offending party here: Wal-Mart, or the people seeing something that isn't actually there?
If thunderbird was preinstalled on 100% of windows machines (like outlook express does), people would quickly learn to equate thunderbird to e-mail the same way they do with outlook
Well, I'm not so sure about that. I've had Thunderbird installed as my only email client for months. Recently, someone mentioned using Thunderbird as a newsgroup reader, and it took me a good 15 seconds to clue in to what program they were talking about. Maybe it's because I have it auto-run on login, but the name doesn't mean anything about sending email to me.
I have been thinking for a while that one of the interesting tricks of human intelligence is the ability to recognize and "tokenize" that infinite chain, essentially allowing us to conceive of the infinite. That sort of generic pattern recognition would seem fairly fundamental to a human-like artificial intelligence, but it's not here yet.
The self-awareness "breakthrough" in question doesn't really seem to be anything of the sort, just some cheap hand-waving and trickery.
Slashdot Mirror
The patent system needs to change such that the obvious and trivial can no longer be patented.
I wonder if a more easily achieved middle-goal would be to make the licensing of patents (which is really, presumably, how the system is supposed to work) be relatively affordable. Perhaps relative to the amount of effort demonstrated in the invention of the patent, which could be part of the application - which for a lot of this nonsense would be practically nil.
......
Model: a standard or example for imitation or comparison.
I don't think the summary means what you think it means.
Now, whether or not the standard we set for our students is "act like an ass on camera in your classroom" is another matter...
Well, pretty well all engines CAN run at 60fps all the time, the difficulty is in either having an environment so constrained that you always know what you're going to be rendering, or artists so far under-shooting the 60fps target that your art is lower quality than it might otherwise be. It's a massive balancing act, and entrusting the framerate to non-technical artists would scare the hell out of me. :-) Certainly I've seen it done, but not often, and I'm skeptical of the relative benefits.
means that it is easier to do enough pixels for 480p mode versus 480i
OK... unless you can 100% guarantee you game will run over 60fps all of the time, you will get nasty interlacing artifacts unless you have a full 640x480 display buffer available at all times. From that standpoint, 480p and 480i are exactly the same as far as the number of pixels they need to render. 480p games were available on every single console last generation too...
...things cost exactly what they're worth, which is whatever the market will bear.
Unless they're admitting to being a price-fixing monopoly Or admitting they are stupid, and actually could charge more without seeing a reduction in sales.
Now that you mention it... I wonder why they don't do that? Studio logos and name always get top billing in any film, obviously they believe that studio/brand awareness is important. What could be better than associating the film with the studio right in the URL? It gives a level of authenticity to the site as well, making it obvious it is the official site.
I usually try to leave at least a 2-second gap. That generally means that if anyone does pull in front, I don't have to jam on the brakes. The people you find annoying are probably also obsessive lane-changers, and will be gone in a moment anyway.
It's also comforting to remind yourself that, for a 20-mile trip, the difference between 50mph and 55mph is about 2 minutes. I'm about 10 miles from work, or about a 1 minute difference. An accident will mess up your whole day / week / life.
I shoot for whatever the traffic is flowing at (which is often above the posted limit, but also often under) and try not to freak out at the maniacs crossing three lanes of traffic without signalling so they can get stuck two cars ahead of me.
I thought the problems with the death penalty were that it makes the state hypocritical, is occasionally carried out on the innocent, and yes, usually does not make financial sense. Silly me.
I seem to recall some off-the-record statements last time around to the effect of, "We didn't cheat! And even if we did, it wouldn't matter, because everybody cheats!" It seems like a very lousy assumption indeed.
Since a computer is just a tool, it all depends what you want to do.
As a game player and game developer (PC, consoles), using a Mac would be a painful exercise in disaster.
But if it runs all of the applications you want, in a more user-friendly and efficient environment, then why not switch?
Hardware is irrelevant - software rules. The OS is irrelevant, whether it runs the software you want is all that matters.
I've been wondering when someone will create a device which requires no input surface (either voice, or something like this) with something that projects its output as well (presumably something such as this could be made to do it). At that point, there is no particular limitation to how small the device itself can actually get. My Palm would be much more convenient to carry around if it were, say, the size of my watch.
I imagine the academic uses are more of the motivation than consumer interests. The data from a single particle collision experiment can be several gigabytes in size, so accessing a remote database of them makes high bandwidth quite desirable.
My grade 8 teacher was always one of the most reasonable people I have ever met, primarily because, as he said, he never forgot what it was like to be a kid.
I have tried as best as I can to do the same, and one thing I remember is this: at age 14, every one of my peers was responsible and self-aware enough to think that being absolved of responsibility for our actions because of our age was an absolute joke. We knew what we should and should not do and were fully in control of our actions (despite the imminent doom 80's heavy metal was going to bring upon us all).
Kids sometimes do stupid things, but they do it with their eyes wide open and full comprehension of the possible consequences. There are bad kids just as there are bad adults. Not holding them responsible for their actions is a disservice to everyone.
Why do I get the image of a single employee sitting in a room with a single phone line and phone, answering calls from irate people who have been getting a busy signal for the last 14 hours?
We got Lego Star Wars for the PC sortly after it came out a year and a half ago. It's still the 5-year-old's favorite game, and the 3-year-old is starting to get it figured out (and starting to compete for play time - fortunately they have their own PC). I spent many late nights myself unlocking everything after they went to bed. :-)
Lego Star Wars II is out in a couple weeks, we'll be picking it up for sure.
I've spent a lot more time in PC FPS's than most other genres, mostly because they're easy to get into and out of, you can save anywhere, and the kids find them much more interesting than, say, an RTS or text-heavy RPG.
Lego Star Wars has been a fabulous game for this segment I think - good for the entire family, great co-op mode, not terribly demanding on time, and just plain fun. If more games were as accessable as that one there would be a whole new market to sell to.
I'm going to watch the Wii with great interest, because that's exactly who they're trying to sell to. I wasn't terribly interested at first, until it occurred to me that it wasn't for me, it was for my family, and then it just sounded like a whole lot of fun.
Exactly the same thing happened to me... of course, after a couple (miserably) failed attempts at using the voice recognition, it informed me I could just use the keypad to enter the serial number. That worked flawlessly and much more quickly. Then they asked me if it was being installed on a different machine, I said no, they gave me a new code.
Still it's a bit strange. Somehow it thought I had a different network card, even though the only one I have is the built-in one on the motherboard. I noticed later it was now listed as network adapter #2, so I'm not sure if there might have been a way to flip it back to #1 or not.
What kind of curve does that graph follow, if 5 year olds are the average?
If you are intentionally looking for such things, it's vastly easier to find something racier on the net than what is effectively a Ken and Barbie doll suggestively animated. Regardless of any wrongdoing, the whole issue has been blown so far out of proportion it boggles the mind.
And should this suggestion gain popularity, I humbly appologize to future generations.
Yes, it is Windows. I don't think it's GTK though, mostly it seems to be searching for plugins or loading components.
Likes:
-Supports a wide range of file formats
-Tons of image editing and processing options
-Understands the concept of an alpha channel
-Free!
Dislikes:
-Alpha channel support is "inadequate" (to be kind)
-8 bits per channel max
-Starts up very slowly
I don't hate the interface as much as some people, but then I don't work with it all day either. I imagine the bits-per-channel thing could be a pain to fix, depending on how things have been designed. It seems that most problems with it are known and fixable, why is it exactly that they aren't?
I live in Canada, and I'm a bit baffled as well. Who exactly is the offending party here: Wal-Mart, or the people seeing something that isn't actually there?
Well, I'm not so sure about that. I've had Thunderbird installed as my only email client for months. Recently, someone mentioned using Thunderbird as a newsgroup reader, and it took me a good 15 seconds to clue in to what program they were talking about. Maybe it's because I have it auto-run on login, but the name doesn't mean anything about sending email to me.
The self-awareness "breakthrough" in question doesn't really seem to be anything of the sort, just some cheap hand-waving and trickery.