Good links BTW, and I did read most of the information contained at their locations.
But something struck me, as I've been reading quite a bit of information about early computing and code breaking concerning the enigma. The only thing they ever mention is that it was "German Built".
Which German built it?
How many other early computing concepts have simply been atrributed to anonymous "Germans"? I know a bit about Zuse, but were there others?
Are there no records of this?
I ask only in the interests of computing history, though I guess I run the risk of my intentions being misinterpreted.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
The old "open source" games that you use as examples have their roots in real-world games. Heck, almost all computer games are just adaptations of games that previously existed in r/l.
The precursor to Nethack - d&d.
The precursor to the unspecified "multiplayer conquest game" - Diplomacy
mazewar - paintball (a bit of a stretch, but pretty close)
So let me rephrase a paragraph or two of yours: So, it seems to me that open source game programmer collectives are making non-proprietary games out of proprietary, often copyrighted, games. They add a bit of graphics, modify the gameplay somewhat (often dumbing it down due to hardware limitations), and do a pretty crappy job at packaging. When the original inventor of a game does that, I don't have a problem with it, but most of these collectives are generations away from the original inventors
Should they get the kind of protection from prosecution that open source hubris provides? I think not. Their slick, non-commercial implementation of copyrighted ideas deserves prompt legal action. In the give-and-take of ideas between proprietary and non-proprietary games, IMO, open source programming collectives have been doing a lot more taking than giving.
That's an entirely sarcastic passage, btw. But my point is, the open source people draw just as much inspiration from the world around them as the commercial "evils" that surround them.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
This is a wasted post, I know. Just thought I'd add my voice to this line of reasoning though. Which is almost participating in a reflection of the situation you speak about... only seeking out and responding to information that you agree with.
I'm already caught in the net.:-)
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Yeah it's a simple accessory, I realize that, so why hasn't it been done until now? Because you don't need to type on something that you can't save your words on?
What a laugh; the keyboard is 100+ buttons of pure, unadulterated gaming interface just waiting to be exploited, yet completely ignored by the console industry. The mouse is simply the best 2d-movement analog controller you can find (of course, mice don't work well on carpets, but the SNES had one... why didn't the PS1?)
The point of my message though, was that this is never ever discussed. They only focus on polygon pushing power, as if that was the only way people experience games. I'd laugh my balls off reading a ZDNet/C-Net article prognosticating the doom of PC gaming yet again, when all they talk about is the whiz-bang doo-dads, not the fundamental changes that must really happen to consoles if they ever want to overtake PCs as serious gaming rigs.
The Dreamcast keyboard is a step in the right direction. MS will probably do the same for X-Box. If Sony dosn't do it for the PS2 or Nintendo for the GameCube, then they are dead before they hit the shelves. -- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
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One always hears about the outputs when discussing gaming rigs. One never hears a discussion regarding the inputs.
Why is that?
The inputs are such an integral part of the equation and are what keep me coming back to PC games. I know that they are not as fancy as graphics and sounds, but they play as much a part in game design, if not more, because they dictate the type of interface that you can build, which in turn dictates the type of game mechanics that can be built, which THEN determines the presentation bells and whistles (of course, that's purely theoretical, as most games just follow a successful formula and therefore only concentrate on bigger badder graphics with a few minor twists on the interface/control scheme).
It's pretty tough to imagine Quake being developed for a console first when you consider that you almost require a keyboard/mouse combination control in order to play it properly. Same thing goes for Dune and War-Craft. If there were only consoles and joypads available, these types of games would -never- have developed to the point they currently are at.
Until consoles provide more than the Joypad/Analog Stick/8 Button environment, then they will always be severely retarded compared to PCs in terms of the variety of gaming experiences that they can deliver. You will get fighters, platformers, menu driven random combat-fest "RPGs" with no character interaction, puzzlers, and drivers. The other hugely successful gaming genres: First Person Shooters, Real Time Strategy, and Massively Multiplayer RPGs, will remain the domain of the PC until such time as controls better suited to their application appear on the console (namely the keyboard/mouse combination).
Yes I realize that SEGA is doing some MMORPG based on Phantasy Star (one of their earlier console RPG hits), but try to imagine for one second how hard it's going to be for the palyers to communicate with one another without a keyboard. What will make this a compelling experience, beyond what is already capable on a console, if the players can't easily communicate with one another?
I also realize that GoldenEye is a great console based FPS, but it dosn't come close to replicating the feel of Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, or QuakeX. Furthermore, when the console FPS crowd eventually go online, they'll have to remain in their own server spaces simply because they won't have a hope in hell against keyboard/mousers. The same thing goes for RTS games.
Sure, inputs might be the simplest of balances to rectify, but how come they NEVER discuss this topic? It's always about graphics and blah blah blah. So what! All you'll get is better looking versions of games that you already own. And forget about cross-platform development of PC and console games on the X-Box if they do not support similar control options.
All this grief just adds to the fact that by the time X-Box, GameCube, and the PS2 are released, PCs will be 2 generations ahead technologically... which is all anybody cares about anyways it seems.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
I don't know how this got moderated as funny. I'd moderate it up and say interesting because it's bloody true. I've seen ads exactly like the one mentioned, where someone requires so much experience with a fledgeling tool, that they would've had to be learning it before it was publicly available.
When I left my former position, the requirements list that they published, in the advertising to fill my position, was ridiculous. I didn't meet half of their requirements. I couldn't have got my old job back even if I wanted to.
Do you know why they did this? Because policy dictated that they had to give opportunity to the general public regardless of whether they just wanted to promote someone from inside. They simply put someone they already had into the position I vacated, cicumventing due process.
Neat tactic:-\
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Ultimately winning a battle at law (USA or EU) is not going to be enough. You need to persuade people/voters that there are problems with the Industry generally and especially Microsoft and these same, ordinary people are suffering as a consequence.
Part of the solution is going to involve explaining about good and bad software practices, How quality code can be built, the importance of well controlled and maintained open standards etc.
I agree that this is something that -should- be done, but we are talking about educating Joe. A. Everyman here. Teaching the average person about the importance of good software practices and principles is a monumental, if not futile endeavor. The sad fact of life is that ignorance begets ignorance and after enough generations of unquestioning servitude, you need something bordering on a revolution to get people to think for themselves again.:-( (Besides, I would rather that more people paid greater attention to the lives of their children than whether or not such and such software package is good for them on technical and social terms.)
Once you have got the "movers and thinkers" in society to understand such issues - then it will become a lot easier to convince of them things like why it is wrong for a company to leverage its market to try and subvert an open standard API into a proprietry API.
The only real "movers and thinkers" in N. American society are those presented through the popular media. This makes it extremely easy for corporate interests to control exactly which thinker gets heard, when, and for how long. It is difficult to find a rationally intelligent person who can communicate effectively while at the same time understand the entire issue from technical details all the way up to broad social scope. It is rarer still to find a person with those qualities AND a sizeable audience of the general populace.
Sorry to be such a downer.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
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no one's asking you to give up a right. i'm asking someone to explain to me again when production of art became the same activity as production, say, of canned corn.
At about the time that the (insert media industry of choice) started to churn out everything based on prescribed formulas. Face it, the art that makes money is a commodity, nothing more, nothing less.
In the music world, think of every pop 'artist' ever. The Backstreet Boys were manufactured. And to use the argument that "pop art is not art, real art is..." is just ignoring the fact that art is whatever the public/media wants it to be. There is no such thing as certain art being more "real" than other art. It can be better than other art (entirely subjectively, I might add), but art is art, good or bad.
You want exposure? You better be able to position yourself for an audience. Yes, even on napster (etc...)
You want to starve? Keep up the "art is not a commodity" ideal.
Art = canned corn. Maybe that was the whole point of Warhols soup cans... to show that relationship.
-- kwashiorkor -- Leaps in Logic should not be confused with
electronic transfer = fast physical transfer = slow The highways can transport the same materials as the internet (and more), but to Joe Nobody, it's all about instant gratification. When it can be had for little to no effort, then it will be had... just cuz. But when it takes time or effort, there's a certain barrier to entry that keeps a lot of people out. -- kwashiorkor -- Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
Here's what the mobile giants of Europe are working on/with: symbian.
Some of the proposed devices using it will resemble PDAs in one sense, but will be fully integrated with cell phones. As someone mentioned in a thread above this one, because the two functions of PIM and Cell Communication are complimentary, they are converging. Unfortunately, because this is happening faster in Europe than in the USA, we're not as aware of these developments, unless we're actively looking for them.
For a quick example: imagine being able to drop your PDA into your breast pocket, then clipping a small earphone/mic. to your ear. You say something like, "dial Mark Edwards" and it recognizes the voice command, fetches Mark's phone number from it's built in address book, and places the call for you.
To me, that dosn't sound like that same ole PDA. Until that time, I don't think I'll get any of the current generation PDAs. They're really nothing more than Exec/Geek badges of status and are more trouble than they're worth (to me, at least).
-- kwashiorkor -- Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
Does anyone even remember this article posted by CmdrTaco sometime yesterday (or maybe even the day before?)... about the naval research institute achieveing 400GB/sq. inch ?
By the time we've met with the capacity of magneto-resistive drives, we'll be moving on to something else. As the article said, thin-film didn't last forever, who/what is saying that MR has to last forever?
There will be no storage shortage in the future. Who cares about the death of MR... bring on the next generation.
PS: Imagine how long a surface scan is going to take on one of these babies. Pack a three course meal, and a good book.
-- kwashiorkor -- Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
It's too little too late. MS isn't even going to bother putting up more than a cursory fight. They're such an amorphous company that they'll simply change and "innovate" somewhere else.
I'm thinking that their whole XBox initiative is aimed at putting MS everywhere, but not as a software vendor per se, but as a content vehicle. I see them as positioning themselves as a sort of media company in the same sense as NBC or CBS is a TV network. XBox is just the foot in the door.
Whatever the case may be, we are far far from being free of MS and any other corporation in the same stratosphere. MS is simply too pervasively entrenched in the realm of computing right now that removing them from the environment will take years, if it ever happens.
So they're not on the bleeding edge of technology, that dosn't make them irrelevant by any means. The bleeding edge is that top 1-2% and MS makes up the other 98%. They could roll over and squish everone of us without any effort.
-- kwashiorkor -- Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
The rates are: $0.233 on blank tapes of 40 minutes or more $0.052 on blank CD-R $0.608 on minidisc, CD-RW, and CD-R Audio For more info: click here
Say that 15,000,000 blank CD-Rs are sold in Canada this year (very rough estimate and probably not accurate). That's $780,000 Canadian or $530,681 USD (as of today). When split between all of the artists losing money because of IP theft, you can liken that to trying to make change for a penny.
And not all of that surtax goes to the music industry. Portions go to any industry which uses CDs to distribute digitized IP. So try and split it even further. [I've heard that the only portion that goes to the recording industry is the levy from the CDR-Audio, which is a joke because there's nothing preventing anyone from using the CD-R (regular) for recording music]
Furthermore, how many MP3s can you fit on a CD. Taken at roughly 5MB/file, and 650MB/CD, that's about 130 songs. How many songs does the average albumn contain? probably between 10 and 15 on average, which means you could get the entire MP3 library of an artist on a single CD, and that's assuming high bit rate conversion. So you don't need many CDs to have thousands of tunes.
Couple that with 40GB and larger HDs, and you can see that there really isn't any need for CDs and that the surtax amounts to a joke. This dosn't even take into account that storage media is growing ever larger and cheaper at a furious rate.
Taking copies of Intellectual Property that you have not purchased from the original source is theft. Denial is simply ridiculous.
-- kwashiorkor -- Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
Something I'm NOT seeing in the various posts about the XBox here on/. is imagination, just gripe gripe gripe. Think about this...
The XBox proposed stats: An x86 CPU running at 600mhz It has 64MB unified DDR SDRAM 8 gig HD DVD ROM drive
So here we're all whining about it being obsolete by the time this thing ships and blah blah blah...
Well, if it's made from pretty much generic, off the shelf PC parts, what is really stopping MS from replacing the 600mhz CPU with an 800mhz CPU by release date? How about upping the amount of memory? Increasing the size of the HD?
The only thing they have commited to is a paper spec. The beauty of it is that the only proprietary part in that spec is the NV25 which dosn't yet exist. If they happen to upgrade any of the hardware along such predictable paths, I'm sure that the developers wouldn't mind.
I don't think throwing a faster CPU into the mix would be a death blow to any developer, though if they didn't plan for scaling then their game might not be as impressive as one that uses ALL of that power.
Not only that, but if they decide to stick to exactly what their paper spec says, by the time of the XBox's release, the component parts will cost next to nothing (except for the graphics chip) allowing them to undercut their competition's prices. And that's just good business sense. Just think about how much SONY has ahd to invest in the PSX2 just to get it off the ground. Proprietary this proprietary that... by comparisson the XBox is half-way to being an open system.
I'm sure that within moments of release, some enterprising H4x0r will develop an interface allowing you to use the hardware for just about anything, much like that 'net appliance (the name eludes me at the moment) that people've been snapping up from BestBuys (or wherever) and turing into dirt cheap 'net surfing wonder toys. Heck, with the amount of hardware in the XBox, and the fact that it practically is an x86 PC, there's got to be some way to bend it to one's will.:-)
-- kwashiorkor -- Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
This breakthrough though is very interesting. Visions of wearable computers based on cheaply manufactured monocles seem to be creeping ever closer to reality:-)
But here's a product that puts to practice a real breakthrough in flat panel display technology. (though I'm not sure about it's power consumption).
iFire Flat Panel Displays Compared with most other flat panel technologies, an iFire flat panel display is a very simple device. It does not involve vacuum like CRT and FED; gases like PDP; or liquids like LCD. This results in reduced susceptibility to shock, vibration and breakage. Unlike LCD that relies on multiple fluorescent tubes to light up the display, iFire flat panel displays emit light from the front portion of the display. This results in a wider viewing angle and a crisper, clearer image. The simple screen printing methods also translate into lower costs, and higher yields, thus producing an affordable flat panel display for the mass consumer market. http://www.ifire.com/technology/compar e.html
-- kwashiorkor -- Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
I wonder how this competes with the strongARM processor:
The strongARM only requires about 400 milliwatts vs. the crusoe's 1 watt.
The crusoe has compatibility with existing software (not just x86) via the code morphing whereas the strongARM is a platform unto itself.
The crusoe might have a faster clock cycle, but are the extra megahertz used up by the CodeMorphing?
Whatever the verdict, when coupled by emergent display technologies (OLED and SSD), it looks like the future of ultra compacts is all bright and shiny right now.
I'm also wondering what the overclocking potential of such a low heat dissipating CPU must be:-)! Imgine one of these babies in a cryotech tower (this is more or less a joke - laugh, damn it!).
-- kwashiorkor -- Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
... "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen."
What drags us all back to places like Slashdot and work environments like "locker rooms" is that in these chaotic hostile environments, good ideas are kept and bad ideas are discarded. Just like a kitchen, these environments are where all of the cooking and real action is happening. We post our thoughts for public peer review and accept the consequences of posting these thoughts. We flame weeds, we don't nuture them, that's counter productive. Deal with it.
If you are flamed by an anonymous entity you learn to write that off and ignore it. When you are flamed, or crticized harshly in public by a more knowledgeable entity, you either learn to think BEFORE you speak or you develop a certain mental toughness that lets you ignore what others have to say. It's a common fallacy that just because someone has something to say that it is worth listening to.
So it's not civil? So what! There's no time for niceties in the digital medium, especially when talking about meat and potatoes like code or science or politics. Niceties are for the leisure class, expediency is for those who have to get things done and don't have time for garbage clogging up the pipes.
By the way, since when did the color of a person's skin, or their sex, mean anything in terms of the 'net? If being black or hispanic (etc...), male or female affects ones ability to participate in online communities it is because of outside cultural influences.
It stands to reason that people from predominantly underclass cultural backgrounds would not have the necessary resources - personal, environmental, or otherwise - to gain knowledge of these areas that are dominated by the young white male. To imply that this resultant is a function of virtual communities is ridiculous, this is a result of meatspace socio-political boundries. On here, you are all colors and no colors (mmm mmm cliched metaphors, yum!:-), so get over it Katz.
In the immortal words of the Human Torch: "Flame on!"
-- kwashiorkor -- Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
I see a lot of statements and speculations about this potentially being a PDA (or other ultra portable device) running a version of Linux or Win or something. What I'm wondering is WHY does it have to involve an already existing operating system?
I'm not sure if it's been mentioned before by Linus himself or elsewhere, but why does a project involving Linus have to involve Linux? Is it possible that he could be working on a customized o/s for an all new platform? Is it possible that he might be working on other things altogether?
This is not a flame and I'm probably misinformed, but I havn't seen any references explicitly stating that Linus is working on an o/s and for that matter, Linux.
Furthermore, judging by the information on the patents filed by Transmeta, this appears to be a radically different processor design. This might need an equally radical approach to software development, especially in the compiler and o/s departments. Maybe Linus is stretching his wings at Transmeta and doing something completely different.
-- kwashiorkor -- Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
Pretend that the deed is done. MS is broken up into multiple smaller shops. Each shop deals with a narrower field, such as office suites or o/s development.
So lets say that by forcing the company into smaller shops, it has the intended effect of opening up the undocumented APIs. It would have to because how would each of the shops be able to create new products with secret features when there would be communication barriers between the shops. I'm though that at first, the secrets would be very slow in leaking out, so you could probably count on Word, or whatever, to be dominant in it's market sector for the forseeable future.
Take it a step further. Let's say, for purposes of illustration, that this actually has the intended effect. Suddenly the market is opened again to competitors, and companies such as Corel with their WordPerfect suite start to gain marketshare again. Companies start to make a lot more money when competeting with the children of MS on their old turf.
I'm really curious what this would do to the open source movement. I find a lot of new (and lots of the old) open source supporters have a very anti-MS stance and it seems that a lot of the reasons for open source software is in reply to this inability to compete with a closed source monopoly. But if there was a new way to compete on the Win platform, would a lot of people abandon doing open source stuff?
I can see a lot of people saying with great invective that this would never happen. That open source is the way of the future. But I suspect that once the lucre begins waving in front of peoples' noses, that there is a chance of moving back to our cathedrals.
Just a thought. (Probably been thought before by better people, but I thought that it was approprite).
-- kwashiorkor -- Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
This isn't really related to the article itself, but more to LL's response. So moderate it down if necessary.
I took the time to read the article he linked to and I must say that I would recommend that everyone should do as I did and read it. Very informative and educational, unless of course you knew all about this sort of stuff already (dumb 'dark fibre' networks).
I wonder though at the fact that it was published in 1992 and we havn't really heard of this sort of thing. Yes I realize that the telcos would be running big obfuscation and FUD campaigns against something this threatening to their power, but one would think that some more information would be widely available as it seems like such a positive thing.
Of course it could all be a pipe-dream technology along the lines of pure vapourware, but it just seems too logical and "right" IMHO. If anyone can point me to more resources along these lines, I'd be very grateful. Please feel free to email me, as this forum is not the proper place for responses to my enquiry. Thanks.
-- kwashiorkor -- Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
From colored Palms, to colored intelligent vaccuum cleaners in less than a day. Neat.
This is an intriguing bit of technology, but more importantly (at least to myself), is that it's nice to see such a clean approach to design. They're builing a practical robot from the ground up, in a staged/layered manner, instead of lumping a whole bunch of features into the product at once, and then trying to unravel the knots at a later date. The only problem I have is that the robot might have been released prematurely as there are hardly any real uses for it yet.
What I mean by all that is, cye is apparently a good stepping stone for future robotic products because it's starting as a simple device to which revisions can be easily applied. The future growth of something designed in this manner is greater than something like the sony AIBO, which would be something quite difficult to change due to it's greater base level of complexity.
I'm thinking of cye as the kernel around which a real robotic appliance can one day be built. All the sensory features, and manipulators and fancy things can be gradually introduced as they become useable as well as feasible.
I also like that it's brains are your PC. This provides an easy upgrade path that isn't based on any one particular hardware platform. Try upgrading an AIBO to do something other than what it was initially built for and the differences will be apparent.
I can actually see this scene in my head. As a matter of fact, I can see the Wired magazine article right now.
Two guys with blond highlighted spikey hair. Black single breasted suits with blue shirts and metallic yellow ties. The one woman is dressed like a pop culture icon, right down to the thick rimmed black plastic glasses which add that touch of fau-geek intelligence. They're sitting either in a fancy "cafe" or in a glass tower "office by IKEA".
Can't you just tell that I LOVE the pop image of the people in the tech industry. I'm still waiting to turn into the uber-stud "internet guy" who drives a porsche and has a super model for a wife.
I know this has nothing to do with Color Palms, but damnit, this is funny. I havn't laughed this bitterly in ages. WHAAAA! I want my IPO!
Slashdot Mirror
But something struck me, as I've been reading quite a bit of information about early computing and code breaking concerning the enigma. The only thing they ever mention is that it was "German Built".
Which German built it?
How many other early computing concepts have simply been atrributed to anonymous "Germans"? I know a bit about Zuse, but were there others?
Are there no records of this?
I ask only in the interests of computing history, though I guess I run the risk of my intentions being misinterpreted.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
The Mgt.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
The precursor to Nethack - d&d.
The precursor to the unspecified "multiplayer conquest game" - Diplomacy
mazewar - paintball (a bit of a stretch, but pretty close)
So let me rephrase a paragraph or two of yours:
So, it seems to me that open source game programmer collectives are making non-proprietary games out of proprietary, often copyrighted, games. They add a bit of graphics, modify the gameplay somewhat (often dumbing it down due to hardware limitations), and do a pretty crappy job at packaging. When the original inventor of a game does that, I don't have a problem with it, but most of these collectives are generations away from the original inventors
Should they get the kind of protection from prosecution that open source hubris provides? I think not. Their slick, non-commercial implementation of copyrighted ideas deserves prompt legal action. In the give-and-take of ideas between proprietary and non-proprietary games, IMO, open source programming collectives have been doing a lot more taking than giving.
That's an entirely sarcastic passage, btw. But my point is, the open source people draw just as much inspiration from the world around them as the commercial "evils" that surround them.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
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This is a wasted post, I know. Just thought I'd add my voice to this line of reasoning though. Which is almost participating in a reflection of the situation you speak about... only seeking out and responding to information that you agree with.
I'm already caught in the net. :-)
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
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What a laugh; the keyboard is 100+ buttons of pure, unadulterated gaming interface just waiting to be exploited, yet completely ignored by the console industry. The mouse is simply the best 2d-movement analog controller you can find (of course, mice don't work well on carpets, but the SNES had one... why didn't the PS1?)
The point of my message though, was that this is never ever discussed. They only focus on polygon pushing power, as if that was the only way people experience games. I'd laugh my balls off reading a ZDNet/C-Net article prognosticating the doom of PC gaming yet again, when all they talk about is the whiz-bang doo-dads, not the fundamental changes that must really happen to consoles if they ever want to overtake PCs as serious gaming rigs.
The Dreamcast keyboard is a step in the right direction. MS will probably do the same for X-Box. If Sony dosn't do it for the PS2 or Nintendo for the GameCube, then they are dead before they hit the shelves.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
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Why is that?
The inputs are such an integral part of the equation and are what keep me coming back to PC games. I know that they are not as fancy as graphics and sounds, but they play as much a part in game design, if not more, because they dictate the type of interface that you can build, which in turn dictates the type of game mechanics that can be built, which THEN determines the presentation bells and whistles (of course, that's purely theoretical, as most games just follow a successful formula and therefore only concentrate on bigger badder graphics with a few minor twists on the interface/control scheme).
Until consoles provide more than the Joypad/Analog Stick/8 Button environment, then they will always be severely retarded compared to PCs in terms of the variety of gaming experiences that they can deliver. You will get fighters, platformers, menu driven random combat-fest "RPGs" with no character interaction, puzzlers, and drivers. The other hugely successful gaming genres: First Person Shooters, Real Time Strategy, and Massively Multiplayer RPGs, will remain the domain of the PC until such time as controls better suited to their application appear on the console (namely the keyboard/mouse combination).Yes I realize that SEGA is doing some MMORPG based on Phantasy Star (one of their earlier console RPG hits), but try to imagine for one second how hard it's going to be for the palyers to communicate with one another without a keyboard. What will make this a compelling experience, beyond what is already capable on a console, if the players can't easily communicate with one another?
I also realize that GoldenEye is a great console based FPS, but it dosn't come close to replicating the feel of Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, or QuakeX. Furthermore, when the console FPS crowd eventually go online, they'll have to remain in their own server spaces simply because they won't have a hope in hell against keyboard/mousers. The same thing goes for RTS games.
Sure, inputs might be the simplest of balances to rectify, but how come they NEVER discuss this topic? It's always about graphics and blah blah blah. So what! All you'll get is better looking versions of games that you already own. And forget about cross-platform development of PC and console games on the X-Box if they do not support similar control options.
All this grief just adds to the fact that by the time X-Box, GameCube, and the PS2 are released, PCs will be 2 generations ahead technologically... which is all anybody cares about anyways it seems.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
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When I left my former position, the requirements list that they published, in the advertising to fill my position, was ridiculous. I didn't meet half of their requirements. I couldn't have got my old job back even if I wanted to.
Do you know why they did this? Because policy dictated that they had to give opportunity to the general public regardless of whether they just wanted to promote someone from inside. They simply put someone they already had into the position I vacated, cicumventing due process.
Neat tactic :-\
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
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Sorry to be such a downer.
-- kwashiorkor --
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In the music world, think of every pop 'artist' ever. The Backstreet Boys were manufactured. And to use the argument that "pop art is not art, real art is..." is just ignoring the fact that art is whatever the public/media wants it to be. There is no such thing as certain art being more "real" than other art. It can be better than other art (entirely subjectively, I might add), but art is art, good or bad.
You want exposure? You better be able to position yourself for an audience. Yes, even on napster (etc...)
You want to starve? Keep up the "art is not a commodity" ideal.
Art = canned corn. Maybe that was the whole point of Warhols soup cans... to show that relationship.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
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I'd like to add:
- Fist of the North Star (for ultra violence)
- Lost Record of Lodoss War (the first Lodoss series)
- Doomed Megalopolis (excellent "magic in modern times")
- MaddOx (astounding "mecha")
just some of my favourites. destined to be ignored as they're buried DEEP down in the-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
electronic transfer = fast physical transfer = slow The highways can transport the same materials as the internet (and more), but to Joe Nobody, it's all about instant gratification. When it can be had for little to no effort, then it will be had... just cuz. But when it takes time or effort, there's a certain barrier to entry that keeps a lot of people out.
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
Some of the proposed devices using it will resemble PDAs in one sense, but will be fully integrated with cell phones. As someone mentioned in a thread above this one, because the two functions of PIM and Cell Communication are complimentary, they are converging. Unfortunately, because this is happening faster in Europe than in the USA, we're not as aware of these developments, unless we're actively looking for them.
For a quick example: imagine being able to drop your PDA into your breast pocket, then clipping a small earphone/mic. to your ear. You say something like, "dial Mark Edwards" and it recognizes the voice command, fetches Mark's phone number from it's built in address book, and places the call for you.
To me, that dosn't sound like that same ole PDA. Until that time, I don't think I'll get any of the current generation PDAs. They're really nothing more than Exec/Geek badges of status and are more trouble than they're worth (to me, at least).
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
By the time we've met with the capacity of magneto-resistive drives, we'll be moving on to something else. As the article said, thin-film didn't last forever, who/what is saying that MR has to last forever?
There will be no storage shortage in the future. Who cares about the death of MR... bring on the next generation.
PS: Imagine how long a surface scan is going to take on one of these babies. Pack a three course meal, and a good book.
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
I'm thinking that their whole XBox initiative is aimed at putting MS everywhere, but not as a software vendor per se, but as a content vehicle. I see them as positioning themselves as a sort of media company in the same sense as NBC or CBS is a TV network. XBox is just the foot in the door.
Whatever the case may be, we are far far from being free of MS and any other corporation in the same stratosphere. MS is simply too pervasively entrenched in the realm of computing right now that removing them from the environment will take years, if it ever happens.
So they're not on the bleeding edge of technology, that dosn't make them irrelevant by any means. The bleeding edge is that top 1-2% and MS makes up the other 98%. They could roll over and squish everone of us without any effort.
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
The rates are:
$0.233 on blank tapes of 40 minutes or more
$0.052 on blank CD-R
$0.608 on minidisc, CD-RW, and CD-R Audio
For more info: click here
Say that 15,000,000 blank CD-Rs are sold in Canada this year (very rough estimate and probably not accurate). That's $780,000 Canadian or $530,681 USD (as of today). When split between all of the artists losing money because of IP theft, you can liken that to trying to make change for a penny.
And not all of that surtax goes to the music industry. Portions go to any industry which uses CDs to distribute digitized IP. So try and split it even further. [I've heard that the only portion that goes to the recording industry is the levy from the CDR-Audio, which is a joke because there's nothing preventing anyone from using the CD-R (regular) for recording music]
Furthermore, how many MP3s can you fit on a CD. Taken at roughly 5MB/file, and 650MB/CD, that's about 130 songs. How many songs does the average albumn contain? probably between 10 and 15 on average, which means you could get the entire MP3 library of an artist on a single CD, and that's assuming high bit rate conversion. So you don't need many CDs to have thousands of tunes.
Couple that with 40GB and larger HDs, and you can see that there really isn't any need for CDs and that the surtax amounts to a joke. This dosn't even take into account that storage media is growing ever larger and cheaper at a furious rate.
Taking copies of Intellectual Property that you have not purchased from the original source is theft. Denial is simply ridiculous.
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
The XBox proposed stats: An x86 CPU running at 600mhz
It has 64MB unified DDR SDRAM
8 gig HD
DVD ROM drive
So here we're all whining about it being obsolete by the time this thing ships and blah blah blah...
Well, if it's made from pretty much generic, off the shelf PC parts, what is really stopping MS from replacing the 600mhz CPU with an 800mhz CPU by release date? How about upping the amount of memory? Increasing the size of the HD?
The only thing they have commited to is a paper spec. The beauty of it is that the only proprietary part in that spec is the NV25 which dosn't yet exist. If they happen to upgrade any of the hardware along such predictable paths, I'm sure that the developers wouldn't mind.
I don't think throwing a faster CPU into the mix would be a death blow to any developer, though if they didn't plan for scaling then their game might not be as impressive as one that uses ALL of that power.
Not only that, but if they decide to stick to exactly what their paper spec says, by the time of the XBox's release, the component parts will cost next to nothing (except for the graphics chip) allowing them to undercut their competition's prices. And that's just good business sense. Just think about how much SONY has ahd to invest in the PSX2 just to get it off the ground. Proprietary this proprietary that... by comparisson the XBox is half-way to being an open system.
I'm sure that within moments of release, some enterprising H4x0r will develop an interface allowing you to use the hardware for just about anything, much like that 'net appliance (the name eludes me at the moment) that people've been snapping up from BestBuys (or wherever) and turing into dirt cheap 'net surfing wonder toys. Heck, with the amount of hardware in the XBox, and the fact that it practically is an x86 PC, there's got to be some way to bend it to one's will. :-)
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
We need malaise infected futurists like Sterling and Gibson to get other jobs and stop harping on about the hells of the near future.
I would kill to read a positive, yet realistic, prediction one of these days... but maybe that's just me.
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
For more info about OLED, look on Kodak's site:c ts/specialProducts/OEL/oelIndex.shtm l
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/produ
But here's a product that puts to practice a real breakthrough in flat panel display technology. (though I'm not sure about it's power consumption).
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
- The strongARM only requires about 400 milliwatts vs. the crusoe's 1 watt.
- The crusoe has compatibility with existing software (not just x86) via the code morphing whereas the strongARM is a platform unto itself.
- The crusoe might have a faster clock cycle, but are the extra megahertz used up by the CodeMorphing?
Whatever the verdict, when coupled by emergent display technologies (OLED and SSD), it looks like the future of ultra compacts is all bright and shiny right now.I'm also wondering what the overclocking potential of such a low heat dissipating CPU must be :-)! Imgine one of these babies in a cryotech tower (this is more or less a joke - laugh, damn it!).
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
What drags us all back to places like Slashdot and work environments like "locker rooms" is that in these chaotic hostile environments, good ideas are kept and bad ideas are discarded. Just like a kitchen, these environments are where all of the cooking and real action is happening. We post our thoughts for public peer review and accept the consequences of posting these thoughts. We flame weeds, we don't nuture them, that's counter productive. Deal with it.
If you are flamed by an anonymous entity you learn to write that off and ignore it. When you are flamed, or crticized harshly in public by a more knowledgeable entity, you either learn to think BEFORE you speak or you develop a certain mental toughness that lets you ignore what others have to say. It's a common fallacy that just because someone has something to say that it is worth listening to.
So it's not civil? So what! There's no time for niceties in the digital medium, especially when talking about meat and potatoes like code or science or politics. Niceties are for the leisure class, expediency is for those who have to get things done and don't have time for garbage clogging up the pipes.
By the way, since when did the color of a person's skin, or their sex, mean anything in terms of the 'net? If being black or hispanic (etc...), male or female affects ones ability to participate in online communities it is because of outside cultural influences.
It stands to reason that people from predominantly underclass cultural backgrounds would not have the necessary resources - personal, environmental, or otherwise - to gain knowledge of these areas that are dominated by the young white male. To imply that this resultant is a function of virtual communities is ridiculous, this is a result of meatspace socio-political boundries. On here, you are all colors and no colors (mmm mmm cliched metaphors, yum! :-), so get over it Katz.
In the immortal words of the Human Torch: "Flame on!"
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
I'm not sure if it's been mentioned before by Linus himself or elsewhere, but why does a project involving Linus have to involve Linux? Is it possible that he could be working on a customized o/s for an all new platform? Is it possible that he might be working on other things altogether?
This is not a flame and I'm probably misinformed, but I havn't seen any references explicitly stating that Linus is working on an o/s and for that matter, Linux.
Furthermore, judging by the information on the patents filed by Transmeta, this appears to be a radically different processor design. This might need an equally radical approach to software development, especially in the compiler and o/s departments. Maybe Linus is stretching his wings at Transmeta and doing something completely different.
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
So lets say that by forcing the company into smaller shops, it has the intended effect of opening up the undocumented APIs. It would have to because how would each of the shops be able to create new products with secret features when there would be communication barriers between the shops. I'm though that at first, the secrets would be very slow in leaking out, so you could probably count on Word, or whatever, to be dominant in it's market sector for the forseeable future.
Take it a step further. Let's say, for purposes of illustration, that this actually has the intended effect. Suddenly the market is opened again to competitors, and companies such as Corel with their WordPerfect suite start to gain marketshare again. Companies start to make a lot more money when competeting with the children of MS on their old turf.
I'm really curious what this would do to the open source movement. I find a lot of new (and lots of the old) open source supporters have a very anti-MS stance and it seems that a lot of the reasons for open source software is in reply to this inability to compete with a closed source monopoly. But if there was a new way to compete on the Win platform, would a lot of people abandon doing open source stuff?
I can see a lot of people saying with great invective that this would never happen. That open source is the way of the future. But I suspect that once the lucre begins waving in front of peoples' noses, that there is a chance of moving back to our cathedrals.
Just a thought. (Probably been thought before by better people, but I thought that it was approprite).
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
I took the time to read the article he linked to and I must say that I would recommend that everyone should do as I did and read it. Very informative and educational, unless of course you knew all about this sort of stuff already (dumb 'dark fibre' networks).
I wonder though at the fact that it was published in 1992 and we havn't really heard of this sort of thing. Yes I realize that the telcos would be running big obfuscation and FUD campaigns against something this threatening to their power, but one would think that some more information would be widely available as it seems like such a positive thing.
Of course it could all be a pipe-dream technology along the lines of pure vapourware, but it just seems too logical and "right" IMHO. If anyone can point me to more resources along these lines, I'd be very grateful. Please feel free to email me, as this forum is not the proper place for responses to my enquiry. Thanks.
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
This is an intriguing bit of technology, but more importantly (at least to myself), is that it's nice to see such a clean approach to design. They're builing a practical robot from the ground up, in a staged/layered manner, instead of lumping a whole bunch of features into the product at once, and then trying to unravel the knots at a later date. The only problem I have is that the robot might have been released prematurely as there are hardly any real uses for it yet.
What I mean by all that is, cye is apparently a good stepping stone for future robotic products because it's starting as a simple device to which revisions can be easily applied. The future growth of something designed in this manner is greater than something like the sony AIBO, which would be something quite difficult to change due to it's greater base level of complexity.
I'm thinking of cye as the kernel around which a real robotic appliance can one day be built. All the sensory features, and manipulators and fancy things can be gradually introduced as they become useable as well as feasible.
I also like that it's brains are your PC. This provides an easy upgrade path that isn't based on any one particular hardware platform. Try upgrading an AIBO to do something other than what it was initially built for and the differences will be apparent.
As it stands, I can't afford one anyways. :-(
Two guys with blond highlighted spikey hair. Black single breasted suits with blue shirts and metallic yellow ties. The one woman is dressed like a pop culture icon, right down to the thick rimmed black plastic glasses which add that touch of fau-geek intelligence. They're sitting either in a fancy "cafe" or in a glass tower "office by IKEA".
Can't you just tell that I LOVE the pop image of the people in the tech industry. I'm still waiting to turn into the uber-stud "internet guy" who drives a porsche and has a super model for a wife.
I know this has nothing to do with Color Palms, but damnit, this is funny. I havn't laughed this bitterly in ages. WHAAAA! I want my IPO!