Perhaps I worded my point badly. By "take possession," I was implying a complete transfer of possession from one party to another. As in not just to gain information by force, but to deprive another of that same information--a very common occurrence when it comes to physical goods.
My point was that that it's a notion that just doesn't apply to information, although it does to physical goods, which seems to indicate that they must be different in nature.
I don't know about the rest of you, but when I get a game that's really good, I don't sell it back, ever.
This explanation has it ass-backwards I think. I would say it's less that games are decreasing in quality because used copies are lining the shelves of stores, and more that used copies are lining the shelves of stores because games are decreasing in quality. The one game I bought this year that I thought was just absolutely excellent--Fallout 3--I intend to keep because it's worth having.
Although, I can see it being a vicious feedback loop.
You've obviously never seen the quality of discs that come out of used GameStop boxes. Let me tell you, they depreciate very quickly in the hands of most people. CDs, believe it or not, are not very good long-term storage mechanisms; heck, they'll eventually just break down by themselves.
I think the problem is thinking that information cannot be a physical good.
I hate to be pedantic, but it can't. It's really tautological; information is entirely non-physical and therefore fundamentally can not be a physical good. It can have physical manifestations--you can write it down on a piece of paper, in which case you have a piece of paper with information on it being a physical good--but that doesn't turn the information itself into a physical good.
Perhaps you meant to say that information is a commodity; or rather, simply a good. That would be a position on stronger foundations, but also one that many here would strongly disagree with (myself included). The disagreement in this case, however, is on ethical grounds, whereas I would say disagreement with the claim that information can be a physical good is ontological.
And before you accuse me of splitting hairs, I think it's fair to say that the difference between physical and non-physical goods is marked (e.g. how does one take possession of a non-physical good by force?).
Now that everybody knows weird mails are going to get posted like this, I've got to wonder how much of the stuff coming in to you is just an exercise in creative writing backed by a hope to get a stupid story on/.'s front page.
Dollars to donuts the crashing is on account of the emulator, not the program. It's a nice emulator, but I've actually had some stability problems with it just running with default settings.
Mind if I ask which program it is that can not be reasonably scaled down without making the fonts too small? I haven't really found any on my phone so far that seem like they'd fit the bill. Not that I don't believe you, more that I want to see what sorts of designs to ideally try to avoid when I start porting stuff to the platform.
Have you done much development with the Android API and actually used the phones? I have a hard time thinking of any program you'd be making on a mobile phone that wouldn't be able to easily scale by 100 pixels one way or another. Certainly nothing I have on my G1 would qualify as such. And having played around making some apps with the API, it really encourages you to design in a way that scales transparently to different screen sizes.
I'm curious what sort of program you're envisioning that has to cram so much into a non-scrollable area that it couldn't reasonably be resized.
I quite liked Dreamfall. It was more along the lines of "interactive fiction" than a proper adventure game, but as long as you're okay with that there's a lot to like. It was very VERY well put together.
Having had the iPhone since early first generation, I recently decided to try out the G1, and I have been very pleasantly surprised. Feature-wise it's pretty much on par with the iPhone, but I've found the UI to (surprisingly enough) be more user-friendly and substantially more responsive (opening the contact list on the iPhone takes forever, for example). The web browser is a lot easier to use anywhere you need to deal with forms, too.
After the major issues I've had with the iPhone (dropped calls, completely missed calls that never ever register on the phone, random total system crashes, etc...), I would honestly recommend Android over it for anybody who doesn't have an obsessive Apple fetish. So far it just seems to work more smoothly and reliably. It being much more open is icing on the cake, and conveys some very obvious advantages, like how developers are encouraged to make drop-in replacements for its built-in components (like a new email program), whereas Apple apparently forbids the same practice on the iPhone.
Overall, I'm definitely gonna be sticking with my Android phone, but thankfully first gen iPhones still resell for a decent price:) It's good to see more models coming out--hopefully it'll really start catching on.
Android applications, if properly made, are pretty screen-agnostic. The UI layout code is designed to heavily emphasize relative placement rather than absolute. Hell, even on the G1 you need a little leeway because of the way everything changes size when you flip the screen orientation.
Overall, only the very laziest developers should have to do any significant patching, if any at all.
I'm not sure I buy that as an excuse. The way you're using "homage" sounds a lot like "knockoff" in my vocabulary. For me, when it comes to entertainment media, a decent "homage" is going to present the familiar to you in a way you haven't experienced yet. Like, you might describe many Akira Kurosawa's movies as being "homages" to Shakespeare and American westerns. And I think the whole point of the article is that, by that standard, this game doesn't quite make the cut, and ends up feeling more like by-the-numbers mimicry than a creative homage.
Well, I'm not sure I would call this "elitism" any more than I would levy that charge against, say, a film critic. It's their job to analyze what's going on here--if you don't want them trying to tear it apart, don't read it.
As for me, I found the game entertaining, but have to agree that it felt like it was written by committee. It was like they got a few writers in a room and then just told them, "Write us a sci-fi horror story in a big ship."
Well, that's fine, but from what I gather this patent has a couple of points against it in that (a) its claims seem quite simple and happen to only encompass a process that has been quite common for several years, and (b) it the iPhone doesn't even implement the process covered by this patent; it doesn't even come close to implementing it, in fact, it's the one phone on the market that is overwhelmingly not covered by this patent, unless I'm vastly misunderstanding the content of this patent.
Prior art aside, I'm guessing it's point (b) which is going to see this one dead in the water. They chose the iPhone because it's hot and popular, but failed to realize that their patent doesn't even relate to it. I'd think Apple would even be able to pursue something like malicious prosecution charges because of how flagrantly inapplicable this patent is.
Yeah, this is what really just blew my mind. They could have sued any other phone manufacturer on earth and had a case, but yet they chose Apple. I... I just don't understand the world anymore:(
California has an economy so large that if it were an independent nation, it would still have one of the top ten economies in the entire world. California actually has a larger economy than the entire nations of Canada or Russia. In other words, there's a lot of money in California, which means a lot of taxes being collected.
I'm not sure why you would say, "especially California," considering its economy is substantially larger than any other state in the union. Are you indicating that the state should spend its funds elsewhere? That we are suffering so much disproportionately more than anywhere else? I'm not sure.
Re:Halfway through the book, and ...
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· Score: 1
Well, I don't want to post any spoilers here, but there is certainly a reason why he chose to make up all these new words. Whether, in the end, you think it's a good reason is a matter of opinion, but by the end of the novel it's certainly obvious that there was a thematic end of sorts being served by it all.
Re:Halfway through the book, and ...
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Anathem
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· Score: 1
I quite enjoyed the bit that came after that. I suppose if you're looking for a more Lovecraftian style where he hints rather than SHOWS what it's all about, then you might well have been disappointed. I think he did a good job of actually laying it all out and making it believable.
I found the introduction enjoyable, if somewhat contemplative in pace. If a novel needs 200-300 pages of completely uninteresting introduction, that's another thing entirely, but I absolutely did not find that to be the case here.
Completely Disagree
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Anathem
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· Score: 4, Interesting
As far as I'm concerned, the reviewer's complaints really only apply to the first third of the book. Yeah, he made up a bunch of words, which was a bit off putting. Also, there was a very prolonged rising action where several hundred pages essentially just introduced the world; the actual plot proper didn't start until maybe page 200 or 300.
And that's where all my complaints stopped. I found the actual plot thoroughly compelling. I found the world very interesting and all of the characters deep and quirky. Towards the end of the book I couldn't put it down. Once I got through all the introductory material, I thought this was one of the most entertaining books I've read in a good while, and I read a lot.
Re:Halfway through the book, and ...
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Anathem
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Well, to each his own. I found the first third perhaps a little slow going, but by the end I really just couldn't put it down. Once the plot proper starts going on full steam I found it very compelling.
Perhaps it's my lack of experience specifically in the web services arena, but you didn't really give much information about the details of the sorts of things you'll be developing and testing. Are you developing proprietary server software or something like that with a lower level language? Are you using off the shelf components in a PHP/MySQL environment or something like that? Are you developing on Windows? Linux? Unix of some sort?
Honestly, I don't think the question can be answered usefully without more information.
You're arguing a matter of semantics. The man crossed over the line into the public view when he started doing TV spots and signing book deals in a capacity as a republican pundit.* At that point, it doesn't matter who you are or where you came from, the simple fact is that by going into the public sphere like that you open yourself up as fair game to public scrutiny and criticism. In fact, he deserves to be scrutinized and criticized as any Republican OR DEMOCRATIC pundit should be. It would be a disservice to the country to simply accept punditry without criticism.
So please, stop complaining that the man is being put under the microscope. When he crossed the line from the private life to the public view, he made the choice to open himself up to that. He was, by every definition I care to consider, operating in the capacity as a pundit for the Republican party. As far as I'm concerned, that makes him an operative. I'm not passing judgment; anybody is free to do so and it's by and large a healthy thing, but that's just simply what he did.
* pundit. noun. a person who makes comments or judgments, esp. in an authoritative manner; critic or commentator.
My position on the matter is immaterial. The validity of the study he cited is immaterial. You accused him of "only listing one person," clearly with the implication that his example only drew on the experience of a single person. This was simply on the face of it, regardless of whether you accept the data or not, an untrue statement. Because, having read his post, he (a) listed two people, and (b) listed them only by way of reference to their work on the matter--supposedly taking the form of statistical studies of many people.
And, for your information, I have very little to no opinion on the matter. I was just pointing out the fact that your post clearly did not follow from his, most likely, I am guessing, because you didn't bother to actually examine his post beyond the first sentence or two. Honestly, I couldn't care who's right or wrong on the matter.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps I worded my point badly. By "take possession," I was implying a complete transfer of possession from one party to another. As in not just to gain information by force, but to deprive another of that same information--a very common occurrence when it comes to physical goods.
My point was that that it's a notion that just doesn't apply to information, although it does to physical goods, which seems to indicate that they must be different in nature.
I don't know about the rest of you, but when I get a game that's really good, I don't sell it back, ever.
This explanation has it ass-backwards I think. I would say it's less that games are decreasing in quality because used copies are lining the shelves of stores, and more that used copies are lining the shelves of stores because games are decreasing in quality. The one game I bought this year that I thought was just absolutely excellent--Fallout 3--I intend to keep because it's worth having.
Although, I can see it being a vicious feedback loop.
You've obviously never seen the quality of discs that come out of used GameStop boxes. Let me tell you, they depreciate very quickly in the hands of most people. CDs, believe it or not, are not very good long-term storage mechanisms; heck, they'll eventually just break down by themselves.
I hate to be pedantic, but it can't. It's really tautological; information is entirely non-physical and therefore fundamentally can not be a physical good. It can have physical manifestations--you can write it down on a piece of paper, in which case you have a piece of paper with information on it being a physical good--but that doesn't turn the information itself into a physical good.
Perhaps you meant to say that information is a commodity; or rather, simply a good. That would be a position on stronger foundations, but also one that many here would strongly disagree with (myself included). The disagreement in this case, however, is on ethical grounds, whereas I would say disagreement with the claim that information can be a physical good is ontological.
And before you accuse me of splitting hairs, I think it's fair to say that the difference between physical and non-physical goods is marked (e.g. how does one take possession of a non-physical good by force?).
I think I'd rather look at it from the perspective that, in the long term, stupid people aren't going to be doing much for our economy.
Now that everybody knows weird mails are going to get posted like this, I've got to wonder how much of the stuff coming in to you is just an exercise in creative writing backed by a hope to get a stupid story on /.'s front page.
Dollars to donuts the crashing is on account of the emulator, not the program. It's a nice emulator, but I've actually had some stability problems with it just running with default settings.
Mind if I ask which program it is that can not be reasonably scaled down without making the fonts too small? I haven't really found any on my phone so far that seem like they'd fit the bill. Not that I don't believe you, more that I want to see what sorts of designs to ideally try to avoid when I start porting stuff to the platform.
Have you done much development with the Android API and actually used the phones? I have a hard time thinking of any program you'd be making on a mobile phone that wouldn't be able to easily scale by 100 pixels one way or another. Certainly nothing I have on my G1 would qualify as such. And having played around making some apps with the API, it really encourages you to design in a way that scales transparently to different screen sizes.
I'm curious what sort of program you're envisioning that has to cram so much into a non-scrollable area that it couldn't reasonably be resized.
I quite liked Dreamfall. It was more along the lines of "interactive fiction" than a proper adventure game, but as long as you're okay with that there's a lot to like. It was very VERY well put together.
Having had the iPhone since early first generation, I recently decided to try out the G1, and I have been very pleasantly surprised. Feature-wise it's pretty much on par with the iPhone, but I've found the UI to (surprisingly enough) be more user-friendly and substantially more responsive (opening the contact list on the iPhone takes forever, for example). The web browser is a lot easier to use anywhere you need to deal with forms, too.
After the major issues I've had with the iPhone (dropped calls, completely missed calls that never ever register on the phone, random total system crashes, etc...), I would honestly recommend Android over it for anybody who doesn't have an obsessive Apple fetish. So far it just seems to work more smoothly and reliably. It being much more open is icing on the cake, and conveys some very obvious advantages, like how developers are encouraged to make drop-in replacements for its built-in components (like a new email program), whereas Apple apparently forbids the same practice on the iPhone.
Overall, I'm definitely gonna be sticking with my Android phone, but thankfully first gen iPhones still resell for a decent price :) It's good to see more models coming out--hopefully it'll really start catching on.
Android applications, if properly made, are pretty screen-agnostic. The UI layout code is designed to heavily emphasize relative placement rather than absolute. Hell, even on the G1 you need a little leeway because of the way everything changes size when you flip the screen orientation.
Overall, only the very laziest developers should have to do any significant patching, if any at all.
I'm not sure I buy that as an excuse. The way you're using "homage" sounds a lot like "knockoff" in my vocabulary. For me, when it comes to entertainment media, a decent "homage" is going to present the familiar to you in a way you haven't experienced yet. Like, you might describe many Akira Kurosawa's movies as being "homages" to Shakespeare and American westerns. And I think the whole point of the article is that, by that standard, this game doesn't quite make the cut, and ends up feeling more like by-the-numbers mimicry than a creative homage.
Well, I'm not sure I would call this "elitism" any more than I would levy that charge against, say, a film critic. It's their job to analyze what's going on here--if you don't want them trying to tear it apart, don't read it.
As for me, I found the game entertaining, but have to agree that it felt like it was written by committee. It was like they got a few writers in a room and then just told them, "Write us a sci-fi horror story in a big ship."
Well, that's fine, but from what I gather this patent has a couple of points against it in that (a) its claims seem quite simple and happen to only encompass a process that has been quite common for several years, and (b) it the iPhone doesn't even implement the process covered by this patent; it doesn't even come close to implementing it, in fact, it's the one phone on the market that is overwhelmingly not covered by this patent, unless I'm vastly misunderstanding the content of this patent.
Prior art aside, I'm guessing it's point (b) which is going to see this one dead in the water. They chose the iPhone because it's hot and popular, but failed to realize that their patent doesn't even relate to it. I'd think Apple would even be able to pursue something like malicious prosecution charges because of how flagrantly inapplicable this patent is.
Yeah, this is what really just blew my mind. They could have sued any other phone manufacturer on earth and had a case, but yet they chose Apple. I... I just don't understand the world anymore :(
California has an economy so large that if it were an independent nation, it would still have one of the top ten economies in the entire world. California actually has a larger economy than the entire nations of Canada or Russia. In other words, there's a lot of money in California, which means a lot of taxes being collected.
I'm not sure why you would say, "especially California," considering its economy is substantially larger than any other state in the union. Are you indicating that the state should spend its funds elsewhere? That we are suffering so much disproportionately more than anywhere else? I'm not sure.
Well, I don't want to post any spoilers here, but there is certainly a reason why he chose to make up all these new words. Whether, in the end, you think it's a good reason is a matter of opinion, but by the end of the novel it's certainly obvious that there was a thematic end of sorts being served by it all.
I quite enjoyed the bit that came after that. I suppose if you're looking for a more Lovecraftian style where he hints rather than SHOWS what it's all about, then you might well have been disappointed. I think he did a good job of actually laying it all out and making it believable.
I found the introduction enjoyable, if somewhat contemplative in pace. If a novel needs 200-300 pages of completely uninteresting introduction, that's another thing entirely, but I absolutely did not find that to be the case here.
As far as I'm concerned, the reviewer's complaints really only apply to the first third of the book. Yeah, he made up a bunch of words, which was a bit off putting. Also, there was a very prolonged rising action where several hundred pages essentially just introduced the world; the actual plot proper didn't start until maybe page 200 or 300.
And that's where all my complaints stopped. I found the actual plot thoroughly compelling. I found the world very interesting and all of the characters deep and quirky. Towards the end of the book I couldn't put it down. Once I got through all the introductory material, I thought this was one of the most entertaining books I've read in a good while, and I read a lot.
Well, to each his own. I found the first third perhaps a little slow going, but by the end I really just couldn't put it down. Once the plot proper starts going on full steam I found it very compelling.
Perhaps it's my lack of experience specifically in the web services arena, but you didn't really give much information about the details of the sorts of things you'll be developing and testing. Are you developing proprietary server software or something like that with a lower level language? Are you using off the shelf components in a PHP/MySQL environment or something like that? Are you developing on Windows? Linux? Unix of some sort?
Honestly, I don't think the question can be answered usefully without more information.
You're arguing a matter of semantics. The man crossed over the line into the public view when he started doing TV spots and signing book deals in a capacity as a republican pundit.* At that point, it doesn't matter who you are or where you came from, the simple fact is that by going into the public sphere like that you open yourself up as fair game to public scrutiny and criticism. In fact, he deserves to be scrutinized and criticized as any Republican OR DEMOCRATIC pundit should be. It would be a disservice to the country to simply accept punditry without criticism.
So please, stop complaining that the man is being put under the microscope. When he crossed the line from the private life to the public view, he made the choice to open himself up to that. He was, by every definition I care to consider, operating in the capacity as a pundit for the Republican party. As far as I'm concerned, that makes him an operative. I'm not passing judgment; anybody is free to do so and it's by and large a healthy thing, but that's just simply what he did.
* pundit. noun. a person who makes comments or judgments, esp. in an authoritative manner; critic or commentator.
My position on the matter is immaterial. The validity of the study he cited is immaterial. You accused him of "only listing one person," clearly with the implication that his example only drew on the experience of a single person. This was simply on the face of it, regardless of whether you accept the data or not, an untrue statement. Because, having read his post, he (a) listed two people, and (b) listed them only by way of reference to their work on the matter--supposedly taking the form of statistical studies of many people.
And, for your information, I have very little to no opinion on the matter. I was just pointing out the fact that your post clearly did not follow from his, most likely, I am guessing, because you didn't bother to actually examine his post beyond the first sentence or two. Honestly, I couldn't care who's right or wrong on the matter.
My fault. Clearly context changes things. I sit corrected.