The SSSCA bill, at least the draft that was out in the open, has a grandfather clause that any computer hardware/software made before 2 years after the bill passes are exempt. The 2 years is the amount of time that the bill requires the content and computer industries to decide on a format; else Congress steps in and standardizes the formats.
What an ISP should do is not necessary block spam, but to simply add a header (something that should be agreed on) like "X-Possible-Spam: Yes", then instruct the end users that they can choose to ignore the header together, use the header to filter the mail into the right places, or simply refuse to accept the header altogether. Of course, in such instructions, a big blazing notificiation that "You may lose legitimate email by setting this option" for the last choice would be necessary else face a lawsuit. Or, even more detailed, use something like "X-Spam-Level: (number)" where a level of 0 is nothing that looks like spam, while some higher number, say 5, are perfect matches for known spam messages. Intermediate levels may or may not be spam. Of course, I don't believe that the GUI mail clients can do 'math' on the headers for filters, but the idea is there.
Basically, this doesn't block the delivery of any message to the end-user but gives the end user of filtering out spam if they desire. However, this puts the burden on the ISP to actually do such filtering, and unless one has a mail client with CPU cycles to spare, that might be hard to do. However, given what the averge person knows on email filtering, this might not seem unreasonable for an ISP to impliment to keep & gain customers. Of course, a key part of this is that there needs to be agreements on what format to take such that users that swap ISPs don't have to reconfigure their clients to use a different filtering system.
Since UHF has been mentioned in the writeup, it can't hurt to say that plans to release the movie on DVD are set to go this summer, with a large number of extra features that Al is helping to arrange.
The print you recall is called "Speechless", and probably one of the best things that WB could have done to tribute the death of Mel Blanc. A similar work was done when F. Freling passed away, though it wasn't as catchy as the first one (most people know who Mel and Chuck are, but Freling is only well known to animation buffs).
Unfortunately, as the WB stores have all but closed up, it's doubtful that a companion piece will be made available. It would be great if they could, but...
Coming from a chemical engineering background, I would argue that chemists ARE well-versed in hard sciences, more than you expect.
You use the NMR as an example. The NMR was developed by chemists (and I believe the inventors got the Nobel a few years ago for it). Some of the technology is end-use developed from other fields (for example, spinning magnets I would expect from friends in physics), but the fundamental science that NMR uses (looking at spin coorelations between neighboring atoms in a molecule) is pure chemistry, and putting together those end-use systems as well as unique elements together in such a way to be able to capture that is what makes the NMR invention unique. This is typically the way with most chemical instrumentation.
Now, just because NMR or other equipment that a chemist uses has a FFT in it, does it mean they need to know it? Typically not: they should be aware that the time-based signal they are collecting is being converted to frequency, which is the data of most interest, but they don't need to know all the mathematical computations that go into the FFT. That's not to say that chemists don't know it; there is a large body of chemists that overlap with mathematicians and comp scis to develop new and improve existing algorithms common in analysis. Even typical organic chemists that work mostly in a lab will know what the FFT transform is, though not necessarily being able to fully describe it.
And I would argue heavily with chemists not knowing quantum mechanics. There's typically 4 (recently 5) unofficial divisions of chemistry: organic, inorganic, analytical, theorhetical, and of late, bio-organic; the division is heavily weighted with organcis and bio, but the other 3 divisions are about equal in terms of distribution. I'd estimate that between 5 and 10% of chemists are in theorhetical, based on my experiences at grad schools and paper outputs. And theorhetical chemists spend most of their time working with molecular simulations, quantum mechanics, and other computer tools to develop models and predictions for how matter interacts. These models certainly aren't perfect, but they do know quantum theory quite well since most of these simulations account for quantum-type effects. As for other chemists, there is a need to know what quantum theory is, but in the typical lab reaction that most chemists do, it doesn't make a big difference. So therefore, they know the quantum theory, but they never need to apply it at large.
So I completely disagree that chemists hand-wave. A poor chemist will, but those that are trained at good graduate schools know that they can't get through doing that. But there is a point that you need to assume that the instrument or reading is correct and you don't need to understand the underlying principle in order to proceed forward; a good chemist knows how to test and calibrate an instrument to the point of being satisfied that the reading is as what should be predicted, and then will 'question' everything else beyond that.
(And the reason for macs is that much of the best chemical structure drawing and professional graphing (!Excel) software was developed on Macs first, and while PC versions have come out to
equate those versions, its hard to get academics to spend the money to switch over when what they have *works* for their needs. Also, a lot of older equipment only has software that works on specific versions of an OS, and so they are limited by that as well.)
If you haven't already visited it, please go and bookmark The Interface Hall of Shame. While it's unfortunate that they've not really added much to it, leaving most of their examples of programs that tried to bridge the GUI changed between 3.1 and 95, many of the examples of bad component use, dialog use, and error messages are certainly valid.
And another tip that I've not yet seen posted - Always always have people beta test the interface for you, without supplying them help files or the like (making sure these people are sufficiently computer-experienced as to not make 'what's a right-click?' type statements). If possible watch them and take notes, or better, videotape them to review them. An excellent GUI will require no additional help files in order to understand, such that any help that is actually included would be supplimentary to understanding the more advanced features. (Of course, this does not mean to use Wizards for anything. GUIs should have minimal text on the screen to start).
And also, never hard-code the colors for window/dialog backgrounds, fonts, or the like. I know of people that don't use the default grey for window or black text, and it's amazing how many programs are unusable because they try to draw (fixed) black text on (user-selected) black backgrounds. I know Win32, Classic MacOS (and would expect OSX to have it too), and both KDE and GNOME have the appropriate hooks that you can grab what the user-selected color scheme is instead of fixing it to your own colors.
The problem with indy media
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Disinformation.com
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The problem with any independant media group is that of credibility. News media groups like CNN, AP, and Reuters have spent years in the business building their reputation of credible reporting, and for the most part, if it's reported on one of those outlets, I'll trust that sources are sufficient credible to be true. However, even with local news outlets or sites such as Jon describes, there's no history or experience that they can necessarily proof to me, and so while they may truely be credible, I will have my doubts until it can be proven otherwise. And I still have my doubts; I have friends that will quote stories from these sources that sound very much over the top and of course will never be shown on national news. They're not the level of incredibility as with tabloids, but they are very questions, and wondering what sources they used and how credible are they; the continued use of anonymous or unrelieved sources doesn't help. Compare this with most national news stories that have access to key national figures and can get the word straight from their mouth, by-lines and all.
Now true, I will grant that the first aim of the mainstream media is to make money, and thus, they are going to select the news stories that will attract the highest viewership. Which means if they have to drop details to keep people falling asleep and candycoat issues without stretching the truth, they will do so. There does exist some indy media that is less worried on the profit and more worried on the truth, and will report in greater depth than typical newsblurbs. However, again, the target audience for these indy media are not the population at large, but generally intellicuals that want more information than the mainstream can give them. Then of course, there is the indy media that goes on as little information as possible to stretch the truth as decribed above.
As from MIB: "A person is smart; people are dumb", and all that the national media is doing is catering to people. Indy media, in most cases, is trying to cater to persons. The same thing with AOL; AOL and most big content creators cater towards people - independant sites (such as/.) cater towards persons, and just as with the media, some of these indy sites are good and details, while some are poor and over-the-top. That's what you get when you limit the scope of your audience and worry more on the content than about the profit.
With the number of DVD recording specs (4, I believe) with no single spec having better support for the other, the market is fractured, and profits, while still made, aren't great. As one example, if I, the consumer, bought a Phillips DVD recorder, and used that extensively, then I'm very limited in what models I may select from when I have to upgrade my hardware as to ensure my existing media continued to work. And if I don't like the features or find a feature lacking on the models of Phillips recorders when I'm ready to repurchase, I may not purchase anything at all. Add to this the mess that 4 difference blank DVD media disks would incure, and it's not a pretty picture. Also, what would happen if Phillips got out of the market? I'd be screwed if my hardware should die.
With a standard, there's more of a profit to be made as now consumers will be able to shop and compare features across a number of different makers, will not have to worry about which type of DVD disk to purchase, and will be insured that their recorded media will work on any other DVD recording hardware device regardless of maker. While this is all beneficial to the end user, this is also beneficial to the electronics makers since they will see more sales as a whole as a result of unification.
Anyone else find it ionic that AOLTW (to some extent) and SBC/Ameritech are among the majority against the settlement, and wanting more enforcement of antitrade legislation?
While I agree game demos are the best way to actually to go, several factors seem to be sending the demo the way of the dinosaurs, including:
HUGE demo sizes. MOH:AA MP was around 130megs, the solo about the same. Part the problem here is that everyone insists on including DirX as part of the demo distribution, but that's not the only reason. Yes, it's understandable to get the models, skins, maps, engine and sounds in, you'll need that much space, and as broadband becomes easier to get, size isn't as much of a problem, but it's better to be able to cut the size of demo down by as much as 50% by using less detailed models, low quality sound, etc. and make sure the user knows that the final version will have all that.
In addition to size, online distribution is becoming a problem. It used to be that there were tons of mirrors for demos and mods and similar features, but as demos grew, the cost on these mirrors increases, such that many have dropped out of the picture. Of what's left, you have cases like FilePlanet, which require ID'ing *and* they still keep you in a huge queue unless you pay them money, GameSpot, which only lets you have large downloads if you pay them money, or sites like 3D Gamers, which still have free, FTP-type downloads, but are so battered by hits that they are always full. Part of that can probably be blamed on the dot.com bubble. In addition, there are cases now of magazines getting exclusive rights to put the demo on the cover disk before online distribution can commence. I believe MOHAA SP demo was done this way by PC Gamer; the MP demo was available to all at the same time, but the SP demo general availablity lagged a few months until the specific issue of PC Gamer was on the racks.
Timing - an ideal timeframe to release a demo is between 1 and 2 months prior to the game being on shelves. This gives the player enough time to evaluate the game, and to keep it fresh in the player's mind when the game is ready. However, several games of late have been quite different here. For example, SimGolf, which came out 3 weeks ago, had it's demo out in October. On the other hand, I've seen games released to the shelves, and then the demo is released a few weeks later (Half-Life's Uplink demo was the notable one here).
Non-demo demos - Too many games, IMO, have demos in the form of movies with no user interaction. It might show you want the game looks and sounds like, and some of the gameplay, but I know that for numerous games the subtlies of the interface makes or breaks the game, and not being able to test those for yourself is a downside.
IMO, if no demo is available, is to simply follow USENET discussions. Not only reviews but the questions and bug reports and the like. I know that I was interested in B&W but didn't have the urge to buy it until I started reading all of the tricks and details the game had in one newsgroup, and with very few negative comments.
(I have submitted the following link, but since this was posted first, I expect it to be rejected..)
Find the parallels between this (the BT case) and
this patent lawsuit that SightSound is bringing against CDNow but potentally all music/video sellers. (SightSound claims they own the common methods of selling music and video over the Internet, and the judge has allowed the case to go to trial).
This year is the first year for the Animated Feature Oscar, and 3 films made the cut from the several that were put forward: Shrek, Monsters Inc, and Jimmy Neutron...surprisingly, all 3 are CG films, despite a few traditionally animated films that were still in the submission pool. Shrek also got a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay.
I think the idea of.NET is good too, but realistically, we already saw it for Java.
I wonder where we would be if Microsoft had enbraced (but not extended) Java, such that both Sun and MS had meanful discussions on how to expand it and yet keep the promise of "Write Once, Run Everywhere" (ie, no MS-specific extensions, and so forth). The idea that any vendor could release code that would run on 100% of the computers out there, not just 95%, would be a godsend.
While.NET, and efforts by Miguel and Ximian to create Mono, and probably similar efforts inhouse at Apple, appear to offer the same promise, I still expect that we'll see a lot of Windows-specific hooks that would prevent a good chunk of code of being cross compatible. Not that one can't write fully compatiable.NET code that runs everywhere, but I would not be surprised if MS offered programming goodies (cool widgets, eyecandy features, etc) that would be easily be limited to Winboxen and leave other implimentations of the virtual machine out in the cold.
Three problems with this, IMO. I disagree that internet connectivity is similar to a human right as food or shelter, thus equating somewhat wealthy people that live in rural areas to homeless people. It should be seen as something that ought to be as ubiquitious in the States as possible, such that in areas where one cannot necessary get good connectivity, a local school or library can provide that facility.
Second, unlike, say cable, phone, or electricity, there is a rather large initial cost of ownership that one needs to invest in (the computer) in order to take advantage of the service. The poor to lower-middle classes won't be able to enjoy such services and would be mightly upset to find that they had to pay for that utility despite not using anyway.
Finally, the internet market still has no rules; it's unregulated, and yet it's not hard to find places where monopolistic-type systems are appearing. Some providers that also control other parts of the pipe want to do everything for you (AOLTW envisions >$200 monthly bills for people that use their cable for TV, movies-on-demand, phone, and internet connectivity). Local players are still getting the run-arounds from ILECs in trying to service customers that they are supposed to be able to by law. Let's work out the last mile mess first before we start pushing the idea of a internet connection in every home, otherwise, we could end up with a second MaBell-like monopoly.
While I agree that the case shouldn't have even come this far (first come, first served back in the 90s), I also think the Judge's reasoning on the non-commercial nature of the site are to be noticed. Specifically, the platiffs tried to point out that the site had the authors email, resume, phone, and other ways to contact the author if they wanted to talk about business deals. The Judge summarized that these were all passive, in that no business activity or exchanging of money was done through the site itself, nor the direct selling of a product. (This was even considered in the posting of the resume; the judge disagreed that the author was selling himself to outside companies).
Thus, trying to call the site 'commercial' failed, and thus fell out of the traditional cybersquatting situation.
Unfortunately, this is a limited decision, but hopefully others (like WIPO!) would consider some of this ruling to be reasonable when deciding other domain name battles.
There is still something significantly different about a 'print' magazine vs article-by-article compilations, not only here but in scientific literature, that makes it necessary. A print magazine, firstly, can be held and read anywhere (even with the dream of wireless, wide-band, electronic paper that we can dl articles on the fly, which isn't going to happen for a long time), while you need a net connection for perl.com to read. Second, and more importantly, a print journal should serve to make all articles interesting to the end user, even if the topic is not something the user may have had need for before reading. Having a varied set of articles with friendly introductions into various aspects of program may cause the reader to be intrigried by an article that describes something they haven't read yet, and thus may be inclined to use it on their next project. With articles-as-you-go of perl.com, you read only want you want to read, and unless you're bored, you won't browse articles that have nothing to do with what you need to know now. (Note that this is not always the case: I've seen print journals that have frequnent references to source code, which you would need to access their web site to see, and I've seen journals that don't have a good selection of articles despite their name, thus making the entire issue somewhat worthless to most people.)
Neither format is directly better than the other, and in fact, the two formats can work off each other.
So I think that there will remain a happy co-existence between print and online articles.
Particularly in the perl arena where there's not a lot of print to start with and many are thristy for good perl articles to begin with.
They (groups generally opposed to spam, which I believe EPIC would be behind) tried to get spam legislation passed at the national level and couldn't.
Then they tried to pass it at the state level and have succeeded in several cases, including court victories that strength such laws.
Dealing with an issue such as privacy at the state level is going to have a better chance of passing because the common ideologies of the state populous will be somewhat more narrower than those of the nation as a whole. In addition, there's not as much of a lobbyist effort in state governments, because it would spread a company thin to deal with 50 + 1 governments instead of just 1. Furthermore, if a majority of states enact some regulation, other states are usually pressured into passing similar ones if only to remain sufficient consistant (Particularly if the state without such a statute is surrounded on all borders by states with such.)
Heck, look at what the vendors were trying to do with UCITA, trying to achieve a national standard by aiming at the states.
A free software magazine not free?!?
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Free Software Magazine
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· Score: 3, Informative
The base cost for our distributor is USD2.00/copy, plus the air shipping cost, the air freight tariff varies according to the country and city the distributor located, plus 5% handling on the basis of C+F airport price.
You mean a magazine about free software isn't free?!?!? </joke>
Seriously, you can grab the PDF files and make your own copies for free. The $2 above seems reasonable for cost of printing and paper, and to keep a bit buoyant in terms of profit.
Yes, given better hardware and tools, game makers will continue to put out good games. Top of my head, Black and White is leaps and bounds in terms of both game play and A/V stuff than Populous (though still a great game in of itself).
But this is because there were strides not only in graphics, but in baseline RAM configurations, sound cards, storage space, etc.
However, the problem that others have alluded to is that we are seeing development in the video card technology that appears to be much much faster relative to baseline CPU, RAM, HD, and other hardware developments (Or, better put, video card tech is outdoing Moore's law, but nothing else is). Because the video card arena is booming, the game designers continue to add more and more graphics features that take advantage of the new cards. But because it *seems* they are developing around the new features of these graphics cards, other features of the games go on the wayside. A good explain I remember of late was Summoner. That came out shortly after particle effects were introduced. And hoooo-boy, did the game use particle effects. But as for game-play, it just wasn't there.
And yes, a film might be great even if filmed today in b&w with mono sound, if it also had a great script, great acting, and great directing. If the B&W motif added to the overall impression of the script, all the better. And there are still numerous games that come out that don't use all the available bells and whistles of modern hardware, but have excellent gameplay that keeps them at the top of the best sellers list. Roller Coaster Tycoon: 2D, simple stereo sound, but yet was super addictive and fun to play. Similarly, when SimGolf (also 2D) comes out in a few weeks, I expect a similar rise to the top.
A good game in today's age is one that targets playability on a hardware generation one back from the current level. Example: Today, baseline machines are 1.6-2.0GHz, 256Megs of RAM, 40gig HD and GF2 or equivalent cards. So if I was developing a game, I'd aim to make sure it was playable on 1.0-.4 GHz machines with 128Megs, installed in under a gig of space, and aiming at the original GF line of cards. I'd have hooks in the code that would take advantage of better hardward specs, but the game would still be playable without those. This way, not only do I have sales from owners of current baseline machines, but as well as from 1-1.5 yr old systems as well.
I did get a DC and PS2. And yes, there's more variation on the console, at least, there's more emphasis on arcade-style play than exploration and adventure. But the PC games have much more going for it than consoles, and that is that with the right game design, it's very easy for user-created content for a game to be developed and used. The mod scene is HUGE, as well as the numbers of people working on developing new maps and other aspects of the game. You just can't get that in a console, even if you add on a HD and ether connection.
But here, again, the usermod scene will only be huge if a game is successful. If a game is just the same-old, same-old, people will flee it like rats from a sinking ship after a few months.
I've got a very bad feeling that the gaming industry is heading towards a black hole of development. Sure, the GF3 and other graphics boards are truely amazing in terms of HW, with all the new pluggable rendering devices, hardware T&L, etc. And I'm certainly not going to complain about the graphics in a game that take advantage of such graphics.
However, you can put all the greatest graphics in the world, but if you don't add something interesting in terms of the game itself (plot, gameplay (both single and multiplayer), etc), then all you've got is a pretty looking game that no one is going to buy. And too many of today's games are just that; there hasn't been anything 'different' in the FPS arena since Half-Life, Deus Ex and No One Lives Forever, Diablo 2 in terms of RPGs, and so forth. There's only two interesting areas of games that I've seem them take great steps above their predecesors as to make them different; first is the X4/real-time strategy games such as Black & White and the recent Dune title, which are now combining good 3d engines with good gameplay (though Myth would be the first real entry in this catagory). The other is the simulation area: recent entries of games like Startopia combine the graphics and a rather detailed but playable ruleset to make a good game.
So while the hardware makers keep pushing out better cards capable of running all the graphics effects today, the game makers seem to be too tied up in taking advantage of that and not of improving the underlying game itself. I'm hoping that we hit a plateau in the graphics card ability, as once that is hit, then the game makers will turn back to the game since they can no longer optimize the pretty-ness of the game itself.
Delay between Windows and Linux port did them in?
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Loki Games Closing?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Most of Loki's port came out 6 to 12 months after the Windows version was released. Now, maybe 5-6 years ago, this would be reasonable, but in today's age, the average lifecycle for a game with a multiplayer element is at most 3 months, with only a few notable exceptions (Half-Life Counterstrike, for example). After that initial 3 months, while people will still be playing these games, there's definitely a lack of servers for that game. While single-player elements can be used 'indefinitely', the lack of a usable multiplayer element when the port is released is a bad selling point.
Understandably, Loki's method couldn't allow them to start the port much earlier, as it seems they waited until a 'popular' game emerged from new releases. The same thing appears to be happening with the Mac market, but maybe not as apparent as a Mac owner doesn't have the same dual-booting option that many Linux users have. A better method, as demonstrated by id, is to work on the port at the same time, either in house or with outside help, such that the binaries for all systems of interest can be released near-simulateously.
If/. was, say, a professional computing site/magazine, I would simply chalk it up to that... I've yet to see such a site given anything less than 'average or above' reviews, save for once in a while when they really slam a product.
Here, I think because we have readers submitting book reviews, the reviewers are buying and reviewing books that would be of interest to them, and because of that, most of these books would already rank somewhat average-like because of the content. In addition, the reviewers have the ability to pre-review books at a store...if they're considering a book based on title alone, and open it up to see crap, they're not going to buy it nor review it. Thus, because these non-professional reviewers are only buying books that will already have some interest to/. reading in content and quality, I would expect very very few "less than average" books to be reviewed.
Maybe/. ought to solicate some of these reviewers with $40-50 and ask them to go out and review a book that most here would expect to be crap, just so that we see what those reviewers say about the opposite end of the spectrum. Or maybe the reviewers should consider that a 0-10 scale on/. is not the same as a 0-10 for any book review, as our bottom rung would probably fall around a 3 or 4 on a normal scale, with our average expection (our 5) being a 6 or 7 on the unadjusted scale.
Unfortunately, just this weekend, the site that most of the Visual Pinball stuff was stored at, hippie.net, was hit with a massive DOS attack (no, not a/. effect). This has forced the person in charge of that site, which apparently was very good and organized, to give up the job, as discussed at one of the forums on vpforums.com.
So in case you go looking for files and find a black hole at hippie.net, you need to look elsewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
The SSSCA bill, at least the draft that was out in the open, has a grandfather clause that any computer hardware/software made before 2 years after the bill passes are exempt. The 2 years is the amount of time that the bill requires the content and computer industries to decide on a format; else Congress steps in and standardizes the formats.
Basically, this doesn't block the delivery of any message to the end-user but gives the end user of filtering out spam if they desire. However, this puts the burden on the ISP to actually do such filtering, and unless one has a mail client with CPU cycles to spare, that might be hard to do. However, given what the averge person knows on email filtering, this might not seem unreasonable for an ISP to impliment to keep & gain customers. Of course, a key part of this is that there needs to be agreements on what format to take such that users that swap ISPs don't have to reconfigure their clients to use a different filtering system.
Since UHF has been mentioned in the writeup, it can't hurt to say that plans to release the movie on DVD are set to go this summer, with a large number of extra features that Al is helping to arrange.
Unfortunately, as the WB stores have all but closed up, it's doubtful that a companion piece will be made available. It would be great if they could, but...
You use the NMR as an example. The NMR was developed by chemists (and I believe the inventors got the Nobel a few years ago for it). Some of the technology is end-use developed from other fields (for example, spinning magnets I would expect from friends in physics), but the fundamental science that NMR uses (looking at spin coorelations between neighboring atoms in a molecule) is pure chemistry, and putting together those end-use systems as well as unique elements together in such a way to be able to capture that is what makes the NMR invention unique. This is typically the way with most chemical instrumentation.
Now, just because NMR or other equipment that a chemist uses has a FFT in it, does it mean they need to know it? Typically not: they should be aware that the time-based signal they are collecting is being converted to frequency, which is the data of most interest, but they don't need to know all the mathematical computations that go into the FFT. That's not to say that chemists don't know it; there is a large body of chemists that overlap with mathematicians and comp scis to develop new and improve existing algorithms common in analysis. Even typical organic chemists that work mostly in a lab will know what the FFT transform is, though not necessarily being able to fully describe it.
And I would argue heavily with chemists not knowing quantum mechanics. There's typically 4 (recently 5) unofficial divisions of chemistry: organic, inorganic, analytical, theorhetical, and of late, bio-organic; the division is heavily weighted with organcis and bio, but the other 3 divisions are about equal in terms of distribution. I'd estimate that between 5 and 10% of chemists are in theorhetical, based on my experiences at grad schools and paper outputs. And theorhetical chemists spend most of their time working with molecular simulations, quantum mechanics, and other computer tools to develop models and predictions for how matter interacts. These models certainly aren't perfect, but they do know quantum theory quite well since most of these simulations account for quantum-type effects. As for other chemists, there is a need to know what quantum theory is, but in the typical lab reaction that most chemists do, it doesn't make a big difference. So therefore, they know the quantum theory, but they never need to apply it at large.
So I completely disagree that chemists hand-wave. A poor chemist will, but those that are trained at good graduate schools know that they can't get through doing that. But there is a point that you need to assume that the instrument or reading is correct and you don't need to understand the underlying principle in order to proceed forward; a good chemist knows how to test and calibrate an instrument to the point of being satisfied that the reading is as what should be predicted, and then will 'question' everything else beyond that.
(And the reason for macs is that much of the best chemical structure drawing and professional graphing (!Excel) software was developed on Macs first, and while PC versions have come out to equate those versions, its hard to get academics to spend the money to switch over when what they have *works* for their needs. Also, a lot of older equipment only has software that works on specific versions of an OS, and so they are limited by that as well.)
And another tip that I've not yet seen posted - Always always have people beta test the interface for you, without supplying them help files or the like (making sure these people are sufficiently computer-experienced as to not make 'what's a right-click?' type statements). If possible watch them and take notes, or better, videotape them to review them. An excellent GUI will require no additional help files in order to understand, such that any help that is actually included would be supplimentary to understanding the more advanced features. (Of course, this does not mean to use Wizards for anything. GUIs should have minimal text on the screen to start).
And also, never hard-code the colors for window/dialog backgrounds, fonts, or the like. I know of people that don't use the default grey for window or black text, and it's amazing how many programs are unusable because they try to draw (fixed) black text on (user-selected) black backgrounds. I know Win32, Classic MacOS (and would expect OSX to have it too), and both KDE and GNOME have the appropriate hooks that you can grab what the user-selected color scheme is instead of fixing it to your own colors.
Now true, I will grant that the first aim of the mainstream media is to make money, and thus, they are going to select the news stories that will attract the highest viewership. Which means if they have to drop details to keep people falling asleep and candycoat issues without stretching the truth, they will do so. There does exist some indy media that is less worried on the profit and more worried on the truth, and will report in greater depth than typical newsblurbs. However, again, the target audience for these indy media are not the population at large, but generally intellicuals that want more information than the mainstream can give them. Then of course, there is the indy media that goes on as little information as possible to stretch the truth as decribed above.
As from MIB: "A person is smart; people are dumb", and all that the national media is doing is catering to people. Indy media, in most cases, is trying to cater to persons. The same thing with AOL; AOL and most big content creators cater towards people - independant sites (such as /.) cater towards persons, and just as with the media, some of these indy sites are good and details, while some are poor and over-the-top. That's what you get when you limit the scope of your audience and worry more on the content than about the profit.
With a standard, there's more of a profit to be made as now consumers will be able to shop and compare features across a number of different makers, will not have to worry about which type of DVD disk to purchase, and will be insured that their recorded media will work on any other DVD recording hardware device regardless of maker. While this is all beneficial to the end user, this is also beneficial to the electronics makers since they will see more sales as a whole as a result of unification.
- HUGE demo sizes. MOH:AA MP was around 130megs, the solo about the same. Part the problem here is that everyone insists on including DirX as part of the demo distribution, but that's not the only reason. Yes, it's understandable to get the models, skins, maps, engine and sounds in, you'll need that much space, and as broadband becomes easier to get, size isn't as much of a problem, but it's better to be able to cut the size of demo down by as much as 50% by using less detailed models, low quality sound, etc. and make sure the user knows that the final version will have all that.
- In addition to size, online distribution is becoming a problem. It used to be that there were tons of mirrors for demos and mods and similar features, but as demos grew, the cost on these mirrors increases, such that many have dropped out of the picture. Of what's left, you have cases like FilePlanet, which require ID'ing *and* they still keep you in a huge queue unless you pay them money, GameSpot, which only lets you have large downloads if you pay them money, or sites like 3D Gamers, which still have free, FTP-type downloads, but are so battered by hits that they are always full. Part of that can probably be blamed on the dot.com bubble. In addition, there are cases now of magazines getting exclusive rights to put the demo on the cover disk before online distribution can commence. I believe MOHAA SP demo was done this way by PC Gamer; the MP demo was available to all at the same time, but the SP demo general availablity lagged a few months until the specific issue of PC Gamer was on the racks.
- Timing - an ideal timeframe to release a demo is between 1 and 2 months prior to the game being on shelves. This gives the player enough time to evaluate the game, and to keep it fresh in the player's mind when the game is ready. However, several games of late have been quite different here. For example, SimGolf, which came out 3 weeks ago, had it's demo out in October. On the other hand, I've seen games released to the shelves, and then the demo is released a few weeks later (Half-Life's Uplink demo was the notable one here).
- Non-demo demos - Too many games, IMO, have demos in the form of movies with no user interaction. It might show you want the game looks and sounds like, and some of the gameplay, but I know that for numerous games the subtlies of the interface makes or breaks the game, and not being able to test those for yourself is a downside.
IMO, if no demo is available, is to simply follow USENET discussions. Not only reviews but the questions and bug reports and the like. I know that I was interested in B&W but didn't have the urge to buy it until I started reading all of the tricks and details the game had in one newsgroup, and with very few negative comments.Find the parallels between this (the BT case) and this patent lawsuit that SightSound is bringing against CDNow but potentally all music/video sellers. (SightSound claims they own the common methods of selling music and video over the Internet, and the judge has allowed the case to go to trial).
This year is the first year for the Animated Feature Oscar, and 3 films made the cut from the several that were put forward: Shrek, Monsters Inc, and Jimmy Neutron...surprisingly, all 3 are CG films, despite a few traditionally animated films that were still in the submission pool. Shrek also got a nod for Best Adapted Screenplay.
I wonder where we would be if Microsoft had enbraced (but not extended) Java, such that both Sun and MS had meanful discussions on how to expand it and yet keep the promise of "Write Once, Run Everywhere" (ie, no MS-specific extensions, and so forth). The idea that any vendor could release code that would run on 100% of the computers out there, not just 95%, would be a godsend.
While .NET, and efforts by Miguel and Ximian to create Mono, and probably similar efforts inhouse at Apple, appear to offer the same promise, I still expect that we'll see a lot of Windows-specific hooks that would prevent a good chunk of code of being cross compatible. Not that one can't write fully compatiable .NET code that runs everywhere, but I would not be surprised if MS offered programming goodies (cool widgets, eyecandy features, etc) that would be easily be limited to Winboxen and leave other implimentations of the virtual machine out in the cold.
Second, unlike, say cable, phone, or electricity, there is a rather large initial cost of ownership that one needs to invest in (the computer) in order to take advantage of the service. The poor to lower-middle classes won't be able to enjoy such services and would be mightly upset to find that they had to pay for that utility despite not using anyway.
Finally, the internet market still has no rules; it's unregulated, and yet it's not hard to find places where monopolistic-type systems are appearing. Some providers that also control other parts of the pipe want to do everything for you (AOLTW envisions >$200 monthly bills for people that use their cable for TV, movies-on-demand, phone, and internet connectivity). Local players are still getting the run-arounds from ILECs in trying to service customers that they are supposed to be able to by law. Let's work out the last mile mess first before we start pushing the idea of a internet connection in every home, otherwise, we could end up with a second MaBell-like monopoly.
Unfortunately, this is a limited decision, but hopefully others (like WIPO!) would consider some of this ruling to be reasonable when deciding other domain name battles.
Neither format is directly better than the other, and in fact, the two formats can work off each other.
So I think that there will remain a happy co-existence between print and online articles. Particularly in the perl arena where there's not a lot of print to start with and many are thristy for good perl articles to begin with.
Then they tried to pass it at the state level and have succeeded in several cases, including court victories that strength such laws.
Dealing with an issue such as privacy at the state level is going to have a better chance of passing because the common ideologies of the state populous will be somewhat more narrower than those of the nation as a whole. In addition, there's not as much of a lobbyist effort in state governments, because it would spread a company thin to deal with 50 + 1 governments instead of just 1. Furthermore, if a majority of states enact some regulation, other states are usually pressured into passing similar ones if only to remain sufficient consistant (Particularly if the state without such a statute is surrounded on all borders by states with such.)
Heck, look at what the vendors were trying to do with UCITA, trying to achieve a national standard by aiming at the states.
Seriously, you can grab the PDF files and make your own copies for free. The $2 above seems reasonable for cost of printing and paper, and to keep a bit buoyant in terms of profit.
However, the problem that others have alluded to is that we are seeing development in the video card technology that appears to be much much faster relative to baseline CPU, RAM, HD, and other hardware developments (Or, better put, video card tech is outdoing Moore's law, but nothing else is). Because the video card arena is booming, the game designers continue to add more and more graphics features that take advantage of the new cards. But because it *seems* they are developing around the new features of these graphics cards, other features of the games go on the wayside. A good explain I remember of late was Summoner. That came out shortly after particle effects were introduced. And hoooo-boy, did the game use particle effects. But as for game-play, it just wasn't there.
And yes, a film might be great even if filmed today in b&w with mono sound, if it also had a great script, great acting, and great directing. If the B&W motif added to the overall impression of the script, all the better. And there are still numerous games that come out that don't use all the available bells and whistles of modern hardware, but have excellent gameplay that keeps them at the top of the best sellers list. Roller Coaster Tycoon: 2D, simple stereo sound, but yet was super addictive and fun to play. Similarly, when SimGolf (also 2D) comes out in a few weeks, I expect a similar rise to the top.
A good game in today's age is one that targets playability on a hardware generation one back from the current level. Example: Today, baseline machines are 1.6-2.0GHz, 256Megs of RAM, 40gig HD and GF2 or equivalent cards. So if I was developing a game, I'd aim to make sure it was playable on 1.0-.4 GHz machines with 128Megs, installed in under a gig of space, and aiming at the original GF line of cards. I'd have hooks in the code that would take advantage of better hardward specs, but the game would still be playable without those. This way, not only do I have sales from owners of current baseline machines, but as well as from 1-1.5 yr old systems as well.
But here, again, the usermod scene will only be huge if a game is successful. If a game is just the same-old, same-old, people will flee it like rats from a sinking ship after a few months.
However, you can put all the greatest graphics in the world, but if you don't add something interesting in terms of the game itself (plot, gameplay (both single and multiplayer), etc), then all you've got is a pretty looking game that no one is going to buy. And too many of today's games are just that; there hasn't been anything 'different' in the FPS arena since Half-Life, Deus Ex and No One Lives Forever, Diablo 2 in terms of RPGs, and so forth. There's only two interesting areas of games that I've seem them take great steps above their predecesors as to make them different; first is the X4/real-time strategy games such as Black & White and the recent Dune title, which are now combining good 3d engines with good gameplay (though Myth would be the first real entry in this catagory). The other is the simulation area: recent entries of games like Startopia combine the graphics and a rather detailed but playable ruleset to make a good game.
So while the hardware makers keep pushing out better cards capable of running all the graphics effects today, the game makers seem to be too tied up in taking advantage of that and not of improving the underlying game itself. I'm hoping that we hit a plateau in the graphics card ability, as once that is hit, then the game makers will turn back to the game since they can no longer optimize the pretty-ness of the game itself.
Understandably, Loki's method couldn't allow them to start the port much earlier, as it seems they waited until a 'popular' game emerged from new releases. The same thing appears to be happening with the Mac market, but maybe not as apparent as a Mac owner doesn't have the same dual-booting option that many Linux users have. A better method, as demonstrated by id, is to work on the port at the same time, either in house or with outside help, such that the binaries for all systems of interest can be released near-simulateously.
Here, I think because we have readers submitting book reviews, the reviewers are buying and reviewing books that would be of interest to them, and because of that, most of these books would already rank somewhat average-like because of the content. In addition, the reviewers have the ability to pre-review books at a store...if they're considering a book based on title alone, and open it up to see crap, they're not going to buy it nor review it. Thus, because these non-professional reviewers are only buying books that will already have some interest to /. reading in content and quality, I would expect very very few "less than average" books to be reviewed.
Maybe /. ought to solicate some of these reviewers with $40-50 and ask them to go out and review a book that most here would expect to be crap, just so that we see what those reviewers say about the opposite end of the spectrum. Or maybe the reviewers should consider that a 0-10 scale on /. is not the same as a 0-10 for any book review, as our bottom rung would probably fall around a 3 or 4 on a normal scale, with our average expection (our 5) being a 6 or 7 on the unadjusted scale.