I'm kind of shocked how tone deaf this is. If a company generally perceived as trustworthy asked the British to send them their nudes, there would be plenty of eyebrows raised. Now how trustworthy is facebook? In the UK?
They're bascially dumbphones they can wear on their wrist. We can call them(and even auto-answer if they're not picking up), and they can call us. There are only 4 phone numbers that can call in or out, so no telemarketer spam. There's GPS tracking too, which is spotty but generally good enough. And since they're dumbphones they stay charged all week. They have some fund sounds and voice changing features too, and it can say the current time. We bought them used for $35 each, and Verizon charges us $5 a month for each. Not too bad. If they didn't gouge us with a one-time $32 activation fee per watch we'd be pretty happy.
Now I'm not saying the dumbwatches can't be hacked...but it's a lot more work without internet access!
The kids are in to Overwatch for FPS these days, but if you've been out of PC gaming for a while you might want to check out Bioshock. Single player only, but even my wife was hooked after playing for 5 minutes.
I worked at Google for 3.5 years as a software engineer, and I am not at all surprised that a Googler would write this pap. During my time there it was clear that there were some employees who were completely blind to the reasons there were so many white men in computer science.
It's ironic that the mandatory unconscious bias training could have led to this: privileged white male conservatives convincing themselves that they suffer from comparable levels of discrimination.
I've worked as a programmer mainly at companies in Silicon Valley. I've taken and given plenty of whiteboard coding interviews, including for Google.
The problem is that they were designed originally to find recent college graduates who have topics like red-black trees or counting sort at top-of-mind. This process weeds out older folks who might have a lot more practical knowledge but aren't as well versed with more academic topics that aren't encountered much in the real world. Instead, people are given an expectation that they need to brush up on their academic skills for a non-academic job interview, which is an indicator of a broken process.
Besides, even Google has publicly admitted that there is almost zero correlation between interview scores and the resulting job performance score. It's disheartening to see that they really haven't revisited this process then, despite their claims of data-driven decision making.
Previously I've used the free version Catch on mobile and desktop with zero problems, but then Apple bought them out and shut down the service. I migrated everything to Evernote just because they're the de-facto note taking service; I didn't want to have to switch again.
After using it for a while I discovered its flaws, like having your notes be inaccessible during their weekly maintenance Wednesday evenings. What is this, the 90s?
Anyway I couldn't complain too much because it was free. Now that they're hitting us up for money I'm inclined to just pay them the $35 yearly fee so I can access it everywhere and start complaining. I tried Google Keep but it was extremely bare bones; the notes couldn't be shared and were limited to less than 1K of text.
In any case, it's better than pen and paper--these notes never get lost and are easily searchable. If those features aren't useful, you haven't taken that many notes!
Remember that there would have been no charges filed in the Walter Scott case had there not been any video that conflicted with the official police story. I'm all for more surveillance _of_ police, so long as it's not kept secret.
This is less of an attempt by Intellectual Ventures to shed the "patent troll" label and more of an attempt to get some money after the big boys refuse to pay them for their shenanigans. As noted by BusinessWeek and others, they had their second round of layoffs in less than a year:
I second the Roku/WDTV props. When I was shopping around for such a box I was leaning toward WDTV but its lack of DVD menu support was a show stopper.
I ended up going with an Asus O!Play and never looked back. $79 for a beautiful HDMI picture and it plays absolutely everything with zero hassles. The menus could be prettier, but it's more important for me that it just works.
The whole thing reminds me of Blockbuster Video and their somewhat arbitrary "family friendly" policies impacting how movies get made. Now Blockbuster is getting their asses handed to them by competitors with more choice and/or convenience(Netflix, Redbox), and I wouldn't be too surprised if Apple found themselves in the same boat in a few years.
OK Ebert, it's time for you to stop trolling on the subject of video games being art or not; you've already made up your mind.
Everyone has different ideas on what art is. Here's mine: art is how an artist expresses something. As long as the artist is genuine in their attempt at expression, that's art. Video games met that criteria long ago.
Of course the medium of video games will change considerably over the next 80-90 years just like it has for medium of film. I doubt anyone could look at the video games of today and accurately predict that future.
It's less about greed on Google's part and more about the usual cost-benefit analysis of doing business with China's repressive government. Google just stayed until the disadvantages outweighed the benefits.
Google didn't come to this decision because they found their moral compass all of a sudden--otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to play censor for the government in the first place. Like any corporation they were attracted to China by the money and the audience, but after finding out the government was all too willing to help Baidu and hinder Google they re-evaluated their decision. The cyber attack may have been the breaking point, but it may just as well have been a convenient event for Google to justify their standoff with the government.
Sounds to me like the Bush administration is fighting against the.xxx domain because they feel they're fighting the spread of Internet porn. Like someone's going to go: "What? No.xxx domain? Well I guess I have to give up my idea for that BukkakeBarn site..."
Get real. All the domain does is give porn site operators the opportunity to denote their sites as pornographic, which in turn may help site filters and potentially foster government regulation. The Bush administration probably likes both of those things; strange that they shouldn't try and just let the.xxx go through then. Maybe they're just not used to making mistakes.
Archos beat Apple to the bunch with their excellent Gmini400 video player with its 2.1" color screen. It plays DivX/XviD encoded AVI files which can be ripped off DVDs. Its 20G HD has space for about 25-30 full-length movies. Plus, it has composite video out in case you want to plug it in a TV or projector.
AND it has a compact flash card slot for saving/viewing digital camera images. Like the iPod Photo, but more useful.
AND it can record audio via the built-in mic
AND it's an MP3 Jukebox of course, which displays the album art while you listen.
AND it can play(relatively lame) Mophun games.
AND it actually fits nicely in your shirt pocket.
AND it retails for less than the iPod Photo.
Oh well, I guess if they charged a few hundred dollars more for it and stuck an Apple sticker on the case it might get them noticed.
Yeah, I watched the MTV special, but besides the fact that it had wireless controllers I didn't learn much. It's going to have Madden? Project Gotham Racing? A FPS? You don't say?
Most importantly, I didn't really hear any killer features or see any killer games. They were trying to make HD their killer feature, but it seems a little high end(of course, broadband was pretty high end a few years ago). Customization via micropayments? If it costs money, I don't think gamers will do it(and it still won't make the games any better).
What I really wanted to know was:
- is it backward compatible? My guess is it isn't considering they never mentioned it during the broadcast - how much is it going to cost?
I own an Xbox and a PS2 right now, and I didn't see anything I'd want to give up those systems for. My gut says Microsoft might have a real problem on its hands if people decide the current generation is "good enough" and/or want to wait for Sony to respond with their feature set.
I know this guy's a joke, but come on Dvorak. Your sources are 5 minutes of what your kids showed you and some biased quote from Nintendo. I don't know if this article is the result of deadline pressure, antagonism, or just plain apathy.
Bottom line is that people aren't(that) stupid: if games didn't bring something new to the table--whether that's a brand new or a refined experience, then people wouldn't buy them for $50 a pop. Considering that the gaming industry is raking in more an more dollars every year, I'd say the numbers speak for themselves.
Sorry guy, but Annie Hall, Goldfinger, Robocop, Twelve Angry Men, Yellow Submarine, and Y Tu Mama Tambien are all great movies IMHO. But hey, maybe Steven Seagal is more your speed.
I read George Lucas' AP interview yesterday, and I just have to conclude that the man's gone insane.
When asked about releasing the originals on DVD, he replied:
The special edition, that's the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it's on VHS, if anybody wants it. I'm not going to spend the, we're talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn't really exist anymore.
This seems completely defensive and disingenuous to me. If the original movies are available on LaserDisc, presumably the difficult part of the mastering process has already been done.
I also just plain don't understand why he's so hostile towards the original films:
I wanted to actually finish the film the way it was meant to be when I was originally doing it. At the beginning, people went, "Don't you like it?" I said, "Well, the film only came out to be 25 or 30 percent of what I wanted it to be." They said, "What are you talking about?"
I've got to side with the people here; the "Special Editions" are different, but they're not that different! What did he want, a musical?
Maybe he's just trying to justify why he's spending so much of his time digitially tinkering with 20+ year old movies.
What I really hate about his positioning is that he seems to want to will the original movies out of existence even though these are the ones, warts and all, that made film history.
Like many of you I just want to see them on DVD as I remember seeing them in theaters in 1997, 1980, and 1983.
If Lucas is really dead-set on not releasing the original films, even after releasing them many many MANY times on VHS, he's getting absolutely no patronage from me.
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I'm kind of shocked how tone deaf this is. If a company generally perceived as trustworthy asked the British to send them their nudes, there would be plenty of eyebrows raised. Now how trustworthy is facebook? In the UK?
http://www.lg.com/us/cell-phon...
They're bascially dumbphones they can wear on their wrist. We can call them(and even auto-answer if they're not picking up), and they can call us. There are only 4 phone numbers that can call in or out, so no telemarketer spam. There's GPS tracking too, which is spotty but generally good enough. And since they're dumbphones they stay charged all week. They have some fund sounds and voice changing features too, and it can say the current time. We bought them used for $35 each, and Verizon charges us $5 a month for each. Not too bad. If they didn't gouge us with a one-time $32 activation fee per watch we'd be pretty happy.
Now I'm not saying the dumbwatches can't be hacked...but it's a lot more work without internet access!
The kids are in to Overwatch for FPS these days, but if you've been out of PC gaming for a while you might want to check out Bioshock. Single player only, but even my wife was hooked after playing for 5 minutes.
I worked at Google for 3.5 years as a software engineer, and I am not at all surprised that a Googler would write this pap. During my time there it was clear that there were some employees who were completely blind to the reasons there were so many white men in computer science. It's ironic that the mandatory unconscious bias training could have led to this: privileged white male conservatives convincing themselves that they suffer from comparable levels of discrimination.
I've worked as a programmer mainly at companies in Silicon Valley. I've taken and given plenty of whiteboard coding interviews, including for Google.
The problem is that they were designed originally to find recent college graduates who have topics like red-black trees or counting sort at top-of-mind. This process weeds out older folks who might have a lot more practical knowledge but aren't as well versed with more academic topics that aren't encountered much in the real world. Instead, people are given an expectation that they need to brush up on their academic skills for a non-academic job interview, which is an indicator of a broken process.
Besides, even Google has publicly admitted that there is almost zero correlation between interview scores and the resulting job performance score. It's disheartening to see that they really haven't revisited this process then, despite their claims of data-driven decision making.
I'll believe Microsoft can do this once they've "solved" email spam. That solution was promised 10 years ago, yes?
Previously I've used the free version Catch on mobile and desktop with zero problems, but then Apple bought them out and shut down the service. I migrated everything to Evernote just because they're the de-facto note taking service; I didn't want to have to switch again.
After using it for a while I discovered its flaws, like having your notes be inaccessible during their weekly maintenance Wednesday evenings. What is this, the 90s?
Anyway I couldn't complain too much because it was free. Now that they're hitting us up for money I'm inclined to just pay them the $35 yearly fee so I can access it everywhere and start complaining. I tried Google Keep but it was extremely bare bones; the notes couldn't be shared and were limited to less than 1K of text.
In any case, it's better than pen and paper--these notes never get lost and are easily searchable. If those features aren't useful, you haven't taken that many notes!
Remember that there would have been no charges filed in the Walter Scott case had there not been any video that conflicted with the official police story. I'm all for more surveillance _of_ police, so long as it's not kept secret.
This is less of an attempt by Intellectual Ventures to shed the "patent troll" label and more of an attempt to get some money after the big boys refuse to pay them for their shenanigans. As noted by BusinessWeek and others, they had their second round of layoffs in less than a year:
http://www.businessweek.com/ar...
So they're flailing a bit to try and generate a second revenue stream. I guess VCs are handing out more money than the courts.
To quote my friend Auric Goldfinger: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it's enemy action."
I second the Roku/WDTV props. When I was shopping around for such a box I was leaning toward WDTV but its lack of DVD menu support was a show stopper.
I ended up going with an Asus O!Play and never looked back. $79 for a beautiful HDMI picture and it plays absolutely everything with zero hassles. The menus could be prettier, but it's more important for me that it just works.
The whole thing reminds me of Blockbuster Video and their somewhat arbitrary "family friendly" policies impacting how movies get made. Now Blockbuster is getting their asses handed to them by competitors with more choice and/or convenience(Netflix, Redbox), and I wouldn't be too surprised if Apple found themselves in the same boat in a few years.
I didn't realize that Nintendogs was The Game.
OK Ebert, it's time for you to stop trolling on the subject of video games being art or not; you've already made up your mind.
Everyone has different ideas on what art is. Here's mine: art is how an artist expresses something. As long as the artist is genuine in their attempt at expression, that's art. Video games met that criteria long ago.
Of course the medium of video games will change considerably over the next 80-90 years just like it has for medium of film. I doubt anyone could look at the video games of today and accurately predict that future.
Just stop pouring those beers in your ear and you'll be all right.
...it would certainly explain why there are so many rude cell phone users :-)
It's less about greed on Google's part and more about the usual cost-benefit analysis of doing business with China's repressive government. Google just stayed until the disadvantages outweighed the benefits.
Google didn't come to this decision because they found their moral compass all of a sudden--otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to play censor for the government in the first place. Like any corporation they were attracted to China by the money and the audience, but after finding out the government was all too willing to help Baidu and hinder Google they re-evaluated their decision. The cyber attack may have been the breaking point, but it may just as well have been a convenient event for Google to justify their standoff with the government.
Sounds to me like the Bush administration is fighting against the .xxx domain because they feel they're fighting the spread of Internet porn. Like someone's going to go: "What? No .xxx domain? Well I guess I have to give up my idea for that BukkakeBarn site..."
Get real. All the domain does is give porn site operators the opportunity to denote their sites as pornographic, which in turn may help site filters and potentially foster government regulation. The Bush administration probably likes both of those things; strange that they shouldn't try and just let the .xxx go through then. Maybe they're just not used to making mistakes.
Archos beat Apple to the bunch with their excellent Gmini400 video player with its 2.1" color screen. It plays DivX/XviD encoded AVI files which can be ripped off DVDs. Its 20G HD has space for about 25-30 full-length movies. Plus, it has composite video out in case you want to plug it in a TV or projector.
AND it has a compact flash card slot for saving/viewing digital camera images. Like the iPod Photo, but more useful.
AND it can record audio via the built-in mic
AND it's an MP3 Jukebox of course, which displays the album art while you listen.
AND it can play(relatively lame) Mophun games.
AND it actually fits nicely in your shirt pocket.
AND it retails for less than the iPod Photo.
Oh well, I guess if they charged a few hundred dollars more for it and stuck an Apple sticker on the case it might get them noticed.
Yeah, I watched the MTV special, but besides the fact that it had wireless controllers I didn't learn much. It's going to have Madden? Project Gotham Racing? A FPS? You don't say?
Most importantly, I didn't really hear any killer features or see any killer games. They were trying to make HD their killer feature, but it seems a little high end(of course, broadband was pretty high end a few years ago). Customization via micropayments? If it costs money, I don't think gamers will do it(and it still won't make the games any better).
What I really wanted to know was:
- is it backward compatible? My guess is it isn't considering they never mentioned it during the broadcast
- how much is it going to cost?
I own an Xbox and a PS2 right now, and I didn't see anything I'd want to give up those systems for. My gut says Microsoft might have a real problem on its hands if people decide the current generation is "good enough" and/or want to wait for Sony to respond with their feature set.
Bottom line is that people aren't(that) stupid: if games didn't bring something new to the table--whether that's a brand new or a refined experience, then people wouldn't buy them for $50 a pop. Considering that the gaming industry is raking in more an more dollars every year, I'd say the numbers speak for themselves.
I don't know where that 2x2 chess comparison came from, but heck..I can solve that: take the guy's king with your king. Done.
Sorry guy, but Annie Hall, Goldfinger, Robocop, Twelve Angry Men, Yellow Submarine, and Y Tu Mama Tambien are all great movies IMHO. But hey, maybe Steven Seagal is more your speed.
When asked about releasing the originals on DVD, he replied:
This seems completely defensive and disingenuous to me. If the original movies are available on LaserDisc, presumably the difficult part of the mastering process has already been done.I also just plain don't understand why he's so hostile towards the original films:
I've got to side with the people here; the "Special Editions" are different, but they're not that different! What did he want, a musical?Maybe he's just trying to justify why he's spending so much of his time digitially tinkering with 20+ year old movies.
What I really hate about his positioning is that he seems to want to will the original movies out of existence even though these are the ones, warts and all, that made film history. Like many of you I just want to see them on DVD as I remember seeing them in theaters in 1997, 1980, and 1983.
If Lucas is really dead-set on not releasing the original films, even after releasing them many many MANY times on VHS, he's getting absolutely no patronage from me.
And don't get me started about I and II...