"According to Reuters, Potsdam University in Germany is now teaching social skills as part of their IT courses. This is intended to 'ease entry into..... a superficial model, who will fall in love with the nerdiest student at the end of the semester after realizing that he is beautiful on the inside.
By that point of course, he will have become a handsome and rugged jock on the outside while keeping the smarts and sensibilities of a computer geek, thus bridging the gap and making the world a better place where nerds and football jocks can live together in peace while 80's pop-rock plays over a sunset.
We can expect our good friends of the Righteous Inquisition Army of Autocrats to file more lawsuits and claim that their arguments were never rejected in court because they dismissed their counterclaim before the judge could smack it down. Business as usual for the scum of the earth, I guess. Hey remember when these guys used to SELL MUSIC?
This brings back my usual argument - anyone claiming that GTA or Counterstrike can give you real life combat skills should be given a copy of Skate or Tony Hawk, a skateboard and one week to prove that playing the game can teach him to make a double Ollie flipkick handstand.
ANY means of meeting people can be "used by terrorists", if you think about it too hard. If we listen to these guys, we'll first take down Facebook and MySpace. Then the chat rooms, and the public forums. Once the internet is expunged, cell phones would be banned, because "terrorists use them to meet and plan." Eventually, land lines would follow too. Should we also extend this fear to shortwave radios, pencil and paper? How about coffee shops? People can meet there too. And plan "terrorist activities." Now personally I prefer my latte without terror, but there's no accounting for taste I guess. Make mine fanaticism free please.
When it comes to the printed page format, information media have a very hard time competing with the internet. Digital information online has no print equipment, no raw materials, no distribution and delivery channels to contend with (or at least nowhere near as high) and can be updated daily. Comments sections can be put everywhere as opposed to a single reader letters page or two, and the simple presence of the internet has greatly increased reader expectations as to the value of content offered.
The question now is... what can printed magazines offer that the web cannot? This is what magazines need to ask themselves to stay competitive.
The math on this is quite easy to grasp from a marketing angle. If even a single percent of all Xbox 360 owners buy a game, that's still nearly half a million units. Considering that hardcore gamers tend to gravitate to the Xbox 360 (and PS3, which also has high units sold numbers), a well-designed title can do extremely well. Just look at the launch day numbers for games like GTA4, Halo 3 or GoW2!
The PC rig requirement to get halfway decent graphics have gotten too ridiculous for me to try and follow. Why would I pay a thousand or more for a gaming machine that will still require an install and a tweaking almost as long? I can get the same game that works out of the box on my 400$ Xbox 360 Elite without one second spent on setup. PC gaming is pretty dead to me - it died of a monetary hemorrage.
Imagine 100 tech support agents in the same office, talking to both the caller on their phone AND their computer at once. It's only a matter of time before "Peach Wreck Ignition Probe Limes" start popping up...
One word: BRAID.
Developped by ONE MAN, hailed by the critic and downloaded by the thousands on xbox live, this title shows that single individuals with talent and vision can be immense success stories.
Take a few pictures of the item you sell, add them to your auction description and VOILA! Instant patent infringement!
These patents are getting more and more absurd by the day, I tells ya. Penny Arcade had it right: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/1/2/
That's what Canada's doing (kind-of) through its recordable media levy. If you buy a recordable CD, it's assumed that you'll use a portion of it for copying music - some you pay something like $0.25 per cd to compensate the artists of that music.
Math time!
1 cd = 700 megs
Average MP3 of reasonable length and quality = 5 megs
700 megs / 5 megs/song = 140 songs
25 cents / 140 songs = 0.17 cent per song
I say put the artists in the Thunderdome and let them fight out for the 0.17 cents!
Remember the profession system in SWG? One look at this indecipherable table with no explanation whatsoever convinced me to give up after a mere twenty minutes of playing. And don't get me started on the total absence of money drops (at least in the newbie area where I was stuck...)
I know, the memory is always the second thing to go...;)
What was the first one again?
Yeah, you got me there, so I did write that. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to grab my broom and go yell at some youngins on my lawn.;)
This happened at work, where we do... computer tech support. Only the names are withheld to protect the idiots involved.
One of our senior techs (yes, feel free to laugh, I know I do!) came to tell me he had a virus on his laptop. His cursor was runnign wild, an dplenty of windows kept popping open and apps being launched. He could not figure why, so his best guess was "a really bad virus."
From personal experience, 97% of people who guess "It must be a virus!" have no virus whatsoever (the reverse is also true - 97% of viral issues ar edismissed as "something weird is going on and I don't know why") so I assumed it surely wasn't one. I had him unplug his wireless mouse bluetooth dongle, which ended the problem immediately, so it was clear where the problem was coming from. I guessed bad drivers, and suggested he reinstall. Putting them fresh from the driver disk simply returned the issue.
The following day, while looking for a spare power supply, we stumbled on the answer. The wireless keyboard that came with the mouse he was using had been carelessly thrown in there, with another keyboard on top, mashing down a large part of the wireless keyboard's keys. The laptop was just doing as it was told by the keyboard all along.
*laughing*
Because they can't listen to their customers *and* have a completely fubar'd development process?
Right...
Newsflash! They can listen to their customer *and* still screw up. They aren't mutually exclusive!
{cue shock and amazement that things can be more complex than you seem to want to believe in your narrow views.}
I never claimed they weren't listening. Only that Vista is a bloated system resource hog and ineffective as an XP replacement. I'm not attacking whether Microsoft is listening to its customers or not, just that Vista is flawed. Surely we can both agree to that.
Now, I could be wrong here, but I thought most client/server 3D game protocols do *not* have the clients transmit the position of the avatar to the server, which is part (b)? Don't the servers already know the position of the avatar, and the clients just send a vector, that is, a request to move a certain number of units in a particular direction, at which point the server calculates a new position from the original postion + the vector? I don't know if that is what CoH does, but I suspect that is the case (the only exception might be for the 'teleport' powers; teleportation, I suspect, basically works on an explicit location basis, so there might be some wiggle-room for Worlds.com to make a claim there, although I think a lawyer could argue that teleportation, when activated, is not the client transmitting the avatar's actual location, but instead a location which the server should move the avatar too, which might be different enough to be a handy loophole).
Prior art is easy to find - look at ANY multiplayer online shooter. Doom alone locks the case and throws it out for public ridicule.
Right..because the customers don't *want* a dumbed down OS that does damned near anything right out of the box (and yes, you are going to think it's bloated). And that's not even bringing to bear the millions they spend yearly on analyzing the data from their tracking, surveys, usage patterns and so on.
*laughing*
A little out of touch with the reality of the consumer market, are we?
You're probably right. That's certainly why old users of Win XP are abandonning that obsolete platform to rush in droves to purchase the light, fast and highly efficient Windows Vista. My, do I love me that Aero theme and translucent gadget sidebar.
I have to admit, the "Gates was Right" scenario gave me the most giggles. I mean, honestly, an integrated OS into Office that can run on any platform? Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I'll believe they can pull this off only after they can provide a stable OS that runs right out of the box without multiple service packs stretched out over several years. That, and Microsoft's reliance on having to come up with new versions of their OS to impose their vision on the consumer rather than listen to what they need (and right what what we need is a streamlined, light, fast and unbloated OS)
Time for the FEATS OF STRENGTH!
on
Happy Festivus
·
· Score: 1
As soon as I'm done with the airing of grievances!!!
These guys don't get half the recognition they deserve. They've built from scratch a gigantic charity organization that gives thousands of kids a ray of sunshine in a time of their life that would otherwise be dark and bleak. That alone needs to be given the props they deserve to get, and that's not even scratching the surface here. It's most probably because of the success of PAX that E3 is rethinking its closed-doors invitation-only no-booth-bunnies rebranding failure. (That, and the stockholders weren't too crazy about their latest idea, the "First 1000 attendees get gouged with an icepick" promotion)
Imagine if a computer science "journal" based on Hollywood's portrayal of how computers work were being published by the ACM, and you have some idea of how big a problem this is.
Perhaps then we'd finally be able to learn from Diane Lane how "totally untraceable" websites can still manage to get millions of hits and how to prevent FBI professionals from tracing a Best Buy RF wireless webcam from being traced back to its receptor (which clearly has to be within fifty yards)
I've had Win ME installed on a system at home since 2001 and it's been running as close as it will get to flawlessly.
This is like saying you're getting "as close to good performance as I can" out of a Pinto or a Yugo.
This is exactly what I'm saying, I didn't realize I was being too subtle.
Slashdot Mirror
"According to Reuters, Potsdam University in Germany is now teaching social skills as part of their IT courses. This is intended to 'ease entry into ..... a superficial model, who will fall in love with the nerdiest student at the end of the semester after realizing that he is beautiful on the inside.
By that point of course, he will have become a handsome and rugged jock on the outside while keeping the smarts and sensibilities of a computer geek, thus bridging the gap and making the world a better place where nerds and football jocks can live together in peace while 80's pop-rock plays over a sunset.
You fool! You've altered the outcome by observing it!!!
We can expect our good friends of the Righteous Inquisition Army of Autocrats to file more lawsuits and claim that their arguments were never rejected in court because they dismissed their counterclaim before the judge could smack it down. Business as usual for the scum of the earth, I guess. Hey remember when these guys used to SELL MUSIC?
This brings back my usual argument - anyone claiming that GTA or Counterstrike can give you real life combat skills should be given a copy of Skate or Tony Hawk, a skateboard and one week to prove that playing the game can teach him to make a double Ollie flipkick handstand.
ANY means of meeting people can be "used by terrorists", if you think about it too hard. If we listen to these guys, we'll first take down Facebook and MySpace. Then the chat rooms, and the public forums. Once the internet is expunged, cell phones would be banned, because "terrorists use them to meet and plan." Eventually, land lines would follow too. Should we also extend this fear to shortwave radios, pencil and paper? How about coffee shops? People can meet there too. And plan "terrorist activities." Now personally I prefer my latte without terror, but there's no accounting for taste I guess. Make mine fanaticism free please.
The question now is... what can printed magazines offer that the web cannot? This is what magazines need to ask themselves to stay competitive.
The math on this is quite easy to grasp from a marketing angle. If even a single percent of all Xbox 360 owners buy a game, that's still nearly half a million units. Considering that hardcore gamers tend to gravitate to the Xbox 360 (and PS3, which also has high units sold numbers), a well-designed title can do extremely well. Just look at the launch day numbers for games like GTA4, Halo 3 or GoW2!
The PC rig requirement to get halfway decent graphics have gotten too ridiculous for me to try and follow. Why would I pay a thousand or more for a gaming machine that will still require an install and a tweaking almost as long? I can get the same game that works out of the box on my 400$ Xbox 360 Elite without one second spent on setup. PC gaming is pretty dead to me - it died of a monetary hemorrage.
Imagine 100 tech support agents in the same office, talking to both the caller on their phone AND their computer at once. It's only a matter of time before "Peach Wreck Ignition Probe Limes" start popping up...
One word: BRAID. Developped by ONE MAN, hailed by the critic and downloaded by the thousands on xbox live, this title shows that single individuals with talent and vision can be immense success stories.
Take a few pictures of the item you sell, add them to your auction description and VOILA! Instant patent infringement! These patents are getting more and more absurd by the day, I tells ya. Penny Arcade had it right: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/1/2/
That's what Canada's doing (kind-of) through its recordable media levy. If you buy a recordable CD, it's assumed that you'll use a portion of it for copying music - some you pay something like $0.25 per cd to compensate the artists of that music.
Math time! 1 cd = 700 megs Average MP3 of reasonable length and quality = 5 megs 700 megs / 5 megs/song = 140 songs 25 cents / 140 songs = 0.17 cent per song I say put the artists in the Thunderdome and let them fight out for the 0.17 cents!
Remember the profession system in SWG? One look at this indecipherable table with no explanation whatsoever convinced me to give up after a mere twenty minutes of playing. And don't get me started on the total absence of money drops (at least in the newbie area where I was stuck...)
I know, the memory is always the second thing to go... ;)
What was the first one again? Yeah, you got me there, so I did write that. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to grab my broom and go yell at some youngins on my lawn. ;)
One of our senior techs (yes, feel free to laugh, I know I do!) came to tell me he had a virus on his laptop. His cursor was runnign wild, an dplenty of windows kept popping open and apps being launched. He could not figure why, so his best guess was "a really bad virus."
From personal experience, 97% of people who guess "It must be a virus!" have no virus whatsoever (the reverse is also true - 97% of viral issues ar edismissed as "something weird is going on and I don't know why") so I assumed it surely wasn't one. I had him unplug his wireless mouse bluetooth dongle, which ended the problem immediately, so it was clear where the problem was coming from. I guessed bad drivers, and suggested he reinstall. Putting them fresh from the driver disk simply returned the issue.
The following day, while looking for a spare power supply, we stumbled on the answer. The wireless keyboard that came with the mouse he was using had been carelessly thrown in there, with another keyboard on top, mashing down a large part of the wireless keyboard's keys. The laptop was just doing as it was told by the keyboard all along.
*laughing* Because they can't listen to their customers *and* have a completely fubar'd development process? Right... Newsflash! They can listen to their customer *and* still screw up. They aren't mutually exclusive! {cue shock and amazement that things can be more complex than you seem to want to believe in your narrow views.}
I never claimed they weren't listening. Only that Vista is a bloated system resource hog and ineffective as an XP replacement. I'm not attacking whether Microsoft is listening to its customers or not, just that Vista is flawed. Surely we can both agree to that.
Now, I could be wrong here, but I thought most client/server 3D game protocols do *not* have the clients transmit the position of the avatar to the server, which is part (b)? Don't the servers already know the position of the avatar, and the clients just send a vector, that is, a request to move a certain number of units in a particular direction, at which point the server calculates a new position from the original postion + the vector? I don't know if that is what CoH does, but I suspect that is the case (the only exception might be for the 'teleport' powers; teleportation, I suspect, basically works on an explicit location basis, so there might be some wiggle-room for Worlds.com to make a claim there, although I think a lawyer could argue that teleportation, when activated, is not the client transmitting the avatar's actual location, but instead a location which the server should move the avatar too, which might be different enough to be a handy loophole).
Prior art is easy to find - look at ANY multiplayer online shooter. Doom alone locks the case and throws it out for public ridicule.
And you thought laptop screws were hard to find when you drop them on the living room carpet...
Right..because the customers don't *want* a dumbed down OS that does damned near anything right out of the box (and yes, you are going to think it's bloated). And that's not even bringing to bear the millions they spend yearly on analyzing the data from their tracking, surveys, usage patterns and so on. *laughing* A little out of touch with the reality of the consumer market, are we?
You're probably right. That's certainly why old users of Win XP are abandonning that obsolete platform to rush in droves to purchase the light, fast and highly efficient Windows Vista. My, do I love me that Aero theme and translucent gadget sidebar.
I have to admit, the "Gates was Right" scenario gave me the most giggles. I mean, honestly, an integrated OS into Office that can run on any platform? Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I'll believe they can pull this off only after they can provide a stable OS that runs right out of the box without multiple service packs stretched out over several years. That, and Microsoft's reliance on having to come up with new versions of their OS to impose their vision on the consumer rather than listen to what they need (and right what what we need is a streamlined, light, fast and unbloated OS)
As soon as I'm done with the airing of grievances!!!
These guys don't get half the recognition they deserve. They've built from scratch a gigantic charity organization that gives thousands of kids a ray of sunshine in a time of their life that would otherwise be dark and bleak. That alone needs to be given the props they deserve to get, and that's not even scratching the surface here. It's most probably because of the success of PAX that E3 is rethinking its closed-doors invitation-only no-booth-bunnies rebranding failure. (That, and the stockholders weren't too crazy about their latest idea, the "First 1000 attendees get gouged with an icepick" promotion)
Only one man can save us from the tidal wave of piracy... Bring back MC Double Def DP!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_copy_that_floppy
Imagine if a computer science "journal" based on Hollywood's portrayal of how computers work were being published by the ACM, and you have some idea of how big a problem this is.
Perhaps then we'd finally be able to learn from Diane Lane how "totally untraceable" websites can still manage to get millions of hits and how to prevent FBI professionals from tracing a Best Buy RF wireless webcam from being traced back to its receptor (which clearly has to be within fifty yards)
I've had Win ME installed on a system at home since 2001 and it's been running as close as it will get to flawlessly. This is like saying you're getting "as close to good performance as I can" out of a Pinto or a Yugo.
This is exactly what I'm saying, I didn't realize I was being too subtle.