Ok, so lets say we do find life even as advanced as, say, rats. What do we do with that information? Especially if its so far out that we can't possibly make it to that planet?
Fragmentation will kill cell phone games before networks do. The reason why gaming has thrived on consoles is because it takes the guesswork out of knowing how a game is going to play. PC gaming has always had flaws where no one knows -how- their game is going to play. So the system requirements recommend a 3 Ghz P4 CPU, ok, would a 1.6 Ghz Pentium Dual Core run it? What about an 2.7 Ghz Sempron? The same thing is going to happen to cell phone games, especially on simi-open platforms such as Android and Windows Mobile, while it might be easy to give out the 3 models of iPhones and the 3 generations of iPod touches, what about the million different names for the same Android phone? The T-Mobile G1 is known in some parts as the HTC Dream or the Era G1, and that is just one of the many Android phones. Mix that with different capabilities (a G1 is going to have different capabilities than a Nexus One which is going to be different than a Motorola Backflip) and you have a platform where you don't know if something as demanding as a game is going to work well or at all and who wants to spend money on a download that might not work.
No, rather PC games are becoming console games because that is what gives publishers the most revenue. Why keep supporting a game with user maps when you can release a new game with a few new weapons and maps and charge the full price? Why allow for mods when you can release DLC?
Why exactly is there a congressional case going on about this? It becomes even more worrying when you realize that the US government has a controlling interest in most of Toyota's competitors in the USA. In short, why, in a country where states are going bankrupt, privacy is an illusion, healthcare reform has boiled down to if you are pro or anti Obama, rampant spending and tax increases. In short, why do I care about this? File a class action lawsuit and let the courts settle it. Nothing is worse then a bunch of politicians knowing nothing about engineering, with stock in competitor's companies and large problems they haven't solved wasting their time with this crap.
But the thing is, faking a death is easy. How many people A) Are computer geeks (the average joe doesn't even know what a Core i7 is) B) has access to a printing press or the like to make a box C) has access to plastic moulds and the like D) has spare aluminium that looks like a CPU.
Faking a death, by contrast, is rather easy, you drive off into the dark, have your car fall off of the cliff and plant some DNA evidence. In a remote enough area people will think your corpse was dragged off by animals and no use looking.
But the thing is, if it is high quality information -why- does it need to be deleted? The advantage to Wikipedia isn't that the information is always high quality but rather
A) It is one source for -everything- you don't have to hunt for 234242344 other sites to get the information
B) No ads
C) Fast loading
D) Easy URLs, its pretty easy to find what article without having to find/blog/php?=323423A34234F324234ABC342
But what do we -gain- for deleting every long article on every Pokemon in existence? Does it really matter if we have a single article for each episode of Keeping Up Appearances? In a print encyclopedia its easy to say that yes it does matter because extra pages translates to extra costs, however, with Wikipedia it doesn't. Yes, it may use a few -kilobytes- of disk space and if its really as obscure as everyone says, there won't be any extra bandwidth costs.
Yes, but as history tells us, many important inventions and many important scientists didn't have a formal education with science journals and the like, but rather with the "popular" side of scientists. Look at the aristocrat scientists who simply purchased the "new thing" at the time, and used it to find important discoveries.
Such as? Really, the most useful information that I found deleted was on Fire Emblem (a J-RPG) it contained a lot of useful information on things it was inspired from and things that were inspired by it, references to mythology and certain references to common characters/themes. While one might argue that it doesn't "belong" on Wikipedia, it was well sourced, and today I can't even find it on Deletionpedia.
This should be tagged as sudden outbreak of common sense. The entire point of organized science is to let anyone read, comment and improve upon various theories and publications in science.
Reverted. I wrote that so it must be perfect! How dare someone have the -audacity- to change one of my words on -my- article! What is the world coming to? An encyclopedia where the masses can edit it!?
I think the main problem with Wikipedia is it went from "an encyclopedia where you -might- find something of interest" to "a place you can find anything!" to now "a place where you can possibly find some things but if we don't like it, it gets deleted and we don't want your help unless you feel like reading 22342342343 policies, follow them exactly and patrol "your" page constantly". Seriously, Wikipedia 2-3 years ago was a lot better than Wikipedia now. Why is it that editors think deleting articles somehow makes it better? Especially since Wikipedia is online and a few new articles don't translate to (much) extra load?
As opposed to? You know, I've come to the conclusion that Wikipedia is a lot more reliable, current and useful than a Google search. How many of us when going through links find the majority of them to be old (circa 1998) sites using outdated layouts, outdated information, etc. And it isn't like print media is much better. Really, Wikipedia is a great source to find needed information (note that accurate information is often unimportant compared to what the masses think) that you would spend days hunting down on Google and in libraries.
Exactly. And then these people who revert -any- change without even looking at it. What? An anonymous contributor added a few words to make a phrase make since? Revert it!
Hm, perhaps your library situation is different then mine, but with mine I have access to about ~20 different libraries across the region, and if one library doesn't have the book, one of the 19 may have it and will get it to you in about a day. And while it isn't the best stocked library (in their entire system they had 3 books about the Welsh Language) for simi-recent books (~2000-2008) you can get any book within a day or so.
It also depends on what you are reading, for novels it is a lot easier to use the library then to pay $9 for a book that you are only going to read once. For a book you are going to read multiple times you have to pay $30 for a book without crappy binding. I simply don't have the money per enjoyment out of buying books. I read an interesting book (out of the library on the formation of the English language) but it took me only 2 days to read it, the book cost $14 if I would have bought it normally, making me pay $7 per day of reading, which is rather expensive.
Books that embrace their physicality is like a pop-up book, with flaps to open, wheels to turn, and tabs to pull. While I really don't see his point (how many people buy lots of pop-up books after their kid has turned 5?)
Leave the iPad out of this. We're talking about consuming text which isn't printed on paper, and we've been doing that since even before the *gasp* kindle.
Sure, but it is only after the Kindle that people have really started to read things traditionally done with print using a screen. Yes, most of us have been getting news online since we got our first AOL subscription, but how many of us have read novels until recently? And recent novels, not just The Canterbury Tales or Candide.
If I printed that out on paper, read it, and then burned the paper, would that have made the content "embrace its physicality"?
No, he was referring to the few books who have strange things with their books, like pull out pages or pop-up books. I really don't see his point, how many people really buy those?
The same thing could be said of any technology. Isn't your iPod more likely to be stolen then a CD player? Yet that really didn't slow down the adoption of digital music.
Yes, but DRM is going to go away much like with music. Perhaps even faster when people start adding programs to the E-readers, wouldn't it be nice to have a search feature that searches all public domain sites, the book stores, and torrents to find the best solution for you?
If cost came down sufficiently maybe I could end up stacking my e-books on the shelf beside the paper ones. "Buy the book and get a free, reusable e-book reader" isn't *that* far off, I think.
But that defeats the entire purpose of an e-reader. The point isn't to use e-ink and be all fancy but allow for one device that eliminates the eye strain of reading on an LCD, that can store lots of books and not take up lots of room and have great battery life. For example, when traveling rather than putting 4 paperbacks in a backpack, they can store one Kindle and have 200 novels in the same space.
Um, I don't think any "merchants" are confused. It is the publishers that are confused. Book stores as a whole have embraced E-Readers, look at Amazon and the Kindle and Barnes and Noble and the Nook. Other than Borders and a few other stores, the rest basically specialize in cheap books, something that E-readers lack (and pre-1920s works only get you so far) and book exchanges.
The main problems with e-readers is A) books are expensive B) there are no libraries. How many people actually -buy- all the books they read? Yes, occasionally there is the odd book where the waiting list in the library would give me a copy sometime in the next decade and I will buy a book. Or the odd book on sale at Barnes and Nobel for $3 that is a hardback, and occasionally I wish to annotate a classic work of literature so I will buy it, but for the rest, I just go to a library. As for newspapers, I generally don't read any. I don't see the point. Any community event traditionally advertised in the local paper is easily found via Facebook or Twitter. National or international news is best found online where you can see all sides of the story rather than the one or two expressed via print media. It allows for more specialized interest stories, good luck finding a newspaper with coverage as complete as even Endgadget. Newspapers also rarely follow up stories or allow for user feedback except for some cherry picked editorials.
In short, E-Readers aren't going to replace print media when it comes to literature and print is already dead for most people under 40 for news.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, so lets say we do find life even as advanced as, say, rats. What do we do with that information? Especially if its so far out that we can't possibly make it to that planet?
Fragmentation will kill cell phone games before networks do. The reason why gaming has thrived on consoles is because it takes the guesswork out of knowing how a game is going to play. PC gaming has always had flaws where no one knows -how- their game is going to play. So the system requirements recommend a 3 Ghz P4 CPU, ok, would a 1.6 Ghz Pentium Dual Core run it? What about an 2.7 Ghz Sempron? The same thing is going to happen to cell phone games, especially on simi-open platforms such as Android and Windows Mobile, while it might be easy to give out the 3 models of iPhones and the 3 generations of iPod touches, what about the million different names for the same Android phone? The T-Mobile G1 is known in some parts as the HTC Dream or the Era G1, and that is just one of the many Android phones. Mix that with different capabilities (a G1 is going to have different capabilities than a Nexus One which is going to be different than a Motorola Backflip) and you have a platform where you don't know if something as demanding as a game is going to work well or at all and who wants to spend money on a download that might not work.
No, rather PC games are becoming console games because that is what gives publishers the most revenue. Why keep supporting a game with user maps when you can release a new game with a few new weapons and maps and charge the full price? Why allow for mods when you can release DLC?
Why exactly is there a congressional case going on about this? It becomes even more worrying when you realize that the US government has a controlling interest in most of Toyota's competitors in the USA. In short, why, in a country where states are going bankrupt, privacy is an illusion, healthcare reform has boiled down to if you are pro or anti Obama, rampant spending and tax increases. In short, why do I care about this? File a class action lawsuit and let the courts settle it. Nothing is worse then a bunch of politicians knowing nothing about engineering, with stock in competitor's companies and large problems they haven't solved wasting their time with this crap.
Good luck finding a decent ISP that gives that quality of service, for that price without annoying caps.
But the thing is, faking a death is easy. How many people A) Are computer geeks (the average joe doesn't even know what a Core i7 is) B) has access to a printing press or the like to make a box C) has access to plastic moulds and the like D) has spare aluminium that looks like a CPU.
Faking a death, by contrast, is rather easy, you drive off into the dark, have your car fall off of the cliff and plant some DNA evidence. In a remote enough area people will think your corpse was dragged off by animals and no use looking.
Except for rather than one or two returns, there were several. Few people have the time/materials to make such elaborate fakes to save ~$500.
There is a difference between someone driving past and seeing, and a million cars driving past.
But the thing is, if it is high quality information -why- does it need to be deleted? The advantage to Wikipedia isn't that the information is always high quality but rather
/blog/php?=323423A34234F324234ABC342
A) It is one source for -everything- you don't have to hunt for 234242344 other sites to get the information
B) No ads
C) Fast loading
D) Easy URLs, its pretty easy to find what article without having to find
But what do we -gain- for deleting every long article on every Pokemon in existence? Does it really matter if we have a single article for each episode of Keeping Up Appearances? In a print encyclopedia its easy to say that yes it does matter because extra pages translates to extra costs, however, with Wikipedia it doesn't. Yes, it may use a few -kilobytes- of disk space and if its really as obscure as everyone says, there won't be any extra bandwidth costs.
Yes, but as history tells us, many important inventions and many important scientists didn't have a formal education with science journals and the like, but rather with the "popular" side of scientists. Look at the aristocrat scientists who simply purchased the "new thing" at the time, and used it to find important discoveries.
Such as? Really, the most useful information that I found deleted was on Fire Emblem (a J-RPG) it contained a lot of useful information on things it was inspired from and things that were inspired by it, references to mythology and certain references to common characters/themes. While one might argue that it doesn't "belong" on Wikipedia, it was well sourced, and today I can't even find it on Deletionpedia.
This should be tagged as sudden outbreak of common sense. The entire point of organized science is to let anyone read, comment and improve upon various theories and publications in science.
Reverted. I wrote that so it must be perfect! How dare someone have the -audacity- to change one of my words on -my- article! What is the world coming to? An encyclopedia where the masses can edit it!?
I think the main problem with Wikipedia is it went from "an encyclopedia where you -might- find something of interest" to "a place you can find anything!" to now "a place where you can possibly find some things but if we don't like it, it gets deleted and we don't want your help unless you feel like reading 22342342343 policies, follow them exactly and patrol "your" page constantly". Seriously, Wikipedia 2-3 years ago was a lot better than Wikipedia now. Why is it that editors think deleting articles somehow makes it better? Especially since Wikipedia is online and a few new articles don't translate to (much) extra load?
As opposed to? You know, I've come to the conclusion that Wikipedia is a lot more reliable, current and useful than a Google search. How many of us when going through links find the majority of them to be old (circa 1998) sites using outdated layouts, outdated information, etc. And it isn't like print media is much better. Really, Wikipedia is a great source to find needed information (note that accurate information is often unimportant compared to what the masses think) that you would spend days hunting down on Google and in libraries.
Exactly. And then these people who revert -any- change without even looking at it. What? An anonymous contributor added a few words to make a phrase make since? Revert it!
Hm, perhaps your library situation is different then mine, but with mine I have access to about ~20 different libraries across the region, and if one library doesn't have the book, one of the 19 may have it and will get it to you in about a day. And while it isn't the best stocked library (in their entire system they had 3 books about the Welsh Language) for simi-recent books (~2000-2008) you can get any book within a day or so.
It also depends on what you are reading, for novels it is a lot easier to use the library then to pay $9 for a book that you are only going to read once. For a book you are going to read multiple times you have to pay $30 for a book without crappy binding. I simply don't have the money per enjoyment out of buying books. I read an interesting book (out of the library on the formation of the English language) but it took me only 2 days to read it, the book cost $14 if I would have bought it normally, making me pay $7 per day of reading, which is rather expensive.
Leave the iPad out of this. We're talking about consuming text which isn't printed on paper, and we've been doing that since even before the *gasp* kindle.
Sure, but it is only after the Kindle that people have really started to read things traditionally done with print using a screen. Yes, most of us have been getting news online since we got our first AOL subscription, but how many of us have read novels until recently? And recent novels, not just The Canterbury Tales or Candide.
If I printed that out on paper, read it, and then burned the paper, would that have made the content "embrace its physicality"?
No, he was referring to the few books who have strange things with their books, like pull out pages or pop-up books. I really don't see his point, how many people really buy those?
The same thing could be said of any technology. Isn't your iPod more likely to be stolen then a CD player? Yet that really didn't slow down the adoption of digital music.
Yes, but DRM is going to go away much like with music. Perhaps even faster when people start adding programs to the E-readers, wouldn't it be nice to have a search feature that searches all public domain sites, the book stores, and torrents to find the best solution for you?
If its any type of /. mod probably overrated, troll, offtopic or flamebait.
If cost came down sufficiently maybe I could end up stacking my e-books on the shelf beside the paper ones. "Buy the book and get a free, reusable e-book reader" isn't *that* far off, I think.
But that defeats the entire purpose of an e-reader. The point isn't to use e-ink and be all fancy but allow for one device that eliminates the eye strain of reading on an LCD, that can store lots of books and not take up lots of room and have great battery life. For example, when traveling rather than putting 4 paperbacks in a backpack, they can store one Kindle and have 200 novels in the same space.
Um, I don't think any "merchants" are confused. It is the publishers that are confused. Book stores as a whole have embraced E-Readers, look at Amazon and the Kindle and Barnes and Noble and the Nook. Other than Borders and a few other stores, the rest basically specialize in cheap books, something that E-readers lack (and pre-1920s works only get you so far) and book exchanges.
The main problems with e-readers is A) books are expensive B) there are no libraries. How many people actually -buy- all the books they read? Yes, occasionally there is the odd book where the waiting list in the library would give me a copy sometime in the next decade and I will buy a book. Or the odd book on sale at Barnes and Nobel for $3 that is a hardback, and occasionally I wish to annotate a classic work of literature so I will buy it, but for the rest, I just go to a library. As for newspapers, I generally don't read any. I don't see the point. Any community event traditionally advertised in the local paper is easily found via Facebook or Twitter. National or international news is best found online where you can see all sides of the story rather than the one or two expressed via print media. It allows for more specialized interest stories, good luck finding a newspaper with coverage as complete as even Endgadget. Newspapers also rarely follow up stories or allow for user feedback except for some cherry picked editorials.
In short, E-Readers aren't going to replace print media when it comes to literature and print is already dead for most people under 40 for news.