There are both rational and irrational components to this answer...
Rational: The Lite looks even smaller than the DS is now. Given that my hands are basically already too big for the DS, going with the Lite seems like it'd be a step backward in terms of comfort. I know it is supposed to have a brighter screen and all that, but honestly I don't see much wrong with the current DS' brightness. Additionally, the DS is cheaper now at Wal-mart than the Lite will be (since the Lite will be the "new" thing). Admittedly, not *much* cheaper... but still, it helps me feel better about it.:-)
Irrational: I wanted it *now* dammit! (stupid impulse-buying...)
Just yesterday I was reading everything I could about this game. I had been waiting for it since I first heard of it and the reviews all sounded excellent. After work my wife and I headed to the store and picked up a DS, New Super Mario Brothers, Mario Kart DS, and Nintendogs (for her).
The DS is only the 3rd Nintendo system I've owned. I had an original NES when I was a kid and loved SMB 3 in particular. Most of the rest of the games just didn't do it for me at the time (of course I was broke and didn't have much access to game stores, either). Years later, I got a Game Cube with the idea that it was about time I satisfied my Mario cravings. Unfortunately, Super Mario Sunshine sucked balls. Mario is just not meant to be 3D. Sorry. (Although I enjoyed Viewtiful Joe quite a lot - but that's basically a 2D game.) I sold the GC not long after buying it out of disappointment. Now I have the DS and already the games I've played on them have been excellent. Mario Kart is pretty damn fun - and made even better by the Internet play. New Super Mario Brothers is everything I've wished for in a Mario game since SMB 3. Nintendogs is just silly, but the wife loves it.:-) Long story short - I'm quite happy with my purchase and it's all because of the release of this game. Way to go Nintendo!
For almost everything except typing in the small keyboards, a finger works just fine. (At least in the games I've played - including New Super Mario Brothers.)
A different key is negotiated for each call - therefore reading your key and being overheard or jotting it down on a note that can easily get found later doesn't matter in the slightest for future calls (although the current call could then be tapped, I believe, but if they are bugging your house or car then you've got to be taking other high security precautions as well). As I understand it, a man-in-the-middle attack is going to change the keys that are perceived by each end. So while the voice communication would seem to be working fine, the keys won't match. Simply verifying the key (and sound of the voice) on each side match would determine if you've been tapped or not, right? Once that is decided, the call can proceed accordingly.
The biggest danger with a jotted down or overheard key is if the call is recorded in encrypted form - then the spies could decrypt and hear what everyone said (just perhaps not in a real time). But like I said before, if you're in that kind of danger, then you're going to be making damn sure your henchmen know proper paranoid security protocols, talk in codes, sweep for bugs, never write anything down, etc.
It's not going to magically make calls secure, but it adds a nice layer for the mafia.. er.. people who need it.
Has anyone had a chance to play with these in-person yet in an Apple store? (There are no such stores around here...) How does the glossy display look and feel? How does it compare with a standard Windows screen or vs. the displays used on the MacBook Pros or older PowerBooks and iBooks?
Does anyone have any guesses on when Apple might upgrade their G5 pro desktop line? I got my dad to finally consider getting a Mac, but now he's convinced that he needs the biggest and baddest machine possible before he'll buy one. (He won't just get a top of the line iMac at this point since it isn't "pro" enough somehow. *sigh*) Since the G5 appears to be on the way out, I told him to hold off buying a PowerPC desktop and wait for the Intel upgrade - but it has been awhile now, and there hasn't been any mention of upgrading the PowerMac line that I've heard. (And apparently the money to buy a new computer is burning a hole in his wallet or something - wish I had that problem!) He even called Apple to ask them, but the tech support response was that PowerMacs would never be upgraded and support for them would never be dropped. (Sounds a bit fishy to me... I suppose if they change the name to something without "Power" in there, technically the guy didn't lie.)
..but there is a Javascript environment - and it's graphical. It's hundreds of times *better* than what I had as a kid. I would have killed for the kind of functionality that's routinely abused by Web 2.0 sites on a daily basis.
Teach it? No one taught me anything about programming when I was a kid. I checked out books from the library and fired up my Atari 800 and typed stuff in myself. No teacher required. (And no one to ask for help - I was the only person I knew who had a clue what I was doing.) The only reason I did it was because I had a computer and it didn't do much on its own. I had a need, so I set out to fill that need not knowing what I was getting myself into. That's the charm of being young and ignorant. Now, though, computers do so much out of the box that it's hard to imagine a kid thinking "gee, there's nothing to do with the darned thing." Combined with the Internet, it almost completely removes the old motivations we had for learning the craft. Other factors drive the modern geek-ling - such as the notoriety of building your own web page, making javascript programs in the browser that your friends can play with from anywhere in the world, and working on stuff in Flash that's so much cooler than I had ever dreamed possible back when I was saving my BASIC programs to an audio cassette. The geeks are still there - they just look different. It's hard to imagine what they will come up with in the future after growing up on such powerful tools.
It's just changing with the times. Javascript and Flash are pretty easy languages to pick up and the environments are everywhere. They might not be programming in Pascal or C++ anymore, but instead using ubiquitous web technologies to release their creative juices.
Just the other day I was web2.0ing and I noticed - hey, this stuff works just like web 1.0 - but there's more nounal verbification. And that's when the truth hit me: web2.0 is really web1.0 - but with more words!
If anything, it'd be a fun way to gain a wide variety of experiences that would normally be very hard to get - even if you never had any desire to change careers. It'd beat a passive trip to a museum, that's for sure...
Well if only some other company had a patent on patent trolling! Then the problem would solve itself. Of course, chances are good that Intellectual Ventures has the patent on patent trolling - in which case we're all screwed.
..makes it sound like he is being questioned by police or academics or something for, perhaps, faulty research - when in fact he's being questioned in the context of an interview! Here I was all excited to join the crowd of people slamming this guy for his anti-videogame-ways only to be thwarted by the english language! Now what am I going to do with my afternoon?
It'll nicely eliminate the classic webcam-looking-down-on-you situation, but it makes covert spying by nasty software a very real possibility. Not to mention that technology like this will end up in screens in stores, on streets, and eventually even in your television. It's the ultimate hidden camera - hidden in plain sight! Abuse is a given.
Sure, eventually we'll all adapt to the idea that screens could be watching us in the same way we are watching them - but that's going to take a long, long time to really sink in...
Spore is the only game I care about at this point. It looks like damn cool tech - and it was made mostly by demoscene coders! You can't beat that! Hopefully there's a cool "greetz" cheatcode or something which activates a screen of flying and oscillating words, bright rotating and flashing background lines, and a rockin' retro MOD score blasting from the speakers.
I'm glad the article inspired you and wish you good luck on your quest to better yourself! I'm working on it myself, too. It's not easy. There's a lot of baggage to overcome - but I think it should be possible.:-)
"exercize" - I'm glad I'm not the only one who has a problem spelling that damn word... (it's "exercise", btw):-)
Anyway, I ran across this article about procrastination yesterday which I think sort of relates to what you're saying. You don't seem to suffer from the problem, but I'm posting the link here since someone looking for help and reading what you wrote may also find it insightful.
My theory is that Apple secretly helped fund that contest. It would have been incredibly cheap R&D and they'd have nothing to lose. In the meantime they could have been working on the installer, bootloader, and partitioner on the off chance someone got it to work. Then they cut a deal with Microsoft to make it all legal and boom-instant stock price increase.
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Heber's Law: As an online discussion which has invoked Godwin's Law grows longer, the probability that someone will point it out approaches one.
There are both rational and irrational components to this answer...
:-)
Rational: The Lite looks even smaller than the DS is now. Given that my hands are basically already too big for the DS, going with the Lite seems like it'd be a step backward in terms of comfort. I know it is supposed to have a brighter screen and all that, but honestly I don't see much wrong with the current DS' brightness. Additionally, the DS is cheaper now at Wal-mart than the Lite will be (since the Lite will be the "new" thing). Admittedly, not *much* cheaper... but still, it helps me feel better about it.
Irrational: I wanted it *now* dammit! (stupid impulse-buying...)
Hmm. Okay. Interesting. Good tidbit, thanks. :-)
Just yesterday I was reading everything I could about this game. I had been waiting for it since I first heard of it and the reviews all sounded excellent. After work my wife and I headed to the store and picked up a DS, New Super Mario Brothers, Mario Kart DS, and Nintendogs (for her).
:-) Long story short - I'm quite happy with my purchase and it's all because of the release of this game. Way to go Nintendo!
The DS is only the 3rd Nintendo system I've owned. I had an original NES when I was a kid and loved SMB 3 in particular. Most of the rest of the games just didn't do it for me at the time (of course I was broke and didn't have much access to game stores, either). Years later, I got a Game Cube with the idea that it was about time I satisfied my Mario cravings. Unfortunately, Super Mario Sunshine sucked balls. Mario is just not meant to be 3D. Sorry. (Although I enjoyed Viewtiful Joe quite a lot - but that's basically a 2D game.) I sold the GC not long after buying it out of disappointment. Now I have the DS and already the games I've played on them have been excellent. Mario Kart is pretty damn fun - and made even better by the Internet play. New Super Mario Brothers is everything I've wished for in a Mario game since SMB 3. Nintendogs is just silly, but the wife loves it.
too bad DS games need the stylus
For almost everything except typing in the small keyboards, a finger works just fine. (At least in the games I've played - including New Super Mario Brothers.)
A different key is negotiated for each call - therefore reading your key and being overheard or jotting it down on a note that can easily get found later doesn't matter in the slightest for future calls (although the current call could then be tapped, I believe, but if they are bugging your house or car then you've got to be taking other high security precautions as well). As I understand it, a man-in-the-middle attack is going to change the keys that are perceived by each end. So while the voice communication would seem to be working fine, the keys won't match. Simply verifying the key (and sound of the voice) on each side match would determine if you've been tapped or not, right? Once that is decided, the call can proceed accordingly.
The biggest danger with a jotted down or overheard key is if the call is recorded in encrypted form - then the spies could decrypt and hear what everyone said (just perhaps not in a real time). But like I said before, if you're in that kind of danger, then you're going to be making damn sure your henchmen know proper paranoid security protocols, talk in codes, sweep for bugs, never write anything down, etc.
It's not going to magically make calls secure, but it adds a nice layer for the mafia.. er.. people who need it.
Has anyone had a chance to play with these in-person yet in an Apple store? (There are no such stores around here...) How does the glossy display look and feel? How does it compare with a standard Windows screen or vs. the displays used on the MacBook Pros or older PowerBooks and iBooks?
Does anyone have any guesses on when Apple might upgrade their G5 pro desktop line? I got my dad to finally consider getting a Mac, but now he's convinced that he needs the biggest and baddest machine possible before he'll buy one. (He won't just get a top of the line iMac at this point since it isn't "pro" enough somehow. *sigh*) Since the G5 appears to be on the way out, I told him to hold off buying a PowerPC desktop and wait for the Intel upgrade - but it has been awhile now, and there hasn't been any mention of upgrading the PowerMac line that I've heard. (And apparently the money to buy a new computer is burning a hole in his wallet or something - wish I had that problem!) He even called Apple to ask them, but the tech support response was that PowerMacs would never be upgraded and support for them would never be dropped. (Sounds a bit fishy to me... I suppose if they change the name to something without "Power" in there, technically the guy didn't lie.)
Wow! AMD has invented a way to crash an infinite loop! Awesome! Intel? I bet their solution will take twice as long to crash this loop:
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10
AMD is always innovating.
..but there is a Javascript environment - and it's graphical. It's hundreds of times *better* than what I had as a kid. I would have killed for the kind of functionality that's routinely abused by Web 2.0 sites on a daily basis.
Teach it? No one taught me anything about programming when I was a kid. I checked out books from the library and fired up my Atari 800 and typed stuff in myself. No teacher required. (And no one to ask for help - I was the only person I knew who had a clue what I was doing.) The only reason I did it was because I had a computer and it didn't do much on its own. I had a need, so I set out to fill that need not knowing what I was getting myself into. That's the charm of being young and ignorant. Now, though, computers do so much out of the box that it's hard to imagine a kid thinking "gee, there's nothing to do with the darned thing." Combined with the Internet, it almost completely removes the old motivations we had for learning the craft. Other factors drive the modern geek-ling - such as the notoriety of building your own web page, making javascript programs in the browser that your friends can play with from anywhere in the world, and working on stuff in Flash that's so much cooler than I had ever dreamed possible back when I was saving my BASIC programs to an audio cassette. The geeks are still there - they just look different. It's hard to imagine what they will come up with in the future after growing up on such powerful tools.
It's just changing with the times. Javascript and Flash are pretty easy languages to pick up and the environments are everywhere. They might not be programming in Pascal or C++ anymore, but instead using ubiquitous web technologies to release their creative juices.
Just the other day I was web2.0ing and I noticed - hey, this stuff works just like web 1.0 - but there's more nounal verbification. And that's when the truth hit me: web2.0 is really web1.0 - but with more words!
If anything, it'd be a fun way to gain a wide variety of experiences that would normally be very hard to get - even if you never had any desire to change careers. It'd beat a passive trip to a museum, that's for sure...
Well if only some other company had a patent on patent trolling! Then the problem would solve itself. Of course, chances are good that Intellectual Ventures has the patent on patent trolling - in which case we're all screwed.
Heh. Yeah. I noticed that after I hit submit, of course... Stupid too-fast-button-clicking-and-not-enough-proofreadi ng-or-previewing-ing. :-)
Get drunk. Play a game.
Excellent idea!
..makes it sound like he is being questioned by police or academics or something for, perhaps, faulty research - when in fact he's being questioned in the context of an interview! Here I was all excited to join the crowd of people slamming this guy for his anti-videogame-ways only to be thwarted by the english language! Now what am I going to do with my afternoon?
It'll nicely eliminate the classic webcam-looking-down-on-you situation, but it makes covert spying by nasty software a very real possibility. Not to mention that technology like this will end up in screens in stores, on streets, and eventually even in your television. It's the ultimate hidden camera - hidden in plain sight! Abuse is a given.
Sure, eventually we'll all adapt to the idea that screens could be watching us in the same way we are watching them - but that's going to take a long, long time to really sink in...
Spore is the only game I care about at this point. It looks like damn cool tech - and it was made mostly by demoscene coders! You can't beat that! Hopefully there's a cool "greetz" cheatcode or something which activates a screen of flying and oscillating words, bright rotating and flashing background lines, and a rockin' retro MOD score blasting from the speakers.
I'm glad the article inspired you and wish you good luck on your quest to better yourself! I'm working on it myself, too. It's not easy. There's a lot of baggage to overcome - but I think it should be possible. :-)
OMG that's so totally cheating!!!!1!11one!1!!
Thanks, I'm a terrible procrastinator. I'm busy right now, so I'll read that later.
Look at it this way... if you read the article immediately, you can put off what you're doing right now! It's a win-win.
"exercize" - I'm glad I'm not the only one who has a problem spelling that damn word... (it's "exercise", btw) :-)
Anyway, I ran across this article about procrastination yesterday which I think sort of relates to what you're saying. You don't seem to suffer from the problem, but I'm posting the link here since someone looking for help and reading what you wrote may also find it insightful.
My theory is that Apple secretly helped fund that contest. It would have been incredibly cheap R&D and they'd have nothing to lose. In the meantime they could have been working on the installer, bootloader, and partitioner on the off chance someone got it to work. Then they cut a deal with Microsoft to make it all legal and boom-instant stock price increase.