Actually, as a console game developer for a living, it's not just about having fixed hardware like a 360. If you want to publish a PC game, no one will stop you. If you want to publish a console game, you have to get approved by the 1st party and there is a certain bar of quality, including how well it performs. Thus, plenty of PC games are churned out with shitty performance and no one is there to stop them.
My mother is a teacher in California working especially with the mentally disabled for over 25 years, highly educated with several specialized education degrees, writes about education, and she could barely afford rent on the salary they gave her (about 45k in '99, if I remember correctly) teaching non-college education. She moved up to administration since, while teaching was, in her words, way more important, she couldn't pay the bills for the family. Now, she's unemployed due to cutbacks for the special education system in the past year - CA is pretty much trying to drop the entire program to save money.
I understand where this guy's coming from. My mother always spent hours of time and hundreds of dollars outside of the classroom to get kids supplies they needed - many of her textbooks were paid for out of HER pocket since the school would not supply them. She had to do her photocopying at a copy shop since the school couldn't afford to pay for her copies of the kids' reading material.
I learned a lot about the financial side of this whole debacle while she was teaching. What's sad is that the best way to make a living as a teacher is in the college system, but I'd argue that teachers in the lower levels of education are fundamentally way more important. Lots of kids do fine without college, but getting them educated while they still have a functionally (i.e. tax-paid) free education system available is so crucial.
Network-Manager pretty much was the huge, gigantic piece of lumber that broke the camel's back for me and generally points out the problem when everything becomes automated: I spent all my time trying to get it to STOP doing what it wanted to automagically do since I didn't want that at all. It made a bunch of automated decisions for me, but I didn't like nor want those decisions.
Things that 'just work' automatically is great when they actually make it work properly or will stop being so automated when the user wants control back. Car analogy time: this is why even cars with automatic transmission have 1st, 2nd, and neutral gears on the shifter in addition to plain old 'Drive.' Computer-assisted anything should be there until we grab the steering wheel, and it should never get in the way of us grabbing the wheel.
Localization has all sorts of unexpected problems. For example, when we were finishing our kids game we learned that, since we have a very, very minor slot machine minigame in it, the German version was going to be rated MATURE since they're super-sensitive to that stuff in ratings - the US rating is "E," FYI.
It wasn't money. The RIAA offered the judge a 3 album contract to help him finally realize his dream of pop stardom. Look for the debut album, "Judge, Jury, and Executioner" from 'MC Gaveltron' this Christmas.
No way! Forget pollution! With enough tsunamis, the world will spin backwards, and we'll get to fix all the mistakes we made polluting the ocean in the past!
AWESOME!
No one can be 'kicked' from an open quest. If you're in the area, you're working with the team on the quest, and everyone shares the rewards. At best/worst (depending on your opinion), the player who contributes the most gets a higher chance to get a 'magic goodie bag' with a selection of items in it.
... so for the non-pvpers, they added Public Quests, which, I can say from experience, are totally awesome and social situations. No player-killing, but no busywork just getting together with some people to hang out and kick some monster butt.
Just to play devil's advocate, while I will be the last person spending my hard earned money on a diamond, people have every right to spend money on what they want. How about a piece of art? How is that different than a diamond? They both don't DO anything in the traditional, 'verb' sense of the word, but they make a person happy. They both are pleasant to look at. They both are unique, rare creations. Why don't we give art buyers a hard time, since art does nothing useful?;)
Someone on the Nokia tablettalk forums rigged up a camera that downloads pictures straight to his n810 tablet. I took it a step further and made it Bluetooth tether to my phone and SCP the file to my home server. You can destroy the camera, but that upload is safe and sound. Even if it's in the process of being transmitted, it's already been copied to the n810. You could be really paranoid and copy it AGAIN to your phone via Bluetooth. That way, they might see the cable going to your n810 and assume it's part of the deal, but it's still been transmitted to your phone's SD card, safely in your pocket.
Original post on tablettalk forums here: http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13868&highlight=camera
How's that for geeking out over it?
No, while your laptop is off, your HDD is as likely to break as anything, but while it is ON and accessing data, that sucker is spinning. A big jostle can seriously damage it. Panasonic Toughbooks even had shock-mounted HDDs in them to stop this. Solid state drives completely eliminate the worry about spinning - this is why we can manhandle our cellphones without worry while they're ON.
It's not like with a spinning CD in a Discman - the optical lens is nowhere near as close to the CD as the parts in a HDD are crammed together.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, spread the word, man! I bought the Prius conversion kit - I'm running on 100% blubber.
Actually, as a console game developer for a living, it's not just about having fixed hardware like a 360. If you want to publish a PC game, no one will stop you. If you want to publish a console game, you have to get approved by the 1st party and there is a certain bar of quality, including how well it performs. Thus, plenty of PC games are churned out with shitty performance and no one is there to stop them.
According to the article from a few days ago...
In Soviet China, Linux runs YOU!
My mother is a teacher in California working especially with the mentally disabled for over 25 years, highly educated with several specialized education degrees, writes about education, and she could barely afford rent on the salary they gave her (about 45k in '99, if I remember correctly) teaching non-college education. She moved up to administration since, while teaching was, in her words, way more important, she couldn't pay the bills for the family. Now, she's unemployed due to cutbacks for the special education system in the past year - CA is pretty much trying to drop the entire program to save money.
I understand where this guy's coming from. My mother always spent hours of time and hundreds of dollars outside of the classroom to get kids supplies they needed - many of her textbooks were paid for out of HER pocket since the school would not supply them. She had to do her photocopying at a copy shop since the school couldn't afford to pay for her copies of the kids' reading material.
I learned a lot about the financial side of this whole debacle while she was teaching. What's sad is that the best way to make a living as a teacher is in the college system, but I'd argue that teachers in the lower levels of education are fundamentally way more important. Lots of kids do fine without college, but getting them educated while they still have a functionally (i.e. tax-paid) free education system available is so crucial.
I think the 3M one would also be less of a hit to your bank account.
Mod parent up!
Network-Manager pretty much was the huge, gigantic piece of lumber that broke the camel's back for me and generally points out the problem when everything becomes automated: I spent all my time trying to get it to STOP doing what it wanted to automagically do since I didn't want that at all. It made a bunch of automated decisions for me, but I didn't like nor want those decisions.
Things that 'just work' automatically is great when they actually make it work properly or will stop being so automated when the user wants control back. Car analogy time: this is why even cars with automatic transmission have 1st, 2nd, and neutral gears on the shifter in addition to plain old 'Drive.' Computer-assisted anything should be there until we grab the steering wheel, and it should never get in the way of us grabbing the wheel.
Localization has all sorts of unexpected problems. For example, when we were finishing our kids game we learned that, since we have a very, very minor slot machine minigame in it, the German version was going to be rated MATURE since they're super-sensitive to that stuff in ratings - the US rating is "E," FYI.
Subway Submarines. Baskin Robbins ICBM (Ice Cream Ballistic Missiles).
It is only $400 more to the bottom end of the Pro line... ...So if you want your firewire and a great display get a Pro.
Or I could buy a 500 dollar Dell laptop and get a great display on that. I'm sorry... "only 400 dollars"? That's a lot just for a decent display.
He's such a narcissist, Everybody's always talking about everybody.
But a Sorceress implies the gender, and they say you can make any class in either gender for Diablo 3. Wizard sure sounds better than "Sorcer????"
He got the memo, but he's still recompiling it since he's running on Gentoo.
It wasn't money. The RIAA offered the judge a 3 album contract to help him finally realize his dream of pop stardom. Look for the debut album, "Judge, Jury, and Executioner" from 'MC Gaveltron' this Christmas.
No one is saying Apple has a monopoly, the suit is pointing to monopolistic behavior (forced tie-ins, etc.).
No way! Forget pollution! With enough tsunamis, the world will spin backwards, and we'll get to fix all the mistakes we made polluting the ocean in the past! AWESOME!
No one can be 'kicked' from an open quest. If you're in the area, you're working with the team on the quest, and everyone shares the rewards. At best/worst (depending on your opinion), the player who contributes the most gets a higher chance to get a 'magic goodie bag' with a selection of items in it.
... so for the non-pvpers, they added Public Quests, which, I can say from experience, are totally awesome and social situations. No player-killing, but no busywork just getting together with some people to hang out and kick some monster butt.
Just to play devil's advocate, while I will be the last person spending my hard earned money on a diamond, people have every right to spend money on what they want. How about a piece of art? How is that different than a diamond? They both don't DO anything in the traditional, 'verb' sense of the word, but they make a person happy. They both are pleasant to look at. They both are unique, rare creations. Why don't we give art buyers a hard time, since art does nothing useful? ;)
Oh crap, if Slashdot is turning into Digg, that means the DNS cache has been poisoned! Why don't we practice what we preach?!
Someone on the Nokia tablettalk forums rigged up a camera that downloads pictures straight to his n810 tablet. I took it a step further and made it Bluetooth tether to my phone and SCP the file to my home server. You can destroy the camera, but that upload is safe and sound. Even if it's in the process of being transmitted, it's already been copied to the n810. You could be really paranoid and copy it AGAIN to your phone via Bluetooth. That way, they might see the cable going to your n810 and assume it's part of the deal, but it's still been transmitted to your phone's SD card, safely in your pocket. Original post on tablettalk forums here: http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13868&highlight=camera How's that for geeking out over it?
Complaining that people don't RTFA is so 2007. It's about time they stopped Reading the Fucking Title! I, for one, support our troll!
No, while your laptop is off, your HDD is as likely to break as anything, but while it is ON and accessing data, that sucker is spinning. A big jostle can seriously damage it. Panasonic Toughbooks even had shock-mounted HDDs in them to stop this. Solid state drives completely eliminate the worry about spinning - this is why we can manhandle our cellphones without worry while they're ON. It's not like with a spinning CD in a Discman - the optical lens is nowhere near as close to the CD as the parts in a HDD are crammed together.
"A government of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation." Yeah, I think that was it. Let me go fix up the reference on Wikipedia...