True, brands do mean something (that's why we have ONLINE brands like Google and Amazon), but on the internet they don't HAVE to mean anything. We have options now that we don't get in the traditional "Brick and Mortar" world. Yes people will still believe the brand names they see like CNN, but people can easily find other views. They can find views of ordinary citizens, the government agency that CNN was reporting on, etc; things that are nearly impossible to get most of the time on many issues. Before the internet views of small groups with "untraditional" thinking was often regulated to keeping up on things in small monthly magazines or newspapers. Now thanks to the internet you don't have to wait a month to hear what "Citizens Against A Government Controlled By Aardvarks" has to say on the State of the Union address, you can find out as soon as they want to tell you.
So the difference on whether brands mean anything is choice. Now we have a REAL choice, as opposed to (for example) only getting your news from CBS, ABC, or NBC. They are all pretty close. But on the 'net you get the Drudge Report, and tons of other things. (Not to get on a topic about ABC vs. CBS vs. Drudge, just an example).
If you were going to build something that used embedded 64 bit processing, why would you choose a processor with a 64 bit address space? If you need that much address space, then chances are you can handle the extra RAM needed by the pointers, right?
It's in the current issue of the magazine, and that's what the article was designed for. It was never designed for the web, that's why you would have to click "next" so much.
My brother has an old Creative Nomad II that has an FM tuner. This is by no means a new feature, I guess it's just not popular enough to be included on other players.
Now the built in FM transmitter (which this seems to have) IS new, as far as I know. If they do a good job with that feature, that would be quite nice.
I have an iPod and love it, and I understand that there is no iPod killer right now. That said, it's still interesting to look for two reasons. First, to see if the other companies can "get it". The iPod is not just a big hard drive, it's a fantastic UI. Second is to see what other people are comming up with. If another company has an inferior product but has some interesting or fantastic features, that could show us what's comming. If someone made something that had some of these features and came close to the iPod (was almost as good) then Apple might be forced to improve the iPod, and looking at the competitor would show us what might be added.
Just because I love my car doesn't stop me from looking into other one every once in a while when some interesting feature comes along. Lets you see what's comming.
Very cool. My first thought was of the old Game&Watch games, some of which had two screens. So not only do we get to have games like that, but we can also have games that use the two screens in different ways. In RPGs you could constantly have your stats/inventory open. In other games you could have the top window be a map and the bottom the area where your working. If they put a few more buttons on, you could head to head on one unit with someone else on simple games. I think this will be VERY interesting to see what developers come up with for this. Puzzle games alone (with two perspectives) could be very intersting.
I read this HILARIOUS thing once, I forget where. Basicially the premise was that a new species of bug had been discovered by scientists. The bug could be found in many colors and sizes, with varying number of antennae. These bugs could be identified by their feeding habbits. The attach to humans by hanging out the outside of the head and feed through the ear canal. The bugs have the ability to make people act like stupid idiots talking to people who aren't there and yelling loudly, and they can be dangerous (having been known to cause car accidents).
It is suggested that if you ever see a person with one of these bugs on their ear, you run up, grab it off, throw it on the ground, SMASH IT, and then yell to the person "I just saved your life! You don't have to thank me." At that point you might want to run as victims seem to suffer from withdrawl from the bugs and don't like losing them.
I'll just say that they are simply trying to get their name out there and take on an "evil" cause to get votes.
That said, I hope the judge in the case gets things right and PLAYS THE GAME to that point (it's not that far in) so that he can see how it really is portrayed in the game, and not just listen to some lawyer try to make things sound the way he wants. That way maybe he'll see that it's part of the game, and that it's not just anti-hatian speach. This case is like suing movie studios over anti-semetic elements in "Schindler's List" or the racist stuff in "To Kill A Mockingbird". The lawsuit is rediculous.
I understand what you say. I have a cell phone, but I keep it off, ALL THE TIME. I don't tell other people the number. I can use it if I get into a wreck (and I have), or if something else very important comes up. But I refuse to keep it on all the time. I can't even go one class in college now (even 45 minute ones with only a handfull of people) without a cell phone going off. And in my largest class (~1000 people) you could hear 3 or 4 if you listened every day. If people would just stop leaving the damn things on and answering every call even when they don't feel like it, they might not hate 'em so much.
That hasn't prevented people from suing gun makers for making guns, or automobile makers for making big cars. It may not turn out for the people bringing the lawsuits, but that doesn't mean the lawsuits won't be brought any ways. And so the company will STILL have to defent it's self and that will cost $$$.
The same as all those stupid warning labels. Often it's just easier to put a little warning somewhere than deal with the $500 million lawsuit that will later get dismissed after $1 million in legal bills.
NOTE: The title of that post was supposed to be "Snipers AREN'T Real", I forgot the "n't". The title probably doesn't make much sense without that part.
I think the problem is that in most games, snipers are realistic. In real life snipers get a spot and spend TONS of time there and don't move around. Also, you have one (maybe two) snipers, not half the team. The guns are not light, so you couldn't run around and shoot people with 'em point blank when you are looking for a new spot.
In other words, I think the problem is not the guns, but the fact that they are treated just like any other gun, which they are NOT. Fixing that would probably make things better, but it wouldn't be that fun so why include a sniper rifle at all.
Oh the hell they do. How old are you? Kids DO NOT HAVE RIGHTS. There is a REASON that adults have total jurisdiction over their kids lives. Yes there are cases of abuse (as with anything), but the fact is by and large it's GOOD for the kids. Is there anyone who thinks that letting kids have a right to watch TV or own/drive a car (in the case of a 16 year old) is really a good idea? Personally I think the idea of a "child-lojack" as you put it is a good. There are TONS of parrents who would love such a thing.
10:1 you're about 16 years old. I think that any mature adult (espeically if they are a parrent) would agree with me. And besides, if the kids isn't doing something they should be, why should they care?
PS: For refference I'm 20, since I get the feeling this will come up in responses to this comment.
That's a good point. I haven't seen track paper in a few years so that does make more sense. Still, it seems like an odd way to describe something. Why now "Like a fat bread box" or... ok I can't think up another description. A pile of paper could be so many different sizes, just doesn't seem like something you should use for description.
I've got to say that was a VERY interesting read. I'm just under 21 so I didn't pay much attention to the Macintosh's launch at the the time. But reading the article, it's amazing how much the (computer) world has changed. They have to describe what things like icons are, and what a mouse is. Today it's almost unfathomable that someone wouldn't know what a mouse it. Some of the technical specs are interesting too. It seems so weird that things were specified in BYTES then. I realize it made sense but can you imagine what it would be like to go to a computer store and ask for a 40,000,000,000 disk drive? I also have to say the description of being "the size of a stack of paper" seems very odd to me, as when I think of a stack of paper I think of something the size of a book at max, but still. Weirdest of all is describing Microsoft and where they are located (Seattle). These days people don't write about a Seattle software company named Microsoft, they write about MS because we ALL know who MS is.
Seeing the introduction of some things from the past can be facinating in how much our world has changed. But in this case, it's especially interesting in how FAST it's changed. I'm sitting here typing on a laptop that is a year or two old. That said my laptop (for about that price, ignoring inflation) has a hard drive that's half a million times larger than the machine's RAM, has more power than a building full of old Macs running together weighs 1/3 (or less) what that mac did, can do TONS of other things that the Mac could never dream of, and my laptop is OLD AND OUT OF DATE. Of course, I owe a HUGE amount of this stuff to that little Mac (which I have 4 of im my basement;). Go Apple!
Why don't these RIAA/MPAA lawsuits increase traffic on P2P networks?
Now the theory is that they announce these things and people get scared that if they use a P2P they'll get sued right?
Well when are the more likely to find people to sue? When they haven't done it for a while, or the day after they file a suit and are busy with legal stuff? I'm thinking that the time immediatly after the suits are announce would be the SAFEST time to use a P2P service.
So the rover runs Java huh? I can see some advantages. I just hope they programed it well. Seeing that made me think of a story one of my programing teachers told me one.
There was a team doing a robotics competition for their school (this was college level). Their task was to make a ping-pong playing robot and theirs went to the competition and was doing fantastic. It had been beating the opponents and they were sure they'd win. They had a great Java program to do it.
The problem was that the CPU they were running on wasn't that fast. Now it worked just fine, untill it froze solid. You see, in the final match (or nearly final?) the thing started to do garbage collection, which they hadn't turned off (realize they didn't need it). While doing the garbage collection, the robot wouldn't move or do anything, so they lost. Oops.
And the moral of the storage is... problems in Java are a bunch of garbage. **rimshot**. But seriously though. If they don't capture that picture of the Martian because that little rover is garbage collecting, I'm going to have to go kick some NASA butt.
Isn't there some kind of process that we could go through to get SCO unlisted from the Nasdaq? Or at least put on some kind of probation where every time you try to buy some of their stock you get sent a long letter basically saying that "if you buy this stock, your throwing your money away on a what is quite possibly a scam".
Only on Slashdot will you find a word like Sisyphean.
Instersting interview though. I think government is one of the most natural places for OSS though. Government is (or should be) open to the people, as is OSS. And people are always trying to find ways to do Government cheaper, since the money we give to our cities (say for the Water Department) should go to Water Department stuff (new pipes, etc) not making sure they have the lastest version of Soliare that comes with Windows. Free software is a great way to save costs while getting things done (and staying secure too, because I don't want that dang Mr. Smith down the street to know I spend $7.23 more per month on water than he does:).
It's the magic formula to success! No wonder the XBox is terrible, it has no VUs! OK, in all seriousness the VUs don't magicaly make games better, that is a result of the reason, not the cause.
This makes perfect sense. The developers who use the VU are the ones that take the time. Quick and dirty ports wouldn't use it, but if you take the time to optomize for the VU and such, then chances are you'll take the time to optomize other things. You'll make the sound work well, get rid of the logic glitches, adjust the diffuculty so people don't get stuck because you left out some clues to where the key is hidden, etc. The publishers and developers that take time to make great games spend some of that time one the VUs.
So, indirectly, it makes perfect sense that VUs make a good judge of quality. Now if only other publishers would stop making so much shovelware. The PS2 (and other consoles too, but especially the PS2) has a LOT of great games. But for every great game the PS2 has, it has TONS of shovelware. Unfortunatly, often the shovelware gets great marketing (Finding Nemo, The Matrix: Reloaded, BMX-XXX) and great games (Amplitude, Ico, etc) don't get nearly as much and so they don't do nearly as well, because a large number of games are bought by parents who don't know what games are worth money, or what aren't worth their weight in dust.
I don't know about Wreckless, but Splinter Cell did look great on all three consoles. Now my understanding is that large parts of the rendering code were re-written on each platform to make it look that good. What the article is talking about (I think) is those games that get put on all 3 platforms real fast, and often lower quality things. I would guess that most of the games below fit the list:
Ty: The Tazmanian Tiger
The Matrix: Reloaded
Most sports games
Rayman 2 or 3 (Whatever the latest was)
The Sims: Unleashed
Other movie tie in games (Lilo & Stitch, Finding Nemo, possibly the Two Towers, although that there is a good chance that had the quality to do things "correctly" and really optomize things for the PS2).
Now granted, some of these (sports games) might have no use for the VUs, but maybe they could have been used in another way. Basically the kinds of things that are designed and implemented on all three platforms at the same time, so people can get as much money as possible from the people out there. I think that the article is arguing that these "quick and dirty ports" hurt the quality of the PS2's library, which I'm sure is true. They also hurt the GC and XBox too, of course.
Yes, most games are probably designed on the PS2 first (if not, they are probably designed at all three consoles); but if you are making a game for all the consoles to make money (not a big quality title), why lock yourself into having to rewrite rendering code for the other consoles by using the VUs?
Compared to most places she can be quite caustic, and it can really flabbergast many people, but I've come to lover her style instead of all the "touchy feely it's not your faulty cushion even the smallest thing" stuff you find in many other places. And as you said, her message is meaningful and ethical.
It's probably good you posted this warning though. I tend to forget how much of a shock this is to some people when they first hear her, I'm used to it (and I like it, as I said above).
Slashdot Mirror
So the difference on whether brands mean anything is choice. Now we have a REAL choice, as opposed to (for example) only getting your news from CBS, ABC, or NBC. They are all pretty close. But on the 'net you get the Drudge Report, and tons of other things. (Not to get on a topic about ABC vs. CBS vs. Drudge, just an example).
Is this really a problem in the embedded space?
It's in the current issue of the magazine, and that's what the article was designed for. It was never designed for the web, that's why you would have to click "next" so much.
Now the built in FM transmitter (which this seems to have) IS new, as far as I know. If they do a good job with that feature, that would be quite nice.
Just because I love my car doesn't stop me from looking into other one every once in a while when some interesting feature comes along. Lets you see what's comming.
Very cool. My first thought was of the old Game&Watch games, some of which had two screens. So not only do we get to have games like that, but we can also have games that use the two screens in different ways. In RPGs you could constantly have your stats/inventory open. In other games you could have the top window be a map and the bottom the area where your working. If they put a few more buttons on, you could head to head on one unit with someone else on simple games. I think this will be VERY interesting to see what developers come up with for this. Puzzle games alone (with two perspectives) could be very intersting.
It is suggested that if you ever see a person with one of these bugs on their ear, you run up, grab it off, throw it on the ground, SMASH IT, and then yell to the person "I just saved your life! You don't have to thank me." At that point you might want to run as victims seem to suffer from withdrawl from the bugs and don't like losing them.
That said, I hope the judge in the case gets things right and PLAYS THE GAME to that point (it's not that far in) so that he can see how it really is portrayed in the game, and not just listen to some lawyer try to make things sound the way he wants. That way maybe he'll see that it's part of the game, and that it's not just anti-hatian speach. This case is like suing movie studios over anti-semetic elements in "Schindler's List" or the racist stuff in "To Kill A Mockingbird". The lawsuit is rediculous.
I understand what you say. I have a cell phone, but I keep it off, ALL THE TIME. I don't tell other people the number. I can use it if I get into a wreck (and I have), or if something else very important comes up. But I refuse to keep it on all the time. I can't even go one class in college now (even 45 minute ones with only a handfull of people) without a cell phone going off. And in my largest class (~1000 people) you could hear 3 or 4 if you listened every day. If people would just stop leaving the damn things on and answering every call even when they don't feel like it, they might not hate 'em so much.
--MBCook, uanblew to type well.
The same as all those stupid warning labels. Often it's just easier to put a little warning somewhere than deal with the $500 million lawsuit that will later get dismissed after $1 million in legal bills.
NOTE: The title of that post was supposed to be "Snipers AREN'T Real", I forgot the "n't". The title probably doesn't make much sense without that part.
In other words, I think the problem is not the guns, but the fact that they are treated just like any other gun, which they are NOT. Fixing that would probably make things better, but it wouldn't be that fun so why include a sniper rifle at all.
10:1 you're about 16 years old. I think that any mature adult (espeically if they are a parrent) would agree with me. And besides, if the kids isn't doing something they should be, why should they care?
PS: For refference I'm 20, since I get the feeling this will come up in responses to this comment.
That's a good point. I haven't seen track paper in a few years so that does make more sense. Still, it seems like an odd way to describe something. Why now "Like a fat bread box" or... ok I can't think up another description. A pile of paper could be so many different sizes, just doesn't seem like something you should use for description.
Seeing the introduction of some things from the past can be facinating in how much our world has changed. But in this case, it's especially interesting in how FAST it's changed. I'm sitting here typing on a laptop that is a year or two old. That said my laptop (for about that price, ignoring inflation) has a hard drive that's half a million times larger than the machine's RAM, has more power than a building full of old Macs running together weighs 1/3 (or less) what that mac did, can do TONS of other things that the Mac could never dream of, and my laptop is OLD AND OUT OF DATE. Of course, I owe a HUGE amount of this stuff to that little Mac (which I have 4 of im my basement ;). Go Apple!
Now the theory is that they announce these things and people get scared that if they use a P2P they'll get sued right?
Well when are the more likely to find people to sue? When they haven't done it for a while, or the day after they file a suit and are busy with legal stuff? I'm thinking that the time immediatly after the suits are announce would be the SAFEST time to use a P2P service.
But why would LISP pause like that? Does it do GC too? I've never used it.
There was a team doing a robotics competition for their school (this was college level). Their task was to make a ping-pong playing robot and theirs went to the competition and was doing fantastic. It had been beating the opponents and they were sure they'd win. They had a great Java program to do it.
The problem was that the CPU they were running on wasn't that fast. Now it worked just fine, untill it froze solid. You see, in the final match (or nearly final?) the thing started to do garbage collection, which they hadn't turned off (realize they didn't need it). While doing the garbage collection, the robot wouldn't move or do anything, so they lost. Oops.
And the moral of the storage is... problems in Java are a bunch of garbage. **rimshot**. But seriously though. If they don't capture that picture of the Martian because that little rover is garbage collecting, I'm going to have to go kick some NASA butt.
Isn't there some kind of process that we could go through to get SCO unlisted from the Nasdaq? Or at least put on some kind of probation where every time you try to buy some of their stock you get sent a long letter basically saying that "if you buy this stock, your throwing your money away on a what is quite possibly a scam".
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Instersting interview though. I think government is one of the most natural places for OSS though. Government is (or should be) open to the people, as is OSS. And people are always trying to find ways to do Government cheaper, since the money we give to our cities (say for the Water Department) should go to Water Department stuff (new pipes, etc) not making sure they have the lastest version of Soliare that comes with Windows. Free software is a great way to save costs while getting things done (and staying secure too, because I don't want that dang Mr. Smith down the street to know I spend $7.23 more per month on water than he does :).
This makes perfect sense. The developers who use the VU are the ones that take the time. Quick and dirty ports wouldn't use it, but if you take the time to optomize for the VU and such, then chances are you'll take the time to optomize other things. You'll make the sound work well, get rid of the logic glitches, adjust the diffuculty so people don't get stuck because you left out some clues to where the key is hidden, etc. The publishers and developers that take time to make great games spend some of that time one the VUs.
So, indirectly, it makes perfect sense that VUs make a good judge of quality. Now if only other publishers would stop making so much shovelware. The PS2 (and other consoles too, but especially the PS2) has a LOT of great games. But for every great game the PS2 has, it has TONS of shovelware. Unfortunatly, often the shovelware gets great marketing (Finding Nemo, The Matrix: Reloaded, BMX-XXX) and great games (Amplitude, Ico, etc) don't get nearly as much and so they don't do nearly as well, because a large number of games are bought by parents who don't know what games are worth money, or what aren't worth their weight in dust.
Now granted, some of these (sports games) might have no use for the VUs, but maybe they could have been used in another way. Basically the kinds of things that are designed and implemented on all three platforms at the same time, so people can get as much money as possible from the people out there. I think that the article is arguing that these "quick and dirty ports" hurt the quality of the PS2's library, which I'm sure is true. They also hurt the GC and XBox too, of course.
Yes, most games are probably designed on the PS2 first (if not, they are probably designed at all three consoles); but if you are making a game for all the consoles to make money (not a big quality title), why lock yourself into having to rewrite rendering code for the other consoles by using the VUs?
If only people would learn that
It's probably good you posted this warning though. I tend to forget how much of a shock this is to some people when they first hear her, I'm used to it (and I like it, as I said above).