I just got a 360, and I've got to say the graphics are nice. Forza 2 looks great. Geometry Wars looks very good and is tons of fun. I've been playing The Simpsons Game and there are constantly bits (during the cinematics) when it's hard to tell if you are watching the engine or the animation they produced for the game.
That said, the console has been beaten with a Microsoft stick. There is all sorts of weirdness going on.
I've seen the same thing on my MacBook Pro with my external drive. FireWire 400 is maybe 25% faster, FireWire 800 is 50% faster (same drive). The big thing is CPU utilization though. Maxing out the disk on FireWire 800 is no problem. Very little CPU usage (maybe under 10%, this is based on a little graph, I've never looked at hard numbers). Running it over USB has a very noticeable CPU impact.
FireWire is great at what it was made for. USB is very good at what it was designed for (mice, keyboards) and weak at things it was forced to do (hard drives).
It's all Intel's fault. They put USB on everything, but didn't put FireWire on anything until very recently, if they even have by now. So USB "won".
I'm not management. I'm a 24 year old programmer. I'm not anyone's superior. A job is just a job. You think people loved working in coal mines? They did/do it because they have to. It puts food on the table. Some may like it, but they know it's hard work and has to be done. Good jobs offered benefits, security, and such. Mine does. But not all do. Pizza delivery people never got perks or job security.
You're in a people business, and in those kind of jobs being able to be reached for things like scheduling changes are more important. My post was more aimed at people in corporate cultures who feel invaded by blackberries and such. Your position needs someone to do that. It could be a central secretary managing 15 people, or it can be you. Service jobs are different from white collar jobs.
There are mitigating factors. The higher your salary/importance, the more this applies. Obviously a McDonald's burger flipper couldn't say this stuff if it applied to them, they would be replaced too easily.
So what? If I do my work, why should they care? If my job allows me*, I should be able to do this kind of thing. I'd jump on a problem if it came up. That's expected.
* What I mean by "allows me" is that the job is setup in a way that this isn't a problem. As an accountant who has a big assignment that will take me a week, or a programmer who already has the scope and just need to do the coding, this should be fine. If you a help desk representative, a lawyer or accountant who needs to meet clients, or some other people facing job this way of working obviously wouldn't work out.
I was walking down the street the other day and I thought I saw you. I called
out your name and crossed the street to say "Hi", but it wasn't you after all.
15 minutes of my time - $200
That is an excellent solution to the problem, but I doubt many people would have the guts to go through with it.
Let me translate. That probably means one of three things.
I'm afraid of responsibility
I don't think I'd have enough strength to be able to control myself with that and not let work take over my personal life, or stand up for myself when work starts asking me to be on call all the time
I wouldn't want my position to involve being expected to be on call all the time
I see no problem with #3, but I think for most people that statement probably means #2.
If you don't want to be on call, don't take a job that expects you to be on call. If the job you took didn't including being on call and they want you to be, tell them no... that wasn't in the job description. You could negotiate for something ("You want me to start being on call, that's an expansion in my responsibilities, will my compensation go up as well?"). If you took a job where you were on call and don't like it too bad. That's the job you took and you signed up for it.
If everyone who had this problem actually stood up, they wouldn't fire people because there wouldn't be enough people left. You're not helpless.
Also, remember that some of these people don't have that responsibility. They just check their blackberry out of habit. They don't need to. It's all their choice. They aren't being forced into it, they are choosing it then complaining about it.
Work doesn't have to be fun. It's a means to an end: being able to take care of and feed yourself and your family. It's not your personal satisfaction center. That's nice if it is, but people used to understand that. A lot of this just sounds like whining to me.
I agree. It's the employee's fault. They're willing to put up with it. There was a time before cell phones when the same kind of thing was true. If you were a town doctor in the 1800s, you think you got to say "I'm only open 8-5, M-F"? People got sick when they got sick. Accountants didn't have to take their work home, but it was known that as a doctor you were on call all the time.
If you don't like it, push back, let your work know that when you aren't on call, you're not on call. This is just a boundaries issue. People don't want to set them (afraid of repercussions, don't know they have the option, like the "piece of mind" they get from being able to watch what's going on at work, whatever)... so they put up with this.
Blackberries are just a symptom/enabler. They make this problem easier to occur than during the '60s (when bringing your work home or to vacation meant hauling a bunch of papers and books and such).
People just need to learn to adapt to this change and handle it. Just like people are being forced to invent manners and limits for other things that weren't considered before (like cell phones). That's our transition that we're going through now.
You don't. You put 3 antennas in the device and switch between them. This would be problematic for other things, but in high frequencies the antennas aren't that big. If all three things use nearby pieces of spectrum (say different parts of 2.4 GHz) then you can tune the antenna for the center and put up with the losses for frequencies near the edges.
I should point out that I'm almost positive that there is no rule that says this. The companies take that position then try to back it up that way ("well the FCC might pull the device's license if..."). There are valid reasons for this (it would be easy to cause interference for only the purpose of being annoying) and good reasons against (my device means my responsibility, it's an unlicensed part of the spectrum).
However that only applies to transmitting. The is no valid reason why there would be a problem letting you configure the thing however you wanted to receive things. There are a few little bands that you aren't supposed to listen to, but if the analog part was designed correctly that would be impossible (I don't know if any of those bands are that high up). It would be simple to make it so that it's impossible (without modification of the physical circuits) to get RF though the amplifier unless it is within a little frequency set that the device is allowed in.
It IS illegal to make a device in such a way that it can be easily modified to transmit on other frequencies (seen with CBs) and I think it may be illegal for receiving too (like to listen into cell frequencies). Note that there is no solid definition on this as far as I know. You can't make it so it's "cut jumper B3 and you're set", but you don't have to go all the way to "install 12 wires, a chip, flash the firmware, hold the radio upside-down and...". Someone who is more familiar with this rules will surely point out the specifics.
OK, I'll accept that. The Wii works the same way, after all. Now how about telling me why you can't peg points to the currency like Nintendo does with the Wii? Why is it that MS points are 80 for $1 in the US? Why the weird exchange rate? Why can't it be 100:$1 like the Wii? Or at least something I can do math with easier, like 25:$1?
Do you try to do this much? I don't, so it wouldn't be a problem for me
Browsing is complex and not designed for a device like this. They are giving you a reference, not a crippled browser
OK, but it has CDMA access, which works fine when you aren't near a WiFi access point, or even if you are near one.
But it looks better than an equivelent LCD
Wrong.. That newton was 480x320. The screen was physically smaller. It didn't have nearly as much contrast. The battery life isn't the same (the Kindle is measured in page turns, it will hold a page image practically forever). Newtons were great (I had one), but don't kid yourself. They aren't equivalent.
The Kindle is interesting. The keyboard is ugly. The screen refresh time still seems like a problem for me (although I know it is a problem with all E-Ink stuff now). I think the Sony device looks much better. Still, these are quire an advance. My brother has one of those RocketReaders (or whatever) from ~2000 that is thicker than my MacBook Pro, heavy, ugly, and has a LCD screen about as nice as the Newton.
I'm aware. But since during Windows 95 my entire OS and office suite probably took less memory (total, with disk) than the OLPC has in RAM, they should be able to do this without it being to bad. And since flash is faster than a drive (especially in random access), you don't even have to keep as much stuff in ram since getting it "off disk" is so much faster.
In all seriousness, I have quite a few game soundtracks. Both Jet Set Radios, FF VII, MGS: 3 (which works very well away from the game), Katamari (and the sequel), a Zelda or two... there is quite a bit of very good music in games if you are listening. My favorite is probably my Super Smash Brothers: Melee CD. I got it as a pack in with an issue of Nintendo Power a couple of years ago. It has a bunch of fully orchestrated tracks from the game and sounds fantastic. It has a Metroid track, Yoshi's Story track, Kirby track, Pokemon track, and many more. I'd have gladly paid $20-$25 for it.
Too bad it's not all like that. It's hard to get many soundtrack CDs in the US (have to order them from Japan). Worse is that some games that have soundtracks I want have terrible soundtrack CDs. I thought the music in SSX 3 was fantastic, so I bought the soundtrack to it. It has like 10 tracks, only one of which I like. The game it's self had a ton more. The GTA soundtracks had everything, there was no excuse. Then again, there were missing tracks on the JSRF disc too (where was Aisle 10 by Scapegoat Wax?)
If they cared, they'd put 2k on it. I saw a post somewhere the other day saying it was taking them so long for three reasons. They needed new drivers (reasonable), they aren't used to doing this (usually Dell or whoever, somewhat reasonable), and they are having trouble getting Office et all to run in 2GB of storage (stupid).
I ran Windows 95 on a 386 with 8MB or RAM. It was slow, but it ran. A Pentium 166 with 32 ran Office 95 fine. With 2GB of total storage, Office + Windows shouldn't a problem.
That's my question. The finding isn't that surprising. If you are standing in a crowd and someone is running around bashing people's skulls in... it makes sense that you be more prone to violence so you can defend yourself with all necessary force. Seems like a sane evolutionary adaptation.
However, this finding implies(or at least in the media's reporting of it) that violent games will cause kids to be more violent. If a kid plays a violent game, does that make them more violent in 5 minutes? 2 days? 2 weeks? 6 months? The first isn't that surprising, it's the others that are important. Does the effect last, and is it strong at that point?
Well, there is something to that. Video games are different though, since they are interactive. While the point holds up for the story, in a game it's possible to be interested in the story or gameplay but have an element (controls, puzzle, whatever) be so frustrating as to stop all interest in continuing to play or to enrage you at the unfairness of the answer.
I have an instant on computer now. It's called a MacBook Pro and I just put it to sleep. I never have a need to actually cold boot.
This kind of thing would allow you load an OS wicked quick, but there are still some problems. There is some hardware (do X, wait 200ms, do Y, wait 200ms... until the hardware is initted) that will slow things down. Then there is the problem of as computers get faster, they are asked to do more stuff so it takes longer (in absolute cycle counts) to boot them up.
I'm talking absolute numbers, not relative. It doesn't matter if only.5% of illegal aliens don't learn English if that make the number 20,000,000 people (I know those figures are wrong, just hyperbole to make my point).
I realize the Spanish signs are for people who haven't learned English, almost always first generation. I'm also aware that it provides a competitive advantage for companies to do that. I'm saying I think it's wrong because it makes it easier to slide along and not integrate.
The ironic thing is that would help quite a bit with the illegal alien situation too. While there are other reasons to not like the situation, the thing I dislike the most is that I see a great many of the illegal aliens and coming in and not integrating. That's why we have Spanish on all sorts of menus and signs here in the middle of the country where there is no good reason: for people who aren't integrating. If more illegal aliens knew English, they could integrate better, get better jobs, and not stand out as much as "them". That would probably help lower the number of people wanting something big done to fix the problem (although it would still need fixing). Out of site, out of mind. If we didn't see large groups of people who didn't seem to try to integrate, many people wouldn't be nearly as vocal about the issue.
I agree though, learning another language (English is obvious, but Mandarin, Japanese, French, Spanish, anything else big) would be a great reason to give these to kids.
See, that's why a game like Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga is good. If she can get into it (she's a little young for the amount of text, I think) it has a fair amount of text so she reads it and gets practice reading, but isn't thinking about that, she's just playing a game.
Maybe they shouldn't make hardware so expensive they have no choice but to sell it at tremendous losses? You don't have to make profit on every console, but you don't have to lose $200 per console at the start either.
I agree. Rewriting working code is often a bad idea. What you need to do is this (as I see it):
Report it to management/legal
See if you can get permission to use the code (chances are you will)
Then rewrite
Management may already know. Doing this makes you look above board (as you should be) and covers you just in case ("I reported it, and legal said it was OK").
Since it was on a form (presumably to help someone else) I would be rather amazed if the author of the code didn't give you permission
You don't always need permission. Obviously if the code is "how to set a window title in Java" there is only about one way to do that (ignore the various toolkit issues). That you can take, because it's exactly what anyone would have come up with. It's not original. Someone's fast way to sort a list or perform some other action you can't, because it's their work.
Slashdot Mirror
I just got a 360, and I've got to say the graphics are nice. Forza 2 looks great. Geometry Wars looks very good and is tons of fun. I've been playing The Simpsons Game and there are constantly bits (during the cinematics) when it's hard to tell if you are watching the engine or the animation they produced for the game.
That said, the console has been beaten with a Microsoft stick. There is all sorts of weirdness going on.
I've been writing about it on my blog.
I've seen the same thing on my MacBook Pro with my external drive. FireWire 400 is maybe 25% faster, FireWire 800 is 50% faster (same drive). The big thing is CPU utilization though. Maxing out the disk on FireWire 800 is no problem. Very little CPU usage (maybe under 10%, this is based on a little graph, I've never looked at hard numbers). Running it over USB has a very noticeable CPU impact.
FireWire is great at what it was made for. USB is very good at what it was designed for (mice, keyboards) and weak at things it was forced to do (hard drives).
It's all Intel's fault. They put USB on everything, but didn't put FireWire on anything until very recently, if they even have by now. So USB "won".
I'm not management. I'm a 24 year old programmer. I'm not anyone's superior. A job is just a job. You think people loved working in coal mines? They did/do it because they have to. It puts food on the table. Some may like it, but they know it's hard work and has to be done. Good jobs offered benefits, security, and such. Mine does. But not all do. Pizza delivery people never got perks or job security.
You're in a people business, and in those kind of jobs being able to be reached for things like scheduling changes are more important. My post was more aimed at people in corporate cultures who feel invaded by blackberries and such. Your position needs someone to do that. It could be a central secretary managing 15 people, or it can be you. Service jobs are different from white collar jobs.
There are mitigating factors. The higher your salary/importance, the more this applies. Obviously a McDonald's burger flipper couldn't say this stuff if it applied to them, they would be replaced too easily.
So what? If I do my work, why should they care? If my job allows me*, I should be able to do this kind of thing. I'd jump on a problem if it came up. That's expected.
* What I mean by "allows me" is that the job is setup in a way that this isn't a problem. As an accountant who has a big assignment that will take me a week, or a programmer who already has the scope and just need to do the coding, this should be fine. If you a help desk representative, a lawyer or accountant who needs to meet clients, or some other people facing job this way of working obviously wouldn't work out.
A man gets a Bill from his lawyer.
That is an excellent solution to the problem, but I doubt many people would have the guts to go through with it.
- I'm afraid of responsibility
- I don't think I'd have enough strength to be able to control myself with that and not let work take over my personal life, or stand up for myself when work starts asking me to be on call all the time
- I wouldn't want my position to involve being expected to be on call all the time
I see no problem with #3, but I think for most people that statement probably means #2.If you don't want to be on call, don't take a job that expects you to be on call. If the job you took didn't including being on call and they want you to be, tell them no... that wasn't in the job description. You could negotiate for something ("You want me to start being on call, that's an expansion in my responsibilities, will my compensation go up as well?"). If you took a job where you were on call and don't like it too bad. That's the job you took and you signed up for it.
If everyone who had this problem actually stood up, they wouldn't fire people because there wouldn't be enough people left. You're not helpless.
Also, remember that some of these people don't have that responsibility. They just check their blackberry out of habit. They don't need to. It's all their choice. They aren't being forced into it, they are choosing it then complaining about it.
Work doesn't have to be fun. It's a means to an end: being able to take care of and feed yourself and your family. It's not your personal satisfaction center. That's nice if it is, but people used to understand that. A lot of this just sounds like whining to me.
I agree. It's the employee's fault. They're willing to put up with it. There was a time before cell phones when the same kind of thing was true. If you were a town doctor in the 1800s, you think you got to say "I'm only open 8-5, M-F"? People got sick when they got sick. Accountants didn't have to take their work home, but it was known that as a doctor you were on call all the time.
If you don't like it, push back, let your work know that when you aren't on call, you're not on call. This is just a boundaries issue. People don't want to set them (afraid of repercussions, don't know they have the option, like the "piece of mind" they get from being able to watch what's going on at work, whatever)... so they put up with this.
Blackberries are just a symptom/enabler. They make this problem easier to occur than during the '60s (when bringing your work home or to vacation meant hauling a bunch of papers and books and such).
People just need to learn to adapt to this change and handle it. Just like people are being forced to invent manners and limits for other things that weren't considered before (like cell phones). That's our transition that we're going through now.
Default? No. Not enough power.
However, we could add a (highly illegal and dangerous) external amplifier on the output and do it that way.
I wonder what the resonant frequency of a burrito is....
You don't. You put 3 antennas in the device and switch between them. This would be problematic for other things, but in high frequencies the antennas aren't that big. If all three things use nearby pieces of spectrum (say different parts of 2.4 GHz) then you can tune the antenna for the center and put up with the losses for frequencies near the edges.
I should point out that I'm almost positive that there is no rule that says this. The companies take that position then try to back it up that way ("well the FCC might pull the device's license if..."). There are valid reasons for this (it would be easy to cause interference for only the purpose of being annoying) and good reasons against (my device means my responsibility, it's an unlicensed part of the spectrum).
However that only applies to transmitting. The is no valid reason why there would be a problem letting you configure the thing however you wanted to receive things. There are a few little bands that you aren't supposed to listen to, but if the analog part was designed correctly that would be impossible (I don't know if any of those bands are that high up). It would be simple to make it so that it's impossible (without modification of the physical circuits) to get RF though the amplifier unless it is within a little frequency set that the device is allowed in.
It IS illegal to make a device in such a way that it can be easily modified to transmit on other frequencies (seen with CBs) and I think it may be illegal for receiving too (like to listen into cell frequencies). Note that there is no solid definition on this as far as I know. You can't make it so it's "cut jumper B3 and you're set", but you don't have to go all the way to "install 12 wires, a chip, flash the firmware, hold the radio upside-down and...". Someone who is more familiar with this rules will surely point out the specifics.
They seem to be some little "indy" publisher. Their list of titles is really stand out. I think I might have actually heard of one!
OK, I'll accept that. The Wii works the same way, after all. Now how about telling me why you can't peg points to the currency like Nintendo does with the Wii? Why is it that MS points are 80 for $1 in the US? Why the weird exchange rate? Why can't it be 100:$1 like the Wii? Or at least something I can do math with easier, like 25:$1?
Wrong.. That newton was 480x320. The screen was physically smaller. It didn't have nearly as much contrast. The battery life isn't the same (the Kindle is measured in page turns, it will hold a page image practically forever). Newtons were great (I had one), but don't kid yourself. They aren't equivalent.
The Kindle is interesting. The keyboard is ugly. The screen refresh time still seems like a problem for me (although I know it is a problem with all E-Ink stuff now). I think the Sony device looks much better. Still, these are quire an advance. My brother has one of those RocketReaders (or whatever) from ~2000 that is thicker than my MacBook Pro, heavy, ugly, and has a LCD screen about as nice as the Newton.
I'm aware. But since during Windows 95 my entire OS and office suite probably took less memory (total, with disk) than the OLPC has in RAM, they should be able to do this without it being to bad. And since flash is faster than a drive (especially in random access), you don't even have to keep as much stuff in ram since getting it "off disk" is so much faster.
What a thrill...
In all seriousness, I have quite a few game soundtracks. Both Jet Set Radios, FF VII, MGS: 3 (which works very well away from the game), Katamari (and the sequel), a Zelda or two... there is quite a bit of very good music in games if you are listening. My favorite is probably my Super Smash Brothers: Melee CD. I got it as a pack in with an issue of Nintendo Power a couple of years ago. It has a bunch of fully orchestrated tracks from the game and sounds fantastic. It has a Metroid track, Yoshi's Story track, Kirby track, Pokemon track, and many more. I'd have gladly paid $20-$25 for it.
Too bad it's not all like that. It's hard to get many soundtrack CDs in the US (have to order them from Japan). Worse is that some games that have soundtracks I want have terrible soundtrack CDs. I thought the music in SSX 3 was fantastic, so I bought the soundtrack to it. It has like 10 tracks, only one of which I like. The game it's self had a ton more. The GTA soundtracks had everything, there was no excuse. Then again, there were missing tracks on the JSRF disc too (where was Aisle 10 by Scapegoat Wax?)
Oh well. Great music.
If they cared, they'd put 2k on it. I saw a post somewhere the other day saying it was taking them so long for three reasons. They needed new drivers (reasonable), they aren't used to doing this (usually Dell or whoever, somewhat reasonable), and they are having trouble getting Office et all to run in 2GB of storage (stupid).
I ran Windows 95 on a 386 with 8MB or RAM. It was slow, but it ran. A Pentium 166 with 32 ran Office 95 fine. With 2GB of total storage, Office + Windows shouldn't a problem.
That's my question. The finding isn't that surprising. If you are standing in a crowd and someone is running around bashing people's skulls in... it makes sense that you be more prone to violence so you can defend yourself with all necessary force. Seems like a sane evolutionary adaptation.
However, this finding implies(or at least in the media's reporting of it) that violent games will cause kids to be more violent. If a kid plays a violent game, does that make them more violent in 5 minutes? 2 days? 2 weeks? 6 months? The first isn't that surprising, it's the others that are important. Does the effect last, and is it strong at that point?
Well, there is something to that. Video games are different though, since they are interactive. While the point holds up for the story, in a game it's possible to be interested in the story or gameplay but have an element (controls, puzzle, whatever) be so frustrating as to stop all interest in continuing to play or to enrage you at the unfairness of the answer.
I have an instant on computer now. It's called a MacBook Pro and I just put it to sleep. I never have a need to actually cold boot.
This kind of thing would allow you load an OS wicked quick, but there are still some problems. There is some hardware (do X, wait 200ms, do Y, wait 200ms... until the hardware is initted) that will slow things down. Then there is the problem of as computers get faster, they are asked to do more stuff so it takes longer (in absolute cycle counts) to boot them up.
I'm talking absolute numbers, not relative. It doesn't matter if only .5% of illegal aliens don't learn English if that make the number 20,000,000 people (I know those figures are wrong, just hyperbole to make my point).
I realize the Spanish signs are for people who haven't learned English, almost always first generation. I'm also aware that it provides a competitive advantage for companies to do that. I'm saying I think it's wrong because it makes it easier to slide along and not integrate.
The ironic thing is that would help quite a bit with the illegal alien situation too. While there are other reasons to not like the situation, the thing I dislike the most is that I see a great many of the illegal aliens and coming in and not integrating. That's why we have Spanish on all sorts of menus and signs here in the middle of the country where there is no good reason: for people who aren't integrating. If more illegal aliens knew English, they could integrate better, get better jobs, and not stand out as much as "them". That would probably help lower the number of people wanting something big done to fix the problem (although it would still need fixing). Out of site, out of mind. If we didn't see large groups of people who didn't seem to try to integrate, many people wouldn't be nearly as vocal about the issue.
I agree though, learning another language (English is obvious, but Mandarin, Japanese, French, Spanish, anything else big) would be a great reason to give these to kids.
See, that's why a game like Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga is good. If she can get into it (she's a little young for the amount of text, I think) it has a fair amount of text so she reads it and gets practice reading, but isn't thinking about that, she's just playing a game.
Maybe they shouldn't make hardware so expensive they have no choice but to sell it at tremendous losses? You don't have to make profit on every console, but you don't have to lose $200 per console at the start either.
I agree. Rewriting working code is often a bad idea. What you need to do is this (as I see it):
Management may already know. Doing this makes you look above board (as you should be) and covers you just in case ("I reported it, and legal said it was OK").
Since it was on a form (presumably to help someone else) I would be rather amazed if the author of the code didn't give you permission
You don't always need permission. Obviously if the code is "how to set a window title in Java" there is only about one way to do that (ignore the various toolkit issues). That you can take, because it's exactly what anyone would have come up with. It's not original. Someone's fast way to sort a list or perform some other action you can't, because it's their work.