For what it's worth if you watch (and listen) to the GDC video he talks about the various phases and where he got the inspiration. Among the phases are the Sim Earth phase (the early one, but he doesn't say this), Populous (when your creatures form tribes), Sim City Lite (when they get a city), and I can't remember if there were any like that.
He does explicitly acknowledge that one part of the game is Populous like.
I still remember watching the 30 minute demo video that came out of GDC. I just can't wait for this game. The only thing that worries me is I don't think my computer (1.67 GHz PowerBook with 1 Gig of RAM) won't run it (very well). I think they said they would bring it to consoles so I guess I'll play it on the Wii/PS3/XBox360.
Windows 2000 was evolutionary for servers. For home users it was revolutionary. It was the end of all the blue-screen and rebooting jokes. They should have pushed it for that, but they waited for XP to do that and by then it wasn't anything new. If you knew enough about computers, you would run 2000, even if it wasn't designed for home. This makes the revolutionary aspect debatable.
I didn't mean that DirectX was revolutionary, I meant that it was important that it was included in 2000 and could be used (as opposed to you couldn't use it on NT4 IIRC).
I stand by my statement. They didn't innovate with the 360.
They DID innovate with the original Live!, that I forgot about. That's an excellent point.
But there is nothing special about the 360. It's the same interface, same kind of games, same kind of hardware, just all faster/better looking. Nintendo is innovating with the DS and Revolution. The XBox 360 is nothing but the XBox with faster hardware. It's not innovative.
As for media center, it's not that great. It's no TiVo. It has no major competitors. Front Row is neat, but it doesn't record things and that is the center of the software, as far as I'm concerned; so I don't see it as a competitor. Then what else is there? There are one or two programs, but they are require Windows or Linux so they aren't quite there to be a home appliance GUI. If MS did it before TiVo, I would give them credit. If TiVo's interface was bad and MS made a better one, I would give them credit.
But media center is based, in large part, on Ultimate TV which was a TiVo copy/wannabe/"improvement" (I've never used it myself, but if it was better than where did it go?).
The little external displays on upcoming laptops for Vista are interesting, but they aren't out yet. I'm also waiting to see what is on them. They may be great (I can think of very useful ideas), or it could end up useless. We'll have to wait and see with that one.
I'm going to go WAY out on a hypothetical limb with this comment.
"Clinton and Democrats to Bush and the big-money-friendly Republicans"
Let's just say that the Democrats win the next election and decide to put some MAJOR sanctions on Microsoft. What do they do about Gate's "nuclear option".
I read the other day that Bill Gates has enough Microsoft stock that if he were to sell it all in one swipe, he could cause a world-wide recession (scare the tech sector, scare the general market, scare the world market).
So here is the question: you are the government, and he threatens to sell all his stock if you put any more sanctions on his company. What do you do? You can't stop him from selling his stock, can you? And even if you tried (took him to court to prevent it) wouldn't that news be enough to put the markets into panic?
I don't think he'd do it. Just an interesting idea.
By and large I agree with the article. MS has lost it, and Vista proves that. At this rate their "ultra" operating system Vista will come out two years after tiny little Apple's operating system Tiger. And yet Tiger had most of the features that Vista was supposed to have (many of which got cut) such as Spotlight, the Dashboard, OpenGL based UI, etc.
The last real innovation I saw from MS was Windows 2000. That was such a HUGE step up from Windows 9x for consumers, while things worked well enough that it could be used by normal people since it supported DirectX and other things that NT 4 didn't.
The next version of Office I do think is interesting though. They are completely changing the UI. This is a BIG decision, but they are going in a VERY different direction and I think it's a good thing. If you turn on all those toolbars for Office to get to all the functions, things are a HUGE mess. It's almost impossible to find many thing.
Office is trying to innovate. Windows isn't. XBox 360 isn't. MSN isn't. IE isn't.
By and large, Microsoft has "settled in" and is only starting to stir again. I agree they would be dead in the water if it wasn't for, as another poster pointed out, their huge war-chest. They are going to have to start spending a bunch of that if they want to try to stay relevant.
I enjoyed Netflix for a little while before I ran into the same problem.
But I've found a solution.
TV.
Most of my rentals from Netflix are TV shows (often that don't air). I tend to get one movie for every three TV discs I rent. By the time that movie disc gets to my house, I'm in a movie mood (because I haven't seen one) or I can just hold it until I am. I've watched Neon Genesis Evangelion this way (this was years ago before it was aired on Cartoon Network), Red Dwarf, Dual: Parallel Universe Saga, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Bubblegum Crisis, Stargate SG-1, Read or Die the TV Series, and Farscape. Plus I've got more in the queue.
I would have canceled a long time ago (after watching the obscure movies that Blockbuster doesn't carry in store) if I had not discovered how great it was to do this. It has only made me love Netflix more.
I really REALLY like Netflix. I've had them for two years or so and they are fantastic. I haven't tried Blockbuster and I don't intend to because, frankly, I hate the company. Their stores have gone down in quality and the prices have gone WAY up in last few years (specifically video games). All that said, I'd like to comment on something from the article:
"Since the launch of Blockbuster's online dvd rental program in August 2004, they have added 1.3 million customers, but over the last 6 months alone, Netflix was able to add almost as many subscribers. Each customer that Netflix acquired represents pure growth for the company, but of Blockbuster's 1.3 million subscribers, how many of them represent former retail store customers? "
The last few times I've been in my local Blockbuster, they have been doing hard sells on their online service to every customer. They talk about how convenient it is, how much it will save you, blah blah blah.
I seriously doubt Blockbuster has gotten very many new customers at all to their online service. I think most of them were conversions from in-store customers.
I always loved that game. It was very tough (or I was terrible, quite possible). But I just loved the way the little guys looked, all round and fat. It was my favorite baseball game for the NES. In the later versions, they "fixed" the people and they looked better but I always liked the original.
Baseball for the Game Boy looked almost identical, I always wondered if they were somehow "related" (like it was just published under Nintendo). Anyone know?
Personally I'd like to see them all deported and then have to apply to get back into the country. They broke the law and came here illegally and should have to suffer the punishment.
That said, I also realized that for dozens of reasons that is COMPLETELY unworkable. I'm a hard-core republican but I have to break with my party on this one. There was that proposal (I think it came from Kennedy and a few others) that these aliens could pay backed taxes, learn English, and pay a fine. I think that (combined with fixes to keep new aliens from streaming in like better fencing, more visas, and a guest worker program) are the best we can do.
They blatantly ignored our laws. I'm as mad about that as anyone else. But saying "too bad, leave the country and then come back" ignores problems like the one you mentioned (no tax revenue) because very few people will do that.
That said, I think these protests that are scheduled for tomorrow are a very serious mistake and will only hurt support for their cause (like the Spanish Star Spangled Banner did), but that's another topic.
Thinking about it I guess your right, it is used in a lot of products. It's just that unless it's in the name, I don't tend to notice as I don't watch TV commercials (combination of TiVo and paying attention to my computer).
Still, I thought it was a good name. Wii is... ok. I hope it grows on me more.
But I find it hard to believe that Nintendo is going to pull a "New Coke". While an interesting idea, it just doesn't seem like the Nintendo thing to do.
Don't misunderstand, I was not blaming the the immigrants, I was just responding to the comment. I live near Kansas and I have been hearing about this for a while now. My personal theory? These are college kids. It's not called "the kissing disease" for nothing. I think it just is an outbreak year for no good reason. I just responded because I thought the idea was interesting.
Based on how hard it is is most places to get into school without shots like the MMR, I think the only thing illegal immigrants could do would be to bring it up here (since it is so scarce in the wild here due to vaccinations. I think they are a non-factor in this. Just thought the idea was interesting.
But let's take it out of MMR. What if it was some disease that there is a vaccination for (doesn't "everyone" get the Chicken Pox vaccines these days?) but isn't required to get into schools (I don't know if that vaccine is). Just an interesting idea.
As I said in my original post, other issues (taxes, medicaid, etc) are far more meaningful and important in the immigration debate than this is or probably will ever be.
Again, thanks for the info. I'm 23 so I have little experience in what kids need to be vaccinated for to get into schools and such, just memories about what happened to me.
I like revolution for a couple of reasons. It sounds fresh, which is a plus. Where you see "Edge" or "Extreme" tacked onto everything, "Revolution" is something you don't see much.
But more than that is it's literal meaning. The Revolution is nothing short of a revolution in game systems. They are dropping the graphics arms race and doing something completely differently. Games have been controlled with joysticks and buttons since the first video games on the market (pong and space invaders). There have been a few variations (trackballs, DDR pads) and a few really different schemes (light light-guns, almost all in the arcades now).
There is NO variety in non-arcades. There is a token game or two (Guitar Hero, for example) but every system since the dawn of home systems has come with some version of a game pad with buttons. Same old same old. There have been one little bit or two (thumbsticks, rumble) but it's all the same.
The revolution is revolutionary in the way you control it. There is no other system out there (except Xavix which has probably sold less than the Virtual Boy) with anything like it. It's a revolution in the graphics department (not doing the same thing as other consoles).
The Revolution is a revolution in video game console designs. That's why I thought it was a good and fitting name.
Well that kind of thing can be a possibility. I have no idea if it is though.
But here in the US everyone (more or less) gets MMR vaccines. In most places you often can't get into middle/highschool without it. The few people who were born and grew up in this country who didn't get it (and were children of citizens) didn't get it because their parent were nuts or hyper-suggestable (there is a 0.001% chance that taking vaccine X will enhance the possibility your kid will get Y by 7%, we better not give it to him).
But with immigrants, we don't know. With legal immigrants they may get the same same (either in their home country they came from, were forced to when they moved here, etc) but if you come from some country where vaccination is not common, you may slip by (I don't think I had to prove I had my vaccinations to go to college).
This is only made worse by many illegal immigrants being afraid of hospitals/doctors/police/etc because they think they may get reported and sent back (not all are like this, and while unfortunate I can understand the fear).
This is just one more issue in the immigration debate. It's a smaller one (I think the drain on the tax, medicaid, and other systems are bigger), but it is still something. When someone sneaks in, we don't know what they have, what they don't have, what they are vaccinated against, etc.
As hard as I find it to believe, I'm not against the idea that this is another "New Coke".
Did Nintendo do this just to get more support when they bring back "Coke Classic" (i.e. Revolution or another better name)?
Even if this IS the name, they certainly got quite a lot of press over it.
I still don't really like it. I'll buy the system, don't get me wrong. They could call it "Magic Happy Leprosy Spreading Bad Smell Maker" and I'd buy it. But I think Revolution was such a perfect name. It was catchy, yet differentiated the console perfectly.
DS was just a code name and they said they would change the name, until they said DS was the final name.
Is this all a stunt? Who knows. We'll find out when the system actually launches.
That said, I'm getting used to the name. Maybe it's like Game Cube and I'll come to like it.
That said the blurb mentions that "wii" is not a sound in the Japanese language (which I've heard elsewhere). I've heard that "revolution" is similarly unpronounceable because it also contains sounds not in Japanese. Is that true?
They could always call it Revolution here and the Japanese word for Revolution there (like the NES/Famicom, SNES/Super Famicom, Genesis/MegaDrive and a few others had different names).
Re:As an unemployed bugle player
on
Gadgets for the Lazy
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· Score: 2, Interesting
They can't. I head a story about it a while back on NPR (a year or two maybe). I don't know if it is because you have to attend all those funerals, because of all the practice, or what but they just can't find enough people who know how to play the bugle or will learn.
They could fix this by ordering people to learn and play at the funerals, but they don't do that (I don't think they should).
As another poster pointed out, this is better than a CD player (ceremonially).
What's with the "you obviously don't have a clue" part? He obviously DOES. He knows what he's doing. He has some ideas of how to do it. He is just asking for guidance from people who may know more than him. It's called learning. You think people are just born knowing how to write a complex application like this? They have to learn about it.
Those people he should pay, how did they get their clue?
If there is some obvious reason why he shouldn't continue, why don't you, I don't know, TELL EVERYONE. That way he and the rest of us can learn from it. If you don't have a good reason, why did you bother to post?
Oh that's right, you're a troll.
You comment would at least make a little sense if it was a question like "I've got an idea for this application that is cross-platform and (everything else he talked about) and a book on QBasic from 20 years ago. Should I use a for loop or a while loop?" But his question had merit.
I would have liked to see the answer. Unfortunatly there are only 2 or 3 answers posted. There is one side note about using UTF-8 (good idea), and the rest are all "don't bother, the RIAA will sue you" posts (which are, unfortunately, true).
I would say use Java. That was you don't have to recompile the application for every architecture. You want it to run on Mac OS? Is that PPC or Intel? For Linux is that x86, PPC, Sparc, what? With Java it doesn't matter. Plus it would also run on Solaris and a few others.
As for the database handling since this will be static (if you want it to run off a CD, it's static) here is what I can think of. You can embed an SQL server (I know there is one, can't remember the name) and do it that way. I don't know if that is an option for Java. Your other option is to store it in files. You could easily make a bunch of directories (made by a script) that would give you a large directory tree. Simply assign a ID to each song. The first digit of the ID is the first folder (there are 0-9), the second folder inside the first works the same only for the second ID, etc. You can go as far as you need. You can either keep the individual files, or inside each directory that you make (maybe you only want to go 2 levels deep) you keep ALL the data for those songs in a compressed file (XML, serialized objects, whatever). Then you have an index file that you load that tells you how to find the songs (which ID goes to which artist/cd/track) and you could add a second file that holds a database of words and in which IDs they appear for searching purposes.
I'd say go Java. You can include the JRE on the disc (at least for OS X and Windows). Java is very stable and mature, where as something else like wxWindows may not be (don't know how well it performs on various platforms). Plus wxWindows or QT would require extra libraries.
If the user didn't want to run the app off the CD, they'd just have to copy it all to a folder they have access to. If you put the code in a JAR file, not only is it cleaner but you can run the program simply by double clicking on it in either Windows or OS X (might need an extra property or two in the manifest file for OS X).
For the web part, you could have a little application that launches the web server and closes the server when you close the program. You could embed the web browser in that. It would be more complex though, especially when going cross platform.
I'm going to have to stick with using Java. I think that will be your best bet.
I'm not a big fan of Sprint (although I hear Verizon is worse), but they are my company so here is what I can tell you. I have used two phones with my 15" PB: the LG 325 (my current phone) and a Sanyo 8200 (I think that's it).
When using a USB cable, you just plug the phone in and for the modem kind choose "Sprint PCS". The dial-up number is #777 and that's all there is to it. Works fine. The 8200 was very fast (ISDN speeds) where the LG is dial-up speeds (same area, same everything else). Things really do vary by phone.
With Bluetooth on the 325, it is just like above only no cable. You just have to enable DUN on the phone each time, and turn the phone on and off in-between dial-up uses.
It works ok. The 8200 worked quite a bit better. As for syncing phone data (contacts, etc) you are basically up the creek without a paddle. Neither phone does that (they also don't charge when you use the cable). I don't know of any that do (except perhaps the Palm/PocketPC ones) on Sprint. I've heard much better things about the kinds of phones one can get from Cingular on that point.
Where is the iPhone when I need it?
As for other help, the people on the Sprint Users forum are nice and can answer almost anything.
In the US you must be 18 to enter into a contract. Thus the part of the content that says you give up all rights to your entry would not be enforceable. Thus when you win and you are 17 you can then go and sue Slashdot/OSTG/whoever for using your design without paying you and giving you credit and blah blah blah.
You could get your parents to sign for you, but that would be a hassle. That is why (I believe) all contests say "you must be 18 or older to enter", at least in the US.
We have the 30 day thing. No termination fees would work for me though.
The problem is that in technology 2 years is a VERY LONG TIME. I could buy a phone/contract today and it may have the best service in the area or the best network or whatever. In 6 months that my not be true. In 1.5 years that may not be true. Yet I'm still locked into my contract.
That's another one for my list that I just thought of:
No contract only prices in ads. Consumers must be able to get a month to month contract from the start. If there is any preferential pricing when you sign up for two years, it must be VERY CLEAR that the price is attached to the two year contract, and you must specify in the same print size what the cost would be for the same plan without a contract or a different length contract (1 year, for example)
NEW PHONE DOES NOT EQUAL NEW CONTRACT - Consumers MUST be able to buy a new phone without having to sign a new 2 year contract to get it.
I have been told by cell phone companies that if I bought a new phone I would have to a) pay to get out of my current contract with them, and b) sign up for a new 2 year contract.
I believe that the companies are predatory. They keep cell phone prices very high (low end cell phones cost $200?) I'm amazed they don't cost more! Then they offer these huge subsidies for the phones when you sign up for a contract which prevents most people from being able to ever afford them without the long contracts.
I remember the pre-MP3 world. No one used sound on computers like they do now. There were little sound clips and such, but they were low quality.
MP3s at 128 kpbs are a meg a minute. CD quality WAV files are 10 megs a minute. Considering how fast your hard drive would get full, people didn't rip their music. Even if you cut the quality to 22 Khz instead of 44 Khz, your file is still 5x larger than an MP3 and wouldn't sound as well. Cut it in half again (8-bit instead of 16-bit) and you're down to 2.5 megs a minute. Cut it down AGAIN (11 Khz) and you're at 1.25 megs a minute.
25% larger files for clearly inferior sound quality. It wasn't worth it.
Yes, you could compress things, but the compression wasn't nearly as good. 2-3x maybe.
It was the vastly superior file size of MP3 that helped made it famous and ubiquitous. Like DVD, there was a very clear difference between the old and new format at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
He does explicitly acknowledge that one part of the game is Populous like.
I still remember watching the 30 minute demo video that came out of GDC. I just can't wait for this game. The only thing that worries me is I don't think my computer (1.67 GHz PowerBook with 1 Gig of RAM) won't run it (very well). I think they said they would bring it to consoles so I guess I'll play it on the Wii/PS3/XBox360.
If they can tap the VOIP calls, wouldn't encrypting them be the equivalent of voice scramblers and thus illegal?
I didn't mean that DirectX was revolutionary, I meant that it was important that it was included in 2000 and could be used (as opposed to you couldn't use it on NT4 IIRC).
They DID innovate with the original Live!, that I forgot about. That's an excellent point.
But there is nothing special about the 360. It's the same interface, same kind of games, same kind of hardware, just all faster/better looking. Nintendo is innovating with the DS and Revolution. The XBox 360 is nothing but the XBox with faster hardware. It's not innovative.
As for media center, it's not that great. It's no TiVo. It has no major competitors. Front Row is neat, but it doesn't record things and that is the center of the software, as far as I'm concerned; so I don't see it as a competitor. Then what else is there? There are one or two programs, but they are require Windows or Linux so they aren't quite there to be a home appliance GUI. If MS did it before TiVo, I would give them credit. If TiVo's interface was bad and MS made a better one, I would give them credit.
But media center is based, in large part, on Ultimate TV which was a TiVo copy/wannabe/"improvement" (I've never used it myself, but if it was better than where did it go?).
The little external displays on upcoming laptops for Vista are interesting, but they aren't out yet. I'm also waiting to see what is on them. They may be great (I can think of very useful ideas), or it could end up useless. We'll have to wait and see with that one.
"Clinton and Democrats to Bush and the big-money-friendly Republicans"
Let's just say that the Democrats win the next election and decide to put some MAJOR sanctions on Microsoft. What do they do about Gate's "nuclear option".
I read the other day that Bill Gates has enough Microsoft stock that if he were to sell it all in one swipe, he could cause a world-wide recession (scare the tech sector, scare the general market, scare the world market).
So here is the question: you are the government, and he threatens to sell all his stock if you put any more sanctions on his company. What do you do? You can't stop him from selling his stock, can you? And even if you tried (took him to court to prevent it) wouldn't that news be enough to put the markets into panic?
I don't think he'd do it. Just an interesting idea.
So, what would you do?
The last real innovation I saw from MS was Windows 2000. That was such a HUGE step up from Windows 9x for consumers, while things worked well enough that it could be used by normal people since it supported DirectX and other things that NT 4 didn't.
The next version of Office I do think is interesting though. They are completely changing the UI. This is a BIG decision, but they are going in a VERY different direction and I think it's a good thing. If you turn on all those toolbars for Office to get to all the functions, things are a HUGE mess. It's almost impossible to find many thing.
Office is trying to innovate. Windows isn't. XBox 360 isn't. MSN isn't. IE isn't.
By and large, Microsoft has "settled in" and is only starting to stir again. I agree they would be dead in the water if it wasn't for, as another poster pointed out, their huge war-chest. They are going to have to start spending a bunch of that if they want to try to stay relevant.
But I've found a solution.
TV.
Most of my rentals from Netflix are TV shows (often that don't air). I tend to get one movie for every three TV discs I rent. By the time that movie disc gets to my house, I'm in a movie mood (because I haven't seen one) or I can just hold it until I am. I've watched Neon Genesis Evangelion this way (this was years ago before it was aired on Cartoon Network), Red Dwarf, Dual: Parallel Universe Saga, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Bubblegum Crisis, Stargate SG-1, Read or Die the TV Series, and Farscape. Plus I've got more in the queue.
I would have canceled a long time ago (after watching the obscure movies that Blockbuster doesn't carry in store) if I had not discovered how great it was to do this. It has only made me love Netflix more.
"Since the launch of Blockbuster's online dvd rental program in August 2004, they have added 1.3 million customers, but over the last 6 months alone, Netflix was able to add almost as many subscribers. Each customer that Netflix acquired represents pure growth for the company, but of Blockbuster's 1.3 million subscribers, how many of them represent former retail store customers? "
The last few times I've been in my local Blockbuster, they have been doing hard sells on their online service to every customer. They talk about how convenient it is, how much it will save you, blah blah blah.
I seriously doubt Blockbuster has gotten very many new customers at all to their online service. I think most of them were conversions from in-store customers.
Baseball for the Game Boy looked almost identical, I always wondered if they were somehow "related" (like it was just published under Nintendo). Anyone know?
Call me when Leprosy is back in style with the free trip and lifetime lodging in Hawaii.
Now THAT'S a deal!
Personally I'd like to see them all deported and then have to apply to get back into the country. They broke the law and came here illegally and should have to suffer the punishment.
That said, I also realized that for dozens of reasons that is COMPLETELY unworkable. I'm a hard-core republican but I have to break with my party on this one. There was that proposal (I think it came from Kennedy and a few others) that these aliens could pay backed taxes, learn English, and pay a fine. I think that (combined with fixes to keep new aliens from streaming in like better fencing, more visas, and a guest worker program) are the best we can do.
They blatantly ignored our laws. I'm as mad about that as anyone else. But saying "too bad, leave the country and then come back" ignores problems like the one you mentioned (no tax revenue) because very few people will do that.
That said, I think these protests that are scheduled for tomorrow are a very serious mistake and will only hurt support for their cause (like the Spanish Star Spangled Banner did), but that's another topic.
Still, I thought it was a good name. Wii is... ok. I hope it grows on me more.
But I find it hard to believe that Nintendo is going to pull a "New Coke". While an interesting idea, it just doesn't seem like the Nintendo thing to do.
Don't misunderstand, I was not blaming the the immigrants, I was just responding to the comment. I live near Kansas and I have been hearing about this for a while now. My personal theory? These are college kids. It's not called "the kissing disease" for nothing. I think it just is an outbreak year for no good reason. I just responded because I thought the idea was interesting.
Based on how hard it is is most places to get into school without shots like the MMR, I think the only thing illegal immigrants could do would be to bring it up here (since it is so scarce in the wild here due to vaccinations. I think they are a non-factor in this. Just thought the idea was interesting.
But let's take it out of MMR. What if it was some disease that there is a vaccination for (doesn't "everyone" get the Chicken Pox vaccines these days?) but isn't required to get into schools (I don't know if that vaccine is). Just an interesting idea.
As I said in my original post, other issues (taxes, medicaid, etc) are far more meaningful and important in the immigration debate than this is or probably will ever be.
Again, thanks for the info. I'm 23 so I have little experience in what kids need to be vaccinated for to get into schools and such, just memories about what happened to me.
I like revolution for a couple of reasons. It sounds fresh, which is a plus. Where you see "Edge" or "Extreme" tacked onto everything, "Revolution" is something you don't see much.
But more than that is it's literal meaning. The Revolution is nothing short of a revolution in game systems. They are dropping the graphics arms race and doing something completely differently. Games have been controlled with joysticks and buttons since the first video games on the market (pong and space invaders). There have been a few variations (trackballs, DDR pads) and a few really different schemes (light light-guns, almost all in the arcades now).
There is NO variety in non-arcades. There is a token game or two (Guitar Hero, for example) but every system since the dawn of home systems has come with some version of a game pad with buttons. Same old same old. There have been one little bit or two (thumbsticks, rumble) but it's all the same.
The revolution is revolutionary in the way you control it. There is no other system out there (except Xavix which has probably sold less than the Virtual Boy) with anything like it. It's a revolution in the graphics department (not doing the same thing as other consoles).
The Revolution is a revolution in video game console designs. That's why I thought it was a good and fitting name.
But here in the US everyone (more or less) gets MMR vaccines. In most places you often can't get into middle/highschool without it. The few people who were born and grew up in this country who didn't get it (and were children of citizens) didn't get it because their parent were nuts or hyper-suggestable (there is a 0.001% chance that taking vaccine X will enhance the possibility your kid will get Y by 7%, we better not give it to him).
But with immigrants, we don't know. With legal immigrants they may get the same same (either in their home country they came from, were forced to when they moved here, etc) but if you come from some country where vaccination is not common, you may slip by (I don't think I had to prove I had my vaccinations to go to college).
This is only made worse by many illegal immigrants being afraid of hospitals/doctors/police/etc because they think they may get reported and sent back (not all are like this, and while unfortunate I can understand the fear).
This is just one more issue in the immigration debate. It's a smaller one (I think the drain on the tax, medicaid, and other systems are bigger), but it is still something. When someone sneaks in, we don't know what they have, what they don't have, what they are vaccinated against, etc.
Did Nintendo do this just to get more support when they bring back "Coke Classic" (i.e. Revolution or another better name)?
Even if this IS the name, they certainly got quite a lot of press over it.
I still don't really like it. I'll buy the system, don't get me wrong. They could call it "Magic Happy Leprosy Spreading Bad Smell Maker" and I'd buy it. But I think Revolution was such a perfect name. It was catchy, yet differentiated the console perfectly.
DS was just a code name and they said they would change the name, until they said DS was the final name.
Is this all a stunt? Who knows. We'll find out when the system actually launches.
That said, I'm getting used to the name. Maybe it's like Game Cube and I'll come to like it.
That said the blurb mentions that "wii" is not a sound in the Japanese language (which I've heard elsewhere). I've heard that "revolution" is similarly unpronounceable because it also contains sounds not in Japanese. Is that true?
They could always call it Revolution here and the Japanese word for Revolution there (like the NES/Famicom, SNES/Super Famicom, Genesis/MegaDrive and a few others had different names).
They could fix this by ordering people to learn and play at the funerals, but they don't do that (I don't think they should).
As another poster pointed out, this is better than a CD player (ceremonially).
What's with the "you obviously don't have a clue" part? He obviously DOES. He knows what he's doing. He has some ideas of how to do it. He is just asking for guidance from people who may know more than him. It's called learning. You think people are just born knowing how to write a complex application like this? They have to learn about it.
Those people he should pay, how did they get their clue?
If there is some obvious reason why he shouldn't continue, why don't you, I don't know, TELL EVERYONE. That way he and the rest of us can learn from it. If you don't have a good reason, why did you bother to post?
Oh that's right, you're a troll.
You comment would at least make a little sense if it was a question like "I've got an idea for this application that is cross-platform and (everything else he talked about) and a book on QBasic from 20 years ago. Should I use a for loop or a while loop?" But his question had merit.
I would have liked to see the answer. Unfortunatly there are only 2 or 3 answers posted. There is one side note about using UTF-8 (good idea), and the rest are all "don't bother, the RIAA will sue you" posts (which are, unfortunately, true).
As for the database handling since this will be static (if you want it to run off a CD, it's static) here is what I can think of. You can embed an SQL server (I know there is one, can't remember the name) and do it that way. I don't know if that is an option for Java. Your other option is to store it in files. You could easily make a bunch of directories (made by a script) that would give you a large directory tree. Simply assign a ID to each song. The first digit of the ID is the first folder (there are 0-9), the second folder inside the first works the same only for the second ID, etc. You can go as far as you need. You can either keep the individual files, or inside each directory that you make (maybe you only want to go 2 levels deep) you keep ALL the data for those songs in a compressed file (XML, serialized objects, whatever). Then you have an index file that you load that tells you how to find the songs (which ID goes to which artist/cd/track) and you could add a second file that holds a database of words and in which IDs they appear for searching purposes.
I'd say go Java. You can include the JRE on the disc (at least for OS X and Windows). Java is very stable and mature, where as something else like wxWindows may not be (don't know how well it performs on various platforms). Plus wxWindows or QT would require extra libraries.
If the user didn't want to run the app off the CD, they'd just have to copy it all to a folder they have access to. If you put the code in a JAR file, not only is it cleaner but you can run the program simply by double clicking on it in either Windows or OS X (might need an extra property or two in the manifest file for OS X).
For the web part, you could have a little application that launches the web server and closes the server when you close the program. You could embed the web browser in that. It would be more complex though, especially when going cross platform.
I'm going to have to stick with using Java. I think that will be your best bet.
Please note that ennui is a French word. It is pronounced "on-we", not "in-we".
When using a USB cable, you just plug the phone in and for the modem kind choose "Sprint PCS". The dial-up number is #777 and that's all there is to it. Works fine. The 8200 was very fast (ISDN speeds) where the LG is dial-up speeds (same area, same everything else). Things really do vary by phone.
With Bluetooth on the 325, it is just like above only no cable. You just have to enable DUN on the phone each time, and turn the phone on and off in-between dial-up uses.
It works ok. The 8200 worked quite a bit better. As for syncing phone data (contacts, etc) you are basically up the creek without a paddle. Neither phone does that (they also don't charge when you use the cable). I don't know of any that do (except perhaps the Palm/PocketPC ones) on Sprint. I've heard much better things about the kinds of phones one can get from Cingular on that point.
Where is the iPhone when I need it?
As for other help, the people on the Sprint Users forum are nice and can answer almost anything.
Good luck.
You could get your parents to sign for you, but that would be a hassle. That is why (I believe) all contests say "you must be 18 or older to enter", at least in the US.
The problem is that in technology 2 years is a VERY LONG TIME. I could buy a phone/contract today and it may have the best service in the area or the best network or whatever. In 6 months that my not be true. In 1.5 years that may not be true. Yet I'm still locked into my contract.
That's another one for my list that I just thought of:
I have been told by cell phone companies that if I bought a new phone I would have to a) pay to get out of my current contract with them, and b) sign up for a new 2 year contract.
I believe that the companies are predatory. They keep cell phone prices very high (low end cell phones cost $200?) I'm amazed they don't cost more! Then they offer these huge subsidies for the phones when you sign up for a contract which prevents most people from being able to ever afford them without the long contracts.
MP3s at 128 kpbs are a meg a minute. CD quality WAV files are 10 megs a minute. Considering how fast your hard drive would get full, people didn't rip their music. Even if you cut the quality to 22 Khz instead of 44 Khz, your file is still 5x larger than an MP3 and wouldn't sound as well. Cut it in half again (8-bit instead of 16-bit) and you're down to 2.5 megs a minute. Cut it down AGAIN (11 Khz) and you're at 1.25 megs a minute.
25% larger files for clearly inferior sound quality. It wasn't worth it.
Yes, you could compress things, but the compression wasn't nearly as good. 2-3x maybe.
It was the vastly superior file size of MP3 that helped made it famous and ubiquitous. Like DVD, there was a very clear difference between the old and new format at the time.