I guess it's to be expected - let other companies spend years building a business making 3rd-party accessories for consoles, then squeeze them for licensing fees in order to stay in the business.
I wonder how much it will be? $2? $10? The problem with this kind of deal is that it almost always hurts the little guy more. Logitech isn't going to have to pay nearly as much per-unit as one of the smaller players, so we end up with fewer choices. I would be one thing if we could somehow be guaranteed that MS will make the best controllers out there, but it's not like their track record has been that good.
So if a developer wants to sell a driving game with a wheel or we want to get the HD version of Dance Dance Revolution (yay) then it's going to cost even more than before.
Really though, I doubt this is about controllers. More likely it concerns other types of accessories...like mod chips. If they can prove that "unlicensed" mod chip makers are avoiding a standard license fee, they can sue them for those fees to either put them out of business or make it too expensive to make a product. If it's not illegal yet, I'm sure there's a lobbyist somewhere working on it.
After playing Doom, I decided to become a physicist so that I could unlock the secrets of interdimensional travel.
If it weren't for my playing Myst, I would never have had the foresight to keep my D'ni linking book handy when the demons came through.
Unfortunately, I linked to some Bizzaro-Earth where killing and car theft are OK but having sex is VERY bad. I wish I could go back...at least hell demons behave rationally.
Here we have a game where stealing cars, killing cops and doing death-defying stunts (well, death-defying the third time through) is perfectly fine. No complaints from politicians above the general noise level of outrage that these people seem to feel towards everything not featured in "Leave it to Beaver" and no ass clowns protesting outside Rockstar's offices.
But bring sex into it and suddenly these guys are harming America far more than people who steal cars, kill cops and do death-defying stunts in real life.
I'm sorry but I can't seem to wrap my brain around the idea that even the most deviant sexual behavior could somehow be less morally acceptable than killing somebody.
So, since I haven't seen the offensive sexual content in GTA yet, can somebody clue me in here. Was there bondage? Gay sex? Bestiality? Something scatological? What could have been in that hidden scene that was worse than murder?
Don't get me wrong. I honestly don't believe that video game behavior directly causes similar behavior in real life. Otherwise, I would have leveled several small towns with my hand-held rocket launcher.
Whatever damage these games do to our kids' abillity to restrain themselves from violent behavior, it's nothing compared to the the completely fucked up messages they're getting about the evils of sex. No wonder Viagra and the like are selling so well...if you spend your whole childhood learning now bad, dirty, offensive, and just plain wrong sex is you're not going to be very well equipped (no pun intended) to participate in it in a healthy way.
- Dad getting a pocket calculator and a digital watch in the same year - both with LED displays.
- The two-part episode of The Bionic Woman where she had to go through the deadly obstacle course to defeat the evil computer...behold the power of technology!
- Dad was a high school teacher and got to bring home a Commodore PET during the summer for us kids to play with. CLOAD, baby!
-Spending 4 hours typing some huge BASIC program into the PET out of Byte magazine, 1 finger at a time, losing it once due to power glitch, retyping it the next day, another 3 hours correcting typos, and then finding out that the version of BASIC on the PET wasn't the same as the one used for the program. This is especially frustrating to a 12-year-old with ADD...I had never concentrated so much on a single task. And then to find out the time was all wasted...a good preparation for an adult career in IT.
- Getting an Apple//e with 2 drives and a green monitor.
- Learning how to copy games and other protected disks with nibble copying and other nefarious things.
- Beagle Brothers!!! My God, those guys were the best. I learned all my reverse engineering skills from them. A close second was the TMH disks for Apple II's. They were better for graphics stuff, but weren't as clear in how they worked.
- Dialing in to a college mainframe with my friend's Atari 400 and a modem you put the handset into.
- Getting kicked outof my HS computer class because I knew how to program and use computers and the teacher did not. (And they were teaching LOGO! Come On!!)
- In my first attempt at social engineering, gaining access to the store manager's account on 's mainframe, creating my own account, and giving people raises.
- Using my first exploit to gain admin rights to an employer's Novell network and read the boss's email.
There are others, but that's more than enough.
Re:Long Live K.C. Munchkin!
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Pac-Man Turns 25
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· Score: 3, Funny
Oh yeah!!!
I had an Odyssey 2 and it was something of a coup that KC Munchkin was so much better looking than Pac Man on the Atari 2600. It was one of the few times I was glad my parents didn't buy me the 2600 instead.
Now that I'm an adult (well, legally...) I can see how owning that console was the beginning of a long pattern of owning technically superior products that nevertheless lost in the market to lesser technology. Now, after having been the proud owner of a Betamax, a Mac, a Newton, an Amiga, LaserDisk, NetWare, propane-powered pickup, and a bunch of other gadgets, I have such low self-esteem and aversion to getting screwed by technology that I buy everything at Best Buy because those guys know what's really good.
Oh, and happy birthday, Pac Man. Hope you and the Ms. are doing well. I miss you.
You are certainly not the only one. Those new ATM's drive me crazy. There is aboslutely no reason that should have made it into production as-is. It has to be about a half-second between a keypress and the response from the machine.
But that's just the beginning. The real menace if the damned touch screen interface. A little calibration would go a long way, not to mention that you get the same response time from the screen as you do from the keypad. I don't know how tall their QA people are, but because of the distance between the screen and the outside of the glass a tall person is guaranteed to press the wrong button on-screen. I miss all the time, but don't know because of the delay in feedback. At least they make it semi-convenient to put back all the extra money you didn't really mean to withdraw. Unless WF isn't your bank.
I reckon it's nice that they can send out updates remotely to these ATM's. God knows that wasn't possible with "less advanced" OS'es. I guess we'll just have to see how long before some kid at home sends out his new update package. Or until WF works out a deal with Gator to serve pop-up ads while you wait for the stupid thing to register keypresses.
It's funny you mention this. I have been having the same problem with mine and finally traced it to temperature.
I have been running the Sveasoft firmware and thought that it was the problem at first. However, after reverting back to the stock FW I got the same problems without any of the benefits.
For a long itme I thought it was my Xbox causing problems with the network. I only really got steady trouble when I had the Xbox turned on. It took longer than it should have for me to correlate how hot the AV closet got when the Xbox was turned on to the Linksys problems.
So now I'm going to install a vent fan in the closet to keep things cool. As for the WRT54g, I may take the top of the case off so air can move more freely over the hot bits. If anybody else has had/solved the heat issue with these routers, I would love to know more.
OK, let me be the first to say that I don't usually agree with these kind of arrests but that was way out of line. Did he think somebody was actually going to watch that turd?
The only thing worse is explaining to friends and family what caused you to get arrested.
OK, enough cheap humor. This thread's gonaa go downhill fast anyway...I'll just stop now.
I used to have an IBM 755CD laptop (P75, baby!) that had a removable back on the LCD screen. It was made so you could set the laptop on an overhead projector and use it for presentations. It was a nice concept, but a practical nightmare. The image was dark, it was hard to focus, and the screen was only 640X480. The biggest problem was that if you wanted to center the screen on the projector the body of the laptop hung over the edge and would fall off unless you supported it with something.
As for the state of my living room, I've found that having a wife or GF kind of precludes the mess. I can have all the technology I want in the living room, but it's either hidden in a cupboard or made otherwise stealthy. It works for all concerned that way.
This is one that didn't get enough attention when it was released ~5 years ago. It was really beautiful back then on my old P3-750 and an original 32MB Radeon. I found it in a bargain bin the other day re-released with the original MDK for $5.00.
If you're looking for a goregeous 3d platformer that will scream on today's mainstream hardware, you can't do much better. It's all OpenGL, so it's probably an easier one to get running in Linux (although I can't vouch for that myself), has a good storyline, incredibly large outdoor environments, and a lot of humor. The farting aliens still crack me up.
If it matters to you, MDK2 was done by Bioware, better known for KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Baldur's Gate, etc. This type of game may seem a little unusual for them, but believe me, the quality and design are top-notch.
So I don't know if you'd consider it a classic game as such...when I think classic I think asteroids and Tempest. But it definitely worth the bargain bin price and you'll get 15 or so hours of play out of it.
They have those. They're called consoles. It's a custom os running on custom hardware, and runs games very well.
The problem isn't what gets stripped out but how much still needs to be included in order to run the game on the vast variety of hardware out there. It's one thing to tune your OS for a specific target machine, but when you don't know anything other than it's an x86 box and can boot from CD, there are a few more things you have to add just to get the OS running, let alone the game itself.
So, you can reduce the number of supported devices or configs and incur the wrath of all the folks who think your game should run on the 486 they use for Zork or you can add everything you think might be needed at the expense of size. It's a tough call, and one of the biggest obstacles to achieving optimal performance.
I agree. The problem is not that technology is ineffective. It's more that technology needs to be understood as another tool in the educator's toolbox. If you look at classrooms today (ignore the computers for now) you won't see much that's different from what was there 50 years ago. There are books, desks, paper, blackboard, etc. that teachers use to put knowledge into our little heads. These tools are all very well-understood and have a context that stays with students between grades or between schools.
What needs to be understood is that putting computers into a classroom isn't going to magically make kids tech-savvy or improve the rest of the learning experience. It requires a dramatic shift in the way the curriculum is developed and presented.
If you tell kids that they need to write a research paper and then plop them down with MS Word and a web browser, they're going to cut and paste. It's certainly easier than when I was in school and had to plagarize from the encyclopedia by hand, but the end result is the same: the student doesn't really learn what he/she is supposed to, so the learning experience is wasted. Computers just make it a whole lot easier to accomplish the same thing.
Technology in education really works when the curriculum and lessons are designed with computers in mind from the beginning. There are really good opportunities to engage students and get them to think critically, but it takes more than just telling kids to use the computer. Those of us who depend on the Internet for our livelihood have learned to sift through the abundance of crap to get the information we need. That's a life skill that is going to get more and more important as time goes on.
I wonder if, 500 or so years ago, there were similar problems with books. Instead of actively teaching, maybe techers just gave textbooks to kids and told them to read all day. Imagine when blackboards started showing up in classrooms - I'm sure many of them looked new for years, and others weren't used effectively.
Computers are the same way. It's a hard thing to integrate new methods and tools into teaching, but we would be doing a tremendous disservice to students if we just decided to pretend they didn't exist.
The only reservation I have is that right now, computers are still considered a luxury to those with lower incomes. A big part of a classroom computer strategy is figuring out how to address the disparity between the wealthy and poor. You can't expect a family on food stamps to be able to provide the same access to a computer that a wealthy family can. I think that this is a big reason for many of the problems the author and submitter mention.
As time goes on, this will be less of an issue. Maybe by that time the kinks will be worked out with the curriculum.
Really dude...if you're reading this far down and still don't know then you need more help than what we can provide.
I got the order right - first the band and touring europe for a couple of years, then the wife, then the "real" job. That seems to be the most prevalent pattern in the biz. If you've got an opportunity to go tour now and don't have any reason other than some software job to stay, you need to get the hell off of your ass and on a plane.
I'm 35 now and cherish the experience of playing in a band on tour. It's not easy, smells bad, and you stand a better chance of getting your ass kicked by bouncers (little disputes with club owners over compensation) than you do of getting laid.
Still, it's the best job there is. I was never fond of recording, but getting on-stage for 50 or 10,000 people and playing music for a living is absolutely one of the best experiences of my life. I can't imagine not doing it.
why are you still reading this? You should be packing.
Yeah, you're probably right about the price, although the fiber is likely the expensive part. Really, I like the fiber because it's a good hedge against future wiring. I don't have anything that I need it for right now, but I didn't need CAT5 5 years ago either. 10 years ago, I would have told you that CAT5 is a bad hurricane.
In the grand scheme of things, getting the fiber pair in eachg room isn't much more money - especially if I'm paying an electrician to wire the house. Pulling one cable to each room is going to be cheaper than pulling 5. And if it means that I don't have to dig back into the walls and attic later, I'm all for it. I've spent too many itchy weekends digging throught that blown-in fiberglass attic insulation. I'll make the fiber work!
When I build my own home (in a couple of years, I hope), I'll install this to all rooms. Instead of pulling a bunch of different cable, why not do 2XCat5, 2X Coax, and a fiber pair? This stuff is kind of expensive, ($1/foot at Home Depot) but when you consider what's contained in a single jacket, it makes sense. I would probably run extra service to the living room to accommodate the extra AV and computer gear, but a single run of this cable to each room is probably enough for most people.
Honestly, I'm surprised nobody else has suggested this yet. I get a woody every time I see this stuff.
I must admit that part of me agrees with you. The reason I watch(ed) all of the various ST series is because I was raised on the the first one. because of that one, I was also raised on Space:1999, Quark (I know, it's a guilty pleasure), Buck Rogers (original and the 70's version), and who knows what else that's been produced over my 35 years. I'm a fan of the genre, and will watch scifi on TV whenever something new comes out. I'm still pissed that Farscape got cancelled, and miss B5 very much.
Having said that, I totally agree that B&B have turned the Star Trek world to shit. There's no imagination anymore. There's no innovation, and no risk-taking. There's also nothing even remotely mentally stimulating about what has been produced since DS9 ended. I can't watch any ST episode with a holodeck, because they're all uniformly bad. I have never seen why more than one trip to 20th Century Earth or another planet suspiciously similar was necessary.
Here's my greatest wish for Star Trek: Make a new series set in the same time as the previous 3. Now that a really rich universe has been created with lots of different species and locations, rules, technology, and other such factors there's a real strong environment for creating something interesting. There's a tremendous amount of familiarity with all of this in the viewer population.
Now, instead of a serialized show with the same characters in it every week, make it more of an anthology. Different characters and different stories every week. One week, maybe the story revolves around a Ferengi merchant ship and some issue they face. The next week, parents deal with the fact that their child is (or is not) joining Star Fleet. Another could be comical - Klingons trying to spy on the Federation or someting like that.
The fans would get the "in" jokes, already know the political environment, and understand the different cultures of the species from the show. There's this huge universe to draw upon, and so much of it hasn't been explored...like anything NOT having to do with Star Fleet.
So, who would write the shows? Fans. You and me. Anybody could submit 1 (one) story per season. The best ones would get produced. You'd have good writing, fresh ideas every week, and a show that I believe people would look forward to every week. If you get a bad one, it's no big deal because it's not like you're going to have to put up with the same crappy acting or writing the next time. If somebody does exceptionally well, they could come back and do another one the next season. We would end up with some favorite recurring characters...maybe you would see a popular, flamboyant character (Harry Mudd, anyone?) in some small role occasionally to lend a sense of continuity.
Maybe I'm just insane. I just think that there's so much here to draw from that it really takes tremendous effort to make something as bad as Enterprise or Voyager. Like I said, I'll still watch them because it's hard-coded into my behavior. But that doesn't mean that they can't be better.
I have been looking into similar treatments for myself, since I really REALLY hate the way the stimulant meds make me feel. They do help me get some clarity, but I'm miserable the whole time. I was recently looking for alternative treatments and stumbled upon neural feedback. I was very interested in this thread, hoping that somebody else might have had experience with the treatment. Instead, it's the same old "IANAD, but Ritalin sux0rz" stuff.
Oh well...
As an aside, I got a great christmas gift this year: The Wild Divine game. It uses a USB-connected biofeedback sensor to control the game. Basically, you get to learn some good meditative skills and apply them in a game setting. It's not neural feedback therapy, but I have found it useful in learning relaxation techniques and I have found it to be very helpful in achieving mental calm...something pretty novel for me.
If you would like your daughter to try this type of therapy, the Wild Divine game may be a good place to start. It's not as cheap as other video games, but it's cheaper than talking to a neural feedback therapy specialist. I bet you'll be pleasantly surprised.
You're absolutely right...and reminded me of something as well.
I was in Mexico this past summer and went on a a tour of the Mayan ruins at Coba with these guys. (highly recommended, BTW). On part of the tour, they had kids from a local village taking pictures of the tourists with a digital camera. Then, when we got back to the village you could buy a picture of yourself looking foolish.
The kids had a laptop and an inkjet photo printer inside a hut with a line run outside to a solar panel. These folks are way off the grid, but this seemed to be enough to run not only the laptop but the printer as well. Of course, it probably didn't do much good at night but is worked fine for them during the day.
If anybody else has seen this and taken a picture, I would love to have a copy. My technology failed me that day. (/hangs geek head in shame)
- VoIP companies are asked to share the cost of maintaining IP infrastructure, in return for the burden they impose on it
You mean, like paying for colocation of their equipment, their bandwidth, the USF fees they pay, and that sort of thing?
I thought when you paid for these things, you were sharing the cost of the IP infrastructure. It's not like Vonage has just a cable modem at their end too. The fact that they can pay for the bandwidth they use, the bridging equipment, and the tie lines to the PSTN and still charge what they do is a pretty good sign that VoIP is a cheaper way to provide voice service to individuals.
I'm a (very satisfied) Vonage user, and work for a voice services provider. After spending some time looking into providing VoIP to our customers, I can tell you there's a whole lot of work that takes place and a big chunk of money to set this up. A lot of people seem to be under the impression that it's a no-brainer to provide a service like this. Although there are some good bundles available today from folks like Cisco to get started, there's still a lot of real telco work involved.
And while I'm on the subject, has anybody seen anything about Vonage's infrastructure? I'm sure they don't want to divulge all of their secrets, but I would love to know how it's all put together.
Wow. That's really a god idea. Now, before I get flamed for this, let me explain.
I'm sure I'm not the only one (at least I hope I'm not) who has taken a bonus/windfall and bought a tech toy that's marginally useful for work but might not have a really solid business need. I once took a bonus and bought a really kick-ass PDA, which I thine used for some work purposed as well as all the fun stuff I wanted it for.
There's a ton of things that would fall into this category. Maybe a trip to (insert trade show at fun location), a laptop for somebody who might not ordinarily get one, and damn near everything in the ThinkGeek store.
Now I really wish I worked where I would get a bonus. Maybe next job...
I've been looking for a justifiable reason to get a shuttle (pc, not exploding space plane) hooked up to the big-screen in the living room. This is exactly the ticket! "Come on...you don't want to spend your time playing this on the little computer in the basement, do you? think how much better it will be if you can sit on the couch and play/chat"
And when you're not doing that, I'll be playing Homeworld 2! And UT 2003.
So yeah, thanks Ubi/Cyan.
Re:Hmmmmmm I wonder...
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 1
Funny, that exact thing just happened to my company. Coincidence?
Slashdot Mirror
I guess it's to be expected - let other companies spend years building a business making 3rd-party accessories for consoles, then squeeze them for licensing fees in order to stay in the business.
I wonder how much it will be? $2? $10? The problem with this kind of deal is that it almost always hurts the little guy more. Logitech isn't going to have to pay nearly as much per-unit as one of the smaller players, so we end up with fewer choices. I would be one thing if we could somehow be guaranteed that MS will make the best controllers out there, but it's not like their track record has been that good.
So if a developer wants to sell a driving game with a wheel or we want to get the HD version of Dance Dance Revolution (yay) then it's going to cost even more than before.
Really though, I doubt this is about controllers. More likely it concerns other types of accessories...like mod chips. If they can prove that "unlicensed" mod chip makers are avoiding a standard license fee, they can sue them for those fees to either put them out of business or make it too expensive to make a product. If it's not illegal yet, I'm sure there's a lobbyist somewhere working on it.
Yeah, my bad. Sorry about that.
After playing Doom, I decided to become a physicist so that I could unlock the secrets of interdimensional travel.
If it weren't for my playing Myst, I would never have had the foresight to keep my D'ni linking book handy when the demons came through.
Unfortunately, I linked to some Bizzaro-Earth where killing and car theft are OK but having sex is VERY bad. I wish I could go back...at least hell demons behave rationally.
My sentiments exactly.
Here we have a game where stealing cars, killing cops and doing death-defying stunts (well, death-defying the third time through) is perfectly fine. No complaints from politicians above the general noise level of outrage that these people seem to feel towards everything not featured in "Leave it to Beaver" and no ass clowns protesting outside Rockstar's offices.
But bring sex into it and suddenly these guys are harming America far more than people who steal cars, kill cops and do death-defying stunts in real life.
I'm sorry but I can't seem to wrap my brain around the idea that even the most deviant sexual behavior could somehow be less morally acceptable than killing somebody.
So, since I haven't seen the offensive sexual content in GTA yet, can somebody clue me in here. Was there bondage? Gay sex? Bestiality? Something scatological? What could have been in that hidden scene that was worse than murder?
Don't get me wrong. I honestly don't believe that video game behavior directly causes similar behavior in real life. Otherwise, I would have leveled several small towns with my hand-held rocket launcher.
Whatever damage these games do to our kids' abillity to restrain themselves from violent behavior, it's nothing compared to the the completely fucked up messages they're getting about the evils of sex. No wonder Viagra and the like are selling so well...if you spend your whole childhood learning now bad, dirty, offensive, and just plain wrong sex is you're not going to be very well equipped (no pun intended) to participate in it in a healthy way.
pivotal moments in my geek life:
//e with 2 drives and a green monitor.
- Dad getting a pocket calculator and a digital watch in the same year - both with LED displays.
- The two-part episode of The Bionic Woman where she had to go through the deadly obstacle course to defeat the evil computer...behold the power of technology!
- Dad was a high school teacher and got to bring home a Commodore PET during the summer for us kids to play with. CLOAD, baby!
-Spending 4 hours typing some huge BASIC program into the PET out of Byte magazine, 1 finger at a time, losing it once due to power glitch, retyping it the next day, another 3 hours correcting typos, and then finding out that the version of BASIC on the PET wasn't the same as the one used for the program. This is especially frustrating to a 12-year-old with ADD...I had never concentrated so much on a single task. And then to find out the time was all wasted...a good preparation for an adult career in IT.
- Getting an Apple
- Learning how to copy games and other protected disks with nibble copying and other nefarious things.
- Beagle Brothers!!! My God, those guys were the best. I learned all my reverse engineering skills from them. A close second was the TMH disks for Apple II's. They were better for graphics stuff, but weren't as clear in how they worked.
- Dialing in to a college mainframe with my friend's Atari 400 and a modem you put the handset into.
- Getting kicked outof my HS computer class because I knew how to program and use computers and the teacher did not. (And they were teaching LOGO! Come On!!)
- In my first attempt at social engineering, gaining access to the store manager's account on 's mainframe, creating my own account, and giving people raises.
- Using my first exploit to gain admin rights to an employer's Novell network and read the boss's email.
There are others, but that's more than enough.
Oh yeah!!!
I had an Odyssey 2 and it was something of a coup that KC Munchkin was so much better looking than Pac Man on the Atari 2600. It was one of the few times I was glad my parents didn't buy me the 2600 instead.
Now that I'm an adult (well, legally...) I can see how owning that console was the beginning of a long pattern of owning technically superior products that nevertheless lost in the market to lesser technology. Now, after having been the proud owner of a Betamax, a Mac, a Newton, an Amiga, LaserDisk, NetWare, propane-powered pickup, and a bunch of other gadgets, I have such low self-esteem and aversion to getting screwed by technology that I buy everything at Best Buy because those guys know what's really good.
Oh, and happy birthday, Pac Man. Hope you and the Ms. are doing well. I miss you.
The first thing I though of was the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. I get the feeling that both are equally destructive to life on Earth.
You are certainly not the only one. Those new ATM's drive me crazy. There is aboslutely no reason that should have made it into production as-is. It has to be about a half-second between a keypress and the response from the machine.
But that's just the beginning. The real menace if the damned touch screen interface. A little calibration would go a long way, not to mention that you get the same response time from the screen as you do from the keypad. I don't know how tall their QA people are, but because of the distance between the screen and the outside of the glass a tall person is guaranteed to press the wrong button on-screen. I miss all the time, but don't know because of the delay in feedback. At least they make it semi-convenient to put back all the extra money you didn't really mean to withdraw. Unless WF isn't your bank.
I reckon it's nice that they can send out updates remotely to these ATM's. God knows that wasn't possible with "less advanced" OS'es. I guess we'll just have to see how long before some kid at home sends out his new update package. Or until WF works out a deal with Gator to serve pop-up ads while you wait for the stupid thing to register keypresses.
It's funny you mention this. I have been having the same problem with mine and finally traced it to temperature.
I have been running the Sveasoft firmware and thought that it was the problem at first. However, after reverting back to the stock FW I got the same problems without any of the benefits.
For a long itme I thought it was my Xbox causing problems with the network. I only really got steady trouble when I had the Xbox turned on. It took longer than it should have for me to correlate how hot the AV closet got when the Xbox was turned on to the Linksys problems.
So now I'm going to install a vent fan in the closet to keep things cool. As for the WRT54g, I may take the top of the case off so air can move more freely over the hot bits. If anybody else has had/solved the heat issue with these routers, I would love to know more.
OK, let me be the first to say that I don't usually agree with these kind of arrests but that was way out of line. Did he think somebody was actually going to watch that turd?
The only thing worse is explaining to friends and family what caused you to get arrested.
OK, enough cheap humor. This thread's gonaa go downhill fast anyway...I'll just stop now.
I used to have an IBM 755CD laptop (P75, baby!) that had a removable back on the LCD screen. It was made so you could set the laptop on an overhead projector and use it for presentations. It was a nice concept, but a practical nightmare. The image was dark, it was hard to focus, and the screen was only 640X480. The biggest problem was that if you wanted to center the screen on the projector the body of the laptop hung over the edge and would fall off unless you supported it with something.
As for the state of my living room, I've found that having a wife or GF kind of precludes the mess. I can have all the technology I want in the living room, but it's either hidden in a cupboard or made otherwise stealthy. It works for all concerned that way.
This is one that didn't get enough attention when it was released ~5 years ago. It was really beautiful back then on my old P3-750 and an original 32MB Radeon. I found it in a bargain bin the other day re-released with the original MDK for $5.00.
If you're looking for a goregeous 3d platformer that will scream on today's mainstream hardware, you can't do much better. It's all OpenGL, so it's probably an easier one to get running in Linux (although I can't vouch for that myself), has a good storyline, incredibly large outdoor environments, and a lot of humor. The farting aliens still crack me up.
If it matters to you, MDK2 was done by Bioware, better known for KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Baldur's Gate, etc. This type of game may seem a little unusual for them, but believe me, the quality and design are top-notch.
So I don't know if you'd consider it a classic game as such...when I think classic I think asteroids and Tempest. But it definitely worth the bargain bin price and you'll get 15 or so hours of play out of it.
They have those. They're called consoles. It's a custom os running on custom hardware, and runs games very well.
The problem isn't what gets stripped out but how much still needs to be included in order to run the game on the vast variety of hardware out there. It's one thing to tune your OS for a specific target machine, but when you don't know anything other than it's an x86 box and can boot from CD, there are a few more things you have to add just to get the OS running, let alone the game itself.
So, you can reduce the number of supported devices or configs and incur the wrath of all the folks who think your game should run on the 486 they use for Zork or you can add everything you think might be needed at the expense of size. It's a tough call, and one of the biggest obstacles to achieving optimal performance.
LOL. I wish I could give you a +1 Funny.
Really, my first reaction when I saw that page was "WTF? there's a Japanese version of Slashdot?"
I voted in the poll, but I may have chosen poorly. What does "l337 h4x0r" look like in Kanji?
I agree. The problem is not that technology is ineffective. It's more that technology needs to be understood as another tool in the educator's toolbox. If you look at classrooms today (ignore the computers for now) you won't see much that's different from what was there 50 years ago. There are books, desks, paper, blackboard, etc. that teachers use to put knowledge into our little heads. These tools are all very well-understood and have a context that stays with students between grades or between schools.
What needs to be understood is that putting computers into a classroom isn't going to magically make kids tech-savvy or improve the rest of the learning experience. It requires a dramatic shift in the way the curriculum is developed and presented.
If you tell kids that they need to write a research paper and then plop them down with MS Word and a web browser, they're going to cut and paste. It's certainly easier than when I was in school and had to plagarize from the encyclopedia by hand, but the end result is the same: the student doesn't really learn what he/she is supposed to, so the learning experience is wasted. Computers just make it a whole lot easier to accomplish the same thing.
Technology in education really works when the curriculum and lessons are designed with computers in mind from the beginning. There are really good opportunities to engage students and get them to think critically, but it takes more than just telling kids to use the computer. Those of us who depend on the Internet for our livelihood have learned to sift through the abundance of crap to get the information we need. That's a life skill that is going to get more and more important as time goes on.
I wonder if, 500 or so years ago, there were similar problems with books. Instead of actively teaching, maybe techers just gave textbooks to kids and told them to read all day. Imagine when blackboards started showing up in classrooms - I'm sure many of them looked new for years, and others weren't used effectively.
Computers are the same way. It's a hard thing to integrate new methods and tools into teaching, but we would be doing a tremendous disservice to students if we just decided to pretend they didn't exist.
The only reservation I have is that right now, computers are still considered a luxury to those with lower incomes. A big part of a classroom computer strategy is figuring out how to address the disparity between the wealthy and poor. You can't expect a family on food stamps to be able to provide the same access to a computer that a wealthy family can. I think that this is a big reason for many of the problems the author and submitter mention.
As time goes on, this will be less of an issue. Maybe by that time the kinks will be worked out with the curriculum.
Really dude...if you're reading this far down and still don't know then you need more help than what we can provide.
I got the order right - first the band and touring europe for a couple of years, then the wife, then the "real" job. That seems to be the most prevalent pattern in the biz. If you've got an opportunity to go tour now and don't have any reason other than some software job to stay, you need to get the hell off of your ass and on a plane.
I'm 35 now and cherish the experience of playing in a band on tour. It's not easy, smells bad, and you stand a better chance of getting your ass kicked by bouncers (little disputes with club owners over compensation) than you do of getting laid.
Still, it's the best job there is. I was never fond of recording, but getting on-stage for 50 or 10,000 people and playing music for a living is absolutely one of the best experiences of my life. I can't imagine not doing it.
why are you still reading this? You should be packing.
Yeah, you're probably right about the price, although the fiber is likely the expensive part. Really, I like the fiber because it's a good hedge against future wiring. I don't have anything that I need it for right now, but I didn't need CAT5 5 years ago either. 10 years ago, I would have told you that CAT5 is a bad hurricane.
In the grand scheme of things, getting the fiber pair in eachg room isn't much more money - especially if I'm paying an electrician to wire the house. Pulling one cable to each room is going to be cheaper than pulling 5. And if it means that I don't have to dig back into the walls and attic later, I'm all for it. I've spent too many itchy weekends digging throught that blown-in fiberglass attic insulation. I'll make the fiber work!
When I build my own home (in a couple of years, I hope), I'll install this to all rooms. Instead of pulling a bunch of different cable, why not do 2XCat5, 2X Coax, and a fiber pair? This stuff is kind of expensive, ($1/foot at Home Depot) but when you consider what's contained in a single jacket, it makes sense. I would probably run extra service to the living room to accommodate the extra AV and computer gear, but a single run of this cable to each room is probably enough for most people.
Honestly, I'm surprised nobody else has suggested this yet. I get a woody every time I see this stuff.
I must admit that part of me agrees with you. The reason I watch(ed) all of the various ST series is because I was raised on the the first one. because of that one, I was also raised on Space:1999, Quark (I know, it's a guilty pleasure), Buck Rogers (original and the 70's version), and who knows what else that's been produced over my 35 years. I'm a fan of the genre, and will watch scifi on TV whenever something new comes out. I'm still pissed that Farscape got cancelled, and miss B5 very much.
Having said that, I totally agree that B&B have turned the Star Trek world to shit. There's no imagination anymore. There's no innovation, and no risk-taking. There's also nothing even remotely mentally stimulating about what has been produced since DS9 ended. I can't watch any ST episode with a holodeck, because they're all uniformly bad. I have never seen why more than one trip to 20th Century Earth or another planet suspiciously similar was necessary.
Here's my greatest wish for Star Trek: Make a new series set in the same time as the previous 3. Now that a really rich universe has been created with lots of different species and locations, rules, technology, and other such factors there's a real strong environment for creating something interesting. There's a tremendous amount of familiarity with all of this in the viewer population.
Now, instead of a serialized show with the same characters in it every week, make it more of an anthology. Different characters and different stories every week. One week, maybe the story revolves around a Ferengi merchant ship and some issue they face. The next week, parents deal with the fact that their child is (or is not) joining Star Fleet. Another could be comical - Klingons trying to spy on the Federation or someting like that.
The fans would get the "in" jokes, already know the political environment, and understand the different cultures of the species from the show. There's this huge universe to draw upon, and so much of it hasn't been explored...like anything NOT having to do with Star Fleet.
So, who would write the shows? Fans. You and me. Anybody could submit 1 (one) story per season. The best ones would get produced. You'd have good writing, fresh ideas every week, and a show that I believe people would look forward to every week. If you get a bad one, it's no big deal because it's not like you're going to have to put up with the same crappy acting or writing the next time. If somebody does exceptionally well, they could come back and do another one the next season. We would end up with some favorite recurring characters...maybe you would see a popular, flamboyant character (Harry Mudd, anyone?) in some small role occasionally to lend a sense of continuity.
Maybe I'm just insane. I just think that there's so much here to draw from that it really takes tremendous effort to make something as bad as Enterprise or Voyager. Like I said, I'll still watch them because it's hard-coded into my behavior. But that doesn't mean that they can't be better.
I have been looking into similar treatments for myself, since I really REALLY hate the way the stimulant meds make me feel. They do help me get some clarity, but I'm miserable the whole time. I was recently looking for alternative treatments and stumbled upon neural feedback. I was very interested in this thread, hoping that somebody else might have had experience with the treatment. Instead, it's the same old "IANAD, but Ritalin sux0rz" stuff.
Oh well...
As an aside, I got a great christmas gift this year: The Wild Divine game. It uses a USB-connected biofeedback sensor to control the game. Basically, you get to learn some good meditative skills and apply them in a game setting. It's not neural feedback therapy, but I have found it useful in learning relaxation techniques and I have found it to be very helpful in achieving mental calm...something pretty novel for me.
If you would like your daughter to try this type of therapy, the Wild Divine game may be a good place to start. It's not as cheap as other video games, but it's cheaper than talking to a neural feedback therapy specialist. I bet you'll be pleasantly surprised.
You're absolutely right...and reminded me of something as well.
I was in Mexico this past summer and went on a a tour of the Mayan ruins at Coba with these guys. (highly recommended, BTW). On part of the tour, they had kids from a local village taking pictures of the tourists with a digital camera. Then, when we got back to the village you could buy a picture of yourself looking foolish.
The kids had a laptop and an inkjet photo printer inside a hut with a line run outside to a solar panel. These folks are way off the grid, but this seemed to be enough to run not only the laptop but the printer as well. Of course, it probably didn't do much good at night but is worked fine for them during the day.
If anybody else has seen this and taken a picture, I would love to have a copy. My technology failed me that day. (/hangs geek head in shame)
You mean, like paying for colocation of their equipment, their bandwidth, the USF fees they pay, and that sort of thing?
I thought when you paid for these things, you were sharing the cost of the IP infrastructure. It's not like Vonage has just a cable modem at their end too. The fact that they can pay for the bandwidth they use, the bridging equipment, and the tie lines to the PSTN and still charge what they do is a pretty good sign that VoIP is a cheaper way to provide voice service to individuals.
I'm a (very satisfied) Vonage user, and work for a voice services provider. After spending some time looking into providing VoIP to our customers, I can tell you there's a whole lot of work that takes place and a big chunk of money to set this up. A lot of people seem to be under the impression that it's a no-brainer to provide a service like this. Although there are some good bundles available today from folks like Cisco to get started, there's still a lot of real telco work involved.
And while I'm on the subject, has anybody seen anything about Vonage's infrastructure? I'm sure they don't want to divulge all of their secrets, but I would love to know how it's all put together.
Wow. That's really a god idea. Now, before I get flamed for this, let me explain.
I'm sure I'm not the only one (at least I hope I'm not) who has taken a bonus/windfall and bought a tech toy that's marginally useful for work but might not have a really solid business need. I once took a bonus and bought a really kick-ass PDA, which I thine used for some work purposed as well as all the fun stuff I wanted it for.
There's a ton of things that would fall into this category. Maybe a trip to (insert trade show at fun location), a laptop for somebody who might not ordinarily get one, and damn near everything in the ThinkGeek store.
Now I really wish I worked where I would get a bonus. Maybe next job...
it's funny 'cause it's true...
I've been looking for a justifiable reason to get a shuttle (pc, not exploding space plane) hooked up to the big-screen in the living room. This is exactly the ticket! "Come on...you don't want to spend your time playing this on the little computer in the basement, do you? think how much better it will be if you can sit on the couch and play/chat"
And when you're not doing that, I'll be playing Homeworld 2! And UT 2003.
So yeah, thanks Ubi/Cyan.
Funny, that exact thing just happened to my company. Coincidence?
I'm not an IEEE member...does that mean I can't read the interview?
Crap!