To me, the idea of buying a paper to find out if, perchance, someone died is absurd.
Actually, I do it every day (as do my work colleagues). As I'm a nurse, we often get to hear about past patients this way. Sometimes they even say nice things about us... I'm sure that's some sort of conditioning, so we're maybe reinforcing our own behaviour there:)
Of course, the downside is that they usually lie on the obits - "Mary, aged 86, passed away peacefully in her sleep at Ward , General Hospital..." and we're all thinking "bollocks, that was/not/ a good death actually..."
But then, they're hardly likely to write "passed away shortly after vomiting black liquid and howling in pain" which is how it usually goes:(
Take a read through Flatland, its a short story based on a square who lives on a 2 dimentional plane. Basically how he can only see things in 1 Dimension (a line) because him and his world are on a single plane.
The XKCD alt-text contains a nice in-joke about flatland (IIRC) - all women are straight lines, and the more important a member of society, the more sides he has - a priest would be almost a circle, as he has so many sides he looks circular. The alt-text goes:
"Also, I apologize for the time I climbed down into your world and everyone freaked out about the lesbian orgy overseen by a priest."
Which is what the flatlanders would see when a stick-man enters their world:)
A 700MB file would take me about... just over a day, if I wasn't doing anything else on the web. I live out in the back of beyond where the best I can get is 20-30k/sec via ADSL on a copper wire exchange. It sucks, but I can enjoy the scenery around me while I wait for my downloads:)
Now I have no idea if I am talking about the same movie, but when I was very small, my dad took me to see ESB (I was a SW nut at that point, being about 6 years old). The theatre that showed it was running two films one after another - and I remember being quite disappointed when we walked in - I briefly saw the end of the previous film (ESB, the starscape after Luke gets his hand repaired, Han buggers off in t'Falcon), then a pause and then... This incomprehensible short film about a knight in some dark woods - followed by the main event.
I have no idea what that film was, but this sounds eerily like it.
Possible?
My god yes, I'd forgotten about that. Lobbing devices into the magnetic ramscoop field's pinch-point to frazzle the pilot... dropping an antimatter bullet onto a neutron star, just as the enemy comes around in an orbital manoeuvre.. And I particularly recall that the whole battle between Brennan and the pursuing Pak protector fleet took many years.
It was exciting as all hell, though!
Quite a few people that I know bought this multiple times for multiple platforms - bought originally for $20, then for $10 for Mac/Linux versions, simply because they felt it was right to do that. It's kind of odd, as I doubt many people would buy a AAA title more than once but folks don't seem to mind doing it for a small indie studio. The price could well be a factor in that one though...
And, as today's pointless bad analogy, it's like trying and failing to sell the last apples at half the original price after they've started rotting, when they could be sold as fertilizer and use the money to buy more land, even if just a little.
He could require that every HTML web page has a ratings tag, and have the browser refuse to view the page if the ratings tag didn't match the permissions of the browser.
I don't doubt that you're right there, that's probably what he's thinking. However, that could only work if you had government approved browsers - where would the OSS browsers stand? They can be easily modified to impersonate an official browser, and to ignore tags/ratings.
It'd have to be implemented at an ISP level, I think. And the only way to do that would be to undermine the economy to such an extent that the UK ISPs need bailing out, probably nationalising, and then become the government's own ISPs...
Can't see that happening though, can you?
I have a Panasonic CF41 laptop - 50mhz 486. Runs Win95 and DOS just lovely, straight out of the box.
Not so any distro of linux. I've tried and tried to get a decent linux install on it, but they all barf when trying to read the CD drive. It's not too surprising as it's a proprietary drive, but the standard DOS drivers detect and enable it nicely... The only way to install linux is from DOS (no CD Boot option), and the only way to run it is by setting up a tiny DOS partition to boot from in order to get the CD recognised by linux:(
It's quite ironic that Linux needs M$ software to get anywhere on that old machine.
Just take one look at Nintendo's emphasis on producing softcore games that have an extremely casual appeal to them. Sure they make a lot of money because children play them, but for adults, the games fail to be intellectually satisfying.
Or if I run a microISV, for which handheld device should I develop?
I realise that it might well be commercial suicide, but it would be nice if companies developed for the more "open" platforms, such as the GP2X/Wiz/Pandora, rather than for a company that actively attempts to prevent independant developers.
But how would the median user who owns a game for the other platforms (an 8-bit Game Boy Game Pak, a Super NES Game Pak, or a JAMMA PCB) dump it to a PC for use with an emulator? Which copier for Game Boy Color or Super NES Game Paks do you recommend?
For hardware that's no longer commercially available, and games that are also no longer available to buy, I'd probably recommend a ROM site. Personally, I have no problem with them; YMMV - I certainly like to emulate the games I bought in my childhood but can no longer run on the original hardware.
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To me, the idea of buying a paper to find out if, perchance, someone died is absurd.
Actually, I do it every day (as do my work colleagues). As I'm a nurse, we often get to hear about past patients this way. Sometimes they even say nice things about us... I'm sure that's some sort of conditioning, so we're maybe reinforcing our own behaviour there :)
Of course, the downside is that they usually lie on the obits - "Mary, aged 86, passed away peacefully in her sleep at Ward , General Hospital..." and we're all thinking "bollocks, that was /not/ a good death actually..."
But then, they're hardly likely to write "passed away shortly after vomiting black liquid and howling in pain" which is how it usually goes :(
A little googling turned up Google books' own scans of the original book (from 1884, no less!) and I'd recommend it wholeheartedly:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=R6E0AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=flatland&source=bl&ots=B9O1Bn_kho&sig=iEnx2rKJ_0-bBrAKXWLDP_Jfle4&hl=en&ei=iWuzS-buHcKA4QbrvO3LAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false
And I think I'll go brush up on it myself :-)
Thanks for the replies, my day gets better and better!
Thank you! I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, so thank you very much for explaining it :)
That's... absolutely no problem at all! Your reply just brightened up my day, so many thanks in return!
Take a read through Flatland, its a short story based on a square who lives on a 2 dimentional plane. Basically how he can only see things in 1 Dimension (a line) because him and his world are on a single plane.
The XKCD alt-text contains a nice in-joke about flatland (IIRC) - all women are straight lines, and the more important a member of society, the more sides he has - a priest would be almost a circle, as he has so many sides he looks circular. The alt-text goes: "Also, I apologize for the time I climbed down into your world and everyone freaked out about the lesbian orgy overseen by a priest." Which is what the flatlanders would see when a stick-man enters their world :)
A 700MB file would take me about ... just over a day, if I wasn't doing anything else on the web. I live out in the back of beyond where the best I can get is 20-30k/sec via ADSL on a copper wire exchange. It sucks, but I can enjoy the scenery around me while I wait for my downloads :)
Now I have no idea if I am talking about the same movie, but when I was very small, my dad took me to see ESB (I was a SW nut at that point, being about 6 years old). The theatre that showed it was running two films one after another - and I remember being quite disappointed when we walked in - I briefly saw the end of the previous film (ESB, the starscape after Luke gets his hand repaired, Han buggers off in t'Falcon), then a pause and then... This incomprehensible short film about a knight in some dark woods - followed by the main event. I have no idea what that film was, but this sounds eerily like it. Possible?
My god yes, I'd forgotten about that. Lobbing devices into the magnetic ramscoop field's pinch-point to frazzle the pilot... dropping an antimatter bullet onto a neutron star, just as the enemy comes around in an orbital manoeuvre.. And I particularly recall that the whole battle between Brennan and the pursuing Pak protector fleet took many years. It was exciting as all hell, though!
Quite a few people that I know bought this multiple times for multiple platforms - bought originally for $20, then for $10 for Mac/Linux versions, simply because they felt it was right to do that. It's kind of odd, as I doubt many people would buy a AAA title more than once but folks don't seem to mind doing it for a small indie studio. The price could well be a factor in that one though...
And, as today's pointless bad analogy, it's like trying and failing to sell the last apples at half the original price after they've started rotting, when they could be sold as fertilizer and use the money to buy more land, even if just a little.
What, iPhones?
Do you have any idea how performance would be if they'd ported a recent version of MAME?
Ouch! That was my pacemaker, you insensitive clod!
He could require that every HTML web page has a ratings tag, and have the browser refuse to view the page if the ratings tag didn't match the permissions of the browser.
I don't doubt that you're right there, that's probably what he's thinking. However, that could only work if you had government approved browsers - where would the OSS browsers stand? They can be easily modified to impersonate an official browser, and to ignore tags/ratings. It'd have to be implemented at an ISP level, I think. And the only way to do that would be to undermine the economy to such an extent that the UK ISPs need bailing out, probably nationalising, and then become the government's own ISPs... Can't see that happening though, can you?
I have a Panasonic CF41 laptop - 50mhz 486. Runs Win95 and DOS just lovely, straight out of the box. Not so any distro of linux. I've tried and tried to get a decent linux install on it, but they all barf when trying to read the CD drive. It's not too surprising as it's a proprietary drive, but the standard DOS drivers detect and enable it nicely... The only way to install linux is from DOS (no CD Boot option), and the only way to run it is by setting up a tiny DOS partition to boot from in order to get the CD recognised by linux :(
It's quite ironic that Linux needs M$ software to get anywhere on that old machine.
Just take one look at Nintendo's emphasis on producing softcore games that have an extremely casual appeal to them. Sure they make a lot of money because children play them, but for adults, the games fail to be intellectually satisfying.
Sorry, are we talking about SF here, or what?
Why is that a bad idea? What are the FOSS community likely to do?
Or if I run a microISV, for which handheld device should I develop?
I realise that it might well be commercial suicide, but it would be nice if companies developed for the more "open" platforms, such as the GP2X/Wiz/Pandora, rather than for a company that actively attempts to prevent independant developers.
But how would the median user who owns a game for the other platforms (an 8-bit Game Boy Game Pak, a Super NES Game Pak, or a JAMMA PCB) dump it to a PC for use with an emulator? Which copier for Game Boy Color or Super NES Game Paks do you recommend?
For hardware that's no longer commercially available, and games that are also no longer available to buy, I'd probably recommend a ROM site. Personally, I have no problem with them; YMMV - I certainly like to emulate the games I bought in my childhood but can no longer run on the original hardware.
Let's face it, you just want to build an effing big laser and fire it at stuff. It's ok, you can admit it, nobody will think any the worse of you.