It can enhance movies (Avatar), or serve as a stupid gimmick where shit flies out of the screen at you (every 3D ad I saw when going to see Avatar). If Hollywood can restrain themselves from going the gimmick route there is a lot of potential for the idea. Quite honestly I'm more interested to see what game developers do with 3D because I don't think most movies would benefit that much from it.
It doesn't really matter whether Blizzard even notices. See, some of us have these things called "principles" and "values", and we stand up for them even if nobody else cares.
Blizzard wants to shove a LAN-less multiplayer game at us. That's fine, but I'm not going to buy it because I like LAN games.
It's also a demonstration on Blizzard's part that they no longer care about their own roots. Starcraft was so popular largely because of its LAN-friendly multiplayer games. I don't like it when companies abandon their roots.
Heck, Blizzard even provided spawn copies of Starcraft you could use for multiplayer games, so you could play with your friends even if they didn't have their own copies of the game. Do you think they'll be doing that with SC2? Of course not.
My decision to refuse to buy Starcraft 2 has as much to do with Blizzard's attitude as it has to do with the game itself.
Yeah Blizzard has abandoned its roots. I remember Warcraft 2 was such a great game because I could play it over 56k modem with my friend. How could they not include 56k direct connect anymore?
Can't the same be said for ODF if any countries choose it instead?
But won't the top office suites just end up supporting both anyway?
They already do. You just have to worry about inconsistent behavior between the suites. And stupid crap like Office telling you you're a horrible person for not using the latest Microsoft document format.
We are free to vote for whomever we want. There are still other parties on the ballot. The fact that the people in this country refuse to vote for anyone that isn't part of one of the 2 major parties is ultimately their own fault.
It also doesn't help that we really don't get any good candidates running, regardless of party. Come up with your own theories of why this might be.
Its like when GEnie shut down the Air Warrior servers!
(did I just date myself?)
Seriously, though. Halo2 is fun, but its 2010. Play Halo3. All of the rest of us know its identical to Halo2 only with better graphics. You'll barely even notice the change if you're on an equally old TV.
And it sure sounded to me like they aren't happy they're making the move and, unlike most companies that do it, are planning on interacting with the affected people *somehow*.
I know people on Slashdot hate Microsoft for just about everything, but once you pull your head out of that hole, I don't see how this is worth grabbing the pitchforks for. If you aren't one of the people impacted, why do you care so much, and if you are *they said they're going to work with you about it*. So why are you bent out of shape *before they have*?
So you're saying Halo 3 is exactly like Halo 2, but because Halo 2 was released so long ago they should just buy a new console and Halo 3 to continue playing the same game?
And then you're saying people need to pull their head out of the hole and get over their hatred for Microsoft?
I've never had a document saved in OpenOffice fail to open in normal Office, though I admit I haven't tried it very many times. Formatting can be different, yes, but it still opens. You better be careful to change that Office 2007 to save as.doc instead of.docx by default or your professors won't be able to open them unless they're using Office 2007 as well. Oh and by the way if they're using Office 2007 you could have just stuck to OpenOffice with.odt files since Office 2007 now supports them.
Oh my god Chrome is copying IE by supporting for the http header X-Frame-Options that Microsoft wants web developers to start using. Don't they know you're supposed to invent your own browser-specific variation of what your opponent implements?
I also like how they mention Chrome added 5 security features but they only cover the 2 that are already in IE.
It's nice that all of the browsers are adding security features but can we cover one of them without focusing on who did what first?
Regardless of whether or not it could be considered "useful" in this situation, I had a similar first reaction. I can't wait for twitter to die so I never have to see the word "tweet" again unless it's referring to a little yellow bird.
Last I heard all of the US carriers were requiring the data plan if you had a smart phone. Any word on whether the "Even More Plus" plan does this? Again, last time I looked into it AT&T would detect the smart phone on their network regardless of whether it was bought separately and add the $30/month data plan to your bill for you. Any carrier that lets me bring my own smart phone without requiring me to pay $30 for an internet connection I'll barely ever use has a good chance of getting my business next time my contract expires.
I'm guessing it's this much more than to generate interest. Google entering the phone market is a big enough deal that it will get plenty of attention on its own. But they need some testing and it's generally not a good idea to start off by mass producing something like this where expectations are high. By limiting the stock early they can make some tweaks before the general public has access to them with minimal side effects. Hopefully this means less chance of an "updated" version 6 months later.
I was doubtful myself, it seemed really weird that Google would compete against partners like this. It seems like most technical people that would even want Android to start with would flock to this phone and drop the others. Heck, I might even buy one to have something to tether my iPhone to when traveling internationally!!
I had a chance to try out a Droid, and it was still pretty pokey (especially when using the built in browser). Perhaps the Google phone will finally hit a good performance stride.
And from that link:
The phone is called the Nexus One and is being manufactured for Google by HTC Corp.
But unlike the more than half-dozen Android phones made by phone manufacturers today, Google designed virtually the entire software experience behind the phone
Subscription required beyond that.
So it's made by HTC. And "designed virtually the entire software experience" isn't saying much. Sounds like another "myTouch 3G with Google" sort of deal.
We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities
I'm reading this as "some hardware manufacturer invented the big red button and we want our employees to be able to play around with what the software will do when the big red button is pressed." Or maybe they're just talking about faster processors, more memory, or some other somewhat minor upgrade. I see nothing to indicate they're going to enter the phone market themselves especially since it mentions the hardware is from "a partner".
Sometimes the discomfort is just a matter of getting used to them. Sometimes they're uncomfortable because you're using the wrong size/type of tips or pushing them in too far. Or maybe you just have really sensitive ears. I found them uncomfortable at first but after getting used to them I really started to like them.
I know people have their preferences but I would like to see some evidence to back up the claim that buds are evil and will destroy your hearing, especially since I often wear them 5+ hours a day at work.
A $70 pair of SHURE earbuds has made all the difference in how I listen to music
Sorry, but no earbuds are worth $70. They are simply evil and will destroy your hearing. Get yourself some proper earphones, something that cups the ear and ventilates.
Citation needed.
I haven't seen any convincing evidence that earbuds damage your ears any more or less than any other style headphones. It's all about how loud the music is and how long you listen to it. Maybe the trick is that the big headphones are too clunky to take with you everywhere so you don't use them as often.
My Shure buds came with a little guide for how loud you should let your volume get for different listening durations. Of course, it's hard to tell how many decibels are coming out of your headphones.
I've been saying this for a while now. Making driving require 2 hands works wonders for minimizing the distractions.
You don't even have to go so far as to ban automatics, just create incentives to use a stick for anyone who doesn't have an excusable medical condition. And no, old age doesn't count. This plan doubles to get old people off the road. My grandpa is 91 years old and can barely walk but that doesn't stop him from driving!
Maybe something like a 20% tax for a car with an automatic. So for a $25K car you're paying an extra 5 to be lazy on top of the manufacturer's cost for the option.
Or do something more creative like double the cost of any tickets if you were driving an automatic. This probably wouldn't have as much impact since most people don't get tickets very often, but if you combine this with some sort of marking on the license plate or bumper indicating you have a stick the smart people will drive them so they don't get targeted by cops.
Or require that all automatics made be pink and green. Pepto pink and ninja turtle green.
I don't see the "trust" issue. And I don't see first person shooters as "competing" with each other. If it's a good game people will buy it regardless of whether they have bought another game in that genre. The only games that really "compete" are the ones that have failed to significantly innovate. And how is this conflict of interest crap different from EA owning one development studio but also publishing and distributing games from other studios?
I actually think there is a benefit for everyone in keeping things the way they are. Valve's reputation is affected by both their service and their games. This gives them incentive to do both well. Also, if players like Microsoft stepped in as a competitor to Steam an independent company would have a hard time competing. Especially since Microsoft "competing" in that market would probably involve as many exclusivity deals as they can pull off.
I also disagree with your idea of "standardizing the landscape". Many people feel Steam's DRM system is reasonably fair. What if the competition doesn't agree? Should we standardize on one of the more obtrusive DRM systems? No, I say let these digital distribution systems implement their own methods and have the customers decide who does it right. We're still at a point where customer expectations are not set in stone.
It's fairly common these days... just to make sure people aren't connecting malware infested crap that hasn't been patched in years. Usually some form of anti-virus is required and sometimes they go a little overboard by requiring everyone turn on auto updates for windows machines. There was a slashdot discussion about it a little while back including quite a bit of discussion about Cisco Clean Access, the program some colleges are using for this authentication.
Not true. A third-person over-the-shoulder camera can accommodate pretty much the same approach to aiming as a first-person camera, while still providing a phenomenal (literally) avatar with which gamers can subjectively identify (or can objectify, in the same way that cinema moves between those two operations).
Until you try to take cover behind a box and start wondering whether you'll be shooting right into the box because the tip of your gun is behind it or whether you'll shoot the target in your unobstructed crosshair. If it's the former have fun drawing imaginary lines between your model's gun and the target all the time.
Granted, even first person games suffer from this sometimes but it isn't nearly as bad.
There are a lot of things you might want out of a game, of which immersion is only one.
This.
The author also seems to be assuming game developers are using the first person perspective for the sake of immersion. This is not necessarily true. The camera greatly influences gameplay. Aiming a gun is much more natural from a first person view than some sort of overhead view with a crosshair floating over your character's head or something. Maybe the developers are first deciding that a first person view is optimal for gameplay and then trying to make the game as immersive as possible given the chosen camera.
Heck, I even wrote an XML based text editor back when I was learning Java in 2001 or so.
Go read the patent. Go!
The darn thing isn't for a pseudo-WYSIWYG XML editor. It's for a specific bundle of features that let you save your non-XML based word processing file as one single XML file, which includes bookmarks, styles, and "formatting hints" as well.
According to the abstract "Hints may be provided within the XML associated files" - so the "hints" are in the XSD (or other unspecified file, likely not released to other people trying to implement the format), not the XML file. It would be interesting to see what they mean by "hint". When I'm writing software I prefer to give it explicit instructions, but that's just me.
Making your word processor save to XHTML, or a randomly selected XML dialect? Obvious. The specific way you do that, and include some conventions for features that XML really wasn't meant to support? Non-obivous, and therefore patentable.
Also not all that broad.
And, of course,, the real nice thing: this patent only applies if you through a lot of formatting crap into your XML file as well... and I certainly don't remember anyone dumb enough to do that before Microsoft.
You mean formatting crap like the font tag? Or classes which refer to CSS formatting? Hell HTML was basically designed to describe formatting and XML is just a variation of the same concept. And I don't see how you can say XML wasn't meant to support Microsoft's features considering it was specifically designed to be extensible and thus support any application. They are basically trying to patent their tags and tag definitions. This is a specific implementation of XML - they might as well have stuck with binary if they didn't want anyone using their precious tags.
Slashdot Mirror
No they'll just decide people don't buy games for their computer anymore and stick to consoles.
It can enhance movies (Avatar), or serve as a stupid gimmick where shit flies out of the screen at you (every 3D ad I saw when going to see Avatar). If Hollywood can restrain themselves from going the gimmick route there is a lot of potential for the idea. Quite honestly I'm more interested to see what game developers do with 3D because I don't think most movies would benefit that much from it.
It doesn't really matter whether Blizzard even notices. See, some of us have these things called "principles" and "values", and we stand up for them even if nobody else cares.
Blizzard wants to shove a LAN-less multiplayer game at us. That's fine, but I'm not going to buy it because I like LAN games.
It's also a demonstration on Blizzard's part that they no longer care about their own roots. Starcraft was so popular largely because of its LAN-friendly multiplayer games. I don't like it when companies abandon their roots.
Heck, Blizzard even provided spawn copies of Starcraft you could use for multiplayer games, so you could play with your friends even if they didn't have their own copies of the game. Do you think they'll be doing that with SC2? Of course not.
My decision to refuse to buy Starcraft 2 has as much to do with Blizzard's attitude as it has to do with the game itself.
Yeah Blizzard has abandoned its roots. I remember Warcraft 2 was such a great game because I could play it over 56k modem with my friend. How could they not include 56k direct connect anymore?
I read that as "designated hitler rule" and realized we need a designated hitler rule.
Can't the same be said for ODF if any countries choose it instead? But won't the top office suites just end up supporting both anyway?
They already do. You just have to worry about inconsistent behavior between the suites. And stupid crap like Office telling you you're a horrible person for not using the latest Microsoft document format.
We are free to vote for whomever we want. There are still other parties on the ballot. The fact that the people in this country refuse to vote for anyone that isn't part of one of the 2 major parties is ultimately their own fault.
It also doesn't help that we really don't get any good candidates running, regardless of party. Come up with your own theories of why this might be.
Its like when GEnie shut down the Air Warrior servers!
(did I just date myself?)
Seriously, though. Halo2 is fun, but its 2010. Play Halo3. All of the rest of us know its identical to Halo2 only with better graphics. You'll barely even notice the change if you're on an equally old TV.
And it sure sounded to me like they aren't happy they're making the move and, unlike most companies that do it, are planning on interacting with the affected people *somehow*.
I know people on Slashdot hate Microsoft for just about everything, but once you pull your head out of that hole, I don't see how this is worth grabbing the pitchforks for. If you aren't one of the people impacted, why do you care so much, and if you are *they said they're going to work with you about it*. So why are you bent out of shape *before they have*?
So you're saying Halo 3 is exactly like Halo 2, but because Halo 2 was released so long ago they should just buy a new console and Halo 3 to continue playing the same game?
And then you're saying people need to pull their head out of the hole and get over their hatred for Microsoft?
...
I've never had a document saved in OpenOffice fail to open in normal Office, though I admit I haven't tried it very many times. Formatting can be different, yes, but it still opens. You better be careful to change that Office 2007 to save as .doc instead of .docx by default or your professors won't be able to open them unless they're using Office 2007 as well. Oh and by the way if they're using Office 2007 you could have just stuck to OpenOffice with .odt files since Office 2007 now supports them.
Oh my god Chrome is copying IE by supporting for the http header X-Frame-Options that Microsoft wants web developers to start using. Don't they know you're supposed to invent your own browser-specific variation of what your opponent implements?
I also like how they mention Chrome added 5 security features but they only cover the 2 that are already in IE.
It's nice that all of the browsers are adding security features but can we cover one of them without focusing on who did what first?
Or they can settle on this small case and make the problem go away without setting a precedent.
Regardless of whether or not it could be considered "useful" in this situation, I had a similar first reaction. I can't wait for twitter to die so I never have to see the word "tweet" again unless it's referring to a little yellow bird.
Last I heard all of the US carriers were requiring the data plan if you had a smart phone. Any word on whether the "Even More Plus" plan does this? Again, last time I looked into it AT&T would detect the smart phone on their network regardless of whether it was bought separately and add the $30/month data plan to your bill for you. Any carrier that lets me bring my own smart phone without requiring me to pay $30 for an internet connection I'll barely ever use has a good chance of getting my business next time my contract expires.
I'm guessing it's this much more than to generate interest. Google entering the phone market is a big enough deal that it will get plenty of attention on its own. But they need some testing and it's generally not a good idea to start off by mass producing something like this where expectations are high. By limiting the stock early they can make some tweaks before the general public has access to them with minimal side effects. Hopefully this means less chance of an "updated" version 6 months later.
The Wall Street Journal says it's real.
I was doubtful myself, it seemed really weird that Google would compete against partners like this. It seems like most technical people that would even want Android to start with would flock to this phone and drop the others. Heck, I might even buy one to have something to tether my iPhone to when traveling internationally!!
I had a chance to try out a Droid, and it was still pretty pokey (especially when using the built in browser). Perhaps the Google phone will finally hit a good performance stride.
And from that link:
The phone is called the Nexus One and is being manufactured for Google by HTC Corp.
But unlike the more than half-dozen Android phones made by phone manufacturers today, Google designed virtually the entire software experience behind the phone
Subscription required beyond that.
So it's made by HTC. And "designed virtually the entire software experience" isn't saying much. Sounds like another "myTouch 3G with Google" sort of deal.
We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities
I'm reading this as "some hardware manufacturer invented the big red button and we want our employees to be able to play around with what the software will do when the big red button is pressed." Or maybe they're just talking about faster processors, more memory, or some other somewhat minor upgrade. I see nothing to indicate they're going to enter the phone market themselves especially since it mentions the hardware is from "a partner".
I don't get it.
Sometimes the discomfort is just a matter of getting used to them. Sometimes they're uncomfortable because you're using the wrong size/type of tips or pushing them in too far. Or maybe you just have really sensitive ears. I found them uncomfortable at first but after getting used to them I really started to like them.
I know people have their preferences but I would like to see some evidence to back up the claim that buds are evil and will destroy your hearing, especially since I often wear them 5+ hours a day at work.
A $70 pair of SHURE earbuds has made all the difference in how I listen to music
Sorry, but no earbuds are worth $70. They are simply evil and will destroy your hearing. Get yourself some proper earphones, something that cups the ear and ventilates.
Citation needed.
I haven't seen any convincing evidence that earbuds damage your ears any more or less than any other style headphones. It's all about how loud the music is and how long you listen to it. Maybe the trick is that the big headphones are too clunky to take with you everywhere so you don't use them as often.
My Shure buds came with a little guide for how loud you should let your volume get for different listening durations. Of course, it's hard to tell how many decibels are coming out of your headphones.
I've been saying this for a while now. Making driving require 2 hands works wonders for minimizing the distractions.
You don't even have to go so far as to ban automatics, just create incentives to use a stick for anyone who doesn't have an excusable medical condition. And no, old age doesn't count. This plan doubles to get old people off the road. My grandpa is 91 years old and can barely walk but that doesn't stop him from driving!
Maybe something like a 20% tax for a car with an automatic. So for a $25K car you're paying an extra 5 to be lazy on top of the manufacturer's cost for the option.
Or do something more creative like double the cost of any tickets if you were driving an automatic. This probably wouldn't have as much impact since most people don't get tickets very often, but if you combine this with some sort of marking on the license plate or bumper indicating you have a stick the smart people will drive them so they don't get targeted by cops.
Or require that all automatics made be pink and green. Pepto pink and ninja turtle green.
I don't see the "trust" issue. And I don't see first person shooters as "competing" with each other. If it's a good game people will buy it regardless of whether they have bought another game in that genre. The only games that really "compete" are the ones that have failed to significantly innovate. And how is this conflict of interest crap different from EA owning one development studio but also publishing and distributing games from other studios?
I actually think there is a benefit for everyone in keeping things the way they are. Valve's reputation is affected by both their service and their games. This gives them incentive to do both well. Also, if players like Microsoft stepped in as a competitor to Steam an independent company would have a hard time competing. Especially since Microsoft "competing" in that market would probably involve as many exclusivity deals as they can pull off.
I also disagree with your idea of "standardizing the landscape". Many people feel Steam's DRM system is reasonably fair. What if the competition doesn't agree? Should we standardize on one of the more obtrusive DRM systems? No, I say let these digital distribution systems implement their own methods and have the customers decide who does it right. We're still at a point where customer expectations are not set in stone.
It's fairly common these days... just to make sure people aren't connecting malware infested crap that hasn't been patched in years. Usually some form of anti-virus is required and sometimes they go a little overboard by requiring everyone turn on auto updates for windows machines. There was a slashdot discussion about it a little while back including quite a bit of discussion about Cisco Clean Access, the program some colleges are using for this authentication.
Not true. A third-person over-the-shoulder camera can accommodate pretty much the same approach to aiming as a first-person camera, while still providing a phenomenal (literally) avatar with which gamers can subjectively identify (or can objectify, in the same way that cinema moves between those two operations).
Until you try to take cover behind a box and start wondering whether you'll be shooting right into the box because the tip of your gun is behind it or whether you'll shoot the target in your unobstructed crosshair. If it's the former have fun drawing imaginary lines between your model's gun and the target all the time.
Granted, even first person games suffer from this sometimes but it isn't nearly as bad.
There are a lot of things you might want out of a game, of which immersion is only one.
This.
The author also seems to be assuming game developers are using the first person perspective for the sake of immersion. This is not necessarily true. The camera greatly influences gameplay. Aiming a gun is much more natural from a first person view than some sort of overhead view with a crosshair floating over your character's head or something. Maybe the developers are first deciding that a first person view is optimal for gameplay and then trying to make the game as immersive as possible given the chosen camera.
I think it means you spend a thousand hours picking grass so you can raise your grasspicking skill 1% which increases your rabbit faction by 0.001.
Heck, I even wrote an XML based text editor back when I was learning Java in 2001 or so.
Go read the patent. Go!
The darn thing isn't for a pseudo-WYSIWYG XML editor. It's for a specific bundle of features that let you save your non-XML based word processing file as one single XML file, which includes bookmarks, styles, and "formatting hints" as well.
According to the abstract "Hints may be provided within the XML associated files" - so the "hints" are in the XSD (or other unspecified file, likely not released to other people trying to implement the format), not the XML file. It would be interesting to see what they mean by "hint". When I'm writing software I prefer to give it explicit instructions, but that's just me.
Making your word processor save to XHTML, or a randomly selected XML dialect? Obvious. The specific way you do that, and include some conventions for features that XML really wasn't meant to support? Non-obivous, and therefore patentable.
Also not all that broad.
And, of course,, the real nice thing: this patent only applies if you through a lot of formatting crap into your XML file as well... and I certainly don't remember anyone dumb enough to do that before Microsoft.
You mean formatting crap like the font tag? Or classes which refer to CSS formatting? Hell HTML was basically designed to describe formatting and XML is just a variation of the same concept. And I don't see how you can say XML wasn't meant to support Microsoft's features considering it was specifically designed to be extensible and thus support any application. They are basically trying to patent their tags and tag definitions. This is a specific implementation of XML - they might as well have stuck with binary if they didn't want anyone using their precious tags.