I think the contest idea would work better than paying for cpu cycles. If there were a million dollar prize involved, I'd get the client software on every cpu I could get my hands on.
Oh, yes. That is a dream. I hate the damn yakkers who think they can turn the commuter bus into their private office. I wouldn't mind having a weak jammer with maybe a 20 foot radius. If it's true that you can make one basically with the guts of a cordless phone, I'm on it. joel
The scariest part is that most of us are probably doing nothing that anybody would be remotely interested in knowing about.
I don't know what's worse. Being watched, listened to, and recorded at every moment. Or being so insignificant as to not even warrant anybody to even notice you.
"Now, digging up more dirt on MS allies... that could still be worth something. Who knows? "
It would probably reveal a vast alien conspiracy that stretched acrossed 18 galaxies. The PI really had to make up a cover story because the black oil was infused into his eyeballs.
joel
Re:Call me when they can fix the screen size too.
on
Power Up That iMac
·
· Score: 1
The small monitor makes it a perfect server. Who needs a monitor on a server anyways?
"There really should be a way to order paper docs at no charge to the consumer. Acrobat's nice, but I like the ability to actually pick up a book and sit on the couch.
Does anyone else think this way??:) "
But, then that would undercut the whole O'Reilly, SAMS, Dummies documentation industry. People sell books that cost just as much as the software. Microsoft is no exception. Sure, you can get it for free off the CD. The book costs $40.
"of course as proven in many horror movies even if you are absolutely certain that the murderer is dead they will undoubtedly come back in a sequel. also, you would have to carry your co-workers weight in the project, and they wouldn't even be able to pitch in on pizza..."
Ergo, the death penalty is definitely not a deterrent.
Yeah, I loved this article. I knew musicians were being screwed by the Man but it's good to actually hear it from the whores's mouth.
Hopefully, someday there will be more room for the middle ground between starvin-and-playing-on-the-street-corner and living-in-the-mansion-and-suing-Napster.
Okay, I'll bite: "Microsoft'sflagship product, Windows, was developed completely in-house."
From "Barbarians Leb by Bill Gates" by Jennifer Edstrom and Marlin Eller:
For example, the group had originally designed their own scroll bar, but it wasn't like the Mac's. With the Windows scroll bar, people got an extra visual representation. The thumb on the right-hand side of the page changed size based on how much of the document they were seeing. With the Mac, the thumb size didn't change. "That's not compatible with the Mac," Gates said. "It's got to be like the Mac." Other features that had been designed into Windows under McGregor were also being questioned. No matter if they were better, if they weren't like the Mac, Gates wanted them taken out. So the scroll bar was changed to match the Mac's.
"No longer is innovation lauded, but persecuted. The unsuccessful are rewarded, and the successful are put to death. Truly a sad, sad day to be an American."
I had that argument with my ex-girlfriend today.(Yes, we still talk. It was a nice breakup.) She claims that Microsoft is being punished for being successful and that they make the best products. They're easy to use. She stipulated that the reason that Microsoft is so successful is because nobody else could do any better. Of course, part of the problem is that 90% of the software she uses is Microsoft. She even had the gall to tell me that Macs are hard to use!
joel
ps-I still love her. I just don't see myself being happy with such a person.
"How many people who talk about how Shakespeare is the acme of literature have even heard of Ben Jonson? I personally think that Alexander Pope and John Milton could whup Shakespeare any day of the week and twice on Sundays, but that's just my personal opinion."
You're allowed that. Vulpone and Paradise Lost just weren't my cup of tea. Of course, Shakespeare was the pop star of his day and he had a larger body of work than all those other guys put together.
"Pick up something new, different, daring, something that other people may have overlooked. Remember, most people that we consider artistic geniuses today were overlooked in their own day and age -- what has changed? We're incapable of judging for ourselves, we need a cultural consensus! Bah!"
The curse of Van Gogh, right? The guy was ignored during his time and killed himself. We shouldn't let that happen again.
Consensus is basically how culture works. I hate to get on a literary flame here, but what makes a work important is by how much it's copied. Shakespeare was pop culture and continues to be pop culture. "Three's Company" really is just a continual rehash of "Merry Wives of Windsor." I'm not saying that theres no brilliance in obscurity. But, "Close Encounters" is probably going to be hailed as more of a classic than "Koyaanisqatsi." Madonna will be more remembered than John Cage. That's just the nature of culture.
joel
ps.-All the surprise ending movies probably exist because everyone hails "Citizen Kane" as the best movie of all time. Rosebud is a sled!
"On the other hand, there is no story, not even the real classics, that I can really review over and over again. After a certain number of replays it does get boring."
That's true in an immediate sense. But, if you come acrossed an old story you haven't read or seen in years, you come to it as a different person. You can see good story again because you can see it with different eyes years later.
As individuals change, so whole cultures change and thus the context of the stories change. Hamlet is a current obsession with our culture today possibly because divorce is so common. People identify with Hamlet because of his absent father and having to deal with an evil step-dad. The story itself hasn't changed. We have changed. We don't mind it being retold again.
"Romeo and Juliet" was remade in the 60's as "West Side Story" to put the star-crossed lovers acrossed race lines. I prefer the movie to the play, but it's still a damn fine story.
"That's ridiculous, the "story" in virtually all of those is basically nothing but a few paragraphs of atmosphere building that most players will ignore anyway."
I never read the manuals. The stories in games is not in the manual. It's the journey that the player takes or is taken on. The story might be as simple as "This guy wants to kill you. You gotta get him first." but because of the first person nature, you get emotionally vested in the life and death situation.
I actually was an aspiring actor for 10 years in New York City. I got a BA in Theatre Arts. One of the first things they do for people who start out training is play games. Because games have many of the same features as stories: conflict, rules, opposing characters, etc. "Games for Actors and Non-Actors" by Augusto Boal is a good book on this.
"IMO the difference between a good story and a bad one is that the good one diverges from the formula, plays with your expectations and stays unpredictable."
It's true and not true. Good stories are ones that can be retold many many times. Stories that last don't have to have a gimmicky trick ending that invalidates everything else that went before. That's a recent thing that's been happening in movies. The surprise ending that makes everyone gasp.
Of course, that only works once. Good movies, good games, and good stories are the ones that you can review over and over again and not get tired of it. Even though you know the ending, however expected and predictable, it's the journey itself that is satisfying.
Most of Shakespeare's works were not original stories. But, I never get tired of watching Hamlet or MacBeth or Romeo and Juliet. The same stories get told many times over, but you never get tired of them. That's what makes them good.
"Excuse me, but isn't formulaic the last thing a good story should be?"
All "good" stories have to follow the same time-tested formulas or else it doesn't "feel" right. Read Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" for a serious breakdown of storytelling. A story always has a beginning, middle, and end. There is always some sort of conflict and then resolution.
Games naturally lend to this kind of story telling, especially FPS. Some folk always decry the violence in these video games. But, it's the life and death situations in stories and games that make them dramatic and emotionally moving.
With the guys I work with, we plan to be online have "virtually" meet in nightly fragfests. It's a bond at the watercooler when we trade war stories. So, Gaming is social. Demented and sad, but social.
joel
Re:How Many People Feel This Way?
on
The Leased Life?
·
· Score: 1
Maybe it's the idea of meritocracy. That your place in society is based on your own abilities. Wouldn't that put an awful lot of stress on a person? That you have only you to blame for why your life is so crappy.
"1. You need a job to live. False. Convicts, for example, live without jobs. "
Dude, you can't trick the laws of thermo. If you ain't supporting yourself, somebody else is. And you pay with your freedom. Of course, "most people" think freedom is highly overrated and may think some people have too much freedom. I've actually heard someone tell me this. Too much freedom! AS IF!
"We are becoming a society that wants things easy and as cheap as possible... "
While it is easier, leasing is not as cheap as putting cash up front. It's just about always cheaper to pay with your own money than it is to pay with someone elses money.
It just requires the commitment to save up the money beforehand. Otherwise you could find yourself in a long-term relationship with your creditors. How's that for commitment! You have your credit card company contacting you for a longer time than any of your personal relationships.
"Also, one must reckon with the "tyranny of the majority". Lets say we abolish representational democracy, and let each person participate in government. What body prevents this 'democracy' from enacting laws which abolish the rights of individuals who think/behave differently? It would be completely democratic if 80% of the populous decided to ban bubble gum chewing. But that doesn't make it "right". The existing political system uses the courts to try and help balance this out, and I'll be the last to say it works perfectly. But I can't help but think I would be very afraid in a society which WAS actually ruled by "the people". "
That's exactly what is said in that discover mag article.
Almost always, he found, individual voting power is higher when funneled through districts--such as states--than when pooled in one large, direct election. It is more likely, in other words, that your one vote will determine the outcome in your state and your state will then turn the outcome of the electoral college, than that your vote will turn the outcome of a direct national election. A voter therefore, Natapoff found, has more power under the current electoral system.
"In this country, the way this system works, the only votes that matter are those of the electoral college. My history profs would smack me for not remembering details, but there is at least one instance in history where the electoral vote and the public vote differed. Which canidate do you think won?"
Actually, I think discover mag had an article about this. The electoral college makes each vote more important. Read it here:
"I force myself to vote because I know that my individual vote might not mean much, but the aggregate of my demographic's vote does....and if my demographic is apathetic, then people like me will be underrepresented." True that. The religious right actually depend on voter apathy to put politicians in office. They specifically target districts with low voter turnout and organize churches to vote for their candidates. pfaw joel
Slashdot Mirror
I think the contest idea would work better than paying for cpu cycles. If there were a million dollar prize involved, I'd get the client software on every cpu I could get my hands on.
joel
Oh, yes. That is a dream. I hate the damn yakkers who think they can turn the commuter bus into their private office. I wouldn't mind having a weak jammer with maybe a 20 foot radius. If it's true that you can make one basically with the guts of a cordless phone, I'm on it. joel
The scariest part is that most of us are probably doing nothing that anybody would be remotely interested in knowing about.
I don't know what's worse. Being watched, listened to, and recorded at every moment. Or being so insignificant as to not even warrant anybody to even notice you.
joel
"Thats ok, i want them to die a horrible death."
You can join and then subvert them from within.
joel
"Now, digging up more dirt on MS allies ... that could still be worth something. Who knows? "
It would probably reveal a vast alien conspiracy that stretched acrossed 18 galaxies. The PI really had to make up a cover story because the black oil was infused into his eyeballs.
joel
The small monitor makes it a perfect server. Who needs a monitor on a server anyways?
joel
"There really should be a way to order paper docs at no charge to the consumer. Acrobat's nice, but I like the ability to actually pick up a book and sit on the couch.
:) "
Does anyone else think this way??
But, then that would undercut the whole O'Reilly, SAMS, Dummies documentation industry. People sell books that cost just as much as the software. Microsoft is no exception. Sure, you can get it for free off the CD. The book costs $40.
joel
"of course as proven in many horror movies even if you are absolutely certain that the murderer is dead they will undoubtedly come back in a sequel. also, you would have to carry your co-workers weight in the project, and they wouldn't even be able to pitch in on pizza..."
Ergo, the death penalty is definitely not a deterrent.
joel
Yeah, I loved this article. I knew musicians were being screwed by the Man but it's good to actually hear it from the whores's mouth.
Hopefully, someday there will be more room for the middle ground between starvin-and-playing-on-the-street-corner and living-in-the-mansion-and-suing-Napster.
joel
Okay, I'll bite:
"Microsoft'sflagship product, Windows, was developed completely in-house."
From "Barbarians Leb by Bill Gates" by Jennifer Edstrom and Marlin Eller:
For example, the group had originally designed their own scroll bar, but it wasn't like the Mac's. With the Windows scroll bar, people got an extra visual representation. The thumb on the right-hand side of the page changed size based on how much of the document they were seeing. With the Mac, the thumb size didn't change. "That's not compatible with the Mac," Gates said. "It's got to be like the Mac." Other features that had been designed into Windows under McGregor were also being questioned. No matter if they were better, if they weren't like the Mac, Gates wanted them taken out. So the scroll bar was changed to match the Mac's.
joel
"No longer is innovation lauded, but persecuted. The unsuccessful are rewarded, and the successful are put to death. Truly a sad, sad day to be an American."
I had that argument with my ex-girlfriend today.(Yes, we still talk. It was a nice breakup.) She claims that Microsoft is being punished for being successful and that they make the best products. They're easy to use. She stipulated that the reason that Microsoft is so successful is because nobody else could do any better. Of course, part of the problem is that 90% of the software she uses is Microsoft. She even had the gall to tell me that Macs are hard to use!
joel
ps-I still love her. I just don't see myself being happy with such a person.
"How many people who talk about how Shakespeare is the acme of literature have even heard of Ben Jonson? I personally think that Alexander Pope and John Milton could whup Shakespeare any day of the week and twice on Sundays, but that's just my personal opinion."
You're allowed that. Vulpone and Paradise Lost just weren't my cup of tea. Of course, Shakespeare was the pop star of his day and he had a larger body of work than all those other guys put together.
"Pick up something new, different, daring, something that other people may have overlooked. Remember, most people that we consider artistic geniuses today were overlooked in their own day and age -- what has changed? We're incapable of judging for ourselves, we need a cultural consensus! Bah!"
The curse of Van Gogh, right? The guy was ignored during his time and killed himself. We shouldn't let that happen again.
Consensus is basically how culture works. I hate to get on a literary flame here, but what makes a work important is by how much it's copied. Shakespeare was pop culture and continues to be pop culture. "Three's Company" really is just a continual rehash of "Merry Wives of Windsor." I'm not saying that theres no brilliance in obscurity. But, "Close Encounters" is probably going to be hailed as more of a classic than "Koyaanisqatsi." Madonna will be more remembered than John Cage. That's just the nature of culture.
joel
ps.-All the surprise ending movies probably exist because everyone hails "Citizen Kane" as the best movie of all time. Rosebud is a sled!
"On the other hand, there is no story, not even the real classics, that I can really review over and over again. After a certain number of replays it does get boring."
That's true in an immediate sense. But, if you come acrossed an old story you haven't read or seen in years, you come to it as a different person. You can see good story again because you can see it with different eyes years later.
As individuals change, so whole cultures change and thus the context of the stories change. Hamlet is a current obsession with our culture today possibly because divorce is so common. People identify with Hamlet because of his absent father and having to deal with an evil step-dad. The story itself hasn't changed. We have changed. We don't mind it being retold again.
"Romeo and Juliet" was remade in the 60's as "West Side Story" to put the star-crossed lovers acrossed race lines. I prefer the movie to the play, but it's still a damn fine story.
joel
"That's ridiculous, the "story" in virtually all of those is basically nothing but a few paragraphs of atmosphere building that most players will ignore anyway."
I never read the manuals. The stories in games is not in the manual. It's the journey that the player takes or is taken on. The story might be as simple as "This guy wants to kill you. You gotta get him first." but because of the first person nature, you get emotionally vested in the life and death situation.
I actually was an aspiring actor for 10 years in New York City. I got a BA in Theatre Arts. One of the first things they do for people who start out training is play games. Because games have many of the same features as stories: conflict, rules, opposing characters, etc. "Games for Actors and Non-Actors" by Augusto Boal is a good book on this.
joel
"IMO the difference between a good story and a bad one is that the good one diverges from the formula, plays with your expectations and stays unpredictable."
It's true and not true. Good stories are ones that can be retold many many times. Stories that last don't have to have a gimmicky trick ending that invalidates everything else that went before. That's a recent thing that's been happening in movies. The surprise ending that makes everyone gasp.
Of course, that only works once. Good movies, good games, and good stories are the ones that you can review over and over again and not get tired of it. Even though you know the ending, however expected and predictable, it's the journey itself that is satisfying.
Most of Shakespeare's works were not original stories. But, I never get tired of watching Hamlet or MacBeth or Romeo and Juliet. The same stories get told many times over, but you never get tired of them. That's what makes them good.
joel
"Excuse me, but isn't formulaic the last thing a good story should be?"
All "good" stories have to follow the same time-tested formulas or else it doesn't "feel" right. Read Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces" for a serious breakdown of storytelling. A story always has a beginning, middle, and end. There is always some sort of conflict and then resolution.
Games naturally lend to this kind of story telling, especially FPS. Some folk always decry the violence in these video games. But, it's the life and death situations in stories and games that make them dramatic and emotionally moving.
joel
With the guys I work with, we plan to be online have "virtually" meet in nightly fragfests. It's a bond at the watercooler when we trade war stories. So, Gaming is social. Demented and sad, but social.
joel
Maybe it's the idea of meritocracy. That your place in society is based on your own abilities. Wouldn't that put an awful lot of stress on a person? That you have only you to blame for why your life is so crappy.
joel
"1. You need a job to live. False. Convicts, for example, live without jobs. "
Dude, you can't trick the laws of thermo. If you ain't supporting yourself, somebody else is. And you pay with your freedom. Of course, "most people" think freedom is highly overrated and may think some people have too much freedom. I've actually heard someone tell me this. Too much freedom! AS IF!
joel
"We are becoming a society that wants things easy and as cheap as possible... "
While it is easier, leasing is not as cheap as putting cash up front. It's just about always cheaper to pay with your own money than it is to pay with someone elses money.
It just requires the commitment to save up the money beforehand. Otherwise you could find yourself in a long-term relationship with your creditors. How's that for commitment! You have your credit card company contacting you for a longer time than any of your personal relationships.
joel
"your cities seem strangely hostile to you doing anything other than working, sleeping, or spending. "
How is this any different from a hundred years ago? Work 16 hours a day as a coal miner or a sharecropper. Come home. And you owe the company store.
Of course, we'd like to believe that we've progressed in some way. We have progressed, right?
joel
"Also, one must reckon with the "tyranny of the majority". Lets say we abolish representational democracy, and let each person participate in government. What body prevents this 'democracy' from enacting laws which abolish the rights of individuals who think/behave differently? It would be completely democratic if 80% of the populous decided to ban bubble gum chewing. But that doesn't make it "right". The existing political system uses the courts to try and help balance this out, and I'll be the last to say it works perfectly. But I can't help but think I would be very afraid in a society which WAS actually ruled by "the people". "
That's exactly what is said in that discover mag article.
Almost always, he found, individual voting power is higher when funneled through districts--such as states--than when pooled in one large, direct election. It is more likely, in other words, that your one vote will determine the outcome in your state and your state will then turn the outcome of the electoral college, than that your vote will turn the outcome of a direct national election. A voter therefore, Natapoff found, has more power under the current electoral system.
joel
"In this country, the way this system works, the only votes that matter are those of the electoral college. My history profs would smack me for not remembering details, but there is at least one instance in history where the electoral vote and the public vote differed. Which canidate do you think won?"
Actually, I think discover mag had an article about this. The electoral college makes each vote more important. Read it here:
Math Against Tyranny
joel
"I force myself to vote because I know that my individual vote might not mean much, but the aggregate of my demographic's vote does. ...and if my demographic is apathetic, then people like me will be underrepresented." True that. The religious right actually depend on voter apathy to put politicians in office. They specifically target districts with low voter turnout and organize churches to vote for their candidates. pfaw joel
I never got to finish the game. How does it end?