In considering getting an HDTV, my wife casually asked about recording shows. Aghast, I had to admit I wasn't sure how that could be done! In the HDMI world - as the cartels intended - there just is no place to plug in a recorder, and DVRs don't come with disc writers. Yeah, I could hack up something involving a PC, HD tuner card, ill-supported software, bittorrent, etc. but it just would never meet the "insert blank, choose channel, hit 'Record'" it-just-works paradigm.
Removing unnecessary stuff from a computer - I mean really removing it, not just taking half away and ignoring the half that's left - is difficult when the cheap option is to leave crap hidden inside, and to tell the suits "no, really, people will pay MORE to have LESS!" Sounds goofy, but true. Ever consider building a really really small computer? even with the "micro" and "nano" sized motherboards, there's always a whole bunch of useless ports on it; want to get rid of the unused stuff? go build yer own motherboard is the answer.
Crossing the 3lb barrier has huge physical and psychological changes. Getting a Vaio ultraportable has (dare I say) changed my life: having a computer so light it's harder to not have it around than to drag it everywhere. Never do I have to go home to get email, or look stuff up, or run handy tools, or decide whether to lug the durn heavy thing around... instead, it's within arm's reach or a short walk all the time. The one thing holding me back from Apple was the absence of an ultraportable (and now my only hesitation is no 1024-line display).
Part of the genius of Apple IS the gumption to say "no, you're not going to have it that way". They compel people to think forward to better ways of solving a long-running problem, rather than hanging back to old solutions. No optical drive? yeesh, they're so 20th Century, get with the download/bittorrent/thumbdrive/802.11n future already. Limited hard drive? wireless shared drive, man. No Ethernet port? get a USB adapter for those rare no-Wi-Fi times.
Time to switch. Apple is hitting the tipping point: just a hair (or 224 lines of video) away from "PC? Vista? why bother what that old stuff?"
A movie is interesting because the protagonist screws up at some point. A game is interesting because the protagonist (you) must never screw up.
"Romeo and Juliet" the play/movie is interesting because the characters make tragic mistakes and suffer horribly. "Romeo and Juliet" the game would suck precisely because they would all live happily ever after.
"Doom" the game was cool because you ran around killing monsters, and tried repeatedly in difficult scenarios until you overcame the scenario. "Doom" the movie sucked because watching someone else playing a game perfectly for 2 hours is enormously dull so the scriptwriter threw in unrelated "and the protagonist screwed up" material.
Some may counter by tweaking game rules so that "correct" behavior includes "screwups"; no, "screwing up" means failing to exercise "correct" behavior (whatever the system defines that as). Some may counter by inserting "and then something horrible happens" moments in a game; no, the tragedy comes from the protagonist messing up, not by Demonos Ex Machina events being thrust upon him.
People want to hear stories about how someone else screwed up (regardless of whether they overcame the screwup in the end). People want to do things correctly and successfully. Implementing these to cross-purposes is not interesting... but Ewe Boll has made a bundle from our deeply-ingrained erroneous expectation that if something is fun to do then it _must_ be fun to watch.
I would doubt the LotR crowds were created any differently.
Actually they were created very differently. At the time, there was a big deal made about the crowd scenes being entirely computer-generated using the program "Massive". Several 3D characters were animated and given crowd-behavior AI, then replicated into a large group with each character instance figuring out how to behave in relation to other nearby characters. (One character, an Ura-Kai (sp?) in Battle of Helm's Deep, reportedly stops and takes a cell-phone call. But I digress...)
Yes, it's written in a past-tense explanatory manner. However, it is so thorough and detailed and systematic as to be, for most practical purposes, an instruction manual.
The difference between "how did you do X" vs. "how should you do X" is often negligible.
(And as for "-1 Wrong": sometimes the facts presented in a post are, objectively, wrong. A moderator should be able to facilitate downplaying factually erronious material, rather than having to shout among the masses. The whole POINT of a -1 moderation, whatever the reason, is to prevent crap from floating to the top.)
If you've got a router broadcasting to the world "I'm here! I'm open! I'm free!" and handing out DCHP IP addresses on request, using it ain't "stealing".
Kinda like having a doorman shouting "C'mon in!" to passers-by and handing full-access visitor ID cards to anyone who walks in.
I once "nabbed" a half-dozen AP photos & put them on my website for quasi-personal use (grouped the key Elian Gonzales photos into a.gif animation to enhance effect, posted for a few friends to see). Within a few hours, the image was linked to by Drudge Report. Wasn't long before AP lawyers were leaving phone messages for me to cease-and-desist immediately.
You'd think groups so (justifiably) paranoid about copyright issues would be keenly aware about the legalities of using other peoples' IP.
The revolutionary change - squeezing a viable video projector into a cell phone - has been achieved. Yes, it's pretty weak at this point....but don't overlook the fact that now it's just a matter of incremental improvements, cranking up the power and improving efficency.
(What is it about/. that people so enjoy trashing new technologies based on correctable/improvable limits? kinda like dissing hard drives in general because the first ones were 10MB, and never giving 'em a chance to grow to 1TB.)
My home is probably pushing 2000 books now, which I consider - a good start. No I'm not rich....but after keeping every book obtained over four decades, including every textbook from two degrees, voracious abuse of dirt-cheap ($0.25/book, fill-a-bag-for-$4, etc.) book sales, and received many free/inherited/gifts, they add up.
My first reaction to the lead question was: organize them? haven't you read them all and know which is where?
The CD took over, despite the "warmth of vinyl" BS, because it was small, convenient, easy & fast. Insert in player, hit "play", it plays - and plays perfectly. Hit "next track" and you're there immediately without having to do anything else, without scratches or chipmunks.
The Sony ebook reader, and apparently the Kindle, just isn't there yet: click "next page" and you have to wait, you can't just flip thru pages really really fast, and the page transition makes this horrible wierd flicker that lasts just long enough to be seriously distracting. The screen looks great (paper-like) when just sitting there, but the transition is just bad - and that happens every single page. I applaud the high density of content in a slim package... but wake me up when I can flip pages as fast as scrolling on an LCD display, and without bizzare flickering.
Oh, Tower of Goo was hysterically fun, ideal for casual gaming.
It was one of the offspring of the www.ExperimentalGamePlay.com project, an exploration of "starting from scratch, create a unique game in a week". Some of the results were very creative, some were valliant attempts that fell flat, and some were incredibly absorbing and enjoyable with really unique concepts and gameplay.
I've been hoping for versions of those games with the rough edges polished up, as little things like odd/inconvenient window sizes kinda hindered play at times.
So how long until I can replace the POS crippled RAZR firmware with the proper "original" Motorola RAZR firmware? and I don't mean a hacked copy, I mean a legit approved download from motorola.com or verizonwireless.com or walk into a Verizon store and get it re-flashed in 5 minutes???
The problem is that bits can vanish without a trace - heck, nobody is sure they were there in the first place. Atoms, however, are hard to dispose of - yes a paper trail gets counted too, but it's much harder to deny the physical reality.
A voter can verify his correct paper ballot went into a locked box, and observers can make sure the locked boxes are transported and the contents counted. If there is a question, it can be repeated with closer inspection.
When I touch the "vote!" box on a screen, I have no idea what happened next, and verification is difficult.
A major reason I rarely play games on my PS2 is because of its alarming frequencey of losing saved games.
Playing for hours on end, only to come back to "saved game corrupted" and the prospect of going thru all of that again, just pretty much nullifies any interest in completing any game, and thus any interest in even starting one.
I just drag my important files onto an external drive.
The whole point is that you don't have to do that, it happens automatically. AND it catches all the files that you didn't think were important, but are. AND it lets you roll the system back to the state it was in at any given time in the past (hence "time machine"). AND it takes care of any problems that can happen during backup (like "disk full", "power failure", etc.).
You have to admit that driving to work 5 days a week has less of an impact (good or bad) on someone's lifestyle than getting killed in a car crash does (again, good or bad).
That the odds of ending up terminated on a highway are far higher than getting an "off the charts lifestyle impact" lottery payout doesn't seem to affect anyone's choice in making that daily drive.
"The status of some machines will necessarily change from 'non-universal' to 'universal'"??? This sounds like a cop-out to justify the error in the proof: re-define the problem so the proof fits it.
Sometimes the official definition of a boundary (in this case, the difference between non-universal vs. universal) is, upon careful inspection, found to be wrong/incomplete/complicated/obfuscated. The indicated post indicates that the mathematical understanding of "universal" is understood to be incomplete; apparently the 2,3 machine is exposing just such a flaw (and sometimes just discovering a problem is worthy of a Nobel Prize).
Indeed, that's the biggest problem with software engineering: specifications which appear complete usually aren't. Analyzing and modifying and correcting incomplete specs isn't a cop-out.
What happened to all that talk of "dark fiber"? And how much of the routing problems stem from backbone ISPs (Comcast, Verizon, etc.; see recent/.) wanting to fiddle with packets instead of simply routing them?
Well, I was increasingly thinking of giving up my wired broadband entirely and switching to cellular "unlimited" broadband (maybe a bit slower, but useable everywhere).
Still want to. So much for Verizon when my contract ends in a couple months.
Does AT&T have an affordable deal on a 4-way (2 iPhones, 2 notebooks, 1 bill) unlimited (actual, not a paltry 5GB limit) data plan?
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In considering getting an HDTV, my wife casually asked about recording shows. Aghast, I had to admit I wasn't sure how that could be done! In the HDMI world - as the cartels intended - there just is no place to plug in a recorder, and DVRs don't come with disc writers. Yeah, I could hack up something involving a PC, HD tuner card, ill-supported software, bittorrent, etc. but it just would never meet the "insert blank, choose channel, hit 'Record'" it-just-works paradigm.
Removing unnecessary stuff from a computer - I mean really removing it, not just taking half away and ignoring the half that's left - is difficult when the cheap option is to leave crap hidden inside, and to tell the suits "no, really, people will pay MORE to have LESS!" Sounds goofy, but true. Ever consider building a really really small computer? even with the "micro" and "nano" sized motherboards, there's always a whole bunch of useless ports on it; want to get rid of the unused stuff? go build yer own motherboard is the answer.
... instead, it's within arm's reach or a short walk all the time. The one thing holding me back from Apple was the absence of an ultraportable (and now my only hesitation is no 1024-line display).
Crossing the 3lb barrier has huge physical and psychological changes. Getting a Vaio ultraportable has (dare I say) changed my life: having a computer so light it's harder to not have it around than to drag it everywhere. Never do I have to go home to get email, or look stuff up, or run handy tools, or decide whether to lug the durn heavy thing around
Part of the genius of Apple IS the gumption to say "no, you're not going to have it that way". They compel people to think forward to better ways of solving a long-running problem, rather than hanging back to old solutions. No optical drive? yeesh, they're so 20th Century, get with the download/bittorrent/thumbdrive/802.11n future already. Limited hard drive? wireless shared drive, man. No Ethernet port? get a USB adapter for those rare no-Wi-Fi times.
Time to switch. Apple is hitting the tipping point: just a hair (or 224 lines of video) away from "PC? Vista? why bother what that old stuff?"
1280-by-800 resolution.
This thing is awesome, and I really really want one, and I understand compromises must be made, but a screen limited to 800 lines is problematic.
Please, Steve, 1024 lines? really soon now? please?
A movie is interesting because the protagonist screws up at some point.
... but Ewe Boll has made a bundle from our deeply-ingrained erroneous expectation that if something is fun to do then it _must_ be fun to watch.
A game is interesting because the protagonist (you) must never screw up.
"Romeo and Juliet" the play/movie is interesting because the characters make tragic mistakes and suffer horribly.
"Romeo and Juliet" the game would suck precisely because they would all live happily ever after.
"Doom" the game was cool because you ran around killing monsters, and tried repeatedly in difficult scenarios until you overcame the scenario.
"Doom" the movie sucked because watching someone else playing a game perfectly for 2 hours is enormously dull so the scriptwriter threw in unrelated "and the protagonist screwed up" material.
Some may counter by tweaking game rules so that "correct" behavior includes "screwups"; no, "screwing up" means failing to exercise "correct" behavior (whatever the system defines that as).
Some may counter by inserting "and then something horrible happens" moments in a game; no, the tragedy comes from the protagonist messing up, not by Demonos Ex Machina events being thrust upon him.
People want to hear stories about how someone else screwed up (regardless of whether they overcame the screwup in the end).
People want to do things correctly and successfully.
Implementing these to cross-purposes is not interesting
I would doubt the LotR crowds were created any differently.
Actually they were created very differently. At the time, there was a big deal made about the crowd scenes being entirely computer-generated using the program "Massive". Several 3D characters were animated and given crowd-behavior AI, then replicated into a large group with each character instance figuring out how to behave in relation to other nearby characters. (One character, an Ura-Kai (sp?) in Battle of Helm's Deep, reportedly stops and takes a cell-phone call. But I digress...)
Go re-read the appendix to "1984".
Yes, it's written in a past-tense explanatory manner.
However, it is so thorough and detailed and systematic as to be, for most practical purposes, an instruction manual.
The difference between "how did you do X" vs. "how should you do X" is often negligible.
(And as for "-1 Wrong": sometimes the facts presented in a post are, objectively, wrong. A moderator should be able to facilitate downplaying factually erronious material, rather than having to shout among the masses. The whole POINT of a -1 moderation, whatever the reason, is to prevent crap from floating to the top.)
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
Actually, the appendex in "1984" IS an instruction manual.
If you've got a router broadcasting to the world "I'm here! I'm open! I'm free!" and handing out DCHP IP addresses on request, using it ain't "stealing".
Kinda like having a doorman shouting "C'mon in!" to passers-by and handing full-access visitor ID cards to anyone who walks in.
I once "nabbed" a half-dozen AP photos & put them on my website for quasi-personal use (grouped the key Elian Gonzales photos into a .gif animation to enhance effect, posted for a few friends to see). Within a few hours, the image was linked to by Drudge Report. Wasn't long before AP lawyers were leaving phone messages for me to cease-and-desist immediately.
You'd think groups so (justifiably) paranoid about copyright issues would be keenly aware about the legalities of using other peoples' IP.
The revolutionary change - squeezing a viable video projector into a cell phone - has been achieved. ...but don't overlook the fact that now it's just a matter of incremental improvements, cranking up the power and improving efficency.
/. that people so enjoy trashing new technologies based on correctable/improvable limits? kinda like dissing hard drives in general because the first ones were 10MB, and never giving 'em a chance to grow to 1TB.)
Yes, it's pretty weak at this point.
(What is it about
Broadcasters ... are ... giving copies of shows to a friend of a friend who is unaffiliated with the company to make a torrent
Methinks the notion that it is "piracy" just evaporated.
3500 books = roughly 100 books per year.
...but after keeping every book obtained over four decades, including every textbook from two degrees, voracious abuse of dirt-cheap ($0.25/book, fill-a-bag-for-$4, etc.) book sales, and received many free/inherited/gifts, they add up.
My home is probably pushing 2000 books now, which I consider - a good start.
No I'm not rich.
My first reaction to the lead question was: organize them? haven't you read them all and know which is where?
The CD took over, despite the "warmth of vinyl" BS, because it was small, convenient, easy & fast. Insert in player, hit "play", it plays - and plays perfectly. Hit "next track" and you're there immediately without having to do anything else, without scratches or chipmunks.
... but wake me up when I can flip pages as fast as scrolling on an LCD display, and without bizzare flickering.
The Sony ebook reader, and apparently the Kindle, just isn't there yet: click "next page" and you have to wait, you can't just flip thru pages really really fast, and the page transition makes this horrible wierd flicker that lasts just long enough to be seriously distracting. The screen looks great (paper-like) when just sitting there, but the transition is just bad - and that happens every single page. I applaud the high density of content in a slim package
Oh, Tower of Goo was hysterically fun, ideal for casual gaming.
It was one of the offspring of the www.ExperimentalGamePlay.com project, an exploration of "starting from scratch, create a unique game in a week". Some of the results were very creative, some were valliant attempts that fell flat, and some were incredibly absorbing and enjoyable with really unique concepts and gameplay.
I've been hoping for versions of those games with the rough edges polished up, as little things like odd/inconvenient window sizes kinda hindered play at times.
So how long until I can replace the POS crippled RAZR firmware with the proper "original" Motorola RAZR firmware? and I don't mean a hacked copy, I mean a legit approved download from motorola.com or verizonwireless.com or walk into a Verizon store and get it re-flashed in 5 minutes???
The problem is that bits can vanish without a trace - heck, nobody is sure they were there in the first place.
Atoms, however, are hard to dispose of - yes a paper trail gets counted too, but it's much harder to deny the physical reality.
A voter can verify his correct paper ballot went into a locked box, and observers can make sure the locked boxes are transported and the contents counted. If there is a question, it can be repeated with closer inspection.
When I touch the "vote!" box on a screen, I have no idea what happened next, and verification is difficult.
A major reason I rarely play games on my PS2 is because of its alarming frequencey of losing saved games.
Playing for hours on end, only to come back to "saved game corrupted" and the prospect of going thru all of that again, just pretty much nullifies any interest in completing any game, and thus any interest in even starting one.
explain that einstein?
/. is not for you.
He just did.
This is "News for Nerds".
If you don't understand why he's right,
You're looking for USA Today.
I just drag my important files onto an external drive.
The whole point is that you don't have to do that, it happens automatically.
AND it catches all the files that you didn't think were important, but are.
AND it lets you roll the system back to the state it was in at any given time in the past (hence "time machine").
AND it takes care of any problems that can happen during backup (like "disk full", "power failure", etc.).
To turn those numbers around:
You have to admit that driving to work 5 days a week has less of an impact (good or bad) on someone's lifestyle than getting killed in a car crash does (again, good or bad).
That the odds of ending up terminated on a highway are far higher than getting an "off the charts lifestyle impact" lottery payout doesn't seem to affect anyone's choice in making that daily drive.
"The status of some machines will necessarily change from 'non-universal' to 'universal'"??? This sounds like a cop-out to justify the error in the proof: re-define the problem so the proof fits it.
Sometimes the official definition of a boundary (in this case, the difference between non-universal vs. universal) is, upon careful inspection, found to be wrong/incomplete/complicated/obfuscated. The indicated post indicates that the mathematical understanding of "universal" is understood to be incomplete; apparently the 2,3 machine is exposing just such a flaw (and sometimes just discovering a problem is worthy of a Nobel Prize).
Indeed, that's the biggest problem with software engineering: specifications which appear complete usually aren't. Analyzing and modifying and correcting incomplete specs isn't a cop-out.
New incarnation of given technology cheaper than older incarnation of same technology, film at 11...
Actually, there have been talks for the Caribbean nation of Turks And Caicos to join Canada.
What happened to all that talk of "dark fiber"? /.) wanting to fiddle with packets instead of simply routing them?
And how much of the routing problems stem from backbone ISPs (Comcast, Verizon, etc.; see recent
Well, I was increasingly thinking of giving up my wired broadband entirely and switching to cellular "unlimited" broadband (maybe a bit slower, but useable everywhere).
Still want to.
So much for Verizon when my contract ends in a couple months.
Does AT&T have an affordable deal on a 4-way (2 iPhones, 2 notebooks, 1 bill) unlimited (actual, not a paltry 5GB limit) data plan?