Well no... okay okay okay... I see what you're saying, there's no way Firefox could possibly take over EVERYTHING on the desktop, there are many things that operate outside of applications.
However, for what most people use a computer for, a web browser does most of it. Email? Who here has an email address and check it using their favourite browser. I know I've got a hotmail and a gmail. Surfing the web? Thats a given. Aside from games, what do most people do on computers? Word processing, spreadsheets, there is some work-y kind of stuff. But more and more stuff is being moved to the cloud (for better or worse, its happening). Eventually, it might reach a point where its standard to have your documents backed up online in a service like Google Docs, and then before you know it your word processor is an Addon or plugin bundled into Firefox.
Firefox has that flexibility in it that allows for more customization, which is one of the areas Internet Explorer lacks most (I'll compare it to IE since IE has a lot of market share). It also has that community behind it, in a way that 1)That there are a lot of people who use it, just for the sake of not being stuck to IE 2)There are a lot of people who develop for it, just because its the most popular alternative out there 3) There are a lot of people who use it, and provide useful feedback to those who develop for it.
All in all, even if you don't always like the course Firefox takes (some people complain its getty bogged down), its at least in the most healthy environment imaginable to change. IE, being in that tough spot of "All these businesses use Internet Explorer, we better not screw up" doesn't have the ability to try things out as much as Firefox does.
So - all in all, don't be surprised if the browser thats best suited for new standards (if Firefox beats IE at HTML5) ends up gaining a lot of momentum in this technological shift we're seeing lately.
I wasn't just trying to beat it, I was trying to progress the storyline. Just regular progression to the next plot element took too long.
And Would you consider Fable 2 Multiplayer? It was essentially a hack and slash RPG where you COULD have a second player, but it was never necessary and didn't detract from the game.
I had an adverse reaction though I played it a bit differently. Like when I played the first Mass Effect, I didn't do any of the sidequests because I wanted to progress the main storyline as fast as possible.
And that bothered me with Dragon-age, is that I couldn't seem to progress fast enough, no matter what class I chose. I eventually stopped playing - some time just before the landsmeet, after getting all the treaties fulfilled. The boss fights I encountered didn't require any strategy, just enough poltices or a few timed heals, and the trash leading up to a boss fight felt about 50% longer than they needed to be. Then the dialogue on top of it - I don't know whether there was too much or if it was lacking substance, but it kind of felt like everything after Loathering was kind of weak.
One thing that would have made it infinitely better was a multiplayer option, even just locally. There would be times when I my room mates would want to play, and I would want to play right after. But I wouldn't want to watch because that would ruin the storyline, and I couldn't play his character because he'd go to bed and lose his place. Because everyone was so hyped to play this game, and I wanted to experience it in its fully unruined state, I ended up shutting myself in my room anytime anyone else was playing it. If they had simply made it possible to play with 2-4 players, you know, progress through the storyline, let the other controller control the other storyline characters or another party members once the party is established...
I dunno, I don't expect my issues with it to be addressed, a lot of people liked the game, I'm just some of the few who were kind of disappointed. Like, it could have been a whole lot more than what it was.
So, in 30 years from now, when the world looks back on current events and news stories as inspiration for movies - is this what they're going to be about?
Just because something works in optimum conditions doesn't make it noteworthy.
That's a load of crock.
The LHC only works in optimum conditions and you don't think that's noteworthy?
Seriously, the number of things that "only work in optimum conditions" is beyond comprehension. My computer would probably go on the fritz if it were to pass through a super strong magnetic field but you don't see me calling it useless.
Finally you get to the really easy bit, rendering the data. That volume of work would take a team of 10 programmers about 3 or 4 years to complete.
And even THAT'S being Generous. For some of the bigger engines, like Valve's Source engine or Epic's Unreal Engine - the man hours spent projects like those is absolutely astounding. In Valve's case they were hoping to make Source inifinitely scalable, sort of like just adding tons of shaders to achieve any newly desired effects. In Epic's case, they've made a point to make it run on just about every graphical configuration ever, you'll notice that you can still run Unreal PC games at 320x240 resolution.
The amount of complexity that goes into games these days far outweighs anything on any of the side-scroller consoles. Writing a GOOD rendering engine pretty much requires a Bachelors in Mathematics, since there is a lot of linear algebra that goes into it.
It might be tempting to blame technology for our laziness but let's face it: we've been pacified and are perfectly content to sit around to get fat--moving sidewalk or no moving sidewalk.
Absolutely - In almost all cases, obesity tends to be caused by poor diet decisions. We've let the food industry police themselves in deciding what goods for us, and they've bumped up the sodium content to unspeakable levels so that food is preserved longer and they've added insane amounts of sugar just so everything tastes better. The only way to even get a decent meal anymore is to buy everything Fresh, which is relegated to a small section of the supermarket, and the Farmers markets aren't open as often (especially in the off season). We let this scenario build up where it's difficult to find good food, so our diets lack, and we are naturally overweight. And then of course, the easiest solution outside of cooking a meal is fast food, which is so unbelievably unhealthy I'm surprised its even legal. (Don't get me wrong, in a bind I have and will grab a small lunch, but I try to limit my fast food whenever I can).
However, a few studies have noted that good exercise really does promote longevity in life - some of the longest living people in the world are that way because their daily routines include a fair bit of exercise. You know, the kind of people who have to bike to the market. Or the kind who live in high rises with no elevator, so they have to walk up and down 12 flights of stairs each day. Combined with a good meal, these people have been shown to live 20, or 30+ years longer than the average westerner. I can add my anecdotal evidence that I was definately a more fit individual when I didn't have a car so I rode my bicycle everywhere I needed to go around town. My girlfriend does not hesitate to point out to me that I've lost stomach muscles I once had.
I definately don't blame technology for making us fat, but it is not exactly our friend in the matter either. I'd say food probably weighs in at 50%, lack of exercise like 30%, and transportation like 20%.
I mean, how much time do you spend in your day just in transportation? Some people its about half an hour, other people its closer to 2 hours. Imagine if that time was spent exercising some muscles - suddenly your lack of exercise has a LITTLE something to make up for it.
In Canada, it's an unspoken rule to stand on the right leaving enough room on the left for people wanting to walk to get past. The escalators themselves are generally wide enough to two people on a step (though it might just be that most travelling Canadians aren't too fat yet), so this works fine.
Down Escalators are a bit of a different story. See when people are about to miss the train, they like to grab the side rails and slide down with their feet off the ground, only casually touching to keep balance. Kind of like grabbing the sides of a ladder to slide down. Anyways, if you see the train coming, you generally get off the escalator as quickly as possible, else you might get run over by someone in a hurry.
I think he was actually going with the McDonald's route, and trying to market Star Wars to Kids. I mean a 9 year old protagonist hero. Then a cheesy no-lust love story?
Notice there were a few more video games targetted towards kids and more products aimed at kids than before... I think the idea was to get these kids to be SW geeks for life, more money if you get em young.
He was much better when he just wanted to share some amazing stories floating in his head, like the original SW trilogy and IJ. Ever since it's been downhill, with a slightly worse prequel trilogy, then selling it all out to have an animated TV series, a handful of recent video game flops, and everything else that seems to be detrimental to the Star Wars fantasy universe.
And don't forget the holiday special. shivers
Yeah, George has long since seemed to be more in it for the money, like he is trying to build this vast empire to rival Microsoft. You might even say his entertainment companies, Lucasfilm, Industrial light and magic, skywalker sound, and then hsi co-founding with THX makes it seem like he's monopolized that field. (What's the last action flick you saw that didn't have the little THX promo before the show).
Seriously Lucas, you've built your empire, and it's doing absolutely great without you trying to "defend" it. Just quietly retire and let the other men try and run the company. I've noticed Lucasarts is revamping the Monkey Island series, and I have a feeling this was not your idea. It's not as huge a success as you probably wish, but its not doing too bad. Remember, the reason these people were even inspired to make lightsabers because of your films, no one is going to forget that.
Well this certainly isn't anywhere Microsoft is going to visit, and as a young, hip developer myself, I'd sure like to point out a good reason as to why they aren't doing so hot with my demographic.
The issue isn't that you aren't "accessing" post secondary students. I learned all about VB,.NET, and I used Visual Studio, and I made some pretty amazing Win32 apps. All in all, my experience with the product was good. VB, once you understand programming theory, is as easy to write as Java or C++, its mostly just a syntax thing. All in all I found Visual Studio easier to layout and work with GUI's than Eclipse was with Java. So, you don't need to worry about that, Microsoft.
But you did hit ONE big nail right on the head.
And then, when people, particularly younger people, wanted to build a start-up, and they were generally under-capitalized, the idea of buying Microsoft software was a really problematic idea for them.
Yes, yes it was a big problem for me. Currently the latest version, with the PRO edition (not even the ultimate edition) is $729 dollars - which is more than most kids with student loan debts can afford. And then you made the "Express" tools which are completely and utterly crippled in that I can't do half the stuff that made visual studio so appealing to use.
As such, when my school taught me how to use the no-cost solutions, you can imagine how much more we prefer to work with them as a hobby, because as young, hip, students we don't have any money to just fling around.
Not to mention that.NET seems to be losing some speed - I don't know if I want to keep writing for it.
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Correctumundo! Tell him what he's won.
Famous last words.
Well no... okay okay okay... I see what you're saying, there's no way Firefox could possibly take over EVERYTHING on the desktop, there are many things that operate outside of applications.
However, for what most people use a computer for, a web browser does most of it. Email? Who here has an email address and check it using their favourite browser. I know I've got a hotmail and a gmail. Surfing the web? Thats a given. Aside from games, what do most people do on computers? Word processing, spreadsheets, there is some work-y kind of stuff. But more and more stuff is being moved to the cloud (for better or worse, its happening). Eventually, it might reach a point where its standard to have your documents backed up online in a service like Google Docs, and then before you know it your word processor is an Addon or plugin bundled into Firefox.
Firefox has that flexibility in it that allows for more customization, which is one of the areas Internet Explorer lacks most (I'll compare it to IE since IE has a lot of market share). It also has that community behind it, in a way that
1)That there are a lot of people who use it, just for the sake of not being stuck to IE
2)There are a lot of people who develop for it, just because its the most popular alternative out there
3) There are a lot of people who use it, and provide useful feedback to those who develop for it.
All in all, even if you don't always like the course Firefox takes (some people complain its getty bogged down), its at least in the most healthy environment imaginable to change. IE, being in that tough spot of "All these businesses use Internet Explorer, we better not screw up" doesn't have the ability to try things out as much as Firefox does.
So - all in all, don't be surprised if the browser thats best suited for new standards (if Firefox beats IE at HTML5) ends up gaining a lot of momentum in this technological shift we're seeing lately.
I wasn't just trying to beat it, I was trying to progress the storyline. Just regular progression to the next plot element took too long.
And Would you consider Fable 2 Multiplayer? It was essentially a hack and slash RPG where you COULD have a second player, but it was never necessary and didn't detract from the game.
It just made it so that this ridiculously long game tied up the console with only 1 player capable of using it.
I couldn't "power through" dragon age. I tried. I got about 8 hours into it and didn't want to play it anymore. The combat is too same-y.
I had an adverse reaction though I played it a bit differently. Like when I played the first Mass Effect, I didn't do any of the sidequests because I wanted to progress the main storyline as fast as possible.
And that bothered me with Dragon-age, is that I couldn't seem to progress fast enough, no matter what class I chose. I eventually stopped playing - some time just before the landsmeet, after getting all the treaties fulfilled. The boss fights I encountered didn't require any strategy, just enough poltices or a few timed heals, and the trash leading up to a boss fight felt about 50% longer than they needed to be. Then the dialogue on top of it - I don't know whether there was too much or if it was lacking substance, but it kind of felt like everything after Loathering was kind of weak.
One thing that would have made it infinitely better was a multiplayer option, even just locally. There would be times when I my room mates would want to play, and I would want to play right after. But I wouldn't want to watch because that would ruin the storyline, and I couldn't play his character because he'd go to bed and lose his place. Because everyone was so hyped to play this game, and I wanted to experience it in its fully unruined state, I ended up shutting myself in my room anytime anyone else was playing it. If they had simply made it possible to play with 2-4 players, you know, progress through the storyline, let the other controller control the other storyline characters or another party members once the party is established...
I dunno, I don't expect my issues with it to be addressed, a lot of people liked the game, I'm just some of the few who were kind of disappointed. Like, it could have been a whole lot more than what it was.
While the rating of your comment is relentlessly advancing, it would seem that your karma does not.
Now pick up that can!
So, what in the history of mankind is noteworthy to you?
"'The difference is so infinitesimal that it might defy belief that anyone, even physicists, would care"
Does this sentence bother any one else? Just me?
So, in 30 years from now, when the world looks back on current events and news stories as inspiration for movies - is this what they're going to be about?
If so...
COUNT ME IN.
Think Jason Bourne meets Verizon guy.
Just because something works in optimum conditions doesn't make it noteworthy.
That's a load of crock.
The LHC only works in optimum conditions and you don't think that's noteworthy?
Seriously, the number of things that "only work in optimum conditions" is beyond comprehension. My computer would probably go on the fritz if it were to pass through a super strong magnetic field but you don't see me calling it useless.
This made my day. And its not even 9am yet.
They've sent hundreds of cars around the world taking pictures in all directions every 12 feet or so.
And they STILL can't find em?
Finally you get to the really easy bit, rendering the data. That volume of work would take a team of 10 programmers about 3 or 4 years to complete.
And even THAT'S being Generous. For some of the bigger engines, like Valve's Source engine or Epic's Unreal Engine - the man hours spent projects like those is absolutely astounding. In Valve's case they were hoping to make Source inifinitely scalable, sort of like just adding tons of shaders to achieve any newly desired effects. In Epic's case, they've made a point to make it run on just about every graphical configuration ever, you'll notice that you can still run Unreal PC games at 320x240 resolution.
The amount of complexity that goes into games these days far outweighs anything on any of the side-scroller consoles. Writing a GOOD rendering engine pretty much requires a Bachelors in Mathematics, since there is a lot of linear algebra that goes into it.
It might be tempting to blame technology for our laziness but let's face it: we've been pacified and are perfectly content to sit around to get fat--moving sidewalk or no moving sidewalk.
Absolutely - In almost all cases, obesity tends to be caused by poor diet decisions. We've let the food industry police themselves in deciding what goods for us, and they've bumped up the sodium content to unspeakable levels so that food is preserved longer and they've added insane amounts of sugar just so everything tastes better. The only way to even get a decent meal anymore is to buy everything Fresh, which is relegated to a small section of the supermarket, and the Farmers markets aren't open as often (especially in the off season). We let this scenario build up where it's difficult to find good food, so our diets lack, and we are naturally overweight. And then of course, the easiest solution outside of cooking a meal is fast food, which is so unbelievably unhealthy I'm surprised its even legal. (Don't get me wrong, in a bind I have and will grab a small lunch, but I try to limit my fast food whenever I can).
However, a few studies have noted that good exercise really does promote longevity in life - some of the longest living people in the world are that way because their daily routines include a fair bit of exercise. You know, the kind of people who have to bike to the market. Or the kind who live in high rises with no elevator, so they have to walk up and down 12 flights of stairs each day. Combined with a good meal, these people have been shown to live 20, or 30+ years longer than the average westerner. I can add my anecdotal evidence that I was definately a more fit individual when I didn't have a car so I rode my bicycle everywhere I needed to go around town. My girlfriend does not hesitate to point out to me that I've lost stomach muscles I once had.
I definately don't blame technology for making us fat, but it is not exactly our friend in the matter either. I'd say food probably weighs in at 50%, lack of exercise like 30%, and transportation like 20%.
I mean, how much time do you spend in your day just in transportation? Some people its about half an hour, other people its closer to 2 hours. Imagine if that time was spent exercising some muscles - suddenly your lack of exercise has a LITTLE something to make up for it.
You don't? I don't know of anyone over the age of 12 and under the age of 50 who climbs down.
In Canada, it's an unspoken rule to stand on the right leaving enough room on the left for people wanting to walk to get past. The escalators themselves are generally wide enough to two people on a step (though it might just be that most travelling Canadians aren't too fat yet), so this works fine.
Down Escalators are a bit of a different story. See when people are about to miss the train, they like to grab the side rails and slide down with their feet off the ground, only casually touching to keep balance. Kind of like grabbing the sides of a ladder to slide down. Anyways, if you see the train coming, you generally get off the escalator as quickly as possible, else you might get run over by someone in a hurry.
I think he was actually going with the McDonald's route, and trying to market Star Wars to Kids. I mean a 9 year old protagonist hero. Then a cheesy no-lust love story?
Notice there were a few more video games targetted towards kids and more products aimed at kids than before... I think the idea was to get these kids to be SW geeks for life, more money if you get em young.
the problem is that Lucas is still alive.
He was much better when he just wanted to share some amazing stories floating in his head, like the original SW trilogy and IJ. Ever since it's been downhill, with a slightly worse prequel trilogy, then selling it all out to have an animated TV series, a handful of recent video game flops, and everything else that seems to be detrimental to the Star Wars fantasy universe.
And don't forget the holiday special. shivers
Yeah, George has long since seemed to be more in it for the money, like he is trying to build this vast empire to rival Microsoft. You might even say his entertainment companies, Lucasfilm, Industrial light and magic, skywalker sound, and then hsi co-founding with THX makes it seem like he's monopolized that field. (What's the last action flick you saw that didn't have the little THX promo before the show).
Seriously Lucas, you've built your empire, and it's doing absolutely great without you trying to "defend" it. Just quietly retire and let the other men try and run the company. I've noticed Lucasarts is revamping the Monkey Island series, and I have a feeling this was not your idea. It's not as huge a success as you probably wish, but its not doing too bad. Remember, the reason these people were even inspired to make lightsabers because of your films, no one is going to forget that.
Well this certainly isn't anywhere Microsoft is going to visit, and as a young, hip developer myself, I'd sure like to point out a good reason as to why they aren't doing so hot with my demographic.
The issue isn't that you aren't "accessing" post secondary students. I learned all about VB, .NET, and I used Visual Studio, and I made some pretty amazing Win32 apps. All in all, my experience with the product was good. VB, once you understand programming theory, is as easy to write as Java or C++, its mostly just a syntax thing. All in all I found Visual Studio easier to layout and work with GUI's than Eclipse was with Java. So, you don't need to worry about that, Microsoft.
But you did hit ONE big nail right on the head.
And then, when people, particularly younger people, wanted to build a start-up, and they were generally under-capitalized, the idea of buying Microsoft software was a really problematic idea for them.
Yes, yes it was a big problem for me. Currently the latest version, with the PRO edition (not even the ultimate edition) is $729 dollars - which is more than most kids with student loan debts can afford. And then you made the "Express" tools which are completely and utterly crippled in that I can't do half the stuff that made visual studio so appealing to use.
As such, when my school taught me how to use the no-cost solutions, you can imagine how much more we prefer to work with them as a hobby, because as young, hip, students we don't have any money to just fling around.
Not to mention that .NET seems to be losing some speed - I don't know if I want to keep writing for it.
"Schade Deutschland, alles ist vorbei!"
Jeez man, do you kiss your mother with that mouth?
How many countries have a serious interest in Baseball? Canada.
HA
That's stretching it. Sure we got a team but nobody roots for them, not even Canadians.
And love.
I disagree in that mathematics is applied philosophy, I think its a fundamental law of the universe.