there is no Client-server protocol because it is assumed to be a web application so for a long time all we will have is Google's bloated JavaShit-filled and presumably ad-laden perpetual beta web interface.
There is a client-server protocol, and it is that protocol you would use if developing a robot:
Until the next public holiday, when 100% of their customers try to play and either half of them can't, or all of them have a sucky experience.
It's up to them as service providers to work out the right scale. It will likely *never* be necessary to have enough grunt for every subscriber to be playing a top-end game simultanously.
In your example of a public holiday, for instance - OK, some people will spend the day playing Crysis when they would normally be working. Others will go to see friends/family and not play games at all. Things even out.
Yes, they'll need to predict peaks and provide for them. That's no different to any other service.
If 20% of their users want to play Crysis 2, and 80% want to play Peggle, the company needs to buy enough heavy-duty hardware for all of those people to play Crysis 2, and still offer the service at a price which will please people who want Peggle. I'm not sure that the maths will work.
Er, no they don't.
What's more, if 100% of their customers want to play Crysis 2, half on weekends, half on weekdays, then they only need to buy enough heavy-duty hardware for half the capacity. When a home console isn't being played, that's potential computing power being wasted.
Phone companies don't give away phones. You buy them as part of a contract. If that's what OnLive is doing, fine, but then they shouldn't say that the hardware is so cheap they can "give it away".
Semantics. Plenty of marketing will express it as an airtime contract with a "free phone".
OnLive is the razor. The games are the razorblades, and you won't get those for free.
Will we be able to import contacts from Exchange straight into Wave? Will we be able to use waves in email services other than wave? IE: Could a wave user interact with a wave with someone who is using MS Exchange the same way as they interact with someone who is using Wave also?
At a guess, I think that non-Wave email users will be able to participate in Wave discussions in a limited manner. Limited enough that if you were that user, you'd soon be tempted to move over to the "first class" experience.
Holding a phone to your ear not only ties up a hand, but also probably means you're having a conversation.
A sat nav, on the other hand, is designed so that you don't have to touch it once it's set up. Its voice instructions are designed so you don't usually have to even look at it. If you do have to look at it, it's designed so that a glance is sufficient.
What's more, many people's alternative to a sat nav is to refer to a paper map while driving. That's obviously more of a distraction.
BTW - Studies have shown that having a phone conversation is more distracting than having a conversation with a passenger. Something to do with passengers knowing when to give you space to concentrate on a road hazard. Do your own Googling.
However, the difference is programmers usually know how to -ask- questions that make sense to other programmers.
Fairly often on SO, you get badly constructed questions. Sometimes the questions go unanswered. But often something like this happens:
- users comment on the question (rather than leave an answer) asking for clarification
- the original questioner fixes up his question, based on the queries
- OR a 'senior' user (anyone who's gained enough rep points) fixes up the question
- With the question clarified, the answering can begin.
Mostly, it's the economy of reputation points and badges (sort of like Xbox Live achievements).
People get the warm and fuzzies just from having a score, and SO uses that instinct in all sorts of ways, to promote good questions, good answers, the refinement of good answers, and the sorting of good answers to the top.
It also helps that it's very useable. For example, the post markup language is pretty much perfect for the purpose (making it very easy to include code snippets with syntax highlighting)
AFAIK "flat bed scanner" simply means a scanner where you place the item to be scanned on a flat plane of glass to be scanned. The technology that actually does the scanning is irrelevant.
In which case, the Xerox printer/scanner in my office does flat bed scanning in the blink of an eye. I ran it with the lid up once to prove to myself it wasn't just a camera - and sure enough a sensor bar whips across the page.
Of course, it's not as practical for scanning bound books as the Google solution.
Professional economists understand there's no such thing as an "ideal world."
I see what you mean, but I think there's a fairly strong consensus that the equilibrium reached in a classic commodities market (prices pushed down, efficiency pushed up, nobody making excessive profits) is a desirable outcome.
The invisible hand of Wall Street just recently squeezed our collective invisible nuts quite smartly.
Regulate The Hand.
I agree. My limited understanding of the crash was that bad loans were being bundled up and sold to agencies acting on incomplete/inaccurate information. If they'd had the right information, they wouldn't have bought the debts, or they'd have bought the debts for a sustainable price.
The classic economist's view is that the government's duty is to regulate so that this information flows properly. Secrecy impedes market forces.
I can't believe that such a simple equation like "what you eat, minus what you burn, is what you wear on your ass and thighs" doesn't make sense to people.
I think that working with such a simple model is a good way to approach weight loss. Eat less, or do more exercise and you *will* lose fat.
However, it's not actually true. Some people excrete surplus calories instead of storing it as fat. Lifestyle affects this. I am not a biochemist, and the complexities of this are beyond me.
I fail to see what market failure has to do with this. People want big hamburgers with fries and a diet coke, and they get it.
The PDF explains their angle.
ECONOMIC RATIONALE Economists agree that government intervention in a market is warranted when there are "market failures" that result in less-than-optimal production and consumption. Several market failures exist with respect to sugar-sweetened beverages.
First, because many persons do not fully appreciate the links between consumption of these beverages and health consequences, they make consumption decisions with imperfect information. These decisions are likely to be further distorted by the extensive marketing campaigns that advertise the benefits of consumption. A second failure results from time-inconsistent preferences (i.e., decisions that provide short-term gratification but long-term harm).
The classic market failure is that some participant (it could be a firm, it could be consumers) is making decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information. They're arguing that in this case, it's the consumers.
I'd argue that they're right about the failure, but that taxation is not the solution. Those failures can be addressed directly through education and through controls on advertising.
Re:And yet they do nothing to discourage the car
on
The Fresca Rebellion
·
· Score: 1
It isn't safe to walk anywhere in the United States? Do you realize how absurd that sounds?
It would sound absurd, if that is what he'd said. What he actually said was:
most Americans never walk anywhere simply because it isn't safe to do so
... which is reasonable if you assume "never" is an exaggeration.
Americans are usually astonished when I tell them I walk 20 minutes to work. When I visit my colleagues in Tampa, I stay in a hotel less than half a mile from the office. Yet I drive from the hotel to the office, because to walk involves crossing 6 lanes with no pedestrian signal.
Re:And yet they do nothing to discourage the car
on
The Fresca Rebellion
·
· Score: 1
It's a chicken and egg situation.
Phoenix is too spread out for non-drivers, because during its biggest period of growth, planners assumed cars would continue to be ubiquitous.
Cars continue to be ubiquitous because the city isn't planned for any other form of transport.
In older cities - Santa Fe, New York City, most European cities (with the exception of a few "new towns") you can see how a differently designed city can make driving less necessary.
They're not arguing this from an economist's view. A healthy market is one that responds to needs and wants. They're saying people's wants are cheaper than their needs leading them to unhealthy habits. It is not an economic argument for junk food/soda tax.
Actually the New England Journal of Medicine is attempting to do exactly that (from the PDF):
ECONOMIC RATIONALE Economists agree that government intervention in a market is warranted when there are "market failures" that result in less-than-optimal production and consumption. Several market failures exist with respect to sugar-sweetened beverages.
First, because many persons do not fully appreciate the links between consumption of these beverages and health consequences, they make consumption decisions with imperfect information. These decisions are likely to be further distorted by the extensive marketing campaigns that advertise the benefits of consumption. A second failure results from time-inconsistent preferences (i.e., decisions that provide short-term gratification but long-term harm).
Slashdot Mirror
a CPU wih enough oomph to decode HD streamed video
If they decode video in the CPU, they're doing it wrong.
there is no Client-server protocol because it is assumed to be a web application so for a long time all we will have is Google's bloated JavaShit-filled and presumably ad-laden perpetual beta web interface.
There is a client-server protocol, and it is that protocol you would use if developing a robot:
http://code.google.com/apis/wave/extensions/
The robot acts as a user. It gets notified of new blips, can create/edit blips.
I see this as being piped to a widescreen 720p TV at best, 17" monitor at 1280x1024 maybe.
OnLive does 'SD' or 'HD'. 'HD' is 720p. I'm guessing that SD is 640x480.
Servers that scale: check. Resources brought online as needed: check. Software as a service: Check.
And that's what make MMORPGs SUCK in my book.
Yet MMORPGs are a massive success. They fit in with the desires of millions, you're just not one of those millions.
I don't buy makeup. I don't boldly announce that the makeup industry can't possibly make money.
Until the next public holiday, when 100% of their customers try to play and either half of them can't, or all of them have a sucky experience.
It's up to them as service providers to work out the right scale. It will likely *never* be necessary to have enough grunt for every subscriber to be playing a top-end game simultanously.
In your example of a public holiday, for instance - OK, some people will spend the day playing Crysis when they would normally be working. Others will go to see friends/family and not play games at all. Things even out.
Yes, they'll need to predict peaks and provide for them. That's no different to any other service.
If 20% of their users want to play Crysis 2, and 80% want to play Peggle, the company needs to buy enough heavy-duty hardware for all of those people to play Crysis 2, and still offer the service at a price which will please people who want Peggle. I'm not sure that the maths will work.
Er, no they don't.
What's more, if 100% of their customers want to play Crysis 2, half on weekends, half on weekdays, then they only need to buy enough heavy-duty hardware for half the capacity. When a home console isn't being played, that's potential computing power being wasted.
Phone companies don't give away phones. You buy them as part of a contract. If that's what OnLive is doing, fine, but then they shouldn't say that the hardware is so cheap they can "give it away".
Semantics. Plenty of marketing will express it as an airtime contract with a "free phone".
OnLive is the razor. The games are the razorblades, and you won't get those for free.
the dot-com bubble called. They want their failed business strategy back. Subsidise the hardware, sure, but don't give it away.
My mobile phone company must be crying into their balance sheet.
Will we be able to import contacts from Exchange straight into Wave? Will we be able to use waves in email services other than wave? IE: Could a wave user interact with a wave with someone who is using MS Exchange the same way as they interact with someone who is using Wave also?
At a guess, I think that non-Wave email users will be able to participate in Wave discussions in a limited manner. Limited enough that if you were that user, you'd soon be tempted to move over to the "first class" experience.
That's a hell of a way to build a user base.
You didn't actually answer his complaint. Don't be such a fanboi.
Why paraphrase when you can link?
It's always 1950 somewhere...
Holding a phone to your ear not only ties up a hand, but also probably means you're having a conversation.
A sat nav, on the other hand, is designed so that you don't have to touch it once it's set up. Its voice instructions are designed so you don't usually have to even look at it. If you do have to look at it, it's designed so that a glance is sufficient.
What's more, many people's alternative to a sat nav is to refer to a paper map while driving. That's obviously more of a distraction.
BTW - Studies have shown that having a phone conversation is more distracting than having a conversation with a passenger. Something to do with passengers knowing when to give you space to concentrate on a road hazard. Do your own Googling.
beauty is subjective, but a bad interface is not
Hence how we all agree about vi vs Emacs, right?
I like SO's interface. What do you find wrong with it? Especially, the markup language is terrific.
However, the difference is programmers usually know how to -ask- questions that make sense to other programmers.
Fairly often on SO, you get badly constructed questions. Sometimes the questions go unanswered. But often something like this happens:
- users comment on the question (rather than leave an answer) asking for clarification
- the original questioner fixes up his question, based on the queries
- OR a 'senior' user (anyone who's gained enough rep points) fixes up the question
- With the question clarified, the answering can begin.
It's a reaction to Yahoo Answers and Experts Exchange - with the difference that it doesn't suck.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/09/15.html ... is Joel's introduction to the site, which explains their motivation.
So, how does it differ from Ask Slashdot?
Mostly, it's the economy of reputation points and badges (sort of like Xbox Live achievements).
People get the warm and fuzzies just from having a score, and SO uses that instinct in all sorts of ways, to promote good questions, good answers, the refinement of good answers, and the sorting of good answers to the top.
It also helps that it's very useable. For example, the post markup language is pretty much perfect for the purpose (making it very easy to include code snippets with syntax highlighting)
Flat bed scanners - well slow.
AFAIK "flat bed scanner" simply means a scanner where you place the item to be scanned on a flat plane of glass to be scanned. The technology that actually does the scanning is irrelevant.
In which case, the Xerox printer/scanner in my office does flat bed scanning in the blink of an eye. I ran it with the lid up once to prove to myself it wasn't just a camera - and sure enough a sensor bar whips across the page.
Of course, it's not as practical for scanning bound books as the Google solution.
Professional economists understand there's no such thing as an "ideal world."
I see what you mean, but I think there's a fairly strong consensus that the equilibrium reached in a classic commodities market (prices pushed down, efficiency pushed up, nobody making excessive profits) is a desirable outcome.
The invisible hand of Wall Street just recently squeezed our collective invisible nuts quite smartly.
Regulate The Hand.
I agree. My limited understanding of the crash was that bad loans were being bundled up and sold to agencies acting on incomplete/inaccurate information. If they'd had the right information, they wouldn't have bought the debts, or they'd have bought the debts for a sustainable price.
The classic economist's view is that the government's duty is to regulate so that this information flows properly. Secrecy impedes market forces.
I can't believe that such a simple equation like "what you eat, minus what you burn, is what you wear on your ass and thighs" doesn't make sense to people.
I think that working with such a simple model is a good way to approach weight loss. Eat less, or do more exercise and you *will* lose fat.
However, it's not actually true. Some people excrete surplus calories instead of storing it as fat. Lifestyle affects this. I am not a biochemist, and the complexities of this are beyond me.
I fail to see what market failure has to do with this. People want big hamburgers with fries and a diet coke, and they get it.
The PDF explains their angle.
ECONOMIC RATIONALE
Economists agree that government intervention in a market is warranted when there are "market failures" that result in less-than-optimal production and consumption. Several market failures exist with respect to sugar-sweetened beverages.
First, because many persons do not fully appreciate the links between consumption of these
beverages and health consequences, they make consumption decisions with imperfect information. These decisions are likely to be further distorted by the extensive marketing campaigns that advertise the benefits of consumption. A second failure results from time-inconsistent preferences (i.e., decisions that provide short-term gratification but long-term harm).
The classic market failure is that some participant (it could be a firm, it could be consumers) is making decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information. They're arguing that in this case, it's the consumers.
I'd argue that they're right about the failure, but that taxation is not the solution. Those failures can be addressed directly through education and through controls on advertising.
It isn't safe to walk anywhere in the United States? Do you realize how absurd that sounds?
It would sound absurd, if that is what he'd said. What he actually said was:
most Americans never walk anywhere simply because it isn't safe to do so
... which is reasonable if you assume "never" is an exaggeration.
Americans are usually astonished when I tell them I walk 20 minutes to work. When I visit my colleagues in Tampa, I stay in a hotel less than half a mile from the office. Yet I drive from the hotel to the office, because to walk involves crossing 6 lanes with no pedestrian signal.
It's a chicken and egg situation.
Phoenix is too spread out for non-drivers, because during its biggest period of growth, planners assumed cars would continue to be ubiquitous.
Cars continue to be ubiquitous because the city isn't planned for any other form of transport.
In older cities - Santa Fe, New York City, most European cities (with the exception of a few "new towns") you can see how a differently designed city can make driving less necessary.
"Obese" is a feel-good term now?
They're not arguing this from an economist's view. A healthy market is one that responds to needs and wants. They're saying people's wants are cheaper than their needs leading them to unhealthy habits. It is not an economic argument for junk food/soda tax.
Actually the New England Journal of Medicine is attempting to do exactly that (from the PDF):
ECONOMIC RATIONALE
Economists agree that government intervention in a market is warranted when there are "market failures" that result in less-than-optimal production and consumption. Several market failures exist with respect to sugar-sweetened beverages.
First, because many persons do not fully appreciate the links between consumption of these
beverages and health consequences, they make consumption decisions with imperfect information. These decisions are likely to be further distorted by the extensive marketing campaigns that advertise the benefits of consumption. A second failure results from time-inconsistent preferences (i.e., decisions that provide short-term gratification but long-term harm).