Re:modern day gaming is alienating, though
on
Sean In The Middle
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· Score: 2
I disagree. If you consider first person shooter's as all there is to gaming today then you have a point. Unfortunately, it is an extremely large portion of the market. However, there are plenty of great games that support some degree of communication and intelligence - EverQuest, muds in general, and strategy games.
The incredibly popularity of FPSs does make me sad, though.
All right, in an attempt to not say what everyone else has been saying, here are my thoughts.
According to this page this box will have a 750 Mhz duron processor with 64 MB of RAM. I run a 700 Mhz duron with 196 MB of RAM, and they aren't very expensive. My motherboard (an Abit designed for overclocking, if I feel like it) was by far the most expensive component, but my processor was only $55. 64 MB of RAM is only $30. These are consumer prices, not mass wholesale prices. I'd imagine they could probably get a motherboard custom made for about $50-75 without any expansion slots in mass. Then of course they need their custom cases, which I have no idea how much they cost. Last but not least are the hard drive and video card, and dvd drive (I'm assuming networking and USB is built onto motherboard).
With that said, I think they could manage to mass produce these for the $350 sale price selling them at cost. However, there is no way they'll be done by fall. Pessimistic, yes, but it's already mid-April and they don't even have a prototype unit built, so the stages of development and testing cannot possibly be started.
Moving along, I think it's a wonderful project, and it could very likely be my first console I will buy since the original NES (yes, it was computer games after that for me). On the other hand, I wouldn't mind a sort of emulator that would be able to read TuxBox games and play them on my (almost exact TuxBox equivalent) PC. The only sticky point here is how dependent they get on a particular graphics chip, but if they're smart they'll go through the OS to access the video card and not put too many vendor-specific calls to it (so I can have an NVidia instead of an ATI chip, for instance).
Last, about making money, everyone has been saying how they can't make money with those prices and that target date. Here's the thing - it's a volunteer effort, with no apparent desire to make loads of money off of it (though it isn't exactly nonprofit). That means the only real overhead is the hardware and marketing, which apparently are being supported by the members of the TuxBox community, which is growing. This is the point where I see the TuxBox project failing, due to lack of funding, but we'll see.
If you like the concepts behind this project, I think we could all find a way to support it. Perhaps they should turn the project officially non-profit and set up a page for donations to buy prototype hardware and support marketing expense. Think, the first open-source and non-profit console ever created.
Oh, one more thing. I doubt a first-generation open-source device will reasonably compete with the major consoles. Microsoft has the XBox in development for a few years now, and they're having a hard time coming up with the release by fall, so you know it's a complicated and difficult project. PS 2 has the market with the PS 1, being solid fun platforms well supported by developers. Nintendo will probably release its GameCube early next year. I think it will take a second-generation device to truly have the polish that consoles need - stability, playability, and developer support.
Is there any plan for a *nix wide upgrade to a 64 bit time variable in the next few years? I figure we ought to take care of this now, otherwise the entire *nix community will be mocked by the Windows and Mac communities in the 2030s. Let's just get the upgrade over with and not have to worry about it in the future.
I use one of the first-generation zip drives that my brother purchased many years ago, and it still works flawlessly. He didn't realize he registered his product until he received a letter in the mail telling him about these rebates. He scoffed at the uselessness of a rebate off of zip drive stuff - because they're close to useless now.
Ironically, my brother was also the recipient of a much nicer settlement from Toshiba for their floppy drives - and his never had a problem =). They actually gave real credit at their store, a few hundred dollars or something, enough to help buy his wireless network card.
Congrats to the plaintiffs - you've managed to get every Zip drive owner a completely useless rebate offer!
Am I the only one completely turned off by the high ($400-$600) price target if and when it's released? I'd rather pay half the price for the Agenda even at a sacrifice of those features. Besides, the specs look a whole lot like the Compaq Ipaq, which runs the Evil Handheld OS (and Linux nicely enough). The thing is, the Compaq is available now, and is in the same price category.
More important to pretty full-color screens and digital camera add-ons are long battery life, quick and easy PIM applications, and excellent handwriting recognition. The Palm and Visor have this, and until WinCE devices and Linux devices do, they'll fail.
Darn, because then it would contend for the web server with the longest uptime. 4 years is very impressive for the uptime of any server on any platform. Maybe Novell should market this in some nifty commercial showing how stable their product used to be.
This isn't a good deal at all. I get my NiMH batteries from Home Depot for $10 per 4 pack of AA, the exact same as the site, except I only pay a 5% sales tax, not a shipping charge. Yeah, Radio Shack is a ripoff for everything, but the mass retail outlet (Wal Mart, Home Depot) is great at giving low prices on this sort of stuff.
Granted, the Energizer NiMH batteries are only 1200 mAH, but the difference is more than made up for in the cost of shipping those "bad boys" of yours.
According to This Agenda page, the Agenda weighs 4 oz without batteries. The weight of 2 AA batteries can vary depending on the type of battery one is using.
Yes, the reviewer should have gotten out an accurate scale and measured exactly how heavy it was, and then gotten a second scale and verified it - but we can't have everything.
Going to wait for a post-release review
on
Agenda VR3 Review
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· Score: 5
I have no intention of buying this first-generation device - I learned my lesson with a first gen WinCE device (still very usable for taking notes and very basic spreadsheets, I'm glad I only paid $100 for it), and my mp3 CD player. However, it's unfair to simply denounce this as a horrible product when the reviewer has nothing more than a pre-production release. I imagine he got something that was put together between a few days to a few weeks ago. A lot of changes can happen in the one month previous to a release.
I eagerly await a review after the April 23rd ship date - I want to see the potential this thing really has. I will probably seriously consider a second generation device, but it must have usability as well as the "toy" factor, including these features:
- lithium ion battery with decent (10-20 hour) lifetime. This is one of my largest considerations because otherwise I have to plunk down more money for less-convenient NiMH batteries (which I use in my current PDA and digital camera).
- Slightly larger screen. This agenda has a 3" x 2 1/8" screen (interesting that a Hong Kong company uses English units, or so it seems). This is just too darned small, like the Palms, for my liking (my WinCE palmtop has a wonderful 2 1/2" x 4 1/2" - unreasonable for handhelds, I know.) Also, reverse backlighting annoys me, there should be a switch to make it normal like the Palm hack.
- A set of physical scroll buttons (up and down) is essential; I like to read on my palmtops, and to tap to scroll down too much of a pain.
- The applications should run about as fast as Palms - after all, the Palms have less than a 30 Mhz processor. This is the true test of how fast Linux can be on slower devices.
- expansion cards for storage and wireless networking are essential - modems are practically useless (at least to me), but a wireless network card would give me access in many buildings I occupy.
Unfortunately, the photo Michael likes so much is among a bunch that are only available at low resolution here at the Mars Odyssey Website. More important scientific photos and artist renderings are frequently available in high-quality tiff format at places like this. I don't know if they had a high enough resolution camera to take the sort of pictures needed for reprint.
If anyone can find a high-res version of this picture, please post it - I'd love to have Ofoto make an ultra high quality 8x10 for me (thanks for the idea, Michael).
In a somewhat surprising move, Slashdot administrators have chosen to move their primary web hosting servers to the Windows 2000 platform. While the audience of Slashdot is primarily unix-based and Microsoft-hating, CmdrTaco believes the move is justified.
"You get what you pay for, so we're paying Microsoft a lot of money for our clustered servers. We like the fact that we can blame Microsoft when Slashdot gets overloaded with requests. In addition, Windows 2000 can run MySQL just as well as Linux. I also like to browse with Internet Explorer on the web server and click the pretty little widgets to mess with server hardware." he said.
The FCC is carefully monitoring what AOL Time Warner is doing, and one of those areas is IM. Yes, this is a step backward from opening up the protocol and standard and allowing everyone on the net to talk to each other like one big happy family (instead of kicking out gaim and msn users). I have some degree of hope that the FCC will jump on this as just being pretty mean to the development of a unified messaging system for the internet (which, some envision, will become about as popular as today's e-mail).
Until then, yes, TOC works. Granted, it may not have as many nice features as OSCAR, but it is adequate for 95% of IM uses. Want file transfer? Use an ICQ clone. Then again, I can see AOL Time Warner messing around a lot with their pretty ICQ service too, but there's only so much we can do.
I don't know about the general viewer, but when I watch TV, I change the channel when the commercials come on. On the radio, I flip between 4 local stations looking for music. If I don't change the channel, I just ignore the radio/TV until the music/show is back on.
Now if I'm playing this game (dumb game, too easy compared to quality trivia games), there's little chance I'd be spending those few seconds seriously looking at the ads, I'd be thinking about the questions, etc. Besides, 7 seconds is an easy amount of time to just simply ignore. I guess we'll have to wait for the statistics, but I can't imagine the click-through rate will be good at all (after all, who wants to interrupt a game they enjoy playing?).
I only briefly used Abiword, so I cannot be certain it doesn't have this functionality, but I use the following:
- Basic drawing tools (useful for small diagrams in lab writeups, etc)
- The ability to import in a variety of media - esp. spreadsheets (I hear this will be coming soon), etc.
- Like I said, tables are very important to me
- I don't use them, but macros are commonly used in automatic letter generating apps, etc
- Full import/export compatibility with Office 97 and 2000 - which means Abiword must support all of that functionality.
I'm sure there are more advanced features deeply hidden in Word that I personally don't use but some businesses might, but I'm sure the Abiword developers are quite aware of any shortcomings.
Two of the nicest things I see about Abiword are its cross-platform nature and its incredible speed.
I'm definately, definately willing to switch to another word processor, and I have a feeling I'll be switching to either Abiword or Open Office soon.
Perhaps I came off wrong in saying I don't like Abiword - I do, it's a very impressive open source product. I look forward to trying new versions as they are released.
From my personal trials with Abiword, I've found that it doesn't hold a candle to a polished, full-featured word processor like Word or WordPerfect (StarOffice comes close..but it's just way too slow!). The article commented about tables not being supported, and with plans to implement them right after 1.0. For this reason alone many of us simply cannot switch to Abiword for our main word processor - I use tables in almost every document for effective formatting.
Then again, vi is enough for the writers of Linux Journal, so I guess that makes Abiword overkill:).
Don't forget about the Lynx and others..those were great systems. I believe that Game Boys are long since due for a major, major upgrade.
Yes, Game Gear ruled. Buy a TV tuner card and you have a portable TV + a portable gaming system, with an adapter that supported the old Sega Master System games...all happening about 7 years ago - amazing.
Let's face it, Washington D.C. isn't very full of technically-oriented people. I wouldn't be surprised if no one even recommended to Bush that he try encryption. This simply shows the incredible need we have to educate our government about cyberspace.
Earlier today an article showed how e-mails to Congress didn't have nearly the impact of snail-mail. How stupid. Instead of finding ways to better communicate through cyberspace, our government simply takes steps back.
Granted, Bush not e-mailing a few dozen friends isn't a threat to national security, but it's the principle of the thing.
Benjamin Franklin was a well-known Deist of his time. Basically, the Deists believed that human nature and the universe was inherently good, which differed greatly from the concurrently-popular Puritan view.
Through this belief that the universe was inherently good, the Deists believed that the best way to worship God was to do good and service others. Franklin demonstrated his wish to help others through the establishment of the University of Pennsylvania and the first American library (excellent way to promote free knowledge). He also improved the quality of living in his favored city of Philadelphia by improving street lighting and sewage systems.
Therefore, it makes perfect sense that Franklin would not want to patent his useful stove invention - doing so would only hamper competition to provide cheap availability of his useful stove. Benjamin Franklin helped early American society in so many ways that he easily became the classic American hero we know today.
With the widespread availability of affordable gaming systems (both PC and console), it's understandable that the arcade business might suffer a few losses. The price of valuable floor space (especially in malls) is becoming extremely expensive, as is the cost of these arcade systems. Accordingly, the game prices are going up a great deal - a $0.25 is a rarity, and it's not uncommon to spend $1.00 playing a 10 minute game.
Simply put, this is just too much money for too little entertainment. I live somewhat near a theater and arcade combo (with bumper cars and mini-golf). Going to see a 2-3 hour movie is much cheaper than spending about an hour in the arcade!
If one is a serious gamer, the time spent playing games every week is mind-boggling. Purchasing a cheaper console (Dreamcast, PS 1, etc) is FAR more economical than playing one's favorite arcade game every night. In addition, emulators are everywhere for those with PCs, playing the old classic arcade games. For those true geeks who like the boxed stand-up arcade set, there have been posts to/. about turning a cheap PC into a dedicated emulator in a custom built box.
The ONLY real advantage in a real arcade system is unusual hardware - especially racing games and VR games. However, even that gaming hardware is becoming increasingly affordable.
Industrial designers poked fun at virtually all facets of computers and other electronic gadgets, and the Apple iMac--displayed in PowerPoint presentations in its groovy new shades
Funny..computers appear to be useful enough to give PowerPoint presentations to a crowd to quickly and easily present information to a large group. I find it a bit hypocritical they'd bash computer design and ease of use and use PowerPoint instead of some other presentation medium.
Some day, my kids will grow up to be adults and experience the harsh realities of the real world, but until then, I am going to be the one who decides what is or is not appropriate
Ok, I mostly agreed with you up to this point. Face the facts - parents have the responsibility to prepare their child from the real world, not shield them from it. I fully agree with home schooling, but you do not want to be overprotective during their childhood so they are shocked when they discover the world isn't perfect. A slow, careful exposure to both the good and bad parts of society will better enable children to handle the obstacles they will face in adult life. I'm not saying that you show your children pornography or anything like that, but they must be adequately exposed to a real sense of history, not some watered-down censored version. As a human race we've accomplished some great things, but also brought upon ourselves horrid deeds. Ex. Christopher Columbus was not this great almighty hero of the Western Hemisphere - he raped, killed, and stole from thousands of Native Americans - but they don't teach you that in elementary school.
I fully agree with your wish to prevent your child from certain things, and I believe you are a rare parent indeed who personally sees to what your children see and hear. Please, though, inform your children well about the bad parts of society both yesterday and today.
"16. The Government does not, however, accept the view - asserted by some respondents - that Open Source software is threatened by the existing extent of
patentability. This seems to fly in the face of the facts, notably that during the last decade Open Source software has flourished."
Hey, they've got a point - software patents have been issued often enough in the 1990s, and OSS has boomed nonetheless, much more than in the 80s (then again, so did the entire industry).
Someone quoted the latter half of this, but it's important that the first part is emphasized: "Software should not be patentable where there is no
technological innovation, and technological innovations should not cease to be patentable merely because the innovation lies in software."
Perhaps they're more receptive to claims that the patent is not innovative or original, but only actual cases can show this, not statements of principle.
"However, the Government agrees with those respondents who said that at present the law is not clear enough, and that this is damaging. Clarification is needed."
Thank you, few governmental actions bother me more than vague and poorly worded laws. Who knows if anything will come of this, but it's a bit reassuring.
"The Government's conclusion is that those who favour some form of patentability for
business methods have not provided the necessary evidence that it would be likely to increase innovation. Unless and until that evidence is available, ways of doing
business should remain unpatentable."
That's also reassuring, lawsuits about copying how a competitor operates is something I'd rather not see (or see more prevalent). It's what competition and capitalism is all about.
I was interested to hear an actual author debate copyright infringement, but I have the hardest time putting up with all capital letters. Apparently this was as close to how the author sent it as possible, so it seems likely that it was done intentionally.
Using all capital letters is equivalent to shouting, and I do not respect people who start off making their point by shouting.
MUDs may be easy to use after you've learned one (because the interface is very similar). However, one still has that initial learning curve. Granted, a MUD has a bit more intuitiveness than your average bash shell, but still. Bash is far more efficient for most tasks, after that initial curve is overcome. I think it's more useful to show a newbie how to do things in a windowed-manager, and when they get comfortable with the concept of a file system with directories (folders), subdirectories, filetypes, extensions, etc. then introduce them to the shell. Learning to get around in a window manager greatly increases overall knowledge of how the filesystem is set up (regardless of OS), which is a prerequisite for using a shell prompt effectively.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree. If you consider first person shooter's as all there is to gaming today then you have a point. Unfortunately, it is an extremely large portion of the market. However, there are plenty of great games that support some degree of communication and intelligence - EverQuest, muds in general, and strategy games.
The incredibly popularity of FPSs does make me sad, though.
All right, in an attempt to not say what everyone else has been saying, here are my thoughts.
According to this page this box will have a 750 Mhz duron processor with 64 MB of RAM. I run a 700 Mhz duron with 196 MB of RAM, and they aren't very expensive. My motherboard (an Abit designed for overclocking, if I feel like it) was by far the most expensive component, but my processor was only $55. 64 MB of RAM is only $30. These are consumer prices, not mass wholesale prices. I'd imagine they could probably get a motherboard custom made for about $50-75 without any expansion slots in mass. Then of course they need their custom cases, which I have no idea how much they cost. Last but not least are the hard drive and video card, and dvd drive (I'm assuming networking and USB is built onto motherboard).
With that said, I think they could manage to mass produce these for the $350 sale price selling them at cost. However, there is no way they'll be done by fall. Pessimistic, yes, but it's already mid-April and they don't even have a prototype unit built, so the stages of development and testing cannot possibly be started.
Moving along, I think it's a wonderful project, and it could very likely be my first console I will buy since the original NES (yes, it was computer games after that for me). On the other hand, I wouldn't mind a sort of emulator that would be able to read TuxBox games and play them on my (almost exact TuxBox equivalent) PC. The only sticky point here is how dependent they get on a particular graphics chip, but if they're smart they'll go through the OS to access the video card and not put too many vendor-specific calls to it (so I can have an NVidia instead of an ATI chip, for instance).
Last, about making money, everyone has been saying how they can't make money with those prices and that target date. Here's the thing - it's a volunteer effort, with no apparent desire to make loads of money off of it (though it isn't exactly nonprofit). That means the only real overhead is the hardware and marketing, which apparently are being supported by the members of the TuxBox community, which is growing. This is the point where I see the TuxBox project failing, due to lack of funding, but we'll see.
If you like the concepts behind this project, I think we could all find a way to support it. Perhaps they should turn the project officially non-profit and set up a page for donations to buy prototype hardware and support marketing expense. Think, the first open-source and non-profit console ever created.
Oh, one more thing. I doubt a first-generation open-source device will reasonably compete with the major consoles. Microsoft has the XBox in development for a few years now, and they're having a hard time coming up with the release by fall, so you know it's a complicated and difficult project. PS 2 has the market with the PS 1, being solid fun platforms well supported by developers. Nintendo will probably release its GameCube early next year. I think it will take a second-generation device to truly have the polish that consoles need - stability, playability, and developer support.
Is there any plan for a *nix wide upgrade to a 64 bit time variable in the next few years? I figure we ought to take care of this now, otherwise the entire *nix community will be mocked by the Windows and Mac communities in the 2030s. Let's just get the upgrade over with and not have to worry about it in the future.
I use one of the first-generation zip drives that my brother purchased many years ago, and it still works flawlessly. He didn't realize he registered his product until he received a letter in the mail telling him about these rebates. He scoffed at the uselessness of a rebate off of zip drive stuff - because they're close to useless now.
Ironically, my brother was also the recipient of a much nicer settlement from Toshiba for their floppy drives - and his never had a problem =). They actually gave real credit at their store, a few hundred dollars or something, enough to help buy his wireless network card.
Congrats to the plaintiffs - you've managed to get every Zip drive owner a completely useless rebate offer!
Am I the only one completely turned off by the high ($400-$600) price target if and when it's released? I'd rather pay half the price for the Agenda even at a sacrifice of those features. Besides, the specs look a whole lot like the Compaq Ipaq, which runs the Evil Handheld OS (and Linux nicely enough). The thing is, the Compaq is available now, and is in the same price category.
More important to pretty full-color screens and digital camera add-ons are long battery life, quick and easy PIM applications, and excellent handwriting recognition. The Palm and Visor have this, and until WinCE devices and Linux devices do, they'll fail.
Darn, because then it would contend for the web server with the longest uptime. 4 years is very impressive for the uptime of any server on any platform. Maybe Novell should market this in some nifty commercial showing how stable their product used to be.
This isn't a good deal at all. I get my NiMH batteries from Home Depot for $10 per 4 pack of AA, the exact same as the site, except I only pay a 5% sales tax, not a shipping charge. Yeah, Radio Shack is a ripoff for everything, but the mass retail outlet (Wal Mart, Home Depot) is great at giving low prices on this sort of stuff.
Granted, the Energizer NiMH batteries are only 1200 mAH, but the difference is more than made up for in the cost of shipping those "bad boys" of yours.
According to This Agenda page, the Agenda weighs 4 oz without batteries. The weight of 2 AA batteries can vary depending on the type of battery one is using.
Yes, the reviewer should have gotten out an accurate scale and measured exactly how heavy it was, and then gotten a second scale and verified it - but we can't have everything.
I have no intention of buying this first-generation device - I learned my lesson with a first gen WinCE device (still very usable for taking notes and very basic spreadsheets, I'm glad I only paid $100 for it), and my mp3 CD player. However, it's unfair to simply denounce this as a horrible product when the reviewer has nothing more than a pre-production release. I imagine he got something that was put together between a few days to a few weeks ago. A lot of changes can happen in the one month previous to a release.
I eagerly await a review after the April 23rd ship date - I want to see the potential this thing really has. I will probably seriously consider a second generation device, but it must have usability as well as the "toy" factor, including these features:
- lithium ion battery with decent (10-20 hour) lifetime. This is one of my largest considerations because otherwise I have to plunk down more money for less-convenient NiMH batteries (which I use in my current PDA and digital camera).
- Slightly larger screen. This agenda has a 3" x 2 1/8" screen (interesting that a Hong Kong company uses English units, or so it seems). This is just too darned small, like the Palms, for my liking (my WinCE palmtop has a wonderful 2 1/2" x 4 1/2" - unreasonable for handhelds, I know.) Also, reverse backlighting annoys me, there should be a switch to make it normal like the Palm hack.
- A set of physical scroll buttons (up and down) is essential; I like to read on my palmtops, and to tap to scroll down too much of a pain.
- The applications should run about as fast as Palms - after all, the Palms have less than a 30 Mhz processor. This is the true test of how fast Linux can be on slower devices.
- expansion cards for storage and wireless networking are essential - modems are practically useless (at least to me), but a wireless network card would give me access in many buildings I occupy.
We'll just have to see how it goes.
Unfortunately, the photo Michael likes so much is among a bunch that are only available at low resolution here at the Mars Odyssey Website. More important scientific photos and artist renderings are frequently available in high-quality tiff format at places like this. I don't know if they had a high enough resolution camera to take the sort of pictures needed for reprint.
If anyone can find a high-res version of this picture, please post it - I'd love to have Ofoto make an ultra high quality 8x10 for me (thanks for the idea, Michael).
"Slashdot Moving To Windows 2000"
In a somewhat surprising move, Slashdot administrators have chosen to move their primary web hosting servers to the Windows 2000 platform. While the audience of Slashdot is primarily unix-based and Microsoft-hating, CmdrTaco believes the move is justified.
"You get what you pay for, so we're paying Microsoft a lot of money for our clustered servers. We like the fact that we can blame Microsoft when Slashdot gets overloaded with requests. In addition, Windows 2000 can run MySQL just as well as Linux. I also like to browse with Internet Explorer on the web server and click the pretty little widgets to mess with server hardware." he said.
The FCC is carefully monitoring what AOL Time Warner is doing, and one of those areas is IM. Yes, this is a step backward from opening up the protocol and standard and allowing everyone on the net to talk to each other like one big happy family (instead of kicking out gaim and msn users). I have some degree of hope that the FCC will jump on this as just being pretty mean to the development of a unified messaging system for the internet (which, some envision, will become about as popular as today's e-mail).
Until then, yes, TOC works. Granted, it may not have as many nice features as OSCAR, but it is adequate for 95% of IM uses. Want file transfer? Use an ICQ clone. Then again, I can see AOL Time Warner messing around a lot with their pretty ICQ service too, but there's only so much we can do.
I don't know about the general viewer, but when I watch TV, I change the channel when the commercials come on. On the radio, I flip between 4 local stations looking for music. If I don't change the channel, I just ignore the radio/TV until the music/show is back on.
Now if I'm playing this game (dumb game, too easy compared to quality trivia games), there's little chance I'd be spending those few seconds seriously looking at the ads, I'd be thinking about the questions, etc. Besides, 7 seconds is an easy amount of time to just simply ignore. I guess we'll have to wait for the statistics, but I can't imagine the click-through rate will be good at all (after all, who wants to interrupt a game they enjoy playing?).
I only briefly used Abiword, so I cannot be certain it doesn't have this functionality, but I use the following:
- Basic drawing tools (useful for small diagrams in lab writeups, etc) - The ability to import in a variety of media - esp. spreadsheets (I hear this will be coming soon), etc. - Like I said, tables are very important to me - I don't use them, but macros are commonly used in automatic letter generating apps, etc - Full import/export compatibility with Office 97 and 2000 - which means Abiword must support all of that functionality. I'm sure there are more advanced features deeply hidden in Word that I personally don't use but some businesses might, but I'm sure the Abiword developers are quite aware of any shortcomings. Two of the nicest things I see about Abiword are its cross-platform nature and its incredible speed. I'm definately, definately willing to switch to another word processor, and I have a feeling I'll be switching to either Abiword or Open Office soon. Perhaps I came off wrong in saying I don't like Abiword - I do, it's a very impressive open source product. I look forward to trying new versions as they are released.
From my personal trials with Abiword, I've found that it doesn't hold a candle to a polished, full-featured word processor like Word or WordPerfect (StarOffice comes close..but it's just way too slow!). The article commented about tables not being supported, and with plans to implement them right after 1.0. For this reason alone many of us simply cannot switch to Abiword for our main word processor - I use tables in almost every document for effective formatting.
:).
Then again, vi is enough for the writers of Linux Journal, so I guess that makes Abiword overkill
Don't forget about the Lynx and others..those were great systems. I believe that Game Boys are long since due for a major, major upgrade. Yes, Game Gear ruled. Buy a TV tuner card and you have a portable TV + a portable gaming system, with an adapter that supported the old Sega Master System games...all happening about 7 years ago - amazing.
Let's face it, Washington D.C. isn't very full of technically-oriented people. I wouldn't be surprised if no one even recommended to Bush that he try encryption. This simply shows the incredible need we have to educate our government about cyberspace.
Earlier today an article showed how e-mails to Congress didn't have nearly the impact of snail-mail. How stupid. Instead of finding ways to better communicate through cyberspace, our government simply takes steps back.
Granted, Bush not e-mailing a few dozen friends isn't a threat to national security, but it's the principle of the thing.
Benjamin Franklin was a well-known Deist of his time. Basically, the Deists believed that human nature and the universe was inherently good, which differed greatly from the concurrently-popular Puritan view.
Through this belief that the universe was inherently good, the Deists believed that the best way to worship God was to do good and service others. Franklin demonstrated his wish to help others through the establishment of the University of Pennsylvania and the first American library (excellent way to promote free knowledge). He also improved the quality of living in his favored city of Philadelphia by improving street lighting and sewage systems.
Therefore, it makes perfect sense that Franklin would not want to patent his useful stove invention - doing so would only hamper competition to provide cheap availability of his useful stove. Benjamin Franklin helped early American society in so many ways that he easily became the classic American hero we know today.
With the widespread availability of affordable gaming systems (both PC and console), it's understandable that the arcade business might suffer a few losses. The price of valuable floor space (especially in malls) is becoming extremely expensive, as is the cost of these arcade systems. Accordingly, the game prices are going up a great deal - a $0.25 is a rarity, and it's not uncommon to spend $1.00 playing a 10 minute game.
/. about turning a cheap PC into a dedicated emulator in a custom built box.
Simply put, this is just too much money for too little entertainment. I live somewhat near a theater and arcade combo (with bumper cars and mini-golf). Going to see a 2-3 hour movie is much cheaper than spending about an hour in the arcade!
If one is a serious gamer, the time spent playing games every week is mind-boggling. Purchasing a cheaper console (Dreamcast, PS 1, etc) is FAR more economical than playing one's favorite arcade game every night. In addition, emulators are everywhere for those with PCs, playing the old classic arcade games. For those true geeks who like the boxed stand-up arcade set, there have been posts to
The ONLY real advantage in a real arcade system is unusual hardware - especially racing games and VR games. However, even that gaming hardware is becoming increasingly affordable.
I simply can't believe that such a reputable company like Microsoft would artificially try to make its product look better than it really is.
Seriously though, I'm sure this stuff is everywhere. Now the real question: did they use Photoshop for Mac or Windows?
Industrial designers poked fun at virtually all facets of computers and other electronic gadgets, and the Apple iMac--displayed in PowerPoint presentations in its groovy new shades
Funny..computers appear to be useful enough to give PowerPoint presentations to a crowd to quickly and easily present information to a large group. I find it a bit hypocritical they'd bash computer design and ease of use and use PowerPoint instead of some other presentation medium.
Some day, my kids will grow up to be adults and experience the harsh realities of the real world, but until then, I am going to be the one who decides what is or is not appropriate
Ok, I mostly agreed with you up to this point. Face the facts - parents have the responsibility to prepare their child from the real world, not shield them from it. I fully agree with home schooling, but you do not want to be overprotective during their childhood so they are shocked when they discover the world isn't perfect. A slow, careful exposure to both the good and bad parts of society will better enable children to handle the obstacles they will face in adult life. I'm not saying that you show your children pornography or anything like that, but they must be adequately exposed to a real sense of history, not some watered-down censored version. As a human race we've accomplished some great things, but also brought upon ourselves horrid deeds. Ex. Christopher Columbus was not this great almighty hero of the Western Hemisphere - he raped, killed, and stole from thousands of Native Americans - but they don't teach you that in elementary school.
I fully agree with your wish to prevent your child from certain things, and I believe you are a rare parent indeed who personally sees to what your children see and hear. Please, though, inform your children well about the bad parts of society both yesterday and today.
"16. The Government does not, however, accept the view - asserted by some respondents - that Open Source software is threatened by the existing extent of patentability. This seems to fly in the face of the facts, notably that during the last decade Open Source software has flourished."
Hey, they've got a point - software patents have been issued often enough in the 1990s, and OSS has boomed nonetheless, much more than in the 80s (then again, so did the entire industry).
Someone quoted the latter half of this, but it's important that the first part is emphasized:
"Software should not be patentable where there is no technological innovation, and technological innovations should not cease to be patentable merely because the innovation lies in software."
Perhaps they're more receptive to claims that the patent is not innovative or original, but only actual cases can show this, not statements of principle.
"However, the Government agrees with those respondents who said that at present the law is not clear enough, and that this is damaging. Clarification is needed."
Thank you, few governmental actions bother me more than vague and poorly worded laws. Who knows if anything will come of this, but it's a bit reassuring.
"The Government's conclusion is that those who favour some form of patentability for business methods have not provided the necessary evidence that it would be likely to increase innovation. Unless and until that evidence is available, ways of doing business should remain unpatentable."
That's also reassuring, lawsuits about copying how a competitor operates is something I'd rather not see (or see more prevalent). It's what competition and capitalism is all about.
I was interested to hear an actual author debate copyright infringement, but I have the hardest time putting up with all capital letters. Apparently this was as close to how the author sent it as possible, so it seems likely that it was done intentionally.
Using all capital letters is equivalent to shouting, and I do not respect people who start off making their point by shouting.
MUDs may be easy to use after you've learned one (because the interface is very similar). However, one still has that initial learning curve. Granted, a MUD has a bit more intuitiveness than your average bash shell, but still. Bash is far more efficient for most tasks, after that initial curve is overcome. I think it's more useful to show a newbie how to do things in a windowed-manager, and when they get comfortable with the concept of a file system with directories (folders), subdirectories, filetypes, extensions, etc. then introduce them to the shell. Learning to get around in a window manager greatly increases overall knowledge of how the filesystem is set up (regardless of OS), which is a prerequisite for using a shell prompt effectively.