I do agree that MS products, in general, implement older technologies ("50 year old wiring"), and after MS's inspection of their own products, MS decides not to "update the wiring" except when forced by industry or circumstances (like Blaster). And I really don't think MS would ever suggest to the industry to "get out of the house" when "the house" is Windows.
If you're going to claim I misunderstood your analogy, you should at least try to understand mine. I wasn't saying that Microsoft implements older technology and then fails to update it. I said that the person with the burning house was using older technology (Windows 2000) and that person refused to update (install the patch, at least, or upgrade to Win2k3). Suggesting that the user "get out of the house" is more like, "get that machine quarantined so you can fix it without exposing it yourself to more security risks." Even if I did mean it as you interpreted, Microsoft certainly would tell you get get off of win2k and upgrade to win2k3.
I would remind same poster that MS was pressured by the industry for years and several major releases of Windows to stop shipping the product with all the services on and ports open.
And they've done that (see Windows 2003). Problem is, this bug is for Windows 2000, which did suck like you say (just like Redhat sucked at the time, for instance).
This is like calling 911 and having the dispatcher say "It can't be a very bad fire if it's only in the kitchen! Call us back when it gets to attic."
If you're going to use bad analogies, it's closer to, "Your house burned down because you were using 50 year old wiring that wasn't up to code. We inspected your house and even offered to update all of your wiring for free, and you declined. Now your house is on fire, and we can send out a fire truck, but there's really nothing more we can do as it'll be ash by the time the fire response gets there. We suggest you get out of the house now and start thinking about how you're going to fix this correctly when you rebuild."
Nothing! The tech for it has been around forever, they just slapped a new name on it.
To be fair, while Microsoft introduced the XMLHTTP object in 1999, other browsers didn't implement a similar interface until 2002 or later (2002 being the first implementation of XMLHttpRequest in Mozilla). So if your definition is of "forever" is "the last four years" then this has been aroud forever. (Note: I'm ignoring hidden iframe solutions that really have been around "forever", where "forever" is defined as "since rich web browsers have been around, such as IE4 and Netscape 4".)
I do agree that "AJAX" is just a flashy name for an already-existing technology, and any good web developer would've already been using the technology in appropriate places prior to the name change. However, "AJAX" does put a fancy name on the technology, and while it certainly can be overused it's not really a bad thing for the technique to get more publicity. "AJAX" as a fad will eventually die down just like "enterprise", "push", etc have in the past. The technology behind it won't, and will continue to be used where appropriate long after the Web 2.0 bubble has burst.
A year after launch I wouldn't even expect any major savings from replacing the bluray drive with a DVD drive. Those things are going to get cheaper pretty quickly.
I don't know about that. DVDs were on the market as early as 1996, but prices didn't really plummet until 1999 or later (higher-end DVD players were still $800-1000 in 2000). BluRay just shipped this year, so I'd expect it to take at least a few years before technological advances and economies of scale make drives dirt cheap. The difference here is that game consoles didn't switch to DVD until prices were already dropping (2000 for the PS2, 2001 for the Xbox). Microsoft and Nintendo are following history and waiting until at least the next generation in another ~5 years before shipping a console using HD-DVD or BluRay (the upcoming 360 HD-DVD attachment not withstanding, since that's video-only and not a way to allow games to use HD-DVD as a medium). Sony isn't, and they're going to take a huge hit to do so.
While it's accepted that the console market is a razor/razor blades type of market, it doesn't have to be. Nintendo eventually made a profit on the GameCube (not necessarily at launch, but not long after either), and Microsoft's set up to be able to do the same with Xbox 360 (they own all of the IP this time around, which means they have no restrictions on chip manufacturers or consolidation of chips to produce cheaper parts, and using a removable hard drive means they won't have to pay a premium to be able to get 8-10GB drives in a market where the smallest 3.5" drives are 40GB). Even if Sony could conceivably innovate away the entire cost of the PS3 besides the BD drive (which they'll not even come close to doing, given the complexity and horrible yields of the Cell chips), BluRay drives won't drop in price fast enough to allow for a profit on the PS3 within its lifetime.
Maybe the PS3 will buck the trend and get 10 years of life out of the console ("life" meaning "between release of the console and release of its successor", as there will almost certainly be PS3 games released for a year or two after PS4 ships), but history makes that seem very unlikely. Using US release dates, the gap between PS1 and PS2 was 5 years (95 to 00), the gap between NES and SNES was 6 years (85 to 91), the gap between Genesis and Saturn was 6 years (89 to 95), etc. Even going back to the Atari days, there was only a 5 year gap between the 2600 and the 5200 (77 to 82). Historically, console generations only last 5 years, 6 at most. There'll be another generation of consoles come 2010-2011, and Sony won't want to be left behind.
If we get a call from a number we don't recognise, or is blocked from giving the caller id, we let the answering machine take it. If the person starts to leave a message, and we want to talk to them, we pick up. But telemarketers hang up as soon as the hear a machine.
An answering machine is only a temporary solution. You still have to screen it, hear the phone ring, hear the message and the person talking, etc. You just don't have to deal with the person yourself. A better solution is to ditch your land line entirely. Unless you still use a dialup net connection, you don't need it. Get a good cell phone on a provider with a strong signal in your area, and be done with it. Since incoming cell phone calls cost you minutes(money), cell phones are exempt from phone spam (telemarketers or politicians alike).
Chances are you already have a cell phone, so why are you paying that extra $20+ per month for the useless land line?
I ditched my land line three years ago after getting fed up with receiving nothing but phone spam (I use my cell phone for real communication). Rather than deal with no-call lists, I just tossed the damned thing. Haven't missed it since. If you must have a land line (bundled in a DSL package, for example), turn off the ringer, don't get an answering machine, get the cheapest plan you can (which is still usually $20/mo), and only use it for emergencies like calling 911.
But how many people will spring for a $600 game console? If BR tanks, Sony would be better off re-tooling for a cheap CD/DVD player and dropping the price. $400 for a top end console makes a lot more sence then $600 for a top end console with a worthless feature.
Exactly. However, I don't expect Sony to retool, because BluRay won't be an obvious failure until at least a year into its life. That means there's a good chance there will already exist PS3 games on BD media, which means Sony can't retrofit the PS3 back to a DVD drive.
UMD as a video format is dead, but Sony's not going to rework the PSP to use a different medium. Similarly, if BluRay fails as a video format that doesn't mean it's now useless as a game medium. The point is that failure of BluRay will not cause the PS3 to fail. The PS3 is quite capable of failing all on its own (and possibly taking out BluRay with it on its way down).
If you are already in the market for a $300 HD/BluRay player AND a $300 console, then the PS3 makes sence.
That's not the target market, though. BD players are in the $1000 range (HD-DVD players are a bit cheaper, but still in the $500-1000 range). The type of person who's going to buy a $1000 BluRay player is not the type of person who will compromise with an integrated unit, because integrated units generally suck (the PS2 was a horrible DVD player, for example). What Sony is really hoping for is that they can get the people in the market for a $600 console, and have them decide to buy BluRay movies since they get a player for "free". The problem is that there's virtually nobody in the market for a $600 console. It doesn't help that the few people in that market (who normally wouldn't pay above $400 for a new console, but are willing to pony up $200 more because it's Sony) are quickly being alienated by Kutaragi's reality distortion field.
Besides, nobody wants to use a game controller as a remote control for movies.
If you are in the market for a $40 DVD player and a $200 Console, then a Wii makes sence
If you're in the market for a $40 DVD player, buy a $40 DVD player. It'll still be a better DVD player than a Wii, Xbox 360, or PS3. The Wii's rumored to be priced in the "optimal" price range ($200-300) for a new console. The market for a $250 console is huge. Maybe you're not in that market (preferring to buy when prices are < $200), but your absence does not make the market any less significant.
If the high def video disk market doesn't pan out, then the PS3 is screwed.
Just like the PSP is screwed because the mobile video disc market didn't pan out? UMD sucked, and is thankfully (almost?) dead, but the PSP could pull it together and still be a kickass game machine. It probably won't, given the utter lack of must-have games (the few top-notch games have also seen releases outside the PSP, or will shortly -- GTA: Liberty City Stories on PS2, Lumines on Xbox Live Arcade). The PS3 could still pull off being a kickass game machine even if BluRay tanks as a video format. Sony is making a big bet by including BluRay (without BD, the PS3 would probably be priced the same as Xbox 360 -- $300-400), and that'll probably screw them whether or not BluRay takes off, but they just might pull it off.
These seem to work pretty well for me anyways, but others will save all the data into some format as a cookie that can be read by both the server and the javascript which is probably the easier solution for very large apps.
Cookies and session states are ephemeral. The OP's question could be restated as, "How do I bookmark a specific view of an AJAX web page?" This is the same problem browsers have with framesets -- the bookmark just doesn't contain enough information to tell you what page you had in which frame at the time of saving the bookmark, and it can't persist the state of an AJAXy page. The only real solution for this involves changes in browsers.
My main problem with AJAX: submitting a form without reloading the page! Any easy way to do that?
Hook the form's onsubmit event and cancel event bubbling. Simple. Of course, you'll need to do that in a cross-browser compatible way, which means different event attaching/detaching semantics, different event callback signatures, different ways to cancel event bubbling, etc. Any good AJAXy framework should standardize most of this for you (for example, Atlas standardizes on IE's attachEvent/detachEvent with implementations of those for Firefox -- I don't like that they chose to use the old broken IE way rather than the correct w3c/Firefox way, but the point is that compatibility is handled for you under the covers), but you'll probably still need to sort out callback signatures and event bubble cancelling on your own.
Caveat: If you do hook onsubmit, you'll have to take care of form submission yourself (via a POST with XMLHttpRequest, for example), because you're cancelling the submission.
I'm waiting for Pacman to get to the Live Arcade. They've announced they're working on it, but I don't know anything about a date.
While no specific date has been set, Pac-Man is one of the games on the list for this summer's "Xbox Live Wednesdays" arcade releases. The list is:
Frogger
Cloning Clyde
Galaga
Street Fighter 2
Pac-Man
Since the list has gone in that order so far, releasing every Wednesday, I think it's a safe bet to say that Pac-Man will ship next week (Wednesday morning at 1:00am PST, because apparently Microsoft hasn't figured out daylight savings time).
But, on the other hand, how often do you write to your windows folder? There's the monthly update, the occassional reg hack, but all in all, once it's established, that's a pretty static area of your drive. I could see this as an incredible benefit to system files, which, as has been discussed oft here before, the big reason for this.
Depends on what you're doing. For example, if you run IIS, your log files (by default; you can change this) are in %WINDIR%\Sytem32\LogFiles. That's going to have a lot of writes. Any new hardware or software installation may cause writes to %WINDIR%. There's a lot of other stuff that legitimately writes to %WINDIR% like installing a new printer (think roaming -- you may print to a different printer every day), the.NET Global Assembly Cache, Visual Styles and themes, and a whole lot more. Whether these things should be in %WINDIR% or not is a different question. The point is that using flash for %WINDIR% under the assumption that you'll not write there very often is a little naive. Perhaps Vista reorganizes %WINDIR% somewhat so that fewer processes need to write there.
There should be some level of safeguard built in that anything user created should be stored to the magnetic part of the drive, my documents, program files, but they should have this anyway. I mean, nothing like the last save and then having to call Dell because your drive is spitting out an Error Code 7...
All of this is a moot point anyway, because this use of flash is only as cache. Anything written to the flash drive should eventually be flushed to the hard drive. Similarly, if you've exhausted your write cycles and try to write to the cache, it should seamlessly catch the fault and go directly to hard drive. In that case it would be nice to give an occasional notice that your flash chip is exhausted and you need to replace it, but you should not risk losing any data. I'm not a big fan of on-board flash simply because it may be unreplaceable. Any onboard flash chips should not be surface-mounted, but socketed like RAM, CPU, or the clock battery. That will require some standardization on sockets, but as long as there are only two or three different options and the designers of said options let others build chips using that interface (*cough*Sony*cough*) it shouldn't be a problem.
In the long run, I think computer manufacturers will love this. How likely do you think your parents will be to replace their onboard flash when they run out of write cycles? The average consumer will just buy another PC for a couple hundred dollars rather than buying a new flash chip and installing it (or paying someone to install it).
How soon do you think the conspiracy theories will start up that manufacturers like Dell are intentionally shortening the life of onboard flash through factory "testing"?
Only IE7 bug I noticed is that IE7 REFUSES to remove borders on iframes (or maybe it's the body tag inside the iframe). Using CSS or deprecated HTML attributes have no effect. IE6 does not have this problem.
It should be possible, as Live.com does just that (every non-certified gadget runs in an iframe for security purposes). However beta 3 does have an issue with resizing those iframes vertically. If a gadget needs more or less space than the default, it'll resize on IE6. Not so on IE7. It won't resize on Firefox either, but live.com puts scrollbars on the iframes for Firefox to somewhat mitigate the issue. No scrollbars for IE7 makes many gadgets unusable.
The 360 cools itself fine (if not a bit loudly) as long as you don't put it in an enclosed space. Since it is so loud, I had to put it in an enclosed space and thus I had to find a way to ventilate that space.
Odd, my 360 is quite quiet. Sure, when nothing else is on and you're within a couple of feet of the 360 you can hear the fans. From my normal seating position ~8 feet away from my TV, I can't really hear it at all. The 360 definitely is loud when playing a game, though. I have one of the launch consoles with a Samsung drive, which is louder at full speed (16X?) than the newer drives from Hitachi (I think -- maybe I got the manufactuers backwards?). While a little annoying, the drive sound is still drowned out by most games. Though I don't use the 360 as a DVD player, it's not much louder than my Toshiba upconverting player when playing a movie (because the drive runs at 1X). I could see a true videophile complaining about what little noise the 360 does make during a movie, but a) a true videophile wouldn't use the 360 as a DVD player, and b) you'd only hear it during the rare quiet scene anyway.
Re:they now make a separate charger...
on
More Wii-mote Info
·
· Score: 1
If you charge your controller off your 360 while the 360 is "off", the 360 isn't really off, it is taking over 80W of power. It basically just turns off the video out. It gets hot and wastes a lot of power.
Did you actually measure the power draw? I haven't, so I have no idea if it's 80W or less. What I do know is that it only stays on long enough to recharge the battery, and that's usually done in a couple of hours. As for getting hot, it should not get any hotter than it would leaving the 360 on the dashboard, and probably less since the video card isn't running. If you're having overheating issues, you should get your box serviced (most likely you got one of the batch of defective power supplies from the launch window).
Re:AA Batteries? Are they kidding?
on
More Wii-mote Info
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The rare occasion when it runs out, I just need to run to the pantry to get a few replacements rather than wait for it to recharge.
That's the beautiful part about the 360's play and charge cable. It'll recharge and let you play at the same time (it'll recharge much more slowly that way, of course). Of course, then you're tethered to the console again, but it's better than waiting an hour or two for the batteries to charge back up. I guess if being wireless is really that important, you could buy two battery packs and a charging station and just swap out batteries as necessary (that'd be major overkill, since the 360 battery pack lasts for a good 2-3 weeks on a single charge, depending on how much you play of course).
Re:AA Batteries? Are they kidding?
on
More Wii-mote Info
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Just because it can use AA batteries doesn't mean it won't have a rechargeable battery pack. Look at the Xbox 360 controller, for example. Out of the box, it comes with two AA batteries that fit into a little box that snaps into the controller. However, you can go out and buy a play and charge kit (battery + USB recharge cable) for ~$20 and use that instead. The battery pack is similar in shape to the AA battery cartridge and fits in the exact same place on the controller. Selling it separately may be seen as a money grab by some, but it does make sense (accessories == big money!) to help offset the console subsidy.
Then again, Nintendo didn't do that with the old Wavebird. If you wanted rechargeable batteries, you had to go out and buy your own AA-sized rechargeables. I would be very surprised if Nintendo didn't offer some sort of rechargeable battery pack for the WiiMote, though.
Actually, it's kind of an original concept. Most of the stalk-and-kill games involve creeping up and slashing guards' throats, sneaking further into a fortress, and doing it all over again. Thief, Metal Gear, Commandos, Desperados, they're all the same.
Stalking people, then killing them, then worrying about the evidence, add some shootouts and narrow escapes from the cops... that'd be great! You could have a voice in your head telling you which victims to find ("Balding man between the ages of 30 and 45", "Young boy with dog") to act out repressed tresspasses on you. The police could follow your actions (for example, if you always kill in a 3 block radius, they'll step up patrols there), you could go on killing sprees, where you'd have to kill X people within X minutes, you could have slasher sections where you'd have to kill groups of cliche, dumb teenagers while dressed in a scary mask... A minigame where you have to invade a high school and take out as many people as possible. Killing with interesting weapons and devices ("Kill this guy by dragging him behind your car." "Kill this lady by setting her on fire.").
What you just described already exists, but for the last few bits. It's called Hitman. No, it's not a serial murder simulator, but it's pretty much exactly what you described: Stalk your victim to learn their patterns, stay hidden, kill your victim (and others, if you like, though no Silent Assassin rating for you if you do), leave no trace. The "voice in your head" is the agency that sends you on the hits rather than schizophrenia, but is it really that different?
They have spare engineers for this, but they can not finish Vista?
Do you really think that everyone at Microsoft works on Windows? What would you expect a bunch of hardware guys to be able to do with a software project, anyway? This argument is silly. Adding more people to Vista won't necessarily make it ship any sooner (and more likely would cause even more delays), and that's assuming Microsoft would move the developers anyway. They have many projects in many markets, and they're not going to sacrifice that just because the bread-winner OS is struggling (there's still Office to bring in the cash).
Should everybody at Sun work on Java? Should everybody at IBM work on WebSphere? Should everybody at Google work on search? Should everybody at Sony work on PS3? So why should everybody at Microsoft work on Windows?
I have a design for a device that is inevitable, and could be made with today's technology. The problem is that I have no idea how to get a patent, it just seems to complex for me to figure out.
Assuming you're filing in the US, you can do it all online. I've not done it personally, so I have no idea how easy or difficult it actually is, but you should be able to find enough information to get it done if you really wanted to.
Why don't we see this more often in all games? Because I think most games today are disposable. They're built for one console or platform with the intent of only running on the current version of Windows or Mac and with no interest in coming out with new releases that support new hardware or software. They do this because games are construed as novelty software that expire as the user tires of them. Games like WoW or other MMOs might bring about a shift in the way game designers spend their efforts. Maybe games will start to take a longer time to develop but last a hell of a lot longer than they traditionally have?
I don't think you're right. While games may be disposable, engines are not. Good engines are modular, supporting multiple rendering systems (OpenGL, DirectX), input systems (SDL, DirectX), audio systems (OpenAL, DirectX), etc. Game logic is separate from the engine (UnrealScript, Lua, QScript, etc). As an example, the Unreal engine that powers many games is an evolution from the engine that powered the very first Unreal game ~8 years ago (as opposed to id engines, which are rewritten each "generation" -- Doom, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Doom 3/Quake 4). That's right, the same engine that powers next generation titles like Gears of War is ~8 years old. Obviously it's been maintained and updated (anybody remember when Unreal only supported Glide for 3D acceleration?), of course.
I think the real shift will not be games taking longer to develop, but a more radical split between tools/engines and games. That's been happening for quite some time now, with developers like Ubi, Digital Extremes, Raven, Grey Matter, etc focusing on building games based on other's technology (Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, Unreal 2, Prince of Persia, etc all on the Unreal engine and not done by Epic). We've seen id step back and focus more on technology than games (id didn't write Quake IV), and even before that id's games felt more like tech demos for the new engines than actual games. This split will only become more pronounced as hardware gets more complex (multi-core CPUs, for example), cost to develop games increases, and required time to market decreases or stays the same. It'll not be possible to develop a brand new engine and a good game and still make a profit.
Let me guess. you don't have a wife or live-in girlfriend... even a hardcore geek chick wouldn't put up with that.
On the other hand, most wives and girlfriends aren't too friendly to video gaming in general, and would rather spend the $600 for a PS3 on shoes or handbags instead. However, if WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is and issue, you have options. First, make sure that whatever shelving unit or entertainment center you buy meets her approval. You need to put your components somewhere, the only question is whether the wife/gf thinks it fits the decor. So take her shopping with you.
Second, a good switch (like all of the AA ones I linked) will auto-select the source, and be 99.9% correct (ie, correct enough that the wife won't bitch). My setup is so simple that a single button press will turn on everything necessary (without some fancy programmable universal remote) for "normal" usage (TV, receiver, cable box). From the same remote, you can then change channels and watch what you want. It gets a little more complicated with the other components (oh nos! I have to push a power button on consoles that don't work remotely!), but since the wife/gf isn't dealing with that, they never need to know. And so long as you turn off your console when done, the mux will switch back to the appropriate input.
So, while you're correct that I'm living the bahelor life, if you can't get your wife/gf to approve of a few switches and a rack then you're not trying hard enough. Of course, you won't even get to that argument when you try to explain to her that you need to be able to play your NES/Genesis/SNES/PS1/N64/Dreamcast/PS2/GC/Xbox/360 /Wii/PS3 all on the same TV.
A cheap shelving unit would solve that problem. I got a nice metal shelving unit (similar to this but with only three shelves) a while back that looks good and holds quite a bit of stuff. Plus, it's completely open so I don't have to worry about heating issues like with a fully enclosed "media center" rack (I never understood why you'd put hot, sensitive electronics in a fully enclosed rack).
Finite number of inputs into my TV?
Get a mux. My current personal favorite is the AA1154 component switch. If you don't need component, you can get switches for composite/s-video or even DVI (and thus HDMI, since the two convert back and forth easily). Granted, the Audio Authority switches are expensive, but there are many PRODUCTS&cm_ite=1%20PRODUCT&cm_keycode=4">other optionsoutthere depending on the feature you want and the price you're willing to pay.
She makes at least a few hundred a month, cant really remember how much, but she does very good for herself for a mother of 5 kids.
I hope she has some other form of (non-government-provided) income! A couple hundred a month is nowhere near enough to provide for five children (Assumption 1: She lives in the US or an equivalent country, not a third-world country where a few hundred a month is insanely rich. Assumption 2: When you say "a few hundred", I assume that means "a few hundred dollars". Since you probably really mean "a few hundred pounds", given your usage of the word "mum", adjust the following numbers appropriately for the currency.)
US Federal minimum wage is $5.15/hr (many states have a higher minimum wage than the federal standard). A full-time (40 hours per week) worker at minimum wage makes $206/week before taxes, or $824/mo (4 weeks in a month). While the minimum wage is supposed to be a "living wage", that full-time minimum wage worker earns $10,712 per year (again, before taxes -- while she'll get that money back come tax time, her normal take-home pay will be much less). That's just barely above the poverty line for a single-person household. For the lady in question, her household consists of at least six (possibly seven, as you made no mention of a father/husband). The poverty threshold for a six person family is $26,800/year, which is more than twice what can be made holding two 40hour/week minimum wage paying jobs. And since "a few hundred per month" is generally assumed to be smaller than $824/mo (I'd equate "a few hundred" with "less than or equal to $500"), she's even worse off than a minimum wage worker. She's certainly not getting rich by any definition of the word.
Assuming your friend's mom's kids are grown and she has no large bills or debts (owns her own home or has a rent-controlled apartment, lives within her means, etc), then I guess it may be possible to live comfortably off of a few hundred pounds a month. If she's still actively raising her children, that doesn't sound like nearly enough to survive.
That is exactly what PRT is designed to do. It's not an unrealistic expectation at all. Infact it's the cheapest, most efficient form of public transport.
http://www.personalrapidtransit.com/
You know, as soon a that website did its shitty, "I'm going to resize your browser without your permission so that it looks like it's maximized but it's really not," thing, I gave up caring. PRT may be the world's transportation savior, but I'm never going to know because I'll never go back to that website. Way to go, shithead web designers!
So... Could we actually replace the car with any of the existing public transport offerings? Is it physically possible for the existing public transport system to accomodate a 900% increase in usage? 500% increase? How about even a 100% increase? Nope. We're basically wasting our time and money attempting to get people on to the existing public transport systems. Never mind that they don't go where people want to go, when they want to go there.
It's not even just the increase in usage. People don't use public transportation because it's not convenient. Until I can walk outside of my house and immediately jump on a train or bus that will take me exactly where I want to go without any lengthy stops or detours in between, I will not use public transportation. Since that's a completely unrealistic expectation of public transporation, I think it's safe to say that I will never use it as my main mode of movement. Why is that unrealistic? Because 90% (made up high percentage) of the population of the US lives in relatively sparse conditions, not the urban density of something like NYC.
I live in a fairly dense suburban area, compared to where I grew up (on a farm, with the nearest neighbor being half a mile away), but it's still not dense enough to support the level of mass transit necessary to get people to give up their cars. For example, if I wanted to try taking the bus to and from work, I'd have to get on the 8:30am bus in order to be at work by 10:00am (for comparison, I usually leave my house around 9:45am by car and arrive at work by 10:00am). Then, to be able to get home, I'd have to get on the 6:30pm bus because no later bus routes go anywhere near my house. And even then, I wouldn't get home until 8:30pm on that route (again for comparison, I usually will work until 7:30 or 8:00, and arrive home by 7:50 or 8:20, depending on when I left work). Thus, for me, using mass transit ends up as a huge waste of time. That time is more valuable than what I would save in gas or wear and tear on my car.
As for self-driving cars: You'll get my manually-driven car when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands. It's a neat idea for the car to drive itself, but there's no way in hell I'm giving up my ability to drive. Similarly, there's no way in hell I'm giving up my standard transmission. I don't care if dual-clutch sequential manuals are better, or slushbox automatics are progressing, or whatever else -- If I can't sling around the stick, I'm not driving it.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're going to claim I misunderstood your analogy, you should at least try to understand mine. I wasn't saying that Microsoft implements older technology and then fails to update it. I said that the person with the burning house was using older technology (Windows 2000) and that person refused to update (install the patch, at least, or upgrade to Win2k3). Suggesting that the user "get out of the house" is more like, "get that machine quarantined so you can fix it without exposing it yourself to more security risks." Even if I did mean it as you interpreted, Microsoft certainly would tell you get get off of win2k and upgrade to win2k3.
And they've done that (see Windows 2003). Problem is, this bug is for Windows 2000, which did suck like you say (just like Redhat sucked at the time, for instance).
If you're going to use bad analogies, it's closer to, "Your house burned down because you were using 50 year old wiring that wasn't up to code. We inspected your house and even offered to update all of your wiring for free, and you declined. Now your house is on fire, and we can send out a fire truck, but there's really nothing more we can do as it'll be ash by the time the fire response gets there. We suggest you get out of the house now and start thinking about how you're going to fix this correctly when you rebuild."
To be fair, while Microsoft introduced the XMLHTTP object in 1999, other browsers didn't implement a similar interface until 2002 or later (2002 being the first implementation of XMLHttpRequest in Mozilla). So if your definition is of "forever" is "the last four years" then this has been aroud forever. (Note: I'm ignoring hidden iframe solutions that really have been around "forever", where "forever" is defined as "since rich web browsers have been around, such as IE4 and Netscape 4".)
I do agree that "AJAX" is just a flashy name for an already-existing technology, and any good web developer would've already been using the technology in appropriate places prior to the name change. However, "AJAX" does put a fancy name on the technology, and while it certainly can be overused it's not really a bad thing for the technique to get more publicity. "AJAX" as a fad will eventually die down just like "enterprise", "push", etc have in the past. The technology behind it won't, and will continue to be used where appropriate long after the Web 2.0 bubble has burst.
I don't know about that. DVDs were on the market as early as 1996, but prices didn't really plummet until 1999 or later (higher-end DVD players were still $800-1000 in 2000). BluRay just shipped this year, so I'd expect it to take at least a few years before technological advances and economies of scale make drives dirt cheap. The difference here is that game consoles didn't switch to DVD until prices were already dropping (2000 for the PS2, 2001 for the Xbox). Microsoft and Nintendo are following history and waiting until at least the next generation in another ~5 years before shipping a console using HD-DVD or BluRay (the upcoming 360 HD-DVD attachment not withstanding, since that's video-only and not a way to allow games to use HD-DVD as a medium). Sony isn't, and they're going to take a huge hit to do so.
While it's accepted that the console market is a razor/razor blades type of market, it doesn't have to be. Nintendo eventually made a profit on the GameCube (not necessarily at launch, but not long after either), and Microsoft's set up to be able to do the same with Xbox 360 (they own all of the IP this time around, which means they have no restrictions on chip manufacturers or consolidation of chips to produce cheaper parts, and using a removable hard drive means they won't have to pay a premium to be able to get 8-10GB drives in a market where the smallest 3.5" drives are 40GB). Even if Sony could conceivably innovate away the entire cost of the PS3 besides the BD drive (which they'll not even come close to doing, given the complexity and horrible yields of the Cell chips), BluRay drives won't drop in price fast enough to allow for a profit on the PS3 within its lifetime.
Maybe the PS3 will buck the trend and get 10 years of life out of the console ("life" meaning "between release of the console and release of its successor", as there will almost certainly be PS3 games released for a year or two after PS4 ships), but history makes that seem very unlikely. Using US release dates, the gap between PS1 and PS2 was 5 years (95 to 00), the gap between NES and SNES was 6 years (85 to 91), the gap between Genesis and Saturn was 6 years (89 to 95), etc. Even going back to the Atari days, there was only a 5 year gap between the 2600 and the 5200 (77 to 82). Historically, console generations only last 5 years, 6 at most. There'll be another generation of consoles come 2010-2011, and Sony won't want to be left behind.
An answering machine is only a temporary solution. You still have to screen it, hear the phone ring, hear the message and the person talking, etc. You just don't have to deal with the person yourself. A better solution is to ditch your land line entirely. Unless you still use a dialup net connection, you don't need it. Get a good cell phone on a provider with a strong signal in your area, and be done with it. Since incoming cell phone calls cost you minutes(money), cell phones are exempt from phone spam (telemarketers or politicians alike).
Chances are you already have a cell phone, so why are you paying that extra $20+ per month for the useless land line?
I ditched my land line three years ago after getting fed up with receiving nothing but phone spam (I use my cell phone for real communication). Rather than deal with no-call lists, I just tossed the damned thing. Haven't missed it since. If you must have a land line (bundled in a DSL package, for example), turn off the ringer, don't get an answering machine, get the cheapest plan you can (which is still usually $20/mo), and only use it for emergencies like calling 911.
Exactly. However, I don't expect Sony to retool, because BluRay won't be an obvious failure until at least a year into its life. That means there's a good chance there will already exist PS3 games on BD media, which means Sony can't retrofit the PS3 back to a DVD drive.
UMD as a video format is dead, but Sony's not going to rework the PSP to use a different medium. Similarly, if BluRay fails as a video format that doesn't mean it's now useless as a game medium. The point is that failure of BluRay will not cause the PS3 to fail. The PS3 is quite capable of failing all on its own (and possibly taking out BluRay with it on its way down).
That's not the target market, though. BD players are in the $1000 range (HD-DVD players are a bit cheaper, but still in the $500-1000 range). The type of person who's going to buy a $1000 BluRay player is not the type of person who will compromise with an integrated unit, because integrated units generally suck (the PS2 was a horrible DVD player, for example). What Sony is really hoping for is that they can get the people in the market for a $600 console, and have them decide to buy BluRay movies since they get a player for "free". The problem is that there's virtually nobody in the market for a $600 console. It doesn't help that the few people in that market (who normally wouldn't pay above $400 for a new console, but are willing to pony up $200 more because it's Sony) are quickly being alienated by Kutaragi's reality distortion field.
Besides, nobody wants to use a game controller as a remote control for movies.
If you're in the market for a $40 DVD player, buy a $40 DVD player. It'll still be a better DVD player than a Wii, Xbox 360, or PS3. The Wii's rumored to be priced in the "optimal" price range ($200-300) for a new console. The market for a $250 console is huge. Maybe you're not in that market (preferring to buy when prices are < $200), but your absence does not make the market any less significant.
Just like the PSP is screwed because the mobile video disc market didn't pan out? UMD sucked, and is thankfully (almost?) dead, but the PSP could pull it together and still be a kickass game machine. It probably won't, given the utter lack of must-have games (the few top-notch games have also seen releases outside the PSP, or will shortly -- GTA: Liberty City Stories on PS2, Lumines on Xbox Live Arcade). The PS3 could still pull off being a kickass game machine even if BluRay tanks as a video format. Sony is making a big bet by including BluRay (without BD, the PS3 would probably be priced the same as Xbox 360 -- $300-400), and that'll probably screw them whether or not BluRay takes off, but they just might pull it off.
Cookies and session states are ephemeral. The OP's question could be restated as, "How do I bookmark a specific view of an AJAX web page?" This is the same problem browsers have with framesets -- the bookmark just doesn't contain enough information to tell you what page you had in which frame at the time of saving the bookmark, and it can't persist the state of an AJAXy page. The only real solution for this involves changes in browsers.
Hook the form's onsubmit event and cancel event bubbling. Simple. Of course, you'll need to do that in a cross-browser compatible way, which means different event attaching/detaching semantics, different event callback signatures, different ways to cancel event bubbling, etc. Any good AJAXy framework should standardize most of this for you (for example, Atlas standardizes on IE's attachEvent/detachEvent with implementations of those for Firefox -- I don't like that they chose to use the old broken IE way rather than the correct w3c/Firefox way, but the point is that compatibility is handled for you under the covers), but you'll probably still need to sort out callback signatures and event bubble cancelling on your own.
Caveat: If you do hook onsubmit, you'll have to take care of form submission yourself (via a POST with XMLHttpRequest, for example), because you're cancelling the submission.
While no specific date has been set, Pac-Man is one of the games on the list for this summer's "Xbox Live Wednesdays" arcade releases. The list is:
Since the list has gone in that order so far, releasing every Wednesday, I think it's a safe bet to say that Pac-Man will ship next week (Wednesday morning at 1:00am PST, because apparently Microsoft hasn't figured out daylight savings time).
Depends on what you're doing. For example, if you run IIS, your log files (by default; you can change this) are in %WINDIR%\Sytem32\LogFiles. That's going to have a lot of writes. Any new hardware or software installation may cause writes to %WINDIR%. There's a lot of other stuff that legitimately writes to %WINDIR% like installing a new printer (think roaming -- you may print to a different printer every day), the .NET Global Assembly Cache, Visual Styles and themes, and a whole lot more. Whether these things should be in %WINDIR% or not is a different question. The point is that using flash for %WINDIR% under the assumption that you'll not write there very often is a little naive. Perhaps Vista reorganizes %WINDIR% somewhat so that fewer processes need to write there.
All of this is a moot point anyway, because this use of flash is only as cache. Anything written to the flash drive should eventually be flushed to the hard drive. Similarly, if you've exhausted your write cycles and try to write to the cache, it should seamlessly catch the fault and go directly to hard drive. In that case it would be nice to give an occasional notice that your flash chip is exhausted and you need to replace it, but you should not risk losing any data. I'm not a big fan of on-board flash simply because it may be unreplaceable. Any onboard flash chips should not be surface-mounted, but socketed like RAM, CPU, or the clock battery. That will require some standardization on sockets, but as long as there are only two or three different options and the designers of said options let others build chips using that interface (*cough*Sony*cough*) it shouldn't be a problem.
In the long run, I think computer manufacturers will love this. How likely do you think your parents will be to replace their onboard flash when they run out of write cycles? The average consumer will just buy another PC for a couple hundred dollars rather than buying a new flash chip and installing it (or paying someone to install it).
How soon do you think the conspiracy theories will start up that manufacturers like Dell are intentionally shortening the life of onboard flash through factory "testing"?
It should be possible, as Live.com does just that (every non-certified gadget runs in an iframe for security purposes). However beta 3 does have an issue with resizing those iframes vertically. If a gadget needs more or less space than the default, it'll resize on IE6. Not so on IE7. It won't resize on Firefox either, but live.com puts scrollbars on the iframes for Firefox to somewhat mitigate the issue. No scrollbars for IE7 makes many gadgets unusable.
Really? That doesn't sound right to me. I guess there were no sequels before now.
Odd, my 360 is quite quiet. Sure, when nothing else is on and you're within a couple of feet of the 360 you can hear the fans. From my normal seating position ~8 feet away from my TV, I can't really hear it at all. The 360 definitely is loud when playing a game, though. I have one of the launch consoles with a Samsung drive, which is louder at full speed (16X?) than the newer drives from Hitachi (I think -- maybe I got the manufactuers backwards?). While a little annoying, the drive sound is still drowned out by most games. Though I don't use the 360 as a DVD player, it's not much louder than my Toshiba upconverting player when playing a movie (because the drive runs at 1X). I could see a true videophile complaining about what little noise the 360 does make during a movie, but a) a true videophile wouldn't use the 360 as a DVD player, and b) you'd only hear it during the rare quiet scene anyway.
Did you actually measure the power draw? I haven't, so I have no idea if it's 80W or less. What I do know is that it only stays on long enough to recharge the battery, and that's usually done in a couple of hours. As for getting hot, it should not get any hotter than it would leaving the 360 on the dashboard, and probably less since the video card isn't running. If you're having overheating issues, you should get your box serviced (most likely you got one of the batch of defective power supplies from the launch window).
That's the beautiful part about the 360's play and charge cable. It'll recharge and let you play at the same time (it'll recharge much more slowly that way, of course). Of course, then you're tethered to the console again, but it's better than waiting an hour or two for the batteries to charge back up. I guess if being wireless is really that important, you could buy two battery packs and a charging station and just swap out batteries as necessary (that'd be major overkill, since the 360 battery pack lasts for a good 2-3 weeks on a single charge, depending on how much you play of course).
Just because it can use AA batteries doesn't mean it won't have a rechargeable battery pack. Look at the Xbox 360 controller, for example. Out of the box, it comes with two AA batteries that fit into a little box that snaps into the controller. However, you can go out and buy a play and charge kit (battery + USB recharge cable) for ~$20 and use that instead. The battery pack is similar in shape to the AA battery cartridge and fits in the exact same place on the controller. Selling it separately may be seen as a money grab by some, but it does make sense (accessories == big money!) to help offset the console subsidy.
Then again, Nintendo didn't do that with the old Wavebird. If you wanted rechargeable batteries, you had to go out and buy your own AA-sized rechargeables. I would be very surprised if Nintendo didn't offer some sort of rechargeable battery pack for the WiiMote, though.
What you just described already exists, but for the last few bits. It's called Hitman. No, it's not a serial murder simulator, but it's pretty much exactly what you described: Stalk your victim to learn their patterns, stay hidden, kill your victim (and others, if you like, though no Silent Assassin rating for you if you do), leave no trace. The "voice in your head" is the agency that sends you on the hits rather than schizophrenia, but is it really that different?
Do you really think that everyone at Microsoft works on Windows? What would you expect a bunch of hardware guys to be able to do with a software project, anyway? This argument is silly. Adding more people to Vista won't necessarily make it ship any sooner (and more likely would cause even more delays), and that's assuming Microsoft would move the developers anyway. They have many projects in many markets, and they're not going to sacrifice that just because the bread-winner OS is struggling (there's still Office to bring in the cash).
Should everybody at Sun work on Java? Should everybody at IBM work on WebSphere? Should everybody at Google work on search? Should everybody at Sony work on PS3? So why should everybody at Microsoft work on Windows?
Assuming you're filing in the US, you can do it all online. I've not done it personally, so I have no idea how easy or difficult it actually is, but you should be able to find enough information to get it done if you really wanted to.
I don't think you're right. While games may be disposable, engines are not. Good engines are modular, supporting multiple rendering systems (OpenGL, DirectX), input systems (SDL, DirectX), audio systems (OpenAL, DirectX), etc. Game logic is separate from the engine (UnrealScript, Lua, QScript, etc). As an example, the Unreal engine that powers many games is an evolution from the engine that powered the very first Unreal game ~8 years ago (as opposed to id engines, which are rewritten each "generation" -- Doom, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Doom 3/Quake 4). That's right, the same engine that powers next generation titles like Gears of War is ~8 years old. Obviously it's been maintained and updated (anybody remember when Unreal only supported Glide for 3D acceleration?), of course.
I think the real shift will not be games taking longer to develop, but a more radical split between tools/engines and games. That's been happening for quite some time now, with developers like Ubi, Digital Extremes, Raven, Grey Matter, etc focusing on building games based on other's technology (Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six, Unreal 2, Prince of Persia, etc all on the Unreal engine and not done by Epic). We've seen id step back and focus more on technology than games (id didn't write Quake IV), and even before that id's games felt more like tech demos for the new engines than actual games. This split will only become more pronounced as hardware gets more complex (multi-core CPUs, for example), cost to develop games increases, and required time to market decreases or stays the same. It'll not be possible to develop a brand new engine and a good game and still make a profit.
On the other hand, most wives and girlfriends aren't too friendly to video gaming in general, and would rather spend the $600 for a PS3 on shoes or handbags instead. However, if WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is and issue, you have options. First, make sure that whatever shelving unit or entertainment center you buy meets her approval. You need to put your components somewhere, the only question is whether the wife/gf thinks it fits the decor. So take her shopping with you.
Second, a good switch (like all of the AA ones I linked) will auto-select the source, and be 99.9% correct (ie, correct enough that the wife won't bitch). My setup is so simple that a single button press will turn on everything necessary (without some fancy programmable universal remote) for "normal" usage (TV, receiver, cable box). From the same remote, you can then change channels and watch what you want. It gets a little more complicated with the other components (oh nos! I have to push a power button on consoles that don't work remotely!), but since the wife/gf isn't dealing with that, they never need to know. And so long as you turn off your console when done, the mux will switch back to the appropriate input.
So, while you're correct that I'm living the bahelor life, if you can't get your wife/gf to approve of a few switches and a rack then you're not trying hard enough. Of course, you won't even get to that argument when you try to explain to her that you need to be able to play your NES/Genesis/SNES/PS1/N64/Dreamcast/PS2/GC/Xbox/360 /Wii/PS3 all on the same TV.
A cheap shelving unit would solve that problem. I got a nice metal shelving unit (similar to this but with only three shelves) a while back that looks good and holds quite a bit of stuff. Plus, it's completely open so I don't have to worry about heating issues like with a fully enclosed "media center" rack (I never understood why you'd put hot, sensitive electronics in a fully enclosed rack).
Get a mux. My current personal favorite is the AA1154 component switch. If you don't need component, you can get switches for composite/s-video or even DVI (and thus HDMI, since the two convert back and forth easily). Granted, the Audio Authority switches are expensive, but there are many PRODUCTS&cm_ite=1%20PRODUCT&cm_keycode=4">other options out there depending on the feature you want and the price you're willing to pay.
I hope she has some other form of (non-government-provided) income! A couple hundred a month is nowhere near enough to provide for five children (Assumption 1: She lives in the US or an equivalent country, not a third-world country where a few hundred a month is insanely rich. Assumption 2: When you say "a few hundred", I assume that means "a few hundred dollars". Since you probably really mean "a few hundred pounds", given your usage of the word "mum", adjust the following numbers appropriately for the currency.)
US Federal minimum wage is $5.15/hr (many states have a higher minimum wage than the federal standard). A full-time (40 hours per week) worker at minimum wage makes $206/week before taxes, or $824/mo (4 weeks in a month). While the minimum wage is supposed to be a "living wage", that full-time minimum wage worker earns $10,712 per year (again, before taxes -- while she'll get that money back come tax time, her normal take-home pay will be much less). That's just barely above the poverty line for a single-person household. For the lady in question, her household consists of at least six (possibly seven, as you made no mention of a father/husband). The poverty threshold for a six person family is $26,800/year, which is more than twice what can be made holding two 40hour/week minimum wage paying jobs. And since "a few hundred per month" is generally assumed to be smaller than $824/mo (I'd equate "a few hundred" with "less than or equal to $500"), she's even worse off than a minimum wage worker. She's certainly not getting rich by any definition of the word.
Assuming your friend's mom's kids are grown and she has no large bills or debts (owns her own home or has a rent-controlled apartment, lives within her means, etc), then I guess it may be possible to live comfortably off of a few hundred pounds a month. If she's still actively raising her children, that doesn't sound like nearly enough to survive.
You know, as soon a that website did its shitty, "I'm going to resize your browser without your permission so that it looks like it's maximized but it's really not," thing, I gave up caring. PRT may be the world's transportation savior, but I'm never going to know because I'll never go back to that website. Way to go, shithead web designers!
It's not even just the increase in usage. People don't use public transportation because it's not convenient. Until I can walk outside of my house and immediately jump on a train or bus that will take me exactly where I want to go without any lengthy stops or detours in between, I will not use public transportation. Since that's a completely unrealistic expectation of public transporation, I think it's safe to say that I will never use it as my main mode of movement. Why is that unrealistic? Because 90% (made up high percentage) of the population of the US lives in relatively sparse conditions, not the urban density of something like NYC.
I live in a fairly dense suburban area, compared to where I grew up (on a farm, with the nearest neighbor being half a mile away), but it's still not dense enough to support the level of mass transit necessary to get people to give up their cars. For example, if I wanted to try taking the bus to and from work, I'd have to get on the 8:30am bus in order to be at work by 10:00am (for comparison, I usually leave my house around 9:45am by car and arrive at work by 10:00am). Then, to be able to get home, I'd have to get on the 6:30pm bus because no later bus routes go anywhere near my house. And even then, I wouldn't get home until 8:30pm on that route (again for comparison, I usually will work until 7:30 or 8:00, and arrive home by 7:50 or 8:20, depending on when I left work). Thus, for me, using mass transit ends up as a huge waste of time. That time is more valuable than what I would save in gas or wear and tear on my car.
As for self-driving cars: You'll get my manually-driven car when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands. It's a neat idea for the car to drive itself, but there's no way in hell I'm giving up my ability to drive. Similarly, there's no way in hell I'm giving up my standard transmission. I don't care if dual-clutch sequential manuals are better, or slushbox automatics are progressing, or whatever else -- If I can't sling around the stick, I'm not driving it.