everyone knows that MS uses Apple boxes in their design shops - and they certainly could use new G5s for their mac development teams (remember, they openly write software for the mac). Neither of which would be news to any company who wished to get an inside track at what MS is watching and developing (i'll save you time: everything)
Given that he mentions he works in the MSCopy building, it seems likely this has nothing to do with development.
if anything, this is simply a termination for violating a 'no pictures' policy. if anything devious - this is a termination for a perceived attempt to embarass the company. (headline/pic out of context implies that MS secretly covets Mac, tacit admission apple is better)
... particularly after reading what those offering-banks were doing during the boom.
Not only were investors dumb with their money, but there was a sea of illegal under-the-table action building up those numbers.
Recap: When Amazon does an IPO, they get a bank to handle the deal. That bank first sells shares in large chunks to other very large banks, who then sell to other less-large banks, who then sell to you and me.
Brokers at the offering bank would cut deals with would-be 1st tier purchasers, offering them a chunk of shares for a good price, but only if they agreed to buy more shares at the inflated price (illegal) - further inflating the perceived value (if you see smith barney still buying a.com with no revenue at $20/share, one normally assumes they know something you don't).
The would-be purchasers wouldn't want to back out on the deal, after the good price, or else they'd be cut off from getting in early on other IPOs offered by that bank. (few banks actually do IPOs) Similarly, they sure wouldn't want to take a hit for their own company (it'd be their ass) if that second block of shares turned out to be overvalued - so they gussied up their forecasts to convince other investors that a company really -was- worth the secondary inflated price (illegal).
They made millions on everyone else losing billions.
Given that, if Google does their own IPO straight-to-the-people, day-traders and herd mentality could easily drive the prices up to bubble-era prices. Of course, on the other hand, it's much less likely that there's shady deals going on.
Though I'd imagine they'd only sell a small block of shares that way. One doesn't usually turn away a billion dollar brokerage firm who wishes to purchase in significant quantities.
Re:my only experience with this kind of environmen
on
Software Exorcism
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· Score: 1
i was making light of the issue of implied frequency of hostile environments, and the suggestions that such recommended attitudes and behaviors are productive applications of an engineers time and energy.
something altogether different than how you seem to have interpreted it, given your fairly extreme analogy.
suffice to say i don't believe my personal experience is indicative of world-wide norms. by the same token though, i don't take frantic arm-waving reporting for social norms either.
i don't believe -most- engineers should bother with such extreme foil-hat defenses. certainly they should be aware of underhanded tactics, and some suggested behaviors are just good business sense. but i certainly don't believe -every- kid coming out of college needs to be inundated with these concerns to the extreme degrees set out in this book.
similarly i don't believe that shark attacks, or school shootings or old people plowing through farmer's markets are as wildly prevalent as some 'experts' would have you believe. particularly when such experts are economically incentivized to overstate themselves (fueling further concern, opening the door to consulting or... hey! a book deal!)
my only experience with this kind of environment..
on
Software Exorcism
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· Score: 1
... was in watching Michael Crichton's Disclosure.
Either I'm exceedingly lucky, or these types of hostile environs aren't nearly as widespread as this guy would have you believe.
Or maybe i'm so inept that I can't see the game being played around me... where's that foil carton?
look up all the problems and exploits that digital voting has had. being able to change alread-cast ballots and submitting a theoretically infinite number of ballots are a bit too much for my tastes.
i suppose if the evoting industry were to entirely switch gears and go with a -secure- OS with a -secure- UI, on a -secure- Local network, -and- have a papertrail - then automatic vote counting would be fine.
but in their current incarnation, exploiting those voting machines has proven much too easy, and due to the anonymous nature of voting, is an unproveable crime.
I dont oppose digital media - I oppose the systems that are being put up, and the vendors who have created them. at least with a hard-copy-only system, even a failing by the weak machines these companies create wouldn't lead to an easily exploited voting process.
in a perfectly implemented world - i'd be able to securely, yet anonymously, vote from home over the internet. and i'm for that; in theory.
By my nature I certainly wouldn't think the first incarnation of evoting will work flawlessly. And looking at the existing field of candidates, I'd bet my house on it. So there's no shame in a progressive implementation. Limit moving parts, secure and improve the technology through experience - and build up to the ultimate goal.
It isn't a race. Democracy in america has worked as designed for 200+ years, we can afford to take our time with ensuring that vote integrity isn't easily compromised.
really that is the only thing holding back my getting a camera phone. i dont need 192MB built in - i have a 256MB card laying around (since i upgraded my Nex2e and my digital camera to 512).
data service for those phones is unnecessarily expensive (in the US) and yet i see the benefits of having a small average quality digital camera with me for all the times where i haven't thought to bring my 3MP monster.
why is it that these phones never have a decent expansion slot? don't lock me in with your 'no one will ever need more than 128MB' short-sightedness. (no proprietary DRM'd media thank-you-very-much. i appreciate my price/performance/flexbility superiority to memoryStick or SD)
plastic card functionality: proven, existant, immune to remote theft.
cell phone purchasing: unproven, nonexistant, susceptible to remote theft.
what's the benefit of buying a coke from a foot away if you have to touch the machine anyway to grab the can?
and telneting is a terribly inappropriate analogy. telnet makes sense because monitors occupy space, are expensive, and you can do remote work with such a connection.
do i ever need to do remote work on a vending machine or at a grocery store? do i need to touch only my cell phone to specify flavor and prepay for a soda from 50' away?
do i need to trust yet another vendor with holding my credit card information in yet another database that is all too often hacked, just for this magical wireless payment privilege?
do i need to trust yet another monopolistic closed-source provider to create a secure wireless communication method - which may not even be standard? these are convicted monopolists, keep that in mind. lets not pretend that they never hurt innovation, competition or consumer interests. just look at the competitionin the credit card arena. or how about in the cell networks. heck just look at the rate of innovation in US cell networks vs the world.
are these the corporate titans you want to bind even tighter together? so they squeeze out potential newcomers by disallowing them yet-another-proprietary feature?
sure, in the case of credit cards, burden of proof lies on the bank in the event of theft. of course, some of us don't like to pay for everything with a CC (bad habit) and prefer debit cards. where i either have to punch in a pin code (or store another number in a weak database) or use it as a CC transaction and assume the burden of proof in the event of theft (and suffer the inconvenience of not having my money in my checking account until the bank gets around to giving it back).
i don't see one reasonable application of why i should prefer to pay by waving my phone at something, rather than by swiping a piece of plastic. let alone see how such an application's benefits outweigh the above drawbacks.
yeah... could we get a few more convicted monopolists into this system? perhaps Microsoft could build the proprietary network interface to handle all this secure data transfer and storage via passport or something...
are we just -hoping- that they decide to play nice with their fees and standards and data security?
sure it -sounds- like a good idea... wait no. it only sounds -futuristic-. it sounds like something spock would do at a vending machine. so it must be good right?
please. is swiping a plastic card so difficult?
even ignoring the added security problems of a wireless network - it just sounds unnecessary.
another problem is the media hyping mechanical voting systems as 'inaccurate' or 'difficult to understand', suggesting that things like the butterfly ballot skew results towards educated voters. they're manufacturing a crisis.
if computers do the job - great. but they -need- to be only used to simplify the creation of the physical ballot. just like the mechanical machines before them.
why not just have a touchscreen computer laserprint out a scantron-style form with the selected votes (computers allowing reviewing and undoing - -good- features) - and then just have the vote counters pass the ballots through a scantron machine to count them?
you have a count of voters who came to register so no one voter can cast more ballots than they should be allowed to, and the storage system is completely removed from the voter so that no malicious voter can modify another's ballot.
the ballots are machine made and machine read - there's simply no possibility of a 'hanging chad' type instance.
but regardless, there should be no databases for votes. no internet access. no network existing between voting machines.
because of the self-imposed prison that the brightest minds and the largest budgets in comic publishing put themselves in, the form stagnated. it features childlike morals and prepubescent attractions precisely because that is the only market left for it.
If someone sees you pawing through Gaiman's work - they'll -still- derisively scoff at it as 'a comic book' on the same level as golden age Superman. And -that- is what i'm talking about.
Right now, you can't convince a person that Metal Gear Solid 2 may have had the first postmodern storyline, or even just a fairly engaging higher level commentary on the nature of information. why? because it's a game 'oh, like doom'. or 'mario'.
The reason that Lara Croft is the most visible female gaming icon is a terrible precursor of gaming following the path laid down by comics before it. into irrelevance.
To intentionally oversell the same tried and true prepubescent themes to the proven core audience, without ever giving pause to deliver a decent character arc, let alone plot.
the key problem with being a pigeonholed art form by general society, is that you lose exposure to would-be writers, designers, and artists. and that will -always- lead to stagnation. I don't want games continue to stagnate - I already see it, I already lament it, I'd like to change it.
does anyone claim that steven spielberg shouldn't have made Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's list? Was he making light, or 'making a buck' on the idea of americans dying overseas, on the idea of jews being tortured and executed?
yet everyone in the industry aknowledges that the way to grow gaming is to drive for more cinematic, more interactive, more film-like experiences.
Games may very well be considered 'art' the way people consider film 'art' in 10 years.
or, they can be relegated to childish whimsy like comics.
Asking game developers to ignore certain topics, regardless of context, because they might offend someone is very much akin to the self-imposed 'Comic Code' of the 60s-80s. It nearly killed the industry as a legitimate artistic medium. Every american comic became trapped by the restrictive code and fell into a niche as a childish diversion.
within the code american comic creators could only explore child-safe content as defined by the broadest possible american social definition of 'safe'.
compare this with the evolution of anime in japan. Sure, we all make derisive remarks about 'tentacle porn' - but anime in japan is -accepted-. it isn't just for kids. the culture treats it on par with film or literature. why? precisely because only a certain subset of anime is devoted to children and child-safe topics (yu gi oh, pokemon, etc) - the larger segment covers mature subjects one might find in a TV drama or film (ghost in the shell, akira). american comics have no parallel (no mainstream parallel, though the underground is growing, but the social stigma will take time to erode). evern american animated movies suffer from this, and are relegated to insistance on 'child safe'.
visceral emotional response is the key to allowing people to realize that games need not -only- be about mindlessly pulling a trigger. not that there is anything wrong with some twitch play - just as there is nothing wrong with shallow action flicks.
a game simulating the Uday/Qusay vs USAF shootout would certainly have poor timing, if particularly identifying the subjects by name; but shouldn't be labelled in poor taste so because of its content, but rather depending upon its -context-.
if the simulation of that situation was created to educate people about the difficulties and human life risk associated in breach/clear/capture operations against a fully dedicated opponent in an urban setting - that strikes me as possibly reasonable. if the purpose of the game is simply to allow people to pump round after round into from-the-headlines political figures, then that is certainly tasteless.
notice it is the -gameplay-, the context, that indicates tastelessness. people always seem to forget to include context in their discussions of whether it is 'right' or not.
here is where we decide people. are games to be forever treated as an interactive extension of film? or an interactive extension of american comics?
(keep in mind i use 'art', and 'artistic' loosely to indicate mature expression, as in sculpture or painting - not to indicate it as being capital-A Art, being hoity toity or 'correct'.)
... they love to set rules and access rights and controls - instead of actually managing employees conscionably and using resources responsibly.
mostly i imagine this will appeal to the less savory huge corporations who wish to stop seeing their internal memos and severance packages on f*ckedcompany.
but inevitably, if the information would actually be interesting to someone outside the desired recipient list, it will be shared. to borrow a cliche, 'information wants to be free' - good information anyway.
perhaps the 'leaker' will have to retype the message, but more likely he'll cut/paste or (if that's disabled) take a screenshot and email that.
and as soon as an email leaves the corporate structure once, all those controls don't mean a thing.
the platform-specific nature, and the fact that most leaks come through corporate partners who have limited email access/correspondence (some may even be on public distro lists) will mean that its effectiveness will be entirely limited to internal corporations.
though, if momentum builds behind this, a trusted email standard may not be far away. and if nothing else, perhaps that would alleviate some spam? if you consider the price worth the cost.
capturing rain would be an interesting application, if problematic. the occurence of rain would most likely be insufficent for dependable energy generation. and a method to collect enough rain (usually fairly evenly spread over an area) into one location to filter through the aparatus would be tricky. creating these blocks in an array to cover a large area directly would certainly take quite a bit of energy, and would not be a realistic solution (given the ease at which these holes could be obstructed with just about any natural debris). this process nearly demands a controlled water source.
as for putting these blocks under, say, a fish tank - the water would slowly collect in a bucket below the tank (or on your floor). and you would have to refill the tank as it drained to continue power generation. so either you are drawing from the energy used to pressurize the water system (if you leave a tap on) or you use the human kinetic energy necessary to dump the contents of the bucket back into the tank to restart the process (or you could even run an electrical pump to pump the water directly back to the tank from the bucket - but that again would draw power).
so you either have a lossy system, or perpetual motion. (otherwise someone would have made power plants that pumping water to turn a watermill years ago)
if you don't mind lifting the bucket a few times a day, its possible it could generate enough energy to be worthwhile, but it's fairly unlikely to be widely accepted.
again, its most intriguing application would be for energy storage, as pressure is fairly easy to maintain once it is achieved (much more so than preserving the reactivity of chemical battery components).
an interesting possibility is 'shaking' such a water-battery to use human energy to 'recharge' it. of course, one could already use a magnet and a coil to manage this with faraday's principle (eg forever flashlight), so again, it's a matter of how efficient the process is.
again, just my opinion, but it's an effect more interesting for energy -storage- potential rather than direct generation. the controlled environment of a battery allows noncorrosive liquids to be used, and removes possible clogging debris, removing two of the primary problem spots right off. furthermore it is competing with the 30% efficiency of chemical batteries instead of the much higher efficiencies of carbon-based fuels or nuclear power.
fps controls for consoles are absolutely fine. i play unreal championchip on xbl and i play ut2k3 on my PC. there's very little difference. yes, it takes time to get the hang of. but so does circlestrafing with wasd. and all the action games have sensitivity settings for the analog sticks that bring the speed and accuracy up to the same level.
yeah, a mouse is more precise. but when i'm playing on a 50" hdtv, relative precision is easily comparable.
furthermore, one huge advantage is that on the consoles, interfaces are forced to become streamlined. you can't simply expect a user to bind a dozen or more keys just to be able to pick teams or switch models.
as for mods and such - i'm hoping the xbox HD and xbl get used more for the custom content route in the future. downloadable content is pretty sweet - it'd be great to get mods or community made maps via the same mechanisms. i could literally play ghost recon just about forever if there was a map editor with shareable maps.
of course, the heavy duty sims will never be primarily sold on the consoles - its simply a contradiction in markets for the most part. though custom controllers can do anything you like on your pc, only better. there's a keyboard add-on for the xbox already (for PSO) and a ridiculous 100+ key mech sim (gimmicky, but existant). even classic PC-style RPGs and massmogs are moving to consoles.
the lines are going to continue to blur between which games are where (excepting hardcore sims), and the price/performance of consoles is bar-none the greatest in game hardware. i mean, this generation of consoles are playing top of the line games 3 years after their introduction. what top of the line PC 3 years ago is going to be able to play HL2?
then there's the added benefits of the xbl broadband only multiplayer, and the more cheat-resistant qualities of consoles vs pcs in regards to network gaming. cheat-free is a -huge- benefit for multiplayer gaming that you will not see on the pc side. it easily makes up for the analog control learning curve by itself. (and console games aren't constantly patched and buggy).
yeah, i thought the same thing about this time last year, when RAID controllers started hitting just about every mobo in my price range. so i researched it a bit and most benchmarks i've seen have shown 0 to negative performance changes when using striping.
only very large file transfers manage a benefit, on the order of several hundred meg. and thankfully i can still count on one hand, the number of games and situations where i need to squeeze another second or two out of a 200+ mB file transfer.
given of course, this is all based on data from consumer level raid controllers.
gaming is fundamentally lots of relatively small data operations, mostly 'random' in nature, with very few linear loads (startup and 'map' loading being the exceptions) or writes (savegames, screenshots). even big maps/zones/etc don't break 50mB very often.
you'd be better off spending the money on a fast HD if you want performance. (not just RPMs, do your research and watch cache size and cache speed).
me, i decided to wait to upgrade again. sure my 1ghz is showing its age - but none of the games coming out is gettin my wallet itchy. anything that looks half-decent and won't run on my machine (hl2, doom3) is headed for my (much cheaper, much more stable, much longer-lived) xbox.
death? what about convergence? or metamorphosis?
on
Death of the PDA?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
the product isn't going to -die-. this is how convergence devices are -born-.
PDA market growth is just going to come in the form of convergence devices more and more. some consumers will see it as new phone tech on their next PDA, most will see it as new PDA tech on their next phone. but neither product will 'die'. dedicated PDAs will simply be relegated to markets where having phone capability isn't worth the cost.
in the same reactionary vein one could argue that mp3 players are going to 'die' because of the proliferation of that core functionality showing up in PDAs and cellphones. (without near killer-app sized storage though).
i think the obvious explanation is consumers are demanding a single 'thing' that is their interface to mobile digital information. be it 3G phone, PIM, mp3, email, or mobile data storage. then there's society: having a cellphone is not 'geeky', nor is having a cellphone with PIM functionality.
but having a cellphone + mp3 player + PDA certainly still is.
and practicality: having to manage the batteries on 3+ digital devices is a headache. particularly when you are generally using only one or the other.
my ideal convergence device: embedded Linux-based OS (for custom programming) full bandwidth 3G phone (w/ 1m CCD, 24fps video capability) CF type2 slot built-in WiFi (802.11b is fine) short range FM transmitter (for car usage without a dongle) built in HD ~6gB (preferrably magneto-SRAM) usb2.0/firewire OSS PIM mp3 audio software mp4/divx video software tabletPC-style graffiti interface, with automatic translation for text-boxes would be good too. no more hunt and stab with the stylus for url input.
no SD, no MemoryStick -- no DRM at all thank-you-very-much. battery: li-ion, rechargable via usb/firewire/dc adapter. ~10 hrs running time. size: about 4"x2.5".
attachable secondary battery, camelback style, for long trips/flights would be great too.
right now one pays: ~$275 for the mp3 player and storage ~$150 for basic PDA ~$175 for a capable 3G phone
would i pay $600 for all of this rolled into one? most certainly. hell i already spent $200 on the pda and $140 on a nex2e and 512mb CF card. if i get a decent cameraphone i'm out another $150 at least. then there was another $50 for the wifi adapter for the pda.
to be able to have all that functionality in one widget is worth at least $150 by itself. particularly if it has respectable battery life.
if you build underwater, where does the water that has flown through your apparatus go? probably a storage tank of some type, that by definition has to have lower pressure than the bottom of the water source.
at some point you have to transfer it back to a location of higher potential energy, and will waste even more of your 'produced' electricity. (unless of course you are simply going to drain your entire source into another location, and harness energy as a one-time thing).
if you try to connect the apparatus right back to the bottom of your water source, the apparatus will simply achieve pressure equilibrium and you will have no current to supply your current. (punny)
this could however be used in conjunction with tidal power generation and/or hydroelectric dams - the question there being simply: is this method more or less effective than conventional turbines?
this method certainly has the advantage of no moving parts, but one would have to wonder about the rate of corrosion of the electrodes, particularly in saltwater applications - they being submerged in water and all.
now the interesting question is, is water stored at high pressure a more efficient way to store and transfer electricity than chemical batteries?
it shouldn't be too far-fetched, given the poor efficiency of lead-acid and their ilk. and it also wouldn't matter if the process to 'charge' the battery was wasteful, as society has regularly traded off efficiency for portability. particularly in electrical generation.
of course in the case of battery usage, you also have to consider the power required to start/stop the water flow, via a valve of some type. with the pressures being dealt with to create the current, i don't think it would be trivial in the least. particularly at the miniaturized sizes necessary for most battery applications. and then the tiny pump necessary to repressurize the water to 'recharge' it....
you'd really like to think they're 'real' famles wouldn't you...
with any franchise short of The Sims, you ought to be extremely hesitant to ever assume that the person behind that keyboard really is female - even if they claim they 'really' are.
maybe ragnarok has more females, due to the cultural divide re: gaming between korea and the entire rest of the world, i dont pretend to know. (gaming is *gasp* actually -accepted- there)
but all world-average online stats have shown that only a small percentage of the small percentage of female avatars are actually female -players-. of course, gender boundaries being warped by online pseudonymity certainly blurs who is and isn't 'female' for all intents and purposes.
i just wouldn't bet a relationship on any given specific of an online avatar being 'real'.
at least eidos got spector and ion austin out of that convoluted deal. though even if DX2 is huge they still won't be able to make up the cash they burnt on daikatana...
i swear, the more i read about the 'business' of hall and romero, the more i can't see how anyone would ever give them publishing cash ever again.
when you complain that the calendar/clock won't pop up or that you can't get quickbar icons to appear on the start bar - it seems like you're just trying to fill space. XP has plenty of faults, many of which you pointed out very well. So i can't imagine why trying to say these features don't exist (they certainly do) or are impossible to figure out (they aren't) is necessary.
i mean, maybe you'd like to see the quickstart bar enabled by default - that's fine say that. or that you'd like the calendar/clock to pop up on a single click (personally that would drive me insane); or you'd like systray applications to display their option menus with either a left or right mouse button click (so you could figure out how to turn off msn messenger). just say that instead.
i'd like to believe that you're not -actually- unable to figure out how to turn on the optional quick-start bar (an option that used to be on by default and is now off due to -common-user-request-), open the calendar/clock with the default double click or turn off messenger with a right click on the systray icon.
those nags just strike me as hollow and contrived, and are wholly unnecessary. Particularly when juxtaposed between legit gripes about IE,OE,no default productivity suite, etc. i just don't see the point.
Renting and copying VHS movies is easy, comparably anonymous, and much cheaper than buying them.
yet most americans didn't do it. why? because vhs prices were reasonable enough that getting a good copy the first time out made it worth the extra cost.
the same thing is happening with dvd movies. you can rent and burn no problem. dvd-r is becoming awfully cheap and well-supported in players. but the MPAA is in the middle of a banner year for movie sales. why? because the (on average) low price of dvds makes buying more attractive to people than learning to copy, buying the recorder+discs, taking the time to record it and running the risk of getting caught.
as for music, the reason that concerts are where all the money is in music today is because of the RIAA monopoly. not because music wants to be free.
it's the same reason why the radio is so slanted against independent artists. it has nothing to do with the product of music - it has to do with the current -business- of music. Publishers, producers and managers make piles of money off of CDs; that musicians don't is an artifact of the monopoly.
I think that enough people will support legitimate electronic distribution, that suing the people who continue to pirate (there will always be these people, for any media) won't be at all worthwhile. their online business will grudgingly coexist.
most people already pay for music with a credit card, and any respectable music solution will allow charge-per-song, not mandate a monthly fee (though monthly fee is where distributors will want to go, because its guaranteed fixed income).
but you outlined very well the necessary features of a successful legit electronic distribution scheme.
Easy as kazaa, quicker than kazaa, trustable content (no mislabeled, altered, or poor quality tracks).
then it has to be priced cheap enough that: the ease of user experience + guaranteed quality + ease of getting the right song the first time + increased speed of download + no risk for being sued > the cost.
if you think business can't compete with easy, anonymous, and free - look at bottled water.
the RIAA is going to lose no matter what happens to its consituent recording companies. it knows this.
when distribution becomes primarily eletronic, then if the RIAA doesn't wholly control the distributor (if that distributor gives a fair deal to any recording company) their monopoly falls apart, their income will evaporate and the RIAA itself will be redundant and removed.
the recording companies will once again have to compete (because startups and independents can make money even if they're not in Best Buy and Media Play) and the association will dramatically lose funding. whether the individual record companies compete well enough to remain doesn't matter. odds are that they will, but they won't need to donate money to the RIAA to protect their distribution monopoly.
keep in mind, it's the RIAA doing the suing. Not sony, not bmg, not time warner - not even in joint litigation. the same RIAA who are mainly comprised of organizational management and lawyers who exist to perpetuate the monopoly. The same RIAA that operates as a nonprofit, and would be required to donate any existing capital should they go bankrupt.
So they are doing what only makes sense. Invent litigation and lobbying efforts to stall the end of the monopoly (to make more on wages) and to drum up extra legal fees (drain the coffers before the end), and brush up the resume.
The RIAA itself has no other option. It can't adapt, it can't compete. Once the distribution monopoly is gone, the record companies will at the least dramatically scale back their contributions, and the party will be over.
illegal p2p file sharing will lose ground to legit music download services. most people -will- pay to get the right song at the right bit rate at the best download speeds the first time. many already do, and there isn't even much competition. the fact that illegal p2p transfers -are- illegal is important and will contribute to the adoption of legal alternatives, but only slightly for most of the people downloading.
it all depends on the type of game and the pacing.
when i play counterstrike i virtually ignore the second monitor - but being able to switch over to IM or switch a song on winamp between rounds is very nice. particularly for telling friends what server i'm on.
most times i just use the second monitor for quicker access to winamp and icq between the action or during downtime in a massmog. mostly just to switch up songs or playlists, or to coordinate out-of-game friends to which game we're playing/server we're on/etc.
it's not for every gamer, and not for every game.
i've never used it for cheating, though being an online gamer i'm certainly aware of the ease of use that dual monitors provides to those dispicable bastards. even in games that disable alt-tab you can start a radar hack (like Odin's Eye for DAOC) on the second screen before the game, and then just watch it update.
if you never find yourself staring at a loading screen and thinking you should check on that download/upload/icq/remote install/email then sure, you wouldn't get anything outta the second monitor.
i use the apps on the second monitor exclusively during downtime, and only between the action. if i'm playing, like you, i'm too focused to even notice an icq hit or an email coming in. but i appreciate that i can more quickly get over to handling it, and don't have to worry about the graphical bugs caused by windowed apps 'showing through' a dx graphics mode.
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everyone knows that MS uses Apple boxes in their design shops - and they certainly could use new G5s for their mac development teams (remember, they openly write software for the mac). Neither of which would be news to any company who wished to get an inside track at what MS is watching and developing (i'll save you time: everything)
Given that he mentions he works in the MSCopy building, it seems likely this has nothing to do with development.
if anything, this is simply a termination for violating a 'no pictures' policy. if anything devious - this is a termination for a perceived attempt to embarass the company. (headline/pic out of context implies that MS secretly covets Mac, tacit admission apple is better)
... particularly after reading what those offering-banks were doing during the boom.
.com with no revenue at $20/share, one normally assumes they know something you don't).
Not only were investors dumb with their money, but there was a sea of illegal under-the-table action building up those numbers.
Recap: When Amazon does an IPO, they get a bank to handle the deal. That bank first sells shares in large chunks to other very large banks, who then sell to other less-large banks, who then sell to you and me.
Brokers at the offering bank would cut deals with would-be 1st tier purchasers, offering them a chunk of shares for a good price, but only if they agreed to buy more shares at the inflated price (illegal) - further inflating the perceived value (if you see smith barney still buying a
The would-be purchasers wouldn't want to back out on the deal, after the good price, or else they'd be cut off from getting in early on other IPOs offered by that bank. (few banks actually do IPOs) Similarly, they sure wouldn't want to take a hit for their own company (it'd be their ass) if that second block of shares turned out to be overvalued - so they gussied up their forecasts to convince other investors that a company really -was- worth the secondary inflated price (illegal).
They made millions on everyone else losing billions.
Given that, if Google does their own IPO straight-to-the-people, day-traders and herd mentality could easily drive the prices up to bubble-era prices. Of course, on the other hand, it's much less likely that there's shady deals going on.
Though I'd imagine they'd only sell a small block of shares that way. One doesn't usually turn away a billion dollar brokerage firm who wishes to purchase in significant quantities.
i was making light of the issue of implied frequency of hostile environments, and the suggestions that such recommended attitudes and behaviors are productive applications of an engineers time and energy.
... hey! a book deal!)
something altogether different than how you seem to have interpreted it, given your fairly extreme analogy.
suffice to say i don't believe my personal experience is indicative of world-wide norms.
by the same token though, i don't take frantic arm-waving reporting for social norms either.
i don't believe -most- engineers should bother with such extreme foil-hat defenses. certainly they should be aware of underhanded tactics, and some suggested behaviors are just good business sense. but i certainly don't believe -every- kid coming out of college needs to be inundated with these concerns to the extreme degrees set out in this book.
similarly i don't believe that shark attacks, or school shootings or old people plowing through farmer's markets are as wildly prevalent as some 'experts' would have you believe.
particularly when such experts are economically incentivized to overstate themselves (fueling further concern, opening the door to consulting or
... was in watching Michael Crichton's Disclosure.
Either I'm exceedingly lucky, or these types of hostile environs aren't nearly as widespread as this guy would have you believe.
Or maybe i'm so inept that I can't see the game being played around me... where's that foil carton?
look up all the problems and exploits that digital voting has had. being able to change alread-cast ballots and submitting a theoretically infinite number of ballots are a bit too much for my tastes.
i suppose if the evoting industry were to entirely switch gears and go with a -secure- OS with a -secure- UI, on a -secure- Local network, -and- have a papertrail - then automatic vote counting would be fine.
but in their current incarnation, exploiting those voting machines has proven much too easy, and due to the anonymous nature of voting, is an unproveable crime.
I dont oppose digital media - I oppose the systems that are being put up, and the vendors who have created them. at least with a hard-copy-only system, even a failing by the weak machines these companies create wouldn't lead to an easily exploited voting process.
in a perfectly implemented world - i'd be able to securely, yet anonymously, vote from home over the internet. and i'm for that; in theory.
By my nature I certainly wouldn't think the first incarnation of evoting will work flawlessly. And looking at the existing field of candidates, I'd bet my house on it. So there's no shame in a progressive implementation. Limit moving parts, secure and improve the technology through experience - and build up to the ultimate goal.
It isn't a race. Democracy in america has worked as designed for 200+ years, we can afford to take our time with ensuring that vote integrity isn't easily compromised.
really that is the only thing holding back my getting a camera phone. i dont need 192MB built in - i have a 256MB card laying around (since i upgraded my Nex2e and my digital camera to 512).
data service for those phones is unnecessarily expensive (in the US) and yet i see the benefits of having a small average quality digital camera with me for all the times where i haven't thought to bring my 3MP monster.
why is it that these phones never have a decent expansion slot? don't lock me in with your 'no one will ever need more than 128MB' short-sightedness.
(no proprietary DRM'd media thank-you-very-much. i appreciate my price/performance/flexbility superiority to memoryStick or SD)
plastic card functionality: proven, existant, immune to remote theft.
cell phone purchasing: unproven, nonexistant, susceptible to remote theft.
what's the benefit of buying a coke from a foot away if you have to touch the machine anyway to grab the can?
and telneting is a terribly inappropriate analogy.
telnet makes sense because monitors occupy space, are expensive, and you can do remote work with such a connection.
do i ever need to do remote work on a vending machine or at a grocery store? do i need to touch only my cell phone to specify flavor and prepay for a soda from 50' away?
do i need to trust yet another vendor with holding my credit card information in yet another database that is all too often hacked, just for this magical wireless payment privilege?
do i need to trust yet another monopolistic closed-source provider to create a secure wireless communication method - which may not even be standard? these are convicted monopolists, keep that in mind. lets not pretend that they never hurt innovation, competition or consumer interests. just look at the competitionin the credit card arena. or how about in the cell networks. heck just look at the rate of innovation in US cell networks vs the world.
are these the corporate titans you want to bind even tighter together? so they squeeze out potential newcomers by disallowing them yet-another-proprietary feature?
sure, in the case of credit cards, burden of proof lies on the bank in the event of theft. of course, some of us don't like to pay for everything with a CC (bad habit) and prefer debit cards. where i either have to punch in a pin code (or store another number in a weak database) or use it as a CC transaction and assume the burden of proof in the event of theft (and suffer the inconvenience of not having my money in my checking account until the bank gets around to giving it back).
i don't see one reasonable application of why i should prefer to pay by waving my phone at something, rather than by swiping a piece of plastic. let alone see how such an application's benefits outweigh the above drawbacks.
yeah... could we get a few more convicted monopolists into this system? perhaps Microsoft could build the proprietary network interface to handle all this secure data transfer and storage via passport or something...
are we just -hoping- that they decide to play nice with their fees and standards and data security?
sure it -sounds- like a good idea... wait no. it only sounds -futuristic-. it sounds like something spock would do at a vending machine. so it must be good right?
please. is swiping a plastic card so difficult?
even ignoring the added security problems of a wireless network - it just sounds unnecessary.
another problem is the media hyping mechanical voting systems as 'inaccurate' or 'difficult to understand', suggesting that things like the butterfly ballot skew results towards educated voters. they're manufacturing a crisis.
if computers do the job - great. but they -need- to be only used to simplify the creation of the physical ballot. just like the mechanical machines before them.
why not just have a touchscreen computer laserprint out a scantron-style form with the selected votes (computers allowing reviewing and undoing - -good- features) - and then just have the vote counters pass the ballots through a scantron machine to count them?
you have a count of voters who came to register so no one voter can cast more ballots than they should be allowed to, and the storage system is completely removed from the voter so that no malicious voter can modify another's ballot.
the ballots are machine made and machine read - there's simply no possibility of a 'hanging chad' type instance.
but regardless, there should be no databases for votes. no internet access. no network existing between voting machines.
and while i'm on the soapbox: IRV NOW!
which was exactly my point.
because of the self-imposed prison that the brightest minds and the largest budgets in comic publishing put themselves in, the form stagnated. it features childlike morals and prepubescent attractions precisely because that is the only market left for it.
If someone sees you pawing through Gaiman's work - they'll -still- derisively scoff at it as 'a comic book' on the same level as golden age Superman. And -that- is what i'm talking about.
Right now, you can't convince a person that Metal Gear Solid 2 may have had the first postmodern storyline, or even just a fairly engaging higher level commentary on the nature of information. why?
because it's a game 'oh, like doom'. or 'mario'.
The reason that Lara Croft is the most visible female gaming icon is a terrible precursor of gaming following the path laid down by comics before it. into irrelevance.
To intentionally oversell the same tried and true prepubescent themes to the proven core audience, without ever giving pause to deliver a decent character arc, let alone plot.
the key problem with being a pigeonholed art form by general society, is that you lose exposure to would-be writers, designers, and artists. and that will -always- lead to stagnation. I don't want games continue to stagnate - I already see it, I already lament it, I'd like to change it.
and I'm sure marshall will be kind enough to swing by our government housing projects to say 'I told you so'.
...artistically.
does anyone claim that steven spielberg shouldn't have made Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's list? Was he making light, or 'making a buck' on the idea of americans dying overseas, on the idea of jews being tortured and executed?
yet everyone in the industry aknowledges that the way to grow gaming is to drive for more cinematic, more interactive, more film-like experiences.
Games may very well be considered 'art' the way people consider film 'art' in 10 years.
or, they can be relegated to childish whimsy like comics.
Asking game developers to ignore certain topics, regardless of context, because they might offend someone is very much akin to the self-imposed 'Comic Code' of the 60s-80s. It nearly killed the industry as a legitimate artistic medium. Every american comic became trapped by the restrictive code and fell into a niche as a childish diversion.
within the code american comic creators could only explore child-safe content as defined by the broadest possible american social definition of 'safe'.
compare this with the evolution of anime in japan. Sure, we all make derisive remarks about 'tentacle porn' - but anime in japan is -accepted-. it isn't just for kids. the culture treats it on par with film or literature. why? precisely because only a certain subset of anime is devoted to children and child-safe topics (yu gi oh, pokemon, etc) - the larger segment covers mature subjects one might find in a TV drama or film (ghost in the shell, akira). american comics have no parallel (no mainstream parallel, though the underground is growing, but the social stigma will take time to erode). evern american animated movies suffer from this, and are relegated to insistance on 'child safe'.
visceral emotional response is the key to allowing people to realize that games need not -only- be about mindlessly pulling a trigger. not that there is anything wrong with some twitch play - just as there is nothing wrong with shallow action flicks.
a game simulating the Uday/Qusay vs USAF shootout would certainly have poor timing, if particularly identifying the subjects by name; but shouldn't be labelled in poor taste so because of its content, but rather depending upon its -context-.
if the simulation of that situation was created to educate people about the difficulties and human life risk associated in breach/clear/capture operations against a fully dedicated opponent in an urban setting - that strikes me as possibly reasonable. if the purpose of the game is simply to allow people to pump round after round into from-the-headlines political figures, then that is certainly tasteless.
notice it is the -gameplay-, the context, that indicates tastelessness. people always seem to forget to include context in their discussions of whether it is 'right' or not.
here is where we decide people. are games to be forever treated as an interactive extension of film? or an interactive extension of american comics?
(keep in mind i use 'art', and 'artistic' loosely to indicate mature expression, as in sculpture or painting - not to indicate it as being capital-A Art, being hoity toity or 'correct'.)
... they love to set rules and access rights and controls - instead of actually managing employees conscionably and using resources responsibly.
mostly i imagine this will appeal to the less savory huge corporations who wish to stop seeing their internal memos and severance packages on f*ckedcompany.
but inevitably, if the information would actually be interesting to someone outside the desired recipient list, it will be shared. to borrow a cliche, 'information wants to be free' - good information anyway.
perhaps the 'leaker' will have to retype the message, but more likely he'll cut/paste or (if that's disabled) take a screenshot and email that.
and as soon as an email leaves the corporate structure once, all those controls don't mean a thing.
the platform-specific nature, and the fact that most leaks come through corporate partners who have limited email access/correspondence (some may even be on public distro lists) will mean that its effectiveness will be entirely limited to internal corporations.
though, if momentum builds behind this, a trusted email standard may not be far away. and if nothing else, perhaps that would alleviate some spam? if you consider the price worth the cost.
capturing rain would be an interesting application, if problematic. the occurence of rain would most likely be insufficent for dependable energy generation. and a method to collect enough rain (usually fairly evenly spread over an area) into one location to filter through the aparatus would be tricky. creating these blocks in an array to cover a large area directly would certainly take quite a bit of energy, and would not be a realistic solution (given the ease at which these holes could be obstructed with just about any natural debris). this process nearly demands a controlled water source.
as for putting these blocks under, say, a fish tank - the water would slowly collect in a bucket below the tank (or on your floor). and you would have to refill the tank as it drained to continue power generation. so either you are drawing from the energy used to pressurize the water system (if you leave a tap on) or you use the human kinetic energy necessary to dump the contents of the bucket back into the tank to restart the process (or you could even run an electrical pump to pump the water directly back to the tank from the bucket - but that again would draw power).
so you either have a lossy system, or perpetual motion. (otherwise someone would have made power plants that pumping water to turn a watermill years ago)
if you don't mind lifting the bucket a few times a day, its possible it could generate enough energy to be worthwhile, but it's fairly unlikely to be widely accepted.
again, its most intriguing application would be for energy storage, as pressure is fairly easy to maintain once it is achieved (much more so than preserving the reactivity of chemical battery components).
an interesting possibility is 'shaking' such a water-battery to use human energy to 'recharge' it. of course, one could already use a magnet and a coil to manage this with faraday's principle (eg forever flashlight), so again, it's a matter of how efficient the process is.
again, just my opinion, but it's an effect more interesting for energy -storage- potential rather than direct generation. the controlled environment of a battery allows noncorrosive liquids to be used, and removes possible clogging debris, removing two of the primary problem spots right off. furthermore it is competing with the 30% efficiency of chemical batteries instead of the much higher efficiencies of carbon-based fuels or nuclear power.
just to throw in my opinion here:
fps controls for consoles are absolutely fine.
i play unreal championchip on xbl and i play ut2k3 on my PC. there's very little difference.
yes, it takes time to get the hang of. but so does circlestrafing with wasd. and all the action games have sensitivity settings for the analog sticks that bring the speed and accuracy up to the same level.
yeah, a mouse is more precise. but when i'm playing on a 50" hdtv, relative precision is easily comparable.
furthermore, one huge advantage is that on the consoles, interfaces are forced to become streamlined. you can't simply expect a user to bind a dozen or more keys just to be able to pick teams or switch models.
as for mods and such - i'm hoping the xbox HD and xbl get used more for the custom content route in the future. downloadable content is pretty sweet - it'd be great to get mods or community made maps via the same mechanisms. i could literally play ghost recon just about forever if there was a map editor with shareable maps.
of course, the heavy duty sims will never be primarily sold on the consoles - its simply a contradiction in markets for the most part. though custom controllers can do anything you like on your pc, only better. there's a keyboard add-on for the xbox already (for PSO) and a ridiculous 100+ key mech sim (gimmicky, but existant). even classic PC-style RPGs and massmogs are moving to consoles.
the lines are going to continue to blur between which games are where (excepting hardcore sims), and the price/performance of consoles is bar-none the greatest in game hardware. i mean, this generation of consoles are playing top of the line games 3 years after their introduction. what top of the line PC 3 years ago is going to be able to play HL2?
then there's the added benefits of the xbl broadband only multiplayer, and the more cheat-resistant qualities of consoles vs pcs in regards to network gaming. cheat-free is a -huge- benefit for multiplayer gaming that you will not see on the pc side. it easily makes up for the analog control learning curve by itself.
(and console games aren't constantly patched and buggy).
yeah, i thought the same thing about this time last year, when RAID controllers started hitting just about every mobo in my price range. so i researched it a bit and most benchmarks i've seen have shown 0 to negative performance changes when using striping.
only very large file transfers manage a benefit, on the order of several hundred meg. and thankfully i can still count on one hand, the number of games and situations where i need to squeeze another second or two out of a 200+ mB file transfer.
given of course, this is all based on data from consumer level raid controllers.
gaming is fundamentally lots of relatively small data operations, mostly 'random' in nature, with very few linear loads (startup and 'map' loading being the exceptions) or writes (savegames, screenshots). even big maps/zones/etc don't break 50mB very often.
you'd be better off spending the money on a fast HD if you want performance. (not just RPMs, do your research and watch cache size and cache speed).
me, i decided to wait to upgrade again. sure my 1ghz is showing its age - but none of the games coming out is gettin my wallet itchy. anything that looks half-decent and won't run on my machine (hl2, doom3) is headed for my (much cheaper, much more stable, much longer-lived) xbox.
the product isn't going to -die-. this is how convergence devices are -born-.
PDA market growth is just going to come in the form of convergence devices more and more. some consumers will see it as new phone tech on their next PDA, most will see it as new PDA tech on their next phone. but neither product will 'die'. dedicated PDAs will simply be relegated to markets where having phone capability isn't worth the cost.
in the same reactionary vein one could argue that mp3 players are going to 'die' because of the proliferation of that core functionality showing up in PDAs and cellphones. (without near killer-app sized storage though).
i think the obvious explanation is consumers are demanding a single 'thing' that is their interface to mobile digital information. be it 3G phone, PIM, mp3, email, or mobile data storage. then there's society: having a cellphone is not 'geeky', nor is having a cellphone with PIM functionality.
but having a cellphone + mp3 player + PDA certainly still is.
and practicality: having to manage the batteries on 3+ digital devices is a headache. particularly when you are generally using only one or the other.
my ideal convergence device:
embedded Linux-based OS (for custom programming)
full bandwidth 3G phone (w/ 1m CCD, 24fps video capability)
CF type2 slot
built-in WiFi (802.11b is fine)
short range FM transmitter (for car usage without a dongle)
built in HD ~6gB (preferrably magneto-SRAM)
usb2.0/firewire
OSS PIM
mp3 audio software
mp4/divx video software
tabletPC-style graffiti interface, with automatic translation for text-boxes would be good too.
no more hunt and stab with the stylus for url input.
no SD, no MemoryStick -- no DRM at all thank-you-very-much.
battery: li-ion, rechargable via usb/firewire/dc adapter. ~10 hrs running time.
size: about 4"x2.5".
attachable secondary battery, camelback style, for long trips/flights would be great too.
right now one pays:
~$275 for the mp3 player and storage
~$150 for basic PDA
~$175 for a capable 3G phone
would i pay $600 for all of this rolled into one? most certainly. hell i already spent $200 on the pda and $140 on a nex2e and 512mb CF card. if i get a decent cameraphone i'm out another $150 at least. then there was another $50 for the wifi adapter for the pda.
to be able to have all that functionality in one widget is worth at least $150 by itself. particularly if it has respectable battery life.
if you build underwater, where does the water that has flown through your apparatus go? probably a storage tank of some type, that by definition has to have lower pressure than the bottom of the water source.
at some point you have to transfer it back to a location of higher potential energy, and will waste even more of your 'produced' electricity.
(unless of course you are simply going to drain your entire source into another location, and harness energy as a one-time thing).
if you try to connect the apparatus right back to the bottom of your water source, the apparatus will simply achieve pressure equilibrium and you will have no current to supply your current. (punny)
this could however be used in conjunction with tidal power generation and/or hydroelectric dams - the question there being simply: is this method more or less effective than conventional turbines?
this method certainly has the advantage of no moving parts, but one would have to wonder about the rate of corrosion of the electrodes, particularly in saltwater applications - they being submerged in water and all.
now the interesting question is, is water stored at high pressure a more efficient way to store and transfer electricity than chemical batteries?
it shouldn't be too far-fetched, given the poor efficiency of lead-acid and their ilk. and it also wouldn't matter if the process to 'charge' the battery was wasteful, as society has regularly traded off efficiency for portability. particularly in electrical generation.
of course in the case of battery usage, you also have to consider the power required to start/stop the water flow, via a valve of some type. with the pressures being dealt with to create the current, i don't think it would be trivial in the least. particularly at the miniaturized sizes necessary for most battery applications. and then the tiny pump necessary to repressurize the water to 'recharge' it....
in fact, bush won more states by popular vote and had more national popular vote support than clinton.
so if you want to complain about the voting system, that's fine - but complaining down party lines is indicative of amateur trolling.
of course, your whole troll^H^H^H^H^H post is a bit of a conspiracy cliche, so that really shouldn't be surprising to anybody.
you'd really like to think they're 'real' famles wouldn't you...
with any franchise short of The Sims, you ought to be extremely hesitant to ever assume that the person behind that keyboard really is female - even if they claim they 'really' are.
maybe ragnarok has more females, due to the cultural divide re: gaming between korea and the entire rest of the world, i dont pretend to know. (gaming is *gasp* actually -accepted- there)
but all world-average online stats have shown that only a small percentage of the small percentage of female avatars are actually female -players-. of course, gender boundaries being warped by online pseudonymity certainly blurs who is and isn't 'female' for all intents and purposes.
i just wouldn't bet a relationship on any given specific of an online avatar being 'real'.
at least eidos got spector and ion austin out of that convoluted deal. though even if DX2 is huge they still won't be able to make up the cash they burnt on daikatana...
i swear, the more i read about the 'business' of hall and romero, the more i can't see how anyone would ever give them publishing cash ever again.
when you complain that the calendar/clock won't pop up or that you can't get quickbar icons to appear on the start bar - it seems like you're just trying to fill space. XP has plenty of faults, many of which you pointed out very well.
So i can't imagine why trying to say these features don't exist (they certainly do) or are impossible to figure out (they aren't) is necessary.
i mean, maybe you'd like to see the quickstart bar enabled by default - that's fine say that. or that you'd like the calendar/clock to pop up on a single click (personally that would drive me insane); or you'd like systray applications to display their option menus with either a left or right mouse button click (so you could figure out how to turn off msn messenger). just say that instead.
i'd like to believe that you're not -actually- unable to figure out how to turn on the optional quick-start bar (an option that used to be on by default and is now off due to -common-user-request-), open the calendar/clock with the default double click or turn off messenger with a right click on the systray icon.
those nags just strike me as hollow and contrived, and are wholly unnecessary. Particularly when juxtaposed between legit gripes about IE,OE,no default productivity suite, etc.
i just don't see the point.
Renting and copying VHS movies is easy, comparably anonymous, and much cheaper than buying them.
yet most americans didn't do it. why? because vhs prices were reasonable enough that getting a good copy the first time out made it worth the extra cost.
the same thing is happening with dvd movies. you can rent and burn no problem. dvd-r is becoming awfully cheap and well-supported in players. but the MPAA is in the middle of a banner year for movie sales. why? because the (on average) low price of dvds makes buying more attractive to people than learning to copy, buying the recorder+discs, taking the time to record it and running the risk of getting caught.
as for music, the reason that concerts are where all the money is in music today is because of the RIAA monopoly.
not because music wants to be free.
it's the same reason why the radio is so slanted against independent artists. it has nothing to do with the product of music - it has to do with the current -business- of music. Publishers, producers and managers make piles of money off of CDs; that musicians don't is an artifact of the monopoly.
I think that enough people will support legitimate electronic distribution, that suing the people who continue to pirate (there will always be these people, for any media) won't be at all worthwhile. their online business will grudgingly coexist.
most people already pay for music with a credit card, and any respectable music solution will allow charge-per-song, not mandate a monthly fee (though monthly fee is where distributors will want to go, because its guaranteed fixed income).
but you outlined very well the necessary features of a successful legit electronic distribution scheme.
Easy as kazaa, quicker than kazaa, trustable content (no mislabeled, altered, or poor quality tracks).
then it has to be priced cheap enough that:
the ease of user experience + guaranteed quality + ease of getting the right song the first time + increased speed of download + no risk for being sued > the cost.
if you think business can't compete with easy, anonymous, and free - look at bottled water.
the RIAA is going to lose no matter what happens to its consituent recording companies. it knows this.
when distribution becomes primarily eletronic, then if the RIAA doesn't wholly control the distributor (if that distributor gives a fair deal to any recording company) their monopoly falls apart, their income will evaporate and the RIAA itself will be redundant and removed.
the recording companies will once again have to compete (because startups and independents can make money even if they're not in Best Buy and Media Play) and the association will dramatically lose funding. whether the individual record companies compete well enough to remain doesn't matter. odds are that they will, but they won't need to donate money to the RIAA to protect their distribution monopoly.
keep in mind, it's the RIAA doing the suing. Not sony, not bmg, not time warner - not even in joint litigation. the same RIAA who are mainly comprised of organizational management and lawyers who exist to perpetuate the monopoly. The same RIAA that operates as a nonprofit, and would be required to donate any existing capital should they go bankrupt.
So they are doing what only makes sense. Invent litigation and lobbying efforts to stall the end of the monopoly (to make more on wages) and to drum up extra legal fees (drain the coffers before the end), and brush up the resume.
The RIAA itself has no other option. It can't adapt, it can't compete. Once the distribution monopoly is gone, the record companies will at the least dramatically scale back their contributions, and the party will be over.
illegal p2p file sharing will lose ground to legit music download services. most people -will- pay to get the right song at the right bit rate at the best download speeds the first time. many already do, and there isn't even much competition. the fact that illegal p2p transfers -are- illegal is important and will contribute to the adoption of legal alternatives, but only slightly for most of the people downloading.
it all depends on the type of game and the pacing.
when i play counterstrike i virtually ignore the second monitor - but being able to switch over to IM or switch a song on winamp between rounds is very nice. particularly for telling friends what server i'm on.
most times i just use the second monitor for quicker access to winamp and icq between the action or during downtime in a massmog. mostly just to switch up songs or playlists, or to coordinate out-of-game friends to which game we're playing/server we're on/etc.
it's not for every gamer, and not for every game.
i've never used it for cheating, though being an online gamer i'm certainly aware of the ease of use that dual monitors provides to those dispicable bastards. even in games that disable alt-tab you can start a radar hack (like Odin's Eye for DAOC) on the second screen before the game, and then just watch it update.
if you never find yourself staring at a loading screen and thinking you should check on that download/upload/icq/remote install/email then sure, you wouldn't get anything outta the second monitor.
i use the apps on the second monitor exclusively during downtime, and only between the action. if i'm playing, like you, i'm too focused to even notice an icq hit or an email coming in. but i appreciate that i can more quickly get over to handling it, and don't have to worry about the graphical bugs caused by windowed apps 'showing through' a dx graphics mode.