With any of those options, and such a small number of books, why not just organize the shelves. Seperate the shelves by category and then organize each shelf by author. That way a quick visual scan of the shelf will give you the book you want in less time than it takes you to query a database, or sit down and open a text file. If you can't remember which title goes with wich author, you certainly don't need your own database for that. There are plenty that exist already and are internet searchable.
There are libraries in the world with hundreds of thousands of books, and you can walk right in and find a book you want. The technical aspects of this are just pure unnecessary geekery.
Yeah, plus when expansions come out they have to pay $59 for the whole game+expansion instead of just the expansion... I don't want to get into an argument about how much more a computer costs than an Xbox 360 though.
I will say this though: At least I can buy a computer.:)
People wonder why Windows remains king over Linux and I think its corporate America's view that one vendor should decide everything for them as a way to cut down on costs. Meanwhile they are being robbed and price gouged.
I think you're wrong. It's all about the apps. Companies migrate to windows because the apps they need that used to run on *NIX and Netware only run on Windows now. Microsoft won the install base by winning over the application developers, and customers pick Microsoft because they have little or no choice. It's certainly unlikely that they care if it's windows on their desktop or server. They care only about the bottom line of the invoice, but these days there is only one number to pick.
I'm not talking retail applications here, I'm talking about big, industry specific applications.
I was wondering whether you have ever closed on a mortgage.
Yup. Recently in fact.
If so, did you read every line of fine print in the 30 or so pages put in front of you?
Much to the dismay of the bank's closing attorney, yes. It only took a few hours. If I were using an attorney that I knew personally and trusted, I would have let him do the reading and sum up for me, but my bank insisted I use their lawyer, and I wasn't going to pay two, so he had to wait. Most of the stuff isn't even that complicated, disclosures and whatnot, and you've already got a lawyer sitting there to explain things to you that you don't understand... Same goes for an accountant. I have a guy I trust and have built a relationship with, but even then, I still skim stuff. I'd never trust a sweatshop like an H&R Block. You can bet your ass I'd read everything. I'd double check their math too.
Of all the home closings and mortgage refinances I've been through, things like explanations for all the different fees and taxes were covered very well, but then there are pages and pages of boilerplate forms that all need signatures.
With mortgages being in the multiples of annual salaries these days, you'd have to be really, really dumb not to read everything, or hire a lawyer that represented you and not any of the other interested parties to read everything for you. If a multi-hundred thousand dollar transaction isn't worth multiple hours of your time and the trouble of understanding, then what is?
There is a difference between protecting people from stupidity and protecting them from naivety. No-one is an expert in every field, and no-one has time to make themselves into one.
I'm sorry, but you don't have to be an expert in *anything* to read a document before you sign it. Not reading a contract before signing it isn't naive, it's stupid. That goes for things as simple as a credit card receipt, and should be obvious for something as important as your tax return.
The law should encourage/require popular services to work as the public would expect, not encourage the exact opposite.
The public should expect a contract to be binding on signature. By your argument, wouldn't it be better for the contract terms to be what's on the piece of paper, and not what's on the paper after filtered through a list of laws they probably never heard of? How are you not making the problem worse by changing the rules to require research or a lawyer in order to draft a contract? Drafting expectations into laws instead of documented terms has to be one of the most stupid and downright dangerous ideas I've ever heard, to the point where it literally undermines freedom. Perhaps you know what's best for people, but I doubt it. Even if you think you know what's best for me, or that the government knows what's best for me, I don't care. I'd like to be able to make my own choices, thank you.
Critics call the changes a dangerous breach in personal and financial privacy. They say the requirement for signed consent would prove meaningless for many taxpayers, especially those hurriedly reviewing stacks of documents before a filing deadline.
"The normal interaction is that the taxpayer just signs what the tax preparer puts in front of them," said Jean Ann Fox of the Consumer Federation of America, one of several groups fighting the changes.
You can't expect to protect people from their own stupidity. If the preparer can't get the tax return data this way, they can just have their customers fill out a 'financial worksheet' and sell that instead. If you're stupid enough to 'just sign' anything, you're going to have your privacy violated. This ruling is moot.
If you're doing real work on Fedora, I feel your pain.
I don't. I do my real work on Debian stable.
I know it's a testbed, it's just shocking that it's at version 5 when it seems like only yesterday that it didn't exist at all. We are talking initial reactions here, right?
No. seriously, all ironic social commentary aside. Most people do not sit in front of the TV for 12 hours in a row on a regular basis, or even close. They get up, eat, use the facilities, sleep, go to work, mow the lawn, fisit friends and relatives, shop, and do all sorts of other real-life stuff that puts a cap on typical consecutive TV time around the four hour mark. Again, I'm talking most people, there are plenty of lazy slobs outside the norm.
Holy crap! They're up to 5 already? Slow down guys. Nobody wants to upgrade systems they use for actual work that often. There's something to be said for stability.
Do you want the list that matters for this particular purpose, or the complete list? How about both:
For the purpose of this particular marathon, the ones that seem to matter are the increased progressive scan resolution, view distance, and just about everything that requires the input of more than one word of text. (For example, in the PC version of Tribunal, you could add textual markers to the world and local maps, but you couldn't in the Xbox version. There's probably a similar distinction for Oblivion. We'll know tomorrow.)
In general, though, the features you lack are the Construction Set (a full half of the game), free downloadable player created content, the ability to buy expansions without having to re-buy the whole game, a whole slew of graphical options that *aren't* exported in the game menus (what did they disable in the PC version so they could say the Xbox version is the same?), and, if Morrowind is anything to go by, the features that they added in the patches, Yes, the differences between the two are being played down by everybody right now, but that's probably because the only people who have played the game at this point derive some portion of their income from Microsoft.
Most people don't watch TV for extended periods. The majority of most people's day is taken up by work/school, and sleep, where you are sitting/standing up, and lying down respectively. I won't deny that for short periods, the relaxation of a couch is more comfortable than sitting up, but after a few hours your muscles (if you have any left) should be starting to tell you otherwise.
It's not really surprising... Optical drives can only take so much abuse. DVD drives even less so than what old CD players could. I think I've gotten lucky with my PS2s considering I'm on something like my fourth DVD player, my third Gamecube, and judging by the pile of dead CD-ROM/CD-R/DVD+-R/DVD-ROM drives in the corner, like the 12th PC optical drive between myself and my wife. If any real serious study were ever done, I would bet that the MTBF for all devices that read DVDs is about equal.
Of course, if and when I have kids, after they break the second of an expensive item, they'll be hard pressed to get me to buy them a third one. I know a lot of parents reading this will tell me that I'll be of a different mind when the time comes, but I've met most parents and I'm stronger willed than them. My house is going to be run like a military academy.:)
I replied again to the parent after more research. You're exactly right.... for older ATI cards, and nVidia cards. The Radeon X1xxx series cards (which is what is in the 360) support both at the same time, and should allow both at the same time with Oblivion. When the restriction was originally mentioned it was that the GeForce 7800GTX wouldn't support both, not that the PC version wouldn't support it.
I looked into it more.. The HDR lighting and AA combo restriction is only on older cards and nVidia cards because both functions use the same hardware. If you have a Radeon X1xxx you should be able to enable both.
The consensus seems to be that the maximum view distance is farther on a high end PC though.
[...] while relaxing on the couch is less comfortable than hunched over [...] Especially for 12 hours.
It's the "Especially for 12 hours part that really kills any chance at a point that you may have had. I can see that somebody's parents didn't teach them about proper posture.
Nobody will be comfortable in the same sitting position for 12 hours, so I assume a few well timed breaks for a stretch (and maybe a bit of exercise) are to be included, but if you're not more comfortable sitting up straight in a proper chair than you are slouched in a couch after more than a few hours, you're doing something seriously wrong/bad for you.
As for fitting nicely in your hands, well, the way it looks to me is that you're still controlling everything with only four fingers on the 360. I've done marathon gaming sessions both ways, and I've never gotten a thumb blister from PC gaming.
Anyone else find it humorous that this event is in Gamespot's "PC Games" section, but technically he's going to be playing the game on the XBox 360?
What I really find interesting is that, though he has the choice, he picked the 360 version instead of the PC version. I'm sure they have some sweet gaming rigs over there at Gamespot. It's not like the 360 was his only option... Who in their right mind would choose to use only their thumbs to play a game for 12 hours when better, more comfortable means are available... And why choose to play in lower res with less features? I'm curious to see what his shot and spell accuracy looks like after 12 hours.
I was going to respond to your other comment, but I decided it was better to respond in this context.
I agree with you that if you want to go from channel 5 to channel 505, the number keys are the way to go. My point, however, was that if your PVR is doing it's job, that desire could never exist, because you shouldn't have any associations that would lead you to believe that one thing or another was on those channels. When your PVR successfully turns your TV viewing into discrete segments of content, rather than an all out marketing blitz, you forget (or never learn in the first place) that show X is on network Y. If you know that you're on channel 5 (or Foo if it's by name) and you know you might like what is on channel 505 (or channel Bar), then your PVR has let too much of the bad content through. Instead you should be searching for another bit of content (by title), or for another type of content (by genre, keyword, actor, etc...), which is more likely to lead success in viewing enjoyment anyway.
Of course, if you have time or desire to just "channel surf", really you may need to be getting some lessons in ways to relax or have fun. Killing time is silly.
There really isn't a better way to bounce around the dial than the number buttons (see my other post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=179826&cid=148 96185). You can try to come up with a better way if you like, but other have already tried and failed.
That's funny, because whenever I see somebody channel surfing they're using the channel up and down buttons. Bouncing around the channels is exactly the sort of time when you don't have a particular destination in mind.
As for masking the channel number with a name
What's the point of doing that? Who cares what channel you're on, whether it's by name or number? All that matters is if they're showing something you like.
Or they could just do what everybody else who doesn't want to be bothered by US government regulations on the internet does... Host their site elsewhere.
Actually, If you count the number of people with access to my PS2s, and only use me as an example, then the installed userbase is twice the sales figures.
Slashdot Mirror
With any of those options, and such a small number of books, why not just organize the shelves. Seperate the shelves by category and then organize each shelf by author. That way a quick visual scan of the shelf will give you the book you want in less time than it takes you to query a database, or sit down and open a text file. If you can't remember which title goes with wich author, you certainly don't need your own database for that. There are plenty that exist already and are internet searchable.
There are libraries in the world with hundreds of thousands of books, and you can walk right in and find a book you want. The technical aspects of this are just pure unnecessary geekery.
Yeah, plus when expansions come out they have to pay $59 for the whole game+expansion instead of just the expansion... I don't want to get into an argument about how much more a computer costs than an Xbox 360 though.
:)
I will say this though: At least I can buy a computer.
Here's one example: Find me a sane contract to buy or license software.
That's a pretty poor example. I've never signed a software license agreement, have you?
This generally requires a credit card, none of which can be had under what I would consider fair terms.
So not reading the terms makes them go away?
People wonder why Windows remains king over Linux and I think its corporate America's view that one vendor should decide everything for them as a way to cut down on costs. Meanwhile they are being robbed and price gouged.
I think you're wrong. It's all about the apps. Companies migrate to windows because the apps they need that used to run on *NIX and Netware only run on Windows now. Microsoft won the install base by winning over the application developers, and customers pick Microsoft because they have little or no choice. It's certainly unlikely that they care if it's windows on their desktop or server. They care only about the bottom line of the invoice, but these days there is only one number to pick.
I'm not talking retail applications here, I'm talking about big, industry specific applications.
I was wondering whether you have ever closed on a mortgage.
Yup. Recently in fact.
If so, did you read every line of fine print in the 30 or so pages put in front of you?
Much to the dismay of the bank's closing attorney, yes. It only took a few hours. If I were using an attorney that I knew personally and trusted, I would have let him do the reading and sum up for me, but my bank insisted I use their lawyer, and I wasn't going to pay two, so he had to wait. Most of the stuff isn't even that complicated, disclosures and whatnot, and you've already got a lawyer sitting there to explain things to you that you don't understand... Same goes for an accountant. I have a guy I trust and have built a relationship with, but even then, I still skim stuff. I'd never trust a sweatshop like an H&R Block. You can bet your ass I'd read everything. I'd double check their math too.
Of all the home closings and mortgage refinances I've been through, things like explanations for all the different fees and taxes were covered very well, but then there are pages and pages of boilerplate forms that all need signatures.
With mortgages being in the multiples of annual salaries these days, you'd have to be really, really dumb not to read everything, or hire a lawyer that represented you and not any of the other interested parties to read everything for you. If a multi-hundred thousand dollar transaction isn't worth multiple hours of your time and the trouble of understanding, then what is?
There is a difference between protecting people from stupidity and protecting them from naivety. No-one is an expert in every field, and no-one has time to make themselves into one.
I'm sorry, but you don't have to be an expert in *anything* to read a document before you sign it. Not reading a contract before signing it isn't naive, it's stupid. That goes for things as simple as a credit card receipt, and should be obvious for something as important as your tax return.
The law should encourage/require popular services to work as the public would expect, not encourage the exact opposite.
The public should expect a contract to be binding on signature. By your argument, wouldn't it be better for the contract terms to be what's on the piece of paper, and not what's on the paper after filtered through a list of laws they probably never heard of? How are you not making the problem worse by changing the rules to require research or a lawyer in order to draft a contract? Drafting expectations into laws instead of documented terms has to be one of the most stupid and downright dangerous ideas I've ever heard, to the point where it literally undermines freedom. Perhaps you know what's best for people, but I doubt it. Even if you think you know what's best for me, or that the government knows what's best for me, I don't care. I'd like to be able to make my own choices, thank you.
Critics call the changes a dangerous breach in personal and financial privacy. They say the requirement for signed consent would prove meaningless for many taxpayers, especially those hurriedly reviewing stacks of documents before a filing deadline.
"The normal interaction is that the taxpayer just signs what the tax preparer puts in front of them," said Jean Ann Fox of the Consumer Federation of America, one of several groups fighting the changes.
You can't expect to protect people from their own stupidity. If the preparer can't get the tax return data this way, they can just have their customers fill out a 'financial worksheet' and sell that instead. If you're stupid enough to 'just sign' anything, you're going to have your privacy violated. This ruling is moot.
If you're doing real work on Fedora, I feel your pain.
I don't. I do my real work on Debian stable.
I know it's a testbed, it's just shocking that it's at version 5 when it seems like only yesterday that it didn't exist at all. We are talking initial reactions here, right?
No. seriously, all ironic social commentary aside. Most people do not sit in front of the TV for 12 hours in a row on a regular basis, or even close. They get up, eat, use the facilities, sleep, go to work, mow the lawn, fisit friends and relatives, shop, and do all sorts of other real-life stuff that puts a cap on typical consecutive TV time around the four hour mark. Again, I'm talking most people, there are plenty of lazy slobs outside the norm.
Holy crap! They're up to 5 already? Slow down guys. Nobody wants to upgrade systems they use for actual work that often. There's something to be said for stability.
Last I heard, it crashed twice on his Xbox. I certainly hope that the PC version isn't worse than that. (I'm not holding my breath though)
You never played Morrowind on Xbox, did you?
Do you want the list that matters for this particular purpose, or the complete list? How about both:
For the purpose of this particular marathon, the ones that seem to matter are the increased progressive scan resolution, view distance, and just about everything that requires the input of more than one word of text. (For example, in the PC version of Tribunal, you could add textual markers to the world and local maps, but you couldn't in the Xbox version. There's probably a similar distinction for Oblivion. We'll know tomorrow.)
In general, though, the features you lack are the Construction Set (a full half of the game), free downloadable player created content, the ability to buy expansions without having to re-buy the whole game, a whole slew of graphical options that *aren't* exported in the game menus (what did they disable in the PC version so they could say the Xbox version is the same?), and, if Morrowind is anything to go by, the features that they added in the patches, Yes, the differences between the two are being played down by everybody right now, but that's probably because the only people who have played the game at this point derive some portion of their income from Microsoft.
Most people don't watch TV for extended periods. The majority of most people's day is taken up by work/school, and sleep, where you are sitting/standing up, and lying down respectively. I won't deny that for short periods, the relaxation of a couch is more comfortable than sitting up, but after a few hours your muscles (if you have any left) should be starting to tell you otherwise.
It's not really surprising... Optical drives can only take so much abuse. DVD drives even less so than what old CD players could. I think I've gotten lucky with my PS2s considering I'm on something like my fourth DVD player, my third Gamecube, and judging by the pile of dead CD-ROM/CD-R/DVD+-R/DVD-ROM drives in the corner, like the 12th PC optical drive between myself and my wife. If any real serious study were ever done, I would bet that the MTBF for all devices that read DVDs is about equal.
:)
Of course, if and when I have kids, after they break the second of an expensive item, they'll be hard pressed to get me to buy them a third one. I know a lot of parents reading this will tell me that I'll be of a different mind when the time comes, but I've met most parents and I'm stronger willed than them. My house is going to be run like a military academy.
I replied again to the parent after more research. You're exactly right.... for older ATI cards, and nVidia cards. The Radeon X1xxx series cards (which is what is in the 360) support both at the same time, and should allow both at the same time with Oblivion. When the restriction was originally mentioned it was that the GeForce 7800GTX wouldn't support both, not that the PC version wouldn't support it.
I looked into it more.. The HDR lighting and AA combo restriction is only on older cards and nVidia cards because both functions use the same hardware. If you have a Radeon X1xxx you should be able to enable both.
The consensus seems to be that the maximum view distance is farther on a high end PC though.
[...] while relaxing on the couch is less comfortable than hunched over [...] Especially for 12 hours.
It's the "Especially for 12 hours part that really kills any chance at a point that you may have had. I can see that somebody's parents didn't teach them about proper posture.
Nobody will be comfortable in the same sitting position for 12 hours, so I assume a few well timed breaks for a stretch (and maybe a bit of exercise) are to be included, but if you're not more comfortable sitting up straight in a proper chair than you are slouched in a couch after more than a few hours, you're doing something seriously wrong/bad for you.
As for fitting nicely in your hands, well, the way it looks to me is that you're still controlling everything with only four fingers on the 360. I've done marathon gaming sessions both ways, and I've never gotten a thumb blister from PC gaming.
The PC version makes you pick one or the other.
I'd like to see it try. The game doesn't have to know you turned on AA. It can't force you to pick "Application controlled".
Anyone else find it humorous that this event is in Gamespot's "PC Games" section, but technically he's going to be playing the game on the XBox 360?
What I really find interesting is that, though he has the choice, he picked the 360 version instead of the PC version. I'm sure they have some sweet gaming rigs over there at Gamespot. It's not like the 360 was his only option... Who in their right mind would choose to use only their thumbs to play a game for 12 hours when better, more comfortable means are available... And why choose to play in lower res with less features? I'm curious to see what his shot and spell accuracy looks like after 12 hours.
I was going to respond to your other comment, but I decided it was better to respond in this context.
I agree with you that if you want to go from channel 5 to channel 505, the number keys are the way to go. My point, however, was that if your PVR is doing it's job, that desire could never exist, because you shouldn't have any associations that would lead you to believe that one thing or another was on those channels. When your PVR successfully turns your TV viewing into discrete segments of content, rather than an all out marketing blitz, you forget (or never learn in the first place) that show X is on network Y. If you know that you're on channel 5 (or Foo if it's by name) and you know you might like what is on channel 505 (or channel Bar), then your PVR has let too much of the bad content through. Instead you should be searching for another bit of content (by title), or for another type of content (by genre, keyword, actor, etc...), which is more likely to lead success in viewing enjoyment anyway.
Of course, if you have time or desire to just "channel surf", really you may need to be getting some lessons in ways to relax or have fun. Killing time is silly.
There really isn't a better way to bounce around the dial than the number buttons (see my other post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=179826&cid=148 96185). You can try to come up with a better way if you like, but other have already tried and failed.
That's funny, because whenever I see somebody channel surfing they're using the channel up and down buttons. Bouncing around the channels is exactly the sort of time when you don't have a particular destination in mind.
As for masking the channel number with a name
What's the point of doing that? Who cares what channel you're on, whether it's by name or number? All that matters is if they're showing something you like.
Trying to gauge a userbase beyond sales is simply too complicated and contraversial.
That was exactly my point.
Or they could just do what everybody else who doesn't want to be bothered by US government regulations on the internet does... Host their site elsewhere.
Actually, If you count the number of people with access to my PS2s, and only use me as an example, then the installed userbase is twice the sales figures.