There are a few other reasons, like the convenience of being able to save to the Wii's internal storage rather than plugging in a Gamecube memory card... (Emphasis added)
Convenience?!? This is the least-well thought out porting decision for this game.
For those who don't know, this game follows the traditional Zelda path of having three save slots in the game. On the gamecube, this is not a problem -- when the fourth person wants to play, you can just swap in a new memory card.
AFAICT, on the Wii it is impossible for more than 3 people to have Zelda save games. For goodness sake, this is a 4 person console system! In my house, I'm number 6 in line for a slot, and I don't think anyone is finishing their game any time soon.
Call me when somebody builds a car that's actually designed for parallel parking---direct drive on all four wheels and wheels that rotate a full 90 degrees.
TOYOTA FINE-X... Like the Nissan Pivo, the Fine-X is designed for incredible manoeuvrability, with a system for rotating on its axis a full 360 degrees. Unlike the Pivo, the entire body of the Fine-X rotates instead of just the cabin, made possible by wheels that turn 90 degrees. This means you can parallel park the vehicle sideways (just turn the wheels 90 degrees and slide into the parking spot).
If today's california condor isn't well suited in the modern environment; wouldn't it be better to grow better ones more able to survive - rather than forcing the unfortunate few remaining ones to suffer in an environment no longer well suited to them?
Yeah, sure. Until we make just one mistake. Then, we have a condor that is very well suited to a suburban environment -- it just eats stray pets!
I do not trust any human, no more how brilliant, to modify life. We don't know how the ecosystem works, and the law of unintended consequences will bite us in the ass.
How would you like it if you had to pay to send your 20 coleagues e-mailed Hannukah greetings or a copy of your business plan?
I would be fine with that. How many emails do you honestly send a day?
Actually, the system I want is rather more ambitious than AOL's plan. I want all email to require a micropayment. I also want that money to end up (almost entirely) at the sender. For most people, there would be no change, because they probably receive about as much email as they send.
These unreliable internet stats say that over 50% of all email is spam or a virus. Yes, people pay for their own bandwidth costs. But, under the current system, you are forced to pay the costs for spammers trying to reach you. If senders had to pay, in addition to receivers, maybe bandwidth costs would be cheaper for everyone. </unreasonably optimistic>
Companies that do spam will be weighing out their average gains against the cost of sending mass emails, and I'm sure many will decide it's worth it. I'm sure they would be thrilled to know that their emails can bypass spam filters for a few dollars
But this will take out a huge chunk of spammers. The reason spam is an effective business model is because it is so very cheap. A big spam campaign can reach a million people. If ISPs charged just 1 cent per email, that campaign goes from within epsilon of free to $10,000.
It won't completely eliminate spam, but it will knock-out the extremely low-response rate "c1a l1z" emails.
Isn't this just making senders pay postage costs? We don't object to that in the real world -- why the outrage now?
Finally, the Government's subpoena imposes an undue burden on Google without a sufficiently countervailing justification. Perhaps the Government can be forgiven its glib rejection of this point because it is unfamiliar with Google's system architecture. If the Government had that familiarity, it would know that its request will take over a week of engineer time to complete
It's rather reassuring that Google doesn't just have logs lying around. It being so hard to collate them might mean they don't really intend to use them.
The author's main complaint seems to be that everyone doesn't enjoyed playing games the same way he does.
He is an introvert, so he disapproves of needing to play with groups. He doesn't want to play too many hours a day, so he disapproves of any rewards that encourage excess time.
So? Some people want to get a reward for time. Some people want to play with their friends without getting lower quality loot.
The amazing power of Wow is that you _can_ play any way you want. Solo, group, 24/7, infrequently. Do whatever you want, and the game will remain fun. Just don't be annoyed if not everyone wants to play the same way you do.
I am glad Joel found a career he loved, and all, but where does he get off denigrating other people's chosen paths?
Math would happen without math departments, but it is the existence of English majors, and therefore jobs teaching them, that calls into being all those thousands of dreary papers about gender and identity in the novels of Conrad. No one does that kind of thing for fun.
I know plenty of people who discuss and write about exactly those sorts of things for fun. In fact, I would say that having the opportunity to discuss great literature in a meaningful is exactly the draw of college for many people. Truly excellent writers and thinkers get paid to do such. Isn't that the point of the article, doing what you love?
It is possible to keep your old data plan -- you might want to fight to get to higher-level wireless tech support.
The basic deal is they had lots of billing complaints, because it is easy to leave the network connection on with the Treo650. Therefore, it is Verizon policy to not sell any treo without a data plan.
However, if you sign up for the Pay-As-You-Go data plan, you can immediately call customer service to take off that plan and add a "1xPP1" feature, which takes data out of minutes. They'll rant to you about overage charges, and how it's not their fault if you get a $1000 bill, but they'll do it.
I'm a big fan of C, but I would hardly claim that it is simple. Once you finish teaching arrays, say, I don't know, the third of fourth week, you need to introduce memory allocation, and header files, and all sorts of fun stuff. I mean, even figuring out how to get it to compile is a chore. Do you really want to be teaching people the finer points of 'make'?
For the best people, that's when they start to have fun. That's when you decide whether you really want to be a computer scientist .
I would say that Java is much more simple, even in the short term. It's compiler doesn't really let you make errors, for a start. I feel sorry if you learned java the way you described; the GUI is completely unnecesary in many situations. I'm working right now on a Java SNMP implementation toolkit that works entirely off the command line. For "hello world", you wrap it in a public class called hello, instead of #include , you write import.io.*, and instead of printf, you write System.out.println. It's really not that different, syntactically.
-Cassia
Don't give up on BASIC yet! There's a whole family of BASIC-like programming languages out there. A couple summers ago, I spent some time teaching at computer camp, and we used 'True BASIC' to start kids off. It's a very straight-forward procedural language, and we pretty much just taught the kids variables and basic control structures. (Maybe using functions, if they were really quick).
After that, it wasn't much of a jump at all to move the more advanced kids (who came back from the previous years) up to some basic C++. As a first language, True BASIC teaches very clean habits that serves kids well when they move onto more sophisticated languages. One of the things that works well with younger kids is that you start off working with a GUI. (Drawing lots of squares and circles to make a house, that sort of thing.) Working of a command line is fairly boring for kids when it is their summer vacation.
You'd be surprised how much you can do with the language, actually . When the instructors started competing with each other, some nifty things started happening.
-Cassia
I think that alot of people don't share on Gnutella, because they honestly don't know how. Once, they do, they never really get around to it anyone, because the current setup works for them.
Napster, and its near equals like Scour, all have sharing set up by default, and they both encourage you to stay online even if you're not using the program. Yesterday, on Scour, a whole bunch of people figured out that I had some somewhat rare anime videos. Instead of logging out when I was done, I just sent people messages that I wouldn't be there to monitor the transfers, and went to sleep. I think this happens more often than people think.
People love sharing; it makes them feel generous. However, it CAN'T be difficult to do. In Gnutella, it is.
Some people got a poor impression of Lessig from the webcast, but he was actually rather good. He got a poor quality, stationary mike, which put him at a disadvantage to the roving Valenti. He also never even attempted spicing up his arguments with humour, which was disappointing. On the other hand, he attempted to conduct a sound debate; he aswered question and rebutted issues. Valenti on the other hand....
I think what you are talkinga bout as not going for the vugular was really an attempt to exceedingly polite. Too often, geeks in general are branded as antisocial anarchists, in this particular cae, we are fighting against a law that paints us as thieves. Lessig's only chance to not be ignored was to be a total gentelman. Of course, considering the power that the MPAA has, he still will be ignored, regardless.
I thought that Lessig's strongest argument was actually his thoughts on the curtailment of copyright terms, for which is going to trial this weeek. Of course, Jack Valenti ignored him, but the argument sounded as though it has strong grounding in constitutional law.
E.G. was actually sitting directly behind me, which was rather exciting. I didn't get to speak to him, though.
He said funny things; that's why he got applause. I was in the room, and, let me tell you, lots of eyes were being rolled at what he said. I felt that the atmostphere at the Courthouse was dinstinctly pro-Lessing, but he is too serious of an academic to attempt any humour.
I sympathize completely about the questions bit; they only "answered" four questions the whole evening. Part of the problem was that Valenti refused to talk on topic, instead repeating over and over again that "thievery is bad", or "that's the law, it must be good!".
Never mind the fact that he single-handedly made those laws.... (well, sort of).
Yes, actually! There is a rather good video at the Harvard Law School site (the one in the article above), as well as logs of the real-time chats.
It still doesn't do any justice to real life, though.
Make sure that you are logging in to http://slashdot.org, and NOT http://WWW.slashdot.org. It may seem like a small thing, but it makes a difference:).
-rainbowfyre
I'm american, and speak (although not all equally fluently): Modern Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, Ancient Greek, some French, Latin, and English. I'm only 18, and have barely started. (I plan on learning Mandarin next.)
I know one example doesn't mean anything, but I can only think of two monolingual aquaintances. (I live on the Mexican border, which might make my experience somewhat difference.)
I never understood the jokes that people made about "ignorant" Americans. I don't know any!
It is an Italian dance, and actually is related to the arachnid. There was an old myth that if you got bitten by a tarantula, you could dance very, very fast and force the poison out of your body. That resulting dance was the tarantella.
Those school programs/guidance counselors/people you are talking about are trying to tell women that it is alright to do what they are interested in, even if friends/society/men-like-you are telling them they should stay at home.
When is the last time that anyone encouraged a man to stay at home if they wanted to? "Just learn how to cook, and iron your wive's dresses, and you'll be fine for life." If you are in any way offended by that vision for a man, don't try to encourage it for a woman.
*Disclaimer* - I am actually a woman w/ opinions, however dangerous that may be.
I am a woman, and I will tell you quite clearly that I have not met a woman YET who is pro-choice. Woman have to live with the fear that, if abortion is outlawed, they may one day have to take care of a child, a PERSON, for their entire life. Don't you think that having a child changes everything? Maybe not everyone wants to change?
Men don't have to deal with that. They can make a "mistake" tonight, and walk away tomorrow. It's easy for a man to be pro-life, because none of his choices affect him. In many ways, abortion is the only way to create equality for men and women.
But all those other reasons for abortion are out there, and many times, like on rape and incest, it is the man's fault for the baby. Sometimes it is even the dad's fault. That is NOT to be a man-basher, but to show you why we are scared at having our rights taken away.
I am sorry that you feel the way you do about so-called "birth-control abortions", but you have a right to think that. Just don't take away the right to abortion for when it is truly needed.
Thus, the justification of libertarianism is that enough people will be unselfish for society to survive, ie, no one starving to death on the street. If that is not true, like it is in Silicon Valley, than libertarianism, whatever its justification, cannot operate in the USA.
To explain, the libertarian wants to live, but in a world by himself. He, or at least the ones in Silicon Valley, does not want to have to pay attention to those who are less fortunate. In this country, at least, all that keeps big corporations from stealing the food from a two-year old is the welfare system. When that is gone, charity will not be enough to protect our citizens.
Slashdot Mirror
Convenience?!? This is the least-well thought out porting decision for this game.
For those who don't know, this game follows the traditional Zelda path of having three save slots in the game. On the gamecube, this is not a problem -- when the fourth person wants to play, you can just swap in a new memory card.
AFAICT, on the Wii it is impossible for more than 3 people to have Zelda save games. For goodness sake, this is a 4 person console system! In my house, I'm number 6 in line for a slot, and I don't think anyone is finishing their game any time soon.
Heh! They should totally use the dumbfind.com search engine, then.
What's your phone number?
http://www.wheels.ca/features/jan_06_tokyo_auto_s
If today's california condor isn't well suited in the modern environment; wouldn't it be better to grow better ones more able to survive - rather than forcing the unfortunate few remaining ones to suffer in an environment no longer well suited to them?
Yeah, sure. Until we make just one mistake. Then, we have a condor that is very well suited to a suburban environment -- it just eats stray pets!
I do not trust any human, no more how brilliant, to modify life. We don't know how the ecosystem works, and the law of unintended consequences will bite us in the ass.
Cassia
I would be fine with that. How many emails do you honestly send a day?
Actually, the system I want is rather more ambitious than AOL's plan. I want all email to require a micropayment. I also want that money to end up (almost entirely) at the sender. For most people, there would be no change, because they probably receive about as much email as they send.
These unreliable internet stats say that over 50% of all email is spam or a virus. Yes, people pay for their own bandwidth costs. But, under the current system, you are forced to pay the costs for spammers trying to reach you. If senders had to pay, in addition to receivers, maybe bandwidth costs would be cheaper for everyone. </unreasonably optimistic>
Cinnamon
But this will take out a huge chunk of spammers. The reason spam is an effective business model is because it is so very cheap. A big spam campaign can reach a million people. If ISPs charged just 1 cent per email, that campaign goes from within epsilon of free to $10,000.
It won't completely eliminate spam, but it will knock-out the extremely low-response rate "c1a l1z" emails.
Isn't this just making senders pay postage costs? We don't object to that in the real world -- why the outrage now?
Cinnamon
It's rather reassuring that Google doesn't just have logs lying around. It being so hard to collate them might mean they don't really intend to use them.
-Cinnamon
The author's main complaint seems to be that everyone doesn't enjoyed playing games the same way he does.
He is an introvert, so he disapproves of needing to play with groups. He doesn't want to play too many hours a day, so he disapproves of any rewards that encourage excess time.
So? Some people want to get a reward for time. Some people want to play with their friends without getting lower quality loot.
The amazing power of Wow is that you _can_ play any way you want. Solo, group, 24/7, infrequently. Do whatever you want, and the game will remain fun. Just don't be annoyed if not everyone wants to play the same way you do.
-Cassia
Well, if you want to put your money where your mouth is, there is a bounty growing for just that:
http://winxponmac.com/
Of course, nobody really knows if it is possible.
-Cinnamon
I know plenty of people who discuss and write about exactly those sorts of things for fun. In fact, I would say that having the opportunity to discuss great literature in a meaningful is exactly the draw of college for many people. Truly excellent writers and thinkers get paid to do such. Isn't that the point of the article, doing what you love?
Sheesh.
It is possible to keep your old data plan -- you might want to fight to get to higher-level wireless tech support.
The basic deal is they had lots of billing complaints, because it is easy to leave the network connection on with the Treo650. Therefore, it is Verizon policy to not sell any treo without a data plan.
However, if you sign up for the Pay-As-You-Go data plan, you can immediately call customer service to take off that plan and add a "1xPP1" feature, which takes data out of minutes. They'll rant to you about overage charges, and how it's not their fault if you get a $1000 bill, but they'll do it.
I'm a big fan of C, but I would hardly claim that it is simple. Once you finish teaching arrays, say, I don't know, the third of fourth week, you need to introduce memory allocation, and header files, and all sorts of fun stuff. I mean, even figuring out how to get it to compile is a chore. Do you really want to be teaching people the finer points of 'make'? For the best people, that's when they start to have fun. That's when you decide whether you really want to be a computer scientist . I would say that Java is much more simple, even in the short term. It's compiler doesn't really let you make errors, for a start. I feel sorry if you learned java the way you described; the GUI is completely unnecesary in many situations. I'm working right now on a Java SNMP implementation toolkit that works entirely off the command line. For "hello world", you wrap it in a public class called hello, instead of #include , you write import.io.*, and instead of printf, you write System.out.println. It's really not that different, syntactically. -Cassia
Don't give up on BASIC yet! There's a whole family of BASIC-like programming languages out there. A couple summers ago, I spent some time teaching at computer camp, and we used 'True BASIC' to start kids off. It's a very straight-forward procedural language, and we pretty much just taught the kids variables and basic control structures. (Maybe using functions, if they were really quick).
After that, it wasn't much of a jump at all to move the more advanced kids (who came back from the previous years) up to some basic C++. As a first language, True BASIC teaches very clean habits that serves kids well when they move onto more sophisticated languages. One of the things that works well with younger kids is that you start off working with a GUI. (Drawing lots of squares and circles to make a house, that sort of thing.) Working of a command line is fairly boring for kids when it is their summer vacation.
You'd be surprised how much you can do with the language, actually . When the instructors started competing with each other, some nifty things started happening.
-Cassia
I think that alot of people don't share on Gnutella, because they honestly don't know how. Once, they do, they never really get around to it anyone, because the current setup works for them.
Napster, and its near equals like Scour, all have sharing set up by default, and they both encourage you to stay online even if you're not using the program. Yesterday, on Scour, a whole bunch of people figured out that I had some somewhat rare anime videos. Instead of logging out when I was done, I just sent people messages that I wouldn't be there to monitor the transfers, and went to sleep. I think this happens more often than people think.
People love sharing; it makes them feel generous. However, it CAN'T be difficult to do. In Gnutella, it is.
-Rainbowfyre
Some people got a poor impression of Lessig from the webcast, but he was actually rather good. He got a poor quality, stationary mike, which put him at a disadvantage to the roving Valenti. He also never even attempted spicing up his arguments with humour, which was disappointing. On the other hand, he attempted to conduct a sound debate; he aswered question and rebutted issues. Valenti on the other hand....
I think what you are talkinga bout as not going for the vugular was really an attempt to exceedingly polite. Too often, geeks in general are branded as antisocial anarchists, in this particular cae, we are fighting against a law that paints us as thieves. Lessig's only chance to not be ignored was to be a total gentelman. Of course, considering the power that the MPAA has, he still will be ignored, regardless.
I thought that Lessig's strongest argument was actually his thoughts on the curtailment of copyright terms, for which is going to trial this weeek. Of course, Jack Valenti ignored him, but the argument sounded as though it has strong grounding in constitutional law.
E.G. was actually sitting directly behind me, which was rather exciting. I didn't get to speak to him, though.
He said funny things; that's why he got applause. I was in the room, and, let me tell you, lots of eyes were being rolled at what he said. I felt that the atmostphere at the Courthouse was dinstinctly pro-Lessing, but he is too serious of an academic to attempt any humour.
I sympathize completely about the questions bit; they only "answered" four questions the whole evening. Part of the problem was that Valenti refused to talk on topic, instead repeating over and over again that "thievery is bad", or "that's the law, it must be good!".
Never mind the fact that he single-handedly made those laws.... (well, sort of).
rainbowfyre
Yes, actually! There is a rather good video at the Harvard Law School site (the one in the article above), as well as logs of the real-time chats.
It still doesn't do any justice to real life, though.
rainbowfyre
Make sure that you are logging in to http://slashdot.org, and NOT http://WWW.slashdot.org. It may seem like a small thing, but it makes a difference :).
-rainbowfyre
I'm american, and speak (although not all equally fluently): Modern Greek, Portuguese, Spanish, Ancient Greek, some French, Latin, and English. I'm only 18, and have barely started. (I plan on learning Mandarin next.)
I know one example doesn't mean anything, but I can only think of two monolingual aquaintances. (I live on the Mexican border, which might make my experience somewhat difference.)
I never understood the jokes that people made about "ignorant" Americans. I don't know any!
-rainbowfyre
It is an Italian dance, and actually is related to the arachnid. There was an old myth that if you got bitten by a tarantula, you could dance very, very fast and force the poison out of your body. That resulting dance was the tarantella.
:)
I don't think it ever actually worked, though.
-rainbowfyre
Errr. How much money do you make? A CD is four hours wages for me. (I'm a student, in case you can't tell.) -rainbowfyre
Bzz! Wrong, sorry. Try again later!
Those school programs/guidance counselors/people you are talking about are trying to tell women that it is alright to do what they are interested in, even if friends/society/men-like-you are telling them they should stay at home.
When is the last time that anyone encouraged a man to stay at home if they wanted to? "Just learn how to cook, and iron your wive's dresses, and you'll be fine for life." If you are in any way offended by that vision for a man, don't try to encourage it for a woman.
*Disclaimer* - I am actually a woman w/ opinions, however dangerous that may be.
I am a woman, and I will tell you quite clearly that I have not met a woman YET who is pro-choice. Woman have to live with the fear that, if abortion is outlawed, they may one day have to take care of a child, a PERSON, for their entire life. Don't you think that having a child changes everything? Maybe not everyone wants to change?
Men don't have to deal with that. They can make a "mistake" tonight, and walk away tomorrow. It's easy for a man to be pro-life, because none of his choices affect him. In many ways, abortion is the only way to create equality for men and women.
But all those other reasons for abortion are out there, and many times, like on rape and incest, it is the man's fault for the baby. Sometimes it is even the dad's fault. That is NOT to be a man-basher, but to show you why we are scared at having our rights taken away.
I am sorry that you feel the way you do about so-called "birth-control abortions", but you have a right to think that. Just don't take away the right to abortion for when it is truly needed.
-rainbowfyre
Thus, the justification of libertarianism is that enough people will be unselfish for society to survive, ie, no one starving to death on the street. If that is not true, like it is in Silicon Valley, than libertarianism, whatever its justification, cannot operate in the USA.
To explain, the libertarian wants to live, but in a world by himself. He, or at least the ones in Silicon Valley, does not want to have to pay attention to those who are less fortunate. In this country, at least, all that keeps big corporations from stealing the food from a two-year old is the welfare system. When that is gone, charity will not be enough to protect our citizens.
-rainbowfyre