I believe (INANL) that perjury requires willfull deceit. Thus, if you hired a decent attorney, the document containing the list of programmers would contain something to effect that, to the best of your knowledge, this list is complete and accurate. Thus, you avoid perjury charges. Unless, of course, someone leaks documents that indicate otherwise (i.e., proof of willful deceit).
Original poster suggests that saving files isn't a hit on system resources, but of course it is under many circumstances. For my day-to-day activities, here are file types that, when saved, slow my machine down and/or make me wait:
The difference is that the resource hit comes at a time when the user expects it. They pause, say, "looks good," and hit save. Ka-Chunk Ka-Chunk, then they move on. It's non-interruptive because it comes at a point when they have come to a logical pause in their thinking.
The worst thing about Auto-Save in Word is when you're typing along, then, the characters you're typing no longer appear. For a few moments you get that "oh, no" feeling deep in your bowels (since it's been 30 minutes since you hit the Save button and you now expect to lose it all), only to see the string of charachters you just typed vomit across the screen. Nothing interrupts a train of thought like imminent loss of rectal control.
In most (if not all) of the first party games, cutscenes were rendered by the engine at the time of display (the Zelda games were this way). Of course, they were forced to do this by the limitations of the cartrige format.
You're right about staying in the moment, too. It's much more atmospheric to transition from the cutscene directly into game play without hearing the crunch and grind of a disk, and seeing a "now loading" screen (yes PS1, I'm looking at you).
I live in New Orleans (yes, right now!), so let me tell about how "the offer is still on the table," and hwo it'll all play out.
NOLA announces the free WiFi.
BellSouth exec gets pissed, and calls up the homeland security guy in NOLA and says, "if you do that, you can't have the building."
NOLA officials 'leak' the story to the national press, and the story goes out.
Low level exec gets called by a reporter and says, "well, I don't know why they're saying that."
Fracas goes on for a few days/weeks with sniping back and forth.
BellSouth says to NOLA "don't fight the law and you can have the building*"
BellSouth and NOLA 'reach an agreement'
Everybody's smilin' again
* New Orleans had been planning to set up a WiFi network before the storm, with funding issues slowing down the rollout. They also had planned on fighting the state law that limited municipal broadband to 128kb/s (that law was bought after Lafayette, LA started installing fiber to the curb). With the donation of all the wireless equipment, and the continued state of emergency freeing the city from a lot of regulatory hurdles, out comes the intarwebs.
I and MANY others are looking for a reliable long term OFF LINE storage.
Well, (and this is me just talking out of my ass here), you could maybe invest in a film recorder (we called it the slide-shooter). Think of it as a digital projector that projects onto film for later development. We used to use one in my lab to tranfer presentations from PowerPoint to slides (for scientific conference presentations), but I imagine that, as a last resort backup solution, it might work well for photos. The slides are definitely off-line, and I presume could be used to recover the photos in the event that all else fails.
The backup scenario I imagine would be:
Back up photos to RAID array
Shoot photos onto slide film
Develop slides and store them WAY off-site
In the event of catastrophic data-loss, you use the slides to obtain all the hard-copies you need (direct development from slides or scan back into the computer)
Now I imagine that this is not an ideal solution, but it does provide you with the 30-plus year proven backup (we've all seen 30-year-old slide shows). The downsides are that shooting the slides is a time-intensive process, and it adds in the overhead of purchasing and developing the film. I also imagine that you lose some quality going from digital to slide and back, but, you do have the photos in the event of hard-disk failure, and slides are fairly condition-tolerant and physicially small as a backup. Just make sure you don't drop the box.
Additionally, the Roman Catholic church puts great emphasis on the 'quality' of the materials used. In a Catholic church, if it looks like gold, it is gold, if it looks like wood, it is wood; especially when anything that touches the eucharist is involved. The general idea is that if you use 'fake' materials then you are slighting God.
That being said, church buildings and the ornaments contained therein are paid for locally (missionary churches are an exception), by the people that will be attending that particular church. In the US (especially in large cities), that lends itself to very pretty structures. In less well-off areas, the churches tend to be sparer, but the quality of the materials used are still very high.
You could also have a 3-axis accelerometer in there. I beleive there are one-chip solutions for that which are also relatively inexpensive. Worst case scenario is three chips (one for each axis).
Nahh, the GameBoy platform is still the handheld of note, primarily due to its longevity. What better way to note this than by displaying the one that brought handheld gaming to the fore? It's the same reason the original Atari joystick is used for general Gaming news; the image has become iconic.
Plus, the all-black PSP really wouldn't make a very good icon, especially when browsing on a smaller screen.
No, unfortunately, they're looking for gamers who "MUST HAVE NEW SYSTEM NOW!!11!!"
What they haven't told you is that each store will only get 2 $300 systems, 2 $400 systems, and 100 $1200 bundles on day one. If you aren't one of the lucky first 4 people, then you have to buy the big bundle or you go home empty-handed.
The reason they can get away with this is the limited initial supply. There are some people who absolutly must have it one day one, and they are willing to PAY to get it. The game stores did this with the PSP when it launched, and a few weeks later, they were finally selling the "bare" value packs (once they got their second shipment). It worked, because people were willing to pay for it.
As to the $1060 sum being less than the $1199 asking price, I'll bet it includes the one-year system warranty and the Gamestop-patented Rip-You-Off-Again per-game warranty that "guarantees your game will play when you get it home!" I can believe that asshats try to sell it, what I can't believe is that idiots buy it.
I used to work in the Central Engineering Department for a power company. They would periodically open one of the boiler access hatches (while it was boiling, of course), and hurl in sensitive documents.
Ain't no way you're getting anything informative out of the other end of a fire cyclone.
I absolutely hate it when I get in an argument about something when I'm 100% sure about something and can't convince someone else for whatever stupid reason.
The worst part is when they start resenting you for trying to 'force your opinion' upon them.
I once tried to dissuade a friend of mine from presenting a helicopter problem as an exercise in a statics class. She was convinced that the reason helicopters need the tail rotor is to counteract the 'drag force' generated by the main rotor blades moving through the air. When I tried to explain to her that yes, there are drag forces on the blades, it is really gyroscopic progression that tail rotor is counteracting, and that the problem was really better suited to a dynamics course than a statics course, she accused me of bellittling her 'opinion' and said that I was being condecending to her.
It was at that point that I realized I would never get anywhere with her, and I dropped the whole argument. Fortunately, she no longer teaches engineering students.
I believe, but cannot cite sources to back it up, that the Mac Applicaiton development department is separate from the Windows Application developtment department. I seem to recall that they are housed in separate cites as well (perhaps Cupertino for the Mac wing).
They may start with a similar code base, but they tend to diverge as each department tweaks the software to fit the guidlines of the target OS, and consumer demands for the apps.
This also explains why the Mac Apps are about a quarter of a cycle behind on releases, as they may wait for an alpha Windows code base and work from there.
As to the 'support' for important softwares that are not MS-sanctioned (i.e., UNIX and Apache), I imagine that it's more of a thow-away effort designed to just get people to use the MS software (think: gateway drug). Imagine an MS marketer saying, "You think it's great now, but upgrade to Windows, and see how great it really is."
The Nintendo 64 proved that $60 is too much money for an American consumer to spend on one game.
Oddly enough, the single most expensive game I ever bought cost me $72 (after 6% sales tax); it was on the SNES, not the N64, so at one point, consumers were willing to spend $60+ on a new game. I think it was the disparity between the manufacturing costs (and, thus purchase cost) of SNES/N64 media vs. PlayStation media that drove the prices down here (i.e., You want me to spend how much more for the same game?). While Nintendo tried to keep prices up during the N64 era, they quickly found they could not. If Sony had not had drastically (i.e., half to one-third) lower software prices (all the better to enter the market), I can imagine that we would definitely be paying $60+ today.
For those interested, the $72 game was Final Fantasy III (US), bought new, after finals one semester, at Biggs (are they even around anymore).
Along with that, I would wonder if it doesn't increse the salinity of the rest of the water in the body, and keep that water from freezing in the process.
No can do, Boss. If the saline is not isotonic (same amount of electrolytes per volume as the cells/blood), you have worse problems than brain damage.
If the saline is hypotonic (less electrolytes per volume than the cells), then osmosis will drive water into the cells, eventually bursting them. ALL of them.
If the saline is hypertonic (more electrolytes per volume than the cells), then osmosis will drive water out of the cells, causing them to shrivel up and die. ALL of them.
But then maybe he can tell us why the Professor can build a cold fusion plant with coconuts, but can't build a damn boat. I've always wondered about that.
The answer, if I recall correctly, is that he didn't want to.
I can hardly blame the man, "trapped" on an island with:
An old married couple.
Two goofballs more interested in crazy schemes than anything else
And two uber-hotties who share a cramped cottage (and maybe illicit love?)
Add to that the fact that he's away from the pressures of academic grant-writing and teaching, left to putter about on whatever project strikes his fancy. All on an island with plentiful food and fresh water. Hell, sign me up!
Of course, if the added cost of required HD support is significant, you may see the same developer publish the title ONLY on Revolution.
The issues, then, are, "how significant is the cost increase," and, "are there enough Revs to make this worth my while?"
Of course, Nintendo could be positioning the Revolution as the GameBoy of the next-gen market (just about every third party title gets a GBA release). This would turn into a case of 'no matter what other system you have, you also have a Rev', which means big profits for Nintendo, and directly contradicts the idea that this is a first-party only system.
Nintendo has to provide the infrastructure for a downloading service
Nintendo has to somehow make sure no harmful software can be downloaded
There is already a working model for this kind of setup in the Symbian Signed* application quality assesment process.
The developer downloads the dev kits (for free, I might add) from the main web site, and programs her little heart out. If said dev is certain of an application's success, she can pay a fee to have the application tested and certified. The cert process basically verifies that things install/uninstall correctly, the app doesn't have memory leaks, etc., more or less guaranteeing that the application is "safe". Most of the phone carriers require that the apps they sell be certified, meaning that if you want access to the larger market, you have to be willing to invest some cash upfront.
Think about an indie dev program through Nintendo in a similar way. You make a small investment (that could be waived or charged against future earnings for really small developers with good ideas) up front, which indicates to Nintendo that you're serious about this whole thing. The small entry cost keeps out most of the 'me too' types, and pays for the infrastructure and safety checks.
* For those of you who do not know, Symbian is the OS on a lot of Nokia phones (including the N-Gage), that evolved from Psion's handheld OS. Once you develop an application and get it certified, you can sell it on Nokia's website (they keep some of the profits). The barrier to entry imposed by the certification costs keeps the application pool relatively free of pong clones and other crap, yet there are still many programs available for purchase.
Nintendo sets up an Indie Dev Program where an Indie Dev House presents a game concept to the company. The big N weeds out the pong clones, and leases/loans a dev kit to the worthy developer. The developer has to prove X amount of progress every so often (academic grants work this way), or they lose their dev kits.
As part of the lease terms, Nintendo gets the publishing rights. Since Nintendo has not invested any 'real' money, any projects that are not up to snuff just get dropped, and Nintendo hasn't really lost anything (increased hardware sales/market penetration taking up the program cost). But, if they find a real winner (e.g., Alien Hominid) they can publish away, making a fair chunk of change. Even if they only get mediocre titles out of the deal, they could publish "Indie Packs" with ~4 games per disk. Sell them for ~$15, and you could have run-away success stories (would you pay $15 for the next Bejeweled and 3 other games? I would).
Think about how cheaply this could be implemented. Nintendo could use a remote server to do all the compilation (i.e., IBM's on-demand stuff; think punch card submissions), making the dev kit nothing more than an emulator and document package (no progress, no access to the compilation servers, and no rogue hardware to worry about). To do your final testing, Nintendo burns a disk or two and ships them off to you. You verify that things look good, and submit 'final' code to Nintendo. If they decide to go ahead, they do their internal quality testing and then publish it. There are about four or five spots in that whole process where Nintendo can say, "Nope, forget it," and they cut their losses on that particular project.
I'll bet that the media they'll be using will be cheap as hell to press, even in small runs, which is the linch-pin in making this whole thing feasibile. This set-up might even work for the DS, since it's apparent that small runs of the carts are reasonably cheap as well (I'm basing this on the fact that the Zelda trailer was handed out on DS carts at E3).
Have you never been to Dave & Buster's or Jillian's?
There are attractive women there all the time, and they're not all hanging on some dude's arm.
For the uninitiated, both Dave & Buster's and Jillian's are 'adult' arcades; plenty of cool/unique video games plus a couple of bars, good restaurant areas, billiards, darts, and sometimes bowling (depending on the size of the place). They even have the old-school skee-ball and whack-a-mole that spit out tickets good for exchanging at the counter for all sorts of crummy little things. Think Chuck E. Cheese's with a bar and food other than pizza. All told, they can be a lot of fun (can you tell I love them). It is hard, though, to convice my wife to go sometimes.
Slashdot Mirror
Well of course a dog is upset with cats. It's the natural order of things.
Eh, two outta' three ain't bad.
Wait, that's from '77!
I believe (INANL) that perjury requires willfull deceit. Thus, if you hired a decent attorney, the document containing the list of programmers would contain something to effect that, to the best of your knowledge, this list is complete and accurate. Thus, you avoid perjury charges. Unless, of course, someone leaks documents that indicate otherwise (i.e., proof of willful deceit).
The difference is that the resource hit comes at a time when the user expects it. They pause, say, "looks good," and hit save. Ka-Chunk Ka-Chunk, then they move on. It's non-interruptive because it comes at a point when they have come to a logical pause in their thinking.
The worst thing about Auto-Save in Word is when you're typing along, then, the characters you're typing no longer appear. For a few moments you get that "oh, no" feeling deep in your bowels (since it's been 30 minutes since you hit the Save button and you now expect to lose it all), only to see the string of charachters you just typed vomit across the screen. Nothing interrupts a train of thought like imminent loss of rectal control.
Nintendo already did this, on the N64 no less.
In most (if not all) of the first party games, cutscenes were rendered by the engine at the time of display (the Zelda games were this way). Of course, they were forced to do this by the limitations of the cartrige format.
You're right about staying in the moment, too. It's much more atmospheric to transition from the cutscene directly into game play without hearing the crunch and grind of a disk, and seeing a "now loading" screen (yes PS1, I'm looking at you).
I live in New Orleans (yes, right now!), so let me tell about how "the offer is still on the table," and hwo it'll all play out.
* New Orleans had been planning to set up a WiFi network before the storm, with funding issues slowing down the rollout. They also had planned on fighting the state law that limited municipal broadband to 128kb/s (that law was bought after Lafayette, LA started installing fiber to the curb). With the donation of all the wireless equipment, and the continued state of emergency freeing the city from a lot of regulatory hurdles, out comes the intarwebs.
Well, (and this is me just talking out of my ass here), you could maybe invest in a film recorder (we called it the slide-shooter). Think of it as a digital projector that projects onto film for later development. We used to use one in my lab to tranfer presentations from PowerPoint to slides (for scientific conference presentations), but I imagine that, as a last resort backup solution, it might work well for photos. The slides are definitely off-line, and I presume could be used to recover the photos in the event that all else fails.
The backup scenario I imagine would be:
Now I imagine that this is not an ideal solution, but it does provide you with the 30-plus year proven backup (we've all seen 30-year-old slide shows). The downsides are that shooting the slides is a time-intensive process, and it adds in the overhead of purchasing and developing the film. I also imagine that you lose some quality going from digital to slide and back, but, you do have the photos in the event of hard-disk failure, and slides are fairly condition-tolerant and physicially small as a backup. Just make sure you don't drop the box.
Additionally, the Roman Catholic church puts great emphasis on the 'quality' of the materials used. In a Catholic church, if it looks like gold, it is gold, if it looks like wood, it is wood; especially when anything that touches the eucharist is involved. The general idea is that if you use 'fake' materials then you are slighting God.
That being said, church buildings and the ornaments contained therein are paid for locally (missionary churches are an exception), by the people that will be attending that particular church. In the US (especially in large cities), that lends itself to very pretty structures. In less well-off areas, the churches tend to be sparer, but the quality of the materials used are still very high.
You could also have a 3-axis accelerometer in there. I beleive there are one-chip solutions for that which are also relatively inexpensive. Worst case scenario is three chips (one for each axis).
Plus, the all-black PSP really wouldn't make a very good icon, especially when browsing on a smaller screen.
No, unfortunately, they're looking for gamers who "MUST HAVE NEW SYSTEM NOW!!11!!"
What they haven't told you is that each store will only get 2 $300 systems, 2 $400 systems, and 100 $1200 bundles on day one. If you aren't one of the lucky first 4 people, then you have to buy the big bundle or you go home empty-handed.
The reason they can get away with this is the limited initial supply. There are some people who absolutly must have it one day one, and they are willing to PAY to get it. The game stores did this with the PSP when it launched, and a few weeks later, they were finally selling the "bare" value packs (once they got their second shipment). It worked, because people were willing to pay for it.
As to the $1060 sum being less than the $1199 asking price, I'll bet it includes the one-year system warranty and the Gamestop-patented Rip-You-Off-Again per-game warranty that "guarantees your game will play when you get it home!" I can believe that asshats try to sell it, what I can't believe is that idiots buy it.
I used to work in the Central Engineering Department for a power company. They would periodically open one of the boiler access hatches (while it was boiling, of course), and hurl in sensitive documents.
Ain't no way you're getting anything informative out of the other end of a fire cyclone.
The worst part is when they start resenting you for trying to 'force your opinion' upon them.
I once tried to dissuade a friend of mine from presenting a helicopter problem as an exercise in a statics class. She was convinced that the reason helicopters need the tail rotor is to counteract the 'drag force' generated by the main rotor blades moving through the air. When I tried to explain to her that yes, there are drag forces on the blades, it is really gyroscopic progression that tail rotor is counteracting, and that the problem was really better suited to a dynamics course than a statics course, she accused me of bellittling her 'opinion' and said that I was being condecending to her.
It was at that point that I realized I would never get anywhere with her, and I dropped the whole argument. Fortunately, she no longer teaches engineering students.
I believe, but cannot cite sources to back it up, that the Mac Applicaiton development department is separate from the Windows Application developtment department. I seem to recall that they are housed in separate cites as well (perhaps Cupertino for the Mac wing).
They may start with a similar code base, but they tend to diverge as each department tweaks the software to fit the guidlines of the target OS, and consumer demands for the apps.
This also explains why the Mac Apps are about a quarter of a cycle behind on releases, as they may wait for an alpha Windows code base and work from there.
As to the 'support' for important softwares that are not MS-sanctioned (i.e., UNIX and Apache), I imagine that it's more of a thow-away effort designed to just get people to use the MS software (think: gateway drug). Imagine an MS marketer saying, "You think it's great now, but upgrade to Windows, and see how great it really is."
AND 8 years ago, drooling over Natalie Portman was icky!
Oddly enough, the single most expensive game I ever bought cost me $72 (after 6% sales tax); it was on the SNES, not the N64, so at one point, consumers were willing to spend $60+ on a new game. I think it was the disparity between the manufacturing costs (and, thus purchase cost) of SNES/N64 media vs. PlayStation media that drove the prices down here (i.e., You want me to spend how much more for the same game?). While Nintendo tried to keep prices up during the N64 era, they quickly found they could not. If Sony had not had drastically (i.e., half to one-third) lower software prices (all the better to enter the market), I can imagine that we would definitely be paying $60+ today.
For those interested, the $72 game was Final Fantasy III (US), bought new, after finals one semester, at Biggs (are they even around anymore).
No can do, Boss. If the saline is not isotonic (same amount of electrolytes per volume as the cells/blood), you have worse problems than brain damage.
If the saline is hypotonic (less electrolytes per volume than the cells), then osmosis will drive water into the cells, eventually bursting them. ALL of them.
If the saline is hypertonic (more electrolytes per volume than the cells), then osmosis will drive water out of the cells, causing them to shrivel up and die. ALL of them.
No win either way.
Nor is either 'e' pronounced in the Greater Cincinnati area (Northern Kentucky, specifically)
I played it all through high-school, and it's still my favorite card game ever.
Of course, once you get about 30 miles south of the (Ohio) river, no one has even heard of the game, let alone played it.
The answer, if I recall correctly, is that he didn't want to.
I can hardly blame the man, "trapped" on an island with:
Add to that the fact that he's away from the pressures of academic grant-writing and teaching, left to putter about on whatever project strikes his fancy. All on an island with plentiful food and fresh water. Hell, sign me up!
They call them swamp coolers, and I've heard that they are prevalent in Colorado, where the air is nice and dry.
Unfortunately, they don't work in places with higher humidity, which is just about everywhere else (especially here in New Orleans).
Of course, if the added cost of required HD support is significant, you may see the same developer publish the title ONLY on Revolution.
The issues, then, are, "how significant is the cost increase," and, "are there enough Revs to make this worth my while?"
Of course, Nintendo could be positioning the Revolution as the GameBoy of the next-gen market (just about every third party title gets a GBA release). This would turn into a case of 'no matter what other system you have, you also have a Rev', which means big profits for Nintendo, and directly contradicts the idea that this is a first-party only system.
There is already a working model for this kind of setup in the Symbian Signed* application quality assesment process.
The developer downloads the dev kits (for free, I might add) from the main web site, and programs her little heart out. If said dev is certain of an application's success, she can pay a fee to have the application tested and certified. The cert process basically verifies that things install/uninstall correctly, the app doesn't have memory leaks, etc., more or less guaranteeing that the application is "safe". Most of the phone carriers require that the apps they sell be certified, meaning that if you want access to the larger market, you have to be willing to invest some cash upfront.
Think about an indie dev program through Nintendo in a similar way. You make a small investment (that could be waived or charged against future earnings for really small developers with good ideas) up front, which indicates to Nintendo that you're serious about this whole thing. The small entry cost keeps out most of the 'me too' types, and pays for the infrastructure and safety checks.
* For those of you who do not know, Symbian is the OS on a lot of Nokia phones (including the N-Gage), that evolved from Psion's handheld OS. Once you develop an application and get it certified, you can sell it on Nokia's website (they keep some of the profits). The barrier to entry imposed by the certification costs keeps the application pool relatively free of pong clones and other crap, yet there are still many programs available for purchase.
BZZT! That erase-all-save-games demo was for the PS2. Try again.
Think of it this way:
Nintendo sets up an Indie Dev Program where an Indie Dev House presents a game concept to the company. The big N weeds out the pong clones, and leases/loans a dev kit to the worthy developer. The developer has to prove X amount of progress every so often (academic grants work this way), or they lose their dev kits.
As part of the lease terms, Nintendo gets the publishing rights. Since Nintendo has not invested any 'real' money, any projects that are not up to snuff just get dropped, and Nintendo hasn't really lost anything (increased hardware sales/market penetration taking up the program cost). But, if they find a real winner (e.g., Alien Hominid) they can publish away, making a fair chunk of change. Even if they only get mediocre titles out of the deal, they could publish "Indie Packs" with ~4 games per disk. Sell them for ~$15, and you could have run-away success stories (would you pay $15 for the next Bejeweled and 3 other games? I would).
Think about how cheaply this could be implemented. Nintendo could use a remote server to do all the compilation (i.e., IBM's on-demand stuff; think punch card submissions), making the dev kit nothing more than an emulator and document package (no progress, no access to the compilation servers, and no rogue hardware to worry about). To do your final testing, Nintendo burns a disk or two and ships them off to you. You verify that things look good, and submit 'final' code to Nintendo. If they decide to go ahead, they do their internal quality testing and then publish it. There are about four or five spots in that whole process where Nintendo can say, "Nope, forget it," and they cut their losses on that particular project.
I'll bet that the media they'll be using will be cheap as hell to press, even in small runs, which is the linch-pin in making this whole thing feasibile. This set-up might even work for the DS, since it's apparent that small runs of the carts are reasonably cheap as well (I'm basing this on the fact that the Zelda trailer was handed out on DS carts at E3).
Have you never been to Dave & Buster's or Jillian's?
There are attractive women there all the time, and they're not all hanging on some dude's arm.
For the uninitiated, both Dave & Buster's and Jillian's are 'adult' arcades; plenty of cool/unique video games plus a couple of bars, good restaurant areas, billiards, darts, and sometimes bowling (depending on the size of the place). They even have the old-school skee-ball and whack-a-mole that spit out tickets good for exchanging at the counter for all sorts of crummy little things. Think Chuck E. Cheese's with a bar and food other than pizza. All told, they can be a lot of fun (can you tell I love them). It is hard, though, to convice my wife to go sometimes.