Contrast this with Sony support on the Playstation. Just before they launch PS2, they refit the PS1 and start shipping this. Which is a clear sign to gamemakers that the PS1 is not dead even though PS2 is out.
Right after launching the SNES Nintendo refitted the original NES and started shipping it, selling it for $50. A clear sign to gamemakers that the NES was not dead even though the SNES was out. A wrong sign, of course. The NES died anyway, so fast that the refitted NESs now sell for upwards of $100 on eBay.
Sim City is a good example of a non-zero sum game.
No, it's not. SimCity is, according to its creator, a toy and not a game. The primary difference being that SimCity doesn't have an intrinsic goal. You can set goals for yourself, but that's you using SimCity to play a game, much as you can use a ball to play games.
not cause they were so difficult that you got satisfaction from accomplishing some amazingly difficult task?
Actually, the amazingly difficult task was far more common in NES games than it is now. The SNES somewhat the same way. Modern games you can generally advance in by playing some more, as they save your progress. Old games weren't that way. Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3 were all far harder than Mario 64 or Super Mario World.
Personally I like many Atari 2600 games. Generally simple games, with a bunch of variations, and good multi-player, and the high scores allow competive play even single player.
As much as I love Mario Kart 64
That's funny. I consider Super Mario Kart a far better game.
I'm waiting for it, too. In my opinion they should forget about competing with PS2 and Xbox and market it as an HDTV box. It could easily be the only HD-DVD player and HD-Tivo in one box.
I agree, but note that they would have to charge more for it then. Currenty the plan is to profit off the games and not the consoles, as they think that is necessary to compete with the other consoles.
Kudos to Despair for making a mockery of trademarks.
When the US patent office makes a mockery of trademarks people bitch and complain, but when Despair does it they get kudos.
Re:(somewhat OT) Technical Comment about GlassCode
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Glasscode Released
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· Score: 1
For the record. If you want to write it in Java, write it in C or C++. Don't give me the cross-platform BS, there are plenty of cross platform large C/C++ projects (all the Quakes; GNOME; Mozilla; the kernel).
But Java lets you send secure, cross-platform code across a network. The most obvious use of this is web applets, but there are others.
Arguing for Java on the basis of ease-of-coding (basically saying "I like GC") is a cop-out -- you're trading away a lot of speed because you're too lazy to manage your memory
I disagree. It's not laziness, it's a tradeoff. Rather than spending the time to manage your memory you spend the time on other aspects of your code. You can pretty much always improve software by spending more time on it, and it's not always worth it to spend the time on memory management instead of another area.
Or to offer your product on 'closed' systems, that is, systems where installing software and working with the contents of memory yourself - are next to impossible. Systems which are not made to be configured by the general public.
Just do it on a server, a system that the user of the program doesn't have access to. Really simple.
What really bugs me...
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EULA In Games
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· Score: 1
is when they put the big NO WARRANTY NOT EVEN THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE notice in the EULA, and then have the balls to right at the start of the game have a character tell you that his products "are guaranteed for life and come with a two-day warranty!"
Indrema is trying to get the same thing without the hacking, as their console natively runs Linux.
However, they are currently royally screwing up with the certification scheme (you have to pay $50-200 dollars to get your game certified, and you can't even test in on the console until you do so), so it remains to be seen if it can actually do this.
as to why they block things like sci.archaeology, is it? Remember that almost all censorware out there has a Christian Fundie slant, and it's easy to see that if junior discovers archaeology then dinosaurs, biology and evolution are next, and then from there you'd might as well write him off as another anti-creationism devil worshiping Darwinist!
No, Christian Fundamentalists are not against archaeology. They actually believe in Christianity, so there not real scared of people finding facts that contradict it, as they don't believe there are any.
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I've got a brother who drives trucks. From what I've heard, the regulations force truckers to stop when they are still not tired, and then get up in the middle of the night to start driving again, when they then are sleepy.
Along with the fact that they are routinely ignored, and truckers are given jobs that are impossible to fulfill if you follow the regs.
Regulations for just the IT industry would, quite frankly, be really stupid. If you want to regulate everything, I could see the justification, though it is still not a good idea IMO, but just IT? Why are they special? Because they're in such high demand they can choose not to work long hours and still get hired, but choose not to for more money?
Suddenly, the kid's toy becomes a VERY inexpensive replacement for the computer.
Which Microsoft has repeatedly said that they don't want it to be.
The reason they will be "inexpensive" is that Microsoft loses money on each one sold, planning on making it back by taking a share of the profit for each game sold for the system. If people don't buy games, Microsoft loses money. So you've got to subtract the loss from the consoles from your projected revenue stream, and things start looking real shaky, real quick. And they certaintly don't want it on every videophile's list.
If you want to change the voting system, I'd suggest trying to change it in the primaries, where it is up to each party, before amending the constitution.
Every other office in this country that is voted for does not use this silly system, there's no reason that the presidential election needs to use it.
The fact that seats in the House are decided by population but each state has two senators does distribute more power to the small states in exactly the same way as the electoral college though.
You can generally still buy Atari 2600 systems in classified ads. The Recycler offers free ads, mostly in the Los Angeles area, and typically has ads for a system or two each week, and collections of cartridges as well. So you may want to try looking for some local equivalent, or just use eBay.
Another issue of dividing power "increasing" it, is with his example of gerimandering(sp?). Ignoring the president for a moment, if you put all blacks in one district and gave them a black representative, then that senator would only have 1/5xxth of a voice. If, however, you spread those people out among several districts, then you could influence 5-30% of the vote for multiple districts (including sympathists), thereby having dozens of representatives in congress, a significantly greater margin.
Yes, and the increase in the power of the blacks would be exactly counterbalanced by a decrease in power of the other people involved.
I'm assuming that the definition of average power of a group is (total power)/(number of people in group), the standard meaning for average. In both direct election and the electoral college the total power is the same: the power to elect a president. The number of total voters is the same. Therefore the average power of voters is the same. The only way you can change the average power is to change the total power or the number of voters, and changes to the distribution of power are completely irrelevant to total power.
I'm not arguing that average power of a voter is an important measure of how good a voting system is, just that the electoral does not and can not increase it. I support the electoral college and agree with most of what you said in your last message, but don't think it is relevant to the question of whether the electoral college increases the average power of voters.
The paper you've referred to was quite flawed mathematically. Most importantly, the definition of power is wrong. It doesn't argue that voters have more power, just that some voter is more likely to have power someday, as by its definition no voter in any presidential election in the history of the US has ever had any power. If it calculated in the fact that every election starts balanced, and that it is through votes that they become unbalanced, it maybe could give some useful info. It treats power as an all or nothing thing, where you either have the power to decide the election or no power at all. So in order to maximize power under his definition, rather than dividing into districts, we should just take everyone's vote for president, and pick one at random and make that person president, as that way there would be one person with power in every election, the best that can be done by his measure.
I've read the article. It's still stupid. Given that the power involved is to elect the president, and it is divided among some given number of people, the method of dividing the power is completely incapable of increasing it. This is quite obvious.
The article does many things to hide this simple fact. Most notable is the bullshit regarding "uneven" elections, which argues that they give the voters less power to decide the election, while ignoring the fact that all elections start even, and it is only through the exercise of voter's power that they become uneven.
* It turns out that each person's vote is more powerful that way. You vote for a small portion of the big vote, but you have a much bigger contribution to your portion of the vote compared to if you just had a general popular election.
That's just stupid. It doesn't matter how you elect the president, the average power of every person involved is exactly the same. The power to elect the president divided by the number of people involved. Direct election, the electoral college, or randomly picking one person and having him pick the president, it doesn't matter. Same amount of power.
For those of you who cast a vote for Nader because you're sick and tired of the system and think both major parties are incurably corrupt, congratulations. You have accomplished -nothing- beyond satisfying your own smug little idealistic worldview. You might as well have written in MC Hammer, Snoopy, or the Magic School Bus, because nobody besides the two major candidates had any chance of winning the election, and protest votes are historically forgettable.
You might as well have voted for Bush or Gore. Nader arguably could have made a difference by not running. Individual Nader supporters could not. Sure, nobody besides the two major candidates had any chance of winning the election, but the chance of one of the two major candidates winning the election because they won your state by one vote isn't real high either.
If you measure the value of a vote by whether it changes the election than of course a vote for a third party candidate is wasted. Every vote for a presidential candidate in the history of the US was wasted by that criteria.
Slashdot Mirror
Contrast this with Sony support on the Playstation. Just before they launch PS2, they refit the PS1 and start shipping this. Which is a clear sign to gamemakers that the PS1 is not dead even though PS2 is out.
Right after launching the SNES Nintendo refitted the original NES and started shipping it, selling it for $50. A clear sign to gamemakers that the NES was not dead even though the SNES was out. A wrong sign, of course. The NES died anyway, so fast that the refitted NESs now sell for upwards of $100 on eBay.
Sim City is a good example of a non-zero sum game.
No, it's not. SimCity is, according to its creator, a toy and not a game. The primary difference being that SimCity doesn't have an intrinsic goal. You can set goals for yourself, but that's you using SimCity to play a game, much as you can use a ball to play games.
not cause they were so difficult that you got satisfaction from accomplishing some amazingly difficult task?
Actually, the amazingly difficult task was far more common in NES games than it is now. The SNES somewhat the same way. Modern games you can generally advance in by playing some more, as they save your progress. Old games weren't that way. Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3 were all far harder than Mario 64 or Super Mario World.
Personally I like many Atari 2600 games. Generally simple games, with a bunch of variations, and good multi-player, and the high scores allow competive play even single player.
As much as I love Mario Kart 64
That's funny. I consider Super Mario Kart a far better game.
I'm waiting for it, too. In my opinion they should forget about competing with PS2 and Xbox and market it as an HDTV box. It could easily be the only HD-DVD player and HD-Tivo in one box.
I agree, but note that they would have to charge more for it then. Currenty the plan is to profit off the games and not the consoles, as they think that is necessary to compete with the other consoles.
The problem is that "real" enterprise servers don't ever go down, even when they change the hardware.
True. But Microsoft servers go down when you change the *software*, so Linux is significantly ahead of them in this respect.
Kudos to Despair for making a mockery of trademarks.
When the US patent office makes a mockery of trademarks people bitch and complain, but when Despair does it they get kudos.
For the record. If you want to write it in Java, write it in C or C++. Don't give me the cross-platform BS, there are plenty of cross platform large C/C++ projects (all the Quakes; GNOME; Mozilla; the kernel).
But Java lets you send secure, cross-platform code across a network. The most obvious use of this is web applets, but there are others.
Arguing for Java on the basis of ease-of-coding (basically saying "I like GC") is a cop-out -- you're trading away a lot of speed because you're too lazy to manage your memory
I disagree. It's not laziness, it's a tradeoff. Rather than spending the time to manage your memory you spend the time on other aspects of your code. You can pretty much always improve software by spending more time on it, and it's not always worth it to spend the time on memory management instead of another area.
Or to offer your product on 'closed' systems, that is, systems where installing software and working with the contents of memory yourself - are next to impossible. Systems which are not made to be configured by the general public.
Just do it on a server, a system that the user of the program doesn't have access to. Really simple.
is when they put the big NO WARRANTY NOT EVEN THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE notice in the EULA, and then have the balls to right at the start of the game have a character tell you that his products "are guaranteed for life and come with a two-day warranty!"
It's not a sig. It's part of the comment.
Indrema is trying to get the same thing without the hacking, as their console natively runs Linux.
However, they are currently royally screwing up with the certification scheme (you have to pay $50-200 dollars to get your game certified, and you can't even test in on the console until you do so), so it remains to be seen if it can actually do this.
as to why they block things like sci.archaeology, is it? Remember that almost all censorware out there has a Christian Fundie slant, and it's easy to see that if junior discovers archaeology then dinosaurs, biology and evolution are next, and then from there you'd might as well write him off as another anti-creationism devil worshiping Darwinist!
No, Christian Fundamentalists are not against archaeology. They actually believe in Christianity, so there not real scared of people finding facts that contradict it, as they don't believe there are any.
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Plays MP3s, TiVo functionality, etc. It's not just for games.
I think that he's using lawyers for the sole purpose of getting a judge to require that a FAIR, COMPLETE, and ACCURATE vote count be conducted
At least in the heavily democratic counties of Florida. Not so important elsewhere.
Granted, roughly half of the ballots without a vote for president are from those four counties. It's still not FAIR or COMPLETE.
I've got a brother who drives trucks. From what I've heard, the regulations force truckers to stop when they are still not tired, and then get up in the middle of the night to start driving again, when they then are sleepy.
Along with the fact that they are routinely ignored, and truckers are given jobs that are impossible to fulfill if you follow the regs.
Regulations for just the IT industry would, quite frankly, be really stupid. If you want to regulate everything, I could see the justification, though it is still not a good idea IMO, but just IT? Why are they special? Because they're in such high demand they can choose not to work long hours and still get hired, but choose not to for more money?
Suddenly, the kid's toy becomes a VERY inexpensive replacement for the computer.
Which Microsoft has repeatedly said that they don't want it to be.
The reason they will be "inexpensive" is that Microsoft loses money on each one sold, planning on making it back by taking a share of the profit for each game sold for the system. If people don't buy games, Microsoft loses money. So you've got to subtract the loss from the consoles from your projected revenue stream, and things start looking real shaky, real quick. And they certaintly don't want it on every videophile's list.
If you want to change the voting system, I'd suggest trying to change it in the primaries, where it is up to each party, before amending the constitution.
Every other office in this country that is voted for does not use this silly system, there's no reason that the presidential election needs to use it.
The fact that seats in the House are decided by population but each state has two senators does distribute more power to the small states in exactly the same way as the electoral college though.
I believe Maine already does things this way.
It's up to each state, not the federal government.
You can generally still buy Atari 2600 systems in classified ads. The Recycler offers free ads, mostly in the Los Angeles area, and typically has ads for a system or two each week, and collections of cartridges as well. So you may want to try looking for some local equivalent, or just use eBay.
Another issue of dividing power "increasing" it, is with his example of gerimandering(sp?). Ignoring the president for a moment, if you put all blacks in one district and gave them a black representative, then that senator would only have 1/5xxth of a voice. If, however, you spread those people out among several districts, then you could influence 5-30% of the vote for multiple districts (including sympathists), thereby having dozens of representatives in congress, a significantly greater margin.
Yes, and the increase in the power of the blacks would be exactly counterbalanced by a decrease in power of the other people involved.
I'm assuming that the definition of average power of a group is (total power)/(number of people in group), the standard meaning for average. In both direct election and the electoral college the total power is the same: the power to elect a president. The number of total voters is the same. Therefore the average power of voters is the same. The only way you can change the average power is to change the total power or the number of voters, and changes to the distribution of power are completely irrelevant to total power.
I'm not arguing that average power of a voter is an important measure of how good a voting system is, just that the electoral does not and can not increase it. I support the electoral college and agree with most of what you said in your last message, but don't think it is relevant to the question of whether the electoral college increases the average power of voters.
The paper you've referred to was quite flawed mathematically. Most importantly, the definition of power is wrong. It doesn't argue that voters have more power, just that some voter is more likely to have power someday, as by its definition no voter in any presidential election in the history of the US has ever had any power. If it calculated in the fact that every election starts balanced, and that it is through votes that they become unbalanced, it maybe could give some useful info. It treats power as an all or nothing thing, where you either have the power to decide the election or no power at all. So in order to maximize power under his definition, rather than dividing into districts, we should just take everyone's vote for president, and pick one at random and make that person president, as that way there would be one person with power in every election, the best that can be done by his measure.
The baseball analogy was really good though.
I've read the article. It's still stupid. Given that the power involved is to elect the president, and it is divided among some given number of people, the method of dividing the power is completely incapable of increasing it. This is quite obvious.
The article does many things to hide this simple fact. Most notable is the bullshit regarding "uneven" elections, which argues that they give the voters less power to decide the election, while ignoring the fact that all elections start even, and it is only through the exercise of voter's power that they become uneven.
* It turns out that each person's vote is more powerful that way. You vote for a small portion of the big vote, but you have a much bigger contribution to your portion of the vote compared to if you just had a general popular election.
That's just stupid. It doesn't matter how you elect the president, the average power of every person involved is exactly the same. The power to elect the president divided by the number of people involved. Direct election, the electoral college, or randomly picking one person and having him pick the president, it doesn't matter. Same amount of power.
For those of you who cast a vote for Nader because you're sick and tired of the system and think both major parties are incurably corrupt, congratulations. You have accomplished -nothing- beyond satisfying your own smug little idealistic worldview. You might as well have written in MC Hammer, Snoopy, or the Magic School Bus, because nobody besides the two major candidates had any chance of winning the election, and protest votes are historically forgettable.
You might as well have voted for Bush or Gore. Nader arguably could have made a difference by not running. Individual Nader supporters could not. Sure, nobody besides the two major candidates had any chance of winning the election, but the chance of one of the two major candidates winning the election because they won your state by one vote isn't real high either.
If you measure the value of a vote by whether it changes the election than of course a vote for a third party candidate is wasted. Every vote for a presidential candidate in the history of the US was wasted by that criteria.
If your going to end the electoral college, you should also end the Senate, as it's based on the same thing.