Also, with respect to the motion control, I do think that Nintendo innovated. Sure, there was a golf game that used accelerometers. I'm certain that accelerometers predate the development of the golf game.
If the golf game can be said to be innovative, because it used accelerometers for input in a game, can we not say that the Wii is innovative for creating a generalized input solution for motion?
Isn't integrating the IR cameras on the Wii sensor bar, and using it to precisely control the aimpoint of the wiimote on the screen an innovation?
That's not quite what I was trying to say, although I can see how you interpreted it that way.
What I meant was, if the first time that innovation was tested in the marketplace, and it had caught on, and there'd been a steady progression of development in the technology, then it'd be clearly non-innovative for Nintendo to come up with the DS. But if an idea gets floated 20+ years ago, and leads to nothing, and then a similar idea is tried again, the fact that the idea was used 20+ years ago doesn't automatically mean that the more recent invention isn't innovative.
To put it another way, no one would say that the Wright brothers weren't innovative simply because Da Vinci had ideas for flying machines hundreds of years earlier.
Good point, but I think my use of the word "usually" covers that.
To clarify my point a bit, I'm not actually saying that "doing it more successfully" is what defines who the innovator is. I'm saying that figuring out how to do it well enough to be a success requires additional advances and refinements of a concept which are themselves innovations.
Just because some company tried a mobile gaming platform with two screens over a decade before the DS doesn't meant much. "Hey let's put two screens in it!" isn't a brilliant innovation; it's a gimmick. It's how you use those elements to create a compelling, engaging, high quality gaming experience that is the non-obvious, innovative advance.
Had 2-screen mobile games caught on after that long-ago, forgotten attempt, then it would be legitimate to say that the DS wasn't innovative. But since the 2-screen games didn't establish a market for 2-screen gaming, I'd say coming back to the concept and doing it well enough to succeed was innovative.
Just because someone had the idea and actually made a product doesn't mean that it was successful. The article makes a number of specious claims that some early product did something like motion control or dual screen means that later stuff that did it well and successfully are therefore not "innovations". These claims might have more merit if the earlier invention had actually caught on. As with most things, there are many failed attempts before someone gets it right. Usually, whatever it was about "getting it right" is a true innovation.
Yeah, really. It was either this, or see the project get scrapped and a new, proprietary "OracleOffice.org" get released a few weeks later. I'm glad to see open source resisting becoming assimilated and crushed because a major backer got acquired.
I used to run a small computer repair and write-to-order software shop for a living while in the Uni with two more people. One of them had that idea around 1994. In those days it was just to store the code in the video RAM pages which are not directly accessible to a scanner and keep a small polymorphic backstrap routine in main memory.
It's clear to anyone who actually watched Star Trek that the Vulcan race is not emotionless. They worked very hard to overcome their emotions, and to conduct themselves according to a rigid ethic that valued logic over everything else. At times in the show Spock either claimed not to have emotions, or else was accused of not having emotions, but there were moments in the series which showed that Spock did still have emotions (possibly due to his half-human genetic heritage?) and that the Vulcans as a race did have emotions in their early history (and still seemed to around mating season).
Ok, while I'll concede that technically you are right, I believe that my main point still stands. Mega Man 9 and 10 are old school style, and are still fun, marketable, successful games today.
I do think that old school game play is still fun and has a lot of legs left in it. Technical innovation only matters insofar as it enables game developers to deliver a fun experience for the player.
As I recall, MM9 and 10 are impossible on 1980s technology. Instead, the design goal was to emulate the look and feel of the classic games.
What's impossible about them? The gameplay is identical. The only thing they changed about it is eliminating flicker. And outputting a HDTV friendly video resolution.
You seriously want a corporation to spend money developing something that their competitors will then get for free?
Yes, pretty much. They're using for free something that someone else spent money on, developing it to the point that it's at now. Improving it for the good of the community of users by putting some resources into further development of the project, and giving it back to the community is exactly how open source is supposed to work.
You don't understand how the corporate world works, methinks... such a proposition has absolutely no ROI at all, because it's unsellable.
I understand that a lot of corporations are locked into a greed mentality and are not capable of seeing the value of open source. They're happy to make use of things if they're free, but don't seem to want to put any effort into making those things better, even if it benefits their own interest.
Corporate greed will win out over free software in this case.
Who exactly is the Swiss Canton competing against? If a free, democratic government can't do things like contribute significant improvements to open source projects for the benefit of the public good, the common weal, then who the fuck can? Swiss tax money can't benefit all the people of Switzerland, and at the same time benefit the Puppet community? What do the Swiss gain by not contributing value to the open project, in favor of a closed off the shelf solution?
If it's that important, and you want somebody to buck up and put in the work to get it done, why aren't you volunteering your own time?
Why am I not volunteering my own time? Because it's not my problem. I personally do not manage nor need to manage a directory services solution, or centrally manage the desktop configuration of workstations.
Where I do use open source projects, and where they do need improvement, and where I can contribute something to improve them, I certainly will. Whether that be code, or documentation, or bug reports, or feature requests, or testing, being an active participant rather than a passive leech of open source software is important.
If a corporation wants to use FOSS to obtain Freedom and gain the benefits of Freedom and all the values that comes with it, then it *is* the problem of a corporation, and they should be willing to work to improve the solutions that solve those problems. It's the problem of many corporations who commonly face this same problem.
These organizations have resources to devote to solving these problems, and should if they want them solved. They can throw resources at Microsoft, or they can throw resources into developing open alternatives. I'm not here to preach about which course of action is best; that's for everyone to decide for themselves.
Many open source projects are developed primarily by employees of corporations that contribute to the project in order to make it better for their own purposes, as well as the community of users who also benefit from the project. Open source projects win because the corporation benefits not just from the labor of their own paid employees, but from the labor of all the contributors to the project. That's how the open source development model works.
If no one's working on a problem that you care about, there's nothing stopping you from devoting resources to solving the problem. Once someone steps up and does this, the entire community benefits from it. If you're too selfish to commit to the project, but expect it to benefit you regardless, then you're a leech and don't understand how open source works. If there's another, possibly cheaper/better, way to achieve your goal available to you, then you have to judge the merits of open source in the context of those alternatives.
Writing and debugging equivalent configuration for even a tenth of that in Puppet would cost a lot more in man-hours than all the Windows licenses you can shake a stick at).
...but, since it's FOSS, the moment someone actually DOES this, AND shares it back to the community, it becomes free and simple for everyone else to do it.
So, if it's such an important thing, some company should buck up and pay for the man hours to make it happen. Open source doesn't develop itself. Freedom isn't free.
It's not like this is anything new... Gamepads have always had d-pad left, buttons right. Atari 2600 joysticks were hold the base of the controller in the left hand, fire with left thumb, joystick right. They never made a left-handed power glove either.
Meanwhile, when I actually use my web browser in the real world, Chrome seems much faster than Firefox. So what do I need any kind of synthetic benchmark to tell me what I already know? I'll find out who's faster when they release a non-beta. If performance matters that much to my experience, I may switch, but whoever I use better support the types of plug-ins that I want. Chrome is just about there. It's nice to see rapid innovation and competition in the browser again.
IIRC my college English professors taught the big words actually interfere with communication rather than enhance it.
In other words, we got too dumb for most of us to be able to use the big words, so now english professors have fallen back to the next line of defense and are teaching writers to use a dumbed-down vocabulary. Me no like.
If all the deniers of peak oil would have the decency to commit suicide once they've been proven wrong, that could go a long way to alleviating the demand that makes post-peak oil such a downer.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, with respect to the motion control, I do think that Nintendo innovated. Sure, there was a golf game that used accelerometers. I'm certain that accelerometers predate the development of the golf game.
If the golf game can be said to be innovative, because it used accelerometers for input in a game, can we not say that the Wii is innovative for creating a generalized input solution for motion?
Isn't integrating the IR cameras on the Wii sensor bar, and using it to precisely control the aimpoint of the wiimote on the screen an innovation?
I hope that clears up what I meant.
That's not quite what I was trying to say, although I can see how you interpreted it that way.
What I meant was, if the first time that innovation was tested in the marketplace, and it had caught on, and there'd been a steady progression of development in the technology, then it'd be clearly non-innovative for Nintendo to come up with the DS. But if an idea gets floated 20+ years ago, and leads to nothing, and then a similar idea is tried again, the fact that the idea was used 20+ years ago doesn't automatically mean that the more recent invention isn't innovative.
To put it another way, no one would say that the Wright brothers weren't innovative simply because Da Vinci had ideas for flying machines hundreds of years earlier.
But I wasn't saying that success == innovation. I'm saying that doing something later than something similar doesn't mean that there's no innovation.
Good point, but I think my use of the word "usually" covers that.
To clarify my point a bit, I'm not actually saying that "doing it more successfully" is what defines who the innovator is. I'm saying that figuring out how to do it well enough to be a success requires additional advances and refinements of a concept which are themselves innovations.
Just because some company tried a mobile gaming platform with two screens over a decade before the DS doesn't meant much. "Hey let's put two screens in it!" isn't a brilliant innovation; it's a gimmick. It's how you use those elements to create a compelling, engaging, high quality gaming experience that is the non-obvious, innovative advance.
Had 2-screen mobile games caught on after that long-ago, forgotten attempt, then it would be legitimate to say that the DS wasn't innovative. But since the 2-screen games didn't establish a market for 2-screen gaming, I'd say coming back to the concept and doing it well enough to succeed was innovative.
Just because someone had the idea and actually made a product doesn't mean that it was successful. The article makes a number of specious claims that some early product did something like motion control or dual screen means that later stuff that did it well and successfully are therefore not "innovations". These claims might have more merit if the earlier invention had actually caught on. As with most things, there are many failed attempts before someone gets it right. Usually, whatever it was about "getting it right" is a true innovation.
Jesus Christ, that was just last month!
Say you wanted to author a js library... you might find pure js handy.
Now whether there's any good reason to write yet another js library, is another thing.
Yeah, really. It was either this, or see the project get scrapped and a new, proprietary "OracleOffice.org" get released a few weeks later. I'm glad to see open source resisting becoming assimilated and crushed because a major backer got acquired.
I used to run a small computer repair and write-to-order software shop for a living while in the Uni with two more people. One of them had that idea around 1994. In those days it was just to store the code in the video RAM pages which are not directly accessible to a scanner and keep a small polymorphic backstrap routine in main memory.
So which one of you guys is the guilty party?
Browsing in a browser just doesn't hold up to browsing the physical media. Guess I'm just a library kinda guy.
Yo dawg, I heard u like browsing...so I put a browser in yer browser so you can browse while you browse.
It's clear to anyone who actually watched Star Trek that the Vulcan race is not emotionless. They worked very hard to overcome their emotions, and to conduct themselves according to a rigid ethic that valued logic over everything else. At times in the show Spock either claimed not to have emotions, or else was accused of not having emotions, but there were moments in the series which showed that Spock did still have emotions (possibly due to his half-human genetic heritage?) and that the Vulcans as a race did have emotions in their early history (and still seemed to around mating season).
Ok, while I'll concede that technically you are right, I believe that my main point still stands. Mega Man 9 and 10 are old school style, and are still fun, marketable, successful games today.
I do think that old school game play is still fun and has a lot of legs left in it. Technical innovation only matters insofar as it enables game developers to deliver a fun experience for the player.
As I recall, MM9 and 10 are impossible on 1980s technology. Instead, the design goal was to emulate the look and feel of the classic games.
What's impossible about them? The gameplay is identical. The only thing they changed about it is eliminating flicker. And outputting a HDTV friendly video resolution.
Mega Man 9, Mega Man 10... pretty fuckin' badass videogames. Implemented in 2009-10 using 1986-8 technology.
This is nothing to be alarmed about, they are merely reusing code from Grand Theft Auto.
You seriously want a corporation to spend money developing something that their competitors will then get for free?
Yes, pretty much. They're using for free something that someone else spent money on, developing it to the point that it's at now. Improving it for the good of the community of users by putting some resources into further development of the project, and giving it back to the community is exactly how open source is supposed to work.
You don't understand how the corporate world works, methinks... such a proposition has absolutely no ROI at all, because it's unsellable.
I understand that a lot of corporations are locked into a greed mentality and are not capable of seeing the value of open source. They're happy to make use of things if they're free, but don't seem to want to put any effort into making those things better, even if it benefits their own interest.
Corporate greed will win out over free software in this case.
Who exactly is the Swiss Canton competing against? If a free, democratic government can't do things like contribute significant improvements to open source projects for the benefit of the public good, the common weal, then who the fuck can? Swiss tax money can't benefit all the people of Switzerland, and at the same time benefit the Puppet community? What do the Swiss gain by not contributing value to the open project, in favor of a closed off the shelf solution?
If it's that important, and you want somebody to buck up and put in the work to get it done, why aren't you volunteering your own time?
Why am I not volunteering my own time? Because it's not my problem. I personally do not manage nor need to manage a directory services solution, or centrally manage the desktop configuration of workstations.
Where I do use open source projects, and where they do need improvement, and where I can contribute something to improve them, I certainly will. Whether that be code, or documentation, or bug reports, or feature requests, or testing, being an active participant rather than a passive leech of open source software is important.
If a corporation wants to use FOSS to obtain Freedom and gain the benefits of Freedom and all the values that comes with it, then it *is* the problem of a corporation, and they should be willing to work to improve the solutions that solve those problems. It's the problem of many corporations who commonly face this same problem.
These organizations have resources to devote to solving these problems, and should if they want them solved. They can throw resources at Microsoft, or they can throw resources into developing open alternatives. I'm not here to preach about which course of action is best; that's for everyone to decide for themselves.
Many open source projects are developed primarily by employees of corporations that contribute to the project in order to make it better for their own purposes, as well as the community of users who also benefit from the project. Open source projects win because the corporation benefits not just from the labor of their own paid employees, but from the labor of all the contributors to the project. That's how the open source development model works.
If no one's working on a problem that you care about, there's nothing stopping you from devoting resources to solving the problem. Once someone steps up and does this, the entire community benefits from it. If you're too selfish to commit to the project, but expect it to benefit you regardless, then you're a leech and don't understand how open source works. If there's another, possibly cheaper/better, way to achieve your goal available to you, then you have to judge the merits of open source in the context of those alternatives.
Hell, a goddamn Visual Basic app from fifteen years ago kicked the butt of most modern web sites in usability, performance and ease of maintenance.
That, and it could even trace IP addresses.
So, if it's such an important thing, some company should buck up and pay for the man hours to make it happen. Open source doesn't develop itself. Freedom isn't free.
It's not like this is anything new... Gamepads have always had d-pad left, buttons right. Atari 2600 joysticks were hold the base of the controller in the left hand, fire with left thumb, joystick right. They never made a left-handed power glove either.
Meanwhile, when I actually use my web browser in the real world, Chrome seems much faster than Firefox. So what do I need any kind of synthetic benchmark to tell me what I already know? I'll find out who's faster when they release a non-beta. If performance matters that much to my experience, I may switch, but whoever I use better support the types of plug-ins that I want. Chrome is just about there. It's nice to see rapid innovation and competition in the browser again.
Sheets of glass vary in thickness. How thin is thin?
IIRC my college English professors taught the big words actually interfere with communication rather than enhance it.
In other words, we got too dumb for most of us to be able to use the big words, so now english professors have fallen back to the next line of defense and are teaching writers to use a dumbed-down vocabulary. Me no like.
If all the deniers of peak oil would have the decency to commit suicide once they've been proven wrong, that could go a long way to alleviating the demand that makes post-peak oil such a downer.
Spaceflight Formation Flying Test Bed... wait wasn't that a Pink Floyd album cover?
This + cellphone technology + in-ear speaker = telepathy
Also indistinguishable from schizophrenia.
Also also indistinguishable from mind control.
I don't think I could ever trust a cell phone company enough to give them direct neural access.