So by your math, $150/year times 7 million clients = $1.05 BILLION dollars in revenue per year. Convince me that you need even a fifth of that to maintain servers and pay salaries, I'll buy your arguement. MMORPGs are cash cows, and there's no two ways about it. Sony's plan (if it is in fact their plan) is just as bad.
I remember a certain incident here at school in a class of my friend's. Apparently, after the professor started the exams, he would go back to his office and post the answer keys on the course website. Some kids found out, and would have their friends wait until it was published, then send a text message with the answers. The professor found out this was going on, so during one test he published a false answer key and found all the kids who were cheating.
I'm just curious about something here. If a second is defined to be 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a Caesium-133 atom, then why is it said atomic clocks are accurate to within a second over 70 million years? Isn't that lost/gained second itself defined by the Caesium atom's transitions? I hope this question makes sense...
No, the article is about how IQ is possibly related to the speed of physiological cortex development (how about a quote like, "Rather, IQ is related to the dynamics of cortex maturation"). I was merely suggesting that perhaps I am one of the slow developers who experienced a rapid change in "intelligence" as a result of the delayed process.
I'd have to say my life follows this hypothesis fairly well. When I was three years old, I was barely speaking more than one word utterances. The doctors told my mom I would probably turn out OK, and she shouldn't worry too much. By the time I was in kindergarten, I had my first IQ test (Pennsylvania does this to place "superior" students in gifted programs, and "deficient" students in a remedial education program). I scored around a 105, just above average and I took all the regular classes like all of the other "regular" students. In state testing in second grade, I scored in the 99th percentile overall; higher than any other kid in my grade, including the "gifted" ones. Because of this, it was suggested that I be tested yet again. This time, I made a dramatic improvement, to two and a half standard deviations above average (I don't like to say scores, because, in essence they mean nothing more than how well I was able to do on a certain test on a certain day). This was more than enough to put me in the gifted program, so I'd get the perk of getting out of 'regular' class one day a week and doing what they considered "smart kid stuff" and I got to go on a bunch of field trips. Why being intelligent should earn some kids these special priveledges over other kids is beyond me.
I eventually started college and realized I had no idea how to learn stuff. High school was easy for me; all I'd have to do is show up and I'd get an "A." Soon I was depressed (more so than normal- I've suffered depression my whole life) and stopped going to classes altogether. When I finally got my act together, I went to a neurologist to figure out why I'm having such a difficulty in learning. I had yet another IQ test, in addition to all these other tests. Amazingly, my IQ went up another whole standard deviation- even though my reading comprehension and auditory memory subtests were actually considered low enough as for me to have a disability under the ADA (how it works is if you are more than 1.5 standard deviation below your test average, you are considered to have a disability in that area- the part I have a hard time accepting is that I still scored above the 90th percentile in both of these tests). My neurologist was very intrigued about how my scores have been improving considering how I got off to such a slow start.
I'm very blessed to have a one-in-10,000 IQ, but it comes with it's caveats. I still struggle to learn information I'm not interested in, I've suffered from pretty severe depression most of my life, and I almost never see a project of mine to completion- my mind just wanders too much. I've gotten a little off-topic here, but I'd be interested to see if my cortex withers more rapidly as I age as illustrated in the article.
Any chance that they could make a software patch that would report the CPU as "GenuineIntel" when the user specifies it should be such? Just intercept the call to wherever that bit of info is stored and report back the fake CPUID to the offending program. Just an idea.
If I were in Sony's shoes, I would just go ahead and release the console with a partially-functional Blu-Ray drive (i.e., able to read the game discs and regular DVDs), and once the specs are finalized, update the drive with new firmware. They'd have to slap a sticker on saying that it will not play Blu-Ray out-of-the-box until new software is available (and if they were kind, they'd do it free of charge either by mailing out discs or downloading it via their online thingamabober). Sure, it'd be a minor inconvenience, but then again, how many Blu-Ray titles are expected by the end of the year?
No, the Steelers were not "handed" two touchdowns. Yes, there were marginal calls, but only one was truly bad (the chop block). The pushoff, as weak as it was, was still a pushoff and was called as such. The Roethlessberger TD did not have enough video evidence to overturn the call... besides, do you think the Steelers wouldn't have scored on 4th down anyways? The holding call was a tough one too, and I don't think the ref that called it had a good view, but just because fathead John Madden says it wasn't holding doesn't mean it wasn't. You just can't tell from the replay. People can complain all they want, but the truth is the officiating wasn't as horrible as everyone says, but it wasn't all that great either.
That said, I was pretty surprised about the high amygdala activity the people showed in the FedEx commercial... even though it was comical, our brains still perceived it as threatening when he got stomped by the dinosaur. Pretty interesting stuff.
Black and White 2 is a really nifty game. The interface is about as simple as it gets, and the whole concept is rather amazing. Probably one of my favorite games ever.
The stopping is not important- it's the transfer of energy from the weapon to the target. A railgun that goes through something and keeps on going can do extraordinary damage because a great deal of the projectile's energy was transferred. If the projectile stops in the target, it just means that it achieved higher efficiency (although potentially less damage) than a projectile that goes straight through.
By far, the best PDA money can buy is the Sharp Zaurus. I've owned an SL-C860 for two years now, and I still have yet to find another PDA that can rival its functionality. It's not sold in the US, so you'll have to import it from a place like Dynamism, and they cost a pretty penny, but they are very much worth it. Dump the stock ROM and replace it with pdaXrom and use xfce as the windows manager- it's like a full-featured linux desktop in your pocket (Evolution and KDE has been built and running, though they need some optimization until they are fully useful. It will make that Axim look like a toy...
Sometimes I help out in the photo-processing department where I work. We get disposable cameras all the time (it's a college town, and people don't want to ruin/lose their digicams when they are drunk). I can't count the number of times I've popped them open and touched the cap inside... sometimes the shock would be so strong I'd lose sensation in my arm for a few minutes and I'd have two marks on my skin from where I contacted the terminals. Of course, what is always fun to do is to charge the cap when it's open, sneak up behind a co-worker, and discharge it with a screwdriver when you're near them. It's loud and always elicits a good jump. Of course, you can always be cruel and sneak up behind someone and touch them with contacts to shock them, but I can't bring myself to do such a thing.
It would be really neat if they could do a time-lapse of this over a long period of time to see how the land evolves. Naturally, this would be hard, what with the steam, clouds, tide, and day/night cycles to make photography too inconsistent to capture some of the more rapid changes completely. How about using high-resolution radar to map the topography, and IR cameras to differentiate the lava, water, and "cool" rock. Mount this on a helicopter, and do a few flybys everyday (if they didn't want to take the helos out at night, they could always make deals with the charter aircraft that I'm sure fly around there all the time). Using the radar data, IR images, and GPS, you could construct a detailed 3D representation of the terrain, and create some nice animations of the whole process. Sure, it would probably be expensive, but I think it would be pretty neat.
I guess what I said came off as sounding like all I cared about was being different. The iPod is a fantastic device, and I even used one as my sole source of music for a few months when my friend was out of the country. In terms of user experience, iPods are without a doubt in a league of their own. My biggest concern is how iPods are slowly moving away from being simple music devices and becoming a sort of all-in-one unit. This may seem like like a good thing in our got-to-have-it society, but really, are you going to watch a whole movie on an iPod video or wow your friends with a photo on your iPod nano? The iPod shuffle is the only "simple" device left in their line, but it's so simple that it's severely compromised (come on, you can't even really pick a particular track to listen to!). Getting an older iPod is an option, but I really worry about how well they hold up, what with scratches and crappy batteries and all.
I would never base a purchasing decision solely on whether just wanting to be different, and I never, ever make a purchase without being sure it's the best solution for my needs (well, for electronics, that is). The reason the Sony player was so appealing, is besides its awesome looks, it offers up a clean, simple user interface without resorting to any fancy gimmicks like color or the ability to show off a picture of your pet armadillo on a 1" screen. This is what appeals to me most, and the fact that it's so different only adds icing to the cake. One concern is whether or not I'd be required to use the Sony software to load music- not only do I now have no trust in them, I'm pretty sure it won't run under Linux and I don't yet know if it works under OS X.
And about those earbuds- when I had the loaner iPod, I tried using them for a day on campus and was just about ready to rip my ears off (I guess I could have just stopped listening to music). My ears have been spoiled for the last few years with either my Shure E2c earbuds (*highly* recommended, but mine are pretty beat up after 2.5 years of hard daily use, and I may retire them for some E3cs this Christmas) or my Grado SR-250s (they're open-air and need a lot of juice, but in a quiet room with a headphone amp, you'd swear the music was right there in front of you. The only downside is that even decently encoded MP3s sound awful as they tend to discard or distort the higher frequencies). Once your ears become accustomed to high-quality headphones, you can never go back.
I just love the fact that when my friend put the Natasha Bedingfield CD to listen to it, I told him I wouldn't be suprised if his computer broke (or at least got mad at him) by putting that crappy excuse for music in there. Seems I was right- his attempt to remove the rootkit totally borked his XP to the point it no longer boots. Guess he should have read the article at the Register first.
I really wanted to buy the NW-A3000 MP3 player when it's released here (everyone and their mom has an iPod... literally). iPods are nice and all, but I'd like something a bit different. Now that I don't know if I can trust Sony, where am I to turn? That thing was so cool looking too.
My main gripe is the fact that they teach ID, but no other alternative theories. Being a member of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I am appaled that Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is not also being taught. If we convert more pastafarians, maybe the schoolboard will hear our pleas!
It's true that 1.8" drives have been around for quite some time now, but they are becoming thinner, lighter, and consume less power than their ancestors. Even so, the new Toshiba drive in the iPod video still consumes 1.1 Watts while reading and writing, and 1.8 to start up the drive from rest. These are fairly significant drains, and you have to take into account that the access patterns are much different than what they'd be on an iPod- with the iPod, you can buffer all of the data very quickly into RAM, play the tracks (around 20 minutes worth considering the amount of RAM), sleep the drive, and wake it up to fill the buffer back up. A PDA may be required to read and write more frequently, and rarely get to put the disk to sleep (not to mention, sleeping the disk only to wake it back up very soon afterwards is very wasteful). Supplying over a Watt and a half of power to a drive from a 3.6V battery is tough, and even harder when you have to also power a large, bright LCD, a high-power CPU, and any external hardware (CF and SD aren't just for memory, I use my CF for GPS, WiFi, USB host, and Bluetooth).
Again, an iPod can pull this off because of its relatively simple hardware- yes it can run Linux (actually uClinux), but then again, so can an Atari ST (again, uClinux). It's impressive enough that an iPod can last 15 or so hours on a charge, and it would be a miracle to have a PDA with a large drive last a fifth as long. With my CF microdrive, my battery life goes down by at least 40% when I'm using it for listening to music. The 20GB drive doesn't really have a large impact on battery life, but that's because I have have another battery hooked up to it just to take care of the drive's power needs (without the extra power source, I got about 20 minutes of use). I have no doubt that in the very near future we'll have PDAs with large integrated drives, but up to now it simply hasn't been possible to pack that much functionality into such a small space while being able to use it for any extended period of time.
I use pdaXrom with xfce4. Sure, it is quite crowded, but you'd get the same effect if you were to run your desktop at 640x480. Since everything overlaps, you just select the tool you need, do your work, and when it's time to change just bring back up the toolbar by clicking on its taskbar button. Because it is so slow, it's not really usable for much more than simple editing, but it's cool to have nonetheless.
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So by your math, $150/year times 7 million clients = $1.05 BILLION dollars in revenue per year. Convince me that you need even a fifth of that to maintain servers and pay salaries, I'll buy your arguement. MMORPGs are cash cows, and there's no two ways about it. Sony's plan (if it is in fact their plan) is just as bad.
I remember a certain incident here at school in a class of my friend's. Apparently, after the professor started the exams, he would go back to his office and post the answer keys on the course website. Some kids found out, and would have their friends wait until it was published, then send a text message with the answers. The professor found out this was going on, so during one test he published a false answer key and found all the kids who were cheating.
I'm just curious about something here. If a second is defined to be 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a Caesium-133 atom, then why is it said atomic clocks are accurate to within a second over 70 million years? Isn't that lost/gained second itself defined by the Caesium atom's transitions? I hope this question makes sense...
So what's the first story I see with Slashdot's new layout? A dupe!
No, the article is about how IQ is possibly related to the speed of physiological cortex development (how about a quote like, "Rather, IQ is related to the dynamics of cortex maturation"). I was merely suggesting that perhaps I am one of the slow developers who experienced a rapid change in "intelligence" as a result of the delayed process.
I'd have to say my life follows this hypothesis fairly well. When I was three years old, I was barely speaking more than one word utterances. The doctors told my mom I would probably turn out OK, and she shouldn't worry too much. By the time I was in kindergarten, I had my first IQ test (Pennsylvania does this to place "superior" students in gifted programs, and "deficient" students in a remedial education program). I scored around a 105, just above average and I took all the regular classes like all of the other "regular" students. In state testing in second grade, I scored in the 99th percentile overall; higher than any other kid in my grade, including the "gifted" ones. Because of this, it was suggested that I be tested yet again. This time, I made a dramatic improvement, to two and a half standard deviations above average (I don't like to say scores, because, in essence they mean nothing more than how well I was able to do on a certain test on a certain day). This was more than enough to put me in the gifted program, so I'd get the perk of getting out of 'regular' class one day a week and doing what they considered "smart kid stuff" and I got to go on a bunch of field trips. Why being intelligent should earn some kids these special priveledges over other kids is beyond me.
I eventually started college and realized I had no idea how to learn stuff. High school was easy for me; all I'd have to do is show up and I'd get an "A." Soon I was depressed (more so than normal- I've suffered depression my whole life) and stopped going to classes altogether. When I finally got my act together, I went to a neurologist to figure out why I'm having such a difficulty in learning. I had yet another IQ test, in addition to all these other tests. Amazingly, my IQ went up another whole standard deviation- even though my reading comprehension and auditory memory subtests were actually considered low enough as for me to have a disability under the ADA (how it works is if you are more than 1.5 standard deviation below your test average, you are considered to have a disability in that area- the part I have a hard time accepting is that I still scored above the 90th percentile in both of these tests). My neurologist was very intrigued about how my scores have been improving considering how I got off to such a slow start.
I'm very blessed to have a one-in-10,000 IQ, but it comes with it's caveats. I still struggle to learn information I'm not interested in, I've suffered from pretty severe depression most of my life, and I almost never see a project of mine to completion- my mind just wanders too much. I've gotten a little off-topic here, but I'd be interested to see if my cortex withers more rapidly as I age as illustrated in the article.
OMGWTFBBQ!
I think they start celebrating when it's 00:00 GMT...
OMGWTFBBQ!
Any chance that they could make a software patch that would report the CPU as "GenuineIntel" when the user specifies it should be such? Just intercept the call to wherever that bit of info is stored and report back the fake CPUID to the offending program. Just an idea.
If I were in Sony's shoes, I would just go ahead and release the console with a partially-functional Blu-Ray drive (i.e., able to read the game discs and regular DVDs), and once the specs are finalized, update the drive with new firmware. They'd have to slap a sticker on saying that it will not play Blu-Ray out-of-the-box until new software is available (and if they were kind, they'd do it free of charge either by mailing out discs or downloading it via their online thingamabober). Sure, it'd be a minor inconvenience, but then again, how many Blu-Ray titles are expected by the end of the year?
Karma at risk, oh well.
No, the Steelers were not "handed" two touchdowns. Yes, there were marginal calls, but only one was truly bad (the chop block). The pushoff, as weak as it was, was still a pushoff and was called as such. The Roethlessberger TD did not have enough video evidence to overturn the call... besides, do you think the Steelers wouldn't have scored on 4th down anyways? The holding call was a tough one too, and I don't think the ref that called it had a good view, but just because fathead John Madden says it wasn't holding doesn't mean it wasn't. You just can't tell from the replay. People can complain all they want, but the truth is the officiating wasn't as horrible as everyone says, but it wasn't all that great either.
That said, I was pretty surprised about the high amygdala activity the people showed in the FedEx commercial... even though it was comical, our brains still perceived it as threatening when he got stomped by the dinosaur. Pretty interesting stuff.
Black and White 2 is a really nifty game. The interface is about as simple as it gets, and the whole concept is rather amazing. Probably one of my favorite games ever.
The stopping is not important- it's the transfer of energy from the weapon to the target. A railgun that goes through something and keeps on going can do extraordinary damage because a great deal of the projectile's energy was transferred. If the projectile stops in the target, it just means that it achieved higher efficiency (although potentially less damage) than a projectile that goes straight through.
No, it's how much porn he's watching, not making.
Perhaps they mean a Vertu?
By far, the best PDA money can buy is the Sharp Zaurus. I've owned an SL-C860 for two years now, and I still have yet to find another PDA that can rival its functionality. It's not sold in the US, so you'll have to import it from a place like Dynamism, and they cost a pretty penny, but they are very much worth it. Dump the stock ROM and replace it with pdaXrom and use xfce as the windows manager- it's like a full-featured linux desktop in your pocket (Evolution and KDE has been built and running, though they need some optimization until they are fully useful. It will make that Axim look like a toy...
Sometimes I help out in the photo-processing department where I work. We get disposable cameras all the time (it's a college town, and people don't want to ruin/lose their digicams when they are drunk). I can't count the number of times I've popped them open and touched the cap inside... sometimes the shock would be so strong I'd lose sensation in my arm for a few minutes and I'd have two marks on my skin from where I contacted the terminals. Of course, what is always fun to do is to charge the cap when it's open, sneak up behind a co-worker, and discharge it with a screwdriver when you're near them. It's loud and always elicits a good jump. Of course, you can always be cruel and sneak up behind someone and touch them with contacts to shock them, but I can't bring myself to do such a thing.
It would be really neat if they could do a time-lapse of this over a long period of time to see how the land evolves. Naturally, this would be hard, what with the steam, clouds, tide, and day/night cycles to make photography too inconsistent to capture some of the more rapid changes completely. How about using high-resolution radar to map the topography, and IR cameras to differentiate the lava, water, and "cool" rock. Mount this on a helicopter, and do a few flybys everyday (if they didn't want to take the helos out at night, they could always make deals with the charter aircraft that I'm sure fly around there all the time). Using the radar data, IR images, and GPS, you could construct a detailed 3D representation of the terrain, and create some nice animations of the whole process. Sure, it would probably be expensive, but I think it would be pretty neat.
I guess what I said came off as sounding like all I cared about was being different. The iPod is a fantastic device, and I even used one as my sole source of music for a few months when my friend was out of the country. In terms of user experience, iPods are without a doubt in a league of their own. My biggest concern is how iPods are slowly moving away from being simple music devices and becoming a sort of all-in-one unit. This may seem like like a good thing in our got-to-have-it society, but really, are you going to watch a whole movie on an iPod video or wow your friends with a photo on your iPod nano? The iPod shuffle is the only "simple" device left in their line, but it's so simple that it's severely compromised (come on, you can't even really pick a particular track to listen to!). Getting an older iPod is an option, but I really worry about how well they hold up, what with scratches and crappy batteries and all.
I would never base a purchasing decision solely on whether just wanting to be different, and I never, ever make a purchase without being sure it's the best solution for my needs (well, for electronics, that is). The reason the Sony player was so appealing, is besides its awesome looks, it offers up a clean, simple user interface without resorting to any fancy gimmicks like color or the ability to show off a picture of your pet armadillo on a 1" screen. This is what appeals to me most, and the fact that it's so different only adds icing to the cake. One concern is whether or not I'd be required to use the Sony software to load music- not only do I now have no trust in them, I'm pretty sure it won't run under Linux and I don't yet know if it works under OS X.
And about those earbuds- when I had the loaner iPod, I tried using them for a day on campus and was just about ready to rip my ears off (I guess I could have just stopped listening to music). My ears have been spoiled for the last few years with either my Shure E2c earbuds (*highly* recommended, but mine are pretty beat up after 2.5 years of hard daily use, and I may retire them for some E3cs this Christmas) or my Grado SR-250s (they're open-air and need a lot of juice, but in a quiet room with a headphone amp, you'd swear the music was right there in front of you. The only downside is that even decently encoded MP3s sound awful as they tend to discard or distort the higher frequencies). Once your ears become accustomed to high-quality headphones, you can never go back.
I just love the fact that when my friend put the Natasha Bedingfield CD to listen to it, I told him I wouldn't be suprised if his computer broke (or at least got mad at him) by putting that crappy excuse for music in there. Seems I was right- his attempt to remove the rootkit totally borked his XP to the point it no longer boots. Guess he should have read the article at the Register first.
I really wanted to buy the NW-A3000 MP3 player when it's released here (everyone and their mom has an iPod... literally). iPods are nice and all, but I'd like something a bit different. Now that I don't know if I can trust Sony, where am I to turn? That thing was so cool looking too.
My main gripe is the fact that they teach ID, but no other alternative theories. Being a member of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I am appaled that Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is not also being taught. If we convert more pastafarians, maybe the schoolboard will hear our pleas!
Like they say: "I'll believe it when I see it."
Still, it would be nice to have some major shakeup in physics... there really haven't been any in my lifetime.
It's true that 1.8" drives have been around for quite some time now, but they are becoming thinner, lighter, and consume less power than their ancestors. Even so, the new Toshiba drive in the iPod video still consumes 1.1 Watts while reading and writing, and 1.8 to start up the drive from rest. These are fairly significant drains, and you have to take into account that the access patterns are much different than what they'd be on an iPod- with the iPod, you can buffer all of the data very quickly into RAM, play the tracks (around 20 minutes worth considering the amount of RAM), sleep the drive, and wake it up to fill the buffer back up. A PDA may be required to read and write more frequently, and rarely get to put the disk to sleep (not to mention, sleeping the disk only to wake it back up very soon afterwards is very wasteful). Supplying over a Watt and a half of power to a drive from a 3.6V battery is tough, and even harder when you have to also power a large, bright LCD, a high-power CPU, and any external hardware (CF and SD aren't just for memory, I use my CF for GPS, WiFi, USB host, and Bluetooth).
Again, an iPod can pull this off because of its relatively simple hardware- yes it can run Linux (actually uClinux), but then again, so can an Atari ST (again, uClinux). It's impressive enough that an iPod can last 15 or so hours on a charge, and it would be a miracle to have a PDA with a large drive last a fifth as long. With my CF microdrive, my battery life goes down by at least 40% when I'm using it for listening to music. The 20GB drive doesn't really have a large impact on battery life, but that's because I have have another battery hooked up to it just to take care of the drive's power needs (without the extra power source, I got about 20 minutes of use). I have no doubt that in the very near future we'll have PDAs with large integrated drives, but up to now it simply hasn't been possible to pack that much functionality into such a small space while being able to use it for any extended period of time.
I use pdaXrom with xfce4. Sure, it is quite crowded, but you'd get the same effect if you were to run your desktop at 640x480. Since everything overlaps, you just select the tool you need, do your work, and when it's time to change just bring back up the toolbar by clicking on its taskbar button. Because it is so slow, it's not really usable for much more than simple editing, but it's cool to have nonetheless.