The oldest generation of cell phone users don't really seem to get it. They leave the phone off because they don't want to charge it, so you can't even reliably reach them. For them the cell phone is for emergency use only.
Most people I know fit into the next generation. We have our phones with us all the time, but we don't use more than a hundred or so minutes a month. The cell phone is used mostly for making plans.
The youngest generation might as well have the phone surgically implanted. They'll use thousands of minutes a month because they don't realize that real life is more interesting than a phone.
"Free" hardware sounds just like the Cable TV market. The cable company sells you a subscription to their service, which is a package of content. They set up a black box in your house to receive and display this content. And you continue to receive this content as long as you pay your monthly fee.
This model works because no one gives a damn about their cable box; they care about the content. Most people do care about the specs of their computer, but only because they must to ensure that their software runs. The software is the important part. And nowadays most of that software is networked.
Do you think that there isn't a significant population out there that wouldn't subscribe to an all-in-one service that provides internet connectivity, hardware, client software and reliable data storage?
limited skill multiplied by many games
on
Geeks and Poker?
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· Score: 1
I also only play poker for small stakes with my friends. I also think that skill plays a limited role in poker. However after playing many games it becomes apparent that the luck evens out and only the skill remains.
You are using skill each time you bluff your way into a win, or call a bluff, or bet heavily against someone with a good hand that isn't quite as good as yours, or cut your losses on a pretty good hand that is going to lose. This probably doesn't happen every hand, but these skill events add up over time.
I have noticed that I win more than I lose, and that I can usually point to a few hands each game where I made a judgement call that worked out well. If you lose on a regular basis then you may need to pay more attention to the other players.
China certainly has reaped some of the rewards of the global economy. Their low standard of living means labor is cheap. Multinational companies are employing many Chinese people to manufacture their products. However these companies get to keep all the profits, leaving the Chinese with nothing more than wages earned.
If China continues to enforce domestic standards at the expense of international ones then it will stunt the growth of some of their industries. There will be no demand for their products outside of China. This will limit the market for Chinese products.
Anyone who thinks that the domestic market is sufficient should take a look at the average income of the Chinese. The US, with only a quarter of the population, has much more purchasing power.
Dell thinks he is running a technology company. This would be comparable to a supermarket claiming they are in the farming industry. Dell markets and sells technology, but they don't actually create it.
I agree that the differences in peripherals makes games ports problematic. However one of the major themes of this interview is that this new gaming software platform will emphasize different tasks for different hardware platforms.
A game could have several different interfaces depending on the available hardware. A PC or a console with keyboard and mouse attached could have access to all functions. A console with gamepads could give access to everything except data entry and mouse-optimized functions. And a phone could access simple menu based functions.
This could even work with some current games. Knights of the Old Republic has an interface that works on both consoles and PCs. It looks like it could be translated into a MMORPG. There are some mini-games like racing that would work on more limited consoles. And the card-playing game would even work on the phone.
This sounds like a cool idea, but a game developer would have to take a big risk to implement it. Microsoft will have to dig deep into their pockets to fund a developer to do this.
Who cares that you are giving away personal information to gain access to free information? After all the NYT went to the enormous effort of putting this info on their web page.
Don't worry about face recognition systems in airports or national ID cards; the authorities in conjunction with MultiHumongoConglomerated Corp have your best interests in mind. Just be happy knowing that everything will be a lot easier if you just give up all your personal info at the drop of a hat.
Have you ever seen a phone conversation in a movie devolve into a fifteen minute discussion on a coworker's hair? Or seen a lead in a movie take a ten minute dump? Movies don't include the mundane details because they are boring and don't move the plot along.
Waiting for a PC to boot up, or seeing the real quality of video conferencing, or even watching people use the relatively user-unfriendly interfaces of real software would be boring.
In the real world programmers don't have time to pore through their code for memory leaks. They don't have time to write every last bit of functionality from scratch. They can't sit down and go through a core dump for every exceptional condition; they can't even afford to take the system down every time an exception occurs. They can't take the time to learn the architectural nuances of every platform in existence.
The real world requires the use of libraries that provide common functionality at the expense of efficiency. Comprehensive garbage collection and exception handling keep the system up at the expense of operating efficiency. And virtual machines and multiplatform toolkits hide architectural differences that would otherwise improve performance.
There are many applications where platform-specific enhancements are necessary; there are many others where this is not possible.
Stallman is undoubtedly one of the most influential programmers ever, but his righteous attitude can be amusing. It's always funny to make fun of "the old man" behind his back.
I hope he doesn't change though; his stubborness is an important counterforce that keeps commercial software in check.
I remember Metroid (and Super Metroid) as games with a constant soundtrack and a constant stream of enemies. I also remember Samus as a lady with many physical talents, such as jump-spinning, dashing, bouncing off of walls, etc. Don't forget the wide variety of weapons.
Maybe you are thinking of Alien; a John Woo action spectacular sounds perfect for the Metroid I remember playing.
need to separate player from codec
on
Real Problems
·
· Score: 1
The basic problem with media playing software is that there is no proper separation of the player from the codec.
I currently have RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, MusicMatch, iTunes, Quicktime and WinAmp installed on my computer. I only have all these damn players to enable the codecs or features they exclusively support.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could pick a player based on features rather than codec support, and then plug in the codecs you need separately? We wouldn't need to familiarize ourselves with many different crappy interfaces, and the codec companies could specialize in what they do best; streaming media. How do we make this happen?
This reminds me of an operating system class I took. The prof presented a module on estimation, with wacky examples like figuring out the average rainfall in the Mississipi watershed. The final test problem on this subject was to estimate the amount of data that could be stored in a professor's office full of DAT tapes.
Remembering the data storage capacity of a DAT tape was simple. However after estimating the size of a tape (including the sleeve?), the size of an office, guessing whether there was furniture, etc, I would be surprised if anyone was within two orders of magnitude of the "correct" answer.
When Ma Bell got broken up and several operators were allowed to sell long distance services prices plummetted. I think they have low price calling plans now that include not only the US but Western Europe. It's only a matter of time before you can call anywhere in the world without having to sell your firstborn to pay for it.
The problem with cable in most areas is that there is one cable operator and satellite, and that's it. What if you bought your basic cable service from an Regional Cable Operator (like a RBOC) and then purchased your cable package separately from one of several competing content providers? They could then compete on price and selection.
The cable companies may complain about the loss of less popular channels, but that's a smokescreen. Some people will want huge packages like we have today. And some media conglomerates will buy multiple niche channels and sell them as a package to content providers. Most of the premium channels work this way anyway; when you buy HBO you get multiple channels that can serve different niches.
The cable operators would hate this, and now that they are parts of huge media conglomerates they have lots of resources to fight it. that's why we need government intervention to make it happen.
The Republican party today is certainly not the progressive party it started out as, and it certainly did not start out as a libertarian organization.
Originally the Republican party started with several basic planks in their platform. They wanted to reform the Constitution to end racial inequality; strengthen the Federal government to reign in the individual states; and to carry out an imperialistic plan to annex the territory between California and the eastern states.
Later as Republicans got cozier with big businesses they became an instrument to protect commercial interests. They wanted a small government when it came to regulating monopolies like the the steel industry, or the horrific meat-packing industry. OTOH they certainly weren't opposed to the government cracking a few heads at labor strikes.
You can continue to call yourself a Republican but you will only confuse folks; why don't you accept the fact that you are actually a libertarian? As a side benefit you will generally get more respect from the programmer community.
The real hypocricy of the cultural/trade remark is that the US has consistently used trade as a tool to enforce cultural hegemony over the years. We still have trade sanctions imposed over Cuba because their government doesn't work the same way ours does. Every few years there is talk of revoking China's "Most Favored Nation" trade status over human rights abuses. We have been playing favorites in South America for years, discriminating against socialist nations. And we continue to support Israel and not Palestine because of cultural ties.
No, you described a libertarian government. "Conservatives" in the US just passed the biggest federal budget ever; that doesn't sound like a small government to me. Libertarians believe in the smallest possible government with the single purpose of protecting individual rights. Conservatives believe in interfering with those rights to promote religious beliefs (pro-life), security (Department of Homeland Security), and the American way of life (invasion of Iraq).
You might have noticed that there aren't any actual libertarian governments. If poor people don't get any support or services from the goverment then they eventually revolt, and this results in either a socialist nation (if they win) or a military dictatorship (if they lose). Maybe if the difference between being rich and poor was purely based on one's skill and effort then libertarianism could work. But the reality is that life is not fair, so people expect their own government to help them out when they are down.
I think the same thing will happen to me if I get a TiVo. I am currently unwilling to arrange my schedule around TV, so if I turn it on and there's nothing on then I just do something else.
I'm not going to comment on how G5s run games since I haven't seen them in action. But I can comment that Quake3 is an ancient game engine. Running Quake3 will not be a good indicator of gaming ability by the end of this year.
Slashdot Mirror
The oldest generation of cell phone users don't really seem to get it. They leave the phone off because they don't want to charge it, so you can't even reliably reach them. For them the cell phone is for emergency use only.
Most people I know fit into the next generation. We have our phones with us all the time, but we don't use more than a hundred or so minutes a month. The cell phone is used mostly for making plans.
The youngest generation might as well have the phone surgically implanted. They'll use thousands of minutes a month because they don't realize that real life is more interesting than a phone.
"Free" hardware sounds just like the Cable TV market. The cable company sells you a subscription to their service, which is a package of content. They set up a black box in your house to receive and display this content. And you continue to receive this content as long as you pay your monthly fee.
This model works because no one gives a damn about their cable box; they care about the content. Most people do care about the specs of their computer, but only because they must to ensure that their software runs. The software is the important part. And nowadays most of that software is networked.
Do you think that there isn't a significant population out there that wouldn't subscribe to an all-in-one service that provides internet connectivity, hardware, client software and reliable data storage?
Doom has been ported to the Symbian Series 60 platform.
What is a sweet paper?
I also only play poker for small stakes with my friends. I also think that skill plays a limited role in poker. However after playing many games it becomes apparent that the luck evens out and only the skill remains.
You are using skill each time you bluff your way into a win, or call a bluff, or bet heavily against someone with a good hand that isn't quite as good as yours, or cut your losses on a pretty good hand that is going to lose. This probably doesn't happen every hand, but these skill events add up over time.
I have noticed that I win more than I lose, and that I can usually point to a few hands each game where I made a judgement call that worked out well. If you lose on a regular basis then you may need to pay more attention to the other players.
China certainly has reaped some of the rewards of the global economy. Their low standard of living means labor is cheap. Multinational companies are employing many Chinese people to manufacture their products. However these companies get to keep all the profits, leaving the Chinese with nothing more than wages earned.
If China continues to enforce domestic standards at the expense of international ones then it will stunt the growth of some of their industries. There will be no demand for their products outside of China. This will limit the market for Chinese products.
Anyone who thinks that the domestic market is sufficient should take a look at the average income of the Chinese. The US, with only a quarter of the population, has much more purchasing power.
Dell thinks he is running a technology company. This would be comparable to a supermarket claiming they are in the farming industry. Dell markets and sells technology, but they don't actually create it.
I agree that the differences in peripherals makes games ports problematic. However one of the major themes of this interview is that this new gaming software platform will emphasize different tasks for different hardware platforms.
A game could have several different interfaces depending on the available hardware. A PC or a console with keyboard and mouse attached could have access to all functions. A console with gamepads could give access to everything except data entry and mouse-optimized functions. And a phone could access simple menu based functions.
This could even work with some current games. Knights of the Old Republic has an interface that works on both consoles and PCs. It looks like it could be translated into a MMORPG. There are some mini-games like racing that would work on more limited consoles. And the card-playing game would even work on the phone.
This sounds like a cool idea, but a game developer would have to take a big risk to implement it. Microsoft will have to dig deep into their pockets to fund a developer to do this.
Who cares that you are giving away personal information to gain access to free information? After all the NYT went to the enormous effort of putting this info on their web page.
Don't worry about face recognition systems in airports or national ID cards; the authorities in conjunction with MultiHumongoConglomerated Corp have your best interests in mind. Just be happy knowing that everything will be a lot easier if you just give up all your personal info at the drop of a hat.
Trick question! Monkeys prefer the easy-to-use interface of Word.
Have you ever seen a phone conversation in a movie devolve into a fifteen minute discussion on a coworker's hair? Or seen a lead in a movie take a ten minute dump? Movies don't include the mundane details because they are boring and don't move the plot along.
Waiting for a PC to boot up, or seeing the real quality of video conferencing, or even watching people use the relatively user-unfriendly interfaces of real software would be boring.
In the real world programmers don't have time to pore through their code for memory leaks. They don't have time to write every last bit of functionality from scratch. They can't sit down and go through a core dump for every exceptional condition; they can't even afford to take the system down every time an exception occurs. They can't take the time to learn the architectural nuances of every platform in existence.
The real world requires the use of libraries that provide common functionality at the expense of efficiency. Comprehensive garbage collection and exception handling keep the system up at the expense of operating efficiency. And virtual machines and multiplatform toolkits hide architectural differences that would otherwise improve performance.
There are many applications where platform-specific enhancements are necessary; there are many others where this is not possible.
Stallman is undoubtedly one of the most influential programmers ever, but his righteous attitude can be amusing. It's always funny to make fun of "the old man" behind his back.
I hope he doesn't change though; his stubborness is an important counterforce that keeps commercial software in check.
Intel is working on longer pipelines for their fat-core architecture, at the cost of more heat.
I remember Metroid (and Super Metroid) as games with a constant soundtrack and a constant stream of enemies. I also remember Samus as a lady with many physical talents, such as jump-spinning, dashing, bouncing off of walls, etc. Don't forget the wide variety of weapons.
Maybe you are thinking of Alien; a John Woo action spectacular sounds perfect for the Metroid I remember playing.
The basic problem with media playing software is that there is no proper separation of the player from the codec.
I currently have RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, MusicMatch, iTunes, Quicktime and WinAmp installed on my computer. I only have all these damn players to enable the codecs or features they exclusively support.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could pick a player based on features rather than codec support, and then plug in the codecs you need separately? We wouldn't need to familiarize ourselves with many different crappy interfaces, and the codec companies could specialize in what they do best; streaming media. How do we make this happen?
This reminds me of an operating system class I took. The prof presented a module on estimation, with wacky examples like figuring out the average rainfall in the Mississipi watershed. The final test problem on this subject was to estimate the amount of data that could be stored in a professor's office full of DAT tapes.
Remembering the data storage capacity of a DAT tape was simple. However after estimating the size of a tape (including the sleeve?), the size of an office, guessing whether there was furniture, etc, I would be surprised if anyone was within two orders of magnitude of the "correct" answer.
When Ma Bell got broken up and several operators were allowed to sell long distance services prices plummetted. I think they have low price calling plans now that include not only the US but Western Europe. It's only a matter of time before you can call anywhere in the world without having to sell your firstborn to pay for it.
The problem with cable in most areas is that there is one cable operator and satellite, and that's it. What if you bought your basic cable service from an Regional Cable Operator (like a RBOC) and then purchased your cable package separately from one of several competing content providers? They could then compete on price and selection.
The cable companies may complain about the loss of less popular channels, but that's a smokescreen. Some people will want huge packages like we have today. And some media conglomerates will buy multiple niche channels and sell them as a package to content providers. Most of the premium channels work this way anyway; when you buy HBO you get multiple channels that can serve different niches.
The cable operators would hate this, and now that they are parts of huge media conglomerates they have lots of resources to fight it. that's why we need government intervention to make it happen.
The Republican party today is certainly not the progressive party it started out as, and it certainly did not start out as a libertarian organization.
Originally the Republican party started with several basic planks in their platform. They wanted to reform the Constitution to end racial inequality; strengthen the Federal government to reign in the individual states; and to carry out an imperialistic plan to annex the territory between California and the eastern states.
Later as Republicans got cozier with big businesses they became an instrument to protect commercial interests. They wanted a small government when it came to regulating monopolies like the the steel industry, or the horrific meat-packing industry. OTOH they certainly weren't opposed to the government cracking a few heads at labor strikes.
You can continue to call yourself a Republican but you will only confuse folks; why don't you accept the fact that you are actually a libertarian? As a side benefit you will generally get more respect from the programmer community.
The real hypocricy of the cultural/trade remark is that the US has consistently used trade as a tool to enforce cultural hegemony over the years. We still have trade sanctions imposed over Cuba because their government doesn't work the same way ours does. Every few years there is talk of revoking China's "Most Favored Nation" trade status over human rights abuses. We have been playing favorites in South America for years, discriminating against socialist nations. And we continue to support Israel and not Palestine because of cultural ties.
No, you described a libertarian government. "Conservatives" in the US just passed the biggest federal budget ever; that doesn't sound like a small government to me. Libertarians believe in the smallest possible government with the single purpose of protecting individual rights. Conservatives believe in interfering with those rights to promote religious beliefs (pro-life), security (Department of Homeland Security), and the American way of life (invasion of Iraq).
You might have noticed that there aren't any actual libertarian governments. If poor people don't get any support or services from the goverment then they eventually revolt, and this results in either a socialist nation (if they win) or a military dictatorship (if they lose). Maybe if the difference between being rich and poor was purely based on one's skill and effort then libertarianism could work. But the reality is that life is not fair, so people expect their own government to help them out when they are down.
No way! Where can I sign up for an annual subscription?
I think the same thing will happen to me if I get a TiVo. I am currently unwilling to arrange my schedule around TV, so if I turn it on and there's nothing on then I just do something else.
I'm not going to comment on how G5s run games since I haven't seen them in action. But I can comment that Quake3 is an ancient game engine. Running Quake3 will not be a good indicator of gaming ability by the end of this year.
I will mail you a money order for $5000 sent to me by a business associate. Please deposit this and send me the laptop plus the excess funds.