Since you are running a kindergarten, I really believe there should be no technology at all. There could be educational games, sure, but nothing that involves technology. This is entirely unscientific, but I have a gut feeling that a lot of the autism and similar developmental problems stem from the fact that people these days are not getting enough social interaction anymore. Technology should not be in a kindergarten, the time when children have the cognitive abilities to take an advantage of that will be later on.
Open oource is by no means a garanty for portability. If someone releases the source code of an utility that's written with many Windows/Linux specific libraries or APIs, then it's not portable, open source or not. Yes, someone can pick it up and port it to another platform - but that is work and you won't know when that someone with the right knowledge and time at their hands will show up...
Hey, be careful! Duke Nukem Forever actually shows up on the BestBuy page... so if it actually will see the light of the day sometimes soon, then the best part of that joke is over soon:-)
I used to be a big fan of PC demos that you could get from magazine CDs back in the days or by download these days. But the problem is that while years ago companies cared, they just don't anymore. Isn't it true that today demos often appear AFTER the game is on the market already? Back in the days, doom, decent, even half-life 1 had very nice demos that you could get a real feel for the game before you buy it. Those were nice days...
I don't own one, but I'd imagine that there are a number of early adopters out there, that are pretty upset now. They bought one of the first batches, it failed a while later and because I'm assuming that most early adopters were enthusiasts, they probably bought a new one when the old didn't have warranty anymore. Those people of course don't get any compensation from Microsoft, even though they admit now that it was basically their fault...
While I agree that Microsoft definately is not an inovator, and that they're pretty much evil, you are putting things wrong nonetheless: First of all I don't see how the charity work of the company / company's founders has any impact on the company's operations, and secondly the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is the biggest one in the world - and they spend their money i.e. on aids related projects. While there has been criticism that they are in fact getting too big / dominating the foundations, I'm sure they have good intentions with their work:-)
I was wondering the same thing. But then if you read a little bit into the article you can see that there is some cooperation going on with MTV and EA - therefore I would doubt that their article would highlight any bad sides of EA.
Plus, as someone else noted, interns probably wouldn't see the bad sides, therefore the article is most likely not even omitting anything.
They are slim cases, but otherwise they are really great: Ejector CD cases. I don't know if they have them in full jewel case width though, probably not, but that's the best I'm aware of.
I wanted to give emusic a shot, so I signed up for their free trial. I didn't like that they wanted to have my credit card info right away, but ok, I can understand their reasoning behind it, that this way you are more likely to continue to use their service after the trial expires. So I signed up, and in the confirmation email I couldn't find anywhere how long the trial was. Ok, I guessed a month, like usual. Then I find out 2 or 3 weeks later, that they their trial is not a month, but only 3 weeks - which really seems like a way to me that they want to suck at least one month of service out of you. This I really disliked, so I don't think I'll use their service again (the selection of music wasn't all that great either, not bad but not good IMO).
But in practice Linux 2.6 is 6 million lines of code and a typical microkernel is less than 10k. Umm, doesn't that mean while you've prooved that the 10k microkernel lines correct, you'd still have ~6 million lines of code sitting outside the microkernal waiting to be prooved? I can't see how a microkernel can magically do with 10k everything Linux is doing with 6 million lines (especially as by the definition of microkernel, than there's no way it could).
Nope, it does not say that. There is a difference between userspace code and kernel code - userspace code runs with a seperate address space and if correct implemented cannot kill any other process or the kernel. So it does not have to be proven for correctness, probably a regular code analysis would suffice, IMHO.
I think the answer is pretty easy: Having any console will reduce your chances of getting laid. Why? Two factors: 1) Time. The more you play, the less you meet people in real life. 2) Friends. Your friends will want to play the console you own when they are over and usually that's pretty boring for the women. Plus, your friends are more likely to include gamers, who in turn also play too much and hang around too little with people and as such reducing the pool of femals in your clique.
I read in the article that Arena is from 1994, but I know a german computer game "Das Schwarze Auge" (based on a german pen&paper RPG similar to D&D) which had exactly the same principle that you could go wherever you wanted and find little quests etc. and only go for the main quest when you felt like it. Sorry, The Elder Scrolls were not the first (but hey, I'm playing Oblivion right now as much as I can find time... (: ).
... when you can have such a better solution with the current Xbox. Buy it, chip it (~$60) and install Xbox Media Center and you have ALL the freedom you want. Plays from smb shares and plays streams. I don't know in particular if it can play your HDTV streams, but since it's essentially mplayer I'd say your chances are good.
Why would you possibly consider an Xbox 360? It'll take a while for that one to get hacked and until then you'll have to live with M$'s restrictions.
Ok, I don't know if you owe me 3 cents now, but I'll bet another one that most Xbox games don't support keyboard and mouse well. I haven't tried it, nor read up much about it, except that I have read about an special adapter that was for sale to allow keyboard and mouse on the xbox for games without support. Unfortunately the reviews were somewhat mixed.
I'd say probably not, because a dev-kit is not just for sale, you get it as part of a contract with Micro$oft that allows you to develop your application/game. And it's a pretty save bet that even if XBMC developers had the money and wanted to go that route (which would mean they'd have to sell XBMC), Micro$oft probably would not give them a license as XBMC is a competing product to their MediaCenter Editions etc.
Modchip makers have said that it will probably take a year or so to make the first modchip. Also, it'll probably be a million-dollar investment...
Then I'm sure they'll port XBMC to it, there will always be a reason for that (unless M$ would give you all the freedom we want, which is pretty much impossible).
When the original Xbox came out, it was actually better than what you could buy in PC graphics cards at the time. At launch, a console better be whooping ass, because after that's it's downhill! PC hardware gets updated, but the console hardware will stay the same for several years to come, during which it will not be top-notch anymore.
So yes, the xbox 360 will be pretty impressive graphics-wise for now, that's obvious. As a PC gamer you shouldn't despair, in a year or so, the Xbox360 high-tech equivalent hardware will be available at commodity prices (timespan may vary).
Plus, who'd want to give up that keyboard and mouse anyways... (my 2 cent)
Read the rest. Oh well, some other, insignificat company that is advertising on slashdot! Great!
Can someone PLEASE not approve these stories? Story about a nice AJAX webmail - great and interesting. Using completely out of context comparisons to M$ and Google - wrong advertisement.
With an extension you could've reordered tabs since a long time, I think it's called MiniT drag or similar. Works fine, the only complaint I have with it, is that session-saver doesn't work with it (after restoring a session, the tabs are back to where they used to be).
My wife very much likes betterthandiamonds.com, where you can get artificial diamonds called "Asha". She did a lot of research on the subject and really only experts can tell the difference and they even come with a guarantee (non-tranferable though, I didn't like that) that they will not get scratched. So you get a very beautiful looking stone for a fraction of the price.
Hope that helps and the obligatory comment that I have no connection to the above mentioned company but did like their product.
Ok, this has probably been said a dozen times already, but I really hope that this will not be the case. I don't particularly like most console games and I really prefer PC games: FPS (still IMO a total PC genre), Real Time Strategy, Roleplaying games are my favorites and they are only on PC, and i hope it stays that way:-)
I setup the a similar system but without encryption, just running a vnc server and azureus in it. The setup really is a snap: copying torrent files onto a samba share with the help from a simple batch file and Azureus checks every 1 min to start downloading them. Then setup a vncviewer shortcut that includes the password and you have all the comforts of running a local bt client with all the benefits of a central server!
Despite of being totally overpriced, I think I would never buy any AlienWare after reading some ad in Wired where it said something along the lines:
I can play games, render an animation, listen to mp3 and encode some video, all with very little slowdown to each other! Thank you AlienWare!
Wow. Unless they think that you will be playing Solitaire, I really doubt that that statement could be true. And as such, they are doing false advertisement, something I really hate and so even if I had the money, I would not spend it on their machines, however cool they are.
I had first a Yahoo account and recently got a GMAIL account. What was of interest is that Yahoo put the GMAIL request into their SPAM folder....
How is that for content filtering?
Don't worry too much, this might not be on purpose, but out of stupidity: I am using a (different) big free mailer and they manage to put _their_own_ announcements into the spam folder...
Why are you so sure this is technologically possible? I can imagine the upstream bandwidth is limited by design because thie meets market demand. This is the case for e.g. DSL too.
Actually, it depends on the type of DSL: the commen ADSL has, as you said, a smaller upload than download rate but SDSL for example is symmetric and provides equal upload and download rates.
Slashdot Mirror
Since you are running a kindergarten, I really believe there should be no technology at all. There could be educational games, sure, but nothing that involves technology.
This is entirely unscientific, but I have a gut feeling that a lot of the autism and similar developmental problems stem from the fact that people these days are not getting enough social interaction anymore. Technology should not be in a kindergarten, the time when children have the cognitive abilities to take an advantage of that will be later on.
Open oource is by no means a garanty for portability. If someone releases the source code of an utility that's written with many Windows/Linux specific libraries or APIs, then it's not portable, open source or not. Yes, someone can pick it up and port it to another platform - but that is work and you won't know when that someone with the right knowledge and time at their hands will show up...
Hey, be careful! Duke Nukem Forever actually shows up on the BestBuy page... so if it actually will see the light of the day sometimes soon, then the best part of that joke is over soon :-)
I used to be a big fan of PC demos that you could get from magazine CDs back in the days or by download these days. But the problem is that while years ago companies cared, they just don't anymore. Isn't it true that today demos often appear AFTER the game is on the market already? Back in the days, doom, decent, even half-life 1 had very nice demos that you could get a real feel for the game before you buy it. Those were nice days...
I don't own one, but I'd imagine that there are a number of early adopters out there, that are pretty upset now. They bought one of the first batches, it failed a while later and because I'm assuming that most early adopters were enthusiasts, they probably bought a new one when the old didn't have warranty anymore. Those people of course don't get any compensation from Microsoft, even though they admit now that it was basically their fault...
While I agree that Microsoft definately is not an inovator, and that they're pretty much evil, you are putting things wrong nonetheless: :-)
First of all I don't see how the charity work of the company / company's founders has any impact on the company's operations, and secondly the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is the biggest one in the world - and they spend their money i.e. on aids related projects.
While there has been criticism that they are in fact getting too big / dominating the foundations, I'm sure they have good intentions with their work
I was wondering the same thing. But then if you read a little bit into the article you can see that there is some cooperation going on with MTV and EA - therefore I would doubt that their article would highlight any bad sides of EA.
Plus, as someone else noted, interns probably wouldn't see the bad sides, therefore the article is most likely not even omitting anything.
They are slim cases, but otherwise they are really great: Ejector CD cases. I don't know if they have them in full jewel case width though, probably not, but that's the best I'm aware of.
I wanted to give emusic a shot, so I signed up for their free trial. I didn't like that they wanted to have my credit card info right away, but ok, I can understand their reasoning behind it, that this way you are more likely to continue to use their service after the trial expires.
So I signed up, and in the confirmation email I couldn't find anywhere how long the trial was. Ok, I guessed a month, like usual. Then I find out 2 or 3 weeks later, that they their trial is not a month, but only 3 weeks - which really seems like a way to me that they want to suck at least one month of service out of you. This I really disliked, so I don't think I'll use their service again (the selection of music wasn't all that great either, not bad but not good IMO).
But in practice Linux 2.6 is 6 million lines of code and a typical microkernel is less than 10k.
Umm, doesn't that mean while you've prooved that the 10k microkernel lines correct, you'd still have ~6 million lines of code sitting outside the microkernal waiting to be prooved? I can't see how a microkernel can magically do with 10k everything Linux is doing with 6 million lines (especially as by the definition of microkernel, than there's no way it could).
Nope, it does not say that. There is a difference between userspace code and kernel code - userspace code runs with a seperate address space and if correct implemented cannot kill any other process or the kernel. So it does not have to be proven for correctness, probably a regular code analysis would suffice, IMHO.
I think the answer is pretty easy:
Having any console will reduce your chances of getting laid.
Why? Two factors:
1) Time. The more you play, the less you meet people in real life.
2) Friends. Your friends will want to play the console you own when they are over and usually that's pretty boring for the women. Plus, your friends are more likely to include gamers, who in turn also play too much and hang around too little with people and as such reducing the pool of femals in your clique.
I read in the article that Arena is from 1994, but I know a german computer game "Das Schwarze Auge" (based on a german pen&paper RPG similar to D&D) which had exactly the same principle that you could go wherever you wanted and find little quests etc. and only go for the main quest when you felt like it.
Sorry, The Elder Scrolls were not the first (but hey, I'm playing Oblivion right now as much as I can find time... (: ).
... when you can have such a better solution with the current Xbox. Buy it, chip it (~$60) and install Xbox Media Center and you have ALL the freedom you want. Plays from smb shares and plays streams. I don't know in particular if it can play your HDTV streams, but since it's essentially mplayer I'd say your chances are good.
Why would you possibly consider an Xbox 360? It'll take a while for that one to get hacked and until then you'll have to live with M$'s restrictions.
Ok, I don't know if you owe me 3 cents now, but I'll bet another one that most Xbox games don't support keyboard and mouse well. I haven't tried it, nor read up much about it, except that I have read about an special adapter that was for sale to allow keyboard and mouse on the xbox for games without support. Unfortunately the reviews were somewhat mixed.
I'd say probably not, because a dev-kit is not just for sale, you get it as part of a contract with Micro$oft that allows you to develop your application/game. And it's a pretty save bet that even if XBMC developers had the money and wanted to go that route (which would mean they'd have to sell XBMC), Micro$oft probably would not give them a license as XBMC is a competing product to their MediaCenter Editions etc.
Modchip makers have said that it will probably take a year or so to make the first modchip. Also, it'll probably be a million-dollar investment...
Then I'm sure they'll port XBMC to it, there will always be a reason for that (unless M$ would give you all the freedom we want, which is pretty much impossible).
Actually, this is no surprise at all.
When the original Xbox came out, it was actually better than what you could buy in PC graphics cards at the time. At launch, a console better be whooping ass, because after that's it's downhill! PC hardware gets updated, but the console hardware will stay the same for several years to come, during which it will not be top-notch anymore.
So yes, the xbox 360 will be pretty impressive graphics-wise for now, that's obvious. As a PC gamer you shouldn't despair, in a year or so, the Xbox360 high-tech equivalent hardware will be available at commodity prices (timespan may vary).
Plus, who'd want to give up that keyboard and mouse anyways... (my 2 cent)
Oh my! Read the headline: Goole and Microsoft.
Read the rest. Oh well, some other, insignificat company that is advertising on slashdot! Great!
Can someone PLEASE not approve these stories? Story about a nice AJAX webmail - great and interesting. Using completely out of context comparisons to M$ and Google - wrong advertisement.
Just my 2 cent...
With an extension you could've reordered tabs since a long time, I think it's called MiniT drag or similar. Works fine, the only complaint I have with it, is that session-saver doesn't work with it (after restoring a session, the tabs are back to where they used to be).
My wife very much likes betterthandiamonds.com, where you can get artificial diamonds called "Asha". She did a lot of research on the subject and really only experts can tell the difference and they even come with a guarantee (non-tranferable though, I didn't like that) that they will not get scratched. So you get a very beautiful looking stone for a fraction of the price.
Hope that helps and the obligatory comment that I have no connection to the above mentioned company but did like their product.
Ok, this has probably been said a dozen times already, but I really hope that this will not be the case. :-)
I don't particularly like most console games and I really prefer PC games: FPS (still IMO a total PC genre), Real Time Strategy, Roleplaying games are my favorites and they are only on PC, and i hope it stays that way
~Squisher
I setup the a similar system but without encryption, just running a vnc server and azureus in it. The setup really is a snap: copying torrent files onto a samba share with the help from a simple batch file and Azureus checks every 1 min to start downloading them. Then setup a vncviewer shortcut that includes the password and you have all the comforts of running a local bt client with all the benefits of a central server!
~Squisher
Despite of being totally overpriced, I think I would never buy any AlienWare after reading some ad in Wired where it said something along the lines:
I can play games, render an animation, listen to mp3 and encode some video, all with very little slowdown to each other! Thank you AlienWare!
Wow. Unless they think that you will be playing Solitaire, I really doubt that that statement could be true. And as such, they are doing false advertisement, something I really hate and so even if I had the money, I would not spend it on their machines, however cool they are.
- I had first a Yahoo account and recently got a GMAIL account. What was of interest is that Yahoo put the GMAIL request into their SPAM folder....
Don't worry too much, this might not be on purpose, but out of stupidity: I am using a (different) big free mailer and they manage to put _their_own_ announcements into the spam folder...How is that for content filtering?
- Why are you so sure this is technologically possible? I can imagine the upstream bandwidth is limited by design because thie meets market demand. This is the case for e.g. DSL too.
Actually, it depends on the type of DSL: the commen ADSL has, as you said, a smaller upload than download rate but SDSL for example is symmetric and provides equal upload and download rates.