Here's a "me too" on the "thought of this exact same thing years ago". Like, 7 or 8 years ago.
I'd have shelled out the money (not a whole hell of a lot) to create a prototype if I'd thought it was patentable, but I just figured it was so obvious that it couldn't possibly be, and assumed some trendy, expensive restaurant somewhere was already using something similar anyway.
Add it to the list, I guess. If I'd had any idea that it'd be so easy to patent, "doing task that could VERY OBVIOUSLY be done with a computer... WITH A COMPUTER!" or "doing task that involves a large number of records... WITH MYSQL!" 10 years ago, I'd be rich.
About 7 or 8 years ago, I worked with a guy who talked--a bit more than idly--about opening a restaurant. One of the features/gimmicks was to be the ability to order from a computer screen at the table. We spent some time discussing how this would work, and how the customer would interact with it.
Of course we came up with the same idea as what's in this patent (pay at the table, split the bill how you like), because it's fucking obvious. We didn't think anything of it, because it hardly seemed like an "invention" of any sort: using a custom thin client POS system to order and pay? What, so exactly like the one (or ones) that waiters use?
How does simply using more of some things that already exist--without even modifying them in any meaningful way--constitute a patentable "invention"? If something like this is the very first thing someone not even in the industry thinks of, it's pretty dumb that it can be patented, IMO. In fact, I'm shocked there wasn't a ton of prior art for this, as I'm sure hundreds of people, if not thousands, had already independently thought of this solution.
Probably HTML special character codes. The parent's point is you can't just type many characters in, you have to type codes for them that don't show up as the proper character until after it's posted and being filtered through an HTML interpreter. These characters work, if you know how to make them work, but they don't work--to quote the parent--"right".
People say, "I defeated the boss", but they don't (usually?) say "I did *something that happened in a cutscene*", or especially "I said *something that the character said*" (whether in a cutscene or not)
I think that the latter one, especially, is why Half Life's "silent protagonist" works so well. In a game without cutscenes, having Gordon say something would break the player's identity with the character. In games that have cutscenes, we (players) seem to automatically make the distinction, anyway.
I might say of Duke Nukem, "Then I killed some pig-aliens", but not "then I said, 'blow it out yer ass'". Duke said that, not me, but I killed the pig-alien.
I think the difference might be control. In a game where you're (generally) more abstracted away from the main character (maybe a Final Fantasy game), if I have choices during dialogue, I might say, "I chose *whatever the option was*", or I might say, "I said x"; in a game where I identify more with the main character (e.g. Oblivion) I'd probably just say, "so I told him x". In a game where I have no control over dialogue, I'd always attribute it to the character, period, even if all the other action is "I did..."
In your example:
Would you expect to hear "Cloud attacked the undead Zombie, but that didn't do much, then when Tifa gave it a Phoenix Down it died" or "I attacked the undead Zombie, but that didn't do much, then when Tifa gave it a Phoenix Down it died"
The latter is the least appropriate primarily because you control all of the characters, and saying "I attacked" leaves it ambiguous--you attacked, but with whom? Your later option of "I used Cloud to attack..." is clearly the best, but "I attacked..." is clearly the worst. On the other hand, if you were in a section where you had only one character to control, and your listener knew this, I think the natural thing to say would be "I attacked".
Speaking as a guy, I enjoy making up stories in my head to explain the traits of my generals or royalty in the Total War games, especially with mods that flesh out the importance of these characters, add extra traits, and give it all more depth. That can be sort of like fostering relationships, I guess.
I'd love to see more of that in those games. Just don't take away the sieges and cavalry charges, damnit!
Hell, I'm usually more compassionate with those very abstract characters than my wife is when she plays The Sims. You should see what she puts those people through just to get "perfect" babies... it's creepy.
Building the houses in The Sims is cool. Everything beyond that is pretty damn boring, though. Seriously, you need me to tell you to pee? Yeah, that's how I wast to spend my time *eyeroll*
Like The Sims -- awesome game, but the only people I know who play it are other girls! Am I hoping for too much here? Is there some way to use some visual medium to help boys crawl out of their shell?
My wife spends all her time in The Sims 2 implementing eugenics programs.
I'm sorry, but I prefer to shoot Nazis in my games, rather than be them.
You could IM and browse the web on that OS without making your MP3s skip, all on a Pentium 133 w/ 64MB ram. None of its contemporaries were even close in terms of UI responsiveness under load and smooth media playback, and no bloated modern OS is even close. Damn impressive.
Yes, I, too, find this nut and bolt set inadequate for the purpose of assisting Chinese Rhinoceros to learn Western astrology. It seems silly that purple monkey dishwasher.
Also, I don't know about yours, but with mine "loud" = "distorted, tinny, and annoying". They're fine up to ~3/4 volume, but past that--assuming the sounds is cranked up in the software, too--they sound very, very bad.
Oh, that's been my experience with apt/dpkg vs yum/rpm, too.
I didn't bring it up for two reasons:
1. It's not really a "learning curve" issue. It works basically the same, just way, way better.
2. I haven't used RH/Fedora for almost 3 years, so it may have gotten better. I know when I had to use Fedora for a project at work--which was the last time I used it--yum was fucking terrible. I mean BAD. I couldn't believe that people actually put up with that shit rather than switching to something less awful. As for RPM, I was turned off from it when I first started learning to use Linux on Red Hat (5.x, IIRC, but I may be very wrong) and Mandrake. Then I discovered Debian and was shocked that RPM could survive against such competition.
Then again, people have told me it's better now, but I'm happy with Ubuntu so I'm not going to check for myself any time soon. Given that none of the Fedora users seemed to think anything was wrong with it back then--let alone that it was a giant, steaming pile of crap, which it was--I take their reassurances with a grain of salt.
What's so different in Ubuntu vs. Red Hat, on a desktop machine?
The packaging system is very similar AFA what the end user sees, and there's a GUI program installed by default that can handle all that for you anyway. I suppose config files might sometimes be located in different places, but how many of those to you edit on a regular basis, if any? Especially with modern, highly effective automatic hardware detection and configuration, it's unlikely that you'll need to edit a large number of config files on a desktop machine. Just locate the one or two (if any) that you need to work with and you're done.
The GUI is Gnome or KDE in either one, or any of the other WMs that you can install on either. No big learning curve.
Bash and 99.9% of the console tools are the same.
Installing a program that doesn't have a package is going to be the same on either, usually a configure and a make.
Hell, I'm pretty sure the network manager in Ubuntu was originally created for (and, I assume, is still used by) Red Hat.
What's the learning curve? I'm not trying to be a dick, I really just can't figure out what would be so different, and would like to know what gave you trouble. I can understand servers being troublesome, since Red Hat has tons of tools that other distros don't, but the desktop experience ought to be very similar, considering they're largely composed of the same 3rd party apps.
If I'm in the mood for Doom, a Quake or Unreal (or Serious Sam, or Wolfenstein, or even Painkiller) session will do just as well. Half Life won't.
Same works the other way. If I'm in the mood for Half Life but don't have it around, I'm probably going to go for a replay of Deus Ex, Thief 1/2/3, Max Payne 2, System Shock 2, Bioshock, or even an RPG (Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 1/2/3, Arcanum, The Witcher), rather than Doom, Quake, etc.
I think what makes the second category different from the first are things like pacing, atmosphere (not necessarily better, but certainly different), and the style and depth of storytelling.
I know, I know, it sounds silly to throw storytelling in there when, after all, isn't Half Life just another "OMG aliens shoot them!" game? But if that's the case, where are the elaborate scripted events involving NPCs in the games I've placed in the other category? How about someone like the G-Man? Anything like that in those other games?
Pacing: generally slower and/or more varied in the second category.
As for atmosphere, in Half Life 2 there were: straight-up horror levels; lonely levels with a strange, Hitchcock feel; "leading the revolution" levels; levels following a sad underground railroad, full of determined but beaten individuals; etc.
In Doom 3 there was Mars Base and Hell. I guess the lab section kind of stood out, a little.
You know what though? Sometimes I do like to fire up Quake or RTCW and blast some bad guys. Sometimes I just want to slice some people up with a lightsaber, so I plug in one of the later Dark Forces games, never mind that the level design is generally sub-par and the storytelling is lame. *whisper* sometimes I play CS:Source with all bots and restrict my purchases to armor and handguns (incidentally, I really wish there were more options for setting up bots-only games--I'd love to play 6-on-12 with Normal bots on my side and Easy bots on the other).
I don't dislike games like that, but to say that the average ID game is comparable to the Half Life series strikes me as highly inaccurate. To be completely honest, I believe that making a successful game of the second class requires something like craftsmanship while the first requires only a 3D engine, moderate talent, and some time. I think the second is more artful. Depending on my mood, however, I can enjoy both.
I hope ndiswrapper isn't dead, though - or has the state of the art of native Linux wireless drivers now advanced to the point where it is no longer needed?
NO.
I have a card in my laptop that is, according to all the documentation I can find, and according to Ubuntu's auto-detection, supported by a native driver. Of course, said driver fails to actually work with my card, at all.
I got a huge Mega Blocks tyrannosaurus set one year for Christmas.
I never managed to assemble it--not for lack of trying, but because the blocks weren't capable of supporting the structure. Legos would have done it, no problem, but the Mega Blocks invariably came apart around 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through. Any more, and they'd fall apart under the weight. My parents even tried glueing some parts when they saw how much it sucked, but that didn't help; it would just break in different places.
No grip. Can't build anything big with them. Certainly can't move even mid-sized things constructed from them, let alone play with your constructions. LAME.
Slashdot Mirror
DO IT.
I truly look forward to reading the resulting article(s). Should be fun.
Here's a "me too" on the "thought of this exact same thing years ago". Like, 7 or 8 years ago.
I'd have shelled out the money (not a whole hell of a lot) to create a prototype if I'd thought it was patentable, but I just figured it was so obvious that it couldn't possibly be, and assumed some trendy, expensive restaurant somewhere was already using something similar anyway.
Add it to the list, I guess. If I'd had any idea that it'd be so easy to patent, "doing task that could VERY OBVIOUSLY be done with a computer... WITH A COMPUTER!" or "doing task that involves a large number of records... WITH MYSQL!" 10 years ago, I'd be rich.
About 7 or 8 years ago, I worked with a guy who talked--a bit more than idly--about opening a restaurant. One of the features/gimmicks was to be the ability to order from a computer screen at the table. We spent some time discussing how this would work, and how the customer would interact with it.
Of course we came up with the same idea as what's in this patent (pay at the table, split the bill how you like), because it's fucking obvious. We didn't think anything of it, because it hardly seemed like an "invention" of any sort: using a custom thin client POS system to order and pay? What, so exactly like the one (or ones) that waiters use?
How does simply using more of some things that already exist--without even modifying them in any meaningful way--constitute a patentable "invention"? If something like this is the very first thing someone not even in the industry thinks of, it's pretty dumb that it can be patented, IMO. In fact, I'm shocked there wasn't a ton of prior art for this, as I'm sure hundreds of people, if not thousands, had already independently thought of this solution.
THANK YOU SO MUCH. God, the front page was horrible. None of the extra shit made any sense or seemed to serve any purpose.
Probably HTML special character codes. The parent's point is you can't just type many characters in, you have to type codes for them that don't show up as the proper character until after it's posted and being filtered through an HTML interpreter. These characters work, if you know how to make them work, but they don't work--to quote the parent--"right".
Slashdot mangles UTF-8, among other things.
And that's not even the biggest 4th wall break in that game.
"You're in a video game, Max"
People say, "I defeated the boss", but they don't (usually?) say "I did *something that happened in a cutscene*", or especially "I said *something that the character said*" (whether in a cutscene or not)
I think that the latter one, especially, is why Half Life's "silent protagonist" works so well. In a game without cutscenes, having Gordon say something would break the player's identity with the character. In games that have cutscenes, we (players) seem to automatically make the distinction, anyway.
I might say of Duke Nukem, "Then I killed some pig-aliens", but not "then I said, 'blow it out yer ass'". Duke said that, not me, but I killed the pig-alien.
I think the difference might be control. In a game where you're (generally) more abstracted away from the main character (maybe a Final Fantasy game), if I have choices during dialogue, I might say, "I chose *whatever the option was*", or I might say, "I said x"; in a game where I identify more with the main character (e.g. Oblivion) I'd probably just say, "so I told him x". In a game where I have no control over dialogue, I'd always attribute it to the character, period, even if all the other action is "I did..."
In your example:
The latter is the least appropriate primarily because you control all of the characters, and saying "I attacked" leaves it ambiguous--you attacked, but with whom? Your later option of "I used Cloud to attack..." is clearly the best, but "I attacked..." is clearly the worst. On the other hand, if you were in a section where you had only one character to control, and your listener knew this, I think the natural thing to say would be "I attacked".
FISSION MAILED
Speaking as a guy, I enjoy making up stories in my head to explain the traits of my generals or royalty in the Total War games, especially with mods that flesh out the importance of these characters, add extra traits, and give it all more depth. That can be sort of like fostering relationships, I guess.
I'd love to see more of that in those games. Just don't take away the sieges and cavalry charges, damnit!
Hell, I'm usually more compassionate with those very abstract characters than my wife is when she plays The Sims. You should see what she puts those people through just to get "perfect" babies... it's creepy.
Building the houses in The Sims is cool. Everything beyond that is pretty damn boring, though. Seriously, you need me to tell you to pee? Yeah, that's how I wast to spend my time *eyeroll*
My wife spends all her time in The Sims 2 implementing eugenics programs.
I'm sorry, but I prefer to shoot Nazis in my games, rather than be them.
Let's bring BeOS in on that test :)
You could IM and browse the web on that OS without making your MP3s skip, all on a Pentium 133 w/ 64MB ram. None of its contemporaries were even close in terms of UI responsiveness under load and smooth media playback, and no bloated modern OS is even close. Damn impressive.
Yes, I, too, find this nut and bolt set inadequate for the purpose of assisting Chinese Rhinoceros to learn Western astrology. It seems silly that purple monkey dishwasher.
Also, I don't know about yours, but with mine "loud" = "distorted, tinny, and annoying". They're fine up to ~3/4 volume, but past that--assuming the sounds is cranked up in the software, too--they sound very, very bad.
Oh, that's been my experience with apt/dpkg vs yum/rpm, too.
I didn't bring it up for two reasons:
1. It's not really a "learning curve" issue. It works basically the same, just way, way better.
2. I haven't used RH/Fedora for almost 3 years, so it may have gotten better. I know when I had to use Fedora for a project at work--which was the last time I used it--yum was fucking terrible. I mean BAD. I couldn't believe that people actually put up with that shit rather than switching to something less awful. As for RPM, I was turned off from it when I first started learning to use Linux on Red Hat (5.x, IIRC, but I may be very wrong) and Mandrake. Then I discovered Debian and was shocked that RPM could survive against such competition.
Then again, people have told me it's better now, but I'm happy with Ubuntu so I'm not going to check for myself any time soon. Given that none of the Fedora users seemed to think anything was wrong with it back then--let alone that it was a giant, steaming pile of crap, which it was--I take their reassurances with a grain of salt.
Ah, yeah RC scripts would be different.
Personally, I wish they'd all switch to Gentoo's layout for the entire /etc folder, and I say that as someone who's abandoned Gentoo for Ubuntu :)
Yeah, FF3 on Vista on mine (ugh, no choice, no XP drivers for my laptop, I boot to Ubuntu when I do real work).
Very strange. Just did it again to double check, and it had the same behavior. So odd.
What's so different in Ubuntu vs. Red Hat, on a desktop machine?
The packaging system is very similar AFA what the end user sees, and there's a GUI program installed by default that can handle all that for you anyway. I suppose config files might sometimes be located in different places, but how many of those to you edit on a regular basis, if any? Especially with modern, highly effective automatic hardware detection and configuration, it's unlikely that you'll need to edit a large number of config files on a desktop machine. Just locate the one or two (if any) that you need to work with and you're done.
The GUI is Gnome or KDE in either one, or any of the other WMs that you can install on either. No big learning curve.
Bash and 99.9% of the console tools are the same.
Installing a program that doesn't have a package is going to be the same on either, usually a configure and a make.
Hell, I'm pretty sure the network manager in Ubuntu was originally created for (and, I assume, is still used by) Red Hat.
What's the learning curve? I'm not trying to be a dick, I really just can't figure out what would be so different, and would like to know what gave you trouble. I can understand servers being troublesome, since Red Hat has tons of tools that other distros don't, but the desktop experience ought to be very similar, considering they're largely composed of the same 3rd party apps.
404'd on mine, changed the ".JPG" to ".jpg" on a hunch, and it worked.
Your browser's address bar seems to be case insensitive, while some of the others here are not. Out of curiosity, what are you using? IE? Safari?
FF3 here.
I have to put my info in every time I buy something on there, and I've never seen an option to save any of it.
Am I doing something wrong?
Completely different class, IMO.
If I'm in the mood for Doom, a Quake or Unreal (or Serious Sam, or Wolfenstein, or even Painkiller) session will do just as well. Half Life won't.
Same works the other way. If I'm in the mood for Half Life but don't have it around, I'm probably going to go for a replay of Deus Ex, Thief 1/2/3, Max Payne 2, System Shock 2, Bioshock, or even an RPG (Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 1/2/3, Arcanum, The Witcher), rather than Doom, Quake, etc.
I think what makes the second category different from the first are things like pacing, atmosphere (not necessarily better, but certainly different), and the style and depth of storytelling.
I know, I know, it sounds silly to throw storytelling in there when, after all, isn't Half Life just another "OMG aliens shoot them!" game? But if that's the case, where are the elaborate scripted events involving NPCs in the games I've placed in the other category? How about someone like the G-Man? Anything like that in those other games?
Pacing: generally slower and/or more varied in the second category.
As for atmosphere, in Half Life 2 there were: straight-up horror levels; lonely levels with a strange, Hitchcock feel; "leading the revolution" levels; levels following a sad underground railroad, full of determined but beaten individuals; etc.
In Doom 3 there was Mars Base and Hell. I guess the lab section kind of stood out, a little.
You know what though? Sometimes I do like to fire up Quake or RTCW and blast some bad guys. Sometimes I just want to slice some people up with a lightsaber, so I plug in one of the later Dark Forces games, never mind that the level design is generally sub-par and the storytelling is lame. *whisper* sometimes I play CS:Source with all bots and restrict my purchases to armor and handguns (incidentally, I really wish there were more options for setting up bots-only games--I'd love to play 6-on-12 with Normal bots on my side and Easy bots on the other).
I don't dislike games like that, but to say that the average ID game is comparable to the Half Life series strikes me as highly inaccurate. To be completely honest, I believe that making a successful game of the second class requires something like craftsmanship while the first requires only a 3D engine, moderate talent, and some time. I think the second is more artful. Depending on my mood, however, I can enjoy both.
As soon as the bus company is merely directing people to buses and not operating said buses, they have a valid complaint.
In the mean time, there is no equivalence.
NO.
I have a card in my laptop that is, according to all the documentation I can find, and according to Ubuntu's auto-detection, supported by a native driver. Of course, said driver fails to actually work with my card, at all.
NDISWrapper to the rescue!
I got a huge Mega Blocks tyrannosaurus set one year for Christmas.
I never managed to assemble it--not for lack of trying, but because the blocks weren't capable of supporting the structure. Legos would have done it, no problem, but the Mega Blocks invariably came apart around 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through. Any more, and they'd fall apart under the weight. My parents even tried glueing some parts when they saw how much it sucked, but that didn't help; it would just break in different places.
No grip. Can't build anything big with them. Certainly can't move even mid-sized things constructed from them, let alone play with your constructions. LAME.
... to the GIMP devs.