Gosh! Only $999.99 list (or as we learned from The Price Is Right, the price you ask if you never
plan to actually sell any, except to the most gullible or desperate, actual price will probably be about $700)
I can wait.
When VCRs came out I bought a rather nice one for ~900$US. When CD's came out I bought a nifty CD player for about 700$US.
I was a little more patient with DVDs but eventually got a DVD drive for a home computer and then a portable player (computer ~70$US, Portabl ~1000$US)
As I'm pretty well past the point of being impressed with Eye Candy in cinema, I'll probably only get a Blu-Ray when there's
significant offerings and most of the newer films I must have are only available via that channel.
Vista is the most secure operating system in the industry
Of course it is... virtually no one is using it yet. While Vista is obscure, it follows that there will be little exploitive effort.
As always, future history is yet to be written--although it tends to reflect and repeat the past.
Seems I've heard this song and dance before, just before a multi-year parade of vulnerabilities and exploits which would have made the Fall of the Roman empire look like an upended tea cup.
Hell, they're all going to be billionaires all over again and end users will muddle through as always.
Lucky Sisyphus, the rock didn't come with Windows.
As long as certain groups stand to profit, and as long as certain people might look like idiots if proven wrong, the debate on this topic will never end. I'm talking about people on either side of the issue. The tough part is that global warming is difficult to prove either positively or negatively, so it's a prime vehicle for unrelated agendas.
We'll know in a thousand years.
In Venice they already know. Not only is the city sinking, but rising sea levels are compounding their problem.
Let it happen. With less land, we'll have shorter distances to drive.
It was painfully slow; a real gimmick. I can't see any benefit beyond the gimmick for then, and now.
These are probably, like many sites these days, counting on you having DSL, because any thing less to access these sites is going to crawl. One reason I despise Flash splash-pages is my dial-up access. It's so enjoyable twiddling your thumbs or playing a quick game of Minesweeper while waiting for crap to download which doesn't tell you anything Text couldn't.
Then like now, the difference between gimmick and junk is how you use it.
My first thought was VRML and what a clunky thing that was before it all but vanished. I've still got books and
CD's for doing stuff in it, in a box somewhere, probably in the car-port.
Not really what I had in mind when I thought about what would make for decent 3D browsing. This looks like something
you could knock off in a plug-in, like Flash. Probably has some decent uses, like creating a game on your own website or
a Realtor giving you a VR tour of a house (which i think someone nearby already has.) Handy for exploring a Mall, to see where
a shop is rather than looking at those little hand-bills which are sometimes so artsy-fartsy you just try to go in the general
direction and hope you find it. Hope people keep these sites updated. More content==more overhead for maintenance.
No, it's the people coupled with our methods of identification. Data release WILL happen. Always did. People will make mistakes, take shortcuts, and break laws. Just the scope is different.
Nope. It still lands squarely in management's lap. They're responsible for implementing security procedures, keeping security procedures current and having the occasional audit to keep people on their toes. Where I once worked it was 100% locked down. Simply a matter of people taking their own job seriously.
You have heard that a leader is responsible for his/her people, right? Seems too few subscribe to that anymore, particularly in the Pentagon.
Higher demand = faster and more efficient production process + cheaper materials due to reduction on high-volume orders = lower manufacturing cost = higer..? endcost?
Depending upon how fast they can actually produce the things. e.g. XBox 360
And all this time I thought our cells where only 2D.
Skin is flat tissue, but has multiple layers. I suppose what they grow in labs is only the epidermis.
But what about the bladders that they've been growing in labs? Isn't that organ a combination of tissue types and more than simply 2D, i.e. muscle and the lining? See some info about it here. These replacement bladders are in people right now.
a government employee was allowed to walk out of a government installation with the data on thousands of American citizens to store on an insecure personal computer? Doesn't that seem strange to you. This is a real failure, in my opinion, in government protection of its citizens. Layers of encryption and protected access was successfully bypassed to make the theft of this information as simple as stealing a home pc.
This happens all the time unfortunately. People's stupidity can circumvent and electronic security measures.
Here's how it happens:
A study is made of security.
Recommendations are put forward and implemented.
Personnel in their mission to get work done find following secure procedures impedes their efficiency.
Personnel devise ways to short cut, wink and a nod, as long as it's me and you know, it's OK, etc.
Less restrictive, security is still viewed as a barrier to getting things done quicker, leads to more shortcutting and circumvention of procedures.
Someone suddenly loses a computer hard drive, CDs a laptop, a networked computer is breached, etc.
Everyone is shocked and amazed.
To those who enabled the shortcuts and circumvention are curiously mum, but people know who they are and they eventually get cleaned out or taken out of the security loop.
The big problem is management, the people who make the big money to take responsibility, react more than proact. Security means vigilance, but it also means giving people the proper time to do their work within the procedures of security. In my life I've only met a few people who took day to day security seriously and made a point of not giving in when someone asked for a short cut, "just this one time."
Management as much as ever seems to attract people to the wages and not the actual responsibilities. Peter principal of some strip I suppose.
Lets not confuse all gaming with fanatacism. That way lies madness, Jack Thompson style. You like your indy movies and board games, I can respect that. I like games of the electronic variety.
Oh, I like electronic/video games, I just don't even bother with games I need to put 10+ hours into to start getting anywhere. I think the Ultima line burned that out of me.
I rarely watch TV, mostly because it bores me to pieces.
Or go to the movies.
I see a movie every week or so, usually indy stuff as I've pretty much heard all the jokes, seen all the fireballs, met all the two dimensional villains, etc. that Hollywood keeps retreading. The Lost City is pretty good, as is Water.
Or spend time with friends.
I spend most of my time spare time with my friends. That's where I lack the time necessary to cater to a career as a full-time gamer.
or play a board game with the kids.
I love board games! I'm vicious at Scrabble, pretty good with the Empire Builder line from Mayfair Games. Not totally incompetent at Settlers of Catan and just picked up a game called Bazaar I loved playing as a kid. The trick is finding other people to play them with. A group I regularly played with has been broken up by 1) one friend getting married and having a son 2) another friend losing his job and getting another where he has all the sh!t hours and can't pull away for the best times to get a game in.
What, every second of your life isnt consumed producing something useful?
Sorry, don't see you there, I like my leisure time. Like the article said, games are too much Work and there's where I keep it in perspective by playing only a bit at a time at games I can, unlike MMORPGs and MUDs (before them) where you only really got anywhere by putting a quarter of your day into them, at the very least.
I think you need to understand a topic first before you post. "Video Game Addicts" and "people who play MMORPGs" are two entirely different groups.
To me, they're the same.
You may wish to qualify them in various ways, but the basis is the same, you are playing a game which is going on remotely, either on the motherboard of your game machine/personal computer or on a server in Elsewheresville, whether against AI or other players, it's still a video game, as opposed to a board game like Chess, Monopoly or Clue which you could play by mail or directly in front of you. I really think splitting Pong from World of Warcraft is splitting hairs, you're playing against the rules of programming (and perhaps the intervention of an admin in the MMORG) to achieve some nontangible goal called Victory (or burn-out, whichever comes first.)
Re:This guy is completely correct.
on
Just Let Me Play!
·
· Score: 1
This is what is destroying most modern games. Mindless repetitive exercize.
I always loved the discovery of the unknown in games, like back when I played Empire on a PC (the game with little (a)rmies, (t)roop transports, etc.) and you didn't know what you were going to find as you explored. Another fun game was Seven Cities of Gold. When I was into mudding it was finding all the cool loot and exploring new areas. When it came to leveling for the sake of leveling it lost it's appeal.
... because the without ALL the content unlocked immediately, games are just dull and boring and no fun to play *geeez*
Nah, that's when you've hacked into the code and disabled things or given yourself invulnerability or great wealth and then the whole thing gets dull.
The entertainment of a game is its challenge to achieve success. Too easy and it's dull, too hard and you give up, inexplicable (i.e. just when you thought you made it the rules change) and you beat your head against a table.
The ideal is to find a game you really like and stick with it, rather than whatever piece of crap is fashionable among the sheep these days. Amazing how many people I see playing board games, now. Check out the Empire Builder series from Mayfair, great stuff.
How many sites and magazines are there, all gushing at the wonders of the next treadmill you will:
Pay intial cost for (buy)
Possibly subscribe to (rent)
Never see one cent of return on (unless you sell something you acquired on eBay)
Spend large swathes of your life on, which you will never have back
Piss and moan to any authority (or even just vent on a blog somewhere) about how something is just not fair
All for what? Seriously, I thought gamblers were obsessed, but video game addicts take the cake.
Me? I play a simple shareware game and an online version of Settlers of Catan when I must, but both are there just
to fill the cracks of time between more important things.
Sorry if I sound like your mom or dad, but that's how it really is.
I've been thinking recently: what if Intel, realizing it had made serious errors in architecture and pricing from which it could not readily recover, decided to effectively feign death and allow its competitors to get hazardously cocky?
AMD overextending itself in an attempt to grab lots of market-share from Intel could prove very damaging when Intel 'gets it right again', such as with the Conroe exploding all expectations. An Intel offering that relies on sheer quality, rather than extortionate market dealing, could wreck AMD's edge and turn all their forward-thinking investment into a Sisyphean debt load.
Sure, but maybe DEC, IBM, UNISYS, Pr1me, Amdahl, et al, thought the same thing. This PC thing won't last, it won't cut into our market, because the world will still need mainframes and minicomputers. It could be that Intel has lost the plot and it's being written by AMD and others yet to be heard from. I look at Conroe as yet another attempt by Intel to strike back, but they've already taken such a terrible beating you have to wonder why there haven't been some mass layoffs yet. Any company with that kind of market share, facing market slowdowns, commoditization of their flagship products and losing market share is surely holding on by their fingernails. Sun finally did the inevitable. When will Intel?
Intel, long an intellectual meatgrinder, may have slowed the pace they acquire new headcount to replace the burnt-out relics which kept their share prices pumped, but it's been long known the way to hurt Intel is to strike at territory they arrogantly regard as their own so much they fail to protect it -- the commodity processor. This was where pitiful little processor clonemaker AMD laboured day to day for years, biding their time as it turns out. They've taken a chunk of the cheap commodity processors and struck at Intel's Achilles heel, by aiming commodity processors, with some understated muscle and clever engineering, directly into the middle of Intel's bread and butter high-end line.
It's really been a blur the past couple years, but now we've got PC's for peanuts which we really will be very hard pressed to tax, we will own these computers for a long time and not be buying new ones in the interval. Intel rested too much on the laurels of market dominance and dictating large profit for the high end with impunity. Even AMD may face some comeuppance, but as they're a smaller, more nimble company, they've got less to lose and can probably continue to adapt to changes better than a behemoth.
Remember, those ridiculous little PC's ultimately killed a lot of big vendors and the survivours have only held out by changing their business model. Intel had best forget the glory days of the past. Conroe may save them, but for how long and at what cost? They're probably still paying off all the investment in the Itanic.
People who like to drum up a bit of publicity for themselves by fearmongering every time anything happens that might result in a bit more net traffic than usual.
This time it might actually happen. More people follow the World Cup than all those other events combined. Football (soccer in the USA where the ball is in more contact with hands than feet and goes by the same name) is the world sport.
Personally, I'll be watching all the 2pm-kickoff matches from work courtesy of the BBC and I suspect that somehow both the NHS.net connection and the BBC site will stand up to the strain.
Polls are predicting a very large epidemic of too-sick-to-work during the World Cup.
how he was able to accomplish this.
However, the article does imply that noone is willing to admit to setting up the site.
Maybe the site's operator didn't provide accurate information when registering it. If that is the grounds for deregistering it, then it's not quite the free speech issue it's made out to be.
When you work in political circles the first lesson is that you get further with contacts, people in positions of influence, etc. Knowing someone at a registry and telling them this looks very dubious and an abuse of yada-yada-yada and suddenly Bob's your uncle and it's gone in a puff of twiddled bits.
This could be the real dirt under the nails -- abuse of power/position.
I've been asked a few times in my life to do some things, by very senior people in my organisation, but stood firm on a) the belief there were proper and less direct channels to address grievances AND b) the senior person couldn't get me sacked for standing up to them.
Appears scum are easier to frame than honest, upstanding people. Thanks for playing, but hope you and your filth go down in flames, spinning or otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, bigger is NOT better.
Gosh! Only $999.99 list (or as we learned from The Price Is Right, the price you ask if you never plan to actually sell any, except to the most gullible or desperate, actual price will probably be about $700) I can wait.
When VCRs came out I bought a rather nice one for ~900$US. When CD's came out I bought a nifty CD player for about 700$US. I was a little more patient with DVDs but eventually got a DVD drive for a home computer and then a portable player (computer ~70$US, Portabl ~1000$US) As I'm pretty well past the point of being impressed with Eye Candy in cinema, I'll probably only get a Blu-Ray when there's significant offerings and most of the newer films I must have are only available via that channel.
Of course it is... virtually no one is using it yet. While Vista is obscure, it follows that there will be little exploitive effort. As always, future history is yet to be written--although it tends to reflect and repeat the past.
Seems I've heard this song and dance before, just before a multi-year parade of vulnerabilities and exploits which would have made the Fall of the Roman empire look like an upended tea cup.
Hell, they're all going to be billionaires all over again and end users will muddle through as always.
Lucky Sisyphus, the rock didn't come with Windows.
You need to read beyond the second word before formulating your reply.
As long as certain groups stand to profit, and as long as certain people might look like idiots if proven wrong, the debate on this topic will never end. I'm talking about people on either side of the issue. The tough part is that global warming is difficult to prove either positively or negatively, so it's a prime vehicle for unrelated agendas.
We'll know in a thousand years.
In Venice they already know. Not only is the city sinking, but rising sea levels are compounding their problem.
Let it happen. With less land, we'll have shorter distances to drive.
And here's me, remembering from one of the Looney Tunes: Sir Osis of Liver
<Astro>rrrrruck!</Astro>
It was painfully slow; a real gimmick. I can't see any benefit beyond the gimmick for then, and now.
These are probably, like many sites these days, counting on you having DSL, because any thing less to access these sites is going to crawl. One reason I despise Flash splash-pages is my dial-up access. It's so enjoyable twiddling your thumbs or playing a quick game of Minesweeper while waiting for crap to download which doesn't tell you anything Text couldn't.
Then like now, the difference between gimmick and junk is how you use it.
My first thought was VRML and what a clunky thing that was before it all but vanished. I've still got books and CD's for doing stuff in it, in a box somewhere, probably in the car-port.
Not really what I had in mind when I thought about what would make for decent 3D browsing. This looks like something you could knock off in a plug-in, like Flash. Probably has some decent uses, like creating a game on your own website or a Realtor giving you a VR tour of a house (which i think someone nearby already has.) Handy for exploring a Mall, to see where a shop is rather than looking at those little hand-bills which are sometimes so artsy-fartsy you just try to go in the general direction and hope you find it. Hope people keep these sites updated. More content==more overhead for maintenance.
Nope. It still lands squarely in management's lap. They're responsible for implementing security procedures, keeping security procedures current and having the occasional audit to keep people on their toes. Where I once worked it was 100% locked down. Simply a matter of people taking their own job seriously.
You have heard that a leader is responsible for his/her people, right? Seems too few subscribe to that anymore, particularly in the Pentagon.
Depending upon how fast they can actually produce the things. e.g. XBox 360
It's cute! It's almost kitsch!
It'll be a hit with the /. crowd which will drive up the price through demand.
Heck, I already want one for the kitchen!
Skin is flat tissue, but has multiple layers. I suppose what they grow in labs is only the epidermis.
But what about the bladders that they've been growing in labs? Isn't that organ a combination of tissue types and more than simply 2D, i.e. muscle and the lining? See some info about it here. These replacement bladders are in people right now.
Here's how it happens:
The big problem is management, the people who make the big money to take responsibility, react more than proact. Security means vigilance, but it also means giving people the proper time to do their work within the procedures of security. In my life I've only met a few people who took day to day security seriously and made a point of not giving in when someone asked for a short cut, "just this one time."
Management as much as ever seems to attract people to the wages and not the actual responsibilities. Peter principal of some strip I suppose.
Oh, I like electronic/video games, I just don't even bother with games I need to put 10+ hours into to start getting anywhere. I think the Ultima line burned that out of me.
I rarely watch TV, mostly because it bores me to pieces.
Or go to the movies.
I see a movie every week or so, usually indy stuff as I've pretty much heard all the jokes, seen all the fireballs, met all the two dimensional villains, etc. that Hollywood keeps retreading. The Lost City is pretty good, as is Water.
Or spend time with friends.
I spend most of my time spare time with my friends. That's where I lack the time necessary to cater to a career as a full-time gamer.
or play a board game with the kids.
I love board games! I'm vicious at Scrabble, pretty good with the Empire Builder line from Mayfair Games. Not totally incompetent at Settlers of Catan and just picked up a game called Bazaar I loved playing as a kid. The trick is finding other people to play them with. A group I regularly played with has been broken up by 1) one friend getting married and having a son 2) another friend losing his job and getting another where he has all the sh!t hours and can't pull away for the best times to get a game in.
What, every second of your life isnt consumed producing something useful?
Sorry, don't see you there, I like my leisure time. Like the article said, games are too much Work and there's where I keep it in perspective by playing only a bit at a time at games I can, unlike MMORPGs and MUDs (before them) where you only really got anywhere by putting a quarter of your day into them, at the very least.
To me, they're the same.
You may wish to qualify them in various ways, but the basis is the same, you are playing a game which is going on remotely, either on the motherboard of your game machine/personal computer or on a server in Elsewheresville, whether against AI or other players, it's still a video game, as opposed to a board game like Chess, Monopoly or Clue which you could play by mail or directly in front of you. I really think splitting Pong from World of Warcraft is splitting hairs, you're playing against the rules of programming (and perhaps the intervention of an admin in the MMORG) to achieve some nontangible goal called Victory (or burn-out, whichever comes first.)
I always loved the discovery of the unknown in games, like back when I played Empire on a PC (the game with little (a)rmies, (t)roop transports, etc.) and you didn't know what you were going to find as you explored. Another fun game was Seven Cities of Gold. When I was into mudding it was finding all the cool loot and exploring new areas. When it came to leveling for the sake of leveling it lost it's appeal.
Nah, that's when you've hacked into the code and disabled things or given yourself invulnerability or great wealth and then the whole thing gets dull.
The entertainment of a game is its challenge to achieve success. Too easy and it's dull, too hard and you give up, inexplicable (i.e. just when you thought you made it the rules change) and you beat your head against a table.
The ideal is to find a game you really like and stick with it, rather than whatever piece of crap is fashionable among the sheep these days. Amazing how many people I see playing board games, now. Check out the Empire Builder series from Mayfair, great stuff.
When the bell rings do you salivate?
How many sites and magazines are there, all gushing at the wonders of the next treadmill you will:
- Pay intial cost for (buy)
- Possibly subscribe to (rent)
- Never see one cent of return on (unless you sell something you acquired on eBay)
- Spend large swathes of your life on, which you will never have back
- Piss and moan to any authority (or even just vent on a blog somewhere) about how something is just not fair
All for what? Seriously, I thought gamblers were obsessed, but video game addicts take the cake.Me? I play a simple shareware game and an online version of Settlers of Catan when I must, but both are there just to fill the cracks of time between more important things.
Sorry if I sound like your mom or dad, but that's how it really is.
AMD overextending itself in an attempt to grab lots of market-share from Intel could prove very damaging when Intel 'gets it right again', such as with the Conroe exploding all expectations. An Intel offering that relies on sheer quality, rather than extortionate market dealing, could wreck AMD's edge and turn all their forward-thinking investment into a Sisyphean debt load.
Sure, but maybe DEC, IBM, UNISYS, Pr1me, Amdahl, et al, thought the same thing. This PC thing won't last, it won't cut into our market, because the world will still need mainframes and minicomputers. It could be that Intel has lost the plot and it's being written by AMD and others yet to be heard from. I look at Conroe as yet another attempt by Intel to strike back, but they've already taken such a terrible beating you have to wonder why there haven't been some mass layoffs yet. Any company with that kind of market share, facing market slowdowns, commoditization of their flagship products and losing market share is surely holding on by their fingernails. Sun finally did the inevitable. When will Intel?
Intel, long an intellectual meatgrinder, may have slowed the pace they acquire new headcount to replace the burnt-out relics which kept their share prices pumped, but it's been long known the way to hurt Intel is to strike at territory they arrogantly regard as their own so much they fail to protect it -- the commodity processor. This was where pitiful little processor clonemaker AMD laboured day to day for years, biding their time as it turns out. They've taken a chunk of the cheap commodity processors and struck at Intel's Achilles heel, by aiming commodity processors, with some understated muscle and clever engineering, directly into the middle of Intel's bread and butter high-end line.
It's really been a blur the past couple years, but now we've got PC's for peanuts which we really will be very hard pressed to tax, we will own these computers for a long time and not be buying new ones in the interval. Intel rested too much on the laurels of market dominance and dictating large profit for the high end with impunity. Even AMD may face some comeuppance, but as they're a smaller, more nimble company, they've got less to lose and can probably continue to adapt to changes better than a behemoth.
Remember, those ridiculous little PC's ultimately killed a lot of big vendors and the survivours have only held out by changing their business model. Intel had best forget the glory days of the past. Conroe may save them, but for how long and at what cost? They're probably still paying off all the investment in the Itanic.
This time it might actually happen. More people follow the World Cup than all those other events combined. Football (soccer in the USA where the ball is in more contact with hands than feet and goes by the same name) is the world sport.
Personally, I'll be watching all the 2pm-kickoff matches from work courtesy of the BBC and I suspect that somehow both the NHS.net connection and the BBC site will stand up to the strain.
Polls are predicting a very large epidemic of too-sick-to-work during the World Cup.
Hey now, no stealing tomorrow's headlines...
When you work in political circles the first lesson is that you get further with contacts, people in positions of influence, etc. Knowing someone at a registry and telling them this looks very dubious and an abuse of yada-yada-yada and suddenly Bob's your uncle and it's gone in a puff of twiddled bits.
This could be the real dirt under the nails -- abuse of power/position.
I've been asked a few times in my life to do some things, by very senior people in my organisation, but stood firm on a) the belief there were proper and less direct channels to address grievances AND b) the senior person couldn't get me sacked for standing up to them.
Appears scum are easier to frame than honest, upstanding people. Thanks for playing, but hope you and your filth go down in flames, spinning or otherwise.