Re:Old Concept Revisited with more schmaltz
on
Review: Nintendogs
·
· Score: 1
The AI was fairly good and the possiblities were quite impressive - e.g. playing cards with your LCP buddy, have him write you letters, make him play music for you (if you ask nicely and he feels like it) and so on. With an LCP inside your computer life never gets boring.
Now I believe we call these worms and virii
There was a competition where you could win an amazing amount of money if you could make an LCPEnglish dictionary. I doubt anyone ever did though.
Seems like this "game" would have translated well to other languages. I imagine DC and Activision would have been wealthy beyond their imaginings if they'd marketed a japanese version.
Old Concept Revisited with more schmaltz
on
Review: Nintendogs
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
These concepts go a bit further back than Tamogachi,
i.e. David Crane's Little
Computer People, which today would be something akin to a cross between Tamogachi
and Sims, as you could interact with some little dude who lived in your C64.
I thought it was a bizzare idea when I first saw in in development at Activision in
Mountain View, back in 1985 (that's twenty years ago!) and it runs in only 64K of memory.
Imagine David Crane coming out of retirement or someone else picking this
old nut back up and injecting it with new life. IIRC the main fault of LCP was the limited repetoire of the
character, which Nintendogs seems to take advantage of technology (i.e. lots of cheap memory) to hold
more behaviour and possible courses of action.
I'd probably lean toward some other animal than a dog. A cat would be easy, it just eats and sleeps most of the time, though you could enjoy the thrill of virtual litterbox cleaning and dragging a string around while the cat chases, or even give it a brown paper shopping bag to hide in.
What animal would really make for an ideal pet? I've tried spiders, which are actually fascinating pets and that might be cool in a virtual way.
You appear to not be so afflicted and are therefore content to listen to whatever genre you tune your satellite radio to - your need for "particular music" is less specific than that of others.
Wouldn't say that.. I've picked up a few CD's based upon what I've heard and liked -- even a Louis Jordan boxed set. Killer!
Funny that. I bought a car stereo about 4 years ago which specifically could play MP3 CDs, but also had satellite radio. I've heard so much music on the various channels I've developed a broader taste and acquired a greater affinity for swing, in particular Louis Jordan, whom I'd never heard before in my life (quite a job it seems missing so large a catalog, too.)
Oddly, in those 4 years I've yet to burn an MP3 CD. When I'm out and about, driving, I've got more than an iPod offers. Maybe the iPod phone will offer something akin to satellite broadcast.
BFH has the specific meaning of Big F***ing Hammer among engineers. Always has, always will. An engineer without his BFH is as lost as a chemist without his CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.
What? You think we'd stoop to the level of must... ree... zist.... mere punsters? We can't the power... strong.. too strong... write something interesting, insightful or even can't hold out... must hold out informative? You really think that? aaaaarrrggghhh You might have a point.
except from altitude and even then they are rarely if ever deployed in heavily contested areas. Most of the time they require large airstrips which in itself implies control over land and air of the region.
In the article they mention making landings near combat zones on unimproved landing fields.
What it does offer is many possiblities for not just military operations. If these things pan out in efficiency you can bet UPS and FED Ex would want them. Let alone the possibilities of flying cruise ships!
Oh, heck yes! Have you seen how the passenger compartment of the Hindenburge (LZ-129) was laid out? Pure luxury! I'd fly to London in that in a heartbeat, screw the extra hours it takes.
FWIW, anything is a target for a terrorist, though preference is giving to things that don't shoot back.
Sure, but what is this thing supposed to shoot back with? This looks like the Glider fiasco of WW II all over again.
Far faster than this will be. This may be more manueverable, but not nimble enough to swing out of the path of a missile. For that matter, a foot bow could probably put a small payload into the hide of something like this from a location with moderate cover.
An airship that will look like the budget that funds it!
I've been a huge fan of airships after reading up on them, but this thing will positively scream "TARGET" (not the chain store) to every radical nut with a shoulder
launch missile. It will also move rather slowly.
Perhaps a good choice for moving materiel between safe locations, but not something you'd fly over the Middle East any time soon.
In 2105: "Yessir, your documents are available in GIF format, unfortunately the 1024 by 768 resolution is almost unviewable on today's 1,048,576 by 786,432 document readers."
The spyware can all be run on one of the cores while the other can be used to get work done. I'm getting one for my father-in-law.
The spyware will takeover CPU 0, bloat will occupy CPU 1 and your apps will be paged out to a highly fragmented file created by the file system as opposed to a fixed file on a swap partition.
My experience, though obviously limited to business applications; is that RedHat
runs straight out of the box. Everything, the whole kaboodle: printers,
scanners, cameras, flash sticks. Why even consider Windows, it has missed the proverbial boat.
While benchmarks don't show much improvement, it does potentially provide a bridge to Vista, though from what I've been seeing XP to Vista is App..er..Bananas to Oranges. There really does seem to be a slim case for Win64 (there also seems to be a slim case for Vista, however.) So Linux is certainly a fair case to make.
By default, I gather, as many went out of business with the.com bubble burst fallout. Still, I was initially under the impression there was one kind of DSL and found the offerings, beyond bandwidth, included various communications standards or even brand names. Now it's pretty much down to a couple of choices, not based upon any technical merit, but because they survived.
Back in the early days of DSL in the Bay Area (SFO/OAK/SJC) there was a guide in the now-defunct MicroTimes outlining about 40 vendors and what they offered. It was a bit exasperating trying to figure out which to buy into. Sounds like WiMAX is going to have a shaking out period, too.
Hey, let's all take turns bashing Microsoft! - And then we can say how great Linux is!
Why? The TCO of having a piece of hardware that can support Vista should go way up, adding in the extra memory and electrical power necessary to just sit there and spin the fans.
Seems like it's what Linux enthusiasts have been wanting Microsoft to do for years, hang themselves on their own rope.
Hmmmz, my SGI Indy didn't need 256MB of videomemory to have vectorized icons... somehow I get the feeling Vista isn't the most efficiently programmed software/OS we've seen...;-)
(and the Indy *did* ship with a journaling filesystem... XFS...)
Makes you wonder what they're compiling this thing with and what's going into it. Probably doing it in VB.Net and running it onto of the framework.
"i say! that looks as bloated as a government budget!"
Every new version of windows has beefed up the requirements, and I've always found them usable with less than they say.
I recall the first install of Win 95, the packaging said Minimum 8 MB RAM. Yes, if you don't mind paging on those slow old MFM/RLL 20/30 MB drives over your pokey ISA bus. 12 MB was manageable, with patience. 16 MB was tolerable. 24 MB and up was comfortable. This on a 33 MHz 486.
When I bought my first Pentium with 64 MB and Win 98 it was apparent almost from day 1 that 64 MB was just barely enough to run one application at a time. 2 apps and I was paging and anything over that and it was an exercise in masochism.
My 2.6 MHz Athlon started life with WinXP and 256 MB. Which was fine for the limited things I did, though I noticed (thanks to the task manager) that half of it was tied up before I launched any apps. 1.25 GB has made for a decent system. The first graphics card was a 64 MB generic card which cost a measely $37 and I keep it around for when the big deluxe card decides it's going to have a bad patch.
I think as much as I groan about XP that's where I'll stop with regard to Microsoft. I don't want to overburden my new 64 bit CPU just trying to do the basics.
hardware vendors smile towards the shocking new recommended hardware needed for the next generation Windows operating system."
Tradition. Oh, and remember what ever the minimum Microsoft says, double it.
"Graphics: Vista has changed from using the CPU to display bitmaps on the screen to using the GPU to render vectors. This means the entire display model in Vista has changed. To render the screen in the GPU requires an awful lot of memory to do optimally - 256MB is a happy medium, but you'll actually see benefit from more. Microsoft believes that you're going to see the amount of video memory being shipped on cards hurtle up when Vista ships."
I wonder what this will do to gaming. Seems like an improvement on the surface. But this will probably drive up the base system prices initially. Yes, memory is cheap, but video cards with that much aren't.
I sure hope one feature of Vista is the ability to leave out all kinds of useless crap you'll never need, but it doesn't sound like it's trending that way.
"Why are all the lights around town dimming? Is Enron back in business?" "No, people are upgrading their PC's to minimum to do absolutely nothing but boot up."
Sure, you can do that on Linux and Windows too, but the question is, can you do it without the user being part of the equation? On Windows it is easy, on Mac/Linux, not really.
And this can be attributed to the active vs. passive approach to many aspects of the OS. Windows is crammed with automation, to be the Be-All, End-All of Opertaing Systems/User Environments, which really was giftwrapping to the virus/worm/trojan authors.
I deliberatly bypass as much automation as I can on my PC, I don't want email automatically opend in a browser, etc.
My bad. IIRC prions are the predecessors of viruses. A good explanation of this can actually be found in Critchton's Lost World, where dinosaurs were eating poo.
Maybe 'prion' would be a good name for a simple computer virus, though more labels would simply confuse people and further enrich McAfee, et al...
I obviously did, but was underscoring "what is the motivation" of someone who would target Macs (or Linux, or cell phones or Xboxes or...) Grabbing headlines? That's passe, slipping in under the radar to steal info, relay spam or add to a personal zombie pool is the mode of the day. It's not so much security by design or accident, but by obsecurity. Why, if you're after the greatest return on your efforts target 5% of the computer market?
Checking the headline, I thought, well that's either BSE or CJD and it's already here.
Anyone who is trying to grab headlines with a Mac virus isn't of the same ilk of the two recently
arrested Zotob/Mytob worms, whom really desire to keep a low profile. We've pretty much moved on from the
egomaniacal hacker who wants to see how n070r10u5 he can be, with his worm/virus mentioned in the NYT and CNN.
The logical assumption is "what does a Mac virus/worm author expect?" Stealing personal info, spyware, etc, that's the game for
the larger herd. It may pay some dividends and be relatively untapped and not as challenging, but there's so much
groundwork laid for Windows and the frequency of exploits underscore this is the way to go.
"what u get, d00d?"
"some iTunes"
"anything good?"
"just more u2, i'm so sick of u2:p"
"blame j0bs"
Slashdot Mirror
Now I believe we call these worms and virii
There was a competition where you could win an amazing amount of money if you could make an LCPEnglish dictionary. I doubt anyone ever did though.
Seems like this "game" would have translated well to other languages. I imagine DC and Activision would have been wealthy beyond their imaginings if they'd marketed a japanese version.
These concepts go a bit further back than Tamogachi, i.e. David Crane's Little Computer People, which today would be something akin to a cross between Tamogachi and Sims, as you could interact with some little dude who lived in your C64. I thought it was a bizzare idea when I first saw in in development at Activision in Mountain View, back in 1985 (that's twenty years ago!) and it runs in only 64K of memory. Imagine David Crane coming out of retirement or someone else picking this old nut back up and injecting it with new life. IIRC the main fault of LCP was the limited repetoire of the character, which Nintendogs seems to take advantage of technology (i.e. lots of cheap memory) to hold more behaviour and possible courses of action.
I'd probably lean toward some other animal than a dog. A cat would be easy, it just eats and sleeps most of the time, though you could enjoy the thrill of virtual litterbox cleaning and dragging a string around while the cat chases, or even give it a brown paper shopping bag to hide in.
What animal would really make for an ideal pet? I've tried spiders, which are actually fascinating pets and that might be cool in a virtual way.
Wouldn't say that.. I've picked up a few CD's based upon what I've heard and liked -- even a Louis Jordan boxed set. Killer!
Funny that. I bought a car stereo about 4 years ago which specifically could play MP3 CDs, but also had satellite radio. I've heard so much music on the various channels I've developed a broader taste and acquired a greater affinity for swing, in particular Louis Jordan, whom I'd never heard before in my life (quite a job it seems missing so large a catalog, too.)
Oddly, in those 4 years I've yet to burn an MP3 CD. When I'm out and about, driving, I've got more than an iPod offers. Maybe the iPod phone will offer something akin to satellite broadcast.
BFH has the specific meaning of Big F***ing Hammer among engineers. Always has, always will. An engineer without his BFH is as lost as a chemist without his CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.
"What? No CRC Handbook? Must be an E-winger."
What? You think we'd stoop to the level of must ... ree ... zist .... mere punsters? We can't the power ... strong .. too strong ... write something interesting, insightful or even can't hold out ... must hold out informative? You really think that? aaaaarrrggghhh You might have a point.
ahhh..."It's still not slim enough, give me the BFH.
"What was his password?"
"I don't know, but it has a catchy beat!"
In the article they mention making landings near combat zones on unimproved landing fields.
What it does offer is many possiblities for not just military operations. If these things pan out in efficiency you can bet UPS and FED Ex would want them. Let alone the possibilities of flying cruise ships!
Oh, heck yes! Have you seen how the passenger compartment of the Hindenburge (LZ-129) was laid out? Pure luxury! I'd fly to London in that in a heartbeat, screw the extra hours it takes.
FWIW, anything is a target for a terrorist, though preference is giving to things that don't shoot back.
Sure, but what is this thing supposed to shoot back with? This looks like the Glider fiasco of WW II all over again.
Far faster than this will be. This may be more manueverable, but not nimble enough to swing out of the path of a missile. For that matter, a foot bow could probably put a small payload into the hide of something like this from a location with moderate cover.
I've been a huge fan of airships after reading up on them, but this thing will positively scream "TARGET" (not the chain store) to every radical nut with a shoulder launch missile. It will also move rather slowly.
Perhaps a good choice for moving materiel between safe locations, but not something you'd fly over the Middle East any time soon.
In 2105: "Yessir, your documents are available in GIF format, unfortunately the 1024 by 768 resolution is almost unviewable on today's 1,048,576 by 786,432 document readers."
The spyware will takeover CPU 0, bloat will occupy CPU 1 and your apps will be paged out to a highly fragmented file created by the file system as opposed to a fixed file on a swap partition.
You ought to know that by now.
While benchmarks don't show much improvement, it does potentially provide a bridge to Vista, though from what I've been seeing XP to Vista is App..er..Bananas to Oranges. There really does seem to be a slim case for Win64 (there also seems to be a slim case for Vista, however.) So Linux is certainly a fair case to make.
By default, I gather, as many went out of business with the .com bubble burst fallout. Still, I was initially under the impression there was one kind of DSL and found the offerings, beyond bandwidth, included various communications standards or even brand names. Now it's pretty much down to a couple of choices, not based upon any technical merit, but because they survived.
Back in the early days of DSL in the Bay Area (SFO/OAK/SJC) there was a guide in the now-defunct MicroTimes outlining about 40 vendors and what they offered. It was a bit exasperating trying to figure out which to buy into. Sounds like WiMAX is going to have a shaking out period, too.
Why? The TCO of having a piece of hardware that can support Vista should go way up, adding in the extra memory and electrical power necessary to just sit there and spin the fans.
Seems like it's what Linux enthusiasts have been wanting Microsoft to do for years, hang themselves on their own rope.
Makes you wonder what they're compiling this thing with and what's going into it. Probably doing it in VB.Net and running it onto of the framework.
"i say! that looks as bloated as a government budget!"
I recall the first install of Win 95, the packaging said Minimum 8 MB RAM. Yes, if you don't mind paging on those slow old MFM/RLL 20/30 MB drives over your pokey ISA bus. 12 MB was manageable, with patience. 16 MB was tolerable. 24 MB and up was comfortable. This on a 33 MHz 486.
When I bought my first Pentium with 64 MB and Win 98 it was apparent almost from day 1 that 64 MB was just barely enough to run one application at a time. 2 apps and I was paging and anything over that and it was an exercise in masochism.
My 2.6 MHz Athlon started life with WinXP and 256 MB. Which was fine for the limited things I did, though I noticed (thanks to the task manager) that half of it was tied up before I launched any apps. 1.25 GB has made for a decent system. The first graphics card was a 64 MB generic card which cost a measely $37 and I keep it around for when the big deluxe card decides it's going to have a bad patch.
I think as much as I groan about XP that's where I'll stop with regard to Microsoft. I don't want to overburden my new 64 bit CPU just trying to do the basics.
Tradition. Oh, and remember what ever the minimum Microsoft says, double it.
"Graphics: Vista has changed from using the CPU to display bitmaps on the screen to using the GPU to render vectors. This means the entire display model in Vista has changed. To render the screen in the GPU requires an awful lot of memory to do optimally - 256MB is a happy medium, but you'll actually see benefit from more. Microsoft believes that you're going to see the amount of video memory being shipped on cards hurtle up when Vista ships."
I wonder what this will do to gaming. Seems like an improvement on the surface. But this will probably drive up the base system prices initially. Yes, memory is cheap, but video cards with that much aren't.
I sure hope one feature of Vista is the ability to leave out all kinds of useless crap you'll never need, but it doesn't sound like it's trending that way.
"Why are all the lights around town dimming? Is Enron back in business?"
"No, people are upgrading their PC's to minimum to do absolutely nothing but boot up."
And this can be attributed to the active vs. passive approach to many aspects of the OS. Windows is crammed with automation, to be the Be-All, End-All of Opertaing Systems/User Environments, which really was giftwrapping to the virus/worm/trojan authors.
I deliberatly bypass as much automation as I can on my PC, I don't want email automatically opend in a browser, etc.
My bad. IIRC prions are the predecessors of viruses. A good explanation of this can actually be found in Critchton's Lost World, where dinosaurs were eating poo.
Maybe 'prion' would be a good name for a simple computer virus, though more labels would simply confuse people and further enrich McAfee, et al ...
Gee. Hope they don't read /.
I obviously did, but was underscoring "what is the motivation" of someone who would target Macs (or Linux, or cell phones or Xboxes or ...) Grabbing headlines? That's passe, slipping in under the radar to steal info, relay spam or add to a personal zombie pool is the mode of the day. It's not so much security by design or accident, but by obsecurity. Why, if you're after the greatest return on your efforts target 5% of the computer market?
Anyone who is trying to grab headlines with a Mac virus isn't of the same ilk of the two recently arrested Zotob/Mytob worms, whom really desire to keep a low profile. We've pretty much moved on from the egomaniacal hacker who wants to see how n070r10u5 he can be, with his worm/virus mentioned in the NYT and CNN.
The logical assumption is "what does a Mac virus/worm author expect?" Stealing personal info, spyware, etc, that's the game for the larger herd. It may pay some dividends and be relatively untapped and not as challenging, but there's so much groundwork laid for Windows and the frequency of exploits underscore this is the way to go.
"what u get, d00d?" :p"
"some iTunes"
"anything good?"
"just more u2, i'm so sick of u2
"blame j0bs"
ESR: I can't do that?
MS: Can't handle the isolation?
ESR: No, I have to sound off every now and then or people will forget about me!
MS: Well... that's what were actually shooting for.