It *is* news, thank you. Read the title - "Linux chosen for new SC" - that is news. It could conceivably be replaced with every new machine being announced, and the nunbers for this new one draw another line in the sand. It's pretty mind-boggling, great to hear, and yes, it is news.
I agree with you inasmuch as the world doesn't need this at all, however it seems pointless to me to wish these people refocused elsewhere. They aren't being paid to do it - they do it cuz they *want to*. They won't refocus on what you want unless you're willing to pay them! I doubt these tiny little distros will have any impact one way or the other with Billy G. affairs...
The price is a VERY important point. I've also tried to get/.'s attention on the extremely aggressive methodology Apple's beginning to use - buying up Shake and then essentially wiping out all the other ports with a "2 for 1" offer if you go OSX. Combine this with the Pixar/Apple/nvidia destruction of Exluna's Entropy renderer(with NVidia courting Apple to get their cards in the next generation Apple hardware), and this company is starting to play like MS. I guess/. didn't feel that they should have posted either of those stories because they're obviously OSX fans. Apple is going to start repeating the Final Cut Pro/Shake model as a method to *force* user's to go OSX instead of Linux, and I'm baffled that more people here don't see it as a tangible threat to Linux!
I'll never give them my money now...and it's a shame because there are some things to like about OSX(although I still loathe the fat graphic GUI crap).
I'll go a step further - digital is NOT an improvement. I work in the FX biz, and the whole digital thing is about saving costs to the filmakers and distributors, NOT about delivering some bigger faster better technology. Some end products, such as all-digital films like Pixar's products, look better, arguably, but shooting live action on digicams does *not* have the same resolution as film. It's less. In fact, one of the senior cinematographers at ILM "left" the company after he made much noise about digi not being ready yet. He was right.
I'm not anti-digital - hey - it makes my job a lot easier! However, I also love movies, and it's bad enough that american movies can't seem to find more than a couple of good writers, but now they want to de-res the visual look so they can make even *more* millions! Bleh.
I think that's why digital, as it stands now, won't succeed. It needs more work, and some other standard will come along before theatres are convinced to spend all that money. The latter part of the ABC article was bang on - if it ain't broke...!
This scenario has already been playing out with HDTV - I distinctly remember SIGGRAPH '90 in Texas when Virtual Reality and HDTV were the "kewl new things" that would change life as we know it.
Twelve years later virtual reality has hardly changed at all since then apart from better poly counts, and HDTV has stalled in North America. Essentially the cost for networks to upgrade is phenomonal. They *will* do it eventually(although it remains to be seen if it will take so long that a cheaper/better technology will come out first!), but it takes much time and money. This will be echoed in the digi-projection market too, I think.
I'm so sick and tired of people associating success with talent. Success is driven by a huge number of variables - talent is just one of them. Brittany Spears is successful too - would you iconize her? Give me a break. In Lucas' defence, he did do a couple of good early films(THX and American Grafitti were good), so I think he was a capable director, even smart on occasion. However, he took that long hiatus from films for a reason - he hates doing it. Do you do a good job on things you hate? Over the last 30 years he's lost whatever directing and writing talent he had. Pathetic dialog, childish scenes, stunningly derivative visuals - you have the nerve to call his visual sense "amazing"?! Here's the films he visually stole from for AOTC - The Fifth Element(city car chase), Blade Runner(same sequence, when they come down to the bar), Waterworld/Dune(the hidden cloning planet), Gladiator(the arena scene), and Starship Troopers(the final apocalyptic battle scenes).
There were indeed some mighty fine FX sequences done for this movie. It was a BAD film, however. It was bad because it was written and directed poorly - I know MacGregor, Lee and Jackson can act(although the lead was another issue!), so there's only two people you can blame - the writer or the director. Hmmm...who was that?
And give me a break on the "visionary" stuff. If he hadn't made all the money he had in his early years(off American Grafitti and SW), then he would have gone bust after a year and no-one would have heard of him again. It was throwing more and more money at ILM that kept it going. If he hadn't of done it, then someone else would have. Period. Why do so many people worship money? There are hundreds, nay thousands of people over history that just kept pouring more and more money after something they thought was "neat". Some ended up being successful, and are "visionaries". Others died penniless and are "losers".
You'd think the average Slashdotter would have a little less respect for corporate sucess as a measure of quality.
Stop being such an ugly american, fer cryin' out loud. You find it surprising/disappointing that there are some smart people in the world that don't come from your particular country? Gawd. Do some reading. Travel. Listening.
I'm completely unfamiliar with the guy, which puts me in a good position, I suppose.
It was as if the "review" was written by an overeager child - nothing remotely reputable in it. Please folks. Anyone using that many quotation marks can't seriously be expected to be anything other than a rabid fan.
>> What happens after the wall, is there also a parachute, or are you just supposed to land after your 20 foot fall
That's been bylined for now until v2.0.
>> Micoreactors could detect bleeding and apply pressure. -So that the enemies crackers can cut off circulation in battle to help their side.
No, it's being used in v1.0 for when you land on the other side of the brick wall.
> MIT's research centers had been working on nanotechnology ideas long before getting involved with the Army, but not with military applications in mind.
And look how far they've come! Pretty soon you can replace your president with a comely anime babe spitting out mutating nano-robots! Count me in.
Well folks, it's only a few bucks. In the end, I'll probably just leave things as they are, and if the big ads drive me nuts I'll make a decision then whether to cough up, or make another site my homepage. That's life in the big city.
However, what about Google? Assuming I'll always be online, they're something I cannot live without, yet the ads are absurdly small and never interfere with it's usage. It's free. Is it because so many more people use Google than Slashdot that the advertisers don't give them as much flack? Perhaps the answer is to broaden the demographic - perhaps Brittany vs Linus online voting?:)
I've beta tested many time, and my contribution has gone far, far beyond "XYZ causes a crash". Your job isn't just to break the software, it's to give feedback, (G)UI approaches, suggestions, crazy ideas, in fact everything that happens in the app company before they actually started development. I've never even dreamt about trying to claim ownership over any of those ideas I contributed(many of which I've seen come to light), probably just because I'm not a major asshole like the beta tester that spawned this thread. Oh, I also had to sign a contract too:), but frankly most of it relates to my not revealing product information during the process.
Don't forget, when it comes down to it, they are making a *film*. Someone had to sit down and write a movie, regardless of what "Square does". It's an individual thing. The process, according to Screenplay magazine, was a very bad one - the director(a games director with no training in film), who didn't speak English, spoke through an interpreter to an American writer, and back again through the same pipe. The original idea was a poor one(IMHO), and the writer said that the process was hell - essentially he'd hear one thing, send back a response, then would hear a completely different thing because the interpreter happened to translate the same thing a different way("purple" became "red", for instance). It was rushed, awkward, and not remotely conducive to brainstorming. When I read that(before it came out), I knew immediately it would be very unlikely it would be a good film. I'm in the middle of a writing project with a co-writer and I cannot *begin* to imagine how it could work if we spoke different languages. It's hard enough just getting two minds to sync!
So blaming it on the fact that games are different than films isn't really accurate. To be fair, the director had the foresight to insist on having a professional writer be involved, but the decision to use an English-only writer was incorrect. Not that the writer wasn't any good! The pipeline was flawed. *Perhaps* with a good Japanese writer they could have wrangled a decent film out of that derivative mess of an idea.
It seems obvious tht most of the people posting here don't have to deal with SGI directly. They have *consistently* gouged their users in the support area ever since they opened. When they were the only shop in town, no-one could stop them. Now - forget it. If you're well-off and buy SGI workstations for a hobby you can ignore this topic, but when you're trying to run a business and they lasso you into positively obscene support contracts, you ask questions. Since support is one of their major profit centres, don't expect an answer.
They're in trouble - most people I know in the FX biz see this as a desperate last hurrah in the post world.
DT
Folks - this is a dead-end discussion
on
Browsing Alone
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· Score: 1
This whole topic is indeed navel-gazing. Whenever people write about trends in contempory culture, do they really have a point except to sell books and make money? All you need to do is go to the library and read articles by people throughout history who have done the same - they are either charmingly naive or they spotted precisely what would happen - and it happened.
Fact is, there are pros and cons to the inet. To TV. To film, books, trash tabloid, mass travel, etc., on to infinity. So what's the point? Is the original author sounding a wake-up call to action - we must crush the inet to save bowling alleys! C'mon folks. Civilization moves inexorably to where it must. As individuals, we can sometimes make a change, but larger things than your bandwidth drive the world.
Sheesh.
DT
Re:Samba validates Microsoft
on
Samba Turns 10
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· Score: 2, Interesting
>> No bashing here , but Samba validates Microsoft.
No it doesn't! There seems to be two groups of people here - those that embrace every attempt to get Linux to work with the rest of the world, and those that see anything like that as some sort of "betrayal" to the Linux community (to be fair, you haven't worded it that strongly, but I've seen it many times here).
As an end user, and not a hacker, I cannot tell you how important it is to be able to have sharing of resources with others, regardless of their OS. It goes without saying that the majority of computing resources in the world are attached to MS-run machines. Anything that promotes access is a winner in my books. That the Samba team has accomplished this, to the degree they have, with a protocol as "crappy" as that, with MS doing everything they can to obfuscate matters, well, hats off to you people. Thank you very, very much.
Would you prefer that they dismantle Samba and wait until enough Open Source resource sharing protocols are embraced by windows users? Don't hold your breath!
While I think your comments are a little too cynical for my tastes, I do agree in principal. I'm sure that historians would have had a *huge* snigger over the naiveness of the original article. Technology changes the world - yup. It changes the way we interact with each other. Hell, technology let us live longer than 30 years! But it doesn't change human nature. There's some wonderful caring unselfish people floating about. And there's some major selfish, cruel buggers too. Always have been! The only people I trust to predict possible futures are people that have rigourously and objectively studied the past.
Why are you afraid of a little exercise?
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
You are essentially fulfilling comments made earlier - the only people that will benefit by this are lazy and don't want to walk. I understand it's trendy on/. to knock anything hyped, but really. REALLY. This is absolute crap. It's not going to completely change society. People who drive their car 3 blocks to get groceries still need the trunk to stuff their prepackaged food into. They aren't going to switch and stop burning fuel. Bikers won't dump their bikes which are certainly no more dangerous and give them great exercise(to say nothing of a very vibrant bike subculture). The only people that will buy it are rich yuppies that want to look trendy, or if they put the price point low, cardiac disease will jump 20%.
I don't doubt MS employees will look very trendy(=geeky) zipping around Redmond on their little racing-striped Gingers. But please. Changing the world?
The work they did to Olly was hardly "pionneering", however they did a very nice job. Suffice it to say, there's a universe of difference between some clever tricks on a few scenes with existing footage of an actor that has already created the character for the audience, vs making a digital human that must convey an entire performance from scratch. FF showed just how incredibly far the technology has to go to make people *care* about pixels pretending to be humans. This producer is doing what producers do best: BS
DThorne
Hardware=irrelevant, Games=the whole point
on
XBox Released
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· Score: 1
Part of the problem is that both the dissers and the pro-XBox people miss the point - the subject of my message. Dreamcast had great hardware - where is it now? The *vast* majority of end users of these products care not a whit about specs - they just want games on it that they enjoy playing. Only time will tell if Gates et al get that point and manage to attract designers of the same magnitude as Nintendo does. The fact that MS seemed to focus more on hardware than software doesn't bode well for them, since they're the new kid on the block. However, as much as I'm not a big MS fan, they're not entirely stupid - I'm sure that now the hardware footprint has been established they're focusing on attracting those developers.
This sort of crap is inevitable, but *man* do I hate this. It's on the same page as the V chip - it buys into a philosophy that children that watch cartoons with more than 3 "violent acts per minute" will grow up to be John Gacey.
Look, parents and teachers, if your child is going to watch a show on history that contains moments of violence, then let them watch it or not, based on it's quality. I remember seeing sexual and violent stuff as a kid, and because I was provided with a *context*, I was appropriately tittilated or terrified, and I learned from that. When I watch "Die Hard" with the particularly brutal sequences edited out for broadcast TV, it sickens me more than anything you could show me on the screen. If you think your kid should be watching a fantasy story about a constantly swearing cop blowing away terrorists, then let it be. Otherwise, don't let them watch it! Don't pass the responsibility of parenting to execs and censors.
Even though my initial reaction was to support The Sims, in retrospect I think perhaps not, for a couple of reasons:
On more than one occasion, I've heard wags refer to the game as a "yuppie simulator". Not entirely incorrect, and it's likely that kids from difficult circumstances will probably not relate to the cutesy consumerism inherent in the game.
Because it *is* really a simulation (regardless of what you may think it's simulating), I can see it being misused, despite the good intentions of the original poster. I wonder how long before some management person looks over the shoulder of a kid trying to fry some yuppies in a hot tub with a toaster and makes a judgement on the kid. Hell, that's the first thing I tried to do!:)
Hey - I know that Google's just a bunch of folks with a great product and attitude, but I swear that they seem to be positively magical about reading my mind. For instance, I live in Canada, where we often get shortchanged with the obvious content bias of our illustrious friends to the south, but man - there's no other engine that gives me the number hits I'm after when I type in a word, like "York", which happens to be a borough in nothern Toronto, but also happens to be part of a name of a sizable little town southeast of us.:)
Other engines give endless New York results, but somehow Google hits home. And that's just a trivial example. I think it's great that there's competition starting up - that's good for all of us - but they have a *long* way to go to catch up with the Mighty G.
And getting that sort of endorsement from all these cynical hackers is impressive enough!:)
I don't think you missed a thing! When edocs in general first appeared, I used to always bitch about many of the items in your list, but secretly I felt it was an age thing of mine - despite how much I was computer-friendly - it *isn't* a book. I always thought younger kids would embrace it and I'd be left in the dust. Now that the ebook "revolution" has happened, I feel vindicated re: my initial instincts.
The Tribune article commented on the industry control over content - I honestly don't think the potential audience out there gives a shit about that(seems to be mostly info/net geeks that care). They want the convenience of changing their location, flipping(VERY important!), and not worrying that their book will "run out."
Print works!
Oh - and the reason the kids don't embrace them?
They don't read!:)
I'm sorry, but I really think you're wrong about the original audience. I distinctly remember when it was released in 1977, getting on the cover of Time magazine labelled as a "Fable for the 70's". I think that we get jaded nowadays because we've been Indiana Jonesd and Matrix'ed to death - been there done that. Back then, however, Star Wars was new inasmuch as it showed a science fiction world that was "dirtier" and more used than ever had been shown in films before. It created a world that had never been experienced before - it crossed the age boundary. Now don't get me wrong - I screened it again the other day and am embarrassed by the big hair and poor acting - it's not a "great film", but I think you're wrong in dismissing it as for children only. It was intended, and succeeded, to capture the sense of wonder we had as children, regardless of age.
For the record, I *loathed* the latest. Odd about the wide-eyed kids you saw - in my screening the little kid next to me constantly yawned. When asked by his father "did you like it?", he answered "well, the racing scene was cool." I agreed with him - that's all I got out of it!
Slashdot Mirror
It *is* news, thank you. Read the title - "Linux chosen for new SC" - that is news. It could conceivably be replaced with every new machine being announced, and the nunbers for this new one draw another line in the sand. It's pretty mind-boggling, great to hear, and yes, it is news.
/. articles!
Everyone seems so desperate to diss
DT
I agree with you inasmuch as the world doesn't need this at all, however it seems pointless to me to wish these people refocused elsewhere. They aren't being paid to do it - they do it cuz they *want to*. They won't refocus on what you want unless you're willing to pay them!
I doubt these tiny little distros will have any impact one way or the other with Billy G. affairs...
Cheers
DT
Ummm, yeah. Trivial little plot points. This movie ain't gonna end like "The Usual Suspects", my friend.
Unless Sauron is....KEISER SOZYE!!!!!!
Cheers,
DT
The price is a VERY important point. I've also tried to get /.'s attention on the extremely aggressive methodology Apple's beginning to use - buying up Shake and then essentially wiping out all the other ports with a "2 for 1" offer if you go OSX. Combine this with the Pixar/Apple/nvidia destruction of Exluna's Entropy renderer(with NVidia courting Apple to get their cards in the next generation Apple hardware), and this company is starting to play like MS. I guess /. didn't feel that they should have posted either of those stories because they're obviously OSX fans. Apple is going to start repeating the Final Cut Pro/Shake model as a method to *force* user's to go OSX instead of Linux, and I'm baffled that more people here don't see it as a tangible threat to Linux!
I'll never give them my money now...and it's a shame because there are some things to like about OSX(although I still loathe the fat graphic GUI crap).
DT
I'll go a step further - digital is NOT an improvement. I work in the FX biz, and the whole digital thing is about saving costs to the filmakers and distributors, NOT about delivering some bigger faster better technology. Some end products, such as all-digital films like Pixar's products, look better, arguably, but shooting live action on digicams does *not* have the same resolution as film. It's less. In fact, one of the senior cinematographers at ILM "left" the company after he made much noise about digi not being ready yet. He was right.
I'm not anti-digital - hey - it makes my job a lot easier! However, I also love movies, and it's bad enough that american movies can't seem to find more than a couple of good writers, but now they want to de-res the visual look so they can make even *more* millions! Bleh.
I think that's why digital, as it stands now, won't succeed. It needs more work, and some other standard will come along before theatres are convinced to spend all that money. The latter part of the ABC article was bang on - if it ain't broke...!
DT
This scenario has already been playing out with HDTV - I distinctly remember SIGGRAPH '90 in Texas when Virtual Reality and HDTV were the "kewl new things" that would change life as we know it.
Twelve years later virtual reality has hardly changed at all since then apart from better poly counts, and HDTV has stalled in North America. Essentially the cost for networks to upgrade is phenomonal. They *will* do it eventually(although it remains to be seen if it will take so long that a cheaper/better technology will come out first!), but it takes much time and money. This will be echoed in the digi-projection market too, I think.
DT
I'm so sick and tired of people associating success with talent. Success is driven by a huge number of variables - talent is just one of them. Brittany Spears is successful too - would you iconize her? Give me a break. In Lucas' defence, he did do a couple of good early films(THX and American Grafitti were good), so I think he was a capable director, even smart on occasion. However, he took that long hiatus from films for a reason - he hates doing it. Do you do a good job on things you hate? Over the last 30 years he's lost whatever directing and writing talent he had. Pathetic dialog, childish scenes, stunningly derivative visuals - you have the nerve to call his visual sense "amazing"?! Here's the films he visually stole from for AOTC - The Fifth Element(city car chase), Blade Runner(same sequence, when they come down to the bar), Waterworld/Dune(the hidden cloning planet), Gladiator(the arena scene), and Starship Troopers(the final apocalyptic battle scenes).
There were indeed some mighty fine FX sequences done for this movie. It was a BAD film, however. It was bad because it was written and directed poorly - I know MacGregor, Lee and Jackson can act(although the lead was another issue!), so there's only two people you can blame - the writer or the director. Hmmm...who was that?
And give me a break on the "visionary" stuff. If he hadn't made all the money he had in his early years(off American Grafitti and SW), then he would have gone bust after a year and no-one would have heard of him again. It was throwing more and more money at ILM that kept it going. If he hadn't of done it, then someone else would have. Period. Why do so many people worship money? There are hundreds, nay thousands of people over history that just kept pouring more and more money after something they thought was "neat". Some ended up being successful, and are "visionaries". Others died penniless and are "losers".
You'd think the average Slashdotter would have a little less respect for corporate sucess as a measure of quality.
DT
Stop being such an ugly american, fer cryin' out loud. You find it surprising/disappointing that there are some smart people in the world that don't come from your particular country? Gawd. Do some reading. Travel. Listening.
I'm completely unfamiliar with the guy, which puts me in a good position, I suppose.
It was as if the "review" was written by an overeager child - nothing remotely reputable in it. Please folks. Anyone using that many quotation marks can't seriously be expected to be anything other than a rabid fan.
DT
>> What happens after the wall, is there also a parachute, or are you just supposed to land after your 20 foot fall
That's been bylined for now until v2.0.
>> Micoreactors could detect bleeding and apply pressure. -So that the enemies crackers can cut off circulation in battle to help their side.
No, it's being used in v1.0 for when you land on the other side of the brick wall.
> MIT's research centers had been working on nanotechnology ideas long before getting involved with the Army, but not with military applications in mind.
And look how far they've come! Pretty soon you can replace your president with a comely anime babe spitting out mutating nano-robots! Count me in.
DT
Well folks, it's only a few bucks. In the end, I'll probably just leave things as they are, and if the big ads drive me nuts I'll make a decision then whether to cough up, or make another site my homepage. That's life in the big city.
:)
However, what about Google? Assuming I'll always be online, they're something I cannot live without, yet the ads are absurdly small and never interfere with it's usage. It's free. Is it because so many more people use Google than Slashdot that the advertisers don't give them as much flack? Perhaps the answer is to broaden the demographic - perhaps Brittany vs Linus online voting?
DT
I've beta tested many time, and my contribution has gone far, far beyond "XYZ causes a crash". Your job isn't just to break the software, it's to give feedback, (G)UI approaches, suggestions, crazy ideas, in fact everything that happens in the app company before they actually started development. I've never even dreamt about trying to claim ownership over any of those ideas I contributed(many of which I've seen come to light), probably just because I'm not a major asshole like the beta tester that spawned this thread. Oh, I also had to sign a contract too :), but frankly most of it relates to my not revealing product information during the process.
As has been already mentioned:
ideas are not product, and
GET A LAWYER!
DT
Don't forget, when it comes down to it, they are making a *film*. Someone had to sit down and write a movie, regardless of what "Square does". It's an individual thing. The process, according to Screenplay magazine, was a very bad one - the director(a games director with no training in film), who didn't speak English, spoke through an interpreter to an American writer, and back again through the same pipe. The original idea was a poor one(IMHO), and the writer said that the process was hell - essentially he'd hear one thing, send back a response, then would hear a completely different thing because the interpreter happened to translate the same thing a different way("purple" became "red", for instance). It was rushed, awkward, and not remotely conducive to brainstorming. When I read that(before it came out), I knew immediately it would be very unlikely it would be a good film. I'm in the middle of a writing project with a co-writer and I cannot *begin* to imagine how it could work if we spoke different languages. It's hard enough just getting two minds to sync!
So blaming it on the fact that games are different than films isn't really accurate. To be fair, the director had the foresight to insist on having a professional writer be involved, but the decision to use an English-only writer was incorrect. Not that the writer wasn't any good! The pipeline was flawed. *Perhaps* with a good Japanese writer they could have wrangled a decent film out of that derivative mess of an idea.
DT
It seems obvious tht most of the people posting here don't have to deal with SGI directly. They have *consistently* gouged their users in the support area ever since they opened. When they were the only shop in town, no-one could stop them. Now - forget it. If you're well-off and buy SGI workstations for a hobby you can ignore this topic, but when you're trying to run a business and they lasso you into positively obscene support contracts, you ask questions. Since support is one of their major profit centres, don't expect an answer.
They're in trouble - most people I know in the FX biz see this as a desperate last hurrah in the post world.
DT
This whole topic is indeed navel-gazing. Whenever people write about trends in contempory culture, do they really have a point except to sell books and make money? All you need to do is go to the library and read articles by people throughout history who have done the same - they are either charmingly naive or they spotted precisely what would happen - and it happened.
Fact is, there are pros and cons to the inet. To TV. To film, books, trash tabloid, mass travel, etc., on to infinity. So what's the point? Is the original author sounding a wake-up call to action - we must crush the inet to save bowling alleys! C'mon folks. Civilization moves inexorably to where it must. As individuals, we can sometimes make a change, but larger things than your bandwidth drive the world.
Sheesh.
DT
>> No bashing here , but Samba validates Microsoft.
No it doesn't! There seems to be two groups of people here - those that embrace every attempt to get Linux to work with the rest of the world, and those that see anything like that as some sort of "betrayal" to the Linux community (to be fair, you haven't worded it that strongly, but I've seen it many times here).
As an end user, and not a hacker, I cannot tell you how important it is to be able to have sharing of resources with others, regardless of their OS. It goes without saying that the majority of computing resources in the world are attached to MS-run machines. Anything that promotes access is a winner in my books. That the Samba team has accomplished this, to the degree they have, with a protocol as "crappy" as that, with MS doing everything they can to obfuscate matters, well, hats off to you people. Thank you very, very much.
Would you prefer that they dismantle Samba and wait until enough Open Source resource sharing protocols are embraced by windows users? Don't hold your breath!
Sincerely
DT
While I think your comments are a little too cynical for my tastes, I do agree in principal. I'm sure that historians would have had a *huge* snigger over the naiveness of the original article. Technology changes the world - yup. It changes the way we interact with each other. Hell, technology let us live longer than 30 years! But it doesn't change human nature. There's some wonderful caring unselfish people floating about. And there's some major selfish, cruel buggers too. Always have been! The only people I trust to predict possible futures are people that have rigourously and objectively studied the past.
You are essentially fulfilling comments made earlier - the only people that will benefit by this are lazy and don't want to walk. I understand it's trendy on /. to knock anything hyped, but really. REALLY. This is absolute crap. It's not going to completely change society. People who drive their car 3 blocks to get groceries still need the trunk to stuff their prepackaged food into. They aren't going to switch and stop burning fuel. Bikers won't dump their bikes which are certainly no more dangerous and give them great exercise(to say nothing of a very vibrant bike subculture). The only people that will buy it are rich yuppies that want to look trendy, or if they put the price point low, cardiac disease will jump 20%.
I don't doubt MS employees will look very trendy(=geeky) zipping around Redmond on their little racing-striped Gingers. But please. Changing the world?
DT
The work they did to Olly was hardly "pionneering", however they did a very nice job. Suffice it to say, there's a universe of difference between some clever tricks on a few scenes with existing footage of an actor that has already created the character for the audience, vs making a digital human that must convey an entire performance from scratch. FF showed just how incredibly far the technology has to go to make people *care* about pixels pretending to be humans. This producer is doing what producers do best: BS
DThorne
Part of the problem is that both the dissers and the pro-XBox people miss the point - the subject of my message. Dreamcast had great hardware - where is it now? The *vast* majority of end users of these products care not a whit about specs - they just want games on it that they enjoy playing. Only time will tell if Gates et al get that point and manage to attract designers of the same magnitude as Nintendo does. The fact that MS seemed to focus more on hardware than software doesn't bode well for them, since they're the new kid on the block. However, as much as I'm not a big MS fan, they're not entirely stupid - I'm sure that now the hardware footprint has been established they're focusing on attracting those developers.
DThorne
This sort of crap is inevitable, but *man* do I hate this. It's on the same page as the V chip - it buys into a philosophy that children that watch cartoons with more than 3 "violent acts per minute" will grow up to be John Gacey.
Look, parents and teachers, if your child is going to watch a show on history that contains moments of violence, then let them watch it or not, based on it's quality. I remember seeing sexual and violent stuff as a kid, and because I was provided with a *context*, I was appropriately tittilated or terrified, and I learned from that. When I watch "Die Hard" with the particularly brutal sequences edited out for broadcast TV, it sickens me more than anything you could show me on the screen. If you think your kid should be watching a fantasy story about a constantly swearing cop blowing away terrorists, then let it be. Otherwise, don't let them watch it! Don't pass the responsibility of parenting to execs and censors.
Disgusted in TO
Even though my initial reaction was to support The Sims, in retrospect I think perhaps not, for a couple of reasons: :)
On more than one occasion, I've heard wags refer to the game as a "yuppie simulator". Not entirely incorrect, and it's likely that kids from difficult circumstances will probably not relate to the cutesy consumerism inherent in the game.
Because it *is* really a simulation (regardless of what you may think it's simulating), I can see it being misused, despite the good intentions of the original poster. I wonder how long before some management person looks over the shoulder of a kid trying to fry some yuppies in a hot tub with a toaster and makes a judgement on the kid. Hell, that's the first thing I tried to do!
D.T.
Hey - I know that Google's just a bunch of folks with a great product and attitude, but I swear that they seem to be positively magical about reading my mind. For instance, I live in Canada, where we often get shortchanged with the obvious content bias of our illustrious friends to the south, but man - there's no other engine that gives me the number hits I'm after when I type in a word, like "York", which happens to be a borough in nothern Toronto, but also happens to be part of a name of a sizable little town southeast of us. :)
:)
Other engines give endless New York results, but somehow Google hits home. And that's just a trivial example. I think it's great that there's competition starting up - that's good for all of us - but they have a *long* way to go to catch up with the Mighty G.
And getting that sort of endorsement from all these cynical hackers is impressive enough!
D.T.
I don't think you missed a thing! When edocs in general first appeared, I used to always bitch about many of the items in your list, but secretly I felt it was an age thing of mine - despite how much I was computer-friendly - it *isn't* a book. I always thought younger kids would embrace it and I'd be left in the dust. Now that the ebook "revolution" has happened, I feel vindicated re: my initial instincts. :)
The Tribune article commented on the industry control over content - I honestly don't think the potential audience out there gives a shit about that(seems to be mostly info/net geeks that care). They want the convenience of changing their location, flipping(VERY important!), and not worrying that their book will "run out."
Print works!
Oh - and the reason the kids don't embrace them?
They don't read!
DT
I'm sorry, but I really think you're wrong about the original audience. I distinctly remember when it was released in 1977, getting on the cover of Time magazine labelled as a "Fable for the 70's". I think that we get jaded nowadays because we've been Indiana Jonesd and Matrix'ed to death - been there done that. Back then, however, Star Wars was new inasmuch as it showed a science fiction world that was "dirtier" and more used than ever had been shown in films before. It created a world that had never been experienced before - it crossed the age boundary. Now don't get me wrong - I screened it again the other day and am embarrassed by the big hair and poor acting - it's not a "great film", but I think you're wrong in dismissing it as for children only. It was intended, and succeeded, to capture the sense of wonder we had as children, regardless of age.
For the record, I *loathed* the latest. Odd about the wide-eyed kids you saw - in my screening the little kid next to me constantly yawned. When asked by his father "did you like it?", he answered "well, the racing scene was cool." I agreed with him - that's all I got out of it!
DT