Basically it's a hard drive and a processor in your pocket. It connects wirelessly to "normal" computers. So I can carry my mp3s, my videos, my schedule, and all that crap around with me in a little box. But if I want to get at it I have to connect to the little box from a "real" computer.
You know what's better than that? Just set up a "real" computer at home. Then use VNC, ssh, a web server, sftp, or any of that type of stuff. Then, wa-la you have the same exact thing. Only now, you don't have to carry anything around with you. It just sits on your desk at home, where it always is.
The problem isn't that you can't get to your stuff when you're out of the house. The problem is that you can't get to a computer. What I'd like to see is a super super thin super small laptop. Screen, keyboard, small processor, bit of ram, sound output of some kind, pointing device and network connectivity through wire or not. The device would pretty much be a vnc box. Turn it in, connect securely to your machine at home. Use your computer from anywhere on earth.
There's a problem with this. If you are on a plane, suck. But vnc uses mad bandwith. So if you don't have broadband it should have a command line only mode, or at least a low bandwith mode, like lbx or something. So that you can make it work by plugging it into the bottom of your cell phone and raising the little antenna.
We don't need the services. Those can be anywhere. The problem is lack of io. Give me just the io devices and a means to connect, and I'll have just one computer. I'm asking for something like viewsonic's wireless monitor, only 10 times better.
That's just great. But one thing... What kind of hardware do I need to connect my computer to all the devices in my house? Does it support wireless? I would assume that the site would have the answers I'm looking for, but it's a bit/.ed.
Software does me no good if I don't have the hardware to make it work.
I think you are missing the point a little bit. It is true what you say about plot. But we aren't talking about books, we're talking about video games. While the plot may change, the user interaction, the game is still the same. I can take an old adventure game engine, and make a new game on it. The plot could be outstanding, the puzzles could be ingenius. But it will still be a game of click on stuff to solve puzzles and progress the plot. While the plot will be revolutionary, perhaps enough to make the game worth buying, the game will be the same as it has always been.
Once you've experience the perfect fps (Half-Life as evidence shows), all the others seem to be more of the same. Changing the theme doesn't make it better. When there is actually a new innovation in the genre then it means something.
I'm aware of many reasons adventure games have passed on, but I'm not sure which one I want to put stake in. One thing I do know is Space Shooting games like Gradius, RaidenIII, R-TYPE, etc. and why they died. This might provide some insight into gaming genres as a whole.
Back in the day there were lots of space shooters. 1942 series, ZAXON, Galaga, Galaxian, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Defender. They all fit in somewhere. But around the time of Gradius, Life Force, and definitely by R-TYPE3, Gradius 3, Raptor:COTS the genre had been perfected. There was no more new ways to innovate and make the game better.
They put more bullets on the screen to dodge. They gave you a wide variety of weapons and defenses. They made really flashy big bosses. They provided environments that were difficult to navigate along with bad guys simultaneously. They did everything to make the games awesome. They had a lot of practice making shooters and they had perfected the art. So the genre died. Every new space shooter had to be perfect. If it wasn't then it was crap compared to the 10 or so perfect shooters. So we get Einhander, G-Darius, and now Ikaruga. There are still new games in the genre, but each one is simply a new perfect game. They each add a new gameplay gimmick to separate them from the rest. G-Darius let you grap enemies and make them join you. Ikaruga has the color change shield thing.
These aren't bad games. In fact, they are about as good as they can be. This is the problem. Because there is no innovation in the genre nobody is buying the games. Why would I buy spaceshootX if it is the same game as spaceshootY, it only adds new sprites to look at?
This is the same reason a lot of PC gaming is going downhill and console gaming is really kicking it. The genres which play well on a PC are lacking innovation. The RTS, the FPS, the simulation. All of these haven't seen any major advances. New games just have better graphics and physics. Tribes 2 was the last great advance in fps gameplay, and they fucked it up. Unreal Tournamet 2k3 and Unreal 2 are just more of the same, but shinier. When a genre doesn't innovate it dies. There is no reason to buy a new RTS if the RTS you already have it perfect. This is why Counter-Strike and other Half-Life mods are still #1. Nobody has come up with anything better.
King Kong is not smaller than a B2 bomber. I remember clearly that in Godzilla vs. King Kong it was an even fight in height and weight.
Also, there are too many Star Trek ships on that chart. Star Trek sux. There are some Star Wars ships, but where's the death star? Where's the star destroyers? Did I miss them?
Also the SDF-1 Macross is still missing. I am of the opinion that in a 1 on 1 fight the Macross can beat any other single starship of any category. The Valkyries will dominate!
You mean we'll go back to the golden age. Where in Bases Loaded the best batters were Paste and Warner. And team names were single letters like P, B and M. The only sports games that are good anymore are NHL 200*. Other than that the best are NBA Jam, Bases Loaded, Baseball, Baseball Simulator, 10 Yard Fight, Tecmo Super Bowl, Blades of Steel, and the best ever Ice Hockey. I'd rather have generic color teams with no branding. Then the companies will concentrate on making the game better and not on getting the better license.
The trueness. I only fly jetblue, because they go everywhere I do, and for other reasons. But now every airport has decided they want to search checked baggage. I mean sure, if there's a time bomb or a remote controlled bomb in there, then you can do some damage. But if I check a gun, how am I supposed to get it from the cargo hold in flight?
I got the truth out of an airport employee once. They realize that the security is false. They know that people can sneak stuff on. They know that they can never provide real security. They do it to make idiots feel safe. Because if idiots didn't feel safe they wouldn't fly.
I say if we didn't scare them in the first place they wouldn't need to feel safe.
But yeah, I don't check shit that is worth anything. If I need to bring more expensive stuff than I can carry, airplane is not my choice. Security or not.
p2p file sharing is great, and we all know why. But it has one serious flaw. Searching a p2p network is complete ass compared to searching google. But a web server doesn't do well at serving very large files. So if someone wants to have say, a video blog, they shouldn't have to pay for the zillions of megabytes in bandwith, nor is it a fast/reasonable way to simply link to the file and use http/ftp. And pointing all your visitors towards a p2p program like WinMX or Kazaa is ok, but it has problems. You can't guarantee visitors will get the file. Many will not care enough to go through the effort. The file could be renamed, or altered or otherwise false.
Bit Torrent allows webmasters to overcome these problems. Because of BitTorrent you can put a link to a video on your web site, without paying out the ass or crashing and burning from the load. Your visitors have to go through very little effort to get the file. Even if nobody else is sharing, you have to be, so at least they are guaranteed to get the goods. And they are guaranteed to get the correct goods. And they don't have to search relentlessly for it.
One thing that pisses me off, however, is that every time I want to download something with bit torrent I have to open up Internet Explorer. I used to use IE until I discovered Phoenix(Firebird) months ago. I don't want to have to keep opening IE every other day to download a single file. If BitTorrent doesn't work with Moz it's either a fault in Moz or a fault in BitTorrent. And it should be fixed either way.
It's hard to do. Too many people would be on both lists. The problem is that big evil corporations are so big that some parts of them are evil and some parts are good. Like how sony electronics and sony music are in direct conflict on the mp3 issue. Most big corporations are in general evil. They just have good parts. Like an axe murderer who takes his victim's wallets and donates the money to the homeless. Or something like that.
yeah, my friend has one of those. Runs Linux on it and everything. The thing in this article doesn't even hold a candle to it. Even the mini Sony VAIO is better than this. Sure they're both a little bigger, but they are small enough.
Well if you need it cross platform the obvious choice is java. You also want a web interface, which could be jsp or php. mysql or postgres is the database choice, because recommending anything else on/. will get you stoned. Java seems to be a good choice also because you can use it on handheld devices and such. Problem is that you're going to need to hire some software people to make your database. There might be one that exists already, but it wont be tailored to your exact needs. You can get a small software company to make it for you, or hire some contract coders to get the job done. It isn't a hard thing, people make stuff like this every day.
The trueness. Even in Mandrake 9 it uses kaffe instead of sun java. You have to install sun java yourself, which is easy enough. But you have to replace the symbolic links in/usr/bin with ones that point to the sun java. When I tried to install jython I realized this.
I'm kind of dissapointed about this MoneyDance program though. It looks like it's really cool and simple. Which is just what I need because I don't do complicated things with my money. But it's a java program, and it isn't free as in beer or speech. If I had extra money to spend on software I wouldn't need a money managing program.
All of that is good, but proportional represenation is bad. Countries like Israel and New Zealand have proportional representation. This means that if 5% of the people are nazis, then 5% of the government is nazi. It works in theory, however because they are so many parties in government nothing gets done. Instead of two sides to every issue there are 20, and compromise takes a long long time. The problem is that new people are voted in more often than stuff gets done. I agree we need more democracy, and a more than two party system, and no corporate involvment. But proportional representation is mostly bad.
The real problem is that Kazaa is the p2p sharing program of choice. It uses so much bandwith for its spy/adware stuff that you don't even realize. If you could get kazaa users to use some other p2p program that isn't spyware, then it would be much much faster.
I've seen cable and I've seen DSL. Depending on who and where one is usually faster than the other. But either one is usually fast enough. They are both fast enough to stream video. And the difference isn't enough to save a significant amount of time when you are downloading a few linux isos. It doesn't really matter if you choose cable or DSL. You wont get the next significant level of speed unless you are at a college campus or have a lot of money.
I thought this article was going to talke about backing into a "normal" parking spot. But apparently people don't seem to know what a paralell park is. It's not a reverse park.
Personally, I think if you can't park anywhere, at anytime, then you shouldn't be driving. United States hand out driver's licenses too easily. The driving test should be a rigorous test of skill. Only extremely skilled drivers should be allowed to get behind the wheel. A system like that would have numerous obvious positive effects. One of them would be that driving would be a lot more fun. Mainly because you have confidence in your own ability as well as the ability of others. You wouldn't have to be constantly watching out for what every other car is doing, but instead be able to have fun worrying about your own driving.
On another slightly more unrelated note, speed limits are bs. Speed limits make the roads less safe in order to provide revenue for the states. Most people drive comfortable at about 85 mph (on the highway). If the speed limit was 85, not many people would feel comfortable driving faster than that. Presently with speed limits like 65 and 75 people feel that they are still in control of their car when they go over the limit. What results is some people who refuse to go over the limit and some people who always go 5 or 10 or even 15 mph over the limit. I think its obvious that it would be safer if every car on the road was driving at about 85mph as opposed to some driving 65 and some driving as high as 90. Mixing fast + slow cars disrupts the traffic and makes thing less-safe.
What makes open source projects successful is obvious. Look at things like Mozilla, gaim, DC++, CDex, etc. What do they all have in common?
Most open source projects fall into one of the following categories.
1)A program someone wrote for themselves, and decided to make freely available for the heck of it.
2)By geeks for geeks.
3)Done by a group, for free and open, but thinking like a commercial product.
3 are the succesful projects. They have good GUIs, they don't crash, they have features that make them better than commercial alternatives, they install easily, they work on many OSes, and they are generally useful. They are often mistaken for commercial products. Slick interface is key. They just happen to be free and open.
What we really need is to replace the entire technological infrastructure from scratch.
New electical, plumbing, telephone, fiber, roads, everything. Technology has advanced so much over the past 100 years that the infrastructure, in the USA in particular, is a patchwork of "legacy" and new technologies. You can see just driving around places where shitty old telephone poles head underground. Places where you'll see new fancy street lights, with old crappy lights at the next intersection. Of course, it's unrealistic. But it would be pretty awesome.
That was a lot less geeky, a lot more well thought out and a lot more fun to read than I would have ever imagined it being. Props to the guy who came up with that.
I have the Logitech cordless freedom keyboard and mouse pair. The mouse is the Cordless Mouseman Optical. I got it because it has a third button. A thumb button! I also hate clicking the scroll wheel, but I like scrolling the scroll wheel. The mouse is perfect in every way, I've even made it work in linux and windows. I highly reccomend it.
I definitely dig the open floor. Have bit U and L shaped desks with computers and cool shit everywhere. Ad some scenery with video games, posters, stuff hanging from the cieling. Give people nerf guns. But a dart board on the wall. Chair with wheels are key. A floor, some desks, some machines, and a combination of work and fun.
Slashdot Mirror
Basically it's a hard drive and a processor in your pocket. It connects wirelessly to "normal" computers. So I can carry my mp3s, my videos, my schedule, and all that crap around with me in a little box. But if I want to get at it I have to connect to the little box from a "real" computer.
You know what's better than that? Just set up a "real" computer at home. Then use VNC, ssh, a web server, sftp, or any of that type of stuff. Then, wa-la you have the same exact thing. Only now, you don't have to carry anything around with you. It just sits on your desk at home, where it always is.
The problem isn't that you can't get to your stuff when you're out of the house. The problem is that you can't get to a computer. What I'd like to see is a super super thin super small laptop. Screen, keyboard, small processor, bit of ram, sound output of some kind, pointing device and network connectivity through wire or not. The device would pretty much be a vnc box. Turn it in, connect securely to your machine at home. Use your computer from anywhere on earth.
There's a problem with this. If you are on a plane, suck. But vnc uses mad bandwith. So if you don't have broadband it should have a command line only mode, or at least a low bandwith mode, like lbx or something. So that you can make it work by plugging it into the bottom of your cell phone and raising the little antenna.
We don't need the services. Those can be anywhere. The problem is lack of io. Give me just the io devices and a means to connect, and I'll have just one computer. I'm asking for something like viewsonic's wireless monitor, only 10 times better.
Zelda 1
Mega Man 2 (the best game ever)
Countless RPGs, especially SNES ones.
Why is stuff like this always way out west? There are a whole lot of gamers up northeast, and we don't get none.
That's just great. But one thing... What kind of hardware do I need to connect my computer to all the devices in my house? Does it support wireless? I would assume that the site would have the answers I'm looking for, but it's a bit /.ed.
Software does me no good if I don't have the hardware to make it work.
I think you are missing the point a little bit. It is true what you say about plot. But we aren't talking about books, we're talking about video games. While the plot may change, the user interaction, the game is still the same. I can take an old adventure game engine, and make a new game on it. The plot could be outstanding, the puzzles could be ingenius. But it will still be a game of click on stuff to solve puzzles and progress the plot. While the plot will be revolutionary, perhaps enough to make the game worth buying, the game will be the same as it has always been.
Once you've experience the perfect fps (Half-Life as evidence shows), all the others seem to be more of the same. Changing the theme doesn't make it better. When there is actually a new innovation in the genre then it means something.
I'm aware of many reasons adventure games have passed on, but I'm not sure which one I want to put stake in. One thing I do know is Space Shooting games like Gradius, RaidenIII, R-TYPE, etc. and why they died. This might provide some insight into gaming genres as a whole.
Back in the day there were lots of space shooters. 1942 series, ZAXON, Galaga, Galaxian, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Defender. They all fit in somewhere. But around the time of Gradius, Life Force, and definitely by R-TYPE3, Gradius 3, Raptor:COTS the genre had been perfected. There was no more new ways to innovate and make the game better.
They put more bullets on the screen to dodge. They gave you a wide variety of weapons and defenses. They made really flashy big bosses. They provided environments that were difficult to navigate along with bad guys simultaneously. They did everything to make the games awesome. They had a lot of practice making shooters and they had perfected the art. So the genre died. Every new space shooter had to be perfect. If it wasn't then it was crap compared to the 10 or so perfect shooters. So we get Einhander, G-Darius, and now Ikaruga. There are still new games in the genre, but each one is simply a new perfect game. They each add a new gameplay gimmick to separate them from the rest. G-Darius let you grap enemies and make them join you. Ikaruga has the color change shield thing.
These aren't bad games. In fact, they are about as good as they can be. This is the problem. Because there is no innovation in the genre nobody is buying the games. Why would I buy spaceshootX if it is the same game as spaceshootY, it only adds new sprites to look at?
This is the same reason a lot of PC gaming is going downhill and console gaming is really kicking it. The genres which play well on a PC are lacking innovation. The RTS, the FPS, the simulation. All of these haven't seen any major advances. New games just have better graphics and physics. Tribes 2 was the last great advance in fps gameplay, and they fucked it up. Unreal Tournamet 2k3 and Unreal 2 are just more of the same, but shinier. When a genre doesn't innovate it dies. There is no reason to buy a new RTS if the RTS you already have it perfect. This is why Counter-Strike and other Half-Life mods are still #1. Nobody has come up with anything better.
King Kong is not smaller than a B2 bomber. I remember clearly that in Godzilla vs. King Kong it was an even fight in height and weight.
Also, there are too many Star Trek ships on that chart. Star Trek sux. There are some Star Wars ships, but where's the death star? Where's the star destroyers? Did I miss them?
Also the SDF-1 Macross is still missing. I am of the opinion that in a 1 on 1 fight the Macross can beat any other single starship of any category. The Valkyries will dominate!
You mean we'll go back to the golden age. Where in Bases Loaded the best batters were Paste and Warner. And team names were single letters like P, B and M. The only sports games that are good anymore are NHL 200*. Other than that the best are NBA Jam, Bases Loaded, Baseball, Baseball Simulator, 10 Yard Fight, Tecmo Super Bowl, Blades of Steel, and the best ever Ice Hockey. I'd rather have generic color teams with no branding. Then the companies will concentrate on making the game better and not on getting the better license.
The trueness. I only fly jetblue, because they go everywhere I do, and for other reasons. But now every airport has decided they want to search checked baggage. I mean sure, if there's a time bomb or a remote controlled bomb in there, then you can do some damage. But if I check a gun, how am I supposed to get it from the cargo hold in flight?
I got the truth out of an airport employee once. They realize that the security is false. They know that people can sneak stuff on. They know that they can never provide real security. They do it to make idiots feel safe. Because if idiots didn't feel safe they wouldn't fly.
I say if we didn't scare them in the first place they wouldn't need to feel safe.
But yeah, I don't check shit that is worth anything. If I need to bring more expensive stuff than I can carry, airplane is not my choice. Security or not.
p2p file sharing is great, and we all know why. But it has one serious flaw. Searching a p2p network is complete ass compared to searching google. But a web server doesn't do well at serving very large files. So if someone wants to have say, a video blog, they shouldn't have to pay for the zillions of megabytes in bandwith, nor is it a fast/reasonable way to simply link to the file and use http/ftp. And pointing all your visitors towards a p2p program like WinMX or Kazaa is ok, but it has problems. You can't guarantee visitors will get the file. Many will not care enough to go through the effort. The file could be renamed, or altered or otherwise false.
Bit Torrent allows webmasters to overcome these problems. Because of BitTorrent you can put a link to a video on your web site, without paying out the ass or crashing and burning from the load. Your visitors have to go through very little effort to get the file. Even if nobody else is sharing, you have to be, so at least they are guaranteed to get the goods. And they are guaranteed to get the correct goods. And they don't have to search relentlessly for it.
One thing that pisses me off, however, is that every time I want to download something with bit torrent I have to open up Internet Explorer. I used to use IE until I discovered Phoenix(Firebird) months ago. I don't want to have to keep opening IE every other day to download a single file. If BitTorrent doesn't work with Moz it's either a fault in Moz or a fault in BitTorrent. And it should be fixed either way.
It's hard to do. Too many people would be on both lists. The problem is that big evil corporations are so big that some parts of them are evil and some parts are good. Like how sony electronics and sony music are in direct conflict on the mp3 issue. Most big corporations are in general evil. They just have good parts. Like an axe murderer who takes his victim's wallets and donates the money to the homeless. Or something like that.
and windows 95+ runs dos programs so well. I don't need a seperate box to play TIE Fighter or anything.
Jabba the Hut: Bitch of a Wookie Chewbacca.
(he actually says this at one point)
yeah, my friend has one of those. Runs Linux on it and everything. The thing in this article doesn't even hold a candle to it. Even the mini Sony VAIO is better than this. Sure they're both a little bigger, but they are small enough.
Well if you need it cross platform the obvious choice is java. You also want a web interface, which could be jsp or php. mysql or postgres is the database choice, because recommending anything else on /. will get you stoned. Java seems to be a good choice also because you can use it on handheld devices and such. Problem is that you're going to need to hire some software people to make your database. There might be one that exists already, but it wont be tailored to your exact needs. You can get a small software company to make it for you, or hire some contract coders to get the job done. It isn't a hard thing, people make stuff like this every day.
w00t, I would join this week if I had 100$. Anyone want to pay for me? I wish they had a "poor college student" membership for $1.00
The trueness. Even in Mandrake 9 it uses kaffe instead of sun java. You have to install sun java yourself, which is easy enough. But you have to replace the symbolic links in /usr/bin with ones that point to the sun java. When I tried to install jython I realized this.
I'm kind of dissapointed about this MoneyDance program though. It looks like it's really cool and simple. Which is just what I need because I don't do complicated things with my money. But it's a java program, and it isn't free as in beer or speech. If I had extra money to spend on software I wouldn't need a money managing program.
All of that is good, but proportional represenation is bad. Countries like Israel and New Zealand have proportional representation. This means that if 5% of the people are nazis, then 5% of the government is nazi. It works in theory, however because they are so many parties in government nothing gets done. Instead of two sides to every issue there are 20, and compromise takes a long long time. The problem is that new people are voted in more often than stuff gets done. I agree we need more democracy, and a more than two party system, and no corporate involvment. But proportional representation is mostly bad.
The real problem is that Kazaa is the p2p sharing program of choice. It uses so much bandwith for its spy/adware stuff that you don't even realize. If you could get kazaa users to use some other p2p program that isn't spyware, then it would be much much faster.
I've seen cable and I've seen DSL. Depending on who and where one is usually faster than the other. But either one is usually fast enough. They are both fast enough to stream video. And the difference isn't enough to save a significant amount of time when you are downloading a few linux isos. It doesn't really matter if you choose cable or DSL. You wont get the next significant level of speed unless you are at a college campus or have a lot of money.
I thought this article was going to talke about backing into a "normal" parking spot. But apparently people don't seem to know what a paralell park is. It's not a reverse park.
Personally, I think if you can't park anywhere, at anytime, then you shouldn't be driving. United States hand out driver's licenses too easily. The driving test should be a rigorous test of skill. Only extremely skilled drivers should be allowed to get behind the wheel. A system like that would have numerous obvious positive effects. One of them would be that driving would be a lot more fun. Mainly because you have confidence in your own ability as well as the ability of others. You wouldn't have to be constantly watching out for what every other car is doing, but instead be able to have fun worrying about your own driving.
On another slightly more unrelated note, speed limits are bs. Speed limits make the roads less safe in order to provide revenue for the states. Most people drive comfortable at about 85 mph (on the highway). If the speed limit was 85, not many people would feel comfortable driving faster than that. Presently with speed limits like 65 and 75 people feel that they are still in control of their car when they go over the limit. What results is some people who refuse to go over the limit and some people who always go 5 or 10 or even 15 mph over the limit. I think its obvious that it would be safer if every car on the road was driving at about 85mph as opposed to some driving 65 and some driving as high as 90. Mixing fast + slow cars disrupts the traffic and makes thing less-safe.
What makes open source projects successful is obvious. Look at things like Mozilla, gaim, DC++, CDex, etc. What do they all have in common?
Most open source projects fall into one of the following categories.
1)A program someone wrote for themselves, and decided to make freely available for the heck of it.
2)By geeks for geeks.
3)Done by a group, for free and open, but thinking like a commercial product.
3 are the succesful projects. They have good GUIs, they don't crash, they have features that make them better than commercial alternatives, they install easily, they work on many OSes, and they are generally useful. They are often mistaken for commercial products. Slick interface is key. They just happen to be free and open.
What we really need is to replace the entire technological infrastructure from scratch.
New electical, plumbing, telephone, fiber, roads, everything. Technology has advanced so much over the past 100 years that the infrastructure, in the USA in particular, is a patchwork of "legacy" and new technologies. You can see just driving around places where shitty old telephone poles head underground. Places where you'll see new fancy street lights, with old crappy lights at the next intersection. Of course, it's unrealistic. But it would be pretty awesome.
That was a lot less geeky, a lot more well thought out and a lot more fun to read than I would have ever imagined it being. Props to the guy who came up with that.
I have the Logitech cordless freedom keyboard and mouse pair. The mouse is the Cordless Mouseman Optical. I got it because it has a third button. A thumb button! I also hate clicking the scroll wheel, but I like scrolling the scroll wheel. The mouse is perfect in every way, I've even made it work in linux and windows. I highly reccomend it.
I definitely dig the open floor. Have bit U and L shaped desks with computers and cool shit everywhere. Ad some scenery with video games, posters, stuff hanging from the cieling. Give people nerf guns. But a dart board on the wall. Chair with wheels are key. A floor, some desks, some machines, and a combination of work and fun.