Why? The work that Al Gore has done to raise awareness of our current planetary climate crisis is second to none. The Peace Prize goes out to individuals who raise global awareness of issues that affect the peace of the entire world, right? Wouldn't you say that climate change is in that category?
No, I wouldn't. If there were a Nobel Prize in climatology, then I could see giving him that, but peace? Ridiculous.
I actually agree with Con's assessment that Linus' refusal to accept these performance enhancements shows that the desktop is not a priority in the core Linux kernel, just as embedded devices are not. What I don't understand is why there's so much controversy over creating a kernel variant to address this. It's been done before, and these variants seem to coexist more or less peacefully with the core. You have uClinux handling embedded devices, while SELinux has a following among the security community, RTLinux does realtime stuff, and so on. Why should a "DeskLinux" with Con's performance enhancements be any different?
PS3 fans are like Harry/Hermione shippers. Fans of something that's theoretically very good, and would be nifty if it actually happened. But reality works against it, and there are reasons for that. And so it just doesn't work out, but it's not the end of the world.
Wii fans are like Ron/Hermione shippers. Much less glamorous, even mundane. Yet for various good reasons, it Just Works Out. The fans see it coming, using stuff that others just don't see (or refuse to see).
XBox 360 fans are like Luna/Hermione shippers. They just want to see Emma Watson making out with another girl on the big screen.
What he's saying is that without strong DRM (or the renamed version), the content providers will simply take their ball and bat and go home.
History shows otherwise. The media always comes around eventually.
Try to remove it, and the HBO mafia will come aknockin'.
And thus, we get to the real kicker: essentially it's a racket. Legitimate users surrender their legitimate rights to the media, and in exchange the media will continue to provide the same crappy level of "service" they provide now.
Certainly it could be argued that online rape is a form of aggravated sexual harrassment. In fact, that's exactly what I would classify that as. But to equate it with actual rape is just plain insulting to those who have been victimized in the real world. Cheapening the real thing does no one any good.
I do not mean to belittle those who have faced online rape. The pain is very real, and it is very strong. It should not simply be ignored or swept under the proverbial carpet. But it's not even in the same league as actual rape.
So let me get this straight... Nintendo is dominating software sales on its platform because its fans aren't tolerating the relative crap put out by the third parties, and this is a bad thing?
THIS... IS... oh, wait; I guess it's not quite enough for Sparta yet, huh? Um... er... let me get back to you in a couple of weeks, k? Here's some earth and water in the meantime.
Programming is to computer science what engineering is to physics.
I'd argue that it's more like what math is to physics (and to computer science).
Programming isn't science, it is an application of science.
It's also the means of expressing that science, which is ultimately why they're as inseparable as math and physics. Take away the ability to record knowledge and it dies.
You wouldn't say that engineering is the most important aspect of physics, and you wouldn't say that de-emphasizing the engineering aspects of physics amounts to lowering the bar.
No, but I might say these things if a school were to de-emphasize mathematics in its physics programs. In fact, this is why I made the Barbie reference in my previous post.
Exactly. While programming is not the only aspect of computer science, it is easily the most important. De-emphasizing it amounts to lowering the bar, and that isn't acceptable in any field. Diversity is nice, but it's not worth compromising standards of excellence.
Surely there is a better way to attract women to CS. Surely the issue of women not being interested isn't just a "Programming is haaaaaaaard" thing; women are not Barbie dolls. If we assume that there's a genuine problem, then we need to be spending more effort figuring out why, rather than using this as a convenient excuse to lower the bar.
The only ironic thing in her song is that despite being about irony, there is in fact no irony in it. Maybe that was part of the intent of the song in the first place, but it doesn't change the fact that there isn't a single correct use of irony in the piece, just a lot of depressing coincidences.
What went wrong guys? Capitalism was never supposed to be as f*cked up as this.
You answered your own question: the capitalism got f*cked up. Capitalism only works as long as there is competition in a given market. When a company achieves monopoly status, it loses its incentive to improve, stagnation rears its head, and eventually ugly stuff like the things you've mention occur.
What's been going on more recently is not so much an issue of true monopolies, but more like a series of agreements between companies that allow them to act as though they were monopolies even if there's more than one in the market. About a hundred years ago we used to call these agreements trusts. This is where the term "antitrust legislation" comes from: a set of regulations aimed at stopping this sort of anticompetitive behavior, thus keeping monopolies and trusts from usurping the power of the markets. It's one of the points where regulation really can be a useful tool of capitalism.
Unfortunately, recent administrations have been less than zealous enough when it comes to enforcing these regulations. Bush the Younger is not the only one to blame for this, though he's certainly the latest one in the bunch. Clinton wasn't so good about it either (the Microsoft trial notwithstanding), nor was Bush the Elder, and while Reagan had his moments most of those were relatively early in his tenure.
Miyamoto use to be absolutely godlike in his ability to come up with enduring gameplay elements in his games. It is so sad to see him now pretty much just towing the Nintendo line as the company tries to market old technology with a pointer tack on.
Miyamoto is "toeing the company line"? No, my friend; Miyamoto is the company line. Have you never heard of the Miyahon Check?
Honestly, I think this is the one thing Nintendo has understood about portable systems that nobody else has ever been able to figure out:
If the batteries are dead, then it doesn't matter how awesome your graphics are, how l33t your processor is, or even how good your games are: your system is an expensive brick. It seems like such a small thing, but poor battery life can bring even the greatest system to its knees. None of Nintendo's competitors seem to have understood this, and in the end they've all suffered for it.
Isn't this basically infrared light? It's a longer wavelength than the stuff emitted by your typical remote control or Wii sensor bar, but it's still basically just infrared, is it not?
OP is correct - The resale market for the Wii will be very low because nobody short of a mindless nintendo fanboy would want want a gamecube in a differently-shaped box.
Although your statement is correct, it's also irrelevant, since the Wii is not "a gamecube in a differently-shaped box" by any stretch of the imagination.
If anything, "emulating the QWERTY layout" is nothing more than marketing for these folks. The real boost here comes from someone else.
Refer back to the title of my post: ETAOIN SHRDLU. It's a mnemonic you see a lot in cryptographic circles, and you can memorize it as though it were a name. It's not an abbreviation, though; it's a list of the twelve most common letters in the English language, in order of how common they're used (E being the most common). If you were to count the letters in the words in an English dictionary, these twelve letters would account for the vast bulk of them.
Now, look at the keyboard again, and take a look at the letters that require only one keypress: ETOARI SHN. Or, scrambled up just a but, ETAOIN SHR: the first nine letters of our mnemonic. This is where the real efficiency boost comes in: the letters that make up over 70% of written English require only one keypress each.
D, L, and U, you will notice, only take two keypresses each. There are slightly better positions for these than the ones they chose, and they freely admit that. They chose to keep the second- and third-letter presses more QWERTY-like for what essentially amount to branding purposes. The real boost comes from the statistical placement of the letters.
Oh yes, people are sticking with MS today just to use IE. [rolling eyes]. You're somewhere between clueless and moronic.
Actually, you might be surprised. One of the big questions potential switchers to Macs ask is about whether "their websites will keep working." Among the few but very vocal people who switch back to Windows, "website compatibility" is often cited as a major reason for going back.
It is difficult to gather corresponding data on people who switch to Linux and/or back, but there's no reason to believe that the situation isn't similar. When MS controls the browser, they have a very powerful weapon for spreading FUD, and they aren't afraid to use it.
The Wii has GC memory card slots already (though it will supposedly use standard SD cards for its own games), so there's no need for an adapter as far as that goes. I would be interested, however, to see if someone will come up with a solution for N64 memory cards, since those games will be playable via the Virtual Console.
If you're so enslaved to your hormones that you can't be entertained by content that isn't "mature", then you are not mature enough to handle such content. Real maturity is when you realize that "maturity" isn't everything.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? The work that Al Gore has done to raise awareness of our current planetary climate crisis is second to none. The Peace Prize goes out to individuals who raise global awareness of issues that affect the peace of the entire world, right? Wouldn't you say that climate change is in that category?
No, I wouldn't. If there were a Nobel Prize in climatology, then I could see giving him that, but peace? Ridiculous.
I actually agree with Con's assessment that Linus' refusal to accept these performance enhancements shows that the desktop is not a priority in the core Linux kernel, just as embedded devices are not. What I don't understand is why there's so much controversy over creating a kernel variant to address this. It's been done before, and these variants seem to coexist more or less peacefully with the core. You have uClinux handling embedded devices, while SELinux has a following among the security community, RTLinux does realtime stuff, and so on. Why should a "DeskLinux" with Con's performance enhancements be any different?
PS3 fans are like Harry/Hermione shippers. Fans of something that's theoretically very good, and would be nifty if it actually happened. But reality works against it, and there are reasons for that. And so it just doesn't work out, but it's not the end of the world.
Wii fans are like Ron/Hermione shippers. Much less glamorous, even mundane. Yet for various good reasons, it Just Works Out. The fans see it coming, using stuff that others just don't see (or refuse to see).
XBox 360 fans are like Luna/Hermione shippers. They just want to see Emma Watson making out with another girl on the big screen.
What he's saying is that without strong DRM (or the renamed version), the content providers will simply take their ball and bat and go home.
History shows otherwise. The media always comes around eventually.
Try to remove it, and the HBO mafia will come aknockin'.
And thus, we get to the real kicker: essentially it's a racket. Legitimate users surrender their legitimate rights to the media, and in exchange the media will continue to provide the same crappy level of "service" they provide now.
Certainly it could be argued that online rape is a form of aggravated sexual harrassment. In fact, that's exactly what I would classify that as. But to equate it with actual rape is just plain insulting to those who have been victimized in the real world. Cheapening the real thing does no one any good.
I do not mean to belittle those who have faced online rape. The pain is very real, and it is very strong. It should not simply be ignored or swept under the proverbial carpet. But it's not even in the same league as actual rape.
You are quite correct. However, it's a sad fact that the laws in many places have not caught up with common sense where this is concerned.
So let me get this straight... Nintendo is dominating software sales on its platform because its fans aren't tolerating the relative crap put out by the third parties, and this is a bad thing?
THIS... IS... oh, wait; I guess it's not quite enough for Sparta yet, huh? Um... er... let me get back to you in a couple of weeks, k? Here's some earth and water in the meantime.
Programming is to computer science what engineering is to physics.
I'd argue that it's more like what math is to physics (and to computer science).
Programming isn't science, it is an application of science.
It's also the means of expressing that science, which is ultimately why they're as inseparable as math and physics. Take away the ability to record knowledge and it dies.
You wouldn't say that engineering is the most important aspect of physics, and you wouldn't say that de-emphasizing the engineering aspects of physics amounts to lowering the bar.
No, but I might say these things if a school were to de-emphasize mathematics in its physics programs. In fact, this is why I made the Barbie reference in my previous post.
Exactly. While programming is not the only aspect of computer science, it is easily the most important. De-emphasizing it amounts to lowering the bar, and that isn't acceptable in any field. Diversity is nice, but it's not worth compromising standards of excellence.
Surely there is a better way to attract women to CS. Surely the issue of women not being interested isn't just a "Programming is haaaaaaaard" thing; women are not Barbie dolls. If we assume that there's a genuine problem, then we need to be spending more effort figuring out why, rather than using this as a convenient excuse to lower the bar.
The only ironic thing in her song is that despite being about irony, there is in fact no irony in it. Maybe that was part of the intent of the song in the first place, but it doesn't change the fact that there isn't a single correct use of irony in the piece, just a lot of depressing coincidences.
What went wrong guys? Capitalism was never supposed to be as f*cked up as this.
You answered your own question: the capitalism got f*cked up. Capitalism only works as long as there is competition in a given market. When a company achieves monopoly status, it loses its incentive to improve, stagnation rears its head, and eventually ugly stuff like the things you've mention occur.
What's been going on more recently is not so much an issue of true monopolies, but more like a series of agreements between companies that allow them to act as though they were monopolies even if there's more than one in the market. About a hundred years ago we used to call these agreements trusts. This is where the term "antitrust legislation" comes from: a set of regulations aimed at stopping this sort of anticompetitive behavior, thus keeping monopolies and trusts from usurping the power of the markets. It's one of the points where regulation really can be a useful tool of capitalism.
Unfortunately, recent administrations have been less than zealous enough when it comes to enforcing these regulations. Bush the Younger is not the only one to blame for this, though he's certainly the latest one in the bunch. Clinton wasn't so good about it either (the Microsoft trial notwithstanding), nor was Bush the Elder, and while Reagan had his moments most of those were relatively early in his tenure.
Miyamoto use to be absolutely godlike in his ability to come up with enduring gameplay elements in his games. It is so sad to see him now pretty much just towing the Nintendo line as the company tries to market old technology with a pointer tack on.
Miyamoto is "toeing the company line"? No, my friend; Miyamoto is the company line. Have you never heard of the Miyahon Check?
Honestly, I think this is the one thing Nintendo has understood about portable systems that nobody else has ever been able to figure out:
If the batteries are dead, then it doesn't matter how awesome your graphics are, how l33t your processor is, or even how good your games are: your system is an expensive brick. It seems like such a small thing, but poor battery life can bring even the greatest system to its knees. None of Nintendo's competitors seem to have understood this, and in the end they've all suffered for it.
Isn't this basically infrared light? It's a longer wavelength than the stuff emitted by your typical remote control or Wii sensor bar, but it's still basically just infrared, is it not?
OP is correct - The resale market for the Wii will be very low because nobody short of a mindless nintendo fanboy would want want a gamecube in a differently-shaped box.
Although your statement is correct, it's also irrelevant, since the Wii is not "a gamecube in a differently-shaped box" by any stretch of the imagination.
If anything, "emulating the QWERTY layout" is nothing more than marketing for these folks. The real boost here comes from someone else.
Refer back to the title of my post: ETAOIN SHRDLU. It's a mnemonic you see a lot in cryptographic circles, and you can memorize it as though it were a name. It's not an abbreviation, though; it's a list of the twelve most common letters in the English language, in order of how common they're used (E being the most common). If you were to count the letters in the words in an English dictionary, these twelve letters would account for the vast bulk of them.
Now, look at the keyboard again, and take a look at the letters that require only one keypress: ETOARI SHN. Or, scrambled up just a but, ETAOIN SHR: the first nine letters of our mnemonic. This is where the real efficiency boost comes in: the letters that make up over 70% of written English require only one keypress each.
D, L, and U, you will notice, only take two keypresses each. There are slightly better positions for these than the ones they chose, and they freely admit that. They chose to keep the second- and third-letter presses more QWERTY-like for what essentially amount to branding purposes. The real boost comes from the statistical placement of the letters.
...oh, that's right. Silly me. I always get web browsers and databases mixed up. You know, they're just so confusingly similar.
First, Sony halved its U.S./Japanese launch shipments of its Blu-ray powered PlayStation 3, blaming a shortage of blue lasers.
Curse those Cheat Commandos...
In Soviet Russia, grue is likely to be eaten by YOU!
Oh yes, people are sticking with MS today just to use IE. [rolling eyes]. You're somewhere between clueless and moronic.
Actually, you might be surprised. One of the big questions potential switchers to Macs ask is about whether "their websites will keep working." Among the few but very vocal people who switch back to Windows, "website compatibility" is often cited as a major reason for going back.
It is difficult to gather corresponding data on people who switch to Linux and/or back, but there's no reason to believe that the situation isn't similar. When MS controls the browser, they have a very powerful weapon for spreading FUD, and they aren't afraid to use it.
You are correct: the letters l and n both appear twice. But then, this is Slashdot; correct spelling may not be a reasonable expectation.
The Wii has GC memory card slots already (though it will supposedly use standard SD cards for its own games), so there's no need for an adapter as far as that goes. I would be interested, however, to see if someone will come up with a solution for N64 memory cards, since those games will be playable via the Virtual Console.
Doesn't PNG qualify as a patent-free high-quality graphics format?
If you're so enslaved to your hormones that you can't be entertained by content that isn't "mature", then you are not mature enough to handle such content. Real maturity is when you realize that "maturity" isn't everything.