Good artists copy, great artists steal... programmers buy.
Well good programmers should look into buying royalty free icons, there's some great icon foundries that offer them and the quality is much higher than most could replicate.
I firmly believe that anyone can draw or paint with the right instruction, but who has that kind of time? Crack open the pocket book. Pay a starving artist, feed them, that's why they are so skinny and pale. No one ever feeds them!
It's a good thing he did gut the radiator out of a Delorean cause he'll need it for building a time machine to go back in time and recover all that wasted time he spent doing this case mod from hell.
My worst and probably most distressing to this very day... has got to be the demise of my beloved Commodore VIC-20.
I loved that VIC-20, some people love chocolate, sports cars, pornography... nothing compares to just how much I loved that computer.
I was a young lad of meager means, but I had what I felt at the time, was a sweet rig. Had my own black and white Emerson TV as a monitor, had my ultra-ghetto joystick and Kawala artpad... data cassette drive, Oki Data printer. As much nerdy crap a pre-teen could ever hope for....
To match this ultra ghetto rig, I had an ultra ghetto desk. Particle board 'computer desk' with contact paper wood grain. It did the job, but it was very wobbly.... which lends to just how it died.
My older Sister was doing some science project for school involving brime shrimp: Sea Monkeys. They sat on top of the computer desks shelf, came into the room where the VIC-20 slept and slammed the door.
Down came the sea monkeys and the cascade of murky water they lived in. Larger ones flopping around on the keys.
As you can guess, it was trashed.
I felt sick to my stomach about it, I still do just recalling this tale. I think I'll go take a hot bath and cry for a while...
I've been stuck on hold for hours before, I always wished someone would have books-on-tape for being on hold. I don't care if it's even a boring book, least it's not going to be something I've heard 7000x's before like common music.
I doubt it's legal, but since when did that stop anyone? Broadcasting NPR news over the phone would be nice... god I love it.
Originally, if I remember the story correctly, this game was used for Law Enforcement/Student Drivers due to it's very realistic physics and force feedback. Later adapted into a game by Atari since there wasn't a huge market for it.
One of my favorites and was a good way to understand how to drive a clutch 'n stick.
There was some bus driving game from the Dreamcast in Japan, never played it myself. But who knows, might be a close approximation.
I've always tried my best to keep personal treasures under a certain price if the following could be applied to them:
A) I could break it by sitting on it with my massive ass B) Lose it C) Someone would be willing to steal it off my person due to it's value.
So I never wanted to risk spending betweeen $200-800 on a PDA in fear that one of the above would happen.
Well eventually a few models would drop down to 129$, and I bought a discontinued Sony Clie. Really cool little gadget. It was cheap, but had practical features. Built-in lithium ion battery with 60+ hours of charge, a simple black and white screen with a indiglo backlight, scroll wheel. I got a lot of use out of the little creature.
Eventually B) happened, I lost it. Was not the end of the world cause it was at a price point I was willing to deal with A, B or C happening to.
So I go out to find me a replacement, at the time, everything had color screens, cameras, mp3 players, etc. All really cool stuff, but it jacked the price up out of my reach.
Then you had the Palm Zire series, certainly cheap. But it had none of the practical features I relied on.
I think we're all attracted to cool, but I'm willing to bet that most people crave cool but buy what they can get by with and afford.
I know Ford sells more cars than Porsche partly cause of this:)
I think partly this is why the PDA market is drying up, for me, I feel they are pricing themselves out of reach. For people that feel the same as myself, that they're too expensive to risk losing/breaking/having stolen, rather do without than the risk.
This will sound a bit nuts, but I went to school in the inner city. I used to get my butt kicked on a regular basis having to go through rough neighborhoods because of the color of my skin.
Then an old man in that neighborhood gave me some good advice:
"Run, never walk. If you're running they'll either be too slow to react to mess with you or they'll think you're running from the cops and don't want anything to do with you"
I tried it, it worked. The same thing is true of any other sketchy place in the world I've been.
It'll get your lazzy hump into shape quick. Not the most practical in dress shoes, but kept my butt from being black and blue.
I worked at a well known, shovelware game dev studio. I won't say exactly where, to protect the innocent/guilty. But lets say it was a number one title around 97-99 timeframe.
The main cycle for this unsaid company was in shovel ware, low budget, 'value priced" (such a bastardization of the word 'value'), and equally low timeframe to build these games.
They'd produce about 8-10 of these crappy games a year, each game being alloted 2-3 months on average. So crunch-time was all the time, it wasn't uncommon to see their best and lead programmer working 80+ hours a week, sleeping under his cubicle desk.
Once in a rare while this is alright, but all the time got old. I left quickly and decided "This isn't for me" the pay is alright, but money is worthless if you don't have time to spend/enjoy it.
At the end of it all, it was just a nice way to get the bug out of my system. I always wanted to design games for a living, got my foot in the door and got it right back out. Fulfilled the dream, went on to do other things.
I enjoyed it more when it was just myself, hacking away at early games like Doom and Duke3D. No pressures, just fun like the games themselves.
Soon as yo umake your hobby your career, the pracitce often starts to taste sour and eventually bitter.
You get to pee on Gary Coleman. Get to set fire to Gary Coleman. Use a shovel to hit Gary Coleman. Use a cat's anus as a silencer on the end of a shotgun on Gary Coleman.
These attributes make it worty of a port to every platform, just not just Linux.
Northland, Railroad Tycoon and certainly Tux Racer do not share the vision and grace that Postal 2 does in this regard. None of the forementioned games include water-sports with Gary Coleman. Thus Postal 2 > *
A great place to get a good pirce on power tools, but their handtools both mechanical and woodworking are of horrible quality.
Cheap woodworking tools lead to serious injuries. And mechanical tools lead to broken knuckles. You get what you pay for and then you pay some more to Blue Cross Blue Sheild:/
Mack, Snapon and Craftsman really can't be beat, you get durability, quality and Sears will replace about any tool even if it's from doing something stupid with em.
I've always tried to give GIMP an objective and open-minded whirl from time to time. For tho I don't mind paying for my legal copies of Photoshop (since it's my bread winning app) but I'd also like to do without the expense.
My workflow has changed over the years and I'll use the best tool for the job regardless of cost, maker or platform. From PC Paintbrush, Pixel Paint, Painter, PhotoPaint, Photoshop, NeoPaint, etc etc etc over the past 15 years in digital illustration.
First off, I feel that GIMP's interface is inefficent. True, if you get used to it, it's not such a big deal, shaving off seconds here and there not having to rely on the interface at all is what makes for an effective working enviroment. No windows in view, just full screen, just you and your cursor brush. Right+click contextuals should be all that is necessary.
Why? Window clutter distorts your perception of light/dark. Put a dark grey square in the middle of a very light grey flooded field and the smaller dark square looks darker than it really is and the same is true for the lighter grey field. Windows floating around give the same effect.
Being able to control everything you need via contextuals limits the time and visual distractions. It's a fickle complaint I realize, but it's these little nuances that impair the using experience. When this sort of application is pretty much all you ever use a computer for, it becomes a greater issue.
Interfaces can make or break an applications success in my opinion (however welcome it may be). PhotoPaint by Corel has had this issue, some versions of it had great interfaces, others had not. The few that were very comparable to Photoshop (tho not mimicing) and others were haphazzard and impaired my interest which sent me back to other versions or back to Photoshop.
Painter is another such example, from 7 to 8 were big improvements in terms of interface. Greatly increasing my desire to use the application and thus greater understanding of how to empower myself with the applicaiton.
I won't bother to rehash the technical limitations nor shall I embark on repeating the voices of others regarding the spirit/ethics/cost of GIMP vs *.
It all really depends on what you do with the application and how. Personally, given the choice of any appliation for photo restoration, I'd opt for Photoshop and it's healing brush. If I had to batch process a few thousand images, depending on what's ncessary I could use Photoshop or I could use GIMP. When it comes to natural illustration, it's either Painter or Photoshop.
Right tool for the job, sometimes you don't need a Cadillac to do a Chevy job. Sometimes you do...
One of the few games I felt that I had grossly underpaid. I love that game, it took racing games to a new level. Superb graphics, courses mapped out to block-by-block sections of real life cities. Awesome stuff.
Tho it lacked the upgrade and hotrod aspects of Gran Turismo it excelled in breaking the static driving game formula. Style, overall speed, top speed, number of passes, one on ones. Made it less monotounous than simply going track after track (tho there were hundreds of different tracks).
The AI was pretty weak but was very challenging none-the-less.
The realtime day and night was a nice plus too. If it was nightime in London and daytime where you really live (that is if you set your dreamcast clock correctly) it'd be night in the game, vice versa. Some rewards were only available during certain hours of the day. Made it interesting.
The sound was unique too, had radio stations (course Rad Racer had that) but it felt like you were really listening to the radio with commercials and DJ babble. Also when you went through tunnels the radio would cut out and you'd get static till you exited. Stations also reflected the country you were racing in.
This game later became Project Gotham and the superb PGR2. But it lost much of it's whistles in favor for flashier graphics. If you find this game it's worth the 5$ you'll see priced on it. Knowing how good it was after I played it, I would have gladly paid over $100 for it.
Normally any conversation taking place about technical advancements of parking meters is usually left to the pub with the intoxicated...
But alas here I am... sober.
What I wonder is, being able to use your cell phone to pay for your parking fare on such a possible UBER METER, would it also SMS or phone you to nag you that your time is almost up and it's time to "feed" the meter?
Anyone that remembers pay toilets is surely dieing for info on state-of-the-art bleeding edge toilet tech. Anyone have any info on computerized pay toilets?
Over a decade ago, there used to be a brand of skateboarding apparrel made by World Industries called Ghetto Wear. I didn't notice till some years later after buying a pair of their pants about the washing instructions printed on the tag.
1) Pile dirty clothes on floor 2) When you run out of clean clothes, gather them up and ask your Mom how to use the washer 3) When she says she'll do it so you don't break her washer and ruin your clothes, come back in an hour and they'll be done.
I also had a FUCT jacket that's washing instructions were:
Washing Instructions: Steal this garment.
I like that kind of thing, making the blatently obvious and unnessary become fun.
I don't know how many of you have seen this movie, it's not great, but it had some great ideas.
Nutshell movie-theater: An inventor makes a machine that can make ice (genius!) but no one stateside appreciated his invention. So he buys a plot of land in the jungle. Packs up his family and moves em there to start a civilization based around his ice machine. Airconditioning the jungle per say. Tells his family that the united states is no longer, destroyed by nuclear war with the Russians. To do a bit of Castaway.
Imagine a game like The Sims, social interactions but with a Sim City twist. Keep the villagers happy, resource management and an ice tech-tree, keeping out the missionaries and militias.
Kind of a cool movie that I don't think many people saw, you could rent it for $5, but you could probably buy it for $1.
Is it just me, or is Mad Max in The Road Warrior, the only straight male in the whole movie? I'd hope for a Mad Max 2 game done right so badly, I could even tollerate the Humungous in his leather speedo.
1GB, that's a pretty hefty size. My concern is that such a wealth of storage is going to be abused by pirates.
Those of you who are familar with AOL back in the early days found their large capacity email to be a haven for piracy. Large file attachments that once initially uploaded, could be forwarded and shared with hundreds of people in seconds, once recieved, it could be forwarded again to yet even more people. All without the delay of re-uploading, nor even having to download the complete file.
I hope that Google has something up their sleave to preemptively nullify this problem before it starts. I used to make entertainment software for PC's and eventually had to disolve the S-Corp due to dwindling sales lost to piracy. The above mentioned method the result of...
Possible solutions would be to limit the size of attachments. Possible disallow forwarding attachments greater than 50MB. Dunno, just hope this is just paranoia talking and not an omen commanded by my Rice Krispies.
Why? Palm OS, there's flexibility in the software choices. Choice is a good thing. Easier to sync with another computer, for printing, email, whatever. WiFi option could be a butt saver on occasion.
I always thought there should be more devices similar to this. A full blown laptop is great, but you lose some qualities like stellar battery life, low cost, lightweight. It'd be cool to have laptops with grayscale screens (if anyone made them anymore to keep the cost down in volume). I think it'd be great to have even 20 hour battery life, the thought of 100's of hours on AAA's sounds pretty damn good to me.
Everyone's boat floats in some kind of water, but Northland's kind of water doesn't float mine.
The game is a case study of the effects of extreme co-dependency. All the villagers need you too badly, they need you to tell them to get shoes, where wood is, where tools and weapons are, takes a few hours just to get the tech-tree up enough to be able to survive some battles.
Detailed to the nth degree, but I don't think having some things being autonymous would of been so bad. Like let them find their own mates instead of the player being forced to play cupid, things like Populous were successful in achieving that. Have a Norse god cast a decree "Go forth and hump like rabbits!" to have more children. Instead of telling each female in the village to produce an offspring.
I played the demo for a few weeks, it's not a bad game, just too tedious for my tastes.
If you only buy one game for linux this year (you're lucky, you've got more than one to choose from this year::tardcasm:::) I'd put my 2cents towards UT2K4.
I work a local Apple retailer, we deal with new and used equipment.
We've had a few break-ins in the past, the owner of our store tried contacting pawn shops in town to ask them to keep an eye out for iBooks/PowerBooks that might show up soon cause of the break-in. What is truely pathetic is that the pawn brokers just hung up as soon as they heard anything about stolen goods. They didn't want to be involved in the slightest. That really made me mad that people out there are allowed to run such a shady business. But that's America for ya, thanks Martha Stewart...
As I mentioned earlier, we deal in used equipment as well. We're able to track S/N through Apple's service site, so we often catch a lot of stolen equipment. If the names don't match up for example, obvious red flag. Other times it just seems like some scam is taking place, especially when the kids that steal these things don't know how to turn em on, what the product name is, don't know the password or username, etc. So we play along with them, claim we just need to take it in back for a few minutes to 'test it out', run the serial number, call the cops and see if it's been reported, if so we have the police come pick them up and return the product to the customer (another reason not to buy mail-order, sometimes the local guys are looking out for you more ways than one).
But even phoning the police on these matters is rediculous, in our city, you have to talk to about 10 different people, none one at the station seems to care. Which is frustrating, they have an attitude that it's not worth getting off their butts to check for a serial number. And yet, every one we've phoned in was reported and was finally returned.
I wish local police would have a website to allow you to look up serial numbers of reported stolen goods, it'd make reselling and buying for the customer a lot safer and ethical. Although I'm sure it's more a legal problem to pull that task off, but still... I can dream of a perfect world still?
I hope they sue EB for this, it's truely bad business.
I thought it was insane at first myself too, but hear me out.
The boss suggested that price, and after a few years of doing this on the side, his advice paid off.
"Why so much?", it sets a precedence, if you do it for 35-50$ people will start to take advantage of you. They call you out to do BS tasks at that point "Fix my mailbox" "Install the new AOL 9.0 for me". They start to look at it as a tech support housecall. Gets old quickly, then it chews up all your free time having to run around and do this and that. Eventually money doesn't mean much when you don't have any free time to spend it.
So charging $175 an hour makes the customer think before they act, it's a hefty price "Is it worth it to me?". They know our expertise and personalities from shopping with us, so they know the value of the service we can provide if they feel it's worth it to them. I myself would never pay $175 for any kind of training, I didn't think it would work out but it does. I go and do this about 6-7x's a month. Gives me the cash to do stupid stuff like buy a video card that'll be outta date by the time I install it:)
"What kind of person spends $175 for training? A book is only $30!" I thought that was strange too, I also didn't realize just how much some people earn in my area and their lavish over the top homes hidden behind those iron gates. Doctors, business people, the-well-to-do types who have more money than time. To them, money isn't a big deal compared to the time invested learning on their own via a book or experimentation. To them, a computer isn't a rewarding investment of time, just a tool to get something they want done -NOW-. They feel that they learn quicker if someone shows em how things work and what to do. They cut you a check, they're happy, you're even happier.
So many people have more dollars than sense... I wish I were one of em, maybe I will if I jack up my rate to $350 an hour! Man I wish.
I work at a local comuter retailer in my city, one of the top requests we get from our customers is: "Do you guys or do you know of anyone that offers training?"
They just want to know basic stuff, how to use their computer, how to copy files, create folders, etc really basic stuff.
Our business doesn't have the space or the resources to make this happen. But it would be simple to do and something that high school kids could pull off with a little investment of money.
You could check out an auditorium at a city library, they often have facilities for such things, including screens and projectors. You could hook a laptop up to it and do your demonstrations there.
Q&A's, how to, basic stuff. May have to pay a few bucks to use the facilities, but long as you balance the costs:profit, shouldn't be a big dent.
What kind of customers can you expect? The older generation, elderly retired people are new to computers still, they don't learn quickly, have surplus income to spend and have the time and interest to attend such a training class on general computer use.
They're really into geneology and email correspondance. Little else, so although it's not the best use of your tallents, it should be rewarding finacially and equally rewarding improving some old farts quality of life.
How to get the word out. Basic cheap marketing that targets your market. The Newspaper, they're one of the few audiences that still read it. Cheap too. Putting flyers up at senior centers, veterans hospitals, etc. anywhere old people hang out. Charge a minimal fee at first, just to gauge what your expected turn-out will be, jack the price up a bit afterwards once the word-of-mouth starts within their communities.
Should work out well, I do this stuff on the side on a one-on-one basis (since I have a car) and the money is pretty good. I usually charge $175 an hour, but if you're going to have more bodies in an auditorium, shoot for 30$ a person, something basic that everyone can afford.
Good luck, better than working at McDonalds all Summer (although working there would really give you a reason to go to college).
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Good artists copy, great artists steal... programmers buy.
Well good programmers should look into buying royalty free icons, there's some great icon foundries that offer them and the quality is much higher than most could replicate.
I firmly believe that anyone can draw or paint with the right instruction, but who has that kind of time? Crack open the pocket book. Pay a starving artist, feed them, that's why they are so skinny and pale. No one ever feeds them!
It's a good thing he did gut the radiator out of a Delorean cause he'll need it for building a time machine to go back in time and recover all that wasted time he spent doing this case mod from hell.
My worst and probably most distressing to this very day... has got to be the demise of my beloved Commodore VIC-20.
I loved that VIC-20, some people love chocolate, sports cars, pornography... nothing compares to just how much I loved that computer.
I was a young lad of meager means, but I had what I felt at the time, was a sweet rig. Had my own black and white Emerson TV as a monitor, had my ultra-ghetto joystick and Kawala artpad... data cassette drive, Oki Data printer. As much nerdy crap a pre-teen could ever hope for....
To match this ultra ghetto rig, I had an ultra ghetto desk. Particle board 'computer desk' with contact paper wood grain. It did the job, but it was very wobbly.... which lends to just how it died.
My older Sister was doing some science project for school involving brime shrimp: Sea Monkeys. They sat on top of the computer desks shelf, came into the room where the VIC-20 slept and slammed the door.
Down came the sea monkeys and the cascade of murky water they lived in. Larger ones flopping around on the keys.
As you can guess, it was trashed.
I felt sick to my stomach about it, I still do just recalling this tale. I think I'll go take a hot bath and cry for a while...
Well I'm sure it's localized for the USA.
So if it has Farm Aid and getting paid not to grow crops, it'd be a plus.
Also co-ops cause the in-game farmers can't afford an overpriced JD combine...
Hopefully there will be mods so that New Holland, International, Belarus and Ford can be represented in the new Farming Sim genre.
I've been stuck on hold for hours before, I always wished someone would have books-on-tape for being on hold. I don't care if it's even a boring book, least it's not going to be something I've heard 7000x's before like common music.
I doubt it's legal, but since when did that stop anyone? Broadcasting NPR news over the phone would be nice... god I love it.
It's to simulate something that can be loosly described as an anti-anti-missile. (like a patriot that hunts other patriot missiles)
US Army Space & Missile Command is around the corner after all.
Originally, if I remember the story correctly, this game was used for Law Enforcement/Student Drivers due to it's very realistic physics and force feedback. Later adapted into a game by Atari since there wasn't a huge market for it.
One of my favorites and was a good way to understand how to drive a clutch 'n stick.
There was some bus driving game from the Dreamcast in Japan, never played it myself. But who knows, might be a close approximation.
I've always tried my best to keep personal treasures under a certain price if the following could be applied to them:
:)
A) I could break it by sitting on it with my massive ass
B) Lose it
C) Someone would be willing to steal it off my person due to it's value.
So I never wanted to risk spending betweeen $200-800 on a PDA in fear that one of the above would happen.
Well eventually a few models would drop down to 129$, and I bought a discontinued Sony Clie. Really cool little gadget. It was cheap, but had practical features. Built-in lithium ion battery with 60+ hours of charge, a simple black and white screen with a indiglo backlight, scroll wheel. I got a lot of use out of the little creature.
Eventually B) happened, I lost it. Was not the end of the world cause it was at a price point I was willing to deal with A, B or C happening to.
So I go out to find me a replacement, at the time, everything had color screens, cameras, mp3 players, etc. All really cool stuff, but it jacked the price up out of my reach.
Then you had the Palm Zire series, certainly cheap. But it had none of the practical features I relied on.
I think we're all attracted to cool, but I'm willing to bet that most people crave cool but buy what they can get by with and afford.
I know Ford sells more cars than Porsche partly cause of this
I think partly this is why the PDA market is drying up, for me, I feel they are pricing themselves out of reach. For people that feel the same as myself, that they're too expensive to risk losing/breaking/having stolen, rather do without than the risk.
Unfortunate, I really liked Monopoly for Palm.
This will sound a bit nuts, but I went to school in the inner city. I used to get my butt kicked on a regular basis having to go through rough neighborhoods because of the color of my skin.
Then an old man in that neighborhood gave me some good advice:
"Run, never walk. If you're running they'll either be too slow to react to mess with you or they'll think you're running from the cops and don't want anything to do with you"
I tried it, it worked. The same thing is true of any other sketchy place in the world I've been.
It'll get your lazzy hump into shape quick. Not the most practical in dress shoes, but kept my butt from being black and blue.
I worked at a well known, shovelware game dev studio. I won't say exactly where, to protect the innocent/guilty. But lets say it was a number one title around 97-99 timeframe.
The main cycle for this unsaid company was in shovel ware, low budget, 'value priced" (such a bastardization of the word 'value'), and equally low timeframe to build these games.
They'd produce about 8-10 of these crappy games a year, each game being alloted 2-3 months on average. So crunch-time was all the time, it wasn't uncommon to see their best and lead programmer working 80+ hours a week, sleeping under his cubicle desk.
Once in a rare while this is alright, but all the time got old. I left quickly and decided "This isn't for me" the pay is alright, but money is worthless if you don't have time to spend/enjoy it.
At the end of it all, it was just a nice way to get the bug out of my system. I always wanted to design games for a living, got my foot in the door and got it right back out. Fulfilled the dream, went on to do other things.
I enjoyed it more when it was just myself, hacking away at early games like Doom and Duke3D. No pressures, just fun like the games themselves.
Soon as yo umake your hobby your career, the pracitce often starts to taste sour and eventually bitter.
You get to pee on Gary Coleman.
Get to set fire to Gary Coleman.
Use a shovel to hit Gary Coleman.
Use a cat's anus as a silencer on the end of a shotgun on Gary Coleman.
These attributes make it worty of a port to every platform, just not just Linux.
Northland, Railroad Tycoon and certainly Tux Racer do not share the vision and grace that Postal 2 does in this regard. None of the forementioned games include water-sports with Gary Coleman. Thus Postal 2 > *
A great place to get a good pirce on power tools, but their handtools both mechanical and woodworking are of horrible quality.
:/
Cheap woodworking tools lead to serious injuries. And mechanical tools lead to broken knuckles. You get what you pay for and then you pay some more to Blue Cross Blue Sheild
Mack, Snapon and Craftsman really can't be beat, you get durability, quality and Sears will replace about any tool even if it's from doing something stupid with em.
I've always tried to give GIMP an objective and open-minded whirl from time to time. For tho I don't mind paying for my legal copies of Photoshop (since it's my bread winning app) but I'd also like to do without the expense.
My workflow has changed over the years and I'll use the best tool for the job regardless of cost, maker or platform. From PC Paintbrush, Pixel Paint, Painter, PhotoPaint, Photoshop, NeoPaint, etc etc etc over the past 15 years in digital illustration.
First off, I feel that GIMP's interface is inefficent. True, if you get used to it, it's not such a big deal, shaving off seconds here and there not having to rely on the interface at all is what makes for an effective working enviroment. No windows in view, just full screen, just you and your cursor brush. Right+click contextuals should be all that is necessary.
Why? Window clutter distorts your perception of light/dark. Put a dark grey square in the middle of a very light grey flooded field and the smaller dark square looks darker than it really is and the same is true for the lighter grey field. Windows floating around give the same effect.
Being able to control everything you need via contextuals limits the time and visual distractions. It's a fickle complaint I realize, but it's these little nuances that impair the using experience. When this sort of application is pretty much all you ever use a computer for, it becomes a greater issue.
Interfaces can make or break an applications success in my opinion (however welcome it may be). PhotoPaint by Corel has had this issue, some versions of it had great interfaces, others had not. The few that were very comparable to Photoshop (tho not mimicing) and others were haphazzard and impaired my interest which sent me back to other versions or back to Photoshop.
Painter is another such example, from 7 to 8 were big improvements in terms of interface. Greatly increasing my desire to use the application and thus greater understanding of how to empower myself with the applicaiton.
I won't bother to rehash the technical limitations nor shall I embark on repeating the voices of others regarding the spirit/ethics/cost of GIMP vs *.
It all really depends on what you do with the application and how. Personally, given the choice of any appliation for photo restoration, I'd opt for Photoshop and it's healing brush. If I had to batch process a few thousand images, depending on what's ncessary I could use Photoshop or I could use GIMP. When it comes to natural illustration, it's either Painter or Photoshop.
Right tool for the job, sometimes you don't need a Cadillac to do a Chevy job. Sometimes you do...
Metropolis Street Racing
One of the few games I felt that I had grossly underpaid. I love that game, it took racing games to a new level. Superb graphics, courses mapped out to block-by-block sections of real life cities. Awesome stuff.
Tho it lacked the upgrade and hotrod aspects of Gran Turismo it excelled in breaking the static driving game formula. Style, overall speed, top speed, number of passes, one on ones. Made it less monotounous than simply going track after track (tho there were hundreds of different tracks).
The AI was pretty weak but was very challenging none-the-less.
The realtime day and night was a nice plus too. If it was nightime in London and daytime where you really live (that is if you set your dreamcast clock correctly) it'd be night in the game, vice versa. Some rewards were only available during certain hours of the day. Made it interesting.
The sound was unique too, had radio stations (course Rad Racer had that) but it felt like you were really listening to the radio with commercials and DJ babble. Also when you went through tunnels the radio would cut out and you'd get static till you exited. Stations also reflected the country you were racing in.
This game later became Project Gotham and the superb PGR2. But it lost much of it's whistles in favor for flashier graphics. If you find this game it's worth the 5$ you'll see priced on it. Knowing how good it was after I played it, I would have gladly paid over $100 for it.
Normally any conversation taking place about technical advancements of parking meters is usually left to the pub with the intoxicated...
But alas here I am... sober.
What I wonder is, being able to use your cell phone to pay for your parking fare on such a possible UBER METER, would it also SMS or phone you to nag you that your time is almost up and it's time to "feed" the meter?
Anyone that remembers pay toilets is surely dieing for info on state-of-the-art bleeding edge toilet tech. Anyone have any info on computerized pay toilets?
Over a decade ago, there used to be a brand of skateboarding apparrel made by World Industries called Ghetto Wear. I didn't notice till some years later after buying a pair of their pants about the washing instructions printed on the tag.
1) Pile dirty clothes on floor
2) When you run out of clean clothes, gather them up and ask your Mom how to use the washer
3) When she says she'll do it so you don't break her washer and ruin your clothes, come back in an hour and they'll be done.
I also had a FUCT jacket that's washing instructions were:
Washing Instructions: Steal this garment.
I like that kind of thing, making the blatently obvious and unnessary become fun.
I don't know how many of you have seen this movie, it's not great, but it had some great ideas.
Nutshell movie-theater:
An inventor makes a machine that can make ice (genius!) but no one stateside appreciated his invention. So he buys a plot of land in the jungle. Packs up his family and moves em there to start a civilization based around his ice machine. Airconditioning the jungle per say. Tells his family that the united states is no longer, destroyed by nuclear war with the Russians. To do a bit of Castaway.
Imagine a game like The Sims, social interactions but with a Sim City twist. Keep the villagers happy, resource management and an ice tech-tree, keeping out the missionaries and militias.
Kind of a cool movie that I don't think many people saw, you could rent it for $5, but you could probably buy it for $1.
Is it just me, or is Mad Max in The Road Warrior, the only straight male in the whole movie? I'd hope for a Mad Max 2 game done right so badly, I could even tollerate the Humungous in his leather speedo.
1GB, that's a pretty hefty size. My concern is that such a wealth of storage is going to be abused by pirates.
Those of you who are familar with AOL back in the early days found their large capacity email to be a haven for piracy. Large file attachments that once initially uploaded, could be forwarded and shared with hundreds of people in seconds, once recieved, it could be forwarded again to yet even more people. All without the delay of re-uploading, nor even having to download the complete file.
I hope that Google has something up their sleave to preemptively nullify this problem before it starts. I used to make entertainment software for PC's and eventually had to disolve the S-Corp due to dwindling sales lost to piracy. The above mentioned method the result of...
Possible solutions would be to limit the size of attachments. Possible disallow forwarding attachments greater than 50MB. Dunno, just hope this is just paranoia talking and not an omen commanded by my Rice Krispies.
Why? Palm OS, there's flexibility in the software choices. Choice is a good thing. Easier to sync with another computer, for printing, email, whatever. WiFi option could be a butt saver on occasion.
I always thought there should be more devices similar to this. A full blown laptop is great, but you lose some qualities like stellar battery life, low cost, lightweight. It'd be cool to have laptops with grayscale screens (if anyone made them anymore to keep the cost down in volume). I think it'd be great to have even 20 hour battery life, the thought of 100's of hours on AAA's sounds pretty damn good to me.
Exhalted dreamer...
How bout Sim City 4? Other than the occasional fires, tornados and alien attacks, it's pretty passive and very educational.
Everyone's boat floats in some kind of water, but Northland's kind of water doesn't float mine.
::tardcasm:::) I'd put my 2cents towards UT2K4.
The game is a case study of the effects of extreme co-dependency. All the villagers need you too badly, they need you to tell them to get shoes, where wood is, where tools and weapons are, takes a few hours just to get the tech-tree up enough to be able to survive some battles.
Detailed to the nth degree, but I don't think having some things being autonymous would of been so bad. Like let them find their own mates instead of the player being forced to play cupid, things like Populous were successful in achieving that. Have a Norse god cast a decree "Go forth and hump like rabbits!" to have more children. Instead of telling each female in the village to produce an offspring.
I played the demo for a few weeks, it's not a bad game, just too tedious for my tastes.
If you only buy one game for linux this year (you're lucky, you've got more than one to choose from this year
I work a local Apple retailer, we deal with new and used equipment.
We've had a few break-ins in the past, the owner of our store tried contacting pawn shops in town to ask them to keep an eye out for iBooks/PowerBooks that might show up soon cause of the break-in. What is truely pathetic is that the pawn brokers just hung up as soon as they heard anything about stolen goods. They didn't want to be involved in the slightest. That really made me mad that people out there are allowed to run such a shady business. But that's America for ya, thanks Martha Stewart...
As I mentioned earlier, we deal in used equipment as well. We're able to track S/N through Apple's service site, so we often catch a lot of stolen equipment. If the names don't match up for example, obvious red flag. Other times it just seems like some scam is taking place, especially when the kids that steal these things don't know how to turn em on, what the product name is, don't know the password or username, etc. So we play along with them, claim we just need to take it in back for a few minutes to 'test it out', run the serial number, call the cops and see if it's been reported, if so we have the police come pick them up and return the product to the customer (another reason not to buy mail-order, sometimes the local guys are looking out for you more ways than one).
But even phoning the police on these matters is rediculous, in our city, you have to talk to about 10 different people, none one at the station seems to care. Which is frustrating, they have an attitude that it's not worth getting off their butts to check for a serial number. And yet, every one we've phoned in was reported and was finally returned.
I wish local police would have a website to allow you to look up serial numbers of reported stolen goods, it'd make reselling and buying for the customer a lot safer and ethical. Although I'm sure it's more a legal problem to pull that task off, but still... I can dream of a perfect world still?
I hope they sue EB for this, it's truely bad business.
Is it just me, or is the concept of the Xbox 2 not having a hard-drive seem possible as a direct influence of piracy?
With modchips and the internal drive, being able to play disk images right off the harddisk seems like this could be an issue for Microsoft.
Fastest way to find a needle in a haystack? Burn down the haystack...
Taking out the harddrive would be just that, elimating the problem.
Course it could be just a cost factor, who knows. All arm-chair analtics...
I thought it was insane at first myself too, but hear me out.
The boss suggested that price, and after a few years of doing this on the side, his advice paid off.
"Why so much?", it sets a precedence, if you do it for 35-50$ people will start to take advantage of you. They call you out to do BS tasks at that point "Fix my mailbox" "Install the new AOL 9.0 for me". They start to look at it as a tech support housecall. Gets old quickly, then it chews up all your free time having to run around and do this and that. Eventually money doesn't mean much when you don't have any free time to spend it.
So charging $175 an hour makes the customer think before they act, it's a hefty price "Is it worth it to me?". They know our expertise and personalities from shopping with us, so they know the value of the service we can provide if they feel it's worth it to them. I myself would never pay $175 for any kind of training, I didn't think it would work out but it does. I go and do this about 6-7x's a month. Gives me the cash to do stupid stuff like buy a video card that'll be outta date by the time I install it:)
"What kind of person spends $175 for training? A book is only $30!" I thought that was strange too, I also didn't realize just how much some people earn in my area and their lavish over the top homes hidden behind those iron gates. Doctors, business people, the-well-to-do types who have more money than time. To them, money isn't a big deal compared to the time invested learning on their own via a book or experimentation. To them, a computer isn't a rewarding investment of time, just a tool to get something they want done -NOW-. They feel that they learn quicker if someone shows em how things work and what to do. They cut you a check, they're happy, you're even happier.
So many people have more dollars than sense... I wish I were one of em, maybe I will if I jack up my rate to $350 an hour! Man I wish.
I work at a local comuter retailer in my city, one of the top requests we get from our customers is: "Do you guys or do you know of anyone that offers training?"
They just want to know basic stuff, how to use their computer, how to copy files, create folders, etc really basic stuff.
Our business doesn't have the space or the resources to make this happen. But it would be simple to do and something that high school kids could pull off with a little investment of money.
You could check out an auditorium at a city library, they often have facilities for such things, including screens and projectors. You could hook a laptop up to it and do your demonstrations there.
Q&A's, how to, basic stuff. May have to pay a few bucks to use the facilities, but long as you balance the costs:profit, shouldn't be a big dent.
What kind of customers can you expect? The older generation, elderly retired people are new to computers still, they don't learn quickly, have surplus income to spend and have the time and interest to attend such a training class on general computer use.
They're really into geneology and email correspondance. Little else, so although it's not the best use of your tallents, it should be rewarding finacially and equally rewarding improving some old farts quality of life.
How to get the word out. Basic cheap marketing that targets your market. The Newspaper, they're one of the few audiences that still read it. Cheap too. Putting flyers up at senior centers, veterans hospitals, etc. anywhere old people hang out. Charge a minimal fee at first, just to gauge what your expected turn-out will be, jack the price up a bit afterwards once the word-of-mouth starts within their communities.
Should work out well, I do this stuff on the side on a one-on-one basis (since I have a car) and the money is pretty good. I usually charge $175 an hour, but if you're going to have more bodies in an auditorium, shoot for 30$ a person, something basic that everyone can afford.
Good luck, better than working at McDonalds all Summer (although working there would really give you a reason to go to college).