If it's your imagination, then it's mine too. In the research program where I work, we actually have a policy that reads, "never work off of a floppy."
There's a documented bug in some version of MS Office where if you try to Save As... on a file that's been opened from a floppy, well, say goodbye to your file.
Naturally this isn't the first "death of the floppy" topic on slashdot, and on every previous one someone piped up to say, "why is the floppy dead? it's cheap, reliable, ubiquitous, and the perfect size for documents." Take the "reliable" out of that and the attraction fades fast.
Does anyone else find it depressing that the entire privacy issue this service (creates? no... inflames?) hinges on the fact that 99% of Internet users probably don't know whether they're reading email as HTML or plain text?
Anybody remember the Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, 32x Extension, and CD-Drive extension? Nobody knew what to buy because nobody knew what games were going to be made for which combination of hardware.
Those systems debuted for big $$. These are relatively cheap portables. If you have a GBA and like it (hint: this is everyone), and you see a DS game that excites you, you buy it. How hard is that?
And the dual screen? It's a gimmick. Anything the Dual screen can do could also be done by a bigger or wider screen.
Have you noticed that it's a
portable? The dual screen is perfect with the clamshell design. A bigger screen would give you some kind of tablet gaming devices. Good thing Nintendo doesn't have you as a hardware engineer.
Anyway, have you even read how the screen will be used? How the input works? In fact, you CAN'T do the same things with just a larger screen.
Their Internet use is high for their per capita income, and the law they passed is certainly forward-looking. But securitas's summary is flat-out wrong. Last year only 1/3 of the population used the Internet, so clearly 80% of the people aren't using online banking. What the article said is that "Estonians do 80 percent of their banking on the internet." This could mean that a tiny fraction who do a ton of transactions (medium-size business, for example) are doing it online.
"...broadband penetration rates are comparable to Western Europe" is another hot one. The article says that "Internet usage and broadband access are approaching West European levels." Hell, all that means is that Estonian rates are (a) lower, and (b) increasing relative to WE levels.
The article itself gives information that conveys almost nothing about usage: "Farmers are ordering broadband lines, and motorists on rural roads frequently pass blue information signs pointing them to the nearest place to access the Web." Wow, so at least 2 farmers have ordered broadband. And there are at least two signs on country highways - of course motorists frequently pass them, people drive down those roads all the time!
I just have no sympathy for whiny, rich people who are desperate to "find themselves," which is the meme it seems that this book is enamored with.
It doesn't sound like the book is trying to foster sympathy for these people. More like, "if you feel as these people do, here's some food for thought." If you don't feel that way: (a) no one cares, and (b) don't buy the book.
It's very unlikely that someone making $200K a year will ever be able to develop the survival skills needed to live at $50K (gross).
Survival skills? Pay the bills and the rent first. Don't forget about toilet paper and food. We're not talking rocket science here, and if anything there would be lot more to manage with a $200K income. Someone who could do that, and then drops down to $50K would have no problems, just fewer silly luxuries.
Anyone who thinks living on $50K is a challenge is someone who needs to evaluate their life management skills. Talk about being spoiled.
The thought that there was nothing (well, almost nothing) in between me and those huge, huge objects that were so very far away still sends tingling down my spine whenever I think about it.
Timothy's little snip offers at least as much as your post. He's just pointing out that pages indexed is (only) one measure of a search tool. That's a starting point - what are some others? Another poster mentioned up-to-dateness of the pages returned. That's good. Clean interface is another one. Features like a cache, which you mention, are another. Response time, configurability, documentation, what else?
Other than that you just say that alltheweb gave more hits for you on a couple of searches. That's a pretty useless measure of search tool quality to anyone else.
For my part I'm not sure what would make me switch from Google. I really value their interface, and none of the recent challengers are preferable to me in that regard. I switched TO Google because IMO it was a big leap in result quality over the earlier generation, but until we start using personalized intelligent agents, I'm hard pressed to imagine how a new engine could produce as big a leap. Basically, as search engine quality improves, for most people the sample of searches that they'd have to do in order for a comparison to produce clearly discriminable results also grows. Will very many Google users really sit down and do like 50 searches with both it and AllTheWeb, on the chance that ATW proves slightly better? I doubt it, and I'd hate to have to be in the planning room of a Google competitor, trying to think of the killer app that could get people to switch with just a few searches.
Though I'd certainly switch if I could have the Librarian from Snow Crash.
•MS built a system that's a bear to develop for
Compared to what? From day 1 Xbox was built with development ease in mind, and everything I've read since says that it and Gamecube are very friendly. How about you point to one quote from one developer that says the opposite?
•and they didn't secure enough games on release day. Hell - in their release year.
Again, compared to what? They had arguably the best launch selection of the three current consoles (Gamecube was a joke, and PS2 had football), and the highest software units:hardware units ratio in their opening months.
•Nintendo isn't about games, it's practically about franchises
...which consist of games. What Nintendo has are franchises in which the games are consistently good. "Spyro the Dragon" is a franchise, but who gives a shit? It's all recycled crap.
•The Playstation 2 sells because, even though it's beastly hard to develop for, it was backward compatible with the libraries of PS1 games already out there. ("Look, Mom! You don't *need* to buy me all new games!")
Do you have any evidence regarding how important this feature was to PS2 sales? Granted, it's a positive selling point, but I suspect consistently overrated. Getting SOFTWARE was not the problem for new PS2 owners in the first year - it was getting ahold of the system itself. When you spend $300, 400, 500 dollars on your brand new state-of-the-art machine, you're not going to pop in some pixellated game you've already played.
•On top of that, they've got heavy duty third-party support: Konami's Metal Gear Solid series, and Squaresoft's Final Fantasy, to name two offhand.
Yes.
•They should know how tight the hardware markets are and how difficult it is to sell a third-party system
What the hell is a third-party system?
•Yet, even so, they distribute the X-Box -- a scaled down PC, with the ability to port your PC games to it -- which places it directly in contention for a part of the PC Gamer market.
The Xbox is not a PC, scaled down or otherwise. A PC is defined by its functions (it's a personal computer), and the Xbox doesn't fill those functions. All consoles consist of components not too dissimilar to those found in PCs, the Xbox only somewhat moreso.
You can port PC games to ANY console. The fact that this will be somewhat easier for the Xbox doesn't "place it in contention for a part of the PC gamer market", whatever that means. Xbox was explicitly designed to NOT be a PC. They still refuse to release a keyboard for it.
MS aimed, for better or worse, at the console market. They surely never counted on getting PC gamers to "jump ship" - it's not like you can do your homework, office work, web design, graphic design, whatever on an Xbox. It's meant to sit in front of your couch with a pizza box on top of it.
I'd go for 'Troll' just on account of this sentence:
"You see a country that doesn't like the U.S. developing technology that can easily be used to deliver a nuclear payload and you cheer, while simultaneously objecting to the very plan that can protect us from the developing threat."
Give me a break. That plan can't even protect the US from dummy missiles, launched BY the US under ideal circumstances, that are continuously beaming their exact location to the kill vehicle. THAT's why people object to it.
Well, this one did it.
on
MAME On Xbox
·
· Score: 0
Bumping threshold to 4. Wonder how long before it'll have to be 5?
"Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it."
"The term "spam," as used on this newsgroup, means "the same article (or essentially the same article) posted an unacceptably high number of times to one or more newsgroups." CONTENT IS IRRELEVANT. 'Spam' doesn't mean "ads." It doesn't mean "abuse." It doesn't mean "posts whose content I object to."
This comment is no different from Negroponte's, except for taking the inverse position. You offer no rationale, no evidence, no argument. It doesn't even really constitute a criticism.
Why should a reader take your view instead of his? Because it's sardonic?
Slashdot Mirror
There's a documented bug in some version of MS Office where if you try to Save As... on a file that's been opened from a floppy, well, say goodbye to your file.
Naturally this isn't the first "death of the floppy" topic on slashdot, and on every previous one someone piped up to say, "why is the floppy dead? it's cheap, reliable, ubiquitous, and the perfect size for documents." Take the "reliable" out of that and the attraction fades fast.
Does anyone else find it depressing that the entire privacy issue this service (creates? no... inflames?) hinges on the fact that 99% of Internet users probably don't know whether they're reading email as HTML or plain text?
Those systems debuted for big $$. These are relatively cheap portables. If you have a GBA and like it (hint: this is everyone), and you see a DS game that excites you, you buy it. How hard is that?
And the dual screen? It's a gimmick. Anything the Dual screen can do could also be done by a bigger or wider screen.
Anyway, have you even read how the screen will be used? How the input works? In fact, you CAN'T do the same things with just a larger screen.
Anonymous Coward
Sedna is over 4 times the size (volume) of Quaoar.
Whether it's a planet is a silly argument, but even so, "we already have Quaoar" is really irrelevant.
Oh, right on. It's about time someone started developing a mass-market Loch Ness monster.
2003? They should have hopped on the fucking cluetrain four years ago.
When I glance over "Popout Prism" on the page, I keep seeing "priapism."
SETI@Home attracts... football players?
"...broadband penetration rates are comparable to Western Europe" is another hot one. The article says that "Internet usage and broadband access are approaching West European levels." Hell, all that means is that Estonian rates are (a) lower, and (b) increasing relative to WE levels.
The article itself gives information that conveys almost nothing about usage: "Farmers are ordering broadband lines, and motorists on rural roads frequently pass blue information signs pointing them to the nearest place to access the Web." Wow, so at least 2 farmers have ordered broadband. And there are at least two signs on country highways - of course motorists frequently pass them, people drive down those roads all the time!
Something that gets ESR a little too excited.
Anyone who thinks living on $50K is a challenge is someone who needs to evaluate their life management skills. Talk about being spoiled.
And you're ranting about this on Slashdot?
Have you noticed that ticking off the "no MS stories" box in your preferences really means "imperceptibly fewer MS stories"?
Oh, that'll keep the minors away, I'm sure.
Well, it sounds promising so far...
The thought that there was nothing (well, almost nothing) in between me and those huge, huge objects that were so very far away still sends tingling down my spine whenever I think about it.
First you have to disperse the triffid seeds.
Other than that you just say that alltheweb gave more hits for you on a couple of searches. That's a pretty useless measure of search tool quality to anyone else.
For my part I'm not sure what would make me switch from Google. I really value their interface, and none of the recent challengers are preferable to me in that regard. I switched TO Google because IMO it was a big leap in result quality over the earlier generation, but until we start using personalized intelligent agents, I'm hard pressed to imagine how a new engine could produce as big a leap. Basically, as search engine quality improves, for most people the sample of searches that they'd have to do in order for a comparison to produce clearly discriminable results also grows. Will very many Google users really sit down and do like 50 searches with both it and AllTheWeb, on the chance that ATW proves slightly better? I doubt it, and I'd hate to have to be in the planning room of a Google competitor, trying to think of the killer app that could get people to switch with just a few searches.
Though I'd certainly switch if I could have the Librarian from Snow Crash.
Compared to what? From day 1 Xbox was built with development ease in mind, and everything I've read since says that it and Gamecube are very friendly. How about you point to one quote from one developer that says the opposite?
•and they didn't secure enough games on release day. Hell - in their release year.
Again, compared to what? They had arguably the best launch selection of the three current consoles (Gamecube was a joke, and PS2 had football), and the highest software units:hardware units ratio in their opening months.
•Nintendo isn't about games, it's practically about franchises
...which consist of games. What Nintendo has are franchises in which the games are consistently good. "Spyro the Dragon" is a franchise, but who gives a shit? It's all recycled crap.
•The Playstation 2 sells because, even though it's beastly hard to develop for, it was backward compatible with the libraries of PS1 games already out there. ("Look, Mom! You don't *need* to buy me all new games!")
Do you have any evidence regarding how important this feature was to PS2 sales? Granted, it's a positive selling point, but I suspect consistently overrated. Getting SOFTWARE was not the problem for new PS2 owners in the first year - it was getting ahold of the system itself. When you spend $300, 400, 500 dollars on your brand new state-of-the-art machine, you're not going to pop in some pixellated game you've already played.
•On top of that, they've got heavy duty third-party support: Konami's Metal Gear Solid series, and Squaresoft's Final Fantasy, to name two offhand.
Yes.
•They should know how tight the hardware markets are and how difficult it is to sell a third-party system
What the hell is a third-party system?
•Yet, even so, they distribute the X-Box -- a scaled down PC, with the ability to port your PC games to it -- which places it directly in contention for a part of the PC Gamer market.
The Xbox is not a PC, scaled down or otherwise. A PC is defined by its functions (it's a personal computer), and the Xbox doesn't fill those functions. All consoles consist of components not too dissimilar to those found in PCs, the Xbox only somewhat moreso.
You can port PC games to ANY console. The fact that this will be somewhat easier for the Xbox doesn't "place it in contention for a part of the PC gamer market", whatever that means. Xbox was explicitly designed to NOT be a PC. They still refuse to release a keyboard for it.
MS aimed, for better or worse, at the console market. They surely never counted on getting PC gamers to "jump ship" - it's not like you can do your homework, office work, web design, graphic design, whatever on an Xbox. It's meant to sit in front of your couch with a pizza box on top of it.
I couldn't even read that whole thing without getting bored out of my skull.
Bumping threshold to 4. Wonder how long before it'll have to be 5?
"Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it."
From the Net Abuse FAQ:
"The term "spam," as used on this newsgroup, means "the same article (or essentially the same article) posted an unacceptably high number of times to one or more newsgroups." CONTENT IS IRRELEVANT. 'Spam' doesn't mean "ads." It doesn't mean "abuse." It doesn't mean "posts whose content I object to."
Why should a reader take your view instead of his? Because it's sardonic?