What a useless summary. Something big and great. No clue what genre the game would consider, nothing to even dream about. How about "a game about mutant monkeys" or maybe "space pirates" or something.
PS, if you have a Wii, get orb.com to stream media to your Wii browser. Not a perfect solution, but mostly works for pics, video, games, TV, etc.
Put your tinfoil hat on, next they will be monitoring your brainwaves.
Public places can legally be monitored. Cops are allowed to patrol the streets, so automated traffic cameras just extend the natural reach of the police without hiring 100x more cops.
Private places are still private. You are not required to host a viewscreen like 1984 in your home, although many people do in the form of cable TV and broadband. Don't like it? Unplug! (and put on your tinfoil hat). It is totally legal to NOT let google read your mail and share it with the CIA or for TW to monitor what you watch 24/7.
Not even censorship. Dell owns the forum, they can do whatever they want. Maybe if they had some crazy TOS that said they would never delete posts, you could go after them. I doubt it.
Is there anything that keeps slashdot from deleting posts? No. Private companies can censor things under their control all they want.
Don't like it? Start your own site and delete whatever you don't like.
I spent some time at MIT too, and it is definitely the exception to almost all rules. My personal experience includes Georgia Tech, Purdue, Delaware, MIT, and my current employer USC.
Yes, the MIT people are almost all movers and shakers. They will be running things down the line. But most people will never be able to get into MIT or any other top-ten private school.
At the same time, you can get a good undergraduate science / engineering degree at a lot state schools and still be a productive member of society and not be 100k in debt.
Also, after seeing how "valued" teaching is at MIT, I would never encourage anyone to go there for undergrad, unless they just wanted to network. The quality of education for the undergrads is limited compared to other places. The kids are all brilliant so they will be fine at whatever they do, but generally undergrads are way way down the ladder. Go there for grad school (when it is free) instead. Again, state schools in my experience seemed to do a better job at undergrad education.
I can see that private schools may have better students, but that is really debatable. You can find outstanding people anywhere, most state schools have an honors program if you want to hang out with the elite.
The contacts issue may be valid though. Mega-rich people send kids to private schools, so your chances of meeting the offspring of powerful people should increase at a private school. In my experience, techy people don't always get out and socialize so much, so this advantage is lost on engineering / science students.
I could see there being more hand-holding at private schools. They are motivated to keep you happy, you are dropping 30k per year to be there. State schools can almost always find another student as good as you to fill your spot.
Also, for financial reasons many public schools will have better/bigger research programs, so they may have better faculty. To do research, you need grad students. To get grad students, we generally have to pay their tuition. That extra 20k per year at a private school impacts the bottom line. And there are tons of state programs to fund public schools, so you get grants for research lab equipment and such. Obviously, there are great private research places for science (MIT, CMU, etc) but the average state school will have decent science and engineering programs. The average private school probably doesn't.
I personally don't see the added value of going to a private school for a tech education. Usually, tech education is more about what you can do and what you know, not who you know.
I have tried a few solutions for streaming media to my Wii from a PC. WiiCR would not install and Red Kawa did not work and was not polished.
orb.com has a nice application that serves up your media (pron?) to your Wii browser, or any browser. Photos and mp3s work ok, some video works, and they have easy links to online video that works as well. The interface almost looks like a Mythbox frontend.
Maybe WiiCR will get an installer and kick but, but until the Wii browser gets rid of the big tool bar always on it will not be a great solution, just a good solution.
I was a postdoc at MIT. Compared to other schools, they did not appear to value undergraduate education. They are THE research university, not THE engineering educator. I had friends that went to MIT for undergrad, you meet the best and brightest and people that will be running things down the line, but you probably could get a similar or better education at a large research active state school. MIT does not need great / dedicated instructors, since the undergrads will do great things no matter what.
For that matter, I agree with previous posts on public vs private. For engineering, why go to a private school? In many cases, the benefit is not there. I considered CMU too, since I wanted to double major in engineering and music, but I changed my mind later. The cost difference is significant.
I went out-of-state to Georgia Tech for undergrad. At the time, they did not do much hand-holding either, following the MIT mold but at least it did not cost me 35k per year.
Reputation is probably more important for graduate work, not your undergrad degree. Most any place will make you a competent engineer. Only a few places will make you a great researcher. To get into a good grad school, keep a 3.7 GPA, do some research with a faculty member while in undergrad, and do something in the summer (work for industry, do a REU). And remember, they pay engineers to go to grad school. Tuition is paid and you get a stipend of 20-30k or so.
My wife recently found out the local Target had some Wiis, so I sat in the parking lot at 5 AM on a Sunday waiting for them to open. A few other showed up a bit before 8 looking for Wiis, but they actually had a few left on the shelves that Sunday.
It is freaking awesome.
And it may be able to replace my need for a MythBox. With the available web browser and orb.com, you can stream pics, photos, mp3, and movies to the wii from your PC (but the browser bar is still there, not optimal but good).
We took it on a multi-family vacation and it was a total hit with all the kids, from 4 up to 14. The hard-core gamer kid even thought it was fun. Bowling, tennis, golf, baseball are all great social games.
I have not ever been into consoles, but this thing is awesome and I think I made a few converts this weekend.
I do wish they had a 1080P version with 8xAA, but it is fine for now. I wonder if version 2 (Wii Wii?) could upgrade the graphics and add pvr capabilities? I love the interface, the pointing remote is awesome, especially the vibration for feedback on when you are on a button.
I assume you want to get an advanced degree if you want to do research. I have heard BS level people get looked down upon at research labs, but YMMV, so you need a PhD.
Going to grad school now could be problematic just because of the coursework requirements. In engineering, you generally would have to complete a few core classes (plus some specialty courses) to get a PhD. There are some softer engineering majors (less math and science) but you still need the basics which could hurt.
As for basic sciences, age could be problematic. If you ultimately want a faculty position, you may need a PhD (which I have seen take much longer in sciences) and maybe a coupld of post docs. Think maybe a decade. After that, you could be a professor. Or maybe you stop early (no postdoc) and get a research position at a lab somewhere.
The good thing is that with a programming background you can be very very productive in a lot of research areas. The big Physics guys do a lot of computing. Computational chemistry. Bioinformatics. Simulation. The cutting edge research stuff is generally computationally driven, but our new students going into grad school have less and less computing experience. You may get your clock cleaned in your course work, but you should be able to do some good stuff later on. Good thing is, you just have to survive your coursework (Usually maintain B average) since after grad school people just look at your papers and impact, not your grades (usually).
I think there are cases where there may be a lot of extra functionality in some hardware (for testing or legal versions). Maybe it can operate in bands limited by the FCC, but should not for legal reasons. The detailed docs covered by NDA may detail this, and there is no reason to put all the details in the open source driver to get something working.
This way, you get your working open source driver, but you don't need all the details of the hardware (which may include a lot of IP for the hardware maker).
I have had trouble with a PVR-500 card in linux support. They changed hardware, but did not release full specs so the linux driver is lagging. People with access to the specs don't seem to care about making the driver work properly, so we are screwed. People with access to the specs are probably under NDA and can't release info.
The easy fix for them is to revoke the keys for the player they assume is at fault. Easy to do, but the movies pressed so far will be in the open.
The other fix I read about is to release a single movie with hundreds of different keys. Instead of "pirates" releasing one cracked key per movie, they would have to get all of the hundreds of keys out there and match them as well...
What you need is a 1080p LCD with HDMI HDCP attached to a 1080p scanner... Like the good old days where you put your boom box next to another boom box to dub cassette tapes... Love the 80s!!
Just realizing my treo looks similar in specs. I can add a 2 GB SD card and WiFi Sled. The newer 700 has a 1.2 MP camera. Treo battery is a little better, and the form factor is ok. Screen resolution is similar, and treo has a real keyboard (not some silly touch screen without stylus, like a mouse with no right or center click?)
Other than the cool demo with pretty pictures, why switch?
And what happens after you authorize five computers? Say ten years from now, what are you going to do with your $5000 DRM crippled iTunes collection?
Plus you are stuck with a single vendor who can change the terms of the agreement as they want. Maybe they don't want mp3 output anymore (I think they limit to 196k too). Maybe they only want you tied to a single machine. Whatever.
At least with my CD collection, there are a wide number of players available. And I have the original non-compressed format, so I can encode it to whatever format I want.
Buying DRM crippled music is just throwing money away.
Re:Well then, the time has come.
on
Plasma or LCD?
·
· Score: 1
Bah, I am running 2560x1600. Any idea where to get 1600p video (other than HL2 and similar FPS?)
Ontopic, Plasma 1080p screens are super expensive. They have some plasmas that claim 1080p, but they are not 1960x1080, they cheat horizontal and do something like 480x1080. 1080p LCDs are all over the place.
Slashdot Mirror
What about Dune II? That was the first top down strategy game for me... Same type of play, build base, create troops, manage resources, kill people.
What a useless summary. Something big and great. No clue what genre the game would consider, nothing to even dream about. How about "a game about mutant monkeys" or maybe "space pirates" or something.
PS, if you have a Wii, get orb.com to stream media to your Wii browser. Not a perfect solution, but mostly works for pics, video, games, TV, etc.
Put your tinfoil hat on, next they will be monitoring your brainwaves.
Public places can legally be monitored. Cops are allowed to patrol the streets, so automated traffic cameras just extend the natural reach of the police without hiring 100x more cops.
Private places are still private. You are not required to host a viewscreen like 1984 in your home, although many people do in the form of cable TV and broadband. Don't like it? Unplug! (and put on your tinfoil hat). It is totally legal to NOT let google read your mail and share it with the CIA or for TW to monitor what you watch 24/7.
Not even censorship. Dell owns the forum, they can do whatever they want. Maybe if they had some crazy TOS that said they would never delete posts, you could go after them. I doubt it.
Is there anything that keeps slashdot from deleting posts? No. Private companies can censor things under their control all they want.
Don't like it? Start your own site and delete whatever you don't like.
I spent some time at MIT too, and it is definitely the exception to almost all rules. My personal experience includes Georgia Tech, Purdue, Delaware, MIT, and my current employer USC.
Yes, the MIT people are almost all movers and shakers. They will be running things down the line. But most people will never be able to get into MIT or any other top-ten private school.
At the same time, you can get a good undergraduate science / engineering degree at a lot state schools and still be a productive member of society and not be 100k in debt.
Also, after seeing how "valued" teaching is at MIT, I would never encourage anyone to go there for undergrad, unless they just wanted to network. The quality of education for the undergrads is limited compared to other places. The kids are all brilliant so they will be fine at whatever they do, but generally undergrads are way way down the ladder. Go there for grad school (when it is free) instead. Again, state schools in my experience seemed to do a better job at undergrad education.
I can see that private schools may have better students, but that is really debatable. You can find outstanding people anywhere, most state schools have an honors program if you want to hang out with the elite.
The contacts issue may be valid though. Mega-rich people send kids to private schools, so your chances of meeting the offspring of powerful people should increase at a private school. In my experience, techy people don't always get out and socialize so much, so this advantage is lost on engineering / science students.
I could see there being more hand-holding at private schools. They are motivated to keep you happy, you are dropping 30k per year to be there. State schools can almost always find another student as good as you to fill your spot.
Also, for financial reasons many public schools will have better/bigger research programs, so they may have better faculty. To do research, you need grad students. To get grad students, we generally have to pay their tuition. That extra 20k per year at a private school impacts the bottom line. And there are tons of state programs to fund public schools, so you get grants for research lab equipment and such. Obviously, there are great private research places for science (MIT, CMU, etc) but the average state school will have decent science and engineering programs. The average private school probably doesn't.
I personally don't see the added value of going to a private school for a tech education. Usually, tech education is more about what you can do and what you know, not who you know.
There is no reason to go 100k into debt for a college degree, especially for a technical degree.
There are a variety of fine state schools that will train / pedigree you in whatever you want at a fraction of that cost.
I have tried a few solutions for streaming media to my Wii from a PC. WiiCR would not install and Red Kawa did not work and was not polished.
orb.com has a nice application that serves up your media (pron?) to your Wii browser, or any browser. Photos and mp3s work ok, some video works, and they have easy links to online video that works as well. The interface almost looks like a Mythbox frontend.
Maybe WiiCR will get an installer and kick but, but until the Wii browser gets rid of the big tool bar always on it will not be a great solution, just a good solution.
I was a postdoc at MIT. Compared to other schools, they did not appear to value undergraduate education. They are THE research university, not THE engineering educator. I had friends that went to MIT for undergrad, you meet the best and brightest and people that will be running things down the line, but you probably could get a similar or better education at a large research active state school. MIT does not need great / dedicated instructors, since the undergrads will do great things no matter what.
For that matter, I agree with previous posts on public vs private. For engineering, why go to a private school? In many cases, the benefit is not there. I considered CMU too, since I wanted to double major in engineering and music, but I changed my mind later. The cost difference is significant.
I went out-of-state to Georgia Tech for undergrad. At the time, they did not do much hand-holding either, following the MIT mold but at least it did not cost me 35k per year.
Reputation is probably more important for graduate work, not your undergrad degree. Most any place will make you a competent engineer. Only a few places will make you a great researcher. To get into a good grad school, keep a 3.7 GPA, do some research with a faculty member while in undergrad, and do something in the summer (work for industry, do a REU). And remember, they pay engineers to go to grad school. Tuition is paid and you get a stipend of 20-30k or so.
My wife recently found out the local Target had some Wiis, so I sat in the parking lot at 5 AM on a Sunday waiting for them to open. A few other showed up a bit before 8 looking for Wiis, but they actually had a few left on the shelves that Sunday.
It is freaking awesome.
And it may be able to replace my need for a MythBox. With the available web browser and orb.com, you can stream pics, photos, mp3, and movies to the wii from your PC (but the browser bar is still there, not optimal but good).
We took it on a multi-family vacation and it was a total hit with all the kids, from 4 up to 14. The hard-core gamer kid even thought it was fun. Bowling, tennis, golf, baseball are all great social games.
I have not ever been into consoles, but this thing is awesome and I think I made a few converts this weekend.
I do wish they had a 1080P version with 8xAA, but it is fine for now. I wonder if version 2 (Wii Wii?) could upgrade the graphics and add pvr capabilities? I love the interface, the pointing remote is awesome, especially the vibration for feedback on when you are on a button.
The Wii is dead, long live the Wii.
I assume you want to get an advanced degree if you want to do research. I have heard BS level people get looked down upon at research labs, but YMMV, so you need a PhD.
Going to grad school now could be problematic just because of the coursework requirements. In engineering, you generally would have to complete a few core classes (plus some specialty courses) to get a PhD. There are some softer engineering majors (less math and science) but you still need the basics which could hurt.
As for basic sciences, age could be problematic. If you ultimately want a faculty position, you may need a PhD (which I have seen take much longer in sciences) and maybe a coupld of post docs. Think maybe a decade. After that, you could be a professor. Or maybe you stop early (no postdoc) and get a research position at a lab somewhere.
The good thing is that with a programming background you can be very very productive in a lot of research areas. The big Physics guys do a lot of computing. Computational chemistry. Bioinformatics. Simulation. The cutting edge research stuff is generally computationally driven, but our new students going into grad school have less and less computing experience. You may get your clock cleaned in your course work, but you should be able to do some good stuff later on. Good thing is, you just have to survive your coursework (Usually maintain B average) since after grad school people just look at your papers and impact, not your grades (usually).
Youngsters. Probably never saw an 8 inch monster floppy.
Size does matter...
People do this to get around scalping rules.
Buy this crappy t-shirt for $1000 and get a free ticket to the superbowl!
Buy this "travel package" at the local crappy hotel for $$$$$ and get a free ticket to the world series.
Technically I think you can't sell tickets in most places above face value, but this service approach seems to work.
I think there are cases where there may be a lot of extra functionality in some hardware (for testing or legal versions). Maybe it can operate in bands limited by the FCC, but should not for legal reasons. The detailed docs covered by NDA may detail this, and there is no reason to put all the details in the open source driver to get something working.
This way, you get your working open source driver, but you don't need all the details of the hardware (which may include a lot of IP for the hardware maker).
I have had trouble with a PVR-500 card in linux support. They changed hardware, but did not release full specs so the linux driver is lagging. People with access to the specs don't seem to care about making the driver work properly, so we are screwed. People with access to the specs are probably under NDA and can't release info.
But I still get garbage printing some pdf stuff on my printers...
And I get garbage display (bitmap fonts) on some computer display.
PDF is certainly not perfect.
I dropped my Treo in a parking lot after taking some hefty back-pain meds... When returned the next day, the LCD was cracked but the left side worked.
I have to cut-and-paste text messages then add carriage feed returns so I can read the text...
$100 for new screen
$200 for new (replacement) treo
$300 for new treo version
Too cheap and lazy to upgrade or fix it now...
The easy fix for them is to revoke the keys for the player they assume is at fault. Easy to do, but the movies pressed so far will be in the open.
The other fix I read about is to release a single movie with hundreds of different keys. Instead of "pirates" releasing one cracked key per movie, they would have to get all of the hundreds of keys out there and match them as well...
What you need is a 1080p LCD with HDMI HDCP attached to a 1080p scanner... Like the good old days where you put your boom box next to another boom box to dub cassette tapes... Love the 80s!!
You are totally wrong.
You can receive HD programming without a HD box.
Typically, on regular cable a lot of channels will not be encrypted and all you need is a QAM tuner.
Generally, the good stuff is encrypted, so all you can get is local and educational channels without a box. No espn or discovery...
Classic HP 15C. Graphing is for sissies. Best form factor ever (sideways, punch with both thumbs)
Maybe a 48SX if you really need graphing.
RPN forever!!!
I like metric for science and tech stuff, but for everyday items English makes sense.
Hot day? 100 degrees. Cold day? 0 degrees. 100 increments, no negatives. Not -15 and 37 garbage.
Thirsty? Grab a pint of beer. A liter gets warm too quickly.
Family needs milk? Get a gallon. Not a 3.5 L of milk.
Need to measure something? A foot is a natural length estimated with body parts on most people. A meter? not so much.
Same with an inch. A cm is too small to be useful in many cases.
I think I read that most of the stuff in answers.com was ripped from a earlier version of Wikipedia, so linking to both is redundant in many cases.
Just realizing my treo looks similar in specs. I can add a 2 GB SD card and WiFi Sled. The newer 700 has a 1.2 MP camera. Treo battery is a little better, and the form factor is ok. Screen resolution is similar, and treo has a real keyboard (not some silly touch screen without stylus, like a mouse with no right or center click?)
Other than the cool demo with pretty pictures, why switch?
And what happens after you authorize five computers? Say ten years from now, what are you going to do with your $5000 DRM crippled iTunes collection?
Plus you are stuck with a single vendor who can change the terms of the agreement as they want. Maybe they don't want mp3 output anymore (I think they limit to 196k too). Maybe they only want you tied to a single machine. Whatever.
At least with my CD collection, there are a wide number of players available. And I have the original non-compressed format, so I can encode it to whatever format I want.
Buying DRM crippled music is just throwing money away.
Bah, I am running 2560x1600. Any idea where to get 1600p video (other than HL2 and similar FPS?)
Ontopic, Plasma 1080p screens are super expensive. They have some plasmas that claim 1080p, but they are not 1960x1080, they cheat horizontal and do something like 480x1080. 1080p LCDs are all over the place.
And check out LyX for a decen LaTeX front end. Works on XP pretty well too.