The OP said "touch interface" and then refers to "touch" as an "input method". The trackpad is described as "multi-touch".
I stand by my statements and provide further evidence of "touch" making its way to the desktop. Look! It's an official apple support page about multi-touch gestures in OSX Lion, one of the big things they were promoting about it: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4721
If you're touching a trackpad (distinct from mousing, which is more using a stick to poke things instead of touching directly), what and where you are touching the interface is largely arbitrary. It's not that crazy to imagine a kinect-like desktop interface being common so that people can touch items in their desktop experience without smudging the screen up with fingerprints.
... it's maybe the ONE thing I agree with Steve Jobs about -- touch does NOT work as a viable input method for a desktop.
He may have said that at some point, but you should know by now that Apple changes the kool-aid they serve every so often. He's even spoken at length about merging iOS concepts into the desktop OSX.
I've copied some text straight from the apple web site for the "Magic Trackpad" that make touch sound like you're no longer cool without it:
"The new Magic Trackpad is the first Multi-Touch trackpad designed to work with your Mac desktop computer." "And it supports a full set of gestures, giving you a whole new way to control and interact with what’s on your screen." "Magic Trackpad gives you a whole new way to control what’s on your Mac desktop computer. When you perform gestures, you actually interact with what’s on your screen. You feel closer to your content, and moving around feels completely natural."
Yeah, I sat through the "cat" example and it was annoying to watch. I then searched for some awk examples, and I came up with a page full of "insert title here" entries that were all noise and no signal.
And you can't control the playback apart from starting it. THAT SUCKS! Can't even pause? rewind, move the time cursor or w/e it's called.
This site is *not* ready for public consumption. I really wish it were.
I used to play Q3A with the handle "KillBot" and I had uncanny skill with the rail gun (I miss it, sniff). I could pluck people across the map while flying off one of those jump ramps, and people would CONSTANTLY ask me if I was a bot or an actual person.
... I guess I must be missing something. Aside from the DRM that forces you to be online to play, and the fact that they censor your character names, how is this an improvement over Diablo 2?
A quick list of what I saw: - no longer have to click on gold to pick it up, just run next to it - in co-op mode loot drops and becomes visible to players individually. No more "community loot" - same for shrines... one player can't just take em all - the cauldron that magically recycles your crap into gold so you don't have to keep running back to town to sell it and empty your bags - a box that does something similar, but functions like "disenchanting" in wow. not sure what you do with the materials just yet - pretty contemporary graphics:)
From what I understand they're starting out small with the beta invites because they want to make it more stable before inviting in more people. It would make sense that they're only inviting people with certain hardware configurations or high status. Imagine how unhelpful it would be to them if droves of people started saying how unstable it is, even for the first beta release.
Re:Blizzard is evil, boycott if you have integrity
on
Diablo III Beta Begins
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· Score: 1
I've purchased every other game Blizzard made...
I bet my super nintendo you never bought the lost vikings.
Normally I'd agree with you, but I've been watching husky for a while and those two made me lol quite a bit. The go-to harry potter reference "I'm a WIZahd!" and ATHF reference "Chicken, arise!" they kept saying kept a grin on my face. I'd love to kick it with those guys and play games.
Re:Blizzard is evil, boycott if you have integrity
on
Diablo III Beta Begins
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I value my freedom to play some seriously fun games that take advantage of my slick 2011 hardware. They dropped the real names issue after all the outcry, by the way. Blizzard puts a lot of their name into the quality of their games, being unafraid to shelve a project with heavy investment if necessary. I'm not especially happy about the bnetd thing, but I do kind of appreciate that they make it difficult to operate a bot in WoW.
I'm not sure what you're talking about unless that's a reference to online-only play. I like they way they've handled co-op loot, not having to click on gold, a cauldron that magically turns your crap into gold (saving you a trip to town), and a lot of other little niceties that make it look VERY fun to play and a worthy sequel. Not to mention it looks amazing.
Whether or not they need another cash cow (spoiler: they don't), this most certainly will be one.
Over an hour of gameplay co-op footage
on
Diablo III Beta Begins
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· Score: 3, Informative
Huskystarcraft has a 4-part youtube series of co-op play. Great to watch if you don't have access to the beta yet! They play a wizard (so full of himself, it's great!) and witchdoctor.
From TFA: "Late Thursday night, BP officials sent word that an ROV survey of the well found no leaks." That might have been added in the update that postdates the publish date.
For all they know, there is something faulty that regularly spurts ten barrels every time they're not looking. The article mentions several explanations. The kernel of the story is that it is the same oil from BP's well, and not some other source.
You're saying the article is out of date because NPR reported something contained in that very article a day after it was published? PLEASE MOD INSIGHTFUL
I've never done a FP comment before, and now seemed like the time. Am I late?
I have plenty of fond memories reading slashdot religiously after I graduated high school (about the same time/. started) as I stumbled through IT as pertains to the real world. I even started a once very popular movie news blog using the/. db structure, which was overkill, but we implemented the fields we needed and built an original thing in php around it. It was a very fun and rewarding early web project for me and my friends.
I've never found a quick way to download flickr sets. Closest I've come are old apps that have had api access blocked off. It's such a hassle to manually pick the high-res images and download them all to the same folder. Short of writing my own program to do it, does anyone have a good way to get all these images?
I'm running OS X 10.6.4 on a dell mini9 netbook. that's with an atom processor, which became unsupported as of 10.6.2. a little patch allows me to run it. It's a sweet OS for my netbook, but having 2gig of ram on it helps a lot. the processor is a little pokey, which is why it's a netbook and not something in a better class with a better processor. It gets great battery life too.
I would LOVE to have the same netbook with an updated processor. dual-core atom would be nice!
I bought warhammer as a digital download and though I felt it had a lot of promise, I was really disappointed that I had bought something that just "needed more time in the oven". Compared to WoW, it used twice as much ram, and I couldn't alt-tab in and out quickly at all like I could with WoW when consulting online references. There were never enough players around for the group quests, which were a cool idea but a COMPLETE waste of time because finishing one was obviously not going to happen for me. Some of the game concepts were not well explained, and I felt like I had passed up some important stuff early because there was no clear way to know about it. I didn't even play out the month that came with the game purchase it was that bad. I figured I'd come back to it at some point after it had time to mature, but the interest has long since faded. Oh, and I vaguely recall something about one of the classes not being available yet. Don't really remember what it was by now.
So yeah, I pretty much agree with the article summary as one who got in early then dropped off.
How about a ban on violent behavior from adults in front of children? Or how about letting children opt out of religious organizations if they don't like being forced into one!!??
Government regulations are what keep you from dying every time you make toast, plug in the kettle, or turn on the TV. They keep you safe on the roads. They stop your house from falling in, from toxic chemicals being found in your food, and thousands upon thousands of other hazards that every day life throws at you.
Go find some fda-approved orange soda with sodium benzoate and tell me how much benzene you feel safe drinking. Tell me about how much safer america is by decades of relaxing fuel efficiency standards and making us dependent on foreign oil. I'm sure all the car exhaust I breathe while biking is good for my health too. Tell me why I used to pay so much for car insurance that refused to replace my unsafe windshield that I couldn't afford to replace myself because I had spent all that money on car insurance. Tell me why government regulations allow credit companies to tarnish my record when the bank screws up, but their access to credit isn't affected when they unlawfully withhold money due to system malfunctions. Tell me about how government corn subsidies are making food generally more affordable and nutritious. Tell me about how the lack of real police oversight (and prosecuting people with the nerve to record police interactions) make the citizenry safer.
This is your opportunity to make me feel all warm and squishy about the government acting as Big Nanny. Go for it!
I don't have any citations handy, but from what I've gathered longbow archers were trained from a very young age to master the longbow. Shooting it accurately with enough strength for the duration an archer needs to shoot was not a job for the peasants who'd normally be thrilled to have so much as a pitchfork to fight with. When archers were thinned, finding replacements was a real problem.
Slashdot Mirror
The OP said "touch interface" and then refers to "touch" as an "input method". The trackpad is described as "multi-touch".
I stand by my statements and provide further evidence of "touch" making its way to the desktop. Look! It's an official apple support page about multi-touch gestures in OSX Lion, one of the big things they were promoting about it: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4721
If you're touching a trackpad (distinct from mousing, which is more using a stick to poke things instead of touching directly), what and where you are touching the interface is largely arbitrary. It's not that crazy to imagine a kinect-like desktop interface being common so that people can touch items in their desktop experience without smudging the screen up with fingerprints.
... it's maybe the ONE thing I agree with Steve Jobs about -- touch does NOT work as a viable input method for a desktop.
He may have said that at some point, but you should know by now that Apple changes the kool-aid they serve every so often. He's even spoken at length about merging iOS concepts into the desktop OSX.
I've copied some text straight from the apple web site for the "Magic Trackpad" that make touch sound like you're no longer cool without it:
"The new Magic Trackpad is the first Multi-Touch trackpad designed to work with your Mac desktop computer."
"And it supports a full set of gestures, giving you a whole new way to control and interact with what’s on your screen."
"Magic Trackpad gives you a whole new way to control what’s on your Mac desktop computer. When you perform gestures, you actually interact with what’s on your screen. You feel closer to your content, and moving around feels completely natural."
Yeah, I sat through the "cat" example and it was annoying to watch. I then searched for some awk examples, and I came up with a page full of "insert title here" entries that were all noise and no signal.
And you can't control the playback apart from starting it. THAT SUCKS! Can't even pause? rewind, move the time cursor or w/e it's called.
This site is *not* ready for public consumption. I really wish it were.
I used to play Q3A with the handle "KillBot" and I had uncanny skill with the rail gun (I miss it, sniff). I could pluck people across the map while flying off one of those jump ramps, and people would CONSTANTLY ask me if I was a bot or an actual person.
... I guess I must be missing something. Aside from the DRM that forces you to be online to play, and the fact that they censor your character names, how is this an improvement over Diablo 2?
A quick list of what I saw: :)
- no longer have to click on gold to pick it up, just run next to it
- in co-op mode loot drops and becomes visible to players individually. No more "community loot"
- same for shrines... one player can't just take em all
- the cauldron that magically recycles your crap into gold so you don't have to keep running back to town to sell it and empty your bags
- a box that does something similar, but functions like "disenchanting" in wow. not sure what you do with the materials just yet
- pretty contemporary graphics
From what I understand they're starting out small with the beta invites because they want to make it more stable before inviting in more people. It would make sense that they're only inviting people with certain hardware configurations or high status. Imagine how unhelpful it would be to them if droves of people started saying how unstable it is, even for the first beta release.
I've purchased every other game Blizzard made...
I bet my super nintendo you never bought the lost vikings.
Normally I'd agree with you, but I've been watching husky for a while and those two made me lol quite a bit. The go-to harry potter reference "I'm a WIZahd!" and ATHF reference "Chicken, arise!" they kept saying kept a grin on my face. I'd love to kick it with those guys and play games.
I value my freedom to play some seriously fun games that take advantage of my slick 2011 hardware. They dropped the real names issue after all the outcry, by the way. Blizzard puts a lot of their name into the quality of their games, being unafraid to shelve a project with heavy investment if necessary. I'm not especially happy about the bnetd thing, but I do kind of appreciate that they make it difficult to operate a bot in WoW.
I'm not sure what you're talking about unless that's a reference to online-only play. I like they way they've handled co-op loot, not having to click on gold, a cauldron that magically turns your crap into gold (saving you a trip to town), and a lot of other little niceties that make it look VERY fun to play and a worthy sequel. Not to mention it looks amazing.
Whether or not they need another cash cow (spoiler: they don't), this most certainly will be one.
Huskystarcraft has a 4-part youtube series of co-op play. Great to watch if you don't have access to the beta yet! They play a wizard (so full of himself, it's great!) and witchdoctor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoGQmKi0Iq0 (1st part)
I honestly wouldn't expect a lot of developers to cupertino with this decision.
From TFA: "Late Thursday night, BP officials sent word that an ROV survey of the well found no leaks." That might have been added in the update that postdates the publish date.
For all they know, there is something faulty that regularly spurts ten barrels every time they're not looking. The article mentions several explanations. The kernel of the story is that it is the same oil from BP's well, and not some other source.
Sorry for being snarky. I admit that was rude.
You're saying the article is out of date because NPR reported something contained in that very article a day after it was published? PLEASE MOD INSIGHTFUL
I've never done a FP comment before, and now seemed like the time. Am I late?
I have plenty of fond memories reading slashdot religiously after I graduated high school (about the same time /. started) as I stumbled through IT as pertains to the real world. I even started a once very popular movie news blog using the /. db structure, which was overkill, but we implemented the fields we needed and built an original thing in php around it. It was a very fun and rewarding early web project for me and my friends.
Thanks a lot for your contributions Rob!
I'm going to seek a $20k grant to advise police agencies against having their website developed by BJM marketing.
In case you are wondering what the hell I'm talking about: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9218961/AntiSec_hackers_dump_data_after_hacking_police_websites
When rocksmith comes out soon, guitar zero will have nothing to offer than can't be had (likely for better) between that and rock band.
Personally, I would have tossed GH under the bus for rock band just because the strum bar click was so damn annoying.
hey that worked great! TYVM!
I've never found a quick way to download flickr sets. Closest I've come are old apps that have had api access blocked off. It's such a hassle to manually pick the high-res images and download them all to the same folder. Short of writing my own program to do it, does anyone have a good way to get all these images?
I'm running OS X 10.6.4 on a dell mini9 netbook. that's with an atom processor, which became unsupported as of 10.6.2. a little patch allows me to run it. It's a sweet OS for my netbook, but having 2gig of ram on it helps a lot. the processor is a little pokey, which is why it's a netbook and not something in a better class with a better processor. It gets great battery life too.
I would LOVE to have the same netbook with an updated processor. dual-core atom would be nice!
I wonder if I'm even eligible for the free trial since I've long ago purchased the game.
I bought warhammer as a digital download and though I felt it had a lot of promise, I was really disappointed that I had bought something that just "needed more time in the oven". Compared to WoW, it used twice as much ram, and I couldn't alt-tab in and out quickly at all like I could with WoW when consulting online references. There were never enough players around for the group quests, which were a cool idea but a COMPLETE waste of time because finishing one was obviously not going to happen for me. Some of the game concepts were not well explained, and I felt like I had passed up some important stuff early because there was no clear way to know about it. I didn't even play out the month that came with the game purchase it was that bad. I figured I'd come back to it at some point after it had time to mature, but the interest has long since faded. Oh, and I vaguely recall something about one of the classes not being available yet. Don't really remember what it was by now.
So yeah, I pretty much agree with the article summary as one who got in early then dropped off.
How about a ban on violent behavior from adults in front of children? Or how about letting children opt out of religious organizations if they don't like being forced into one!!??
Government regulations are what keep you from dying every time you make toast, plug in the kettle, or turn on the TV. They keep you safe on the roads. They stop your house from falling in, from toxic chemicals being found in your food, and thousands upon thousands of other hazards that every day life throws at you.
Go find some fda-approved orange soda with sodium benzoate and tell me how much benzene you feel safe drinking. Tell me about how much safer america is by decades of relaxing fuel efficiency standards and making us dependent on foreign oil. I'm sure all the car exhaust I breathe while biking is good for my health too. Tell me why I used to pay so much for car insurance that refused to replace my unsafe windshield that I couldn't afford to replace myself because I had spent all that money on car insurance. Tell me why government regulations allow credit companies to tarnish my record when the bank screws up, but their access to credit isn't affected when they unlawfully withhold money due to system malfunctions. Tell me about how government corn subsidies are making food generally more affordable and nutritious. Tell me about how the lack of real police oversight (and prosecuting people with the nerve to record police interactions) make the citizenry safer.
This is your opportunity to make me feel all warm and squishy about the government acting as Big Nanny. Go for it!
I don't have any citations handy, but from what I've gathered longbow archers were trained from a very young age to master the longbow. Shooting it accurately with enough strength for the duration an archer needs to shoot was not a job for the peasants who'd normally be thrilled to have so much as a pitchfork to fight with. When archers were thinned, finding replacements was a real problem.