In a way, a game should let you escape, immediately, outside the bounds of your mundane world. This is why people play Counterstrike, Left4Dead, Wolverine, etc. You leave the mowing of the lawns for the emptying of the clip as soon as the game is done loading. But there's a way to tell a story -- the build-up, the foreshadowing, and mostly, in terms of fantasy (fantasty/scifi/horror), to note the way things should have been had something not significantly changed. It sounds like Hard Rain is going to be like a book -- it's not going to throw you into a gunfight or a zombie massacre in the first page. It wants you to sit down, get involved with the characters, so that when they are pinned to a wall by a demon having their throats ripped out, you'll be thinking, "Dammit! He has T-ball in the morning!" and you'll care...even from your comfy computer chair.
1) Action game: You love your wife. She means the world to you. Zombies are attacking her. What do you do?
2) Story: "Hi, honey. I'm home!" (From the kitchen)"Wow. Just like yesterday. Coincidence?" "Hah. Hah. Did you manage to find my bowtie for tonight? The award ceremony's in a couple hours." "Yes, sir. Found it, sir." "What's that supposed to mean?" (hangs up his coat) "It means that you go from disorganized computer nerd to commander-in-chief whenever there's something that specifically involves you." (groaning)"Mmm. We don't have to go. I'm sure someone will accept the award for me." (heads towards kitchen door) "No no. I'm already dressed...." (Opens the kitchen door to find his wife seated with her legs on the table wearing a bowtie...and nothing else.) "Oh, we should skip it..." "No way." She lets him pick her up. "I think we can manage both." (As our reluctant hero carries her through the living room to their den of iniquity, their front door is struck so hard it nearly breaks the hinges. Slobbering and drooling can be heard from the other side...)
In #2, the zombies are secondary. They are the obstruction to the normalcy you'd rather be enjoying.
In all seriousness, what are they going to do when they are no longer the exclusive Jesus phone provider?
Raise their rates. People will leave AT&T (I live in an area with good AT&T service so I won't be leaving) and go to some other provider with the iPhone. The loss of $80/month/iPhone + their possible per MB increase will cripple them and the $60 family plan will be an extra $25 per device, 50 cents per text or $20 for unlimited texting.
You just alienated the largest pool of geeks on the Internet.
"You may think you're not doing anything wrong, but you may indeed be wronging someone you don't know." "But who defines what's wrong?" "Someone you don't know."
Excuse me while I iron my burka...I'll probably be needing it soon, just to be sure I'm not breaking any future laws.
I'd mod you up but you're already at +5. My concern is that Amazon's example reminded people that with everything electronic, data can be changed with or without our permission. Tough for someone to walk into your house and remove your book without at least some defense on your part. But if a company can just click a button and remove your property without your permission or knowledge, we're walking right into Orwell's 1984, only we won't need thousands of people editing newspapers...just a small team to make the edits to the electronic newspaper editions, book bannings, etc.
Not saying my tinfoil hat is on, but Amazon's deletion of personal property means I'm wearing it sombrero style on my back with a string around my neck.
Meh. Amplify and fork the incoming light -- some goes around to the back of the cloak and out, some reaches your eyes. It's all right there in the manual...
They fail in the mainstream market because there's such a small market for them. The Nokia n900 is a geek's dream, but most people want a phone, not a handheld computer. Most as in 99.99% of the marketplace. And even fewer want a multi-hundred dollar handheld computer/phone. So I'm sure it sells well in the market it was designed for...that.001% of the population that wants a hackable, programmable micro computer that makes calls. So it succeeds where its market is. Saying it fails is like saying the Audi R8 supercar failed. Though, at least that made it into Iron Man.
You could say the iPhone is a failure as well: it only has 1% of the cell phone market. But I think most of the U.S. will disagree with that statement.
GE also makes jet engines, for example, which military aircraft use. I think they would have been fine with either candidate.
And that defines a successful business plan -- if you can continue to make money down whatever path you are forced to tread, then you're doing smart business.
Felten's challenge is paired with a more technical look at how networks operate, which claims that TCP/IP by its design eliminates the possibliity of hogging bandwidth. But Wes Felter corrects that misimpression in a post to a network neutrality mailing list.
Wait till I get going! The blogosphere, initially made famous by one Cory Doctorow, has impressed upon us for years that the internet highway is headed for a 100 car pileup. The Distinguished and Honored Senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, tells us that the tubes are filling up every day. But only a fool would liken the internet to a series of tubes when clearly the highway analogy is what's best! And clearly you can't think that any single user confined to the HOV lane is going to encroach upon the bandwidth of the other 10 lanes of traffic! It's obvious that I know where the problem with the Internet is. I've known from the beginning! Wait! What in the world could THAT be! Oh. Never mind. It was nothing. Now. I'll drink from FiOS in front of me and you drink from your DSL in front of you. Hah! You fell victim to one of the greatest internet blunders of all time! The first being that you never believe what you read on the Internet followed closely by the fact that you never take Slashdot seriously when money is on the line! Ha ha ha! Ha ha....
My point being: if they're going to cut you off for maxing out your line regardless of how it affects other people, THAT'S the real problem. Imaginary or not, you can still die from fright over the boogeyman in the closet.
You're right. Eventually, teen texting will be the equivalent of 2 years of secretarial school and Gregg shorthand classes. People will be able to take dictation with their phone.
Just installed the Kindle reader on iPhone. It does give me a handy slider bar at the bottom, which is probably close enough. Still like the idea of seeing 3D pages like the album covers on iTunes when you hold the iPhone sideways and flip through music...
Having never used one of these Nooks or Kindles, I know that this is a feature I would like:
To be able to press my finger to a page which will then put the book on its binder, pages facing me. Then I could slide my finger back and forth to a random spot and let go...and the book would open to that page. This is how I re-read books I really liked the first time through...they sit on my bedstand and when I want to read a bit, I just pick it up and open it to some random spot.
If I have to type in a page number or some such nonsense from the 1900s, I'll wait until my feature is included.:-)
You are seated at a computer. There is a flashing cursor. Items that are nearby: keyboard, coffee mug, butcher knife > N The way is shut. >E You shall not pass. >Type on computer What do you type on computer? >>N Computer: That is not a command I recognize >>Look Computer: That is not a command I recognize >>man give me a break. this game sucks Computer: No manual entry for give No manual entry for me No manual entry for a No manual entry for break >>man what? Computer: No manual entry for what? >>man N Computer: No manual entry for N >>man get knife Computer: FINALLY you frikkin half-wit! You managed to open a page in the manual. Now all you have to do is guess what the different commands are you can look up and we can get down to business. That awk script for CS 201 is due at midnight. >>man quit Computer: Quitting is not an option >>quit Computer: Nope. Not going to let you out that easy. >>exit Computer: You're quicker than I gave you credit for. >shutdown -h now Computer: How the hell? Oh, your kid brother showed up....Killing all processes. Perhaps you should use a Mac -- only one button to worry about there.
You buy a product. It's your property. The person who sold it to you doesn't like the way you're using it, so they break the product you bought.
What of the what, now? You buy a product with software that is titled iPhoneOS 1.1. You jailbreak the phone to do what you want to it. You can continue to do what you want to it, unless you decide to download 1.1.1 which means, with the jailbreak software you added, your phone no longer works and you need to wipe and reinstall.
So when you say "they break the product you bought" what you really mean is "by downloading a new version of the phone's OS, you broke the product you bought".
Unless you mean an owner was surprised they bricked their own phone, and that I can understand. But you know...you just customized heavily your own phone's software, then you apply someone else's code to it? What do you expect, really?
Well. I don't have any kids nor will I. That's sort of a start. And it was more of a hypothetical rather than a "Save the world. Kill yourself!" sort of lunacy.
We are big on precedents here. The Bill of Rights is a long list of precedents we can point to when someone tries to:
- sue someone else for speaking out - take away their guns - make them talk about a crime they may have committed - etc
Without that list, we really are too divided a country to not have a few of those rights removed. If Australia is better in that regard, kudos to you and yours.
Anyone ever consider what life would be like without burning (ie, energy use for efficiency of existence)? Perhaps the native Americans had it right: we should be nomadic, moving with the herds and the climate, eating dropped fruit versus growing orchards, etc. Granted, you can't do that with the population (or the populace) we have now, but give it a few years: with no nuclear fuel, no gasoline or plastic/petroleum-based products, water shortages (never mind when everything east of California falls into the ocean), the population might thin out enough that we move back to living within nature instead of being this anomalous creature that tries to force nature to obey.
And besides, with less people on the Internet, my ping times in L4D would be teh awsum.
Last I checked, there is not a war going on in Coshocton, OH
You think not? We are all, every one of us, not spectators, oh no, but soldiers in the war for freedom! Be it in the high desert of Afghanistan, the cities of Iraq, or the wi-fi spectrum of Coshocton, Ohio, we will fight the enemies of freedom wherever they raise their malignant heads. We will fight them on the internets; we will fight them in the courtrooms; we shall never surrender!
This post brought to you by a ghost named Churchill.
... and if it has to be Windows for some strange reason. Give them Limited User accounts.
Good god, THIS! Two reasons Macs don't have the issues Windows machines do:
1) Macs aren't a primary virus target (I mean, why blow up Beverly Hills?)
2) Mac users don't run as unquestioned admins
Vista has helped #2 with the UAC, but really, if you're running a computer 99% of the time with full administrator rights, you're doing it wrong: Linux, Mac, or Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
In a way, a game should let you escape, immediately, outside the bounds of your mundane world. This is why people play Counterstrike, Left4Dead, Wolverine, etc. You leave the mowing of the lawns for the emptying of the clip as soon as the game is done loading. But there's a way to tell a story -- the build-up, the foreshadowing, and mostly, in terms of fantasy (fantasty/scifi/horror), to note the way things should have been had something not significantly changed. It sounds like Hard Rain is going to be like a book -- it's not going to throw you into a gunfight or a zombie massacre in the first page. It wants you to sit down, get involved with the characters, so that when they are pinned to a wall by a demon having their throats ripped out, you'll be thinking, "Dammit! He has T-ball in the morning!" and you'll care...even from your comfy computer chair.
1) Action game: You love your wife. She means the world to you. Zombies are attacking her. What do you do?
2) Story:
"Hi, honey. I'm home!"
(From the kitchen)"Wow. Just like yesterday. Coincidence?"
"Hah. Hah. Did you manage to find my bowtie for tonight? The award ceremony's in a couple hours."
"Yes, sir. Found it, sir."
"What's that supposed to mean?" (hangs up his coat)
"It means that you go from disorganized computer nerd to commander-in-chief whenever there's something that specifically involves you."
(groaning)"Mmm. We don't have to go. I'm sure someone will accept the award for me." (heads towards kitchen door)
"No no. I'm already dressed...."
(Opens the kitchen door to find his wife seated with her legs on the table wearing a bowtie...and nothing else.)
"Oh, we should skip it..."
"No way." She lets him pick her up. "I think we can manage both."
(As our reluctant hero carries her through the living room to their den of iniquity, their front door is struck so hard it nearly breaks the hinges. Slobbering and drooling can be heard from the other side...)
In #2, the zombies are secondary. They are the obstruction to the normalcy you'd rather be enjoying.
Wouldn't it be nice if the FASTRA II, which is 3.75 times faster than the FASTRA I, was actually called the FASTRA 375. Then I wouldn't have to ask.
In all seriousness, what are they going to do when they are no longer the exclusive Jesus phone provider?
Raise their rates. People will leave AT&T (I live in an area with good AT&T service so I won't be leaving) and go to some other provider with the iPhone. The loss of $80/month/iPhone + their possible per MB increase will cripple them and the $60 family plan will be an extra $25 per device, 50 cents per text or $20 for unlimited texting.
You just alienated the largest pool of geeks on the Internet.
"You may think you're not doing anything wrong, but you may indeed be wronging someone you don't know."
"But who defines what's wrong?"
"Someone you don't know."
Excuse me while I iron my burka...I'll probably be needing it soon, just to be sure I'm not breaking any future laws.
I'd mod you up but you're already at +5. My concern is that Amazon's example reminded people that with everything electronic, data can be changed with or without our permission. Tough for someone to walk into your house and remove your book without at least some defense on your part. But if a company can just click a button and remove your property without your permission or knowledge, we're walking right into Orwell's 1984, only we won't need thousands of people editing newspapers...just a small team to make the edits to the electronic newspaper editions, book bannings, etc.
Not saying my tinfoil hat is on, but Amazon's deletion of personal property means I'm wearing it sombrero style on my back with a string around my neck.
Meh. Amplify and fork the incoming light -- some goes around to the back of the cloak and out, some reaches your eyes. It's all right there in the manual...
They fail in the mainstream market because there's such a small market for them. The Nokia n900 is a geek's dream, but most people want a phone, not a handheld computer. Most as in 99.99% of the marketplace. And even fewer want a multi-hundred dollar handheld computer/phone. So I'm sure it sells well in the market it was designed for...that .001% of the population that wants a hackable, programmable micro computer that makes calls. So it succeeds where its market is. Saying it fails is like saying the Audi R8 supercar failed. Though, at least that made it into Iron Man.
You could say the iPhone is a failure as well: it only has 1% of the cell phone market. But I think most of the U.S. will disagree with that statement.
GE also makes jet engines, for example, which military aircraft use. I think they would have been fine with either candidate.
And that defines a successful business plan -- if you can continue to make money down whatever path you are forced to tread, then you're doing smart business.
Felten's challenge is paired with a more technical look at how networks operate, which claims that TCP/IP by its design eliminates the possibliity of hogging bandwidth. But Wes Felter corrects that misimpression in a post to a network neutrality mailing list.
Wait till I get going! The blogosphere, initially made famous by one Cory Doctorow, has impressed upon us for years that the internet highway is headed for a 100 car pileup. The Distinguished and Honored Senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, tells us that the tubes are filling up every day. But only a fool would liken the internet to a series of tubes when clearly the highway analogy is what's best! And clearly you can't think that any single user confined to the HOV lane is going to encroach upon the bandwidth of the other 10 lanes of traffic! It's obvious that I know where the problem with the Internet is. I've known from the beginning! Wait! What in the world could THAT be! Oh. Never mind. It was nothing. Now. I'll drink from FiOS in front of me and you drink from your DSL in front of you. Hah! You fell victim to one of the greatest internet blunders of all time! The first being that you never believe what you read on the Internet followed closely by the fact that you never take Slashdot seriously when money is on the line! Ha ha ha! Ha ha....
My point being: if they're going to cut you off for maxing out your line regardless of how it affects other people, THAT'S the real problem. Imaginary or not, you can still die from fright over the boogeyman in the closet.
I'm so putting my Christmas tree back up in my cubicle!
You're right. Eventually, teen texting will be the equivalent of 2 years of secretarial school and Gregg shorthand classes. People will be able to take dictation with their phone.
Just installed the Kindle reader on iPhone. It does give me a handy slider bar at the bottom, which is probably close enough. Still like the idea of seeing 3D pages like the album covers on iTunes when you hold the iPhone sideways and flip through music...
But thanks for the tip. :-)
I no. this story iz so tru. i c ug apps 4 my college that luk lik this. way smart
Having never used one of these Nooks or Kindles, I know that this is a feature I would like:
To be able to press my finger to a page which will then put the book on its binder, pages facing me. Then I could slide my finger back and forth to a random spot and let go...and the book would open to that page. This is how I re-read books I really liked the first time through...they sit on my bedstand and when I want to read a bit, I just pick it up and open it to some random spot.
If I have to type in a page number or some such nonsense from the 1900s, I'll wait until my feature is included. :-)
You are seated at a computer. There is a flashing cursor.
Items that are nearby: keyboard, coffee mug, butcher knife
> N
The way is shut.
>E
You shall not pass.
>Type on computer
What do you type on computer?
>>N
Computer: That is not a command I recognize
>>Look
Computer: That is not a command I recognize
>>man give me a break. this game sucks
Computer: No manual entry for give
No manual entry for me
No manual entry for a
No manual entry for break
>>man what?
Computer: No manual entry for what?
>>man N
Computer: No manual entry for N
>>man get knife
Computer: FINALLY you frikkin half-wit! You managed to open a page in the manual. Now all you have to do is guess what the different commands are you can look up and we can get down to business. That awk script for CS 201 is due at midnight.
>>man quit
Computer: Quitting is not an option
>>quit
Computer: Nope. Not going to let you out that easy.
>>exit
Computer: You're quicker than I gave you credit for.
>shutdown -h now
Computer: How the hell? Oh, your kid brother showed up....Killing all processes. Perhaps you should use a Mac -- only one button to worry about there.
Chat session log:
child: ur not being very nice
evil: no. I'm not a nice person
child: then Im gonna go
evil: you better not. I know where you live
child: I'll tell my mom
evil: you better f---in not. Don't you f---in log out
child: ok
evil: now do what I tell you you f---in brat. Pull down your...
Etc etc etc. Things can go horribly wrong on the Internet. Don't assume a child will know that 999 times out of 100 he CAN just log out.
But it's the wrong analogy. I'm balancing on a rail. Apple throws a bowling ball within reach. I lunge for it and fall. I could have kept balancing.
It's like forking a linux distro, customizing the kernel, then trying to upgrade your kernel with the old distro's new kernel. Why would I do that?
You buy a product. It's your property. The person who sold it to you doesn't like the way you're using it, so they break the product you bought.
What of the what, now? You buy a product with software that is titled iPhoneOS 1.1. You jailbreak the phone to do what you want to it. You can continue to do what you want to it, unless you decide to download 1.1.1 which means, with the jailbreak software you added, your phone no longer works and you need to wipe and reinstall.
So when you say "they break the product you bought" what you really mean is "by downloading a new version of the phone's OS, you broke the product you bought".
Unless you mean an owner was surprised they bricked their own phone, and that I can understand. But you know...you just customized heavily your own phone's software, then you apply someone else's code to it? What do you expect, really?
Well. I don't have any kids nor will I. That's sort of a start. And it was more of a hypothetical rather than a "Save the world. Kill yourself!" sort of lunacy.
We are big on precedents here. The Bill of Rights is a long list of precedents we can point to when someone tries to:
- sue someone else for speaking out
- take away their guns
- make them talk about a crime they may have committed
- etc
Without that list, we really are too
divided a country to not have a few of those rights removed. If Australia is better in that regard, kudos to you and yours.
Anyone ever consider what life would be like without burning (ie, energy use for efficiency of existence)? Perhaps the native Americans had it right: we should be nomadic, moving with the herds and the climate, eating dropped fruit versus growing orchards, etc. Granted, you can't do that with the population (or the populace) we have now, but give it a few years: with no nuclear fuel, no gasoline or plastic/petroleum-based products, water shortages (never mind when everything east of California falls into the ocean), the population might thin out enough that we move back to living within nature instead of being this anomalous creature that tries to force nature to obey.
And besides, with less people on the Internet, my ping times in L4D would be teh awsum.
I learned all my programming techniques, and the art of debate, from Slashdot posts.
Fear me.
Last I checked, there is not a war going on in Coshocton, OH
You think not? We are all, every one of us, not spectators, oh no, but soldiers in the war for freedom! Be it in the high desert of Afghanistan, the cities of Iraq, or the wi-fi spectrum of Coshocton, Ohio, we will fight the enemies of freedom wherever they raise their malignant heads. We will fight them on the internets; we will fight them in the courtrooms; we shall never surrender!
This post brought to you by a ghost named Churchill.
... and if it has to be Windows for some strange reason. Give them Limited User accounts.
Good god, THIS! Two reasons Macs don't have the issues Windows machines do:
1) Macs aren't a primary virus target (I mean, why blow up Beverly Hills?)
2) Mac users don't run as unquestioned admins
Vista has helped #2 with the UAC, but really, if you're running a computer 99% of the time with full administrator rights, you're doing it wrong: Linux, Mac, or Windows.
if Google are unaware
That is the most hive-minded reference to Google I've ever heard.