Episode 20 of the show My Life as a Teenage Robot depicts one possible scenario where an AI-based robot is given complete, unhindered control over the destruction of weaponry it finds. While it does initially achieve its intended goal of ending all war on earth, the robot's AI system eventually falls into a state of unrest during peacetime and starts attacking anything that could conceivably be used as a weapon indiscriminately.
What's interesting about this concept, is what would prevent an AI system with the authorization to kill humans as "collateral damage" from simply concluding that all humans are weapons in and of themselves and thus must be destroyed in order to protect them?
Humans are crafty, adaptive, violent creatures that are often much to defiant to be controlled through oppressive means.
Just a thought here, but considering how crazy Mac zealots tend to get around events like WWDC and MacWorld (particularly when a popular rumor goes bust), could it be that Apple is simply using the iPhone excuse to misdirect our attention away from Mac OS 10.5's progress? Or, on the other hand, could it be that Apple intentionally kept the 10.5 hype in play just long enough to ensure they didn't face any last-minute surprises with the iPhone... using 10.5 as a sort of "consolation prize" to would-be early iPhone adopters?
In either case, it's an interesting tactic that protects them from post-event community backlash on both fronts.
While it seems like a good idea on paper, shared processing for gaming may not be so great in practice. In order for a shared processing setup to really be used reliably, wouldn't it require taking control out of the hands of the user and contractually forcing them into maintaining a set number of "always connected" hours at a set bandwith for a set number of processor cycles, so a bare minimum of threads across all connected systems can be processed for each node on the entire network?
If not, does that mean game developers will only produce games that run well on a single, unnetworked system? Or, would we have a huge mess of games whose performance is so inconsistent that it can't be benchmarked due to constantly changing network/node conditions? Does this mean we might one day face such oddities as being unable to play certain games on our brand new next-next gen consoles because there's insufficient processing power available from other nodes on the network to handle the minimum requirements?
I could see this becoming a tech support nightmare on the launch date of such a system when the first few dozen users can't get their system to do anything other than boot up to a menu and a single task bar saying something like "waiting for sufficient processing power from the network... one moment please."
How about more of the weirder style games where you exert some type of physical control over characters, enemies and the environment itself, rather than focusing gameplay on controlling a single character directly? Sure, you got stuff like Super Monkey Ball and Rocket Slime out there already, but this is only scratching the surface of what the DS is capable of. For example, imagine some type of RTS game where the playfield has elasticity properties the player can alter during gameplay. certain areas could have sudden elevation changes, rippling effects, twisting, pinching or other oddities that could alter progress.
Or how about games that allow the user to create their own objects with adjustable properties, or construct an object from a large number of preset parts, similar to Mind Rover: The Europa Project.
The bottom line: we need more games that force you to think outside of the box, and not just for purposes of speed or button mashing. The DS has so much untapped potential, it's not even funny.
If God had physically come down to earth, found a man living in one of the first civilizations, and tried to explain to him the Big Bang, stellar evolution, how the Solar System developed, and biological evolution, the man would be totally confused.
Unlikely.
Since God in this case apparently made the man in question, I would assume he has everything needed to directly upload that knowlege into the man's brain using the proper RFCs. (Unless, of course, man was invented by something other than God, and God is only monkeying around with a technology he lacks the proper understanding of.)
... is someone (other than Al Gore) who can play the "fear" card about the potential consequences of the United States falling too far behind the other world super-powers (China, etc...) in the science and technology sector, as convincingly as these mega-church preachers do with the "eternal hellfire and brimstone" gimmick.
These people need to stop drinking the religion kool-aid for a minute and start looking at the bigger picture here. That moral high ground they pride themselves on now isn't going to be around much longer once one of these other nations with the man-power, brute-force and morale to take us down actually does it. Our military power is rooted heavily in science, technology and playing the statistics, rather than raw firepower combined with large numbers of soldiers. Once we lose that science and technology edge we have now, not even God will be able to protect us.
Anyone who still believes the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction keeps us safe in this day and age is a fool. Our enemies today don't care if they survive or not, so long as they take us out with them.
If the statistics presented in this poll really are an accurate assessment of the U.S. population, then it sounds like Y2K boogie-man has most of the religious folk convinced that this is "end times", and that their death/rapture is coming, making them apathetic toward taking control of their destiny. In short, they "want" to die, but they want God (or someone else) to pull the trigger for them. People like this need to realize that their deaths will solely be a pointless product of man, rather than an act of God.
I will never understand the reasoning behind one's willingness to die a pointless death as a matter of pride/spiritual closure...
I gotta put my money on the numerous video game bugs of the last few decades which don't really do anything but invoke a "hey, that's kinda cool" response. Ones like the negative worlds bug in the original Super Mario Bros, or the Pac-Man "perfect game" crash.
There's probably at least one out there each of us has stumbled over at one point.
If the TurnItIn system is continuously appending its database with data from each new student paper on every common curriculum topic, won't there eventually come a point where the limited availability of word combinations and phrases will become so great that it becomes impossible to submit any paper on a particular topic without it getting flagged as plagiarized?
There are only so many ways one can write statements that are factually correct without it becoming a rube-goldberg contest of words... growing ever longer each year as previous rube-goldberg'ed papers become logged.
I predict TurnItIn will suddenly find themselves being dropped like a lead weight from school after school as using their system eventually costs more in man-hours than simply checking the papers by hand the first time around.
A more intelligent way for TurnItIn to function, would be to drop student works from the database entirely, and focus on professional publications only. Then, leave it up to the schools to figure out a system to compare student works against previous student works per curriculum topic. A prunning of previous works after about 3 years of age should be sufficient in avoiding any meaningful plagerism.
Despite being a long-term Mac user and owning a 5G iPod, I still consider the XBox 360 as being the far more worthwhile set-top device when faced with the Apple TV. Apple TV may look pretty, but it lacks several key elements that could keep the Apple TV out of the hands of the non-Mac using population.
First, it seems almost too dependent on iTunes. If you look around at some of the early adopter reports, you can't access your iTMS paid content without at least one copy of the content stored on the machine your Apple TV box is synced with... even if you copy the files directly onto the Apple TV drive itself and give it internet access to verify the files with iTMS before playback. (For most Mac users, this means having the files crowding your primary HD.) This is a limitation that even most iPod users don't have to face.
Next, there's no support for us non-HDTV users who are perfectly comfortable using their current low-definition displays. If Microsoft would only open the 360's supported playback codecs to included several of the non-Windows Media content formats common to the typical Mac user, utilities like Connect360 would become significantly more useful in allowing Microsoft to take control of the market. Otherwise such users are just going to invest in a 5G iPod and a remote-control based interface to get around the lack of low-definition support.
Finally, the 360 has the added value of games. Not just the fancy 3D titles, but the entire XBox Live Arcade collection. The Apple TV docs specifically say it won't support the 5G iPod games (a huge mistake, IMHO), and the 5G iPods themselves won't play these games on any other screen than the built-in display. One should never completely overlook gaming options when trying to pitch a set-top box to non-techie users. It's hard to explain the value of a $300-400 device that isn't merely a DVD player or a game machine.
Side-by-side, the XBox 360 is just going to put on a much better show, simply baded on features alone. If it wasn't for the fact that I don't particularly need an all-in-one set-top media player setup, I'd probably be giving the new 360 model some consideration. However, given that the file size restrictions for XBox Live Arcade downloads is much more lax now, users may quickly find themselves needing more than 20GB of storage.
As for the media content, something like a slingbox-connected Mac Mini could handle most of what Apple TV already does, only without the imposed annoyances.
Anyone remember back when car dealerships used to distribute custom versions of the PS2 game, Gran Turismo, featuring certain vehicles customers would come in to test drive as a means of advertising? If they are still doing these kinds of promotions, I wonder what kind of effect this will have on the dealerships actually allowing test driving of these vehicles in the future... or even allowing test driving of any vehicle.
It'd be interesting to know just what kind of search method was used to issue these takedown notices. Does a GREP search script have the legal authority to send a cease & desist order without human intervention? It's hard to imagine all 100,000 cases were human reviewed...
Definitely have to agree on this. After playing the gamecube version for a while now, I have a feeling the Wii's dependence on body movements would only end up becoming a distraction from the gameplay. There's no odd disconnect between the controls of the gamecube version and the user, despite the Wii version being the first version to launch.
I would be interested in hearing more on how the controls from both versions feel relative to each other, though.
The only way I could see a workable system in place for ensuring authenticity of a photo, would be to create a specialized database that all "certified" image editors will be required to contact at every point where it is launched, opens a file or saves to a file. The software in question would then upload a low-resolution snapshot of the image for every changed state to the original image that is saved. The image files themselves would then have to be encoded in such a way that they are linked to particular piece of software that created it, the machine it was created on and a reference within the database to verify the file is the same one that left the previous machine.
This means, of course, that all systems used for image editing would be required to have access to the internet in order to run, open a file or save changes.
The real scary part, is that such a system could also be used to spy on people, tracking their photographing habits, as well as who they are sharing the images with that would require such authentication.
It would certainly make for a great, yet simple geek toy... assuming they could manufacture the systems for a decent price. ($299 to $349, maybe?)
The only other item I can think of that even comes close would be the Sharp Zaurus palmtops, but the things are just too small to actually use them for productive purposes. 12"+ is probably a far more ideal size. Also, since the system wouldn't be that dependent on graphics, the resolution could be kept to minimal levels... 640x480 or 800x600, to reduce costs. Graphics handling wouldn't have to be great either... just enough to handle a few sprites/vector shapes and text with basic anti-aliasing/alpha handling options.
If anyone at Radio Shack is listening, this could be a great little device to slap the well-known TRS-80 name onto!
Actually, one thing I would like to see is almost exactly that... a very simplifed machine with it's own compact OS on-board, dedicated specifically to encourage the user to learn what exactly is going on under the hood without being intimidating. A machine that's inexpensive, portable and about as powerful as a high-end PDA.
The machine would include a few different programming languages (such as BASIC, JavaScript, Perl, etc...), topping off in power close to Flash. It would have limited networking capabilities allowing it to connect to the internet via WiFi/ethernet/dial-up, but connecting only to certain dedicated networks. These networks would then facilitate users to trade programs, handle program-to-program communications and offer services like message boards/chat the old-school BBS way. Users could even program their own BBS add-ons (like multi-user games/MUDs). However, the machine would not include a web browser (except maybe lynx), to help discourage reliance on graphic user interfaces to do everything for them. The machines would also be able to transfer files/programs to a traditional home PC, which could then be run within a virtual machine on the PC itself.
The point such a system, is to move as far away from the modern ways of doing everything, as well as eliminate the overhead of a complicated OS (linux, Windows, Mac OS X, etc...) from competing with the core purpose of the system itself... to encourage exploration and experimentation at the lowest level, while still taking advantage of some of the modern technologies we take for granted.
By having such a system, I think we would see a lot more people actually *using* their computers intelligently, rather than simply tolerating them as an everyday annoyance.
Aside from that, I'd personally like to see the older BBS days return once more... and I'm sure I'm not alone on this sentiment.
Personally, I've enjoyed the Xbox Live Arcade features on the 360 ever I got mine back at its launch date. (Hexic being an all-time favorite.) However, there are a few areas I'd like to see more development in, particularly with titles you can quickly pick up and play for a few minutes (puzzle games) or titles that can be played with many people on the same system (board games or party games).
While I'll admit some of the newer 3D titles are fun, they're often far more complicated and would require splitting the screen to support more than one player at a time on the same system. There's definitely a market for titles like these, but it shouldn't become the sole attraction of the XBLA now that Microsoft has relaxed its requirements.
For right now though, I'd like to see games like Scrabble or Monopoly brought into the line-up. Even better, they could support up to 4-players online with the game boards and relevent info on the left side of the screen, while supporting a 4-way party-line style video/voice chat with the Xbox Vision camera, all displayed stacked on the right side of the screen. A setup like this would make a killing.
... then where is that wireless connection coming from for the kiddies to connect to? It seems really unlikely that your children will be setting up wireless networks in your home without your knowledge. And, if your children aren't the ones managing the network in your home, where are they getting the necessary WPA/WEP password, network SSID, DNS server IPs and whatever other relevent information is needed to connect wirelessly?
Just because a device has wireless hardware onboard doesn't guarantee there will be connectivity for it.
"Everything in a casino is engineered to encourage you to keep playing. From the obvious (as you said, huge jackpot signs, loud noises when someone wins) - to the not-so-obvious (carpets on the gaming floor are often intentionally ugly to encourage you to look up at the gaming)."
It's not just that, they also custom tune all those noises from each of various games so that they merge together into an comfortable, enjoyable sound, as opposed to sounding like chaos (such as your typical Chuck E. Cheese arcade). The less chaos the customer is exposed to, the more likely they'll stick around and drop more coins into the machines.
Having previously hosted Think Secret's message boards for a few years, I'm no stranger to having companies like Adobe and Apple threatening to sue over content a user posted into a thread. In many instances where this occurred the content in question (usually pictures, screenshots or diagrams) were not even hosted on our site or any of our servers, but were linked from external sites where the content had originated. In addition, I was sometimes even threatened over mere links to other sites that were displaying the objectionable content in question. (Though, in those cases, I was able to simply refuse to remove the links on the grounds that I could not be held responsible for content hosted on third party websites.)
So, would this imply that a site is protected from such harrassments should a user post a trade secret into the forums without the knowledge of the forum owner?
Aside from the money to be raked off such delays, there should be no technical excuses preventing any network from having new episodes of any program available within a week of their US premieres, especially in an english-speaking country like Australia. There is no translation needed, and non-compressed high-definition content should be easily deliverable to any broadcast network using the internet.
Granted, the piracy concerns for Australia might be a greater threat to their local advertising economy, but they need to acknowledge user concerns when it comes to these excessive delays in viewing new shows... especially since it's next to impossible to hear about newer episodes at some point in that timeframe, which in turn will deminish the overall value of the shows to the viewers themselves.
That said, perhaps companies like Apple should be working with the networks and the Australian government to test run full-fledged internet-based television using some form of an iTunes Music Store / Apple TV device and boosting their internet backbone connection to the rest of the world to it's fullest potential, instead of relying upon over-the-air broadcasts. Then, it's just a matter of converting Australian citizens to convert over to the new system at a price that would offset the ad revenue, as well as the service itself. The 16 months that would have been used to delay these programs could then be used to both evaluate and tweak the delivery system in order to determine if such a system could realistically work elsewhere in the world, where both options are already available at some level.
In the developers's own words, 'There exist several illegal cd-keys that you can use to unlock the demo program. If Display Eater detects that you are using these, it will erase something. I don't know if this is going to become Display Eater policy. If this level of piracy continues, development will stop.'
The sheer audacity of this guy's attitude over this problem is downright sickening. He's like one of those whiny little brats who'll only play a game until he starts losing, then trashes the game so no one else can cintinue playing.
If you're going to develop software, then you have to accept piracy as one of the negatives. (Though, personally, if a piece of software I wrote was being pirated, I'd be flattered knowing people wanted it bad enough to invest their time into doing so.) It's not like this guy never saw this coming (given he already keyed the software ahead of time), so why screw you're paying users over by threatening to cease development over it when it backfires? Besides, these "pirates" likely wouldn't bother using the software at all had the keying stuff been made unbreakable to begin with.
In the meanwhile, what happened to all this "trusted computing" junk that's supposed to "protect" us from stuff like this? Why aren't we sand-boxing all applications so that they only have basic read/write privileges, rather than having free reign over the system itself? Shouldn't we start looking into creating a centralized install/registration system where the OS itself handles the entire installation and approval/denial of software keys based on data the developers provide in the installation archive? That way, it is the OS itself that decides how to handle a pirated software key, rather than allowing individual developers to act as judge, jury and executioner without recourse. The developer in this article is exactly why we need such a system in place.
Seriously... you'd think everyone has issues with the things. My release date 360 still runs just as well as it did since it arrived.
Get over the anti-Microsoft high-horse, guys. The console is perfectly stable for those of us who take the time to clean up around the thing an don't stuff it into an air-tight hole somewhere.
Some Serious Flaws Here...
on
Interstellar Ark
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· Score: 3, Interesting
In order for us to actually do something like this, we'd have to get past all the dogma involved in the creation and taking of human lives. Since you are dealing with severely limited resources within a highly confined area, we would need to regularly sheer our numbers down, "Logan's Run" style. Anyone on this ark would have to agree to be put to death once they've become unable to contribute into the community by as much as they take away from it. This means all severely disabled, physically/mentally handicapped, or just plain lazy people would have to be destroyed and recycled back into the community ecosystem, regardless of their age or status among the community itself. It would be the ultimate in "zero-tolerance" policy, with sentencing issued and carried out with extreme prejudice. It would require death squads equal to the Nazis during WWII... only done out of necessity, rather than hatred. (Every second a useless individual mooches off the community, the less resources the contributing members of the community have to survive on.)
The concept of family would be a thing of the past, replaced with child farming. There would be no relationships between anyone outside of basic affection. Sex itself would be discouraged or considered a capital offense, as the act itself would waste precious resources. Instead all children would be a product of test-tube fertilization. Every member of the community would be required to submit their egg/sperm cells every few weeks to be catalogued in order to keep the gene pool as diverse as possible. After fertilization, the embryo is placed into one of several hundred women tagged as surrogate mother stock, who's sole purpose in the community is to be impregnated, gestate and give birth, not unlike a queen insect laying thousands of eggs... while the real mothers of these children are left to continue work in whatever section of the community they serve in.
These child farms then serve as large scale permanant daycare centers until the children are old enough to contribute back into the community. No child would ever know their real parents or genetic siblings to prevent familial conflicts from disrupting community contribution. Names would be assigned only as a novelty, like one does with their pets, to get around the trouble of memorizing dozens of similar sounding identification numbers.
In a lot of ways, the life style of an interstellar ark would be best visualized by watching ant or bee colonies. No one is "special"... you're simply there to plug up a particular hole in the wall where someone else inevitably failed at the task.
I have to say that trying to claim someone somehow *forced* you pay too much for an item, after you already agreed to it by entering a maximum bid is pretty laughable. How does creating the illusion of high demand for your useless junk amount to criminal fraud? Sure, it might seem unethical, but how is it any worse than writing a clever description for an item that makes it seem better than it really is? (Just like all those other modern advertisements you're exposed to hundreds of times each day.)
If you've actually been a "victim" of a shilled auction, maybe you should focus on becoming a more intelligent buyer, rather than accusing the seller for being creative enough to draw you into a legally binding sale. Nothing illegal has happened here. You lost no more money on the item than you were willing to pay for it. The only thing that did happen is that greed/hoarding instincts or need for instant gratification overruled your judgement for that fraction of a second where you clicked the "submit bid" button before looking for any other sellers offering the same item.
A sucker truly is born every minute... and no place shows it more than eBay.
Slashdot Mirror
Episode 20 of the show My Life as a Teenage Robot depicts one possible scenario where an AI-based robot is given complete, unhindered control over the destruction of weaponry it finds. While it does initially achieve its intended goal of ending all war on earth, the robot's AI system eventually falls into a state of unrest during peacetime and starts attacking anything that could conceivably be used as a weapon indiscriminately.
What's interesting about this concept, is what would prevent an AI system with the authorization to kill humans as "collateral damage" from simply concluding that all humans are weapons in and of themselves and thus must be destroyed in order to protect them?
Humans are crafty, adaptive, violent creatures that are often much to defiant to be controlled through oppressive means.
Just a thought here, but considering how crazy Mac zealots tend to get around events like WWDC and MacWorld (particularly when a popular rumor goes bust), could it be that Apple is simply using the iPhone excuse to misdirect our attention away from Mac OS 10.5's progress? Or, on the other hand, could it be that Apple intentionally kept the 10.5 hype in play just long enough to ensure they didn't face any last-minute surprises with the iPhone... using 10.5 as a sort of "consolation prize" to would-be early iPhone adopters?
In either case, it's an interesting tactic that protects them from post-event community backlash on both fronts.
While it seems like a good idea on paper, shared processing for gaming may not be so great in practice. In order for a shared processing setup to really be used reliably, wouldn't it require taking control out of the hands of the user and contractually forcing them into maintaining a set number of "always connected" hours at a set bandwith for a set number of processor cycles, so a bare minimum of threads across all connected systems can be processed for each node on the entire network?
If not, does that mean game developers will only produce games that run well on a single, unnetworked system? Or, would we have a huge mess of games whose performance is so inconsistent that it can't be benchmarked due to constantly changing network/node conditions? Does this mean we might one day face such oddities as being unable to play certain games on our brand new next-next gen consoles because there's insufficient processing power available from other nodes on the network to handle the minimum requirements?
I could see this becoming a tech support nightmare on the launch date of such a system when the first few dozen users can't get their system to do anything other than boot up to a menu and a single task bar saying something like "waiting for sufficient processing power from the network... one moment please."
Seaman is a fantastic idea, actually. Nintendogs, of all things, shows the potential for a game like Seaman to work on the DS.
How about more of the weirder style games where you exert some type of physical control over characters, enemies and the environment itself, rather than focusing gameplay on controlling a single character directly? Sure, you got stuff like Super Monkey Ball and Rocket Slime out there already, but this is only scratching the surface of what the DS is capable of. For example, imagine some type of RTS game where the playfield has elasticity properties the player can alter during gameplay. certain areas could have sudden elevation changes, rippling effects, twisting, pinching or other oddities that could alter progress.
Or how about games that allow the user to create their own objects with adjustable properties, or construct an object from a large number of preset parts, similar to Mind Rover: The Europa Project.
The bottom line: we need more games that force you to think outside of the box, and not just for purposes of speed or button mashing. The DS has so much untapped potential, it's not even funny.
If God had physically come down to earth, found a man living in one of the first civilizations, and tried to explain to him the Big Bang, stellar evolution, how the Solar System developed, and biological evolution, the man would be totally confused.
Unlikely.
Since God in this case apparently made the man in question, I would assume he has everything needed to directly upload that knowlege into the man's brain using the proper RFCs. (Unless, of course, man was invented by something other than God, and God is only monkeying around with a technology he lacks the proper understanding of.)
... is someone (other than Al Gore) who can play the "fear" card about the potential consequences of the United States falling too far behind the other world super-powers (China, etc...) in the science and technology sector, as convincingly as these mega-church preachers do with the "eternal hellfire and brimstone" gimmick.
These people need to stop drinking the religion kool-aid for a minute and start looking at the bigger picture here. That moral high ground they pride themselves on now isn't going to be around much longer once one of these other nations with the man-power, brute-force and morale to take us down actually does it. Our military power is rooted heavily in science, technology and playing the statistics, rather than raw firepower combined with large numbers of soldiers. Once we lose that science and technology edge we have now, not even God will be able to protect us.
Anyone who still believes the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction keeps us safe in this day and age is a fool. Our enemies today don't care if they survive or not, so long as they take us out with them.
If the statistics presented in this poll really are an accurate assessment of the U.S. population, then it sounds like Y2K boogie-man has most of the religious folk convinced that this is "end times", and that their death/rapture is coming, making them apathetic toward taking control of their destiny. In short, they "want" to die, but they want God (or someone else) to pull the trigger for them. People like this need to realize that their deaths will solely be a pointless product of man, rather than an act of God.
I will never understand the reasoning behind one's willingness to die a pointless death as a matter of pride/spiritual closure...
I gotta put my money on the numerous video game bugs of the last few decades which don't really do anything but invoke a "hey, that's kinda cool" response. Ones like the negative worlds bug in the original Super Mario Bros, or the Pac-Man "perfect game" crash.
There's probably at least one out there each of us has stumbled over at one point.
Just a thought...
If the TurnItIn system is continuously appending its database with data from each new student paper on every common curriculum topic, won't there eventually come a point where the limited availability of word combinations and phrases will become so great that it becomes impossible to submit any paper on a particular topic without it getting flagged as plagiarized?
There are only so many ways one can write statements that are factually correct without it becoming a rube-goldberg contest of words... growing ever longer each year as previous rube-goldberg'ed papers become logged.
I predict TurnItIn will suddenly find themselves being dropped like a lead weight from school after school as using their system eventually costs more in man-hours than simply checking the papers by hand the first time around.
A more intelligent way for TurnItIn to function, would be to drop student works from the database entirely, and focus on professional publications only. Then, leave it up to the schools to figure out a system to compare student works against previous student works per curriculum topic. A prunning of previous works after about 3 years of age should be sufficient in avoiding any meaningful plagerism.
Despite being a long-term Mac user and owning a 5G iPod, I still consider the XBox 360 as being the far more worthwhile set-top device when faced with the Apple TV. Apple TV may look pretty, but it lacks several key elements that could keep the Apple TV out of the hands of the non-Mac using population.
First, it seems almost too dependent on iTunes. If you look around at some of the early adopter reports, you can't access your iTMS paid content without at least one copy of the content stored on the machine your Apple TV box is synced with... even if you copy the files directly onto the Apple TV drive itself and give it internet access to verify the files with iTMS before playback. (For most Mac users, this means having the files crowding your primary HD.) This is a limitation that even most iPod users don't have to face.
Next, there's no support for us non-HDTV users who are perfectly comfortable using their current low-definition displays. If Microsoft would only open the 360's supported playback codecs to included several of the non-Windows Media content formats common to the typical Mac user, utilities like Connect360 would become significantly more useful in allowing Microsoft to take control of the market. Otherwise such users are just going to invest in a 5G iPod and a remote-control based interface to get around the lack of low-definition support.
Finally, the 360 has the added value of games. Not just the fancy 3D titles, but the entire XBox Live Arcade collection. The Apple TV docs specifically say it won't support the 5G iPod games (a huge mistake, IMHO), and the 5G iPods themselves won't play these games on any other screen than the built-in display. One should never completely overlook gaming options when trying to pitch a set-top box to non-techie users. It's hard to explain the value of a $300-400 device that isn't merely a DVD player or a game machine.
Side-by-side, the XBox 360 is just going to put on a much better show, simply baded on features alone. If it wasn't for the fact that I don't particularly need an all-in-one set-top media player setup, I'd probably be giving the new 360 model some consideration. However, given that the file size restrictions for XBox Live Arcade downloads is much more lax now, users may quickly find themselves needing more than 20GB of storage.
As for the media content, something like a slingbox-connected Mac Mini could handle most of what Apple TV already does, only without the imposed annoyances.
Anyone remember back when car dealerships used to distribute custom versions of the PS2 game, Gran Turismo, featuring certain vehicles customers would come in to test drive as a means of advertising? If they are still doing these kinds of promotions, I wonder what kind of effect this will have on the dealerships actually allowing test driving of these vehicles in the future... or even allowing test driving of any vehicle.
It'd be interesting to know just what kind of search method was used to issue these takedown notices. Does a GREP search script have the legal authority to send a cease & desist order without human intervention? It's hard to imagine all 100,000 cases were human reviewed...
Definitely have to agree on this. After playing the gamecube version for a while now, I have a feeling the Wii's dependence on body movements would only end up becoming a distraction from the gameplay. There's no odd disconnect between the controls of the gamecube version and the user, despite the Wii version being the first version to launch.
I would be interested in hearing more on how the controls from both versions feel relative to each other, though.
The only way I could see a workable system in place for ensuring authenticity of a photo, would be to create a specialized database that all "certified" image editors will be required to contact at every point where it is launched, opens a file or saves to a file. The software in question would then upload a low-resolution snapshot of the image for every changed state to the original image that is saved. The image files themselves would then have to be encoded in such a way that they are linked to particular piece of software that created it, the machine it was created on and a reference within the database to verify the file is the same one that left the previous machine.
This means, of course, that all systems used for image editing would be required to have access to the internet in order to run, open a file or save changes.
The real scary part, is that such a system could also be used to spy on people, tracking their photographing habits, as well as who they are sharing the images with that would require such authentication.
It would certainly make for a great, yet simple geek toy... assuming they could manufacture the systems for a decent price. ($299 to $349, maybe?)
The only other item I can think of that even comes close would be the Sharp Zaurus palmtops, but the things are just too small to actually use them for productive purposes. 12"+ is probably a far more ideal size. Also, since the system wouldn't be that dependent on graphics, the resolution could be kept to minimal levels... 640x480 or 800x600, to reduce costs. Graphics handling wouldn't have to be great either... just enough to handle a few sprites/vector shapes and text with basic anti-aliasing/alpha handling options.
If anyone at Radio Shack is listening, this could be a great little device to slap the well-known TRS-80 name onto!
Actually, one thing I would like to see is almost exactly that... a very simplifed machine with it's own compact OS on-board, dedicated specifically to encourage the user to learn what exactly is going on under the hood without being intimidating. A machine that's inexpensive, portable and about as powerful as a high-end PDA.
The machine would include a few different programming languages (such as BASIC, JavaScript, Perl, etc...), topping off in power close to Flash. It would have limited networking capabilities allowing it to connect to the internet via WiFi/ethernet/dial-up, but connecting only to certain dedicated networks. These networks would then facilitate users to trade programs, handle program-to-program communications and offer services like message boards/chat the old-school BBS way. Users could even program their own BBS add-ons (like multi-user games/MUDs). However, the machine would not include a web browser (except maybe lynx), to help discourage reliance on graphic user interfaces to do everything for them. The machines would also be able to transfer files/programs to a traditional home PC, which could then be run within a virtual machine on the PC itself.
The point such a system, is to move as far away from the modern ways of doing everything, as well as eliminate the overhead of a complicated OS (linux, Windows, Mac OS X, etc...) from competing with the core purpose of the system itself... to encourage exploration and experimentation at the lowest level, while still taking advantage of some of the modern technologies we take for granted.
By having such a system, I think we would see a lot more people actually *using* their computers intelligently, rather than simply tolerating them as an everyday annoyance.
Aside from that, I'd personally like to see the older BBS days return once more... and I'm sure I'm not alone on this sentiment.
Personally, I've enjoyed the Xbox Live Arcade features on the 360 ever I got mine back at its launch date. (Hexic being an all-time favorite.) However, there are a few areas I'd like to see more development in, particularly with titles you can quickly pick up and play for a few minutes (puzzle games) or titles that can be played with many people on the same system (board games or party games).
While I'll admit some of the newer 3D titles are fun, they're often far more complicated and would require splitting the screen to support more than one player at a time on the same system. There's definitely a market for titles like these, but it shouldn't become the sole attraction of the XBLA now that Microsoft has relaxed its requirements.
For right now though, I'd like to see games like Scrabble or Monopoly brought into the line-up. Even better, they could support up to 4-players online with the game boards and relevent info on the left side of the screen, while supporting a 4-way party-line style video/voice chat with the Xbox Vision camera, all displayed stacked on the right side of the screen. A setup like this would make a killing.
... then where is that wireless connection coming from for the kiddies to connect to? It seems really unlikely that your children will be setting up wireless networks in your home without your knowledge. And, if your children aren't the ones managing the network in your home, where are they getting the necessary WPA/WEP password, network SSID, DNS server IPs and whatever other relevent information is needed to connect wirelessly?
Just because a device has wireless hardware onboard doesn't guarantee there will be connectivity for it.
"Everything in a casino is engineered to encourage you to keep playing. From the obvious (as you said, huge jackpot signs, loud noises when someone wins) - to the not-so-obvious (carpets on the gaming floor are often intentionally ugly to encourage you to look up at the gaming)."
It's not just that, they also custom tune all those noises from each of various games so that they merge together into an comfortable, enjoyable sound, as opposed to sounding like chaos (such as your typical Chuck E. Cheese arcade). The less chaos the customer is exposed to, the more likely they'll stick around and drop more coins into the machines.
Having previously hosted Think Secret's message boards for a few years, I'm no stranger to having companies like Adobe and Apple threatening to sue over content a user posted into a thread. In many instances where this occurred the content in question (usually pictures, screenshots or diagrams) were not even hosted on our site or any of our servers, but were linked from external sites where the content had originated. In addition, I was sometimes even threatened over mere links to other sites that were displaying the objectionable content in question. (Though, in those cases, I was able to simply refuse to remove the links on the grounds that I could not be held responsible for content hosted on third party websites.)
So, would this imply that a site is protected from such harrassments should a user post a trade secret into the forums without the knowledge of the forum owner?
Aside from the money to be raked off such delays, there should be no technical excuses preventing any network from having new episodes of any program available within a week of their US premieres, especially in an english-speaking country like Australia. There is no translation needed, and non-compressed high-definition content should be easily deliverable to any broadcast network using the internet.
Granted, the piracy concerns for Australia might be a greater threat to their local advertising economy, but they need to acknowledge user concerns when it comes to these excessive delays in viewing new shows... especially since it's next to impossible to hear about newer episodes at some point in that timeframe, which in turn will deminish the overall value of the shows to the viewers themselves.
That said, perhaps companies like Apple should be working with the networks and the Australian government to test run full-fledged internet-based television using some form of an iTunes Music Store / Apple TV device and boosting their internet backbone connection to the rest of the world to it's fullest potential, instead of relying upon over-the-air broadcasts. Then, it's just a matter of converting Australian citizens to convert over to the new system at a price that would offset the ad revenue, as well as the service itself. The 16 months that would have been used to delay these programs could then be used to both evaluate and tweak the delivery system in order to determine if such a system could realistically work elsewhere in the world, where both options are already available at some level.
In the developers's own words, 'There exist several illegal cd-keys that you can use to unlock the demo program. If Display Eater detects that you are using these, it will erase something. I don't know if this is going to become Display Eater policy. If this level of piracy continues, development will stop.'
The sheer audacity of this guy's attitude over this problem is downright sickening. He's like one of those whiny little brats who'll only play a game until he starts losing, then trashes the game so no one else can cintinue playing.
If you're going to develop software, then you have to accept piracy as one of the negatives. (Though, personally, if a piece of software I wrote was being pirated, I'd be flattered knowing people wanted it bad enough to invest their time into doing so.) It's not like this guy never saw this coming (given he already keyed the software ahead of time), so why screw you're paying users over by threatening to cease development over it when it backfires? Besides, these "pirates" likely wouldn't bother using the software at all had the keying stuff been made unbreakable to begin with.
In the meanwhile, what happened to all this "trusted computing" junk that's supposed to "protect" us from stuff like this? Why aren't we sand-boxing all applications so that they only have basic read/write privileges, rather than having free reign over the system itself? Shouldn't we start looking into creating a centralized install/registration system where the OS itself handles the entire installation and approval/denial of software keys based on data the developers provide in the installation archive? That way, it is the OS itself that decides how to handle a pirated software key, rather than allowing individual developers to act as judge, jury and executioner without recourse. The developer in this article is exactly why we need such a system in place.
Seriously... you'd think everyone has issues with the things. My release date 360 still runs just as well as it did since it arrived.
Get over the anti-Microsoft high-horse, guys. The console is perfectly stable for those of us who take the time to clean up around the thing an don't stuff it into an air-tight hole somewhere.
In order for us to actually do something like this, we'd have to get past all the dogma involved in the creation and taking of human lives. Since you are dealing with severely limited resources within a highly confined area, we would need to regularly sheer our numbers down, "Logan's Run" style. Anyone on this ark would have to agree to be put to death once they've become unable to contribute into the community by as much as they take away from it. This means all severely disabled, physically/mentally handicapped, or just plain lazy people would have to be destroyed and recycled back into the community ecosystem, regardless of their age or status among the community itself. It would be the ultimate in "zero-tolerance" policy, with sentencing issued and carried out with extreme prejudice. It would require death squads equal to the Nazis during WWII... only done out of necessity, rather than hatred. (Every second a useless individual mooches off the community, the less resources the contributing members of the community have to survive on.)
The concept of family would be a thing of the past, replaced with child farming. There would be no relationships between anyone outside of basic affection. Sex itself would be discouraged or considered a capital offense, as the act itself would waste precious resources. Instead all children would be a product of test-tube fertilization. Every member of the community would be required to submit their egg/sperm cells every few weeks to be catalogued in order to keep the gene pool as diverse as possible. After fertilization, the embryo is placed into one of several hundred women tagged as surrogate mother stock, who's sole purpose in the community is to be impregnated, gestate and give birth, not unlike a queen insect laying thousands of eggs... while the real mothers of these children are left to continue work in whatever section of the community they serve in.
These child farms then serve as large scale permanant daycare centers until the children are old enough to contribute back into the community. No child would ever know their real parents or genetic siblings to prevent familial conflicts from disrupting community contribution. Names would be assigned only as a novelty, like one does with their pets, to get around the trouble of memorizing dozens of similar sounding identification numbers.
In a lot of ways, the life style of an interstellar ark would be best visualized by watching ant or bee colonies. No one is "special"... you're simply there to plug up a particular hole in the wall where someone else inevitably failed at the task.
I have to say that trying to claim someone somehow *forced* you pay too much for an item, after you already agreed to it by entering a maximum bid is pretty laughable. How does creating the illusion of high demand for your useless junk amount to criminal fraud? Sure, it might seem unethical, but how is it any worse than writing a clever description for an item that makes it seem better than it really is? (Just like all those other modern advertisements you're exposed to hundreds of times each day.)
If you've actually been a "victim" of a shilled auction, maybe you should focus on becoming a more intelligent buyer, rather than accusing the seller for being creative enough to draw you into a legally binding sale. Nothing illegal has happened here. You lost no more money on the item than you were willing to pay for it. The only thing that did happen is that greed/hoarding instincts or need for instant gratification overruled your judgement for that fraction of a second where you clicked the "submit bid" button before looking for any other sellers offering the same item.
A sucker truly is born every minute... and no place shows it more than eBay.