What handheld platform should homebrewers be developing for instead?
GP32 and the GP2x. They are korean handheld consoles running linux specifically developed for homebrew. There is an american version in development with keyboard and joysticks, but I can't seem to find any links online.
Alternatively, develop for the iPhone or Android. They're both perfect systems for home development.
As another alternative, the XGameStation is a game console they can develop on from soldering the chipsets to implementing the software. Or sign up for XNA and make Xbox 360 games.
As a side note, why is Homebrew DS suddenly something amazing to be protected, especially with the multitude of alternatives? One or two neat things have come out of it, but it pales compared to the amazing works that have come out of independent flash development in rescent years.
Most of the real-world complaints about Vista upon launch revolved around application and hardware compatibility, with a nice dose of "the system requirements are what!?!" Also, Vista didn't do anything that XP didn't already do, so why bother?
Since launch, Vista has recieved a lot of needed application and hardware compatibility, and a lot of under-the-hood fixes. Additionally, the kinds of hardware requirements that Vista needed became commonplace.
Really, the only substantial launch problem with Vista that hasn't been solved already is its general pointlessness. With Windows 7 you at least have the potential for a better interface.
Full disclosure: I have Vista, XP, Ubuntu, and OSX 10.5 laptops.
Apple's iphone platform (unlike their professional computer line) serves no use, but they made a market for it anyway as a fashion accessory.
My iPhone lets me edit online shared documents through Evernote, access shared google calendars, send / recieve e-mail in a halfway descent interface, check my balances, log work times and bill clients directly from my phone, find myself when lost driving to said clients, and plays a mean game of Sim City.
And as far as I can tell the iPhone has become a symbol of uncoolness, an anti-fashion accessory, simply by being too popular.
I had a Treo for years, and it didn't have half of the functionality of the iPhone. On the flip side, I've used Linux phones with ostensibly as much functionality as the iPhone, but I never got the damned applications to work right without spending hours online.
It is powerful and usable. Don't let your chosen phone cloud the fact that the iPhone is being purchased en masse because it actually is pretty good.
It's actually closer to 30,000 gold for 500 dollars.
However, what if you bought bits of that gold for 200 dollars? Can you write that off as a business expense? Can you write off your salaried time? If you bought Epic Armor to sell, but an expansion suddenly made it less valuable, can you write it off as capital depreciation? What if you spent salaried time to get Epic Armor, only to have to write down that value on a re-balance?
It gets messy. IRS issuing guidelines could clear up a lot of the messy details.
Why do tax stories always bring out the extremists?
Not everybody draws a clean salary. What is your income rate if you are buying and selling virtual goods? Heck, what is your income rate if you're buying and selling real goods? Or if you buy a good and the value goes up, but you haven't sold it yet? What if you're trading goods with value for other goods with value, and it never passes through a cash phase? What if a portion of your salary is drawn against goods that you have on loan to others?
A flat income tax isn't the answer. Forgetting about how it would shift the tax burden to those least able to pay, it would still be a nightmare of bureaucracy anyway. It would just be a different bureaucracy.
Considering the 2008 US federal recipts was in the range of 2.5 Trillion dollars, a cost of 500 million spent dealing with th emoney would be actually only.00002 of the total. That's less than one fiftieth of one percent. That's a monetary transaction cost that any business would love to have, and is a hundred times better than the 2% or so of every transaction that Visa skims off the top.
I was actually wondering what spyware might have been messing with my CSS files to give google such a strange logo.
Also, why are RGBY Google's colors? It seems like every company has used those colors at some point or another. Everyone knows that google's colors are white and, somewhat reluctantly, blue.
Since we have Gravity, it knows it's orientation in most directions.
Actually, gravity is a highly complicating factor. When upright, the Wiimote knows it has an upwards acceleration. If you move it to the right, the wii mote has no way of knowing if that acceleration is from being moved to the right, or if the wii mote was tilted to the left and gravity is doing its work. You can get an upwards and backwards acceleration by keeping the wiimote upright and pulling back, tilting it about 45 degrees down and pulling straight up, or flipping it upside-down and quickly rotating it down and back in a circle.
Here here. I can't tell you the millions of man hours that have been lost over the years just to lack of proper PNG support... which was promised with I.E. 5 and not delivered until just now.
Actually, many do. Google's AdSense pays per click or per impression. Even on websites that are being paid a flat rate, that impression makes it more likely that advertisers will return.
And you don't think the website host serves the ad, do you? How do think your browser extension is blocking them?
I'm rather fond of Opera's solution. All of the text and images are increased in size, but the page remains the same width. That way L/R scrolling is eliminated (unlike PDF's or the iPhone) but all of the elements of the page are larger and more usable.
Nonsense. I'm happy with Google making money off advertising as long as I'm not the one being advertised at. But if a browser doesn't let me avoid the adds, I won't use it.
We're talking about Ad-Block Plus here. Essentially, you want a browser that will let you strip out the revenue-generating portion of all of the websites that you visit.
You put it in happy terms, but there is something kind of dirty about that. It's like only visiting museums with a suggested donation, and then insulting the suckers who actually donate. Or in this case, you're not willing to have a tiny bar at the top of the websites that you visit, to fund the continued existence of the websites that you visit.
If you're not going to buy something, don't buy something. If you don't like advertising, spend time on portions of the internet that aren't funded by advertising. But don't just get all high-and-mighty about how advertising is for suckers, while posting to a site that wouldn't exist without it with a browser that wouldn't exist without it.
I too signed up for the free EGM. The writing and articles were so bad that I hid them from my girlfriend. It was just embarassing to open up one of these things and see comments on characters' breast sizes, fart jokes, etc. Not every writer did it and it was by no means the everywhere in the magazine. But there was a lot in every magazine that was just pointlessly juvenile.
I remember in the early 90's not being able to read GamePro simply because the level of writing was insulting to the reader. It felt like it was written for 6 year olds. Well, EGM felt like it was written for 12 year olds, which a lot of gamers no longer are.
To be honest, this is exactly the sort of thing that the OLPC project needs to remain relevant. OLPC has been failing not because it isn't an worthwile project, but because people are already producing $200 commodity laptops that are good enough.
Touchscreens allows for arbitrary keyboard layouts without retooling factories, reducing manufacturing costs. Also, it reduces the raw number of components significantly. Negroponte even said that the reason why they announced so early is because they're hoping other people will copy their lead, thus driving costs down. Dumping Sugar meant they don't have the daunting burden of developing an OS themselves.
Again, if you are ripping a 256Kbps lossy file from a 192 khz DVD-A quality master, you might be getting a resultant signal that's *closer* to the original than CD quality. I'm not saying that's what is happening, I'm just saying that you can't dismiss all lossy files as worse than lossless files when the original source fidelity is unknown.
Until you've listened to both, do you know that what Apple is selling is lower than CD quality?
I've had two tubes catch fire, and quite a few others break in different ways. LCD TV's have to have their light source replaced faster than you'd think, and projectors are constantly in need of new bulbs.
A 25 year old set would be built in about 82, or just before TV manufacturers realized you could sell more by making things break. Don't expect a modern set to last you more than 10 years, tops, no matter the bells and whistles.
Divx had the drawbacks of both physical media and network media... I.E. you both had to buy a disk, and you had to dial in through Divx's modem to validate that disk.
My experience with Netflix's streaming video: You're wandering around a house, thinking "gee, I've got some cleaning to do, but it would be nice if Groundhog Day was playing in the background." Turn on the TV, and Groundhog Day is playing. You don't horde the movie now and forever, keeping it pressed tightly to you like some sort of video gollem. You just watch something, like it, and leave. It's kind of like those days when everything on cable happens to be pretty good. And the cost is roughly equivalent to buying 1 DVD per month.
It's the one-night-stand equivalent of movie watching. You don't marry the thing, you just experience it and move on.
Also, it's generally easier to one-way stream video to a device than to support arbitrary HTML, especially as NetFlix might change their interface in the future. As long as the device can pick up a standard queue listing and show the covers, the device will continue to work. And if your device supports arbitrary HTML, it probably has a built-in browser anyway.
Things like you describe already exist: Java and flash. Sadly, due to that common interface, the applications run way too slowly for common game usage.
The game developers who ran down that road either died trying to compete with more polished and amazing single-platform engines, or became sickeningly rich targeting casuals. Obviously, this article is not talking about the latter.
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In 2000, I didn't vote because I thought the republicans would be just as bad as the democrats.
Boy did they exceed my expectations.
Let's hope we can return from jaw-droppingly awful to just mildly bought.
What handheld platform should homebrewers be developing for instead?
GP32 and the GP2x. They are korean handheld consoles running linux specifically developed for homebrew. There is an american version in development with keyboard and joysticks, but I can't seem to find any links online.
Alternatively, develop for the iPhone or Android. They're both perfect systems for home development.
As another alternative, the XGameStation is a game console they can develop on from soldering the chipsets to implementing the software. Or sign up for XNA and make Xbox 360 games.
As a side note, why is Homebrew DS suddenly something amazing to be protected, especially with the multitude of alternatives? One or two neat things have come out of it, but it pales compared to the amazing works that have come out of independent flash development in rescent years.
Most of the real-world complaints about Vista upon launch revolved around application and hardware compatibility, with a nice dose of "the system requirements are what!?!" Also, Vista didn't do anything that XP didn't already do, so why bother?
Since launch, Vista has recieved a lot of needed application and hardware compatibility, and a lot of under-the-hood fixes. Additionally, the kinds of hardware requirements that Vista needed became commonplace.
Really, the only substantial launch problem with Vista that hasn't been solved already is its general pointlessness. With Windows 7 you at least have the potential for a better interface.
Full disclosure: I have Vista, XP, Ubuntu, and OSX 10.5 laptops.
Apple's iphone platform (unlike their professional computer line) serves no use, but they made a market for it anyway as a fashion accessory.
My iPhone lets me edit online shared documents through Evernote, access shared google calendars, send / recieve e-mail in a halfway descent interface, check my balances, log work times and bill clients directly from my phone, find myself when lost driving to said clients, and plays a mean game of Sim City.
And as far as I can tell the iPhone has become a symbol of uncoolness, an anti-fashion accessory, simply by being too popular.
I had a Treo for years, and it didn't have half of the functionality of the iPhone. On the flip side, I've used Linux phones with ostensibly as much functionality as the iPhone, but I never got the damned applications to work right without spending hours online.
It is powerful and usable. Don't let your chosen phone cloud the fact that the iPhone is being purchased en masse because it actually is pretty good.
It's actually closer to 30,000 gold for 500 dollars.
However, what if you bought bits of that gold for 200 dollars? Can you write that off as a business expense? Can you write off your salaried time? If you bought Epic Armor to sell, but an expansion suddenly made it less valuable, can you write it off as capital depreciation? What if you spent salaried time to get Epic Armor, only to have to write down that value on a re-balance?
It gets messy. IRS issuing guidelines could clear up a lot of the messy details.
Why do tax stories always bring out the extremists?
Not everybody draws a clean salary. What is your income rate if you are buying and selling virtual goods? Heck, what is your income rate if you're buying and selling real goods? Or if you buy a good and the value goes up, but you haven't sold it yet? What if you're trading goods with value for other goods with value, and it never passes through a cash phase? What if a portion of your salary is drawn against goods that you have on loan to others?
A flat income tax isn't the answer. Forgetting about how it would shift the tax burden to those least able to pay, it would still be a nightmare of bureaucracy anyway. It would just be a different bureaucracy.
Considering the 2008 US federal recipts was in the range of 2.5 Trillion dollars, a cost of 500 million spent dealing with th emoney would be actually only .00002 of the total. That's less than one fiftieth of one percent. That's a monetary transaction cost that any business would love to have, and is a hundred times better than the 2% or so of every transaction that Visa skims off the top.
I was actually wondering what spyware might have been messing with my CSS files to give google such a strange logo.
Also, why are RGBY Google's colors? It seems like every company has used those colors at some point or another. Everyone knows that google's colors are white and, somewhat reluctantly, blue.
Since we have Gravity, it knows it's orientation in most directions.
Actually, gravity is a highly complicating factor. When upright, the Wiimote knows it has an upwards acceleration. If you move it to the right, the wii mote has no way of knowing if that acceleration is from being moved to the right, or if the wii mote was tilted to the left and gravity is doing its work. You can get an upwards and backwards acceleration by keeping the wiimote upright and pulling back, tilting it about 45 degrees down and pulling straight up, or flipping it upside-down and quickly rotating it down and back in a circle.
They're selling products they don't have to support I.P. they don't have. There's something pure about this model.
Quick, somebody get Carly Fiorina on the phone.
Here here. I can't tell you the millions of man hours that have been lost over the years just to lack of proper PNG support... which was promised with I.E. 5 and not delivered until just now.
Actually, many do. Google's AdSense pays per click or per impression. Even on websites that are being paid a flat rate, that impression makes it more likely that advertisers will return.
And you don't think the website host serves the ad, do you? How do think your browser extension is blocking them?
I'm rather fond of Opera's solution. All of the text and images are increased in size, but the page remains the same width. That way L/R scrolling is eliminated (unlike PDF's or the iPhone) but all of the elements of the page are larger and more usable.
(Post mysteriously disappeared the first time)
Nonsense. I'm happy with Google making money off advertising as long as I'm not the one being advertised at. But if a browser doesn't let me avoid the adds, I won't use it.
We're talking about Ad-Block Plus here. Essentially, you want a browser that will let you strip out the revenue-generating portion of all of the websites that you visit.
You put it in happy terms, but there is something kind of dirty about that. It's like only visiting museums with a suggested donation, and then insulting the suckers who actually donate. Or in this case, you're not willing to have a tiny bar at the top of the websites that you visit, to fund the continued existence of the websites that you visit.
If you're not going to buy something, don't buy something. If you don't like advertising, spend time on portions of the internet that aren't funded by advertising. But don't just get all high-and-mighty about how advertising is for suckers, while posting to a site that wouldn't exist without it with a browser that wouldn't exist without it.
I too signed up for the free EGM. The writing and articles were so bad that I hid them from my girlfriend. It was just embarassing to open up one of these things and see comments on characters' breast sizes, fart jokes, etc. Not every writer did it and it was by no means the everywhere in the magazine. But there was a lot in every magazine that was just pointlessly juvenile.
I remember in the early 90's not being able to read GamePro simply because the level of writing was insulting to the reader. It felt like it was written for 6 year olds. Well, EGM felt like it was written for 12 year olds, which a lot of gamers no longer are.
To be honest, this is exactly the sort of thing that the OLPC project needs to remain relevant. OLPC has been failing not because it isn't an worthwile project, but because people are already producing $200 commodity laptops that are good enough.
Touchscreens allows for arbitrary keyboard layouts without retooling factories, reducing manufacturing costs. Also, it reduces the raw number of components significantly. Negroponte even said that the reason why they announced so early is because they're hoping other people will copy their lead, thus driving costs down. Dumping Sugar meant they don't have the daunting burden of developing an OS themselves.
This seems pretty shrewed to me.
Again, if you are ripping a 256Kbps lossy file from a 192 khz DVD-A quality master, you might be getting a resultant signal that's *closer* to the original than CD quality. I'm not saying that's what is happening, I'm just saying that you can't dismiss all lossy files as worse than lossless files when the original source fidelity is unknown.
Until you've listened to both, do you know that what Apple is selling is lower than CD quality?
There is no such thing as lossless analog to digital conversion. 256 Kbps lossy might still be better than lossless if the source material is better.
I've had two tubes catch fire, and quite a few others break in different ways. LCD TV's have to have their light source replaced faster than you'd think, and projectors are constantly in need of new bulbs.
A 25 year old set would be built in about 82, or just before TV manufacturers realized you could sell more by making things break. Don't expect a modern set to last you more than 10 years, tops, no matter the bells and whistles.
I would be impressed by fast forwarding live TV.
My mother could probably get an all-in-one device working. She would have little chance of getting an Xbox or Tivo connected to her TV, however.
Divx had the drawbacks of both physical media and network media... I.E. you both had to buy a disk, and you had to dial in through Divx's modem to validate that disk.
My experience with Netflix's streaming video: You're wandering around a house, thinking "gee, I've got some cleaning to do, but it would be nice if Groundhog Day was playing in the background." Turn on the TV, and Groundhog Day is playing. You don't horde the movie now and forever, keeping it pressed tightly to you like some sort of video gollem. You just watch something, like it, and leave. It's kind of like those days when everything on cable happens to be pretty good. And the cost is roughly equivalent to buying 1 DVD per month.
It's the one-night-stand equivalent of movie watching. You don't marry the thing, you just experience it and move on.
Also, it's generally easier to one-way stream video to a device than to support arbitrary HTML, especially as NetFlix might change their interface in the future. As long as the device can pick up a standard queue listing and show the covers, the device will continue to work. And if your device supports arbitrary HTML, it probably has a built-in browser anyway.
Things like you describe already exist: Java and flash. Sadly, due to that common interface, the applications run way too slowly for common game usage.
The game developers who ran down that road either died trying to compete with more polished and amazing single-platform engines, or became sickeningly rich targeting casuals. Obviously, this article is not talking about the latter.
2. There WILL be more testing required. Chances are things would work the same as all platforms but they'd still have to test that.
Nothing *ever* works the same on all 6 platforms, or even between two of them.
Yes. Not gone, just foreign. Remember how weird those friendly-colored all-in-one things looked next to the drab grey PC's of the era?