Yeah, but if they dedicated their dedicated binary to your dedicated OC3, and you dedicated a server on the dedicated OC3 to the dedicated binary, you could dedicate your dedication to the dedicated program. You're just so..dedicated!
In my opinion, modwest.com is far and away the best provider I've found. After using a sub-par provider, and another that went under (and didn't tell me), you can't beat modwest.
I run a personal web site that I don't do much more than blog and rant on, but it's still ran using my own MySQL database that modwest provides, and the ability to telnet into my account is definitely icing on the cake. Plus the fact I'm only paying $11.95 a month sealed it for me. In the sixth months or so I've been using the service, I've only had two incidents, both of which not lasting more than an hour, where my website was down. And one of those was due to a DNS problem on my end.
I'm not sure about any other providers (other than yahoo, which you should stay far, far away from), but modwest is a damn fine choice.
I watched Firefly for a few episodes and found it very boring. The only part that was slightly interesting (the hidden crush thing) was overcome with the hokey idea of the gunslinger in space theme that, while interesting, was never taken advantage of, and therefore it lost viewers.
I'm sure showing the pilot would've helped the show, but the first three episodes that aired (the only ones I watched), just got more and more drab. It would've been nice to actually seen the origins of these characters but, gathering what I did on those that aired, the whole thing was a misfire. Regardless of its cult-like status (whenever a show is beginning it falter and the three people who like it complain, suddenly there's a "cult"), maybe Josh Wheadon doesn't have the golden goose.
You want to see a high-concept new show that's actually worth your hour? Check out John Doe. A slightly sci-fi, slightly X-Files, slightly CSI type show that delivers on suspense, mystery, and solid writing. While it can't be this good for long, it sure beats Firefly.
Actually he just drew Stan Lee's idea, and raised such a ruckus after he completed the accepted image (that Amazing Fantasy #15 cover art) that he got co-creator credit.
It looks like I'm gonna have to stand up once again and go against the grain. I love everything I've seen on Xandros. I think the client is a great, great thing, and basing it on stable, bug-free code (KDE 2.2 instead of 3) is a very smart idea.
These guys are off on the right foot. They don't want/. readers buying the distro: They want corporate accounts. And by the looks of it, they're going to get them.
Why? Simple. The file manager is brilliant in terms of what it does, how it looks, and how it can be incorporated with existing machines, and especially, domains. You ever wonder what Linux has been missing? Well, this is it.
Does anyone else here, especially those bitching the loudest, actually administer users? I don't know about you, but any tiny change will cause an uproar. A rollout of Mandrake, Redhat, or SuSE would cause numerous heart attacks where I work, with users complaining about everything from clutter in the menus (why are there 4 different configuration menus in Redhat? No one's really sure...) to lack of a decent resolution changer, something Xandros already has. Training is a big issue in large companies, and the more you can port from Windows to Xandros, the easier (and more compelling) a choice it will be.
OpenOffice should save companies lots of cash. It's compatible with Office 97->XP docs, and the savings on the lack of licensing on that product alone will be worth raising an eyebrow for the upper execs. Those who still need it for Outlook, Powerpoint and/or Access can keep their copies at little to no cost of what businesses are paying now, or simply buy the products seprately instead of the whole office suite. The only thing needed now is a true, open source Exchange-connecting email client (I know Evolution can use the calendars, but it costs $70 and I love Linux because 95% of it is free) and then they'll really be in high cotton.
I know everyone's balking about the cost, the GPL source tinkering, and the rest, but from a sys admin's POV, this OS has done more in one release than Redhat did in five.
2. This is EXACTLY what Microsoft needs for the floundering X-Box. [snip] If I own a PS2, why should I bother getting an X-Box for a game that is available on my machine?
This sounds EXACTLY like what Nintendo did in the 80's. Not buy companies per se (this is purely a I-have-enough-money-so-why-not deal), just make deals to where the games a company produced were exclusive to the NES, or forced them to sign proposterous deals that didn't make sense (like produce 5 games for NES, one for Sega Master System). This is how the NES dominated the 80's home video game market, and how the technically superior Sega Master System got crushed. Read all about it in the excellent Game Over, that chronicles this wicked tale of manipulation and greed.
Hmm...manipulation, greed, and Microsoft. It's all so...familiar, isn't it?
Working in the IT Dept. of a bank, I can see how this could possibly appeal to the decision makers in the bank, and the industry at large.
Privacy is big in banking. Bigger than big. There is nothing more important that people's money, and there are enough federal guidelines and regulations on the subject to choke a horse. People can argue about the importance of their kids, cars, and homes, but if a bank employee makes a mistake and suddenly your financial information is stolen or made public, you've got one hell of a lawsuit, and one severely ill person on your hands.
While the technology does seem a bit silly in its inception, and beating this security measure is a moderately difficult at best, what security guard or bank personnel is not going to notice the strange looking individual with 3-D glasses on and a terrible case of tilting-head looking over the shoulder of a CSR or teller.
Of course it's beatable, and of course it's not going to make sense in your average office environment. But I'll tell you right now that there is nothing better than this, that I can think of, that has come along in terms of blocking people from looking over the shoulder of bank employees. Sure there are vertical-blind-like shadded screens, where the information is only viewable when looking directly at the monitor (and we employ those as well), but this again is foilable by a person's mere position. If the employee gets up for coffee, a smoke, whatever, the information the screen is still viewable by anyone with a direct line of sight.
This technology can prevent the average person from seeing what's on an employee's screen. The "average person" is about 95% of all bank customers. The "average person" won't really care how it works, won't want to know why it works, but I'll tell ya, the "average person" will feel a 100 times more confident in his/her financial institutions commitment to security and privacy when using this technology, even if it can be foiled by 3D-glasses or expensive shades.
When you combine this technology with the common sense of "closing all applications when leaving your desk," a financial instutition's employee's desk becomes 10 times safer than it was originally, and that's a big step. I'm certain that the larger financial institutions out there (Citibank, et al) would be glad to show off the new technology and tout about its security, even if it can be foiled by the strange looking man wearing $3 3D glasses.
This seems to me yet another attempt to play Life on a machine. Ala Matrix, if you'd rather put it in that context. As far as I can tell, there is no real gaming "concept" that has been show to me, or anyone else, that demonstrates how this "game" works, apart from the AI which, while impressive, will still boil down to how-much-can-be-done-without-slowing-down-to-nothi ng.
A lot of time is spent in the article with Evans talking about variuos social aspects of culture, what to do, what is expected, what is not expected. He brings up a Sims reference. That's about as close to gameplay as he comes to actually describing what it is Lionhead is attempting here. A larger scale Sims is just gonna look like a larger scale Sims, no matter how bad they too want to sell a billion copies.
The fact is that there is no true AI yet. No computer, machine, or created lifeform has yet to have hopes, dreams, or make decisions without having an entire list of them, somewhere, in which to choose from.
Here's a nice quote: "We can't have hundreds of agents looking at big decision trees all the time in real time while rendering the landscape, so we'll do a lot of off-line pre-computation of decision trees before the game starts," said Evans. "We're not sure just how much we can accomplish yet."
Again, as far as laying down gameplay dynamics, the most that can be learned from this article is that you'll play a member of society. Wow. Call me impressed. You'll have "good" actions, "naughty" actions (as Evans puts it), and "inbetween" actions in which the good and bad aren't clear. You'll have to fit into a "group" to survive (or at least that's how I took it), so be a sqaure or a thug, the fact remains: this still feels like someone trying to steal The Sims glory, and I wish them the best of luck.
If the best they can come up with is that characters fight with each other for status, and might come up with a few bits of code to mutter to one another to mean something unique to each of them, this looks like Nothing Special Just Yet.
Surely there must be better material than this on a smaller site. Its no big deal to find a short story on Salon
Actually, it is a big deal. There has never been, AFAIK, an original sci-fi story posted on Salon (of course those cynical enough will say that some news stories must be...).
Regardless of whether that statment is true, the point is that not only is this a really good story, with interesting characters, fresh situations, and nice twists, but that it also deals with Trusted Computing and the dreaded Palladium (Palladium in gibberish is Taliban, didn't ya know). How hardware in the future will be encrypted with keys and codes only unecrypted by those in control and power so they know exactly what you're doing all the time. This story takes that concept from the computer and applies to human beings. It's like 1984, only a bit more hip and filled with enough buzzwords so that geeks will get a nice, big smile every three paragraphs or so.
The arc of the story is not the technology or the use of it in regards to its manipulation on the body. The arc is the two friends and how loyalties are shared, and how loyalties are disregarded for the sake of one's well being (or selfishness, if you'd rather). The circular and sometimes disconnected view of one man's life (Murray) and his spiral into depression and boredom after the loss of his junkie friend (Liam). How, when they are rejoined, those old friendly traits, both good and bad, are showing up again, just like old times. Sometimes you can change, but deep down most people are the same. How, when it comes down to it, just like in Orwell's opus 1984, people will look out for #1 before they would ever bother to keep their loyalties true.
This is a great story that is mentioned because not only does it make a great point about the future of corporate-controlled computer content, but how in essence it deals with friendships, those fragile beasts that we all crave and have to put up with, just to have someone to attend LAN parties with.
Would it make economic sense to convert The Matrix? How many people would pay $10 to see it again on a really big screen? Maybe first run movies would be a better bet.
I, for one, would love to see The Matrix on an IMAX screen. I think it would be a great experience.
That's why you go to a theater you know. For the experience. Otherwise, DVD and VHS would've killed them a long time ago. Why bother paying high ticket prices and overcharged on underbuttered popcorn and $7 drinks? Because there's something magical about being in a huge auditorium, in a room filled with strangers, going on imaginary adventures with people who never existed.
I would kill to see a marathon of Star Wars (Ep. 1,2,4,5, & 6) on IMAX (and of course do it again once Ep. 3 is finished). It would be a wonderful experience. The sights, the sounds, I think there would be absolutely nothing like it.
But there's a lot to think about here.
Firstly you have the screen itself. Last year, when Beauty and the Beast made more bundles of cash by making a "Special IMAX Edition" there had to be a change. And I'm not talking resolution, I'm talking frame-wise.
IMAX screens are 1.33:1 (television) aspect ratios. Most films are 1.85:1, and most of the classics are 2.35:1
So when they blow up films to fit this huge screen, not only are they losing resolution, they're losing part of the image all over again. It's called Pan & Scan, or Hack 'N Slash, depending on your viewpoint.
I could go on the huge tirade about how P&S is awful, how its destroying cinema as we know it, how it scares away Joe Blow from the infamous "black bars" and "why can't I see the rest of the picture" bullshit that myself and others have dealt with for years (ie, those in defense of widescreen).
The point is that The Matrix was not filmed in "Open Matte." Open Matte is where the black bars are put there intentionally, so the film can be shown in theaters properly. So when the home video comes around, you don't even have to worry about loss of picture, because the 1.33:1 frame actually shows more than what you originally saw in the theater (the great Run Lola Run was done this way). In those cases IMAX reproduction would rely solely on the resolution, with nothing else to worry about.
However, most of the films that are "classics" are in 2.35:1 "Superscope" meaning that when you pan and scan, you lose up to 33% of the film. For example, you have Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Arc (all of the Indiana Jones films for that matter), Lawrence of Arabia, Pulp Fiction, etc etc. The list can go on.
So when you think about IMAX reproduction of films, the frame is more important than the resolution. If you pan and scan a classic, you don't get the classic, you get what an editor "chose" to see at a particular point. And this to me is paramount.
Why? Because you'll get feedback, good or bad, that will (at the very least subliminally) change your mind about where the story should go.
The story is first. No matter what book(s) you read about writing and fiction, the story should be king. If it's not, you might as well hang up those typing hands and give it up.
The problem with this is that first of all, and this happens ALL the time, you'll just plain ole run out of ideas. But then, you'll protest, by all of the feedback you're getting you'll get more ideas. Well, here we have the Too Many Cooks In The Kitchen scenario that plagues most writerly "collaborations." Everyone wants to have their say, and when you start in one direction, even a tiny bit, by the time you get another hundred pages or so, you've altered your original narrative in such a way that you'll hardly recognize it anymore.
The second, and most important problem? No rewrites. Lemme land a quote on ya: "The first draft of everything is shit." - Ernest Hemingway. Smart guy. He's right too. The simple fact is that when you finish a writing a large or small piece of fiction, there is at least 10% fluff that needs to be trimmed. Normally more, but I myself shoot for 10% at the least. The problem with the blognovel is that, once you get so far into the story, and you realize something is off, there's no way to change it without editing what may amount to dozens of entries. Then you get frustrated. Then you panic. Then you give up.
You note Great Expectations and its episodic format. But what you don't realize, and what I'd stake my life on, is that Dickens probably finished at least two or three large sections, rewrote the first one, published it, wrote another large section, rewrote the second part, published that one, and so on.
With this format you don't have the luxury of forgetting parts of it, only to rediscover them later on your first readthrough. Not doing so is subjecting many an unsuspecting reader on something they didn't know they were in for: a novel that's not a novel but wants to be a novel but will never actually be a novel.
You have an idea; just the wrong way to go about it.
Here's a suggestion: how about building a story with multiple blogs of fictional people? You can design sites with fictional towns and places (imagine, you can build your own fictional police force website, write your own police reports about incidents, etc) and then link them together with a condusive narrative. This would also work well with more than one writer, all of you with your own story, just interwoven with one another. But hey, it's just an idea.
Two of our more recent films, 'The Fast and The Furious', and 'For Love of The Game' were praised in the Los Angeles Times and Variety as films with a refreshing lack of special effects.
Yeah, that whole Flying-Through-The-gas-pedal-and-into-the-engine shot in TF&TF was SO done on-set...
Now those geeky enough to splurge for such a device can look even more "approachable" to women.
Can you imagine? Keep the "How to Talk To Women" e-book on your display as you peruse the club scene. That'll do the trick.
Doesn't this look a lot like...
on
Fahrenheit
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· Score: 2
...all those Choose Your Adventure books you used to read as a kid? You know the kind, "If you want to venture into the right cave, go to page 87; If you want to trust him, go to page 92" and so on.
It also looks strikingly like those really awful FMV games that came out when the hottest CD-ROMs were spinning at 2x and needed the CD to be loaded into a case and then slid into the drive (remember those infernal things?). There were a few good ones, my fav being The Seventh Guest, but the rest were dreadful point-click-choose-a-scenario games.
But more than anything, it reminded me of Night Trap, the game-movie that had some panties and violence and caused a ruckus back in the early 90's. Sure the game was awful and the "movie" was so bad it set new standards. But it had the same premise, to be "interactive entertainment" with "actors."
You can go so far to say that RPG's are interactive television shows or films. Basically you control characters who have emotions and relationships and whose decisions change the situation around them.
For proof, check out this awesome poster for Spirited Away, Buena Vista's (ie Disney's) first foray into the world of Japenese animation on a wide-release scale since Princess Mononoke. The film has broken all kinds of records in Japan and I hope it does the same here as well. The poster looks great, I've heard nothing but fantastic stuff about it, and this should easily top Millenium Actress if the marketing push works.
Here's to hoping it does.
ps - and I hope they don't screw up the DVD and force an uproar like Princess Mononoke did:)
I realize that there are some functions performed differently on seperate chat programs, but what is really stopping them all from creating a standard interface for communicating? It seems like the main reason for limiting the audience is to lock people into your look and feel client, but what good does that really serve?
I think you may have gotten a bit carried away with yourself here. I have a few counter-points to discuss:
Second, cutting and pasting has never been a problem in the X environment with *any piece of software* but KDE 1 and 2.
Um..I don't know about you, but I have yet to find a desktop that can correctly cut and paste text correctly 100% of the time. At best it's a 60% success rate. From KDE, GNOME, Browsers, consoles, etc, rarely will you find a reliable cut/paste system between the apps.
There are tons of front ends to configure X. It's terribly easy to change resolution on the fly in X -- ctrl alt kp+ and ctrl alt kp-.
But, how many people actually know this? Why isn't there a simple little GUI that runs this command for the user? It's unbelievably sad that one has to SEARCH to change the desktop resolution on their computer. It's silly at best.
Perhaps *you* don't like it, but for some of us that have special needs, having a dumbed down printing system would be incredibly frusterating (I'll give you a pass on this if you just want a new front end).
Wasn't that what he was complaining about? A crappy front end? The program itself has always been frustrating, but a nice, stable, secure, and easy to use front end for sharing printers and the like...well, that's what Linux Printing has needed forever.
The broadband companies have 3 choices here: Cap speed per user, raise the price to reduce demand, or allow the performance to decrease unreasonably when the system is over capacity. None of those options are terribly good, but option 2 is the one that will keep the company afloat.
Or how about option 4: Cap speeds and charge more for those who want more. It keeps the company afloat and lets those who want more pay for it.
What is true is that businesses generally want repeatable infrastructures. This often (but not always) requires a good degree of automation within business processes. I would maintain that both Windows and Linux have a ways to go on this front, but I'd place more money on Linux getting there, since the view of a stripped down internet appliance is (IMHO) easier to make under Linux.
Of course a stripped-down internet appliance is easier to make under Linux. Linux can be stripped to its bare core and manipulated in every which way possible. Hell, they have distros that can be installed, and ran, on a single 3.5" floppy. So yes, on that front, you are absolutely 100% in the know.
The problem comes when you need more than a stripped down internet appliance. When you need a desktop, a true environment that allows you to run office apps, play games, launch and easily install applications, and also be a server if need be.
Linux can do all those things, but to do them, you normally have two or three different GUIs and/or interfaces that do the same thing. Where was the sound volume located? Where can I set my screen saver settings? Why is it so hard to choose a new resolution? I'm not talking about the intermediate Linux user here, I'm talking about Grandma Thelma who just bought her machine at Wal-Mart and wants to install Pro Knitting Tournament, the latest in Grandma fun.
Lets keep on this little rant and just assume that there is a Pro Knitting Tournament game for Linux that Grandma Thelma wants to install. After she glances at the directions and does what she is told, an error comes up saying Grandma needs a new version of perl. The troubleshooting section says only to go to CPAN and find it. On her way there, assuming that she somehow magically made her internet connection work, she gets lost, finds a link, downloads something but isn't sure what, where it is, how big it was, or what she's supposed to do now. Now she's totally frustrated, her joints ache, and her teeth hurt. She turns the machine off never to bother again, the darned old thing too frustrating to mess with. Another Linux user lost thanks to the thousands of window managers, package managers, source distrobutions, and bash script installs.
This is the first step in fixing this problem. Maybe it won't happen this year, or even the next, but soon graphics will get prettier, GUIs will be more efficient and easier to find (ie, you won't have three different "System/Settings" menus in your "Start Button" (or whatever you want to call it), and packages will be easily installed with great documentation and links will be created on the users desktop as well as their application menu (ie, Start Button).
But that is the future, and this is the start. The journey of a thousand miles has begun.
You'd walk in to a big area and there would be 20 or 30 enemies to take down. Not many games do that these days....
I for one am very glad that DooM III won't have this "feature."
Sure the first few times you get swamped by enemies is fun, but I would rather have a stalking enemy, one who is smart and knows that you are as well, both of you chasing each other through catacombs and dark rooms.
Who can ever forget playing DooM for the first time, scared to death and immersed in the darkness and the music and the sounds coming from God knows where. The demons coming at you from behind and through hidden doors. I'd much rather see a beautifully bump-mapped, textured, well-modeled creature that can dig its nails into the wall and crawl along the ceiling ready to drop and chomp your ass like a psychotic, demented Spider-Man than a room full of stupid targets.
...thanks to a friend of a friend of an executive, I can tell you that the movie is a Star Wars fans' dream. I'm going spoiler-free this time out.
The Good:
The visuals are amazing. From start to finish, while Lucas may be in love with the computers a bit too much, what is here is fantastic and you will definitely hear gasps during several points of the movie.
The Yoda battle. If you've seen the TV commercials you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, think green, think three feet tall, think Jedi. He's not called a master for nothing.
Ewan McGregor. The man is a genius and his little ticks and manerisms put him in the character so well it makes the rest of the actors look bad.
The Score. Oh man, Williams sealed the Oscar nod about twenty minutes in. You'll see what I mean. It's beautiful, beautiful stuff.
What's Bad:
The dialogue stinks. While witty banter is sparse, and mostly kept to the great Obiwan/Anakin discussions found in different spots, make not mistake that the romance story's wooden, dead-before-it-leaves-their-mouths lines are cringe-inducing.
Hayden Christenson. Not bad, per se, just..eh. Not a lot going on here. He tries too hard and sometimes it's hard to swallow. He does nail it in a few key scenes, most specifically near the climax of the movie, and that's what counts.
Jar-Jar. Even when he's reduced to 10 minutes of screen time, the damn guy still irritates the shit outta me.
Overall, this is a fun romp that as a film stinks, but as far as Star Wars and all that that implies, this is a fanboy's dream and not even Spider-Man comes close to the deep, heroin-junkie-like need to watch the movie again as soon as you see the end credits.
Slashdot Mirror
Weather.google.como gle.com. comr eBelongToUs.google.com
Jokes.google.com
LanParty.go
StarWars.google.com
NewsForNerds.google
GeeksWhoNeedLovin.google.com
AllYourGoogleA
and my personal favorite..
NataliePortmanNaked.google.com
[/joke]
I run a personal web site that I don't do much more than blog and rant on, but it's still ran using my own MySQL database that modwest provides, and the ability to telnet into my account is definitely icing on the cake. Plus the fact I'm only paying $11.95 a month sealed it for me. In the sixth months or so I've been using the service, I've only had two incidents, both of which not lasting more than an hour, where my website was down. And one of those was due to a DNS problem on my end.
I'm not sure about any other providers (other than yahoo, which you should stay far, far away from), but modwest is a damn fine choice.
This is not flamebait.
I watched Firefly for a few episodes and found it very boring. The only part that was slightly interesting (the hidden crush thing) was overcome with the hokey idea of the gunslinger in space theme that, while interesting, was never taken advantage of, and therefore it lost viewers.
I'm sure showing the pilot would've helped the show, but the first three episodes that aired (the only ones I watched), just got more and more drab. It would've been nice to actually seen the origins of these characters but, gathering what I did on those that aired, the whole thing was a misfire. Regardless of its cult-like status (whenever a show is beginning it falter and the three people who like it complain, suddenly there's a "cult"), maybe Josh Wheadon doesn't have the golden goose.
You want to see a high-concept new show that's actually worth your hour? Check out John Doe. A slightly sci-fi, slightly X-Files, slightly CSI type show that delivers on suspense, mystery, and solid writing. While it can't be this good for long, it sure beats Firefly.
Good riddance.
"It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission."
Hey, when you can't beat em...
I don't mean to get all philosophical here, but doesn't that sound like life?
Or, at the least, The Sims?
(Yeah, that was a joke)
You can hear all about it in the excellent Stan Lee's Mutants, Monsters, and Marvels, hosted by the always great K. Smith. It comes highly recommended.
It looks like I'm gonna have to stand up once again and go against the grain. I love everything I've seen on Xandros. I think the client is a great, great thing, and basing it on stable, bug-free code (KDE 2.2 instead of 3) is a very smart idea.
/. readers buying the distro: They want corporate accounts. And by the looks of it, they're going to get them.
These guys are off on the right foot. They don't want
Why? Simple. The file manager is brilliant in terms of what it does, how it looks, and how it can be incorporated with existing machines, and especially, domains. You ever wonder what Linux has been missing? Well, this is it.
Does anyone else here, especially those bitching the loudest, actually administer users? I don't know about you, but any tiny change will cause an uproar. A rollout of Mandrake, Redhat, or SuSE would cause numerous heart attacks where I work, with users complaining about everything from clutter in the menus (why are there 4 different configuration menus in Redhat? No one's really sure...) to lack of a decent resolution changer, something Xandros already has. Training is a big issue in large companies, and the more you can port from Windows to Xandros, the easier (and more compelling) a choice it will be.
OpenOffice should save companies lots of cash. It's compatible with Office 97->XP docs, and the savings on the lack of licensing on that product alone will be worth raising an eyebrow for the upper execs. Those who still need it for Outlook, Powerpoint and/or Access can keep their copies at little to no cost of what businesses are paying now, or simply buy the products seprately instead of the whole office suite. The only thing needed now is a true, open source Exchange-connecting email client (I know Evolution can use the calendars, but it costs $70 and I love Linux because 95% of it is free) and then they'll really be in high cotton.
I know everyone's balking about the cost, the GPL source tinkering, and the rest, but from a sys admin's POV, this OS has done more in one release than Redhat did in five.
2. This is EXACTLY what Microsoft needs for the floundering X-Box. [snip] If I own a PS2, why should I bother getting an X-Box for a game that is available on my machine?
This sounds EXACTLY like what Nintendo did in the 80's. Not buy companies per se (this is purely a I-have-enough-money-so-why-not deal), just make deals to where the games a company produced were exclusive to the NES, or forced them to sign proposterous deals that didn't make sense (like produce 5 games for NES, one for Sega Master System). This is how the NES dominated the 80's home video game market, and how the technically superior Sega Master System got crushed. Read all about it in the excellent Game Over, that chronicles this wicked tale of manipulation and greed.
Hmm...manipulation, greed, and Microsoft. It's all so...familiar, isn't it?
Working in the IT Dept. of a bank, I can see how this could possibly appeal to the decision makers in the bank, and the industry at large.
Privacy is big in banking. Bigger than big. There is nothing more important that people's money, and there are enough federal guidelines and regulations on the subject to choke a horse. People can argue about the importance of their kids, cars, and homes, but if a bank employee makes a mistake and suddenly your financial information is stolen or made public, you've got one hell of a lawsuit, and one severely ill person on your hands.
While the technology does seem a bit silly in its inception, and beating this security measure is a moderately difficult at best, what security guard or bank personnel is not going to notice the strange looking individual with 3-D glasses on and a terrible case of tilting-head looking over the shoulder of a CSR or teller.
Of course it's beatable, and of course it's not going to make sense in your average office environment. But I'll tell you right now that there is nothing better than this, that I can think of, that has come along in terms of blocking people from looking over the shoulder of bank employees. Sure there are vertical-blind-like shadded screens, where the information is only viewable when looking directly at the monitor (and we employ those as well), but this again is foilable by a person's mere position. If the employee gets up for coffee, a smoke, whatever, the information the screen is still viewable by anyone with a direct line of sight.
This technology can prevent the average person from seeing what's on an employee's screen. The "average person" is about 95% of all bank customers. The "average person" won't really care how it works, won't want to know why it works, but I'll tell ya, the "average person" will feel a 100 times more confident in his/her financial institutions commitment to security and privacy when using this technology, even if it can be foiled by 3D-glasses or expensive shades.
When you combine this technology with the common sense of "closing all applications when leaving your desk," a financial instutition's employee's desk becomes 10 times safer than it was originally, and that's a big step. I'm certain that the larger financial institutions out there (Citibank, et al) would be glad to show off the new technology and tout about its security, even if it can be foiled by the strange looking man wearing $3 3D glasses.
This seems to me yet another attempt to play Life on a machine. Ala Matrix, if you'd rather put it in that context. As far as I can tell, there is no real gaming "concept" that has been show to me, or anyone else, that demonstrates how this "game" works, apart from the AI which, while impressive, will still boil down to how-much-can-be-done-without-slowing-down-to-nothi ng.
A lot of time is spent in the article with Evans talking about variuos social aspects of culture, what to do, what is expected, what is not expected. He brings up a Sims reference. That's about as close to gameplay as he comes to actually describing what it is Lionhead is attempting here. A larger scale Sims is just gonna look like a larger scale Sims, no matter how bad they too want to sell a billion copies.
The fact is that there is no true AI yet. No computer, machine, or created lifeform has yet to have hopes, dreams, or make decisions without having an entire list of them, somewhere, in which to choose from.
Here's a nice quote: "We can't have hundreds of agents looking at big decision trees all the time in real time while rendering the landscape, so we'll do a lot of off-line pre-computation of decision trees before the game starts," said Evans. "We're not sure just how much we can accomplish yet."
Again, as far as laying down gameplay dynamics, the most that can be learned from this article is that you'll play a member of society. Wow. Call me impressed. You'll have "good" actions, "naughty" actions (as Evans puts it), and "inbetween" actions in which the good and bad aren't clear. You'll have to fit into a "group" to survive (or at least that's how I took it), so be a sqaure or a thug, the fact remains: this still feels like someone trying to steal The Sims glory, and I wish them the best of luck.
If the best they can come up with is that characters fight with each other for status, and might come up with a few bits of code to mutter to one another to mean something unique to each of them, this looks like Nothing Special Just Yet.
Surely there must be better material than this on a smaller site. Its no big deal to find a short story on Salon
Actually, it is a big deal. There has never been, AFAIK, an original sci-fi story posted on Salon (of course those cynical enough will say that some news stories must be...).
Regardless of whether that statment is true, the point is that not only is this a really good story, with interesting characters, fresh situations, and nice twists, but that it also deals with Trusted Computing and the dreaded Palladium (Palladium in gibberish is Taliban, didn't ya know). How hardware in the future will be encrypted with keys and codes only unecrypted by those in control and power so they know exactly what you're doing all the time. This story takes that concept from the computer and applies to human beings. It's like 1984, only a bit more hip and filled with enough buzzwords so that geeks will get a nice, big smile every three paragraphs or so.
The arc of the story is not the technology or the use of it in regards to its manipulation on the body. The arc is the two friends and how loyalties are shared, and how loyalties are disregarded for the sake of one's well being (or selfishness, if you'd rather). The circular and sometimes disconnected view of one man's life (Murray) and his spiral into depression and boredom after the loss of his junkie friend (Liam). How, when they are rejoined, those old friendly traits, both good and bad, are showing up again, just like old times. Sometimes you can change, but deep down most people are the same. How, when it comes down to it, just like in Orwell's opus 1984, people will look out for #1 before they would ever bother to keep their loyalties true.
This is a great story that is mentioned because not only does it make a great point about the future of corporate-controlled computer content, but how in essence it deals with friendships, those fragile beasts that we all crave and have to put up with, just to have someone to attend LAN parties with.
Would it make economic sense to convert The Matrix? How many people would pay $10 to see it again on a really big screen? Maybe first run movies would be a better bet.
I, for one, would love to see The Matrix on an IMAX screen. I think it would be a great experience.
That's why you go to a theater you know. For the experience. Otherwise, DVD and VHS would've killed them a long time ago. Why bother paying high ticket prices and overcharged on underbuttered popcorn and $7 drinks? Because there's something magical about being in a huge auditorium, in a room filled with strangers, going on imaginary adventures with people who never existed.
I would kill to see a marathon of Star Wars (Ep. 1,2,4,5, & 6) on IMAX (and of course do it again once Ep. 3 is finished). It would be a wonderful experience. The sights, the sounds, I think there would be absolutely nothing like it.
But there's a lot to think about here.
Firstly you have the screen itself. Last year, when Beauty and the Beast made more bundles of cash by making a "Special IMAX Edition" there had to be a change. And I'm not talking resolution, I'm talking frame-wise.
IMAX screens are 1.33:1 (television) aspect ratios. Most films are 1.85:1, and most of the classics are 2.35:1
So when they blow up films to fit this huge screen, not only are they losing resolution, they're losing part of the image all over again. It's called Pan & Scan, or Hack 'N Slash, depending on your viewpoint.
I could go on the huge tirade about how P&S is awful, how its destroying cinema as we know it, how it scares away Joe Blow from the infamous "black bars" and "why can't I see the rest of the picture" bullshit that myself and others have dealt with for years (ie, those in defense of widescreen).
The point is that The Matrix was not filmed in "Open Matte." Open Matte is where the black bars are put there intentionally, so the film can be shown in theaters properly. So when the home video comes around, you don't even have to worry about loss of picture, because the 1.33:1 frame actually shows more than what you originally saw in the theater (the great Run Lola Run was done this way). In those cases IMAX reproduction would rely solely on the resolution, with nothing else to worry about.
However, most of the films that are "classics" are in 2.35:1 "Superscope" meaning that when you pan and scan, you lose up to 33% of the film. For example, you have Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Arc (all of the Indiana Jones films for that matter), Lawrence of Arabia, Pulp Fiction, etc etc. The list can go on.
So when you think about IMAX reproduction of films, the frame is more important than the resolution. If you pan and scan a classic, you don't get the classic, you get what an editor "chose" to see at a particular point. And this to me is paramount.
...so great in fact, it'll never work.
Why? Because you'll get feedback, good or bad, that will (at the very least subliminally) change your mind about where the story should go.
The story is first. No matter what book(s) you read about writing and fiction, the story should be king. If it's not, you might as well hang up those typing hands and give it up.
The problem with this is that first of all, and this happens ALL the time, you'll just plain ole run out of ideas. But then, you'll protest, by all of the feedback you're getting you'll get more ideas. Well, here we have the Too Many Cooks In The Kitchen scenario that plagues most writerly "collaborations." Everyone wants to have their say, and when you start in one direction, even a tiny bit, by the time you get another hundred pages or so, you've altered your original narrative in such a way that you'll hardly recognize it anymore.
The second, and most important problem? No rewrites. Lemme land a quote on ya: "The first draft of everything is shit." - Ernest Hemingway. Smart guy. He's right too. The simple fact is that when you finish a writing a large or small piece of fiction, there is at least 10% fluff that needs to be trimmed. Normally more, but I myself shoot for 10% at the least. The problem with the blognovel is that, once you get so far into the story, and you realize something is off, there's no way to change it without editing what may amount to dozens of entries. Then you get frustrated. Then you panic. Then you give up.
You note Great Expectations and its episodic format. But what you don't realize, and what I'd stake my life on, is that Dickens probably finished at least two or three large sections, rewrote the first one, published it, wrote another large section, rewrote the second part, published that one, and so on.
With this format you don't have the luxury of forgetting parts of it, only to rediscover them later on your first readthrough. Not doing so is subjecting many an unsuspecting reader on something they didn't know they were in for: a novel that's not a novel but wants to be a novel but will never actually be a novel.
You have an idea; just the wrong way to go about it.
Here's a suggestion: how about building a story with multiple blogs of fictional people? You can design sites with fictional towns and places (imagine, you can build your own fictional police force website, write your own police reports about incidents, etc) and then link them together with a condusive narrative. This would also work well with more than one writer, all of you with your own story, just interwoven with one another. But hey, it's just an idea.
Good luck.
Quote:
Two of our more recent films, 'The Fast and The Furious', and 'For Love of The Game' were praised in the Los Angeles Times and Variety as films with a refreshing lack of special effects.
Yeah, that whole Flying-Through-The-gas-pedal-and-into-the-engine shot in TF&TF was SO done on-set...
Now those geeky enough to splurge for such a device can look even more "approachable" to women.
Can you imagine? Keep the "How to Talk To Women" e-book on your display as you peruse the club scene. That'll do the trick.
...all those Choose Your Adventure books you used to read as a kid? You know the kind, "If you want to venture into the right cave, go to page 87; If you want to trust him, go to page 92" and so on.
It also looks strikingly like those really awful FMV games that came out when the hottest CD-ROMs were spinning at 2x and needed the CD to be loaded into a case and then slid into the drive (remember those infernal things?). There were a few good ones, my fav being The Seventh Guest, but the rest were dreadful point-click-choose-a-scenario games.
But more than anything, it reminded me of Night Trap, the game-movie that had some panties and violence and caused a ruckus back in the early 90's. Sure the game was awful and the "movie" was so bad it set new standards. But it had the same premise, to be "interactive entertainment" with "actors."
You can go so far to say that RPG's are interactive television shows or films. Basically you control characters who have emotions and relationships and whose decisions change the situation around them.
Wow, this is truly revolutionary gaming fun.
For proof, check out this awesome poster for Spirited Away, Buena Vista's (ie Disney's) first foray into the world of Japenese animation on a wide-release scale since Princess Mononoke. The film has broken all kinds of records in Japan and I hope it does the same here as well. The poster looks great, I've heard nothing but fantastic stuff about it, and this should easily top Millenium Actress if the marketing push works.
:)
Here's to hoping it does.
ps - and I hope they don't screw up the DVD and force an uproar like Princess Mononoke did
I realize that there are some functions performed differently on seperate chat programs, but what is really stopping them all from creating a standard interface for communicating? It seems like the main reason for limiting the audience is to lock people into your look and feel client, but what good does that really serve?
One word: Greed
Second, cutting and pasting has never been a problem in the X environment with *any piece of software* but KDE 1 and 2.
Um..I don't know about you, but I have yet to find a desktop that can correctly cut and paste text correctly 100% of the time. At best it's a 60% success rate. From KDE, GNOME, Browsers, consoles, etc, rarely will you find a reliable cut/paste system between the apps.
There are tons of front ends to configure X. It's terribly easy to change resolution on the fly in X -- ctrl alt kp+ and ctrl alt kp-.
But, how many people actually know this? Why isn't there a simple little GUI that runs this command for the user? It's unbelievably sad that one has to SEARCH to change the desktop resolution on their computer. It's silly at best.
Perhaps *you* don't like it, but for some of us that have special needs, having a dumbed down printing system would be incredibly frusterating (I'll give you a pass on this if you just want a new front end).
Wasn't that what he was complaining about? A crappy front end? The program itself has always been frustrating, but a nice, stable, secure, and easy to use front end for sharing printers and the like...well, that's what Linux Printing has needed forever.
The broadband companies have 3 choices here: Cap speed per user, raise the price to reduce demand, or allow the performance to decrease unreasonably when the system is over capacity. None of those options are terribly good, but option 2 is the one that will keep the company afloat.
Or how about option 4: Cap speeds and charge more for those who want more. It keeps the company afloat and lets those who want more pay for it.
Of course a stripped-down internet appliance is easier to make under Linux. Linux can be stripped to its bare core and manipulated in every which way possible. Hell, they have distros that can be installed, and ran, on a single 3.5" floppy. So yes, on that front, you are absolutely 100% in the know.
The problem comes when you need more than a stripped down internet appliance. When you need a desktop, a true environment that allows you to run office apps, play games, launch and easily install applications, and also be a server if need be.
Linux can do all those things, but to do them, you normally have two or three different GUIs and/or interfaces that do the same thing. Where was the sound volume located? Where can I set my screen saver settings? Why is it so hard to choose a new resolution? I'm not talking about the intermediate Linux user here, I'm talking about Grandma Thelma who just bought her machine at Wal-Mart and wants to install Pro Knitting Tournament, the latest in Grandma fun.
Lets keep on this little rant and just assume that there is a Pro Knitting Tournament game for Linux that Grandma Thelma wants to install. After she glances at the directions and does what she is told, an error comes up saying Grandma needs a new version of perl. The troubleshooting section says only to go to CPAN and find it. On her way there, assuming that she somehow magically made her internet connection work, she gets lost, finds a link, downloads something but isn't sure what, where it is, how big it was, or what she's supposed to do now. Now she's totally frustrated, her joints ache, and her teeth hurt. She turns the machine off never to bother again, the darned old thing too frustrating to mess with. Another Linux user lost thanks to the thousands of window managers, package managers, source distrobutions, and bash script installs.
This is the first step in fixing this problem. Maybe it won't happen this year, or even the next, but soon graphics will get prettier, GUIs will be more efficient and easier to find (ie, you won't have three different "System/Settings" menus in your "Start Button" (or whatever you want to call it), and packages will be easily installed with great documentation and links will be created on the users desktop as well as their application menu (ie, Start Button).
But that is the future, and this is the start. The journey of a thousand miles has begun.
You'd walk in to a big area and there would be 20 or 30 enemies to take down. Not many games do that these days....
I for one am very glad that DooM III won't have this "feature."
Sure the first few times you get swamped by enemies is fun, but I would rather have a stalking enemy, one who is smart and knows that you are as well, both of you chasing each other through catacombs and dark rooms.
Who can ever forget playing DooM for the first time, scared to death and immersed in the darkness and the music and the sounds coming from God knows where. The demons coming at you from behind and through hidden doors. I'd much rather see a beautifully bump-mapped, textured, well-modeled creature that can dig its nails into the wall and crawl along the ceiling ready to drop and chomp your ass like a psychotic, demented Spider-Man than a room full of stupid targets.
The Good:
The visuals are amazing. From start to finish, while Lucas may be in love with the computers a bit too much, what is here is fantastic and you will definitely hear gasps during several points of the movie.
The Yoda battle. If you've seen the TV commercials you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, think green, think three feet tall, think Jedi. He's not called a master for nothing.
Ewan McGregor. The man is a genius and his little ticks and manerisms put him in the character so well it makes the rest of the actors look bad. The Score. Oh man, Williams sealed the Oscar nod about twenty minutes in. You'll see what I mean. It's beautiful, beautiful stuff.
What's Bad:
The dialogue stinks. While witty banter is sparse, and mostly kept to the great Obiwan/Anakin discussions found in different spots, make not mistake that the romance story's wooden, dead-before-it-leaves-their-mouths lines are cringe-inducing.
Hayden Christenson. Not bad, per se, just..eh. Not a lot going on here. He tries too hard and sometimes it's hard to swallow. He does nail it in a few key scenes, most specifically near the climax of the movie, and that's what counts.
Jar-Jar. Even when he's reduced to 10 minutes of screen time, the damn guy still irritates the shit outta me.
Overall, this is a fun romp that as a film stinks, but as far as Star Wars and all that that implies, this is a fanboy's dream and not even Spider-Man comes close to the deep, heroin-junkie-like need to watch the movie again as soon as you see the end credits.
Prepare to geek out.