Yeah, requiring a lot of this stuff is just stupid. It's more gimmicky "don't we have some way to use the XYZ?" than it is "hammer for nail, screwdriver for screw".
On the other hand, they did the gesture thing really well. It actually works. There are other problems (like it becoming painful to hold the DS after awhile... play this on a flat surface), but this particular aspect works. This is what they should have done with Zelda:TP on the Wii, instead of the craptacular control scheme they came up with. (Seriously, did anyone playtest that? Damn.) This isn't to say it's superior to having button inputs... I'd say if anything not... but it definitely works.
I love it when posts get moderated up simply due to extensive formatting, when it's clear the moderators haven't actually read or considered the inane, ridiculous content.
No; when you're only willing to pay low wages, you get what you pay for. "Good programmers" are good because they love to do what they do, and often do it just for the love of it: thus free software. Low-paid programmers who scraped through college to get that "high-paying" tech job, but otherwise don't care, and are crap. But they're the only ones willing to take that low-paying job. They're not the sort that will write free software.
No, this isn't the reason things are kept proprietary. Stop and think for half a second:
Design, Policies, Marketing
Development
Delivery
If something is going to be designed and released Open Source, this is decided up front. It has legal implications, especially when you might be interfacing with external third-party libraries and making platform decisions. Then code is written.
Things are exactly the opposite: closed source leads to poor code. No one's going to see it. The product has to get out of the door fast. You hire crappy budget programmers. You don't enforce disciplines of good design and code. Marketing runs the show. There is no ability for the community to see, contribute, and fix. All of these things about the closed source process make crappy code easy. I've seen them all.
But of all of these, no, crappy code is not the reason people don't release their source. I've seen plenty of craptastic code released by companies, that of all things is hardly going to stop them. Especially when improving the code is one of the benefits of releasing it.
However, Bill Gates realized the importance of the Internet, and singlehandedly turned the company attitude around. He "got it".
Don't make me laugh. Gates thought the internet would go nowhere:
"The Internet? We are not interested in it" (Gates, 1993)
"Sometimes we do get taken by surprise. For example, when the Internet came along, we had it as a fifth or sixth priority." (Gates, 1998)
Microsoft has never been a leader. Always the follower. Always the profiteering second-hand salesman, willing to resell you what someone else came up with, and make you think it was the greatest thing in the world, never before available.
Sadly, they've driven us to a corner of computing where the web is the platform, because it's cross-platform and open. In this corner, we're surviving, but nothing interesting is happening. Hell.. the most "interesting" apps are things like Google is putting out: bare-bones word processor and spreadsheet that make early Linux offerings look functional. A web mail client. When the coolest new thing is "Web 2.0"...come on. We're stagnating.
And Microsoft reflects this: they have no source, nothing "new" to repackage. It's the same old crap, bigger, more bloated, more questionable.
"unfinished/unplayable" ... so then ...
on
Lair Review
·
· Score: 1, Troll
Score: 1/5 - This game is unfinished/unplayable. It is not worth the trouble of purchasing, or renting.
So after reading all the reviews on the internet and in print saying this exact same thing---weeks ago, mind you---with the myriad of evidence to back it up, you still decided it was worth playing and reviewing here? What a waste of time and bandwidth.
This gem has been around for awhile. It's somewhat "minimalistic": gtk, C, maybe libxml. No heavy component interface, large GNOME dependencies, or similar. It's blazing fast on both my desktop and my PDA. It's also blazing fast to use...faster than the commandline alone. Once you've assigned keys to its standard functions, you can navigate directories by clicking...or by hitting '/' and shell-style tab completion. You can select files by globs, regexps, or more complicated patterns, also at the press of a key. Then you can hit '!' and run a command on your selection. Drag and drop is prevalent and intuitive, but not forced or required. The mass rename dialog is awesome, and regexp-based, along with manual editing. Did I mention it was really fast? And when all the builtin functions aren't sufficient, you can hit 'x' and pop up a (user-specified) terminal in the cwd. Thus it works alongside the shell you love, instead of replacing it.
After all these years, there's still nothing as usable or functional... or fast.
Everyone is wondering what the bait and switch scheme is. Perhaps there is none. Microsoft may be realizing that the OS battle is a losing one.
This isn't modded funny? Yeah, after 20+ years of buying, scamming, or crushing competitors, pushing their OS on everyone, tying their products tightly into it (IE, Office, Exchange), breaking standards (Java, HTML, kerberos), dumping billions to try and take over your living room (WebTV, XBOX, Media Center), Microsoft has suddenly had a change of heart and released a product in direct competition to another vendor's defacto, cross-platform standard. But this product is totally innocuous. No really.
And on top of it, they've realized their errant ways and are giving up product tying, the OS race, and the browser dominance war. No really.
Blah, blah, blah. The real story? Everyone's pissed about D&D 4e, because they just bought 3e, then 3.5e. I heard more than one person looking to dump their D&D gear entirely and get out of the system.
GenCon organization was also something of a disaster. Preorders set for will call were shipped instead. Badges were missing. People weren't in the system. There was a huge long line for the single will-call booth (the only place to pick up preorders), and a whole row of on-site stations (for those who just showed up). Not the greatest way to serve those who signed up over 8 months in advance. Tables were moved---which happens---and GMs were lost between buildings---which shouldn't.
That said, it was still fun; the exhibition hall isn't where people spent most of their time, either. I had the opportunity to play True Dungeon this year with a great group. We survived. It was far too expensive (at $35 a ticket for a 2-hour event), especially when you can essentially get kicked out of the game in the first 12 minute segment. Fortunately none of our team had that problem. The story was a bit disjointed and illogical, but the puzzles and other gameplay (battles and magic) were fun.
I was somewhat suprised to see the videogame section this year. I got an opportunity to play Eye of Judgement (which was cool), but the little time I spent in the exhibition hall was mostly a quick glance of the tabletop vendors, so I can't elaborate too much here. All in all, enough to do that even with minimal sleep you'll still see only a fraction of what's there.
I'm glad someone's making a revitalizing effort on the part of HD-DVD, even if it means handing out buckets of cash. My biggest reason for supporting HDDVD over BluRay (other than a long-time dislike for Sony) is that HDDVD does not have any form of region coding, while BluRay does. I haven't seen that point raised here on Slashdot before, so I'm at the point of wondering if A) it's even correct, and B) if I'm really the only one who cares.
If anything, you should support BD over HDDVD simply because it's better technology (higher capacity storage), and if you want to go down the "corporate evil" route, Microsoft is far more evil than Sony, so BD wins by default.
So far as I know, with HD-DVD I don't have to worry about it. But Sony, showing their true stripes once again, embraced it with BluRay.
First off, BD is not a "Sony" format, anymore than Cell is a "Sony processor"; they're just part of the committees. One of many. Secondly, if anything, the lack of region codes on PS3 and PSP games should point in the opposite direction. The inclusion of region coding is like the inclusion of DRM---it's a feature that studios will want before they support the format, regardless of how ineffective or stupid it is.
I can see the IBM lawyers now..."Hmmm, interesting. Yes it may be possible that you have something there on this one patent. Let's see..." ruffles through a huge stack of papers in front of him. "However, we've discovered that you're also in violation of these 127 patents of ours. Now, shall we deal?"
Unfortunately the defensive patent portfolio only works if you're not being sued by a patent-holding firm. If they're not actually doing anything but litigating, chances are they're not violating any patents, I think (IANAL). I'm not sure that's the case here, though.
It is perfectly possible to convey humor, sarcasm, or irony with text, plenty of authors did so well before the electronics age.
This is not entirely accurate, or at least not the whole story. First, yes, it is possible to convey these things in the form of writing; plenty of authors have done it, and people should definitely have the writing ability to do so. However, there is a semantic difference between emotion expressed in prose, and emotion expressed with body language, emoticons, dialogue, and other means. These things are possible to convey, but doing so would be wordy and defeat the purpose. Consider other various forms of writing. Why express express something as a play, when one could write a dissertation? Why write character expressions between dialogue when one could express emotion in the speech itself?
Emoticons are a new notation; they neither exclude nor invalidate previous forms of written expression. Nor are they irrelevant and unnecessary, or indicative of poor communication. They are part of new forms of communication involving high-rate, low-latency text, where a few words and an icon can convey as much meaning as a paragraph of text.
The standard cop out that something doesn't translate well to text is bull. Jonathan Swift didn't complainabout how hard it is to write effective satire, nor does Garry Trudeau for that matter.
There has been more than one form of "text" even before telecommunications. One form of expression does not necessarily "translate well" into another form of text. Given any medium, you can find a way to express what you're trying to say effectively: Swift did. And, with some modern text communication, we have too, with emoticons.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - Santayana
What you've said Microsoft has done over and over and over. Yet people are still willing enough, naive enough, stupid enough, to play along. When they get burned, they have no one to blame but themselves.
I use it to look up documented information and references to canonical sources thereof. I use it for a reference. Most people who use it probably do.
However I don't edit it for my own purposes. The purpose of Wikipedia is as an information reference, with cited sources for some measure of integrity. Not a playground for pushing agendas. Not necessarily that this was what the alleged agent was doing---but some people do.
On the other side of the aisle, if you have a PS3, you might enjoy Super Stardust HD. Features great old-school shooter action. You have 4 basic weapons: Rock Crusher, Gold Melter, Ice Breaker, and Bombs. Each of these start off really weak, and you build them up to 100% (or 200% for a short time) by collecting powerups. Your playing field is the orbit around a planet; you face everything from asteroids (which break up when you shoot them, of course) to things like green space centipedes, floating mines, intelligent balls of ice, and more.
Gameplay is simple: left stick moves your ship, right stick fires your weapon. L2 gives you a short speed "nitro" boost in a direction (during which you're invincible), R2 drops a screen-killing bomb. Simple, effective. Story? Characters? Besides the gorgeous HD graphics, this game is oldschool: it doesn't bother you with needless details. Your goal is to shoot lots and lots of things while listening to electronic music tracks and trying to get as high a score as you can. Survive longer, get a higher score multiplier, beat your friends' score on the global scoreboard. That's it. And it's great. And it's $10.
This game gets a score of "Electrum Monkey," which is about 4 out of 5 for those of you who need numbers.
In my opinion a 2.5 year prison term is not excessive for a federal official lying to federal investigators in an effort to mislead the american people.
A guy can get more time than that for personal marijuana possession. Which is worse, possessing some plant leaves, or conspiring to mislead the 280 million american citizens you are sworn to serve?
Maybe someone is trying to set a precedent for leniency when lying to federal investigators... or just feeling guilty...
Leave it to someone who doesn't know what they're talking about to determine what should be considered "fraud". Do you implement the evil bit? I hear it's supposed to prevent hackers and fraud and all that...
First, I would like to draw your attention to a certain holiday party late last year, which I happened to attend. As an avid hobbiest photographer, it was my opportunity to take some very original photographs of the boardroom that night. Say, around 10:42pm. As it is your job to take an interest in the media, I thought you would like to know.
On a clearly unrelated note, I hope we can all remain neutral with regards to the issues at hand today, such as the Internet, and... the media.
There must be enough evidence in THIS case to convict, whatever the track record of the individual (or corporation) concerned. As they say; "Judge each case on its merit".
This is fine if we're trying a person for a crime. But we're not.
This is simply a case of "be skeptical". It's extremely naive to the point of delusional ignorance to think that "maybe Microsoft is playing nice this time". This is more a case of politics and strategy. What you're saying is akin to "well, they deceived us the last 10 times, but surely they're playing honest this time!"
I can't wait to read all sorts of interesting theories on how this will really work from people who have never been inside Microsoft, yet feel the need to 'enlighten' us with their ignorance.
We needn't work at Microsoft, just look at history:
Microsoft vs CP/M
Microsoft vs DR-DOS
Microsoft vs Lotus
Microsoft vs Stac
Microsoft vs Netscape
Microsoft vs DOJ
The list goes on. SCO? EU? IE and Media player bundling? As there is no evidence of change in attitude, it doesn't take much to be skeptical.
Just wait, pretty soon pirating a HD DVD will be right up there with rape (if its not there already).
I believe rape gets you 3-5 years, whereas copyright violation can get you 10 and a $250k-per-incident fine. Just goes to show what our politicians really value.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, requiring a lot of this stuff is just stupid. It's more gimmicky "don't we have some way to use the XYZ?" than it is "hammer for nail, screwdriver for screw".
On the other hand, they did the gesture thing really well. It actually works. There are other problems (like it becoming painful to hold the DS after awhile... play this on a flat surface), but this particular aspect works. This is what they should have done with Zelda:TP on the Wii, instead of the craptacular control scheme they came up with. (Seriously, did anyone playtest that? Damn.) This isn't to say it's superior to having button inputs... I'd say if anything not... but it definitely works.
...and someone who sees you throwing rocks at dogs is likely to comment on your idiocy.
I love it when posts get moderated up simply due to extensive formatting, when it's clear the moderators haven't actually read or considered the inane, ridiculous content.
No; when you're only willing to pay low wages, you get what you pay for. "Good programmers" are good because they love to do what they do, and often do it just for the love of it: thus free software. Low-paid programmers who scraped through college to get that "high-paying" tech job, but otherwise don't care, and are crap. But they're the only ones willing to take that low-paying job. They're not the sort that will write free software.
No, this isn't the reason things are kept proprietary. Stop and think for half a second:
If something is going to be designed and released Open Source, this is decided up front. It has legal implications, especially when you might be interfacing with external third-party libraries and making platform decisions. Then code is written.
Things are exactly the opposite: closed source leads to poor code. No one's going to see it. The product has to get out of the door fast. You hire crappy budget programmers. You don't enforce disciplines of good design and code. Marketing runs the show. There is no ability for the community to see, contribute, and fix. All of these things about the closed source process make crappy code easy. I've seen them all.
But of all of these, no, crappy code is not the reason people don't release their source. I've seen plenty of craptastic code released by companies, that of all things is hardly going to stop them. Especially when improving the code is one of the benefits of releasing it.
Don't make me laugh. Gates thought the internet would go nowhere:
Microsoft has never been a leader. Always the follower. Always the profiteering second-hand salesman, willing to resell you what someone else came up with, and make you think it was the greatest thing in the world, never before available.
Sadly, they've driven us to a corner of computing where the web is the platform, because it's cross-platform and open. In this corner, we're surviving, but nothing interesting is happening. Hell.. the most "interesting" apps are things like Google is putting out: bare-bones word processor and spreadsheet that make early Linux offerings look functional. A web mail client. When the coolest new thing is "Web 2.0"...come on. We're stagnating.
And Microsoft reflects this: they have no source, nothing "new" to repackage. It's the same old crap, bigger, more bloated, more questionable.
So after reading all the reviews on the internet and in print saying this exact same thing---weeks ago, mind you---with the myriad of evidence to back it up, you still decided it was worth playing and reviewing here? What a waste of time and bandwidth.
RiscOS On X (ROX)
This gem has been around for awhile. It's somewhat "minimalistic": gtk, C, maybe libxml. No heavy component interface, large GNOME dependencies, or similar. It's blazing fast on both my desktop and my PDA. It's also blazing fast to use...faster than the commandline alone. Once you've assigned keys to its standard functions, you can navigate directories by clicking...or by hitting '/' and shell-style tab completion. You can select files by globs, regexps, or more complicated patterns, also at the press of a key. Then you can hit '!' and run a command on your selection. Drag and drop is prevalent and intuitive, but not forced or required. The mass rename dialog is awesome, and regexp-based, along with manual editing. Did I mention it was really fast? And when all the builtin functions aren't sufficient, you can hit 'x' and pop up a (user-specified) terminal in the cwd. Thus it works alongside the shell you love, instead of replacing it.
After all these years, there's still nothing as usable or functional... or fast.
This isn't modded funny? Yeah, after 20+ years of buying, scamming, or crushing competitors, pushing their OS on everyone, tying their products tightly into it (IE, Office, Exchange), breaking standards (Java, HTML, kerberos), dumping billions to try and take over your living room (WebTV, XBOX, Media Center), Microsoft has suddenly had a change of heart and released a product in direct competition to another vendor's defacto, cross-platform standard. But this product is totally innocuous. No really.
And on top of it, they've realized their errant ways and are giving up product tying, the OS race, and the browser dominance war. No really.
You're killing me here.
Uh, ever heard of the Fourth Amendment?
If you're not going to lose sleep over the Bill of Rights being shredded, what are you going to lose sleep over?
Blah, blah, blah. The real story? Everyone's pissed about D&D 4e, because they just bought 3e, then 3.5e. I heard more than one person looking to dump their D&D gear entirely and get out of the system.
GenCon organization was also something of a disaster. Preorders set for will call were shipped instead. Badges were missing. People weren't in the system. There was a huge long line for the single will-call booth (the only place to pick up preorders), and a whole row of on-site stations (for those who just showed up). Not the greatest way to serve those who signed up over 8 months in advance. Tables were moved---which happens---and GMs were lost between buildings---which shouldn't.
That said, it was still fun; the exhibition hall isn't where people spent most of their time, either. I had the opportunity to play True Dungeon this year with a great group. We survived. It was far too expensive (at $35 a ticket for a 2-hour event), especially when you can essentially get kicked out of the game in the first 12 minute segment. Fortunately none of our team had that problem. The story was a bit disjointed and illogical, but the puzzles and other gameplay (battles and magic) were fun.
I was somewhat suprised to see the videogame section this year. I got an opportunity to play Eye of Judgement (which was cool), but the little time I spent in the exhibition hall was mostly a quick glance of the tabletop vendors, so I can't elaborate too much here. All in all, enough to do that even with minimal sleep you'll still see only a fraction of what's there.
Everything seems to point to HDDVD region codes:
If anything, you should support BD over HDDVD simply because it's better technology (higher capacity storage), and if you want to go down the "corporate evil" route, Microsoft is far more evil than Sony, so BD wins by default.
First off, BD is not a "Sony" format, anymore than Cell is a "Sony processor"; they're just part of the committees. One of many. Secondly, if anything, the lack of region codes on PS3 and PSP games should point in the opposite direction. The inclusion of region coding is like the inclusion of DRM---it's a feature that studios will want before they support the format, regardless of how ineffective or stupid it is.
Unfortunately the defensive patent portfolio only works if you're not being sued by a patent-holding firm. If they're not actually doing anything but litigating, chances are they're not violating any patents, I think (IANAL). I'm not sure that's the case here, though.
This is not entirely accurate, or at least not the whole story. First, yes, it is possible to convey these things in the form of writing; plenty of authors have done it, and people should definitely have the writing ability to do so. However, there is a semantic difference between emotion expressed in prose, and emotion expressed with body language, emoticons, dialogue, and other means. These things are possible to convey, but doing so would be wordy and defeat the purpose. Consider other various forms of writing. Why express express something as a play, when one could write a dissertation? Why write character expressions between dialogue when one could express emotion in the speech itself?
Emoticons are a new notation; they neither exclude nor invalidate previous forms of written expression. Nor are they irrelevant and unnecessary, or indicative of poor communication. They are part of new forms of communication involving high-rate, low-latency text, where a few words and an icon can convey as much meaning as a paragraph of text.
There has been more than one form of "text" even before telecommunications. One form of expression does not necessarily "translate well" into another form of text. Given any medium, you can find a way to express what you're trying to say effectively: Swift did. And, with some modern text communication, we have too, with emoticons.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - Santayana
What you've said Microsoft has done over and over and over. Yet people are still willing enough, naive enough, stupid enough, to play along. When they get burned, they have no one to blame but themselves.
I use it to look up documented information and references to canonical sources thereof. I use it for a reference. Most people who use it probably do.
However I don't edit it for my own purposes. The purpose of Wikipedia is as an information reference, with cited sources for some measure of integrity. Not a playground for pushing agendas. Not necessarily that this was what the alleged agent was doing---but some people do.
If digg is "beating" slashdot, let it win. Maybe the YouTube popularity blog can suck away the idiots from slashdot.
On the other side of the aisle, if you have a PS3, you might enjoy Super Stardust HD. Features great old-school shooter action. You have 4 basic weapons: Rock Crusher, Gold Melter, Ice Breaker, and Bombs. Each of these start off really weak, and you build them up to 100% (or 200% for a short time) by collecting powerups. Your playing field is the orbit around a planet; you face everything from asteroids (which break up when you shoot them, of course) to things like green space centipedes, floating mines, intelligent balls of ice, and more.
Gameplay is simple: left stick moves your ship, right stick fires your weapon. L2 gives you a short speed "nitro" boost in a direction (during which you're invincible), R2 drops a screen-killing bomb. Simple, effective. Story? Characters? Besides the gorgeous HD graphics, this game is oldschool: it doesn't bother you with needless details. Your goal is to shoot lots and lots of things while listening to electronic music tracks and trying to get as high a score as you can. Survive longer, get a higher score multiplier, beat your friends' score on the global scoreboard. That's it. And it's great. And it's $10.
This game gets a score of "Electrum Monkey," which is about 4 out of 5 for those of you who need numbers.
Maybe someone is trying to set a precedent for leniency when lying to federal investigators... or just feeling guilty...
Leave it to someone who doesn't know what they're talking about to determine what should be considered "fraud". Do you implement the evil bit? I hear it's supposed to prevent hackers and fraud and all that...
Attn: Chairman and Commissioners;
Sirs:
First, I would like to draw your attention to a certain holiday party late last year, which I happened to attend. As an avid hobbiest photographer, it was my opportunity to take some very original photographs of the boardroom that night. Say, around 10:42pm. As it is your job to take an interest in the media, I thought you would like to know.
On a clearly unrelated note, I hope we can all remain neutral with regards to the issues at hand today, such as the Internet, and... the media.
Regards,
This is fine if we're trying a person for a crime. But we're not.
This is simply a case of "be skeptical". It's extremely naive to the point of delusional ignorance to think that "maybe Microsoft is playing nice this time". This is more a case of politics and strategy. What you're saying is akin to "well, they deceived us the last 10 times, but surely they're playing honest this time!"
Uh-huh.
We needn't work at Microsoft, just look at history:
The list goes on. SCO? EU? IE and Media player bundling? As there is no evidence of change in attitude, it doesn't take much to be skeptical.
I believe rape gets you 3-5 years, whereas copyright violation can get you 10 and a $250k-per-incident fine. Just goes to show what our politicians really value.
PostgreSQL (AWESOME and FREE)
And PHBs can spend budget on paid support.