Not that Nintendo has taken many chances lately, but if they were to design, say, a Dual Screen Phone...
The DSP: a RAZResque flip-phone design featuring two 2.5"x4" multitouch sensitive screens on either side. The right hand screen, when held vertically, would also provide the keypad/controls for the cell phone aspect, while the top (left) would provide the traditional display. Other killer features would be a decent camera, motion control (vertical would make a good driving game, horizontally a rail shooter) long battery life (72h standby, 10 hr play, 3-4 talk time) and Wifi capabilites (to communicate with other DSPs, browse the itnernet, etc). The most important feature would be the ability to preserve the state of the game between calls or when the phone is in standby (closed).
I'm sure they could do it. The question is more of a logistical one than a technical one. As Apple is finding out now, the cellular business is a tough nut to crack.
Actually, my 20 month old loves watching his old man play Guitar Hero and Super Mario Galaxy. There's even a couple flash games on the PC we play together. Trackballs make great kid toys, when supervised, and he already knows what icon makes Firefox load up our shortcut to Starfall
And when he's older, the video games and computer stay in the family room. Being a responsible parent means taking responsibility and being vigilant. I'm not a strict disciplinarian by any stretch of the imagination. I just know that the worst thing you can do is stop watching. If they know you're there, they're less likely to do something they shouldn't.
A lot of the complaints about the Kindle center from it's high starting price. While Bezos can make the comparison that the iPod came out at the same price point and succeeded, there's one critical difference between the two: free import of already owned content.
That's right. Forget that iTunes had a store all set up for digital distribution, as Amazon is aiming for with their Kindle. Anyone who paid $399 for an iPod got to include their ENTIRE CD COLLECTION for free, and iTunes did all the work! It checked CDDB, put the artist's name and title right on the track, and did the encoding while you went and read a book. People who could put their thousands of CDs onto one little box weren't just intrigued, they were sold.
You cannot compare the complete conversion of an entire media collection to a device that charges you for everything you want to use it for. The iPod never would have gotten any bigger than 5 gigs, never would have had video, if it wasn't possible to take already owned media and put it into it. And there is no equivalent solution for the Kindle, at least not without some mighty legal and technological leaps that Amazon doesn't have the infrastructure or the cajones to implement.
In short: you're paying for device to buy stuff you already own, again. Apple didn't try and charge you for importing your CD collection, and that's why the iPod is the iPod and the Kindle isn't.
Am I supposed to sit behind my kids and watch everything they watch as they are watching it instead of getting dinner ready or something just incase they decide to play hardcore porn and snuff films or something equally deranged? Am I supposed to follow them everywhere they go and police everything they do?
YES. Welcome to parenthood.
Who are you going to blame when your baby drowns in the tub because you were too busy microwaving dinner? Orville Reddenbocker?
Who are you going to blame when that baby picks up a handful of loose change and decides it's candy? The Treasury?
Being a parent means YOU WATCH EVERYTHING YOUR KIDS DO. It's part of the fucking job. Get used to it, or don't apply for the job.
Log in. Check to see if skill is done training. If not, go have fun.
If so, change it, then go have fun.
Eve doesn't wear out your mouse buttons, clicking on rabbits. It wears out patience, which too many people have far too little of.
Are there "other" ways to advance? Yeah -- but there is more than one way to earn an isk, as opposed to the "Go kill 1000 innocent woodland creatures of a semi-rare variety"
"By looking at our results it is obvious how the fixed basket approach can overestimate the impact of price changes, just as predicted by theory. With consumer preferences changing faster now in real life than ever before (consumer electronics is a good example), this might be a lesson that could help us understand better changes in price levels and how we measure that outside virtual worlds."
Re:Less than obvious solution?
on
Lap Desks
·
· Score: 1
Watching TV wasn't mentioned in the requirements; if he does, there's always Hulu, Joost, Youtube, or any of a million other sites on every band of the ethical spectrum that's just as accessible from his laptop. Or, he could hook up an 85$ HDTV Tuner and never miss a beat.
Re:Less than obvious solution?
on
Lap Desks
·
· Score: 1
I've got both a tube HDTV and an LCD, and while I wouldn't recommend the tube for the hookup the LCD works like a charm at 1366x768 or 1280x720. Setting a resolution like 1024x768 will typically letterbox the picture, unless your TV does internal scaling in which case it might get stretched a bit. Running at 1920x1080 with small fonts on a 1080p monitor might still be uncomfortable, but with a decent screen size and some UI tweaking there's no reason you couldn't use a decent 720p screen for word processing or spreadsheets from 6-10 ft away.
Speaking of range, I just checked and the Mediaboard Pro I suggested has a 10m (30ft) range so no USB hub chaining is necessary. You still might be SOL though with your older laptops because it's bluetooth and you'll need to get yourself an adapter for that as well. I picked this one in particular because it has the trackpad integrated into the device, and yes, I did some research and it is XP and Vista compatible (don't know about *nix)
There's no perfect solution for everyone, but the days of being shackled to the office chair in your own home are coming to an end.
Less than obvious solution?
on
Lap Desks
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Here's a less obvious solution that might just fit your needs:
Most HDTVs these days have VGA inputs. A 15-dollar VGA cable should do the trick, and most XP installs will recognize the HD resolution and scale a desktop fairly well. Once you've hooked up the laptop to the tv, get yourself a wireless keyboard with a trackpad built in (like the Logitech Mediaboard Pro and as a bonus, it works with the PS3 too) and you should be set.
"It's just such a waste of time," said Lackman, 47, a power plant operator from Center, N.D. "I tell him, 'Do something that has some lasting value.'"
And what, exactly, has he accomplished with his life that's got lasting value? The article declines to mention any charity work, artistic endeavours, or community programs he's involved in that his son's neglecting. Odds are good he spends his spare time in front of the TV, watching football and drinking beer.
News flash for parents: if you want your kids do great things, first you have to do great things with them. If your son's more interested in slaying monsters online than spending time with you, it's probably because whatever he's doing is more engaging than what you've got planned for "Quality Time".
"I don't think it's good for them, the violence, the obsession," said Karen Kimball, 55, of Hale, Minn., another nonplayer who estimates her 17-year-old son plays 25 hours weekly. "No longer is it, 'Let's go out and throw a football.'"
I really hope this is misquoted, because if this 55 year old mom is disappointed that her 17 year old son to offer to go outside (where his friends can see) and throw a football with her, she's got more problems than video games. How about challenging him to a game of Madden? Would it kill you to try and engage your teenage son on his level, rather than guilt him into breaking social norms? I'm not saying there's anything *wrong* with throwing around a football with your mother, but try explaining that to the pimple-faced horndog who's just trying to survive the pressures a high school social fishbowl.
I grew up watching my parents playing Pacman and Asteroids on the venerable 2600, and got my first chops on a computer by making levels for Lode Runner with my dad. My childhood's filled with those kinds of memories, along with the fishing trips and the amusement parks and all the other usual stuff. So it's no wonder that my son's growing up dancing along to Guitar Hero, rolling around the pretty shiny ball in Metroid, and learning his alphabet by playing online games (Fisher-Price and Starfall are his favorites)
I do all the usual Dad stuff with him too; we throw the ball around, I read books to him, we push around toy cars (Vrrooms, as he calls them), we hang out the park on weekends. But it's the digital age, and the generation that grew up with the Video game industry is going to incorporate it into their children's lives just as our parents grew up in front of the TV. The interactivity of video gaming just makes it a much better bonding experience -- it's something we do together actively, not passively.
Here's an easy one for Apple: offer a midrange expandable desktop that doesn't come with an integrated screen. The Mac Mini is nice toy but is not a primary desktop and is hardly expandable, and $2500 for the baseline Mac Pro is just ridiculous for a machine that has the specs of an $1200 Dell.
The only reason I yawned while playing Mario Galaxy was because I lost track of time and stayed up an extra two hours playing it. It really is digital crack.
All it takes is one leak from Joe Nobody's blog and all these numbers they're trying to assign a value to will suddenly be open to the public anyway. So instead of building up all this bad karma with their customer base, it makes sense to give the general numbers out and keep the juicy stuff "premium", the boring facts and figures your average Xbox fanboy doesn't care about as long as he can rant about how the PS3 isn't selling as much.
So your armchair economist fanboy blogs get to overhype and exaggerate every nuance of the basic sales figures, NPD comes off looking like mysterious but benevolent database gods, and the industry keeps on churning out more sequels to the Sims and Madden.
What's the point of recording in High-Def it's zoomed out and all in monochrome? It's kind of like recording the greatest rock concert ever with just one (albeit really good) microphone stationed way up in the bleachers.
Apparently, according to this study, not as much as if it were just ONE child:
In another study, Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, found that people were more sympathetic to a single starving child than they were to two children facing the same plight.
"We cannot wrap our minds around two people as well as around one," said Mr. Slovic.
I actually liked having the pipes minigame as a kind of steampunk-hacking system. Considering the theme and the setting I think it was very appropriate, if you ignore the fact that enemies basically wait for you to finish while you're playing it.
While they're not terribly difficult even at the hardest settings, it's a nice change of pace and definately more satisfying than automatic hacking or using a consumable. It's just too bad there wasn't more variety in it, having a couple different minigames would have been much more interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Not that Nintendo has taken many chances lately, but if they were to design, say, a Dual Screen Phone...
The DSP: a RAZResque flip-phone design featuring two 2.5"x4" multitouch sensitive screens on either side. The right hand screen, when held vertically, would also provide the keypad/controls for the cell phone aspect, while the top (left) would provide the traditional display. Other killer features would be a decent camera, motion control (vertical would make a good driving game, horizontally a rail shooter) long battery life (72h standby, 10 hr play, 3-4 talk time) and Wifi capabilites (to communicate with other DSPs, browse the itnernet, etc). The most important feature would be the ability to preserve the state of the game between calls or when the phone is in standby (closed).
I'm sure they could do it. The question is more of a logistical one than a technical one. As Apple is finding out now, the cellular business is a tough nut to crack.
Actually, my 20 month old loves watching his old man play Guitar Hero and Super Mario Galaxy. There's even a couple flash games on the PC we play together. Trackballs make great kid toys, when supervised, and he already knows what icon makes Firefox load up our shortcut to Starfall
And when he's older, the video games and computer stay in the family room. Being a responsible parent means taking responsibility and being vigilant. I'm not a strict disciplinarian by any stretch of the imagination. I just know that the worst thing you can do is stop watching. If they know you're there, they're less likely to do something they shouldn't.
A lot of the complaints about the Kindle center from it's high starting price. While Bezos can make the comparison that the iPod came out at the same price point and succeeded, there's one critical difference between the two: free import of already owned content.
That's right. Forget that iTunes had a store all set up for digital distribution, as Amazon is aiming for with their Kindle. Anyone who paid $399 for an iPod got to include their ENTIRE CD COLLECTION for free, and iTunes did all the work! It checked CDDB, put the artist's name and title right on the track, and did the encoding while you went and read a book. People who could put their thousands of CDs onto one little box weren't just intrigued, they were sold.
You cannot compare the complete conversion of an entire media collection to a device that charges you for everything you want to use it for. The iPod never would have gotten any bigger than 5 gigs, never would have had video, if it wasn't possible to take already owned media and put it into it. And there is no equivalent solution for the Kindle, at least not without some mighty legal and technological leaps that Amazon doesn't have the infrastructure or the cajones to implement.
In short: you're paying for device to buy stuff you already own, again. Apple didn't try and charge you for importing your CD collection, and that's why the iPod is the iPod and the Kindle isn't.
Am I supposed to sit behind my kids and watch everything they watch as they are watching it instead of getting dinner ready or something just incase they decide to play hardcore porn and snuff films or something equally deranged? Am I supposed to follow them everywhere they go and police everything they do?
YES. Welcome to parenthood.
Who are you going to blame when your baby drowns in the tub because you were too busy microwaving dinner? Orville Reddenbocker?
Who are you going to blame when that baby picks up a handful of loose change and decides it's candy? The Treasury?
Being a parent means YOU WATCH EVERYTHING YOUR KIDS DO. It's part of the fucking job. Get used to it, or don't apply for the job.
The Eve Grind:
Log in.
Check to see if skill is done training.
If not, go have fun.
If so, change it, then go have fun.
Eve doesn't wear out your mouse buttons, clicking on rabbits. It wears out patience, which too many people have far too little of.
Are there "other" ways to advance? Yeah -- but there is more than one way to earn an isk, as opposed to the "Go kill 1000 innocent woodland creatures of a semi-rare variety"
From the Article:
"By looking at our results it is obvious how the fixed basket approach can overestimate the impact of price changes, just as predicted by theory. With consumer preferences changing faster now in real life than ever before (consumer electronics is a good example), this might be a lesson that could help us understand better changes in price levels and how we measure that outside virtual worlds."
Watching TV wasn't mentioned in the requirements; if he does, there's always Hulu, Joost, Youtube, or any of a million other sites on every band of the ethical spectrum that's just as accessible from his laptop. Or, he could hook up an 85$ HDTV Tuner and never miss a beat.
I've got both a tube HDTV and an LCD, and while I wouldn't recommend the tube for the hookup the LCD works like a charm at 1366x768 or 1280x720. Setting a resolution like 1024x768 will typically letterbox the picture, unless your TV does internal scaling in which case it might get stretched a bit. Running at 1920x1080 with small fonts on a 1080p monitor might still be uncomfortable, but with a decent screen size and some UI tweaking there's no reason you couldn't use a decent 720p screen for word processing or spreadsheets from 6-10 ft away.
Speaking of range, I just checked and the Mediaboard Pro I suggested has a 10m (30ft) range so no USB hub chaining is necessary. You still might be SOL though with your older laptops because it's bluetooth and you'll need to get yourself an adapter for that as well. I picked this one in particular because it has the trackpad integrated into the device, and yes, I did some research and it is XP and Vista compatible (don't know about *nix)
There's no perfect solution for everyone, but the days of being shackled to the office chair in your own home are coming to an end.
Here's a less obvious solution that might just fit your needs:
Most HDTVs these days have VGA inputs. A 15-dollar VGA cable should do the trick, and most XP installs will recognize the HD resolution and scale a desktop fairly well. Once you've hooked up the laptop to the tv, get yourself a wireless keyboard with a trackpad built in (like the Logitech Mediaboard Pro and as a bonus, it works with the PS3 too) and you should be set.
"It's just such a waste of time," said Lackman, 47, a power plant operator from Center, N.D. "I tell him, 'Do something that has some lasting value.'"
And what, exactly, has he accomplished with his life that's got lasting value? The article declines to mention any charity work, artistic endeavours, or community programs he's involved in that his son's neglecting. Odds are good he spends his spare time in front of the TV, watching football and drinking beer.
News flash for parents: if you want your kids do great things, first you have to do great things with them. If your son's more interested in slaying monsters online than spending time with you, it's probably because whatever he's doing is more engaging than what you've got planned for "Quality Time".
"I don't think it's good for them, the violence, the obsession," said Karen Kimball, 55, of Hale, Minn., another nonplayer who estimates her 17-year-old son plays 25 hours weekly. "No longer is it, 'Let's go out and throw a football.'"
I really hope this is misquoted, because if this 55 year old mom is disappointed that her 17 year old son to offer to go outside (where his friends can see) and throw a football with her, she's got more problems than video games. How about challenging him to a game of Madden? Would it kill you to try and engage your teenage son on his level, rather than guilt him into breaking social norms? I'm not saying there's anything *wrong* with throwing around a football with your mother, but try explaining that to the pimple-faced horndog who's just trying to survive the pressures a high school social fishbowl.
I grew up watching my parents playing Pacman and Asteroids on the venerable 2600, and got my first chops on a computer by making levels for Lode Runner with my dad. My childhood's filled with those kinds of memories, along with the fishing trips and the amusement parks and all the other usual stuff. So it's no wonder that my son's growing up dancing along to Guitar Hero, rolling around the pretty shiny ball in Metroid, and learning his alphabet by playing online games (Fisher-Price and Starfall are his favorites)
I do all the usual Dad stuff with him too; we throw the ball around, I read books to him, we push around toy cars (Vrrooms, as he calls them), we hang out the park on weekends. But it's the digital age, and the generation that grew up with the Video game industry is going to incorporate it into their children's lives just as our parents grew up in front of the TV. The interactivity of video gaming just makes it a much better bonding experience -- it's something we do together actively, not passively.
Here's an easy one for Apple: offer a midrange expandable desktop that doesn't come with an integrated screen. The Mac Mini is nice toy but is not a primary desktop and is hardly expandable, and $2500 for the baseline Mac Pro is just ridiculous for a machine that has the specs of an $1200 Dell.
The only reason I yawned while playing Mario Galaxy was because I lost track of time and stayed up an extra two hours playing it. It really is digital crack.
He's bluffing. Go all in!
All it takes is one leak from Joe Nobody's blog and all these numbers they're trying to assign a value to will suddenly be open to the public anyway. So instead of building up all this bad karma with their customer base, it makes sense to give the general numbers out and keep the juicy stuff "premium", the boring facts and figures your average Xbox fanboy doesn't care about as long as he can rant about how the PS3 isn't selling as much.
So your armchair economist fanboy blogs get to overhype and exaggerate every nuance of the basic sales figures, NPD comes off looking like mysterious but benevolent database gods, and the industry keeps on churning out more sequels to the Sims and Madden.
Everybody wins, right?
It wouldn't be the first time.
What's the point of recording in High-Def it's zoomed out and all in monochrome? It's kind of like recording the greatest rock concert ever with just one (albeit really good) microphone stationed way up in the bleachers.
DRM - Digital Rights Management.
It's about THEIR rights, not yours.
Lately, Yankees fans.
I guess you don't use NHL.TV then.
Apparently, according to this study, not as much as if it were just ONE child:
In another study, Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, found that people were more sympathetic to a single starving child than they were to two children facing the same plight.
"We cannot wrap our minds around two people as well as around one," said Mr. Slovic.
Actually, I read it as LD-50
looks around suspiciously
You know that EB is a wholly owned subsidiary of Gamestop, right?
Compare: EB Gamestop
It's better to fight with this quack, because he is just as damaging to his own cause as he is to the gaming industry.
Now imagine it was someone charasmatic, popular, and had plans for world domination.
I actually liked having the pipes minigame as a kind of steampunk-hacking system. Considering the theme and the setting I think it was very appropriate, if you ignore the fact that enemies basically wait for you to finish while you're playing it.
While they're not terribly difficult even at the hardest settings, it's a nice change of pace and definately more satisfying than automatic hacking or using a consumable. It's just too bad there wasn't more variety in it, having a couple different minigames would have been much more interesting.