So, what's misssing is a remote that doesn't suck for your media that can interact wirelessly with your media. Something like a big lcd touchscreen. And only like an LCD screen. Nothing else. It's the display and the input. Simple. Elegant. Getting cheap. This is a thin client, really.
I have to agree because I've long said myself that bulky tablets don't interest me, but I'd definitely buy a good "wireless monitor". For the office, I could just pick it up off the desk and walk to a meeting. For the home, it is the smart TV you can take anywhere (or maybe just the remote if you have a big media center:-). Pair something like that with a Mac mini and you get a really interesting digital hub for not a lot of money. That seems to be more inline with Apple's strategy than a vanilla tablet would be.
Ironically, you'd really "know how the meat is produced" if you hunted it yourself...
Knowing how an animal dies is a far cry from knowing how an animal lives. In the wild, you have no idea what gets eaten or what diseases the prey might carry. That said, I do agree that there is a bit of a disconnect between picking up a plastic-wrapped bundle and the actual killing of an animal.
There are all kinds of chicken. I can't speak for the OP, but I tend to get this chicken, which is in the neighborhood of $6.50 per pound. Given how little chicken I eat, I'm comfortable paying a bit more to know how the meat is produced.
You want to string them along, slowly ramping up their frustration, giving them the hint of success every once and a while only to tear their souls slowly from their block-addled minds with a perfectly times sequence of S-bricks.
Call it Wifetris. It starts out all hot and eager, giving you amazing I brick opportunities. As the rounds go on, it grows uncaring and eventually spiteful. At the end of the game, it drops your score in half.
And, no, I haven't been married, but I do have a few divorced friends!:-)
You say they are different because of two core issues; firstly, the number of players & secondly, lack of bias in a computer-governed (as opposed to human GM-governed) universe. I say you are wrong on both counts.
You are so misguided it is laughably sad. OK, one last opportunity for you to turn your brain on or I'm done with you.
Firstly, as a human GM I can populate my world with thousands of people in exactly the same way a n MMORPG does - however, in my case I create NPCs (non-player characters) who only become relevant when they interact with my characters.
Another non-parity example. An NPC is simply not another person. Hell, it is unlikely to even be another adventurer. That is, in an MMORPG, it is highly likely someone else in the world has explored the dungeon (or gone of the quest, or whatever the task is) and gotten whatever treasure was the point of the exercise. That creates an economy that any one-off campaign you run at home does not. When you tell the players they need to get a dragon scale from the caves of Qualdar, do you also supply an NPC that will just give them such a scale in exchange for something else? If not, stop pretending the two situations are even close to similar.
That's point one - it doesn't matter whether we are talking about an RPG or MMORPG here, if you give players rules about your universe and they create characters within that universe that they grow accustomed to then suddenly change those rules, you lose cohesion and destroy the fantasy; exactly what Sony is doing here.
But that's just it; the rules of the game are not changing! Players can already exchange items. It doesn't matter one bit the reason of the exchange. Maybe they're doing a vanilla sale in game for gold. Maybe they're part of the same clan or friends or have some other reason to share the item. Yes, maybe it's because they're getting cash money. Regardless, the game is unchanged. You're trying to claim a difference where none exists. I'd respect you more if you simply said you didn't like the idea rather than trying to make up an excuse through some unreasonable mental gymnastics.
A good GM understands this and can tweak his game real-time to keep all the players in the party interested - in other words, if the fighters are up the front wading into a group of orcs and the wizard is sat at the back clicking his fingers, then how about we throw in an orc or two then and there that surprises him from behind...
Uh, that is the very model of bias! What a shitty GM you are. The wizard is playing perfectly fair, and if the fighter doesn't like it he's free to turn on the bastard. If you as a GM are making a judgement on that, you're an asshat. That is precisely what Sony didn't do. The game still plays as it always did, and people will sell items like they always have. The only difference is that there will be fewer fraud complaints tying up their customer service lines.
That's point two - an experienced GM can keep a game balanced and unbiased. Sony's action creates bias towards those who can afford to buy their status in the universe.
Bwahahahahaha! Everyone buys their status in EQ! The game is not free to play. That creates a base for exchange, and "time is money" does the rest. It doesn't matter that you don't like it; that's just the way things are. As I have also noted, a bought status is easier to take than an earned status, so the bias is definitely against those with fat wallets. Your inability to see all these things makes your opinion on the matter essentially worthless.
Both traditional RPGs and MMORPGs in an ideal world provide complete escapism and entertainment. In theory, an AD&D game could host a huge number of players, it's the rules and mechanics that simply restrict a GM for only "running" a game practically for a handful of people.
You make no points here by requiring an ideal world. It's simply not a parity analogy, and if you can acknowledge that then maybe there is something worth discussing.
It could be argued that a computer performs precisely the same task in an MMORPG that a GM does in an RPG - i.e. define the game universe & ensure the players live within that universe's rules. It's just capable of doing that for a lot more players:-)
Making that point favors me. I'm sure you realize that only the computer version treats people the same. A human GM will gladly hand-wave the kind of rat-killing tedium that online players must endlessly suffer through. The human GM is far more corruptible by all manner of "currency" than any lifeless server is. So how is it any more fair to have a GM arbitrarily decide a task is trivial compared to having a MMORPG with clear rules that state things like "Killing a rat is worth 5 silver. The current exchange rate for 1 gold is $0.1234"
Real-life wealth will allow new players to skip the system of the fantasy world that experienced players have worked hard to live within in order to make their characters successful.
Bullocks. That's like saying rich kids are cheaters in real life because they're using "soul wealth" (or however you'd like to explain an inequality of birth) and skipping the hardships of being poor. The truth remains that the in game experience does not change because of it. They're simply acquiring something that you yourself have acquired, but using a different means to the end. An unfair favoritism is not cheating.
They've introduced a "currency" that makes your abilities as a player in the game universe completely meaningless - if you have more real-life disposable income, you can progress as a character within the game without having any game-playing skills.
And the problem is . . . ? Are you really tying some fundamental sense of worth to the progress of a game character? Isn't the value supposed to be in the journey, not the destination? Isn't the fool supposed to part with his money? Is it really so bad that a person acquires a castle with no experience and thus no means to keep it when confronted by a die-hard player? Me, I say "Free castle!"
If I was an experienced player who invested time and effort in creating a character through good gameplay only to find some upstart with a big bank balance has progressed quicker than me, I would be most angry! In just the same way as when I find out a player in Quake on the Internet is using a game cheat - no difference!
Big difference. Again, an economy is not a cheat. In the MMORPG, nothing is taken from you. You still have your castle and you still have the adventures that went into it. For an FPS, the entirety of the gameplay is the kill and a cheat does steal that. If you don't get the difference, think about this: if I join your castle game today, I don't have a castle and so I can't play the "castle management" game and instead can only kill rats. If rat hunting is not my thing, I bail and that's one less person who you can possibly play against. Is that any more "fair" than me being able to hop on and actually play against you at your level in the "castle management" game? In a very real way, it actually levels the field in a manner that makes the game more playable for all parties involved. How can you not see that?
Rubbish! Many years ago, a friend of mine wrote and ran games within an AD&D world he created. We played in it for over a year, on and off, until we suddenly realised how linear his game and GM-ing had been. In other words, we,
I will call it the "Yes, you." bug. All you have to do is keep saying "Yes, you." and ALICE will take her last statement, add some random statement to the front of it, and add the question, "Me, unknown person?" to the end. It just keeps growing and growing.
Conversely, ALICE has found a bug in d474 such that, by repeating her previous statement and appending "Me, unknown person?", the resulting response is always "Yes, you." I will call it the chocolate/peanut butter bug.
Between 10 and 20 years ago I was into "pen and dice" role playing games big time. As the pre-cursor to MMORPGs, it was great fun escaping from the real life of mortgages & work to go have a few beers with some friends and pretending to be an elf for a while - I even miss RPGs occasionally today.
Your analogy immediately starts out flawed. You had small games with a few friends, not massive worlds full of complete strangers. To be parity, you would've had to allow anybody to play, you would've had to have had a cover charge, and you would've had to have played the rules fairly with all participants.
However, one thing that would have ruined it would have been to have a games master who was open to bribery - e.g. "Here's a ten pound note, make sure I get that +5 Vorpal Blade, okay?" It didn't happen and had it happened, the fun element would have dissipated quickly purely because the real world of money and bribery would have begun to influence that fantasy world in our heads.
An economy is not bribery. If there is a fair way to get a VB+5, the fact that there is a market for it in a foreign currency in no way impacts the game. By all accounts this is not Sony devaluing game items by flipping a few critical bits. Instead, the game is generating the same resources it always did, allowing the same trading as it always did, and the only difference is that in addition to all the hundreds of other reasons you have to make a trade, they've introduced another currency that some people value more, but apparently some people value less, than online resources.
This will destroy Everquest, no question about it, because the people that make that universe fun will feel cheated and robbed and will no doubt find another MMORPG to go and play instead.
That makes zero sense, because the game isn't changing. If people are leaving, it just means they game was never any fun, and they should have left a long time ago if that were true. To me, such a move makes the game more interesting because it makes it more complex. If I were a player, I'd look forward to taking items from newbie players with more money than sense, and it's just icing on the cake that I might again be able to sell it back to them, too!
So, what, suitable for the needs of 99% of commuters?
The driver/pilot position is open to the elements.
Kinda like a motorcycle, yes. Doesn't appear to be a requirement, though, so enclosed versions seem likely.
It has no cargo carrying capacity (as far as I could tell.)
So, what, suitable for the needs of 99% of commuters?
Max speed 55mph, 2 hours of flight per tank.
So, what, suitable for the needs of 99% of commuters? Also, you have to take into account it potentially provides constant travel in a direct line. A one hour, 30 mile car commute could work out to a 20 mile/minute hop.
Skids only (no wheels), so you can't park it in a ramp/underground garage, so can't fly it to the city...
This one is almost fair, but then I could point out that most rooftop space is wasted. Plus, if these were allowed, facilities would follow. Ever seen an automated "elevator" parking garage where the spaces move rather than the cars? Also, like an enclosure, wheels are an obvious option for a future model.
Yeah, I'm not holding off any vehicle purchases for this either, but there is no need to heap undue pessimism on it.
You should check back, every single article links to the author as the first thing, the bloody blog is linked there.
You need to screw your head on straight if you think it's out of the ordinary for the submitter's contact link to reference their own blog. Roland does the same and that is not the source of the disgust towards his practices.
As a rebuttal, show me one place where you are forced to view Rolands blog without actually being able to read the original source article.
The issue is not that some links don't exists, but that he whores his links in as though they're related to anything other than his own ad revenue. Here's the solution: if he wants to talk about the articles he submits to Slashdot, he can fucking do it on Slashdot like everyone else.
Given that, what would the community advise by way of a choice between Java and C#?
Neither. Having watched the video, I am most reminded of AudioPad. For that, "Most of the code is written in Python, except for the low-level tracking code, which is in C and C++." I've also used a demo inspired by that called Mix done in Io. UI experts want to be able to very quickly scale up from the low level of the device to the high level of the research. I would thus suggest you target C in an OO fashion, which will allow binding to all kinds of different higher-level languages.
The first person(prostoalex ) has more accepted submissions, also has a blog, and has nobody complaining about him.
The people modding you up should be banned from moderation permanently. Why, and why is nobody complaining about prostoalex? Because he's not linking to his site(s) as part of the article. At least not in the last 10 submissions I bothered to double-check. Can you point out to any link whoring by prostoalex that is anywhere close to the Engadget shit we've seen?
Without regular roving reporters, digging out interesting stories, slashdot would be shit.
Yes it would, and that's why Roland is covered in feces while prostoalex is clean. The latter is reporting what they find, while the former is just trying to direct you to their web site. It's like those fucking blurbs that try to get you to watch the local news. "Is milk killing your children? Tune in 11!" Fuck that kind of non-informative sensationalism and fuck you for supporting its Slashdot form.
Why not? I was doing it over 5 years ago.. what's changed?
What changed?!? I didn't mention Moore for nothing! The issue is not that you were doing task X in year Y, but that you were doing it with Y - 5 hardware. The use of 'legacy' was his, not mine, and I think I was generous to make just 5 year old hardware qualify.
Funny, I could swear I was using Cubase for real-time multi-track audio editing 5 years ago on my x86 without any problems.
Unless that 'x' in x86 was a 4, you can hardly qualify your experience as using legacy hardware. I don't know jack about Cubase, but a quick search turns up this version, which states a Pentium requirement that was mid- to low-range at the time, not horribly outdated. And if that bare minimum is what you used, yes, I imagine you were swearing quite a bit.
I like Macs and all, but sometimes you rabid fan-boys really do over-exaggerate the situation.
Exactly where was I being a fan-boy; when I suspected he might actually have a legitimate reason to dislike the Mac? Exactly where was I exaggerating; when I said that running current software on ancient hardware is a bad move? It undermines your position when you try to make a personal slam about statements I never made.
I'm a HUGE NIN fan, but I don't use Macs. Nothing wrong with them, I just have tons of legacy hardware.
Dude, you want to do real-time, multi-track audio editing on over 5 year old machines? Good luck with that! Your problem lies with Moore, not with Macs. And if you do have newer x86 machines then, yes, you apparently do think something is wrong with Macs.
Was there a substantial change to the underlying code from 10.2 to 10.3 that would explain the lack of software compatibility between the two versions? (I'm not being rhetorical here. I seriously want to know.)
Yes; there almost always is. Apple usually adds many, many nice new things under the hood that developers (both third party and within Apple) would be fools not to take advantage of. Fine examples are things like Xcode and Cocoa Bindings. For 10.3 to 10.4, Core Image/Data are likely similar developer must-haves, but seemingly much more publicized to the end user.
Regardless, it doesn't make a lot of business sense to release new features for old systems. You got what you paid for and Apple has no real obligation to give you anything more, let alone for free. It is only natural that they give new buyers the incentive of new features. It also almost certainly streamlines their internal development process, allowing them to price it better for those they can support.
And, hell, half the time it's not even read access to the code that matters, what matters is reading the comments to see what takes what arguments, or looking to see exactly how they called some unrelated thing else so you can be consistent.
If dependence on an undocumented API is your concern, you have bigger problems than code theft. Or, briefly, your box is not black.
Coding correctly in small bits and pieces is not the same as operating a 'Manhattan project' where everyone knows exactly what they are supposed to do, and has no ability to even see anything else. Just because you should treat objects as blackboxes you can't see inside doesn't mean actually making them blackboxes you can't see inside is useful.
Again, I gave example after example that demonstrate is it not only useful, but often more productive. The assumption, of course, is that someone sees inside the box and takes responsibility for it working as expected.
In the real world, people realize 'Hey, we do this a lot. Someone write a function to do it and we'll add it to the spec'. That can't happen if you have no idea what anyone else is doing. Everyone would constantly reinvent the wheel. Unless you have some sort of God handing down exactly perfect specifications to start with, that get followed to the letter.
If the only way you have of discovering design redundancies is by manually scanning code, again, "bigger problems". It sounds like you've worked in some real crap environments.
Like I said, if you're operating in that enviroment, people can't even compile their own code, because they don't have read access to all the code they need to do so.
I have one word that will change your life: linking. Seriously, have you really been surround by such crap that proper development practices seem like fantasy? That and the whole "90% bugs" thing makes me think you must be joking.
In reality, that's very difficult, and requires fundamental shifts in methodology and a complete rewrite of any existing project. And a very large investment at the start figuring everything out, which is near impossible.
Not true. I'm good at consulting precisely because I see the big picture, but also I see a very "organic" path to get there from whatever mess is the current state of affairs. Too many people seem to think everything is equally dirty and needs to be sparkling clean all at once. I'm not saying it's easy to "grow" a good solution, and there is often a bit of a paradox where you have crap old code as the foundation of nice new code, but I would say that not only is it very possible, it is very possibly the only way to keep a business from dying.
And it's still going to kill productivity. Programmers are going to spend all their time looking up exactly what other people's code is supposed to do, never quite knowing if the other code works correctly, and waiting forever for compiles, which they have to do remotely as they don't have the whole source tree, and thus can't do incrimentally...
Then that business just didn't partition the code correctly. Nothing's perfect, and you have to properly assign resources to get the right results. If you have some core code that is critical to your business and may be flawed, do you really want any junior coder with CVS access to be able to screw around with it in the name of a bug hunt, or do you want domain experts to be informed through regular channels that allow everyone to verify that the actual behavior and the expected behavior match?
All of this already exists in successful systems. Most companies don't need access to the source code of their OS in order to be productive. Most application developers don't need pour over the code to all the libraries they link to. Most GUI developers don't need to know more than the interfaces of the business objects they visualize. And the end user will script it all without even understanding that such black boxes exist. If you're not seeing that kind of thing where you are, you either need to fix it or get out.
If you're programming, either someone needed to create a hell of a lot of documentation, or you need to see code you're not directly working on. There's a difference between 'you only get one volume of the encyclopedia for the report you're writing' and 'you only get one quarter of the blueprint of the car you're designing'.
I disagree. For modern programming, excessive exposure serves more to hinder productivity. That's why complex systems benefit from OO development; knowing how a part is used doesn't mean having to know the details of how a part works. A clear boundary between your code/responsibility and that of others means it's not only simpler to track down errors, but it also goes a long way towards keeping it from all walking out the door (and allows you better figure out who did take any parts that do leak).
And, yeah, the reason so few source code thefts happen is that a) you'd get sued into the ground, along with b) source code is, sadly, still nowhere near as reusable as it should be, and c) sometimes it is stolen, and no one learns about it.
I've contracted at a lot of places, and I'd say it's mostly 'b'. That's also why seeing other's source is usually counterproductive. I can't count the number of times I've seen stuff and and asked myself "How can you run a company on code this shitty?" The fewer messes you're exposed to, the less extraneous cleanup you're tempted to do. The additional benefits you get by thwarting would-be thieves is just icing on the cake.
Although I don't understand the purpose of a trojaned machine repeatedly hitting a DNS server, is this an attempt to cause an overflow and therefore making the DNS server itself vulnerable?
Well, let's say you've got yourself a spam zombie sending out a million messages. How many unique domains would that average out to be? 500,000? 100,000? Let's generously give it another order of magnitude and say 10,000 (i.e., average of 100 inboxes spammed per domain). Compare that to Joe Average user; how many domains do regular folks hit in a day? 10? Upwards of 100? A far cry from the DNS traffic they're probably seeing from malware controlled customers.
You are wrong. He did give it to her, he even says so. It was a "Valentine's Day gift"
To be somewhat fair, it isn't entire clear what part was the "gift". It could be that he took it to mean the site creation/hosting. To be fair to her, though, it is easy for a non-geek to take the "gift" to be the domain and all related material. On the balance, I'd take her side along with you. It'd be like giving her a bowling ball (or whatever) with her name engraved on it, and then later claiming what you really intended as the "gift" was the use of the item. That stupid, post-breakup power grabbing is juvenile, and he made no case why he would otherwise keep the domain for his own (i.e., unrelated to her) purposes.
are there any good bone-induction mics for cell phone / portable usage? i spent a while looking a couple years back and turned up two things, both of which were ear-mounted. i'd much rather a throat mounted system; i imagine its much better able to pick up sound.
Help me out here: "And the ________ bone's connected to the throat bone."
Slashdot Mirror
So, what's misssing is a remote that doesn't suck for your media that can interact wirelessly with your media. Something like a big lcd touchscreen. And only like an LCD screen. Nothing else. It's the display and the input. Simple. Elegant. Getting cheap. This is a thin client, really.
I have to agree because I've long said myself that bulky tablets don't interest me, but I'd definitely buy a good "wireless monitor". For the office, I could just pick it up off the desk and walk to a meeting. For the home, it is the smart TV you can take anywhere (or maybe just the remote if you have a big media center :-). Pair something like that with a Mac mini and you get a really interesting digital hub for not a lot of money. That seems to be more inline with Apple's strategy than a vanilla tablet would be.
Ironically, you'd really "know how the meat is produced" if you hunted it yourself...
Knowing how an animal dies is a far cry from knowing how an animal lives. In the wild, you have no idea what gets eaten or what diseases the prey might carry. That said, I do agree that there is a bit of a disconnect between picking up a plastic-wrapped bundle and the actual killing of an animal.
Where the flip do you live and shop?
There are all kinds of chicken. I can't speak for the OP, but I tend to get this chicken, which is in the neighborhood of $6.50 per pound. Given how little chicken I eat, I'm comfortable paying a bit more to know how the meat is produced.
Think of it this way, the way something happened, is the way it happened.
Buddy, I've got a cat in a box that would or would not beg to disagree.
Will the porn industry spearhead the adoption of the PSP like it has with so many other new technologies?
Maybe. How easy is it to use a PSP with one hand?
You want to string them along, slowly ramping up their frustration, giving them the hint of success every once and a while only to tear their souls slowly from their block-addled minds with a perfectly times sequence of S-bricks.
Call it Wifetris. It starts out all hot and eager, giving you amazing I brick opportunities. As the rounds go on, it grows uncaring and eventually spiteful. At the end of the game, it drops your score in half.And, no, I haven't been married, but I do have a few divorced friends! :-)
Being lazy and smart does not necessarily equate to being stupid.
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." --- Mark Twain
You say they are different because of two core issues; firstly, the number of players & secondly, lack of bias in a computer-governed (as opposed to human GM-governed) universe. I say you are wrong on both counts.
You are so misguided it is laughably sad. OK, one last opportunity for you to turn your brain on or I'm done with you.
Firstly, as a human GM I can populate my world with thousands of people in exactly the same way a n MMORPG does - however, in my case I create NPCs (non-player characters) who only become relevant when they interact with my characters.
Another non-parity example. An NPC is simply not another person. Hell, it is unlikely to even be another adventurer. That is, in an MMORPG, it is highly likely someone else in the world has explored the dungeon (or gone of the quest, or whatever the task is) and gotten whatever treasure was the point of the exercise. That creates an economy that any one-off campaign you run at home does not. When you tell the players they need to get a dragon scale from the caves of Qualdar, do you also supply an NPC that will just give them such a scale in exchange for something else? If not, stop pretending the two situations are even close to similar.
That's point one - it doesn't matter whether we are talking about an RPG or MMORPG here, if you give players rules about your universe and they create characters within that universe that they grow accustomed to then suddenly change those rules, you lose cohesion and destroy the fantasy; exactly what Sony is doing here.
But that's just it; the rules of the game are not changing! Players can already exchange items. It doesn't matter one bit the reason of the exchange. Maybe they're doing a vanilla sale in game for gold. Maybe they're part of the same clan or friends or have some other reason to share the item. Yes, maybe it's because they're getting cash money. Regardless, the game is unchanged. You're trying to claim a difference where none exists. I'd respect you more if you simply said you didn't like the idea rather than trying to make up an excuse through some unreasonable mental gymnastics.
A good GM understands this and can tweak his game real-time to keep all the players in the party interested - in other words, if the fighters are up the front wading into a group of orcs and the wizard is sat at the back clicking his fingers, then how about we throw in an orc or two then and there that surprises him from behind...
Uh, that is the very model of bias! What a shitty GM you are. The wizard is playing perfectly fair, and if the fighter doesn't like it he's free to turn on the bastard. If you as a GM are making a judgement on that, you're an asshat. That is precisely what Sony didn't do. The game still plays as it always did, and people will sell items like they always have. The only difference is that there will be fewer fraud complaints tying up their customer service lines.
That's point two - an experienced GM can keep a game balanced and unbiased. Sony's action creates bias towards those who can afford to buy their status in the universe.
Bwahahahahaha! Everyone buys their status in EQ! The game is not free to play. That creates a base for exchange, and "time is money" does the rest. It doesn't matter that you don't like it; that's just the way things are. As I have also noted, a bought status is easier to take than an earned status, so the bias is definitely against those with fat wallets. Your inability to see all these things makes your opinion on the matter essentially worthless.
Both traditional RPGs and MMORPGs in an ideal world provide complete escapism and entertainment. In theory, an AD&D game could host a huge number of players, it's the rules and mechanics that simply restrict a GM for only "running" a game practically for a handful of people.
You make no points here by requiring an ideal world. It's simply not a parity analogy, and if you can acknowledge that then maybe there is something worth discussing.
It could be argued that a computer performs precisely the same task in an MMORPG that a GM does in an RPG - i.e. define the game universe & ensure the players live within that universe's rules. It's just capable of doing that for a lot more players :-)
Making that point favors me. I'm sure you realize that only the computer version treats people the same. A human GM will gladly hand-wave the kind of rat-killing tedium that online players must endlessly suffer through. The human GM is far more corruptible by all manner of "currency" than any lifeless server is. So how is it any more fair to have a GM arbitrarily decide a task is trivial compared to having a MMORPG with clear rules that state things like "Killing a rat is worth 5 silver. The current exchange rate for 1 gold is $0.1234"
Real-life wealth will allow new players to skip the system of the fantasy world that experienced players have worked hard to live within in order to make their characters successful.
Bullocks. That's like saying rich kids are cheaters in real life because they're using "soul wealth" (or however you'd like to explain an inequality of birth) and skipping the hardships of being poor. The truth remains that the in game experience does not change because of it. They're simply acquiring something that you yourself have acquired, but using a different means to the end. An unfair favoritism is not cheating.
They've introduced a "currency" that makes your abilities as a player in the game universe completely meaningless - if you have more real-life disposable income, you can progress as a character within the game without having any game-playing skills.
And the problem is . . . ? Are you really tying some fundamental sense of worth to the progress of a game character? Isn't the value supposed to be in the journey, not the destination? Isn't the fool supposed to part with his money? Is it really so bad that a person acquires a castle with no experience and thus no means to keep it when confronted by a die-hard player? Me, I say "Free castle!"
If I was an experienced player who invested time and effort in creating a character through good gameplay only to find some upstart with a big bank balance has progressed quicker than me, I would be most angry! In just the same way as when I find out a player in Quake on the Internet is using a game cheat - no difference!
Big difference. Again, an economy is not a cheat. In the MMORPG, nothing is taken from you. You still have your castle and you still have the adventures that went into it. For an FPS, the entirety of the gameplay is the kill and a cheat does steal that. If you don't get the difference, think about this: if I join your castle game today, I don't have a castle and so I can't play the "castle management" game and instead can only kill rats. If rat hunting is not my thing, I bail and that's one less person who you can possibly play against. Is that any more "fair" than me being able to hop on and actually play against you at your level in the "castle management" game? In a very real way, it actually levels the field in a manner that makes the game more playable for all parties involved. How can you not see that?
Rubbish! Many years ago, a friend of mine wrote and ran games within an AD&D world he created. We played in it for over a year, on and off, until we suddenly realised how linear his game and GM-ing had been. In other words, we,
I will call it the "Yes, you." bug. All you have to do is keep saying "Yes, you." and ALICE will take her last statement, add some random statement to the front of it, and add the question, "Me, unknown person?" to the end. It just keeps growing and growing.
Conversely, ALICE has found a bug in d474 such that, by repeating her previous statement and appending "Me, unknown person?", the resulting response is always "Yes, you." I will call it the chocolate/peanut butter bug.
Between 10 and 20 years ago I was into "pen and dice" role playing games big time. As the pre-cursor to MMORPGs, it was great fun escaping from the real life of mortgages & work to go have a few beers with some friends and pretending to be an elf for a while - I even miss RPGs occasionally today.
Your analogy immediately starts out flawed. You had small games with a few friends, not massive worlds full of complete strangers. To be parity, you would've had to allow anybody to play, you would've had to have had a cover charge, and you would've had to have played the rules fairly with all participants.
However, one thing that would have ruined it would have been to have a games master who was open to bribery - e.g. "Here's a ten pound note, make sure I get that +5 Vorpal Blade, okay?" It didn't happen and had it happened, the fun element would have dissipated quickly purely because the real world of money and bribery would have begun to influence that fantasy world in our heads.
An economy is not bribery. If there is a fair way to get a VB+5, the fact that there is a market for it in a foreign currency in no way impacts the game. By all accounts this is not Sony devaluing game items by flipping a few critical bits. Instead, the game is generating the same resources it always did, allowing the same trading as it always did, and the only difference is that in addition to all the hundreds of other reasons you have to make a trade, they've introduced another currency that some people value more, but apparently some people value less, than online resources.
This will destroy Everquest, no question about it, because the people that make that universe fun will feel cheated and robbed and will no doubt find another MMORPG to go and play instead.
That makes zero sense, because the game isn't changing. If people are leaving, it just means they game was never any fun, and they should have left a long time ago if that were true. To me, such a move makes the game more interesting because it makes it more complex. If I were a player, I'd look forward to taking items from newbie players with more money than sense, and it's just icing on the cake that I might again be able to sell it back to them, too!
It's a one seater.
So, what, suitable for the needs of 99% of commuters?
The driver/pilot position is open to the elements.
Kinda like a motorcycle, yes. Doesn't appear to be a requirement, though, so enclosed versions seem likely.
It has no cargo carrying capacity (as far as I could tell.)
So, what, suitable for the needs of 99% of commuters?
Max speed 55mph, 2 hours of flight per tank.
So, what, suitable for the needs of 99% of commuters? Also, you have to take into account it potentially provides constant travel in a direct line. A one hour, 30 mile car commute could work out to a 20 mile/minute hop.
Skids only (no wheels), so you can't park it in a ramp/underground garage, so can't fly it to the city...
This one is almost fair, but then I could point out that most rooftop space is wasted. Plus, if these were allowed, facilities would follow. Ever seen an automated "elevator" parking garage where the spaces move rather than the cars? Also, like an enclosure, wheels are an obvious option for a future model.
Yeah, I'm not holding off any vehicle purchases for this either, but there is no need to heap undue pessimism on it.
You should check back, every single article links to the author as the first thing, the bloody blog is linked there.
You need to screw your head on straight if you think it's out of the ordinary for the submitter's contact link to reference their own blog. Roland does the same and that is not the source of the disgust towards his practices.
As a rebuttal, show me one place where you are forced to view Rolands blog without actually being able to read the original source article.
The issue is not that some links don't exists, but that he whores his links in as though they're related to anything other than his own ad revenue. Here's the solution: if he wants to talk about the articles he submits to Slashdot, he can fucking do it on Slashdot like everyone else.
Given that, what would the community advise by way of a choice between Java and C#?
Neither. Having watched the video, I am most reminded of AudioPad. For that, "Most of the code is written in Python, except for the low-level tracking code, which is in C and C++." I've also used a demo inspired by that called Mix done in Io. UI experts want to be able to very quickly scale up from the low level of the device to the high level of the research. I would thus suggest you target C in an OO fashion, which will allow binding to all kinds of different higher-level languages.
The first person(prostoalex ) has more accepted submissions, also has a blog, and has nobody complaining about him.
The people modding you up should be banned from moderation permanently. Why, and why is nobody complaining about prostoalex? Because he's not linking to his site(s) as part of the article. At least not in the last 10 submissions I bothered to double-check. Can you point out to any link whoring by prostoalex that is anywhere close to the Engadget shit we've seen?
Without regular roving reporters, digging out interesting stories, slashdot would be shit.
Yes it would, and that's why Roland is covered in feces while prostoalex is clean. The latter is reporting what they find, while the former is just trying to direct you to their web site. It's like those fucking blurbs that try to get you to watch the local news. "Is milk killing your children? Tune in 11!" Fuck that kind of non-informative sensationalism and fuck you for supporting its Slashdot form.
Why not? I was doing it over 5 years ago.. what's changed?
What changed?!? I didn't mention Moore for nothing! The issue is not that you were doing task X in year Y, but that you were doing it with Y - 5 hardware. The use of 'legacy' was his, not mine, and I think I was generous to make just 5 year old hardware qualify.
Funny, I could swear I was using Cubase for real-time multi-track audio editing 5 years ago on my x86 without any problems.
Unless that 'x' in x86 was a 4, you can hardly qualify your experience as using legacy hardware. I don't know jack about Cubase, but a quick search turns up this version, which states a Pentium requirement that was mid- to low-range at the time, not horribly outdated. And if that bare minimum is what you used, yes, I imagine you were swearing quite a bit.
I like Macs and all, but sometimes you rabid fan-boys really do over-exaggerate the situation.
Exactly where was I being a fan-boy; when I suspected he might actually have a legitimate reason to dislike the Mac? Exactly where was I exaggerating; when I said that running current software on ancient hardware is a bad move? It undermines your position when you try to make a personal slam about statements I never made.
I'm a HUGE NIN fan, but I don't use Macs. Nothing wrong with them, I just have tons of legacy hardware.
Dude, you want to do real-time, multi-track audio editing on over 5 year old machines? Good luck with that! Your problem lies with Moore, not with Macs. And if you do have newer x86 machines then, yes, you apparently do think something is wrong with Macs.
Was there a substantial change to the underlying code from 10.2 to 10.3 that would explain the lack of software compatibility between the two versions? (I'm not being rhetorical here. I seriously want to know.)
Yes; there almost always is. Apple usually adds many, many nice new things under the hood that developers (both third party and within Apple) would be fools not to take advantage of. Fine examples are things like Xcode and Cocoa Bindings. For 10.3 to 10.4, Core Image/Data are likely similar developer must-haves, but seemingly much more publicized to the end user.
Regardless, it doesn't make a lot of business sense to release new features for old systems. You got what you paid for and Apple has no real obligation to give you anything more, let alone for free. It is only natural that they give new buyers the incentive of new features. It also almost certainly streamlines their internal development process, allowing them to price it better for those they can support.
And, hell, half the time it's not even read access to the code that matters, what matters is reading the comments to see what takes what arguments, or looking to see exactly how they called some unrelated thing else so you can be consistent.
If dependence on an undocumented API is your concern, you have bigger problems than code theft. Or, briefly, your box is not black.
Coding correctly in small bits and pieces is not the same as operating a 'Manhattan project' where everyone knows exactly what they are supposed to do, and has no ability to even see anything else. Just because you should treat objects as blackboxes you can't see inside doesn't mean actually making them blackboxes you can't see inside is useful.
Again, I gave example after example that demonstrate is it not only useful, but often more productive. The assumption, of course, is that someone sees inside the box and takes responsibility for it working as expected.
In the real world, people realize 'Hey, we do this a lot. Someone write a function to do it and we'll add it to the spec'. That can't happen if you have no idea what anyone else is doing. Everyone would constantly reinvent the wheel. Unless you have some sort of God handing down exactly perfect specifications to start with, that get followed to the letter.
If the only way you have of discovering design redundancies is by manually scanning code, again, "bigger problems". It sounds like you've worked in some real crap environments.
Like I said, if you're operating in that enviroment, people can't even compile their own code, because they don't have read access to all the code they need to do so.
I have one word that will change your life: linking. Seriously, have you really been surround by such crap that proper development practices seem like fantasy? That and the whole "90% bugs" thing makes me think you must be joking.
In reality, that's very difficult, and requires fundamental shifts in methodology and a complete rewrite of any existing project. And a very large investment at the start figuring everything out, which is near impossible.
Not true. I'm good at consulting precisely because I see the big picture, but also I see a very "organic" path to get there from whatever mess is the current state of affairs. Too many people seem to think everything is equally dirty and needs to be sparkling clean all at once. I'm not saying it's easy to "grow" a good solution, and there is often a bit of a paradox where you have crap old code as the foundation of nice new code, but I would say that not only is it very possible, it is very possibly the only way to keep a business from dying.
And it's still going to kill productivity. Programmers are going to spend all their time looking up exactly what other people's code is supposed to do, never quite knowing if the other code works correctly, and waiting forever for compiles, which they have to do remotely as they don't have the whole source tree, and thus can't do incrimentally...
Then that business just didn't partition the code correctly. Nothing's perfect, and you have to properly assign resources to get the right results. If you have some core code that is critical to your business and may be flawed, do you really want any junior coder with CVS access to be able to screw around with it in the name of a bug hunt, or do you want domain experts to be informed through regular channels that allow everyone to verify that the actual behavior and the expected behavior match?
All of this already exists in successful systems. Most companies don't need access to the source code of their OS in order to be productive. Most application developers don't need pour over the code to all the libraries they link to. Most GUI developers don't need to know more than the interfaces of the business objects they visualize. And the end user will script it all without even understanding that such black boxes exist. If you're not seeing that kind of thing where you are, you either need to fix it or get out.
If you're programming, either someone needed to create a hell of a lot of documentation, or you need to see code you're not directly working on. There's a difference between 'you only get one volume of the encyclopedia for the report you're writing' and 'you only get one quarter of the blueprint of the car you're designing'.
I disagree. For modern programming, excessive exposure serves more to hinder productivity. That's why complex systems benefit from OO development; knowing how a part is used doesn't mean having to know the details of how a part works. A clear boundary between your code/responsibility and that of others means it's not only simpler to track down errors, but it also goes a long way towards keeping it from all walking out the door (and allows you better figure out who did take any parts that do leak).
And, yeah, the reason so few source code thefts happen is that a) you'd get sued into the ground, along with b) source code is, sadly, still nowhere near as reusable as it should be, and c) sometimes it is stolen, and no one learns about it.
I've contracted at a lot of places, and I'd say it's mostly 'b'. That's also why seeing other's source is usually counterproductive. I can't count the number of times I've seen stuff and and asked myself "How can you run a company on code this shitty?" The fewer messes you're exposed to, the less extraneous cleanup you're tempted to do. The additional benefits you get by thwarting would-be thieves is just icing on the cake.
Although I don't understand the purpose of a trojaned machine repeatedly hitting a DNS server, is this an attempt to cause an overflow and therefore making the DNS server itself vulnerable?
Well, let's say you've got yourself a spam zombie sending out a million messages. How many unique domains would that average out to be? 500,000? 100,000? Let's generously give it another order of magnitude and say 10,000 (i.e., average of 100 inboxes spammed per domain). Compare that to Joe Average user; how many domains do regular folks hit in a day? 10? Upwards of 100? A far cry from the DNS traffic they're probably seeing from malware controlled customers.
You are wrong. He did give it to her, he even says so. It was a "Valentine's Day gift"
To be somewhat fair, it isn't entire clear what part was the "gift". It could be that he took it to mean the site creation/hosting. To be fair to her, though, it is easy for a non-geek to take the "gift" to be the domain and all related material. On the balance, I'd take her side along with you. It'd be like giving her a bowling ball (or whatever) with her name engraved on it, and then later claiming what you really intended as the "gift" was the use of the item. That stupid, post-breakup power grabbing is juvenile, and he made no case why he would otherwise keep the domain for his own (i.e., unrelated to her) purposes.
are there any good bone-induction mics for cell phone / portable usage? i spent a while looking a couple years back and turned up two things, both of which were ear-mounted. i'd much rather a throat mounted system; i imagine its much better able to pick up sound.
Help me out here: "And the ________ bone's connected to the throat bone."