I make a living by finding hacks like this generally useful. My company hired me to be the web master and I ended up finding other interesting stuff to do as well, such as maintaining machines and solving technical problems. I'm a systems analyst today and I've survived 2 rounds of layoffs despite lack of a college degree.
"I know that I love some time away from the pressures of everyday life. Also, why not pick up a good book you have been wanting to read?"
I read e-books. I made the mistake of bringing the entire Hitchhiker's Guide series on a trip. Not only did they take up a lot of precious space, but they were damaged.
Frankly, I don't find your post so insightful. When you don't understand what the appeal is, then how can you say your way is better? Ever try to be at peace with yourself while sitting next to a babbling twerp?
"Am I the only one who noticed that the woman in the BBC Article's picture (directly above the "The MSBlast worm hit some users hard" Caption text) is using an old mac,"
The virus turns your PC into a Mac?! Now that's a creative way to hit users hard.
"So, let us hope that if we ever built a SKYNET, it wouldn't be stupid enough to conquer time, and then have no idea what the next logical step is. "
I'd prefer Skynet over the Matrix. Those idiots adopted of the least efficient batteries ever.
Re:Are you thinking what I'm thinking....?
on
New Treo Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
"Seriously, I know the "Imagine a beowolf cluster of these things..." line is a total cliche and often used in the most ridiculous of situations, but... Imagine a beowolf clusted of these things."
" Bonus; Palm devices don't suck the juice like PocketPC. For anyone who really uses a PDA, and doesn't want to have the device in the cradle every day, there's no competition; Palm wins."
Depends on the PDA really. The reviews I've read said that the Palms with color screens lasted up to 11 hours on a single charge. PocketPCs aren't very far from that. (Models vary, yadda yadda yadda.)
Yes, you can get a low-power palm, and yes its battery life will be great, but you do pay a price for that. Readability. With backlit color screens like on your Palm or on your iPaq, you're getting a very high contrast ratio that makes things such as reading e-books far more pleasing on the eyes. Reading e-mail is much easier as you have black text on a white background, as opposed to green text on a yellow background on the old Palms.
For the record, what I'm saying here isn't that PocketPc is superior to Palm. I'm saying that you trade viewing contrast for battery life. I personally would rather have it sit in the cradle (where I can sync AvantGo, mind you) and charge every so often and get the benefits of the nicer screen. For usage like this, you're paying a small price for a huge visual boost. There's not such a thick line between PocketPC's and Palms then.
" They cannot differentiate between fantasy and reality, so they play these games and then think if they do the same thing in reality, it's OK, there will be no consequences"
The problem with this statement is that if it were true, there would be an overwhelming number of stories like these, instead of the one that happens every few months. Video games aren't some new fad, they have been around and quite popular for YEARS.
"It's not immediately obvious to a kid that guns kill permanently."
Are you kidding?! If television hasn't drilled into a kid's head that guns kill people, then GTA does. You don't shoot somebody in GTA and have them jump out and say "I'm okay!". Take any show on TV except for Bugs Bunny, and you'll see hundreds of times that when you aim a gun at somebody and pull the trigger, they die.
Kids may need to be told more than once that guns killed, but that's happened ages ago for everybody.
"How, here we're not copying anything. We're just asking about it in a way that lets us make an educated guess about the contents of the file. How can that be illegal!? "
Wouldn't that mean that if you're downloading a 20 meg file, you'd be sending out 20 megs worth of data?
"...of all the people who are going to run out and buy it, who REALLY needs that much juice?"
I do. I'm a 3D artist, I do rendering. However, as an artist, the processor must be economically feasible as well.
Am I going to go buy one now? No. But if Intel keeps pushing chips with huge caches, and assuming these caches make a difference in LW, it will affect whether or not my next machine is an AMD or an Intel.
For the record, AMD won the last round. I have a dual Athlon at home that runs circles around a 3.2 gig P4.
" the PS2 was never sold at a loss, it always either broke even or made a profit."
Yes it was. When it was launched in Japan, Sony needed to sell 4 games per system to make a profit. A combination of the sucky launch titles and that the PS2 was primarily being used as a DVD player early on caused Sony to go into the red with the PS2 for the first 6 or so months. This caused the magazine Next Generation to write an article about it with a vague speculation that the game industry would go into a recession.
Fortunately that didn't happen, but it was indeed reported. Frankly, I'm going to believe Next Generation magazine over 'Facts of Gord'. Afterall, the system was quite proprietary and quite complex. The idea that they could sell it for $300 and break even is ridiculous.
Or you could just play games on it instead. Lighten up guys, it's a game machine, not a PC. MS wouldn't feel the need for this shit to happen if not for the constant hacking attempts. Did the community seriously expect MS not to do something like this?
These stories are starting to irritate me. I might be able to jump on this GTA causes violence bandwagon if not for a few things:
1.) Where's the increase in violence? Why aren't we seeing a flood of copycats?
2.) The show Jackass has had a couple of copycats. If kids are so weak willed that TV tells them what to do, how come there weren't millions of Jackass'esque attempts?
3.) How come advertising isn't a much stronger tool? If it's so easy to control kids minds, then why aren't commercials causing big headaches for society?
4.) Why has it been so freaking hard to find a link? It's hard to imagine that there's any children in the USA that don't have access to a TV, yet despite 40 years of exposure, they're still chasing this one. I wouldn't mind if this research was being used to find ways to improve child education through TV/Games, but instead it's being used to hang it. WTF?
5.) Why aren't we seeing studies that look at well balanced adults that grew up on games? My generation had Mortal Kombat, and that created quite a controversy. That game was blamed for all that's wrong with the world, but now that that generation is in their mid 20's, how come nobody's looking at them and saying "strange, lots of these people went on to be successful."?
If you want to prove to me that GTA or any other scapegoat game is causing harm to our kids, then you've got quite a bit to discuss with me first.
"As it stands, I'm sure it will come out, but I'm pretty sure there will be some searing defect... "
It's already got one: the media. It's a portable system, but are you going to toss one of these discs into your pocket? Heck no. I can't imagine parents buying their 10 year old kids one of these.
" The GBA has pathetic power. Doesn't mean it makes for bad games. It doesn't. But it does mean that anyone going to compete with it better offer something different. Like say more powerfull games?"
Keep in mind that the GameBoy Advance has been quite successful despite having 3 'powerful' systems on the market. Frankly, I'm hapPy about the differentiation between the PSP and GBA. It doesn't sound like they'll directly compete with each other. If the games are so different, why not get both systems?
I doubt most people will agree with me on this one, but Mortal Kombat was very overrated. I honestly think the appeal of that game grew more from the "Oo it's got blood, I must be more mature!" aspect of it than the "Wow, this is so much better than Street Figher 2" rationale.
It's all opinion, of course. I just never felt like I was really strategically fighting with anybody in that game, more like "who can hit the buttons in the right sequence?" I have Simon for that.:P
"I was shocked to see Mario Sunshine on the list, who hyped that game?"
Gotta say I agree. I don't remember promises that the game would revolutionize anywhere. Even in the earliest days it sounded like an upgrade to SM64. And that's what it was!
I certanly enjoyed the heck out of it. Okay, you were Mario, you ran around and jumped a lot. Okay, you picked up stuff and threw it. Okay, he's still that little guy with the red hat going "woohoo!". For some reason, there are people out there who were stuck by that. "Uh it's just like Mario 64!"
The thing is, though, the game was still a very different experience from SM64. The FLUDD pak alone seriously changed the rules of that game. It really made you think about how you'd accomplish your goal. I wish I had the words to describe my feelings more clearly. The best I can do is say that though the game was in a familiar setting, it was far more immersive than SM64. The best bit being that Nintendo never promised me more than that.
"It seems to me that, even if all sharing of copyrighted music were discontinued, P2P would still have a perfectly valid place in our spectrum of networking possibilities. "
I would expect the Open Source Community to be all over P2P. Sure, maybe the recording big-wigs will use fancy schmancy high bandwidth servers to deliver their products, but Open Source Community doesn't exactly have the income to justify that.
Here's a thought: How about if Slashdot and other places encourage P2P for delivering Linux distros? It's well known here that I'm not a fan of Linux, but I would still put up Linux images to download right this second if I thought people would come and get them.
For those reasons (Security, etc), I don't mind getting rid of flash. I'd feel the same way that you do assuming I'd reach the same conclusion. (I'm just taking your word for it, I don't have time to reasearch it atm.)
A Flash codec would probably be okay. I don't have an issue there, except it can still be embedded just like Flash movies are today.
You've got me chewing on that idea, though. It would be cool to play a vector based movie as an.AVI. Earlier today I was thinking about Flash and how nice the vector format is for animation. As a matter of fact, I have hopes of doing my own animated series one day. I thought it'd be cool if somebody could download an episode at an internet friendly file size, then process that into a really high res (HDTV?) high quality codec (DivX?) and play it back with all the graphic features running at peak efficiency. In other words, you do the compression on your own terms based on what your computer can do, and the vector format can scale itself up.
Actually, if everybody had Adobe After Effects, I could do something today. The download package would be relatively small, but it could be processed at full quality and played back. That'd be pretty slick.
Not sure if I'm making any sense or not. I'm just enamored with the idea of high resolution video that is almost lossless that plays back at 60fps.
Slashdot Mirror
"You make your living off of modifying C=64s?"
I make a living by finding hacks like this generally useful. My company hired me to be the web master and I ended up finding other interesting stuff to do as well, such as maintaining machines and solving technical problems. I'm a systems analyst today and I've survived 2 rounds of layoffs despite lack of a college degree.
"I know that I love some time away from the pressures of everyday life. Also, why not pick up a good book you have been wanting to read?"
I read e-books. I made the mistake of bringing the entire Hitchhiker's Guide series on a trip. Not only did they take up a lot of precious space, but they were damaged.
Frankly, I don't find your post so insightful. When you don't understand what the appeal is, then how can you say your way is better? Ever try to be at peace with yourself while sitting next to a babbling twerp?
"Am I the only one who noticed that the woman in the BBC Article's picture (directly above the "The MSBlast worm hit some users hard" Caption text) is using an old mac,"
The virus turns your PC into a Mac?! Now that's a creative way to hit users hard.
"Don't mod this down just because you disagree. Look at the logic."
Some of us make a living from this geek stuff. Can't feed people if I have no money. Your logic is faulty.
"So, let us hope that if we ever built a SKYNET, it wouldn't be stupid enough to conquer time, and then have no idea what the next logical step is. "
I'd prefer Skynet over the Matrix. Those idiots adopted of the least efficient batteries ever.
"Seriously, I know the "Imagine a beowolf cluster of these things..." line is a total cliche and often used in the most ridiculous of situations, but... Imagine a beowolf clusted of these things."
It makes one wonder... how do nerds reproduce?
"The Trio 300 is going for $199 ... after rebates"
Off-topic? $200 is a good price for a PDA/Cell phone combo. Not everybody wants to buy the latest and greatest when the price is at its highest.
" Bonus; Palm devices don't suck the juice like PocketPC. For anyone who really uses a PDA, and doesn't want to have the device in the cradle every day, there's no competition; Palm wins."
Depends on the PDA really. The reviews I've read said that the Palms with color screens lasted up to 11 hours on a single charge. PocketPCs aren't very far from that. (Models vary, yadda yadda yadda.)
Yes, you can get a low-power palm, and yes its battery life will be great, but you do pay a price for that. Readability. With backlit color screens like on your Palm or on your iPaq, you're getting a very high contrast ratio that makes things such as reading e-books far more pleasing on the eyes. Reading e-mail is much easier as you have black text on a white background, as opposed to green text on a yellow background on the old Palms.
For the record, what I'm saying here isn't that PocketPc is superior to Palm. I'm saying that you trade viewing contrast for battery life. I personally would rather have it sit in the cradle (where I can sync AvantGo, mind you) and charge every so often and get the benefits of the nicer screen. For usage like this, you're paying a small price for a huge visual boost. There's not such a thick line between PocketPC's and Palms then.
" They cannot differentiate between fantasy and reality, so they play these games and then think if they do the same thing in reality, it's OK, there will be no consequences"
The problem with this statement is that if it were true, there would be an overwhelming number of stories like these, instead of the one that happens every few months. Video games aren't some new fad, they have been around and quite popular for YEARS.
"It's not immediately obvious to a kid that guns kill permanently."
Are you kidding?! If television hasn't drilled into a kid's head that guns kill people, then GTA does. You don't shoot somebody in GTA and have them jump out and say "I'm okay!". Take any show on TV except for Bugs Bunny, and you'll see hundreds of times that when you aim a gun at somebody and pull the trigger, they die.
Kids may need to be told more than once that guns killed, but that's happened ages ago for everybody.
"How, here we're not copying anything. We're just asking about it in a way that lets us make an educated guess about the contents of the file. How can that be illegal!? "
Wouldn't that mean that if you're downloading a 20 meg file, you'd be sending out 20 megs worth of data?
"Any reason this is in the Apache section? "
The editor forgot to hit preview.
"...of all the people who are going to run out and buy it, who REALLY needs that much juice?"
I do. I'm a 3D artist, I do rendering. However, as an artist, the processor must be economically feasible as well.
Am I going to go buy one now? No. But if Intel keeps pushing chips with huge caches, and assuming these caches make a difference in LW, it will affect whether or not my next machine is an AMD or an Intel.
For the record, AMD won the last round. I have a dual Athlon at home that runs circles around a 3.2 gig P4.
Troll? Granted, it was a little obscure, but troll? Was that comment really going to spark an argument?
Orson Wells was the voice of Unicron in the Transformers Movie. Unicron was a planet eater. Orson Wells was a star of the movie. It's a joke.
" the PS2 was never sold at a loss, it always either broke even or made a profit."
Yes it was. When it was launched in Japan, Sony needed to sell 4 games per system to make a profit. A combination of the sucky launch titles and that the PS2 was primarily being used as a DVD player early on caused Sony to go into the red with the PS2 for the first 6 or so months. This caused the magazine Next Generation to write an article about it with a vague speculation that the game industry would go into a recession.
Fortunately that didn't happen, but it was indeed reported. Frankly, I'm going to believe Next Generation magazine over 'Facts of Gord'. Afterall, the system was quite proprietary and quite complex. The idea that they could sell it for $300 and break even is ridiculous.
"Don't buy an X-BOX!"
Or you could just play games on it instead.
Lighten up guys, it's a game machine, not a PC. MS wouldn't feel the need for this shit to happen if not for the constant hacking attempts. Did the community seriously expect MS not to do something like this?
These stories are starting to irritate me. I might be able to jump on this GTA causes violence bandwagon if not for a few things:
1.) Where's the increase in violence? Why aren't we seeing a flood of copycats?
2.) The show Jackass has had a couple of copycats. If kids are so weak willed that TV tells them what to do, how come there weren't millions of Jackass'esque attempts?
3.) How come advertising isn't a much stronger tool? If it's so easy to control kids minds, then why aren't commercials causing big headaches for society?
4.) Why has it been so freaking hard to find a link? It's hard to imagine that there's any children in the USA that don't have access to a TV, yet despite 40 years of exposure, they're still chasing this one. I wouldn't mind if this research was being used to find ways to improve child education through TV/Games, but instead it's being used to hang it. WTF?
5.) Why aren't we seeing studies that look at well balanced adults that grew up on games? My generation had Mortal Kombat, and that created quite a controversy. That game was blamed for all that's wrong with the world, but now that that generation is in their mid 20's, how come nobody's looking at them and saying "strange, lots of these people went on to be successful."?
If you want to prove to me that GTA or any other scapegoat game is causing harm to our kids, then you've got quite a bit to discuss with me first.
"As it stands, I'm sure it will come out, but I'm pretty sure there will be some searing defect... "
It's already got one: the media. It's a portable system, but are you going to toss one of these discs into your pocket? Heck no. I can't imagine parents buying their 10 year old kids one of these.
" The GBA has pathetic power. Doesn't mean it makes for bad games. It doesn't. But it does mean that anyone going to compete with it better offer something different. Like say more powerfull games?"
Keep in mind that the GameBoy Advance has been quite successful despite having 3 'powerful' systems on the market. Frankly, I'm hapPy about the differentiation between the PSP and GBA. It doesn't sound like they'll directly compete with each other. If the games are so different, why not get both systems?
WOOHOO!! Mortal Kombat made it!
I doubt most people will agree with me on this one, but Mortal Kombat was very overrated. I honestly think the appeal of that game grew more from the "Oo it's got blood, I must be more mature!" aspect of it than the "Wow, this is so much better than Street Figher 2" rationale.
:P
It's all opinion, of course. I just never felt like I was really strategically fighting with anybody in that game, more like "who can hit the buttons in the right sequence?" I have Simon for that.
"I was shocked to see Mario Sunshine on the list, who hyped that game?"
Gotta say I agree. I don't remember promises that the game would revolutionize anywhere. Even in the earliest days it sounded like an upgrade to SM64. And that's what it was!
I certanly enjoyed the heck out of it. Okay, you were Mario, you ran around and jumped a lot. Okay, you picked up stuff and threw it. Okay, he's still that little guy with the red hat going "woohoo!". For some reason, there are people out there who were stuck by that. "Uh it's just like Mario 64!"
The thing is, though, the game was still a very different experience from SM64. The FLUDD pak alone seriously changed the rules of that game. It really made you think about how you'd accomplish your goal. I wish I had the words to describe my feelings more clearly. The best I can do is say that though the game was in a familiar setting, it was far more immersive than SM64. The best bit being that Nintendo never promised me more than that.
"It seems to me that, even if all sharing of copyrighted music were discontinued, P2P would still have a perfectly valid place in our spectrum of networking possibilities. "
I would expect the Open Source Community to be all over P2P. Sure, maybe the recording big-wigs will use fancy schmancy high bandwidth servers to deliver their products, but Open Source Community doesn't exactly have the income to justify that.
Here's a thought: How about if Slashdot and other places encourage P2P for delivering Linux distros? It's well known here that I'm not a fan of Linux, but I would still put up Linux images to download right this second if I thought people would come and get them.
For those reasons (Security, etc), I don't mind getting rid of flash. I'd feel the same way that you do assuming I'd reach the same conclusion. (I'm just taking your word for it, I don't have time to reasearch it atm.)
.AVI. Earlier today I was thinking about Flash and how nice the vector format is for animation. As a matter of fact, I have hopes of doing my own animated series one day. I thought it'd be cool if somebody could download an episode at an internet friendly file size, then process that into a really high res (HDTV?) high quality codec (DivX?) and play it back with all the graphic features running at peak efficiency. In other words, you do the compression on your own terms based on what your computer can do, and the vector format can scale itself up.
A Flash codec would probably be okay. I don't have an issue there, except it can still be embedded just like Flash movies are today.
You've got me chewing on that idea, though. It would be cool to play a vector based movie as an
Actually, if everybody had Adobe After Effects, I could do something today. The download package would be relatively small, but it could be processed at full quality and played back. That'd be pretty slick.
Not sure if I'm making any sense or not. I'm just enamored with the idea of high resolution video that is almost lossless that plays back at 60fps.
Parent post is overrated?
In AnonV's defense, he did point out some interesting considerations when reading a badly spelt post.