"Is the reviewer referring to sanskrit here or is there actually a dead language called sandscript? "
It's the primary written language of Jawas. Unfortunately, it all but disappeared after the Empire instituted the death penalty for anybody that didn't speak 20th century Earth English.
Sadly, stability (or lack of) is Opera's weak point. Though it's stable enough to be tolerable, I've had some rather inopportune crashes that I just don't have in IE. My girlfriend has it worse. Hers crashes quite a bit more. (Although her machine is an 'E-Machines.. heh) She lost all her bookmarks, though. One thing IE does right is it stores it's favorites as a bunch of individual shortcuts, makes it lots harder to trash them that way. Once they figure this stability issue out, I'll plunk down my $40 for it.
However, Opera does recover pretty nicely in most cases. It'll let me get my lost page back after a crash. Pity, IE doesn't do that.
" I just don't undersatnd this attitude that you must design for IE. What's the problem with you people? Sheesh."
Don't you think that you should be telling his boss this? He's the guy who decides this stuff. Believe it or not, bosses have a way of making sure you have to cut corners to make your deadline. If you read about all the 'quality' jokes in Dilbert cartoons, then you know why it's so ironic.
"... a very very slow monday for you to post such a story... i think everyone slightly interested in opera that reads/. already tested it "
One of the biggest hinderances to using Opera today is not the browser itself, but how other sites support it. Anything that makes web-masters more aware of a new popular browser on the horizon is a good thing.
"blowing on them is significant for the dust they collect"
That's a myth. It'd have to be a very thick layer of dust to prevent contacts from touching. Think about how much dust would have to get inside your machine (that normally has the door closed...) to successfully block contact with only one pin. The reason why blowing on it works is that your hot breath is getting cooled on the contacts, causing condensation to form. Condensation conducts electricity, and that's why it works.
Ever notice that pennies range from shiny to nearly black? That's because they rub around in your pocket and it creates a layer of gunk on them. That's what's happening inside the NES every time you put a game in and take it out. THat's why they need to be cleaned regularly.
Trust me when I say if you get a good cleaning kit, it'll make your NES work. I used to sell used NES's, I know a lot more about them than I'd like to admit.;)
Okay, in all seriousness, that's how you destroy your Nintendo. What you do is *clean the cartridge*
What happens is when you rub copper on copper (i.e. when you insert a cartridge, ya get copper friction...) little black crap shows up and blocks the contacts. When ya clean it with a good cleaning kit (Recoton is a good brand...) then it'll work again.
I wasn't making a general broadband comment. I was responding to the guy who said *I* don't need broadband.
Although in retrospect, he may have intended to say that all ppl don't need broadband, but my response was focused on myself. Sorry if I misinterpreted him.
"Console games individually cost more" -- That's because a console game lasts longer on the shelf than a PC game.
"PC games offer many possibilities console games dont (due largely to storage / processing power issues)" -- Debatable. Possiblities do not a better game make. Though Quake 3 was able to extend it's lifetime considerably through mods, it was a rare exception. On the flip side, console games tend to be more original in concept and execution. There's a reason Super Mario 64 came out on the N64 but not the PC.
"The installed base of PCs is much higher than any individual console?" -- This line is a lot blurrier than that of a console. PCs are not game machines. The are machines that happen to play games. Not all PC's can play all games due to lack of requirements. Everybody who has a GameCube, though, plays games. Console games historically outsell PC games.
The PC Game Industry, if it is in a downfall, is mainly because of two factors: 1.) PC's weren't built to play games 2.) The games that are coming out are lacking in originality. There really aren't any 'risktaking' games out there. The last one I saw was Sheep. (I think it was called sheep...)
Getting back to the topic at hand, it is far easier to pirate games on the PC. So what? That isn't digging much into PC Game sales. Why? Very simple: I can go download the demo and figure out if I want to play the game or not. The Game Industry is providing me with what I need to make a purchasing decision. Is piracy a problem for them? Perhaps. However, they are not taking extreme measures to thwart piracy.
"piracy works as a disincentive toward developing IP that requires a substantial amount of time/effort/money"
Not sure if I completely agree with that, although I do see your point. Think about it, though: Video games are copied alot, yet the video game industry is very healthy despite a poor economy. You'd think that the Game Industry would be pushing the SSSCA, but they're not. They understand that some people are going to steal stuff, not much they can do about it without costing them way too much money. Their goal is not to stop piracy, just slow it down while their window is open.
As for 'robbing the world of future discoveries..' I may not be interpreting that 100% correctly, but it seems to me that when it publically known how to build something, that isn't the end of that product. Lots of companies make network cards, they're still doing fine.
As I said, I may not have fully understood your point. I apologize if I gave it the wrong meaning. I just think that saying it's the worst kind of crime is overboard. Even in the worst case scenario, we, as a society, will pull through. It's not the same as robbing a country entirely of all it's food.
I'm aware of the bird dying. Sheesh. 'Heh I wonder if that bird that got hit by a baseball pitch is considered a sports kill' wouldn't have made as much sense, keeping to the topic of this post.
Interesting how humans automatically believe other humans are misinformed. I wonder if Occam considered that. Heh.
Heh interesting day for me. Not only is today my birthday, but this is also my 1000th post! heh.
Okay, back to the topic: There's an interesting factor in this particular story that may still be a bit of a wildcard: The CD came with a DVD featuring interviews with Eminem.
I'm reasonably sure that most people who downloaded the MP3s didn't have the DVD, so there was quite a bit of extra value in buying the album. Is this the reason that people bought the CD after downloading it? That's not clear. But it does prove a point I tried to make a few months ago about what the music industry should be doing: increasing the value of CD purchases.
The problem with the RIAA is that they're selling a product that is far too easy to duplicate. Even if they get prevent computers from copying the CD, there are still people that could simply re-sing the song and make that available. I realize the song won't be the same, however the point I'm making is that there is literally no way to prevent a song from getting distributed in one form or another. (Hell, I can imagine people developing a taste for midi if they need to...)
The label was smart in adding the DVD to the CD. This made MP3 sharing into more of a marketing tool. "hey, you like the songs? Check this out: Buy the disc now and you get a DVD with it too!" If I were an Eminem fan, I really think I would have forgone my RIAA boycott and bought that album because of that.
Hopefully they'll learn one day that people downloading MP3s can be tapped as an honest revenue stream.
"Why is that? I don't really need a landline, I only have it for DSL"
Heh, no no I meant a phone in general, not specifically a landline. I don't have a landline either. I'm strictly cell phone and rather happy about that.
I had a case once where I was filling out something and they specifically said 'no cell phone'... but I gave them my cell number anyway and it wasnt a problem. That made me nervous for a mo.
I'll tell you something I didn't expect with getting a cell phone: I don't get solicitation calls. *very happy about that*
I am not, by any means, very well educated on this topic. I would venture, though, that the number of bits is not limited by anything other than practicality. I have a difficult time imagining that a 1024-bit machine would be useful today.
But who knows? Maybe when volumetric holograms come into play we'll see a need for numbers that big.
I do think we're due to move off of silicon soon, though, and move to something organic. I'm really curious what'll happen when we replace bits with neurons.;)
I'm curious about this as well. Is this the type of thing that could make people forget about Itanium, or is this case where an insane # of bits means it's not practical for anything useful?
"...no one will argue that games are what's driving things like new video card technologies -- when did the chicken outdo the egg? "
It probably happened when people spent $3,000 on the latest computer hardware and demanded immediate return on their investment. At l;east that was my experience. My dad got me a 486-33 mhz machine back when they were seriously top of the line. That computer was like my supercomputer for many, many months. My dad dropped a pretty hefty chunk of change on it. He and I both felt that for all the money spent on it, it'd better be a day to night difference over the old 286 I had.
Fortunately, I had Wing Commander II. And boy was it superior on the 486! The game took advantage of the extra RAM to draw more stuff on the screen (like the pilot's hand controlling the ship), and it had the voice pack so your wingman could talk! And the game was smooooooooooooooth.
I think that game did more to impress my dad with his investment than the 3D stuff I ended up doing later on it. Any queeziness he had about buying me that machine melted that night.
I can tell you something, it's satisfying to buy new hardware and have it blow your old hardware away. That's why games like Halo are so important to the XBOX. Quake 3 was the game to do that on PC, but it looks like Doom 3 will easily take its place.
In any case, I think that explains the shift. To tell you the truth, if I didn't run Lightwave so much, I probably wouldn't have much idea how much faster one computer is over another. Guess I should play games s'more.;)
Heh, well to an extent I agree with you. I find game consoles in general to be a better value than new video cards. However, the pivotal point of this argument is that I also prefer console games to PC games in most cases.
A user who prefers PC games would think you're a loon for suggesting that. Remember, games are what you play, not graphics.
Slashdot Mirror
"Is the reviewer referring to sanskrit here or is there actually a dead language called sandscript? "
It's the primary written language of Jawas. Unfortunately, it all but disappeared after the Empire instituted the death penalty for anybody that didn't speak 20th century Earth English.
Sadly, stability (or lack of) is Opera's weak point. Though it's stable enough to be tolerable, I've had some rather inopportune crashes that I just don't have in IE. My girlfriend has it worse. Hers crashes quite a bit more. (Although her machine is an 'E-Machines.. heh) She lost all her bookmarks, though. One thing IE does right is it stores it's favorites as a bunch of individual shortcuts, makes it lots harder to trash them that way. Once they figure this stability issue out, I'll plunk down my $40 for it.
However, Opera does recover pretty nicely in most cases. It'll let me get my lost page back after a crash. Pity, IE doesn't do that.
" I just don't undersatnd this attitude that you must design for IE. What's the problem with you people? Sheesh."
Don't you think that you should be telling his boss this? He's the guy who decides this stuff. Believe it or not, bosses have a way of making sure you have to cut corners to make your deadline. If you read about all the 'quality' jokes in Dilbert cartoons, then you know why it's so ironic.
"If I'm designing web sites, I design for IE.
They you're part of the problem. "
I got news for ya: The people who decide what browsers to support aren't the people who program it. They make decisions like this:
"I hear that Internet Explorer has 98% of the market share."
"Oh, that means we can support IE, and then we can skip worrying about other browsers and save time and money!"
"Exactly."
You really want to talk to the Pointy Haired Boss, it's his decision.
"... a very very slow monday for you to post such a story ... i think everyone slightly interested in opera that reads /. already tested it "
One of the biggest hinderances to using Opera today is not the browser itself, but how other sites support it. Anything that makes web-masters more aware of a new popular browser on the horizon is a good thing.
"blowing on them is significant for the dust they collect"
;)
That's a myth. It'd have to be a very thick layer of dust to prevent contacts from touching. Think about how much dust would have to get inside your machine (that normally has the door closed...) to successfully block contact with only one pin. The reason why blowing on it works is that your hot breath is getting cooled on the contacts, causing condensation to form. Condensation conducts electricity, and that's why it works.
Ever notice that pennies range from shiny to nearly black? That's because they rub around in your pocket and it creates a layer of gunk on them. That's what's happening inside the NES every time you put a game in and take it out. THat's why they need to be cleaned regularly.
Trust me when I say if you get a good cleaning kit, it'll make your NES work. I used to sell used NES's, I know a lot more about them than I'd like to admit.
Okay, in all seriousness, that's how you destroy your Nintendo. What you do is *clean the cartridge*
What happens is when you rub copper on copper (i.e. when you insert a cartridge, ya get copper friction...) little black crap shows up and blocks the contacts. When ya clean it with a good cleaning kit (Recoton is a good brand...) then it'll work again.
*sadly, knows more about this than he should* Heh
"Would you rather play Nintendo games through an emulator, or that NES attached to the TV in the corner?"
In that case, I'd rather play the emulator. Every time I turn on my NES, it just sits there blinking at me.
I wasn't making a general broadband comment. I was responding to the guy who said *I* don't need broadband.
Although in retrospect, he may have intended to say that all ppl don't need broadband, but my response was focused on myself. Sorry if I misinterpreted him.
Thanks. :) *looking*
Ya'all get a hankerin for some Denny's eatins after readin that? heh
Damn I miss Trade Wars. What made that game fun was having like 30 or so real people playing it.
Is there a web equivalent of it?
"Console games individually cost more" -- That's because a console game lasts longer on the shelf than a PC game.
"PC games offer many possibilities console games dont (due largely to storage / processing power issues)" -- Debatable. Possiblities do not a better game make. Though Quake 3 was able to extend it's lifetime considerably through mods, it was a rare exception. On the flip side, console games tend to be more original in concept and execution. There's a reason Super Mario 64 came out on the N64 but not the PC.
"The installed base of PCs is much higher than any individual console?" -- This line is a lot blurrier than that of a console. PCs are not game machines. The are machines that happen to play games. Not all PC's can play all games due to lack of requirements. Everybody who has a GameCube, though, plays games. Console games historically outsell PC games.
The PC Game Industry, if it is in a downfall, is mainly because of two factors: 1.) PC's weren't built to play games 2.) The games that are coming out are lacking in originality. There really aren't any 'risktaking' games out there. The last one I saw was Sheep. (I think it was called sheep...)
Getting back to the topic at hand, it is far easier to pirate games on the PC. So what? That isn't digging much into PC Game sales. Why? Very simple: I can go download the demo and figure out if I want to play the game or not. The Game Industry is providing me with what I need to make a purchasing decision. Is piracy a problem for them? Perhaps. However, they are not taking extreme measures to thwart piracy.
"piracy works as a disincentive toward developing IP that requires a substantial amount of time/effort/money"
Not sure if I completely agree with that, although I do see your point. Think about it, though: Video games are copied alot, yet the video game industry is very healthy despite a poor economy. You'd think that the Game Industry would be pushing the SSSCA, but they're not. They understand that some people are going to steal stuff, not much they can do about it without costing them way too much money. Their goal is not to stop piracy, just slow it down while their window is open.
As for 'robbing the world of future discoveries..' I may not be interpreting that 100% correctly, but it seems to me that when it publically known how to build something, that isn't the end of that product. Lots of companies make network cards, they're still doing fine.
As I said, I may not have fully understood your point. I apologize if I gave it the wrong meaning. I just think that saying it's the worst kind of crime is overboard. Even in the worst case scenario, we, as a society, will pull through. It's not the same as robbing a country entirely of all it's food.
Though what youd said is more accurate, it deflates the impact of what I was saying. heh.
Interesting point though: How can duplication possibly be the worst kind of theft?
So the worst type of theft is the kind that causes the least physical loss.
THEY STOLE MY ELECTRONS!!!
I'm aware of the bird dying. Sheesh. 'Heh I wonder if that bird that got hit by a baseball pitch is considered a sports kill' wouldn't have made as much sense, keeping to the topic of this post.
Interesting how humans automatically believe other humans are misinformed. I wonder if Occam considered that. Heh.
Heh I wonder if that bird that got hit by a baseball pitch is considered a 'sports injury'.
Heh interesting day for me. Not only is today my birthday, but this is also my 1000th post! heh.
Okay, back to the topic: There's an interesting factor in this particular story that may still be a bit of a wildcard: The CD came with a DVD featuring interviews with Eminem.
I'm reasonably sure that most people who downloaded the MP3s didn't have the DVD, so there was quite a bit of extra value in buying the album. Is this the reason that people bought the CD after downloading it? That's not clear. But it does prove a point I tried to make a few months ago about what the music industry should be doing: increasing the value of CD purchases.
The problem with the RIAA is that they're selling a product that is far too easy to duplicate. Even if they get prevent computers from copying the CD, there are still people that could simply re-sing the song and make that available. I realize the song won't be the same, however the point I'm making is that there is literally no way to prevent a song from getting distributed in one form or another. (Hell, I can imagine people developing a taste for midi if they need to...)
The label was smart in adding the DVD to the CD. This made MP3 sharing into more of a marketing tool. "hey, you like the songs? Check this out: Buy the disc now and you get a DVD with it too!" If I were an Eminem fan, I really think I would have forgone my RIAA boycott and bought that album because of that.
Hopefully they'll learn one day that people downloading MP3s can be tapped as an honest revenue stream.
"Why is that? I don't really need a landline, I only have it for DSL"
Heh, no no I meant a phone in general, not specifically a landline. I don't have a landline either. I'm strictly cell phone and rather happy about that.
I had a case once where I was filling out something and they specifically said 'no cell phone'... but I gave them my cell number anyway and it wasnt a problem. That made me nervous for a mo.
I'll tell you something I didn't expect with getting a cell phone: I don't get solicitation calls. *very happy about that*
I am not, by any means, very well educated on this topic. I would venture, though, that the number of bits is not limited by anything other than practicality. I have a difficult time imagining that a 1024-bit machine would be useful today.
;)
But who knows? Maybe when volumetric holograms come into play we'll see a need for numbers that big.
I do think we're due to move off of silicon soon, though, and move to something organic. I'm really curious what'll happen when we replace bits with neurons.
I'm curious about this as well. Is this the type of thing that could make people forget about Itanium, or is this case where an insane # of bits means it's not practical for anything useful?
"...no one will argue that games are what's driving things like new video card technologies -- when did the chicken outdo the egg? "
;)
It probably happened when people spent $3,000 on the latest computer hardware and demanded immediate return on their investment. At l;east that was my experience. My dad got me a 486-33 mhz machine back when they were seriously top of the line. That computer was like my supercomputer for many, many months. My dad dropped a pretty hefty chunk of change on it. He and I both felt that for all the money spent on it, it'd better be a day to night difference over the old 286 I had.
Fortunately, I had Wing Commander II. And boy was it superior on the 486! The game took advantage of the extra RAM to draw more stuff on the screen (like the pilot's hand controlling the ship), and it had the voice pack so your wingman could talk! And the game was smooooooooooooooth.
I think that game did more to impress my dad with his investment than the 3D stuff I ended up doing later on it. Any queeziness he had about buying me that machine melted that night.
I can tell you something, it's satisfying to buy new hardware and have it blow your old hardware away. That's why games like Halo are so important to the XBOX. Quake 3 was the game to do that on PC, but it looks like Doom 3 will easily take its place.
In any case, I think that explains the shift. To tell you the truth, if I didn't run Lightwave so much, I probably wouldn't have much idea how much faster one computer is over another. Guess I should play games s'more.
Heh, well to an extent I agree with you. I find game consoles in general to be a better value than new video cards. However, the pivotal point of this argument is that I also prefer console games to PC games in most cases.
A user who prefers PC games would think you're a loon for suggesting that. Remember, games are what you play, not graphics.
Awesome! It works!
Okay dudes, it's official: In Portland, OR, using AT&T Broadband, I am getting 1.5 meg down and 256 up. *Very happy*