pi in 2d is defined in terms of a ratio of the circumference of a circle to it's diameter.
pi in 3d is conventionally defined in terms of the ratio of the 2d circumference of a circle to it's 2d diameter. It's pi, damn it, it is a constant.
But you can also use 4piR^2 for the surface area of a sphere, and 4/3piR^3 for the volume, which has been mathematically proven for quite some time. The authors of this program appear to be defining 3D pi wrt these ratios... physics geeks will note that the units balance out nicely.
As for 4D pi... I can only assume the ratios are something like npiR^3 surface and mpiR^4 for volume, seeing as how the units must balance and hypergeometry wasn't an emphasis at my college.
Still, though. Writing programs to calculate pi is a fun little project that everyone seems to do at some point in their high school or college career. I did pi in HS. In college I did 4D Tic Tac Toe. These people appear to be doing both. More power to them.
* Sorry, was confused momentarily with another thread I was reading. I should have said "20 posts and rising." I was counting in ABP, not Metric posts.
Yes, I had a pair of friends who worked two different locations at a big-name retailer which will remain annonymous to protect the innocent (Software ETC). They were each encouraged to take games home, play them, and reseal them. One of them would even use that machine to reseal and return hardware to other stores, though only when his boss wasn't looking.
Come to think of it, my copy of FF7 from a now defunct Japanese gaming retail chain was scratched to high heck and was utterly unplayable. The guy at the store admitted it was probably resealed, but had no idea how it got as bad as it did.
And that's really it. I don't mind buying software that has been opened... It's not like you're buying a Coke or an OpenCola that has been half drunk. What I mind, and I think your store is picking up on, is the deception. I think most people are reasonable enough to realize that 40 dollars for a used copy of Zelda is a better deal than 50 dollars for a new one, and if the store worker had to preview it in order to properly recommend for or against... all the more value to the customer.
Ah well, there are 400 posts on this topic and rising, and many empassioned pleas one way or the other. Either way you decide to go, be sure to take full advantage of your decision. If you go resealing, that means you should have a full no-risk return policy with lots of point-of-sale publicity. (Not sure if you will like the new GTA3? Try it for 15 days... if you don't like it you can return it for a full refund). If you decide to go no-resealing, make sure your literature says specifically the names of the stores you know are cheating. You may be pressed to back that up in court, but I get the feeling that this is something these companies don't want proven in front of a judge. If for no other reason than this is a clear, if common, misrepresentation of a product.
Good luck! The independents really make this hobby worthwile.
I'm constantly amazed when I travel to foreign countries and find that real news and real journalism can be genuinely profitable. Why do we settle as a nation for magazines like "Time" when Mother Jones sits quietly on the shelf? Why do serious newsmagazines need to shlock around the latest Julia Roberts rumors to sell copies?
This is as much about culture as it is about media. I have nothing against infotainment... I read Slashdot, after all. But that isn't the same thing as information. Yet any of the myriad of people who pick up, say, the Boston Herald every day think that they are getting their daily dose of vitamin I... They don't make the conscious realization that it is just a copy of People on cheap paper. If Americans had any cultural context and the desire to understand rather than be told they would have snapped up copies of any paper covering the assassination lists Presidente Fox is holding and the overhaul of the Russian criminal justice system set to take effect this week. But we don't, so we don't.
There is nothing wrong with the periodicals mentioned in this piece... they just need to be seen in their proper light. Yelling at the previously core newssources just because they chose to sell avon instead of news won't solve the problem. Moving enmasse to reliable news sources will.
I had a friend... Let's call him Mike. Mike became bored with magic when he realized that he was spending hundreds of dollars per deck to change his proxy cards (fake cards for testing purposes) into real cards. A well-designed proxy deck will basically win every time, btw. He was sick of it.
He sold off all of his cards, and gave me his land / commons (somewhere I have a grocery bag full of living lands, wyrms, forests, etc) and bought two special starter packs that contained a starter and two boosters each. He proceeded to trade with people... collecting unwanted cards and trading bits here and there for things that other people wanted. He would hook people up for cards that they were looking for in exchange for a small cut, and he was a good dealmaker. Within a week, his deck was competitive again (he knew the power of common green), and within six months he was trading legends / antiquities and his collection rivaled that of his old deck... And within the year he was bored again and gave me all of his cards.
The moral of the story... Lots of people are going to be spending lots of money on this online game. If you can spend 10 hours playing a game every day, can you really resist buying a booster every morning? I used to be one of those people. We didn't put any value into common or uncommon cards, or even crappy rares. It sounds like there will be a lot of room for friendly tag-a-longs who are willing to ingraciate themselves by not taking the game seriously... and who don't have to pay any money to play.
I won't reiterate all of the other ideas mentioned here, but differentiate yourself by having a strong "closer." Point out how quiet the computers are, how they are getting lots of internal slots for future expansion, and how it comes with a solid motherboard / chip combination. Prove the value that they are getting... Then while they are mulling the idea and balancing the relative costs in their head, and when you see that look of "almost" on their face, offer them something so over-the-top that it seals the dea. Offer them five years of support. Offer to upgrade their processor in two years time. Offer to upgrade them to a G5 when Nvidia finishes. Offer to keep their OS up-to-date until 2010.
The important thing about an over-the-top closer is that it is far enough away that only about 10% of your customers will take advantage of it, and the ones that do will need to come into your shop at a time when their HD, moniter, RAM, and OS could use upgrading. If you charge 850 for an 800 dollar system with an therotical 200 dollar closer, and 10 % of the people take advantage of it, you just made 30 dollars cream per machine and earned a group of dedicated customers who will tell their friends about you.
And remember, you ARE selling computers that are better from the ground up. They have more slots, quieter fans, no winmodems, HD's without problems, strong power supplies, and a service person who knows your machine from the inside out. And of course they'll want an ergonomic keyboard, which is much more affordable than you might think. You'll even knock some off of the price if they buy it together with the computer. Your computers are ready to be delivered and setup any time by a skilled technician... All the customer needs to do is swipe that little plastic card, and everything will be taken care of.
Be friendly, outgoing, positive, happy, do whatever you can to make the customer more comfortable. Never let the customer know that you are carefully hedging your numbers. If they ask, you can tell them that the G4 you removed during their complimentary upgrade to a G5 will be used as a "gift" for another customer's computer, but don't let on that it was carefully calculated.
You might have been a geek, but now you are a geek salsemen. Congratulations, it sounds like you have a lot of fun hard work ahead of you, with the freedom to be creative and the financial responsibility if you fail. How I envy you.
People who talk like this can only relate to two things: other people who talk like this, and their huge egos.
I've heard the same complaint from non-techies talking to programmers, non-sociologists talking to sociologists, non-mathematicians talking to mathematicians....
Learned businessmen use specific language because it evolved as an efficient way to communicate with eachother clearly. It's understandable that most people don't understand / don't see the significance of the word choices, but that doesn't mean they don't convey specific meaning.
I'll translate a few here.
"[create a] common, best of breed"
Create co-branded and individually marketed distributions that will bring all partners into the top sales slots.
"giving developers a global infrastructure of support in local languages and channels..."
Group together translators, marketers, and distributers around the world to help sell other companys' products in various regions
"Supportable business quality product"
A solid distribution that makes money while meeting the needs of most businesses and not sucking.
"address a graphical desktop"
attempt to solve the ongoing issue of a need for a graphical user interface.
 
And so on.
Don't get me wrong, there are foolish catchphrases and buzzwords that float through management training camps (phrases like, "information wants to be free"), and the world seems to be in good supply of bad managers. But when confronted with a potentially good manager whose meanings have interesting implications for this industry, don't get caught up on your lack of training with the words used to convey that meaning.
If Microsoft claims it will support X-boxes that have been opened, soldered repeatedly, closed, and used to play burned copies of games over an abstraction layer over the OS, all by amatuer end users, then Microsoft must have taken a turn for Seattle's finest Irish coffee.
As for wheter or not they can sue you... The pervasive argument during the early PSX chip days is that it was your box, and you could do basically whatever you want with it assuming you understand that it releases the other party from any liability at all. The EULA was viewed as a liability arrangement, not as a force of law. Now, of course, they can sue you under the DMCA, but Microsoft isn't the copyright holder on any of the software that you may be modifying and putting on your box. It's been a while since I checked the relative values of software piracy suits, but I believe each emulated cartridge manufacturer can sue you for 10 times the value of the goods you copied... Any Lawyers lurking that could clarify the potential losses if everyone that could sue you, did?
Of course, the chance that Microsoft would sue individuals is nonexistent... That would be hideous press for what is an expendable fluff toy traded on positive feelings. They are far more likely to sue the creaters of X MAME, the hosting company that puts them up, Sourceforge (You just know they want to sue sourceforge), 2600, slashdot...
Sigh... Why does it feel like we're rolling a large boulder up a steep hill?
The arcade machine has many advantages over the home console. For one, the pads need to be durable, strong, and solid. Home pads really, really don't have the same strength or feel. The arcade machine is also a solid one-piece whereas the console has all sorts of cords and things to be tripped over and broken, a television to smash, and a PS2 to steal. Not to mention those crafty students that would slip in a copy of GTA3 when the advisor wasn't looking.
The arcade machines are vastly superior to the home consoles, in basically all ways. PS2's skip, the pads slide, you can't feel your feet, there is no bar in back to hold yourself up, there isn't a coinbox... Really, for serious usage the arcade machine is the only way to go. Most serious dancers I know have a full machine.
Unsatisfied intellect begets zealotry when years beget nothing. Microsoft's proven abuse patterns and their enviable ability to outspend the consumer protection arm of the government has begotten a bit of lighthearted humor.
Perhaps the dear reader of the twice-above post will realize that neither moral justice nor the public's economic interest is best served when justice hinges upon the ability to pay. Or perhaps they will just walk away having recieved the message that "Microsoft is evil." I have no moral qualms about putting that message into people's heads, as Microsoft's behavior record should be what people use in deciding the value to society of a corporation. If and when they finally prove me wrong, I promise to recant. However, with the actions WRT Opera, Dr. Dos, Samba, security through obscurity, planned obselescence and obfuscation of the Word file format, and the proposed school computer settlement, I might as well promise to move to Tibet upon a semblance of a genuine corporate philanthropy.
>The 2-VU operates in the Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP® environments and features the Adobe Acrobat Reader®. This strategy avoids the problems of a propriety, closed environment while maintaining the file integrity offered through these state-of-the-art digital rights management platforms.
Win2K and Acrobat. Could this thing have any LESS file integrity???
Seriously, though, why has America (and indeed, the world) become complacent with companies that outright lie to us? Estari inc has proven through this obviously falsified information release that they cannot and should not be trusted about anything wrt this tablet. Why do people who should know better turn around and put things like this in their store? Are they surprised when the battery life doesn't live up to expectations, or when customers return the thing because the HD head crashed?
While I'm generally opposed to increased governmental regulation, I'm not opposed to the consumer protection agencies doing their job. The class-action suit against HP for stating the their DVD+RW would eventually be firmware upgraded to support DVD+R, a claim that they knew at the time to be impossible, is a step in the right direction. However, what about the time Microsoft got away with claiming that MSN was blocking non-IE browsers because they "didn't adequately support CSS," a claim that was an outright lie (IE's CSS support is notoriously bad, surpassed only by Lynx). Or for that matter Energizer claiming that your shiny new PDA will explode and spray acid if you use non-energizer batteries. *
Quite frankly I think we're all a little sick of the lies passing as hype passing as truth around the technology industry. Without delving into too much indlugent prose, there are more broken promises in IT than in a Los Vegas drive-through chapel. If you claim 9 hours of battery life, your battery should last for roughly 9 hours... period. If you claim "excellent, 99.9% uptime" you should be required by law to have A: independent studies to back up that time frame claim and B: comparative studies that show that 99.9% uptime (a figure claimed for windows NT 4) is actually a good figure (it's not.. 99.999 is good). Anything less than that is false advertising and should be prosecuted as such.
And of course, no business should trust any person or group who repeatedly fails to live up to their promises.
-Chris
*There is a phenomenon whereby if one battery in a group is discharged the remainder of the group will force current through it, and thereby force the battery to take on an inverted current. This is bad and can cause the battery to overheat and vent to prevent meltdown (vent hydrogen in the case of NIMH). It's a bad idea to mix batteries. However, saying that off-brand batteries will explode is simply alarmist capitalism.
** It is very difficult to write a column about industry lies without degrading into an out-and-out Microsoft expository. For sake of venting without exploding, here are some of the lies that were expunged from the original draft of this article for sake of a balanced posting. DR Dos doesn't run windows as well as MS Dos. Per-Processor licences are a benifit to consumers. Dual-booting would destroy the industry. If you work with any open-source software you must make all of your software open-source. Windows 95 is a complete 32 bit operating system that doesn't need DOS. The author of The Microsoft File: The Secret Case Against Bill Gates has admitted to "making up many scenes in the book." The next version of NT will utilize 64-bit addressing. After having purchased Konami and Capcom and secured 6 titles from Square, and hand-checked each and every unit for defects, the X-box will launch with 100 titles... There are of course more, but I see a dead stallion across the street that could use some tenderizing.
You can choose to enforce the existing laws and actually prosecute those people who break it, or you can make it illegal to produce anything that will facilitate the breaking of the unenforced laws. You can shield the people who violate copyright laws, or you can protect people's rights to produce hardware and software of multiple uses, but you cannot do both.
I hope you can use all of this feedback you are getting.
I would love to get a MAC as a terminal in my house... to telnet into my e-mail account (not this one, of course), and to opera around the web. I'd probably want to use it as a mediaserver to the linux and PC boxes, to simplify web development projects for my roommate. I'm working in a small corner of the gaming industry, so I would need to keep my PC box for development (Quake 3 Radiant comes to mind), but as there are currently 8 computers sitting in front of me I don't think that will adversely effect the total. I would also want this to be as SILENT as possible, as it would likely never be turned off. So PLEASE find a way to remove that last fan from the beautiful new iMAC.
There are three things holding me back from this purchase.
One: performance. The last time I tried your operating system on a G4 cube, it was sluggish at best. This is hurt further by the performance gap with other chip makers such as AMD. (I know MHZ != speed, but many other benchmarks show a lag). I wouldn't plan on using the system to play Everquest, but I do need it to snap to attention the moment I want it to do something. And that isn't necessarily Ghz related, so much as how well those cycles are allocated.
Two: interface maturity. OS9 had a multitude of programs available to customize the os to behave exactly as I found aesthetically pleasing. Window Monkey, Menuette, and a host of others filled out interface gaps and created functionality where once there was annoyance. Windowshade started as a hack, you'll recall. OS9 is such a radical departure from the previous interface I doubt time for such fine-tuning has ocurred.
Along with interface maturity, 3+ button mouse support is needed. One button just isn't enough for real usage. Opera's innovative mousegestures show that two buttons and a scroll wheel may be enough for serious web surfing, and Kensington's scroll trackball implementation of the scroll wheel is spot on, but all of these should be supported with the default mouse.
Sometimes you are still on the cutting edge of interface design, sometimes you aren't. When you aren't, I strongly recommend stealing.
Three: software support. This is the reason I originally left the macintosh, and the reason it would be impossible for me to be primary with OSX. Everyone knows this, and everyone knows this is why Microsoft holds on to their monopoly. Show the developers how this could make them money and how this could make them want to wake up in the morning. Spread this mantra: "Enjoy life more: Program for OSX."
I don't plan on buying another wintel box anytime soon, basically because I can't bear to throw more money towards that godawful filesystem. On the other hand, I can't exactly plug my rio into the NeXT Cube (which, amusingly, has a picture of the new iMAC pinned to it).
Save for the price I would love a titanium. Get the snappy imac to snap to attention, do everything you can to get developers on the box, and abandon that stupid mouse, and you will have one more repatriot.
There is no way this is possible. Gaming has evolved into Hollywood extravaganza at its brightest, with all of the special effects that entails. Java is a platform that introduces a processor-taxing virtual layer of representation that would be intolerably slow for an industry where each company banks its future on having a higher poly count than their competitors. Eidos is very proud of the fact that the new Laura Croft has 5,000 polys, making even more realistic her unrealistic curves. While this kind of unrealism is quite common amongst Sun's press releases, the likelyhood of Java being successful as a gaming meta platform on the PS2 is about as likely as the CDI coming back from the grave: Zero. And what are the chances of the next GTA 3 or MGS 2 coming on a platform that pretends the idiosyncracies of the hardware doesn't exist?
Sun makes it very clear that either A: they don't understand this or B: they're pretending it isn't important.
Using Java technology's cross platform capability, developers are creating new game and entertainment experiences that fully leverage the network and allow the player to engage anytime on multiple devices.
They are? How interesting... Might you point to one? Or are you talking about the browser-based games on Yahoo?
Sun shows an image of people playing linked games on a cell phone, a Palmpilot, a gameboy advance, and a flipped picture of a PS2 controller. Some of these devices actually have network connections widely available (a place where utilizing java would make sense), but they aren't the ones that are used for gaming. The Gameboy advance, for example, would be impossible to design and develop a decent game for if you didn't know that you had to choose between 16 million colors, or a 256 color pallete with 0, 1, or 2 scalable / rotatable backgrounds and 4, 2, 0 tiled backgrounds, your available sprite count, your audio options... And not only that, but you would never be able to put in a CD to that cartridge based thing anyway. In all of these examples, the end user would have to buy a copy of the game specific to the device, a move that would make sense for the console creators who only survive by taking a cut of every game sold that has been enabled to work on that hardware. Binary cross platform compatibility would be suicide for Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo to support.
The Sun representative talks about how you could fiddle with your inventory in Everquest or chat with your friends while you are away from your computer. Thankfully, most internet-enabled cell phones are already equipped with many options for chatting with friends, and reorganizing your inventory is about as much fun as it sounds. This has already been tried, with Sega's VMU and Sony's Pocketstation, with very limited success (though Sega gets Kudos for true research).
Sun mentions that You don't know Jack, Majestic, and Who wants to be a Millionaire, as well as the scripting in V:TM all utilized Java. Jack and Millionaire are all simple, browser based quiz shows with a reliance upon audio and clever dialog. Majestic is audio and text based in a revolutionary but not processor-intensive way. V:TM may have its events scripted in java (using java as a scripting language rather than a programming one), but by no means is any substantial portion of the code java based.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really wish large companies would get a little respect for the business side of the gaming industry and do their homework before charging right in to foolish and doomed projects that will only waste their money and developers' time.
[Quietly steps down from soapbox and wipes froth from mouth]
I find this to be quite amusing. Distributed computing? Biotechnology? Developers demanding 1,000 times more computing power? All of the developers I know that have touched the PS2 have demanded fewer processors and an architecture that makes a semblance of sense.
You can't distribute the computing on a game system when.05 seconds is a nauseating lag. Maybe if you were running a MMPORG, you could use each console to compute the region of space that they were in. Even then the most computationally costly part of gaming, the rendering, needs to be done locally in real time.
The only way this could even make sense is if Sony was focusing on massively multiprocessor systems, an idea that seems unlikely considering A: the relative costs and B: sony's claim of shared memory.
Did the Blue Meanies spike the water supply?
It's interesting to note how product teams resisted the security invasion. Now, while we know very little about how offensively these security teams were implemented, it does harken to a truism about coding.
Properly securing products isn't fun.
Implementing improved, automatic PGP hooks might be fun (hint hint), but slowly and methodically picking through all of your code to make sure that no buffers can overflow is just uninteresting and unglamorous. If we can't convince ourselves to sufficiently comment the code we write, even though we routinely curse ourselves for not having done it previously, security is going to be unfortunately naturally low on the list of things to do.
Likewise, an ounce of glitzy new features tends to sell better than an ounce of better security. People are going to look down upon you if you encourage them to upgrade from the old software you sold them by pointing out the security flaws that it had. It's usually more marketable to say "Trust our products, we have new inline spell checking across all our platforms" rather than "Trust our products, we no longer grant root through tcp/ip overflows."
All of this falls down like a rotten house if you allow your security to get too bad for too long, as is obvious to anyone reading this thread. You can let the support poles wear a little, and usually the cost of a *little* more wear is much less than the cost of fixing the whole thing properly. But unless you have that long-term vision, you'll be sleeping outside eventually. Microsoft didn't, and it is really starting to hurt them. The greatest threat to their monopoly has come from people being unable to use NT in critical applications. You don't want to force your customers to have to go to competitors.
Microsoft has shown throughout history an ability to expend large amounts of money to get things done. IE... MSN... XBOX... WinCE/PocketPC... If they really do set their mind to security issues, I'm sure that they will be hammered out after several slow, unglamorous years. The press release would make it appear that they know that they are up against human nature on both sides but that the company needs to take action or they will lose their stability.
Compatibility? You mean like trying to buy a keyboard to fit a Clie? (if you find one, please pick me up a copy).
I would argue that PDA's do best as organizers, and that a large portion of Palm's success in the low-cost organizer market is staying focused and realizing that a personal assistant doesn't need to play Quake. Certainly, mapping software, mail updates, spreadsheet programs, and word processors are all needed on a PDA, all of which wouldn't be hard to port to the portable. But those are really above and beyond what you need a Palm for - staying organized. Likewise, any software that was critical to your business would be much easier (and cheaper) to port to an open (or mostly open) linux platform than to try and code on a closed proprietary box. All of the intriguing point-of-sale and data gathering uses for PDA's would be best served on this platform.
I'm not convinced that most people download or buy very many applications for their handhelds. Many seem to buy it as one complete package. Does anyone have any hard data on this?
The article brings up an important point: compulsory licencing truly could revolutionize the internet while fairly compensating artists and financial backers without granting them control over the future of this medium. Many people found the cost / value ratio of broadband sufficient only when Napster started to absorb all available bandwidth. Willingness to pay for the experiences is obviously there, as people paid an extra 20+ per month just to Napster, but without fair, even handed, and content-agnostic services available, why bother?
This reminds me of Texting. Text messaging is such a pervasive thing throughout the rest of the world, yet the US doesn't have it. Companies decided that control of the standard was so lucrative that no standard has evolved, no messages are sent, and no money is being made.
There is so many potential uses for fat pipes that everyone at the service end is trying to block everyone else from crawling in. Compulsory licensing is a standard like texting, html, and phone jacks. It would allow entertainment and money to flow around the internet without either being leveraged towards a monopoly situation. Mediums were meant to be a free highway between people and companies, not a strategic bottleneck to exploit.
Gracenote sues Roxio because Roxio went with a competitor. They pretend they don't know that suit is entirely frivolous. Gracenote and Roxio settle out of court, under undisclosed terms. Roxio abandons competitor to go with Gracenote.
Competitor loses, as their business plan now has to compensate for under the table deals. Roxio loses, as no matter how much money Gracenote managed to stuff down their pants it is generally a bad business decision to tie your products to a company who uses the lawyer tax against you as a negotiation tool. Gracenote wins, obviously, as now they have a prescedent against the evil, market-destroying voulenteer version and have regained some (small) iota of respectability. Consumers lose, as Gracenote is attempting to get them to pay for a service whose imput they themselves provide.
Roxy doesn't like her boyfriend, as he's a stodgy, demanding suit. Roxy finds a happy, crunchy hippie. Her stodgy, demanding suit comes around and beats Roxy up. Closed-door negotiations ensue. Roxy has moved back in with her angry original boyfriend, with the promise that he will never hit her again.
Does anyone else see a problem with this? Thank goodness our good friend Nero has more self-respect than that.
First, you have a or various random-looking number generators of some sort that net you something to compare to the data, probably VERY carefully chosen. You pretend that the seed data doesn't count against your total data. Their indecipherably obtuse hypercube example makes you think that they coax this pattern many times from various "angles" so that they get something shaped like the original data out of the other end.
I'm not buying this claim of "lossless." If they are comparing it to existing compression at 10:1, then they mean JPG or MP3 or DIVX or things like that... none of which are truly lossless. Or, as this is a "temporally-challenged" unproven multi-pass system, perhaps they have found a way to get the above situation to work for certain data losslessly, and are praying to the mathematical gods that zipping a zip file won't just add another 20K.
If they are attempting to compress visual data. Aren't most broadcast images lighter on the top than the bottom? Don't they involve stick-figurey thingies? Why not just send texture and position data to a computer and let us all watch poser-o-vision. After all, we're already dancing like puppets to these posers.
 
This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, financing, completion of technology development, product demand, competition, and other risks and uncertainties.
The reason earth asteroid collision defense is not a huge priority is, as far as I can tell, there aren't any viable solutions. There are many positive monitoringprojects in development stages, but no real solutions. According to that last project, we would have had to have intercepted our little 300 meter friend a full earth's orbit away with a 1 megaton warhead detonated on the surface to alter its course enough to not squish us. Considering how long before interception a missile would have to be launched, and the requisite amount of fuel, this is not practicle for, say, defense against a 1 km asteroid.
Nasa knows about 47 1km asteroids in near-earth orbits, any of which could make bickering about the RIAA rather short-lived. Their website claims that the best reason to study NEO's, as we don't have an active defense, is to "allow us to store food and supplies and to evacuate regions near ground zero." This is not the sort of confidence that inspires politicians to open their wallet, nor should it.
India and Pakistan are on the brink of bringing the world into a nuclear holocost. Our supplies of oil are depleting while our energy usage goes up. Ebola has broken out in another african village, and Aids rates worldwide are up to 1 in 100 with some areas reaching 1 in 3. Until such a time as there is something realistic we can do about near earth asteroids, that money is better focused on more pressing forms of armageddon.
You will also note that IGN rated FF VII a 9.5, and FF VIII only a 9 (FF IX was rated a 9.2). Gamespot gave both games a 9.5, but Gamespot UK loved FF 7, giving it a 9.5, and rated FF 8 just a 6.5. Game ranking's metasearch of reviews gives FFVII a average rating of 94.8 across 27 reviews, and FF VIII an average rating of 91.1 over 47 reviews. Happypuppy gave 7 and 8 a 9 and 7, respectively. IGN's reader's choice awards for best game of all time had FF7 come in second, to FF8's fourth place finish. The reasons? The reviewer cites a bland plot, grating battles, unlikable characters, and refers to it as the least revolutionary of the series.
There were also other things to dislike. While Materia building was optional in FF7, FF8 was spent with hours and hours of painfully drawing spells from enemies. While FF7 kept a brisk clip, FF8 didn't let you skip those 3-minute attack spell animations. And there is also the best bad-guy debate: Sephiroth or that old womanie thingie from another dimension that didn't appear until right at the end.
It's not a very heated debate.
And yes, if you were there at the time, Square's original intentions with FF8 were to have the players play as both sides of a war-torn conflict. This was abandoned, due to financial considerations, and the plan at the time was to release FF8 and 9 as an intertwining series that fully realized the story according to the original vision. The story was never realized. I can't seem to find any trace of this on the web... the original stories were printed in mags such as Game Fan and VG&CE.
I had never before heard anyone claim that FF VIII was the worst in the series.
Well, now you have. Don't you feel better?
However, since I have heard different people claim that each of FF IV, V, VI, and VII were generally regarded as the best in the series, I guess I should be used to people making bullshit claims about the relative popularity of Final Fantasy without any data to back it up.
We're not talking about data here, we're talking personal preference. Yes, as far as I can tell from the people I've spoken to FF8 ranks below FF7 in terms of popularity. People have lovey-dovey feelings towards FF2, 3, and 7, that not many (in my experience) have towards 8. It just didn't evoke the same sort of reaction. People have feelings towards Porum and Palom, towards the destruction of the planet, towards the suicide of Celes, toward our bifrucated Cloud, towards the giant Whale, towards gold saucer, and towards moogles / namingways / chocobos that just don't have corresponding moments in 8. Sure, 8 was a good game with some good moments (like the parade of the queen), but none were as gripping as the killing of Aeris.
From a personal standpoint, many people feel FF2, 3, or 7 closest to their heart. Mine happens to be 3 with a close second to 7. Your mileage may vary.
Everyone is going to have an opinion on these things, so I might as well clarify their design decision.
These things look damn beautiful where they are intended to go. They are kiosks. They are the nicest-looking kiosks money can buy. Imacs always have been. A row of these things on a stand in a lobby, or tucked away in a conference room, would look great. They have a minimalist, comfortable aesthetic that says "come, touch me. I'm all plastic and safe." It shows you exactly what you can do with it, and it doesn't have anything extraneous. For example, there is no "turbo" button. When a company or an institution spends millions to design a building to make it look just right, spending a few thousand on computers that compliment that look is quite understandable.
They would also look great in the home. Yes, they are a little 50's hal 2001 retro, which isn't quite as cool as as the 60's retro of the original Imac but is still very nice. They look a lot like an uncomplicated, friendly little screen designed to be exactly, and only, a little digital hub. While the lack of tivo style options is sad, the little thing really does look like a piece of complimentary design work... like a pretty plastic toaster for your MP3 player. I wouldn't want it to replace the k-6 linux box sitting next to me, but I'm jealous of anyone who can afford to put one of these in their living rooms.
Of course, afford is a keyword. Apple has never stormed the mass market, because it knows that the money is to be made in the high-end. That's how they have been surviving, and more power to them.
-Story update!-
Timecanada.com is now forwarding to time.com, which doesn't have the original story. However, the original, sans photos, is still (as of 2:30 AM EST) available here
Slashdot Mirror
pi in 2d is defined in terms of a ratio of the circumference of a circle to it's diameter.
pi in 3d is conventionally defined in terms of the ratio of the 2d circumference of a circle to it's 2d diameter. It's pi, damn it, it is a constant.
But you can also use 4piR^2 for the surface area of a sphere, and 4/3piR^3 for the volume, which has been mathematically proven for quite some time. The authors of this program appear to be defining 3D pi wrt these ratios... physics geeks will note that the units balance out nicely.
As for 4D pi... I can only assume the ratios are something like npiR^3 surface and mpiR^4 for volume, seeing as how the units must balance and hypergeometry wasn't an emphasis at my college.
Still, though. Writing programs to calculate pi is a fun little project that everyone seems to do at some point in their high school or college career. I did pi in HS. In college I did 4D Tic Tac Toe. These people appear to be doing both. More power to them.
* Sorry, was confused momentarily with another thread I was reading. I should have said "20 posts and rising." I was counting in ABP, not Metric posts.
Yes, I had a pair of friends who worked two different locations at a big-name retailer which will remain annonymous to protect the innocent (Software ETC). They were each encouraged to take games home, play them, and reseal them. One of them would even use that machine to reseal and return hardware to other stores, though only when his boss wasn't looking.
Come to think of it, my copy of FF7 from a now defunct Japanese gaming retail chain was scratched to high heck and was utterly unplayable. The guy at the store admitted it was probably resealed, but had no idea how it got as bad as it did.
And that's really it. I don't mind buying software that has been opened... It's not like you're buying a Coke or an OpenCola that has been half drunk. What I mind, and I think your store is picking up on, is the deception. I think most people are reasonable enough to realize that 40 dollars for a used copy of Zelda is a better deal than 50 dollars for a new one, and if the store worker had to preview it in order to properly recommend for or against... all the more value to the customer.
Ah well, there are 400 posts on this topic and rising, and many empassioned pleas one way or the other. Either way you decide to go, be sure to take full advantage of your decision. If you go resealing, that means you should have a full no-risk return policy with lots of point-of-sale publicity. (Not sure if you will like the new GTA3? Try it for 15 days... if you don't like it you can return it for a full refund). If you decide to go no-resealing, make sure your literature says specifically the names of the stores you know are cheating. You may be pressed to back that up in court, but I get the feeling that this is something these companies don't want proven in front of a judge. If for no other reason than this is a clear, if common, misrepresentation of a product.
Good luck! The independents really make this hobby worthwile.
I'm constantly amazed when I travel to foreign countries and find that real news and real journalism can be genuinely profitable. Why do we settle as a nation for magazines like "Time" when Mother Jones sits quietly on the shelf? Why do serious newsmagazines need to shlock around the latest Julia Roberts rumors to sell copies?
This is as much about culture as it is about media. I have nothing against infotainment... I read Slashdot, after all. But that isn't the same thing as information. Yet any of the myriad of people who pick up, say, the Boston Herald every day think that they are getting their daily dose of vitamin I... They don't make the conscious realization that it is just a copy of People on cheap paper. If Americans had any cultural context and the desire to understand rather than be told they would have snapped up copies of any paper covering the assassination lists Presidente Fox is holding and the overhaul of the Russian criminal justice system set to take effect this week. But we don't, so we don't.
There is nothing wrong with the periodicals mentioned in this piece... they just need to be seen in their proper light. Yelling at the previously core newssources just because they chose to sell avon instead of news won't solve the problem. Moving enmasse to reliable news sources will.
I had a friend... Let's call him Mike. Mike became bored with magic when he realized that he was spending hundreds of dollars per deck to change his proxy cards (fake cards for testing purposes) into real cards. A well-designed proxy deck will basically win every time, btw. He was sick of it.
He sold off all of his cards, and gave me his land / commons (somewhere I have a grocery bag full of living lands, wyrms, forests, etc) and bought two special starter packs that contained a starter and two boosters each. He proceeded to trade with people... collecting unwanted cards and trading bits here and there for things that other people wanted. He would hook people up for cards that they were looking for in exchange for a small cut, and he was a good dealmaker. Within a week, his deck was competitive again (he knew the power of common green), and within six months he was trading legends / antiquities and his collection rivaled that of his old deck... And within the year he was bored again and gave me all of his cards.
The moral of the story... Lots of people are going to be spending lots of money on this online game. If you can spend 10 hours playing a game every day, can you really resist buying a booster every morning? I used to be one of those people. We didn't put any value into common or uncommon cards, or even crappy rares. It sounds like there will be a lot of room for friendly tag-a-longs who are willing to ingraciate themselves by not taking the game seriously... and who don't have to pay any money to play.
Sounds fun. Where can I sign up?
I won't reiterate all of the other ideas mentioned here, but differentiate yourself by having a strong "closer." Point out how quiet the computers are, how they are getting lots of internal slots for future expansion, and how it comes with a solid motherboard / chip combination. Prove the value that they are getting... Then while they are mulling the idea and balancing the relative costs in their head, and when you see that look of "almost" on their face, offer them something so over-the-top that it seals the dea. Offer them five years of support. Offer to upgrade their processor in two years time. Offer to upgrade them to a G5 when Nvidia finishes. Offer to keep their OS up-to-date until 2010.
The important thing about an over-the-top closer is that it is far enough away that only about 10% of your customers will take advantage of it, and the ones that do will need to come into your shop at a time when their HD, moniter, RAM, and OS could use upgrading. If you charge 850 for an 800 dollar system with an therotical 200 dollar closer, and 10 % of the people take advantage of it, you just made 30 dollars cream per machine and earned a group of dedicated customers who will tell their friends about you.
And remember, you ARE selling computers that are better from the ground up. They have more slots, quieter fans, no winmodems, HD's without problems, strong power supplies, and a service person who knows your machine from the inside out. And of course they'll want an ergonomic keyboard, which is much more affordable than you might think. You'll even knock some off of the price if they buy it together with the computer. Your computers are ready to be delivered and setup any time by a skilled technician... All the customer needs to do is swipe that little plastic card, and everything will be taken care of.
Be friendly, outgoing, positive, happy, do whatever you can to make the customer more comfortable. Never let the customer know that you are carefully hedging your numbers. If they ask, you can tell them that the G4 you removed during their complimentary upgrade to a G5 will be used as a "gift" for another customer's computer, but don't let on that it was carefully calculated.
You might have been a geek, but now you are a geek salsemen. Congratulations, it sounds like you have a lot of fun hard work ahead of you, with the freedom to be creative and the financial responsibility if you fail. How I envy you.
Just play it on a Black and White TV. They're pandas.
I've heard the same complaint from non-techies talking to programmers, non-sociologists talking to sociologists, non-mathematicians talking to mathematicians....
Learned businessmen use specific language because it evolved as an efficient way to communicate with eachother clearly. It's understandable that most people don't understand / don't see the significance of the word choices, but that doesn't mean they don't convey specific meaning.
I'll translate a few here.
"[create a] common, best of breed"
Create co-branded and individually marketed distributions that will bring all partners into the top sales slots.
"giving developers a global infrastructure of support in local languages and channels..."
Group together translators, marketers, and distributers around the world to help sell other companys' products in various regions
"Supportable business quality product"
A solid distribution that makes money while meeting the needs of most businesses and not sucking.
"address a graphical desktop"
attempt to solve the ongoing issue of a need for a graphical user interface.
 
And so on.
Don't get me wrong, there are foolish catchphrases and buzzwords that float through management training camps (phrases like, "information wants to be free"), and the world seems to be in good supply of bad managers. But when confronted with a potentially good manager whose meanings have interesting implications for this industry, don't get caught up on your lack of training with the words used to convey that meaning.
-Chris
Dear god I hope so!
If Microsoft claims it will support X-boxes that have been opened, soldered repeatedly, closed, and used to play burned copies of games over an abstraction layer over the OS, all by amatuer end users, then Microsoft must have taken a turn for Seattle's finest Irish coffee.
As for wheter or not they can sue you... The pervasive argument during the early PSX chip days is that it was your box, and you could do basically whatever you want with it assuming you understand that it releases the other party from any liability at all. The EULA was viewed as a liability arrangement, not as a force of law. Now, of course, they can sue you under the DMCA, but Microsoft isn't the copyright holder on any of the software that you may be modifying and putting on your box. It's been a while since I checked the relative values of software piracy suits, but I believe each emulated cartridge manufacturer can sue you for 10 times the value of the goods you copied... Any Lawyers lurking that could clarify the potential losses if everyone that could sue you, did?
Of course, the chance that Microsoft would sue individuals is nonexistent... That would be hideous press for what is an expendable fluff toy traded on positive feelings. They are far more likely to sue the creaters of X MAME, the hosting company that puts them up, Sourceforge (You just know they want to sue sourceforge), 2600, slashdot...
Sigh... Why does it feel like we're rolling a large boulder up a steep hill?
The arcade machine has many advantages over the home console. For one, the pads need to be durable, strong, and solid. Home pads really, really don't have the same strength or feel. The arcade machine is also a solid one-piece whereas the console has all sorts of cords and things to be tripped over and broken, a television to smash, and a PS2 to steal. Not to mention those crafty students that would slip in a copy of GTA3 when the advisor wasn't looking.
The arcade machines are vastly superior to the home consoles, in basically all ways. PS2's skip, the pads slide, you can't feel your feet, there is no bar in back to hold yourself up, there isn't a coinbox... Really, for serious usage the arcade machine is the only way to go. Most serious dancers I know have a full machine.
Perhaps the dear reader of the twice-above post will realize that neither moral justice nor the public's economic interest is best served when justice hinges upon the ability to pay. Or perhaps they will just walk away having recieved the message that "Microsoft is evil." I have no moral qualms about putting that message into people's heads, as Microsoft's behavior record should be what people use in deciding the value to society of a corporation. If and when they finally prove me wrong, I promise to recant. However, with the actions WRT Opera, Dr. Dos, Samba, security through obscurity, planned obselescence and obfuscation of the Word file format, and the proposed school computer settlement, I might as well promise to move to Tibet upon a semblance of a genuine corporate philanthropy.
"By Jove Sherlock, I've found the bloody knife with Moriarty's fingerprints all over it!"
"That's astounding, Watson! I want to see this evidence. Moriarty, how do you feel about this?"
"The law allows me time to consider this evidence, and I will need an infinite amount of it."
"Well, we don't have an infinite amount of time, therefore we do not have enough time to consider the knife. Too bad, I really wanted to see it."
"Case dismissed."
>The 2-VU operates in the Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP® environments and features the Adobe Acrobat Reader®. This strategy avoids the problems of a propriety, closed environment while maintaining the file integrity offered through these state-of-the-art digital rights management platforms.
Win2K and Acrobat. Could this thing have any LESS file integrity???
Seriously, though, why has America (and indeed, the world) become complacent with companies that outright lie to us? Estari inc has proven through this obviously falsified information release that they cannot and should not be trusted about anything wrt this tablet. Why do people who should know better turn around and put things like this in their store? Are they surprised when the battery life doesn't live up to expectations, or when customers return the thing because the HD head crashed?
While I'm generally opposed to increased governmental regulation, I'm not opposed to the consumer protection agencies doing their job. The class-action suit against HP for stating the their DVD+RW would eventually be firmware upgraded to support DVD+R, a claim that they knew at the time to be impossible, is a step in the right direction. However, what about the time Microsoft got away with claiming that MSN was blocking non-IE browsers because they "didn't adequately support CSS," a claim that was an outright lie (IE's CSS support is notoriously bad, surpassed only by Lynx). Or for that matter Energizer claiming that your shiny new PDA will explode and spray acid if you use non-energizer batteries. *
Quite frankly I think we're all a little sick of the lies passing as hype passing as truth around the technology industry. Without delving into too much indlugent prose, there are more broken promises in IT than in a Los Vegas drive-through chapel. If you claim 9 hours of battery life, your battery should last for roughly 9 hours... period. If you claim "excellent, 99.9% uptime" you should be required by law to have A: independent studies to back up that time frame claim and B: comparative studies that show that 99.9% uptime (a figure claimed for windows NT 4) is actually a good figure (it's not.. 99.999 is good). Anything less than that is false advertising and should be prosecuted as such.
And of course, no business should trust any person or group who repeatedly fails to live up to their promises.
-Chris
*There is a phenomenon whereby if one battery in a group is discharged the remainder of the group will force current through it, and thereby force the battery to take on an inverted current. This is bad and can cause the battery to overheat and vent to prevent meltdown (vent hydrogen in the case of NIMH). It's a bad idea to mix batteries. However, saying that off-brand batteries will explode is simply alarmist capitalism.
** It is very difficult to write a column about industry lies without degrading into an out-and-out Microsoft expository. For sake of venting without exploding, here are some of the lies that were expunged from the original draft of this article for sake of a balanced posting. DR Dos doesn't run windows as well as MS Dos. Per-Processor licences are a benifit to consumers. Dual-booting would destroy the industry. If you work with any open-source software you must make all of your software open-source. Windows 95 is a complete 32 bit operating system that doesn't need DOS. The author of The Microsoft File: The Secret Case Against Bill Gates has admitted to "making up many scenes in the book." The next version of NT will utilize 64-bit addressing. After having purchased Konami and Capcom and secured 6 titles from Square, and hand-checked each and every unit for defects, the X-box will launch with 100 titles... There are of course more, but I see a dead stallion across the street that could use some tenderizing.
You can choose to enforce the existing laws and actually prosecute those people who break it, or you can make it illegal to produce anything that will facilitate the breaking of the unenforced laws. You can shield the people who violate copyright laws, or you can protect people's rights to produce hardware and software of multiple uses, but you cannot do both.
I hope you can use all of this feedback you are getting.
I would love to get a MAC as a terminal in my house... to telnet into my e-mail account (not this one, of course), and to opera around the web. I'd probably want to use it as a mediaserver to the linux and PC boxes, to simplify web development projects for my roommate. I'm working in a small corner of the gaming industry, so I would need to keep my PC box for development (Quake 3 Radiant comes to mind), but as there are currently 8 computers sitting in front of me I don't think that will adversely effect the total. I would also want this to be as SILENT as possible, as it would likely never be turned off. So PLEASE find a way to remove that last fan from the beautiful new iMAC.
There are three things holding me back from this purchase.
One: performance. The last time I tried your operating system on a G4 cube, it was sluggish at best. This is hurt further by the performance gap with other chip makers such as AMD. (I know MHZ != speed, but many other benchmarks show a lag). I wouldn't plan on using the system to play Everquest, but I do need it to snap to attention the moment I want it to do something. And that isn't necessarily Ghz related, so much as how well those cycles are allocated.
Two: interface maturity. OS9 had a multitude of programs available to customize the os to behave exactly as I found aesthetically pleasing. Window Monkey, Menuette, and a host of others filled out interface gaps and created functionality where once there was annoyance. Windowshade started as a hack, you'll recall. OS9 is such a radical departure from the previous interface I doubt time for such fine-tuning has ocurred.
Along with interface maturity, 3+ button mouse support is needed. One button just isn't enough for real usage. Opera's innovative mousegestures show that two buttons and a scroll wheel may be enough for serious web surfing, and Kensington's scroll trackball implementation of the scroll wheel is spot on, but all of these should be supported with the default mouse.
Sometimes you are still on the cutting edge of interface design, sometimes you aren't. When you aren't, I strongly recommend stealing.
Three: software support. This is the reason I originally left the macintosh, and the reason it would be impossible for me to be primary with OSX. Everyone knows this, and everyone knows this is why Microsoft holds on to their monopoly. Show the developers how this could make them money and how this could make them want to wake up in the morning. Spread this mantra: "Enjoy life more: Program for OSX."
I don't plan on buying another wintel box anytime soon, basically because I can't bear to throw more money towards that godawful filesystem. On the other hand, I can't exactly plug my rio into the NeXT Cube (which, amusingly, has a picture of the new iMAC pinned to it).
Save for the price I would love a titanium. Get the snappy imac to snap to attention, do everything you can to get developers on the box, and abandon that stupid mouse, and you will have one more repatriot.
Sun makes it very clear that either A: they don't understand this or B: they're pretending it isn't important.
Using Java technology's cross platform capability, developers are creating new game and entertainment experiences that fully leverage the network and allow the player to engage anytime on multiple devices.
They are? How interesting... Might you point to one? Or are you talking about the browser-based games on Yahoo?
Sun shows an image of people playing linked games on a cell phone, a Palmpilot, a gameboy advance, and a flipped picture of a PS2 controller. Some of these devices actually have network connections widely available (a place where utilizing java would make sense), but they aren't the ones that are used for gaming. The Gameboy advance, for example, would be impossible to design and develop a decent game for if you didn't know that you had to choose between 16 million colors, or a 256 color pallete with 0, 1, or 2 scalable / rotatable backgrounds and 4, 2, 0 tiled backgrounds, your available sprite count, your audio options... And not only that, but you would never be able to put in a CD to that cartridge based thing anyway. In all of these examples, the end user would have to buy a copy of the game specific to the device, a move that would make sense for the console creators who only survive by taking a cut of every game sold that has been enabled to work on that hardware. Binary cross platform compatibility would be suicide for Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo to support.
The Sun representative talks about how you could fiddle with your inventory in Everquest or chat with your friends while you are away from your computer. Thankfully, most internet-enabled cell phones are already equipped with many options for chatting with friends, and reorganizing your inventory is about as much fun as it sounds. This has already been tried, with Sega's VMU and Sony's Pocketstation, with very limited success (though Sega gets Kudos for true research).
Sun mentions that You don't know Jack, Majestic, and Who wants to be a Millionaire, as well as the scripting in V:TM all utilized Java. Jack and Millionaire are all simple, browser based quiz shows with a reliance upon audio and clever dialog. Majestic is audio and text based in a revolutionary but not processor-intensive way. V:TM may have its events scripted in java (using java as a scripting language rather than a programming one), but by no means is any substantial portion of the code java based.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really wish large companies would get a little respect for the business side of the gaming industry and do their homework before charging right in to foolish and doomed projects that will only waste their money and developers' time.
[Quietly steps down from soapbox and wipes froth from mouth]
I find this to be quite amusing. Distributed computing? Biotechnology? Developers demanding 1,000 times more computing power? All of the developers I know that have touched the PS2 have demanded fewer processors and an architecture that makes a semblance of sense. You can't distribute the computing on a game system when .05 seconds is a nauseating lag. Maybe if you were running a MMPORG, you could use each console to compute the region of space that they were in. Even then the most computationally costly part of gaming, the rendering, needs to be done locally in real time.
The only way this could even make sense is if Sony was focusing on massively multiprocessor systems, an idea that seems unlikely considering A: the relative costs and B: sony's claim of shared memory.
Did the Blue Meanies spike the water supply?
It's interesting to note how product teams resisted the security invasion. Now, while we know very little about how offensively these security teams were implemented, it does harken to a truism about coding.
Properly securing products isn't fun.
Implementing improved, automatic PGP hooks might be fun (hint hint), but slowly and methodically picking through all of your code to make sure that no buffers can overflow is just uninteresting and unglamorous. If we can't convince ourselves to sufficiently comment the code we write, even though we routinely curse ourselves for not having done it previously, security is going to be unfortunately naturally low on the list of things to do.
Likewise, an ounce of glitzy new features tends to sell better than an ounce of better security. People are going to look down upon you if you encourage them to upgrade from the old software you sold them by pointing out the security flaws that it had. It's usually more marketable to say "Trust our products, we have new inline spell checking across all our platforms" rather than "Trust our products, we no longer grant root through tcp/ip overflows."
All of this falls down like a rotten house if you allow your security to get too bad for too long, as is obvious to anyone reading this thread. You can let the support poles wear a little, and usually the cost of a *little* more wear is much less than the cost of fixing the whole thing properly. But unless you have that long-term vision, you'll be sleeping outside eventually. Microsoft didn't, and it is really starting to hurt them. The greatest threat to their monopoly has come from people being unable to use NT in critical applications. You don't want to force your customers to have to go to competitors.
Microsoft has shown throughout history an ability to expend large amounts of money to get things done. IE... MSN... XBOX... WinCE/PocketPC... If they really do set their mind to security issues, I'm sure that they will be hammered out after several slow, unglamorous years. The press release would make it appear that they know that they are up against human nature on both sides but that the company needs to take action or they will lose their stability.
Compatibility? You mean like trying to buy a keyboard to fit a Clie? (if you find one, please pick me up a copy).
I would argue that PDA's do best as organizers, and that a large portion of Palm's success in the low-cost organizer market is staying focused and realizing that a personal assistant doesn't need to play Quake. Certainly, mapping software, mail updates, spreadsheet programs, and word processors are all needed on a PDA, all of which wouldn't be hard to port to the portable. But those are really above and beyond what you need a Palm for - staying organized. Likewise, any software that was critical to your business would be much easier (and cheaper) to port to an open (or mostly open) linux platform than to try and code on a closed proprietary box. All of the intriguing point-of-sale and data gathering uses for PDA's would be best served on this platform.
I'm not convinced that most people download or buy very many applications for their handhelds. Many seem to buy it as one complete package. Does anyone have any hard data on this?
The article brings up an important point: compulsory licencing truly could revolutionize the internet while fairly compensating artists and financial backers without granting them control over the future of this medium. Many people found the cost / value ratio of broadband sufficient only when Napster started to absorb all available bandwidth. Willingness to pay for the experiences is obviously there, as people paid an extra 20+ per month just to Napster, but without fair, even handed, and content-agnostic services available, why bother?
This reminds me of Texting. Text messaging is such a pervasive thing throughout the rest of the world, yet the US doesn't have it. Companies decided that control of the standard was so lucrative that no standard has evolved, no messages are sent, and no money is being made.
There is so many potential uses for fat pipes that everyone at the service end is trying to block everyone else from crawling in. Compulsory licensing is a standard like texting, html, and phone jacks. It would allow entertainment and money to flow around the internet without either being leveraged towards a monopoly situation. Mediums were meant to be a free highway between people and companies, not a strategic bottleneck to exploit.
Gracenote sues Roxio because Roxio went with a competitor. They pretend they don't know that suit is entirely frivolous. Gracenote and Roxio settle out of court, under undisclosed terms. Roxio abandons competitor to go with Gracenote.
Competitor loses, as their business plan now has to compensate for under the table deals. Roxio loses, as no matter how much money Gracenote managed to stuff down their pants it is generally a bad business decision to tie your products to a company who uses the lawyer tax against you as a negotiation tool. Gracenote wins, obviously, as now they have a prescedent against the evil, market-destroying voulenteer version and have regained some (small) iota of respectability. Consumers lose, as Gracenote is attempting to get them to pay for a service whose imput they themselves provide.
Roxy doesn't like her boyfriend, as he's a stodgy, demanding suit. Roxy finds a happy, crunchy hippie. Her stodgy, demanding suit comes around and beats Roxy up. Closed-door negotiations ensue. Roxy has moved back in with her angry original boyfriend, with the promise that he will never hit her again.
Does anyone else see a problem with this? Thank goodness our good friend Nero has more self-respect than that.
First, you have a or various random-looking number generators of some sort that net you something to compare to the data, probably VERY carefully chosen. You pretend that the seed data doesn't count against your total data. Their indecipherably obtuse hypercube example makes you think that they coax this pattern many times from various "angles" so that they get something shaped like the original data out of the other end.
I'm not buying this claim of "lossless." If they are comparing it to existing compression at 10:1, then they mean JPG or MP3 or DIVX or things like that... none of which are truly lossless. Or, as this is a "temporally-challenged" unproven multi-pass system, perhaps they have found a way to get the above situation to work for certain data losslessly, and are praying to the mathematical gods that zipping a zip file won't just add another 20K.
If they are attempting to compress visual data. Aren't most broadcast images lighter on the top than the bottom? Don't they involve stick-figurey thingies? Why not just send texture and position data to a computer and let us all watch poser-o-vision. After all, we're already dancing like puppets to these posers.
 
This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, financing, completion of technology development, product demand, competition, and other risks and uncertainties.
Nasa knows about 47 1km asteroids in near-earth orbits, any of which could make bickering about the RIAA rather short-lived. Their website claims that the best reason to study NEO's, as we don't have an active defense, is to "allow us to store food and supplies and to evacuate regions near ground zero." This is not the sort of confidence that inspires politicians to open their wallet, nor should it.
India and Pakistan are on the brink of bringing the world into a nuclear holocost. Our supplies of oil are depleting while our energy usage goes up. Ebola has broken out in another african village, and Aids rates worldwide are up to 1 in 100 with some areas reaching 1 in 3. Until such a time as there is something realistic we can do about near earth asteroids, that money is better focused on more pressing forms of armageddon.
There were also other things to dislike. While Materia building was optional in FF7, FF8 was spent with hours and hours of painfully drawing spells from enemies. While FF7 kept a brisk clip, FF8 didn't let you skip those 3-minute attack spell animations. And there is also the best bad-guy debate: Sephiroth or that old womanie thingie from another dimension that didn't appear until right at the end.
It's not a very heated debate.
And yes, if you were there at the time, Square's original intentions with FF8 were to have the players play as both sides of a war-torn conflict. This was abandoned, due to financial considerations, and the plan at the time was to release FF8 and 9 as an intertwining series that fully realized the story according to the original vision. The story was never realized. I can't seem to find any trace of this on the web... the original stories were printed in mags such as Game Fan and VG&CE.
I had never before heard anyone claim that FF VIII was the worst in the series.
Well, now you have. Don't you feel better?
However, since I have heard different people claim that each of FF IV, V, VI, and VII were generally regarded as the best in the series, I guess I should be used to people making bullshit claims about the relative popularity of Final Fantasy without any data to back it up.
We're not talking about data here, we're talking personal preference. Yes, as far as I can tell from the people I've spoken to FF8 ranks below FF7 in terms of popularity. People have lovey-dovey feelings towards FF2, 3, and 7, that not many (in my experience) have towards 8. It just didn't evoke the same sort of reaction. People have feelings towards Porum and Palom, towards the destruction of the planet, towards the suicide of Celes, toward our bifrucated Cloud, towards the giant Whale, towards gold saucer, and towards moogles / namingways / chocobos that just don't have corresponding moments in 8. Sure, 8 was a good game with some good moments (like the parade of the queen), but none were as gripping as the killing of Aeris.
From a personal standpoint, many people feel FF2, 3, or 7 closest to their heart. Mine happens to be 3 with a close second to 7. Your mileage may vary.
These things look damn beautiful where they are intended to go. They are kiosks. They are the nicest-looking kiosks money can buy. Imacs always have been. A row of these things on a stand in a lobby, or tucked away in a conference room, would look great. They have a minimalist, comfortable aesthetic that says "come, touch me. I'm all plastic and safe." It shows you exactly what you can do with it, and it doesn't have anything extraneous. For example, there is no "turbo" button. When a company or an institution spends millions to design a building to make it look just right, spending a few thousand on computers that compliment that look is quite understandable.
They would also look great in the home. Yes, they are a little 50's hal 2001 retro, which isn't quite as cool as as the 60's retro of the original Imac but is still very nice. They look a lot like an uncomplicated, friendly little screen designed to be exactly, and only, a little digital hub. While the lack of tivo style options is sad, the little thing really does look like a piece of complimentary design work... like a pretty plastic toaster for your MP3 player. I wouldn't want it to replace the k-6 linux box sitting next to me, but I'm jealous of anyone who can afford to put one of these in their living rooms.
Of course, afford is a keyword. Apple has never stormed the mass market, because it knows that the money is to be made in the high-end. That's how they have been surviving, and more power to them.
-Story update!-
Timecanada.com is now forwarding to time.com, which doesn't have the original story. However, the original, sans photos, is still (as of 2:30 AM EST) available here