Re:Handy for travellers...
on
GPS for GBA
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· Score: 1
Why would a backpacker want to deal with water damage and fragile connections?
Final Fantasy Tactics. 'Nuff said. But there's also Fire Emblem, Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3 (worst game numbering ever!), Kirby, Advance Wars 1&2, I could go on...
Just 'cause you're seeing the world doesn't mean you need to go without games. Travelling can be amazing, but there's long, boring periods where a waterproof GPS (that may or may not be able to have maps uploaded to it) really isn't as much fun as a GBA.
Handy for travellers...
on
GPS for GBA
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I can't imagine very many useful applications for this, but it sure is nifty.
I can think of market that this might really appeal to... Backpackers and other travellers. Lots of gamers buy a GBA when travelling for a long time (something to do on the plane, etc). If they could use it when they get to their destination to help find their way around then I guess a fair number of nerdy backpackers would pay for one.
I know I would have killed for one of these when I was in London a little while ago. I kept getting lost at four in the morning in some maze of lanes near Soho, with my guidebook sitting on the couch where I was staying. A GBA is light and easy to carry/store, I'd rather haul that around than my Lonely Planet guide.
It seems like there's some sort of internal memory in the unit, in which case it should be able to simply download new maps (via USB maybe?). This would rock if you were travelling through Europe and staying in lots of large towns, for example. Just grab the next map at an internet café and you're set.
This is to say nothing of the possibilities with regards to GPS gaming. I can think of a bunch, especially if the games can be downloaded and localised. Among the more annoying/money making: Advertisers could have you unlock extra features of a game (secret Pokemon, etc) when you enter one of their stores...
Most (all?) people actually "speak" when they think in words. This is most observable while reading.
That's a pretty questionable statement. Of course people think in words when they're reading them, but that doesn't mean that when people are thinking about other stuff they're still thinking in words. So, at what level do thoughts become classified into words? There's currently plenty of Psych research going into this concept, and it's not really worth commenting on here.
I can certainly think of times when I've had ideas of concepts that I have been unable to convert into language.
As it catches the signals before they reach the vocal system, it reads "words not yet spoken".
Actually, I'd call those "words not spoken". It's not like you're rehearsing the words in order to say them aloud in a moment. It's simply subvocalisation. Also, it wouldn't give any extra info when someone was actually speaking. If this was some method of ripping info from Broca's or Wernicke's Areas (major speech centres in the brain) then you might be able to hear was someone was going to say a few moments before they actually said it. Or possibly even hear things that someone thought about saying, but instead said something else. However that would also be a lot more difficult to do than this is.
The Australians are long familiar with the dubious benefits of transportation.
It doesn't mean we've learnt anything about it. Our current stance on refugees is so cruel and wrong it's depressing. It amounts to: don't come here, if you try to come here we'll ship you off to Nauru or lock up in "detention centres" with worse conditions than many jails. It applies to anyone (including young children) who tries to come to Australia as a refugee outside the 'correct channels'. (As though all refugees can afford to wait for the right paperwork to come through before fleeing for their lives.)
Human rights in Australia have been getting worse and worse. It's all very embarrassing. It won't suprise me if something extremely dodgy happens to this guy in an effort to appease some US officials.
Avast! Antivirus is free for home users. I've been using it for a while now and it's successfully picked up the few viri that have tried to visit my inbox. I've installed it on few machines (parents/friends computers) and I've had no probs so far.
It's got auto-updates, Outlook add-on module, etc. All good. They want some info in lieu of registration, but it's non-spammy/invasive
You can download it from here if you're so inclined.
Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with Avast, beyond being a quite satisfied user of their software.
I'd be interested to know if this paint can neutralise as much pollutant as is generated in its production.
I seem to recall TO2 being a fairly nasty chemical to produce, using lots of Chlorine in production, etc. (Of course, high-school chem was a while back...) Is using the paint a net benefit to the environment? If not, what's the point?
It is possible to make memory circuits out of disordered systems.
This might seem really dumb, but surely this is self evident to some degree. After all, isn't that what our mind does on regular basis? Evolution has beaten us to the punch and created a self-assembled, disordered system: Our central nervous system.
The description of the system in the article with islands of gold foil and connections of nanowire seems very vaguely analogous to neurons with cell bodies and axons... I wonder if the system functions in a way similar to a group of neurons...
I read all that stuff about how CD-R's will degrade with a certain degree of cynicism. Until a couple of months ago when I went to play a CD I burnt about two years ago, and found it was screwed.
The first time I listened to it (for about 18 months) there was a bit of crackle that coincided with the baseline in all the tracks on the CD. The second time I listened to it, just a couple of hours later, the crackle was throughout the CD and very strong. It turned from a minor annoyance to completely unlistenable. I guess the power of the laser in my stereo was enough to destroy the data still further.
By going through a fair few of my CDs I found that it was only one brand (Princo) that was affected. CD-R's of other brands that were burnt earlier than the Princo ones still played fine. I've since gone through and re-burnt all the Princo CD's that had something important on them.
The CD's were Princo CDR-80's from several different batches. (I bought them a few times because they seemed good at the time.) Has anyone else had problems with Princo CD-R's or any other brands?
I think that format of the ad is not the problem. It's the content. Displaying a huge ad on a website that gets readers who don't care about the product won't get clicked on.
Furthermore, if you annoy your reader/viewer then they won't be inclined to find out more about the product you've got to sell. That's why animated ad, popups, flash ads, etc never, ever get clicked on. At least, not by me.
Here is another little behind the scenes look at the way advertising works on the internet. Game companies want animation. They want a fucking guy to parachute down from the top of your screen and land on the article you're trying to read. They want you to have to interact with their advertisement just so you can see the content you came for. Everyone who uses the internet knows that this kind of shit is just frustrating. Look at sites like IGN, Gamespot, or Gamespy. You can't read an article there without an animated bug crawling across your screen or some flash ad blaring shitty music. When we decided to do advertising we decided that we wouldn't ever run any kind of animated add. Some companies won't advertise with us because of it. Others, it's like pulling teeth to get a non animated ad out of them. They have this idea in their head that the only way their ads will be effective is if they are annoying as fuck.
Some of them are actually shocked when ads at PA out perform animated versions at other sites like IGN. Here we are just a little comic site and we kick their fucking ass. We tell them that if you don't insult people with shitty flash ads, they are much more likely to actually check out your game. I have never once clicked on a flash ad except to mute it or close it and I have a feeling you guys are pretty much the same. They just can't get it through their heads that people don't like to be annoyed by advertising.
Penny Arcade, those guys really are the source of all wisdom...
Do you really think that some consumer hardware robot gimmick is really any reason to bring this up? Were you equally alarmed by Furby?
Well, I sure found Furbies alarming. Now there's a threat to the human race if ever I saw one...
Seriously though, I agree with you. These home robots are unlikely to throw off the chains of slavery and start rampaging through the tundra any time soon. (Pity, really...)
...a script kiddie managed to hack into Hotmail's servers using a widely distributed hacking tool known as "Internet Explorer". The hacker typed the "URL" into the "Address Bar" and gained access to the site.
From here, the hacker sent emails to a number of associates which read: "| 4m teh 1337 |-|aX0R!!!!!1 j00 4LL ArE Cr4P!!!"
"Frankly, we're shocked," said one Hotmail employee. "Who would have thought that URL's would give access to sites on the interweb?" he continued before returning to his task of spamming Hotmail's users.
The FBI are investigating the hacker, rumoured to be in junior high, as well as the distributor of the hacking software, a small company known as MicroSoft, already known for flouting the law. Updates as they come to hand.
Er... not quite. The first half is, but in the second half of THIS story it talks about a more moderate viewpoint. Y'know, the bit that says:
"An accompanying discussion rebukes Wiley's article a bit. Aaron Swartz's light-hearted take is rather entertaining: "
So go read it now and find out how you can take over the whole Internet.
Let's not be too quick to jump on the "Repeat story!" bandwagon. I mean, it can't take that long to read the four sentence story can it?
Let me see if I can be bothered to explain why you're wrong...
First of all, read this as well as being some good background reading, it covers a fair number of facts and figures about gaming in general, and GTA3 specifically.
Second, are you bitching about GTA3 or gaming in general here? Most games have combat and violence in their core concepts. Why not suggest that the Civilisation series encourages people to wage war and enslave opposing civilisations? Quake seems to be far more violence focussed than GTA3.
Thirdly, you seem to have missed the important difference between a game allowing you to do something, and a game encouraging you to do something. For example, you are NEVER best off shooting all the police officers in sight. Doing that will just mean that the FBI and the army will show up and you'll get shot down. The fact that the game allows you to do it means that lots of people do, but that's not the point of the game, and won't help you in the game. Most of the time, the game's storyline is best served by running from the cops, not shooting them.
The point you miss is that videogames are a form of media, not a life experience. Your argument can be extrapolated to most mobster films and it holds true. I can think of various films in which the hero has done all of the things you mention in your opening sentence. Why are games different from movies in this respect?
As a 20 year old, I see games as a form of media with the same value as film or television (ie just under the value of books music). You need to understand that the way you see a game is not the way that gamers see that game.
If you agree that your argument applies to all movies which include your list of nasties, that's fine we'll have reached a point where we can agree to disagree. If you don't, please explain why gaming is so very different from other methods of media consumption.
Either way please respond, as I consider this to be a rational reply to your objection.
The Virtual Harlem project is a great idea, huge educational value, blah, blah...
But what everyone really wants is to be able to blow stuff up. They need to use the system to create a modern day city. They should make it so that you can interact with its inhabitants, give you a selection of weapons, and set you loose to do as you will. Imagine a living, breathing city to cause complete havoc in! If only.
Oh wait... Maybe it's not just a daydream, maybe someone's already done that.
Are you sure these guys are using MP3s? I know that Final Scratch can support a bunch of formats (from their FAQ: at least CDs, MP3's, WAV's, and AIFF's). I figured that they were using a less lossy format.
If they definitely are using MP3 then I guess I'm going to have to eat my words...and just after writing another rebuttal on the same topic (one or two posts above). If you're right, I'm really going to look like an idiot. Oh well, wouldn't be the first time. But pending some sort of confirmation that people like Richie Hawtin, DJ Craze, etc are using MP3s with Final Scratch I'll stick with the "MP3 ain't that great" stance.
By the way, I know that the Final Scratch website recommends "encoding your sound files at 128kbps or higher for normal club play", but you'd have to be crazy on acid to do that. I'm assuming that's like the recommendation that GTA3 runs on 450MHz processor with a 16Mb graphics card. It runs, it's just an awful experience. I'm assuming no-one's going to recommend 128kbps tracks get played in clubland any time soon.
A high enough bitrate will be impossible to tell apart from an analogue source, sure. But bitrates still make things sound a lot better. The best way to prove this is to get you go to a place that sells sound systems that can handle Super Audio CDs. When I did this they played me two recordings of a guitar concert, one regular CD (44.1kHz, 16-bit), the other a SACD (~2.8MHz, 1-bit). None of the other settings were changed. The difference is startling.
So don't say that using a lossy encoding system isn't going to make a difference. It will. Maybe a small difference, but I still know that I'd rather hear warm basslines and crisp highs when I go out.
It's like images: A lossy system like Jpeg is fine while you're looking at an image on your screen or home printing, but anyone sending things to pro printers or publishers is going keep using non-lossy formats like Tiff. Why? Because it's the only way to make the finished product look the same as you made it.
It's not mysticism, just an understanding that people are really good at detecting subtle differences in quality, even if it's not at a conscious level.
Slashdot Mirror
Final Fantasy Tactics. 'Nuff said. But there's also Fire Emblem, Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3 (worst game numbering ever!), Kirby, Advance Wars 1&2, I could go on...
Just 'cause you're seeing the world doesn't mean you need to go without games. Travelling can be amazing, but there's long, boring periods where a waterproof GPS (that may or may not be able to have maps uploaded to it) really isn't as much fun as a GBA.
I can think of market that this might really appeal to... Backpackers and other travellers. Lots of gamers buy a GBA when travelling for a long time (something to do on the plane, etc). If they could use it when they get to their destination to help find their way around then I guess a fair number of nerdy backpackers would pay for one.
I know I would have killed for one of these when I was in London a little while ago. I kept getting lost at four in the morning in some maze of lanes near Soho, with my guidebook sitting on the couch where I was staying. A GBA is light and easy to carry/store, I'd rather haul that around than my Lonely Planet guide.
It seems like there's some sort of internal memory in the unit, in which case it should be able to simply download new maps (via USB maybe?). This would rock if you were travelling through Europe and staying in lots of large towns, for example. Just grab the next map at an internet café and you're set.
This is to say nothing of the possibilities with regards to GPS gaming. I can think of a bunch, especially if the games can be downloaded and localised. Among the more annoying/money making: Advertisers could have you unlock extra features of a game (secret Pokemon, etc) when you enter one of their stores...
It's like a hat for it, right? So it looks stylish. Otherwise the RAM will laugh at it...
"I heard Timothy Roberts, CEO of Infinium Labs, can't have an orgasm unless he kills a dog." -Tycho
Penny Arcade want to be sued too. I guess they'll have to try harder.
That's a pretty questionable statement. Of course people think in words when they're reading them, but that doesn't mean that when people are thinking about other stuff they're still thinking in words. So, at what level do thoughts become classified into words? There's currently plenty of Psych research going into this concept, and it's not really worth commenting on here.
I can certainly think of times when I've had ideas of concepts that I have been unable to convert into language.
As it catches the signals before they reach the vocal system, it reads "words not yet spoken".
Actually, I'd call those "words not spoken". It's not like you're rehearsing the words in order to say them aloud in a moment. It's simply subvocalisation. Also, it wouldn't give any extra info when someone was actually speaking. If this was some method of ripping info from Broca's or Wernicke's Areas (major speech centres in the brain) then you might be able to hear was someone was going to say a few moments before they actually said it. Or possibly even hear things that someone thought about saying, but instead said something else. However that would also be a lot more difficult to do than this is.
It doesn't mean we've learnt anything about it. Our current stance on refugees is so cruel and wrong it's depressing. It amounts to: don't come here, if you try to come here we'll ship you off to Nauru or lock up in "detention centres" with worse conditions than many jails. It applies to anyone (including young children) who tries to come to Australia as a refugee outside the 'correct channels'. (As though all refugees can afford to wait for the right paperwork to come through before fleeing for their lives.)
Human rights in Australia have been getting worse and worse. It's all very embarrassing. It won't suprise me if something extremely dodgy happens to this guy in an effort to appease some US officials.
It's got auto-updates, Outlook add-on module, etc. All good. They want some info in lieu of registration, but it's non-spammy/invasive
You can download it from here if you're so inclined.
Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with Avast, beyond being a quite satisfied user of their software.
I seem to recall TO2 being a fairly nasty chemical to produce, using lots of Chlorine in production, etc. (Of course, high-school chem was a while back...) Is using the paint a net benefit to the environment? If not, what's the point?
This might seem really dumb, but surely this is self evident to some degree. After all, isn't that what our mind does on regular basis? Evolution has beaten us to the punch and created a self-assembled, disordered system: Our central nervous system.
The description of the system in the article with islands of gold foil and connections of nanowire seems very vaguely analogous to neurons with cell bodies and axons... I wonder if the system functions in a way similar to a group of neurons...
The first time I listened to it (for about 18 months) there was a bit of crackle that coincided with the baseline in all the tracks on the CD. The second time I listened to it, just a couple of hours later, the crackle was throughout the CD and very strong. It turned from a minor annoyance to completely unlistenable. I guess the power of the laser in my stereo was enough to destroy the data still further.
By going through a fair few of my CDs I found that it was only one brand (Princo) that was affected. CD-R's of other brands that were burnt earlier than the Princo ones still played fine. I've since gone through and re-burnt all the Princo CD's that had something important on them.
The CD's were Princo CDR-80's from several different batches. (I bought them a few times because they seemed good at the time.) Has anyone else had problems with Princo CD-R's or any other brands?
Big Brother is ignoring you!!
So that's where Darl McBride and the rest of SCO are from!
Am I the only one who finds the line "absorbing a constant stream of anal love" conjuring up images that I never wanted to think of?
On the other hand, it's brilliant opportunity for some sort of joke about priests...
What do they want extras for? What they really need is a script writer.
This might be worth mentioning if they were selling Segway Human Transporters for GBP10
Hell, I'd be impressed if they were actually selling any Segways at all.
In this case it seems the hackers built a device for jamming GPS. What's the problem?
Furthermore, if you annoy your reader/viewer then they won't be inclined to find out more about the product you've got to sell. That's why animated ad, popups, flash ads, etc never, ever get clicked on. At least, not by me.
Gabe from Penny Arcade said in a recent rant/news bulliten something that sums it up nicely:
Here is another little behind the scenes look at the way advertising works on the internet. Game companies want animation. They want a fucking guy to parachute down from the top of your screen and land on the article you're trying to read. They want you to have to interact with their advertisement just so you can see the content you came for. Everyone who uses the internet knows that this kind of shit is just frustrating. Look at sites like IGN, Gamespot, or Gamespy. You can't read an article there without an animated bug crawling across your screen or some flash ad blaring shitty music. When we decided to do advertising we decided that we wouldn't ever run any kind of animated add. Some companies won't advertise with us because of it. Others, it's like pulling teeth to get a non animated ad out of them. They have this idea in their head that the only way their ads will be effective is if they are annoying as fuck.
Some of them are actually shocked when ads at PA out perform animated versions at other sites like IGN. Here we are just a little comic site and we kick their fucking ass. We tell them that if you don't insult people with shitty flash ads, they are much more likely to actually check out your game. I have never once clicked on a flash ad except to mute it or close it and I have a feeling you guys are pretty much the same. They just can't get it through their heads that people don't like to be annoyed by advertising.
Penny Arcade, those guys really are the source of all wisdom...
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For all the quality Aibo on Aibo movies and pictures you can imagine!! You won't regret it!
Well, I sure found Furbies alarming. Now there's a threat to the human race if ever I saw one...
Seriously though, I agree with you. These home robots are unlikely to throw off the chains of slavery and start rampaging through the tundra any time soon. (Pity, really...)
...a script kiddie managed to hack into Hotmail's servers using a widely distributed hacking tool known as "Internet Explorer". The hacker typed the "URL" into the "Address Bar" and gained access to the site.
From here, the hacker sent emails to a number of associates which read: "| 4m teh 1337 |-|aX0R!!!!!1 j00 4LL ArE Cr4P!!!"
"Frankly, we're shocked," said one Hotmail employee. "Who would have thought that URL's would give access to sites on the interweb?" he continued before returning to his task of spamming Hotmail's users.
The FBI are investigating the hacker, rumoured to be in junior high, as well as the distributor of the hacking software, a small company known as MicroSoft, already known for flouting the law. Updates as they come to hand.
Er... not quite. The first half is, but in the second half of THIS story it talks about a more moderate viewpoint. Y'know, the bit that says:
"An accompanying discussion rebukes Wiley's article a bit. Aaron Swartz's light-hearted take is rather entertaining: "
So go read it now and find out how you can take over the whole Internet.
Let's not be too quick to jump on the "Repeat story!" bandwagon. I mean, it can't take that long to read the four sentence story can it?
Let me see if I can be bothered to explain why you're wrong... First of all, read this as well as being some good background reading, it covers a fair number of facts and figures about gaming in general, and GTA3 specifically. Second, are you bitching about GTA3 or gaming in general here? Most games have combat and violence in their core concepts. Why not suggest that the Civilisation series encourages people to wage war and enslave opposing civilisations? Quake seems to be far more violence focussed than GTA3. Thirdly, you seem to have missed the important difference between a game allowing you to do something, and a game encouraging you to do something. For example, you are NEVER best off shooting all the police officers in sight. Doing that will just mean that the FBI and the army will show up and you'll get shot down. The fact that the game allows you to do it means that lots of people do, but that's not the point of the game, and won't help you in the game. Most of the time, the game's storyline is best served by running from the cops, not shooting them. The point you miss is that videogames are a form of media, not a life experience. Your argument can be extrapolated to most mobster films and it holds true. I can think of various films in which the hero has done all of the things you mention in your opening sentence. Why are games different from movies in this respect? As a 20 year old, I see games as a form of media with the same value as film or television (ie just under the value of books music). You need to understand that the way you see a game is not the way that gamers see that game. If you agree that your argument applies to all movies which include your list of nasties, that's fine we'll have reached a point where we can agree to disagree. If you don't, please explain why gaming is so very different from other methods of media consumption. Either way please respond, as I consider this to be a rational reply to your objection.
The Virtual Harlem project is a great idea, huge educational value, blah, blah...
But what everyone really wants is to be able to blow stuff up. They need to use the system to create a modern day city. They should make it so that you can interact with its inhabitants, give you a selection of weapons, and set you loose to do as you will. Imagine a living, breathing city to cause complete havoc in! If only.
Oh wait... Maybe it's not just a daydream, maybe someone's already done that.
Are you sure these guys are using MP3s? I know that Final Scratch can support a bunch of formats (from their FAQ: at least CDs, MP3's, WAV's, and AIFF's). I figured that they were using a less lossy format.
If they definitely are using MP3 then I guess I'm going to have to eat my words...and just after writing another rebuttal on the same topic (one or two posts above). If you're right, I'm really going to look like an idiot. Oh well, wouldn't be the first time. But pending some sort of confirmation that people like Richie Hawtin, DJ Craze, etc are using MP3s with Final Scratch I'll stick with the "MP3 ain't that great" stance.
By the way, I know that the Final Scratch website recommends "encoding your sound files at 128kbps or higher for normal club play", but you'd have to be crazy on acid to do that. I'm assuming that's like the recommendation that GTA3 runs on 450MHz processor with a 16Mb graphics card. It runs, it's just an awful experience. I'm assuming no-one's going to recommend 128kbps tracks get played in clubland any time soon.
A high enough bitrate will be impossible to tell apart from an analogue source, sure. But bitrates still make things sound a lot better. The best way to prove this is to get you go to a place that sells sound systems that can handle Super Audio CDs. When I did this they played me two recordings of a guitar concert, one regular CD (44.1kHz, 16-bit), the other a SACD (~2.8MHz, 1-bit). None of the other settings were changed. The difference is startling.
So don't say that using a lossy encoding system isn't going to make a difference. It will. Maybe a small difference, but I still know that I'd rather hear warm basslines and crisp highs when I go out.
It's like images: A lossy system like Jpeg is fine while you're looking at an image on your screen or home printing, but anyone sending things to pro printers or publishers is going keep using non-lossy formats like Tiff. Why? Because it's the only way to make the finished product look the same as you made it.
It's not mysticism, just an understanding that people are really good at detecting subtle differences in quality, even if it's not at a conscious level.