...the iPhone is still not on Verizon, nor is it likely to be in the near future. Verizon, like Apple, is all about control. Verizon didn't like that Google wanted too much control over the Nexus One, so they canned it. Verizon initially didn't like Apple's terms for the iPhone, so they nixed that. Their position is unlikely to change anytime soon. Apple is going to want a king's ransom for the iPhone to be on Verizon, and Verizon will simply point to their increasingly successful Android lineup and tell Apple to try again next time.
This is a PR blow for Google, but a small one. Verizon is the leading carrier for Android phones, and the Droid Incridible is quite an impressive flagship device, just as the Motorola Droid was last year. Since HTC manufactures both the Nexus One and the Incredible, the deal failing is no skin off their back. Either way google wins, 'cos more Android smartphones will be sold either way.
Madden's "classic teams" all have the wrong numbers on their jerseys... It certainly stinks! Back in the old days, all the football games would have the correct player numbers, even if they didn't have a license for the names. You can't copyright numbers, but, apparently, some people want to. Let's hope this ruling stands.
...to write games... after all, what else is there to do with computers? Game programming is how the commodore 64 generation got into computers, and it is still a powerful draw for game addicted kids.
There isn't any "programming" until the later chapters, but my 12 year old nephew loves the book! It gently guides them into the whole aspect of programming, which is great for those who are experienced using computers, but no.t much else (i.e. most of young America). After finishing this book, there are other books that can guide him into more advanced game programming.
Opera Mini is the only way to go for mobile devices. It is a graphical client running on micro-java on your phone that talks to a proxy server which actually brings up the web page you want, then translates it into a highly compressed data stream, and then is presented on your mobile device in hi resolution goodness! Obviously flash doesn't work, and some Ajax (although a surprising amount is supported), but the web pages come up fast and in the same format as your browser. The same cannot be said of other mobile browsers, since they have to deal with the original data streams on very slow 3g connections. Opera mini is a much more pleasant experience. Try it!
Isn't that what they said about light pens in the 80's? You kinow.. a pen that touches the screen and records the input? The touch pen would replace the joystick and become the dominant input device? That didn't work out so well, did it?
I'd like to add that it is extremely frustrating to see new and better releases for the PS2, an obsolete system, then there are for the Wii, and at a lower price, too!
...and yet, third party developers insist that all Wii owners are 4 year old girls, so they shove games like "Party Chef" down our throats and then complain when no one buys that garbage. Just look at what Electronic Arts has done with their "All Play" series. NCAA football 09 is an absolute abomination with no online play, phony stadiums, and graphics so bad, they make the PS2 version look like the 360! Tecmo Bowl has more advanced gameplay!
Software developers just don't get it... they don't get what casual gaming is about... it's not about kiddie games... it's about games that you don't need to spend weeks of your life playing to get anywhere... that doesn't mean that the games should be lame... quite the opposite, since we play less often, we want our games to be more meaningful and rewarding.
Nintendo gets it... that's why their games sell... everyone else? Not so much!
...too bad Atari couldn't figure out the "blame someone else" for their lousy product 25 years ago. It might have saved them from bankruptcy after the horrendous Atari 2600 versions of E.T. and Pac-Man nearly destroyed the company... I guess even after all these years, they still haven't learned that good products, not excuses, are the key to success!
And special thanks to Microsoft, who slowed down their development and release time so much that it allowed the Wine developers to catch up. I remember in the 90's, Wine developers were significantly hampered by Microsoft continuously adding core components and often completely changing how Windows worked. Now that Windows has been essentially stable for so many years, Wine's been able to catch up. Ever since Gates left Microsoft day-to-day operations, the company has been really blowing it. Thanks to their delays and incompetence, they've lost a significant competitive edge... their OS, their key product that locks customers in, can now be effectively cloned by anyone. Good for us! Bad for Microsoft... no tears shed here!
The best part of the games was, of course, the speech synthesis, which was revolutionary at the time. The games were creatively designed and a lot of fun, though. The only really annoying thing about both the games is when you run into a wall, and the screen totally flops out! I don't understand why that was considered to be a "feature".
Don't forget that the Atari 2600 was sold in 3 different decades (the 70's, 80's and the 90's) and the last new Atari 2600 was sold 15 years after its first release. No other system had anywhere close to the longevity of the Atari. Yes, the hardware was primitive even by yesterday's standards. Even Atari considered the 2600 obsolete by 1980, but the gaming continued... pushing the limited (but very flexible) hardware to the max!
The Atari 2600 is too often overlooked in the discussion of classic gaming. Whenever someone mentions classic gaming, the first device that is always mentioned is the NES... The venerable 2600 is nearly forgotten, yet it was the most prolific and the hardiest of the gaming systems. Never forget!
...It was called a Yugo The Yugoslav government claimed that it would be so cheap that it would drive all the evil capitalist carmakers out of business... Yeaaaaahhh..... That kindof didn't happen... Consumer Reports claimed that it, "barely qualified as a car." It had a 1.1 liter engine, barely enough to get it moving on a windy day... speaking of windy day, a Yugo was literally blown off the Mackinac bridge by high gales... Yeah, the whole Yugo thing didn't work out so well... I doubt this project will, either... but, the Yugo did get featured in the movie, Dragnet:
"After losing the two previous vehicles we had been issued, the only car the department was willing to release to us at this point was an unmarked 1987 Yugo, a Yugoslavian import donated to the department as a test vehicle by the government of that country and reflecting the cutting edge of Serbo-Croatian technology. "
Good times... Good times!! Maybe this Indian car will get a starring role in a movie, too.... at least it's got a shot at a Bollywood movie!;-)
...believe in IP? It's BS power grabs like this by IP power holders that make it hard to believe that intellectual property laws aren't arbitrary, capricious, and screw people over... How can someone believe that IP is good and right when companies (and governments, in this case) keep pulling this shite over and over again? Is it really any wonder that people feel no guilt when they have no rights or say in the stuff they actually PAID MONEY to use? No other industry would ever get away with the BS that the IP industry demands... Yet, the industry always feel "wronged" by society... Whatever...
The author of the article is kidding, right? I mean, Apple's graphics were great circa 1977, but were really weak by the time the Commodore 64 came around. The Atari 8-bit's had the best graphics of the era, prior to 1982, but the Commodore 64 outclassed that machine in almost every respect (except for being able to display multiple shades of colors)... The Commodore 64 was originally designed to be a NEO-GEO-like arcade machine console, in which arcade vendors could effortlessly swap arcade games... When that didn't pan out, they decided to make it into a home computer instead...
The author did get the fact that Commodore's Basic was garbage... It was basically the same basic that was in the old PET computers, and had absolutley ZERO support for its superior graphics and sound capabilities. It was not user friendly, and discouraged programming in the younger generation... It was a lot easier to type LOAD "SUPERFUNGAME", 8, 1 than the cryptic peeks and pokes (in decimal no less) to do anything on that machine. It became primarily a game machine by default, and led the way for the resurgence of the gaming consoles. The idea of a computer being a tool to create died with the C64. Instead, the C64 encouraged users to be passive... a legacy that still lives with us today...
...it's been tried before, a long, long time ago... in a galaxy far, far away...
INTERIOR: DEATH STAR.
Walls buckle and cave in. Troops and equipment are blown in
all directions. Stormtroopers stagger out of the rubble.
Standing in the middle of the chaos, a vision of calm and
foreboding, is Darth Vader. One of his Astro-Officers rushes
up to him.
ASTRO-OFFICER: We count thirty Rebel ships, Lord Vader. But they're so small they're evading our turbo-lasers!
VADER: We'll have to destroy them ship to ship. Get the crews to their fighters.
INTERIOR: DEATH STAR.
Smoke belches from the giant laser guns as they wind up their
turbine generators to create sufficient power. The crew rushes
about preparing for another blast. Even the troopers head gear
is not adequate to protect them from the overwhelming noise of
the monstrous weapon. One troopers bangs his helmet with his
hand in an attempt to stop the ringing.
...is that it subsidizes the poor, but ignores the sick. Anyone with a pre-existing condition (which can be as mild as taking an antidepressant or being on one blood pressure medication) can, and will, be raked over the coals by the insurance industry with no price cap or subsidy. Most of the "universal" health care plans talk about subsidizing the cost of the poor, but they make little mention of the people that pay the most out of pocket for health care--the chronically ill. The segment that pays the most for health care never get mentioned in these universal health care debates. They are just expected to keep paying out the nose. The people who actually need health care can ill afford it, which seems to make little sense. Why have the "best healthcare system in the world" if no one has affordable access to it?
I know that opponents to universal health care blame the sick for their situation, assuming that most of us are fat slobs who eat at McDonalds every day, never get out of the chair, and have diabetes and heart disease as a result. The problem is that most chronically ill people are sick through no fault of their own.... The 9 year old kid with brain cancer... your mom with rheumatoid arthritis... your college roommate with Crohn's disease... nothing they did (or didn't do) created or contributed to their current condition. It is unfair to blame the sick for wanting access to health care.. after all, that IS what it is all about. Health care is about treating the sick, not the healthy. If the sick don't have access to health care, then why have health care available at all?
And what is defined as "affordable"? It seems that the Romney plan is well over $300 a month for very sparse coverage with pages of exceptions... that hardly sounds affordable, especially when most of that money is going into the insurance company's pockets instead of to the actual cost of healthcare.
We'll see how this system pans out... I think the big sticking point is that it is compulsory and subsidizes private insurance companies (who certainly don't work for the public interest). I 'm sure these issues rub a lot of people the wrong way.
Slashdot Mirror
...the iPhone is still not on Verizon, nor is it likely to be in the near future. Verizon, like Apple, is all about control. Verizon didn't like that Google wanted too much control over the Nexus One, so they canned it. Verizon initially didn't like Apple's terms for the iPhone, so they nixed that. Their position is unlikely to change anytime soon. Apple is going to want a king's ransom for the iPhone to be on Verizon, and Verizon will simply point to their increasingly successful Android lineup and tell Apple to try again next time.
This is a PR blow for Google, but a small one. Verizon is the leading carrier for Android phones, and the Droid Incridible is quite an impressive flagship device, just as the Motorola Droid was last year. Since HTC manufactures both the Nexus One and the Incredible, the deal failing is no skin off their back. Either way google wins, 'cos more Android smartphones will be sold either way.
Lifeclocks are a lie! You can't renew! There is no sanctuary!
Madden's "classic teams" all have the wrong numbers on their jerseys... It certainly stinks! Back in the old days, all the football games would have the correct player numbers, even if they didn't have a license for the names. You can't copyright numbers, but, apparently, some people want to. Let's hope this ruling stands.
And an artist who paints a painting doesn't sell it for profit?
....when has Verizon actually offered a phone that anybody actually wants?
So, they are shortening their exclusivity on the Samsung 4589? The what? Who cares?
Verizon may have a good network, but they have absolutely no phone selection whatsoever... No one is waiting in line to buy a phone from Verizon....
I hope this doesn't interfere with the Green Orion Women Slave Trade from Star Trek...
...to write games... after all, what else is there to do with computers? Game programming is how the commodore 64 generation got into computers, and it is still a powerful draw for game addicted kids.
Try this book to start:
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Makers-Apprentice-Development-Technology/dp/1590596153
There isn't any "programming" until the later chapters, but my 12 year old nephew loves the book! It gently guides them into the whole aspect of programming, which is great for those who are experienced using computers, but no.t much else (i.e. most of young America). After finishing this book, there are other books that can guide him into more advanced game programming.
Opera Mini is the only way to go for mobile devices. It is a graphical client running on micro-java on your phone that talks to a proxy server which actually brings up the web page you want, then translates it into a highly compressed data stream, and then is presented on your mobile device in hi resolution goodness! Obviously flash doesn't work, and some Ajax (although a surprising amount is supported), but the web pages come up fast and in the same format as your browser. The same cannot be said of other mobile browsers, since they have to deal with the original data streams on very slow 3g connections. Opera mini is a much more pleasant experience. Try it!
Isn't that what they said about light pens in the 80's? You kinow.. a pen that touches the screen and records the input? The touch pen would replace the joystick and become the dominant input device? That didn't work out so well, did it?
I'd like to add that it is extremely frustrating to see new and better releases for the PS2, an obsolete system, then there are for the Wii, and at a lower price, too!
...and yet, third party developers insist that all Wii owners are 4 year old girls, so they shove games like "Party Chef" down our throats and then complain when no one buys that garbage. Just look at what Electronic Arts has done with their "All Play" series. NCAA football 09 is an absolute abomination with no online play, phony stadiums, and graphics so bad, they make the PS2 version look like the 360! Tecmo Bowl has more advanced gameplay!
Software developers just don't get it... they don't get what casual gaming is about... it's not about kiddie games... it's about games that you don't need to spend weeks of your life playing to get anywhere... that doesn't mean that the games should be lame... quite the opposite, since we play less often, we want our games to be more meaningful and rewarding.
Nintendo gets it... that's why their games sell... everyone else? Not so much!
I was right all along! You owe me 5 bucks, John Locke!
Sincerely,
Thomas Malthus
...too bad Atari couldn't figure out the "blame someone else" for their lousy product 25 years ago. It might have saved them from bankruptcy after the horrendous Atari 2600 versions of E.T. and Pac-Man nearly destroyed the company... I guess even after all these years, they still haven't learned that good products, not excuses, are the key to success!
And special thanks to Microsoft, who slowed down their development and release time so much that it allowed the Wine developers to catch up. I remember in the 90's, Wine developers were significantly hampered by Microsoft continuously adding core components and often completely changing how Windows worked. Now that Windows has been essentially stable for so many years, Wine's been able to catch up. Ever since Gates left Microsoft day-to-day operations, the company has been really blowing it. Thanks to their delays and incompetence, they've lost a significant competitive edge... their OS, their key product that locks customers in, can now be effectively cloned by anyone. Good for us! Bad for Microsoft... no tears shed here!
...We've had this technology since the early-80's!
http://atarimule.neotechgaming.com/
For more details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.U.L.E.
Or it's successor, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein!
HALT! KOMMEN ZIE!!
AUS PASS?
AUS PASS?
*fires shot*
AYEEEEEEEE!!!!
The best part of the games was, of course, the speech synthesis, which was revolutionary at the time. The games were creatively designed and a lot of fun, though. The only really annoying thing about both the games is when you run into a wall, and the screen totally flops out! I don't understand why that was considered to be a "feature".
Man, this article is bringing back memories!
Don't forget that the Atari 2600 was sold in 3 different decades (the 70's, 80's and the 90's) and the last new Atari 2600 was sold 15 years after its first release. No other system had anywhere close to the longevity of the Atari. Yes, the hardware was primitive even by yesterday's standards. Even Atari considered the 2600 obsolete by 1980, but the gaming continued... pushing the limited (but very flexible) hardware to the max!
The Atari 2600 is too often overlooked in the discussion of classic gaming. Whenever someone mentions classic gaming, the first device that is always mentioned is the NES... The venerable 2600 is nearly forgotten, yet it was the most prolific and the hardiest of the gaming systems. Never forget!
...they want their wiimote back!
...It was called a Yugo The Yugoslav government claimed that it would be so cheap that it would drive all the evil capitalist carmakers out of business... Yeaaaaahhh..... That kindof didn't happen... Consumer Reports claimed that it, "barely qualified as a car." It had a 1.1 liter engine, barely enough to get it moving on a windy day... speaking of windy day, a Yugo was literally blown off the Mackinac bridge by high gales... Yeah, the whole Yugo thing didn't work out so well... I doubt this project will, either... but, the Yugo did get featured in the movie, Dragnet:
;-)
"After losing the two previous vehicles we had been issued, the only car the department was willing to release to us at this point was an unmarked 1987 Yugo, a Yugoslavian import donated to the department as a test vehicle by the government of that country and reflecting the cutting edge of Serbo-Croatian technology. "
Good times... Good times!! Maybe this Indian car will get a starring role in a movie, too.... at least it's got a shot at a Bollywood movie!
...believe in IP? It's BS power grabs like this by IP power holders that make it hard to believe that intellectual property laws aren't arbitrary, capricious, and screw people over... How can someone believe that IP is good and right when companies (and governments, in this case) keep pulling this shite over and over again? Is it really any wonder that people feel no guilt when they have no rights or say in the stuff they actually PAID MONEY to use? No other industry would ever get away with the BS that the IP industry demands... Yet, the industry always feel "wronged" by society... Whatever...
Thanks,
Mike
The author of the article is kidding, right? I mean, Apple's graphics were great circa 1977, but were really weak by the time the Commodore 64 came around. The Atari 8-bit's had the best graphics of the era, prior to 1982, but the Commodore 64 outclassed that machine in almost every respect (except for being able to display multiple shades of colors)... The Commodore 64 was originally designed to be a NEO-GEO-like arcade machine console, in which arcade vendors could effortlessly swap arcade games... When that didn't pan out, they decided to make it into a home computer instead...
The author did get the fact that Commodore's Basic was garbage... It was basically the same basic that was in the old PET computers, and had absolutley ZERO support for its superior graphics and sound capabilities. It was not user friendly, and discouraged programming in the younger generation... It was a lot easier to type LOAD "SUPERFUNGAME", 8, 1 than the cryptic peeks and pokes (in decimal no less) to do anything on that machine. It became primarily a game machine by default, and led the way for the resurgence of the gaming consoles. The idea of a computer being a tool to create died with the C64. Instead, the C64 encouraged users to be passive... a legacy that still lives with us today...
...it's been tried before, a long, long time ago... in a galaxy far, far away...
INTERIOR: DEATH STAR.
Walls buckle and cave in. Troops and equipment are blown in
all directions. Stormtroopers stagger out of the rubble.
Standing in the middle of the chaos, a vision of calm and
foreboding, is Darth Vader. One of his Astro-Officers rushes
up to him.
ASTRO-OFFICER: We count thirty Rebel ships, Lord Vader. But they're so
small they're evading our turbo-lasers!
VADER: We'll have to destroy them ship to ship. Get the crews to their
fighters.
INTERIOR: DEATH STAR.
Smoke belches from the giant laser guns as they wind up their
turbine generators to create sufficient power. The crew rushes
about preparing for another blast. Even the troopers head gear
is not adequate to protect them from the overwhelming noise of
the monstrous weapon. One troopers bangs his helmet with his
hand in an attempt to stop the ringing.
...is that it subsidizes the poor, but ignores the sick. Anyone with a pre-existing condition (which can be as mild as taking an antidepressant or being on one blood pressure medication) can, and will, be raked over the coals by the insurance industry with no price cap or subsidy. Most of the "universal" health care plans talk about subsidizing the cost of the poor, but they make little mention of the people that pay the most out of pocket for health care--the chronically ill. The segment that pays the most for health care never get mentioned in these universal health care debates. They are just expected to keep paying out the nose. The people who actually need health care can ill afford it, which seems to make little sense. Why have the "best healthcare system in the world" if no one has affordable access to it?
I know that opponents to universal health care blame the sick for their situation, assuming that most of us are fat slobs who eat at McDonalds every day, never get out of the chair, and have diabetes and heart disease as a result. The problem is that most chronically ill people are sick through no fault of their own.... The 9 year old kid with brain cancer... your mom with rheumatoid arthritis... your college roommate with Crohn's disease... nothing they did (or didn't do) created or contributed to their current condition. It is unfair to blame the sick for wanting access to health care.. after all, that IS what it is all about. Health care is about treating the sick, not the healthy. If the sick don't have access to health care, then why have health care available at all?
And what is defined as "affordable"? It seems that the Romney plan is well over $300 a month for very sparse coverage with pages of exceptions... that hardly sounds affordable, especially when most of that money is going into the insurance company's pockets instead of to the actual cost of healthcare.
We'll see how this system pans out... I think the big sticking point is that it is compulsory and subsidizes private insurance companies (who certainly don't work for the public interest). I 'm sure these issues rub a lot of people the wrong way.
Thanks,
Mike
The Supreme Court will be sure to strike this law down, too...
They are big on that nowadays...
Thanks,
Mike
Are you sure this is a legally licensed low power station? It could be just pirate radio.
Thanks,
Mike