The N-gage was doomed from the beginning. If the system was really that well received, then a minor overhaul might fix it. But smoothing design flaws like having to remove the battery to change the game doesn't fix the core problem.
The Gameboy. Perhaps problem is the wrong word. The Gameboy is awesome at what it does. It's a handheld video game console. It's not a bastardized cell phone pretending to be something it's not. It does one thing and it does it very very well. It's hard to unseat a product like that.
The downfall of hybridizing products like this is two fold. You're targeting two different customers. One's who want a badass cellphone and will occasionally buy games. They're not hardcore gamers, they're just looking for diversion from time to time. You're not going to sell massive amounts of carts to them. Then you have the other type of customer: the ones who don't need a cell phone, don't want to change their current cell phone, or can't get a cellphone. Children fall into that latter category. People/Parents aren't going to buy the thing just to play games on and ignore it's functionality as a cellphone.
There are two ways Nokia could have pulled it off. They could have either hooked up with Nintendo and sold a phone that also played Gameboy Advance games. Thus they'd have a huge library of games, and both audiences are tailored two. Or if they really wanted to compete, they should have created a standalone console that wasn't tied to the cell phone.
I'm a good example. I've got a Gameboy Advance and it's great. I've also got a Motorola v120 that I love. I'm not going to trade up my favorite cellphone just for another portable. Now, if it played GBA, I'd be tempted. I don't often carry my GBA with me, except on travel, but I always have my cell phone. If it played GBA games they might stand a chance of convincing me. Or if they had badass games, they could probably convince me to buy a stand alone unit. But as it stands, their hybridization model just isn't appealing. And they don't really have any titles that are must haves... That's just not a formula for success.
Sony may have something though with the PSP though. If they or Nintendo tried to do a hybrid with a cell phone, they'd probably do alright.
I pay my ISP $60 per month. That is for the right to quickly access other sites who want my money. Just this week I used a mozilla plugin called stumbleupon with is supposed to lead you to the "best of the net" but it just sent me to more pages asking for money.
My !!!Guess!!! is that it will come down to ISPs. One will offer XY and Z services for the price of connection while the other only offers X and Y.
Poo Poo all you want, but look at the basics. Pretty much everyone goes to a one of a handful of portals -- MSN, Yahoo, Google, Netscape, et al. Yahoo, MSN, and Netscape all offer internet access.
That sounds a lot like the days before the WWW (and the internet in general) made it into the household. CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy, GEnie and QuantumLink (pre-AOL), all were dial up content providers. You got news, weather, chat, games, and messaging... essentially a large scale dial-up BBS. And of course you still had a lot of BBSes around, though very few charged except the big multi-line ones. (gotta cover the phone bills)
Sounds like we're heading back in that direction. Which kind of makes sense. The ad revenue model just doesn't work on a broad scale. And content providers want to get paid. I doubt many people will want to have 20 different pay subscriptions.
Welcome the world were YOUR ISP gives you something in return.
Though not mentioned on Apple's site, that's not the original commerical. It was modified for the 20th anniversary and was first shown at Mac World this year. What you're looking at has been CGI enhanced... The iPod insertion is almost flawless.
If there is no God, and no afterlife, etc. Then you don't have much point in doing anything other than taking care of yourself and having a bunch of fun.
Because in the end you die, and well since you no longer exist, you're not aware that you ever even existed. Erased, as though you never were. As quantum phsyics will tell you, without an observer, nothing happens. So it's like you were never born.
So, to put it more bluntly, you can assign whatever purpose to your life you like. However if it is all just random (can it be?), then you'll one day go *poof* and none of this will have ever happened.
And if you actually read the Bible, it very cleraly states you have to have the right intentions in doing things. Doing it because you want a reward is exactly what it speaks against. (Read Matthew and the sections about the Saducees and Pharasees)
You might explain the how, but you'll never know the why.
Why does anything exist in the first place. There must be a reason. Why isn't there just "nothing" (ie: absense of anything... including space.) Really, why is there a universe at all?
God seems about the only answer that doesn't cause your head to go into meltdown.
Even if you think about the big bang... Where the hell did all this energy come from?
They're probably using a blue filter to block Raleigh scattering. We do a lot of image processing, and it's common to use a blue filter in images where you want sharp detail and aren't as concerned about the proper color. Blue light tends to scatter more because of it's low wavelength. If you don't filter it you can end up with just a haze in your image where you'd otherwise have sharp detail in the image.
Just to be clear, when I posted the original message, I had RTFA, and I am aware they were speaking about a specific Windows Messenger Popup. But what I quoted from Mr. Beales seems to suggest Pop-Ups in any form, be it web browser windows, IM login screens, AOL Ads, or what have you just have to be accepted to some degree.
Since I rarely use Windows, Windows Messenger just doesn't mean anything to me. I'd love to see you pop a system message on my OS X box without some how bypassing security and logging in. On the rare occaision I boot Windows it's behind a firewall and I have the Windows Messenger service stopped by default.
So for me the only real pop-ups are web browser pop-ups/pop-unders. They're really the only kind that all systems would be vulnerable to. Safari and Mozilla take care of that problem all together. Windows Messenger is just a very specific example. Another example: Getting an IM from some random person named LuciousSexyCindy saying "buy your drugs on the internet, cheap! http://somewierdip/child/porn" is just as annoying as getting a system message in the middle of the screen saying the same thing.
My point was that it's free to get rid of, and it's most definetly NOT a fact of life. You just have to have the right software, but the average home user isn't aware of what's out there and the choices available. That's what makes them susceptable to the scams like this. "Haha! I can pop up a message box at will!!! But! If you pay me $30 I can make them all go away!!" Flaws like that just shouldn't be exposed on a average home system to be exploited to begin with.
To put it another way. If Windows Messenger service was off by default. Internet Explorer had popup blocking built in and on by default, then alot of these problems would go away. But because they're on, any dumbfuck with the slightest grasp of how to use the "net send" command or basic HTML skills can become a menace. And any home user who doesn't know how to turn off Windows Messenger Service, or doesn't know they have the option to go download something like Mozilla are just prey.
"POP-UP ADVERTISING is a fact of life," said Howard Beales, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "But one company has taken pop-ups beyond annoyance."
No it's not. I use Safari (Mac OS) and Mozilla (Linux/Windows) for all my web browsing. And I use Trillian, Gaim, or Fire for IM.
So no, POP-UP Advertising is deifnetly not a fact of life. It's just that too many people are unaware how easy it is to get away from.
The ending should have just cut back to green letters streaming down the screen that stopped changing leaving the following: "Fuck You, Audience."
It would have better, more shocking, and more honest ending. And would destroyed the possibility of creating a 4th. With the way this goes, they might try (Lord please, no!)
Stop by this section of the LHDC for the latest code samples and tools from Microsoft and the community at large. Even better, if you've built something, put it up for all of us to share!
Share? The largest monopolistic company on the planet encouraging people to share? Does anyone else note a sense of irony?
User's already pay for their bandwidth. Kazaa is just a pretty GUI slapped on top of some Windows COM Components (media player, explorer) and FastTrack (replacable with Gnutella a la Limewire).
They don't exactly have huge development costs there. All the pieces were there, they just stuck them together. Replicating it wouldn't take more than a day or two worth of effort considering all the truely hard / clever stuff is available for use free.
And since the network works off a SuperNode concept, there's really no need for a central server at all. Just get rid of logins, go completely anonymous and all is good.
The truth is Sharman Networks weren't very smart for buying Kazaa in the first place. To expect to make money of it is...well very naieve.
If you'd like an example, do you remember HotLine? That was a Client/Server/Tracker set up as well, pre-Napster. Their shareware version was quite popular. Then they closed up the network, centralized everything so only they could run trackers and charge $$. Where are the now eh? Kazaa just took the first step down the same path.
If they did that, how long would it be before another network popped up to replace them? Hours? I guess they forgot they aren't the ones who invented P2P...
I guess they also don't realize people use the network....because it's... free... Not free and it will go away.
If your a programmer than make deals with the hardware companies to distribute/program/update their drivers and at the same time offer their hardware for sale (at a discount if they would offer you one as their s/w writer) and make money from both angles.
Hold on just a second there chief. So it's ok for hardware vendors to pay software programmers to write software (and of course pass that cost on to you), but it's not ok for the programmer to try to get money from you independently?
Not to analize this too deeply here, but you're basically saying it's ok for programmers to be slaved to some large entity (hardware vendors) and rely on them for income, and in the same breath you say that independent music artists are great (those not affiliated with major labels that are members of the RIAA.) and the major labeled ones suck.
I really like the Bic Medium "Round Stick" ball point pens. (The old school white ones pens with black/blue/green/red caps.) They give nice easy to read printing, and unlike felt/uniball pens they don't keep spilling ink on the paper if you don't write fast enough. ie: you get big thick lines if you write slowly, thinner ones if you write fast, and a big blob if you stop writting for a second and leave it on the paper.
The ball point is consistant. It glides across the paper. The best part is it's popular with hotels as complementary pens.:) Needless to say I haven't bought one of these since I started business travel and probably have a life time supply at this point.;-)
The only sure way to control code is to give developers a PC with no means of creating CDs/DVDs, no USB/Firewire/Parallel/Serial Ports to plug CD burners into, and no internet access. Then you have to secure your network to prevent someone plugging in an unauthorized system and probably encrypt all network activity to prevent someone from grabbing transactions in promiscuous mode.
Developers would have to do all their work on their computer, and then save it on the network drives. That's about the only way to prevent the actual code from leaving the building.
Oh and don't forget the tempest shielding.;-)
Pain in the ass for the developers. But it's about the only way to effectively stop it.
Slashdot Mirror
It's certainly not fair use.
The N-gage was doomed from the beginning. If the system was really that well received, then a minor overhaul might fix it. But smoothing design flaws like having to remove the battery to change the game doesn't fix the core problem.
The Gameboy. Perhaps problem is the wrong word. The Gameboy is awesome at what it does. It's a handheld video game console. It's not a bastardized cell phone pretending to be something it's not. It does one thing and it does it very very well. It's hard to unseat a product like that.
The downfall of hybridizing products like this is two fold. You're targeting two different customers. One's who want a badass cellphone and will occasionally buy games. They're not hardcore gamers, they're just looking for diversion from time to time. You're not going to sell massive amounts of carts to them. Then you have the other type of customer: the ones who don't need a cell phone, don't want to change their current cell phone, or can't get a cellphone. Children fall into that latter category. People/Parents aren't going to buy the thing just to play games on and ignore it's functionality as a cellphone.
There are two ways Nokia could have pulled it off. They could have either hooked up with Nintendo and sold a phone that also played Gameboy Advance games. Thus they'd have a huge library of games, and both audiences are tailored two. Or if they really wanted to compete, they should have created a standalone console that wasn't tied to the cell phone.
I'm a good example. I've got a Gameboy Advance and it's great. I've also got a Motorola v120 that I love. I'm not going to trade up my favorite cellphone just for another portable. Now, if it played GBA, I'd be tempted. I don't often carry my GBA with me, except on travel, but I always have my cell phone. If it played GBA games they might stand a chance of convincing me. Or if they had badass games, they could probably convince me to buy a stand alone unit. But as it stands, their hybridization model just isn't appealing. And they don't really have any titles that are must haves... That's just not a formula for success.
Sony may have something though with the PSP though. If they or Nintendo tried to do a hybrid with a cell phone, they'd probably do alright.
See here: http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/01/technology/google_ email/index.htm?cnn=yes
Google themselves said that while the press release was in the in the "spirit of April Fool's" the annoucment is legitimate.
I pay my ISP $60 per month. That is for the right to quickly access other sites who want my money. Just this week I used a mozilla plugin called stumbleupon with is supposed to lead you to the "best of the net" but it just sent me to more pages asking for money.
My !!!Guess!!! is that it will come down to ISPs. One will offer XY and Z services for the price of connection while the other only offers X and Y.
Poo Poo all you want, but look at the basics. Pretty much everyone goes to a one of a handful of portals -- MSN, Yahoo, Google, Netscape, et al. Yahoo, MSN, and Netscape all offer internet access.
That sounds a lot like the days before the WWW (and the internet in general) made it into the household. CompuServe, AOL, Prodigy, GEnie and QuantumLink (pre-AOL), all were dial up content providers. You got news, weather, chat, games, and messaging... essentially a large scale dial-up BBS. And of course you still had a lot of BBSes around, though very few charged except the big multi-line ones. (gotta cover the phone bills)
Sounds like we're heading back in that direction. Which kind of makes sense. The ad revenue model just doesn't work on a broad scale. And content providers want to get paid. I doubt many people will want to have 20 different pay subscriptions.
Welcome the world were YOUR ISP gives you something in return.
More like "Welcome back..."
did you mean tactile?
Though not mentioned on Apple's site, that's not the original commerical. It was modified for the 20th anniversary and was first shown at Mac World this year. What you're looking at has been CGI enhanced... The iPod insertion is almost flawless.
8 4/
;-)
See http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2004/01/07/19
Welcome to the down side of digital editing and CGI. You can re-write history.
the truth will set you free.
Oh really? Odd that you use that quote and don't know it's origin:
John 8:31
Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, [then] are ye my disciples indeed;
John 8:32
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:33
They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?
John 8:34
Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.
John 8:35
And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: [but] the Son abideth ever.
John 8:36
If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
Look at it this way.
If there is no God, and no afterlife, etc. Then you don't have much point in doing anything other than taking care of yourself and having a bunch of fun.
Because in the end you die, and well since you no longer exist, you're not aware that you ever even existed. Erased, as though you never were. As quantum phsyics will tell you, without an observer, nothing happens. So it's like you were never born.
So, to put it more bluntly, you can assign whatever purpose to your life you like. However if it is all just random (can it be?), then you'll one day go *poof* and none of this will have ever happened.
And if you actually read the Bible, it very cleraly states you have to have the right intentions in doing things. Doing it because you want a reward is exactly what it speaks against. (Read Matthew and the sections about the Saducees and Pharasees)
You might explain the how, but you'll never know the why. Why does anything exist in the first place. There must be a reason. Why isn't there just "nothing" (ie: absense of anything... including space.) Really, why is there a universe at all? God seems about the only answer that doesn't cause your head to go into meltdown. Even if you think about the big bang... Where the hell did all this energy come from?
They're probably using a blue filter to block Raleigh scattering. We do a lot of image processing, and it's common to use a blue filter in images where you want sharp detail and aren't as concerned about the proper color. Blue light tends to scatter more because of it's low wavelength. If you don't filter it you can end up with just a haze in your image where you'd otherwise have sharp detail in the image.
So put the conspiracy theory to rest.
NetHack can be graphical. Never heard of Falcon's Eye? It's graphical, mouse driven and a pretty good interface for NetHack.
Even Zangband has graphical clients... Tile based, but a far cry from pure ASCII symbols.
extensible- ik-'sten(t)-s&-b&l adj. capable of being extended, exploitable.
see synonym: insecure.
Is this going to be the special edition versions or the original?
Having seen the original release in the theaters as a kid, I would love to have a copy of them on DVD, my VHS ones are starting to give up.
Heck, I wouldn't mind a six disc set with both. I think there's still a lot of people out there who like them in their original form.
Just to be clear, when I posted the original message, I had RTFA, and I am aware they were speaking about a specific Windows Messenger Popup. But what I quoted from Mr. Beales seems to suggest Pop-Ups in any form, be it web browser windows, IM login screens, AOL Ads, or what have you just have to be accepted to some degree.
Since I rarely use Windows, Windows Messenger just doesn't mean anything to me. I'd love to see you pop a system message on my OS X box without some how bypassing security and logging in. On the rare occaision I boot Windows it's behind a firewall and I have the Windows Messenger service stopped by default.
So for me the only real pop-ups are web browser pop-ups/pop-unders. They're really the only kind that all systems would be vulnerable to. Safari and Mozilla take care of that problem all together. Windows Messenger is just a very specific example. Another example: Getting an IM from some random person named LuciousSexyCindy saying "buy your drugs on the internet, cheap! http://somewierdip/child/porn" is just as annoying as getting a system message in the middle of the screen saying the same thing.
My point was that it's free to get rid of, and it's most definetly NOT a fact of life. You just have to have the right software, but the average home user isn't aware of what's out there and the choices available. That's what makes them susceptable to the scams like this. "Haha! I can pop up a message box at will!!! But! If you pay me $30 I can make them all go away!!" Flaws like that just shouldn't be exposed on a average home system to be exploited to begin with.
To put it another way. If Windows Messenger service was off by default. Internet Explorer had popup blocking built in and on by default, then alot of these problems would go away. But because they're on, any dumbfuck with the slightest grasp of how to use the "net send" command or basic HTML skills can become a menace. And any home user who doesn't know how to turn off Windows Messenger Service, or doesn't know they have the option to go download something like Mozilla are just prey.
"POP-UP ADVERTISING is a fact of life," said Howard Beales, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "But one company has taken pop-ups beyond annoyance."
No it's not. I use Safari (Mac OS) and Mozilla (Linux/Windows) for all my web browsing. And I use Trillian, Gaim, or Fire for IM.
So no, POP-UP Advertising is deifnetly not a fact of life. It's just that too many people are unaware how easy it is to get away from.
The ending should have just cut back to green letters streaming down the screen that stopped changing leaving the following: "Fuck You, Audience."
It would have better, more shocking, and more honest ending. And would destroyed the possibility of creating a 4th. With the way this goes, they might try (Lord please, no!)
from the developer page:
Stop by this section of the LHDC for the latest code samples and tools from Microsoft and the community at large. Even better, if you've built something, put it up for all of us to share!
Share? The largest monopolistic company on the planet encouraging people to share? Does anyone else note a sense of irony?
User's already pay for their bandwidth. Kazaa is just a pretty GUI slapped on top of some Windows COM Components (media player, explorer) and FastTrack (replacable with Gnutella a la Limewire).
They don't exactly have huge development costs there. All the pieces were there, they just stuck them together. Replicating it wouldn't take more than a day or two worth of effort considering all the truely hard / clever stuff is available for use free.
And since the network works off a SuperNode concept, there's really no need for a central server at all. Just get rid of logins, go completely anonymous and all is good.
The truth is Sharman Networks weren't very smart for buying Kazaa in the first place. To expect to make money of it is...well very naieve.
If you'd like an example, do you remember HotLine? That was a Client/Server/Tracker set up as well, pre-Napster. Their shareware version was quite popular. Then they closed up the network, centralized everything so only they could run trackers and charge $$. Where are the now eh? Kazaa just took the first step down the same path.
did you really have to include all the random crap (advertisement?, and links to other articles?), and some how manage leave out all the spacing?
and thus endeth Kazaa.
If they did that, how long would it be before another network popped up to replace them? Hours? I guess they forgot they aren't the ones who invented P2P...
I guess they also don't realize people use the network....because it's... free... Not free and it will go away.
shouldn't that be FIFTY million, not five million?
Generally HL hacks intercept the DLL calls. SSL on the network connection wouldn't help at all.
If your a programmer than make deals with the hardware companies to distribute/program/update their drivers and at the same time offer their hardware for sale (at a discount if they would offer you one as their s/w writer) and make money from both angles.
Hold on just a second there chief. So it's ok for hardware vendors to pay software programmers to write software (and of course pass that cost on to you), but it's not ok for the programmer to try to get money from you independently?
Not to analize this too deeply here, but you're basically saying it's ok for programmers to be slaved to some large entity (hardware vendors) and rely on them for income, and in the same breath you say that independent music artists are great (those not affiliated with major labels that are members of the RIAA.) and the major labeled ones suck.
Something just doesn't add up here.
I really like the Bic Medium "Round Stick" ball point pens. (The old school white ones pens with black/blue/green/red caps.) They give nice easy to read printing, and unlike felt/uniball pens they don't keep spilling ink on the paper if you don't write fast enough. ie: you get big thick lines if you write slowly, thinner ones if you write fast, and a big blob if you stop writting for a second and leave it on the paper.
:) Needless to say I haven't bought one of these since I started business travel and probably have a life time supply at this point. ;-)
The ball point is consistant. It glides across the paper. The best part is it's popular with hotels as complementary pens.
The only sure way to control code is to give developers a PC with no means of creating CDs/DVDs, no USB/Firewire/Parallel/Serial Ports to plug CD burners into, and no internet access. Then you have to secure your network to prevent someone plugging in an unauthorized system and probably encrypt all network activity to prevent someone from grabbing transactions in promiscuous mode.
;-)
Developers would have to do all their work on their computer, and then save it on the network drives. That's about the only way to prevent the actual code from leaving the building.
Oh and don't forget the tempest shielding.
Pain in the ass for the developers. But it's about the only way to effectively stop it.