I agree, it would be awesome. But don't forget about the ten kajillion different PCI and AGP cards out there.
Your game would have to ship with every driver for every video card, sound card, and even USB drivers for non-standard USB cards, so that people's mice and joysticks would work. Even the integrated USB devices on many motherboards aren't fully compliant with the spec and require custom drivers. Heck, even IDE controllers are often non standard. Shipping an OS really isn't a big deal; it's the drivers.
You'd have to ship two CD's -- one for the game and one just to fit the OS plus drivers.
Online gaming! Just imagine!
on
Mind Over Machine
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Imagine going head-to-head (hehe) with someone in a game where you both put on your "mind caps" and you battle it out... and the winner is simply the guy who can think the fastest. Forget moving a goofy little thumbstick around and pressing buttons. Imagine the feeling of playing some FPS game and moving around in the game just by sheer willpower. Wow. With good enough graphics, you could probably forget that it's a game pretty easily.
And I love the way that "Jenny Holzer" would redesign the page... I'm sure Google would be excited about expressing her personal political views right on the front page. How did that mess even make it into the Wired article?
I think that the main page should have a Flash game where you get to hit republicans on the head with a big hammer. I think that users would really like that. -- Jenny Holzer, "Artist"
I'm also sure that Yahoo's "SpamGuard" was great when they first introduced it. Now, It catches roughly half of all the spam I get. Why? Because people have figured out how it works and taken advantage of it. The same will happen with any content-recognition-based spam software. In the extreme case, even if a piece of software were 100% accurate at saying "This piece of e-mail looks like spam," then spammers would just make their e-mails look exactly like e-mail from one of your buddies. How could software ever tell the difference between:
Hey, dude, check out this website I found. There are some hot naked chicks and stuff. Sweet. Signed, Your Buddy
and
Hey, dude, check out this website I found. There are some hot naked chicks and stuff. Sweet. Signed, SpamKiddy
Even a human can't tell the difference. The only real difference is who they're from.
What happens when your machine sends 500000 spam messages because it's infected with a virus? How exactly do you "guarantee" that won't happen? The only thing that's truly clear is that there is no guaranteed effective solution.
Who modded this up? Do Microsoft employees read slashdot?
The article claims that the average Indian programmer makes about $8000 per year. But it also claims that these companies have "gleaming" buildings and "lawns fit for putting." It claims that these twenty- and thirty-somethings are driving nice, new cars and living in fancy suburbs. They say it looks exactly like Santa Clara, blah blah blah...
So, if you can live like a king in a beautiful, shiny city for $8K per year, then why don't all of us overpaid, fat, American slobs just save up a few months of salary (while we still have jobs) and move to India, and buy a palace? Ok, that's a silly rhetorical question and I know the answer.
But you see my point? How is it possible that there's an order-of-magnitude difference in the cost of living there? Who is building these gleaming buildings at 10% of what we're paying? Who is selling them shiny new cars at 10% of what we're paying? It doesn't add up.
That's what I paid several months ago, so it's probably even less, now. If you can live with refurbished, you'll save a bundle. I haven't had any problems. In fact, I almost trust refurbished products more than brand new ones, because they've been checked over a second time, presumably more thoroughly than the first time they passed through the QA department.
Storage space isn't the most important issue to lots of people. Many, like me, care about the user interface, and the iPod's interface is just excellent. The Zen's isn't.
Thank you for a well written comment. Very insightful.
CNN is a bunch of idiots. And if their readers actually believe that there's a company out there tracking which files they delete from their own PCs, then the readers are even bigger idiots.
Amen to that. First of all, the Internet isn't free. As a home user, you pay a monthly fee to access it. As a student, you pay for it with part of your tuition. As a business, you pay a small fortune to have all your employees connected to it.
Now, consider the other end... the people actually providing the content that is "The Internet." Running a server costs money. Running a web-based business with a room full of servers and a lot of bandwidth costs even more money. Just getting a little bandwidth in a co-lo costs money.
Banner ads are only a 1994 invention, they aren't an intrinsic part of either the internet or the world wide web.
Excellent point. I don't like them, personally, but if they all went away for some reason (which they won't, obviously), the Internet would be just fine. The statement that the "Free Internet" might end is nonsensical, because there is no such thing.
I like the idea! But I suggest rule 110, instead of rule 30. Rule 110 (and its inverses) is the only example of "class 4" behavior in Wolfram's 1D automata. It develops into discrete structures that move around and interact with each other, whereas rule 30 is just an example of "class 3" behavior -- it generates apparent randomness.
I've heard guys who work at TMTA call it "defficeon." I think it's actually a really nice chip... it's just typical engineers' contempt for their marketing department. I gotta agree -- "Efficeon" is pretty dumb. Almost as bad as "Pentium 4 EXTREME."
Same here. Are we breaking the law by running a program that prevents other software from being installed? Suncomm has decided that I must run what is literally a trojan horse in order to listen to one of their CDs. And by using a program that I was already using for years before their new "technology" came out, am I breaking the law?
By the way, The latest version of TweakUI for Windows XP is freaking awesome. They even let you turn off those damned help bubbles that constantly pop up in the system tray. Brilliant.
Linux still relies on the BIOS quite a bit. Last time I checked, Linux still used the BIOS's PCI resource assignments (IRQ settings, memory windows, etc...). I don't follow Linux much, though, so that may have changed.
These days, the main function of the BIOS is just to do the chipset-specific stuff... stuff that Windows could never do, because it's different on every board. PCI is a well established standard, so there's no reason why Windows needs to rely on the BIOS's work there. On the other hand, something like initializing the memory controller or the IDE controller needs to be done by the BIOS, because an Intel memory controller looks nothing like an NVidia memory controller, for example.
It makes sense that things have moved in that direction. I would imagine that, in a few years, something like EFI, or this "MSBIOS" will basically reduce the BIOS to a few plug-in modules -- one for the memory controller, one for the IDE controller, one for the onboard graphics, etc...
All kidding aside... I write BIOS code for a living, and this scares the crap out of me. What Microsoft wants is to basically eliminate the BIOS, except for the jump to the OS code (the "int 19" above). Windows already does just about everything that we do in the BIOS, like PCI device enumeration, etc...
No doubt, this would make Microsoft's life a lot more simple, but I think it would give them too much control -- way too much. DRM would just be the start of it.
I wonder what the EFI proponents (Intel) think about this deal...
1) To strike "fear and awe" into the hearts of downloaders. "Wow! They sued a 12 year old! They wouldn't hesitate to sue my ass." 2) To make legitimate online music services look bad. "I'll never download anything online again!"
It makes sense. The RIAA already looks bad. It's not news to anyone. But, until now, they've looked powerless to stop file sharing.
Of course the real reason their sales are dropping is a simple economic one: the price is too high.
Simply not true. They've been selling CDs for $16 since the dawn of time, and people have been paying it. Remember when the CD first came out? The big news was "CDs are cheaper to make than cassettes! Why are they more expensive?!?" Were they forced to lower the price of CDs? Nope. The only reason their sales are hurting now is because people are downloading music for free and getting away with it. They'll do everything they can to plug that hole. Whether that means suing 12 year olds, 80 year olds, "purchasing" ridiculous laws (DMCA), or anything else.
struggling with their VIA or nVidia chipset
Ok, I'm with you on VIA, but I have to say that nVidia makes damned good chipsets. But that's my point... it doesn't matter whose is better, only who has the money.
This is not good news. This is not the light at the end of the tunnel. This is not the moment where the general public wakes up and sees the evil RIAA for what it is. You will never win a war against the RIAA for one simple reason: They have orders of magnitude more money than you do. They don't care if you boycott their product. Slashdot readers aren't in their target audience anyway (young teens).
Microsoft: The evil empire that controls all PC software. They've survived Linux, OS2, and anti-trust litigation from the US government itself. Hell, Linux is FREE and still can't compete with Microsoft's $99, security-hole-riddled garbage.
Intel: The evil empire that controls all PC hardware. They've survived Cyrix, AMD, VIA, Transmeta, and every other CPU maker. Why? Because if you have "Intel Inside" your web browsing will be much faster. Don't buy anything unless it has "Intel Inside."
DeBeers: Diamonds? For crying out loud! They're not rare, they're not "precious" in any way. They literally have warehouses full of diamonds! They sell clear chunks of carbon and every schmuck in America buys one for his fiance. Why? Because, if you love some one, then they deserve a diamond. A diamond is forever.
Cigarettes: THEY KILL YOU! I think the cat is out of the bag... yet, somehow, cigarette sales continue to increase.
It's simple. He who has the most money has the best marketing. And he who has the best marketing wins, because people are stupid. And it doesn't hurt to buy a few politicians, either. Money is power, period. You can polish a turd.
So, go ahead and boycott the RIAA and listen to indy music on your AMD system that runs Linux. You are the exception, not the rule. You will not bring any industry to its knees. Sorry.
A string walks into a bar. The bartender takes one look at him and says, "HEY! We don't serve your kind here! Beat it!" So the string leaves. He paces around the parking lot for a few minutes, then comes up with an idea. He messes up his hair really vigorously, then ties himself into a knot. He walks right back into the bar. The bartender sees him again, and says, "HEY! Aren't you the guy that I just kicked out of here?!?" The string replies, "I'm a frayed knot."
Please read the Wired article before you comment on it.
Yes, they do exist. In fact, Chemical Vapor Deposition diamonds are actually more perfect, in terms of both color and inclusions than "natural" diamonds. It's a fascinating article. It covers, in great detail, the issue of convincing Jane Q Public. It also covers the cost issue.
Actually... never mind. Nobody else bothers to read the articles, either.
he never said that it was twice as fast... he said it could process twice as much information... He is correct.
True. But the hope is that Joe Consumer will make the assumption that, therefore, it must be twice as fast. And that's totally not true. Saying that a CPU is "N-bits" typically means:
It uses N-bits of addressing. Therefore, it can address 2^N bytes of RAM.
It's general purpose registers are N bits wide.
It's integer arithmetic logic is N bits wide. Meaning that if you need to add two really huge integer numbers, then having a larger value of N can make things more convenient. For example, you can add to 64 bit numbers on a 32-bit CPU, but you'll need to add each half separately and use the carry flag to splice the results together.
But how often do you need to add, subtract, multiply, etc, with two integer (not floating-point) numbers that are bigger than 2^32?
I can't believe how behind-the-times you all are. The spam problem has been solved for over a month. And it was covered on slashdot FOUR times, for crying out loud:
Slashdot Mirror
I agree, it would be awesome. But don't forget about the ten kajillion different PCI and AGP cards out there.
Your game would have to ship with every driver for every video card, sound card, and even USB drivers for non-standard USB cards, so that people's mice and joysticks would work. Even the integrated USB devices on many motherboards aren't fully compliant with the spec and require custom drivers. Heck, even IDE controllers are often non standard. Shipping an OS really isn't a big deal; it's the drivers.
You'd have to ship two CD's -- one for the game and one just to fit the OS plus drivers.
Imagine going head-to-head (hehe) with someone in a game where you both put on your "mind caps" and you battle it out... and the winner is simply the guy who can think the fastest. Forget moving a goofy little thumbstick around and pressing buttons. Imagine the feeling of playing some FPS game and moving around in the game just by sheer willpower. Wow. With good enough graphics, you could probably forget that it's a game pretty easily.
Cool, but a little scary, too.
Agreed.
And I love the way that "Jenny Holzer" would redesign the page... I'm sure Google would be excited about expressing her personal political views right on the front page. How did that mess even make it into the Wired article?
I think that the main page should have a Flash game where you get to hit republicans on the head with a big hammer. I think that users would really like that.
-- Jenny Holzer, "Artist"
Ha.
I'm also sure that Yahoo's "SpamGuard" was great when they first introduced it. Now, It catches roughly half of all the spam I get. Why? Because people have figured out how it works and taken advantage of it. The same will happen with any content-recognition-based spam software. In the extreme case, even if a piece of software were 100% accurate at saying "This piece of e-mail looks like spam," then spammers would just make their e-mails look exactly like e-mail from one of your buddies. How could software ever tell the difference between:
Hey, dude, check out this website I found. There are some hot naked chicks and stuff. Sweet.
Signed,
Your Buddy
and
Hey, dude, check out this website I found. There are some hot naked chicks and stuff. Sweet.
Signed,
SpamKiddy
Even a human can't tell the difference. The only real difference is who they're from.
It's clear? I wouldn't say it's "clear."
What happens when your machine sends 500000 spam messages because it's infected with a virus? How exactly do you "guarantee" that won't happen? The only thing that's truly clear is that there is no guaranteed effective solution.
Who modded this up? Do Microsoft employees read slashdot?
The article claims that the average Indian programmer makes about $8000 per year. But it also claims that these companies have "gleaming" buildings and "lawns fit for putting." It claims that these twenty- and thirty-somethings are driving nice, new cars and living in fancy suburbs. They say it looks exactly like Santa Clara, blah blah blah...
So, if you can live like a king in a beautiful, shiny city for $8K per year, then why don't all of us overpaid, fat, American slobs just save up a few months of salary (while we still have jobs) and move to India, and buy a palace? Ok, that's a silly rhetorical question and I know the answer.
But you see my point? How is it possible that there's an order-of-magnitude difference in the cost of living there? Who is building these gleaming buildings at 10% of what we're paying? Who is selling them shiny new cars at 10% of what we're paying? It doesn't add up.
That's what I paid several months ago, so it's probably even less, now. If you can live with refurbished, you'll save a bundle. I haven't had any problems. In fact, I almost trust refurbished products more than brand new ones, because they've been checked over a second time, presumably more thoroughly than the first time they passed through the QA department.
Storage space isn't the most important issue to lots of people. Many, like me, care about the user interface, and the iPod's interface is just excellent. The Zen's isn't.
Thank you for a well written comment. Very insightful.
CNN is a bunch of idiots. And if their readers actually believe that there's a company out there tracking which files they delete from their own PCs, then the readers are even bigger idiots.
Now, consider the other end... the people actually providing the content that is "The Internet." Running a server costs money. Running a web-based business with a room full of servers and a lot of bandwidth costs even more money. Just getting a little bandwidth in a co-lo costs money.Excellent point. I don't like them, personally, but if they all went away for some reason (which they won't, obviously), the Internet would be just fine. The statement that the "Free Internet" might end is nonsensical, because there is no such thing.
I like the idea! But I suggest rule 110, instead of rule 30. Rule 110 (and its inverses) is the only example of "class 4" behavior in Wolfram's 1D automata. It develops into discrete structures that move around and interact with each other, whereas rule 30 is just an example of "class 3" behavior -- it generates apparent randomness.
Or, we could always just use the goatse guy.
I've heard guys who work at TMTA call it "defficeon." I think it's actually a really nice chip... it's just typical engineers' contempt for their marketing department. I gotta agree -- "Efficeon" is pretty dumb. Almost as bad as "Pentium 4 EXTREME."
Yep, he's no longer with TMTA. Also, he had absolutely zero to do with the development of Astro (the defficeon).
Yes. And a ton of other stuff. You can even change the key that you use for filename completion (in a DOS box).
Same here. Are we breaking the law by running a program that prevents other software from being installed? Suncomm has decided that I must run what is literally a trojan horse in order to listen to one of their CDs. And by using a program that I was already using for years before their new "technology" came out, am I breaking the law?
By the way, The latest version of TweakUI for Windows XP is freaking awesome. They even let you turn off those damned help bubbles that constantly pop up in the system tray. Brilliant.
Linux still relies on the BIOS quite a bit. Last time I checked, Linux still used the BIOS's PCI resource assignments (IRQ settings, memory windows, etc...). I don't follow Linux much, though, so that may have changed.
These days, the main function of the BIOS is just to do the chipset-specific stuff... stuff that Windows could never do, because it's different on every board. PCI is a well established standard, so there's no reason why Windows needs to rely on the BIOS's work there. On the other hand, something like initializing the memory controller or the IDE controller needs to be done by the BIOS, because an Intel memory controller looks nothing like an NVidia memory controller, for example.
It makes sense that things have moved in that direction. I would imagine that, in a few years, something like EFI, or this "MSBIOS" will basically reduce the BIOS to a few plug-in modules -- one for the memory controller, one for the IDE controller, one for the onboard graphics, etc...
All kidding aside... I write BIOS code for a living, and this scares the crap out of me. What Microsoft wants is to basically eliminate the BIOS, except for the jump to the OS code (the "int 19" above). Windows already does just about everything that we do in the BIOS, like PCI device enumeration, etc...
No doubt, this would make Microsoft's life a lot more simple, but I think it would give them too much control -- way too much. DRM would just be the start of it.
I wonder what the EFI proponents (Intel) think about this deal...
I think the reasons are obvious.
1) To strike "fear and awe" into the hearts of downloaders. "Wow! They sued a 12 year old! They wouldn't hesitate to sue my ass."
2) To make legitimate online music services look bad. "I'll never download anything online again!"
It makes sense. The RIAA already looks bad. It's not news to anyone. But, until now, they've looked powerless to stop file sharing.
Of course the real reason their sales are dropping is a simple economic one: the price is too high.
Simply not true. They've been selling CDs for $16 since the dawn of time, and people have been paying it. Remember when the CD first came out? The big news was "CDs are cheaper to make than cassettes! Why are they more expensive?!?" Were they forced to lower the price of CDs? Nope. The only reason their sales are hurting now is because people are downloading music for free and getting away with it. They'll do everything they can to plug that hole. Whether that means suing 12 year olds, 80 year olds, "purchasing" ridiculous laws (DMCA), or anything else.
struggling with their VIA or nVidia chipset
Ok, I'm with you on VIA, but I have to say that nVidia makes damned good chipsets. But that's my point... it doesn't matter whose is better, only who has the money.
- Microsoft: The evil empire that controls all PC software. They've survived Linux, OS2, and anti-trust litigation from the US government itself. Hell, Linux is FREE and still can't compete with Microsoft's $99, security-hole-riddled garbage.
- Intel: The evil empire that controls all PC hardware. They've survived Cyrix, AMD, VIA, Transmeta, and every other CPU maker. Why? Because if you have "Intel Inside" your web browsing will be much faster. Don't buy anything unless it has "Intel Inside."
- DeBeers: Diamonds? For crying out loud! They're not rare, they're not "precious" in any way. They literally have warehouses full of diamonds! They sell clear chunks of carbon and every schmuck in America buys one for his fiance. Why? Because, if you love some one, then they deserve a diamond. A diamond is forever.
- Cigarettes: THEY KILL YOU! I think the cat is out of the bag... yet, somehow, cigarette sales continue to increase.
It's simple. He who has the most money has the best marketing. And he who has the best marketing wins, because people are stupid. And it doesn't hurt to buy a few politicians, either. Money is power, period. You can polish a turd.So, go ahead and boycott the RIAA and listen to indy music on your AMD system that runs Linux. You are the exception, not the rule. You will not bring any industry to its knees. Sorry.
Another theory...
A string walks into a bar. The bartender takes one look at him and says, "HEY! We don't serve your kind here! Beat it!" So the string leaves. He paces around the parking lot for a few minutes, then comes up with an idea. He messes up his hair really vigorously, then ties himself into a knot. He walks right back into the bar. The bartender sees him again, and says, "HEY! Aren't you the guy that I just kicked out of here?!?" The string replies, "I'm a frayed knot."
Please read the Wired article before you comment on it.
Yes, they do exist. In fact, Chemical Vapor Deposition diamonds are actually more perfect, in terms of both color and inclusions than "natural" diamonds. It's a fascinating article. It covers, in great detail, the issue of convincing Jane Q Public. It also covers the cost issue.
Actually... never mind. Nobody else bothers to read the articles, either.
How can any P2P software guarantee anonymity when the RIAA can force your ISP to turn over your usage data?
- It uses N-bits of addressing. Therefore, it can address 2^N bytes of RAM.
- It's general purpose registers are N bits wide.
- It's integer arithmetic logic is N bits wide. Meaning that if you need to add two really huge integer numbers, then having a larger value of N can make things more convenient. For example, you can add to 64 bit numbers on a 32-bit CPU, but you'll need to add each half separately and use the carry flag to splice the results together.
But how often do you need to add, subtract, multiply, etc, with two integer (not floating-point) numbers that are bigger than 2^32?I can't believe how behind-the-times you all are. The spam problem has been solved for over a month. And it was covered on slashdot FOUR times, for crying out loud:
one
two
three
four
All you have to do is filter e-mail packets with that bit set. Get with the program, people.