In 1984, the Apple GUI and its desktop metaphor was -- for people who had never used a computer before -- an easier concept to get their head around than a command line UI. Also, the consistant UI across multiple applications made it easier to use apps -- learn the infrastructure of one (command-c to copy, for instance), you've basically learned them all, was the basic idea.
Since then, as users have demaned more functionality, and Apple has sought to provide more functionality, the Apple UI has gotten progressively more complex, and required ever more abstract mental manipulations to fit into a "desktop" metaphor. For instance, if you look at your physical desktop today, you will not notice a giant bar of animating icons, while in 1984 you may have notice a piece of paper that looked like the document icon on your Mac desktop. At this point, it's safe to say the the desktop metaphor is totally broken, and to someone who's never used a computer before, OSX is not signifcantly easier to use than Windows XP or a DOS command line.
In fact, IMHO, the Windows XP UI is closer to the simplicity of the original Macintosh OS than OS X is.
I used to work a big game magazine, and I can confrim that most companies perform a pretty intuitive, brutal, and sorry-for-the-little-guys, accurate triage of people with media badges before they hand out kits, interviews, or sample copies of games.
Pretty much if you didn't book an appointment in advance of the show, they can't be bothered with you. This is as true for the big guys as for the little guys -- there are only so many half hour press slots at E3, and a good PR perosn works to fill them in advance with the biggest outlets she or he can find for their products. Just having a media badge doesn't count for much if they've never heard of you, and E3 isn't the place to try to make initial press introductions.
As for the "point" of E3, although PR and marketing use it as a great opportunity for press, it's as much for those much-disdained-by-the-poster folks from EB, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart. At the higher, closed-door levels, publishers want to impress buyers with their wares, including what's on the floor and what's several months out past that. At the "exhibits only" level, the idea is for salespeople to get to play the games so they can make informed comments to their customers who didn't go to the author's blog.
That's the best back-explanation of what was clearly -- to me anyway -- a classic science gaff I've ever seen.
Of course, the Kessel Run being measured in parsecs pales to the line from "Real Genius" -- "Is that liquid nitrogen?" after Chris Knight uses a saw to slice a very solid piece of frozen matter that he got out of a freeze. RG is still a great movie though.
If they can now get rid of people who take up space with their irritating, thoughtful, public, journal-writing, we may be able to really get some things done.
Seriously, though, who ever *wants* to use wifi in a coffee shop? I'd much rather be in my office, using a real keyboard and mouse, or in my house, lounging around on the couch while surfing. I reserve free/pay coffee shop wifi for desperate times -- business trips; times when work is way too hectic an environment, etc. Six or eight hours on a laptop keyboard? I'd be dead.
Craven is sort of crazy, but he is the real deal, at least when it comes to the Navy stuff. He wrote an excellent book , which was a good companion and response to another book that first unveiled his crazy greatness. He was the architect, or one of them anyway, of the Polaris missile system; which arguably helped keep the peace during the Cold War. ANyway, either book is a good read. He comes across as a stupendous smart guy maverick badass type in both.
Google. Better than pen-and-paper. The CalcuScribe is exactly what the poster is looking for. Cheap, AAA powered, can send text to any app. Actually, it's kind of pricey, but it's pretty neat. They've had things like this around for *years.* I've always wanted to get one, they seem neat.
This is neat, but not actually innovative. Most larger cities have realtime or near realtime updated maps that show local crimes, sortable in all sorts of neat ways. Oakland's is one that is pretty nice. Done with autocad I think.
I think anyone who made life or purchase decisions based on one magazine's cover lines, without looking inside the magazine to see the screen shots, was probably not acting rationally. I think that anyone who picked up the magazine would then get to see screens comparing Saturn with PlayStation and make an informed decision. I think that holding a grudge about it 10 years later is not rational. I think the editorial intent of the coverline was backed up by the editorial inside the magazine, and in fact that editorial view was validated by the fact that the PlayStation was much more popular than the Saturn. Finally, I think that judging an entire magazine's six year run by one cover-line, on one of its first issues is unfair.
Yeah... Those tools! Remember how Saturn beat the PlayStation, Sega went on to buy Nintendo, and Sony exited the game industry with its tail between it's legs?
Oh wait, that didn't happen. Compared to Saturn games, PlayStation games *did* look as good as a rendered shot of WipeOut... Bitch all you want about Sony, but in 1995 the PlayStation was the most revolutionary piece of gaming hardware released since the 2600.
It wasn't glossy. It was a plastic matte that you could actually peel off to reveal he glossy paper underneath. At the time Next Gen came out, it was the only US magazine that had that kind of cover (although you saw it more frequently in Japan),and there was only one machine in the country (or so the production manager claimed) that could actually apply that matte finish. It was pretty rad to be in a meeting and see people just stroking the magazines cover because it was so neat. (Yes, I used to work there.)
CA doesn't allow private diesel vehicles? Can anyone confirm? (too tired right to figure out a good way to google this) (and yes, a smart-ass answer with a good google query would be appreciate as much as a normal response).
I was thinking of going diesel for my next car, but I am in CA.
My girlfriend used to be a #1. Then her doctor told her she needed to start eating meat. She was all "but I don't like meat," and he was like "you don't have to like it, just eat it. You have low blood pressure, anemia, and you need more fat, salt, and iron in your diet. Eat some red meat once in a while."
...and clearly, you know a LOT more about it than me, because you obviously have done stuff with your education, while I become a game developer! Your satellite concept sounds awesome, good luck with it!
And it's taking 15 years because there's no Soviet Union that's making everyone piss in their pants in fear.
We gotta get bin Laden a space program. The most irritating thing about the war on terror is there are no cool proxy fights like we had with the Soviets -- Image how fun it would be to have our boys grimly staring down Al Qaeda at the Olympics, or a science conference, etc.
Correct! I like Apples fine, and am staring at two//c's, an SE, a Scribe and Imagewriter priniter as I type this, but I need a laptop with three buttons and a track point. These days IBM just makes a better laptop (for me) than Apple.
This is nearly pointless. 3D stereo images for remote sensing are usually taken by PLANES so you can get WAY better imaging quality than 2.5m you get from a satellite.
And, for maybe the first time ever, I actually know what I am talking about in a slashdot post, because I studied this crap in college.
How long before they drop the Lonovo name and just become Think Computers? They can still use the IBM brand name for five years. I'm buying my next ThinkPad in 28 days -- hopefully it isn't my last.
By the way, any recommendations? I can probably spend about $15000 - $2000, so I am assuming I'll get a nice R-series.
I once was kicking it with these rich and powerful people -- at a dude ranch -- and it's true. All they did was talk about how much better they would run the dude ranch, and ways to make more money from the dude ranch, and what the business of dude ranches was like. So they talked business the entire time, but they never really talked about their own businesses that much, other than to establish their rich guy bonafides.
Those were the days because I was 15, and had time for long games! These days, with a job and a kid, I'll take an 12 hour God of War or an 8 hour Ico over a long game any time. Thank you, higher development costs, for making my game experience awesomer but shorter.
maybe it's driver/codec issues? The DVD drive in my ThinkPad died one day. It would recognize DVDs but chunk after one or two seconds. The issue turned out to be a codec that ws randomly installed by something else. Weird, but it wasn't a hrdaware problem, though it felt like one -- drive made funny noises when trying to read.
Slashdot Mirror
Since then, as users have demaned more functionality, and Apple has sought to provide more functionality, the Apple UI has gotten progressively more complex, and required ever more abstract mental manipulations to fit into a "desktop" metaphor. For instance, if you look at your physical desktop today, you will not notice a giant bar of animating icons, while in 1984 you may have notice a piece of paper that looked like the document icon on your Mac desktop. At this point, it's safe to say the the desktop metaphor is totally broken, and to someone who's never used a computer before, OSX is not signifcantly easier to use than Windows XP or a DOS command line.
In fact, IMHO, the Windows XP UI is closer to the simplicity of the original Macintosh OS than OS X is.
Pretty much if you didn't book an appointment in advance of the show, they can't be bothered with you. This is as true for the big guys as for the little guys -- there are only so many half hour press slots at E3, and a good PR perosn works to fill them in advance with the biggest outlets she or he can find for their products. Just having a media badge doesn't count for much if they've never heard of you, and E3 isn't the place to try to make initial press introductions.
As for the "point" of E3, although PR and marketing use it as a great opportunity for press, it's as much for those much-disdained-by-the-poster folks from EB, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart. At the higher, closed-door levels, publishers want to impress buyers with their wares, including what's on the floor and what's several months out past that. At the "exhibits only" level, the idea is for salespeople to get to play the games so they can make informed comments to their customers who didn't go to the author's blog.
Of course, the Kessel Run being measured in parsecs pales to the line from "Real Genius" -- "Is that liquid nitrogen?" after Chris Knight uses a saw to slice a very solid piece of frozen matter that he got out of a freeze. RG is still a great movie though.
Seriously, though, who ever *wants* to use wifi in a coffee shop? I'd much rather be in my office, using a real keyboard and mouse, or in my house, lounging around on the couch while surfing. I reserve free/pay coffee shop wifi for desperate times -- business trips; times when work is way too hectic an environment, etc. Six or eight hours on a laptop keyboard? I'd be dead.
Craven is sort of crazy, but he is the real deal, at least when it comes to the Navy stuff. He wrote an excellent book , which was a good companion and response to another book that first unveiled his crazy greatness. He was the architect, or one of them anyway, of the Polaris missile system; which arguably helped keep the peace during the Cold War. ANyway, either book is a good read. He comes across as a stupendous smart guy maverick badass type in both.
Google. Better than pen-and-paper. The CalcuScribe is exactly what the poster is looking for. Cheap, AAA powered, can send text to any app. Actually, it's kind of pricey, but it's pretty neat. They've had things like this around for *years.* I've always wanted to get one, they seem neat.
It's also -- to some degree -- acting! You have to act like a princess, or Lara Croft, or something like that.
I [heart] my Roomba. Hopefully this will do for my dirty kitchen floor what my Roomba did for my hideous brown carpet.
This is neat, but not actually innovative. Most larger cities have realtime or near realtime updated maps that show local crimes, sortable in all sorts of neat ways. Oakland's is one that is pretty nice. Done with autocad I think.
The other thing about tapes in casettes was that they were way easier for home users to use than paper tapes.
Oh wait, that didn't happen. Compared to Saturn games, PlayStation games *did* look as good as a rendered shot of WipeOut... Bitch all you want about Sony, but in 1995 the PlayStation was the most revolutionary piece of gaming hardware released since the 2600.
It wasn't glossy. It was a plastic matte that you could actually peel off to reveal he glossy paper underneath. At the time Next Gen came out, it was the only US magazine that had that kind of cover (although you saw it more frequently in Japan),and there was only one machine in the country (or so the production manager claimed) that could actually apply that matte finish. It was pretty rad to be in a meeting and see people just stroking the magazines cover because it was so neat. (Yes, I used to work there.)
I was thinking of going diesel for my next car, but I am in CA.
Uh, they did, and they have locked up the market. Haven't seen a GM hybrid even on the drawig boards, have ya?
That doctor is my personal hero.
...and clearly, you know a LOT more about it than me, because you obviously have done stuff with your education, while I become a game developer! Your satellite concept sounds awesome, good luck with it!
We gotta get bin Laden a space program. The most irritating thing about the war on terror is there are no cool proxy fights like we had with the Soviets -- Image how fun it would be to have our boys grimly staring down Al Qaeda at the Olympics, or a science conference, etc.
Correct! I like Apples fine, and am staring at two //c's, an SE, a Scribe and Imagewriter priniter as I type this, but I need a laptop with three buttons and a track point. These days IBM just makes a better laptop (for me) than Apple.
And, for maybe the first time ever, I actually know what I am talking about in a slashdot post, because I studied this crap in college.
By the way, any recommendations? I can probably spend about $15000 - $2000, so I am assuming I'll get a nice R-series.
I once was kicking it with these rich and powerful people -- at a dude ranch -- and it's true. All they did was talk about how much better they would run the dude ranch, and ways to make more money from the dude ranch, and what the business of dude ranches was like. So they talked business the entire time, but they never really talked about their own businesses that much, other than to establish their rich guy bonafides.
Those were the days because I was 15, and had time for long games! These days, with a job and a kid, I'll take an 12 hour God of War or an 8 hour Ico over a long game any time. Thank you, higher development costs, for making my game experience awesomer but shorter.
maybe it's driver/codec issues? The DVD drive in my ThinkPad died one day. It would recognize DVDs but chunk after one or two seconds. The issue turned out to be a codec that ws randomly installed by something else. Weird, but it wasn't a hrdaware problem, though it felt like one -- drive made funny noises when trying to read.
17 i5 h3R3bY 0rD3r3d th4t SCO's X-p4r7e M0t10n 2
4dj0rn teh @pr1l 21, 2005 4rgUm3nt 0n SCO's m0t10n
2 4m3nd itz c0mpl41nt 15 D-NI3D. PWN3D!