First of all, I'm amazed that Sony is considered trustworthy after their rootkit. Guess no-one ever went bankrupt underestimating the public, right?
Secondly, this confirms to me what I've been thinking for a while; now is the time for application and games devs to quit windows and go linux.
The only thing holding most people back from switching is games and that single application which they must use (well, in my case it's maple, matlab and 3dsmax:)). And the games...kids want their games, and they'll prevent dad from going linux if they can help it.
But Vista is the perfect excuse to finqally get rid of the microsoft tax. MS is untrusted and expensive, linux is 'ready for the desktop'(and has been for years!), and mainstream hardwaremakers have linux drivers. What's needed is for the application makers and game makers to switch...but that's a chicken and egg problem.
And even more bafflingly, and more importantly, they're the only one to sell their hardware at a profit. They're the only one with an actual business model which is making them rich.
Sure, the gamecube just about tied with the xbox in terms of worldwide, product lifetime sales. But Nintendo also sells gameboy's (advance/micro/DS) by the absolute containershipload. And unlike Sony and MS, who are selling their stuff at a loss, Nintendo makes money on each system sold. Plus they make money on the games, which is the only place Sony and MS see any return.
Face it: Nintendo have won the console wars, and with the Revolution being either the secondary console, and often even the primary console of gamers around the world (and the only one to do anything new/interesting), they're set for the current next-gen too.
Couldn't you just hack in the deformation by adding a slight time delay to the bounce? Kind of an 'on contact, wait so-many-ticks-dependant-on-object, then resume bounce' with a different delay per object. I know it doesn't simulate reality per-se, but it seems that it would a computationaly-cheap hack to enhance realism. Or is something like that too obviously not real?
That's cool if it's done right, like in F.E.A.R., where the enemy actually does flank you (and you can plan accordingly). It's not ok when it's done in an arbitrary fashion like D3, where the monsters appear out of nowhere, for no reason. That just provokes feelings of unfairness (as opposed to 'damn, that was my own fault!') and breaks immersion...which is not a good thing in games.
Did you see how he's saying that the hardware is cheap, but what is costly is connectivity, applications and support?
Oddly enough, the exact reasons Windows was snubbed on the project. With an open source OS, the applications are free too, and the internet is your helpdesk.
Oh, and hardware IS expensive, especially for the people the thing is targetted at.
Again with the 'Rockstar Bully game will create bullies' meme.
For fucks sake; it is a game where you play a kid being bullied. If people play the game, they will understand what it's like to be bullied. If anything, that will reduce the number of bullies (and might even convert bullies who play the game and see what the're doing).
If I where Rockstar, I'd elevate the profile of that game by sueing legislators for defamation/slander/incorrect reporting/lying.
I'm just still amazed that newspapers and politicians can get away with not just distorting the truth but actively lying about something.
Simply put, the US now has the problem that money=speech. However, this also means that more money=more speech. There went 'one man, one vote', because more money means more influence means that the rich have more influence than the poor; essentially (big duh) money=power. But the world thought that that was not the idea in the US of A in the political process.
The real way it works is probably best depicted in the tv series Deadwood; I was surprised at how well that series showed how the US power structure came into being.
I'm surprised that the original poster didn't mention this: price!
I'll be damned if I pay the same price for a pure electronic version as for a dead-tree book. With a digital distibution network, no shipping, no printing/production costs, an ebook should be WAY cheaper than it's paper counterpart. But instead, we sometimes even have to pay MORE for an ebook!?!
As for the reader device itself...it's only now that teh right formfactor is coming out; paperback sized e-ink screens are EXACTLY what you want for ereading...even though I use my palmpilot t3 now (which I bought for all it's function plus the ereading), it does fall a bit short from something like the sony Libre (which sucks due to DRM) or that other-device-which-is-perfect-but-not-for-sale-yet -and-I-can't-be- bothered-to-look-up-a-link.
Then there's format wars; On my palm, to get the reading experience I want, I need three ereader apps; WTF? One for pdf, one for native palm docs, one for office (word, excell) (and don't tell me to use Documents to go; it's a crap reader with shit fullscreen). And I just cannot read native chm's on my palmpilot.
And then there's DRM; it sucks, is unneccesary and if I donload books illegally I wouldn't have to bother with it. As always, it's almost better to pirate sometyhing so you have no limitations in how you use it...DRM prevents fair use, and sometimes you want to quote bits of a book. Plus, I'd like to be able to read that book I purchased in ten yearrs time too, when my current reader device is a piece of landfill.
So, what will it take to get ebooks mainstream? Easy: cheap ebooks (at least a quarter of the price less than paper, but probably half) on a rugged functional device sporting a large e-ink screen with the possibility to read lots of files (pdf, office and chm minimum, and open source so you can get usermade plugins to read TeX or whatever other files you want [dxf, dwg!]).
AND DON'T USE DRM. My paper boosk isn't drm'ed, and I can photocopy/scan that too.
And I bet Linux won't need you to upgrade your monitor if you want to play back video with a higher resolution that [what was it? 960xsomething?]...until/that/ gets cracked, of course:)
I swear...the two things that are really holding linux back are games and mayor industrial apps. But since they'll have to recode for Vista anyway, why don't the devs just say 'screw the MS tax!' and recode for linux?
As soon as johny can play his games on Linux, daddy won't have a problem chucking out his MS licence and using Open Office:)
The pessimist in me tells me that it's more because
a)their religion dissallows the use of condoms (the pope is pro-aids:( )
b)when you have such high mortality rates, you need to have a large progency ('s why fish produce thousands of eggs)
"like health care, education, construction, retirement benefits, etc."
It's just that when you look at the countries where these services are ranked as 'best in the world', these services are always provided by the government. Which is not so strange, as they have a non-profit mentality; j.random.company is directed by it's profit motive, and cost cutting gets profits up.
The ONLY thing holding linux back from mass-acception is games and certain applications like CAD/CAM/simulation/3d (yes, there are a few crappy linux cad programs, and yes, Maya runs on redhat...so what?).
But with Vista, game/app programmers will have to recompile/code their applications anyway.
So why not convince them that now is the time? Drop windows; if you have to recode, why not recode for an OS that is free, extensible, transparent and does not restrict it's users? Mom&pop dont care what their VoIP/spreadsheet/browser/picture viewer runs on, but they do care that Vista will require a new monitor to view their new HD video on. Not only mom&pop-, but all the kids who want their mp3's to play, or the ability to edit and distribute video from their skiingtrip. Vista is not going to let you do this. Vista will not be adopted by many people. In fact, Vista will probably have even less of an adoptionrate than winxp (and that's pretty much the first OS which MS got right!)
"reading "Das Kapital" and believing Marxist economics - [it's a really dull read] and the economics are transparently bogus"
Not entirely true...at the time it was published, Marx' view was valid prediction. It is only time which has shown Marx to be false, as the downward trend he predicted doesn't seem to happen in the manner he said.
The question you should ask is why the hell your company is giving you a "very high spec'd machine with dual-head 1600x1200 screens." if your work only "involves web/e-Mail/SSH access".
Really; is your company's IT department stupid? Is your company run by dot-com-bubble-wanna-be's who want to repeat the past? When your tasks are so system-resource-undemanding, why did they pay for that machine for you? You could do your work on a 486! Literally!
Thing is, this isn't supposed to happen on the 'it just works' consoles. And trust MS to make the first (ok, second, after the original xbox) crashing console:)
Speaking of observers, here's an interesting tidbit. Last year, there was a guest lecture at Delft uni by one of the ?project managers? of the project (nice guy, american, worked with NASA and the american research uni who did a lot of the work on this probe). It was a very interesting lecture, but at the end of it, during the Q&A part, one of the professors asked what amounted basically to this: "well, it's good and well that NASA created this purpose built satelite, but wasn't there recently an existing satelite which pretty much did the exact same measurement using it's gyro's?". What followed was a short uncomfortable silence followed by a short diversionary answer and a quick 'any more questions?'.
Moral of the story? There's some really interesting science being done by NASA, but at it's heart it still has grown into a conventional, bloated organisation which can't think of a simple innovatively cheap solution to save it's life.
Look at China and the middle east. The tech was supplied by US companies. The FBI has recently retasked it's priorities from terrorism to porn. The internet is/the/ porn distribution network in the world. Re-read your post. Now who looks like an idiot?
"It's exactly the opposite of what the Internet is supposed to be, which is unmonitored and Free."
Yeah...I agree...but it's a cute theory which is rapidly turning into myth; reality is much different, and China et all point in the direction we don't want it to go, but which is all to probable.
So are cheap generic brandless drugs against HIV and many other sickness'...and they're gone now in India and pretty mnuch the rest of the world, thanks to the US interfereing in sovereign nation's IP/patent laws.
"So no, the internet isn't going to be flushed down the tubes by ISPs or whatever, because consumers will not allow it."
Yeah, 'cause if they'll allow it to happen to something which literally saves lives, they won't let it happen to a porn-distribution network.
Seriously, have you not heard of The Great Firewall of China? Supplied by US tech? Tech which now exists, and can be easily implemented anywhere in the world? Like it already is in many middle-eastern nations? And considering the insane FCC stance, and the FBI's recent retasking that puts porn on a higher priority than terrorism (google this one, please), do you really not think that mass-cencorship of the internet worldwide isn't at least a possibility? And is actually a fact for China, the Emirates etc etc?
Yeah, nice strawman. Unjust laws (all literally victimless crimes, like smoking pot) are broken by many more than a paltry million who break just laws (ones which hurt people) in the US.
Dude, Halo has been 'most anticipated game' at E3. Don't make yourself look stupid.
"Halo's E3 impressions was absolutely abysmal"
Not really;
"The press on this game was some of the worst I've ever, ever seen, calling it a "turd" would be one of the better previews I've heard."
Bullshit. Link me to one preview which said that, from one of the bigger gaming sites. Halo was pretty much universally praised (even if I thought it was a crap FPS).
"It was NEW in that it was a completely new IP with an all new engine"
New engine, yes, new IP, not really. Bungie was prettyy straightforwards in saying that there woiuld be lots of Marathon elements in the game.
"You seem to be rewriting history a smidgen with the "HUGE" following:"
Again, bullshit. You are the revisionist. As I said, link me some respected preview which dismissed Halo. Hell, I'll even accept Gamespy/Spot. But you won't find 'em. Halo was HUGE. Why do you think Microsoft bought Bungie so that Halo would launch on the xbox? Because Halo was HUGE.
Plato, having written all of Socrates' work, amongst which the apologia, would probably be stone dead and inert in his grave. Saying that there was any afterlife would have him spinning in his grave.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, I'm amazed that Sony is considered trustworthy after their rootkit. Guess no-one ever went bankrupt underestimating the public, right?
:)). And the games...kids want their games, and they'll prevent dad from going linux if they can help it.
Secondly, this confirms to me what I've been thinking for a while; now is the time for application and games devs to quit windows and go linux.
The only thing holding most people back from switching is games and that single application which they must use (well, in my case it's maple, matlab and 3dsmax
But Vista is the perfect excuse to finqally get rid of the microsoft tax. MS is untrusted and expensive, linux is 'ready for the desktop'(and has been for years!), and mainstream hardwaremakers have linux drivers. What's needed is for the application makers and game makers to switch...but that's a chicken and egg problem.
And even more bafflingly, and more importantly, they're the only one to sell their hardware at a profit. They're the only one with an actual business model which is making them rich.
Sure, the gamecube just about tied with the xbox in terms of worldwide, product lifetime sales. But Nintendo also sells gameboy's (advance/micro/DS) by the absolute containershipload. And unlike Sony and MS, who are selling their stuff at a loss, Nintendo makes money on each system sold. Plus they make money on the games, which is the only place Sony and MS see any return.
Face it: Nintendo have won the console wars, and with the Revolution being either the secondary console, and often even the primary console of gamers around the world (and the only one to do anything new/interesting), they're set for the current next-gen too.
Couldn't you just hack in the deformation by adding a slight time delay to the bounce? Kind of an 'on contact, wait so-many-ticks-dependant-on-object, then resume bounce' with a different delay per object. I know it doesn't simulate reality per-se, but it seems that it would a computationaly-cheap hack to enhance realism. Or is something like that too obviously not real?
That's cool if it's done right, like in F.E.A.R., where the enemy actually does flank you (and you can plan accordingly). It's not ok when it's done in an arbitrary fashion like D3, where the monsters appear out of nowhere, for no reason. That just provokes feelings of unfairness (as opposed to 'damn, that was my own fault!') and breaks immersion...which is not a good thing in games.
Did you see how he's saying that the hardware is cheap, but what is costly is connectivity, applications and support?
Oddly enough, the exact reasons Windows was snubbed on the project. With an open source OS, the applications are free too, and the internet is your helpdesk.
Oh, and hardware IS expensive, especially for the people the thing is targetted at.
Read what the game is about: YOU DO NOT PLAY A BULLY BUT A KID BEING BULLIED!!!
It might even reform the bullies who are bound to play the game.
Again with the 'Rockstar Bully game will create bullies' meme.
For fucks sake; it is a game where you play a kid being bullied. If people play the game, they will understand what it's like to be bullied. If anything, that will reduce the number of bullies (and might even convert bullies who play the game and see what the're doing).
If I where Rockstar, I'd elevate the profile of that game by sueing legislators for defamation/slander/incorrect reporting/lying.
I'm just still amazed that newspapers and politicians can get away with not just distorting the truth but actively lying about something.
I so agree with you.
Simply put, the US now has the problem that money=speech. However, this also means that more money=more speech. There went 'one man, one vote', because more money means more influence means that the rich have more influence than the poor; essentially (big duh) money=power. But the world thought that that was not the idea in the US of A in the political process.
The real way it works is probably best depicted in the tv series Deadwood; I was surprised at how well that series showed how the US power structure came into being.
I'm surprised that the original poster didn't mention this: price! I'll be damned if I pay the same price for a pure electronic version as for a dead-tree book. With a digital distibution network, no shipping, no printing/production costs, an ebook should be WAY cheaper than it's paper counterpart. But instead, we sometimes even have to pay MORE for an ebook!?! As for the reader device itself...it's only now that teh right formfactor is coming out; paperback sized e-ink screens are EXACTLY what you want for ereading...even though I use my palmpilot t3 now (which I bought for all it's function plus the ereading), it does fall a bit short from something like the sony Libre (which sucks due to DRM) or that other-device-which-is-perfect-but-not-for-sale-yet -and-I-can't-be- bothered-to-look-up-a-link.
Then there's format wars; On my palm, to get the reading experience I want, I need three ereader apps; WTF? One for pdf, one for native palm docs, one for office (word, excell) (and don't tell me to use Documents to go; it's a crap reader with shit fullscreen). And I just cannot read native chm's on my palmpilot.
And then there's DRM; it sucks, is unneccesary and if I donload books illegally I wouldn't have to bother with it. As always, it's almost better to pirate sometyhing so you have no limitations in how you use it...DRM prevents fair use, and sometimes you want to quote bits of a book. Plus, I'd like to be able to read that book I purchased in ten yearrs time too, when my current reader device is a piece of landfill.
So, what will it take to get ebooks mainstream? Easy: cheap ebooks (at least a quarter of the price less than paper, but probably half) on a rugged functional device sporting a large e-ink screen with the possibility to read lots of files (pdf, office and chm minimum, and open source so you can get usermade plugins to read TeX or whatever other files you want [dxf, dwg!]).
AND DON'T USE DRM. My paper boosk isn't drm'ed, and I can photocopy/scan that too.
And I bet Linux won't need you to upgrade your monitor if you want to play back video with a higher resolution that [what was it? 960xsomething?]...until /that/ gets cracked, of course :)
:)
I swear...the two things that are really holding linux back are games and mayor industrial apps. But since they'll have to recode for Vista anyway, why don't the devs just say 'screw the MS tax!' and recode for linux?
As soon as johny can play his games on Linux, daddy won't have a problem chucking out his MS licence and using Open Office
The pessimist in me tells me that it's more because a)their religion dissallows the use of condoms (the pope is pro-aids :( )
b)when you have such high mortality rates, you need to have a large progency ('s why fish produce thousands of eggs)
There is a HUGE price difference between a protoype and a production model...a factor of at least ten, if not a hundred.
"like health care, education, construction, retirement benefits, etc."
It's just that when you look at the countries where these services are ranked as 'best in the world', these services are always provided by the government. Which is not so strange, as they have a non-profit mentality; j.random.company is directed by it's profit motive, and cost cutting gets profits up.
There's really only one way to respond to this.
The ONLY thing holding linux back from mass-acception is games and certain applications like CAD/CAM/simulation/3d (yes, there are a few crappy linux cad programs, and yes, Maya runs on redhat...so what?).
But with Vista, game/app programmers will have to recompile/code their applications anyway.
So why not convince them that now is the time? Drop windows; if you have to recode, why not recode for an OS that is free, extensible, transparent and does not restrict it's users? Mom&pop dont care what their VoIP/spreadsheet/browser/picture viewer runs on, but they do care that Vista will require a new monitor to view their new HD video on. Not only mom&pop-, but all the kids who want their mp3's to play, or the ability to edit and distribute video from their skiingtrip. Vista is not going to let you do this. Vista will not be adopted by many people. In fact, Vista will probably have even less of an adoptionrate than winxp (and that's pretty much the first OS which MS got right!)
"All other metals are worse than these four."
Alloys, however....
"reading "Das Kapital" and believing Marxist economics - [it's a really dull read] and the economics are transparently bogus"
Not entirely true...at the time it was published, Marx' view was valid prediction. It is only time which has shown Marx to be false, as the downward trend he predicted doesn't seem to happen in the manner he said.
The question you should ask is why the hell your company is giving you a "very high spec'd machine with dual-head 1600x1200 screens." if your work only "involves web/e-Mail/SSH access".
Really; is your company's IT department stupid? Is your company run by dot-com-bubble-wanna-be's who want to repeat the past? When your tasks are so system-resource-undemanding, why did they pay for that machine for you? You could do your work on a 486! Literally!
Thanks...this sounds like a nice practical application of my signals and systems course :)
Thing is, this isn't supposed to happen on the 'it just works' consoles. And trust MS to make the first (ok, second, after the original xbox) crashing console :)
Speaking of observers, here's an interesting tidbit. Last year, there was a guest lecture at Delft uni by one of the ?project managers? of the project (nice guy, american, worked with NASA and the american research uni who did a lot of the work on this probe).
It was a very interesting lecture, but at the end of it, during the Q&A part, one of the professors asked what amounted basically to this: "well, it's good and well that NASA created this purpose built satelite, but wasn't there recently an existing satelite which pretty much did the exact same measurement using it's gyro's?".
What followed was a short uncomfortable silence followed by a short diversionary answer and a quick 'any more questions?'.
Moral of the story? There's some really interesting science being done by NASA, but at it's heart it still has grown into a conventional, bloated organisation which can't think of a simple innovatively cheap solution to save it's life.
Look at China and the middle east. The tech was supplied by US companies. The FBI has recently retasked it's priorities from terrorism to porn. The internet is /the/ porn distribution network in the world. Re-read your post. Now who looks like an idiot?
"It's exactly the opposite of what the Internet is supposed to be, which is unmonitored and Free."
Yeah...I agree...but it's a cute theory which is rapidly turning into myth; reality is much different, and China et all point in the direction we don't want it to go, but which is all to probable.
"it is useful, and people like it."
So are cheap generic brandless drugs against HIV and many other sickness'...and they're gone now in India and pretty mnuch the rest of the world, thanks to the US interfereing in sovereign nation's IP/patent laws.
"So no, the internet isn't going to be flushed down the tubes by ISPs or whatever, because consumers will not allow it."
Yeah, 'cause if they'll allow it to happen to something which literally saves lives, they won't let it happen to a porn-distribution network.
Seriously, have you not heard of The Great Firewall of China? Supplied by US tech? Tech which now exists, and can be easily implemented anywhere in the world? Like it already is in many middle-eastern nations? And considering the insane FCC stance, and the FBI's recent retasking that puts porn on a higher priority than terrorism (google this one, please), do you really not think that mass-cencorship of the internet worldwide isn't at least a possibility? And is actually a fact for China, the Emirates etc etc?
Yeah, nice strawman. Unjust laws (all literally victimless crimes, like smoking pot) are broken by many more than a paltry million who break just laws (ones which hurt people) in the US.
Dude, Halo has been 'most anticipated game' at E3. Don't make yourself look stupid.
"Halo's E3 impressions was absolutely abysmal"
Not really;
"The press on this game was some of the worst I've ever, ever seen, calling it a "turd" would be one of the better previews I've heard."
Bullshit. Link me to one preview which said that, from one of the bigger gaming sites. Halo was pretty much universally praised (even if I thought it was a crap FPS).
"It was NEW in that it was a completely new IP with an all new engine"
New engine, yes, new IP, not really. Bungie was prettyy straightforwards in saying that there woiuld be lots of Marathon elements in the game.
"You seem to be rewriting history a smidgen with the "HUGE" following:"
Again, bullshit. You are the revisionist. As I said, link me some respected preview which dismissed Halo. Hell, I'll even accept Gamespy/Spot. But you won't find 'em. Halo was HUGE. Why do you think Microsoft bought Bungie so that Halo would launch on the xbox? Because Halo was HUGE.
Plato, having written all of Socrates' work, amongst which the apologia, would probably be stone dead and inert in his grave. Saying that there was any afterlife would have him spinning in his grave.