The catch is this : I don't see what role google can have in this.
Because Google has your search results, whereas the best any TV network can find out is the shows you like to watch. The latter gives them a vague idea of your preferences when you sit back to watch things that are passively pushed at you, whereas the former reveals a lot about what you're actively looking for. Just think about the recent AOL search leak, which revealed more about the users than anyone thought (or feared) was possible.
Seriously, though. $150 a year for your OS. It seems a bit shady to me. Do you apple fans have plans to skip eve/odd releases or something?
In the 11 or 12 years I've owned Macs (having been using them for 16), I've never once bought an OS upgrade, because I haven't felt that I've needed to. My longest-serving desktop Mac was an iMac DV running OS8.6 which I bought in 1999, and it was still running 8.6 when I finally retired it for a Tiger eMac late last year. I also have a 2000 Graphite iBook running 9.2, which I intend to keep using for as long as it stays alive.
Part of my reasoning is financial, of course, but another part is simple blunt pragmatism: if it works, don't fix it. Whatever Steve's Top Secret features for Leopard may be, I can't imagine them being so awesome that I'd feel compelled to upgrade from Tiger. (Hell, I haven't even 'upgraded' from Word 5.1 yet!:p )
Seeing the little 'DD' lurking in the menu bar of one of the Mac screenshots brought back memories. None of them good, admittedly, but still memories. How the hell did we get anything done when we were limited to 20Mb hard drives and (gak!) floppies?
Judging from TFA, my first exposure to a Mac (after using an Atari 520ST for a couple of years) was an already antiquated Mac Plus running System 3 - I remember that ugly-ass diamond desktop pattern. Even the hardly cutting-edge eMac I'm typing on now would look like HAL 9000 by comparison to my 1990 self. Yet ironically, for all the advances in presentation and power, my 1990 self could probably get the hang of using Tiger in a couple of hours, since all the basic operating principles are the same.
If the list is just 'personal computers' in the most general and literal sense rather than the generally accepted 'Wintel/IBM PC-compatibles' definition, then I'd also like to nominate:
On the Charlie Rose show last night, an ABC newscaster said that the U.S. and British governments spy on each other's citizens, doing things that would be illegal in their home countries, and share that information with each other.
That's the UKUSA programme (which despite the name also includes Australia and New Zealand), and it's been going on for decades. Any intercepts on US citizens that NSA isn't legally allowed to obtain directly, they get from GCHQ in England under the terms of UKUSA's intelligence sharing. GCHQ has no legal limits on what it can monitor on UK citizens in their own country, incidentally, so the British government basically gives whatever it finds to NSA without demanding anything in return. Another example of the poodle relationship.
...because there was very little for users. Backdrops in iChat? Spaces? I'd definitely call myself a Mac fan, but there was nothing here that made me go 'Wow, I must have Leopard for that feature!'
I didn't quite get this quote about Time Machine, either: "If your hard drive dies, you can buy a new hard drive, put it in your machine, and be right back where you were." So Time Machine backs up your HDD to the ether?;)
Seriously, Steve, how about something basic like improving the damn Finder, which is still very nearly as clunky and annoying as it was in 10.0? Or is that something you're saving for the next keynote that you don't want MS to photocopy?
It should be public policy to record all police activity, to protect officers against false claims of abuse, and also to protect the public against the possibility of such abuse. The same policy is needed in all other agencies with draconian powers of search seizure and arrest. In other words, any official with opportunity and motive for abuse of power should be monitored and recorded whenever they are on duty.
Don't limit it to law enforcement. Let's have all politicians and public officials videotaped whenever they're in public areas. And since we, the taxpayers, pay for their offices, those offices are technically public areas. If they claim they work for us, then they can't have any secrets from us in their work, can they?
Basically, if a 'public servant' (whether politician or civil servant) is on the clock, then the people who pay for them should have the right to see exactly what they're doing at any time. Playing trashcan basketball when they should be working? Fiddling their expenses? Beating up 'troublesome' citizens? Declaring war under false pretenses? We should know, and hold them accountable for it. These people do not rule us. We chose them to do a job for us. That's what they forget, at every level. It's high time that they were reminded they serve us. At our sufferance. If they wilfully do a bad job, they should be gone.
Wow...sucks for them. Too bad both Microsoft and Nintendo use digital controllers. Yes, there are varying values depending on the analog input (all human input is analog after all), but the output is now, always has been, and always will be, digital.
IIRC (it's been a while), the N64 'analogue' stick was actually a matrix of either 64x64 or 128x128 values, and therefore digital. So absolutely correct, Nintendo did (and probably still does) use entirely digital control systems, so this patent is even more bullshit than it already was.
To me, analogue controllers were those things attached to VCS-era non-Atari games consoles and second-division computers like the Dragon 32 that never self-centred properly and were almost impossible to play games with.
After hearing a lot of critical praise for BG&E, including from people I used to work with in the games magazine business, I decided to pick up the GC version (second-hand) and give it a try.
I'd heard it was something to do with a photojournalist fighting a conspiracy in a sci-fi/fantasy world, so that aspect of the game was expected. What I didn't expect was the heroine's sidekick to be a talking cartoon pig, along with a host of other characters who looked like refugees from Banjo-Kazooie. Kind of a 'WTF?' moment that threw me out of the game to begin with. And I bet I wasn't the only one.
I got past it, though, and started to enjoy the game as it opened up. Unfortunately, then my GC's memory card crapped out on me and lost my saved game, and I just couldn't face playing through the whole thing again. So I guess I'll never know how the story turned out. Shame.
That's really cool - one of those things that you think are a bit Clancy-ish, and are then geeked out by when you find that they really existed (like the hover platforms from MGS3). The question is, of course: what replaced CC-2 and CLC-1? Any techno-thriller fan would demand some kind of super-secret nuclear-powered megaship constantly circling the globe without ever turning into port, with packs of bad guys just waiting for the ideal moment to strike and take it over...
If the Virtual Console is based on a subscription rather than a pay per software model it will blow away XBOX live. I would gladly buy a Wii and $10/month subscription to play any NES/SNES/N64 game ever made. If people have to buy them though it will never take off.
Yeah, like that disastrous flop iTunes - oh, wait a minute...
I've never played FFVIII, but I thought FFVII was an involving story spoiled by endless random monster attacks and boss battles...
I never actually finished it, because I got stuck on one particular boss battle, and just couldn't face drudging back from the save point and sitting through the same dialogue over and over again only to be killed because I hadn't built up the character's spells or stats or whatever the 'right' way.
If a game's selling itself on its story, why can't it have a 'just pretend I won this tedious battle, give me the minimum XP, and let me find out what happens next' option? I don't have to beat a challenge to watch the next chapter on a DVD!
My local Asda just installed four self-checkouts. In the few times I've used them, I've only once gone through without needing the attending cashier to come and authorise something. Since there's only one cashier attending all four machines, if he's handling somebody else's problem you have to stand there and wait while the machine screeches "UNRECOGNISED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA! PLEASE SEEK ASSISTANCE!" over and over again. The only way it speeds things up is if there's no queue, you have at most two items, they don't require weighing, and you're not buying anything that needs an age check (ie, alcohol).
Also, because of the way they're set out, you end up with a milling clump of people blocking the main aisle, none of whom know whose turn it is next. If they'd put the machines at the *end* of the line of checkouts they would have had the space to set up a single-queueing system like at a bank, but noooo...
The really annoying thing is that the place used to have five basket-only lanes. Now it only has two. So you have to wait around for longer whichever you use. Yes, that's progress.
I'm pretty sure that the distance a person can see increases with the different weapons they fight with. In particular, a person with brawling or stickfighting capabilities can only see a short distance, while gunfighters can perceive targets a bit further. F-15 pilots have pretty good eyesight, and can typically spot a missile or aircraft at ranges in excess of 400 km, much further than other humans.
So if I trade in my stick for an F-15, my vision will improve by a factor of one hundred? Awesome!
The 12 principles are based on three main areas: choice for computer manufacturers and customers, opportunities for developers, and interoperability for users
I guess 'choice for users' was to have been the 13th step, but MS thought it would be unlucky.
Optimus Prime? Bah! Peter Cullen will always be KARR to me. (Even though he wasn't in KARR's second appearance.:p) "I have checked my data on basic human desires. Therefore, I understand your needs. You wish to eat. You wish to drink. You wish to reproduce. Which one first?"
So MS are now directly attacking Apple's most successful market. That "taking food from our plate" quote from MS against Google a week or so back cuts both ways, you know. How long before Apple decides to retaliate with a direct attack on Microsoft's market, say by incorporating a virtualisation layer into OS X that lets you run Windows software - without needing to buy a copy of Windows?
That would probably lead to all-out nuclear war between the two companies. And it would be mutually assured destruction in the long term, because without Apple, Microsoft would have no R&D department...:p
If these proteins are so bad, and so easy to genetically engineer out, then from an evolutionary standpoint, why do we have these genes?
Because evolution takes a loooooong time to make changes. You're still born with an appendix, after all, even though it serves no useful function for modern humans.
What all the wannabes apparently failed to spot was that the GTA series mocked first the mobster, and then the gangsta genres. Anyone who listened to the radio stations (never mind playing some of the missions) in Vice City and thought the game was in any way taking itself seriously needed their head examining. The same applied to San Andreas once CJ escaped from the oddly humourless Los Santos missions in the first part of the game. As soon as he met up with The Truth, all bets were off.
Part of the fun of the GTA series is seeing how a bunch of weirdoes in Scotland will take the piss out of American pop-trash culture in the next mission - but the (US-developed) imitators all missed the point and played the whole thing straight. No wonder people got bored very quickly - if you're not taking the piss, there's literally nothing to hold your attention.
Slashdot Mirror
The catch is this : I don't see what role google can have in this.
Because Google has your search results, whereas the best any TV network can find out is the shows you like to watch. The latter gives them a vague idea of your preferences when you sit back to watch things that are passively pushed at you, whereas the former reveals a lot about what you're actively looking for. Just think about the recent AOL search leak, which revealed more about the users than anyone thought (or feared) was possible.
Seriously, though. $150 a year for your OS. It seems a bit shady to me. Do you apple fans have plans to skip eve/odd releases or something?
:p )
In the 11 or 12 years I've owned Macs (having been using them for 16), I've never once bought an OS upgrade, because I haven't felt that I've needed to. My longest-serving desktop Mac was an iMac DV running OS8.6 which I bought in 1999, and it was still running 8.6 when I finally retired it for a Tiger eMac late last year. I also have a 2000 Graphite iBook running 9.2, which I intend to keep using for as long as it stays alive.
Part of my reasoning is financial, of course, but another part is simple blunt pragmatism: if it works, don't fix it. Whatever Steve's Top Secret features for Leopard may be, I can't imagine them being so awesome that I'd feel compelled to upgrade from Tiger. (Hell, I haven't even 'upgraded' from Word 5.1 yet!
Seeing the little 'DD' lurking in the menu bar of one of the Mac screenshots brought back memories. None of them good, admittedly, but still memories. How the hell did we get anything done when we were limited to 20Mb hard drives and (gak!) floppies?
Judging from TFA, my first exposure to a Mac (after using an Atari 520ST for a couple of years) was an already antiquated Mac Plus running System 3 - I remember that ugly-ass diamond desktop pattern. Even the hardly cutting-edge eMac I'm typing on now would look like HAL 9000 by comparison to my 1990 self. Yet ironically, for all the advances in presentation and power, my 1990 self could probably get the hang of using Tiger in a couple of hours, since all the basic operating principles are the same.
If the list is just 'personal computers' in the most general and literal sense rather than the generally accepted 'Wintel/IBM PC-compatibles' definition, then I'd also like to nominate:
:p
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K
Psion Series 5
And yes, I am British. What gave it away?
On the Charlie Rose show last night, an ABC newscaster said that the U.S. and British governments spy on each other's citizens, doing things that would be illegal in their home countries, and share that information with each other.
That's the UKUSA programme (which despite the name also includes Australia and New Zealand), and it's been going on for decades. Any intercepts on US citizens that NSA isn't legally allowed to obtain directly, they get from GCHQ in England under the terms of UKUSA's intelligence sharing. GCHQ has no legal limits on what it can monitor on UK citizens in their own country, incidentally, so the British government basically gives whatever it finds to NSA without demanding anything in return. Another example of the poodle relationship.
Is TurboMan related to Johnny Turbo, by any chance?
...because there was very little for users. Backdrops in iChat? Spaces? I'd definitely call myself a Mac fan, but there was nothing here that made me go 'Wow, I must have Leopard for that feature!'
;)
I didn't quite get this quote about Time Machine, either: "If your hard drive dies, you can buy a new hard drive, put it in your machine, and be right back where you were." So Time Machine backs up your HDD to the ether?
Seriously, Steve, how about something basic like improving the damn Finder, which is still very nearly as clunky and annoying as it was in 10.0? Or is that something you're saving for the next keynote that you don't want MS to photocopy?
It should be public policy to record all police activity, to protect officers against false claims of abuse, and also to protect the public against the possibility of such abuse. The same policy is needed in all other agencies with draconian powers of search seizure and arrest. In other words, any official with opportunity and motive for abuse of power should be monitored and recorded whenever they are on duty.
Don't limit it to law enforcement. Let's have all politicians and public officials videotaped whenever they're in public areas. And since we, the taxpayers, pay for their offices, those offices are technically public areas. If they claim they work for us, then they can't have any secrets from us in their work, can they?
Basically, if a 'public servant' (whether politician or civil servant) is on the clock, then the people who pay for them should have the right to see exactly what they're doing at any time. Playing trashcan basketball when they should be working? Fiddling their expenses? Beating up 'troublesome' citizens? Declaring war under false pretenses? We should know, and hold them accountable for it. These people do not rule us. We chose them to do a job for us. That's what they forget, at every level. It's high time that they were reminded they serve us. At our sufferance. If they wilfully do a bad job, they should be gone.
So one by one, we're losing those freedoms. Eventually, 'they' won't hate us any more! Brilliant!
Wow...sucks for them. Too bad both Microsoft and Nintendo use digital controllers. Yes, there are varying values depending on the analog input (all human input is analog after all), but the output is now, always has been, and always will be, digital.
IIRC (it's been a while), the N64 'analogue' stick was actually a matrix of either 64x64 or 128x128 values, and therefore digital. So absolutely correct, Nintendo did (and probably still does) use entirely digital control systems, so this patent is even more bullshit than it already was.
To me, analogue controllers were those things attached to VCS-era non-Atari games consoles and second-division computers like the Dragon 32 that never self-centred properly and were almost impossible to play games with.
After hearing a lot of critical praise for BG&E, including from people I used to work with in the games magazine business, I decided to pick up the GC version (second-hand) and give it a try.
I'd heard it was something to do with a photojournalist fighting a conspiracy in a sci-fi/fantasy world, so that aspect of the game was expected. What I didn't expect was the heroine's sidekick to be a talking cartoon pig, along with a host of other characters who looked like refugees from Banjo-Kazooie. Kind of a 'WTF?' moment that threw me out of the game to begin with. And I bet I wasn't the only one.
I got past it, though, and started to enjoy the game as it opened up. Unfortunately, then my GC's memory card crapped out on me and lost my saved game, and I just couldn't face playing through the whole thing again. So I guess I'll never know how the story turned out. Shame.
Awesome! Now John Connor has a defence against shape-shifting Terminators!
Wiki on the USS Wright
That's really cool - one of those things that you think are a bit Clancy-ish, and are then geeked out by when you find that they really existed (like the hover platforms from MGS3). The question is, of course: what replaced CC-2 and CLC-1? Any techno-thriller fan would demand some kind of super-secret nuclear-powered megaship constantly circling the globe without ever turning into port, with packs of bad guys just waiting for the ideal moment to strike and take it over...
The lead singer of Coldplay is behind the Wii? I'm sold!
Or, sent to sleep by his turgid dronings. One or the other.
If the Virtual Console is based on a subscription rather than a pay per software model it will blow away XBOX live. I would gladly buy a Wii and $10/month subscription to play any NES/SNES/N64 game ever made. If people have to buy them though it will never take off.
Yeah, like that disastrous flop iTunes - oh, wait a minute...
I've never played FFVIII, but I thought FFVII was an involving story spoiled by endless random monster attacks and boss battles...
I never actually finished it, because I got stuck on one particular boss battle, and just couldn't face drudging back from the save point and sitting through the same dialogue over and over again only to be killed because I hadn't built up the character's spells or stats or whatever the 'right' way.
If a game's selling itself on its story, why can't it have a 'just pretend I won this tedious battle, give me the minimum XP, and let me find out what happens next' option? I don't have to beat a challenge to watch the next chapter on a DVD!
My local Asda just installed four self-checkouts. In the few times I've used them, I've only once gone through without needing the attending cashier to come and authorise something. Since there's only one cashier attending all four machines, if he's handling somebody else's problem you have to stand there and wait while the machine screeches "UNRECOGNISED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA! PLEASE SEEK ASSISTANCE!" over and over again. The only way it speeds things up is if there's no queue, you have at most two items, they don't require weighing, and you're not buying anything that needs an age check (ie, alcohol).
Also, because of the way they're set out, you end up with a milling clump of people blocking the main aisle, none of whom know whose turn it is next. If they'd put the machines at the *end* of the line of checkouts they would have had the space to set up a single-queueing system like at a bank, but noooo...
The really annoying thing is that the place used to have five basket-only lanes. Now it only has two. So you have to wait around for longer whichever you use. Yes, that's progress.
I'm pretty sure that the distance a person can see increases with the different weapons they fight with. In particular, a person with brawling or stickfighting capabilities can only see a short distance, while gunfighters can perceive targets a bit further. F-15 pilots have pretty good eyesight, and can typically spot a missile or aircraft at ranges in excess of 400 km, much further than other humans.
So if I trade in my stick for an F-15, my vision will improve by a factor of one hundred? Awesome!
The 12 principles are based on three main areas: choice for computer manufacturers and customers, opportunities for developers, and interoperability for users
I guess 'choice for users' was to have been the 13th step, but MS thought it would be unlucky.
I for one... what, too obvious? Dammit!
Optimus Prime? Bah! Peter Cullen will always be KARR to me. (Even though he wasn't in KARR's second appearance. :p) "I have checked my data on basic human desires. Therefore, I understand your needs. You wish to eat. You wish to drink. You wish to reproduce. Which one first?"
So MS are now directly attacking Apple's most successful market. That "taking food from our plate" quote from MS against Google a week or so back cuts both ways, you know. How long before Apple decides to retaliate with a direct attack on Microsoft's market, say by incorporating a virtualisation layer into OS X that lets you run Windows software - without needing to buy a copy of Windows?
:p
That would probably lead to all-out nuclear war between the two companies. And it would be mutually assured destruction in the long term, because without Apple, Microsoft would have no R&D department...
a) a game developer
...
why am I working 50 hours a week to create something mediocre
I admire your honesty! But as Jack Bauer would say, "Who do you work for?" Just so I can, y'know, avoid their 'mediocre' games.
If these proteins are so bad, and so easy to genetically engineer out, then from an evolutionary standpoint, why do we have these genes?
Because evolution takes a loooooong time to make changes. You're still born with an appendix, after all, even though it serves no useful function for modern humans.
What all the wannabes apparently failed to spot was that the GTA series mocked first the mobster, and then the gangsta genres. Anyone who listened to the radio stations (never mind playing some of the missions) in Vice City and thought the game was in any way taking itself seriously needed their head examining. The same applied to San Andreas once CJ escaped from the oddly humourless Los Santos missions in the first part of the game. As soon as he met up with The Truth, all bets were off.
Part of the fun of the GTA series is seeing how a bunch of weirdoes in Scotland will take the piss out of American pop-trash culture in the next mission - but the (US-developed) imitators all missed the point and played the whole thing straight. No wonder people got bored very quickly - if you're not taking the piss, there's literally nothing to hold your attention.