Yep, the issue with that is that to many editor out there won't do it correctly. Emacs for example will align with tabs if you auto-indent and things will break if you change the tab-width (at least by default, there is ELisp floating around to fix it).
I think Waves failure has a lot more to do with Google axing it then anything else. I mean seriously, the thing has been public for how long? Not even three month? How the hell did they expect "big huge success" in that time? I don't quite get how they can announce it, hype it and then kill before it had even a chance to gain some traction.
It is basically a Wiki with a build-in discussion system that doesn't suck. Or the other way around, a discussion system with a build in Wiki. Basically a tool in which you can get stuff done, instead of just do the talking.
The thing I don't get: Why wasn't there an easy way to create a public wave? Wasn't that thing meant to be integrated in your own webpages and stuff like that? How would have any of that worked without public waves? The thing felt like a Wiki that is invite-only, good for a few things, but to be truly usable you want the ability to open it up to the rest of the world.
I wanted, then I found at that it is currently not possible (or at least awkward via some email hack) to create a public wave, then I went away thinking "I'll try that again when its ready"... Guess that will now never happen, to bad, since it actually looked quite good for development discussions, brainstorming and all that other stuff that isn't quite a mailing list discussion and not quite a wiki either.
My biggest problems with the game so far where lack of narrative and lack of scale. You start right on the moon base right when stuff goes wrong and then have to do the clean up on a time limit. It would be much more interesting if you would start on earth, create your character and then work your way up through training, flight and then finally the landing before the moon base gameplay starts.
That the game limits itself to the base, instead of making more use of the scale of the moon is also a little disappointing. The whole multiplayer focus with leaderboards also seems a little off, as it shouldn't be about who can solve the same mission the fasted, but more about dynamically generated missions that provide interesting challenges. A few NPC wouldn't hurt either.
The game also suffered from some interface issues, clicking on things wasn't that easy as your character would often get in the way and the physics engine didn't exactly deal well with having two robots crashing into each other.
But overall, the atmosphere and graphics where nifty and for not being the final game, but just some beta it was quite nice.
If you want to make it fun then don't put it into a current day war, better yet, don't put it into any war that ever happened, as you will just end up twisting and mutilating history. If you need war then do some fancy fantasy or sci-fi or whatever that is far removed from reality. If you portrait current day war you have a responsibility to do it at least somewhat accurately.
Where is the study that without a doubt shows that there is more violence among gamers then among non-gamers? Unless you have shown that there is an effect it is rather pointless to look for the cause of that yet to be shown effect.
How a about a study without a predetermined result
on
Tracking the Harm Games Do
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
One thing that bugs me with all this study non-sense and the counter arguments is that they always have an extremely narrow field of view. It is either "they cause harm" or "they don't influence us at all", both are likely complete non-sense (even when done for humorous purpose as here).
What about general studies that simply discuss how child behaviour has changed over the years in more general terms instead of splitting it into good vs evil? Did video games cause less reading of books? Less watching of TV? Do people visit their friends more often due to the Wii or less often due to XboxLive? Or just how many hours spend kids with video games today compared to 10 or 20 years ago? How much of their allowance goes towards video games? How much power does a kid today use? Do they have a more realistic picture of war or a more twisted one? Did Google Earth improve geography skills and what not.
There are plenty of interesting questions that could be asked, where you could actually get at least some interesting result and people wouldn't all jump into defensive stance for their video games.
Back in those days your graphics card didn't even need cooling, todays card need a full slot just for the fan and heatsink, thus there is much more potential for heat and airflow issues.
Anyway, this sounds more like an issue with wasting power and battery, then an issue with "destroying video cards", as any game that makes full use of the GPU would give you the same trouble.
What would you change, if you were in Shuttleworth's shoes ?
Get rid of UbuntuOne and their other adventures into non-free land. Having proprietary software with the name of Ubuntu that once claimed to be an all Free Software distribution is just a little to weird.
"unstable" was and is a gamble, most of the time it will work fine, but every now and then it will stop your machine from booting and that is something that is just unacceptable for a normal user, especially when it can basically happen any day at random, not just at the big upgrading to a new distro day.
Ubuntu is simply what Debian stable should have been, but never managed to be. Tough luck for Debian, but they had more then enough time to get their release cycle under control, but failed to do so.
with basically no advertising other than word of mouth (which turned into news coverage)
And how often can you pull a stunt like this till it is no longer news? Neither Humble Indie bundle nor Radio Head are a good example of a working business model, as it is basically a one-off thing, it works the first few times, but as soon as everybody is doing it, it will basically fail, as you no longer will get free advertising via news.
Um...Flattr is a way of paying for the cool stuff. You just pay a flat rate each month.
It is a donation, not payment. You don't get anything when you click a flattr button, there is not even a way for the receiver to know who clicked his button and gave him money. So all stuff is free and people can donate via Flattr if they liked it, but they don't have to.
The important part with hosting services is that they have a good working data export, not that they run Open Source. In fact many Open Source based hosting solution have a rather incomplete data export, giving you lock-in even so it is all Open Source. No idea what Github allows you to export, but at least the core git repositories are trivial to move to a different host.
Seriously how hard was it to hook up the $2 three color coded RCA jacks?
Connecting five component RCA jacks (two of which having the same color) can get a little annoying, especially when you have to do it behind a heavy TV in the dark. And while SCART connectors could do the one-thing-for-everything ages ago, they were a little fragile and extremely inflexible at the same time and of course not good for HD-TV. So I really don't mind a bit ease of use that comes with HDMI. What kind of kills it however is the whole HDCP mess. For example you can't use a Playstation3 on your DVI monitor unless it is HDCP compliment, which is often not exactly easy to find out without buying a cable and just trying it.
Another messy thing is the lack of VCR support. Recording composite was easy, every VCR could do it, when it comes to HDMI things become much much trickier.
The only significant difference between Linux and the rest is how you get software. In Linux you get by far most of it from your distribution, on Windows you get most stuff from more or less trustworthy webpages, so it is much easier to catch something evil by accident.
In terms of actual security there really isn't much difference, as neither OS properly isolates applications by default and thus every evil tool has far more permissions then it needs.
The trouble aren't really the games that focus completly on multiplayer, but the games that do it as a lackluster sideshow. So instead of focusing all their development power on the singleplayer, they waste time on a second rate multiplayer mode that nobody is going to play anyway.
See Brütal Legend as a horrible example, instead of doing the proper singleplayer game that people wanted, they have created this hybrid of a ultra short singleplayer campaign combined with a lame multiplayer mode. It kind of boggles my mind how anybody could look at that concept and consider it a good idea. But there are of cause plenty of other games where the multilpayer mode is basically just there so that they can say "Hey, we have multiplayer to!".
If developers don't care enough about multiplayer to make it really good, they just should give up on it and focus on singleplayer, as a multiplayer that nobody plays is basically less then worthless. It is kind of the same with MMORPGs, you have to be really really good if you want to compete against WoW, if that is to much, then there is little point in even trying.
You complain that Japanese games 'just want you to watch it'... and your solution is to play 'Mass Effect', where you spend more time sitting through unskippable cut-scenes that don't even approach the level of the typical SF B-movie than you do actually playing your character?
Huh? Your description sounds nothing like 'Mass Effect'. The story is nothing like a B-Movie, in fact its probably among the most interesting Sci-Fi stories I have seen in a a long long while, the cutscenes where skippable as far as I remember and there weren't very many to begin with. The by far largest part of the game is dialog and a third-person tactic shooting. The game is basically everything that is right with gaming, engaging story (one that you actually play, not just watch), good dialog, lots of freedom and great gameplay. Some of the side missions could have been better in ME1 and in ME2 main story was a bit lacking, but overall those two games are easily the best that has happened to gaming in the last few years.
Tab itself are already a reinvention of the window, what this add-on does looks closer to reinventing the bookmark. As the way one can organize the tabs into categories and stuff is much closer to what you get today with bookmarks, then what you can do with tabs. Which raises the question how that is going to work in practice, as in practice I don't consider tabs to be permanent 'links' to webpages, but temporary containers, i.e. does your whole carefully created layout go down the toiled if you decide to use your "research" window for searching for the newest video game or whatever? Do you have to remember to always use a new window for a new webpage? Or is there magic working that makes webpages 'stick' to a tab? I think for this to work properly one might need to not only reinvent the tab, but also the way the forward/back buttons work, as their use doesn't really make much sense if you lay all tabs flat on a 2D plane.
Anyway, overall it looks like an interesting add-on and like an implementation of a zoomable interface that actually might work very well for some use cases and for those looking for a simpler enhancement for tabs there is always Tree Style Tabs.
My point is simply that a BSD style license grants me, as a recipient of code, more freedom/permissiveness than a GPL style license.
It is not the BSD license that gives you the freedom, but the nice upstream author that bothered to include the source code, which he had no obligation to do so under the BSDL.
But what I don't understand is why more games on consoles don't support keyboard and mouse as inputs.
Mapping input from one control device to another is not an easy problem to solve, just look at all the PC to console ports or visa verse, most suffers from rather huge control issues. There simply is no need to go through all that trouble when it doesn't provide any real benefit.
Also precision simply isn't really much of an important design goal, if it would be, we would all play with aim-bots as those beat unaided mouse controls quite easily.
How does a license which specifies what I may or may not do with something maximize my freedom?
"User" here refers to all the people that receives a piece of software. With the GPL the user will get the full source and can do with is what he wants. It is only when he wants to redistribute the software that he has a few limitations, limitations that guarantee that everybody else receives the same freedom as he has.
BSD style licenses on the other side give the developer freedom, including the freedom to not ship the source code to the user and mix in proprietary bits and pieces.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, the issue with that is that to many editor out there won't do it correctly. Emacs for example will align with tabs if you auto-indent and things will break if you change the tab-width (at least by default, there is ELisp floating around to fix it).
Can indent or astyle handle align correctly?
I think Waves failure has a lot more to do with Google axing it then anything else. I mean seriously, the thing has been public for how long? Not even three month? How the hell did they expect "big huge success" in that time? I don't quite get how they can announce it, hype it and then kill before it had even a chance to gain some traction.
It is basically a Wiki with a build-in discussion system that doesn't suck. Or the other way around, a discussion system with a build in Wiki. Basically a tool in which you can get stuff done, instead of just do the talking.
The thing I don't get: Why wasn't there an easy way to create a public wave? Wasn't that thing meant to be integrated in your own webpages and stuff like that? How would have any of that worked without public waves? The thing felt like a Wiki that is invite-only, good for a few things, but to be truly usable you want the ability to open it up to the rest of the world.
I wanted, then I found at that it is currently not possible (or at least awkward via some email hack) to create a public wave, then I went away thinking "I'll try that again when its ready"... Guess that will now never happen, to bad, since it actually looked quite good for development discussions, brainstorming and all that other stuff that isn't quite a mailing list discussion and not quite a wiki either.
My biggest problems with the game so far where lack of narrative and lack of scale. You start right on the moon base right when stuff goes wrong and then have to do the clean up on a time limit. It would be much more interesting if you would start on earth, create your character and then work your way up through training, flight and then finally the landing before the moon base gameplay starts.
That the game limits itself to the base, instead of making more use of the scale of the moon is also a little disappointing. The whole multiplayer focus with leaderboards also seems a little off, as it shouldn't be about who can solve the same mission the fasted, but more about dynamically generated missions that provide interesting challenges. A few NPC wouldn't hurt either.
The game also suffered from some interface issues, clicking on things wasn't that easy as your character would often get in the way and the physics engine didn't exactly deal well with having two robots crashing into each other.
But overall, the atmosphere and graphics where nifty and for not being the final game, but just some beta it was quite nice.
Seriously, it is a GAME, it is meant to be fun,
If you want to make it fun then don't put it into a current day war, better yet, don't put it into any war that ever happened, as you will just end up twisting and mutilating history. If you need war then do some fancy fantasy or sci-fi or whatever that is far removed from reality. If you portrait current day war you have a responsibility to do it at least somewhat accurately.
Where is the study that without a doubt shows that there is more violence among gamers then among non-gamers? Unless you have shown that there is an effect it is rather pointless to look for the cause of that yet to be shown effect.
One thing that bugs me with all this study non-sense and the counter arguments is that they always have an extremely narrow field of view. It is either "they cause harm" or "they don't influence us at all", both are likely complete non-sense (even when done for humorous purpose as here).
What about general studies that simply discuss how child behaviour has changed over the years in more general terms instead of splitting it into good vs evil? Did video games cause less reading of books? Less watching of TV? Do people visit their friends more often due to the Wii or less often due to XboxLive? Or just how many hours spend kids with video games today compared to 10 or 20 years ago? How much of their allowance goes towards video games? How much power does a kid today use? Do they have a more realistic picture of war or a more twisted one? Did Google Earth improve geography skills and what not.
There are plenty of interesting questions that could be asked, where you could actually get at least some interesting result and people wouldn't all jump into defensive stance for their video games.
Back in those days your graphics card didn't even need cooling, todays card need a full slot just for the fan and heatsink, thus there is much more potential for heat and airflow issues.
Anyway, this sounds more like an issue with wasting power and battery, then an issue with "destroying video cards", as any game that makes full use of the GPU would give you the same trouble.
You are likely thinking of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqLPHrCQr2I
What would you change, if you were in Shuttleworth's shoes ?
Get rid of UbuntuOne and their other adventures into non-free land. Having proprietary software with the name of Ubuntu that once claimed to be an all Free Software distribution is just a little to weird.
"unstable" was and is a gamble, most of the time it will work fine, but every now and then it will stop your machine from booting and that is something that is just unacceptable for a normal user, especially when it can basically happen any day at random, not just at the big upgrading to a new distro day.
Ubuntu is simply what Debian stable should have been, but never managed to be. Tough luck for Debian, but they had more then enough time to get their release cycle under control, but failed to do so.
with basically no advertising other than word of mouth (which turned into news coverage)
And how often can you pull a stunt like this till it is no longer news? Neither Humble Indie bundle nor Radio Head are a good example of a working business model, as it is basically a one-off thing, it works the first few times, but as soon as everybody is doing it, it will basically fail, as you no longer will get free advertising via news.
Um...Flattr is a way of paying for the cool stuff. You just pay a flat rate each month.
It is a donation, not payment. You don't get anything when you click a flattr button, there is not even a way for the receiver to know who clicked his button and gave him money. So all stuff is free and people can donate via Flattr if they liked it, but they don't have to.
The important part with hosting services is that they have a good working data export, not that they run Open Source. In fact many Open Source based hosting solution have a rather incomplete data export, giving you lock-in even so it is all Open Source. No idea what Github allows you to export, but at least the core git repositories are trivial to move to a different host.
Seriously how hard was it to hook up the $2 three color coded RCA jacks?
Connecting five component RCA jacks (two of which having the same color) can get a little annoying, especially when you have to do it behind a heavy TV in the dark. And while SCART connectors could do the one-thing-for-everything ages ago, they were a little fragile and extremely inflexible at the same time and of course not good for HD-TV. So I really don't mind a bit ease of use that comes with HDMI. What kind of kills it however is the whole HDCP mess. For example you can't use a Playstation3 on your DVI monitor unless it is HDCP compliment, which is often not exactly easy to find out without buying a cable and just trying it.
Another messy thing is the lack of VCR support. Recording composite was easy, every VCR could do it, when it comes to HDMI things become much much trickier.
The only significant difference between Linux and the rest is how you get software. In Linux you get by far most of it from your distribution, on Windows you get most stuff from more or less trustworthy webpages, so it is much easier to catch something evil by accident.
In terms of actual security there really isn't much difference, as neither OS properly isolates applications by default and thus every evil tool has far more permissions then it needs.
The trouble aren't really the games that focus completly on multiplayer, but the games that do it as a lackluster sideshow. So instead of focusing all their development power on the singleplayer, they waste time on a second rate multiplayer mode that nobody is going to play anyway.
See Brütal Legend as a horrible example, instead of doing the proper singleplayer game that people wanted, they have created this hybrid of a ultra short singleplayer campaign combined with a lame multiplayer mode. It kind of boggles my mind how anybody could look at that concept and consider it a good idea. But there are of cause plenty of other games where the multilpayer mode is basically just there so that they can say "Hey, we have multiplayer to!".
If developers don't care enough about multiplayer to make it really good, they just should give up on it and focus on singleplayer, as a multiplayer that nobody plays is basically less then worthless. It is kind of the same with MMORPGs, you have to be really really good if you want to compete against WoW, if that is to much, then there is little point in even trying.
You complain that Japanese games 'just want you to watch it'... and your solution is to play 'Mass Effect', where you spend more time sitting through unskippable cut-scenes that don't even approach the level of the typical SF B-movie than you do actually playing your character?
Huh? Your description sounds nothing like 'Mass Effect'. The story is nothing like a B-Movie, in fact its probably among the most interesting Sci-Fi stories I have seen in a a long long while, the cutscenes where skippable as far as I remember and there weren't very many to begin with. The by far largest part of the game is dialog and a third-person tactic shooting. The game is basically everything that is right with gaming, engaging story (one that you actually play, not just watch), good dialog, lots of freedom and great gameplay. Some of the side missions could have been better in ME1 and in ME2 main story was a bit lacking, but overall those two games are easily the best that has happened to gaming in the last few years.
Tab itself are already a reinvention of the window, what this add-on does looks closer to reinventing the bookmark. As the way one can organize the tabs into categories and stuff is much closer to what you get today with bookmarks, then what you can do with tabs. Which raises the question how that is going to work in practice, as in practice I don't consider tabs to be permanent 'links' to webpages, but temporary containers, i.e. does your whole carefully created layout go down the toiled if you decide to use your "research" window for searching for the newest video game or whatever? Do you have to remember to always use a new window for a new webpage? Or is there magic working that makes webpages 'stick' to a tab? I think for this to work properly one might need to not only reinvent the tab, but also the way the forward/back buttons work, as their use doesn't really make much sense if you lay all tabs flat on a 2D plane.
Anyway, overall it looks like an interesting add-on and like an implementation of a zoomable interface that actually might work very well for some use cases and for those looking for a simpler enhancement for tabs there is always Tree Style Tabs.
My point is simply that a BSD style license grants me, as a recipient of code, more freedom/permissiveness than a GPL style license.
It is not the BSD license that gives you the freedom, but the nice upstream author that bothered to include the source code, which he had no obligation to do so under the BSDL.
But what I don't understand is why more games on consoles don't support keyboard and mouse as inputs.
Mapping input from one control device to another is not an easy problem to solve, just look at all the PC to console ports or visa verse, most suffers from rather huge control issues. There simply is no need to go through all that trouble when it doesn't provide any real benefit.
Also precision simply isn't really much of an important design goal, if it would be, we would all play with aim-bots as those beat unaided mouse controls quite easily.
When I interpret this correctly you have around 9000 gun murders, while only 1800 knife murders, blunt objects only around 600.
How does a license which specifies what I may or may not do with something maximize my freedom?
"User" here refers to all the people that receives a piece of software. With the GPL the user will get the full source and can do with is what he wants. It is only when he wants to redistribute the software that he has a few limitations, limitations that guarantee that everybody else receives the same freedom as he has.
BSD style licenses on the other side give the developer freedom, including the freedom to not ship the source code to the user and mix in proprietary bits and pieces.