Those don't work for me. I don't know if it's just me, but when I place my hands on a regular keyboard, the position they are in is the natural position. Maybe I spend too much time on a keyboard when I was still growing, and my hands are stuck that way. Anyway, an "ergonomic" keyboard causes me more more pain than the old fashioned ones.
I go right handed at work, and left handed at home. It helps when you can switch hands. I also use trackballs. They are much easier. It's more like using a keyboard. You don't have to move your entire arm, just to move the cursor on the screen.
I have switched over to a trackball for this very reason. I find it much easier on my wrist. Because the trackball is always in the same spot, it's much easier to keep it in the right spot, so that i'm not reaching for it, or have it in some other awkward position.
But saving the princess is not a childish endeavour. Kids don't even like girls, and think they are icky. They'd rather sling mud at the girl, than save her. Look at all the action movies out there. They are all about getting the girl.
I though the RAM manufacturers were already convicted of price fixing. We've known this for a long time. Also, RAM you buy is at retail value. Obviously these laptops will have a cost value of $100, and will be sold for no profit.
This is where I think MS went wrong with ASP.Net. They are trying to get you to remove the presentation from the code. In the end, the code creates the presentation. All the good projects already had the non-presentation code separated from the prestation code. Now they are trying to remove the presentation code from the presentation. This was a little bit too much removed, and now we can't write HTML in loops, but we have to put all our HTML into constant strings, with no code highlighting.
Yeah, but you're paying for britannica. I'd really expect them to have less than 3 errors per article. Wikipedia is a free enclopedia by the people, for the people. It will get better if the community gets bigger. There's a lot of stuff you'll find in wikipedia that you won't find in britannica, because people can write about whatever they want.
Why does cartoon = childish? Southpark is a cartoon, but I wouldn't want my kids watching it. Just because they don't try to make the games look like real life, doesn't mean they are childish. It just means they are going for a different effect. If they wanted them to look real, then they would. Truth is, games that look too real end up immersing you less because you stop using your imagination. Maybe if you have no imagination, then it doesn't matter. Just because mario doesn't have a gun, doesn't mean he's childish. Does violence=adult? what exactly defines and adult game, and what make nintendo's games non adult?
Yeah PS really messes with my brain. Where is the Circle button again? what about triangle and X? Which button do I press is right. Maybe they think this way because they are used to PS, where they really do have no idea which button they are supposed to press at the menus.
AI and physics isn't really a limitation of the processor, its a limitation of the developers. It takes a lot of research to get convincing AI and physics, and most developers aren't spending (wasting) their time on that. Most of them spend their time on graphics, because they think, if it doesn't look good, people won't buy it. There's no reason why we couldn't have had advanced AI on the last generation, but developers aren't interested in providing this.
In case you didn't realize, Nintendo did this for a reason. At the time, optical media was deathly slow. N64 chose to stick with cartidges so that they wouldn't have loading times. I applaud them for this. Loading times on the PS1 were terrible. Same goes for the GameCube. It has much better load times (most of the time not even having load times), which is greate compared to the XBox and PS2. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the disc. Also, Nintendo games don't cost any more than PS2 or XBox, so the fact that they control the manufacturing means nothing. I applaud Nintendo for keeping loading times out of games, where everyone else has failed.
Yeah, used games are nice. I got Metriod Prime at EB for 12 $CDN. It's an amazing game. There's a lot of really good games for really cheap. Walmart has a whole bin of games for 18$. Even unused older games go for around $30. Zelda and mario sunshine are good examples. When you can get the system and six games for less than the price of just the system from the other guys, you're going to be having much more fun.
But what percentage of people own HD TVs? What percentage of people who play video games own HD TVs? The target market of a game console is probably mostly males, from the ages of 10 - 30. Of those who still live with their parents, many may have HD TVs, but probably don't have access to it to play video games all that often since the parents paid for the TV and probably want to use it. They are stuck using the old standard TV to play the video games. I think that many of the parents still have the attitude that games ruin the TV, and won't even let the console near the expensive HDTV. Also, those that have moved out are in college, or recently out of college, or never went to college. Not many people in these situations are out spending the megabucks on the expensive TV. So, the verdict is still out, because although the system does have better graphics when used right, most people won't notice.
Yeah, I find that Nintendo GC is the best system currently. You can get one for $100, and games and accessories are cheap. It's probably the best for people who aren't hardcore. They have that giant green A button, which you hit 95% of the time. the other buttons are easily accessible from the "home" button. You always know what button you are pressing, because they all have a different fell. I think this helps a lot when you are trying to learn new controls to new games.
I think we should really be looking at the third player in the next gen of consoles. Sure XBox 360 and PS3 look to have really fast hardware, and look really pretty, but the Revolution actually looks like it will be doing something new and interesting. After reading about how the new King Kong game being put down by it's own developers for being not so good on the 360 unless you have a flashy new TV, as few people do, It's beginning to become apparent that maybe graphics won't matter all that much in the next generation. With the last 7 generations of consoles, we've seen graphics get noticable better every time. I'm not sure people will notice or care that much about the graphics this time. Most people still have a standard TV, and probably won't be able to tell the difference. Instead, I see many people, looking for something fun, which Nintendo has always provided. Not to mention that the Revo will be around 1/2 the price of the PS3 or the Xbox 360.
I thought that server certificate and SSL were supposed to fix this. You lookup the IP of your bank through DNS, and it doesn't match the IP on the certificate, shouldn't your browser give you a warning? Then you encrypt the data going to that IP with the public key of the server. If you look at the certificate you can verify that it belongs to your bank, and therefore, all information you send out, should only be readable by the bank. Unless their private key has been comprimised. Which i think is another problem altogether.
The problem with this is that a lot of it is based on perception. I thought i'd try out your suggestions of courier, verdana, and georgia. I didn't like it at all. Georgia looks like crap to me. Sorry that's just they way it is. What looks good and is readable to one person looks terrible and is unreadable to another. If there's a specific reason to use a specific font, like in logos and such, then use an image, otherwise, they won't be seeing it for sure anyway. For text of any length such as paragraphs, it's important to use the default font, because that is what they are most used to, and will have the easiest time reading.
We already have this. The fonts are Monospace, Sans-Serif, Serif, and bold/italic versions of these. The user of the web browser can decide which specific fonts are good for representing those less specific fonts. Not all operating systems support the same font formats, and therefore it would be hard to make a single Monospace font that would work well on all devices. Also, depending on the screen resolution and DPI, even if they have the same font, it won't look the same when it comes up anyway. It might take up more or less space depending on lots of different factors. Instead, just use the three fonts outlined above. You can make your site look pretty good with just those fonts, using them in the right places.
But most companies don't have that long term vision. I know that in the long run, software would be much better off if we had software engineers doing it, that took the time to do it properly. The hard part is convincing the companies that it is really in their best interest. Companies work on a project by project basis, and as long as the project is good enough, that's all they want. They don't think about how well the project will work with other projects, or whether an extemely similar project has been done before. In software this is important, and can save them tons of time and money, but they haven't figured this out yet.
You might want to remember that university experience usually isn't counted as experience. There is on the other hand many job colleges teaching.Net, and many managers who don't know what their doing, hiring people who graduated from job colleges even though they may not really know what they are doing. Many projects in.Net are able to use these people, because they can drag and drop controls, and program simple things. Which is all they need them for. Demand for Java seems higher because it takes there is less supply. There are lots of people out there that although they know the Java language, do not know enough to be able to be active members of the development team. However, in.Net, you only need to know very little to be an active member of the development team.
I graduated from an accredited program in software engineering. Granted I don't have my P. Eng. yet, but I still think that software engineering is still a real profession. My current job is a software developer. I wouldn't call it software engineering by a long shot. I don't think many companies care about having software that is engineered. They don't want to take the time or the money to do it right. The software they are getting with their current methods is good enough. Only the military and NASA currently see a need to make sure things are actually engineered. If all companies wanted their software engineered, it would cost 10 times as much, and take 10 times as long to get done.
The only people I knew who took 6 or 7 years to get their engineering degree are those who failed many courses, sometimes more than once, and only go through by the skin of their teeth after being put on academic probation a couple times. Most people I know either did it in the 8 semesters or 9 semesters. It might have taken 5 calendar years because of Co-op programs and such, but they knew it was going to take that long. The course load is heavy, and it's a lot of work, but you can get your degree in 4 years. If you are taking 6 or 7 years, you are either failing a bunch of courses, or having a more relaxed courseload than everyone else in the engineering program.
The fact that you see more jobs on Monster just says that the available jobs have trouble finding qualified people, not that there are more jobs..Net jobs are very easy to fill, because there's lots of people with.Net experience. Java jobs are harder to fill, because there are fewer people with Java experience.
Everybody seems to think that these people are really stupid. But firstly, I think people on slashdot are into technology, and therefore know what is and isn't possible. Also, these people have no reason not to believe the producers aren't telling them the truth. The Milgram Experiment show that people will do stuff that they don't want to do, just because some guy in a white suit says that they should. I believe this shows that people are going to believe the guy in the white suit, even if what he says is a little far fetched.
Slashdot Mirror
No, people who use windows and therefore have to do everything with a GUI because their commandline sucks so much.
Those don't work for me. I don't know if it's just me, but when I place my hands on a regular keyboard, the position they are in is the natural position. Maybe I spend too much time on a keyboard when I was still growing, and my hands are stuck that way. Anyway, an "ergonomic" keyboard causes me more more pain than the old fashioned ones.
I go right handed at work, and left handed at home. It helps when you can switch hands. I also use trackballs. They are much easier. It's more like using a keyboard. You don't have to move your entire arm, just to move the cursor on the screen.
I have switched over to a trackball for this very reason. I find it much easier on my wrist. Because the trackball is always in the same spot, it's much easier to keep it in the right spot, so that i'm not reaching for it, or have it in some other awkward position.
But saving the princess is not a childish endeavour. Kids don't even like girls, and think they are icky. They'd rather sling mud at the girl, than save her. Look at all the action movies out there. They are all about getting the girl.
I though the RAM manufacturers were already convicted of price fixing. We've known this for a long time. Also, RAM you buy is at retail value. Obviously these laptops will have a cost value of $100, and will be sold for no profit.
This is where I think MS went wrong with ASP.Net. They are trying to get you to remove the presentation from the code. In the end, the code creates the presentation. All the good projects already had the non-presentation code separated from the prestation code. Now they are trying to remove the presentation code from the presentation. This was a little bit too much removed, and now we can't write HTML in loops, but we have to put all our HTML into constant strings, with no code highlighting.
Yeah, but you're paying for britannica. I'd really expect them to have less than 3 errors per article. Wikipedia is a free enclopedia by the people, for the people. It will get better if the community gets bigger. There's a lot of stuff you'll find in wikipedia that you won't find in britannica, because people can write about whatever they want.
Why does cartoon = childish? Southpark is a cartoon, but I wouldn't want my kids watching it. Just because they don't try to make the games look like real life, doesn't mean they are childish. It just means they are going for a different effect. If they wanted them to look real, then they would. Truth is, games that look too real end up immersing you less because you stop using your imagination. Maybe if you have no imagination, then it doesn't matter. Just because mario doesn't have a gun, doesn't mean he's childish. Does violence=adult? what exactly defines and adult game, and what make nintendo's games non adult?
Yeah PS really messes with my brain. Where is the Circle button again? what about triangle and X? Which button do I press is right. Maybe they think this way because they are used to PS, where they really do have no idea which button they are supposed to press at the menus.
AI and physics isn't really a limitation of the processor, its a limitation of the developers. It takes a lot of research to get convincing AI and physics, and most developers aren't spending (wasting) their time on that. Most of them spend their time on graphics, because they think, if it doesn't look good, people won't buy it. There's no reason why we couldn't have had advanced AI on the last generation, but developers aren't interested in providing this.
In case you didn't realize, Nintendo did this for a reason. At the time, optical media was deathly slow. N64 chose to stick with cartidges so that they wouldn't have loading times. I applaud them for this. Loading times on the PS1 were terrible. Same goes for the GameCube. It has much better load times (most of the time not even having load times), which is greate compared to the XBox and PS2. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the disc. Also, Nintendo games don't cost any more than PS2 or XBox, so the fact that they control the manufacturing means nothing. I applaud Nintendo for keeping loading times out of games, where everyone else has failed.
Yeah, used games are nice. I got Metriod Prime at EB for 12 $CDN. It's an amazing game. There's a lot of really good games for really cheap. Walmart has a whole bin of games for 18$. Even unused older games go for around $30. Zelda and mario sunshine are good examples. When you can get the system and six games for less than the price of just the system from the other guys, you're going to be having much more fun.
But what percentage of people own HD TVs? What percentage of people who play video games own HD TVs? The target market of a game console is probably mostly males, from the ages of 10 - 30. Of those who still live with their parents, many may have HD TVs, but probably don't have access to it to play video games all that often since the parents paid for the TV and probably want to use it. They are stuck using the old standard TV to play the video games. I think that many of the parents still have the attitude that games ruin the TV, and won't even let the console near the expensive HDTV. Also, those that have moved out are in college, or recently out of college, or never went to college. Not many people in these situations are out spending the megabucks on the expensive TV. So, the verdict is still out, because although the system does have better graphics when used right, most people won't notice.
Yeah, I find that Nintendo GC is the best system currently. You can get one for $100, and games and accessories are cheap. It's probably the best for people who aren't hardcore. They have that giant green A button, which you hit 95% of the time. the other buttons are easily accessible from the "home" button. You always know what button you are pressing, because they all have a different fell. I think this helps a lot when you are trying to learn new controls to new games.
I think we should really be looking at the third player in the next gen of consoles. Sure XBox 360 and PS3 look to have really fast hardware, and look really pretty, but the Revolution actually looks like it will be doing something new and interesting. After reading about how the new King Kong game being put down by it's own developers for being not so good on the 360 unless you have a flashy new TV, as few people do, It's beginning to become apparent that maybe graphics won't matter all that much in the next generation. With the last 7 generations of consoles, we've seen graphics get noticable better every time. I'm not sure people will notice or care that much about the graphics this time. Most people still have a standard TV, and probably won't be able to tell the difference. Instead, I see many people, looking for something fun, which Nintendo has always provided. Not to mention that the Revo will be around 1/2 the price of the PS3 or the Xbox 360.
I thought that server certificate and SSL were supposed to fix this. You lookup the IP of your bank through DNS, and it doesn't match the IP on the certificate, shouldn't your browser give you a warning? Then you encrypt the data going to that IP with the public key of the server. If you look at the certificate you can verify that it belongs to your bank, and therefore, all information you send out, should only be readable by the bank. Unless their private key has been comprimised. Which i think is another problem altogether.
The problem with this is that a lot of it is based on perception. I thought i'd try out your suggestions of courier, verdana, and georgia. I didn't like it at all. Georgia looks like crap to me. Sorry that's just they way it is. What looks good and is readable to one person looks terrible and is unreadable to another. If there's a specific reason to use a specific font, like in logos and such, then use an image, otherwise, they won't be seeing it for sure anyway. For text of any length such as paragraphs, it's important to use the default font, because that is what they are most used to, and will have the easiest time reading.
We already have this. The fonts are Monospace, Sans-Serif, Serif, and bold/italic versions of these. The user of the web browser can decide which specific fonts are good for representing those less specific fonts. Not all operating systems support the same font formats, and therefore it would be hard to make a single Monospace font that would work well on all devices. Also, depending on the screen resolution and DPI, even if they have the same font, it won't look the same when it comes up anyway. It might take up more or less space depending on lots of different factors. Instead, just use the three fonts outlined above. You can make your site look pretty good with just those fonts, using them in the right places.
But most companies don't have that long term vision. I know that in the long run, software would be much better off if we had software engineers doing it, that took the time to do it properly. The hard part is convincing the companies that it is really in their best interest. Companies work on a project by project basis, and as long as the project is good enough, that's all they want. They don't think about how well the project will work with other projects, or whether an extemely similar project has been done before. In software this is important, and can save them tons of time and money, but they haven't figured this out yet.
You might want to remember that university experience usually isn't counted as experience. There is on the other hand many job colleges teaching .Net, and many managers who don't know what their doing, hiring people who graduated from job colleges even though they may not really know what they are doing. Many projects in .Net are able to use these people, because they can drag and drop controls, and program simple things. Which is all they need them for. Demand for Java seems higher because it takes there is less supply. There are lots of people out there that although they know the Java language, do not know enough to be able to be active members of the development team. However, in .Net, you only need to know very little to be an active member of the development team.
I graduated from an accredited program in software engineering. Granted I don't have my P. Eng. yet, but I still think that software engineering is still a real profession. My current job is a software developer. I wouldn't call it software engineering by a long shot. I don't think many companies care about having software that is engineered. They don't want to take the time or the money to do it right. The software they are getting with their current methods is good enough. Only the military and NASA currently see a need to make sure things are actually engineered. If all companies wanted their software engineered, it would cost 10 times as much, and take 10 times as long to get done.
The only people I knew who took 6 or 7 years to get their engineering degree are those who failed many courses, sometimes more than once, and only go through by the skin of their teeth after being put on academic probation a couple times. Most people I know either did it in the 8 semesters or 9 semesters. It might have taken 5 calendar years because of Co-op programs and such, but they knew it was going to take that long. The course load is heavy, and it's a lot of work, but you can get your degree in 4 years. If you are taking 6 or 7 years, you are either failing a bunch of courses, or having a more relaxed courseload than everyone else in the engineering program.
The fact that you see more jobs on Monster just says that the available jobs have trouble finding qualified people, not that there are more jobs. .Net jobs are very easy to fill, because there's lots of people with .Net experience. Java jobs are harder to fill, because there are fewer people with Java experience.
Everybody seems to think that these people are really stupid. But firstly, I think people on slashdot are into technology, and therefore know what is and isn't possible. Also, these people have no reason not to believe the producers aren't telling them the truth. The Milgram Experiment show that people will do stuff that they don't want to do, just because some guy in a white suit says that they should. I believe this shows that people are going to believe the guy in the white suit, even if what he says is a little far fetched.