I would be all about PC gaming if you could play multiplayer games on one computer. I primarily play games as a social activity, hanging out with my friends together in the living room. I have an extra computer that I can put in the living room for games, but I don't have four.
That the cost is so incredibly high, and that doing manned missions are taking funding away from unmanned missions (see recent cuts at JPL) which would result in much more useful science for us on earth per dollar. When we're having such huge problems here on earth (famine, AIDs, energy crisis, poverty, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.) it seems like such an extravagent waste of tax dollars to send people into space. Of course human space travel will advance, and I'm all for that, but I want to wait until technology advances enough to make the cost reasonable.
And when you look at what few accomplishments there are, consider that a vast amount of research can be done robotically in space for a miniscule fraction of the cost of sending humans. Generally it seems like the research that requires humans in space is only useful towards sending MORE humans into space.
I love Rockbox, but it has a lot of shortcomings. Although it has tons of great features, as is, it wouldn't stand a chance against the iPod IMO. Aside from being way behind and still not supporting some of the most basic iRiver features (like recording), the user interface is terribly sloppy in a lot of areas. It took a lot of hassling and arguing just to get them to do away with the painfully slow "read as you go" directory handling. The interface is improving, but it's a got a long way. Fortunately they're writing it so that it can easily be ported to other devices.
The primary problem is that open source developers design their UIs from a stubborn programmers "least common denominator" philosophy. They have to look up the word "intuitive" if you mention it. It takes a lot of arguing to convince them of the most basic User Interface 101 pricipals.
And you can easily convert it to an mp3 with Total Recorder.
I tried buying a subscription to This American Life through audible.com, but the quality was like bad AM radio (when it was advertised as FM quality) and it was DRM'd so I had to use Total Recorder anyway to get it to work on my mp3 player. I found that the free RealPlayer stream was actually significantly better quality than the audible.com version! So I donate my money directly to TAL, rip from their RealPlayer streams, and cut out the middle man.
Read TOFA: "Trojan.PSPBrick is a Trojan horse that deletes critical system files on a Playstation Portable device, preventing the device from restarting correctly."
That probably means that it's impossible to recover without debugging hardware.
I'm just really glad that I don't work for a software company that's making a 360 game right now, cause everything about this sounds really, really rushed.
There have always been bad movies and bad remakes. Howabout Amityville 2 and 3D? The Herbie movie from 1981? Jaws 3D? Ishtar? Take any recent decade, and you can come up with an endless list of crappy remakes, sequels, and all around bad movies.
I keep hearing that movies suck now, but personally I don't see it. Obviously some will disagree with my taste, but I've enjoyed a lot of movies recently like 40 Year Old Virgin, Batman Begins, War of the Worlds, March of the Penguins, Constant Gardener. And I'm just listing mainstream-ish stuff. I'm also a big fan of indie/experimental stuff.
This is just more people spouting theories. Let's see some research about people's movie satisfaction. Sales don't mean anything.
Personally, I think it's more likely that cheaper home theatre, the economy, and videogames especially contribute to lower box office turnout. The videogame industry has become huge, and IIRC it's outgrown the movie industry. People have a limited amount of time and money for entertainment...
Almost every day I throw my iRiver in a canvas bag with my laptop, cables, and power supply. It has one minor scratch on the screen from when I stopped my car suddenly and the whole bag fell on the floor. Other than that the screen looks glossy and new.
MP3 players are portable devices that you carry around a lot. They should be durable IMO.
Useful = things we couldn't do with an unmanned flight, which would cost a miniscule fraction of what manned space flight costs. Most of the experiments that require people up there appear to only be useful towards sending more people into space. So it doesn't actually benefit anybody here on the ground!
And if you're concerned about the continuation of the human race, howabout we solve a few of the problems here on earth first. Even if a devastatingly massive asteroid hits the earth, I think that currently the chances of some people surviving here are much better than chances of an isolated colony on the moon or mars. Once we figure out sutainable energy and deal with poverty, then we can worry about growing billion dollar tomatoes in space.
Interesting post, but I think it's incorrect. I think those other competing formats failed for other reasons. Mainly because people didn't care, or a better or acceptable existing format was available. People see movies at theatres all the time, and are used to high resolution. As HD TVs become affordable, I think people are going to really want a high resolution DVD format to make use of those sets.
And I disagree about DATs. Normal consumers didn't care as much because they were happy with cassette quality (and still are from the mp3 encoding quality I see on p2p). But DATs were the standard for musicians, audiophiles, and audio professionals until CD burners and CDs became cheap. DCC's were a complete failure all around.
30 hours a week is the minimum to get health insurance at my job. That's a barrier for me going to fewer hours and devoting more time to art and music. Any fewer hours and I'll start having to pay for it myself. There are organizations that offer health insurance at reasonable rates to artists and musicians, but I haven't researched the details of those yet.
Or leave 2 hours early. I transitioned from my part time position during school to only a 30 hour week. I live somewhat frugally, so I've managed to save plenty of money even at 3/4 of what I would normally make. Gives me a lot more time to work on my hobbies (digital art and music), which is what I really love. And I'm actually starting to see a bit of positive cashflow from those hobbies. Hopefully someday I'll be able to make those my primary work.
This one doesn't have a light, but it's a lot cooler looking (and has a lot more solar cells.) Funny that the two appear to have been developed at about the same time.
Probably so, but no matter how you subsitute "iTunes Store" for some of the "iPods" in that quote, it still doesn't make any sense, and the guy sounds like a complete fucking idiot. (This is the first time I've ever used a form of the word "fuck" on slashdot, btw)
They do patch stuff fast, but until automatic updates work correctly, it's not going to do much good for the average idiot user. And someone will eventually start trying to take advantage of these exploits.
I'm running 1.0.6 and there's no update icon showing. When I say Check Now: "Firefox was not able to find any updates."
-paul
My friend got this one recently. He hated to admit he got it at walmart, but it's super tiny orange cube with a blue display. It looks awesome and hilarious, and everyone's always asking about it. I'm sure the Dell's nice, but why does everything they make have to be ugly?
This is something I've been really interested in for a while. I think that the idea that video games evoke as much emotion as movies, books, movies, or art is absurd, and I suspect any real research would show this.
One theory is that games are almost always winnable by definition which doesn't accurately mimic reality, and this blunts an emotional response. There's no real question about the fate of the hero, they can eventually "win" one way or another. You're not going to get to the end of Super Mario and find the princess behind an impassable brick wall (this is a hack I've considered doing.)
My friend and I were discussing this, and he pointed out that early video games sometimes had movie-like scenarios but were not winnable. Take Robotron for example. Sure there are some maniacs who can play a long time, but for the most part, it just gets faster and there are more aliens and robots until you die. Personally, I did find the game subtly disturbing.
Part of all this may also be due to the fact that games tend to dwell more in the realm of craft rather than actual art. Videogame art is emerging, but there's not much exposure, or a middle ground between pure conceptual art and something that's actually fun to play. Perhaps Katamari Damacy is a step in that direction, since the importance of goals and challenges is diminished in that game. It becomes more of just an activity, a time where you exist in that world. Frankly, that's the game that's evoked the most emotion from me in recent times just because it's so beautiful visually, musically, and conceptually.
Slashdot Mirror
I would be all about PC gaming if you could play multiplayer games on one computer. I primarily play games as a social activity, hanging out with my friends together in the living room. I have an extra computer that I can put in the living room for games, but I don't have four.
I wonder what Van Halen would think about that?
Is there anything wrong with that?
That the cost is so incredibly high, and that doing manned missions are taking funding away from unmanned missions (see recent cuts at JPL) which would result in much more useful science for us on earth per dollar. When we're having such huge problems here on earth (famine, AIDs, energy crisis, poverty, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.) it seems like such an extravagent waste of tax dollars to send people into space. Of course human space travel will advance, and I'm all for that, but I want to wait until technology advances enough to make the cost reasonable.
And when you look at what few accomplishments there are, consider that a vast amount of research can be done robotically in space for a miniscule fraction of the cost of sending humans. Generally it seems like the research that requires humans in space is only useful towards sending MORE humans into space.
I love Rockbox, but it has a lot of shortcomings. Although it has tons of great features, as is, it wouldn't stand a chance against the iPod IMO. Aside from being way behind and still not supporting some of the most basic iRiver features (like recording), the user interface is terribly sloppy in a lot of areas. It took a lot of hassling and arguing just to get them to do away with the painfully slow "read as you go" directory handling. The interface is improving, but it's a got a long way. Fortunately they're writing it so that it can easily be ported to other devices.
The primary problem is that open source developers design their UIs from a stubborn programmers "least common denominator" philosophy. They have to look up the word "intuitive" if you mention it. It takes a lot of arguing to convince them of the most basic User Interface 101 pricipals.
Welcane aur new hondwriting recogmition ouerlonds!
I don't see anything about this story on that site...
And you can easily convert it to an mp3 with Total Recorder.
I tried buying a subscription to This American Life through audible.com, but the quality was like bad AM radio (when it was advertised as FM quality) and it was DRM'd so I had to use Total Recorder anyway to get it to work on my mp3 player. I found that the free RealPlayer stream was actually significantly better quality than the audible.com version! So I donate my money directly to TAL, rip from their RealPlayer streams, and cut out the middle man.
Maybe he was counting slaves as 3/5ths of a person.
Read TOFA:
"Trojan.PSPBrick is a Trojan horse that deletes critical system files on a Playstation Portable device, preventing the device from restarting correctly."
That probably means that it's impossible to recover without debugging hardware.
-paul
I'm just really glad that I don't work for a software company that's making a 360 game right now, cause everything about this sounds really, really rushed.
There have always been bad movies and bad remakes. Howabout Amityville 2 and 3D? The Herbie movie from 1981? Jaws 3D? Ishtar? Take any recent decade, and you can come up with an endless list of crappy remakes, sequels, and all around bad movies.
I keep hearing that movies suck now, but personally I don't see it. Obviously some will disagree with my taste, but I've enjoyed a lot of movies recently like 40 Year Old Virgin, Batman Begins, War of the Worlds, March of the Penguins, Constant Gardener.
And I'm just listing mainstream-ish stuff. I'm also a big fan of indie/experimental stuff.
This is just more people spouting theories. Let's see some research about people's movie satisfaction. Sales don't mean anything.
Personally, I think it's more likely that cheaper home theatre, the economy, and videogames especially contribute to lower box office turnout. The videogame industry has become huge, and IIRC it's outgrown the movie industry. People have a limited amount of time and money for entertainment...
I don't work on work at home, but I need a way to transport my home projects to work!
Almost every day I throw my iRiver in a canvas bag with my laptop, cables, and power supply. It has one minor scratch on the screen from when I stopped my car suddenly and the whole bag fell on the floor. Other than that the screen looks glossy and new. MP3 players are portable devices that you carry around a lot. They should be durable IMO.
Useful = things we couldn't do with an unmanned flight, which would cost a miniscule fraction of what manned space flight costs. Most of the experiments that require people up there appear to only be useful towards sending more people into space. So it doesn't actually benefit anybody here on the ground!
And if you're concerned about the continuation of the human race, howabout we solve a few of the problems here on earth first. Even if a devastatingly massive asteroid hits the earth, I think that currently the chances of some people surviving here are much better than chances of an isolated colony on the moon or mars. Once we figure out sutainable energy and deal with poverty, then we can worry about growing billion dollar tomatoes in space.
Interesting post, but I think it's incorrect. I think those other competing formats failed for other reasons. Mainly because people didn't care, or a better or acceptable existing format was available. People see movies at theatres all the time, and are used to high resolution. As HD TVs become affordable, I think people are going to really want a high resolution DVD format to make use of those sets.
And I disagree about DATs. Normal consumers didn't care as much because they were happy with cassette quality (and still are from the mp3 encoding quality I see on p2p). But DATs were the standard for musicians, audiophiles, and audio professionals until CD burners and CDs became cheap. DCC's were a complete failure all around.
30 hours a week is the minimum to get health insurance at my job. That's a barrier for me going to fewer hours and devoting more time to art and music. Any fewer hours and I'll start having to pay for it myself. There are organizations that offer health insurance at reasonable rates to artists and musicians, but I haven't researched the details of those yet.
Or leave 2 hours early. I transitioned from my part time position during school to only a 30 hour week. I live somewhat frugally, so I've managed to save plenty of money even at 3/4 of what I would normally make. Gives me a lot more time to work on my hobbies (digital art and music), which is what I really love. And I'm actually starting to see a bit of positive cashflow from those hobbies. Hopefully someday I'll be able to make those my primary work.
This one doesn't have a light, but it's a lot cooler looking (and has a lot more solar cells.) Funny that the two appear to have been developed at about the same time.
Dude, you totally forgot Out of This World!
Probably so, but no matter how you subsitute "iTunes Store" for some of the "iPods" in that quote, it still doesn't make any sense, and the guy sounds like a complete fucking idiot. (This is the first time I've ever used a form of the word "fuck" on slashdot, btw)
They do patch stuff fast, but until automatic updates work correctly, it's not going to do much good for the average idiot user. And someone will eventually start trying to take advantage of these exploits. I'm running 1.0.6 and there's no update icon showing. When I say Check Now: "Firefox was not able to find any updates." -paul
My friend got this one recently. He hated to admit he got it at walmart, but it's super tiny orange cube with a blue display. It looks awesome and hilarious, and everyone's always asking about it. I'm sure the Dell's nice, but why does everything they make have to be ugly?
This is something I've been really interested in for a while. I think that the idea that video games evoke as much emotion as movies, books, movies, or art is absurd, and I suspect any real research would show this.
One theory is that games are almost always winnable by definition which doesn't accurately mimic reality, and this blunts an emotional response. There's no real question about the fate of the hero, they can eventually "win" one way or another. You're not going to get to the end of Super Mario and find the princess behind an impassable brick wall (this is a hack I've considered doing.)
My friend and I were discussing this, and he pointed out that early video games sometimes had movie-like scenarios but were not winnable. Take Robotron for example. Sure there are some maniacs who can play a long time, but for the most part, it just gets faster and there are more aliens and robots until you die. Personally, I did find the game subtly disturbing.
Part of all this may also be due to the fact that games tend to dwell more in the realm of craft rather than actual art. Videogame art is emerging, but there's not much exposure, or a middle ground between pure conceptual art and something that's actually fun to play. Perhaps Katamari Damacy is a step in that direction, since the importance of goals and challenges is diminished in that game. It becomes more of just an activity, a time where you exist in that world. Frankly, that's the game that's evoked the most emotion from me in recent times just because it's so beautiful visually, musically, and conceptually.
-paul