Apple's USB modem is tiny, smaller than an iPod shuffle. I'm sure you'll also be able to get an ExpressCard modem (so it can be "in" the machine and not an extra part to carry). Sure people still need modems, but the number of those using them is shrinking. And since there's a reasonable external solution why continue to build it into the machine?
While many modem users may be shocked by the lack of a built-in modem, this move is probably less radical than it seems, just like ditching the floppy drive. Everyone couldn't imagine a machine without a floppy, but it didn't hurt Apple at all. I think replacing the PC Card slot with an ExpressCard slot is much more extreme, since that obsoletes hardware people have.
The iPod audio support includes AIFF, Apple Lossless and WAV. So if you want serious fidelity you can put your CDs on your iPod without any sound degradation. Then the quality of the audio jack and the headphones really matter. Sure, you won't be able to have as many songs but you will get the purest audio compared to CD source material.
I just replaced the battery in my 1st generation iPod and it works better than ever (longer battery life than original). How hard was it to do? I bought a replacement battery for $20, which came with the necessary plastic tool to open the iPod. 10 minutes is all it took to replace the battery without marring the case in any way. It was about as hard as putting a SIM card into a cellphone. If I had to replace the $20 battery every three years I don't see a reason to complain. The battery in my cordless phone costs just as much and has to be replaced more often. iPods are very durable portable devices.
I am currently learning Spanish using Pimsleur and it's very effective. Half an hour of audio work per day, and the retention of what you learn is very high. Successive lessons bring up material from earlier lessons, providing a rather organic conversational approach to the language.
I only had two weeks to learn Spanish, so I went with the audio-only approach. There's a comprehensive entry at Kuro5hin on how to learn a language that covers other learning methods and technologies, providing a good overview of what options there are.
I've been playing SWG since the early days, and it has always had way too many bugs in-game. Instead of focusing on fixing bugs, SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) has spent its efforts throwing out expansions and revamps. While these are good additions to the game, they come with their own new sets of bugs. NGE was the absolute worst. Setting aside whether or not the changes were good, the number of bugs is unbearable. For weeks after NGE was pushed live none of the basic quests worked properly. Hell, Jabba's Palace (one of the major theme parks) was broken for weeks. NGE would have been a lot easier for the players to swallow if it worked. What we got was a radically different game that was barely beyond alpha quality.
The reason I like SWG and stick with it is because it's a unique MMOG. It's not fantasy and magic (which are fine). Before NGE it was also more like an empire-building game experience, where you were less focused on immediate mechanics and played for a greater goal such as strengthening your guild or creating a major commercial enterprise or organizing huge cantina song and dance events. The "sandbox" play let the players create things to do in-game, which seems a bit different from a lot of existing MMOGs.
With NGE I'm not as happy with SWG as I was. I can adjust to the play, but the changes to rigid, limited character classes and the loss of the player economy and social network has really damaged the appeal of the game to me and many others. I've been casting around for a new MMOG to go to but don't see anything out there that's more like SWG and less like WoW. City of Heroes/Villians is unique, and Pirates of the Burning Sea has potential (Star Wars on the water?), when it goes live. But most MMOGs seems to be WoW-like dragon magic settings, even the much-hyped Dark and Light.
Give me science fiction over fantasy, that's my preference. Oh what I wouldn't give for a decent cyberpunk (not Matrix Online) or even a steampunk MMOG.
Before the NGE I felt like Lando Calrissian. I've been a droid engineer since I started playing, and I have created a comfortable enterprise as a crafter and merchant. Through all of that I maintained some amount of combat skills so I could go on occasional fighting jaunts to keep things fresh. As a combatant I could also participate in the Galactic Civil War (GCW).
Ironically, the NGE class of trader is supposedly based on the iconic representation of Lando but it has made me less like him. I have been stripped of all combat capabilities and can no longer participate in the GCW. As a trader I can only make and sell things, never going on any quests like everyone else. Over 90% of the content is no longer available to me to participate in. The player economy has been destroyed by the elimination of item decay and the addition of loot drops of stuff that used to be purchased from crafters. Only fighters can play SWG now, with traders propping up an increasingly pointless player economy. My trader is a ghost in the world.
I bet I only find about 40% of the stuff I'm looking for on iTunes Music Store. I want to get a lot of music I grew up listening to but is not available on CD or online. Why don't these dimwit music labels put all of their back catalogs online? They sit on piles and piles of music that, if made available, would earn them money. Unlike pressing and shipping CDs, getting them online is a one-time cost that will easily be made up in sales.
This is such a load of crap. It was RIAA who insisted on DRM before Apple could offer music. So Apple developed FairPlay to make RIAA happy, and thus was able to get all of the music we see in iTunes Music Store. This is whining because of the monster that was created. Apple owns the only really successful online music store. Apple owns the only portable music player that works with FairPlay. Music labels can easily get around this by dropping the need for DRM.
This is exactly the lock-in future that DRM brings to the world. The music labels are crying bitter tears because they don't control the locks. Whaa whaa whaa. What would be different if Sony had succeeded instead of Apple? Do we think we'd be seeing Sony offering whatever they had to everyone? No. DRM simply sucks. It's anti-consumer, anti-competitive and restricts the growth of the marketplace. Reap what you've sown, you greedy bastards.
GoDaddy's founder, Bob Parsons, apparently loves the idea of torture. Bleah. Using them is kind of like giving money to the Chinese government. I think spending money at more socially conscientious companies is a better idea.
I have no idea what kind of content they'd be considering, but apparently ESPN is thinking about Apple's video distribution. Now if only that means seeing stuff like The Ocho would be showing ("If it's almost a sport, we've got it!").
WiebeTech makes a desktop RAID enclosure that looks interesting. It's actually two 5-bay RAIDs in a single unit. This is essentially a desktop equivalent to Apple's XServe RAID. WiebeTech has plenty of good high-capacity disk solutions.
This might be the survey. It sure says Nielsen and asks all about gaming habits.
If it is, there are some serious issues with the questioning. It essentially excludes non-console gaming and the questions seem to push the results towards "more of the same, please". Stuff like this might help make more games just like WoW for profitability, but is that what we want in games? Endless variations of the least-common denominator?
Maybe yes, maybe no. Seems like it's up to the Apple technician who does the repair work. There is no blanket policy that third-party etching voids the warranty.
I don't understand the notion that MMOGs are too expensive. How much does it cost to go to a single movie in a theater? That's two hours for about $10. How much is a night in a bar? Even nursing cheap beer, you'll spend at least $10 in a few hours.
For $15 per month you can play an MMOG any time you want, for as long as you want. You get regular patches and new content added every few months. This seems like a decent entertainment bargain to me.
EMI is really looking to irritate Steve Jobs, aren't they? Trying to negotiate through the press isn't going to endear them to Apple, I don't think.
1) It seems very unlikely Apple would support anyone else's DRM. FairPlay does what they want. 2) Apple doesn't pre-announce what they're working on. 3) Partners who divulge projects with Apple before they're announced can expect public humiliation from Steve Jobs. Remember ATI?
As far as "supporting" DRM-crippled pseudo-CDs, all Apple has to do is have iTunes ripping ignore everything except the audio tracks on the discs. These beasts ultimately have to have standard music tracks on them to work in music-only CD players. We've seen how successful special-format stuff like SACD and DVD music has been (not very). Even with better quality the penetration into the marketplace for players just isn't there.
I wonder if Apple's TPM on their Intel platform may have a use of keeping evil music companies from hacking up Mac OS X when you insert a CD? That'd be a sweet irony.
It was unbelievably sleazy for SOE to announce the massive overhaul the day after the release of the expansion. They had been promoting the expansion for weeks prior to the rollout, including pre-order incentives. They could hype The Trials of Obi-Wan expansion well before it was available, and yet they kept the NGE (new game enhancements) quiet until about 2 weeks prior to going live.
I don't think the NGE affects the Obi-Wan expansion all that much other than the massive changes seen game-wide. But it was definitely a very poor way to conduct business. Everyone feels like they had been conned, even if not all will demand a refund.
Aw crap, this is an "ask" post. Well damn, I didn't mean to shill here. Honestly. I have nothing to do with SOE, except pay them. So let's see, what can I ask...
With the release of SWG for XBox and PS2, will there be differences between the console version and the desktop version? I've seen with the new user interface that function keys don't seem to be used the way they currently are. Will the console interface design mean a "dumbing down" of what I can do from my computer with a full keyboard?
There's a lot of gnashing and wailing by veteran players, but as a vet player myself I have to say I think SOE is doing the right thing to the game. I'm going to have to adjust like everyone, but for the future of the game this is what had to happen.
The most obvious change is combat. It is FPS-like (with a 3rd- or 1st-person perspective, similar to MDK), where you shoot at whatever your crosshairs are on. The previous combat was move-based, where you'd select a target and then issue a series of attack commands. No matter how you moved you'd keep your target locked. It's too early to tell what this will really play like since the test servers have some lag issues, but overall it seems to work well. The combat players will cry a lot because you can't sloppily just shoot when you feel like it. But hey, they all complained about the last combat upgrade and then adjusted to it.
The "iconic professions" is really not an accurate way to describe the changes to professions. The SWG concept of professions is being replaced with character classes. Currently in SWG, you could change what your toon does by dropping professions and learning new ones. With NGE you have to delete your character to change classes. Once a smuggler, always a smuggler. You want to be an entertainer now? Delete your character and start over, losing not only your skills but your equipment and, most significantly, your actual toon's physical design and name. I think this part absolutely stinks. SWG players grow attached to their virtual identities, and now we're facing a change that forces us to sacrifice those identities.
The professions themselves aren't going away (well, Creature Handler and Bioengineer are), but rather being combined for the classes. Every trader now becomes artisan, merchant and two crafting professions. Marksman, Pistoleer, Carbineer and Rifleman are rolled into the new "ranged combat" tree, which a number of classes have. Melee combat professions are similarly combined.
Jedi is now a starting class, which has veteran jedi up in arms. But seriously, this is why people play Star Wars games. And in NGE the starting jedi are simply melee fighters with pole arms. A lightsaber doesn't come along for them until they get to level 30, and even then it's not a great lightsaber. Testing has made this seem somewhat like a kung-fu movie, with a few masters and a huge horde of minions running around.
One of the very cool things about NGE is the player tutorial. New players actually play in a separate introductory area on a space station. There are lots of quests that walk players through learning the game, and there's plenty to do there in terms of earning money and even traveling to another station and going into a dungeon. Once a player decides to leave the starting area, they can never go back. But the area is rich enough that there's no rush to leave. This is so much better than being dumped into the world and having to find your way through the advanced players and the communities they've created.
All in all I think NGE is going to breathe fresh life into SWG, providing the kind of interest in play that WoW has. It's clear this is what the gaming market wants, and SOE is delivering a very worthy update to achieve this.
SWG has had its ups and downs (many would say mostly downs), but the servers I play on seem to be growing in population. There has not been any server consolidation, so it's not a situation of coalescing populations. The third expansion, The Trials of Obi-Wan, is about to go live (it has already for pre-orders) and seems to have learned from some of the WoW successes. The new planet, Mustafar (the lava planet), is geared for higher-end characters with harder, longer quests. There are a number of instance dungeons involved in the quests, eliminating the original problem of waiting for a previous party to finish.
It's unfortunate that SWG Japan is not going well, but the game itself seems to be overcoming a lot of the chaos caused by the combat upgrade a while back. In fact, a lot of the loudest complainers are now running around bragging about how they can solo the toughest mobs. Those of us who prefer a more cerebral combat system long for the old one, but we have adjusted. Change is guaranteed in an MMOG, I think.
iTunes isn't some mysterious special format for storing songs. It is simply a well-organized folder structure that is augmented by an XML index file. What iTunes does is rename all of the music files based in the ID tags of each song, providing a GUI on top of the file structure. What's really nice about iTunes is that it encourages proper, decent tags for each song file. I used to see such crappy tags (or none) from people using software other than iTunes. Tagging is much better now which implies either many people use iTunes or others have caught on to how useful proper ID tagging is.
Doxygen handles many languages, not just C++. It's a great utility and can produce some very complete "books" with introductions and full explanations. It will output in multiple formats. For the code you just add simple javadoc-style comments such as:
/** * This is a function that does something. * * @param foo first argument * @param bar second argument * * @return some useful value */
The comments have minimal markup, inside the code source, so when you edit the actual functions you can also read (and update) the comments.
The original Oregon Trail was on mainframes, created by Don Rawitsch. He brought the game with him when he went to work for MECC, which eventually wrote games for microcomputers (the MECC mainframe was taken down in 1983). You youngins may have had fancy low-resolution graphics, but when I was a kid we had to cross the Oregon Trail by teletype. At 110 baud. On paper.
Actually, it's cool that the game survived with its core design in place from mainframe to microcomputer.
I'm not sure what to make of RSS 3.0. Is it a blessed successor of Dave Winer's RSS 2.0, or is it a successor of the RDF-based RSS 1.0? Maybe it's yet a third RSS spec from someone unrelated to Winer or the RSS 1.0 people. Ugh. These syndication specs all do essentially the same damned thing, so it's just petty bickering over who's spec is whose and who gets to use the nomenclature "RSS".
When I chose to implement syndication I went with Atom because of the bickering over RSS. Atom is far from perfect, but it's functionally equivalent to the RSS variants. And is there any aggregator in use that doesn't handle all of these syndication specs?
The.xxx domain will never achieve the goal of segregating "pornography" from the rest of the internet. It's a level of bureaucracy that may generate more money for registrars and filtering companies, but will not stop sex-related content from "poisoning minds".
As is pointed out elsewhere, why will.com domains be given up by porn sites for.xxx? How about hustler.com, or playboy.com? At what point is nudity considered art and not pornography? Or maybe it's both. Would a Mapplethorpe exhibit have to be under.xxx? He made a lot of art that doesn't involve penises or bondage. Does Karen Finley's work go under the.xxx domain? How about Vanessa Beecroft or Spencer Tunick?
The failed.kids domain should show that segregating content isn't likely to succeed. Whatever guidelines or rules or enforcement is put into place will be circumvented. It's how the internet works. The bottom line is the entire DNS system can be ignored and some other name service put into place.
The patent system will collapse in a few years since patents are now being handed out to just about anyone willing to file for one. There is no more requirement for the patent to be non-obvious. The problem seems to be the examiners don't understand the fields for the patent applications they are responsible for. As an example, tying certain kinds of knots would be non-obvious to someone who doesn't use rope a lot, but that doesn't mean I should be able to patent the Monkey's Fist.
The end result of this is that, eventually, all patents will become meaningless. There will be large-scale infringement because so many patents will cover things that are so obvious that everyone will need to or want to do them. How many years from now will we enter this new era of ignoring the broken system? Frivolous patents are hastening the end of all patents.
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Apple's USB modem is tiny, smaller than an iPod shuffle. I'm sure you'll also be able to get an ExpressCard modem (so it can be "in" the machine and not an extra part to carry). Sure people still need modems, but the number of those using them is shrinking. And since there's a reasonable external solution why continue to build it into the machine?
While many modem users may be shocked by the lack of a built-in modem, this move is probably less radical than it seems, just like ditching the floppy drive. Everyone couldn't imagine a machine without a floppy, but it didn't hurt Apple at all. I think replacing the PC Card slot with an ExpressCard slot is much more extreme, since that obsoletes hardware people have.
The iPod audio support includes AIFF, Apple Lossless and WAV. So if you want serious fidelity you can put your CDs on your iPod without any sound degradation. Then the quality of the audio jack and the headphones really matter. Sure, you won't be able to have as many songs but you will get the purest audio compared to CD source material.
I just replaced the battery in my 1st generation iPod and it works better than ever (longer battery life than original). How hard was it to do? I bought a replacement battery for $20, which came with the necessary plastic tool to open the iPod. 10 minutes is all it took to replace the battery without marring the case in any way. It was about as hard as putting a SIM card into a cellphone. If I had to replace the $20 battery every three years I don't see a reason to complain. The battery in my cordless phone costs just as much and has to be replaced more often. iPods are very durable portable devices.
I am currently learning Spanish using Pimsleur and it's very effective. Half an hour of audio work per day, and the retention of what you learn is very high. Successive lessons bring up material from earlier lessons, providing a rather organic conversational approach to the language.
I only had two weeks to learn Spanish, so I went with the audio-only approach. There's a comprehensive entry at Kuro5hin on how to learn a language that covers other learning methods and technologies, providing a good overview of what options there are.
I've been playing SWG since the early days, and it has always had way too many bugs in-game. Instead of focusing on fixing bugs, SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) has spent its efforts throwing out expansions and revamps. While these are good additions to the game, they come with their own new sets of bugs. NGE was the absolute worst. Setting aside whether or not the changes were good, the number of bugs is unbearable. For weeks after NGE was pushed live none of the basic quests worked properly. Hell, Jabba's Palace (one of the major theme parks) was broken for weeks. NGE would have been a lot easier for the players to swallow if it worked. What we got was a radically different game that was barely beyond alpha quality.
The reason I like SWG and stick with it is because it's a unique MMOG. It's not fantasy and magic (which are fine). Before NGE it was also more like an empire-building game experience, where you were less focused on immediate mechanics and played for a greater goal such as strengthening your guild or creating a major commercial enterprise or organizing huge cantina song and dance events. The "sandbox" play let the players create things to do in-game, which seems a bit different from a lot of existing MMOGs.
With NGE I'm not as happy with SWG as I was. I can adjust to the play, but the changes to rigid, limited character classes and the loss of the player economy and social network has really damaged the appeal of the game to me and many others. I've been casting around for a new MMOG to go to but don't see anything out there that's more like SWG and less like WoW. City of Heroes/Villians is unique, and Pirates of the Burning Sea has potential (Star Wars on the water?), when it goes live. But most MMOGs seems to be WoW-like dragon magic settings, even the much-hyped Dark and Light.
Give me science fiction over fantasy, that's my preference. Oh what I wouldn't give for a decent cyberpunk (not Matrix Online) or even a steampunk MMOG.
Before the NGE I felt like Lando Calrissian. I've been a droid engineer since I started playing, and I have created a comfortable enterprise as a crafter and merchant. Through all of that I maintained some amount of combat skills so I could go on occasional fighting jaunts to keep things fresh. As a combatant I could also participate in the Galactic Civil War (GCW).
Ironically, the NGE class of trader is supposedly based on the iconic representation of Lando but it has made me less like him. I have been stripped of all combat capabilities and can no longer participate in the GCW. As a trader I can only make and sell things, never going on any quests like everyone else. Over 90% of the content is no longer available to me to participate in. The player economy has been destroyed by the elimination of item decay and the addition of loot drops of stuff that used to be purchased from crafters. Only fighters can play SWG now, with traders propping up an increasingly pointless player economy. My trader is a ghost in the world.
I bet I only find about 40% of the stuff I'm looking for on iTunes Music Store. I want to get a lot of music I grew up listening to but is not available on CD or online. Why don't these dimwit music labels put all of their back catalogs online? They sit on piles and piles of music that, if made available, would earn them money. Unlike pressing and shipping CDs, getting them online is a one-time cost that will easily be made up in sales.
This is such a load of crap. It was RIAA who insisted on DRM before Apple could offer music. So Apple developed FairPlay to make RIAA happy, and thus was able to get all of the music we see in iTunes Music Store. This is whining because of the monster that was created. Apple owns the only really successful online music store. Apple owns the only portable music player that works with FairPlay. Music labels can easily get around this by dropping the need for DRM.
This is exactly the lock-in future that DRM brings to the world. The music labels are crying bitter tears because they don't control the locks. Whaa whaa whaa. What would be different if Sony had succeeded instead of Apple? Do we think we'd be seeing Sony offering whatever they had to everyone? No. DRM simply sucks. It's anti-consumer, anti-competitive and restricts the growth of the marketplace. Reap what you've sown, you greedy bastards.
GoDaddy's founder, Bob Parsons, apparently loves the idea of torture. Bleah. Using them is kind of like giving money to the Chinese government. I think spending money at more socially conscientious companies is a better idea.
I have no idea what kind of content they'd be considering, but apparently ESPN is thinking about Apple's video distribution. Now if only that means seeing stuff like The Ocho would be showing ("If it's almost a sport, we've got it!").
WiebeTech makes a desktop RAID enclosure that looks interesting. It's actually two 5-bay RAIDs in a single unit. This is essentially a desktop equivalent to Apple's XServe RAID. WiebeTech has plenty of good high-capacity disk solutions.
This might be the survey. It sure says Nielsen and asks all about gaming habits.
If it is, there are some serious issues with the questioning. It essentially excludes non-console gaming and the questions seem to push the results towards "more of the same, please". Stuff like this might help make more games just like WoW for profitability, but is that what we want in games? Endless variations of the least-common denominator?
Maybe yes, maybe no. Seems like it's up to the Apple technician who does the repair work. There is no blanket policy that third-party etching voids the warranty.
I don't understand the notion that MMOGs are too expensive. How much does it cost to go to a single movie in a theater? That's two hours for about $10. How much is a night in a bar? Even nursing cheap beer, you'll spend at least $10 in a few hours.
For $15 per month you can play an MMOG any time you want, for as long as you want. You get regular patches and new content added every few months. This seems like a decent entertainment bargain to me.
EMI is really looking to irritate Steve Jobs, aren't they? Trying to negotiate through the press isn't going to endear them to Apple, I don't think.
1) It seems very unlikely Apple would support anyone else's DRM. FairPlay does what they want.
2) Apple doesn't pre-announce what they're working on.
3) Partners who divulge projects with Apple before they're announced can expect public humiliation from Steve Jobs. Remember ATI?
As far as "supporting" DRM-crippled pseudo-CDs, all Apple has to do is have iTunes ripping ignore everything except the audio tracks on the discs. These beasts ultimately have to have standard music tracks on them to work in music-only CD players. We've seen how successful special-format stuff like SACD and DVD music has been (not very). Even with better quality the penetration into the marketplace for players just isn't there.
I wonder if Apple's TPM on their Intel platform may have a use of keeping evil music companies from hacking up Mac OS X when you insert a CD? That'd be a sweet irony.
It was unbelievably sleazy for SOE to announce the massive overhaul the day after the release of the expansion. They had been promoting the expansion for weeks prior to the rollout, including pre-order incentives. They could hype The Trials of Obi-Wan expansion well before it was available, and yet they kept the NGE (new game enhancements) quiet until about 2 weeks prior to going live.
I don't think the NGE affects the Obi-Wan expansion all that much other than the massive changes seen game-wide. But it was definitely a very poor way to conduct business. Everyone feels like they had been conned, even if not all will demand a refund.
Aw crap, this is an "ask" post. Well damn, I didn't mean to shill here. Honestly. I have nothing to do with SOE, except pay them. So let's see, what can I ask...
With the release of SWG for XBox and PS2, will there be differences between the console version and the desktop version? I've seen with the new user interface that function keys don't seem to be used the way they currently are. Will the console interface design mean a "dumbing down" of what I can do from my computer with a full keyboard?
There's a lot of gnashing and wailing by veteran players, but as a vet player myself I have to say I think SOE is doing the right thing to the game. I'm going to have to adjust like everyone, but for the future of the game this is what had to happen.
The most obvious change is combat. It is FPS-like (with a 3rd- or 1st-person perspective, similar to MDK), where you shoot at whatever your crosshairs are on. The previous combat was move-based, where you'd select a target and then issue a series of attack commands. No matter how you moved you'd keep your target locked. It's too early to tell what this will really play like since the test servers have some lag issues, but overall it seems to work well. The combat players will cry a lot because you can't sloppily just shoot when you feel like it. But hey, they all complained about the last combat upgrade and then adjusted to it.
The "iconic professions" is really not an accurate way to describe the changes to professions. The SWG concept of professions is being replaced with character classes. Currently in SWG, you could change what your toon does by dropping professions and learning new ones. With NGE you have to delete your character to change classes. Once a smuggler, always a smuggler. You want to be an entertainer now? Delete your character and start over, losing not only your skills but your equipment and, most significantly, your actual toon's physical design and name. I think this part absolutely stinks. SWG players grow attached to their virtual identities, and now we're facing a change that forces us to sacrifice those identities.
The professions themselves aren't going away (well, Creature Handler and Bioengineer are), but rather being combined for the classes. Every trader now becomes artisan, merchant and two crafting professions. Marksman, Pistoleer, Carbineer and Rifleman are rolled into the new "ranged combat" tree, which a number of classes have. Melee combat professions are similarly combined.
Jedi is now a starting class, which has veteran jedi up in arms. But seriously, this is why people play Star Wars games. And in NGE the starting jedi are simply melee fighters with pole arms. A lightsaber doesn't come along for them until they get to level 30, and even then it's not a great lightsaber. Testing has made this seem somewhat like a kung-fu movie, with a few masters and a huge horde of minions running around.
One of the very cool things about NGE is the player tutorial. New players actually play in a separate introductory area on a space station. There are lots of quests that walk players through learning the game, and there's plenty to do there in terms of earning money and even traveling to another station and going into a dungeon. Once a player decides to leave the starting area, they can never go back. But the area is rich enough that there's no rush to leave. This is so much better than being dumped into the world and having to find your way through the advanced players and the communities they've created.
All in all I think NGE is going to breathe fresh life into SWG, providing the kind of interest in play that WoW has. It's clear this is what the gaming market wants, and SOE is delivering a very worthy update to achieve this.
SWG has had its ups and downs (many would say mostly downs), but the servers I play on seem to be growing in population. There has not been any server consolidation, so it's not a situation of coalescing populations. The third expansion, The Trials of Obi-Wan, is about to go live (it has already for pre-orders) and seems to have learned from some of the WoW successes. The new planet, Mustafar (the lava planet), is geared for higher-end characters with harder, longer quests. There are a number of instance dungeons involved in the quests, eliminating the original problem of waiting for a previous party to finish.
It's unfortunate that SWG Japan is not going well, but the game itself seems to be overcoming a lot of the chaos caused by the combat upgrade a while back. In fact, a lot of the loudest complainers are now running around bragging about how they can solo the toughest mobs. Those of us who prefer a more cerebral combat system long for the old one, but we have adjusted. Change is guaranteed in an MMOG, I think.
iTunes isn't some mysterious special format for storing songs. It is simply a well-organized folder structure that is augmented by an XML index file. What iTunes does is rename all of the music files based in the ID tags of each song, providing a GUI on top of the file structure. What's really nice about iTunes is that it encourages proper, decent tags for each song file. I used to see such crappy tags (or none) from people using software other than iTunes. Tagging is much better now which implies either many people use iTunes or others have caught on to how useful proper ID tagging is.
Doxygen handles many languages, not just C++. It's a great utility and can produce some very complete "books" with introductions and full explanations. It will output in multiple formats. For the code you just add simple javadoc-style comments such as:
/**
* This is a function that does something.
*
* @param foo first argument
* @param bar second argument
*
* @return some useful value
*/
The comments have minimal markup, inside the code source, so when you edit the actual functions you can also read (and update) the comments.
The original Oregon Trail was on mainframes, created by Don Rawitsch. He brought the game with him when he went to work for MECC, which eventually wrote games for microcomputers (the MECC mainframe was taken down in 1983). You youngins may have had fancy low-resolution graphics, but when I was a kid we had to cross the Oregon Trail by teletype. At 110 baud. On paper.
Actually, it's cool that the game survived with its core design in place from mainframe to microcomputer.
I'm not sure what to make of RSS 3.0. Is it a blessed successor of Dave Winer's RSS 2.0, or is it a successor of the RDF-based RSS 1.0? Maybe it's yet a third RSS spec from someone unrelated to Winer or the RSS 1.0 people. Ugh. These syndication specs all do essentially the same damned thing, so it's just petty bickering over who's spec is whose and who gets to use the nomenclature "RSS".
When I chose to implement syndication I went with Atom because of the bickering over RSS. Atom is far from perfect, but it's functionally equivalent to the RSS variants. And is there any aggregator in use that doesn't handle all of these syndication specs?
The .xxx domain will never achieve the goal of segregating "pornography" from the rest of the internet. It's a level of bureaucracy that may generate more money for registrars and filtering companies, but will not stop sex-related content from "poisoning minds".
.com domains be given up by porn sites for .xxx? How about hustler.com, or playboy.com? At what point is nudity considered art and not pornography? Or maybe it's both. Would a Mapplethorpe exhibit have to be under .xxx? He made a lot of art that doesn't involve penises or bondage. Does Karen Finley's work go under the .xxx domain? How about Vanessa Beecroft or Spencer Tunick?
.kids domain should show that segregating content isn't likely to succeed. Whatever guidelines or rules or enforcement is put into place will be circumvented. It's how the internet works. The bottom line is the entire DNS system can be ignored and some other name service put into place.
As is pointed out elsewhere, why will
The failed
The patent system will collapse in a few years since patents are now being handed out to just about anyone willing to file for one. There is no more requirement for the patent to be non-obvious. The problem seems to be the examiners don't understand the fields for the patent applications they are responsible for. As an example, tying certain kinds of knots would be non-obvious to someone who doesn't use rope a lot, but that doesn't mean I should be able to patent the Monkey's Fist.
The end result of this is that, eventually, all patents will become meaningless. There will be large-scale infringement because so many patents will cover things that are so obvious that everyone will need to or want to do them. How many years from now will we enter this new era of ignoring the broken system? Frivolous patents are hastening the end of all patents.