Games have been trying to emulate movies for years, in the false idea that since both are visual entertainment, they should both be approached in similar ways.
Having to interact with an advert in order to progress, I can see as being a very infuriating premise, unless it is done in a clever way.
Movie promotions you can generally ignore, and let them pass you by, as they are simply passive images, game promotions I can see as being more invasive, and less avoidable.
Everyone knows that leaving a large warning stating that on no accounts is anyone to touch the big blue button, is practically an order to press the damn thing.
I'm guessing that the Piraha tribe have no real bartering or trade within the group, which probably shapes the need for numerical thought process rather than language.
After all, I would have thought that surroundings have a great deal of importance in how a group of peoples thought process is shaped, and the need for pattern recognition, which is more what the researchers are testing here.
Spyware manufacturers should get together and agree upon one open, standard model of software, from which each company can extract and send their own information to their databases.
The fact that Google went down appears to have affected the BBC, given that it was given headline news on the radio. Proof that Google has become a world wide institution(or maybe just where the BBC does some of it's "research":) )
I feel it is mainly because in an open source world there is less of an ability to strictly test usability and functionality, as this requires a different set of abilities than purely that of programming expertise.
Indeed, when there are already a couple of tried and tested UI's on the market (i.e. Windows and OS-X). And with the money having already been spent on user testing the interfaces, the question is why re-invent the wheel?
Build on what has already been developed.
Once the underlying core has been built then experimentation can begin, with the many eyes approach hopefully leading to an even more intuitive OS and GUI.
You're right I missed those, though having what should be important information be placed in a news column rather than directly in the specific download section seems rather poor design.
I mean as you mentioned with each news item, the update information gets sent further and further away from the download link, creating a seperation of linked topics and information.
Indeed if you click on the download link, there is no information about the update whatsoever. In my opinion, that is poor, especially when it can be so easily fixed.
The problem with comparing computer practices with civil engineering practices, is the age of the two industries.
Software is such a young industry that best practices, standards etc. have yet to be settled upon and thus will be hard to implement. Most engineering practices have come about after centuries of development, I somehow feel software development will have to mature for a while before we can see similar licences and standards bodies.
Add that to tabbrowser extensions, to get the tabs reacting the way I want(i.e everything in the same browser window, middle mouse click on the tabbar opens an accidently closed tab). And you almost have my perfect browser.
Now if only Sage would accept OPML properly, with the option of organizing all the RSS feeds within a given folder into a newspaper like format(Sort of like how feedDemon works) I would be in heaven.
Exactly, legislation will only work if the main problem countrys enforce it. And this will only truly work when we fully educate the people who actually reply and buy from spam about its nefarious nature.
To be honest, I still fail to understand the mindset of the people who buy products mentioned by the spam. Are they really that easily influenced by the (rather poor) marketing invloved?
Re:Am I safe just running Microsoft stuff?
on
Indemnification Roundup
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
It's just human nature, everyone wants to make money out of something.
In the case of FOSS, it's usually support, and if it's not support, it'll be insurance. And if it's not insurance, it'll be protection money.
Which isn't the greatest attitude when you are trying to get some loving for an alternative browser by non-techies.
I had managed to convice a fair few people to switch from IE to Firefox 0.8, and they were enjoying it, and were prepared to put up with not being able to go to some of their favorite sites (yes, even with the pretend to be IE extension). But when the latest version of Firefox hit, and they decided to install it, the fact that it removed their bookmarks(for some), removed their extensions, and ruined their themes(which for some was the biggest hurt, they just prefered the eye candy more than anything), more or less made them revert back to IE.
Unfortunately many of them also have the google toolbar for IE, which means the usual pop-up killing advantage of Firefox is now mute, and so the reasons for convincing them to go back are outweighed by the frustrations they have just encountered.
I can only hope the joy of tabs will bring them back.
Though for news and entertainment in general, I usually take my pick from one of these (World service and Radio 4 I consider to be almost essential for my existence).
Re:What is poetry?
on
Spam as Poetry
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
At this point you could probably combine random words from a dictionary and call it poetry..
I actually believe that this is how Mr. David Bowie wrote a few of his songs.
Though I believe beat poets such as Bryon Gysin and William Burroughs were pioneers of the cut-up method, where they basically chopped up other texts and then arranged the words randomly to try and create a form of poetry.
Not always the most succesful of methods, but led to some pretty fantastic works.
True, but I think I need to write an in depth study on how to become less lazy beforehand. And once I've succesfully completed that, I think I'll be more likely to be seen going round various universities and corporations, making money by giving talks about how to become less lazy.
Though if I'm aiming these talks at people like me, getting people to get off their arses to come to the meetings might be a problem.
Until then, I think I'll probably stick to complaining about what people should be doing.:)
However, the one plug in I would like to see, is the ability to highlight sections of text and see related articles in a side box. Admittedly, I can do this at the moment through highlighting text, right clicking and then "searching the web", but it would be nice to have the process automated, with the searches linked to the websites raison d'etre.
In other words, if I'm on a science site and I highlight a set of words, the search engine only looks through sites designated as science sites, go to a sports site, the search only looks through sports sites. Basically a context search.
Difficult to program and get right, but I can see it as being another step along the road. After all, I find one of the more enjoyable sides of browsing to be going of at tangents to the actual article I'm reading and finding information, and learning things that I hadn't even considered before hand.
Should it be so suprising that pure action games generally have relatively weak story lines(with the exception of a few), whereas the more thought provoking ones(in terms of gameplay) tend to have a better plot?
No correlation to movies is there?
Gameplay at the moment tends to be driven by arcade desires, I sort of feel we are still in the transition from the stand up arcade machine instant gratification level of gaming to a more time consuming home leisure pursuit.
Hence I feel the storylines will slowly get better as developers learn more about what is possible for a succesful game for the home, giving alternatives to the wham, bam , thank you kind lady style of today, in favour of a slower pace, yet ultimately more rewarding experience. Which of course are far greater suited for plot and story telling.
Indeed, limitations like the human body not being able to survive speeds over 60 mph? That the sound barrier could not be broken?
Limitations are helpful to look at because it helps define some bounds of the theory, from which the theory may either be helped to be proved, adjusted, or thrown out entirely.
I've always found limitations to be useful in our quest for knowledge, as the human psyche seems not to like such bounds and always seeks to disprove them, increasing our knowledge along the way.
I think one thing that you forgot to mention is the standardized input device on the consoles, the joypad.
Although PC owners all have a keyboard and mouse, this a not a configuration that suits most game, with the exception of the FPS and the like. This means that the guarantee of the number of buttons, analog joypad etc., developers of games know how the input of a game will work. And lets face it, input is key for the enjoyment of a game. Without knowing how a user is going to play a game, controls may be too cumbersome on a host PC, there is no way to playtest and configure for every single type of controller(with the exception of a keyboard, though this is not ideal for arcade games, imagine trying to play Street Fighter). Whereas the console has a standard to aim for, which means the game can be designed around the controller.
For example, look at how Mario 64 worked, it embraced the controller and made moving an overweight plumber around his world feel natural. Look at Ape escape on the Playstation and it's use of the dual analog input, it was innovative and worked, but only because of the standarised input.
Slashdot Mirror
Games have been trying to emulate movies for years, in the false idea that since both are visual entertainment, they should both be approached in similar ways.
Having to interact with an advert in order to progress, I can see as being a very infuriating premise, unless it is done in a clever way.
Movie promotions you can generally ignore, and let them pass you by, as they are simply passive images, game promotions I can see as being more invasive, and less avoidable.
Ms. Sandlin is just asking for trouble.
Everyone knows that leaving a large warning stating that on no accounts is anyone to touch the big blue button, is practically an order to press the damn thing.
I'm guessing that the Piraha tribe have no real bartering or trade within the group, which probably shapes the need for numerical thought process rather than language.
After all, I would have thought that surroundings have a great deal of importance in how a group of peoples thought process is shaped, and the need for pattern recognition, which is more what the researchers are testing here.
I agree completely.
Spyware manufacturers should get together and agree upon one open, standard model of software, from which each company can extract and send their own information to their databases.
One server per computer.
One cartel.
Joy for the world.
The fact that Google went down appears to have affected the BBC, given that it was given headline news on the radio. Proof that Google has become a world wide institution(or maybe just where the BBC does some of it's "research" :) )
In their usual way, Nigeria appears to be leading the way in the causes of spam, but in this case with a slight twist.
I feel it is mainly because in an open source world there is less of an ability to strictly test usability and functionality, as this requires a different set of abilities than purely that of programming expertise.
Indeed, when there are already a couple of tried and tested UI's on the market (i.e. Windows and OS-X). And with the money having already been spent on user testing the interfaces, the question is why re-invent the wheel?
Build on what has already been developed.
Once the underlying core has been built then experimentation can begin, with the many eyes approach hopefully leading to an even more intuitive OS and GUI.
You're right I missed those, though having what should be important information be placed in a news column rather than directly in the specific download section seems rather poor design.
I mean as you mentioned with each news item, the update information gets sent further and further away from the download link, creating a seperation of linked topics and information.
Indeed if you click on the download link, there is no information about the update whatsoever. In my opinion, that is poor, especially when it can be so easily fixed.
But with the lack of info on the Mozilla site, I wonder how many people know this, and download the entire 0.9.2 version, instead of just the patch.
Surely there should at least be a note mentioning the patch on the front page?
The problem with comparing computer practices with civil engineering practices, is the age of the two industries.
Software is such a young industry that best practices, standards etc. have yet to be settled upon and thus will be hard to implement. Most engineering practices have come about after centuries of development, I somehow feel software development will have to mature for a while before we can see similar licences and standards bodies.
Add that to tabbrowser extensions, to get the tabs reacting the way I want(i.e everything in the same browser window, middle mouse click on the tabbar opens an accidently closed tab). And you almost have my perfect browser.
Now if only Sage would accept OPML properly, with the option of organizing all the RSS feeds within a given folder into a newspaper like format(Sort of like how feedDemon works) I would be in heaven.
Exactly, legislation will only work if the main problem countrys enforce it. And this will only truly work when we fully educate the people who actually reply and buy from spam about its nefarious nature.
To be honest, I still fail to understand the mindset of the people who buy products mentioned by the spam. Are they really that easily influenced by the (rather poor) marketing invloved?
It's just human nature, everyone wants to make money out of something.
In the case of FOSS, it's usually support, and if it's not support, it'll be insurance. And if it's not insurance, it'll be protection money.
There's some streaming tools here, which you may find useful.
It's your fault you lost data, not theirs.
Which isn't the greatest attitude when you are trying to get some loving for an alternative browser by non-techies.
I had managed to convice a fair few people to switch from IE to Firefox 0.8, and they were enjoying it, and were prepared to put up with not being able to go to some of their favorite sites (yes, even with the pretend to be IE extension). But when the latest version of Firefox hit, and they decided to install it, the fact that it removed their bookmarks(for some), removed their extensions, and ruined their themes(which for some was the biggest hurt, they just prefered the eye candy more than anything), more or less made them revert back to IE.
Unfortunately many of them also have the google toolbar for IE, which means the usual pop-up killing advantage of Firefox is now mute, and so the reasons for convincing them to go back are outweighed by the frustrations they have just encountered.
I can only hope the joy of tabs will bring them back.
. . . but try launching Slashdot using this.
Though for news and entertainment in general, I usually take my pick from one of these (World service and Radio 4 I consider to be almost essential for my existence).
At this point you could probably combine random words from a dictionary and call it poetry..
I actually believe that this is how Mr. David Bowie wrote a few of his songs.
Though I believe beat poets such as Bryon Gysin and William Burroughs were pioneers of the cut-up method, where they basically chopped up other texts and then arranged the words randomly to try and create a form of poetry.
Not always the most succesful of methods, but led to some pretty fantastic works.
Guess what, non-linux users tend to use Flash and Real.
Guess who IBM want to use linux?
True, but I think I need to write an in depth study on how to become less lazy beforehand. And once I've succesfully completed that, I think I'll be more likely to be seen going round various universities and corporations, making money by giving talks about how to become less lazy.
:)
Though if I'm aiming these talks at people like me, getting people to get off their arses to come to the meetings might be a problem.
Until then, I think I'll probably stick to complaining about what people should be doing.
Speaking of cumbersome customizations. Takes the cookie as it were.
However, the one plug in I would like to see, is the ability to highlight sections of text and see related articles in a side box. Admittedly, I can do this at the moment through highlighting text, right clicking and then "searching the web", but it would be nice to have the process automated, with the searches linked to the websites raison d'etre.
In other words, if I'm on a science site and I highlight a set of words, the search engine only looks through sites designated as science sites, go to a sports site, the search only looks through sports sites. Basically a context search.
Difficult to program and get right, but I can see it as being another step along the road. After all, I find one of the more enjoyable sides of browsing to be going of at tangents to the actual article I'm reading and finding information, and learning things that I hadn't even considered before hand.
If your project enables Windows software to become fully compatable with Linux, do you see companies choosing to only produce a Windows variant?
Will full compatability force Microsoft to release Linux variants of its software?
Will full compatability neccesarily mean people changing their OS to Linux?
Indeed, do you feel full compatability ever be possible?
, Grim Fandango, damn am I spotting a trend here?
Should it be so suprising that pure action games generally have relatively weak story lines(with the exception of a few), whereas the more thought provoking ones(in terms of gameplay) tend to have a better plot?
No correlation to movies is there?
Gameplay at the moment tends to be driven by arcade desires, I sort of feel we are still in the transition from the stand up arcade machine instant gratification level of gaming to a more time consuming home leisure pursuit.
Hence I feel the storylines will slowly get better as developers learn more about what is possible for a succesful game for the home, giving alternatives to the wham, bam , thank you kind lady style of today, in favour of a slower pace, yet ultimately more rewarding experience. Which of course are far greater suited for plot and story telling.
Indeed, limitations like the human body not being able to survive speeds over 60 mph? That the sound barrier could not be broken?
Limitations are helpful to look at because it helps define some bounds of the theory, from which the theory may either be helped to be proved, adjusted, or thrown out entirely.
I've always found limitations to be useful in our quest for knowledge, as the human psyche seems not to like such bounds and always seeks to disprove them, increasing our knowledge along the way.
Indeed I know for a fact that I wouldn't be half the surgeon I am today were it not for the hours I spent playing operation.
I think one thing that you forgot to mention is the standardized input device on the consoles, the joypad.
Although PC owners all have a keyboard and mouse, this a not a configuration that suits most game, with the exception of the FPS and the like. This means that the guarantee of the number of buttons, analog joypad etc., developers of games know how the input of a game will work. And lets face it, input is key for the enjoyment of a game. Without knowing how a user is going to play a game, controls may be too cumbersome on a host PC, there is no way to playtest and configure for every single type of controller(with the exception of a keyboard, though this is not ideal for arcade games, imagine trying to play Street Fighter). Whereas the console has a standard to aim for, which means the game can be designed around the controller.
For example, look at how Mario 64 worked, it embraced the controller and made moving an overweight plumber around his world feel natural. Look at Ape escape on the Playstation and it's use of the dual analog input, it was innovative and worked, but only because of the standarised input.
Control is king in the games world.