I transferred to a US college in January of 1997 and graduated in May of 2000. Back then, the following was commonplace:
Laptops. We all got a Texas Instruments Extensa 510. Pentium 100, 8MB of RAM, 710MB HDD, Windows 95. Linx as a browser, PINE for e-mail. We all had a 14.4 modem that we got with the computer. Mine still works, and I'm still using it, but only with DOS.
Phones. We all got landline phones, and very few of us had cellphones initially. Cellphones became increasingly popular after phone provider initiated a $20/month charge, because most students spent less than that on phone bills. I didn't care - my phone service got canceled after it turned out that they spent more on the stamp for sending me the bill than what I paid them. Since then I used a calling card and a public phone, until now, when I started a grad program at Georgia Tech and realized that Tech has removed all public phones from the campus. I'm wondering what wireless provider paid them to do so...
Home entertainment. TVs were not too common; only about a quarter of the students had them. I remember watching the Nagano Olympics with a hundred or so other students in the student center - a pretty common sight. Stereos were much more common - about one out of two students had them.
Other electronics. By far the most common devices were small fridges and coffee makers. After all those were the sweet innocent times when we didn't go to bed with a dozen of standby lights flashing at us from all directions, and when we were happy in our ignorant bliss.
None of the changed material is illegal in the US; the worst the publisher can suffer is a higher age category rating or poorer reviews (or a combination). Nintendo changes the offending material just to sell more titles, not because it would run into legal troubles.
Now, if Nintendo tried to sell some of those games in Germany, for example, it would be forced to get rid of some of the offending material by the country's law, not by the marketplace.
I'm a gamer, and I don't have Internet access. At least not on my gaming computer. The only PC that I connected to the Internet is my old one, with nothing but a browser, e-mail client, firewall and antivirus program. I wouldn't want it any other way...
That said, I agree that there isn't a single author to blame or praise in most big-company games. And this is why current games largely suck. Group projects sound nice, but their real purpose is for everybody to share the praise and nobody to share the blame, and this is exactly what has been happening in the gaming industry. Not all is lost, though. There are still some developers (most notably Chris Crawford and Trevor Chan) who stand behind their games as their real authors, and who still seem to be willing to take full responsibility for them. I just hope others wouldn't hide behind a corporation like some bureaucrats, and instead face their fans as only artists can.
Re:Finally a voice of reason
on
Less Might Be More
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Compared to gamers, people who encode video streams or compile code are very few, and as such pretty in significant. I'm aware there are those and that they need better computers, but I see no reason why such computers shouldn't be the niche, instead of the mainstream.
Finally a voice of reason
on
Less Might Be More
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Ever since my Pentium II 400MHz, 128MB RAM and a 5400RPM HDD, I haven't noticed any difference in the speed and reliability of basic office computing. That computer is still my primary machine, and if I wasn't required to get a laptop with wireless connectivity for my grad school, it would still be my only computer.
Let's face it: unless you feel the need to play games, there was no reason to upgrade your computer for the past six years.
Just the other day I was complaining that there's no innovation in the gaming industry. It's nice to see that Vivendi found yet another new and original way to screw itself and alienate its remaining fans.
Same companies already do that. For example, if you check Stardock's The Political Machine box, you'll find something similar in the hardware requirements. Others, however, treat this as a trade secret. Actually, that was the exact excuse of Dreamcatcher, whenever they removed posts on their forums that identified their games protected by a similar system.
The new technology is fine with me. As long as its presence is clearly marked on the DVD box, so that I don't accidentally purchase such a protected DVD.
...is Cartel$ and Cutthroat$ by Danni Bunten. Published back in 1985, it was such an entertaining and yet informative business simulation that it's still being used in schools, almost 20 years later. I wish somebody has remade that title...
Apparently, the game publishers who were involved didn't want people to know about their games, so let them have their wish and let their games be ignored, possibly by everybody.
A long time ago, Steve Jackson Games, which holds the copyright on titles based on their games, such as Autoduel, did the same. Very quickly, all their games disappeared into obscurity, and if you ask the average gamer, he won't be able to mention a single computer game based on Steve Jackson's GURPS. By the time the company turned around and declared that it would allow people to review their games and share the screenshots, it was too late. I really hope the same would happen to the companies involved in this case.
A sample group of 1000 people is just that. A sample, and hardly reflects whether the majority of Americans trust e-voting machines or not.
Very rarely, polls are conducted with significantly more than 1000 respondents. The marginal decrease of the sampling error beyond 1000 observations is too small to make a larger sample worthwile. 77% being in favor of e-voting machines is pretty damn significant, and it can be said that the majority of all 291 million Americans is in favor of them (of course, I'd need to know the standard deviation of the sample to be absolutely positive).
That doesn't rule out other errors, though, such as a sampling bias. If the pollsters picked 1000 employees of e-voting machines manufacturers, that would be a voting bias. So would be if they picked 1000 Slashdotters. However, arguing that the poll result is wrong because the sample was comparativelly small is wrong.
What you mention in your requirements is all important, but there's one more aspect to take into account: easy text scrolling. The only PDA I know of that fits the descriprion are older models of Sony Clie, which have a scroll wheel on the side (newer models have it in the middle of the buttons; not very comfortable). The Clie has backlighting, rechargeable battery and a very good contrast. I've been using my Clie PEG-SJ10, which I've gotten for $99, for over two years now, and I'm still getting around 30 hours from one battery charge (without the backlight on).
As for software, if you can hunt down a shareware copy of TomeRaider you are set. The software has excellent compression, and the reader, while not having all the bells and whistles of more bulky software, is fast and reliable. You start out with a basic.txt file, and the software will convert it into a.pdb file, readable on your PDA.
If you offer items for download, but do not state your intentions, does this allow commerical vendors to make a profit out of your work. I think that now that he has applied the CC license, future uses in presentations would be protected, but I am not sure of the offending one.
Actually, the Creative Commons licenses work the other way - they allow the artist to forfeit some of his rights. Unless explicitly stated, every content published on the Web is the exclusive property of the author. As such, Linspire would have to approach the author and ask for permission to use his work. The CC license limits the ownership of the author, and in some, clearly stated cases (in this case the use for non-commercial purposes) other may use the author's work without prior permission.
My boss has 67 different accounts with various financial Web sites. He's really dilligent, and always creates a different user name and password. Then he puts them all, along with the proper Web site address, into an Excel spreadsheet, prints them out and leaves them next to the computer.
Kinda useless, if you ask me. I prefer to have 3-5 different passwords and use post-its attached to my monitor.
>> But, if you are in my airspace... Let's say it's a fancy restaurant. Or better yet, an opera house.
> It isn't your airspace. It's a public place.
Not true. Public place is a park or the sidewalk, basically anything maintained by the government (local, state, federal). A restaurant is a private place. Ever seen those signs saying "We reserve the right to refuse service to anybody"? A public place can't do that, because they aren't allowed to discriminate. Private places can do so. I can well imagine a restaurant (mine, if I had one), to automatically take away all food and drinks and bring the check the moment the customer's phone rings. As the ovner of that particular private place, I may feel like refusing service to those who wish to keep their cell phones on.
In the good old days, a problem encountered by one console gamer would likely be replicated by others. This, however, is not the case anymore. Dual-layer DVDs are known to cause problems on both consoles that facilitate them - X-Box and Playstation 2. Unfortunately, these problems don't affect everybody, so the reviewers could've just assumed that they were the unlucky ones.
This topic has been beaten to death and beyond, so let me just repeat the most common arguments:
Consoles are social gaming devices, PCs are anti-social. In other words, consoles encourage more than one person playing at the same machine, while PCs are much more solitary. On-line gaming is solitary. Thus, only if consoles transform into dumbed down PCs they would able to marginalize PCs as a gaming device.
Consoles are living room appliances, PCs are office appliances. There still are games that require a keyboard to play, and believe it or not, there are still lots of gamers who like such games. These games will always remain on PCs.
Consoles rely on royalties, PCs don't. It's much easier and cheaper do develop low-level games for PCs than for consoles. For example, I spent all this month playing new freeware adventure games, which were released this month only. That's a month worth of gaming for free. Show me a place where I can easily download a bunch of freeware for a console, and show me a way to install it easily. Independent gaming will always be another strong point of PCs, and there are people who like these games.
As a result, consoles and PCs will coexist in the future. PCs would catter to certain games and certain audience, and consoles to others. It's not my place to comment on the quality of the different gaming genres, but my personal preference would lie with the PCs.
I didn't have to give out my name or address to get the card, so it's anonymous data
Which store is that? The local Stop & Shop requires filling out a personal questionare before giving you a loyalty card, and then your name appears on all your cash register bills. The good news is that I found mine laying on a sidewalk. Poor Martha she must be swamped with Hot Pockets and Apple Cinamon Cheerios coupons by now...
"...intent mostly on spreading far and wide, and sometimes inflicting DoS on some poor evil empire."
Actually, the evil empire isn't all that poor; it's got several billion dollard in cash. And the poor wannabe empire isn't poor either; apparently it got a $86 million cash injection, thanks to the evil empire.
Thanks for the insightful comment. I'm ashamed to admit that I completely forgot the modding scene. NOw that you mention it, I'd go even farther - there were cases when gamers released fixes for games, whether it was Temple of Elemental Evil, or Falcon 4.0. However, I see here a possible problem - copyright issues. Just look at the problem Marvel had with a mod for Freedom Force, and I've caught something about other publishers not being too happy with total conversions of Morrowind and NWN to resemble other games.
As for console ports, many of them were successful last year, but the big problem here is the interface. I don't see a solution here, other than attaching a keyboard to a console, but at that point it becomes a PC. However, I disagree with having to have large resources to produce good games. As you said, PC gamers bathe and are distinguished. I think that they are more likely than console gamers forgive poor production and concentrate on gameplay.
Freelancer: My bad; I meant mouse-only, but my head was already a few paragraphs ahead. I still can't forgive Microsoft for releasing a decent space combat game with that dreaded WASD interface...
Electronic Arts: When I purchased Might & Magic VI, Might and Magic VII, Heroes of Might and Magic III and the first Army Men, I thought 3DO would be here forever. That was 3-4 years ago...
So let's see. First, we connect our brains to the computer. Then we create Internet 3, by directly linking our brains. Then a new anti-terrorism bill outlaws firewalls, and our brains will be wide open to each other. Can anybody say "collective consciousness"?
Slashdot Mirror
Now, if Nintendo tried to sell some of those games in Germany, for example, it would be forced to get rid of some of the offending material by the country's law, not by the marketplace.
I'm a gamer, and I don't have Internet access. At least not on my gaming computer. The only PC that I connected to the Internet is my old one, with nothing but a browser, e-mail client, firewall and antivirus program. I wouldn't want it any other way...
That said, I agree that there isn't a single author to blame or praise in most big-company games. And this is why current games largely suck. Group projects sound nice, but their real purpose is for everybody to share the praise and nobody to share the blame, and this is exactly what has been happening in the gaming industry. Not all is lost, though. There are still some developers (most notably Chris Crawford and Trevor Chan) who stand behind their games as their real authors, and who still seem to be willing to take full responsibility for them. I just hope others wouldn't hide behind a corporation like some bureaucrats, and instead face their fans as only artists can.
Compared to gamers, people who encode video streams or compile code are very few, and as such pretty in significant. I'm aware there are those and that they need better computers, but I see no reason why such computers shouldn't be the niche, instead of the mainstream.
Let's face it: unless you feel the need to play games, there was no reason to upgrade your computer for the past six years.
Just the other day I was complaining that there's no innovation in the gaming industry. It's nice to see that Vivendi found yet another new and original way to screw itself and alienate its remaining fans.
Same companies already do that. For example, if you check Stardock's The Political Machine box, you'll find something similar in the hardware requirements. Others, however, treat this as a trade secret. Actually, that was the exact excuse of Dreamcatcher, whenever they removed posts on their forums that identified their games protected by a similar system.
The new technology is fine with me. As long as its presence is clearly marked on the DVD box, so that I don't accidentally purchase such a protected DVD.
...is Cartel$ and Cutthroat$ by Danni Bunten. Published back in 1985, it was such an entertaining and yet informative business simulation that it's still being used in schools, almost 20 years later. I wish somebody has remade that title...
A long time ago, Steve Jackson Games, which holds the copyright on titles based on their games, such as Autoduel, did the same. Very quickly, all their games disappeared into obscurity, and if you ask the average gamer, he won't be able to mention a single computer game based on Steve Jackson's GURPS. By the time the company turned around and declared that it would allow people to review their games and share the screenshots, it was too late. I really hope the same would happen to the companies involved in this case.
Very rarely, polls are conducted with significantly more than 1000 respondents. The marginal decrease of the sampling error beyond 1000 observations is too small to make a larger sample worthwile. 77% being in favor of e-voting machines is pretty damn significant, and it can be said that the majority of all 291 million Americans is in favor of them (of course, I'd need to know the standard deviation of the sample to be absolutely positive).
That doesn't rule out other errors, though, such as a sampling bias. If the pollsters picked 1000 employees of e-voting machines manufacturers, that would be a voting bias. So would be if they picked 1000 Slashdotters. However, arguing that the poll result is wrong because the sample was comparativelly small is wrong.
As for software, if you can hunt down a shareware copy of TomeRaider you are set. The software has excellent compression, and the reader, while not having all the bells and whistles of more bulky software, is fast and reliable. You start out with a basic .txt file, and the software will convert it into a .pdb file, readable on your PDA.
Actually, the Creative Commons licenses work the other way - they allow the artist to forfeit some of his rights. Unless explicitly stated, every content published on the Web is the exclusive property of the author. As such, Linspire would have to approach the author and ask for permission to use his work. The CC license limits the ownership of the author, and in some, clearly stated cases (in this case the use for non-commercial purposes) other may use the author's work without prior permission.
Kinda useless, if you ask me. I prefer to have 3-5 different passwords and use post-its attached to my monitor.
> It isn't your airspace. It's a public place.
Not true. Public place is a park or the sidewalk, basically anything maintained by the government (local, state, federal). A restaurant is a private place. Ever seen those signs saying "We reserve the right to refuse service to anybody"? A public place can't do that, because they aren't allowed to discriminate. Private places can do so. I can well imagine a restaurant (mine, if I had one), to automatically take away all food and drinks and bring the check the moment the customer's phone rings. As the ovner of that particular private place, I may feel like refusing service to those who wish to keep their cell phones on.
In the good old days, a problem encountered by one console gamer would likely be replicated by others. This, however, is not the case anymore. Dual-layer DVDs are known to cause problems on both consoles that facilitate them - X-Box and Playstation 2. Unfortunately, these problems don't affect everybody, so the reviewers could've just assumed that they were the unlucky ones.
- Consoles are social gaming devices, PCs are anti-social. In other words, consoles encourage more than one person playing at the same machine, while PCs are much more solitary. On-line gaming is solitary. Thus, only if consoles transform into dumbed down PCs they would able to marginalize PCs as a gaming device.
- Consoles are living room appliances, PCs are office appliances. There still are games that require a keyboard to play, and believe it or not, there are still lots of gamers who like such games. These games will always remain on PCs.
- Consoles rely on royalties, PCs don't. It's much easier and cheaper do develop low-level games for PCs than for consoles. For example, I spent all this month playing new freeware adventure games, which were released this month only. That's a month worth of gaming for free. Show me a place where I can easily download a bunch of freeware for a console, and show me a way to install it easily. Independent gaming will always be another strong point of PCs, and there are people who like these games.
As a result, consoles and PCs will coexist in the future. PCs would catter to certain games and certain audience, and consoles to others. It's not my place to comment on the quality of the different gaming genres, but my personal preference would lie with the PCs.Which store is that? The local Stop & Shop requires filling out a personal questionare before giving you a loyalty card, and then your name appears on all your cash register bills. The good news is that I found mine laying on a sidewalk. Poor Martha she must be swamped with Hot Pockets and Apple Cinamon Cheerios coupons by now...
I found that playing chess on computer has greatly increased my umm... chess playing skills.
Actually, the evil empire isn't all that poor; it's got several billion dollard in cash. And the poor wannabe empire isn't poor either; apparently it got a $86 million cash injection, thanks to the evil empire.
As for console ports, many of them were successful last year, but the big problem here is the interface. I don't see a solution here, other than attaching a keyboard to a console, but at that point it becomes a PC. However, I disagree with having to have large resources to produce good games. As you said, PC gamers bathe and are distinguished. I think that they are more likely than console gamers forgive poor production and concentrate on gameplay.
Electronic Arts: When I purchased Might & Magic VI, Might and Magic VII, Heroes of Might and Magic III and the first Army Men, I thought 3DO would be here forever. That was 3-4 years ago...
First three numbers - check.
Second three numbers - coming closer.
Third three numbers - danr! Lost once again!
So let's see. First, we connect our brains to the computer. Then we create Internet 3, by directly linking our brains. Then a new anti-terrorism bill outlaws firewalls, and our brains will be wide open to each other. Can anybody say "collective consciousness"?