There's no way in hell I'd have gone to a college that forced me to spend $600-$1000 dollars on a laptop
The poster is talking about laptops used to run some pretty high-end programs (photo manipulation, 3D modeling, video editing, etc). So really you're talking more about $2500-$4000 laptops.
There are a lot of things to consider when making the switch, some of them fall on the administration side, and others on the hardware requirements in a laptop side.
The first thing comes to my mind is that for people who are going to be doing a lot of 3D modeling, CAD, photo editing, etc. having a computer with a decent resolution is a must. A lot of laptop screens max out at 1024x768 or 1280x1024. I've found that for a lot of applications, 1600x1200 is really the minimum comfortable resolution. Another big thing for moving to laptops for people doing artwork is that LCD screens show color differently than CRTs. LCDs are great for a lot of things, but CRTs really have better color accuracy which can matter. The biggest problem with LCDs though is that the brightness and contrast changes noticably with relatively minor movement. This usually isn't a big deal if you're just browsing slashdot or whatever, but it can make a huge impact when you're trying to balance colors or get the right brightness on an image (something that may looked "washed out" on a laptop could appear like a perfectly normal image on a CRT or on paper).
As for processing power, most laptops have plenty of power for doing graphics work, but many are low on RAM. It's also important to make sure that the machines have a decent video card. Many 3D applications will perform abysmally without 3D accelleration- or will refuse to install at all. You're not going to find any notebooks with a Quatro or anything in them, but look for systems with decent cards that have a good amount of video memory.
Hard drive space may be an issue for students working with video. This should be easily solved by suggesting or requiring students to buy a USB or Firewire 250+ GB hard drive. This way they can use the limited laptop storage space for what they are working on, and offload the rest of the storage to an external drive.
Hardware requirements aside, there are other things to consider. One of the biggest things is going to be backups. I would strongly suggest having a file server that is regularly backed up that students can upload work to so that they have an easy way to keep backups of files. Many people don't know how to back up, don't think about it, etc. The point is that if a student is going to fail a class or whatever because their hard drive crashed- it would be a reasonable idea for the school to at least offer students a centralized way to keep backups.
On the topic of hardware failures, I wouldn't completely do away with computer labs either. Stuff happens, and if some hardware goes bad/gets coffee spilled on it/gets run over by a stampede of elephants then students should still have some way to get work done.
Along with hardware considerations and considerations for hardware failure, it's important to remember that (especially if the student is required to buy their own laptop instead of being issued one owned by the school) the machines will NOT be treated like a lab computer. Students will install malware, get viruses, not run a firewall, and do every other thing imaginable to foul up the network. Some of this can be combated technologically- but it's important to remember that you will need policies to deal with these sorts of things. I seem to recall some statistic that said that in corporate networks the single largest way machines get infected is people bringing in laptops that are infected.
To summarize- make sure that system requirements for the systems are clearly stated. I would recommend students go for portable workstations as opposed to laptops for high end graphics stuff. Have a system in place so students can back up their work, and have some machines available for students to work on if their hardware gets hosed. Finally set in place usage policies that deal with the fact that you have machines owned by students on a network owned by the school. I'm certain there are more things to consider that other slashdotters will bring up- but I hope this has helped.
Our current economic system is built around charging an optimal amount for a given product. Basically prices are set at the sweet spot where the most people will pay the most money for a given product. Charge more and some people will still pay, but you'll make less money from all the people who opt not to buy the product. Charge less and more people might buy the product, but the greater sales don't make up the difference in profit you would get were you to charge more for the product.
While it's certainly possible (some would say en vouge) to debate the merits of our system here, there seems to me to be a big mistake that a lot of game publishers (and movie publishers) have traditionally made. The problem is the "a movie is a movie" or "a game is a game" attitude. The thing about it is, that sweet spot for how much I or many other people are willing to pay for a game varies greatly on a number of factors.
Games around here generally retail new for between $49.99 and $54.99. There are some games that I would certainly pay more for, because they hold more value for me. I would venture to say that there are a few top tier titles that could easily go for $65 and not stuffer hardly any loss in sales. Likewise there are a lot of games that I would buy if they were cheaper, but that I don't really see the value in for $50 or $55.
It seems though that the game industry has begun to realize that all games cannot be treated economically the same. I excpect that the end result of this will be that we'll see the average game cost less, with a rise in cost for premium games.
Hopefully this will also lead to more niche and experimental games that companies may have not forseen selling at all at $50 but which may do well at $25 (Katamari Damacy anybody?). The benefit of this is games that very possibly would have not turned any profit when sold at $50 could turn a small profit when soold at $25. Companies could then experiment more with genres and possibly find a new huge seller. This will be good for developers who won't be under so much preassure (instead of a game being either a breakway hit or a flop it could be mildy successfull), for companies (they find new product lines that could make them merry bundles of cash) and for games (we get some cheaper games and some better games).
I certainly agree, and I'm not even sure if this is the case. It's been quite a while since I've used Windows, was just trying to give a bit of advice to maybe help solve the mystery.
I don't have a windows box to test this on, but I believe that windows goes off of how many times the application is actually launched. So if you have firefox open nearly all the time, but rarely re-launch it, then it will show up as "rarely used".
I'm 22 and have played most of the most violent video games available...and I don't think it's appropriate for ME to see the goatse guy any more often than strictly nessesary.
firefox's memory usage has always been a thorn in my side. I tend to average around 20 to 25 tabs open, usually while I'm running other ram hungry applications. Firefox generally was eating up about 200-250 megs of ram on my machine (and I've seen it go as high as 600 megs). After changing the browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to 0 and running "top" firefox seems to be using about 46 megs of ram right now. It also doesn't feel particularly slower than it did before. I have a feeling that the benefit of caching so much was actually having a negative return after a certain point because the machine was so starved for ram.
On a side note, if anyone is like me and looks in about:config for browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers and doesn't see it, you have to actually add the line. Right click and choose "new" then type in "browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers" and then 0 (or whatever you like).
Some of us don't want or need mature-themed games to have a good time.
I think one of the problems is the degredation of the term "mature". I very much enjoy mature games. The problem is that most people associate "mature" with "lots of blood and blowing shit up". In fact, to me most of these games are very immature because they substitute depth with "shiny, blood, explosions, boobies".
I have to agree, pokemon snap was a very unique and addictive game. For those of you who've never heard of it, the premis of the game is that you are a photographer working for a scientist studying Pokemon. You ride around on a track in this little vehicle through this pokemon sanctuary, and your goal is to snap photos of various pokemon- or natural formations that resemble pokemon. Points are given for how good the photo is. The environments were incredibly detailed, as were the pokemon themselves. The game had some puzzle elements as well. You could get a flute and food to help lure the pokemon to certain areas. In one level for example you can use pokemon food to lure an electric pokemon to terminals in a power plant. You can then coerce it to using it's power to charge up the power plant. This leads to an egg hatching and a rare bird type pokemon.
This biggest problem with the game was that it was just too short. I'd love to see a new version of this for the Revolution that takes advantage of the new controller.
The site was painfully slow, so here is a summary of the information in the article:
The case we've seen for the PS3 is empty, and many developers are not convinced that sony will actually be able to fit everything into the case they've designed. The current development machines are towers. Along with a possibly redesigned case, Sony seems to be redesigning the controller, but is planning to keep the basic dual shock2 layout.
As for the graphics, looking at games running in realtime there is certainly nothing as impressive as the Killzone trailer, but but MGS4 trailer seems realistic to be ran in realtime. The graphics right now seem to be about equal to the "creme of the crop" 360 titles, and while the PS3 will certainly be able to provide better graphics than the 360- it will probably be a fairly marginal difference.
One thing to remember is that, while the PS3 may not be able to produce graphics that are substantially nicer looking than on the 360- it does seem to handle many more objects on screen at once.
Game developers seem to be targetting 720p as the target resolution. Developers aren't really expecting games to run at 1080p because the system isn't powerful enough to do 1080p at a reasonable resolution (or even 1080i)- but the PS3 is capable of doing some nice upscaling to 1080p. Dual 1080p output is a joke at this point.
The spring '06 release date isn't looking very likely. Developers are predicting summer 06 for Japan and a fall 06 or winter 07 release for the US and Europe.
While I've not worked with people from the distance you're talking about- I think that one of the main problems that occurs when working with people remotely happens regardless of timezones. Electronic communication is slower than face-to-face communication. Even chatting on the phone is much less efficient than chatting face to face.
What I've found to be helpful is to schedule a few face-to-face meetings with the people you're working with. While the details will certainly vary depending on a number of factors (length of the project, number of people, budget, scope of the project, etc.) A couple of face to face meetings can go along way in helping the project run smoothly.
For example, you may want to get everyone together for a week at the start of the project. Spend a day or so letting everyone get to know eachother and doing some team building (it doesn't have to be some hokey team building exercise, just spent some time chatting, have lunch, etc). Collaborate on design work and figguring out what exactly each person is doing.
You may then want to meet again toward the end of the project. This gives everyone a chance to again work face to face and can make integrating everyones work much easier. This is especially important if you've been working relatively independent modules of code or been focusing largely on different aspects of the project. Getting together to integrate various aspects of the project can turn a month long nightmare into a quick, if not painless, week long endevor. Plus it can give the team members a chance to celebrate the completion of a project together.
It seems to me that lately the largest market for DVDs has been TV shows. I know that personally I've only bought 1 movie in the last several months, but I have purchased several television seasons on DVD. It's the same for most of my friends as well. The thing about it is that for this all that extra resolution is pretty much useless. None of the shows I watch are shown in HD (in fact, the majority of them were off the air before ANYTHING was shown in HD). It seems to me that if this trend continues, it will be several more years before most shows are in HD. Until then, it seems like this extra resolution is pointless even for people who have HDTVs.
It seems to me like they are going about marketing the format in the wrong way. I have an HDTV and I know that I am not particularly excited by the prospect of being able to buy bluray movies. On the other hand, I think a lot of people would be excited about this as a new higher capacity backup media for PCs. I've just recently seen Dual Layer DVD burners becomming common, and it seems like there could have been a good market in selling BluRay has having more capacity than DLDVD burners. As hard drives get bigger, it gets to be more trouble to back up and restore from backups. I recently had a hard drive crash and ended up having around 20 DVDs worth of data to restore from backups.
There is one instance when I've found transparency to be very useful in OS X- and that is with the terminal. It is incredibly nice to be able to code in a terminal window and have documentation open beneath the terminal so that you can simply look through the code to see you're documentation.
The thing about transparency isn't that you want to have all your windows transparent, it's that you want to be able to have one window open full screen and still be able to quickly reference another window.
Actually, Linux has a pretty strong following for 3D modeling. A lot of studios use Maya on Linux for 3D modeling/rendering. I do a lot of 3D modeling, and I use Linux for almost everything. Among the other 3D artists I know, about half use Linux, and the other half is divided around 70%/30% between mac and windows. Many people bound to Mac or Windows are on those systems because of Photoshop.
I use Linux as my primary desktop OS. I have to say that I agree that Photoshop would definitely be a huge boon to be able to run on my desktop. Right now I have a mac that I use for photoshop and although I really like it, it would be very nice to be able to not have to get up and move to a different machine to be able to mess with some textures. While GIMP works for some things (and it actually feels faster working with some larger files than photoshop on similar machines)- the lack of certain plugins (generating normal and image maps, working with.iff files, nVidias photoshop plugins) means that gimp isn't exactly practical.
While the GIMP GUI definitely could use some work (though it has been better since version 2) there is more to the problem than redesigning the GUI. While GIMP has some nice features, in my experience Photoshop has a much better painting engine. There are a few things gimp either doesn't support or does not do quite as well as Photoshop that make it unsuitable for some things.
I understand where you're comming from, but the thing is, in you're case, the manage just wanted to copy a look and feel instead of specifying the technologies used to develop it.
The point is though that AJAX isn't the only choice, and it may not always be the best choice. I know a lot of slashdotters hate Flash, but there are times when it's really the best option. Java applets likewise are sometimes the way to go.
It's also important to remember that "just because you can doesn't mean you should". You say that sites not using AJAX are going to look antiquated, however the counter point to that would be that more sites are using flashing interfaces when something simpler and less flashy is a better option.
I've done a fair bit of web design and programming, both as a side gig and as a full time job. This said, there are a few things that jumped out at me from your post that I thought I would bring up.
The first thing is that you have to remember that good programmers are not alwyas good designers. Good web design is something that really takes a sort of knack to be good at, and there is not a lot of overlap between good designers and good developers. If you manage to find someone who is both a talented programmer and designer, expect to pay a premium. In most cases you will want to higher a designer (and possible even an artist seperate from the designer) to design the site- and then turn over the design to the programmer who will take the static templates and make them alive. While the designer and the programmer can to a certain extent work in parallel, it's important to remember that the design is the critical path because at some point the programmer has to have a skeleton to put the code into.
The other thing that jumped out at me is the specification that you want an AJAX/Web2.0 site. The truth is that if you don't know enough to code the site youself then you really do not have the information to decide the best way to code the site. AJAX and Web2.0 are both very vauge terms in themselves, and chances are that the AJAX parts of your site may only constitute a small part of the overall application. It's important to realize this because if you convince yourself that a project should be done with some combination of technologies A, B, and C then you may end up dismissing a better solution using Technology D, or end up with someone who only knows Technology A and will end up doing you more harm than good in the long run.
As I go to DeVry (yeah, it's even crappier than most people imagine), I think I may be able to shed some light onto the whole "it would be free" thing. The thing about it is, the student's really don't have much of a say. DeVry technically owns the projects that students do for their Senior Projects. DeVry then works out a deal with the companies in turn saying that they get the work done for free in exchange for filling out a bunch of extra paperwork, and agreeing that there is no warranty, support, etc.
University ownership of projects aside- there is another reason talented college students may come cheap or sometimes free. Most "entry level" jobs now still want a couple of years experience, and it's really tough comming out of college with a degree and nothing else. I'm sure it's not an exclusive to DeVry- but there are a lot of people who graduate with high GPAs and very little skills in their fields. Because of this, a lot of talented students are willing to barter work for a good reference on their resume and perhaps some work of mouth advertising.
I do agree that for most projects you are extremely unlikely to find students who are fully qualified (I would agree that 50:1 odds are about right), however in my experience there are a lot more students with experience coding with LAMP/WIMP/etc than in other environments.
Java with Swing is a pretty quick way to write a GUI. Swing is well documented on sun's website- both with APIs and tutorials available. It also has the benefit of being largely crossplatform (though given your specific task there will probably be some native code that would have to be rewritten).
If you don't want to learn Java, or you would prefer something more native to windows,.NET is a huge step up from the old way of creating windows GUIs. I haven't used it extensively, but it seems to be largely well thought out and well documented (though I still vastly prefer Sun's javadoc to Microsofts.NET documentation)..NET has the benefit of being able to work with most languages you would want to program in.
A few general suggestions if you're rusty with GUI programing that you might want to consider as well:
Don't use form builder code for actual code. While GUI builders can be a good way to get an idea of the way you want the GUI to look, in my opinion they end up producing really ugly code. It's generally faster and easier to just write it from scratch.
Sketch out the GUI. Even for a simple GUI it's difficult to design a GUI while looking at code unless you're really comfortable with both the API and with the type of GUI your designing.
Seperate Logic from Display. It's tempting to put little bits of logic in the GUI code, but if you're going to be supporting the code you're life will be much easier if they are seperate. Essentially you are writing two programs. The program that does the task (in this case, reading the data from the serial port and processing the data) and the program that displays the task. It's fairly reasonable to say that if your program is properly designed, you should be able to create a text based interface for the application in a few hours. (Yes, there are programs you can't reasonable run without a GUI, but the point is, seperate logic from display).
Seperate Logic from GUI code. It' bears repeating. I've seen a lot of programs where the author/previous maintainer put a small but crusial bit of logic in the GUI code. Later when re-working the GUI code stuff breaks and it's very difficult to find out where/why.
Use Threads. In a lot of cases you can make the application feel much more responsive by keeping the display code in a seperate thread from the processing code.
Consider your Users. When you design a GUI, remember that small things can make big differences. Consider a couple of things. First off, what is the technical level of your target audience. Second, what are you're users going to do most often. For users with little technical proficency remember that it's often preferable to use terminology that they are familiar with, even if it's not the most precise way of displaying the information. (For example, many users are confused by "export" options for programs, so you should put those options under "save as".) What your users are doing is going to effect where things go. You don't want the most common task to be 3 menus deep and at the bottom of the last tab in an obscure options window, you want it to be a big button in the main window. Likewise you don't want the most commonly clicked button to be the third down in a list of 6 or something.
Last, spend a bit of time reading up on the psychology of colors and shapes. Certain shapes and colors tend to draw the eye and this can be useful to give users subtle visual cues and will make your application much more intuitive.
I think that it is one of those things that varies depending on the coast. I've always seen LGBT as more common in the midwest. I always thought it should be BLTG so you can assosiate something most people like and can remember (a BLT) with the movement to generate positive association.
ah but see, the joke is on you. There are only three or four possible passwords- but by the time you've finished typing in one that you've picked to try the password will have changed.
thanks, I'll take a look at it. I've used JNI a bit and found it to be really nice...all the way up until I had to work with someone who didn't know (and refused to learn) C++.
I'd really like to see a book that covers in-depth the use of reflection in java. I've played around with it a bit and it seems like it's a really nice way to supplement some of the problems caused by the lack of pointers in Java. Unfortunately, it also seems to be one of the things for which the documentation is a little lean. Anyone know of a good book that covers this aspect of Java?
I think that it depends a lot on the type of games. For platform games, FPS, puzzle games, etc. I think that learning modes are generally pointless.
There are certain genres that benefit from a learning mode. RPGs for example usually have a (skippable) tutorial that lets you learn the various aspects of the system. Since the systems tend to be deep it's helpful to get an overview. Other games like the Metal Gear Solid games, Tony Hawk series, Resident Evil 4- to name a few that stick out in my mind- make use of tutorial sections of the game to demonstrate when to use what abilities.
In the end though- I think that it comes down to the fact that the tutorial sections of a lot of games are implemented poorly as opposed to the fact that they are in themselves annoying. The best tutorials I think are the ones where they start you out in the game but offer on-screen hints that you can follow if you're new to the game- or ignore if you've read the manual or played the game before.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no way in hell I'd have gone to a college that forced me to spend $600-$1000 dollars on a laptop
The poster is talking about laptops used to run some pretty high-end programs (photo manipulation, 3D modeling, video editing, etc). So really you're talking more about $2500-$4000 laptops.
There are a lot of things to consider when making the switch, some of them fall on the administration side, and others on the hardware requirements in a laptop side.
The first thing comes to my mind is that for people who are going to be doing a lot of 3D modeling, CAD, photo editing, etc. having a computer with a decent resolution is a must. A lot of laptop screens max out at 1024x768 or 1280x1024. I've found that for a lot of applications, 1600x1200 is really the minimum comfortable resolution. Another big thing for moving to laptops for people doing artwork is that LCD screens show color differently than CRTs. LCDs are great for a lot of things, but CRTs really have better color accuracy which can matter. The biggest problem with LCDs though is that the brightness and contrast changes noticably with relatively minor movement. This usually isn't a big deal if you're just browsing slashdot or whatever, but it can make a huge impact when you're trying to balance colors or get the right brightness on an image (something that may looked "washed out" on a laptop could appear like a perfectly normal image on a CRT or on paper).
As for processing power, most laptops have plenty of power for doing graphics work, but many are low on RAM. It's also important to make sure that the machines have a decent video card. Many 3D applications will perform abysmally without 3D accelleration- or will refuse to install at all. You're not going to find any notebooks with a Quatro or anything in them, but look for systems with decent cards that have a good amount of video memory.
Hard drive space may be an issue for students working with video. This should be easily solved by suggesting or requiring students to buy a USB or Firewire 250+ GB hard drive. This way they can use the limited laptop storage space for what they are working on, and offload the rest of the storage to an external drive.
Hardware requirements aside, there are other things to consider. One of the biggest things is going to be backups. I would strongly suggest having a file server that is regularly backed up that students can upload work to so that they have an easy way to keep backups of files. Many people don't know how to back up, don't think about it, etc. The point is that if a student is going to fail a class or whatever because their hard drive crashed- it would be a reasonable idea for the school to at least offer students a centralized way to keep backups.
On the topic of hardware failures, I wouldn't completely do away with computer labs either. Stuff happens, and if some hardware goes bad/gets coffee spilled on it/gets run over by a stampede of elephants then students should still have some way to get work done.
Along with hardware considerations and considerations for hardware failure, it's important to remember that (especially if the student is required to buy their own laptop instead of being issued one owned by the school) the machines will NOT be treated like a lab computer. Students will install malware, get viruses, not run a firewall, and do every other thing imaginable to foul up the network. Some of this can be combated technologically- but it's important to remember that you will need policies to deal with these sorts of things. I seem to recall some statistic that said that in corporate networks the single largest way machines get infected is people bringing in laptops that are infected.
To summarize- make sure that system requirements for the systems are clearly stated. I would recommend students go for portable workstations as opposed to laptops for high end graphics stuff. Have a system in place so students can back up their work, and have some machines available for students to work on if their hardware gets hosed. Finally set in place usage policies that deal with the fact that you have machines owned by students on a network owned by the school. I'm certain there are more things to consider that other slashdotters will bring up- but I hope this has helped.
Our current economic system is built around charging an optimal amount for a given product. Basically prices are set at the sweet spot where the most people will pay the most money for a given product. Charge more and some people will still pay, but you'll make less money from all the people who opt not to buy the product. Charge less and more people might buy the product, but the greater sales don't make up the difference in profit you would get were you to charge more for the product.
While it's certainly possible (some would say en vouge) to debate the merits of our system here, there seems to me to be a big mistake that a lot of game publishers (and movie publishers) have traditionally made. The problem is the "a movie is a movie" or "a game is a game" attitude. The thing about it is, that sweet spot for how much I or many other people are willing to pay for a game varies greatly on a number of factors.
Games around here generally retail new for between $49.99 and $54.99. There are some games that I would certainly pay more for, because they hold more value for me. I would venture to say that there are a few top tier titles that could easily go for $65 and not stuffer hardly any loss in sales. Likewise there are a lot of games that I would buy if they were cheaper, but that I don't really see the value in for $50 or $55.
It seems though that the game industry has begun to realize that all games cannot be treated economically the same. I excpect that the end result of this will be that we'll see the average game cost less, with a rise in cost for premium games.
Hopefully this will also lead to more niche and experimental games that companies may have not forseen selling at all at $50 but which may do well at $25 (Katamari Damacy anybody?). The benefit of this is games that very possibly would have not turned any profit when sold at $50 could turn a small profit when soold at $25. Companies could then experiment more with genres and possibly find a new huge seller. This will be good for developers who won't be under so much preassure (instead of a game being either a breakway hit or a flop it could be mildy successfull), for companies (they find new product lines that could make them merry bundles of cash) and for games (we get some cheaper games and some better games).
I certainly agree, and I'm not even sure if this is the case. It's been quite a while since I've used Windows, was just trying to give a bit of advice to maybe help solve the mystery.
I don't have a windows box to test this on, but I believe that windows goes off of how many times the application is actually launched. So if you have firefox open nearly all the time, but rarely re-launch it, then it will show up as "rarely used".
I'm 22 and have played most of the most violent video games available...and I don't think it's appropriate for ME to see the goatse guy any more often than strictly nessesary.
firefox's memory usage has always been a thorn in my side. I tend to average around 20 to 25 tabs open, usually while I'm running other ram hungry applications. Firefox generally was eating up about 200-250 megs of ram on my machine (and I've seen it go as high as 600 megs). After changing the browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to 0 and running "top" firefox seems to be using about 46 megs of ram right now. It also doesn't feel particularly slower than it did before. I have a feeling that the benefit of caching so much was actually having a negative return after a certain point because the machine was so starved for ram.
On a side note, if anyone is like me and looks in about:config for browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers and doesn't see it, you have to actually add the line. Right click and choose "new" then type in "browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers" and then 0 (or whatever you like).
Some of us don't want or need mature-themed games to have a good time.
I think one of the problems is the degredation of the term "mature". I very much enjoy mature games. The problem is that most people associate "mature" with "lots of blood and blowing shit up". In fact, to me most of these games are very immature because they substitute depth with "shiny, blood, explosions, boobies".
I have to agree, pokemon snap was a very unique and addictive game. For those of you who've never heard of it, the premis of the game is that you are a photographer working for a scientist studying Pokemon. You ride around on a track in this little vehicle through this pokemon sanctuary, and your goal is to snap photos of various pokemon- or natural formations that resemble pokemon. Points are given for how good the photo is. The environments were incredibly detailed, as were the pokemon themselves. The game had some puzzle elements as well. You could get a flute and food to help lure the pokemon to certain areas. In one level for example you can use pokemon food to lure an electric pokemon to terminals in a power plant. You can then coerce it to using it's power to charge up the power plant. This leads to an egg hatching and a rare bird type pokemon.
This biggest problem with the game was that it was just too short. I'd love to see a new version of this for the Revolution that takes advantage of the new controller.
The site was painfully slow, so here is a summary of the information in the article:
The case we've seen for the PS3 is empty, and many developers are not convinced that sony will actually be able to fit everything into the case they've designed. The current development machines are towers. Along with a possibly redesigned case, Sony seems to be redesigning the controller, but is planning to keep the basic dual shock2 layout.
As for the graphics, looking at games running in realtime there is certainly nothing as impressive as the Killzone trailer, but but MGS4 trailer seems realistic to be ran in realtime. The graphics right now seem to be about equal to the "creme of the crop" 360 titles, and while the PS3 will certainly be able to provide better graphics than the 360- it will probably be a fairly marginal difference.
One thing to remember is that, while the PS3 may not be able to produce graphics that are substantially nicer looking than on the 360- it does seem to handle many more objects on screen at once.
Game developers seem to be targetting 720p as the target resolution. Developers aren't really expecting games to run at 1080p because the system isn't powerful enough to do 1080p at a reasonable resolution (or even 1080i)- but the PS3 is capable of doing some nice upscaling to 1080p. Dual 1080p output is a joke at this point.
The spring '06 release date isn't looking very likely. Developers are predicting summer 06 for Japan and a fall 06 or winter 07 release for the US and Europe.
While I've not worked with people from the distance you're talking about- I think that one of the main problems that occurs when working with people remotely happens regardless of timezones. Electronic communication is slower than face-to-face communication. Even chatting on the phone is much less efficient than chatting face to face.
What I've found to be helpful is to schedule a few face-to-face meetings with the people you're working with. While the details will certainly vary depending on a number of factors (length of the project, number of people, budget, scope of the project, etc.) A couple of face to face meetings can go along way in helping the project run smoothly.
For example, you may want to get everyone together for a week at the start of the project. Spend a day or so letting everyone get to know eachother and doing some team building (it doesn't have to be some hokey team building exercise, just spent some time chatting, have lunch, etc). Collaborate on design work and figguring out what exactly each person is doing.
You may then want to meet again toward the end of the project. This gives everyone a chance to again work face to face and can make integrating everyones work much easier. This is especially important if you've been working relatively independent modules of code or been focusing largely on different aspects of the project. Getting together to integrate various aspects of the project can turn a month long nightmare into a quick, if not painless, week long endevor. Plus it can give the team members a chance to celebrate the completion of a project together.
It seems to me that lately the largest market for DVDs has been TV shows. I know that personally I've only bought 1 movie in the last several months, but I have purchased several television seasons on DVD. It's the same for most of my friends as well. The thing about it is that for this all that extra resolution is pretty much useless. None of the shows I watch are shown in HD (in fact, the majority of them were off the air before ANYTHING was shown in HD). It seems to me that if this trend continues, it will be several more years before most shows are in HD. Until then, it seems like this extra resolution is pointless even for people who have HDTVs.
It seems to me like they are going about marketing the format in the wrong way. I have an HDTV and I know that I am not particularly excited by the prospect of being able to buy bluray movies. On the other hand, I think a lot of people would be excited about this as a new higher capacity backup media for PCs. I've just recently seen Dual Layer DVD burners becomming common, and it seems like there could have been a good market in selling BluRay has having more capacity than DLDVD burners. As hard drives get bigger, it gets to be more trouble to back up and restore from backups. I recently had a hard drive crash and ended up having around 20 DVDs worth of data to restore from backups.
There is one instance when I've found transparency to be very useful in OS X- and that is with the terminal. It is incredibly nice to be able to code in a terminal window and have documentation open beneath the terminal so that you can simply look through the code to see you're documentation.
The thing about transparency isn't that you want to have all your windows transparent, it's that you want to be able to have one window open full screen and still be able to quickly reference another window.
Actually, Linux has a pretty strong following for 3D modeling. A lot of studios use Maya on Linux for 3D modeling/rendering. I do a lot of 3D modeling, and I use Linux for almost everything. Among the other 3D artists I know, about half use Linux, and the other half is divided around 70%/30% between mac and windows. Many people bound to Mac or Windows are on those systems because of Photoshop.
I use Linux as my primary desktop OS. I have to say that I agree that Photoshop would definitely be a huge boon to be able to run on my desktop. Right now I have a mac that I use for photoshop and although I really like it, it would be very nice to be able to not have to get up and move to a different machine to be able to mess with some textures. While GIMP works for some things (and it actually feels faster working with some larger files than photoshop on similar machines)- the lack of certain plugins (generating normal and image maps, working with .iff files, nVidias photoshop plugins) means that gimp isn't exactly practical.
While the GIMP GUI definitely could use some work (though it has been better since version 2) there is more to the problem than redesigning the GUI. While GIMP has some nice features, in my experience Photoshop has a much better painting engine. There are a few things gimp either doesn't support or does not do quite as well as Photoshop that make it unsuitable for some things.
I understand where you're comming from, but the thing is, in you're case, the manage just wanted to copy a look and feel instead of specifying the technologies used to develop it.
The point is though that AJAX isn't the only choice, and it may not always be the best choice. I know a lot of slashdotters hate Flash, but there are times when it's really the best option. Java applets likewise are sometimes the way to go.
It's also important to remember that "just because you can doesn't mean you should". You say that sites not using AJAX are going to look antiquated, however the counter point to that would be that more sites are using flashing interfaces when something simpler and less flashy is a better option.
I've done a fair bit of web design and programming, both as a side gig and as a full time job. This said, there are a few things that jumped out at me from your post that I thought I would bring up.
The first thing is that you have to remember that good programmers are not alwyas good designers. Good web design is something that really takes a sort of knack to be good at, and there is not a lot of overlap between good designers and good developers. If you manage to find someone who is both a talented programmer and designer, expect to pay a premium. In most cases you will want to higher a designer (and possible even an artist seperate from the designer) to design the site- and then turn over the design to the programmer who will take the static templates and make them alive. While the designer and the programmer can to a certain extent work in parallel, it's important to remember that the design is the critical path because at some point the programmer has to have a skeleton to put the code into.
The other thing that jumped out at me is the specification that you want an AJAX/Web2.0 site. The truth is that if you don't know enough to code the site youself then you really do not have the information to decide the best way to code the site. AJAX and Web2.0 are both very vauge terms in themselves, and chances are that the AJAX parts of your site may only constitute a small part of the overall application. It's important to realize this because if you convince yourself that a project should be done with some combination of technologies A, B, and C then you may end up dismissing a better solution using Technology D, or end up with someone who only knows Technology A and will end up doing you more harm than good in the long run.
As I go to DeVry (yeah, it's even crappier than most people imagine), I think I may be able to shed some light onto the whole "it would be free" thing. The thing about it is, the student's really don't have much of a say. DeVry technically owns the projects that students do for their Senior Projects. DeVry then works out a deal with the companies in turn saying that they get the work done for free in exchange for filling out a bunch of extra paperwork, and agreeing that there is no warranty, support, etc.
University ownership of projects aside- there is another reason talented college students may come cheap or sometimes free. Most "entry level" jobs now still want a couple of years experience, and it's really tough comming out of college with a degree and nothing else. I'm sure it's not an exclusive to DeVry- but there are a lot of people who graduate with high GPAs and very little skills in their fields. Because of this, a lot of talented students are willing to barter work for a good reference on their resume and perhaps some work of mouth advertising.
I do agree that for most projects you are extremely unlikely to find students who are fully qualified (I would agree that 50:1 odds are about right), however in my experience there are a lot more students with experience coding with LAMP/WIMP/etc than in other environments.
If you don't want to learn Java, or you would prefer something more native to windows,
A few general suggestions if you're rusty with GUI programing that you might want to consider as well:
I think that it is one of those things that varies depending on the coast. I've always seen LGBT as more common in the midwest. I always thought it should be BLTG so you can assosiate something most people like and can remember (a BLT) with the movement to generate positive association.
ah but see, the joke is on you. There are only three or four possible passwords- but by the time you've finished typing in one that you've picked to try the password will have changed.
thanks, I'll take a look at it. I've used JNI a bit and found it to be really nice...all the way up until I had to work with someone who didn't know (and refused to learn) C++.
I'd really like to see a book that covers in-depth the use of reflection in java. I've played around with it a bit and it seems like it's a really nice way to supplement some of the problems caused by the lack of pointers in Java. Unfortunately, it also seems to be one of the things for which the documentation is a little lean. Anyone know of a good book that covers this aspect of Java?
I think that it depends a lot on the type of games. For platform games, FPS, puzzle games, etc. I think that learning modes are generally pointless.
There are certain genres that benefit from a learning mode. RPGs for example usually have a (skippable) tutorial that lets you learn the various aspects of the system. Since the systems tend to be deep it's helpful to get an overview. Other games like the Metal Gear Solid games, Tony Hawk series, Resident Evil 4- to name a few that stick out in my mind- make use of tutorial sections of the game to demonstrate when to use what abilities.
In the end though- I think that it comes down to the fact that the tutorial sections of a lot of games are implemented poorly as opposed to the fact that they are in themselves annoying. The best tutorials I think are the ones where they start you out in the game but offer on-screen hints that you can follow if you're new to the game- or ignore if you've read the manual or played the game before.