A couple of my friends who are really heavy into counterstrike used to LAN at a couple of places like that around here, as well my friend used to work at a local BattleZone, and one thing I noticed on the occasional outings with them is that the purely computer gaming places didn't do so well.
What I saw instead was that a lot of the places we went that seemed to be busy and nicer places in general offered a place for people to get together and play D&D or Magic or for the younger kids to get together and play Pokemon or YuGiOh.
From talking to my friend who worked at battlezone which did this, Basically what tended to happen was that people would come in for a game of $Tabletop_RPG or $Cardgame_Dejure and would buy a lot of stuff for the game durning or before the game. When a player died they would buy an hour of time on the computers and play counterstrike or whatever untill they were revived.
The owners basically let anyone come in and have their games in there for free as long as it was set up in advance, because they tended to make enough money from the people just being in the store.
Another place that we used to regular also had a nice big screen tv with an Xbox, PS2 and a Gamecube that people could hang out and play for free or occasionally someone would bring in a DVD and people could watch it (I'm pretty sure this was legal since anyone could come in and sit down to watch the movie without having to buy anything). Since the most you could ever have going on was a four player game, it lead to a lot of people switching off from paying for computer time and playing free on the consoles, but it also gives the impression of the place being cool, and about the games, instead of just a business that wants to make money.
As far as food and drinks go, I agree that you should forgoe the tea and crumpets or whatever, but consider putting in a couple of vending machines so people can get their requisite injection of caffeine and junk food whilest playing.
Both places my friends and I used to regular did this, and both were next to a couple of fast food joints, so people could walk over and get "real" food if they wanted it, and come back to play some more.
Atmosphere and Attitude are a couple of important things to remember too, of the places i've been around here, the "good" ones all have a casual atmosphere, and have the "fun over money" attitude, or at least they seem that way.
As a final note, be sure to keep the place kid friendly, about half or maybe more of the people i've noticed at places like that were kids maybe 12 to 14 whos parents would drop them off for a few hours like they might do at the arcade. These kids tend to spend a good chunck of money and will keep comming back if they parents feel like it is a good place to bring their kids. This generally means having people not screaming thing like "I raped your mother with a badger on a stick" or other such nonsence during a game of CS, as well as having at least one or two machines running "nonviolent" games like maybe The Sims or something.
I do graphic art and web design and as a person who makes a living creating things that have to look good on peoples monitors, I have tried to keep up on the merits of the different display technologies. In my experience CRT is still the way to go
Not to long ago I got myself an brand new apple with one of the high dollar diplays and it is really pretty, but now that the "newness" factor is wearing off, I find myself doing a lot more design on my high end CRT again.
The reason for this is that LCD monitors tend to look "softer" which is great for most use, but it leads to graphics that look great on an LCD monitor, but seem unrefined, or just do not look "right" on a CRT.
What it really comes down to is that no matter how good the image looks on my display, I have to have something that will look good the the client, and that means using the same type of display.
LCD displays still seem much nicer for reading text on or for most other casual use, especially with reading black on white because it's not so much like staring into a light bulb.
The smaller size argument for LCDs still seems strange to me though. I guess it's because I don't go to a lot of lan parties, but for me at least, once you have your monitor set up someplace, how often do you really move it?
One of us misunderstood what is going on here, and it could be me, but from what I understand it goes something like this:
Mandrake: Hey community, here is the community version, try it it out, it's pretty stable, we've beta tested it and everything.
Community: Hey, there are bugs X,Y and Z here
Mandrake: Oh, our bad, well we fixed all those bugs and updated the security patches, you subscribers can go ahead and download the new version while we are getting the cds stamped and the manuals printed.
*Boxed set arrives in stores*
Mandrake: Ok, the boxed set is out now, it would be really neat if you could go buy it, but we'll let you download it too.
When you want to run a Python program, you install a Pynthon interpreter. When you want to run a Java program, you have to install the Java runtime environment. When you want to run.NET programs, you need a.NET environment.
I noted that I had not used.NET to point out that some of my notions about it could be quite incorrect, but if you would read my post I postulated that microsoft was merely trying to do the same thing as is done with java etc. I would also assume that it was basterdized because, well, microsoft basterdizes things more often than not.
You should also note that I said if the lock-in scheme was indeed their plan, it was a bad one. Microsoft is nothing if not good with business (heck, they have to be good at something to have all that cash)
The author of the article asks "why is there no linker", and my response was (although admittedly not as well writen as it could have been)
Either A: they want to force us into some upgrade scheme
or B: they just think they have a better way of doing it, and that java etc do things this way, it's no big deal.
I finished by pointing out that A would be a bad idea, and B was more likely.
The thing is, it would be possible for Microsoft to use this as a means to force users to upgrade, just look at some of the crap they have pulled, it's not completely unreasonable to think this is in the realm of remote possibility.
As for complaining that I simply made wild speculation with a disclaimer and that I need to remove my aluminum hat, well are you new here or what?
So Microsoft, wake up, get us some nice 1950s-era linker technology, and let me make a single EXE that runs on any computer with Win 98 or later and no other external dependencies. Otherwise.NET is fatally flawed for consumer, downloaded software.
Could it be that Microsoft is using this as a way to force people into updating/upgrading their OS? Something like "Oh, I'm sorry, to run newer.NET applications you will have to upgrade to Service Pack X", and potentially as a way to force upgrades, "Oh, you have to upgrade to Longhorn to run newer.NET applications"
I'm not sure, it might not be this at all, but it seems like a really bad thing for microsoft if that is their plan.
The only other thing I could think of is that perhaps they are trying to use this as being similar to the Java Virtual Machine in some basterdised way?
I've never used.NET, and a friend had almost convinced me to install a small Windows partition so I could learn C#, but this seems like a big enough pain in the arse to not even bother when there are other alternatives.
I've noticed that no matter how organized you attempt to be, the sheer number of wires can be one of the biggest problems to deal with. I've found that wireless solutions can make things much neater and more managble.
Just going wireless on the keyboard/mouse and network can save quite a bit of wiring mess.
The twist tie option can work, but in my experience this tends to work well behind the tv (console cords, dvd player, stero etc), but no so well with computer wires, as the wires tend to be of various sizes and don't need the same length, and ineveitably things just dont fit right.
Cabling snakes do not seem like a very good solution for home use, but YMMV.
Another handy trick to keeping wires from looking clutterd is to run them up against the trim snugged down into or against the carpet (this depends of course on the type of carpet and if you have trim), and works well for phone cords/cable etc.
A proper desk can also help with cabling, if you can get things situated correctly you can often run wires down behind the desk into the back of the computer and the wires stay hidden unless you are looking for them.
Another thing to consider is the color of the cables, while often times you don't have a choice, a homogenusly colored cable group tends to look better than a mix of various colors.
Another thing to remember is that no matter what, cables are ugly, and they are also a requrirement, and there is only so much you can do, but you can minimize their impact by blending them into the envorionment (running them along the floor by the trim, using a single color that matches your computer case and/or the theme of the room) where possible, and hiding them behind things where not.
This is something that most of the/. crowd would consider one of the best inventions, and why not, most of us use computers as a hobby or a way of making a living, and probably both, but when I look at the average person, they seem to feel almost as if computers were built specifically to annoy them.
As technology becomes more pervasive in our society it is now nearly imossible for one to live without using a computer on a fairly regular basis (say once or twice a week for 30 minutes to an hour per session minimum), and yet most people are clueless enough to get in to a number of problems.
Perhaps my vision is skewed because the only time I hear my family and a majority of my friends mention the computer is when they seem to be having a problem with it, but from my own observations, people seem to think they can't live without a computer, and yet they are constantly having problems with viruses, bad drivers, or the consequences of some stupid thing they've done ("I didn't know what those.dll files were, but my friend told me they were viruses so I deleted them all").
I don't know how many times I've heard something to extent of "I hate the damn thing and wish I could just get rid of it".
I propose the following...
We develop two such machines, subjecting one to nothing but Terminator Movies, and subjecting the other to nothing but The Matrix movies
once critical mass has been reached, we allow the former group to create a TX (seeing as how she is the coolest of all the terminators), we then capture said TX and place it within The Matrix
We then televise the Smith Vs TX Battle Royale on Pay Per View and use the cash generated to purchace large quantities of booze and live the rest of our days in a drunken stupor untill such time as the two groups learn to work together to anhiallate the common enemy..us.
I'm Writing An Open Source Solution
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Enterprise IM?
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· Score: 1
I've been working on an open source solution to just such types of problems. Written in java, it will (eventually) support IRC, AIM, YIM and MSN protocols as well as it's own protocol. While it can be used as a plain ol' client, I want to add support for heavy duty encryption. Although right now it's just a pretty crappy IRC client, the direction I am trying to take it is to allow deployment in secure environments.
I've only been working on this for a couple of months now, so it's barely usable right now, but if anyone is interested in working on the project let me know, I'm sure something usable could be available a lot sooner if it were more than just me working on the project.
The article states that the controller will be compatible with XBox, PS2 and GCN. I'm assuming the way this works is that they include a controller>ps2 cable, a controller>xbox cable and a controller>gcn cable, so that one merely has to connect the correct cable. The major problem I see with this is extended support for newer consoles. While I do not personally own any home exersice equipment, I know people that do, and from that, I do know that the usefull life of exercise equipment is generally much longer than the life of a typical console.
So what happens to all the people who buy this, then can't get appropriate connectors for the PS3, or XBOX2 or the Nintendo Game SuperQuadratic Ellipsoid or something. I know I would be upset to spend $700 on this thing, then not have it be supported in 3 years when the new consoles come out.
Another problem I see is that if they do indeed use the same unit with different connectors (which would seem the most logical way of doing it by far), the consoles each have rather unique control schemes, and a common button interface may not adapt well to any of them trying to support all of them.
That said, I could see the unit popular amongst XBox Players, as the unit as described seems to be quite a bit smaller than the standard xbox controller, and only slightly larger than the new smaller controller </really old humor>
I know the parent poster was intending to be funny, but I think there is a lot of truth to the statment.
At least in the social ciricles of which I am a part , or an observer of, there seems to be a sort or line by which you can divide people into two groups. The first group pride themselves on intelligence, or at least in learning about new things, keeping up with world events, and in general being well rounded people. The other is the group which prides themselves on ignorance, these are the people who are proud that they cannot set the clock on their VCR. It is the former group which I think tends to spend more time online, seeing it as a valuable resource for information and for the communication of ideas in an open forum (be it IRC, newsgroups,/. or whatever), this is the same group which tends to read more often, and whatch less TV. The latter of the groups, while not illiterate (at least not the majority), seem to think that there is a finite amount of thinking they are born with, and are being very careful not to use it all up. This group is unconserned with expanding their own horizons, and as such have little use for the majority of the content available on the internet. It is this group which tends to spend more time watching TV, which provides a form of entertainment(if you can call most tv entertaining) that requires very little thought.
It seems to me that everyone has some amount of time is spent non-socially. It is this time which those intent on learning and the like spend on the net, and those content to live in a happy stupor spend watching TV. Of course the average net user spends less time on the net than the average TV viewer spends watching TV because the net user has more options available to him or her. For those wishing to use their brain as little as possible, the majority of that non-social time can be spent watching tv, movies, and thats about it. For the group who likes to learn and expand their mind however, the choices for that non-social time include being on the internet, reading, drawing, playing music, and a number of other artistic or challenging activities.
While in spite of my efforts, I have fallen victim to some of the most ubiquitous "net slang", I do tend to completely dismiss those who use it to the point that the language is completely unrecognizable.
I do use "lol", and even will allow "u" and "r" in place of "you" and "are" to slip out on rare occasions, I find that even if I am able to understand some of the butchered language, I refuse to communicate with someone who insists on using such obfuscated language that I cannot immediately recognize it as english.
I agree, i've only been playing it for about 2 months now, but I am highly impressed, and will definitly been playing through the whole second telling. This game is such a departure from the standard MMORPG fair that I would say it almost deserves it's own genre. It's far from perfect (what genre re-defining games ever are), but one of it's greatest strengths IMO is the way the developers have embraced the imperfections in the game and made them an entire aspect of the game through the legal system.
The way this works is, if there is a feature request or some other tweeks in the game that a player wants, he or she goes to a University in the game and writes up a petition, then gets it signed by other players. After there are enough signitures the player returns to the university and eventually the petition is voted on. If it passes then (unless there is a veto by the developers for some reason or another, usually because players want something that would break the game) it is then coded into the game and a patch is soon released.
The game is free to download and you get 24 hours of playing to evaluate the game, which is just about enough time to fall in love with it.
There is a Linux client available as well as a windows client, and I've heard a Mac client should be available for the second telling.
While it might not be everyone's cup of tea, I would definitely recommend at least downloading it and giving it a try for the first 24 hours.
It seems this year I've only read books that are at least half a century old, as others have said, books do have a long shelf life, so check some of these out if you run across them.
Flatland - A Romance of Many Dimentions
this is a quite short book, easy to read in a day, and you can probably find it for $5 at B&N. While the mathematical aspects of the book are going to seem simplistic to anyone who's passed highschool geometry, the commentary on victorian societies is interesting.
Brave New World
One of my favorite books of all time, the dialoug can be a little hard to follow at times, but definity worth it.
Beowolf ...imagine a Beo.. seriously an interesting read
Thus Spake Zarathustra
A great read for those interested in philosophy
The Prince
Another short book, handy if you ever become the ruler of a country;)
Critique of Pure *
A great series for those interested in philosophy
Gimp is an acceptable alternative for most users of these programs. Microsoft Office
True that some people have craploads of macros and vb crap for office, but for the average home user, OpenOffice will work just as well as MS Office.
The point I was really trying to make though, is that in this theoretical future where both Windows and Linux are on equal footing for Stability, Security, and UI friendlyness, the amount of software available for Windows as opposed to Linux won't be that big of a deal, because most of that software that gives windows the big numbers are peices of crap anyway, and the good software avaiable for windows always costs $$$ and there is often a free linux alternative.
Of course maybe i'm just out of touch, I haven't used Linux at home or work for over 5 years now.
It should also be noted that I'm not anti-MS, I just prefer Linux, and I'm not trying to say that Linux is perfect or that there is no reason to use windows, just that I don't think that for the average person (the one who doesn't have to use windows to fulfuill work/school obligations), Linux is just as usefull with it's smaller number of programs.
Which OS are you talking about again?
The lack of software available for linux as opposed to windows seems to be one of the primary reasons I hear for people not switching for Windows. While this might have been true at some point, I think now it's safe to call BS on this argument.
It's true that there are some specialty apps which are windows only, but for the vast majority of users, Linux offers most everything one could want.
Windows beats linux in the amount of software, hands down, but I would say somewhere in the area of 90% of that software is crap. The only really good windows software costs at least $100, whereas on linux there are often competitive free alternatives. The thing is there is so much windows software that is just plain awful, much of it buggy, or just really half-assed. I don't know how many shareware programs for windows I've seen that cost $10 or $15 that look like they could have been written by a stoned first semester CS student who wanted to play a practical joke on everyone who downloaded the software.
I'm not saying that all Linux software is perfect, in fact a lot of it suffers from the same problems as the afore mentioned windows software, but when one compares GOOD software on both systems, I think the differences are rather marginal.
There are reasons I could see for someone not wanting to switch from Windows to Linux, like they like to play a lot of games not available for linux, or just that windows works as well as they want it to and they don't want to be bothered to spend to time and effort to learn a new system, but software availability should not be one of those reasons.
</rant>
beware of something like "well give you 1Mb/month of free bandwidth for you project with a cost of 99.99 per byte over 1Mb
also look at stability, is this a service that is going to be going up and down, or might just disappear suddenly.
As others have said, you should also be sure that you are not prevented from posting your content on any other sites.
If you are worried about ads, you should also look into that
between this and my iBook, even classes with alot of symoblic math, or diagrams is a breeze. I just use ink and the handwriting recognition engine converts my own handwriting to easy-to-read-the-next-day type, and I just switch to draw mode for equations, diagrams, etc. After each class I export notes to pdf and upload them to my webserver when I get home where I have a nice php site I wrote up where I can then search all the notes by subject, date, keyword, chapter and unit. It's not as compact of a solution as a tablet pc, but quite a bit cheaper, this also works out nice for me because I can get work done in photoshop during the couple hour break I have in the middle of the day.
I've seen a few posts speculating that MS may be trying to put off paying out untill next quarter in order to make profits look better, but is it possible that they are just keeping that cash in a high interest account or some other high growth thing for as long as possible to recoup some of the lost mony by collecting interest?
I'm in now way an accountant, but it seems to me that this might be a way to gain back some of those losses.
On a side note, there have been a few posts about how $1billion is not much to MS, but really I think that although it might be a much smaller percent of their overal value than any other company, that $1billion is still a fair loss in the sence that it could have been used to generate some ammount >$1billion which is not chump change even to MS
obligatory simpsons quote...
on
Does IT Matter?
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· Score: 1
"I used to be with IT, then they changed what IT is, now what i'm with isn't IT and what's IT seems strange and frightening to me" --grandpa simpson
When the PS2 was released, DVD players had no where near the market penetration that they have now. IIRC most dvd players were running about $150-$200 when the PS2 came out. At that price, people who specifically wanted them would have had them, but most people I know at the time were still waiting for them to come down in price. I know several people who purchaced a PS2 just as a DVD player, and the fact that it could play games was a bonus. The thing is, the PS2 was out to market so long before the game cube or XBox that it's hard to tell how thier respective approaches to DVD playback (supported with added periphrial or not supported at all) would have effected the sales had they been released at the same time.
Just speculating, but I think we would have seen a lot of people buying the PS2 as a dvd players because it cost about the same as one, and it could play all the nifty games. Aside from those people though, I think the market would have gone about like it has now (ok, probably not because the PS2 wouldn't have such a major time advantage and the GC wouldn't have such a major time disadvantage, but that point aside).
The point is, most people buy one next gen console at launch, then wait for the others to come down in price. Most of these people choose one console over another for the games. I don't know anyone who wanted a GC for Zelda or Mario for example, but went with a PS2 because it could play DVDs.
The question then is, are there more people who purchaced a PS2 because it was a dvd player, at regular price, and for the extra $50 they could get a next gen console, or were there more people who purchaced a console because of the games, and dvd playback was a "nice extra"
When the next generation of consoles comes out, I think we will have the same level of market penetration with PVRs et al. as we had with DVD players when the current generation of consoles were released.
I've been kind of ranting here, but what I think i'm trying to get at is, all of factors aside, if one console supports all these nifty features "out of the box" and the others don't, it will have more market share because not only will it have buyers wanting it for the games, but also people just wanting those nifty extras at a reasonable price, and the fact that said system can play games makes it more appetizing than a dedicated player. If all systems support said functionality, then I think the majority of these types of buyers will pounce on either the first to market or the cheapest to market. After considering those people (no idea how big of a difference it will make, because I don't know how big that market is), these extras should have little effect on the console wars.
Slashdot Mirror
step1: buy SCO license for Linux
step2: wait 5 years for it to become a collectors item
step3: sell license on ebay
step4: profit!
A couple of my friends who are really heavy into counterstrike used to LAN at a couple of places like that around here, as well my friend used to work at a local BattleZone, and one thing I noticed on the occasional outings with them is that the purely computer gaming places didn't do so well.
What I saw instead was that a lot of the places we went that seemed to be busy and nicer places in general offered a place for people to get together and play D&D or Magic or for the younger kids to get together and play Pokemon or YuGiOh.
From talking to my friend who worked at battlezone which did this, Basically what tended to happen was that people would come in for a game of $Tabletop_RPG or $Cardgame_Dejure and would buy a lot of stuff for the game durning or before the game. When a player died they would buy an hour of time on the computers and play counterstrike or whatever untill they were revived.
The owners basically let anyone come in and have their games in there for free as long as it was set up in advance, because they tended to make enough money from the people just being in the store.
Another place that we used to regular also had a nice big screen tv with an Xbox, PS2 and a Gamecube that people could hang out and play for free or occasionally someone would bring in a DVD and people could watch it (I'm pretty sure this was legal since anyone could come in and sit down to watch the movie without having to buy anything). Since the most you could ever have going on was a four player game, it lead to a lot of people switching off from paying for computer time and playing free on the consoles, but it also gives the impression of the place being cool, and about the games, instead of just a business that wants to make money.
As far as food and drinks go, I agree that you should forgoe the tea and crumpets or whatever, but consider putting in a couple of vending machines so people can get their requisite injection of caffeine and junk food whilest playing.
Both places my friends and I used to regular did this, and both were next to a couple of fast food joints, so people could walk over and get "real" food if they wanted it, and come back to play some more.
Atmosphere and Attitude are a couple of important things to remember too, of the places i've been around here, the "good" ones all have a casual atmosphere, and have the "fun over money" attitude, or at least they seem that way.
As a final note, be sure to keep the place kid friendly, about half or maybe more of the people i've noticed at places like that were kids maybe 12 to 14 whos parents would drop them off for a few hours like they might do at the arcade. These kids tend to spend a good chunck of money and will keep comming back if they parents feel like it is a good place to bring their kids. This generally means having people not screaming thing like "I raped your mother with a badger on a stick" or other such nonsence during a game of CS, as well as having at least one or two machines running "nonviolent" games like maybe The Sims or something.
I do graphic art and web design and as a person who makes a living creating things that have to look good on peoples monitors, I have tried to keep up on the merits of the different display technologies. In my experience CRT is still the way to go
Not to long ago I got myself an brand new apple with one of the high dollar diplays and it is really pretty, but now that the "newness" factor is wearing off, I find myself doing a lot more design on my high end CRT again.
The reason for this is that LCD monitors tend to look "softer" which is great for most use, but it leads to graphics that look great on an LCD monitor, but seem unrefined, or just do not look "right" on a CRT.
What it really comes down to is that no matter how good the image looks on my display, I have to have something that will look good the the client, and that means using the same type of display.
LCD displays still seem much nicer for reading text on or for most other casual use, especially with reading black on white because it's not so much like staring into a light bulb.
The smaller size argument for LCDs still seems strange to me though. I guess it's because I don't go to a lot of lan parties, but for me at least, once you have your monitor set up someplace, how often do you really move it?
...also from bash.org
Roses are red
Violets are blue
In Soviet Russia
Poems Write You
One of us misunderstood what is going on here, and it could be me, but from what I understand it goes something like this:
Mandrake: Hey community, here is the community version, try it it out, it's pretty stable, we've beta tested it and everything.
Community: Hey, there are bugs X,Y and Z here
Mandrake: Oh, our bad, well we fixed all those bugs and updated the security patches, you subscribers can go ahead and download the new version while we are getting the cds stamped and the manuals printed.
*Boxed set arrives in stores*
Mandrake: Ok, the boxed set is out now, it would be really neat if you could go buy it, but we'll let you download it too.
In soviet China...monkey spanks you
When you want to run a Python program, you install a Pynthon interpreter. When you want to run a Java program, you have to install the Java runtime environment. When you want to run .NET programs, you need a .NET environment. .NET to point out that some of my notions about it could be quite incorrect, but if you would read my post I postulated that microsoft was merely trying to do the same thing as is done with java etc. I would also assume that it was basterdized because, well, microsoft basterdizes things more often than not.
I noted that I had not used
You should also note that I said if the lock-in scheme was indeed their plan, it was a bad one. Microsoft is nothing if not good with business (heck, they have to be good at something to have all that cash)
The author of the article asks "why is there no linker", and my response was (although admittedly not as well writen as it could have been)
Either A: they want to force us into some upgrade scheme
or B: they just think they have a better way of doing it, and that java etc do things this way, it's no big deal.
I finished by pointing out that A would be a bad idea, and B was more likely.
The thing is, it would be possible for Microsoft to use this as a means to force users to upgrade, just look at some of the crap they have pulled, it's not completely unreasonable to think this is in the realm of remote possibility.
As for complaining that I simply made wild speculation with a disclaimer and that I need to remove my aluminum hat, well are you new here or what?
So Microsoft, wake up, get us some nice 1950s-era linker technology, and let me make a single EXE that runs on any computer with Win 98 or later and no other external dependencies. Otherwise .NET is fatally flawed for consumer, downloaded software. .NET applications you will have to upgrade to Service Pack X", and potentially as a way to force upgrades, "Oh, you have to upgrade to Longhorn to run newer .NET applications" .NET, and a friend had almost convinced me to install a small Windows partition so I could learn C#, but this seems like a big enough pain in the arse to not even bother when there are other alternatives.
Could it be that Microsoft is using this as a way to force people into updating/upgrading their OS? Something like "Oh, I'm sorry, to run newer
I'm not sure, it might not be this at all, but it seems like a really bad thing for microsoft if that is their plan.
The only other thing I could think of is that perhaps they are trying to use this as being similar to the Java Virtual Machine in some basterdised way?
I've never used
I've noticed that no matter how organized you attempt to be, the sheer number of wires can be one of the biggest problems to deal with. I've found that wireless solutions can make things much neater and more managble.
Just going wireless on the keyboard/mouse and network can save quite a bit of wiring mess.
The twist tie option can work, but in my experience this tends to work well behind the tv (console cords, dvd player, stero etc), but no so well with computer wires, as the wires tend to be of various sizes and don't need the same length, and ineveitably things just dont fit right.
Cabling snakes do not seem like a very good solution for home use, but YMMV.
Another handy trick to keeping wires from looking clutterd is to run them up against the trim snugged down into or against the carpet (this depends of course on the type of carpet and if you have trim), and works well for phone cords/cable etc.
A proper desk can also help with cabling, if you can get things situated correctly you can often run wires down behind the desk into the back of the computer and the wires stay hidden unless you are looking for them.
Another thing to consider is the color of the cables, while often times you don't have a choice, a homogenusly colored cable group tends to look better than a mix of various colors.
Another thing to remember is that no matter what, cables are ugly, and they are also a requrirement, and there is only so much you can do, but you can minimize their impact by blending them into the envorionment (running them along the floor by the trim, using a single color that matches your computer case and/or the theme of the room) where possible, and hiding them behind things where not.
This is something that most of the /. crowd would consider one of the best inventions, and why not, most of us use computers as a hobby or a way of making a living, and probably both, but when I look at the average person, they seem to feel almost as if computers were built specifically to annoy them. .dll files were, but my friend told me they were viruses so I deleted them all").
As technology becomes more pervasive in our society it is now nearly imossible for one to live without using a computer on a fairly regular basis (say once or twice a week for 30 minutes to an hour per session minimum), and yet most people are clueless enough to get in to a number of problems.
Perhaps my vision is skewed because the only time I hear my family and a majority of my friends mention the computer is when they seem to be having a problem with it, but from my own observations, people seem to think they can't live without a computer, and yet they are constantly having problems with viruses, bad drivers, or the consequences of some stupid thing they've done ("I didn't know what those
I don't know how many times I've heard something to extent of "I hate the damn thing and wish I could just get rid of it".
I propose the following...
We develop two such machines, subjecting one to nothing but Terminator Movies, and subjecting the other to nothing but The Matrix movies
once critical mass has been reached, we allow the former group to create a TX (seeing as how she is the coolest of all the terminators), we then capture said TX and place it within The Matrix
We then televise the Smith Vs TX Battle Royale on Pay Per View and use the cash generated to purchace large quantities of booze and live the rest of our days in a drunken stupor untill such time as the two groups learn to work together to anhiallate the common enemy..us.
I've been working on an open source solution to just such types of problems. Written in java, it will (eventually) support IRC, AIM, YIM and MSN protocols as well as it's own protocol. While it can be used as a plain ol' client, I want to add support for heavy duty encryption. Although right now it's just a pretty crappy IRC client, the direction I am trying to take it is to allow deployment in secure environments.
I've only been working on this for a couple of months now, so it's barely usable right now, but if anyone is interested in working on the project let me know, I'm sure something usable could be available a lot sooner if it were more than just me working on the project.
The article states that the controller will be compatible with XBox, PS2 and GCN. I'm assuming the way this works is that they include a controller>ps2 cable, a controller>xbox cable and a controller>gcn cable, so that one merely has to connect the correct cable. The major problem I see with this is extended support for newer consoles. While I do not personally own any home exersice equipment, I know people that do, and from that, I do know that the usefull life of exercise equipment is generally much longer than the life of a typical console.
So what happens to all the people who buy this, then can't get appropriate connectors for the PS3, or XBOX2 or the Nintendo Game SuperQuadratic Ellipsoid or something. I know I would be upset to spend $700 on this thing, then not have it be supported in 3 years when the new consoles come out.
Another problem I see is that if they do indeed use the same unit with different connectors (which would seem the most logical way of doing it by far), the consoles each have rather unique control schemes, and a common button interface may not adapt well to any of them trying to support all of them.
That said, I could see the unit popular amongst XBox Players, as the unit as described seems to be quite a bit smaller than the standard xbox controller, and only slightly larger than the new smaller controller </really old humor>
I know the parent poster was intending to be funny, but I think there is a lot of truth to the statment. /. or whatever), this is the same group which tends to read more often, and whatch less TV. The latter of the groups, while not illiterate (at least not the majority), seem to think that there is a finite amount of thinking they are born with, and are being very careful not to use it all up. This group is unconserned with expanding their own horizons, and as such have little use for the majority of the content available on the internet. It is this group which tends to spend more time watching TV, which provides a form of entertainment(if you can call most tv entertaining) that requires very little thought.
At least in the social ciricles of which I am a part , or an observer of, there seems to be a sort or line by which you can divide people into two groups. The first group pride themselves on intelligence, or at least in learning about new things, keeping up with world events, and in general being well rounded people. The other is the group which prides themselves on ignorance, these are the people who are proud that they cannot set the clock on their VCR. It is the former group which I think tends to spend more time online, seeing it as a valuable resource for information and for the communication of ideas in an open forum (be it IRC, newsgroups,
It seems to me that everyone has some amount of time is spent non-socially. It is this time which those intent on learning and the like spend on the net, and those content to live in a happy stupor spend watching TV. Of course the average net user spends less time on the net than the average TV viewer spends watching TV because the net user has more options available to him or her. For those wishing to use their brain as little as possible, the majority of that non-social time can be spent watching tv, movies, and thats about it. For the group who likes to learn and expand their mind however, the choices for that non-social time include being on the internet, reading, drawing, playing music, and a number of other artistic or challenging activities.
*makes a face like a child who first hears that there is no santa clause*
b-b-b-b-but google is my friend
*runs away crying*
While in spite of my efforts, I have fallen victim to some of the most ubiquitous "net slang", I do tend to completely dismiss those who use it to the point that the language is completely unrecognizable.
I do use "lol", and even will allow "u" and "r" in place of "you" and "are" to slip out on rare occasions, I find that even if I am able to understand some of the butchered language, I refuse to communicate with someone who insists on using such obfuscated language that I cannot immediately recognize it as english.
I agree, i've only been playing it for about 2 months now, but I am highly impressed, and will definitly been playing through the whole second telling. This game is such a departure from the standard MMORPG fair that I would say it almost deserves it's own genre. It's far from perfect (what genre re-defining games ever are), but one of it's greatest strengths IMO is the way the developers have embraced the imperfections in the game and made them an entire aspect of the game through the legal system.
The way this works is, if there is a feature request or some other tweeks in the game that a player wants, he or she goes to a University in the game and writes up a petition, then gets it signed by other players. After there are enough signitures the player returns to the university and eventually the petition is voted on. If it passes then (unless there is a veto by the developers for some reason or another, usually because players want something that would break the game) it is then coded into the game and a patch is soon released.
The game is free to download and you get 24 hours of playing to evaluate the game, which is just about enough time to fall in love with it.
There is a Linux client available as well as a windows client, and I've heard a Mac client should be available for the second telling.
While it might not be everyone's cup of tea, I would definitely recommend at least downloading it and giving it a try for the first 24 hours.
It seems this year I've only read books that are at least half a century old, as others have said, books do have a long shelf life, so check some of these out if you run across them.
...imagine a Beo.. seriously an interesting read ;)
Flatland - A Romance of Many Dimentions
this is a quite short book, easy to read in a day, and you can probably find it for $5 at B&N. While the mathematical aspects of the book are going to seem simplistic to anyone who's passed highschool geometry, the commentary on victorian societies is interesting.
Brave New World
One of my favorite books of all time, the dialoug can be a little hard to follow at times, but definity worth it.
Beowolf
Thus Spake Zarathustra
A great read for those interested in philosophy
The Prince
Another short book, handy if you ever become the ruler of a country
Critique of Pure *
A great series for those interested in philosophy
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Photoshop
- Paint Shop Pro
Gimp is an acceptable alternative for most users of these programs.Microsoft Office
True that some people have craploads of macros and vb crap for office, but for the average home user, OpenOffice will work just as well as MS Office.
The point I was really trying to make though, is that in this theoretical future where both Windows and Linux are on equal footing for Stability, Security, and UI friendlyness, the amount of software available for Windows as opposed to Linux won't be that big of a deal, because most of that software that gives windows the big numbers are peices of crap anyway, and the good software avaiable for windows always costs $$$ and there is often a free linux alternative.
Of course maybe i'm just out of touch, I haven't used Linux at home or work for over 5 years now.
It should also be noted that I'm not anti-MS, I just prefer Linux, and I'm not trying to say that Linux is perfect or that there is no reason to use windows, just that I don't think that for the average person (the one who doesn't have to use windows to fulfuill work/school obligations), Linux is just as usefull with it's smaller number of programs.
Which OS are you talking about again?
The lack of software available for linux as opposed to windows seems to be one of the primary reasons I hear for people not switching for Windows. While this might have been true at some point, I think now it's safe to call BS on this argument.
It's true that there are some specialty apps which are windows only, but for the vast majority of users, Linux offers most everything one could want.
Windows beats linux in the amount of software, hands down, but I would say somewhere in the area of 90% of that software is crap. The only really good windows software costs at least $100, whereas on linux there are often competitive free alternatives. The thing is there is so much windows software that is just plain awful, much of it buggy, or just really half-assed. I don't know how many shareware programs for windows I've seen that cost $10 or $15 that look like they could have been written by a stoned first semester CS student who wanted to play a practical joke on everyone who downloaded the software.
I'm not saying that all Linux software is perfect, in fact a lot of it suffers from the same problems as the afore mentioned windows software, but when one compares GOOD software on both systems, I think the differences are rather marginal.
There are reasons I could see for someone not wanting to switch from Windows to Linux, like they like to play a lot of games not available for linux, or just that windows works as well as they want it to and they don't want to be bothered to spend to time and effort to learn a new system, but software availability should not be one of those reasons.
</rant>
beware of something like "well give you 1Mb/month of free bandwidth for you project with a cost of 99.99 per byte over 1Mb
also look at stability, is this a service that is going to be going up and down, or might just disappear suddenly.
As others have said, you should also be sure that you are not prevented from posting your content on any other sites.
If you are worried about ads, you should also look into that
between this and my iBook, even classes with alot of symoblic math, or diagrams is a breeze. I just use ink and the handwriting recognition engine converts my own handwriting to easy-to-read-the-next-day type, and I just switch to draw mode for equations, diagrams, etc. After each class I export notes to pdf and upload them to my webserver when I get home where I have a nice php site I wrote up where I can then search all the notes by subject, date, keyword, chapter and unit. It's not as compact of a solution as a tablet pc, but quite a bit cheaper, this also works out nice for me because I can get work done in photoshop during the couple hour break I have in the middle of the day.
I've seen a few posts speculating that MS may be trying to put off paying out untill next quarter in order to make profits look better, but is it possible that they are just keeping that cash in a high interest account or some other high growth thing for as long as possible to recoup some of the lost mony by collecting interest?
I'm in now way an accountant, but it seems to me that this might be a way to gain back some of those losses.
On a side note, there have been a few posts about how $1billion is not much to MS, but really I think that although it might be a much smaller percent of their overal value than any other company, that $1billion is still a fair loss in the sence that it could have been used to generate some ammount >$1billion which is not chump change even to MS
"I used to be with IT, then they changed what IT is, now what i'm with isn't IT and what's IT seems strange and frightening to me"
--grandpa simpson
When the PS2 was released, DVD players had no where near the market penetration that they have now. IIRC most dvd players were running about $150-$200 when the PS2 came out. At that price, people who specifically wanted them would have had them, but most people I know at the time were still waiting for them to come down in price. I know several people who purchaced a PS2 just as a DVD player, and the fact that it could play games was a bonus. The thing is, the PS2 was out to market so long before the game cube or XBox that it's hard to tell how thier respective approaches to DVD playback (supported with added periphrial or not supported at all) would have effected the sales had they been released at the same time.
Just speculating, but I think we would have seen a lot of people buying the PS2 as a dvd players because it cost about the same as one, and it could play all the nifty games. Aside from those people though, I think the market would have gone about like it has now (ok, probably not because the PS2 wouldn't have such a major time advantage and the GC wouldn't have such a major time disadvantage, but that point aside).
The point is, most people buy one next gen console at launch, then wait for the others to come down in price. Most of these people choose one console over another for the games. I don't know anyone who wanted a GC for Zelda or Mario for example, but went with a PS2 because it could play DVDs.
The question then is, are there more people who purchaced a PS2 because it was a dvd player, at regular price, and for the extra $50 they could get a next gen console, or were there more people who purchaced a console because of the games, and dvd playback was a "nice extra"
When the next generation of consoles comes out, I think we will have the same level of market penetration with PVRs et al. as we had with DVD players when the current generation of consoles were released.
I've been kind of ranting here, but what I think i'm trying to get at is, all of factors aside, if one console supports all these nifty features "out of the box" and the others don't, it will have more market share because not only will it have buyers wanting it for the games, but also people just wanting those nifty extras at a reasonable price, and the fact that said system can play games makes it more appetizing than a dedicated player. If all systems support said functionality, then I think the majority of these types of buyers will pounce on either the first to market or the cheapest to market. After considering those people (no idea how big of a difference it will make, because I don't know how big that market is), these extras should have little effect on the console wars.