Bullshit.
I think that a lot of problems with the way the corporate world operates these days is down to exactly that attitude.
Granted, it's not a wise idea to invest in a company that is probably going to lose money. That does not mean, I don't believe, that we should always go after the highest yield investments.
People bitch and moan about how companies are always looking to do anything to make a short term profit increase, and the reason is because that's what stockholders want. If stockholders valued other things, companies would pursue those things as well.
Now, I know that there is still the point of it being other peoples money. There are a few things that I would consider here as well.
1: I would imagine that, as he isn't a professional broker or investor, he will almost certainly have to consult the other members of the club before investing the money.
2: As others have said, he may honestly believe that there is a lot of money to be made in open source.
2 isn't as ridiculous as it might sound to some people. If the major players like IBM, Oracle, Sun, and Google think Open Source is a business plan worth putting time, money, and effort into, then it seems not unreasonable for an investor to think that it could be a fruitful long term investment.
It is reasonable to think that even though investing in open source might not have the best immediate returns, that helping open source based companies through investments could lead to growth in the tech industry, which will mean higher returns on many other tech based investments.
Finally, all other things aside, it's smart to invest in what you know. I'm certainly no market analyst, so when I invest I want to stick to companies whose business I can understand well enough to see how their business decisions could affect my investment. If the submitter is entrenched in the F/OSS community, then he may be able to best manage the investment by sticking to companies within that community, so that he can better manage the investment.
It seems to me like there are all sorts of studies talking about how X% of people are addicted to this, or Y% of people are addicted to that. it also doesn't surprise me that there is some amount of addictive behavior exhibited by MMO players.
Articles like this always seem to oversimplify addiction though. A lot of the articles on gaming and information addiction seem to just go for the "OMG Technology is Teh Bad!!!eleventyone111!" fear mongering luddite angle, but other times it seems like people are just playing too fast and loose with the definition of addiction.
I'll start out by saying that I am not- as far as I am aware of- addicted to anything, nor do I have an addictive personality. I have however dealt with a number of close friends and family members who have suffered with various addictions (alcohol as well as numerous drugs).
The first thing to take note of is that there are really two sides of addiction. There is the psychological aspect of it, as well as the physical/chemical aspect of addiction. I'm sure that, much like a gambling addiction, MMOs can have some effect on the chemical balance of the brain- and lead to some form of minor change in the chemical balance in the body. I would also guess that MMOs have much less of an effect than many other forms of addiction that basically cause your body to dope itself up.
That leaves us mainly looking at the psychological aspects of addiction. This is where things get tricky. The problem is that you have to seperate out things that basically psychologically addictive in the game, and things that people with addictive personalities latch onto - which really raises the question:
How many MMO addicts are addicted because MMOs are addicting, and how many people merely have addictive personalities and play MMOs instead of drinking/gambling/shooting up/etc.
My guess is that for at least half of the people who are addicted to MMOs, it's not that the MMO itself is that addicting, but rather it's that they are going to be addicted to something, and that something turned out to be a game. A big reason for people to become addicted to things is as a way of escaping their real life instead of fixing it, and it's easy for me to see how someone who was going to do that already could just as easily pick up a copy of WoW as a bottle of Wild Turkey.
For the other half, I would say it's pretty evenly divided. Some people have so much invested that they hold out for a payoff. This is sort of like what leads to gambling addictions. I think a lot of these players eventually tell themselves that they are going to quit and sell off their characters/loot/etc, but it becomes a matter of constantly investing more time in order to recoup their investment.
For the other half, I would say that the addiction is really more social than anything else. They say that one of the reasons that it's so hard to quit smoking for people is that they have to give up not only the cigarettes, but the people they hang out with on smoke breaks. I would also guess that for a fairly large number of people, they continue to play MMOs not because they are really addicted to the game specifically, as much as it is that they have personal relationships with people through the game that they may feel that they will be unable to continue on with if they were to choose to quit the game.
I think that far too many studies don't consider all of these aspects of gaming addiction, and instead try to use it as yet another reason why games should be outlawed and burned. I do respect that some people recogonize a legitimate need to study the addictive nature of games and get help for the people who are truly hard core addicted, but I do wish they would go into a bit more depth and study the reasons behind the addictions. Of course, a small part of me also things that these people just need to stop complaining about addiction and take some personal responsibility- but that is the part of me that has never experienced a real addiction.
A proper education should teach you some basic facts, then focus on how to obtain information, critically process it, and apply it to the task at hand. A proper education should not focus on memorizing the sort of stuff that is best left in a reference until you actually need the information.
I think that if we had available our entire video collection at the tip of our fingers, we would find a lot more time to make use of it. For one thing, a lot of video doesn't require constant visual contact. Many TV shows- especially shows that you've already seen once or twice- can be enjoyed mostly through audio, with an occasional glance at the screen.
I can see it being nice, being at work during a bit of a slow period, and queuing up an episode of TNG or Buffy.
What he was saying was that the number of Zelda games sold is 75% of the number of Wii's sold. Interestingly, I think there are a signficant number of people who were unable to get a Wii who went ahead and bought Zelda anyway. A LOT of people have been looking forward to this game, and I think some people who weren't able to get a Wii were buying it just to make sure that they were able to have the game for when they got the system.
When I tried to get a system over at walmart before I waited in line at BB on launch, I saw a lot of people buying their games and accessories so they would have then when they got a system, and to lessen the blow to their wallet from having to buy all of that at once.
Even in this case, more choices can be better. Take the BluRay/HD-DVD format war. Both formats are more or less equivilent functionally, so consumers in this choice get to pick the company (companies) they hate less to support. Sometimes choices isn't about choice in products, but in who supplies the products.
I ran into some accuracy problems for the first maybe 30 minutes when I got my Wii home. If you just take it out of the box and expect it to work with no tuning, you will definitely have problems. Of course, if you RTFM and follow the instructions, things are much better.
Basically, you have to be really careful about how you position the sensor bar in relation to yourself and the TV. I'm not sure there is much science behind it, but you have to make sure to get the sensor bar centered horizontally and at the front of the TV, but it also needs to be perpendicular to the way that you are aiming the controller. If it's a little angled, then things get a little messed up. The other big thing is that if you have other sources of IR than the sensor bar (like the sun, or anything that is going to reflect the IR from the sensor bar) then you need mess with the sensitivity of the wiimote and possibly cover things up (a lot of people on the gamespot forums recommend covering up any theoretical glass coffee tables that are between you and the system).
As for games being easier, yeah- some of the games do seem to START OUT easier, they get harder though (you wouldn't realize that if youre a typical sort of reviewer who only plays the first 30 minutes of a game though). You also have to remember that A: Nintendo is trying to rope in people who might have NEVER played a console game before in their ENTIRE LIFE. You have to make games easier for those people. B: Even hardcore gamers have never used something like the wiimote before, so everyone needs some time to get used to it. Look at how easy the first few levels of Super Mario 64 were- nobody was used to fully 3D analog control then either- but the game ramped up in difficulty toward the end.
I'm no blind nintendo apologist, but the Wii is a really fine system, and it seems like there are a lot of people who are either having legitimate problems with it because it's something new, and need to be set strait, or are just trying to set the console up to look like a failure, since it's doing something new.
Try changing the channel on your wireless router to either 1 or 11. Took hours for me to get the first update, and numerous failures. Second update took less than 5 minutes.
Right now, I'm not really doing anything that much different or better than Digikam or F-Spot (haven't used KPhotoAlbum, so I can't speak to that) partially because those are really good programs, and partially because my app is still in the "just started it a few days ago" phase.
The motivation at first started out being that I just wanted to learn Gtk and play with ImageMagick a bit. Since I've been hacking on it for a few days, I have some ideas that I think will make my application a different alternative. For one, I want to support video and audio as well as images. Pretty much every phone and digital camera now days takes short video clips at least, and I think they should be integrated in with photos nicely in an album. Some of my other ideas are a bit more experimental.
As I was saying to a couple of people on IRC last night, in the end maybe some people will find the software useful, but it's probably going to become a sort of dumping grounds for me to play around with a lot of ideas I have for various image algorithms, and will eventually become completely incomprehencible to anyone below the rank of Advanced God.
If anyone is interested, a couple of the ideas I've had are:
Doing some facial recognition and learning algorithms so that the program will start to associate name tags with people in the photos, and automatically tag new photos with the people it sees in the photo.
Draw a picture that resembles the photo you are looking for, and search the database for it.
Using texture synthesis to clean up images.
Working on creating a UI with OpenGL.
those are just some of the potential ideas I have floating about in my head, if anyone is interested in lending a hand on coding on it send me an email.
Right now it doesn't import from anything else, but if you have some ideas for things that you would like to see imported, by all means post a feature request on the site.
Basically, at the moment you can open up a directory full of images, and go through and add titles, tags, and watermarks - then put it all in a MySQL database. You can search tags in the database to look at your pictures. I also have a PHP script that will allow you to view the database on the web.
If a lot of people start requesting importing some types of files for metadata I'll do my best to add it in though.
Interestingly enough, I just stopped hacking on an application that will hopefully solve a lot of these problems just this minute to start reading slashdot. I actually just started coding on this project a couple of days ago, so it doesn't do a lot right now, but in a couple of days it should have at least the rudimentary features you are looking for (storage of tags, searching) and will hopefully be a bit usable.
You can check out the code here if you want: http://code.google.com/p/mediabrowser/
The project is written in C++ with Gtkmm, you'll have to compile it yourself since I haven't built any packages or anything.
Hope that helps.
My network connection seems to be fine. I am able to connect to my wireless network from my laptop, and I have added the Wii's MAC address to the whitelist on my router. The testing the connection on the Wii works fine, it just chokes when downloading updates. I thought it might be an issue with the updates trying to go through a port I have forwarded to my server, but when I saw that pinging nintendo.com gives between 90% and 100% packet loss it pretty much convinced me that the problem is on their end. I was able to get one of the two updates eventually, but on the second update the system hung for about 4 hours without timing out or making any progress, and I finally had to hold down on the power button for several seconds to get it to power off.
I'm guessing that they underestimated the demand for the Virutal Console, or had some servers not set up or misconfigured. Given that some people seem to be having no trouble at all, and others- like me- can't get updates at all, I wonder if they are having some problems with load balancing or something?
I'll probably give it a try once I get home from work this evening- otherwise I'll probably forget about it for now and just play zelda and hope they get it sorted out in a couple of weeks.
I noticed the same thing yesterday. The cursor in Zelda was fairly steady, but in the menus the cursor was pretty twitchy. I just assumed that the six shots of espresso I had trying to stay awake in line to get the system had something to do with that. Guess as soon as I get home I'll have to sit down and try to track down shiny things in my living room as well.
yeah, I'm a fan of the series and definitely want monkey ball. I went with red steel because at the moment I don't really have anyone to play multiplayer with, so I thought maybe I'd go with a couple of single player games.
After reading up on Gamespot's forums, I seem to be in good company in regards to having trouble with connecting to Wii Shop.
I'm pretty disappointed, because the virtual console is one of the things I've really been looking forward to with the launch of the Wii (Although, I have to say, I haven't played any games with it, but just holding the classic controller in my hands, it doesn't feel very comfortable. I guess I've just become used to controllers that have grips.).
c) there is no internal scaler, so those of us with 720p TVs that can't take a 1080p signal can't even play the sole launch gem Resistance: Fall Of Man at 720p, and have to resort to standard def.
If true, this is a useful bit of information.
I think that is incorrect. It seems like a misunderstanding of an article that was on slashdot the other day. The problem is that the PS3 won't do 1080i. Many older HDTVs only support 1080i, meaning they won't do 720p. The problem is that some games only run in 720p. When you have a game that supports only SD and 720p, and a TV that only supports 1080i and SD, the PS3 is forced to use standard definition, which is the least common denominator.
It's annoying, I'm sure, but not nearly as bad as it sounds to say that the PS3 essentially forces you to buy an HDTV capable of 1080p (which is ridculous. I have two HDTVs, one purchased only about 2 months ago. At no time when I was shopping around for my set did I see any HDTVs that supported 1080p which were less than 30". They would essentially be telling people they have to play on a big screen tv.)
Of course, I do not own a PS3, so I could be mistaken, but I don't think that I am.
I waited outside of Best Buy for 10 hours to get my Wii. I've told myself that I'd never stand outside of a stoor waiting to buy anything except food, but I have to admit that I had great fun. Since I just moved into a new town a few months ago, it was a good opportunity to meet some fellow gamers, as well as to build up anticipation for finally getting the system.
Although I waited all night, the line I was in didn't actually fill up until about 6:30 am. At 8 the store handed out vouches to the first 24 people in line, then we all lined up again at 9 (along with quite a lot of people who had no idea that there had been vouchers handed out earlier, and were hoping to get a system).
I got Zelda and Red Steel (although now that I have heard how abysmal the Red Steel seems to be, and since I haven't opened it, I'm considering making an attempt at returning it and getting Monkey Ball instead), and I have to say that so far the system has definitely been worth it.
The only problem I've had so far is that nintendo's servers seem to be having problems, because I keep running into timeout problems when trying to update the console so I can get into Wii Shop and check out the virtual console.
One of the things that you have to consider is how US foreign policy, especially in south america, effects the decline in the rainforest. A lot of US foreign policy is aimed at keeping nations with significant portions of rainforests locked into an economy where they must continue to exploit those resources- and destroy the rainforests- in order to economically survive.
What about all of the goods the people in the US consume that are produced in China?
The same thing applies to any other country as well, not just the US. You have to consider not just how much pollution is actually generated in the country, but in other countries as a result of things like consumer habbits, foreign policy, etc.
On a side note, I don't think most of the middle part of the US is covered in forests. A lot of the land in the middle to the north and west of MO are covered in plains and deserts.
I think the difference will be that SCO was claiming their actual code was in the kernel, while MS is claiming that it "infringes on their IP".
For all we know MS has some patent on Operating Systems or taking input, processing it, and giving output, or the color blue, or something.
That's the problem with software patents, as it stands right now, if Linux really is infringing on some MS patent then the functionality will have to be removed, not simply re-implemented in a different way. If this patent is on something core to the operation of Linux, then it could be very bad.
Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if Linux does violate some MS patent- not because the kernel developers have been stealing from MS, but because software patents are far to broad in nature. The best possible scenario would be that Linux is violating some MS patents and that is used as a stepping stone in order to reorganize that entire software patent system so it's not so stupid. More likely is that either Linux isn't violating any MS patents, or it is but MS doesn't do anything about it in court because they are afraid of having to fight IBM on one side, and Antitrust lawsuits from the EU (and possibly the US, though we saw how effective that was the last time) on another side.
I think this will certainly spell trouble for Linux. Not "the end of Linux" - but certainly trouble. Mostly it comes down to the fact that, when MS gets around to sueing people, some retarded judge is going to look at Novell signing a deal with MS as "admission of guilt" and - while it might not win the case for MS - it will lend a lot more creadance to their FUD for a lot of people.
As for Novell, I don't think Microsoft will take them to court, but I don't think they need to. I don't really know of anyone who was supportive of the Novell/Microsoft deal- and very few were even willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. This whole thing is going to really deamonize Novell in the eyes of the open source community. The way I see it, and a lot of other people too, is that basically Novell had the idea that Microsoft was going to start suing people over Linux, and rather than stand up for Linux and the community, they decided to become another MS lapdog.
If you would have read the post that I was replying to, you would see that the poster asked if it is actually downscaling, or if the games are rendering natively at 480p.
The article may say downscaling, but the article may have been using the term improperly, wouldn't be the first time.
It has to be capable of downscaling, since BluRay downscales if you are not running over HDMI- but the PS3 has other "insecure" output methods- so it has to be able to downscale the BluRay movies.
I'm really not that upset about the shortages of available PS3s. I want one, but really, those guys that I saw with their tents set up outside of best buy on my way to work this morning, tents covered with a layer of ice- they want it more than I do- and so that's fine.
The thing is, I do wish sony would just come out and admit that this isn't really so much of a launch as a preview. Then they could tell us when they are going to really launch- launch as in, if I were to stand in line for 3 or 4 hours I would be able to get one. That's the thing, I would be willing to stand in line for several hours- maybe even camp out- if I thought there was any sort of reasonable chance of getting one. The fact is that if I lined up in front of best buy this evening and tried to get one at 8am tomorrow, I would be probably like the 20th person in line to NOT get one.
I will stand in line for the Wii though- not that I want it more than the PS3 (I'm actually slightly less excited about it, because until I actually have a chance to play it I'm still just not sure how well the wiimote is going to work out) but because i know that I might actually have a chance to get one.
I would guess that it's perfectly capable of upscaling. More than likely, A: It was intended to upscale from 720p to 1080i, but a bug kept that from working- and the bug will be patched soon, or B: one of Sony's brilliant PHBs decided that there was no reason to upscale, and after sony starts catching heat about it, a patch will be released to enable properly upscaling.
My guess is that it will be a minor irrtation to a small portion of the early adopters, and will be fixed by the next shipment of units. If anyone out there is suffering from this problem, my TV supports 720p just fine, and I would be more than happy to take that PS3 off your hands for you;)
Slashdot Mirror
Bullshit.
I think that a lot of problems with the way the corporate world operates these days is down to exactly that attitude.
Granted, it's not a wise idea to invest in a company that is probably going to lose money. That does not mean, I don't believe, that we should always go after the highest yield investments.
People bitch and moan about how companies are always looking to do anything to make a short term profit increase, and the reason is because that's what stockholders want. If stockholders valued other things, companies would pursue those things as well.
Now, I know that there is still the point of it being other peoples money. There are a few things that I would consider here as well.
1: I would imagine that, as he isn't a professional broker or investor, he will almost certainly have to consult the other members of the club before investing the money.
2: As others have said, he may honestly believe that there is a lot of money to be made in open source.
2 isn't as ridiculous as it might sound to some people. If the major players like IBM, Oracle, Sun, and Google think Open Source is a business plan worth putting time, money, and effort into, then it seems not unreasonable for an investor to think that it could be a fruitful long term investment.
It is reasonable to think that even though investing in open source might not have the best immediate returns, that helping open source based companies through investments could lead to growth in the tech industry, which will mean higher returns on many other tech based investments.
Finally, all other things aside, it's smart to invest in what you know. I'm certainly no market analyst, so when I invest I want to stick to companies whose business I can understand well enough to see how their business decisions could affect my investment. If the submitter is entrenched in the F/OSS community, then he may be able to best manage the investment by sticking to companies within that community, so that he can better manage the investment.
It seems to me like there are all sorts of studies talking about how X% of people are addicted to this, or Y% of people are addicted to that. it also doesn't surprise me that there is some amount of addictive behavior exhibited by MMO players.
Articles like this always seem to oversimplify addiction though. A lot of the articles on gaming and information addiction seem to just go for the "OMG Technology is Teh Bad!!!eleventyone111!" fear mongering luddite angle, but other times it seems like people are just playing too fast and loose with the definition of addiction.
I'll start out by saying that I am not- as far as I am aware of- addicted to anything, nor do I have an addictive personality. I have however dealt with a number of close friends and family members who have suffered with various addictions (alcohol as well as numerous drugs).
The first thing to take note of is that there are really two sides of addiction. There is the psychological aspect of it, as well as the physical/chemical aspect of addiction. I'm sure that, much like a gambling addiction, MMOs can have some effect on the chemical balance of the brain- and lead to some form of minor change in the chemical balance in the body. I would also guess that MMOs have much less of an effect than many other forms of addiction that basically cause your body to dope itself up.
That leaves us mainly looking at the psychological aspects of addiction. This is where things get tricky. The problem is that you have to seperate out things that basically psychologically addictive in the game, and things that people with addictive personalities latch onto - which really raises the question:
How many MMO addicts are addicted because MMOs are addicting, and how many people merely have addictive personalities and play MMOs instead of drinking/gambling/shooting up/etc.
My guess is that for at least half of the people who are addicted to MMOs, it's not that the MMO itself is that addicting, but rather it's that they are going to be addicted to something, and that something turned out to be a game. A big reason for people to become addicted to things is as a way of escaping their real life instead of fixing it, and it's easy for me to see how someone who was going to do that already could just as easily pick up a copy of WoW as a bottle of Wild Turkey.
For the other half, I would say it's pretty evenly divided. Some people have so much invested that they hold out for a payoff. This is sort of like what leads to gambling addictions. I think a lot of these players eventually tell themselves that they are going to quit and sell off their characters/loot/etc, but it becomes a matter of constantly investing more time in order to recoup their investment.
For the other half, I would say that the addiction is really more social than anything else. They say that one of the reasons that it's so hard to quit smoking for people is that they have to give up not only the cigarettes, but the people they hang out with on smoke breaks. I would also guess that for a fairly large number of people, they continue to play MMOs not because they are really addicted to the game specifically, as much as it is that they have personal relationships with people through the game that they may feel that they will be unable to continue on with if they were to choose to quit the game.
I think that far too many studies don't consider all of these aspects of gaming addiction, and instead try to use it as yet another reason why games should be outlawed and burned. I do respect that some people recogonize a legitimate need to study the addictive nature of games and get help for the people who are truly hard core addicted, but I do wish they would go into a bit more depth and study the reasons behind the addictions. Of course, a small part of me also things that these people just need to stop complaining about addiction and take some personal responsibility- but that is the part of me that has never experienced a real addiction.
A proper education should teach you some basic facts, then focus on how to obtain information, critically process it, and apply it to the task at hand. A proper education should not focus on memorizing the sort of stuff that is best left in a reference until you actually need the information.
I think that if we had available our entire video collection at the tip of our fingers, we would find a lot more time to make use of it. For one thing, a lot of video doesn't require constant visual contact. Many TV shows- especially shows that you've already seen once or twice- can be enjoyed mostly through audio, with an occasional glance at the screen.
I can see it being nice, being at work during a bit of a slow period, and queuing up an episode of TNG or Buffy.
What he was saying was that the number of Zelda games sold is 75% of the number of Wii's sold. Interestingly, I think there are a signficant number of people who were unable to get a Wii who went ahead and bought Zelda anyway. A LOT of people have been looking forward to this game, and I think some people who weren't able to get a Wii were buying it just to make sure that they were able to have the game for when they got the system.
When I tried to get a system over at walmart before I waited in line at BB on launch, I saw a lot of people buying their games and accessories so they would have then when they got a system, and to lessen the blow to their wallet from having to buy all of that at once.
Even in this case, more choices can be better. Take the BluRay/HD-DVD format war. Both formats are more or less equivilent functionally, so consumers in this choice get to pick the company (companies) they hate less to support. Sometimes choices isn't about choice in products, but in who supplies the products.
I ran into some accuracy problems for the first maybe 30 minutes when I got my Wii home. If you just take it out of the box and expect it to work with no tuning, you will definitely have problems. Of course, if you RTFM and follow the instructions, things are much better.
Basically, you have to be really careful about how you position the sensor bar in relation to yourself and the TV. I'm not sure there is much science behind it, but you have to make sure to get the sensor bar centered horizontally and at the front of the TV, but it also needs to be perpendicular to the way that you are aiming the controller. If it's a little angled, then things get a little messed up. The other big thing is that if you have other sources of IR than the sensor bar (like the sun, or anything that is going to reflect the IR from the sensor bar) then you need mess with the sensitivity of the wiimote and possibly cover things up (a lot of people on the gamespot forums recommend covering up any theoretical glass coffee tables that are between you and the system).
As for games being easier, yeah- some of the games do seem to START OUT easier, they get harder though (you wouldn't realize that if youre a typical sort of reviewer who only plays the first 30 minutes of a game though). You also have to remember that A: Nintendo is trying to rope in people who might have NEVER played a console game before in their ENTIRE LIFE. You have to make games easier for those people. B: Even hardcore gamers have never used something like the wiimote before, so everyone needs some time to get used to it. Look at how easy the first few levels of Super Mario 64 were- nobody was used to fully 3D analog control then either- but the game ramped up in difficulty toward the end.
I'm no blind nintendo apologist, but the Wii is a really fine system, and it seems like there are a lot of people who are either having legitimate problems with it because it's something new, and need to be set strait, or are just trying to set the console up to look like a failure, since it's doing something new.
Try changing the channel on your wireless router to either 1 or 11. Took hours for me to get the first update, and numerous failures. Second update took less than 5 minutes.
Right now, I'm not really doing anything that much different or better than Digikam or F-Spot (haven't used KPhotoAlbum, so I can't speak to that) partially because those are really good programs, and partially because my app is still in the "just started it a few days ago" phase.
The motivation at first started out being that I just wanted to learn Gtk and play with ImageMagick a bit. Since I've been hacking on it for a few days, I have some ideas that I think will make my application a different alternative. For one, I want to support video and audio as well as images. Pretty much every phone and digital camera now days takes short video clips at least, and I think they should be integrated in with photos nicely in an album. Some of my other ideas are a bit more experimental.
As I was saying to a couple of people on IRC last night, in the end maybe some people will find the software useful, but it's probably going to become a sort of dumping grounds for me to play around with a lot of ideas I have for various image algorithms, and will eventually become completely incomprehencible to anyone below the rank of Advanced God.
If anyone is interested, a couple of the ideas I've had are:
Doing some facial recognition and learning algorithms so that the program will start to associate name tags with people in the photos, and automatically tag new photos with the people it sees in the photo.
Draw a picture that resembles the photo you are looking for, and search the database for it.
Using texture synthesis to clean up images.
Working on creating a UI with OpenGL.
those are just some of the potential ideas I have floating about in my head, if anyone is interested in lending a hand on coding on it send me an email.
Right now it doesn't import from anything else, but if you have some ideas for things that you would like to see imported, by all means post a feature request on the site.
Basically, at the moment you can open up a directory full of images, and go through and add titles, tags, and watermarks - then put it all in a MySQL database. You can search tags in the database to look at your pictures. I also have a PHP script that will allow you to view the database on the web.
If a lot of people start requesting importing some types of files for metadata I'll do my best to add it in though.
Interestingly enough, I just stopped hacking on an application that will hopefully solve a lot of these problems just this minute to start reading slashdot. I actually just started coding on this project a couple of days ago, so it doesn't do a lot right now, but in a couple of days it should have at least the rudimentary features you are looking for (storage of tags, searching) and will hopefully be a bit usable.
You can check out the code here if you want:
http://code.google.com/p/mediabrowser/
The project is written in C++ with Gtkmm, you'll have to compile it yourself since I haven't built any packages or anything.
Hope that helps.
My network connection seems to be fine. I am able to connect to my wireless network from my laptop, and I have added the Wii's MAC address to the whitelist on my router. The testing the connection on the Wii works fine, it just chokes when downloading updates. I thought it might be an issue with the updates trying to go through a port I have forwarded to my server, but when I saw that pinging nintendo.com gives between 90% and 100% packet loss it pretty much convinced me that the problem is on their end. I was able to get one of the two updates eventually, but on the second update the system hung for about 4 hours without timing out or making any progress, and I finally had to hold down on the power button for several seconds to get it to power off.
I'm guessing that they underestimated the demand for the Virutal Console, or had some servers not set up or misconfigured. Given that some people seem to be having no trouble at all, and others- like me- can't get updates at all, I wonder if they are having some problems with load balancing or something?
I'll probably give it a try once I get home from work this evening- otherwise I'll probably forget about it for now and just play zelda and hope they get it sorted out in a couple of weeks.
I noticed the same thing yesterday. The cursor in Zelda was fairly steady, but in the menus the cursor was pretty twitchy. I just assumed that the six shots of espresso I had trying to stay awake in line to get the system had something to do with that. Guess as soon as I get home I'll have to sit down and try to track down shiny things in my living room as well.
yeah, I'm a fan of the series and definitely want monkey ball. I went with red steel because at the moment I don't really have anyone to play multiplayer with, so I thought maybe I'd go with a couple of single player games.
After reading up on Gamespot's forums, I seem to be in good company in regards to having trouble with connecting to Wii Shop.
I'm pretty disappointed, because the virtual console is one of the things I've really been looking forward to with the launch of the Wii (Although, I have to say, I haven't played any games with it, but just holding the classic controller in my hands, it doesn't feel very comfortable. I guess I've just become used to controllers that have grips.).
c) there is no internal scaler, so those of us with 720p TVs that can't take a 1080p signal can't even play the sole launch gem Resistance: Fall Of Man at 720p, and have to resort to standard def.
If true, this is a useful bit of information.
I think that is incorrect. It seems like a misunderstanding of an article that was on slashdot the other day. The problem is that the PS3 won't do 1080i. Many older HDTVs only support 1080i, meaning they won't do 720p. The problem is that some games only run in 720p. When you have a game that supports only SD and 720p, and a TV that only supports 1080i and SD, the PS3 is forced to use standard definition, which is the least common denominator.
It's annoying, I'm sure, but not nearly as bad as it sounds to say that the PS3 essentially forces you to buy an HDTV capable of 1080p (which is ridculous. I have two HDTVs, one purchased only about 2 months ago. At no time when I was shopping around for my set did I see any HDTVs that supported 1080p which were less than 30". They would essentially be telling people they have to play on a big screen tv.)
Of course, I do not own a PS3, so I could be mistaken, but I don't think that I am.
I waited outside of Best Buy for 10 hours to get my Wii. I've told myself that I'd never stand outside of a stoor waiting to buy anything except food, but I have to admit that I had great fun. Since I just moved into a new town a few months ago, it was a good opportunity to meet some fellow gamers, as well as to build up anticipation for finally getting the system.
Although I waited all night, the line I was in didn't actually fill up until about 6:30 am. At 8 the store handed out vouches to the first 24 people in line, then we all lined up again at 9 (along with quite a lot of people who had no idea that there had been vouchers handed out earlier, and were hoping to get a system).
I got Zelda and Red Steel (although now that I have heard how abysmal the Red Steel seems to be, and since I haven't opened it, I'm considering making an attempt at returning it and getting Monkey Ball instead), and I have to say that so far the system has definitely been worth it.
The only problem I've had so far is that nintendo's servers seem to be having problems, because I keep running into timeout problems when trying to update the console so I can get into Wii Shop and check out the virtual console.
One of the things that you have to consider is how US foreign policy, especially in south america, effects the decline in the rainforest. A lot of US foreign policy is aimed at keeping nations with significant portions of rainforests locked into an economy where they must continue to exploit those resources- and destroy the rainforests- in order to economically survive.
What about all of the goods the people in the US consume that are produced in China?
The same thing applies to any other country as well, not just the US. You have to consider not just how much pollution is actually generated in the country, but in other countries as a result of things like consumer habbits, foreign policy, etc.
On a side note, I don't think most of the middle part of the US is covered in forests. A lot of the land in the middle to the north and west of MO are covered in plains and deserts.
It's essentially saying, "the fact is that X, but if all logic fails we'll recover as well as possible instead of just freaking out and dying".
I think the difference will be that SCO was claiming their actual code was in the kernel, while MS is claiming that it "infringes on their IP".
For all we know MS has some patent on Operating Systems or taking input, processing it, and giving output, or the color blue, or something.
That's the problem with software patents, as it stands right now, if Linux really is infringing on some MS patent then the functionality will have to be removed, not simply re-implemented in a different way. If this patent is on something core to the operation of Linux, then it could be very bad.
Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if Linux does violate some MS patent- not because the kernel developers have been stealing from MS, but because software patents are far to broad in nature. The best possible scenario would be that Linux is violating some MS patents and that is used as a stepping stone in order to reorganize that entire software patent system so it's not so stupid. More likely is that either Linux isn't violating any MS patents, or it is but MS doesn't do anything about it in court because they are afraid of having to fight IBM on one side, and Antitrust lawsuits from the EU (and possibly the US, though we saw how effective that was the last time) on another side.
I think this will certainly spell trouble for Linux. Not "the end of Linux" - but certainly trouble. Mostly it comes down to the fact that, when MS gets around to sueing people, some retarded judge is going to look at Novell signing a deal with MS as "admission of guilt" and - while it might not win the case for MS - it will lend a lot more creadance to their FUD for a lot of people.
As for Novell, I don't think Microsoft will take them to court, but I don't think they need to. I don't really know of anyone who was supportive of the Novell/Microsoft deal- and very few were even willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. This whole thing is going to really deamonize Novell in the eyes of the open source community. The way I see it, and a lot of other people too, is that basically Novell had the idea that Microsoft was going to start suing people over Linux, and rather than stand up for Linux and the community, they decided to become another MS lapdog.
If you would have read the post that I was replying to, you would see that the poster asked if it is actually downscaling, or if the games are rendering natively at 480p.
The article may say downscaling, but the article may have been using the term improperly, wouldn't be the first time.
It has to be capable of downscaling, since BluRay downscales if you are not running over HDMI- but the PS3 has other "insecure" output methods- so it has to be able to downscale the BluRay movies.
I'm really not that upset about the shortages of available PS3s. I want one, but really, those guys that I saw with their tents set up outside of best buy on my way to work this morning, tents covered with a layer of ice- they want it more than I do- and so that's fine.
The thing is, I do wish sony would just come out and admit that this isn't really so much of a launch as a preview. Then they could tell us when they are going to really launch- launch as in, if I were to stand in line for 3 or 4 hours I would be able to get one. That's the thing, I would be willing to stand in line for several hours- maybe even camp out- if I thought there was any sort of reasonable chance of getting one. The fact is that if I lined up in front of best buy this evening and tried to get one at 8am tomorrow, I would be probably like the 20th person in line to NOT get one.
I will stand in line for the Wii though- not that I want it more than the PS3 (I'm actually slightly less excited about it, because until I actually have a chance to play it I'm still just not sure how well the wiimote is going to work out) but because i know that I might actually have a chance to get one.
I would guess that it's perfectly capable of upscaling. More than likely, A: It was intended to upscale from 720p to 1080i, but a bug kept that from working- and the bug will be patched soon, or B: one of Sony's brilliant PHBs decided that there was no reason to upscale, and after sony starts catching heat about it, a patch will be released to enable properly upscaling. ;)
My guess is that it will be a minor irrtation to a small portion of the early adopters, and will be fixed by the next shipment of units. If anyone out there is suffering from this problem, my TV supports 720p just fine, and I would be more than happy to take that PS3 off your hands for you