Hey, if it does anything to help lag and load times, I'm all for it. Honestly, I just hope they develop the tech and don't worry about immediate profits. Online gaming is the way of the future, and it will only grow from here.
I doubt this will ever happen. You see, unless some act of god changes the way physics work, a larger device is capable of holding more guts. Yeah, miniaturization helps make mobiles what they are today, but they still pale in comparison to a desktop. New software requires desktop power (or high end laptop) and they will not be going away anytime soon.
So while they may not REPLACE the desktop, I can certainly see them as becoming just as essential as one if they aren't already.
"There's lots of veggie burgers out there that taste great, but McDonalds had to make one that could never compete in taste with their real meat patties."
You do realize its not just their veggie burgers that taste like shit don't you? Last I checked, McDonald's never won any awards for Best Tasting Burger of the Year.
You could also say that the less active people attracted to the Big Mac meals are more likely to have a desktop computer with Winamp, so I don't really think you have a valid point.
What I meant by largest part was the guts of the display take up considerable space, not the size of the screen itself. Our only real hope with that is wearable computers or holographic displays.
Yeah...its still too huge, but its still a helluva lot smaller, and doesn't have a wire that has to go up your sleeve to the battery pack/antenna strapped to your arm.
Fact is, there's been a lot of progress and once they've really worked out these flexible OLED displays, we will start to truly see a lot more miniaturization, as the display is the largest part of most of todays electronics.
'Do you honestly expect your backup provider to cover you in the event of a gamma ray burst in the stellar neighbourhood which vapourizes half the planet within 5 minutes? An extreme example to be sure, but 100% coverage is not realistic, nor is it financially desirable."
Its not the gamma ray burst that I'd be worried about in terms of their accountability, its when some clueless worker screws something trivial up that makes me lose data. The issue is that this clause covers both these issues large and small. I agree that the freak accidents like you mentioned should not make them liable, but something like worker negligence should.
Ok, so there's lots of demand on both sides of the fence. However, you are probably right about the company thing. The collaboration required by these people...over the internet, is quite astounding. However I do think they lack the general business sense. But the money/license part is not a huge issue. Every company needs to start somewhere you konw.
Oh, and your comment about it being a bad japanese learning aide....You do realize that the words you learn from a song are the same as words you speak with right? And that practicing your reading of japanese characters is still practice regardless of whether its a song or speaking right?
Yeah, the lyrics may not be the best, and I'm certainly not going to learn conversational speaking from it, but it is an EXCELLENT way to practice my kana and learn a few new kanji, and if I watch it enough, I can also pick up the english translations to words. So yes, it is a phenomenal learning aide.
I agree. However, I think it will only truly take off when the bulk of the work is taken out of the hands of the user. What I mean by that is there needs to be a sort of director program...that lets the user tell the "actors" what to do, without getting bogged down in the coding and modelling. William Gibson said something similar to this in his blog in regards to movies in general.
Remember, the average pr0n surfer does not want to spend hours and hours slaving away modeling/coding their flick. They want to tell the actors what to do, sit back...and um..."enjoy".
Agreed. What we need is the ability to make our own Second Life, for free. Make your own area, hook it up to other servers via P2P, and voila, you only pay for your own hardware and whatever you can host, and your net access. Others join on, and eventually you have a whole networked world full of islands.
" Any message, commercial, political, moral, or otherwise, that you want to get out can be shoved down the meme-holes of people playing these games by purchasing some land and throwing up a virtual billboard or store."
Interesting point. I wonder if people have rented out small chunks of their land for advertising.
As video game ads become more and more popular, this could become a popular method as it could be updated fairly regularly, and it would be fairly easy to get effectiveness statistics. Advertisers could pay a virtual ad agency to put their ad up, and the ad agency rents the billboard space from the land owner. Has anything like this happened yet?
Exactly. I have quite a large anime collection in divX and I'm waiting until I can get a handheld with decent battery life and decent screen that can actually deal with me needing to constantly install updated codecs *cough*xvid*cough*. Anybody have any suggestions? I know Archos makes a video player, but I don't know how well it would do with needing to have constantly updated divx codecs and such.
Good point about the bonus material which is indeed something only a company with some sway could get. But what's to stop one of the better fansubbing groups from becoming a company? If they did, and were used, they would have access to the official scripts and many other things.
If your point about the karaoke were true, the best fansubbing groups out there wouldn't be doing it. I know TONS of fans who enjoy them. But keep in mind these are American fans. As an American fan learning Japanese, these karaoke have been infinitely helpful and I'm sure a large number of fans feel the same. Again, if the the vast majority of fans felt they were annoying/stupid, they wouldn't be in there, but there is obviously demand for them.
You know, I honestly don't see how the fansubbing groups are any less professional skill wise for translations. Now, obviously they aren't a company, but the translations of the better groups out there put those of the "professionals" to shame. They include informative notes, often times translate onscreen text, and I have yet to see any "professionals" give kanji/kana, romaji, and english karaoki for the beginning and end themes of anime.
Seriously, I wish groups like ANBU & Aone would become an actual company because they have the talent and the quality, and they have the full support of the fan community.
Unless you make up a large number of people there, you do NOT reflect the crowd. That's great that you are regulars and the resident DJs know you, but realize that most DJ's don't have the luxury of not being super-busy.
I do agree though that these are a good way of SUPPORTING the DJ and not telling them what to do (ie. requesting songs).
I agree. I've always wondered how long it would be before a large anime studio partnered with a fansubbing group and sold an official release online via BT or something for a small price, maybe $3 or so. I realize sharing would be an issue, but I think the anime community would support DRM for something like that. For example, I could see it being very successful if the studio doing Naruto paired up with ANBU & Aone on something like this (although I'd be pissed cuz I love their free, excellent quality subs).
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if more independent anime starts popping up like Hoshi no Koe which was all done by one man and his Apple. That way the creators reap all the profits from distro and merchandising.
You know, in my brief look over of the game, I failed to see any unique features that would make it competitive in the MMORPG market. Perhaps someone can point some out to me.
Seriously, nothing pisses me off more than seeing some new cookie cutter MMORPG come out with zero new features just trying to capitalize on an existing franchise or powerhouse marketing.
"Why would I install a "toolbar" to clean out spyware? Shouldn't I use an application dedicated to that?"
Actually, I think it could be quite useful if I had a button on the toolbar in Firefox that let me run a Spybot and Adaware scan all without leaving my browser. I mean, I agree I'd like dedicated software to handle it, but when you think about it, this is software that directly deals with the internet, and in order to help the mass amount of clueless users, I think it would be quite a good interface move to install a button in IE or something that ran the software in the background or something.
Slashdot Mirror
So while they may not REPLACE the desktop, I can certainly see them as becoming just as essential as one if they aren't already.
You do realize its not just their veggie burgers that taste like shit don't you? Last I checked, McDonald's never won any awards for Best Tasting Burger of the Year.
Not to mention girls don't like fat chicks so that is one more strike against us.
Its not the gamma ray burst that I'd be worried about in terms of their accountability, its when some clueless worker screws something trivial up that makes me lose data. The issue is that this clause covers both these issues large and small. I agree that the freak accidents like you mentioned should not make them liable, but something like worker negligence should.
Oh, and your comment about it being a bad japanese learning aide....You do realize that the words you learn from a song are the same as words you speak with right? And that practicing your reading of japanese characters is still practice regardless of whether its a song or speaking right?
Yeah, the lyrics may not be the best, and I'm certainly not going to learn conversational speaking from it, but it is an EXCELLENT way to practice my kana and learn a few new kanji, and if I watch it enough, I can also pick up the english translations to words. So yes, it is a phenomenal learning aide.
Remember, the average pr0n surfer does not want to spend hours and hours slaving away modeling/coding their flick. They want to tell the actors what to do, sit back...and um..."enjoy".
Interesting point. I wonder if people have rented out small chunks of their land for advertising.
As video game ads become more and more popular, this could become a popular method as it could be updated fairly regularly, and it would be fairly easy to get effectiveness statistics. Advertisers could pay a virtual ad agency to put their ad up, and the ad agency rents the billboard space from the land owner. Has anything like this happened yet?
If your point about the karaoke were true, the best fansubbing groups out there wouldn't be doing it. I know TONS of fans who enjoy them. But keep in mind these are American fans. As an American fan learning Japanese, these karaoke have been infinitely helpful and I'm sure a large number of fans feel the same. Again, if the the vast majority of fans felt they were annoying/stupid, they wouldn't be in there, but there is obviously demand for them.
Seriously, I wish groups like ANBU & Aone would become an actual company because they have the talent and the quality, and they have the full support of the fan community.
I do agree though that these are a good way of SUPPORTING the DJ and not telling them what to do (ie. requesting songs).
Also, I wouldn't be surprised if more independent anime starts popping up like Hoshi no Koe which was all done by one man and his Apple. That way the creators reap all the profits from distro and merchandising.
Seriously, nothing pisses me off more than seeing some new cookie cutter MMORPG come out with zero new features just trying to capitalize on an existing franchise or powerhouse marketing.
Sounds like a perfect candidate for a Googlebombing campaign. So say it with me everybody, Claria is spyware!
Actually, I think it could be quite useful if I had a button on the toolbar in Firefox that let me run a Spybot and Adaware scan all without leaving my browser. I mean, I agree I'd like dedicated software to handle it, but when you think about it, this is software that directly deals with the internet, and in order to help the mass amount of clueless users, I think it would be quite a good interface move to install a button in IE or something that ran the software in the background or something.