Perhaps it was just tucked away under the rug because Apple didn't have the time to bother to spend additional money removing it completely. If Apple (or whomever is speaking on it's behalf) is telling the truth and truly it doesn't really do anything, then it's just some clutter.
Besides, what's with the passwords anyways? Using whole words, one that starts with the first letter of the alphabet? Not a single number? It's obviously not meant to be hidden that deep.
Make him an editor for what? Posting right-wing concentrated thoughts and Apple advertisements and claims of not being a fanboy for either?
Jesus man, a hardware review on a cell phone constitues 'right-wing concentrated thoughts?' You're trying too hard. Anti-fanboy is the new fanboy for the real geeks, AMIRITE? Good thing you exposed him for what he is!
I thought GP's post was thoroughly informative - info concentrate with no attempts to bullshit(other than possibly the karma whoring which is what you may have been so pissed about). I saw a list of pros, and cons - both sides offered practical issues, and makes for an interesting observation on how I would imagine would be used day-to-day. For the record, there is no way in hell I'm going to get one yet - certainly not for $500 and service with ATT. But without a doubt it looks like a cool toy.
It appears that you've read the article, so obviously the rule doesn't apply to you.
Unlike me, who didn't read the article at all, going straight for the comments and finding a post to reply to where I can go ahead and voice my opinion on something whether or not the topic I'm talking about actually has any relevance to the article in question.
Isn't this how slashdot is supposed to work anyway? I'll read the manual once my karma goes down.
yes it would. But would it necessarily be _as_ efficient as using a keyboard and mouse? It's always being about being on par with the user-end standard in terms of end efficiency. I use a blackberry at work, and while it's miles more efficient than using a mobile phone in order to write emails, a simple laptop with wifi (or wireless broadband) beats the pants out of it - in terms of work (not necessarily mobility). I mean things like writing emails, or spreadsheets, or a terminal to do some emergency damage control. There is always going to be some kind of tradeoff.
Solid tactile input feedback. Efficient means of multiple user end input. Simple interface/short learning curve. Portable. Pick any three.
Tactile feedback would mean either visual, or physical (or both if so inclined). Almost everybody that works on a keyboard can immediately tell the difference between a good keyboard and a lousy one - one of the many reasons why bucklespring keyboards are still popular amongst geeks rather than membrane ones. And then of course there are the shortcuts, from basic ones for copy/paste, to other more application specific ones (even highlighting text on a blackberry is a bitch, I still haven't been able to figure out how to highlight text, then cut/pasting it to a different location - I can't imagine doing that on a phone)
am I saying that the iphone-type interface is necessarily bad? Or course not. I'm just saying that it's a different direction. In the current context of websites today, usability was firstly designed around the basic keyboard/mouse type input, and efficiency has been maximized for this. The ability for phones to surf the web in the eyes of the webmasters have been observed to be more of a fringe benefit, rather than the standard. Different tools/applications are better suited for different types of input. Only a foolish producer will hear towards the direction of trying to maximize usability on a new input format, because at the same time they will be alienating their cash-cow: people sitting in front of a computer. Better if they simply segregated the different input formats in their own isolated environments and maximize efficiency for each environment.
We already see the signs of serious front-end development being done in javascript. We will really see the differences in user input once we start seeing games with complicated user input - using telnet on the blackberry is bad enough, I shudder to think what mudding will be like on one (barring the whole latency issue, that is). People have even experimented with writing simple doom-type fps games in javascript, how playable is that with one finger?
I wouldn't say that some websites are necessarily badly designed, it's just that there was a specific target demographic that web developers have aimed for when they were designing their websites. It just happens this largely includes websites that were mostly designed to be surfed with a keyboard and mouse, rather than some alternate input device, like a touchscreen
As we see more fancy pants ajax techniques that are driven based on keyboard input, such as that neato google suggest thing that they put out a few years back - while that would be incredibly convenient to a user with a keyboard, it wouldn't necessarily have any impact on user performance when they are using a mobile phone, especially one without some kind if keyboard input. Things like that would be.. obsolete? (hah, for whatever reason obsolete doesn't sound too correct)
IMO a complaint like the author's sure sounds like he's grasping at straws. Sure he could develop a one-size-fits-all site that will be (ideally)wonderful for using with kb/m along with a touchscreen, but all interface designers are keenly aware of the fact that optimizing for one type if interface will ultimately be sacrificing the other. A simple alternative would be to give a url that will redirect the user to an iphone(or similar device) optimized site when the user heads towards there, and another for the standard computer user. Why wouldn't companies that are trying to appeal to both demographics want to do this in the first place? Doesn't make too much sense to me - plus it would prolly be cheaper in the long run instead of trying to retrofit their site to be 'iphone friendly.'
I thought about this when I was younger. I came to the conclusion that it would probably react similarly to a water hose. Shoot it in one position, but move the trajectory, and quickly enough, the 'beam' of water bends. This time instead of water think: light shooting out. Sure it can 'bend,' but we are unable to see far enough to tell the difference.
Mr. Wizard's shows were always fun to watch, I remember sitting in front of the tv watching him bake potatoes in cardboard boxes, loop rubber bands within (which I've been trying to copy for months after I saw that), and cracking rubber balls with a hammer. God I miss that show.
I used to watch his show something like 20 years ago. (has it truly been that long?) And I thought he was pretty old back then too. Looks like he's lived a full life. I only hope to be so lucky.
Perhaps Mr. Wizard will return one day, as Mr. White Wizard. (sorry for the lame LOTR reference)
seriously. Every aspiring game developer thinking about an online gaming model has gone over this a million times. This is like fundamental game cheating tactics 101: there is absolutely no such thing is a trusted client.
The hard part is implementing this without impacting cash flow. That usually means appealing to the mob. Make some changes, and gaming public cries for bloody murder. Of course if it continues in one direction, then they vote with their wallets - by going to another game, where they get to be uber in that 'other' game.
Balancing the game to have the right mix of feeling uber and creating that 'magical, other world immersion' does not mix. Everybody wants to be Gandalf, not the wheat farmer that was responsible for feeding the 21st regiment which resulted in a major tactical victory for the Good Guy Kingdom.
Early games experimented with players having an impact with world-changing events. The net result is that players will do whatever it takes to 'complete the event' in the shortest amount of time. If there was an event that would cause a server wipe forcing everybody to start over on a clean slate, it would be extremely unpopular to casual players, although massively popular to the hardcore players. Businesses know that casual players are where the money is at. As long as companies know there is a golden goose at the end of the game development path when taking the path to appeal to the lowest common denominator, capitalism will dictate the quality of gaming and direction of MMORPGs. We're not going to see anything change, untill the market is completely saturated - and we thought it has been for several years, even before WoW came about.
I had to do a once-over on the title, I really interested in reading a summary about how NY was going to arrest private business owners for failing to sell enough video games, enough to be considered a decent sale.
Not exactly. They didn't call it Starship Troopers because they wanted to call it Warcraft 40k, but ran into legal issues with Games Workshop.:-) [it's a joke. laugh] Those those that don't know already, Blizzard's game Warcraft was largely inspired by Games Workshops' Warhammer. Games Workshop also created a futuristic variant, called Warhammer 40k, which is of course where Blizzard got their ideas for Starcraft.
The three starcraft race's character inspiration can map directly to the War40k races:
Terran - Space Marines (the early sc marines looked almost exactly like spacemarines with their large shoulderpads)
Protoss - Eldar ("one of the most ancient and advanced races in the universe's history")
Zerg - Tyranid ("nomadic alien race comprising many genetically engineered forms") - even the alien designs were shamelessly ripped on top of ideas like the hive mind.
It's likely that they draw their ideas on how Starcraft II is going to play, based on its close association with Epic. Unlike Warcraft, where you have hero units, and gameplay is focused on small squads (like the Warhammer tabletop games), Blizzard is leaning towards a different style of gaming, more on the grand scale where you can see hundreds of zerglings and marines fighting on the field - hence, the association with Epic.
If you see the gameplay footage, you'll notice that the physics employed are strictly visual enhancements - debris blowing up, to roll down a ramp, or hit a wall and bounce once or twice. It appears there is no type of physics used for the gaming logic - goliaths don't trip over rocks or each other.
However, there are a few units that can climb/leap over cliffs, which adds an interesting element when thinking of fortifying with terrain in mind.
This is one of those trump cards Blizzard has over publishers like Vivendi (or whoever is their publisher nowadays). While publishers and marketing execs like giving off drop-dead dates, mostly products with dates like that force developers/producers to cut corners somewhere to meet deadlines. Many many times products will get rushed, and sure enough, it's crap once it goes out the door.
Fortunately, Blizzard doesn't play like that. They will release whenever they damn please. I remember when blizzard announced they were making an MMO (this was before they had a name to it). After their announcement, it took like two years to present the public with a name of the product, early gameplay footage, and some other stuff. This left the (albeit small MMO gaming fanbase) public frothing at the mouth. For another two years. By this time, lots and lots of MMO's starting coming out, and WoW missed the 2nd generation MMO window. Blizzard didn't care, even though Vivendi started getting pissed. But once WoW was released, even Blizzard was caught unprepared for the onslaught of money, and further brought MMO gaming into a much broader demographic that would have never thought they would play such fantasy games. They polish the shit out of their stuff. And it sells like hotcakes, literally without fail.
Blizzard has their golden goose, and that golden goose is quality. Over and over the industry has seen Blizzard produce total blockbuster material, and the industry fails to emulate what Blizzard can do, because dollar minded business execs with absolutely no interest with the products they own (through whatever legal measures they took), have the final say on how the product is produced. Most of the time that 'how' == 'when', especially when that 'when' means cutting corners, either in QA, production quality, or whatever.
So while the public (and publishers) is screaming NOWNOWNOW, Blizzard has known for quite some time that listening to the mob is not always the best way to conduct business. In fact, they never listen to the mob. They do their own work, create a quality product, and then release it for the public to consume. Ironically, it's always going to be a hit or miss, whenever one does it their own way - take War III for example. People would say it's their worst product released so far - even though they have sold millions. But it is still a quality game.
So now, Blizzard has an opportunity to enhance the gameplay of one of the best selling, most popular games ever. This single game along started a HUGE subculture - one that involves competitive RTS gaming, and revolutionized how competitive gaming should be presented to the television viewing public (most notably in Korea), created celebrities out of RTS gaming nerds, and has brought gaming to an (again, at least in Korea) acceptable public position instead of a niche. The last thing they want to do is screw it up - despite the screaming from the publishers to release-something-GODDAMMIT. Blizzard is looking to make a _new_ starcraft game, more of the same, that nobody will complain about (or at least the complaints will be completely drowned out by the praises). If it takes them 4 more years to finally go gold, then that's fine with me. It's got some big shoes to fill, and has to succeed where Warcraft III failed - it has to be across the board, better than it's predecessor.
Isn't the 2nd version a buckle-spring keyboard? (you know, like the old school IBM keyboards with the extra 'clicky' sound) That would account for the price increase. Buckle-spring keyboards, although noisy and not too friendly in a business environment(mostly due to the noise), give off a very satisfying audible and tactile feel upon each keypress, unlike the more common membrane keyboards. Plus, buckle-spring keyboards do not wear out like membrane keyboards. I have a buckle-spring, and while it's a bit heavy and (quite frankly) pretty ugly, I cannot complain about the performance of the keyboard. Those things are solid, and (it's probably a psychological thing) encourages the user to learn to type faster and 'lighter' if that makes any sense. But they aren't cheap.
I know the first generation das keyboard was not bucklespring, but even the feel of the first generation das keyboard is excellent (I own a first gen das keyboard as well). The first gen keyboard has a 'light' touch to it as well, but nowhere near my bucklespring.
Over time, I've noticed that membrane keyboards have gotten quieter, but the offset is that you cannot tell whether or not you've confirmed the keyboard press. I'm talking about soft keyboards, like the current dell, apple, and (overall)laptop keyboards. Those things were built for business where visuals play an overrated importance, unfortunately not designed around performance. (fyi for a membrane keyboard, the first generation das keyboard was pretty noisy and had 'light' keys, somewhat like the oldschool compaq keyboards)
I remember hearing about Johnathan Coulton from various geek podcasts a few years back. His songs were particularly popular with the geek circle because 1) his songs were all under creative commons, and 2) people related to his subject material - geeky things.
I pleasantly suprised to see his popularity grow. I suppose exposure in/., Penny Arcade and Digg really helped on top of the geek podcast inner circles.
tivo suit guy 1: Those lousy internet people keep cracking our encryption!
tivo suit guy 2: How do they keep doing it?
tivo suit guy 1: Because time is on their side, and they have no life! grr
tivo suit guy 2: How long can a 'really hard' encryption take?
tivo suit guy 1: I have no idea, maybe like a month? A week?
tivo suit guy 2: A WEEK? You can't be serious!
drive manufacturer suit: Well, if you can't beat crackers at their own game, what needs to get done is to beat them from a different angle.
tivo suit guy 1: what do you mean?
drive manufacturer suit: Think about it, every time you come up with a new password, it gets cracked in a week, there is no control over that. So, what needs to get done is to beat them where they have no control. TIME!
tivo suit guy 2: Time? And how do you expect us to control TIME?
drive manufacturer suit: Easy. Since we know that a password can be cracked within a week, what needs to get done is to prevent them from getting access to the password before that week. All we have to do is manufacture drives that will fail within a week!
tivo suit guy 2: That's brilliant!
tivo suit guy 1: Wait a minute. We can't have customer's drives dying withing one week. That's just no good for business.
drive manufacturer suit: Don't worry about it. We'll use flash drives. Flash ram wears out overtime. We can explain to the customer that the new flash drives will use less energy, have no moving parts, and are cheaper!
tivo suit guy 1: Will they really be cheaper?
drive manufacturer suit: only to you they will be. That way you won't have to pass off the savings to the customer. Plus, you can add in an additional subscription fee to have new flash drives mailed to them every week when they mail back their old flash drives! Think: netflix, but instead of dvds, flash drives. More money for you!
tivo suit guy 2: kinda like the photo-copier industry with their toners.. hrm, I like it!
tivo suit guy 1: Wait wait wait! Those drives will still cost us a pretty penny, so what's the secret?
drive manufacturer suit: *grins* we will be using _OLD_ flash drives. Just like the old flash drives that croaked so quickly. The manufacturing technology to build them was very cheap. We can churn those out like nobody's business.
tivo suit guy 1: hrm, so essentially they are disposable drives?
tivo suit guy 2: It's an excellent plan! We can add in the additional 'service' and bleed our customers dry!
drive manufacturer suit: soo, do we have a deal?
tivo suit guy 1 & 2: it's a deal! I think I'm gonna patent that idea!
*shakes hands, and the meeting is ended, tivo suit guys leave*
drive manufacturer gets on cell phone
drive manufacturer boss: so, how did it go?
drive manufacturer suit: They accepted project 'disposable drive.' Those fools have no idea we're playing them for our pawn.
drive manufacturer boss: Eeeexxxeeeelent~
drive manufacturer suit: Phase 1 is complete. I've finished talking to Apple and Creative already. I'm scheduled to meet with Sprint and Verizon tomorrow.
drive manufacturer boss: Once we have all the mp3 players, cell phones, and tivos supplied with our disposable drive, users will be upset that only after a week of use, their electronics became useless! This will soil the name of flash drives in a larger scale never seen before, and drive customer confidence towards flash down! They will be forced to lower their prices, and eventually perish under their manufacturing costs. Harddrives will RISE AGAIN! MUHWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Play around with some organic chemistry, soil compsition, try breeding different grapes, and get into the nerdy side of winemaking.
Slow your life down, and if you get bored, you can always figure out something to do during the really slow periods. You can pick up time consuming hobbies, perhaps learn to play an instrument or pick up some kind of crafting, like painting or woodworking. Maybe you can learn to make your own barrels for the wood.
Plus once the final product is done, and if it's good, you can make quite a few bucks. And there will be plenty to drink!
If you want to get serious about selling wine, you can travel around the country talking business with distributors, or go to other countries, perhaps south america, australia, europe and see how the other winemakers do it. Talk shop! Live life and relax around the countryside and soak in the scenery.
Of course, this isn't limited to just wine. Beer is another possibility. Or scotch.
obviously this shouldn't be planned unless you have a decent exit plan if your entire harvest goes bad..
It appears you got a specific arguement for GWT, whereas GP was talking about frameworks in general. GWT sounds like a dream come true when you need to build a pretty serious app - but honestly, how often are you going to run into that situation regarding web developers? It sounds like more the exception to the rule.
The issue stated with the other js frameworks is that it provides a breeding around for lazyness, which results in terrible terrible code designed by people that are clearly unsuited for the task(which is clearly not what GWT is aimed at). Think of it from the business perspective. Most 'web developers' you'll come across don't have an ounce of programming in their body. The ones that are qualified are likely 1) overqualified or 2) working and expensive. (I use the term 'web developer' as someone that states on their resume DOM/javascript/ajax experience)
On top of that, serious js developers likely already have a total grasp of js to begin with and is only looking at the various frameworks for RAD purposes only. So who does that leave? People that are not interested in grokking the dom, or browser quirks, or even the js syntax, and the business analyst equivalent of 'script kiddies.':-( The market is ripe with them.
Then there is the Collections API itself which upon first glance seems like it was written by amateurs who have never had to write any performance critical code in their lives.
forgive me for being ignorant, but I haven't really found anything wrong with the Collections API. I found them to be pretty useful and saves a big of time from having to redo the wheel on each project I come across.
performance is a funny word. To some performance is depending on how much raw speed you can crank out of those transistors; to others it's simply looking at the Big O notation. I think Sun looks at the Big O and assumes the user will be responsible for taking care of the rest.
A slightly humorous quote I read on about an interview/talk someone had with the people from a online game (based on the hardware mention you can probably guess which one):
In the center they run a central database that they have pushed to the maximal edge by throwing Big Hardware at it (millitary spec TI RAM hard disks for instance.) Their only answer to future scaling was "well Moore's law has saved us so far..."
Not to be bashing the developers above as I am certainly in no position to talk, but if you truly are relying on trying to get bleeding edge performance by using optimizing techniques and throwing bigger hardware at it in order to catch up to the scaling necessary to maintain a certain qos, then perhaps it really is time to step back and really take a look at the overall scheme, even if it really means starting from scratch.
now, whatever that means from a business sense, it's a completely different matter...
The whole issue of how to generalize video games down to a common basis is not very fair imo. I haven't RTFA (because I'm a lazy bastard that doesn't want to wait for the page to load, plus I was interested in the dialogue going on in this thread)- but based on what I've read it appears the point of interest lies in the usage of cutscenes and the point of conveying the 'romance' of the content supplied and the apparent drama that is created from the content and the artistic 'direction' of the content rendered, and whether or not the content rendered would be appropriately classified as interactive, or part of the game appropriately.
IMO ultimately all the content in game should be classified as interactive to varying degrees - you had to do 'stuff' to get to the cutscene, and whatever stuff that you've done is wholly dependent on the creater of the game; perhaps it may have been as simple as pushing the 'next cutscene' button, or maybe it requires you to totally grok the gameplay in order to get there(I haven't played GOW, but Ninja Gaiden for the xbox comes to mind)
But interaction is a totally relative term on a case-by-case basis. And so would the artistic content. GOW is a totally different from, Wii tennis, for example. And chess is different from an ADandD session. To try to define a game and what makes a good game and boil it down to the essentials, you're always going to find a different set of core elements that make a great game. This is coupled with the fact that there are a metric ton of terrible games out there, that have sold very well - deeming it in the eyes of the industry as a 'good' game therefore trying to infleuence the consumer as such.
Comparing two different video games is not lie trying to compare two different movies-whether they be from the same era or not. Videogaming cannot be classified as a medium. The video game _itself_ is the medium, and it is entirely up to the creator of that game to determine how to employ it. He/she can make it LIKE a film. Or make it employ intense brain activity. Or make it as mindless as possible. Or make it physically intense. Or require complicated precision and dexterity only obtained from practice practice practice. Or be visually beautiful. Or be based off of interaction of others. Or a combination of different factors.
The best game in the world would be artistically beautiful, easy to pick up, have an engaging story, require amazing gameplay, be incredibly difficult to master, not require dedication, be massively multiplayer, be single player, require a dancepad, microphone, guitar and a controller- all at the same time. And be cheap, and developed with a limited budget. And be fun. And that's impossible, simply because the several factors involved are polar opposites. So what is a developer to do?
Time to get off(was on the blackberry- stuck in a bus)
besides the fact that it holds less and costs more (compared to the ipod that is)?
It's a different target audience. I wouldn't necessarily say it will cannibalize sales, it will fragment the demographic and at the same time provide apple with more fine grained detail about the statistical purchasing power their consumers have. Maybe some will buy just the iphone. Maybe others will just get the ipod. Maybe a few will get both. Maybe the price will deter sales. These factors will provide apple with a basic divining rod to find out where to take their future products next.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps it was just tucked away under the rug because Apple didn't have the time to bother to spend additional money removing it completely. If Apple (or whomever is speaking on it's behalf) is telling the truth and truly it doesn't really do anything, then it's just some clutter. Besides, what's with the passwords anyways? Using whole words, one that starts with the first letter of the alphabet? Not a single number? It's obviously not meant to be hidden that deep.
he sure didn't care for the AppleTV
Yeah because the AppleTV was such an excellent product. Uh huh.
Make him an editor for what? Posting right-wing concentrated thoughts and Apple advertisements and claims of not being a fanboy for either?
Jesus man, a hardware review on a cell phone constitues 'right-wing concentrated thoughts?' You're trying too hard. Anti-fanboy is the new fanboy for the real geeks, AMIRITE? Good thing you exposed him for what he is!
I thought GP's post was thoroughly informative - info concentrate with no attempts to bullshit(other than possibly the karma whoring which is what you may have been so pissed about). I saw a list of pros, and cons - both sides offered practical issues, and makes for an interesting observation on how I would imagine would be used day-to-day. For the record, there is no way in hell I'm going to get one yet - certainly not for $500 and service with ATT. But without a doubt it looks like a cool toy.
It appears that you've read the article, so obviously the rule doesn't apply to you.
Unlike me, who didn't read the article at all, going straight for the comments and finding a post to reply to where I can go ahead and voice my opinion on something whether or not the topic I'm talking about actually has any relevance to the article in question.
Isn't this how slashdot is supposed to work anyway? I'll read the manual once my karma goes down.
yes it would. But would it necessarily be _as_ efficient as using a keyboard and mouse? It's always being about being on par with the user-end standard in terms of end efficiency. I use a blackberry at work, and while it's miles more efficient than using a mobile phone in order to write emails, a simple laptop with wifi (or wireless broadband) beats the pants out of it - in terms of work (not necessarily mobility). I mean things like writing emails, or spreadsheets, or a terminal to do some emergency damage control. There is always going to be some kind of tradeoff.
Solid tactile input feedback. Efficient means of multiple user end input. Simple interface/short learning curve. Portable. Pick any three.
Tactile feedback would mean either visual, or physical (or both if so inclined). Almost everybody that works on a keyboard can immediately tell the difference between a good keyboard and a lousy one - one of the many reasons why bucklespring keyboards are still popular amongst geeks rather than membrane ones. And then of course there are the shortcuts, from basic ones for copy/paste, to other more application specific ones (even highlighting text on a blackberry is a bitch, I still haven't been able to figure out how to highlight text, then cut/pasting it to a different location - I can't imagine doing that on a phone)
am I saying that the iphone-type interface is necessarily bad? Or course not. I'm just saying that it's a different direction. In the current context of websites today, usability was firstly designed around the basic keyboard/mouse type input, and efficiency has been maximized for this. The ability for phones to surf the web in the eyes of the webmasters have been observed to be more of a fringe benefit, rather than the standard. Different tools/applications are better suited for different types of input. Only a foolish producer will hear towards the direction of trying to maximize usability on a new input format, because at the same time they will be alienating their cash-cow: people sitting in front of a computer. Better if they simply segregated the different input formats in their own isolated environments and maximize efficiency for each environment.
We already see the signs of serious front-end development being done in javascript. We will really see the differences in user input once we start seeing games with complicated user input - using telnet on the blackberry is bad enough, I shudder to think what mudding will be like on one (barring the whole latency issue, that is). People have even experimented with writing simple doom-type fps games in javascript, how playable is that with one finger?
It's just a different form of input.
I wouldn't say that some websites are necessarily badly designed, it's just that there was a specific target demographic that web developers have aimed for when they were designing their websites. It just happens this largely includes websites that were mostly designed to be surfed with a keyboard and mouse, rather than some alternate input device, like a touchscreen
As we see more fancy pants ajax techniques that are driven based on keyboard input, such as that neato google suggest thing that they put out a few years back - while that would be incredibly convenient to a user with a keyboard, it wouldn't necessarily have any impact on user performance when they are using a mobile phone, especially one without some kind if keyboard input. Things like that would be.. obsolete? (hah, for whatever reason obsolete doesn't sound too correct)
IMO a complaint like the author's sure sounds like he's grasping at straws. Sure he could develop a one-size-fits-all site that will be (ideally)wonderful for using with kb/m along with a touchscreen, but all interface designers are keenly aware of the fact that optimizing for one type if interface will ultimately be sacrificing the other. A simple alternative would be to give a url that will redirect the user to an iphone(or similar device) optimized site when the user heads towards there, and another for the standard computer user. Why wouldn't companies that are trying to appeal to both demographics want to do this in the first place? Doesn't make too much sense to me - plus it would prolly be cheaper in the long run instead of trying to retrofit their site to be 'iphone friendly.'
I thought about this when I was younger. I came to the conclusion that it would probably react similarly to a water hose. Shoot it in one position, but move the trajectory, and quickly enough, the 'beam' of water bends. This time instead of water think: light shooting out. Sure it can 'bend,' but we are unable to see far enough to tell the difference.
Mr. Wizard's shows were always fun to watch, I remember sitting in front of the tv watching him bake potatoes in cardboard boxes, loop rubber bands within (which I've been trying to copy for months after I saw that), and cracking rubber balls with a hammer. God I miss that show.
I used to watch his show something like 20 years ago. (has it truly been that long?) And I thought he was pretty old back then too. Looks like he's lived a full life. I only hope to be so lucky.
Perhaps Mr. Wizard will return one day, as Mr. White Wizard. (sorry for the lame LOTR reference)
seriously. Every aspiring game developer thinking about an online gaming model has gone over this a million times. This is like fundamental game cheating tactics 101: there is absolutely no such thing is a trusted client.
ooh-veh bowl
The hard part is implementing this without impacting cash flow. That usually means appealing to the mob. Make some changes, and gaming public cries for bloody murder. Of course if it continues in one direction, then they vote with their wallets - by going to another game, where they get to be uber in that 'other' game.
Balancing the game to have the right mix of feeling uber and creating that 'magical, other world immersion' does not mix. Everybody wants to be Gandalf, not the wheat farmer that was responsible for feeding the 21st regiment which resulted in a major tactical victory for the Good Guy Kingdom.
Early games experimented with players having an impact with world-changing events. The net result is that players will do whatever it takes to 'complete the event' in the shortest amount of time. If there was an event that would cause a server wipe forcing everybody to start over on a clean slate, it would be extremely unpopular to casual players, although massively popular to the hardcore players. Businesses know that casual players are where the money is at. As long as companies know there is a golden goose at the end of the game development path when taking the path to appeal to the lowest common denominator, capitalism will dictate the quality of gaming and direction of MMORPGs. We're not going to see anything change, untill the market is completely saturated - and we thought it has been for several years, even before WoW came about.
It's gonna be a while.
I had to do a once-over on the title, I really interested in reading a summary about how NY was going to arrest private business owners for failing to sell enough video games, enough to be considered a decent sale.
Not exactly. They didn't call it Starship Troopers because they wanted to call it Warcraft 40k, but ran into legal issues with Games Workshop. :-) [it's a joke. laugh] Those those that don't know already, Blizzard's game Warcraft was largely inspired by Games Workshops' Warhammer. Games Workshop also created a futuristic variant, called Warhammer 40k, which is of course where Blizzard got their ideas for Starcraft.
The three starcraft race's character inspiration can map directly to the War40k races:
Terran - Space Marines (the early sc marines looked almost exactly like spacemarines with their large shoulderpads)
Protoss - Eldar ("one of the most ancient and advanced races in the universe's history")
Zerg - Tyranid ("nomadic alien race comprising many genetically engineered forms") - even the alien designs were shamelessly ripped on top of ideas like the hive mind.
It's likely that they draw their ideas on how Starcraft II is going to play, based on its close association with Epic. Unlike Warcraft, where you have hero units, and gameplay is focused on small squads (like the Warhammer tabletop games), Blizzard is leaning towards a different style of gaming, more on the grand scale where you can see hundreds of zerglings and marines fighting on the field - hence, the association with Epic.
If you see the gameplay footage, you'll notice that the physics employed are strictly visual enhancements - debris blowing up, to roll down a ramp, or hit a wall and bounce once or twice. It appears there is no type of physics used for the gaming logic - goliaths don't trip over rocks or each other.
However, there are a few units that can climb/leap over cliffs, which adds an interesting element when thinking of fortifying with terrain in mind.
This is one of those trump cards Blizzard has over publishers like Vivendi (or whoever is their publisher nowadays). While publishers and marketing execs like giving off drop-dead dates, mostly products with dates like that force developers/producers to cut corners somewhere to meet deadlines. Many many times products will get rushed, and sure enough, it's crap once it goes out the door.
Fortunately, Blizzard doesn't play like that. They will release whenever they damn please. I remember when blizzard announced they were making an MMO (this was before they had a name to it). After their announcement, it took like two years to present the public with a name of the product, early gameplay footage, and some other stuff. This left the (albeit small MMO gaming fanbase) public frothing at the mouth. For another two years. By this time, lots and lots of MMO's starting coming out, and WoW missed the 2nd generation MMO window. Blizzard didn't care, even though Vivendi started getting pissed. But once WoW was released, even Blizzard was caught unprepared for the onslaught of money, and further brought MMO gaming into a much broader demographic that would have never thought they would play such fantasy games. They polish the shit out of their stuff. And it sells like hotcakes, literally without fail.
Blizzard has their golden goose, and that golden goose is quality. Over and over the industry has seen Blizzard produce total blockbuster material, and the industry fails to emulate what Blizzard can do, because dollar minded business execs with absolutely no interest with the products they own (through whatever legal measures they took), have the final say on how the product is produced. Most of the time that 'how' == 'when', especially when that 'when' means cutting corners, either in QA, production quality, or whatever.
So while the public (and publishers) is screaming NOWNOWNOW, Blizzard has known for quite some time that listening to the mob is not always the best way to conduct business. In fact, they never listen to the mob. They do their own work, create a quality product, and then release it for the public to consume. Ironically, it's always going to be a hit or miss, whenever one does it their own way - take War III for example. People would say it's their worst product released so far - even though they have sold millions. But it is still a quality game.
So now, Blizzard has an opportunity to enhance the gameplay of one of the best selling, most popular games ever. This single game along started a HUGE subculture - one that involves competitive RTS gaming, and revolutionized how competitive gaming should be presented to the television viewing public (most notably in Korea), created celebrities out of RTS gaming nerds, and has brought gaming to an (again, at least in Korea) acceptable public position instead of a niche. The last thing they want to do is screw it up - despite the screaming from the publishers to release-something-GODDAMMIT. Blizzard is looking to make a _new_ starcraft game, more of the same, that nobody will complain about (or at least the complaints will be completely drowned out by the praises). If it takes them 4 more years to finally go gold, then that's fine with me. It's got some big shoes to fill, and has to succeed where Warcraft III failed - it has to be across the board, better than it's predecessor.
Isn't the 2nd version a buckle-spring keyboard? (you know, like the old school IBM keyboards with the extra 'clicky' sound) That would account for the price increase. Buckle-spring keyboards, although noisy and not too friendly in a business environment(mostly due to the noise), give off a very satisfying audible and tactile feel upon each keypress, unlike the more common membrane keyboards. Plus, buckle-spring keyboards do not wear out like membrane keyboards. I have a buckle-spring, and while it's a bit heavy and (quite frankly) pretty ugly, I cannot complain about the performance of the keyboard. Those things are solid, and (it's probably a psychological thing) encourages the user to learn to type faster and 'lighter' if that makes any sense. But they aren't cheap.
I know the first generation das keyboard was not bucklespring, but even the feel of the first generation das keyboard is excellent (I own a first gen das keyboard as well). The first gen keyboard has a 'light' touch to it as well, but nowhere near my bucklespring.
Over time, I've noticed that membrane keyboards have gotten quieter, but the offset is that you cannot tell whether or not you've confirmed the keyboard press. I'm talking about soft keyboards, like the current dell, apple, and (overall)laptop keyboards. Those things were built for business where visuals play an overrated importance, unfortunately not designed around performance. (fyi for a membrane keyboard, the first generation das keyboard was pretty noisy and had 'light' keys, somewhat like the oldschool compaq keyboards)
I remember hearing about Johnathan Coulton from various geek podcasts a few years back. His songs were particularly popular with the geek circle because 1) his songs were all under creative commons, and 2) people related to his subject material - geeky things.
I pleasantly suprised to see his popularity grow. I suppose exposure in /., Penny Arcade and Digg really helped on top of the geek podcast inner circles.
*in the underground lair of tivo*
tivo suit guy 1: Those lousy internet people keep cracking our encryption!
tivo suit guy 2: How do they keep doing it?
tivo suit guy 1: Because time is on their side, and they have no life! grr
tivo suit guy 2: How long can a 'really hard' encryption take?
tivo suit guy 1: I have no idea, maybe like a month? A week?
tivo suit guy 2: A WEEK? You can't be serious!
drive manufacturer suit: Well, if you can't beat crackers at their own game, what needs to get done is to beat them from a different angle.
tivo suit guy 1: what do you mean?
drive manufacturer suit: Think about it, every time you come up with a new password, it gets cracked in a week, there is no control over that. So, what needs to get done is to beat them where they have no control. TIME!
tivo suit guy 2: Time? And how do you expect us to control TIME?
drive manufacturer suit: Easy. Since we know that a password can be cracked within a week, what needs to get done is to prevent them from getting access to the password before that week. All we have to do is manufacture drives that will fail within a week!
tivo suit guy 2: That's brilliant!
tivo suit guy 1: Wait a minute. We can't have customer's drives dying withing one week. That's just no good for business.
drive manufacturer suit: Don't worry about it. We'll use flash drives. Flash ram wears out overtime. We can explain to the customer that the new flash drives will use less energy, have no moving parts, and are cheaper!
tivo suit guy 1: Will they really be cheaper?
drive manufacturer suit: only to you they will be. That way you won't have to pass off the savings to the customer. Plus, you can add in an additional subscription fee to have new flash drives mailed to them every week when they mail back their old flash drives! Think: netflix, but instead of dvds, flash drives. More money for you!
tivo suit guy 2: kinda like the photo-copier industry with their toners.. hrm, I like it!
tivo suit guy 1: Wait wait wait! Those drives will still cost us a pretty penny, so what's the secret?
drive manufacturer suit: *grins* we will be using _OLD_ flash drives. Just like the old flash drives that croaked so quickly. The manufacturing technology to build them was very cheap. We can churn those out like nobody's business.
tivo suit guy 1: hrm, so essentially they are disposable drives?
tivo suit guy 2: It's an excellent plan! We can add in the additional 'service' and bleed our customers dry!
drive manufacturer suit: soo, do we have a deal?
tivo suit guy 1 & 2: it's a deal! I think I'm gonna patent that idea!
*shakes hands, and the meeting is ended, tivo suit guys leave*
drive manufacturer gets on cell phone
drive manufacturer boss: so, how did it go?
drive manufacturer suit: They accepted project 'disposable drive.' Those fools have no idea we're playing them for our pawn.
drive manufacturer boss: Eeeexxxeeeelent~
drive manufacturer suit: Phase 1 is complete. I've finished talking to Apple and Creative already. I'm scheduled to meet with Sprint and Verizon tomorrow.
drive manufacturer boss: Once we have all the mp3 players, cell phones, and tivos supplied with our disposable drive, users will be upset that only after a week of use, their electronics became useless! This will soil the name of flash drives in a larger scale never seen before, and drive customer confidence towards flash down! They will be forced to lower their prices, and eventually perish under their manufacturing costs. Harddrives will RISE AGAIN! MUHWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Grow your own grapes, make your own wine.
Play around with some organic chemistry, soil compsition, try breeding different grapes, and get into the nerdy side of winemaking.
Slow your life down, and if you get bored, you can always figure out something to do during the really slow periods. You can pick up time consuming hobbies, perhaps learn to play an instrument or pick up some kind of crafting, like painting or woodworking. Maybe you can learn to make your own barrels for the wood.
Plus once the final product is done, and if it's good, you can make quite a few bucks. And there will be plenty to drink!
If you want to get serious about selling wine, you can travel around the country talking business with distributors, or go to other countries, perhaps south america, australia, europe and see how the other winemakers do it. Talk shop! Live life and relax around the countryside and soak in the scenery.
Of course, this isn't limited to just wine. Beer is another possibility. Or scotch.
obviously this shouldn't be planned unless you have a decent exit plan if your entire harvest goes bad..
It appears you got a specific arguement for GWT, whereas GP was talking about frameworks in general. GWT sounds like a dream come true when you need to build a pretty serious app - but honestly, how often are you going to run into that situation regarding web developers? It sounds like more the exception to the rule.
The issue stated with the other js frameworks is that it provides a breeding around for lazyness, which results in terrible terrible code designed by people that are clearly unsuited for the task(which is clearly not what GWT is aimed at). Think of it from the business perspective. Most 'web developers' you'll come across don't have an ounce of programming in their body. The ones that are qualified are likely 1) overqualified or 2) working and expensive. (I use the term 'web developer' as someone that states on their resume DOM/javascript/ajax experience)
On top of that, serious js developers likely already have a total grasp of js to begin with and is only looking at the various frameworks for RAD purposes only. So who does that leave? People that are not interested in grokking the dom, or browser quirks, or even the js syntax, and the business analyst equivalent of 'script kiddies.' :-( The market is ripe with them.
you should tell that to the majority demographic of internet gamers.
Then there is the Collections API itself which upon first glance seems like it was written by amateurs who have never had to write any performance critical code in their lives.
forgive me for being ignorant, but I haven't really found anything wrong with the Collections API. I found them to be pretty useful and saves a big of time from having to redo the wheel on each project I come across.
performance is a funny word. To some performance is depending on how much raw speed you can crank out of those transistors; to others it's simply looking at the Big O notation. I think Sun looks at the Big O and assumes the user will be responsible for taking care of the rest.
A slightly humorous quote I read on about an interview/talk someone had with the people from a online game (based on the hardware mention you can probably guess which one):
Not to be bashing the developers above as I am certainly in no position to talk, but if you truly are relying on trying to get bleeding edge performance by using optimizing techniques and throwing bigger hardware at it in order to catch up to the scaling necessary to maintain a certain qos, then perhaps it really is time to step back and really take a look at the overall scheme, even if it really means starting from scratch.
now, whatever that means from a business sense, it's a completely different matter...
as you zone the areas in the text you see display will be
WESTERN PLAGUELANDS "we bring good things to life!" - GE®
MOLTEN CORE "obey your thirst" - Sprite®
IRONFORGE AUCTION HOUSE "what's in your wallet?" - Capital One®
WARSONG GULCH (pvp area) "Is It In You?" - Gatorade®
DUROTAR ZEPPLIN TOWER "The ultimate driving machine" - BMW®
The whole issue of how to generalize video games down to a common basis is not very fair imo. I haven't RTFA (because I'm a lazy bastard that doesn't want to wait for the page to load, plus I was interested in the dialogue going on in this thread)- but based on what I've read it appears the point of interest lies in the usage of cutscenes and the point of conveying the 'romance' of the content supplied and the apparent drama that is created from the content and the artistic 'direction' of the content rendered, and whether or not the content rendered would be appropriately classified as interactive, or part of the game appropriately.
IMO ultimately all the content in game should be classified as interactive to varying degrees - you had to do 'stuff' to get to the cutscene, and whatever stuff that you've done is wholly dependent on the creater of the game; perhaps it may have been as simple as pushing the 'next cutscene' button, or maybe it requires you to totally grok the gameplay in order to get there(I haven't played GOW, but Ninja Gaiden for the xbox comes to mind)
But interaction is a totally relative term on a case-by-case basis. And so would the artistic content. GOW is a totally different from, Wii tennis, for example. And chess is different from an ADandD session. To try to define a game and what makes a good game and boil it down to the essentials, you're always going to find a different set of core elements that make a great game. This is coupled with the fact that there are a metric ton of terrible games out there, that have sold very well - deeming it in the eyes of the industry as a 'good' game therefore trying to infleuence the consumer as such.
Comparing two different video games is not lie trying to compare two different movies-whether they be from the same era or not. Videogaming cannot be classified as a medium. The video game _itself_ is the medium, and it is entirely up to the creator of that game to determine how to employ it. He/she can make it LIKE a film. Or make it employ intense brain activity. Or make it as mindless as possible. Or make it physically intense. Or require complicated precision and dexterity only obtained from practice practice practice. Or be visually beautiful. Or be based off of interaction of others. Or a combination of different factors.
The best game in the world would be artistically beautiful, easy to pick up, have an engaging story, require amazing gameplay, be incredibly difficult to master, not require dedication, be massively multiplayer, be single player, require a dancepad, microphone, guitar and a controller- all at the same time. And be cheap, and developed with a limited budget. And be fun. And that's impossible, simply because the several factors involved are polar opposites. So what is a developer to do?
Time to get off(was on the blackberry- stuck in a bus)
besides the fact that it holds less and costs more (compared to the ipod that is)?
It's a different target audience. I wouldn't necessarily say it will cannibalize sales, it will fragment the demographic and at the same time provide apple with more fine grained detail about the statistical purchasing power their consumers have. Maybe some will buy just the iphone. Maybe others will just get the ipod. Maybe a few will get both. Maybe the price will deter sales. These factors will provide apple with a basic divining rod to find out where to take their future products next.