Maybe my estimate of the percentage of stupid people in the world needs to be revised.
I've been saying for years that 70% of all people are idiots. From this article and this post, maybe I have been over estimating the number of smart people by 10-12%.
Maybe the idiots are procreating faster than the smart people.
More data is needed to be sure. Heck it is only an estimate.
I really only go two steps further.
My wireless network uses WEP.
My access point restricted to particular MACs
Only to keep potential free-loader neighbors off.
Microsoft firewall: off
Active spyware checking: not installed
Threats for using IE instead of Mozila/Firefox:non-existent
I guess I trust my relatives, and I have backups of everything, so have at it.
I used to work for a group that made something like this. We even sold more that 200K to an ISP in a foreign country. No US ISPs would buy into it. After attending a negotiation meeting between management and an ISP, I blame the arrogant management for killing possible deals with US ISPs, and the failure of the business.
Ours was a sealed system with no CD, floppy etc. USB was there though. We had a way to remotely upgrade them, they were not prone to the typical adware and viruses as they were NOT Microsoft based. The idea is a good one, I know that my parents would benefit greatly from a system like this. It would reduce support costs as they can't screw up the system. This business could have taken off, maybe these new guys will succeed.
The ISP worked with a bank and gave them to people for opening an account. Or you could buy one for about the price these guys are quoting. The problem is the ISP didn't know how to run a network. They had a lot of down time, and they could hardly keep their office network running.
Needless to say, the whole business went down the tubes and I work in a different group now.
Last time I saw one was for sale on E-bay for $25.
Ok, so it's under the Netscape name, but you use your AOL screen name to log into it. I have a relative that uses AOL for IM, so I have to have an AOL screen name to use with Gaim
I used it for my junk email account (address for ordering products, New York Times subscription, etc) until it got unrealiable at forwarding email with embedded graphics. I have recently abanonded the address now in favor of a Yahoo account that I can forward any message to my family account, plus I get free SPAMGuard at Yahoo. A feature Netscape does not have.
That reminds me, Netscape used to be my personal account for years until they "updated" (read: broke) their front end and removed message filtering (primitive SPAM removal) decent folder traversal and address aliases. That's when it became a junk email account.
I hope the developers for Netscape webmail had nothing to do with the AOL webmail because the number 1 pastime for most people (forwarding messages) won't work if they have embedded graphics.
This is stupidity! Companies no longer care about their employees, they'll outsource, redeploy, or lay them off whenever it suits them. Any exit benefits are usually required by law. So what reason is there to waste your life going above and beyond? None that I can see.
This could have turned out differently, and Apple could have terminated the guy just before he finished. Heck they could terminate him a week before Christmas. Then what would he have had? Nothing! The company would own the code, if he attempted to use or sell a copy, they'd nail him with the NDA he signed to get his job.
Dedication to a company is stupid these days. They don't care about you.
I had heard information along the same lines. Though the preditions I heard were a little more dire. They said after 5-7 years the plasma sets would be basically trash and have to be replaced. LCD is the way to go.
Personally they're all too expensive. I'll stick with my standard TV for a few more years.
On a somewhat related side note have you seen that commercial for the LCD screen that "illuminates the room to match the picture for a more complete experience"? I think that there is light leakage and they're just marketing it as a new feature. What do you think?
Integration between mail/browser, tabbed bookmarks
on
Mozilla 1.7.5 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have 4 computers, 2 Mozilla, 2 Thunderbird.
I like that when I start Mozilla Browser, it will check my email and tell me if there are new messages. Firefox/Thunderbird does not do this.
The other issue I have is the way tabbed bookmarks open. On Mozilla, I just left click on the group of tabbed bookmarks. On Thunderbird I have to right click and specify to open in tabs.
Another item that is odd, Mozilla has a button next to the tabs for a new tab. On one installation I can't seem to put the button there on Thunderbird. On another installation, I managed to put it there on an old version of Thunderbird and it stays there through the upgrades. I wish I knew how to get it there for my new Thunderbird installation.
I guess I could live without the integration. The tabbed bookmarks might be fixed by some advanced configuration I haven't found yet, same goes for the new tab button. Maybe I could switch, but I am not doing so for now.
My calendar says it'd December 16. Isn't that a bit late for "before the Holiday season"?
Think about it Hanukkah has already started, Ramadan is over and Christmas is close enough that all but the procrastinators have purchased their presents already.
So what Holiday are they marketing for? Just the Christmas procrastinators?
If this was a marketing for a Holiday they should have ran it in early to mid-November.
Maybe I am not the greedy type, but I make enough with my day job to avoid having a side job for extra cash. I don't have cutting edge stuff, but I don't limp along with 10 year old technology either. Most of my friends are in the same situation.
Now I do work on other people's PC's from time to time for free. Spyware removal, Hard Drive recovery, system rebuilds, wireless networks, whatever they need. I rarely get paid for it. The only time I got "paid" for it was in teh form of a Starbucks gift card. That was cool, but I don't expect to be paid for what I do.
Besides I have enough to do around the house (shelves to build, sink to install, rooms to paint, curtains to hang) to keep me busy enough to prevent looking for side jobs.:)
If I were to start a side job, I'd go into audio/video hook ups, VCR programming, remote control programming, etc. No pesky viruses to mess up your hard work.
In the company I work for, code is rarely shutdown completely. It's so rare, that I can use a project I was on as bragging rights, because we actually turned it off.
The team that worked on the old system, and the port to a new system (the new system was a combination of 2 old systems) each got a tombstone shaped award for successfully turning off a system.
We were so nervous about turning it off we practically held our collective breaths for the first 72 hours. If the old system was ever turned off for more than 72 hours we would never be able to catch up to real time. Once 72 hours passed, we gave the old system no more thought.
Hey, at least I get to brag about a successful shutdown of a major system and have a headstone to prove it. Very few people can say that around here. Legacy systems are always used by someone for years after they're usefullness has expired.
You insensitive clod! I've been told by my legal department that I can't read patents as they may accidentally be included in patents I write.
Here I am reading yet another flame war on the patent process, and here there is a patent on Slashdot!
I'm not really upset with you, just a bit surprised to see the text of a patent here.
On a side note, the language the lawyers translate the actual information into is awful! Why must they make it unreadable? I hate reviewing patents after the lawyers get a hold of them. They're barely recognizable.
Why don't they look at the
google cache to see the logins of some of the people that used the site. Though they may have already done that to get the people they busted already.
Interesting topics on their board. They appear to be quite blatent about their activities.
A non-techie (artist business page) site I manage has seen an upward trend in Mozilla use.
Last year it was 85-90% IE. This year it ranges from 50-75% IE
The host I have apparently does not differentiate Mozilla from Firefox, and seems to lump them together.
The numbers for Mozilla last year was in the 3%-9% range. This year Mozilla started out in the 10-15% range, then when the Department of Homeland Security made their announcement to stop using IE, Mozilla use jumped into the 40-50% range.
If I am remembering correctly, Microsoft has expressly forbidden the downloading of any content such as patches, game updates, and expasion modules on the XBox Live network.
I'm pretty sure this came out when XBox Live started, and when that spy/commando game came out with a flaw.
With this known, why would anyone expect the free downloads to occur?
That said, you really can't complain about $5.00 for an expansion pack. Most expansion packs I buy for the PC are $30-$50. The game company has to cover the cost of making the disks and distributing them.
At least an ad embedded into an article is something you can identify clearly as an ad. Not that I see them thanks to Privoxy (you can allow ads at sites you want to support [/.] if you'd like).
In my opinion, the worst offense are ads that are disguised as articles. The local major news paper is made up of at least 25% ads disguised as articles, which is part of the reason why I refuse to subscribe. This has not been as prevelant online as in print, but I expect that it will get that way as more of us switch to digital news.
After seeing how poorly the "fit and finish" of Champions of Norrath is as well as a few other games I have played, it is apparent that the professional game companies could do with some advice on how to finish a game too.
Test Test Test! That is imperative. Don't use the same testers on the final version. You need to see different actions than the expected ones to ensure the bugs have been found. I play plenty of Beta modules for NWN and you can see who tests their modules and who releases the latest modified code. I can honestly say there are better developers in the NWN community than some of the professional developers.
Specific issues for Champions: There should not be "holes" in the graphic walls a character can fall into and be outside of the defined world. There should not be a 10-30 second delay to a response to an action like your pack being full. Simple and common things like accessing your inventory must be fast. Do not force large automaps when you add more than 2 players.
Other games: If the player moves the camera to a specific position, leave it there. If you have 2 tough areas back to back allow the user to save in between. If you have NPC characters, either move them out of the path of the PC or allow the PC to walk through them. If an activity is not required for general game play, but can help with bonus play, do not force the user to learn it.
To add to this wish list, related to the screen going black, is cut-scenes.
When you force the player to stop fighting for a cut scene, then the enemies MUST also stop fighting. This was especially bad with the Pelenor Fields section of Lord of the Rings Return of the King on PS2, where the cut scene is played every few minutes and directs the player where to go next. The number of character deaths there in single player were countless. A lot of them caused by health loss during a cut-scene.
As the article states the 3rd person soft is the most popular of camera angles in games today. Though I am pretty sure I saw an article yesterday that said First Person view was the most desirable. Don't ask me why the conflict, I just read the articles.
Being a player of PC games (Diablo II, Neverwinter Nights) and PS2 games (Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance (1 & 2), Champions of Norrath, Lord of the Rings) I have experienced the 3rd person cameras and their issues.
On the PS2 the Lord of the Rings Return of the King game seems to have the most difficulty when switching to multi-player. The camera angles for single player were great. It adjusts for the terrain and keeps the important stuff on the screen. Once you go into multiplayer though, it is a different story. For some reason, less of the screen is visible with multiplayer. I would have thought more (or even the same) would be visible as the additional character takes up some real estate. Many of the angles prevent you from seeing paths (the run out of the Paths of the Dead) and traps (tiny spiders in Shelob's Lair) as well as some enemies. The lack of control of the camera does not help. The testers needed to test more with multiplayer to identify these issues and do something like expand the real estate seen in multiplayer.
The Baldur's Gate and Champions games on the other hand require you to manipulate the camera. This is fine for me, but not great for my kids as they have not figured out the fine art of directing the character with the left hand while turning the camera with the right hand.
Neverwinter Nights also has full control of the camera, with 3 different 3rd person view points built in. If I remember correctly, you can download a hak that allows for an almost first person view, that is particularly liked with the jiggle hak. These controls are pretty good and you can turn on the feature to have obstructing objects (2nd floors) automatically disappear when they obstruct your view. There are times when you can accidentally turn the camera so you can't see the battle that you are in, which can be quite deadly. Some module writers also force the camera view on you which I find frustrating. I set up my system the way I like it, don't change my settings.
Diablo II has the 3rd person hard camera. They did a good job to prevent most obstructions, but there are places where you can't see. NWN has spoiled me and I try to turn the camera in Diablo II.
All in all the cameras I have seen are pretty good, though there are others that need some work. Bionicle forces the camera to point a particular direction, Harry Potter SS and CoS have no camera controls, Harry Potter PoA has controls, but they are not as responsive as the Baldur's gate ones.
We need to be developing software that has an interface that is initially simple, but can be more complex if needed.
Slashdot is a pretty good example of this (no I'm not using it as a way to be moderated up). Initially you can simply use it for information gathering. Everything recent is one one page, the left hand column has the basic method of reducing the mount of information into simplified "Sections". As you may know, (or maybe not you may be a new reader here) you can reduce the amount of useless information by creating a login, and setting your preferences to see the information you want on the main page and limiting the comments you see on articles to those (for example) moderated level 3 and above. If you want to get more complex, try responding to articles and getting modded up. If you want more complex try getting submissions published!
Another example I have seen recently is Adobe Photoshop Elements which is picture editing software. I use primarily the first 4 menus of this software for my photos. My brother, an artist and an owner of the full version of Photoshop, used the first 4 and remaining menus when building the graphics for his website that I maintain on my computer. The simple items are near the front (to the left) and the more complex items are to the back.
A more embarassing example was when I had my Non-techie wife testing a new version of my brother's website I was building. I had put in some fancy Javascript tricks I found at Dynamic Drive to bring up larger pictures of the thumbnails within the same window to "simplify" the user experience. When she used these pages, she found them more complex and less useable because they were inconsistent within the realm of a web page. Needless to say I ended up ripping out all of the Javascript and creating 40 new pages to simplify the interface. My even less technical mother approved of the new site with the Javascript removed.
At the corporate level, they won't pay for broadband unless you have to do 24x7 support. The most of the rest of the employees do not get reimbursed for broadband.
My group on the other hand covers $25 a month (that's about 1/2 my bill) for anyone in the group. It doesn't matter if you work 24x7 support or not.
As a stockholder I find this wrong. They should not be paying anything for broadband unless:
The person can not/will not have broadband on their own.
The person does on-call support.
It is a waste of money for a corporation to pay for broadband when most techies would have it anyway. If they meet the above requirements I can see paying for it. Of course there are those that would "say" they can/will not have broadband on their own, but really they would, just to get the reimbursement. That decision is on their conscious.
I refuse to submit the expense reports for broadband based on my belief.
Drivers have a lot to do with it. Those of us that bought Soundblaster cards from Dell know all about this as we see non-OEM cards getting driver upgrades, but our non-standard OEM card does not, making the sound in games such as Neverwinter Nights to suck. A year later, we finally get an upgrade, but only after the support message boards are flooded with scathing complaints.
The other issue is setups. You know, number of speakers and their arrangement. The game/driver has to be able downmix the sound so it sounds good whether you have 2 speakers or 7. Relying on the hardware to tell you the setup isn't always possible, for example the card I got from Dell is capable of 5.1, but the best speaker set at the time was 4.1, no center speaker. This makes it so some software has to remix or downnix the center channel to come out of the left and right front speakers.
It was kind of fun playing Diablo II with 5.1 enabled and no center speaker. The surround effects were incredible!
I believe that the long wait for Longhorn/Avalon to be released will cause more people to pick up.NET as an alternative to the old API development.
Developers will see the benefits of the.NET infrastructure (memory management, standardized interfaces, develop in the language of your choice, etc.) over the standard VB/VC++/ASP and begin to use.NET more. They will take classes, and become trained in.NET.
When Longhorn/Avalon finally gets released, the adoption I expect will be slow. We just spent all this money becoming proficient with.NET. Why change to the new system now? Unless you need the new features,.NET should cover most needs of application and web developers.
I just can't see how.NET will go away so soon after it's introduction.
It seems the last Console posting said that PS2 was the ruler of the consoles, but then the one before that said that PC games are going to beat out consoles for patching, the one before that was about how consoles beat out PCs because they have a standard set of hardware so the software can be optimized.
Back to a related topic.
I honestly do not know anyone that owns a gamecube. Most people I know have PS2 systems or nothing at all.
Now onto the actual topic.
Why would Nintendo introduce a new memory card this late in the game? When something has had a consistent hardware configuration, of course the developers are going to take advantage of patterns (small memory cards) and shortcut some robust coding (not being able to handle any memory card) to shorten development time, reduce test time, and save money. This should have been expected by Nintendo when they introduced the larger memory cards.
I'd be willing to bet if a real 16MB (or larger) memory card came out for the PS2 (not those fake 16MB cards that are actually a 8MB card that requires you to put a real 8 MB card in it to get to 16MB) there would be save issues as well. Heck the PS1 games I have freak out that the PS1 memory card is not in slot 1 (there was only 1 slot on the PS1) and will refuse to boot unless you move the card.
This is Nintendo's fault. They should have tested this new card with a number of games, old and new BEFORE they released it to the marketplace. Nintendo should be working on either a workaround to trick games into seeing a smaller card or a full solution that allows it to be seamless to all games.
Not that I like Clear Channel any more than any other broadcaster, but I find it interesting that the other major broadcasters that also carry the Stern show were not fined.
Is Clear Channel being targeted?
Do Inifinity and Viacom have some hold over the FCC?
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe my estimate of the percentage of stupid people in the world needs to be revised.
I've been saying for years that 70% of all people are idiots. From this article and this post, maybe I have been over estimating the number of smart people by 10-12%.
Maybe the idiots are procreating faster than the smart people.
More data is needed to be sure. Heck it is only an estimate.
My wireless network uses WEP.
My access point restricted to particular MACs
Only to keep potential free-loader neighbors off.
- Microsoft firewall: off
- Active spyware checking: not installed
- Threats for using IE instead of Mozila/Firefox
:non-existent
I guess I trust my relatives, and I have backups of everything, so have at it.I used to work for a group that made something like this. We even sold more that 200K to an ISP in a foreign country. No US ISPs would buy into it. After attending a negotiation meeting between management and an ISP, I blame the arrogant management for killing possible deals with US ISPs, and the failure of the business.
Ours was a sealed system with no CD, floppy etc. USB was there though. We had a way to remotely upgrade them, they were not prone to the typical adware and viruses as they were NOT Microsoft based. The idea is a good one, I know that my parents would benefit greatly from a system like this. It would reduce support costs as they can't screw up the system. This business could have taken off, maybe these new guys will succeed.
The ISP worked with a bank and gave them to people for opening an account. Or you could buy one for about the price these guys are quoting. The problem is the ISP didn't know how to run a network. They had a lot of down time, and they could hardly keep their office network running.
Needless to say, the whole business went down the tubes and I work in a different group now.
Last time I saw one was for sale on E-bay for $25.
It's called http://webmail.netscape.com/
Ok, so it's under the Netscape name, but you use your AOL screen name to log into it. I have a relative that uses AOL for IM, so I have to have an AOL screen name to use with Gaim
I used it for my junk email account (address for ordering products, New York Times subscription, etc) until it got unrealiable at forwarding email with embedded graphics. I have recently abanonded the address now in favor of a Yahoo account that I can forward any message to my family account, plus I get free SPAMGuard at Yahoo. A feature Netscape does not have.
That reminds me, Netscape used to be my personal account for years until they "updated" (read: broke) their front end and removed message filtering (primitive SPAM removal) decent folder traversal and address aliases. That's when it became a junk email account.
I hope the developers for Netscape webmail had nothing to do with the AOL webmail because the number 1 pastime for most people (forwarding messages) won't work if they have embedded graphics.
This is stupidity! Companies no longer care about their employees, they'll outsource, redeploy, or lay them off whenever it suits them. Any exit benefits are usually required by law. So what reason is there to waste your life going above and beyond? None that I can see.
This could have turned out differently, and Apple could have terminated the guy just before he finished. Heck they could terminate him a week before Christmas. Then what would he have had? Nothing! The company would own the code, if he attempted to use or sell a copy, they'd nail him with the NDA he signed to get his job.
Dedication to a company is stupid these days. They don't care about you.
I had heard information along the same lines. Though the preditions I heard were a little more dire. They said after 5-7 years the plasma sets would be basically trash and have to be replaced. LCD is the way to go.
Personally they're all too expensive. I'll stick with my standard TV for a few more years.
On a somewhat related side note have you seen that commercial for the LCD screen that "illuminates the room to match the picture for a more complete experience"? I think that there is light leakage and they're just marketing it as a new feature. What do you think?
I have 4 computers, 2 Mozilla, 2 Thunderbird.
I like that when I start Mozilla Browser, it will check my email and tell me if there are new messages. Firefox/Thunderbird does not do this.
The other issue I have is the way tabbed bookmarks open. On Mozilla, I just left click on the group of tabbed bookmarks. On Thunderbird I have to right click and specify to open in tabs.
Another item that is odd, Mozilla has a button next to the tabs for a new tab. On one installation I can't seem to put the button there on Thunderbird. On another installation, I managed to put it there on an old version of Thunderbird and it stays there through the upgrades. I wish I knew how to get it there for my new Thunderbird installation.
I guess I could live without the integration. The tabbed bookmarks might be fixed by some advanced configuration I haven't found yet, same goes for the new tab button. Maybe I could switch, but I am not doing so for now.
My calendar says it'd December 16. Isn't that a bit late for "before the Holiday season"?
Think about it Hanukkah has already started, Ramadan is over and Christmas is close enough that all but the procrastinators have purchased their presents already.
So what Holiday are they marketing for? Just the Christmas procrastinators?
If this was a marketing for a Holiday they should have ran it in early to mid-November.
Maybe I am not the greedy type, but I make enough with my day job to avoid having a side job for extra cash. I don't have cutting edge stuff, but I don't limp along with 10 year old technology either. Most of my friends are in the same situation.
:)
Now I do work on other people's PC's from time to time for free. Spyware removal, Hard Drive recovery, system rebuilds, wireless networks, whatever they need. I rarely get paid for it. The only time I got "paid" for it was in teh form of a Starbucks gift card. That was cool, but I don't expect to be paid for what I do.
Besides I have enough to do around the house (shelves to build, sink to install, rooms to paint, curtains to hang) to keep me busy enough to prevent looking for side jobs.
If I were to start a side job, I'd go into audio/video hook ups, VCR programming, remote control programming, etc. No pesky viruses to mess up your hard work.
In the company I work for, code is rarely shutdown completely. It's so rare, that I can use a project I was on as bragging rights, because we actually turned it off.
The team that worked on the old system, and the port to a new system (the new system was a combination of 2 old systems) each got a tombstone shaped award for successfully turning off a system.
We were so nervous about turning it off we practically held our collective breaths for the first 72 hours. If the old system was ever turned off for more than 72 hours we would never be able to catch up to real time. Once 72 hours passed, we gave the old system no more thought.
Hey, at least I get to brag about a successful shutdown of a major system and have a headstone to prove it. Very few people can say that around here. Legacy systems are always used by someone for years after they're usefullness has expired.
You insensitive clod! I've been told by my legal department that I can't read patents as they may accidentally be included in patents I write.
Here I am reading yet another flame war on the patent process, and here there is a patent on Slashdot!
I'm not really upset with you, just a bit surprised to see the text of a patent here.
On a side note, the language the lawyers translate the actual information into is awful! Why must they make it unreadable? I hate reviewing patents after the lawyers get a hold of them. They're barely recognizable.
Why don't they look at the google cache to see the logins of some of the people that used the site. Though they may have already done that to get the people they busted already.
Interesting topics on their board. They appear to be quite blatent about their activities.
A non-techie (artist business page) site I manage has seen an upward trend in Mozilla use.
Last year it was 85-90% IE.
This year it ranges from 50-75% IE
The host I have apparently does not differentiate Mozilla from Firefox, and seems to lump them together.
The numbers for Mozilla last year was in the 3%-9% range. This year Mozilla started out in the 10-15% range, then when the Department of Homeland Security made their announcement to stop using IE, Mozilla use jumped into the 40-50% range.
If I am remembering correctly, Microsoft has expressly forbidden the downloading of any content such as patches, game updates, and expasion modules on the XBox Live network.
I'm pretty sure this came out when XBox Live started, and when that spy/commando game came out with a flaw.
With this known, why would anyone expect the free downloads to occur?
That said, you really can't complain about $5.00 for an expansion pack. Most expansion packs I buy for the PC are $30-$50. The game company has to cover the cost of making the disks and distributing them.
According to the article it has been posted since July 23rd. It's now Sept 6...it's taken a month to recognize that this article was up?
At least an ad embedded into an article is something you can identify clearly as an ad. Not that I see them thanks to Privoxy (you can allow ads at sites you want to support [/.] if you'd like).
In my opinion, the worst offense are ads that are disguised as articles. The local major news paper is made up of at least 25% ads disguised as articles, which is part of the reason why I refuse to subscribe. This has not been as prevelant online as in print, but I expect that it will get that way as more of us switch to digital news.
After seeing how poorly the "fit and finish" of Champions of Norrath is as well as a few other games I have played, it is apparent that the professional game companies could do with some advice on how to finish a game too.
Test Test Test! That is imperative. Don't use the same testers on the final version. You need to see different actions than the expected ones to ensure the bugs have been found. I play plenty of Beta modules for NWN and you can see who tests their modules and who releases the latest modified code. I can honestly say there are better developers in the NWN community than some of the professional developers.
Specific issues for Champions: There should not be "holes" in the graphic walls a character can fall into and be outside of the defined world. There should not be a 10-30 second delay to a response to an action like your pack being full. Simple and common things like accessing your inventory must be fast. Do not force large automaps when you add more than 2 players.
Other games: If the player moves the camera to a specific position, leave it there. If you have 2 tough areas back to back allow the user to save in between. If you have NPC characters, either move them out of the path of the PC or allow the PC to walk through them. If an activity is not required for general game play, but can help with bonus play, do not force the user to learn it.
To add to this wish list, related to the screen going black, is cut-scenes.
When you force the player to stop fighting for a cut scene, then the enemies MUST also stop fighting. This was especially bad with the Pelenor Fields section of Lord of the Rings Return of the King on PS2, where the cut scene is played every few minutes and directs the player where to go next. The number of character deaths there in single player were countless. A lot of them caused by health loss during a cut-scene.
As the article states the 3rd person soft is the most popular of camera angles in games today. Though I am pretty sure I saw an article yesterday that said First Person view was the most desirable. Don't ask me why the conflict, I just read the articles.
Being a player of PC games (Diablo II, Neverwinter Nights) and PS2 games (Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance (1 & 2), Champions of Norrath, Lord of the Rings) I have experienced the 3rd person cameras and their issues.
On the PS2 the Lord of the Rings Return of the King game seems to have the most difficulty when switching to multi-player. The camera angles for single player were great. It adjusts for the terrain and keeps the important stuff on the screen. Once you go into multiplayer though, it is a different story. For some reason, less of the screen is visible with multiplayer. I would have thought more (or even the same) would be visible as the additional character takes up some real estate. Many of the angles prevent you from seeing paths (the run out of the Paths of the Dead) and traps (tiny spiders in Shelob's Lair) as well as some enemies. The lack of control of the camera does not help. The testers needed to test more with multiplayer to identify these issues and do something like expand the real estate seen in multiplayer.
The Baldur's Gate and Champions games on the other hand require you to manipulate the camera. This is fine for me, but not great for my kids as they have not figured out the fine art of directing the character with the left hand while turning the camera with the right hand.
Neverwinter Nights also has full control of the camera, with 3 different 3rd person view points built in. If I remember correctly, you can download a hak that allows for an almost first person view, that is particularly liked with the jiggle hak. These controls are pretty good and you can turn on the feature to have obstructing objects (2nd floors) automatically disappear when they obstruct your view. There are times when you can accidentally turn the camera so you can't see the battle that you are in, which can be quite deadly. Some module writers also force the camera view on you which I find frustrating. I set up my system the way I like it, don't change my settings.
Diablo II has the 3rd person hard camera. They did a good job to prevent most obstructions, but there are places where you can't see. NWN has spoiled me and I try to turn the camera in Diablo II.
All in all the cameras I have seen are pretty good, though there are others that need some work. Bionicle forces the camera to point a particular direction, Harry Potter SS and CoS have no camera controls, Harry Potter PoA has controls, but they are not as responsive as the Baldur's gate ones.
We need to be developing software that has an interface that is initially simple, but can be more complex if needed.
Slashdot is a pretty good example of this (no I'm not using it as a way to be moderated up). Initially you can simply use it for information gathering. Everything recent is one one page, the left hand column has the basic method of reducing the mount of information into simplified "Sections". As you may know, (or maybe not you may be a new reader here) you can reduce the amount of useless information by creating a login, and setting your preferences to see the information you want on the main page and limiting the comments you see on articles to those (for example) moderated level 3 and above. If you want to get more complex, try responding to articles and getting modded up. If you want more complex try getting submissions published!
Another example I have seen recently is Adobe Photoshop Elements which is picture editing software. I use primarily the first 4 menus of this software for my photos. My brother, an artist and an owner of the full version of Photoshop, used the first 4 and remaining menus when building the graphics for his website that I maintain on my computer. The simple items are near the front (to the left) and the more complex items are to the back.
A more embarassing example was when I had my Non-techie wife testing a new version of my brother's website I was building. I had put in some fancy Javascript tricks I found at Dynamic Drive to bring up larger pictures of the thumbnails within the same window to "simplify" the user experience. When she used these pages, she found them more complex and less useable because they were inconsistent within the realm of a web page. Needless to say I ended up ripping out all of the Javascript and creating 40 new pages to simplify the interface. My even less technical mother approved of the new site with the Javascript removed.
My group on the other hand covers $25 a month (that's about 1/2 my bill) for anyone in the group. It doesn't matter if you work 24x7 support or not.
As a stockholder I find this wrong. They should not be paying anything for broadband unless:
- The person can not/will not have broadband on their own.
- The person does on-call support.
It is a waste of money for a corporation to pay for broadband when most techies would have it anyway. If they meet the above requirements I can see paying for it. Of course there are those that would "say" they can/will not have broadband on their own, but really they would, just to get the reimbursement. That decision is on their conscious.I refuse to submit the expense reports for broadband based on my belief.
Drivers have a lot to do with it. Those of us that bought Soundblaster cards from Dell know all about this as we see non-OEM cards getting driver upgrades, but our non-standard OEM card does not, making the sound in games such as Neverwinter Nights to suck. A year later, we finally get an upgrade, but only after the support message boards are flooded with scathing complaints.
The other issue is setups. You know, number of speakers and their arrangement. The game/driver has to be able downmix the sound so it sounds good whether you have 2 speakers or 7. Relying on the hardware to tell you the setup isn't always possible, for example the card I got from Dell is capable of 5.1, but the best speaker set at the time was 4.1, no center speaker. This makes it so some software has to remix or downnix the center channel to come out of the left and right front speakers.
It was kind of fun playing Diablo II with 5.1 enabled and no center speaker. The surround effects were incredible!
I think that Joel is wrong here.
.NET as an alternative to the old API development.
.NET infrastructure (memory management, standardized interfaces, develop in the language of your choice, etc.) over the standard VB/VC++/ASP and begin to use .NET more. They will take classes, and become trained in .NET.
.NET. Why change to the new system now? Unless you need the new features, .NET should cover most needs of application and web developers.
.NET will go away so soon after it's introduction.
I believe that the long wait for Longhorn/Avalon to be released will cause more people to pick up
Developers will see the benefits of the
When Longhorn/Avalon finally gets released, the adoption I expect will be slow. We just spent all this money becoming proficient with
I just can't see how
It seems the last Console posting said that PS2 was the ruler of the consoles, but then the one before that said that PC games are going to beat out consoles for patching, the one before that was about how consoles beat out PCs because they have a standard set of hardware so the software can be optimized.
Back to a related topic.
I honestly do not know anyone that owns a gamecube. Most people I know have PS2 systems or nothing at all.
Now onto the actual topic.
Why would Nintendo introduce a new memory card this late in the game? When something has had a consistent hardware configuration, of course the developers are going to take advantage of patterns (small memory cards) and shortcut some robust coding (not being able to handle any memory card) to shorten development time, reduce test time, and save money. This should have been expected by Nintendo when they introduced the larger memory cards.
I'd be willing to bet if a real 16MB (or larger) memory card came out for the PS2 (not those fake 16MB cards that are actually a 8MB card that requires you to put a real 8 MB card in it to get to 16MB) there would be save issues as well. Heck the PS1 games I have freak out that the PS1 memory card is not in slot 1 (there was only 1 slot on the PS1) and will refuse to boot unless you move the card.
This is Nintendo's fault. They should have tested this new card with a number of games, old and new BEFORE they released it to the marketplace. Nintendo should be working on either a workaround to trick games into seeing a smaller card or a full solution that allows it to be seamless to all games.
Not that I like Clear Channel any more than any other broadcaster, but I find it interesting that the other major broadcasters that also carry the Stern show were not fined.
Is Clear Channel being targeted?
Do Inifinity and Viacom have some hold over the FCC?
What's the story behind this?