Oracle hasn't replaced that site yet -- the primary site is still Flash and you've now reminded me why this will be a big headache.
Seconded. Oracle's central support portal still holds on to that flash-based dashboard. By my estimation, they were appeared to have this in development at a time when flash had the highest penetration, but by the time they finally released it (2009), the world had moved on to AJAX-based interfaces. If they had just held on a bit longer in their dev-cycle, they may have caught that wave and avoided flash altogether.
Notably, a good percentage of the Oracle Support population are linux-oriented, so maybe this is a good opportunity for Oracle (and other *nix-centric organizations) to speed up the development of their next-gen web portal.
Anyone else read the title and get excited that it was about the future of "BattleTech" the FASA war/board game?
I also did a double-take. On a site featuring News for Nerds, the editors had to have guessed that the title as-it-stood would have caused a bit of confusion.
The closest thing I found to the future of BattleTech(tm) in a quick spot-check of the news was the development of the Mechwarrior Online Free to Play MMO'ish game.
Interesting stuff. From the article's image, the AGloves seem pretty utilitarian. There's also a company MyGloves* that produces gloves with similar functionality.. the difference is that they have conductivity elements on only the main digits of your hand (index, thumb) and they're stylized with different prints / marks / fabric, it seems. Just tossing that out for the masses to chew on..
I felt that neomunk's response (above) is one of the most mature I've read on slashdot in awhile. Most other responses to an argument end up as personal attacks, regardless of whether it was reasonable or not.
The article summary made me think of a related Simpsons episode in which Homer hid behind a "Mister X" moniker and dug up dirt on everybody through a website.
Personally, I chose not to take advanced math (ie. pre-calculus) in the twelfth grade leading up to my University application (Canada here). This wasn't the school advising me one way or another. Based on my average performance in Grade 10 and 11 math courses, I was given the option of taking the advanced math. Figuring I would either get a B+ in regular Grade 12 math or a C+ in advanced math, I enrolled in the former.
That said, I still couldn't make the grade pre-requisite for 1st year university calculus and ended up having to take the Math 100-level course, basically re-treading the Grade 12 course and then some. This time around, it was MUCH harder, and it took me a few semesters to recover that Grade Point Average. I don't know if the Advanced Math course would have prepared me any better because I obviously didn't have the grounding to begin with.
I can't say there's a 'moral of the story' other than to study hard in High school so you don't have to pay in your University years -- there's more than enough stress to deal with by that time.
Good points. However, I would say that the company is doing the right thing by lowering the regional price to make it comparable in time/effort/money as pirating the software. The alternative would be lobbying the local government to crack down more, and it would probably cost them just as much by going that route.
That said, $66 is probably still higher than what somebody in China could afford given their average yearly income (disclaimer that I don't have the figures to back that up but I believe it's semi-common knowledge). If they lowered it to $33 and the North American/European price to $66, then they'd be that much further ahead.
Twilight Princess was great, but isn't it past time to deprecate text-only dialog.
I can appreciate the sentiment, but I can also understand why the developer team went with text only. It would probably be tougher to do localization if you had anything beyond straight text. Each change to the dialog by the writers halfway would entail a re-write of the translations as well, and it would be much harder to do that voice-actors.
Also, does anybody know if they were reaching the capacity of the media when they were coding this? Perhaps it was a technical decision to leave it off, if the "70 hours of content" I heard bandied about earlier in the thread was true.
'Real' is a matter of opinion -- some might say the more recent E3's degenerated into something more and more fake (ie. smoke and mirrors) as time went on. From oversized booths to expensive parties and the like, it probably ate more than its share of marketing (vs. development) dollars from most game publisher's budgets.
..Note: upon reading a bit, I might have shot my own earlier paragraph down--E3 apparently started as a pretty substantial exhibition, according to gamespy's 10 year's of E3 article.
quote: "The Electronic Entertainment Expo was never a small show. It began with over 50,000 attendees and has grown to 75,000."
My God! Those ads really get in your face.
Here the difference is evident when you look at Yahoo's ads versus Google's adwords.
Plus, I remember the reasons I moved towards GMail in the first place:
No-nonsense POP access with other email clients (ie. outlook) so I don't even have to use the web-UI if I prefer. Yahoo's alternative could have been YPOPS but it seemed clunkier with an extra layer loaded in the background.
No 'Signup for [Hot/Yahoo/*]Mail today!' plug attached to each outgoing message
Gmail drive functionality (however long that is going to work)
This is a really cool solution, which I never thought about. Since the cost of the router is almost comparable to the cost of the DS USB access point, it makes sense to have that extra chunk of functionality.
Are there any disadvantages to this setup? Would you still be able to port forward or port trigger to the inner (more secure) router?
Most of them have long since lost that creative spark by the time they're thirty anyway.
This is straying from the intent of the article's reasoning, but there's a study that mentions getting married tends to lower your 'creative spark', although they were specifically talking about men.
I was half expecting something cool like a mechanized ED-209 (a la robocop) but instead it looks like something out a 30's stop-motion animation or a charlie chaplin skit.
I'd go so far as to say they might enhance the gaming experience, rather than detract from it. And the fact that they're open to player ads might imply that they're willing to start a dialogue with their customers.
Player-funded advertisements would be an interesting new addition to the MMPORG economy as well. Imagine being able to post a want-ad, or promote your clan with in-game money, or real-money.
That said, what is to stop these advertisement areas from becoming grafitti-like, libelous, or childish displays from some player/gang/clan with an agenda? There may arise the need for a moderator/authorizer system of some sort, requiring more GM involvement. On the flip-side, it opens the doors to abuse of these powers, and 'sponsor-ethics' as well.. Would they accept, say, an X-Box advertisement on Matrix Online?
Slashdot Mirror
Oracle hasn't replaced that site yet -- the primary site is still Flash and you've now reminded me why this will be a big headache.
Seconded. Oracle's central support portal still holds on to that flash-based dashboard. By my estimation, they were appeared to have this in development at a time when flash had the highest penetration, but by the time they finally released it (2009), the world had moved on to AJAX-based interfaces. If they had just held on a bit longer in their dev-cycle, they may have caught that wave and avoided flash altogether.
Notably, a good percentage of the Oracle Support population are linux-oriented, so maybe this is a good opportunity for Oracle (and other *nix-centric organizations) to speed up the development of their next-gen web portal.
Anyone else read the title and get excited that it was about the future of "BattleTech" the FASA war/board game?
I also did a double-take. On a site featuring News for Nerds, the editors had to have guessed that the title as-it-stood would have caused a bit of confusion. The closest thing I found to the future of BattleTech(tm) in a quick spot-check of the news was the development of the Mechwarrior Online Free to Play MMO'ish game.
Interesting stuff. From the article's image, the AGloves seem pretty utilitarian. There's also a company MyGloves* that produces gloves with similar functionality .. the difference is that they have conductivity elements on only the main digits of your hand (index, thumb) and they're stylized with different prints / marks / fabric, it seems. Just tossing that out for the masses to chew on..
I felt that neomunk's response (above) is one of the most mature I've read on slashdot in awhile. Most other responses to an argument end up as personal attacks, regardless of whether it was reasonable or not.
The article summary made me think of a related Simpsons episode in which Homer hid behind a "Mister X" moniker and dug up dirt on everybody through a website.
Personally, I chose not to take advanced math (ie. pre-calculus) in the twelfth grade leading up to my University application (Canada here). This wasn't the school advising me one way or another. Based on my average performance in Grade 10 and 11 math courses, I was given the option of taking the advanced math. Figuring I would either get a B+ in regular Grade 12 math or a C+ in advanced math, I enrolled in the former.
That said, I still couldn't make the grade pre-requisite for 1st year university calculus and ended up having to take the Math 100-level course, basically re-treading the Grade 12 course and then some. This time around, it was MUCH harder, and it took me a few semesters to recover that Grade Point Average. I don't know if the Advanced Math course would have prepared me any better because I obviously didn't have the grounding to begin with.
I can't say there's a 'moral of the story' other than to study hard in High school so you don't have to pay in your University years -- there's more than enough stress to deal with by that time.
Good points. However, I would say that the company is doing the right thing by lowering the regional price to make it comparable in time/effort/money as pirating the software. The alternative would be lobbying the local government to crack down more, and it would probably cost them just as much by going that route.
That said, $66 is probably still higher than what somebody in China could afford given their average yearly income (disclaimer that I don't have the figures to back that up but I believe it's semi-common knowledge). If they lowered it to $33 and the North American/European price to $66, then they'd be that much further ahead.
Twilight Princess was great, but isn't it past time to deprecate text-only dialog.
I can appreciate the sentiment, but I can also understand why the developer team went with text only. It would probably be tougher to do localization if you had anything beyond straight text. Each change to the dialog by the writers halfway would entail a re-write of the translations as well, and it would be much harder to do that voice-actors.
Also, does anybody know if they were reaching the capacity of the media when they were coding this? Perhaps it was a technical decision to leave it off, if the "70 hours of content" I heard bandied about earlier in the thread was true.
'Real' is a matter of opinion -- some might say the more recent E3's degenerated into something more and more fake (ie. smoke and mirrors) as time went on. From oversized booths to expensive parties and the like, it probably ate more than its share of marketing (vs. development) dollars from most game publisher's budgets.
Plus, I remember the reasons I moved towards GMail in the first place:
When I read this headline I thought it was talking about 0-day warez.
This is a really cool solution, which I never thought about. Since the cost of the router is almost comparable to the cost of the DS USB access point, it makes sense to have that extra chunk of functionality. Are there any disadvantages to this setup? Would you still be able to port forward or port trigger to the inner (more secure) router?
Most of them have long since lost that creative spark by the time they're thirty anyway. This is straying from the intent of the article's reasoning, but there's a study that mentions getting married tends to lower your 'creative spark', although they were specifically talking about men.
I was half expecting something cool like a mechanized ED-209 (a la robocop) but instead it looks like something out a 30's stop-motion animation or a charlie chaplin skit.