Way to go blog-o-sphere, for making your voice heard. Though, interestingly, they didn't state that it fell under fair use, but rather they "gave her permission" to use the figure and data. So, maybe only a half-win.
Now imagine if a player has 2 of these controllers hooked up -- one for each hand.
Double lightsabers, here I come!
Seriously though -- our imaginations are running wild with the possibility of a single controller like this. Imagine if each hand had one? One controller can be used for moving the player, the other for actions (such as swinging a sword, aiming a gun, etc).
A few years back I created a dynamic MySQL backed website in PHP. When I first started learning Ruby, I converted this site to Ruby (ala eRuby and mod_ruby). I easily cut my code in half, *plus* it became a whole lot easier to read (and I was a ruby-newbie!). I am now migrating the site to use Rails, which, from what I can tell so far, is cutting that code down in half *again*.
If Rails had been around when I first started the site, I would have saved hours upon hours of development time. Rails is an amazing framework. It's cut down my development time, and my code is easy to read. It's made web-development *fun* again.
Their most recent release (0.10) provided support for writing (and using!) web services. I've already written one and put it into production with a VisualStudio C# app. Great stuff.
From what I had seen, RoR seemed pretty promising (and it keeps getting better they say), but I'll have to dig deeper to see it's full power. The only problem I can see now is finding some decent hosting for that, preferably cheap (RoR *with postgresql* to make things worse).
Regardless of the heat issue, I think speedstep technology in the desktop is a good idea. Why should my computer consume the same amount of power when I am only using 10% of the processor? Why does it need to be on full power when my screen saver is going? From an energy standpoint I am interested in this technology.
Agreed. I have a website which I originally designed in PHP with a MySQL backend. After one too many PHP headaches, I ported the site to eRuby/mod_ruby. It was a fraction of the code and much more readable. And *now*, with porting to Ruby on rails, I am cutting the code down even more. I won't touch PHP now unless I absolutely have to.
I had a prof a couple years ago give us this interesting quote (sorry, don't know the source)
"If Shakespear was alive today, he'd just be another critic"
In other words, it doesn't really matter what the author intended, what matters is what the reader gets out of it. If the author meant X, but I read it as Y, it is still Y to me.
Really, it goes beyond games. I can see many instances which even "older people" who aren't interested in games might be interested.
Imagine books and movies that are played out in 3D before your eyes.
Imagine that your kids are now married, and have kids of their own. Now imagine they live on the other side of the the country. Wouldn't it be nice to see your kids and grandkids in 3D? You would actually be able to sit in the "same" room together to talk. Or holographic conferencing while at work with your employees 2 states away.
You say you were studying languages? Imagine practicing your language of choice with a fluent artificial intelligence who is standing right in front of you. Or, heck, from a real person who is transmitted as a 3D holograph into your living room.
Imagine building your "house" holographically first. You'd be able to see how it would look from the inside and out before the ground was even broken.
Car manufacturers would be able to holographically build cars and get driver feedback on design issues before they cut a single piece of metal.
Beyond all the porn jokes and the games, the applications for everyday people are numerous and limited only by your imagination.
Sure, the trailer was pretty. But games have had pretty cinema scenes for a long time now. The real question will be what does the *ingame* graphics look like? This of course what be known for some time, I expect.
True, but one of the points of role playing is having the option to play a role. Without female characters the options of what "roles" to play become much more limited. I mean, really, what kind of role playing says "Here, play this *role*, you get to define who this person is, what they are like, the characteristics, their behaviour... anything you can think of. Oh, but you have to play as a man..."
You also have to take into account the *total* number of trees. This is no meager amount to have to process. You not only have to update the trees, you are also checking to see if they even need updating. This means wasted CPU which may not even result in tree growth.
IMHO, the biggest missing "feature" of this game was the fact you could not play as a female. My wife was somewhat interested in this game (which is quite unusual), but when she found out she couldn't play as a female she completely and utterly lost interest.
In fact, I consider the ability to play as either gender not a "feature", but a requisite when playing an RPG.
I wonder if it will be possible to watch games you do not own. This could turn into:
A) A *great* marketing tool for good games. People can watch a particular game and say "Dang, that's cool! I wanna give it a shot
B) A *great* way to avoid games which are just plain... poo. Bad for marketing, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't happen anyway.
The same things can be said about game demos. There have been a few games whos demos were so great, I wanted to play more, and so bought the game. There have also been many games where the demo stunk, so I knew to avoid paying for it.
Chances are, probably not. The people who *do* read the research now are the ones who know enough about the field to be able to read the research critically. The people who don't probably won't be able to identify bogus research.
Now, the real question from me is: who will get all the money? We know that if one were to buy the reatil box at the store, that much of that money goes to the publisher/middleman. If one pays for the game online, does Valve get a bigger piece of the pie? If so, that's okay with me. I'd much rather have the people who do all the hard development work get more of my money. Sure, it would be nice to make the game cheaper, but if it's going to cost the same I'd rather the money go to the developer.
Besides, I know a few people who will likely end up buying HL2 just because they can d/l it. They are the type who "wouldn't buy HL2 if they had to go out, but will end up buying it because they can d/l it when they get bored and want something to play" Their words exactly.
I purchased a Toshiba notebook about this time last year. I really needed it because I was going out of town. The local BestBuy was out of stock, but a store about 1hr away had one. They said I could have it shipped down, and it would be there in time, but only if I bought it at that store. Considering there was a sale ending that day, which gave me $150 off the notebook, I thought sure, why not.
So, the "delivery" day came and went. No call. I called them up -- the unit hadn't even left the store where it originated from. I asked my local store if I could drive up to get it. They say, "shouldn't be a problem, but call their store first to make sure".
Sound advice. So I called. The person said "Sure! That's no problem what so ever. We have it back in the warehouse."
So, I called my local BB to let them know I actually was picking it up, they said no problem.
I ended up driving through one of the worst thunderstorms of the year to get to this store.
I get there, and after about 30 minutes of hassel, I find out I can't pick up the unit. Even though had my receipts, showing I had purchased the item. My computer was not even a 2 minute walk away, after a 1 hour drive, in the back warehouse. I fought with them for another 30 minutes... no good.
Apparently, since I "bought" the computer at the other store, they had to recieve the merchandise and scan it into their system before I could have it. This made sense to me... but what didn't make sense to me is why the 3 different people I talked to to make _sure_ it would be okay told me it was no problem.
Needless to say I wasn't happy. And the manager knew it.
They ended up giving me a $50 gift card for my troubles, and the word of the manager that he would personally deliver my unit to my local best buy in the morning, after which it was all mine.
Sure enough, he did. I was still pretty pissed, however, I felt the manager did what he could. I could understand why I couldn't pick it up (the inventory was not technically their anymore, but my local stores, who needed to scan it into the system), but not why they didn't tell me that before.
Second story. When I first started shopping around for the aforementioned notebook PC, I went to BB. I was looking at the model I was most interested in, but the screen was totally screwed up. It *looked* to me like someone had jacked around with the font settings, and made it unreadable.
So, out of curiousity, I thought I'd see what the computer personel said. I knew from the minute this guy opened his mouth he had no clue what so ever.
He squinted at the screen, trying to read the fonts. Thought about it a minute and said "nothings wrong"
I said "You're kidding, right? Did you notice the fonts?"
"Yeah. I can read them just fine," he said
"Well, I can't. And I have perfect vision"
He said, "Well, I have 20/15"
I almost said "So, a person has to have better than normal vision to use this computer?" but instead I left it as is. I sort of shadowed the fellow for the next 15 minutes or so, to hear some of the "fascinating insights" he had about computers when talking with other customers. After one, I spoke with the customer after the fact and made sure he was *properly* informed before I finally left the store.
Anyway... as mentioned in many other posts, one of BB bigest problems is many of their employees don't know jack, whether it be about the merchandise or store policy. Though I thought the manager did good though to resolve my first issue.
I had webdav remote hosting working over SSL for the July 1st drop of Sunbird (although, it did require adding 4 or so lines to chrome.rdf, which I discovered searching bugzilla... see bug 249796 - http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=255903 ).
However, I have yet to get it to work on this 0.2 beta release, even with the aforementioned patch. The problem is I am never asked for a username or password, or to accept the homebrew SSL cert. It just loops indefinetly. I actually reverted to the July 1 build, because the remote hosting over SSL is essential for me.
Anyone else have any success using webdav over SSL with this release?
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, but *why* does it mean that? Comes from some TV show I imagine, but which?
The problem seems to have already been resolved. http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2007/04/vic tory_a_happy_resolution.php
Way to go blog-o-sphere, for making your voice heard. Though, interestingly, they didn't state that it fell under fair use, but rather they "gave her permission" to use the figure and data. So, maybe only a half-win.
Now imagine if a player has 2 of these controllers hooked up -- one for each hand.
Double lightsabers, here I come!
Seriously though -- our imaginations are running wild with the possibility of a single controller like this. Imagine if each hand had one? One controller can be used for moving the player, the other for actions (such as swinging a sword, aiming a gun, etc).
A few years back I created a dynamic MySQL backed website in PHP. When I first started learning Ruby, I converted this site to Ruby (ala eRuby and mod_ruby). I easily cut my code in half, *plus* it became a whole lot easier to read (and I was a ruby-newbie!). I am now migrating the site to use Rails, which, from what I can tell so far, is cutting that code down in half *again*.
If Rails had been around when I first started the site, I would have saved hours upon hours of development time. Rails is an amazing framework. It's cut down my development time, and my code is easy to read. It's made web-development *fun* again.
Their most recent release (0.10) provided support for writing (and using!) web services. I've already written one and put it into production with a VisualStudio C# app. Great stuff.
From what I had seen, RoR seemed pretty promising (and it keeps getting better they say), but I'll have to dig deeper to see it's full power. The only problem I can see now is finding some decent hosting for that, preferably cheap (RoR *with postgresql* to make things worse).
Check out http://www.textdrive.com/
Regardless of the heat issue, I think speedstep technology in the desktop is a good idea. Why should my computer consume the same amount of power when I am only using 10% of the processor? Why does it need to be on full power when my screen saver is going? From an energy standpoint I am interested in this technology.
Agreed. I have a website which I originally designed in PHP with a MySQL backend. After one too many PHP headaches, I ported the site to eRuby/mod_ruby. It was a fraction of the code and much more readable. And *now*, with porting to Ruby on rails, I am cutting the code down even more. I won't touch PHP now unless I absolutely have to.
In fact, the original author of that quote is Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881). Just google the quote. It is also documented in Bartletts book of quotes.
http://www.bartleby.com/66/99/16799.html
You would get that by going to http://www.ode.org/ ;)
I had a prof a couple years ago give us this interesting quote (sorry, don't know the source)
"If Shakespear was alive today, he'd just be another critic"
In other words, it doesn't really matter what the author intended, what matters is what the reader gets out of it. If the author meant X, but I read it as Y, it is still Y to me.
Really, it goes beyond games. I can see many instances which even "older people" who aren't interested in games might be interested.
Imagine books and movies that are played out in 3D before your eyes.
Imagine that your kids are now married, and have kids of their own. Now imagine they live on the other side of the the country. Wouldn't it be nice to see your kids and grandkids in 3D? You would actually be able to sit in the "same" room together to talk. Or holographic conferencing while at work with your employees 2 states away.
You say you were studying languages? Imagine practicing your language of choice with a fluent artificial intelligence who is standing right in front of you. Or, heck, from a real person who is transmitted as a 3D holograph into your living room.
Imagine building your "house" holographically first. You'd be able to see how it would look from the inside and out before the ground was even broken.
Car manufacturers would be able to holographically build cars and get driver feedback on design issues before they cut a single piece of metal.
Beyond all the porn jokes and the games, the applications for everyday people are numerous and limited only by your imagination.
Sure, the trailer was pretty. But games have had pretty cinema scenes for a long time now. The real question will be what does the *ingame* graphics look like? This of course what be known for some time, I expect.
From the gMail FAQ
"Access: Free automatic forwarding. POP3 access is not yet available, but will be in the future for free or at a nominal fee."
In other words, once they go live I would expect pop3 access to either be a paid service, or have injected google text ads.
Check out http://users.dart.net.au/~srgeorg/ as discussed in http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=9599 5.
True, but one of the points of role playing is having the option to play a role. Without female characters the options of what "roles" to play become much more limited. I mean, really, what kind of role playing says "Here, play this *role*, you get to define who this person is, what they are like, the characteristics, their behaviour... anything you can think of. Oh, but you have to play as a man..."
You also have to take into account the *total* number of trees. This is no meager amount to have to process. You not only have to update the trees, you are also checking to see if they even need updating. This means wasted CPU which may not even result in tree growth.
IMHO, the biggest missing "feature" of this game was the fact you could not play as a female. My wife was somewhat interested in this game (which is quite unusual), but when she found out she couldn't play as a female she completely and utterly lost interest.
In fact, I consider the ability to play as either gender not a "feature", but a requisite when playing an RPG.
I wonder if it will be possible to watch games you do not own. This could turn into:
... poo. Bad for marketing, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't happen anyway.
A) A *great* marketing tool for good games. People can watch a particular game and say "Dang, that's cool! I wanna give it a shot
B) A *great* way to avoid games which are just plain
The same things can be said about game demos. There have been a few games whos demos were so great, I wanted to play more, and so bought the game. There have also been many games where the demo stunk, so I knew to avoid paying for it.
Chances are, probably not. The people who *do* read the research now are the ones who know enough about the field to be able to read the research critically. The people who don't probably won't be able to identify bogus research.
Now, the real question from me is: who will get all the money? We know that if one were to buy the reatil box at the store, that much of that money goes to the publisher/middleman. If one pays for the game online, does Valve get a bigger piece of the pie? If so, that's okay with me. I'd much rather have the people who do all the hard development work get more of my money. Sure, it would be nice to make the game cheaper, but if it's going to cost the same I'd rather the money go to the developer.
Besides, I know a few people who will likely end up buying HL2 just because they can d/l it. They are the type who "wouldn't buy HL2 if they had to go out, but will end up buying it because they can d/l it when they get bored and want something to play" Their words exactly.
I purchased a Toshiba notebook about this time last year. I really needed it because I was going out of town. The local BestBuy was out of stock, but a store about 1hr away had one. They said I could have it shipped down, and it would be there in time, but only if I bought it at that store. Considering there was a sale ending that day, which gave me $150 off the notebook, I thought sure, why not.
... but what didn't make sense to me is why the 3 different people I talked to to make _sure_ it would be okay told me it was no problem.
... as mentioned in many other posts, one of BB bigest problems is many of their employees don't know jack, whether it be about the merchandise or store policy. Though I thought the manager did good though to resolve my first issue.
So, the "delivery" day came and went. No call. I called them up -- the unit hadn't even left the store where it originated from. I asked my local store if I could drive up to get it. They say, "shouldn't be a problem, but call their store first to make sure".
Sound advice. So I called. The person said "Sure! That's no problem what so ever. We have it back in the warehouse."
So, I called my local BB to let them know I actually was picking it up, they said no problem.
I ended up driving through one of the worst thunderstorms of the year to get to this store.
I get there, and after about 30 minutes of hassel, I find out I can't pick up the unit. Even though had my receipts, showing I had purchased the item. My computer was not even a 2 minute walk away, after a 1 hour drive, in the back warehouse. I fought with them for another 30 minutes... no good.
Apparently, since I "bought" the computer at the other store, they had to recieve the merchandise and scan it into their system before I could have it. This made sense to me
Needless to say I wasn't happy. And the manager knew it.
They ended up giving me a $50 gift card for my troubles, and the word of the manager that he would personally deliver my unit to my local best buy in the morning, after which it was all mine.
Sure enough, he did. I was still pretty pissed, however, I felt the manager did what he could. I could understand why I couldn't pick it up (the inventory was not technically their anymore, but my local stores, who needed to scan it into the system), but not why they didn't tell me that before.
Second story. When I first started shopping around for the aforementioned notebook PC, I went to BB. I was looking at the model I was most interested in, but the screen was totally screwed up. It *looked* to me like someone had jacked around with the font settings, and made it unreadable.
So, out of curiousity, I thought I'd see what the computer personel said. I knew from the minute this guy opened his mouth he had no clue what so ever.
He squinted at the screen, trying to read the fonts. Thought about it a minute and said "nothings wrong"
I said "You're kidding, right? Did you notice the fonts?"
"Yeah. I can read them just fine," he said
"Well, I can't. And I have perfect vision"
He said, "Well, I have 20/15"
I almost said "So, a person has to have better than normal vision to use this computer?" but instead I left it as is. I sort of shadowed the fellow for the next 15 minutes or so, to hear some of the "fascinating insights" he had about computers when talking with other customers. After one, I spoke with the customer after the fact and made sure he was *properly* informed before I finally left the store.
Anyway
I had webdav remote hosting working over SSL for the July 1st drop of Sunbird (although, it did require adding 4 or so lines to chrome.rdf, which I discovered searching bugzilla... see bug 249796 - http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=255903 ).
However, I have yet to get it to work on this 0.2 beta release, even with the aforementioned patch. The problem is I am never asked for a username or password, or to accept the homebrew SSL cert. It just loops indefinetly. I actually reverted to the July 1 build, because the remote hosting over SSL is essential for me.
Anyone else have any success using webdav over SSL with this release?
Anyone have the MD5 for SP2 handy? I d/l direct from microsoft.com, but would still like verification of the d/l integrity.
have stopped teaching touch-typing as a necessary office skill and are now often saying that basic computer skills are more important.
I consider being able to type IS a basic computer skill. Being proficient in touch typing will accelerate the learning of those other basic skills.
I'm glad all is going well for him. He's lucky he fell into that rare 1%. Pancreatic cancer is one of the more deadly types of cancer.