Games which were techincal marvels on the Commodore 64 included "Armalyte", "Turrican II" and "Mayhem in Monsterland".
I think "Elite" and "The Sentinel" also deserve mentions, but both those games were realsed on the BBC as well.
Wow . . . that's an awfully derogatory way to describe cultural differences.
Wow, that's really derogatory to call someone out for being "derogatory". Sheesh.
Ok, so it sounds "bleak", but we ARE talking about the minds of people who would feel better off dead here, so bear with me for a minute. If you're not willing to consider their position for just a few moments, and think for a minute of WHY they might feel that way, given possible situations, then you're going to be less able to think from their perspective.
Yes, the Japanese dislike physical violence; yes, they can be clever at manipulating others' emotions; and yes, there may even be a cause-and-effect relationship between those two traits. But implying that they use that method to "get what they want" or "defend themselves" in the same way as Westerners do shows a basic misunderstanding of Japanese culture.
Japanese culture is not static, just like "asian culture" is fairly undefinable as well. It used to be Japanese culture to have a samurai come around and lop your head off for whatever reason as well. Where are the samurais today? You cannot ignore that specific behavioural traits rose up from a need to survive in the society in which one finds oneself. While it's easy for us to write it all off as "Japanese culture" from our ivory gaijin towers, it gives us a skewed view of what's really going on.
Japanese, on the whole, place significant value on helping others rather than fulfilling personal desires; not to an extreme, of course, but enough so that Dilbert has no real-life reference point here, for example. The lifetime employment system you mention is partly due to this, and partly due to the willingness of many Japanese to allow organizations to take care of them rather than taking control of their own lives.
But not everyone views it like this.
Have YOU ever thought about starting your own company? I figure it would be very easy to do in Japan. You could start your own company, bring in a bunch of unskilled Japanese workers, underpay them for what they do, tell them that they are gaining valuable experience, tell them to ganbare a million times, socially ostracize them for not working hard enough, then just sit back and watch those profits roll in.
Now, one of two things happen at this point. Most employees find out they're being used and try to leave for foreign companies who don't treat them like crap, OR since they have no time or experience to find another job because their current job overworks them, or out of fear of risking their reputation by breaking away from their employer, stick it out.
So now that our salaryman is sticking it out, he is given harder work and more responsibilities. He is paid just a little extra and now has to travel 2 hours to work everyday, there and back, to complete 160+ hours of a contract - which is pretty rough by anyone's standards because doing so involves overwork. But this is the company taking care of you, right? You have to do what they say.
Good for you that you have an education and plenty of experience so that you are very mobile. Not everyone has experience, or is very mobile. Maybe we can blame them for not studying harder?
The younger generation is certainly beginning to change that, as you mention, but not because of some dislike of this mental pressuring; it's the result of an increased emphasis on private life and personal growth, which the old system doesn't have much (if any) leeway for.
I propose that the mental pressuring and increased emphasis on private life are linked. When you are working long days and have no time for exercise, a private life, or much sleep, you turn to alcohol and nights out in the snack bars or karaoke boxes or pachinko. Or, like several Japanese people I know, you get stress related sicknesses and have to skip work to visit the "doctor" everyday. or you smoke heavily.
Interpersonal clashes do happen, of course, and as you suggest, the Japanese pref
After living here for about 6-7 years, and working in a Japanese office environment, suicide is the result of the non-violent way that the Japanese have dealt with getting rid of people you don't like.
The Japanese are no longer a violent race of people after the war, having said that, they are no less at peace with themselves or with others. Since they refuse to use violence, they have had to use other ways of controlling others - and the result is that the Japanese have evolved into a race of people who have learnt to push people's emotional buttons to defend themselves and get what they want.
The fact is, if you can mentally make a person turn on THEMSELVES - then you don't have to kill them. You feed them guilt, you over work them, you deprive them of sleep, you bully them, you ignore them, you socially ostracize them... all the while faking a smile at them and telling them that you like them.
OK, so someone gets angry and tries to use violence.... socially ostracized, arrested, lose your job, nobody will employ you, have a nice homeless life.
This is what the younger generation has been fighting against by refusing full term employment. This is why you have a nation of recluses. This is why some people are bumping themselves off.
With all this programming power, and graphics and sound all sorted out, what's needed is a game that makes full use of the processing power needed for AI. I present to the next-gen game genre:- The Too-many-things-on-the-screen-requiring-calculatio n genre
Same thing with these 1.6TB holographic discs. It seems they're only going to start out at 300GB capcity so that market can be milked, and only LATER introduce the 1.6TB version at it's full working spec - but not before you've sold out to the 300GB crowd and made them upgrade.
Also, remember that there are both male and female geeks. For that geeky male scientist out there, perhaps an equally geeky female scientist, or vise-versa.
Uhh... dunno if they'll ever get around to talking to each other though.
Of course, this way probably a joke anyhow, but really I find that the biggest problem many geeks have is that the tendency to have a superiority complex over their fellows.
This is the big sticking point I think.... that and the need to be "right" all the time I'll wager. Pretty useful skills in the lab, but not so great when dealing with common folk - who just want to bond rather than have a meaningful discussion (like this one).
Just like intelligent women usually have to dumb themselves down to bimbo levels in order to attract men and not intimidate them, geeks have to do the same I think.
The thing is, most intelligent people have a lot of interesting things to say - but come off all "high and mighty" that most ordinary non-geek people switch off very fast.
This means that for all intents and purposes, science is unpopular, it requires a lot of work to get good. Then you're too smart for your own good and you intimidate women so much they stay away from you. End result: Geeks get no dates, and science is unpopular....but then there's always alcohol.
A S.Korean Robot won't look like Robocop. They'll probably look something more like Gundam or Macross or something, and if you hook them all up into super mega mecha man... they can really kick some butt....or at least they can transform into cars and planes and things.
The problem with any new console is that the best games for it come out last, rather than first - by the time the developers can figure out how to really push the hardware in ways other than making the graphics better.
Why not use all that computing resource to power a game with thousands of characters on the screen with each of their own AI? Only a game like that will really test the hardware's mettle. (and it could be more fun than the Doom nuts.wad)
I'd say Sony is going to ream Japan with the PS3, but in the US and Europe.... all Microsoft have to do is release Halo 3 and get Bethesda to put Oblivion out at the same time. Should be an interesting fight.
Running around with huge guns and blasting things, and driving around like maniacs is what kids fantasize about all day.... but what do adults fantasize about all day?
Maybe escaping the quiet desperation that is modern civilization, getting out of that boring job, or running a successful enterprise, or doing things which they don't have the time and money to do.... such as build that dream home, or pick up scads of women.
It's not a hard one to figure out if marketing bods pulled their heads out of their collective rear-ends.
Techinically speaking, the pentium D is the tenth generation of intel chip, so sticking with the pentium naming convention - the D in Pentium D should be for "Pentium Decadium" (hey, it rhymes!)
A bit more interesting than just plain "D"
You're right about the instability of the Radeon Drivers on Xorg. I have such a setup and I run Debian testing on it with with an AIW Radeon 9700 Pro. Using the latest ATI drivers from Dec last year, even when I'm not running a graphics intensive application, X often seems to hang heavily and without any warning. The system crashes so bad that I can't even switch consoles to halt the machine properly.
I can successfully crash the Xorg every time just by trying to run prboom though. Don't ask me why.
YES! Next time YOU buy a kitchen knife - you're telling companies that it's OK to make knives which may be used to KILL OTHER PEOPLE! THE BLOOD WILL BE ALL OVER YOUR HANDS!
Next time YOU buy a car, you are voting with your purse strings and ENCOURAGING people to smash their cars into pedestrians in hit and run accidents? Is this the country we fought to win?
WHEN YOU BUY ALCOHOL, you are signalling to the rest of the country that YOU ACCEPT a DRUNK SOCIETY. Let's ban ALL ALCOHOL so that will never.... oh,..... what that? They tried that already and it didn't work?
I guess we will be seeing Cell in servers at some point as well, though not as cheap as in a PS3. Sony probably won't want anyone to run Linux on the PS3, lest geeks start cranking out PS3 server farms, but hopefully Sony will leave enough backdoors so can we can see the PS3 run Linux (or FreeBSD, or some beta OpenSolaris distro). Knoppix running on the PS3 just about removes the need for a home computer.
Hopefully Sony will create such a backdoor. I mean if they can screw up with a rootkit... *ducks*
If 16Gb = approx 2GB, and there are already 2GB SD Flash memory cards available, does this mean that we could end up with 4GB -> 8GB SD memory cards in the forseeable future?
(Eagerly awaiting next iteration of the Sharp Zaurus!)
Slashdot Mirror
There are people addicted to socializing and having sex with as many people as possible too.... and THAT'S an addiction.
Food and breathing air can be addicting to. Once you start on that yummy oxygen, you can't really stop!
What were we talking about again?
Games which were techincal marvels on the Commodore 64 included "Armalyte", "Turrican II" and "Mayhem in Monsterland". I think "Elite" and "The Sentinel" also deserve mentions, but both those games were realsed on the BBC as well.
Just goes to show that you should never assume that anyone is mean or out to get you, or react in such a way... or they will become VERY SOON!
Self-fulfilling prophecies, anyone?
Wow . . . that's an awfully derogatory way to describe cultural differences.
Wow, that's really derogatory to call someone out for being "derogatory". Sheesh.
Ok, so it sounds "bleak", but we ARE talking about the minds of people who would feel better off dead here, so bear with me for a minute. If you're not willing to consider their position for just a few moments, and think for a minute of WHY they might feel that way, given possible situations, then you're going to be less able to think from their perspective.
Yes, the Japanese dislike physical violence; yes, they can be clever at manipulating others' emotions; and yes, there may even be a cause-and-effect relationship between those two traits. But implying that they use that method to "get what they want" or "defend themselves" in the same way as Westerners do shows a basic misunderstanding of Japanese culture.
Japanese culture is not static, just like "asian culture" is fairly undefinable as well. It used to be Japanese culture to have a samurai come around and lop your head off for whatever reason as well. Where are the samurais today?
You cannot ignore that specific behavioural traits rose up from a need to survive in the society in which one finds oneself. While it's easy for us to write it all off as "Japanese culture" from our ivory gaijin towers, it gives us a skewed view of what's really going on.
Japanese, on the whole, place significant value on helping others rather than fulfilling personal desires; not to an extreme, of course, but enough so that Dilbert has no real-life reference point here, for example. The lifetime employment system you mention is partly due to this, and partly due to the willingness of many Japanese to allow organizations to take care of them rather than taking control of their own lives.
But not everyone views it like this.
Have YOU ever thought about starting your own company? I figure it would be very easy to do in Japan. You could start your own company, bring in a bunch of unskilled Japanese workers, underpay them for what they do, tell them that they are gaining valuable experience, tell them to ganbare a million times, socially ostracize them for not working hard enough, then just sit back and watch those profits roll in.
Now, one of two things happen at this point. Most employees find out they're being used and try to leave for foreign companies who don't treat them like crap, OR since they have no time or experience to find another job because their current job overworks them, or out of fear of risking their reputation by breaking away from their employer, stick it out.
So now that our salaryman is sticking it out, he is given harder work and more responsibilities. He is paid just a little extra and now has to travel 2 hours to work everyday, there and back, to complete 160+ hours of a contract - which is pretty rough by anyone's standards because doing so involves overwork. But this is the company taking care of you, right? You have to do what they say.
Good for you that you have an education and plenty of experience so that you are very mobile. Not everyone has experience, or is very mobile.
Maybe we can blame them for not studying harder?
The younger generation is certainly beginning to change that, as you mention, but not because of some dislike of this mental pressuring; it's the result of an increased emphasis on private life and personal growth, which the old system doesn't have much (if any) leeway for.
I propose that the mental pressuring and increased emphasis on private life are linked. When you are working long days and have no time for exercise, a private life, or much sleep, you turn to alcohol and nights out in the snack bars or karaoke boxes or pachinko. Or, like several Japanese people I know, you get stress related sicknesses and have to skip work to visit the "doctor" everyday. or you smoke heavily.
Interpersonal clashes do happen, of course, and as you suggest, the Japanese pref
After living here for about 6-7 years, and working in a Japanese office environment, suicide is the result of the non-violent way that the Japanese have dealt with getting rid of people you don't like.
The Japanese are no longer a violent race of people after the war, having said that, they are no less at peace with themselves or with others. Since they refuse to use violence, they have had to use other ways of controlling others - and the result is that the Japanese have evolved into a race of people who have learnt to push people's emotional buttons to defend themselves and get what they want.
The fact is, if you can mentally make a person turn on THEMSELVES - then you don't have to kill them. You feed them guilt, you over work them, you deprive them of sleep, you bully them, you ignore them, you socially ostracize them... all the while faking a smile at them and telling them that you like them.
OK, so someone gets angry and tries to use violence.... socially ostracized, arrested, lose your job, nobody will employ you, have a nice homeless life.
This is what the younger generation has been fighting against by refusing full term employment. This is why you have a nation of recluses. This is why some people are bumping themselves off.
With all this programming power, and graphics and sound all sorted out, what's needed is a game that makes full use of the processing power needed for AI.o n genre
I present to the next-gen game genre:- The Too-many-things-on-the-screen-requiring-calculati
TMTOTSRC games for short
So what we need are next-gen versions of
http://kevan.org/proce55ing/zombies/
and an updated version of...
http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/crossroads/
Gimp is only a semi-decent replacement for the home consumer Photoshop CS series.
You also have to admit that the name "The Gimp" is somewhat risque as well, considering most people know what a gimp actually is.
To a novice, Photoshop obviously must be a photo application. An application called "The gimp" does what exactly?
It's offensive to tell other people that they're being offensive. It's not very polite.
Next thing you know, Muslims will get offended by what a Danish person draws in a comic strip.
Oh wait.....
You're right on the money I'll wager.
Same thing with these 1.6TB holographic discs. It seems they're only going to start out at 300GB capcity so that market can be milked, and only LATER introduce the 1.6TB version at it's full working spec - but not before you've sold out to the 300GB crowd and made them upgrade.
Total loss of summer Arctic sea ice causing extinction of the polar bear and the walrus
I AM THE EGGMAN Ooh !
THEY ARE THE EGGMAN Ooh !
I AM THE WALRUS Ooh !
GOO GOO GOO JOOB! GOO GOO GOO BLEAUGHHH!!!!
*dies*
I clicked on "Read More" as soon as the article came up and I got the message
"Nothing for you to see here, please move along"
Chinese censorship on slashdot too? 8@
Also, remember that there are both male and female geeks. For that geeky male scientist out there, perhaps an equally geeky female scientist, or vise-versa. Uhh... dunno if they'll ever get around to talking to each other though. Of course, this way probably a joke anyhow, but really I find that the biggest problem many geeks have is that the tendency to have a superiority complex over their fellows. This is the big sticking point I think.... that and the need to be "right" all the time I'll wager. Pretty useful skills in the lab, but not so great when dealing with common folk - who just want to bond rather than have a meaningful discussion (like this one). Just like intelligent women usually have to dumb themselves down to bimbo levels in order to attract men and not intimidate them, geeks have to do the same I think. The thing is, most intelligent people have a lot of interesting things to say - but come off all "high and mighty" that most ordinary non-geek people switch off very fast.
People are intimidated by intelligent people.
...but then there's always alcohol.
This means that for all intents and purposes, science is unpopular, it requires a lot of work to get good. Then you're too smart for your own good and you intimidate women so much they stay away from you. End result: Geeks get no dates, and science is unpopular.
So that explains the "Happy Meal Ethernet" driver for Linux on SPARC systems....
Dupey dupe dupey dupey dupe dupe dupe!
Dupey dupe dupey dupey dupe dupe dupe!
Dupey dupe dupey dupey dupe dupe dupe!
dupe dupe dupe dupe dupey dupe!
*cue horn*
(geez, can I attempt comedy without the compression filter too?)
The brothers reportedly created the virus to deter pirated copies of software they had written.
Predecessor to the SONY rootkit!
*ducks*
A S.Korean Robot won't look like Robocop. They'll probably look something more like Gundam or Macross or something, and if you hook them all up into super mega mecha man... they can really kick some butt. ...or at least they can transform into cars and planes and things.
The problem with any new console is that the best games for it come out last, rather than first - by the time the developers can figure out how to really push the hardware in ways other than making the graphics better. Why not use all that computing resource to power a game with thousands of characters on the screen with each of their own AI? Only a game like that will really test the hardware's mettle. (and it could be more fun than the Doom nuts.wad) I'd say Sony is going to ream Japan with the PS3, but in the US and Europe.... all Microsoft have to do is release Halo 3 and get Bethesda to put Oblivion out at the same time. Should be an interesting fight.
Running around with huge guns and blasting things, and driving around like maniacs is what kids fantasize about all day.... but what do adults fantasize about all day?
Maybe escaping the quiet desperation that is modern civilization, getting out of that boring job, or running a successful enterprise, or doing things which they don't have the time and money to do.... such as build that dream home, or pick up scads of women.
It's not a hard one to figure out if marketing bods pulled their heads out of their collective rear-ends.
Techinically speaking, the pentium D is the tenth generation of intel chip, so sticking with the pentium naming convention - the D in Pentium D should be for "Pentium Decadium" (hey, it rhymes!) A bit more interesting than just plain "D"
You're right about the instability of the Radeon Drivers on Xorg. I have such a setup and I run Debian testing on it with with an AIW Radeon 9700 Pro. Using the latest ATI drivers from Dec last year, even when I'm not running a graphics intensive application, X often seems to hang heavily and without any warning. The system crashes so bad that I can't even switch consoles to halt the machine properly.
I can successfully crash the Xorg every time just by trying to run prboom though. Don't ask me why.
YES! Next time YOU buy a kitchen knife - you're telling companies that it's OK to make knives which may be used to KILL OTHER PEOPLE! THE BLOOD WILL BE ALL OVER YOUR HANDS!
Next time YOU buy a car, you are voting with your purse strings and ENCOURAGING people to smash their cars into pedestrians in hit and run accidents? Is this the country we fought to win?
WHEN YOU BUY ALCOHOL, you are signalling to the rest of the country that YOU ACCEPT a DRUNK SOCIETY. Let's ban ALL ALCOHOL so that will never.... oh,..... what that? They tried that already and it didn't work?
*whistles and twiddles thumbs*
I guess we will be seeing Cell in servers at some point as well, though not as cheap as in a PS3.
Sony probably won't want anyone to run Linux on the PS3, lest geeks start cranking out PS3 server farms, but hopefully Sony will leave enough backdoors so can we can see the PS3 run Linux (or FreeBSD, or some beta OpenSolaris distro). Knoppix running on the PS3 just about removes the need for a home computer.
Hopefully Sony will create such a backdoor. I mean if they can screw up with a rootkit...
*ducks*
If 16Gb = approx 2GB, and there are already 2GB SD Flash memory cards available, does this mean that we could end up with 4GB -> 8GB SD memory cards in the forseeable future?
(Eagerly awaiting next iteration of the Sharp Zaurus!)