They should have stuck with 'Revolution'
on
Both Sides of Wii
·
· Score: 1
They should have stuck with 'Revolution'. Or alternatively, given that the names of most new consoles these days are variations on their predecessors, why not GameCube 2? Or GameCube Revolution?
On the Internet in general, there are 'geeks' who are obsessed by almost anything; it's one of the great things about the Internet. Name a band, or a TV show, or a movie, or a political ideology, or a social cause, or an OS, or a public transport system, or a piece of technology, etc., and inevitably you can find someone out there who has devoted an IRC channel, or a message board, or a website to the topic.
In defence of Wikipedia, while anyone can edit any article, it would be interesting to see what percentage of article edits on a given topic are made by members of the general public, vs. people who are the 'geeks' of those topics, who post on message boards on the subject, and create the websites on the topic. Given the ammout of fairly obscure knowledge which has accumulated on certain topics (be they bands, TV shows, movies, etc.) my guess that a fair ammount of the articles on Wikipedia have been extensively written and edited by the 'geeks' of whatever a given article is about. If this is the case, then reading a Wikipedia article on, say, The Simpsons is like consulting with the collective knowledge of the geeks who populate the message boards, chatrooms, and newsgroups dedicated to The Simpsons; or asking one of the geeks what they know about the subject. Not necessarily accurate, but certainly better than asking Joe Sixpack's opinion.
For example, take a look at the following quote from the Wikipedia article on the (now defunct) WCW wrestling promotion:
Crockett had almost accomplished his goal of creating a national federation. Between his purchasing several NWA territories, World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas leaving the NWA in 1986 (and later merging with Jerry Lawler's Championship Wrestling Alliance in Memphis to create the United States Wrestling Association), and the once highly viable Portland territory going bankrupt (it closed in 1992), he was the last bastion of the NWA, and the last member with national TV exposure. Since it was all they now saw, many people began to believe that World Championship Wrestling was the NWA. World Championship Wrestling and the NWA were still two separate entities, though, with Crockett as NWA President, they were very much on the same page. By this point, the NWA was effectively an on paper organization funded by Crockett, and allowed Crockett to use the NWA brand-name.
However, it takes a large amount of capital to take a wrestling federation on a national tour, and Crockett's territorial acquisitions had seriously drained WCW's coffers. He was in a similar situation to that of the WWF in the early 1980s: a large debt load, and the success or failure of a federation hinging on the success or failure of a couple of PPVs. Crockett marketed StarrCade '87 as the NWA's answer to WrestleMania, however neither it, nor Bunkhouse Stampede, drew enough money to keep Crockett's promotion afloat.
On November 21, 1988, Crockett's struggling firm was purchased outright by billionaire media mogul Ted Turner, the Atlanta-based owner of the cable TV networks TBS and TNT, among other interests. Crockett remained NWA President until 1991.
Who, bar a wrestling geek, would know, remember, or care about the aquisitions and financial position of a now-bankrupt wrestling federation over 15 years ago?
Now there is a degree of elitism in our society, that unless information comes from accademia, or a reputable news source, information is useless. I think - given the geek communities out there - the quality of information in Wikipedia is often better than it is given credit for.
Could there be a commercial opportunity in forking Wikipedia, and then having an advertising-supported business hire some editors and professionals to verify Wikipedia articles, perhaps in conjunction with other content? Or perhaps having a university fork Wikipedia and then flag which edits have been verified, or edited, by students or professors of the subjects covered by a particular article? Or perhaps introducing a Slashdot-style moderation system (where you can by default, for instance, only see edits which are rated 5*'s or higher?)
A hard science channel, at least for the immediate time being, would be a niche channel. It may attract a large enough audience to remain viable, but unless it is significantly dumbed down, I can't imagine that niche would be a really large one.
And this doesn't mean that those who chose not to be viewers of such a channel are "dumb". The truth is that a lot of people - really intelligent people for that matter - don't particularly find subject matter that leads to a lot of thinking an appealing use of the time where they don't have to. A lot of people are under a lot of stress, between work, jobs, family, etc.; and don't want to do a lot of extra mental heavy lifting in their leisure time.
The other thing is that, for many people, hard science is difficult. This, again, doesn't necessarily mean that they're dumb; just that they've gone through life without having a good education about science. Call it a problem with the education system, or the way many children are raised, but the sad truth is many people just don't 'get' science.
So will it be a mainstream success? If I were a gambling man, I'd almost certainly say no, mostly for the reasons outlined above. But I don't think that high ratings is the point of putting together a hard science channel; rather the point is to attract a core demographic of people who are interested. And, assuming that the channel can find advertisers who are willing to pay a premium for people who spend their leaisure time thinking about hard science, it can be a success.
The truth, I imagine, is that games like this are relatively cheap to develop. 6 or 7 titles out of a back catalogue, decent emulator, maybe some old advertising material, and a UI.
And there must be a market of people who like the nostalgia but either:
a) Can't be bothered getting out the old Atari or Commodore 64
b) Can't be bothered, or don't want to, download ROM images and an emulator, or
c) Like the nostalgia of old games,a nd are willing to pay for the conveninece of playing them on a new console.
Video game companies, right back to Atari, have used comics to try to move copies of video games. Acclaim, before going under, at one point owned a comic book division. So my question is, what is so noteworthy about Maxis marketing The Urbz with an online comic?
The problem with PPC Windows is that the vast bulk of the market share - at least in the consumer market - for PPC hardware is held by Apple. Therefore, unless Apple wanted to continue making PPC's and were to drop OSX, I really can't see this happening.
As mentioned numerous times already in this thread, OS-X is arguably a much better OS than Windows, and I doubt that most OS-X users would switch from it to Windows. Again, especially without Apple's support.
Given that the camera is only 1,22 MP, I wouldn't consider this as primarily being a camera. That said, I think the idea of a device that is primarily a camera, with a built in hard disk (that also plays MP3's) would be a good idea for Olympus, given that they are primarily known - rightly or wrongly - as a camera company. However, you would need significantly higher definition than 1,22 MP to do this.
The sad truth is that, even though Apple is arguably in the best position they have been in in over a decade - certainly since the Scully and Spindler era - there will always be naysayers claiming that Apple's impending doom is just around the corner...
Okay, the idea - the guiding philosophy - behind any UI should be to "get stuff done". One feature that I'd love to see implemented in a GUI - across the board - is "User Modes".
Something along the lines of - on the desktop somewhere - a pull down menu with the options "Beginner / Novice / Intermediate / Experienced / Advanced".
Beginner mode is designed with the first time / technophobic user in mind. Big buttons, fewer options, cute puppy dogs and paperclips, lots of hand holding. The stuff that drives most of the rest of us mad (the Office paperclip, for example) is handy for first time users.
Novice mode is designed for users who use their computers for basic tasks, but get confused when things go out of the ordinary. More options and less hand-holding than beginner, but most of the decisions are still made on their behalf by the OS or programs.
Intermediate mode for your average, middle of the road tech literate user. They know how to do what they need, and find the hand-holding annoying. They happily know what to they need to do until something breaks. The aim is to make sure it doesn't.
Intermediate users probably don't need to see an xterm window, and running one should even be an option for people in beginner / novice mode.
Experienced users are power users. They know their way around a GUI and are computer confident, but don't necessarily know the inner workings. More options, most decisions made for themselves.
Finally, advanced mode. "Advanced" in this case is a codeword for geek. All those cool features you think you'd like, but would either be useless to your average or beginner user? Or would confuse them? Cram 'em in here.
* * * * *
These settings would apply to all apps. Especially with beginners and novices, consistancy is important.
If they need settings or features, the options are up the user mode tree, and thus someone more experienced than them would do the configuring.
Open Source Fund to buy out these companies?
on
Corel Goes Private
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm just wondering if the Open Source community should set up a fund to, in future, buy out companies like Corel, and release their intellectual property as open source under GNU.
Perhaps not as much Corel as Adobe, and its ilk. Think '80s style corporate raiding, except we raid intellectual property. Stuff like offices and the like get sold on the market, funding more purchases.
Or am I just insane?
Slashdot Mirror
Why did I get the feeling that this ain't gonna end well for AT&T?
Under what license is this offered? Is the license compatible with GNU - FDL, and could this content be incorporated into Wikibooks or Wikiversity?
So how is this not simply automated discourse analysis?
They should have stuck with 'Revolution'. Or alternatively, given that the names of most new consoles these days are variations on their predecessors, why not GameCube 2? Or GameCube Revolution?
Could there be a commercial opportunity in forking Wikipedia, and then having an advertising-supported business hire some editors and professionals to verify Wikipedia articles, perhaps in conjunction with other content? Or perhaps having a university fork Wikipedia and then flag which edits have been verified, or edited, by students or professors of the subjects covered by a particular article? Or perhaps introducing a Slashdot-style moderation system (where you can by default, for instance, only see edits which are rated 5*'s or higher?)
And this doesn't mean that those who chose not to be viewers of such a channel are "dumb". The truth is that a lot of people - really intelligent people for that matter - don't particularly find subject matter that leads to a lot of thinking an appealing use of the time where they don't have to. A lot of people are under a lot of stress, between work, jobs, family, etc.; and don't want to do a lot of extra mental heavy lifting in their leisure time.
The other thing is that, for many people, hard science is difficult. This, again, doesn't necessarily mean that they're dumb; just that they've gone through life without having a good education about science. Call it a problem with the education system, or the way many children are raised, but the sad truth is many people just don't 'get' science.
So will it be a mainstream success? If I were a gambling man, I'd almost certainly say no, mostly for the reasons outlined above. But I don't think that high ratings is the point of putting together a hard science channel; rather the point is to attract a core demographic of people who are interested. And, assuming that the channel can find advertisers who are willing to pay a premium for people who spend their leaisure time thinking about hard science, it can be a success.
And there must be a market of people who like the nostalgia but either:
a) Can't be bothered getting out the old Atari or Commodore 64
b) Can't be bothered, or don't want to, download ROM images and an emulator, or
c) Like the nostalgia of old games,a nd are willing to pay for the conveninece of playing them on a new console.
Seems to make business sense to me!
As mentioned numerous times already in this thread, OS-X is arguably a much better OS than Windows, and I doubt that most OS-X users would switch from it to Windows. Again, especially without Apple's support.
The sad truth is that, even though Apple is arguably in the best position they have been in in over a decade - certainly since the Scully and Spindler era - there will always be naysayers claiming that Apple's impending doom is just around the corner...
Okay, the idea - the guiding philosophy - behind any UI should be to "get stuff done". One feature that I'd love to see implemented in a GUI - across the board - is "User Modes". Something along the lines of - on the desktop somewhere - a pull down menu with the options "Beginner / Novice / Intermediate / Experienced / Advanced". Beginner mode is designed with the first time / technophobic user in mind. Big buttons, fewer options, cute puppy dogs and paperclips, lots of hand holding. The stuff that drives most of the rest of us mad (the Office paperclip, for example) is handy for first time users. Novice mode is designed for users who use their computers for basic tasks, but get confused when things go out of the ordinary. More options and less hand-holding than beginner, but most of the decisions are still made on their behalf by the OS or programs. Intermediate mode for your average, middle of the road tech literate user. They know how to do what they need, and find the hand-holding annoying. They happily know what to they need to do until something breaks. The aim is to make sure it doesn't. Intermediate users probably don't need to see an xterm window, and running one should even be an option for people in beginner / novice mode. Experienced users are power users. They know their way around a GUI and are computer confident, but don't necessarily know the inner workings. More options, most decisions made for themselves. Finally, advanced mode. "Advanced" in this case is a codeword for geek. All those cool features you think you'd like, but would either be useless to your average or beginner user? Or would confuse them? Cram 'em in here. * * * * * These settings would apply to all apps. Especially with beginners and novices, consistancy is important. If they need settings or features, the options are up the user mode tree, and thus someone more experienced than them would do the configuring.
I'm just wondering if the Open Source community should set up a fund to, in future, buy out companies like Corel, and release their intellectual property as open source under GNU. Perhaps not as much Corel as Adobe, and its ilk. Think '80s style corporate raiding, except we raid intellectual property. Stuff like offices and the like get sold on the market, funding more purchases. Or am I just insane?