What's natural about www.example.com? It looks nothing like any other kind of address. Phone numbers maybe but those are rendered in a very non-uniform way and ".", "/", "-" and " " are all very common separators there.
You just feel that that format feels natural for domain names because that's the way domain names are usually written. If Berners-Lee had went with com/example/www, you'd find "//com/example" to be the natural format.
Of course one could also have had a packet layout like this:
com.example.domain \2
some
other
com.another.domain \1
www
org.another \1
yet \1
blah
Essentially, every line ends with one byte (in order to save space) stating how many of the following lines are direct subdomains of this one. The last line would thus identify org.another.yet.blah. Granted, this would be slightly more computationally intensive than the currently used one.
Come to think of it, if space and computational complexity is that important, one could simply have used the current format - declaring that the order of subdomains in the format is reserved for convenience reasons. It's not like we don't have a few weird file formats that use such reasoning.
Microsoft and Adobe have tried to get Adobe Reader preinstalles but so far they haven't yet found a way to fit both Windows and the Adobe Reader installer on one disc. Hopes are that BluRay usage will take up as with current state-of-the-art compression Adobe Reader almost fits on a single BD-ROM.
There is some truth to that. As an example, I never used Photoshop. Back on windows I used Paint Shop Pro (until it became a lame Photoshop clone with version 8) and on Linux and OS X I used (and still use) the GIMP. I've tried Photoshop but to me the interface is cluttered, confusing and much less clear than that of the GIMP.
Is Photoshop's interface that much worse than that of the infamous GIMP? No, I just happen to have some experience with the GIMP and virtually none with Photoshop. Both have interfaces that expose a lot of functionality to you (= nontrivial interfaces). I go with what I'm productive with, which is the GIMP. Of course thet means that I don't see any point in ever shelling out money for Photoshop.
Mind share builds market share. The question of how harmful piracy is (negative numbers considered possible) is very much dependant on whether the loss in sales outweighs the gain in mind share (which later drives sales). I'd assume that the mind share bonus should be more pronounced for applications like Photoshop or Word than for games.
You won't find exclusive commercial titles for desktop linux (the market isn't there) but maybe the Pandora (a Linux-based handheld console) will be able to attract some developers. The problem, however, is that Linux handhelds have traditionally mostly attracted a homebrew scene but not buyers for commercial games.
One way out of this situation might be ARM's plans to enter the laptop world - ARM laptops will probably run Linux; if there are enough of them it might become feasible to write casual games for them (and if your game relies on vector graphics or can tolerate a small screen you could target ARM laptops and the Pandora simultaneously). Still, I wouldn't count on it.
One problem with many roguelikes is that they are frustratingly difficult (at least for people who don't know exactly what to look out for). One good alternative is DoomRL. Yes, it's Doom in roguelike form, blending FPS and roguelike sensibilities - the game is much more fast-paced than regular roguelikes and much easier to get into. At the same time you not only have a nice skill tree but also a number of challenges ranging from the benign pistols-only "Angel of Marksmanship" to the brutal "Angel of Pacifism" where you can't use weapons (you do get a nuke for killing the Cyberdmon, however).
Add to that a lot of secret levels, unique weapons, weapon and armor mods, mystery levers etc. etc. and you end up with a really nice game with a lot of replay value. Oh, and it has sound and music, too.
Closed yource, though, which is why there are only Windows ans x86 Linux binaries available.
I guess I'm too pampered by other Flash games, which usually have the instructions inside the game. Even though the game does have a keyboard setup, not having it available as a menu item and not offering instructions in-game is really weak in comparison to most Flash games.
No, QWERTZ, which is the default in Germany, for very good reasons (we virtually never use the Y so it doesn't make sense to waste a highly accessible key on it; conversely, we do use the Z fairly often).
Plus, it's not even written that well. The control scheme (which is never explained) makes sense only on QWERTY keyboards and can't be changed and the game occasionally freezes (but that might just be the incredibly buggy "MAC 10,0,32,18" Flash player). The "PC" and "Mac" versions appear to be identical in everything but name and neither is a native binary.
I have no idea why this was considered newsworthy, it's just bad.
Especially since the "Mac version" is just a Zip archive containing an HTML file with the Flash game embedded. What's the difference to the PC version, then?
Yes, but the notion of a stratified service has been virtually unknown in gaming before so it's obvious that the gamers are pissed. Apart from making the difference between gamers with a large disposable income and those without greater (something almost nobody will call a good thing) DLC undermines the assumptons that the companies are (apart from the usual rushed releases) doing their best to deliver me the best game they can. Now I have to assume that they do the absolute minimum to deliver me a playable game and make everything else a separate sale. Things like launch-day DLC leave me no other conclusion.
In essence, I weep for the days when video game companies spent their time thining about how to make the best game they can instead of wondering how to make the most profit off a franchise.
That's not an ad per se, it's product placement. For product placement, similar rules apply - the offhand remark you mentioned is okay because it's unobtrusive. The advantage of product placement is that it's always less obtrusive than an ad unless you really try to shove the product down the viewers' throats.
So you say that anything that allows a writer to quickly go from a script to a movie mockup impedes creativity? I'd say it greatly enables it - with a program like that one could quickly generate animated storyboards, which isn't just awesome (thus enticing more people to do creative writing as a hobby) but also useful if you want to pitch your idea to someone as you can give them a rough impression of how the final result would look.
Sorry, but I can't see your concept as anythng but awesome. Sure, there's all kinds of legal issues but it's still awesome. Think of it as RAD for movies.
Very true. Some TV ads are actually worth seeing. For example a German home improvement store chain is known for clever, sometimes arts ads - one well-known campaign features the lead singer of an old (and well-known) punk band reading from their brochures as if they were great works of literature. It's always fun to see one of their ads and as a result you actually pay attention. Other companies (especially car makers and perfume companies) usually give you generic drek a sane person can't stand to watch.
Likewise in-game ads can be executed well or less-well. Well-done ads integrate with the game world, are unobtrusive and match the game's tone (for example a Coke ad in GTA would be much edgier than a Coke ad in The Sims). In those cases they can actually enhance the game by making the world feel very much like ours.
On the other hand, if you shove the ads into people's faces (loading screen interstitials or scoring board ads), don't bother to adapt the ad to the game or have unrealistically few products advertised (every other billboard showing the same ad) people are going to complain. Rightfully, as the ads greatly degrade the game's athmosphere.
There are ways of making ads really work but they require effort and that costs money. That makes it unlikely that real ads (as opposed to game designer-made fake ones) are ever going to actually improve a game outside the sport simulation genre where generic, obtrusive ads are expected and okay.
Seizure-inducing images, Flash (gotta love Flashblock) and everything that insists on loading external JavaScript. Plus all things that make the page load significantly slower (Google Analytics being an example). Apart from Google Analytics, I never blocked anything on/., for example, until the site offered me to turn off ads because my karma is so good.
If the site offers an ad-free version to me it's obviously okay with them if I don't want to look at their ads.
But isn't it equally as jarring when you use fictional guns or equipment? Looking at, for example, Burnout Paradise, I find not only a completely fictional city but also completely fictional cars. That's not 100% realism. I don't mind. Many games that play now or in the near future have weapons that don't exist, never made it to production or can't possibly work. I don't particularly mind my character holding an H&K G11 but it's nowhere near realistic.
Plus, what if I play a game that only has advertising partners from another region? Or that plays somewhere outside my country? It doesn't make sense to see a Postbank ad in virtual New York and without looking it up on Wikipedia I couldn't discern something like Nutter Butter from a fake product.
Real in-game ads have plenty potential to be jarring; it's easier by far to make fake in-game ads work. Besides, virtually no games besides sports sims and Counterstrike have any semblance of realism anyway.
The problem is that sponsored ads try to sell an existing product to me. I somehow doubt that in 2759 the Angry Whopper (which is neither angry nor a whopper) will be the new big thing. Or Coke Zero. So either the sponsored ads are completely generic ("Drink Coca-Cola") or they don't fit the setting or they advertise something that doesn't exist. I'm fine with the last one but the companies likely aren't.
How about for being the first minority figure to win the highest office of a country in a democratically run election?
Germany had Angela Merkel become Chancellor in 2005. And no, I don't think that there's an objective measure as to how minor a minority is in the context of a democratic election; women had to fight for their rights as well. Of course Merkel is nor the first female elected head of government; that would be Sirimavo Bandaranaike for Ceylon. And I'm certain that other minorities (in whichever context) have acheived head-of-governtment state somewhere before.
I really don't think that being black while being elected president is enough of a deal to warrant the Nobel Prize. Besides, the committee didn't really mention it, either.
I maintain that anyone elected after Bush would've had that effect. The USA went from "known bad" to "possibly less bad". No matter who would've won the election, everyone would've agreed that it was an improvement. The prize was essentially given to Obama for his achievement of getting elected after Bush.
Actually, I haven't noticed much of that. On/. maybe, but apart from that the USA have merely progressed from "dangerous scumbags" to "still dangerous, probably still scumbags". The bg change is that it's a new administration that might be better. Essentially, everyone would have won that Nobel Prize simply for being elected after George Bush.
Slashdot Mirror
So, are all those people who follow trends without thinking and who go vegetarian because it's currently in vegetarian or herbivore?
What's natural about www.example.com? It looks nothing like any other kind of address. Phone numbers maybe but those are rendered in a very non-uniform way and ".", "/", "-" and " " are all very common separators there.
You just feel that that format feels natural for domain names because that's the way domain names are usually written. If Berners-Lee had went with com/example/www, you'd find "//com/example" to be the natural format.
Of course one could also have had a packet layout like this:
com.example.domain \2
some
other
com.another.domain \1
www
org.another \1
yet \1
blah
Essentially, every line ends with one byte (in order to save space) stating how many of the following lines are direct subdomains of this one. The last line would thus identify org.another.yet.blah. Granted, this would be slightly more computationally intensive than the currently used one.
Come to think of it, if space and computational complexity is that important, one could simply have used the current format - declaring that the order of subdomains in the format is reserved for convenience reasons. It's not like we don't have a few weird file formats that use such reasoning.
The correct word is obviously "cardinality".
Microsoft and Adobe have tried to get Adobe Reader preinstalles but so far they haven't yet found a way to fit both Windows and the Adobe Reader installer on one disc. Hopes are that BluRay usage will take up as with current state-of-the-art compression Adobe Reader almost fits on a single BD-ROM.
There is some truth to that. As an example, I never used Photoshop. Back on windows I used Paint Shop Pro (until it became a lame Photoshop clone with version 8) and on Linux and OS X I used (and still use) the GIMP. I've tried Photoshop but to me the interface is cluttered, confusing and much less clear than that of the GIMP.
Is Photoshop's interface that much worse than that of the infamous GIMP? No, I just happen to have some experience with the GIMP and virtually none with Photoshop. Both have interfaces that expose a lot of functionality to you (= nontrivial interfaces). I go with what I'm productive with, which is the GIMP. Of course thet means that I don't see any point in ever shelling out money for Photoshop.
Mind share builds market share. The question of how harmful piracy is (negative numbers considered possible) is very much dependant on whether the loss in sales outweighs the gain in mind share (which later drives sales). I'd assume that the mind share bonus should be more pronounced for applications like Photoshop or Word than for games.
You won't find exclusive commercial titles for desktop linux (the market isn't there) but maybe the Pandora (a Linux-based handheld console) will be able to attract some developers. The problem, however, is that Linux handhelds have traditionally mostly attracted a homebrew scene but not buyers for commercial games.
One way out of this situation might be ARM's plans to enter the laptop world - ARM laptops will probably run Linux; if there are enough of them it might become feasible to write casual games for them (and if your game relies on vector graphics or can tolerate a small screen you could target ARM laptops and the Pandora simultaneously). Still, I wouldn't count on it.
One problem with many roguelikes is that they are frustratingly difficult (at least for people who don't know exactly what to look out for). One good alternative is DoomRL. Yes, it's Doom in roguelike form, blending FPS and roguelike sensibilities - the game is much more fast-paced than regular roguelikes and much easier to get into. At the same time you not only have a nice skill tree but also a number of challenges ranging from the benign pistols-only "Angel of Marksmanship" to the brutal "Angel of Pacifism" where you can't use weapons (you do get a nuke for killing the Cyberdmon, however).
Add to that a lot of secret levels, unique weapons, weapon and armor mods, mystery levers etc. etc. and you end up with a really nice game with a lot of replay value. Oh, and it has sound and music, too.
Closed yource, though, which is why there are only Windows ans x86 Linux binaries available.
I guess I'm too pampered by other Flash games, which usually have the instructions inside the game. Even though the game does have a keyboard setup, not having it available as a menu item and not offering instructions in-game is really weak in comparison to most Flash games.
No, QWERTZ, which is the default in Germany, for very good reasons (we virtually never use the Y so it doesn't make sense to waste a highly accessible key on it; conversely, we do use the Z fairly often).
Plus, it's not even written that well. The control scheme (which is never explained) makes sense only on QWERTY keyboards and can't be changed and the game occasionally freezes (but that might just be the incredibly buggy "MAC 10,0,32,18" Flash player). The "PC" and "Mac" versions appear to be identical in everything but name and neither is a native binary.
I have no idea why this was considered newsworthy, it's just bad.
Especially since the "Mac version" is just a Zip archive containing an HTML file with the Flash game embedded. What's the difference to the PC version, then?
Yes, but the notion of a stratified service has been virtually unknown in gaming before so it's obvious that the gamers are pissed. Apart from making the difference between gamers with a large disposable income and those without greater (something almost nobody will call a good thing) DLC undermines the assumptons that the companies are (apart from the usual rushed releases) doing their best to deliver me the best game they can. Now I have to assume that they do the absolute minimum to deliver me a playable game and make everything else a separate sale. Things like launch-day DLC leave me no other conclusion.
In essence, I weep for the days when video game companies spent their time thining about how to make the best game they can instead of wondering how to make the most profit off a franchise.
That's not an ad per se, it's product placement. For product placement, similar rules apply - the offhand remark you mentioned is okay because it's unobtrusive. The advantage of product placement is that it's always less obtrusive than an ad unless you really try to shove the product down the viewers' throats.
So you say that anything that allows a writer to quickly go from a script to a movie mockup impedes creativity? I'd say it greatly enables it - with a program like that one could quickly generate animated storyboards, which isn't just awesome (thus enticing more people to do creative writing as a hobby) but also useful if you want to pitch your idea to someone as you can give them a rough impression of how the final result would look.
Sorry, but I can't see your concept as anythng but awesome. Sure, there's all kinds of legal issues but it's still awesome. Think of it as RAD for movies.
Very true. Some TV ads are actually worth seeing. For example a German home improvement store chain is known for clever, sometimes arts ads - one well-known campaign features the lead singer of an old (and well-known) punk band reading from their brochures as if they were great works of literature. It's always fun to see one of their ads and as a result you actually pay attention. Other companies (especially car makers and perfume companies) usually give you generic drek a sane person can't stand to watch.
Likewise in-game ads can be executed well or less-well. Well-done ads integrate with the game world, are unobtrusive and match the game's tone (for example a Coke ad in GTA would be much edgier than a Coke ad in The Sims). In those cases they can actually enhance the game by making the world feel very much like ours.
On the other hand, if you shove the ads into people's faces (loading screen interstitials or scoring board ads), don't bother to adapt the ad to the game or have unrealistically few products advertised (every other billboard showing the same ad) people are going to complain. Rightfully, as the ads greatly degrade the game's athmosphere.
There are ways of making ads really work but they require effort and that costs money. That makes it unlikely that real ads (as opposed to game designer-made fake ones) are ever going to actually improve a game outside the sport simulation genre where generic, obtrusive ads are expected and okay.
Seizure-inducing images, Flash (gotta love Flashblock) and everything that insists on loading external JavaScript. Plus all things that make the page load significantly slower (Google Analytics being an example). Apart from Google Analytics, I never blocked anything on /., for example, until the site offered me to turn off ads because my karma is so good.
If the site offers an ad-free version to me it's obviously okay with them if I don't want to look at their ads.
But isn't it equally as jarring when you use fictional guns or equipment? Looking at, for example, Burnout Paradise, I find not only a completely fictional city but also completely fictional cars. That's not 100% realism. I don't mind. Many games that play now or in the near future have weapons that don't exist, never made it to production or can't possibly work. I don't particularly mind my character holding an H&K G11 but it's nowhere near realistic.
Plus, what if I play a game that only has advertising partners from another region? Or that plays somewhere outside my country? It doesn't make sense to see a Postbank ad in virtual New York and without looking it up on Wikipedia I couldn't discern something like Nutter Butter from a fake product.
Real in-game ads have plenty potential to be jarring; it's easier by far to make fake in-game ads work. Besides, virtually no games besides sports sims and Counterstrike have any semblance of realism anyway.
The problem is that sponsored ads try to sell an existing product to me. I somehow doubt that in 2759 the Angry Whopper (which is neither angry nor a whopper) will be the new big thing. Or Coke Zero. So either the sponsored ads are completely generic ("Drink Coca-Cola") or they don't fit the setting or they advertise something that doesn't exist. I'm fine with the last one but the companies likely aren't.
You mean except for the binary on the website (linked to in another comment)?
No, just the head. The French are really good at disconnecting heads of state.
Actually a third; Shimon Peres won it that year as well.
Germany had Angela Merkel become Chancellor in 2005. And no, I don't think that there's an objective measure as to how minor a minority is in the context of a democratic election; women had to fight for their rights as well. Of course Merkel is nor the first female elected head of government; that would be Sirimavo Bandaranaike for Ceylon. And I'm certain that other minorities (in whichever context) have acheived head-of-governtment state somewhere before.
I really don't think that being black while being elected president is enough of a deal to warrant the Nobel Prize. Besides, the committee didn't really mention it, either.
I maintain that anyone elected after Bush would've had that effect. The USA went from "known bad" to "possibly less bad". No matter who would've won the election, everyone would've agreed that it was an improvement. The prize was essentially given to Obama for his achievement of getting elected after Bush.
Actually, I haven't noticed much of that. On /. maybe, but apart from that the USA have merely progressed from "dangerous scumbags" to "still dangerous, probably still scumbags". The bg change is that it's a new administration that might be better. Essentially, everyone would have won that Nobel Prize simply for being elected after George Bush.