Mac is down to 1 or 2 % market share. Switching to a different processor is an insane marketting decision at this point. Look at the losses in market share that apple has scored with each major change. This one could finish them off.
Current applications will not run on the new Intel based systems, except in emmmmuuuuullllaaaatttiiiooonn - sloooowwwwww. It will take a re-compilation of the OS to execute on x86 processors.
Why Apple didn't go out of their way to get on the Cell is beyond me. Can anyone here enlighten me?
Hear, Hear man! This is the reoccuring theme in the later Star Wars material - that the Jedi inclination to inaction, basically a buddhist trait, ultimately lead to their downfall.
Hidden stats and formulas - It also meant that you didn't know your race/class combo was non-viable until you had been playing it for 2 months. It also means that the developers will change the values every patch just to see what happens, i.e. they are experimenting on you.
Original EQ-style models - I agree. The later models were generic.
Kill stealing - Watch out what you wish for, you just might get it.
Death penalty - True. But it also motivates you to avoid everywhere but the place with the highest reward/risk ratio. This is a large part of the reason that most EQ dungeons were totally under-used. Everybody ends up in the same area, because it's the least deadly and offers the best reward.
Runs through desolation - I totally agree.
Looting an item in PvP - If your looking for PvP, well, I would look somewhere other than to this group of designers.
Don't test every single possible scenario - I totally disagree with this. I saw bugs slip through test on some MMOs that were so bad they had to roll the servers back 8 hours because within 24 hours everyone would have had millions of the top value coins. Test, test and test some more.
Instancing does not belong - and it doesn't bother you that the whole population of the server is supported by 2 farms. Or that 1 sq mile of area has 300 bears wandering in it? Or the 100 orcs that live in a tiny tunnel system?
Don't chicken out! - we wouldn't want anyone to have fun.
I haven't given this game more than a passing look, but it looks like the chance of it making all the same mistakes as EQ (without the good stuff of EQ) is very high.
The first thing they have to learn is how to balance. Balance classes against each other, balance difficulty vs enjoyment - I never saw any sign that they had figured that out when they ran EQ.
There is a lot more competition out there than there was in the early days of EQ. Part of what kept everyone coming back was that there just wasn't anywhere else to go - that's not true now. Maybe McQuad and Co will rise to the challenge.
It took a huge amount of computing power and lots of tricky programming to build a computer that could beat a Grand Master at chess, and chess is easy for a compuer - it's pure math. The number of possible moves are finite.
In games like Civ it's possible to have strong computer opponents that play by the same rules as the player. But in FPS, MMOGS and RPGs it's just not possible. Computers are just logic machines.
The next generation of consoles may offer performance that makes slightly better AI possible, but it won't be much better - in fact it may well be worse because the focus is more on eye candy.
Seeing the Anakin character get his legs cut off and then burned was worth it. I know it was supposed to be tragic, but I almost burst out laughing.
A lot of the actors in this movie are world class, not the brad pit wantabe that played Anakin. It almost as if Lucas made the others act cheesy so the Anakin actor wouldn't look so bad. The dialog was about par with a soap opera.
Actually, I think lucas just forgot how to direct actors.
Outsourcing is proving to be more expensive than originally thought and highly inefficient.
Also there is the problem of handing your companies IP over to individual in foriegn countries that are effectively beyond the reach of any US copyright law.
Jobs making websites are probably gone for good, but software jobs were domain experience and specialized skills are required are proving to be difficult to ship out of country.
Of course CS enrollment has fallen through the floor because all these companies were saying they were gonna outsource all the IT jobs. Hiring Osama doesn't look nearly as good as it did in 2000. Also, a new era of protectionism may just be around the corner.
So it costs about $200. What about the price of electricity to recharge the battery? How long will the 'optional' 15" monitory run off of a battery charge. 15" CRTs are real cheap, but suck a lot of juice, 15" LCDs - not so cheap. What about internet service...
Last year, an xpert on 3rd wold development was on NPR talking about how Africa could be jump-started into the 21st century if only the peasant villagers had PCs so they could connect to the internet to get better prices for their agricultural good.
To the technologically unsavy it sounds like a good plan. But in reality, if the nearest place you can recharge your lithium battery is 10, 50 or 100km away and you don't have a car (and there is no road there anyway) - what is the point??
Clean water, a decent road to the nearest port of railhead, a sewage system, medical care and electricity are far more important and useful to most subsitance farmers than something to play solitare for 6 hours every 2 months.
A PC isn't that useful of a tool until you have INFRASTRUCTURE and that cost serious money.
Although I tend to agree with his former grad student in terms of philosophies on scientific theories, I have always been impressed with Penrose. This books sounds like one that deserves a place in the library of Alexandria.
It's possible that this movie maybe even worse than the last two. I am not sure if I would be sad watching Lucas self-destruct on screen or if I would get a kick out of it.
What a lack of imagination and Technical Knowledge
on
Space Elevator Update
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I am amazed at the lack of vision and basic technical knowledge most of the nay-sayers here on Slashdot display.
There is no doubt that it will take major developments in material sciences to make a SE practical. The possibility of breakage and sabotage would also have to be studied and mitigated. But right now, this is the only realistic possibility we have of becoming a space-faring species in the next couple of centuries.
An SE could lifts 10s of millions of tons of cargo into space each year. Once a critical mass of material and industry was in orbit it would be possible to colonize Mars and the Asteroid belt. Interstellar probes could be constructed and sent on their way. Trillions of dollar worth of palladium, silver, gold and platnium could be extracted from metallic asteroids to be used in manufacturing.
Is it risky, sure it is - but no more than crossing the Atlantic in a little wooden boat in the 15th century.
"The benefits are small. The energy needed to shift a payload from the bottom to the top remains the same with or without the structure. The amount of money and energy spent on building the structure needs to be recovered in improved efficiency, and that seems unlikely."
This is not correct. A rocket has to lift it's fuel, which generally wieghs several hundred times it's payload's weight. Most of the fuel (99%) goes to lift itself.
The SE can use an electrical power-plant to supply the energy to lift payloads into space. This is much cheaper and much more efficient and stays on the ground. Rockets are have to carry all of their power generating equipment with them. They are very inefficient, very expensive and highly explosive.
I have never bought into the Anakin character. I have never cared about it. The last two movies had some of the best actors around - not necessarily giving their best performances, but still it's going to take a much better quality actor than the ones that played Anakin in the last two movies to even be noticeable in a scene with Portman or McGregor. If they have the same bland, c-grade actor playing Anakin as played him in the last movie, the movie is in deep trouble.
I think it would have worked much better if the Anakin character had been about 15 at the start of the last Trilogy and Lucas had hired somebody that could act.
The best thing that could happen is that the Anakin character would die in the first 5 minutes of the movie to be replaced with something that would be more interesting, like a wet paper bag.
What has really disappointed me is that Lucas has these really great actors playing the supporting roles and a card-board cutout as the main character. Unfortunately, The special effects have often been - well - boring.
Anakin and Padme return to their happy home only to discover Padme's long-lost Husband survived that speeder crash after all. Of course he had amensia after the crash and had to have plastic surgery that made him look just like Jar-Jar and then he became a priest and then a policeman and then a doctor.
A non-techie CEO or Manager could work for some tech companies, but it depends upon how technical the company is. If the company is actually a big holding company that owns a lot of smaller high tech firms, it would probably work to have a non-technical manager. The CEO would be far enough removed from any day to day technical decisions where ignorance could do real damage. They could focus on selling the company and coordinating the operations at a large scale where people management and organization is far more important that making technical decisions.
If the company is smaller, then the CEO should be an ex-techie and be very familiar with how the company operates, it customers and it's products.
Bringing in someone like Fionia ( or whatever her name was ) to manage a computer company was a bad ideal. Bringing someone like her on to manage a company that builds heavy metal with millions of lines of code to control all the moving parts, would be such a bad ideal, it would never even be considered.
"Why 'edit' this site at all if you're going to masturbate on donuts all day?"
Somebody is responsible for editting this site? I thought this shit was just a free-for-all. I figured that cowboy ned and some of his outofwork dotcom flunky friends probably ran this site off of his dad's old 386 running apache and haX0R linxus.
I wish they would get some real forum software instead of this crap.
Slashdot Mirror
Now that would make some kind of sense. Even stealing just a little of MicroSofts pie would bring in the big bucks.
Current applications will not run on the new Intel based systems, except in emmmmuuuuullllaaaatttiiiooonn - sloooowwwwww. It will take a re-compilation of the OS to execute on x86 processors.
Why Apple didn't go out of their way to get on the Cell is beyond me. Can anyone here enlighten me?
Hear, Hear man! This is the reoccuring theme in the later Star Wars material - that the Jedi inclination to inaction, basically a buddhist trait, ultimately lead to their downfall.
Original EQ-style models - I agree. The later models were generic.
Kill stealing - Watch out what you wish for, you just might get it.
Death penalty - True. But it also motivates you to avoid everywhere but the place with the highest reward/risk ratio. This is a large part of the reason that most EQ dungeons were totally under-used. Everybody ends up in the same area, because it's the least deadly and offers the best reward.
Runs through desolation - I totally agree.
Looting an item in PvP - If your looking for PvP, well, I would look somewhere other than to this group of designers.
Don't test every single possible scenario - I totally disagree with this. I saw bugs slip through test on some MMOs that were so bad they had to roll the servers back 8 hours because within 24 hours everyone would have had millions of the top value coins. Test, test and test some more.
Instancing does not belong - and it doesn't bother you that the whole population of the server is supported by 2 farms. Or that 1 sq mile of area has 300 bears wandering in it? Or the 100 orcs that live in a tiny tunnel system?
Don't chicken out! - we wouldn't want anyone to have fun.
I haven't given this game more than a passing look, but it looks like the chance of it making all the same mistakes as EQ (without the good stuff of EQ) is very high.
The first thing they have to learn is how to balance. Balance classes against each other, balance difficulty vs enjoyment - I never saw any sign that they had figured that out when they ran EQ.
There is a lot more competition out there than there was in the early days of EQ. Part of what kept everyone coming back was that there just wasn't anywhere else to go - that's not true now. Maybe McQuad and Co will rise to the challenge.
In games like Civ it's possible to have strong computer opponents that play by the same rules as the player. But in FPS, MMOGS and RPGs it's just not possible. Computers are just logic machines.
The next generation of consoles may offer performance that makes slightly better AI possible, but it won't be much better - in fact it may well be worse because the focus is more on eye candy.
Yes. He doesn't have a clue what he's talking about when it comes to instruction ordering.
The galaxy is a better place without the Sith, but it is also a better place without the Jedi.
A lot of the actors in this movie are world class, not the brad pit wantabe that played Anakin. It almost as if Lucas made the others act cheesy so the Anakin actor wouldn't look so bad. The dialog was about par with a soap opera.
Actually, I think lucas just forgot how to direct actors.
Also there is the problem of handing your companies IP over to individual in foriegn countries that are effectively beyond the reach of any US copyright law.
Jobs making websites are probably gone for good, but software jobs were domain experience and specialized skills are required are proving to be difficult to ship out of country.
Of course CS enrollment has fallen through the floor because all these companies were saying they were gonna outsource all the IT jobs. Hiring Osama doesn't look nearly as good as it did in 2000. Also, a new era of protectionism may just be around the corner.
Proof that the one hit can be turned into a business model if it's in demand enough.
Last year, an xpert on 3rd wold development was on NPR talking about how Africa could be jump-started into the 21st century if only the peasant villagers had PCs so they could connect to the internet to get better prices for their agricultural good.
To the technologically unsavy it sounds like a good plan. But in reality, if the nearest place you can recharge your lithium battery is 10, 50 or 100km away and you don't have a car (and there is no road there anyway) - what is the point??
Clean water, a decent road to the nearest port of railhead, a sewage system, medical care and electricity are far more important and useful to most subsitance farmers than something to play solitare for 6 hours every 2 months.
A PC isn't that useful of a tool until you have INFRASTRUCTURE and that cost serious money.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Although I tend to agree with his former grad student in terms of philosophies on scientific theories, I have always been impressed with Penrose. This books sounds like one that deserves a place in the library of Alexandria.
May the Force be with you!
It's possible that this movie maybe even worse than the last two. I am not sure if I would be sad watching Lucas self-destruct on screen or if I would get a kick out of it.
What about the teats?
I am amazed at the lack of vision and basic technical knowledge most of the nay-sayers here on Slashdot display.
There is no doubt that it will take major developments in material sciences to make a SE practical. The possibility of breakage and sabotage would also have to be studied and mitigated. But right now, this is the only realistic possibility we have of becoming a space-faring species in the next couple of centuries.
An SE could lifts 10s of millions of tons of cargo into space each year. Once a critical mass of material and industry was in orbit it would be possible to colonize Mars and the Asteroid belt. Interstellar probes could be constructed and sent on their way. Trillions of dollar worth of palladium, silver, gold and platnium could be extracted from metallic asteroids to be used in manufacturing.
Is it risky, sure it is - but no more than crossing the Atlantic in a little wooden boat in the 15th century.
"The benefits are small. The energy needed to shift a payload from the bottom to the top remains the same with or without the structure. The amount of money and energy spent on building the structure needs to be recovered in improved efficiency, and that seems unlikely."
This is not correct. A rocket has to lift it's fuel, which generally wieghs several hundred times it's payload's weight. Most of the fuel (99%) goes to lift itself.
The SE can use an electrical power-plant to supply the energy to lift payloads into space. This is much cheaper and much more efficient and stays on the ground. Rockets are have to carry all of their power generating equipment with them. They are very inefficient, very expensive and highly explosive.
NO UN REGULATION! Oh please, if you really had a lameness filter it would filter out this crappy BB software you use.
I have never bought into the Anakin character. I have never cared about it. The last two movies had some of the best actors around - not necessarily giving their best performances, but still it's going to take a much better quality actor than the ones that played Anakin in the last two movies to even be noticeable in a scene with Portman or McGregor. If they have the same bland, c-grade actor playing Anakin as played him in the last movie, the movie is in deep trouble.
I think it would have worked much better if the Anakin character had been about 15 at the start of the last Trilogy and Lucas had hired somebody that could act.
The best thing that could happen is that the Anakin character would die in the first 5 minutes of the movie to be replaced with something that would be more interesting, like a wet paper bag.
What has really disappointed me is that Lucas has these really great actors playing the supporting roles and a card-board cutout as the main character. Unfortunately, The special effects have often been - well - boring.
Anakin and Padme return to their happy home only to discover Padme's long-lost Husband survived that speeder crash after all. Of course he had amensia after the crash and had to have plastic surgery that made him look just like Jar-Jar and then he became a priest and then a policeman and then a doctor.
If you forget that all hope is lost. - Strousup
A non-techie CEO or Manager could work for some tech companies, but it depends upon how technical the company is. If the company is actually a big holding company that owns a lot of smaller high tech firms, it would probably work to have a non-technical manager. The CEO would be far enough removed from any day to day technical decisions where ignorance could do real damage. They could focus on selling the company and coordinating the operations at a large scale where people management and organization is far more important that making technical decisions.
If the company is smaller, then the CEO should be an ex-techie and be very familiar with how the company operates, it customers and it's products.
Bringing in someone like Fionia ( or whatever her name was ) to manage a computer company was a bad ideal. Bringing someone like her on to manage a company that builds heavy metal with millions of lines of code to control all the moving parts, would be such a bad ideal, it would never even be considered.
they would have known that sitting around doing their pseudo-buddhist bullshit is exactly what the Sith want them to do.
"We sense a disturbance in the Force. If we meditate on balance and pretend we don't notice it, this new Sith threat will reveal itself soon enough."
BUZZZHHT. WHACK! THUD!
Easy as shooting monks in a cargo pod with a mandalorian blaster.
LOL - rootkit explorer.
"Why 'edit' this site at all if you're going to masturbate on donuts all day?"
Somebody is responsible for editting this site? I thought this shit was just a free-for-all. I figured that cowboy ned and some of his outofwork dotcom flunky friends probably ran this site off of his dad's old 386 running apache and haX0R linxus.
I wish they would get some real forum software instead of this crap.