"They don't have hookers either. OMG!! A hooker crisis!"
This isn't an entirely valid analogy. If you remember from the summary...
"According to the federal government, just 17% of rural U.S. households subscribe to broadband service." (emphasis mine)
That doesn't mean that everyone who has access to broadband subscribes to it. A better analogy would be that only 18% of people in rural areas using hookers means there's a hooker crisis. A lot of slashdotters just can't wrap their minds around the idea that some people simply don't want broadband.
"The Warriors are so troublesome that Sinistar, while not more difficult than Defender,..."
Did I just step into some alternate reality where Sinistar is the mother of all side-scrolling shooters and Defender is the massively hard top-down shooter where a self-assembling robot demon chases you around screaming "Ron Howard?" I deeply love both games but Sinistar is way harder.
Hey, at least this time when the Wachowski Brothers get credit for something original that's really not original at all, it won't be for raping and pillaging the best ideas from mid-20th Century science fiction novels and short stories. Philip K Dick practically deserved writing credits for the first Matrix movie. I'm a lot less upset about them resurrecting deep focus as something new.
"Sadly TV broadcast through the air *is* being discontinued though"
You keep saying this and it's dead wrong. NTSC is supposedly being discontinued (I'll believe it when they stop pushing back the deadline). ATSC transmissions aren't going anywhere. And ATSC is still very much broadcast TV. It just doesn't work with an NTSC tuner.
"Now we have to pay sometimes hundreds of bucks a month to access the programming on cable and the "free" broadcast TV is being shut down."
What? I still have a nice set of rabbit ears on top of my TV to pick up my television. I pay $0 monthly for TV with an initial purchase of TV ($600) and antennae ($30). That same old antennae can pick up regular broadcast TV and newer digital TV feeds that are just as "free" as the older variety. In fact, depending on your cable/satellite situation, you may be getting a better free signal for your local channels than your pay TV provider is giving you. Free broadcast television isn't going anywhere. You don't have to spend a dime on your monthly TV bill. You just choose to.
What?! One of the greatest games ever made required you to find coke cans to regain health. I guess you're just not a bad enough dude to rescue President Ronnie.
"At least in my field, scientists don't issue corrections like"
Well, maybe not in your field. In my field, I could've seen Dijkstra making such a statement concerning the continued use of GOTO. I don't think it would've made it into a proper EWD and I doubt it would be sent via email since Dijkstra wasn't that fond of personal computers, but I could see him making such a statement.
At first there will be games coming from MTV. But then they'll put out the occasional TV show for your console. At first, they will be relatively good shows like a TV trivia game show with a few good up-and-coming comedians as regulars. You'll buy some of them with your regular game purchases. The next thing you know you'll be trying to find a game for your console but all you'll find are a bunch of lame dating and reality shows and you'll say to yourself, "My God, what have I done?!"
Exactly. Now instead of testing console games to death to make sure there are absolutely no errors making the game unplayable, they can just shovel crap out the door and throw a ton of patches your way like they currently do with PC gaming. All hail the hard drive!
"I have a girlfriend thanks, but I don't want to just jump her. Some of us aren't in it just for getting off."
I know a guy who felt the same way you did towards his girlfriend in high school. Then again, he was in a grade lower than mine and the only way I knew him was because I had sex with his girlfriend (and so did lots of other people).
I don't buy the you're-not-smart-enough-to-get-it argument. I can check off all of your points and never really cared for Futurama. I don't think the general dislike really has to do with the brainy jokes as much as it has to do with episode pacing and the main characters. It also had a weak first few episodes. Family Guy tosses in a lot of pop culture references that go straight over people's heads, but there are still plenty of people who enjoy the show. I know pop culture references aren't the same thing as scientific and political jokes but at the same time, there are probably more people who have taken college Physics than know who Gil Gerrard is. American Dad does the same thing with pop culture references but has a lot fewer fans. The problems isn't the jokes. The problem is the stories that hold the jokes together.
I did like a few Futurama episodes here and there but I would much rather be watching the Simpsons. And I did get it. Just like I got the Matrix sequels and I got the Doctor Who story Ghost Light. I'm not a fan of any though.
It was a joke. Lottery scheduling is an anathema to real time systems for the exact reason you point out: you can't make any gaurantees. I really do like the idea of lottery scheduling but this is not the place.
"Some of the features are a pre-emptable time slicing OS. It defines a number of application slots or partitions which are completely isloated from one another. Each partition then is assigned a quota or multiple quotas of CPU time. For instance 7 ms out of every 200 ms. Each partition is given control of its own resources, a set amount of RAM and Memory, mostly flash based."
I think that was rather obvious. Most early Prius owners just ditched their relatively new cars to get a Prius. Nothing is as good for the environment as trading in a one or two year old 2000-4000 lb hunk of aluminum, steel, glass, and rubber that has at least 8 more years of life left so you can save a marginal amount on gas mileage. If the initial crop of Prius actually care about the environment more than the image, they're being awful clandestine about it.
You have to call customer service directly. They don't exactly advertise that you can have a plan without any text messages at all. They hope to eventually hook you or someone in your plan on the feature since they make a killing on it. I couldn't even get my local Cingular Store to cut off the feature without calling customer service.
"buying your goods from Tom and Amy's hardware store down the street does."
Or depending on how Tom and Amy run their store, it makes you an idiot. In my town, we have two Mom and Popish hardware stores that are really stuggling now that one of the big boxen are in town. And they deserve it. They both close at 5PM (close all day on Sunday), carry minimal inventory, and charge about twice as much for most power tools. One is rather unfriendly and one of them is often staffed by very unknowledgeable high schoolers. I go to one of them still for some lumber and pine bark because their prices are better in those areas but I hate every trip.
On the other hand, we have a locally owned grocery store in my town and I very much prefer it to our other grocery stores in town (especially the Wal-Mart grocery). They are not open on Sunday either but they have better prices and quality on both meat and produce. Their store is very clean even though the building is very old. They even have most of their registers open at any given time so I can get in and out quickly. That's the kind of store I'd really hate to see go. Fortunately, it's rather obvious from the crowd that's always shopping there that it's not going anywhere any time soon.
I guess my point is that Mom and Pop vs. Big Box isn't some black and white battle. Sometimes that big box isn't some dump that just has cheaper prices. And sometimes that mom and pop isn't some wonderful store that's getting run out of town because of consumers wanting to save a buck. Some of those local owners deserve to get run out of business.
A few months ago I bought a Dell with an Athlon X2 3600, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, and XP Home off the Dell Outlet site for $260 shipped. It was "Previously Ordered New" which generally means the original owner never even opened the package. I'll take the crapware and an X2 over no crapware and the C7.
"just to keep them occupied while they're fornicating in the back room with the neighbor."
The kid or the parent? I sure wish I could've fornicated with the neighbor (down the street, not next door mind you) while playing my video game system when I was a kid. That would be sweet!
"All i know is that i buy games based on what entertains me."
I think you have me confused with someone else. I never took a stance one way or another on the merits of EA being innovative. I also buy what entertains me. And if you look at my previous postings regarding EA, I often defend the Madden series in particular for being updated enough that year X of Madden is almost always better than a mere roster update of year X-1. Being more innovative may or may not be a good idea for EA but judging from the quote in the article, I don't think EA even knows what it means to be innovative anymore. That's ok though because I'm not entirely sure I want them to be. To be honest, liking a previous game in a series makes me more apt to try out a sequel.
"many games that lack innovation. He says EA and others need both to push more aggressively beyond traditional audiences to court 'casual' consumers and to experiment more with new sales approaches -- outside the norm of selling $50 to $60 discs with 40-hour games that he says few players ever finish. 'We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play,'" (emphasis mine)
So EA's idea of being innovative is copying Nintendo's recent targeting of casual gamers?
"Really, what gave you the impression that freedom of choice actually exists, in this world that is lead by corporate america?"
Well, the primary thing that gives me that impression is how well VHS held on in the face of the most widely adopted video format ever. You can still get VHS copies of most movies at my local video rental store. Admittedly, that "most" is down to just over half from the 90% or so a few years ago, but that's still a lot of new VHS going around. The movie industry is not going to drop support for DVD until there's just nobody left to buy a DVD. Locking consumers down is not nearly as important to them as making money is. They'd just like to do both if possible.
-When Fallout 3 jumps in the water it doesn't get wet. The water gets Fallout 3. -Fallout 3's tears can cure cancer. Too bad Fallout 3 doesn't cry. Ever. -Guns don't kill people. Fallout 3 kills people. -Fallout 3 is the reason why Waldo is hiding....
Slashdot Mirror
"They don't have hookers either. OMG!! A hooker crisis!"
This isn't an entirely valid analogy. If you remember from the summary...
"According to the federal government, just 17% of rural U.S. households subscribe to broadband service." (emphasis mine)
That doesn't mean that everyone who has access to broadband subscribes to it. A better analogy would be that only 18% of people in rural areas using hookers means there's a hooker crisis. A lot of slashdotters just can't wrap their minds around the idea that some people simply don't want broadband.
"The Warriors are so troublesome that Sinistar, while not more difficult than Defender,..."
Did I just step into some alternate reality where Sinistar is the mother of all side-scrolling shooters and Defender is the massively hard top-down shooter where a self-assembling robot demon chases you around screaming "Ron Howard?" I deeply love both games but Sinistar is way harder.
Hey, at least this time when the Wachowski Brothers get credit for something original that's really not original at all, it won't be for raping and pillaging the best ideas from mid-20th Century science fiction novels and short stories. Philip K Dick practically deserved writing credits for the first Matrix movie. I'm a lot less upset about them resurrecting deep focus as something new.
"Sadly TV broadcast through the air *is* being discontinued though"
You keep saying this and it's dead wrong. NTSC is supposedly being discontinued (I'll believe it when they stop pushing back the deadline). ATSC transmissions aren't going anywhere. And ATSC is still very much broadcast TV. It just doesn't work with an NTSC tuner.
"Now we have to pay sometimes hundreds of bucks a month to access the programming on cable and the "free" broadcast TV is being shut down."
What? I still have a nice set of rabbit ears on top of my TV to pick up my television. I pay $0 monthly for TV with an initial purchase of TV ($600) and antennae ($30). That same old antennae can pick up regular broadcast TV and newer digital TV feeds that are just as "free" as the older variety. In fact, depending on your cable/satellite situation, you may be getting a better free signal for your local channels than your pay TV provider is giving you. Free broadcast television isn't going anywhere. You don't have to spend a dime on your monthly TV bill. You just choose to.
What?! One of the greatest games ever made required you to find coke cans to regain health. I guess you're just not a bad enough dude to rescue President Ronnie.
"At least in my field, scientists don't issue corrections like"
Well, maybe not in your field. In my field, I could've seen Dijkstra making such a statement concerning the continued use of GOTO. I don't think it would've made it into a proper EWD and I doubt it would be sent via email since Dijkstra wasn't that fond of personal computers, but I could see him making such a statement.
At first there will be games coming from MTV. But then they'll put out the occasional TV show for your console. At first, they will be relatively good shows like a TV trivia game show with a few good up-and-coming comedians as regulars. You'll buy some of them with your regular game purchases. The next thing you know you'll be trying to find a game for your console but all you'll find are a bunch of lame dating and reality shows and you'll say to yourself, "My God, what have I done?!"
"Well patches for one..."
Exactly. Now instead of testing console games to death to make sure there are absolutely no errors making the game unplayable, they can just shovel crap out the door and throw a ton of patches your way like they currently do with PC gaming. All hail the hard drive!
"People don't buy a SKU, they buy the XBOX!"
You're very wrong. That little barcode thingy on the box is what costs $449. The rest of the package is their way of saying thanks.
You should've seen what he thought back in 1944.
Why didn't anyone tell me my butt was this big?
"I have a girlfriend thanks, but I don't want to just jump her. Some of us aren't in it just for getting off."
I know a guy who felt the same way you did towards his girlfriend in high school. Then again, he was in a grade lower than mine and the only way I knew him was because I had sex with his girlfriend (and so did lots of other people).
I don't buy the you're-not-smart-enough-to-get-it argument. I can check off all of your points and never really cared for Futurama. I don't think the general dislike really has to do with the brainy jokes as much as it has to do with episode pacing and the main characters. It also had a weak first few episodes. Family Guy tosses in a lot of pop culture references that go straight over people's heads, but there are still plenty of people who enjoy the show. I know pop culture references aren't the same thing as scientific and political jokes but at the same time, there are probably more people who have taken college Physics than know who Gil Gerrard is. American Dad does the same thing with pop culture references but has a lot fewer fans. The problems isn't the jokes. The problem is the stories that hold the jokes together.
I did like a few Futurama episodes here and there but I would much rather be watching the Simpsons. And I did get it. Just like I got the Matrix sequels and I got the Doctor Who story Ghost Light. I'm not a fan of any though.
It was a joke. Lottery scheduling is an anathema to real time systems for the exact reason you point out: you can't make any gaurantees. I really do like the idea of lottery scheduling but this is not the place.
"Some of the features are a pre-emptable time slicing OS. It defines a number of application slots or partitions which are completely isloated from one another. Each partition then is assigned a quota or multiple quotas of CPU time. For instance 7 ms out of every 200 ms. Each partition is given control of its own resources, a set amount of RAM and Memory, mostly flash based."
What? They don't use lottery scheduling?
I think that was rather obvious. Most early Prius owners just ditched their relatively new cars to get a Prius. Nothing is as good for the environment as trading in a one or two year old 2000-4000 lb hunk of aluminum, steel, glass, and rubber that has at least 8 more years of life left so you can save a marginal amount on gas mileage. If the initial crop of Prius actually care about the environment more than the image, they're being awful clandestine about it.
You have to call customer service directly. They don't exactly advertise that you can have a plan without any text messages at all. They hope to eventually hook you or someone in your plan on the feature since they make a killing on it. I couldn't even get my local Cingular Store to cut off the feature without calling customer service.
"buying your goods from Tom and Amy's hardware store down the street does."
Or depending on how Tom and Amy run their store, it makes you an idiot. In my town, we have two Mom and Popish hardware stores that are really stuggling now that one of the big boxen are in town. And they deserve it. They both close at 5PM (close all day on Sunday), carry minimal inventory, and charge about twice as much for most power tools. One is rather unfriendly and one of them is often staffed by very unknowledgeable high schoolers. I go to one of them still for some lumber and pine bark because their prices are better in those areas but I hate every trip.
On the other hand, we have a locally owned grocery store in my town and I very much prefer it to our other grocery stores in town (especially the Wal-Mart grocery). They are not open on Sunday either but they have better prices and quality on both meat and produce. Their store is very clean even though the building is very old. They even have most of their registers open at any given time so I can get in and out quickly. That's the kind of store I'd really hate to see go. Fortunately, it's rather obvious from the crowd that's always shopping there that it's not going anywhere any time soon.
I guess my point is that Mom and Pop vs. Big Box isn't some black and white battle. Sometimes that big box isn't some dump that just has cheaper prices. And sometimes that mom and pop isn't some wonderful store that's getting run out of town because of consumers wanting to save a buck. Some of those local owners deserve to get run out of business.
A few months ago I bought a Dell with an Athlon X2 3600, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, and XP Home off the Dell Outlet site for $260 shipped. It was "Previously Ordered New" which generally means the original owner never even opened the package. I'll take the crapware and an X2 over no crapware and the C7.
"just to keep them occupied while they're fornicating in the back room with the neighbor."
The kid or the parent? I sure wish I could've fornicated with the neighbor (down the street, not next door mind you) while playing my video game system when I was a kid. That would be sweet!
"All i know is that i buy games based on what entertains me."
I think you have me confused with someone else. I never took a stance one way or another on the merits of EA being innovative. I also buy what entertains me. And if you look at my previous postings regarding EA, I often defend the Madden series in particular for being updated enough that year X of Madden is almost always better than a mere roster update of year X-1. Being more innovative may or may not be a good idea for EA but judging from the quote in the article, I don't think EA even knows what it means to be innovative anymore. That's ok though because I'm not entirely sure I want them to be. To be honest, liking a previous game in a series makes me more apt to try out a sequel.
"many games that lack innovation. He says EA and others need both to push more aggressively beyond traditional audiences to court 'casual' consumers and to experiment more with new sales approaches -- outside the norm of selling $50 to $60 discs with 40-hour games that he says few players ever finish. 'We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play,'" (emphasis mine)
So EA's idea of being innovative is copying Nintendo's recent targeting of casual gamers?
"Really, what gave you the impression that freedom of choice actually exists, in this world that is lead by corporate america?"
Well, the primary thing that gives me that impression is how well VHS held on in the face of the most widely adopted video format ever. You can still get VHS copies of most movies at my local video rental store. Admittedly, that "most" is down to just over half from the 90% or so a few years ago, but that's still a lot of new VHS going around. The movie industry is not going to drop support for DVD until there's just nobody left to buy a DVD. Locking consumers down is not nearly as important to them as making money is. They'd just like to do both if possible.
-When Fallout 3 jumps in the water it doesn't get wet. The water gets Fallout 3. ...
-Fallout 3's tears can cure cancer. Too bad Fallout 3 doesn't cry. Ever.
-Guns don't kill people. Fallout 3 kills people.
-Fallout 3 is the reason why Waldo is hiding.