Personally, I see the audioplug necklace as something pretty much anyone would see as cool. Especially if she's into DJing or just live music in general.
But the Cat5 bracelet? It just looks like a bunch of 10 cent wire strands attached to a clasp. I wouldn't recommend that unless you wanted to be both ripped of and have your girlfriend break up with you.
So the media conglomerates are demanding DRM on user-created content? I don't get it.
I'd imagine that DRM on user-created content would make it easier for smaller artists/groups to make music without having to deal with piracy.
While the **AA's make a huge deal out of it for Avril Lavigne and whatnot, smaller artists are hit harder by piracy. If you're selling 1,000 CDs a year, 200 people pirating music is a much bigger hit than if you sell 1,000,000 CDs a year.
And #4 is while I'll buy it. Worst case scenario: Longhorn is OS X without Darwin.
Then I can run all my programs, upgrade ALL of my hardware, and dual boot Linux if I wanted to. Plus I'll have all the features in OS X that I like - a 3D accelerated API, searching via metadata, and a decent command line. Sounds like a win-win situation for me.
Transparency effects are nothing new..
on
Longhorn Preview
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· Score: 2, Informative
IEEE = Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Interestingly enough, electrical and electronics engineers design audio equipment. Because, you know, there are electronics inside of audio equipment.
Have you ever heard of Digital Signal Processing (DSPs)? There's an entire field of EE dedicated to that.
Even if you're as efficient as possible, you'll still end up spending way more time than any casual gamer is willing to spend. IMHO, 'casual gamer' and 'MMOG' should never be mentioned in the same sentence.
99% of MMOG's (except Guild Wars, but it's not quite a normal MMOG, I'd say it's more like PSO) depend on subscriptions for their main profit. This leads to design decisions that would be considered horrible in any other type of game: infamous level grinds, mandatory level cap quests that require hours of killing to find some rare item, and worst of all, forced grouping (I'm looking at you, FFXI).
I quit FFXI for two of those reasons. I was looking for something to play one or two hours a night, but the combination of forced grouping (Waiting 45 minutes to an hour for a WHM was just too painful) and the level grind made it impossible to get anything useful done in less than two hours.
WoW looks like it may have resolved a lot of these issues. A lot of the 'hardcore' guys criticize it for being 'too easy' to get to high levels, but from my limited experience, it seems like the fun/grind ratio is much higher than it is for any other MMO I've played.
"Either it does, or it doesn't. Anything's fifty percent. Either I win the lottery, or I don't. Either I find that uber rare weapon in some random MMORPG, or I don't."
"quite a few residential broadband providers are blocking many incoming ports due to the threat windows boxes pose to the reliability of their networks."
So you're saying it's BS unless the computer is exposed to conditions that it wouldn't be exposed to in the real world?
I can see the next article on/.: Sophos AV says 99% of Linux machines fall victim to rootkits within the first 10 minutes of being online.
I'd like to see the actual numbers and the methodology of their study. It seems like all of the compromising attacks require action on the part of the user, like downloading unknown attachments, clicking spam links, and browsing shady porn sites.
I don't see how any of those could be affect turning on your computer and using automatic updates.
Ah, I forgot about RE4. But RE4 doesn't really count much, because of the copious use of preendered backgrounds. Baten Kaitos, another game that was one of the GC's prettiest, also relied heavily on prerendering.
Except that has no practical use. People would use the slideshow with a soundtrack option, and would move the scrollwheel as fast as they could so they could get motion.
I think they got something like 10 or 15 FPS... And I doubt you could keep up a consistent rate of motion for any longer than a minute.
"Guess who ended up with the best graphics of the generation... Nintendo!"
No.
Currently, The GameCube's prettiest game is Metroid Prime 2. Compare that to Ninja Gaiden, which was released a year beforehand. MP2 gets points for style, but Ninja Gaiden just looks better.
They did withold information. If you read the Wikipedia Article, you'll immediately notice one statement that contradicts most of waht you stated.
"Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did not give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis; instead they were told they had "bad blood" and could receive free treatment."
Also, treatement for Syphilis was very affordable by the time the study began to wind down- it lasted until 1972. Antibiotics were quite widespread and relatively cheap at that point in time.
Re:from the oxymoron dept...
on
Effective C#
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· Score: 1
"But its not an open platform if you've got a submarine patents laying around."
Well, if you're a Java programmer, shouldn't you be accustomed to that by now? =P
"Apple's main point of sale is Job's salesmanship. Don't get me wrong - they have great products. But great products don't sell themselves (Which RIO is explicitly trying to do). "
That may be true, but Rio has its own problems. It designed the best 20 GB DAP feature-wise. It had an equalizer that actually made things sound better instead of distorting the music, great sound quality, gapless playback, and good battery life.
But what did they do? They skimped on the hardware. The plastic casing doesn't adequately protect the hard drive, and the scroll wheel is infamously weak. They also didn't market their player or go for third party support. They had one feature that should be standard in *all* MP3 players, gapless music playback.
Don't get me wrong. I don't like the iPod. It's easy to use, but its poor battery life (until the 4G) and touch controls annoyed the hell out of me. Not to mention the fact that you're locked into on e PC for transferring music unless you use a 3rd party program. And have you ever tried listening to a Pink Floyd album. on an iPod? The gaps between each song completely destroy the mood of the album.
It's just that everyone else in the industry is focusing too much on competing with and/or imitating the iPod rather than creating a solid product. The Toshiba Gigabeat, for example, is probably the only legitimate iPod competitor on the market. It's actually well designed, well priced, and well constructed. Rio had a good approach with trying to be different from Apple and designing their own DAP, but they discontinued the Karma and have showed no sign of releasing an iPod compeititor.
Everyone else is just stupid. Creative just doesn't know anything about actual design (We'll make touch controls, and they will come!), Sony is run by a bunch of DRM morons (you can only load music onto the HD-5 by using their SonicStage software, and if you uninstall and reinstall their software, you have to wipe your DAP again.) iAudio makes an excellent player, but they didn't implement an ID3 databasing system, which is pretty damn important to any sane person. iRiver's getting there, but their marketing campaign leaves much to be desired.
Personally, I think the next year should be interesting. It seems like Apple's competitors are wising up and realizing what people actually need in a DAP. iRiver's H10 is well-designed and actually easy to use. Rio's Carbon is cheaper than the mini, offers full UMS support (which means support across any platform that supports external USB drives), and has more battery life. Napster and Yahoo! offer viable music stores that are very attractive to anyone who wants to purchase all their music online.
"When a game sells for $49.99 at retail, expect to buy it anywhere from $41-43. Your cost will depend on the amount of units bought, and the frequency at which you buy them. "
What the hell is he talking about? I've *never* seen a new release that retails for $49.99 any cheaper than that *anywhere*. And yes, that includes Wal-Mart. If anything, Wal-Mart's prices are always *more* expensive than the indie shops. The indie shops are being threatened by companies that deal exclusively in games, like EB Games/GameStop.
The biggest problem I've noted with indie game shops is that they refuse to drop the prices of their older games, while other retailers do it quite quickly.
The one indie shop I do go to has a huge customer base because it uses a unique system for selling games. It acts as something of a middleman for selling used games. Someone will bring a game to their shop and set a price. When that game is sold, the store gets 25% of the sale, and the seller gets 75%. It seems to be working pretty well for them.
Indie shops need to leverage their ability to set up unusual business models if they want to compete with the large retailers.
"You can't combine a negative timeline article with a positive puff-piece article (written with no hands-on knowledge and probably a video and press release). 1UP seems to do this a lot."
A lot of times in the journalism industry, you have to agree not to release a negative review of a product until it's actually released. Otherwise you'll be denied any further previews of that company's products.
Slashdot Mirror
Sweet jesus, I was just trying to imagine a scenario in which it would be preferable for an 'end user' to have DRM. I wasn't advocating it. =P
Depends on the girl.
Personally, I see the audioplug necklace as something pretty much anyone would see as cool. Especially if she's into DJing or just live music in general.
But the Cat5 bracelet? It just looks like a bunch of 10 cent wire strands attached to a clasp. I wouldn't recommend that unless you wanted to be both ripped of and have your girlfriend break up with you.
So the media conglomerates are demanding DRM on user-created content? I don't get it.
I'd imagine that DRM on user-created content would make it easier for smaller artists/groups to make music without having to deal with piracy.
While the **AA's make a huge deal out of it for Avril Lavigne and whatnot, smaller artists are hit harder by piracy. If you're selling 1,000 CDs a year, 200 people pirating music is a much bigger hit than if you sell 1,000,000 CDs a year.
The patched the vulnerability that allowed Sasser to spread two weeks before the virus was made.
This is once case where it wasn't all Microsoft's fault, rather, it was mostly the fault of millions of users too stupid to turn on automatic updates.
And #4 is while I'll buy it. Worst case scenario: Longhorn is OS X without Darwin.
Then I can run all my programs, upgrade ALL of my hardware, and dual boot Linux if I wanted to. Plus I'll have all the features in OS X that I like - a 3D accelerated API, searching via metadata, and a decent command line. Sounds like a win-win situation for me.
Windows 2000 had transparency effects.
There are tons of third-party programs that take advantage of it (WinAMP, Trillian...), it's just that with Longhorn, MS will use it themselves.
You just managed to repeat exactly what the article said.
It's okay. Most slashdotters read comments, not TFA.
IEEE = Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Interestingly enough, electrical and electronics engineers design audio equipment. Because, you know, there are electronics inside of audio equipment.
Have you ever heard of Digital Signal Processing (DSPs)? There's an entire field of EE dedicated to that.
IMHO, 'casual gamer' and 'MMOG' should never be mentioned in the same sentence.
Heh.
D'oh. I feel like an idiot now.
Even if you're as efficient as possible, you'll still end up spending way more time than any casual gamer is willing to spend. IMHO, 'casual gamer' and 'MMOG' should never be mentioned in the same sentence.
99% of MMOG's (except Guild Wars, but it's not quite a normal MMOG, I'd say it's more like PSO) depend on subscriptions for their main profit. This leads to design decisions that would be considered horrible in any other type of game: infamous level grinds, mandatory level cap quests that require hours of killing to find some rare item, and worst of all, forced grouping (I'm looking at you, FFXI).
I quit FFXI for two of those reasons. I was looking for something to play one or two hours a night, but the combination of forced grouping (Waiting 45 minutes to an hour for a WHM was just too painful) and the level grind made it impossible to get anything useful done in less than two hours.
WoW looks like it may have resolved a lot of these issues. A lot of the 'hardcore' guys criticize it for being 'too easy' to get to high levels, but from my limited experience, it seems like the fun/grind ratio is much higher than it is for any other MMO I've played.
"Either it does, or it doesn't. Anything's fifty percent. Either I win the lottery, or I don't. Either I find that uber rare weapon in some random MMORPG, or I don't."
Let me guess... You failed math in high school?
"quite a few residential broadband providers are blocking many incoming ports due to the threat windows boxes pose to the reliability of their networks."
/.: Sophos AV says 99% of Linux machines fall victim to rootkits within the first 10 minutes of being online.
So you're saying it's BS unless the computer is exposed to conditions that it wouldn't be exposed to in the real world?
I can see the next article on
Ugh, I was thinking of Resident Evil 0. I stand corrected.
I'd like to see the actual numbers and the methodology of their study. It seems like all of the compromising attacks require action on the part of the user, like downloading unknown attachments, clicking spam links, and browsing shady porn sites.
I don't see how any of those could be affect turning on your computer and using automatic updates.
Ah, I forgot about RE4. But RE4 doesn't really count much, because of the copious use of preendered backgrounds. Baten Kaitos, another game that was one of the GC's prettiest, also relied heavily on prerendering.
Except that has no practical use. People would use the slideshow with a soundtrack option, and would move the scrollwheel as fast as they could so they could get motion.
I think they got something like 10 or 15 FPS... And I doubt you could keep up a consistent rate of motion for any longer than a minute.
"Guess who ended up with the best graphics of the generation... Nintendo!"
No.
Currently, The GameCube's prettiest game is Metroid Prime 2. Compare that to Ninja Gaiden, which was released a year beforehand. MP2 gets points for style, but Ninja Gaiden just looks better.
You're wrong.
They did withold information. If you read the Wikipedia Article, you'll immediately notice one statement that contradicts most of waht you stated.
"Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did not give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis; instead they were told they had "bad blood" and could receive free treatment."
Also, treatement for Syphilis was very affordable by the time the study began to wind down- it lasted until 1972. Antibiotics were quite widespread and relatively cheap at that point in time.
"But its not an open platform if you've got a submarine patents laying around."
Well, if you're a Java programmer, shouldn't you be accustomed to that by now? =P
"If these things had happened to one of the Bush presidents there would have been a bunch of dead Mullahs lieing around."
And hundreds of thousands of civilians, too. And probably one or two thousand dead US soldiers. Wait, that sounds vaguely familiar..
"Look this word up: succint."
You mean succinct, right? The irony in this thread is sickening. =P
"Apple's main point of sale is Job's salesmanship. Don't get me wrong - they have great products. But great products don't sell themselves (Which RIO is explicitly trying to do). "
That may be true, but Rio has its own problems. It designed the best 20 GB DAP feature-wise. It had an equalizer that actually made things sound better instead of distorting the music, great sound quality, gapless playback, and good battery life.
But what did they do? They skimped on the hardware. The plastic casing doesn't adequately protect the hard drive, and the scroll wheel is infamously weak. They also didn't market their player or go for third party support. They had one feature that should be standard in *all* MP3 players, gapless music playback.
Don't get me wrong. I don't like the iPod. It's easy to use, but its poor battery life (until the 4G) and touch controls annoyed the hell out of me. Not to mention the fact that you're locked into on e PC for transferring music unless you use a 3rd party program. And have you ever tried listening to a Pink Floyd album. on an iPod? The gaps between each song completely destroy the mood of the album.
It's just that everyone else in the industry is focusing too much on competing with and/or imitating the iPod rather than creating a solid product. The Toshiba Gigabeat, for example, is probably the only legitimate iPod competitor on the market. It's actually well designed, well priced, and well constructed. Rio had a good approach with trying to be different from Apple and designing their own DAP, but they discontinued the Karma and have showed no sign of releasing an iPod compeititor.
Everyone else is just stupid. Creative just doesn't know anything about actual design (We'll make touch controls, and they will come!), Sony is run by a bunch of DRM morons (you can only load music onto the HD-5 by using their SonicStage software, and if you uninstall and reinstall their software, you have to wipe your DAP again.) iAudio makes an excellent player, but they didn't implement an ID3 databasing system, which is pretty damn important to any sane person. iRiver's getting there, but their marketing campaign leaves much to be desired.
Personally, I think the next year should be interesting. It seems like Apple's competitors are wising up and realizing what people actually need in a DAP. iRiver's H10 is well-designed and actually easy to use. Rio's Carbon is cheaper than the mini, offers full UMS support (which means support across any platform that supports external USB drives), and has more battery life. Napster and Yahoo! offer viable music stores that are very attractive to anyone who wants to purchase all their music online.
"When a game sells for $49.99 at retail, expect to buy it anywhere from $41-43. Your cost will depend on the amount of units bought, and the frequency at which you buy them. "
What the hell is he talking about? I've *never* seen a new release that retails for $49.99 any cheaper than that *anywhere*. And yes, that includes Wal-Mart. If anything, Wal-Mart's prices are always *more* expensive than the indie shops. The indie shops are being threatened by companies that deal exclusively in games, like EB Games/GameStop.
The biggest problem I've noted with indie game shops is that they refuse to drop the prices of their older games, while other retailers do it quite quickly.
The one indie shop I do go to has a huge customer base because it uses a unique system for selling games. It acts as something of a middleman for selling used games. Someone will bring a game to their shop and set a price. When that game is sold, the store gets 25% of the sale, and the seller gets 75%. It seems to be working pretty well for them.
Indie shops need to leverage their ability to set up unusual business models if they want to compete with the large retailers.
I don't actually work in a beer yeast lab. I work in one at a Medical School, we do research into yeast prions.
One of the grad students in the lab tried brewing some beer with some of the lab stocks, and it didn't work out too well. =P
"You can't combine a negative timeline article with a positive puff-piece article (written with no hands-on knowledge and probably a video and press release). 1UP seems to do this a lot."
A lot of times in the journalism industry, you have to agree not to release a negative review of a product until it's actually released. Otherwise you'll be denied any further previews of that company's products.