Your only option with button mashers on the Wii is the classic controller as the gamecube controllers are hard to find now. I suppose they could sell bundles that include the controllers like Guitar Hero does. The classic controllers cost less than the guitars do at retail.
I suppose they could develop their own controller, but the classic has everything I can think of that they would need. Guitar Hero manages to sell a ton of games and controllers, I don't see any reason another type of game couldn't do the same thing for the Wii. Down-res the textures and models and it should port reasonably well. The Wii isn't a complete slouch with CPU power, it just doesn't do HD. The up side of that is that you don't need nearly as much CPU/GPU to deal with SD, so more of that power can go to the game engines.
Personally, I don't mind the lack of HD. I own a PS3 and love the games on there as well, but the Wii is a totally different type of system. They both have a lot to offer. I'm sure the 360 does as well, but I decided to limit myself to 2 consoles at a time. I rarely have time to play games these days anyway with a 1 year old running around.
Not to mention that a large number of people these days own digital cameras and such and are likely to have 2GB+ cards they could re-purpose to the Wii. Some would just use it as an excuse to go buy a larger card for the digicam and move the existing card to the Wii. SD is everywhere and cheap as hell if you are only talking about 4GB or less. And not very expensive for the larger types. I bought an 8GB micro-SDHC for ~$30 not long ago. Newegg has a Kingston for $18 now.
I agree. What I really want is the bastard child of an iPhone and a Blackberry. The iPhone UI, with a real keyboard... oh wait, the G1 is damn close to that. Just wish it was a little more polished. Say what you like about Apple, they are very good at UI. Hopefully Google makes some improvements there. If I had the $, I'd probably buy the developer version of the G1.
I certainly don't speak for all Americans, but one reason I can see for people not using signals around here... If you do, the moron in the next lane speeds up and blocks you out. Though this really does boil down to poor training.
The UTOPIA project would differ with you there. That's in Utah, suburb hell. And yet, they manage to link up everyone in various cities. Those cities have to pay to help build the network, but it works very well. Unfortunately, I'm not in such a city. I'm seriously considering starting a lobbying campaign to do something like that in my city though.
Note that "City" around here is more a collection of suburbs than a real city like NY or LA.
With a decent signal, whitespace devices are supposed to avoid that channel. So in areas served with a local transmitter, that shouldn't be an issue. Those that will be negatively effected will be those in "fringe" areas. While that sucks, it is a small minority and they were likely receiving out of area transmissions. IMO, if the signal can't be received with "rabbit ears", it should be OK to use another device there. That might mean that some people have to get better antennas for TV. And some might lose some channels, but I doubt that "The FCC has essentially killed free-to-view TV/radio.".
If you brought a whitespace device to my house, I seriously doubt the few mW of power would overwhelm my TV setup, even if it used the same channel. I'm ~15 miles from high power transmitters with a directional antenna.
I'm OK with whitespace devices only if they can be shown to avoid frequencies with an existing user. I'd also want to see decent enforcement so that if someone's malfunctioned the FCC would make them take it off the air. That's the bit that I think makes this plan suspect, the FCC isn't very good at enforcement.
SSH tunnels get around that without difficulty. If you know the address, it's as simple as assigning local port 2222 to 10.1.0.100:22 and you can now SSH to that machine by connecting to localhost:2222. Get a SOCKS capable SSH client, and you don't need to set up the tunnel for each connection.
I think the point of dumping Kirk off on the ice planet (other than the obvious ploy to get Scotty involved) was that Spock was being illogical. It was a way of demonstrating his "emotionally compromised" state before they get around to pointing out that Kirk can assume command because of it.
If you want a good tuner for ATSC and now, DVB, look no further than the HDHomeRun. It tunes as well as my built-in tuners in recently purchased TVs and works very well. Linux support out of the box, fully open source.
This kind of crap is going to continue. You can't stop it this way. If you want normal people to respect you and your rights, you need to respect them. To do that you need the following:
1) Lose any and all copy protection measures. It doesn't even slow down the pirates and it causes problems for your legit users that actually pay for the works.
2) Support efforts to repeal DMCA-like laws in all countries. Again, makes life difficult for people that actually pay you and doesn't slow down the people that won't.
3) Support efforts to shorten the length of copyrights. They are FAR too long right now. To the point that most people simply don't respect them. 10 years should be enough to make your money. Same with patents, though I do think software and business method patents need to die as well.
4) Drop prices to the point that people are willing to pay. Artificial high prices are a big part of the problem. Particularly with music. A CD costs more than some DVDs? Nuts.
5) Just accept that some people simply won't pay. That's just how it is. It sucks, but that's life. Get over it. Instead of being a bunch of whiners, offer something special for those that buy the real deal. I've seen codes for discounts on real goods, early access to concert tickets, etc.. Get creative.
District of Columbia: 3,699.9 people per square km
New Jersey: 452.16 people per square km
The top 4 are within spitting distance of Japan. I'd be willing to cut the cable companies some slack if I saw this sort of bandwidth available in even the big cities, let alone states. Verizon is closest with FIOS, and they service the suburbs as well. Interesting, isn't it? The population density argument is a BS smokescreen. If Verizon can do it and make money, TWC can as well. They just don't want to. Well, too damn bad.
They don't charge fast on 120V, but some of us look ahead. I have a 240V 50A outlet in my garage just waiting for a charger. Right now, I use it for tools like my air compressor and welder, but I'd be thrilled to charge my car with it.
There's always the separate battery pack or capacitor bank to charge up from as well. A 100-200V capacitor bank at a few 10s of Farad shouldn't cost all that much to build compared to the cost of the car. Something like that could top off your car's batteries in a snap.:)
If the local ISPs start this crap here, I'll buy business class service with an SLA (or even a T1) and start running CAT5 to the neighbors, which happen to be my family, and split the costs. Maybe even set up a WISP.
Or get a group together to lobby the city council to join Utopia.
I tend libertarian as well. I don't see the internet as being significantly different than roads. The government has shown it can provide good service for large infrastructure projects like this. I also believe they should require that anyone can run fiber, no monopolies. Competition is the only way to improve high speed internet access. Lack of competition leaves us with stagnating technology, even in large cities with population density that rivals other nations that have much better service. It also leaves many people with no choice when the monopoly carrier puts draconian restrictions on the service.
Yes, but the FCC and Congress can fix that problem. And in my mind they should. The problem is simple enough, monopoly. So allow municipal projects to lay fiber so long as they provide no services to the end user and all retailers get the same rates, no exceptions. In addition, ban any and all governments from restricting competition by granting monopolies for last mile services.
This provides 2 paths for competition. Over the municipal system (see: UTOPIA Project for a good description of this working in Utah). Or by anyone laying their own fiber.
Hmmm... that VPN service from The Pirate Bay doesn't look quite so paranoid now, does it?:) Seriously, we really need to get encrypted connections going. VPN is even better, they can see you connect to the VPN host, after that, all traffic is encrypted and tunneled. Or there's TOR and such.
In many ways, yes, it is their problem. But how do you suggest they handle it? If ATI/AMD won't cough up a decent driver or documentation, what can the driver devs do? Do you have any idea how complicated modern video drivers are? People suggest NVidia because they supply a decent quality video driver. Yeah, it's closed source and that bugs people, but it works. You can buy a VDPAU capable NVidia video card for about $30. Is that really so much to ask for a full blown open source PVR that has more features than any Windows software I have ever seen?
Yeah, it sucks that your hardware isn't well supported. We'd all love to have full Linux compatibility for all hardware. But if the vendors refuse to provide drivers or specs, there isn't much that can be done.
For the tuner card, there are working drivers for at least some ATI HDTV Wonder cards. And I've seen discussion on the Myth mailing list about someone selling cards for about $20 shipped that are compatible.
So you have a valid scientific theory that competes with evolution on the body of observable evidence? If you don't, STFU. If it involves supreme beings, or other supernatural causes, STFU.
No scientist worth anything wants to stifle questioning. What they object to is people insisting that "god did it" is science. It's not, it's religion and has its place, but it is not science. Creationism, ID, and whatever name they come up with tomorrow are all the same. They fall back to "god did it". They might not call the "designer" by the same name, but it's all the same when you break it down. Science deals with what we can observe and prove. We can't observe or prove everything, and a good scientist knows this. But that doesn't mean we fall back to "god" to explain it. We simply look at it as a challenge to figure it out.
How can you do that when one side states that all life was created in exactly seven days (how is that measured before the sun and moon were created?) by a magic man in the sky that we can't prove or disprove exists?
That's not science, it's religion and/or philosophy. A scientific theory requires observations and hypothesis that can be tested using other observations and experiments. I can't come up with an experiment that one could use to prove or disprove creationism. I can do so, quite easily, for evolution. If you don't have a testable and observable hypothesis, it's not science. Creationists have a forum to teach their views, church and classes on religion and philosophy. They just aren't content with that and want to force their views on everyone else.
I've read the Bible, who's plan does that sound like to you?
You do realize that people like you are the ones singling out evolution and making it "special", right? I've never taken a science class that refers to evolution as anything more than the current scientific theory of how man came to be. In a science class, we deal with the observable. Faith and belief have no place in science. We leave those at the door and pick them up later on the way out. God and his/her actions are not directly observable by men, by design. They are therefore NOT science.
The religious camp could as easily have decided to attack the law of gravity and surface tension because Jesus walked on the water. Or the Theory of Relativity because God is everywhere at once. Both cases would make about as much sense as the freaking out over evolution does.
How about this for a compromise: You teach what you want to in church, or a class on religion/philosophy, and scientists will teach what they want to in science class.
I don't think that first class public transport would be "easy to supply" it would take a decade or more to build out along with the various holdups due to lawsuits from NIMBYs. Yes, I do think it would be nice to have. But it's not something we can have tomorrow. However, if we don't start building it, we can never have it.
Hell, locally we have the transit company attempting to build out commuter rail. A city on the route blew a gasket when they wanted to build a station in their city. How retarded is that? Something to make it easy to use public transit and they try to block it. They were concerned about noise or something. They have obviously never been near one of the trains, they are electric and damn near silent. If I had a station close to home, I would use it now. But it would take me as long to drive to a station as it would to just drive to work, so what do you think I do?
Slashdot Mirror
Your only option with button mashers on the Wii is the classic controller as the gamecube controllers are hard to find now. I suppose they could sell bundles that include the controllers like Guitar Hero does. The classic controllers cost less than the guitars do at retail.
I suppose they could develop their own controller, but the classic has everything I can think of that they would need. Guitar Hero manages to sell a ton of games and controllers, I don't see any reason another type of game couldn't do the same thing for the Wii. Down-res the textures and models and it should port reasonably well. The Wii isn't a complete slouch with CPU power, it just doesn't do HD. The up side of that is that you don't need nearly as much CPU/GPU to deal with SD, so more of that power can go to the game engines.
Personally, I don't mind the lack of HD. I own a PS3 and love the games on there as well, but the Wii is a totally different type of system. They both have a lot to offer. I'm sure the 360 does as well, but I decided to limit myself to 2 consoles at a time. I rarely have time to play games these days anyway with a 1 year old running around.
Not to mention that a large number of people these days own digital cameras and such and are likely to have 2GB+ cards they could re-purpose to the Wii. Some would just use it as an excuse to go buy a larger card for the digicam and move the existing card to the Wii. SD is everywhere and cheap as hell if you are only talking about 4GB or less. And not very expensive for the larger types. I bought an 8GB micro-SDHC for ~$30 not long ago. Newegg has a Kingston for $18 now.
I agree. What I really want is the bastard child of an iPhone and a Blackberry. The iPhone UI, with a real keyboard... oh wait, the G1 is damn close to that. Just wish it was a little more polished. Say what you like about Apple, they are very good at UI. Hopefully Google makes some improvements there. If I had the $, I'd probably buy the developer version of the G1.
I certainly don't speak for all Americans, but one reason I can see for people not using signals around here... If you do, the moron in the next lane speeds up and blocks you out. Though this really does boil down to poor training.
The UTOPIA project would differ with you there. That's in Utah, suburb hell. And yet, they manage to link up everyone in various cities. Those cities have to pay to help build the network, but it works very well. Unfortunately, I'm not in such a city. I'm seriously considering starting a lobbying campaign to do something like that in my city though.
Note that "City" around here is more a collection of suburbs than a real city like NY or LA.
With a decent signal, whitespace devices are supposed to avoid that channel. So in areas served with a local transmitter, that shouldn't be an issue. Those that will be negatively effected will be those in "fringe" areas. While that sucks, it is a small minority and they were likely receiving out of area transmissions. IMO, if the signal can't be received with "rabbit ears", it should be OK to use another device there. That might mean that some people have to get better antennas for TV. And some might lose some channels, but I doubt that "The FCC has essentially killed free-to-view TV/radio.".
If you brought a whitespace device to my house, I seriously doubt the few mW of power would overwhelm my TV setup, even if it used the same channel. I'm ~15 miles from high power transmitters with a directional antenna.
I'm OK with whitespace devices only if they can be shown to avoid frequencies with an existing user. I'd also want to see decent enforcement so that if someone's malfunctioned the FCC would make them take it off the air. That's the bit that I think makes this plan suspect, the FCC isn't very good at enforcement.
And yet, they wonder why people prefer to download stuff. sigh....
SSH tunnels get around that without difficulty. If you know the address, it's as simple as assigning local port 2222 to 10.1.0.100:22 and you can now SSH to that machine by connecting to localhost:2222. Get a SOCKS capable SSH client, and you don't need to set up the tunnel for each connection.
So long as it's not encrypted. FCC doesn't allow Hams to use encryption. :)
I think the point of dumping Kirk off on the ice planet (other than the obvious ploy to get Scotty involved) was that Spock was being illogical. It was a way of demonstrating his "emotionally compromised" state before they get around to pointing out that Kirk can assume command because of it.
If you want a good tuner for ATSC and now, DVB, look no further than the HDHomeRun. It tunes as well as my built-in tuners in recently purchased TVs and works very well. Linux support out of the box, fully open source.
This kind of crap is going to continue. You can't stop it this way. If you want normal people to respect you and your rights, you need to respect them. To do that you need the following:
1) Lose any and all copy protection measures. It doesn't even slow down the pirates and it causes problems for your legit users that actually pay for the works.
2) Support efforts to repeal DMCA-like laws in all countries. Again, makes life difficult for people that actually pay you and doesn't slow down the people that won't.
3) Support efforts to shorten the length of copyrights. They are FAR too long right now. To the point that most people simply don't respect them. 10 years should be enough to make your money. Same with patents, though I do think software and business method patents need to die as well.
4) Drop prices to the point that people are willing to pay. Artificial high prices are a big part of the problem. Particularly with music. A CD costs more than some DVDs? Nuts.
5) Just accept that some people simply won't pay. That's just how it is. It sucks, but that's life. Get over it. Instead of being a bunch of whiners, offer something special for those that buy the real deal. I've seen codes for discounts on real goods, early access to concert tickets, etc.. Get creative.
Population Density
District of Columbia: 3,699.9 people per square km
New Jersey: 452.16 people per square km
The top 4 are within spitting distance of Japan. I'd be willing to cut the cable companies some slack if I saw this sort of bandwidth available in even the big cities, let alone states. Verizon is closest with FIOS, and they service the suburbs as well. Interesting, isn't it? The population density argument is a BS smokescreen. If Verizon can do it and make money, TWC can as well. They just don't want to. Well, too damn bad.
For even more fun: Population Density by City
Still think that's the only reason?
They don't charge fast on 120V, but some of us look ahead. I have a 240V 50A outlet in my garage just waiting for a charger. Right now, I use it for tools like my air compressor and welder, but I'd be thrilled to charge my car with it.
There's always the separate battery pack or capacitor bank to charge up from as well. A 100-200V capacitor bank at a few 10s of Farad shouldn't cost all that much to build compared to the cost of the car. Something like that could top off your car's batteries in a snap. :)
If the local ISPs start this crap here, I'll buy business class service with an SLA (or even a T1) and start running CAT5 to the neighbors, which happen to be my family, and split the costs. Maybe even set up a WISP.
Or get a group together to lobby the city council to join Utopia.
I tend libertarian as well. I don't see the internet as being significantly different than roads. The government has shown it can provide good service for large infrastructure projects like this. I also believe they should require that anyone can run fiber, no monopolies. Competition is the only way to improve high speed internet access. Lack of competition leaves us with stagnating technology, even in large cities with population density that rivals other nations that have much better service. It also leaves many people with no choice when the monopoly carrier puts draconian restrictions on the service.
Yes, but the FCC and Congress can fix that problem. And in my mind they should. The problem is simple enough, monopoly. So allow municipal projects to lay fiber so long as they provide no services to the end user and all retailers get the same rates, no exceptions. In addition, ban any and all governments from restricting competition by granting monopolies for last mile services.
This provides 2 paths for competition. Over the municipal system (see: UTOPIA Project for a good description of this working in Utah). Or by anyone laying their own fiber.
Hmmm... that VPN service from The Pirate Bay doesn't look quite so paranoid now, does it? :) Seriously, we really need to get encrypted connections going. VPN is even better, they can see you connect to the VPN host, after that, all traffic is encrypted and tunneled. Or there's TOR and such.
In many ways, yes, it is their problem. But how do you suggest they handle it? If ATI/AMD won't cough up a decent driver or documentation, what can the driver devs do? Do you have any idea how complicated modern video drivers are? People suggest NVidia because they supply a decent quality video driver. Yeah, it's closed source and that bugs people, but it works. You can buy a VDPAU capable NVidia video card for about $30. Is that really so much to ask for a full blown open source PVR that has more features than any Windows software I have ever seen?
Yeah, it sucks that your hardware isn't well supported. We'd all love to have full Linux compatibility for all hardware. But if the vendors refuse to provide drivers or specs, there isn't much that can be done.
For the tuner card, there are working drivers for at least some ATI HDTV Wonder cards. And I've seen discussion on the Myth mailing list about someone selling cards for about $20 shipped that are compatible.
So you have a valid scientific theory that competes with evolution on the body of observable evidence? If you don't, STFU. If it involves supreme beings, or other supernatural causes, STFU.
No scientist worth anything wants to stifle questioning. What they object to is people insisting that "god did it" is science. It's not, it's religion and has its place, but it is not science. Creationism, ID, and whatever name they come up with tomorrow are all the same. They fall back to "god did it". They might not call the "designer" by the same name, but it's all the same when you break it down. Science deals with what we can observe and prove. We can't observe or prove everything, and a good scientist knows this. But that doesn't mean we fall back to "god" to explain it. We simply look at it as a challenge to figure it out.
I prefer baby seal. But it's no good unless you club it really well. You have to tenderize it. :)
Has that fsync patch been added to mythtv either in .21-fixes or trunk? I've been having a problem very like that and really need to fix it.
How can you do that when one side states that all life was created in exactly seven days (how is that measured before the sun and moon were created?) by a magic man in the sky that we can't prove or disprove exists?
That's not science, it's religion and/or philosophy. A scientific theory requires observations and hypothesis that can be tested using other observations and experiments. I can't come up with an experiment that one could use to prove or disprove creationism. I can do so, quite easily, for evolution. If you don't have a testable and observable hypothesis, it's not science. Creationists have a forum to teach their views, church and classes on religion and philosophy. They just aren't content with that and want to force their views on everyone else.
I've read the Bible, who's plan does that sound like to you?
You do realize that people like you are the ones singling out evolution and making it "special", right? I've never taken a science class that refers to evolution as anything more than the current scientific theory of how man came to be. In a science class, we deal with the observable. Faith and belief have no place in science. We leave those at the door and pick them up later on the way out. God and his/her actions are not directly observable by men, by design. They are therefore NOT science.
The religious camp could as easily have decided to attack the law of gravity and surface tension because Jesus walked on the water. Or the Theory of Relativity because God is everywhere at once. Both cases would make about as much sense as the freaking out over evolution does.
How about this for a compromise: You teach what you want to in church, or a class on religion/philosophy, and scientists will teach what they want to in science class.
I don't think that first class public transport would be "easy to supply" it would take a decade or more to build out along with the various holdups due to lawsuits from NIMBYs. Yes, I do think it would be nice to have. But it's not something we can have tomorrow. However, if we don't start building it, we can never have it.
Hell, locally we have the transit company attempting to build out commuter rail. A city on the route blew a gasket when they wanted to build a station in their city. How retarded is that? Something to make it easy to use public transit and they try to block it. They were concerned about noise or something. They have obviously never been near one of the trains, they are electric and damn near silent. If I had a station close to home, I would use it now. But it would take me as long to drive to a station as it would to just drive to work, so what do you think I do?