Sounds neat, and may not be all that uncomfortable (try moving thin air as if you were moving a mouse. you can still relax your hand).
However, I wish the interface itself was better. The times I'd die for a purely continuous analogue middle wheel, instead of the 'step-by-step' wheel that's forced upon us. Two wheels (one of each type) would be far better... (I suppose step-by-step does have a use for say, selecting dropdown menu items etc.).
It's going to be a great boon for those who would like great GP-GPU performance too. Custom raytracing, and scientific research is going to get a kick from this.
I think competition among kids could help improve creativity.
For example, in engineering, it's going to be relatively boring if everyone is asked to build an electric motor. But if they are instead asked to build the most efficient, or the quietest, or the smallest electric motor, kids can think of ingenious ways to beat their classmates.
Same in art. Don't just ask kids to paint a picture, rate them according to various attributes (and overall), and see who did the best.
A hundred times more useful than a 4k resolution would be to allow videos more than 10 minutes long. Or better quality for 1080p. Or, my pet favourite, frame rates at around 60fps (and yes, obviously 60fps apx video does appear much smoother than half that frame rate as has been discussed countless times on/. ).
Again with the false dichotomy (I'm not necessary blaming you here, but what I feel is the whole attitude in general). Why does something have to be either "fair" or "not fair". Why can't there be... shock... degrees of fairness, and some kind of middleground?
So 'borderline cases' of whether something is 'fair' or not, instead become cases where say, a small penalty is issued.
Doh. Of course, you're right. Then, the only reason would be to have lighter PSUs for those that don't need the extra power. Something more like 3 different sizes would be more sensible than 10.
Interesting. I suppose like you say, around 5-10 ratings. Perhaps 20, 30, 45, 65, 90, 120, 160, 200 wattages would be an example of that.
By the way, isn't it possible to simply have a power supply which is capable of switching between a range of wattages? I know that even my desktop cooling fan has three speeds (and therefore 3 wattages).
There was an episode of the Simpsons called "Itchy and Scratchy Land", and from that episode, there was a map with an attraction named "Unnecessary Surgery Land".
Hence I coined the phrase UWS or "Unnecessary Work Syndrome" for things exactly like this, where every manufacturer spends thousands or even millions of dollars to come up with their own special version of say... the power brick.
I'm not sure if open source is appropriate all the time, but open standards are such a no-brainer, it hurts.
It actually ends up more efficient for everyone if just one company (or two or three for competition's sake) end up doing all the work in a particular area.
Unless you think everyone doing more work is actually a good thing (broken window fallacy springs to mind).
Strange, I didn't know it would be so easy to check for oneself like that. It makes me wonder what else can be done without the need to visit a health specialist.
So many sites do the same thing and it really peeves me off. A simple solution would be to count the number of votes as a factor of reliability and include that in the overall score. One solution I came up with years ago was this:
x can be adjusted to other numbers appropriately, though values from 3 to 30 could works wel. The score (and weighted score) will be a value from 0 to 1. Perhaps it's not perfect (maybe mathematicians could chime in), but it's a damn sight better than most of what's out there. (I use it on the web host comparison in my sig.)
Physical media will always be far superior to digital.
Not really no. Physical media takes up space.
1) Can buy the game used. Instead of paying $60 for a game, you can wait a few weeks and get it for $35-40. Within a few months, it's available for $20-30 while Steam still sells it for $60.
You can still theoretically sell a non-DRM digitial copy, and delete the original, though you'd have to be honest about it. You used the word 'always' initially which implies that at no future point will humanity be honest in this way.
2) It can be resold. After you spend 10 hours finishing that game, you can turn it around and resell it for 80% of its buying price. You can then apply that money towards #1 and buy another game for cheap.
See 1.
3) You're not stuck with it. How many games, honestly, do you still play after a year? Maybe one or two. Why be permanently stuck with a game that you'll never play again? And why be stuck with a game that sucks? How about those poor saps that paid $60 for Terminator Salvation, discovered the game could be beaten in 5 hours, and had absolutely no replay value?
Er, there's always the delete/uninstall button...?
4) You can trade games. The ultimate barter. Tired of a game and need a break? Trade with a friend for a month. Want to see if a game is really fun? Borrow it from a friend. Downloadable demos do not compare.
Swap (non-drm) digital copies, and both parties can delete their initial originals. Problem solved.
5) A visual reminder. Having a physical boxed item is a visual reminder that you have a game that you can play.
Get a nicer presentation system then. In the future, we'll have 200" OLED monitors displaying 'game box covers' in 3D with all the bells and whistles you could ever want. Perhaps you want the smell of the paper box emulated too?
Maybe we should all discuss the most appropriate expiration for copyright (say 10 to 30 years), and then create a website and try to change copyright to the new limit.
A publicly available graph showing time against against frequency usage with coloured company bars over it. We'd see exactly what was going on, and it'd be scientifically educational and informative too.
Slashdot Mirror
That flywheel sounds great. Here's a look at the special wheel:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2007815,00.asp
Wish the mouse was less heavy, bulky, and had more than a week's battery life (my wireless lasts a year or so on one battery).
Sounds neat, and may not be all that uncomfortable (try moving thin air as if you were moving a mouse. you can still relax your hand).
However, I wish the interface itself was better. The times I'd die for a purely continuous analogue middle wheel, instead of the 'step-by-step' wheel that's forced upon us. Two wheels (one of each type) would be far better... (I suppose step-by-step does have a use for say, selecting dropdown menu items etc.).
As well as being a relative bargain, this is the quietest GPU in its power range, especially considering it uses the Fermi architecture.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3809/nvidias-geforce-gtx-460-the-200-king/16
It's going to be a great boon for those who would like great GP-GPU performance too. Custom raytracing, and scientific research is going to get a kick from this.
Is there a reason they can't go above the artificial limit of 192 GB?
64 bit CPUs should be able to access up to 18,446,000,000 GB of memory space, so I see no reason for the arbitrary limit.
I think competition among kids could help improve creativity.
For example, in engineering, it's going to be relatively boring if everyone is asked to build an electric motor. But if they are instead asked to build the most efficient, or the quietest, or the smallest electric motor, kids can think of ingenious ways to beat their classmates.
Same in art. Don't just ask kids to paint a picture, rate them according to various attributes (and overall), and see who did the best.
Just out of interest, what was wrong with the equipment and did the hammer and duct tape fix it?
service.
Perhaps it did good for the company in the end, because more people got to play it, and therefore bought the sequels (as they did).
Best strategy?
1: Release first version with zero copy protection.
2: It becomes famous, improve game, release sequel and add copy protection.
3: Profit.
A hundred times more useful than a 4k resolution would be to allow videos more than 10 minutes long. Or better quality for 1080p. Or, my pet favourite, frame rates at around 60fps (and yes, obviously 60fps apx video does appear much smoother than half that frame rate as has been discussed countless times on /. ).
Again with the false dichotomy (I'm not necessary blaming you here, but what I feel is the whole attitude in general). Why does something have to be either "fair" or "not fair". Why can't there be... shock... degrees of fairness, and some kind of middleground?
So 'borderline cases' of whether something is 'fair' or not, instead become cases where say, a small penalty is issued.
Doh. Of course, you're right. Then, the only reason would be to have lighter PSUs for those that don't need the extra power. Something more like 3 different sizes would be more sensible than 10.
My bad. Here is more info (one reply said HDMI is decoded in milliseconds):
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1696034&cid=32669672
Interesting. I suppose like you say, around 5-10 ratings. Perhaps 20, 30, 45, 65, 90, 120, 160, 200 wattages would be an example of that.
By the way, isn't it possible to simply have a power supply which is capable of switching between a range of wattages? I know that even my desktop cooling fan has three speeds (and therefore 3 wattages).
Doesn't HDMI have some terrible lag - something like 0.2 seconds or something? Maybe DisplayPort doesn't suffer from this.
There was an episode of the Simpsons called "Itchy and Scratchy Land", and from that episode, there was a map with an attraction named "Unnecessary Surgery Land".
Hence I coined the phrase UWS or "Unnecessary Work Syndrome" for things exactly like this, where every manufacturer spends thousands or even millions of dollars to come up with their own special version of say... the power brick.
I'm not sure if open source is appropriate all the time, but open standards are such a no-brainer, it hurts.
You seem to be assuming a zero-sum game here. That a company's gain is automatically the customer's loss.
Fuse that notion with the 'broken window fallacy' attitude, another popular misconception, and the potential for confusion is limitless.
It actually ends up more efficient for everyone if just one company (or two or three for competition's sake) end up doing all the work in a particular area.
Unless you think everyone doing more work is actually a good thing (broken window fallacy springs to mind).
Yes, everyone knows the 19th century ended *on* 2000 not at the end of 1999... sigh.
Strange, I didn't know it would be so easy to check for oneself like that. It makes me wonder what else can be done without the need to visit a health specialist.
Sigh.
So many sites do the same thing and it really peeves me off. A simple solution would be to count the number of votes as a factor of reliability and include that in the overall score. One solution I came up with years ago was this:
x = (say) 10
reliability = (numberOfVotes / x) / (1 + numberOfVotes / x)
weightedScore = (score/0.5)^reliability * 0.5 (*100 for percent).
x can be adjusted to other numbers appropriately, though values from 3 to 30 could works wel. The score (and weighted score) will be a value from 0 to 1. Perhaps it's not perfect (maybe mathematicians could chime in), but it's a damn sight better than most of what's out there. (I use it on the web host comparison in my sig.)
Physical media will always be far superior to digital.
Not really no. Physical media takes up space.
1) Can buy the game used. Instead of paying $60 for a game, you can wait a few weeks and get it for $35-40. Within a few months, it's available for $20-30 while Steam still sells it for $60.
You can still theoretically sell a non-DRM digitial copy, and delete the original, though you'd have to be honest about it. You used the word 'always' initially which implies that at no future point will humanity be honest in this way.
2) It can be resold. After you spend 10 hours finishing that game, you can turn it around and resell it for 80% of its buying price. You can then apply that money towards #1 and buy another game for cheap.
See 1.
3) You're not stuck with it. How many games, honestly, do you still play after a year? Maybe one or two. Why be permanently stuck with a game that you'll never play again? And why be stuck with a game that sucks? How about those poor saps that paid $60 for Terminator Salvation, discovered the game could be beaten in 5 hours, and had absolutely no replay value?
Er, there's always the delete/uninstall button...?
4) You can trade games. The ultimate barter. Tired of a game and need a break? Trade with a friend for a month. Want to see if a game is really fun? Borrow it from a friend. Downloadable demos do not compare.
Swap (non-drm) digital copies, and both parties can delete their initial originals. Problem solved.
5) A visual reminder. Having a physical boxed item is a visual reminder that you have a game that you can play.
Get a nicer presentation system then. In the future, we'll have 200" OLED monitors displaying 'game box covers' in 3D with all the bells and whistles you could ever want. Perhaps you want the smell of the paper box emulated too?
I always thought that artsy snobs would actually at least tolerate films with no plot anyway (stuff like 2001: A Space Odyssey springs to mind).
Maybe we should all discuss the most appropriate expiration for copyright (say 10 to 30 years), and then create a website and try to change copyright to the new limit.
It's an interesting problem, but a slightly trickier probability puzzle in the Snooker Table of Doom:
http://www.skytopia.com/project/imath/imath.html#13
I know what would be good.
A publicly available graph showing time against against frequency usage with coloured company bars over it. We'd see exactly what was going on, and it'd be scientifically educational and informative too.