I'd hardly call the Japanese "dumbed-down culture".
Neither would I. It seems his impression of Manga is based on the covers of a few more "bubblegum" style books he may have seen at the local bookstore. There certainly are some out there that fit, but only if you ignore reams of great stuff.
The author of the article barely makes mention of it except to crack a joke. Manga has been mainstream entertainment for people of all ages/social status for years in Japan, and accounts for about 1/3 of all books and magazines published there (and several billion US dollars in sales). Where 'Comic Books' are considered Geeky in the US, Manga is read by everyone from children to housewives to businessmen.
Whether you believe it or not, neither I or any of my friends has a friend with a Mac.
I do have a few friends who own a BMW to answer your question, and no I do not need a more diverse set of friends. I am friends with educators, attorneys, and doctors as a matter of fact and they ALL own and use IBM PCs / Windows (And ask for my help to fix them, but that is another story altogether!)
Not all of us live in hotbeds of Apple activity like NYC or California (although I guess statistically speaking almost 20% of the USA lives in one of those two areas).
Ohhh Boy, embedded video on the web page. That site will be smoked QUICK!
Here is a link that shows what appears at a glance to be a superior robot model from Japan doing all kinds of neat tricks. It has 22 Degrees of Freedom rather than the 17 DOF in the robot from Wow Robot. This page also has video, but they are all links at the bottom of the page.
I agree that one of these would be great fun to play with!
Now, you would be hard-pressed to find someone that doesn't know a Macintosh owner.
I have to disagree here. I don't know any Mac owners, and nobody I know has a friend with a Mac either.
You are correct that Apple does have a "test drive" program though, the shiny Apple Stores in malls around the country. People play around with the display models, and that increases public awareness. Now it's not as good as bringing it home to try out, but it's a start. They just need to get better at convincing Average Joes WHY they should pay a premium for a Mac.
You know, that's a really smart idea! Of course it would need a few tweaks- Maybe calculate the percentage of mistakes and trash it above a certain value (for the friends who make the occasional spelling mistake).
The best part is, if spammers start using spell-check and correcting their mail before sending (changing V1@gr@ to Viagra) it will be caught by the spam filters instead! It's a win-win situation, less spam and correct spelling...
Well, we could make public systems that accepted your "desktop" on a USB Key or compact flash card that you can take out and keep with you. No fancy internet storage of your apps and data needed, and nothing left behind to hack. Sure, a USB key could be stolen from you, but so could your laptop. People are less likely to know you have something valuable to steal if you're not carrying that large laptop bag around.
A USB key based system is something I might actually use, unless the public terminal was covered in mystery spooge as Surlyboi suggests in his reply to you...
From the article: Despite their outward sameness, most computers are so personalized with desktop preferences and software that borrowing someone's computer can seem as creepy as borrowing their underwear.
Does this mean that borrowing someone else's underwear could be made less creepy if it were made to look like your own? Will we laugh at people someday for actually travelling with luggage- Ha ha, fools- I just use the underwear that is laying around at the hotel?!
Seriously, who would use this? How long will it be after introduction before someone comes up with a way to hack/hijack an Internet Suspend/Resume account and get all of your data?
I know that's meant to be funny, but seriously- Why burden the broadcaster with taping and archiving all this junk? Instead, have a large distributed system record it all for you. Yes thats right, the viewers. I'm sure that with all the TV addicts out there nearly everything gets recorded by somebody. It's just spread out in small blocks throughout the country.
In the rare chance you need something as evidence you can offer a small "bounty" for a copy of it. Hell that would make even more people record TV shows just in the off chance of earning $1000 at some point!
Could it be that some percentage of their sales are actually being lost to people who are using Open Source Software and other free (as in beer) alternatives? Nah, let's just blame P2P. Maybe we can sue our customers when they don't buy the newer versions of our software while we're at it (hey it works for the music industry)!
The idea of blanket wireless internet access for all is enticing, but what kind of battery life are you going to get in your Laptop/PDA when you need a PC Card that can transmit signals over Seventy Six miles to this thing? (Based on the Altitude of 13 miles and an expected wireless coverage radius of 75 miles)
Not sure about anyone else, but I lose an hour off my battery life for a wifi signal that barely reaches 100 feet.
Note that the small Israeli company mentioned above is not Radarvison/Time Domain. Radarvision is based out of Huntsville Alabama.
The Israeli company is called Camero and the product they are developing is superior to the Radarvision product as you don't need to hold it up to a wall. It can be used up to 20 meters away from a wall, and will give more detail on the items/activity behind the wall...
Camero does not appear to have a web site, as far as I could find in my brief googling.
Microsoft is the company we all love to hate. This package is designed to prevent Linux gaining a foothold in Thailand, the article spells that out for us. Since they're doing this for the good of their pocketbooks and not the consumer, I damn it. They clearly have no intention of deploying this in the USA, because all US companies and individuals would opt for the stripped down $38 package over the $600 one.
Of course, if MS creates a leaner, meaner OS because of their desire to crush the spread of Linux in developing nations that's great. I applaud it. As long as the benefits are shared with every country.
A stripped down version of Windows XP and Office XP could be infinitely better than the full versions in the USA if the right features were removed- remove active scripting and VBA from these products, take out a good percentage of the obscure features of Office that no one uses, and presto- a less bloated, more secure computing environment that just happens to have the MS logo on it.
Hell, for 38 bucks I would give it a try if they rolled it out here. Of course they won't do that, because this whole tactic is about training the next generation of PC owners (developing nations) to become dependant upon MS crack.
Re:Games don't have to be old to be good.
on
Retro Gaming Gets Hot
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Yes! I have seen and played his stuff. Speaking of interesting 2-D games, have you seen Gish? Not a shooter, but a very unique and fun 2-D game. Check out the demo, or at least look at the gameplay video (no I'm not affiliated with them, my company's name just happens to be similar to theirs!)
I'm glad that some companies have figured this out! I love the latest and greatest games as much as anyone, but my heart still belongs to good old 2-D action games. Ah the memories of dimly lit arcades where you could go and bask in the warm glow of electronic sex, erm I mean video monitors...
Emulators like MAME and ZSNES are a blast when you just need a quick game to let off some steam or kill some time. When on the go the old Gameboy Advance really has you covered with tons of classic games available as well.
Or you can read it here without the soul sucking registration...
On a related note, am I the only one who thinks gaming on a cell phone sucks big time? Making it 3D does not make the screen or controls any better. I'll keep my Gameboy Advance thanks...
I really like these concepts for alternate ways to visualize large amounts of data. Reminds me of Douglas Adam's Dirk Gently books. There was a character who wrote a program called Anthem that would interpret a company's stock data and vital statistics and play a tune based on that data.
Rather than using a Wav. file, maybe this could be written to play a variety MIDI tones to account for all kinds of activity on your network!
Yes but with the NIMBY mentality in the US, where would you put that 30 mile square box? No one would want it, just like the trouble finding a home for spent nuclear fuel rods and waste.
The problem is you CAN fill local landfills for many towns/cities. They are not bottomless pits. Then deals need to be struck to transport garbage elsewhere, increasing costs to the individuals who live in that town through taxes to pay for it.
Yes they are recyclable, but how many people will recycle? Not every community has enforced recycling policies, and even in the ones that do a lot of people will probably throw these in the regular trash bin without thinking...
That's just great. Lets overflow landfill after landfill with disposable view-once or twice DVDs, and use up those fossil fuel supplies even faster making these disposable frisbees. Oh yeah, while we're at it, lets gouge the customer's wallets more on regular DVDs that don't self destruct...
The combinatiom of these things does nothing to stop piracy, it may even increase it. You could rent one of these and copy it in the first 8 hours to a regular DVD-R and enjoy it forever.
Maybe Microsoft should just fall back onto it's old standby technique- buy the company. Purchase Symantec and integrate the Norton Anti-virus product directly into the Windows OS!
It would make the net a safer place for the rest of us if they did so...
Sorry to reply to myself, but I figured I should point out for the people who might not already be aware that SPF and Caller ID for e-mail have become a merged plan in the last several weeks. Missed the announcement myself:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'd hardly call the Japanese "dumbed-down culture".
Neither would I. It seems his impression of Manga is based on the covers of a few more "bubblegum" style books he may have seen at the local bookstore. There certainly are some out there that fit, but only if you ignore reams of great stuff.
The author of the article barely makes mention of it except to crack a joke. Manga has been mainstream entertainment for people of all ages/social status for years in Japan, and accounts for about 1/3 of all books and magazines published there (and several billion US dollars in sales). Where 'Comic Books' are considered Geeky in the US, Manga is read by everyone from children to housewives to businessmen.
It's about time we started catching up...
Whether you believe it or not, neither I or any of my friends has a friend with a Mac.
I do have a few friends who own a BMW to answer your question, and no I do not need a more diverse set of friends. I am friends with educators, attorneys, and doctors as a matter of fact and they ALL own and use IBM PCs / Windows (And ask for my help to fix them, but that is another story altogether!)
Not all of us live in hotbeds of Apple activity like NYC or California (although I guess statistically speaking almost 20% of the USA lives in one of those two areas).
Ohhh Boy, embedded video on the web page. That site will be smoked QUICK!
Here is a link that shows what appears at a glance to be a superior robot model from Japan doing all kinds of neat tricks. It has 22 Degrees of Freedom rather than the 17 DOF in the robot from Wow Robot. This page also has video, but they are all links at the bottom of the page.
I agree that one of these would be great fun to play with!
Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated...
Now, you would be hard-pressed to find someone that doesn't know a Macintosh owner.
I have to disagree here. I don't know any Mac owners, and nobody I know has a friend with a Mac either.
You are correct that Apple does have a "test drive" program though, the shiny Apple Stores in malls around the country. People play around with the display models, and that increases public awareness. Now it's not as good as bringing it home to try out, but it's a start. They just need to get better at convincing Average Joes WHY they should pay a premium for a Mac.
You know, that's a really smart idea! Of course it would need a few tweaks- Maybe calculate the percentage of mistakes and trash it above a certain value (for the friends who make the occasional spelling mistake).
The best part is, if spammers start using spell-check and correcting their mail before sending (changing V1@gr@ to Viagra) it will be caught by the spam filters instead! It's a win-win situation, less spam and correct spelling...
Well, we could make public systems that accepted your "desktop" on a USB Key or compact flash card that you can take out and keep with you. No fancy internet storage of your apps and data needed, and nothing left behind to hack. Sure, a USB key could be stolen from you, but so could your laptop. People are less likely to know you have something valuable to steal if you're not carrying that large laptop bag around.
A USB key based system is something I might actually use, unless the public terminal was covered in mystery spooge as Surlyboi suggests in his reply to you...
From the article:
Despite their outward sameness, most computers are so personalized with desktop preferences and software that borrowing someone's computer can seem as creepy as borrowing their underwear.
Does this mean that borrowing someone else's underwear could be made less creepy if it were made to look like your own? Will we laugh at people someday for actually travelling with luggage- Ha ha, fools- I just use the underwear that is laying around at the hotel?!
Seriously, who would use this? How long will it be after introduction before someone comes up with a way to hack/hijack an Internet Suspend/Resume account and get all of your data?
I know that's meant to be funny, but seriously- Why burden the broadcaster with taping and archiving all this junk? Instead, have a large distributed system record it all for you. Yes thats right, the viewers. I'm sure that with all the TV addicts out there nearly everything gets recorded by somebody. It's just spread out in small blocks throughout the country.
In the rare chance you need something as evidence you can offer a small "bounty" for a copy of it. Hell that would make even more people record TV shows just in the off chance of earning $1000 at some point!
Could it be that some percentage of their sales are actually being lost to people who are using Open Source Software and other free (as in beer) alternatives? Nah, let's just blame P2P. Maybe we can sue our customers when they don't buy the newer versions of our software while we're at it (hey it works for the music industry)!
I'd add MediaPortal to that list for comparison, although I would agree MythTV should come out on top, it's awesome!
The idea of blanket wireless internet access for all is enticing, but what kind of battery life are you going to get in your Laptop/PDA when you need a PC Card that can transmit signals over Seventy Six miles to this thing? (Based on the Altitude of 13 miles and an expected wireless coverage radius of 75 miles)
Not sure about anyone else, but I lose an hour off my battery life for a wifi signal that barely reaches 100 feet.
Note that the small Israeli company mentioned above is not Radarvison/Time Domain. Radarvision is based out of Huntsville Alabama.
The Israeli company is called Camero and the product they are developing is superior to the Radarvision product as you don't need to hold it up to a wall. It can be used up to 20 meters away from a wall, and will give more detail on the items/activity behind the wall...
Camero does not appear to have a web site, as far as I could find in my brief googling.
It's a bit of both...
Microsoft is the company we all love to hate. This package is designed to prevent Linux gaining a foothold in Thailand, the article spells that out for us. Since they're doing this for the good of their pocketbooks and not the consumer, I damn it. They clearly have no intention of deploying this in the USA, because all US companies and individuals would opt for the stripped down $38 package over the $600 one.
Of course, if MS creates a leaner, meaner OS because of their desire to crush the spread of Linux in developing nations that's great. I applaud it. As long as the benefits are shared with every country.
A stripped down version of Windows XP and Office XP could be infinitely better than the full versions in the USA if the right features were removed- remove active scripting and VBA from these products, take out a good percentage of the obscure features of Office that no one uses, and presto- a less bloated, more secure computing environment that just happens to have the MS logo on it.
Hell, for 38 bucks I would give it a try if they rolled it out here. Of course they won't do that, because this whole tactic is about training the next generation of PC owners (developing nations) to become dependant upon MS crack.
Yes! I have seen and played his stuff. Speaking of interesting 2-D games, have you seen Gish? Not a shooter, but a very unique and fun 2-D game. Check out the demo, or at least look at the gameplay video (no I'm not affiliated with them, my company's name just happens to be similar to theirs!)
I'm glad that some companies have figured this out! I love the latest and greatest games as much as anyone, but my heart still belongs to good old 2-D action games. Ah the memories of dimly lit arcades where you could go and bask in the warm glow of electronic sex, erm I mean video monitors...
Emulators like MAME and ZSNES are a blast when you just need a quick game to let off some steam or kill some time. When on the go the old Gameboy Advance really has you covered with tons of classic games available as well.
Or you can read it here without the soul sucking registration...
On a related note, am I the only one who thinks gaming on a cell phone sucks big time? Making it 3D does not make the screen or controls any better. I'll keep my Gameboy Advance thanks...
I really like these concepts for alternate ways to visualize large amounts of data. Reminds me of Douglas Adam's Dirk Gently books. There was a character who wrote a program called Anthem that would interpret a company's stock data and vital statistics and play a tune based on that data.
Rather than using a Wav. file, maybe this could be written to play a variety MIDI tones to account for all kinds of activity on your network!
Yes but with the NIMBY mentality in the US, where would you put that 30 mile square box? No one would want it, just like the trouble finding a home for spent nuclear fuel rods and waste.
The problem is you CAN fill local landfills for many towns/cities. They are not bottomless pits. Then deals need to be struck to transport garbage elsewhere, increasing costs to the individuals who live in that town through taxes to pay for it.
Yes they are recyclable, but how many people will recycle? Not every community has enforced recycling policies, and even in the ones that do a lot of people will probably throw these in the regular trash bin without thinking...
That's just great. Lets overflow landfill after landfill with disposable view-once or twice DVDs, and use up those fossil fuel supplies even faster making these disposable frisbees. Oh yeah, while we're at it, lets gouge the customer's wallets more on regular DVDs that don't self destruct...
The combinatiom of these things does nothing to stop piracy, it may even increase it. You could rent one of these and copy it in the first 8 hours to a regular DVD-R and enjoy it forever.
Maybe Microsoft should just fall back onto it's old standby technique- buy the company. Purchase Symantec and integrate the Norton Anti-virus product directly into the Windows OS!
It would make the net a safer place for the rest of us if they did so...
Sorry to reply to myself, but I figured I should point out for the people who might not already be aware that SPF and Caller ID for e-mail have become a merged plan in the last several weeks. Missed the announcement myself :)