We've all heard this rant before before. No, Linux is not for everyone unfortunately. However neither is Windows, nor Mac, nor Unix, nor BSD, etc. It all comes down to what you want your computer to do and what those operating systems offer.
So your argument makes assumptions I don't see anyone here making.
Server Name: YOUTUBE.COM.ZZZZZ.GET.LAID.AT.WWW.SWINGINGCOMMUNITY.COM
IP Address: 69.41.185.205
Registrar: INNERWISE, INC. D/B/A ITSYOURDOMAIN.COM
Whois Server: whois.itsyourdomain.com
Referral URL: http://www.itsyourdomain.com/
Server Name: YOUTUBE.COM.MORE.INFO.AT.WWW.BEYONDWHOIS.COM
IP Address: 203.36.226.2
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
Referral URL: http://domainhelp.opensrs.net/
Server Name: YOUTUBE.COM.IS.N0T.AS.1337.AS.WWW.GULLI.COM
IP Address: 80.190.192.39
Registrar: KEY-SYSTEMS GMBH
Whois Server: whois.rrpproxy.net
Referral URL: http://www.key-systems.net/
I queried the valid DNS and got these:
Using domain server:
Name: dns1.sjl.youtube.com
Address: 208.65.152.201#53
Aliases:
youtube.com has address 208.65.153.253
youtube.com has address 208.65.153.238
youtube.com has address 208.65.153.251
As in, the camera sees the IR bar, and notes that the Remote is currently pointed 20-degrees "up" from horizontal. Somebody then walks in front of the remote... while the signal is blocked, the user points it a further 10 degrees up, according to the accelerometers; the software then knows to send a 30-degree Y signal to the console. The interloper then stops blocking the camera, and it the remote discovers that it was really 31-degrees, it uses this new information to correct the signal and compensate for the drift. I don't think I follow this. If you point the wiimote at your screen then block the IR signal from reaching the camera the Wii will drop any pointing activity. So the wiimote will not send to the wii what it thinks the change was based on the previous IR data, it will only send the lack of IR data and the current accelerometer values. If this is what you meant by drift then they eliminated the problem by ignoring anything that they couldn't directly observed at that point in time. You can do this on the menu screen by pointing at the screen then covering up the camera, the cursor will disappear.
The only information you (the Wii) gets from the wiimote for IR is the X,Y position of each IR source (up to 4, the sensor bar has only 2). It doesn't even give you the X,Y position you are pointing at, you have to use the other information to calculate what it is.
Given this limited amount of information, unless the wiimote does it internally somehow, it doesn't recalibrate itself. If you knew that two dots are 11 inches apart (I'm not sure if that is the distance the sensor bar uses or not) and that they are level, the only information I would think you could obtain from any picture of them in any orientation is the approximate distance you are from it (given you know it's 11" apart and you know how close the dots on the image are at your present location), limited yaw (because if the dots go off the screen then you can't tell what it is), and limited roll (because after 180 degrees it would just mirror itself). You would not be able to tell pitch because you could elevate the camera and get the same picture of the dots as you would it you changed the pitch.
I don't doubt that more complex systems do recalibrate themselves with some external reference, just that I don't think in this case the IR sensor bar would have enough information to be able to do that.
Please correct me if I'm wrong or missed something obvious.
Accelerometers only give you how much gravity forces are applied to each axis. If the accelerometer is not moving then only gravity is being applied to each of those. Assuming you are holding the wiimote with the buttons facing up, then when you roll it the x-axis accelerometer will change, and when you change the pitch the y-axis accelerometer will change. The only way you can change the z-axis accelerometer is by raising the wiimote or lowering it closer to the floor. So if you change the yaw position of the wiimote (hold the wiimote out in front of you with the buttons facing up then turn your body 90 degrees to the right) the force of gravity does not change on any of those accelerometer axis and so it is impossible to calculate how much you turned.
The image here may make it more obvious. The z-axis is pulled down by gravity, but it does not change if you yaw the wiimote. However roll and pitch can change the x and y-axis accelerometers, so they can be used to calculate the new angles.
This is why you need an external point of reference for pointing at the TV (since you only have pitch and not yaw), so Nintendo included the IR stuff.
Check out Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008, that game is pretty accurate. When I play golf a lot of times I slice off to the right (or is that called a hook?), and I do the same in that game. It's actually very frustrating, but also realistic. They probably do some kind of fuzzy swing matching algorithm in that game to get better results than just analyzing the raw angles and accelerations. Anyway, it's pretty well done, worth at least a rental fee.
Also, the IR system is only used as as calibration for the accelerometers. The accelerometers in the Wii Remote still do the bulk of the work. If the Wii Remote relied on the IR camera as the primary sensor, it would be useless every time line of sight to the sensor bar was lost. What the Wii Remote does is keep rough track of remote position using the accelerometers, and then when the camera is pointed at the sensor bar, it re-calculates the starting point for the motion tracking to start from. The wiimote has factory set calibrations, it doesn't recalibrate itself on-the-fly. The only thing IR is used for is limited yaw calculations, depth (distance from the sensor bar) estimation, and calculating the X,Y position you are pointing at on the screen. For these the sensor bar is used as a primary sensor because that's the only point of reference that can be used to get that information. Everything else you said is spot on though.
Motion detection and pointing are really two different features.
The wiimote uses a 3-axis accelerometer to calculate roll, yaw, as well as gravity forces on each axis; this gives everything except for yaw. Yaw would be nice but it really isn't needed because the shape of the object in your hand doesn't feel nature (or comfortable) to rotate it in that direction. To solve the issue of pointing the wiimote uses a camera sensitive to IR light and captures it at 1024x768 resolution. Since the wii sensor bar has two dots the virtual screen resolution is actually slightly bigger than that.
In addition to actually pointing at the screen the wiimote's IR camera can also be used to estimate the distance you are from the TV. So in all the wiimote has several degrees of freedom:
Pitch
Roll
Yaw (very limited with IR)
Distance
X,Y position on the TV
With all of this you get a pretty decent idea of where the wiimote is in 3d space and at what orientation it is at.
Now consider the distance you are from your TV. As you move further away then the angle you should move the wiimote either up, down, left, or right should also decrease because the object. The wiimote can do that because of the IR camera. If you use a gyroscope you lose this because no matter where you are in 3d space it only cares about the orientation it is with respect to gravity. So if you are aiming at the top of your TV and you move backwards with a gyroscope then it will still be aiming at the top, whereas with the wiimote it will go above the top because that's where you're actually pointing the device.
With a gyroscope and accelerometer you would get:
Pitch
Roll
Yaw
That's about it. No distance, no X,Y position.
I think the wiimote still wins out. The only thing that I would change with the wiimote is give it a higher resolution IR camera, but maybe that was too expensive for Nintendo (that may also have been a reason they didn't do high def?)
Also you can already use the wiimote on a PC for free and have millions of potential customers already owning one. So why would anyone want to pay royalties to use this thing?
But otherwise, you really shouldn't run into any deal-breakers as long as your machine has enough RAM (2-4 gigs), and RAM is cheap. I think this really helps your argument. If I'm going to buy a new computer it's probably going to have 2-4+ GB of RAM anyway, so it makes sense for me to take advantage of the latest and greatest technological achievements with the new features provided by Vista.
Hardware is cheap, let the programs that want to use it use it. If I install a program on Vista that needs more RAM because I'm running low on system resources, I can just go get more.
Paradoxically, your cell phone, email, and Facebook networks are making it more attractive to meet people in the flesh. Why is the cell phone listed? Land lines do the same thing and have been around a lot longer, that is nothing new.
E-Mail is just a faster form of snail-mail. I can understand wanting to meet a pen pal but I don't see how having one is more appealing than meeting someone at a public place.
Facebook.. good lord. Social networking sites are a joke. I have more interesting conversations on IRC on a regular basis than anyone ever has on facebook. And that has been around for ages, as has instant messanging. Thinking about how facebook makes it "more attractive to meet people in the flesh" makes my head explode. I think I actually hate that site for how much crap it seems to be spewing out.
That is an option you can enable if you want that data. Looking at it though, it seems pretty general and doesn't give very accurate results. For example, you may have to move backward a couple of feet for it to drop to the next smallest size interval. If you are using the two IR sources to estimate distance you will have much better precision.
The sensor bar has two IR points on either end to help with calculating things like distance. The wiimote itself can see up to 4 IR sources at any given time. So the multitouch interface would be limited to 4 pens, not that you'd need more than that though.
As far as I know the Daily Show is not available on DVD, whereas South Park is. So if you wanted to watch the Daily Show and you didn't have Comedy Central, your only option was to pirate the episodes; making them available for free online made sense. But with South Park you can buy the DVDs, so making them available for free online would only hurt their DVD sales (unless of course the downloads are of very poor quality).
That's why id made it open source, so people could add to it. You're thinking of a mod where only the game content has changed and the engine is exactly the same. With the GPLed engine these third party developers can go in an update the engine making it more modern... and it's free. It's my opinion that game play is more important that eye candy anyhow.
Also, no one gives a shit why you don't read/. that often.
This also used to influence the width of the 'int' datatype in the C compiler, although I'm not sure that 'int' is a 64-bit integer when compiling x64 code. With GCC an int is 4 bytes (32-bit) and a long is 8 bytes (64-bit).
American McGee is supposed to be doing a film version of his video game American McGee's Alice.
There is some info about it here.
How will these versions compare? American's was very dark and twisted, with Alice emotionally disturbed and borderline insane. Characters were murdered and gruesome experiments were performed on the inhabitants of Wonderland.
You're using one example to justify a ridiculous generalization about the use of Nmap. Just because your example included the author of the tool (if this story is even true or not) is irrelevant.
I think you missed the point of the argument entirely. Nmap has real, legitimate use. In fact, I use it on a regular basis to scan my local area network to make sure no suspicious ports are open that may be trojan infections. So when does trying to keep my network clean of viruses and trojans make Nmap a 'hacker tool' and me a 'criminal'?
The game seems to be insanely huge and how is it that there can be an infinite amount of different creates created in the game? It's not possible to have an infinite amount of states in a finite state machine (like our turing machines).
There will at most be 'a lot' of different combinations.
They don't give out details because it makes sense not to early in development. From what I've read from the book "Masters of Doom", John Romero used to do a lot of boasting about new games before they were really ready to showcase. This became a problem because he would say stuff like, "well our game is going to do blah and blah", which is likely what they wanted at that stage in development. But maybe a few months down the road they decide that's not really want they wanted, now they have to deal with this hype that was generated for something they no longer intend to do. So thats why they don't give out much detail about their projects until it is much closer to being ready to ship.
I think long building hype sets you up for failure... Daikatana and Duke Nukem Forever?
While I agree, I think it should be pointed out that SG-1 and Atlantis have done some interesting things in terms of using elements of each show concurrently in the other. For example, something may occur in SG-1, then the next week (or perhaps even the same week) those events will somehow influence what happens in Atlantis. While the shows are completely separate, I think the writers are doing a great job of keeping the whole stargate universe together as a whole and not just ignoring events that are happening at the same time in the other galaxy. By keeping two shows going at the same time they are able to maintain this. Any more than two shows and it may just become confusing and irritating.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I never really thought they made much money at all from selling their games regardless of pirates.
Ok, I could be completely wrong. How would I know anyway, right? I don't have a copy of the companies financial reports or anything like that. What I do know is id consistently produces high quality gaming engines which are licensed out to third party companies for their own titles. According to id's website the licensed Quake3 out for $250,000 per title. And from what I remember, there were quite a few titles using that engine.
On a side note id has been producing ports to consoles for ages. There was QuakeII for the N64 and Playstation.
Addiction. Contrary to many peoples beliefs, it does exist. I've been addicted to games before, and I've certainly seen other people who have. What I don't understand is how they can let it become so out of control the start paying money, depriving themselves of sleep, and dying. I remember reading about some kid who was playing Quake1 at one of the first Quake conventions, who refused to use the bathroom for so long he explosively defecated at his computer. Please, for the love of god, take a break every once in a while from your games kids.
Accomplishment. I can only speculate from hearing people talk about games like WoW, that when some quest or section of the game has been finished, they feel like they really did something. Now if they are playing the game for release, or casually, this is all well and good. I play Quake3 every once in a while to vent from frustration and it feels pretty good when I kill that last guy. But in combination with the addiction this is just depressing.
Boredom. If it's a hobby that you do in moderation, fine. But I don't think many kids really understand moderation, or the effects certain activities have on them if they do not observe it.
Here's what I think happens. Some kid gets bored and decides to try out this new game all his friends tell him is fun. Great, he picks it up as a hobby and has a blast. After a couple days/weeks it develops into an obsession, and after a month full blown addiction. Now if neither he nor anyone around him realizes it's an addiction, then he has a problem. If he is able to see the problem, then he can regulate it my limiting his play time, and there is really no harm at all. Let's say he doesn't and it becomes out of control (as most of these kids seem to be doing), then he beats some aspect of the game, feels good about it, and the whole cycle reiterates until the addiction lasts so long than the boredom overtakes it and they move on to the next game.
You're entirely right, why the hell would anyone do that?
What's the point of even considering to play a game if you're just going to skip right to the end anyhow? That's like buying a movie ticket 2 hours late and walking into the theater to catch the last 10 minutes of the film. Bravo kids.
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We've all heard this rant before before. No, Linux is not for everyone unfortunately. However neither is Windows, nor Mac, nor Unix, nor BSD, etc. It all comes down to what you want your computer to do and what those operating systems offer.
So your argument makes assumptions I don't see anyone here making.
My head just exploded.
As in, the camera sees the IR bar, and notes that the Remote is currently pointed 20-degrees "up" from horizontal. Somebody then walks in front of the remote... while the signal is blocked, the user points it a further 10 degrees up, according to the accelerometers; the software then knows to send a 30-degree Y signal to the console. The interloper then stops blocking the camera, and it the remote discovers that it was really 31-degrees, it uses this new information to correct the signal and compensate for the drift. I don't think I follow this. If you point the wiimote at your screen then block the IR signal from reaching the camera the Wii will drop any pointing activity. So the wiimote will not send to the wii what it thinks the change was based on the previous IR data, it will only send the lack of IR data and the current accelerometer values. If this is what you meant by drift then they eliminated the problem by ignoring anything that they couldn't directly observed at that point in time. You can do this on the menu screen by pointing at the screen then covering up the camera, the cursor will disappear.
This is interesting, I wasn't aware of drift.
The only information you (the Wii) gets from the wiimote for IR is the X,Y position of each IR source (up to 4, the sensor bar has only 2). It doesn't even give you the X,Y position you are pointing at, you have to use the other information to calculate what it is.
Given this limited amount of information, unless the wiimote does it internally somehow, it doesn't recalibrate itself. If you knew that two dots are 11 inches apart (I'm not sure if that is the distance the sensor bar uses or not) and that they are level, the only information I would think you could obtain from any picture of them in any orientation is the approximate distance you are from it (given you know it's 11" apart and you know how close the dots on the image are at your present location), limited yaw (because if the dots go off the screen then you can't tell what it is), and limited roll (because after 180 degrees it would just mirror itself). You would not be able to tell pitch because you could elevate the camera and get the same picture of the dots as you would it you changed the pitch.
I don't doubt that more complex systems do recalibrate themselves with some external reference, just that I don't think in this case the IR sensor bar would have enough information to be able to do that.
Please correct me if I'm wrong or missed something obvious.
Accelerometers only give you how much gravity forces are applied to each axis. If the accelerometer is not moving then only gravity is being applied to each of those. Assuming you are holding the wiimote with the buttons facing up, then when you roll it the x-axis accelerometer will change, and when you change the pitch the y-axis accelerometer will change. The only way you can change the z-axis accelerometer is by raising the wiimote or lowering it closer to the floor. So if you change the yaw position of the wiimote (hold the wiimote out in front of you with the buttons facing up then turn your body 90 degrees to the right) the force of gravity does not change on any of those accelerometer axis and so it is impossible to calculate how much you turned.
The image here may make it more obvious. The z-axis is pulled down by gravity, but it does not change if you yaw the wiimote. However roll and pitch can change the x and y-axis accelerometers, so they can be used to calculate the new angles.
This is why you need an external point of reference for pointing at the TV (since you only have pitch and not yaw), so Nintendo included the IR stuff.
Check out Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2008, that game is pretty accurate. When I play golf a lot of times I slice off to the right (or is that called a hook?), and I do the same in that game. It's actually very frustrating, but also realistic. They probably do some kind of fuzzy swing matching algorithm in that game to get better results than just analyzing the raw angles and accelerations. Anyway, it's pretty well done, worth at least a rental fee.
The wiimote uses a 3-axis accelerometer to calculate roll, yaw, as well as gravity forces on each axis; this gives everything except for yaw. Yaw would be nice but it really isn't needed because the shape of the object in your hand doesn't feel nature (or comfortable) to rotate it in that direction. To solve the issue of pointing the wiimote uses a camera sensitive to IR light and captures it at 1024x768 resolution. Since the wii sensor bar has two dots the virtual screen resolution is actually slightly bigger than that.
In addition to actually pointing at the screen the wiimote's IR camera can also be used to estimate the distance you are from the TV. So in all the wiimote has several degrees of freedom:
- Pitch
- Roll
- Yaw (very limited with IR)
- Distance
- X,Y position on the TV
With all of this you get a pretty decent idea of where the wiimote is in 3d space and at what orientation it is at.Now consider the distance you are from your TV. As you move further away then the angle you should move the wiimote either up, down, left, or right should also decrease because the object. The wiimote can do that because of the IR camera. If you use a gyroscope you lose this because no matter where you are in 3d space it only cares about the orientation it is with respect to gravity. So if you are aiming at the top of your TV and you move backwards with a gyroscope then it will still be aiming at the top, whereas with the wiimote it will go above the top because that's where you're actually pointing the device.
With a gyroscope and accelerometer you would get:
- Pitch
- Roll
- Yaw
That's about it. No distance, no X,Y position.I think the wiimote still wins out. The only thing that I would change with the wiimote is give it a higher resolution IR camera, but maybe that was too expensive for Nintendo (that may also have been a reason they didn't do high def?)
Also you can already use the wiimote on a PC for free and have millions of potential customers already owning one. So why would anyone want to pay royalties to use this thing?
Hardware is cheap, let the programs that want to use it use it. If I install a program on Vista that needs more RAM because I'm running low on system resources, I can just go get more.
If it works it works.
E-Mail is just a faster form of snail-mail. I can understand wanting to meet a pen pal but I don't see how having one is more appealing than meeting someone at a public place.
Facebook.. good lord. Social networking sites are a joke. I have more interesting conversations on IRC on a regular basis than anyone ever has on facebook. And that has been around for ages, as has instant messanging. Thinking about how facebook makes it "more attractive to meet people in the flesh" makes my head explode. I think I actually hate that site for how much crap it seems to be spewing out.
That is an option you can enable if you want that data. Looking at it though, it seems pretty general and doesn't give very accurate results. For example, you may have to move backward a couple of feet for it to drop to the next smallest size interval. If you are using the two IR sources to estimate distance you will have much better precision.
The sensor bar has two IR points on either end to help with calculating things like distance. The wiimote itself can see up to 4 IR sources at any given time. So the multitouch interface would be limited to 4 pens, not that you'd need more than that though.
As far as I know the Daily Show is not available on DVD, whereas South Park is. So if you wanted to watch the Daily Show and you didn't have Comedy Central, your only option was to pirate the episodes; making them available for free online made sense. But with South Park you can buy the DVDs, so making them available for free online would only hurt their DVD sales (unless of course the downloads are of very poor quality).
That's why id made it open source, so people could add to it. You're thinking of a mod where only the game content has changed and the engine is exactly the same. With the GPLed engine these third party developers can go in an update the engine making it more modern... and it's free. It's my opinion that game play is more important that eye candy anyhow.
/. that often.
Also, no one gives a shit why you don't read
American McGee is supposed to be doing a film version of his video game American McGee's Alice.
There is some info about it here.
How will these versions compare? American's was very dark and twisted, with Alice emotionally disturbed and borderline insane. Characters were murdered and gruesome experiments were performed on the inhabitants of Wonderland.
Does anyone really care?
You're using one example to justify a ridiculous generalization about the use of Nmap. Just because your example included the author of the tool (if this story is even true or not) is irrelevant.
I think you missed the point of the argument entirely. Nmap has real, legitimate use. In fact, I use it on a regular basis to scan my local area network to make sure no suspicious ports are open that may be trojan infections. So when does trying to keep my network clean of viruses and trojans make Nmap a 'hacker tool' and me a 'criminal'?
There will at most be 'a lot' of different combinations.
id games always have native Linux binaries.
They don't give out details because it makes sense not to early in development. From what I've read from the book "Masters of Doom", John Romero used to do a lot of boasting about new games before they were really ready to showcase. This became a problem because he would say stuff like, "well our game is going to do blah and blah", which is likely what they wanted at that stage in development. But maybe a few months down the road they decide that's not really want they wanted, now they have to deal with this hype that was generated for something they no longer intend to do. So thats why they don't give out much detail about their projects until it is much closer to being ready to ship.
I think long building hype sets you up for failure... Daikatana and Duke Nukem Forever?
While I agree, I think it should be pointed out that SG-1 and Atlantis have done some interesting things in terms of using elements of each show concurrently in the other. For example, something may occur in SG-1, then the next week (or perhaps even the same week) those events will somehow influence what happens in Atlantis. While the shows are completely separate, I think the writers are doing a great job of keeping the whole stargate universe together as a whole and not just ignoring events that are happening at the same time in the other galaxy. By keeping two shows going at the same time they are able to maintain this. Any more than two shows and it may just become confusing and irritating.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I never really thought they made much money at all from selling their games regardless of pirates.
Ok, I could be completely wrong. How would I know anyway, right? I don't have a copy of the companies financial reports or anything like that. What I do know is id consistently produces high quality gaming engines which are licensed out to third party companies for their own titles. According to id's website the licensed Quake3 out for $250,000 per title. And from what I remember, there were quite a few titles using that engine.
On a side note id has been producing ports to consoles for ages. There was QuakeII for the N64 and Playstation.
- Addiction. Contrary to many peoples beliefs, it does exist. I've been addicted to games before, and I've certainly seen other people who have. What I don't understand is how they can let it become so out of control the start paying money, depriving themselves of sleep, and dying. I remember reading about some kid who was playing Quake1 at one of the first Quake conventions, who refused to use the bathroom for so long he explosively defecated at his computer. Please, for the love of god, take a break every once in a while from your games kids.
- Accomplishment. I can only speculate from hearing people talk about games like WoW, that when some quest or section of the game has been finished, they feel like they really did something. Now if they are playing the game for release, or casually, this is all well and good. I play Quake3 every once in a while to vent from frustration and it feels pretty good when I kill that last guy. But in combination with the addiction this is just depressing.
- Boredom. If it's a hobby that you do in moderation, fine. But I don't think many kids really understand moderation, or the effects certain activities have on them if they do not observe it.
Here's what I think happens. Some kid gets bored and decides to try out this new game all his friends tell him is fun. Great, he picks it up as a hobby and has a blast. After a couple days/weeks it develops into an obsession, and after a month full blown addiction. Now if neither he nor anyone around him realizes it's an addiction, then he has a problem. If he is able to see the problem, then he can regulate it my limiting his play time, and there is really no harm at all. Let's say he doesn't and it becomes out of control (as most of these kids seem to be doing), then he beats some aspect of the game, feels good about it, and the whole cycle reiterates until the addiction lasts so long than the boredom overtakes it and they move on to the next game.Kind of a long post, sorry.
Mod parent up.
You're entirely right, why the hell would anyone do that?
What's the point of even considering to play a game if you're just going to skip right to the end anyhow? That's like buying a movie ticket 2 hours late and walking into the theater to catch the last 10 minutes of the film. Bravo kids.