I have a similar issue with such things - I have two eyes, but my brain doesn't 'see' in stereo. Instead, it uses what it sees through my left eye, and then fills in the blanks with the right, resulting in less than stereoscopic vision, and no depth perception.
That is to say, no hardware-accelerated depth perception. I can still do software depth perception by considering points of reference (trees, shadows, etc.) and estimating accordingly.
Still, I've never seen a stereoscopic imagine, or the sailboat, or 3D comics. Sigh. Maybe some day.
*gasp* you have to talk into it sideways, that "flaw" has been hyped out of proportion. I find it more difficult to open a shell-phone than to align my N-Gage the right way around.
It's not a question of alignment, it's a question of conveniance and comfort. It's a lot easier for me to hold my clamshell phone than an N-Gage, and when I'm using my clamshell, I can hold it up with my shoulder for a few moments while I do something with both hands. Not so much luck with the N-Gage.
The bluetooth headset point is a good one though, I'll remember that.
As far as the games go, I was referring to the hassle of swapping game chips. This, of course, is not a problem when you think of the N-Gage as a cellphone which also plays games (so you can throw in Super Monkey Ball to play when you're on the metro), but Nokia marketed it as a game machine which is also a cellphone, and from that point of view, the device fails miserably.
MP3s - Working at an EB, we got absolutely no product documentation on the N-Gage. We got hype, sure, but we didn't get anything to tell us things like 'it comes with a USB cable'. EB Games Canada is the only Canadian retailer of the N-Gage, and I didn't see a spec of useful (to us, to tell our customers) product literature - only hype and marketing.
As for the numpad - When you pick up an X-Box controller, or a PS2 controller, or a Gamecube controller, or a GBA, you pretty much instantly know how to hold it. When you do, you find your thumbs right around the D-Pad or Analog control, and a set of four buttons. There are also triggers you can figure out how to use pretty quick, especially with the X-Box controller.
10 keys for the X-Box controller? Four that your thumb can reach, and two analog in the back. Eight, simple. Yes, there are others, but they're out of the way, and not meant to be used for things like jumping or running.
The N-Gage, on the other hand, is reminiscant of the Jaguar. You have 12 buttons, but little sense of which ones you should try and push. I tried out Tony Hawk, and had to try pretty much every button, even though only a few of them did anything. The keys are all mashed together with no apparant distinction between any of them, insofar as when each should be used.
To summarize that last point, the X-Box has four buttons readily apparant as important, whereas the N-Gage has 12 buttons with only one (the '5') as apparantly important. Also, it's a pain in the ass to push more than one (maybe Nokia staff have more thumbs than I do).
I'm not one of the naysayers that says the N-Gage is the worst thing ever. It has a lot of flaws, but nothing really big that can't be fixed by a relatively minor revision. Largely, its problems are inconveniances, and for a lot of people, those don't apply (for example, if you're not a big gamer). I'm also not one of the luddites who believes that every device should have only one function. I'm a huge fan of the 'global' from Earth: Final Conflict, a cellphone/video phone/radio/pda/datalink/computer/everything else, in one simple, easy to use form. The problem is that the N-Gage doesn't do anything that it does excellently. Perhaps the next version will fix that.
As long as they fix the datebook (or I can find a better one to replace it), I'd consider getting a version 2. Until then, no dice.
--Dan
Shouldn't be too hard to fix
on
N-Gage 2 Announced
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The N-gage (version 1) was a neat idea, but there were a few flaws. It was a game machine, a cellphone, and an MP3 player, but the cellphone aspect had some flaws. And the game aspect had some flaws. And you know what, the MP3 player aspect may have had some flaws, because I couldn't figure out how you'd get the damn things on there ('It can play MP3s? Really? How do you download them onto it?' 'I haven't got the foggiest idea.')
The N-Gage 2 needs a few things to wsucceed where its predecessor failed so spectacularly. It needs to change games easier. It needs to be simpler to control where possible (using a numpad to control is less than intuitive, so the manual is a necessity). It needs to not look stupid as a phone. Finally, it doesn't need, but should certainly have, hardware 3D acceleration. Keeping in mind we're dealing with basically PS1 ports, it shouldn't be that hard to make a tiny chip to do this, considering how light-years ahead of the PS2 3D acceleration has leaped.
Too true. I'd wager that one in three hairdressers wouldn't be happy if people got a new hairdo then ten minutes later found gum on the sidewalk and mashed it into their hair, then came back and complained because their 'do was messed up.
Would florists be happy if people kept coming back and complaining that all their new plants had died (from not watering or feeding them, and keeping them in dark rooms), and that the florist had sold them crappy plants? I doubt it.
If people played with their plumbing without turning off the water, and the plumber had to fix it for free, or if they put tabasco sauce and steak spice and a half shaker of salt on their jello and the chef had to replace it.
The problem is that people do stupid shit with their computers (that they don't know is stupid shit), and then IT professionals have to fix it (for free, every time, because they're on contract). If IT services were contracted out and cost $50/hr, you can bet people would start being more careful about downloading shit onto their computer after a few hundred dollars.
I always thought that when I told the cop I was in a hurry and 'could I pay the fine to you in cash?' I was doing something illegal. Now you're saying that I can go to Montana and do it legally? State-approved bribery, here I come!
And on top of that, while I'm there, I'm almost guaranteed fifty bucks for every car I can jimmy open? Man, big sky country here I come.
Usually, yes. But a lot people buy consoles because they want to play games in general, not to play a particular game. I get a lot of people coming in and asking which console is the best, which has better graphics, and this and that, and what I often struggle to explain to them is that what they need to do is go to the walls, browse through the games, read through the magazines, and make lists of games they want to play. Once they have them, figure out which system has more games they want to play most, and buy that one.
PC Advantages: Pirating games - Actual quote from a customer of mine at EB: 'Oh, I don't buy PC games, I have a friend who downloads them.' (Really fucker? So why in god's name should I tell you anything about it?)
Modding games (this may fall under your point of 'ease of development')
PC Disadvantages: Platform Incompatibility ('Where's your Mac games section?' 'It's over there where it says "Blizzard"' - computers vs. consoles, not windows vs. consoles)
Driver hell - When customers say they have a problem with a PC game, I almost inevitably end up suggesting upgrades - 'Well, you should check for patches to the game, to see if they resolve any issues, and then you chould download the latest video card drivers from the manufacturer's website, and you'll probably want to grab the latest version of DirectX, and then...'
Price - a top-of-the-line video card will cost me about $600 CDN, give or take. Any X-Box will cost me about $200 CDN. For the price of a serious gaming machine, I could get all three major consoles, four GBAs and link cables to play Crystal Chronicles with, every accessory I could want for all three systems, a component video selector, and enough games to last me until next Christmas, even if all I did was play games all day, and I'd still have money left over to take my girlfriend to an expensive restaurant to make up for spending so much money on crap.
By that time Creative was already releasing second generation harddrive players with twice capacity as Apple's best ipod at almost the same price.
And three times the size. And they looked stupid. And they used USB1.1. Let's face it, you may be a geek and not mind waiting hours for your music to download to a big, clunky, ugly-looking player, but for a lot of people (myself included), that just doesn't hack. The iPod is the size of a deck of cards, used firewire for almost instant transfer, and it just looks cool. Oh, and it's easy to use.
Apple didn't really invent the MP3 player, but they may as well have. When other companies were making geek gadgets, Apple made consumer electronics that people wanted to buy, and that's why they're dominant.
Sure, not every HD-based MP3 player is a knockoff, but Apple is the one that showed people that they could be successful with the mass market.
This is fascinatingly wrong. The ability is there, but game developers don't take advantage of it. Morrowind could be modded, if the developers had enabled Live support and provided a way to upload your mod to your XBox. Sony itself has stated that the HDD will open the PS2 up to the mod community - a vague and cryptic message, but I think it's interesting to think about the potential. Perhaps they plan on releasing editing tools and APIs for their games (SOCOM 2 for example), so people can make their own levels, weapons, etc. None of the console games out now can be modded, but that doesn't mean they won't be.
They have always had copy restrictions for games (like the PC) but now they come with restrictions against fair use of the media that they play, too. They have far more powerful restrictions than PCs do.
That's why it's a $10 billion market and not a $2 billion market, as another poster pointed out. If it were that easy to copy PS2 games (even with a DVD burner), no one would actually buy them. Why pay $50 for a game when you can pay $175 for a DVD burner and rent games for $5? Then, on top of that, you can sell them to friends who don't have a DVD burner for $15 each.
I agree that ISPs can't be responsible for keeping idiots from being idiots, but the poster has a good point that I've been shouting from the rooftops for years.
Why on earth do ISPs allow packets out from their network that claim to come from outside the network? Why can packet kiddies with ip 24.55.66.77 send packets that come from 10.0.0.1 ? There is literally no reason to allow this, since they are completely bogus packets, and 99.99% of the time they happen, it's either a TOS violation (packeting someone) or an infected machine (packeting someone). This one filter would help prevent a lot of DOS attacks, or at the very least, make it easier to figure out which machines were infected (by IP address).
ISPs may not have a responsibility to coddle idiots, but I think they DO have a responsibility to the rest of the internet to make sure their customers aren't fucking it up for everyone. If that means shutting down spammers (which no one but spammers think is a bad idea), then fine, but if that means firewalling machines that are packeting, or trying to spread viruses or worms, then I think they should do that too.
I'm getting sick and tired of idiots ruining things for everyone, and the internet is no exception.
Power is transferring from the state (the general state, not just California) to corporations. If this continues, companies will rule. This is perhaps the ultimate downfall of democracy, and the end point of capitalism.
The United States being a republic, I believe Ambrose Bierce said it best:
REPUBLIC, n. A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience. In a republic, the foundation of public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to.
There are as many kinds of republics as there are graduations between the despotism whence they came and the anarchy whither they lead.
OPn the flipside, I'm thinking of moving into the IT industry...
What I'm looking for:
Reasonable job satisfaction - I work in retail, and you get no sense of satisfaction from it. After a hard day's work, you have nothing to show for it (unless you've sold out of stock, and that's a bad thing). I'd rather have something that's vital to my customers' life (or at least business), because people act like getting their coffee within twenty seconds is going to make the difference between life and death. If people are going to overreact, I'd like to have a reason behind it.
Human interaction - and by interaction, I don't mean they tell me what they want, and I give it to them, and they leave without an extra word. Being on a job where the only customers that actually talk to you for months on end are 7 other guys gets old too. Especially if you don't like them.
Money would be nice, but I'm not getting paid shit anyway, so I'm not missing out if I do.
Nice to see that they can take a/. friendly position too...
Think more along the lines of a 'money friendly position'. They specialize in copyright and trademark disputes, so they get hired by people who want to sue people. No reason they can't defend.
What I always miss in free software that I try to use is examples. Some command-line software I try to use has all the options cleanly documented in very specific terms with every possibility labelled and indexed by date and whatever the hell else, but it's missing one thing: examples.
Try running hdparm for the first time, and you can see a pretty good example: if you mess up your syntax, it gives you the --help, without actually saying what it was you need help with. If it said 'invalid option' or 'you must specify a device', then that would be fine, but instead it gives me a screen and a half of junk that I've *probably* seen before (honestly, could you ever *guess* how to use hdparm and get it right?), without actually telling me what's the dilly-o.
I'll say this once more, to all the documentation maintainers: if you have a command-line tool, you need to follow a few steps.
If the parameters don't hash, tell them what the problem is. Don't just repeat the --help over again, that *NEVER HELPS*. Tell them what went wrong. If possible, tell them how to fix it, e.g. instead of 'invalid argument to -B' say 'argument to -B must be in range of 42-69' - bonus points if the argument range depends on outside variables that you can detect.
If you have a man page, provide examples. Figure out the syntax of the most common things people will use your program for, and provide a few examples to give them a solid idea. Parameters are good, yes, but a lot of people don't have the mind for reading a bunch of variables and putting it all together mentally. We'll catch on faster if we can see an overview of the whole thing, instead of miles of microscopic detail that we have to piece together.
If you don't have a man page, make a man page. Make an info page too, if you're bored, but don't spend too much time on it, no one uses them except the GNU zealots anyway (ok, that was a troll, I admit).
If you have a GUI, take out any options that don't NEED to be there. Put anything that NEEDS to be there but won't be changed by most users into an 'advanced settings' dialog. Take a lesson from the Apple folks: you can make programs with only two changable preferences and still have it be a usable program for thousands of people. If you need to have that many preferences, maybe your program is too complex. Apple keeps its fanbase because it can do one thing: get out of your face. Because you don't have to worry about the assload of shit that Windows and Linux programs throw at you, you can get down to work and get your job done.
And finally, to reiterate, autodetect whenever possible. It might take you longer, but it'll make for a better and more envious program - 'hey, I like how your program automatically detects networked file shares and adds them to the pop-up' or whatever. Another day of coding means the release date gets pushed back one day, but it also might save hundreds (or, depending on how well you do, thousands) of people a few hours (or days) configuring.
That isn't a 'good guide' at all! It's barely more than a rant if you can manage to read between the lines.
It would seem JWZ would agree with you:
Then in January, the jackasses over at Slashdot posted a link to it, calling it a "review" of Linux video software. I guess you could consider it a review, if you were to squint at it just right. But really what it is is a rant about how I had an evening stolen from me by crap software design.
It has been remarked by many people, myself included, that the level of sophistication the kernel has reached is inversely proportionate to the ease of setting up sound and getting it to work.
A lot of people have no trouble whatsoever, but for myself, it's been a steady downhill progression. 2.2 was easy, set some io/dma/irq stuff in menuconfig, and you're done. 2.4 autodetected my settings, but I had to cat/proc/isapnp before the module would load (no joke, that's the only thing that would make it work). In 2.6, it took me the better part of an hour to even find my sound card drivers, and since I don't have any speakers handy, I have no idea if they'll work when I go to use them.
The problem I ended up finding was that it's not apparant in menuconfig which options will open up new options when you select them. Thus, I had to select something that looked to me like just another sound card in a list of twenty in order to find the list that contained my sound card. Confusing, to say the least. And don't even get me started on ALSA.
Too true. In my computer information systems course, there were a few people who understood what programming was (even though they'd never done anything but copy javascript off tutorial websites), but most people were completely clueless.
One girl asked me, the first time we were in the lab, 'Do these computers have HotMail?' I almost cried. A few weeks later, the fellow beside me asked me for help with a compile error that he couldn't figure out. I looked over at his screen, and saw the error. 'Missing semicolon on line 34'. I told him he was missing a semicolon on line 34 and off he went.
People don't understand that computer science is computer work, not computer play. They signed up, most of them because they like chatting on MSN and want to make lots of money. They don't realize that there's a lot of work, thinking, and math to CS, and sometimes, it's just over their heads.
A stealthy helecopter would be good for quick low-altitude drops or retrieves of cargo or personnel, or for quick strike capability, without being seen by conventional radar. This allows insertion of troops and equipment behind enemy lines, for obvious benefit.
The blades do not create a disc - since radar isn't a constant beam out and a constant beam back (it rotates around), the blades would likely create no signiture whatsoever, even if they weren't designed to also be stealthy.
The primary method of stealh is usually flat angles and special paints that absorb radar emissions (and reflect what little they don't absorb away from the radar tower, and not back towards it).
The blades might give the thing away, but only if there's someone listening nearby.
20 years, no working product? Think about that. That's 1984. That's before web pages, before the internet, before Microsoft "took over the world". That's Commodore 64, Atari and Apple days.
Wow, that's almost like wasting my entire life up until this point. What kind of fool would make a mistake like that?
Anyway, I'm going back to reading Slashdot, watching Star Wars, and eating pringles in my darkened basement bedroom until it's time to play some D&D. Later guys.
In Canada, the price is usually $10 less for $35+ games, and $5 less for $30 or less. In some situations (e.g. Metroid Prime for a while), the difference is more - up to $20 bucks sometimes.
The people who wrote the manuals and designed the posters and so on and so forth got their business. EB is 'only' lowering the price however much it does because it can - people will pay the difference, and when then can give someone $15 in store credit and then sell it for $49.99, they will.
Oh well. They're still the best place to go for games in any city I've been to, and still, $10 off is $10 off, as long as it's in good condition. That being said, I won't buy a game without the original case and manual, unless it can't be found.
The problem is that, in most places, older systems aren't worth the trouble. The prices at EB are fixed so high that most people won't want to buy them, even though most are traded in without the box or instructions. Tetris for Nintendo (NES) is going for $39.99 CDN preowned, cart-only. No one's going to buy that, but that's what it's priced at.
The N64 games at my local EB are all the ones that no one wants - that's why they got traded in. No one buys them, they just use EB as a clearinghouse to get rid of the crap they wish they'd never bought.
No one cares about N64 games because there's no money in them.
The condition they're in really depends on who owned them before. I've seen a lot of games in mint condition (I saw a copy of Syphon Filter that looked like it had never been played), but I've seen a lot of games where people just don't care about what condition their games are in. Looking through the local EB's collection, most of the games without original cases are wrestling games. Shock.
The fact of the matter is, these are pre-owned games. They are used. They were played by someone else. No, they're not in excellent condition. That's why they're cheaper. Get over it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think Penny Arcade said it best. But then again, it could be worse.
--Dan
I traded in almost my entire game collection, in part towards FFXI and etc. needed for PS2.
After playing it for a week, I sold my gamecube and GBA and traded the rest in towards a PC version for my roommate.
Addictive, social, exciting, fun, dynamic, and far-reaching. Best game ever.
--Dan
I have a similar issue with such things - I have two eyes, but my brain doesn't 'see' in stereo. Instead, it uses what it sees through my left eye, and then fills in the blanks with the right, resulting in less than stereoscopic vision, and no depth perception.
That is to say, no hardware-accelerated depth perception. I can still do software depth perception by considering points of reference (trees, shadows, etc.) and estimating accordingly.
Still, I've never seen a stereoscopic imagine, or the sailboat, or 3D comics. Sigh. Maybe some day.
--Dan
*gasp* you have to talk into it sideways, that "flaw" has been hyped out of proportion. I find it more difficult to open a shell-phone than to align my N-Gage the right way around.
It's not a question of alignment, it's a question of conveniance and comfort. It's a lot easier for me to hold my clamshell phone than an N-Gage, and when I'm using my clamshell, I can hold it up with my shoulder for a few moments while I do something with both hands. Not so much luck with the N-Gage.
The bluetooth headset point is a good one though, I'll remember that.
As far as the games go, I was referring to the hassle of swapping game chips. This, of course, is not a problem when you think of the N-Gage as a cellphone which also plays games (so you can throw in Super Monkey Ball to play when you're on the metro), but Nokia marketed it as a game machine which is also a cellphone, and from that point of view, the device fails miserably.
MP3s - Working at an EB, we got absolutely no product documentation on the N-Gage. We got hype, sure, but we didn't get anything to tell us things like 'it comes with a USB cable'. EB Games Canada is the only Canadian retailer of the N-Gage, and I didn't see a spec of useful (to us, to tell our customers) product literature - only hype and marketing.
As for the numpad - When you pick up an X-Box controller, or a PS2 controller, or a Gamecube controller, or a GBA, you pretty much instantly know how to hold it. When you do, you find your thumbs right around the D-Pad or Analog control, and a set of four buttons. There are also triggers you can figure out how to use pretty quick, especially with the X-Box controller.
10 keys for the X-Box controller? Four that your thumb can reach, and two analog in the back. Eight, simple. Yes, there are others, but they're out of the way, and not meant to be used for things like jumping or running.
The N-Gage, on the other hand, is reminiscant of the Jaguar. You have 12 buttons, but little sense of which ones you should try and push. I tried out Tony Hawk, and had to try pretty much every button, even though only a few of them did anything. The keys are all mashed together with no apparant distinction between any of them, insofar as when each should be used.
To summarize that last point, the X-Box has four buttons readily apparant as important, whereas the N-Gage has 12 buttons with only one (the '5') as apparantly important. Also, it's a pain in the ass to push more than one (maybe Nokia staff have more thumbs than I do).
I'm not one of the naysayers that says the N-Gage is the worst thing ever. It has a lot of flaws, but nothing really big that can't be fixed by a relatively minor revision. Largely, its problems are inconveniances, and for a lot of people, those don't apply (for example, if you're not a big gamer). I'm also not one of the luddites who believes that every device should have only one function. I'm a huge fan of the 'global' from Earth: Final Conflict, a cellphone/video phone/radio/pda/datalink/computer/everything else, in one simple, easy to use form. The problem is that the N-Gage doesn't do anything that it does excellently. Perhaps the next version will fix that.
As long as they fix the datebook (or I can find a better one to replace it), I'd consider getting a version 2. Until then, no dice.
--Dan
The N-gage (version 1) was a neat idea, but there were a few flaws. It was a game machine, a cellphone, and an MP3 player, but the cellphone aspect had some flaws. And the game aspect had some flaws. And you know what, the MP3 player aspect may have had some flaws, because I couldn't figure out how you'd get the damn things on there ('It can play MP3s? Really? How do you download them onto it?' 'I haven't got the foggiest idea.')
The N-Gage 2 needs a few things to wsucceed where its predecessor failed so spectacularly. It needs to change games easier. It needs to be simpler to control where possible (using a numpad to control is less than intuitive, so the manual is a necessity). It needs to not look stupid as a phone. Finally, it doesn't need, but should certainly have, hardware 3D acceleration. Keeping in mind we're dealing with basically PS1 ports, it shouldn't be that hard to make a tiny chip to do this, considering how light-years ahead of the PS2 3D acceleration has leaped.
Here's hoping.
--Dan
Too true. I'd wager that one in three hairdressers wouldn't be happy if people got a new hairdo then ten minutes later found gum on the sidewalk and mashed it into their hair, then came back and complained because their 'do was messed up.
Would florists be happy if people kept coming back and complaining that all their new plants had died (from not watering or feeding them, and keeping them in dark rooms), and that the florist had sold them crappy plants? I doubt it.
If people played with their plumbing without turning off the water, and the plumber had to fix it for free, or if they put tabasco sauce and steak spice and a half shaker of salt on their jello and the chef had to replace it.
The problem is that people do stupid shit with their computers (that they don't know is stupid shit), and then IT professionals have to fix it (for free, every time, because they're on contract). If IT services were contracted out and cost $50/hr, you can bet people would start being more careful about downloading shit onto their computer after a few hundred dollars.
--Dan
I always thought that when I told the cop I was in a hurry and 'could I pay the fine to you in cash?' I was doing something illegal. Now you're saying that I can go to Montana and do it legally? State-approved bribery, here I come!
And on top of that, while I'm there, I'm almost guaranteed fifty bucks for every car I can jimmy open? Man, big sky country here I come.
--Dan
People buy a console to play a game
Usually, yes. But a lot people buy consoles because they want to play games in general, not to play a particular game. I get a lot of people coming in and asking which console is the best, which has better graphics, and this and that, and what I often struggle to explain to them is that what they need to do is go to the walls, browse through the games, read through the magazines, and make lists of games they want to play. Once they have them, figure out which system has more games they want to play most, and buy that one.
--Dan
PC Advantages:
Pirating games - Actual quote from a customer of mine at EB: 'Oh, I don't buy PC games, I have a friend who downloads them.' (Really fucker? So why in god's name should I tell you anything about it?)
Modding games (this may fall under your point of 'ease of development')
PC Disadvantages:
Platform Incompatibility ('Where's your Mac games section?' 'It's over there where it says "Blizzard"' - computers vs. consoles, not windows vs. consoles)
Driver hell - When customers say they have a problem with a PC game, I almost inevitably end up suggesting upgrades - 'Well, you should check for patches to the game, to see if they resolve any issues, and then you chould download the latest video card drivers from the manufacturer's website, and you'll probably want to grab the latest version of DirectX, and then...'
Price - a top-of-the-line video card will cost me about $600 CDN, give or take. Any X-Box will cost me about $200 CDN. For the price of a serious gaming machine, I could get all three major consoles, four GBAs and link cables to play Crystal Chronicles with, every accessory I could want for all three systems, a component video selector, and enough games to last me until next Christmas, even if all I did was play games all day, and I'd still have money left over to take my girlfriend to an expensive restaurant to make up for spending so much money on crap.
--Dan
By that time Creative was already releasing second generation harddrive players with twice capacity as Apple's best ipod at almost the same price.
And three times the size. And they looked stupid. And they used USB1.1. Let's face it, you may be a geek and not mind waiting hours for your music to download to a big, clunky, ugly-looking player, but for a lot of people (myself included), that just doesn't hack. The iPod is the size of a deck of cards, used firewire for almost instant transfer, and it just looks cool. Oh, and it's easy to use.
Apple didn't really invent the MP3 player, but they may as well have. When other companies were making geek gadgets, Apple made consumer electronics that people wanted to buy, and that's why they're dominant.
Sure, not every HD-based MP3 player is a knockoff, but Apple is the one that showed people that they could be successful with the mass market.
--Dan
Console games can't be modded.
This is fascinatingly wrong. The ability is there, but game developers don't take advantage of it. Morrowind could be modded, if the developers had enabled Live support and provided a way to upload your mod to your XBox. Sony itself has stated that the HDD will open the PS2 up to the mod community - a vague and cryptic message, but I think it's interesting to think about the potential. Perhaps they plan on releasing editing tools and APIs for their games (SOCOM 2 for example), so people can make their own levels, weapons, etc. None of the console games out now can be modded, but that doesn't mean they won't be.
They have always had copy restrictions for games (like the PC) but now they come with restrictions against fair use of the media that they play, too. They have far more powerful restrictions than PCs do.
That's why it's a $10 billion market and not a $2 billion market, as another poster pointed out. If it were that easy to copy PS2 games (even with a DVD burner), no one would actually buy them. Why pay $50 for a game when you can pay $175 for a DVD burner and rent games for $5? Then, on top of that, you can sell them to friends who don't have a DVD burner for $15 each.
--Dan
I agree that ISPs can't be responsible for keeping idiots from being idiots, but the poster has a good point that I've been shouting from the rooftops for years.
Why on earth do ISPs allow packets out from their network that claim to come from outside the network? Why can packet kiddies with ip 24.55.66.77 send packets that come from 10.0.0.1 ? There is literally no reason to allow this, since they are completely bogus packets, and 99.99% of the time they happen, it's either a TOS violation (packeting someone) or an infected machine (packeting someone). This one filter would help prevent a lot of DOS attacks, or at the very least, make it easier to figure out which machines were infected (by IP address).
ISPs may not have a responsibility to coddle idiots, but I think they DO have a responsibility to the rest of the internet to make sure their customers aren't fucking it up for everyone. If that means shutting down spammers (which no one but spammers think is a bad idea), then fine, but if that means firewalling machines that are packeting, or trying to spread viruses or worms, then I think they should do that too.
I'm getting sick and tired of idiots ruining things for everyone, and the internet is no exception.
--Dan
Power is transferring from the state (the general state, not just California) to corporations. If this continues, companies will rule. This is perhaps the ultimate downfall of democracy, and the end point of capitalism.
The United States being a republic, I believe Ambrose Bierce said it best:
Because that one country is the largest market in the world for things of that nature.
--Dan
OPn the flipside, I'm thinking of moving into the IT industry...
:)
What I'm looking for:
Reasonable job satisfaction - I work in retail, and you get no sense of satisfaction from it. After a hard day's work, you have nothing to show for it (unless you've sold out of stock, and that's a bad thing). I'd rather have something that's vital to my customers' life (or at least business), because people act like getting their coffee within twenty seconds is going to make the difference between life and death. If people are going to overreact, I'd like to have a reason behind it.
Human interaction - and by interaction, I don't mean they tell me what they want, and I give it to them, and they leave without an extra word. Being on a job where the only customers that actually talk to you for months on end are 7 other guys gets old too. Especially if you don't like them.
Money would be nice, but I'm not getting paid shit anyway, so I'm not missing out if I do.
Just a polite counterpoint.
--Dan
Nice to see that they can take a /. friendly position too...
Think more along the lines of a 'money friendly position'. They specialize in copyright and trademark disputes, so they get hired by people who want to sue people. No reason they can't defend.
--Dan
What I always miss in free software that I try to use is examples. Some command-line software I try to use has all the options cleanly documented in very specific terms with every possibility labelled and indexed by date and whatever the hell else, but it's missing one thing: examples.
Try running hdparm for the first time, and you can see a pretty good example: if you mess up your syntax, it gives you the --help, without actually saying what it was you need help with. If it said 'invalid option' or 'you must specify a device', then that would be fine, but instead it gives me a screen and a half of junk that I've *probably* seen before (honestly, could you ever *guess* how to use hdparm and get it right?), without actually telling me what's the dilly-o.
I'll say this once more, to all the documentation maintainers: if you have a command-line tool, you need to follow a few steps.
If the parameters don't hash, tell them what the problem is. Don't just repeat the --help over again, that *NEVER HELPS*. Tell them what went wrong. If possible, tell them how to fix it, e.g. instead of 'invalid argument to -B' say 'argument to -B must be in range of 42-69' - bonus points if the argument range depends on outside variables that you can detect.
If you have a man page, provide examples. Figure out the syntax of the most common things people will use your program for, and provide a few examples to give them a solid idea. Parameters are good, yes, but a lot of people don't have the mind for reading a bunch of variables and putting it all together mentally. We'll catch on faster if we can see an overview of the whole thing, instead of miles of microscopic detail that we have to piece together.
If you don't have a man page, make a man page. Make an info page too, if you're bored, but don't spend too much time on it, no one uses them except the GNU zealots anyway (ok, that was a troll, I admit).
If you have a GUI, take out any options that don't NEED to be there. Put anything that NEEDS to be there but won't be changed by most users into an 'advanced settings' dialog. Take a lesson from the Apple folks: you can make programs with only two changable preferences and still have it be a usable program for thousands of people. If you need to have that many preferences, maybe your program is too complex. Apple keeps its fanbase because it can do one thing: get out of your face. Because you don't have to worry about the assload of shit that Windows and Linux programs throw at you, you can get down to work and get your job done.
And finally, to reiterate, autodetect whenever possible. It might take you longer, but it'll make for a better and more envious program - 'hey, I like how your program automatically detects networked file shares and adds them to the pop-up' or whatever. Another day of coding means the release date gets pushed back one day, but it also might save hundreds (or, depending on how well you do, thousands) of people a few hours (or days) configuring.
--Dan
It would seem JWZ would agree with you:
Then in January, the jackasses over at Slashdot posted a link to it, calling it a "review" of Linux video software. I guess you could consider it a review, if you were to squint at it just right. But really what it is is a rant about how I had an evening stolen from me by crap software design.
It's a rant, pure and simple.
--Dan
It has been remarked by many people, myself included, that the level of sophistication the kernel has reached is inversely proportionate to the ease of setting up sound and getting it to work.
/proc/isapnp before the module would load (no joke, that's the only thing that would make it work). In 2.6, it took me the better part of an hour to even find my sound card drivers, and since I don't have any speakers handy, I have no idea if they'll work when I go to use them.
A lot of people have no trouble whatsoever, but for myself, it's been a steady downhill progression. 2.2 was easy, set some io/dma/irq stuff in menuconfig, and you're done. 2.4 autodetected my settings, but I had to cat
The problem I ended up finding was that it's not apparant in menuconfig which options will open up new options when you select them. Thus, I had to select something that looked to me like just another sound card in a list of twenty in order to find the list that contained my sound card. Confusing, to say the least. And don't even get me started on ALSA.
--Dan
Too true. In my computer information systems course, there were a few people who understood what programming was (even though they'd never done anything but copy javascript off tutorial websites), but most people were completely clueless.
One girl asked me, the first time we were in the lab, 'Do these computers have HotMail?' I almost cried. A few weeks later, the fellow beside me asked me for help with a compile error that he couldn't figure out. I looked over at his screen, and saw the error. 'Missing semicolon on line 34'. I told him he was missing a semicolon on line 34 and off he went.
People don't understand that computer science is computer work, not computer play. They signed up, most of them because they like chatting on MSN and want to make lots of money. They don't realize that there's a lot of work, thinking, and math to CS, and sometimes, it's just over their heads.
--Dan
A stealthy helecopter would be good for quick low-altitude drops or retrieves of cargo or personnel, or for quick strike capability, without being seen by conventional radar. This allows insertion of troops and equipment behind enemy lines, for obvious benefit.
The blades do not create a disc - since radar isn't a constant beam out and a constant beam back (it rotates around), the blades would likely create no signiture whatsoever, even if they weren't designed to also be stealthy.
The primary method of stealh is usually flat angles and special paints that absorb radar emissions (and reflect what little they don't absorb away from the radar tower, and not back towards it).
The blades might give the thing away, but only if there's someone listening nearby.
--Dan
20 years, no working product? Think about that. That's 1984. That's before web pages, before the internet, before Microsoft "took over the world". That's Commodore 64, Atari and Apple days.
Wow, that's almost like wasting my entire life up until this point. What kind of fool would make a mistake like that?
Anyway, I'm going back to reading Slashdot, watching Star Wars, and eating pringles in my darkened basement bedroom until it's time to play some D&D. Later guys.
--Dan
Maybe someone can figure out how to merge it into the EMACS source tree. Then it can be all three.
--Dan
In Canada, the price is usually $10 less for $35+ games, and $5 less for $30 or less. In some situations (e.g. Metroid Prime for a while), the difference is more - up to $20 bucks sometimes.
The people who wrote the manuals and designed the posters and so on and so forth got their business. EB is 'only' lowering the price however much it does because it can - people will pay the difference, and when then can give someone $15 in store credit and then sell it for $49.99, they will.
Oh well. They're still the best place to go for games in any city I've been to, and still, $10 off is $10 off, as long as it's in good condition. That being said, I won't buy a game without the original case and manual, unless it can't be found.
--Dan
The problem is that, in most places, older systems aren't worth the trouble. The prices at EB are fixed so high that most people won't want to buy them, even though most are traded in without the box or instructions. Tetris for Nintendo (NES) is going for $39.99 CDN preowned, cart-only. No one's going to buy that, but that's what it's priced at.
The N64 games at my local EB are all the ones that no one wants - that's why they got traded in. No one buys them, they just use EB as a clearinghouse to get rid of the crap they wish they'd never bought.
No one cares about N64 games because there's no money in them.
The condition they're in really depends on who owned them before. I've seen a lot of games in mint condition (I saw a copy of Syphon Filter that looked like it had never been played), but I've seen a lot of games where people just don't care about what condition their games are in. Looking through the local EB's collection, most of the games without original cases are wrestling games. Shock.
The fact of the matter is, these are pre-owned games. They are used. They were played by someone else. No, they're not in excellent condition. That's why they're cheaper. Get over it.
--Dan