That Boombox is almost as dumb as... the time two Apple engineers had the following conversation.
Engineer 1: How will the user eject a disk?
Engineer 2: How about they drag it to the trash can.
Engineer 1: But won't that throw it away.
Engineer 2: Not if it's a metaphysical analogy to data being purged from the inner sanctum of the Macintosh.
Engineer 1: Brilliant!
None of which requires a purchase of Disney. If you ask me, disney would be more desperate to be "the company" that would provide that content than apple desperate to get disney on their kidpod. Apple has the upper hand, they can go to NBC, CBS, Nickelodian and shop their wares. Disney has only one apple.
I suspect you're reading far far too deep into an offhand comment.
Ok happy: "The Allied forces were able to defeat their enemies through their incredible industrial efforts."
But let me ask you a question... while we're on the subject. Did America lose the last world war? If we didn't lose then logic tells us, we either didn't participate, or we won. It is an accurate phrase to say "America defeated germany." It is also an accurate statement to say "The UK defeated germany." Hell it's an accurate statement to say "Singapore defeated Japan".
If this was a troll comment it would have read:
"The amazing super power of the united states of america who kicks all ass in all places because God watches over their shoulder and speaks to their leaders brought forth the only industrial reaction in world war 2, and out produced everybody especially those stupid lazy canadians who eat funny foods like bread. On the front lines, Americans fired every gun, and shot every cannon and at the end of the day took every hill. Hail America the great!"
If you read the paragraph as a thought process it says. "Last time we won (as opposed to the germans and japanese winning) by doing more of X, maybe next time Y will be the "x" that wins the war."
Has it ever crossed your mind that sometimes people just refer to their home country because it's the first name that pops into their head? I'm sure I wouldn't be geting this sort of shit if I had said "Britain had defeated..." even though in many areas germany out produced Britain.
I think you could live a much happier life by not looking for conspiracies where they don't exist.
Assuming we don't annihilate each other in the first 10 minutes of the next global conflict... I wonder if national distributed computing might become something of the norm. Obviously all of the processes would have to be encrypted and redundantly checked by various sources, but I'm curious if the government isn't looking into some sort of national emergency processing procedure.
In the last world war the united states was able to out defeat the enemy in a large part by our incredible industrial efforts, perhaps in the next we'll be able to wield the largest data processing center.
Everybody that wants to and is able to watch TV does. Not only that, we have almost 100% market penetration on the TV market. So at this point television is actually ahead of reading/writing, it has such a large audience that it can't really grow any more. In comparison to reading/writing we're well past the printing press, or even blog culture.
When cable began to emerge as a dominant force in the 80s people predicted it would bring a new democratization of media. With local access channels the average Joe could produce a show and have it viewed by millions of viewers on their TVs at home. What came of that? Mystery Science Theater 3k (which promptly sold out at the first chance it got). But that was a rare case, and even then, they became popular thanks to a large network buying them.
At this time there are still only a handful of entities producing TV shows: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and on the side you have the smaller entities: like HBO. Almost every single other channel is either owned by one of those companies, and or simply is a re-run outlet mall for those channels.
The channels that will probably die out when VOD takes hold will be the: TNT, Spike and USAesque channels which are simply re-run channels.
You'll never get a talented actor or actress on an indie television show, because if you're working for free there'll be no contracts, and the moment someone discovers you have talent, you'll get snatched. This is why actors and actresses just starting out love indipendent short films. You can be in and out in a month if you get a better job.
Probably the only driving force behind the expansion of programming will come from an increase in population. With the increase of our population, smaller niche markets such as sci-fi can take hold because it costs X amount of dollars to produce a show. If your market is 4% of the market, as long as you get the required numbers of eyes, it doesn't matter if you're the 26th most popular show, you still have a large enough audience to make it economically feasible.
TV will never become democratized to the level of writing. Why? Because writing is a solitary activity. One person can write a screenplay. It takes one person to write a novel. You can keep a blog up to date by yourself. Filmmaking is a collaborative process, you can't have the lone filmmaker working all by himself in some attic somewhere creating the next starwars by himself.
I find this theory highly unlikely. The cost of producing even a simple show with actors payed minimum wage would be tens of thousands of dollars.
We're seeing lots of amateurs producing simple online shows for free online now, because every part of the process is donated. Many are still young and ambitious, they can't get a job, so they create a job for themselves. I think if you interviewed most amateur indie TV producers, they're not doing it because they want to produce indi features for the rest of their lives, they're doing it to get noticed and hired (think payed).
Costs are coming down on hardware and software (All that slashdot cares about) but HR won't come down in price any time soon, and that makes up a significant bulk of the cost of production. I just budgeted a 6 minute short film. 26 thousand went into wages, 5 thousand went into hardware. Let's say the cameras, lights, sound and post equipment is free. You still only come down by about 16%.
Multicasting will deal with the challenge faced with distributing a single live event. However, TV networks are moving into Video On Demand as quickly as they can. They will have to probably invest in two distribution bases.
1) Multicast for "Regularly scheduled programming"
2) P2P for day after and future VOD distribution.
Said box was made by an employee of EB Games on his mom's Dell. And he knows less than he should, since that little rumour was squashed long ago. It's common practice to create fake boxes at game outlets to give a tangible item to look at and pre-order.
... I want every microsoft product bundled for free with Windows. Am I alone in this? I don't want to have to install windows, download a browser, download or install an office suite, download or install an email client, download or install a chat client, download or install CD burning software or download or install streaming media software.
I remember the dark ages of streaming media, when I had to install that festering pile of stink called Real Player on my computer and every other computer I knew of, so that they could get the full web experience.
When Windows boots for the first time, there should be a full suite of "Good enough" software to at least operate in the short term until I can replace it with something I might like better.
As I see it I can either:
A) Boot up with no software, which forces me to download everything.
B) Boot up with crappy software that gets the job done.
I choose the latter. Knowing it doesn't matter what windows XP machine on earth I'm on, I'll have a media player and a chat client is a huge plus in my mind.
This principle has won Apple what percentage of the desktop market?
I think the fact that I have more than a 1,000 Processor/MotherBoard/Memory/Video Card options is a blessing not a curse.
This is going to be the thought process of the average consumer:
"Home... basic, sounds nice I live at home, hmmm premium sounds better maybe I'll get that. Business... I don't own a business... must not mean me. Corporate... how am I even finding a bulk license at Wal-Mart... this doesn't make any sense. Nerfed... Wow, I found one of 3 stores in the EU selling it, I should buy this and put it on Ebay as a collectible. And finally starter... well I am starting out, but it's in a gray box, and I'm standing in sewage in bengal, I think I'll buy food instead."
Despite humankind's considerable capacity for war and violence, we/humans are highly sociable animals, according to anthropologists.
Really... because I've never started a war. I have been sociable. Besides isn't war a perfect example of a large number of organisms working together for a common goal? The fact there are usually only two over-riding goals is a testament to our social structure. Imagine anarchy.
They key to censorship is to keep the censored populace unaware of this fact.
This is why we have the Chinese government saying things like: "history demonstrates that only a totalitarian system needs news censorship, out of the delusion that it can keep the public locked in ignorance." Just a little bit of reassurance to the populace. "Don't worry we disagree with censorship, go back to your homes and sleep safe."
If you know you're being censored, the censorship has essentially failed and will need to be rethought. Same thing with propaganda. As soon as people realized that "Fair and balanced" was code for "Propaganda", they stopped paying attention. Unfortunately, the sad truth is, people like to hear what they want to hear.
My other complaint with pandora is it's really, really skittish. It seems to have a 5 second memory. An artist with a terrible singer will come up. I'll give it a thumbs down and all of a sudden I'll go from Rob Zombie to Enya. It doesn't seem to average your requests, it just looks at the last opinion you made. What would be nice is if you could take the "Why am I listening to this" and select properties in songs that you like and lock them down. I might not like the artist, but I still want the style of the artist.
I'll probably write up some feedback and email it off to him this week if I ever get some time.
Ask the average user about the first matrix (the most philisophical of all of them) and they'll tell you it's about a guy who discovers he lived in a computer and that humanity is enslaved. He goes back in to save them and kicks ass with cool kung-fu.
The lobby scene made the Matrix series popular. I doubt the average joe returns for the psychobabel.
I've never experienced such a high "Itunes Temptations Per Hour" rate than when I'm listening to my playlist.
However I agree with some of the responses, Pandora is amazing for finding new material, but they need a "Safe mode" where they aren't quite as adventerous and perhaps only play songs you've given a thumbs up. If I want 100% music I like, I still just load up winamp.
Re:Halo still is innovative in a number of ways...
on
Halo 2 Only on Vista
·
· Score: 1
I actually never really got hooked on the Halo 1 or 2 single or multiplayers.
What I thought Halo did brilliantly was Co-op. This is something the PC edition neglected, and as such, I had very little interest in it.
Console Co-op, in my opinion is the greatest game mode ever created. Not only is the action extremely refined since it's single player, but you get to play with a friend.
I have so many fond memories of trying to get the jeeps into places never intended. We got a jeep all the way to the map room once. Grea times.. *sigh*
I would like an answer to this question: Do you think that phrases such as "At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood." would give valid reason to doubt the meaningfulness of any HIV test?
I think all tests have a margin of error. Can any test be meaningful if it has a margin of error greater than 0? Yes. Even if their tests are only 80% accurate, it's meaningful in that it tells you that you "likely" do or do not have HIV. If we stopped giving credence to tests with >0% margin of error we wouldn't be able to operate. There are no guarantees in life, you have to operate with what you got.
However, that also doesn't mean that simply because we can't have definitive results, it doesn't exist. We don't know the position of any electrons currently in the universe, that doesn't imply they aren't there.
Re:Halo still is innovative in a number of ways...
on
Halo 2 Only on Vista
·
· Score: 1
Well I was operating on a temporal average. His first message asked how it evolved the genre. His second referenced a game that followed the Halo formula. I could only presume then he was confused about the release order.
I Love battlefield, because it is the Tribes/Halo formula with a new innovation: massive player count. I disagree however that it's the same style as the Halo franchise. Combat evolved indeed.
Yes "unique" was a poor choice of words, I'm sure the fight schematic has been cloned somewhere else. But I can't remember a time when I've used a vehicle, a melee attack and a grenade in one fight in Battlefield. I apologize for jumping the gun all the same.
Re:Halo still is innovative in a number of ways...
on
Halo 2 Only on Vista
·
· Score: 1
But in IMHO tribes also lacked quality weapons. If tribes had sported better weapons, I think it would have been a driving force in game sales and gameplay evolution.
No game is an island. Half-Life didn't really do anything innovative either, but it was a relatively revolutionairy game. Tribes was truely a revolutionairy game in many ways (Although all of its components had also been done previously in other games.) Halo was just culmination of that entire sub-genre of FPSs into a tight and well balanced game.
The model T was just a car, not too innovative.
Re:Halo still is innovative in a number of ways...
on
Halo 2 Only on Vista
·
· Score: 1
The Battlefield series and UT2k4 are exactly the sorts of games which I think came about, at least in part, thanks to the success Halo.
Halo mixed up the "Underground Military complex" formula just like CS brought credibility to objective based DM.
If you doubt me I would like to point out just for the sake of chronology:
Halo 1 Release Date: November 15, 2001
Battlefield Release Date: September 11, 2002
The legacy of Halo I think will be the near mandatory inclusion of vehicles in FPSs
Halo still is innovative in a number of ways...
on
Halo 2 Only on Vista
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Halo was innovative because it pushed games into whole new areas of integration.
Besides tribes and a few other games vehicles were mostly viewed as single player feature, not a multiplayer asset. Look at just about any game now and the vehicle + dm model has really taken hold. I would say at least in a small part because of the success of Halo.
Single button grenade throw. The concept of being able to throw grenades whith a gun out was done before (Team Fortress) but nowhere to the level and integration that Halo sported. Throwing a grenade was part of combat in Halo, not just a weapon whose bullets happen to have a short range and bounce.
Single button melee attack. Halo brought the melee attack previously only found in sneaky shadow games like Metal gear to the FPS.
What made Halo the first-person that redefined first person combat were all of these things in tandem:
You're driving along in a jeep, someone throws a grenade onto your jeep. You jump out. Take a shot, they hide behind a rock. You throw a grenade over the rock to flush them out. As they come out you club them over the head.
This is an experience still unique to the halo franchise.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually the "answers to this 'survey' will be" posted on the internets for all to see.
That Boombox is almost as dumb as... the time two Apple engineers had the following conversation. Engineer 1: How will the user eject a disk? Engineer 2: How about they drag it to the trash can. Engineer 1: But won't that throw it away. Engineer 2: Not if it's a metaphysical analogy to data being purged from the inner sanctum of the Macintosh. Engineer 1: Brilliant!
Considering none of those publishers have any interest in the 360s perception, I would say you're directing your angst at the wrong party.
None of which requires a purchase of Disney. If you ask me, disney would be more desperate to be "the company" that would provide that content than apple desperate to get disney on their kidpod. Apple has the upper hand, they can go to NBC, CBS, Nickelodian and shop their wares. Disney has only one apple.
Hehe, no conspiracy in forgetting to select "Plain Text", sorry about the big text block of death.
I suspect you're reading far far too deep into an offhand comment. Ok happy: "The Allied forces were able to defeat their enemies through their incredible industrial efforts." But let me ask you a question... while we're on the subject. Did America lose the last world war? If we didn't lose then logic tells us, we either didn't participate, or we won. It is an accurate phrase to say "America defeated germany." It is also an accurate statement to say "The UK defeated germany." Hell it's an accurate statement to say "Singapore defeated Japan". If this was a troll comment it would have read: "The amazing super power of the united states of america who kicks all ass in all places because God watches over their shoulder and speaks to their leaders brought forth the only industrial reaction in world war 2, and out produced everybody especially those stupid lazy canadians who eat funny foods like bread. On the front lines, Americans fired every gun, and shot every cannon and at the end of the day took every hill. Hail America the great!" If you read the paragraph as a thought process it says. "Last time we won (as opposed to the germans and japanese winning) by doing more of X, maybe next time Y will be the "x" that wins the war." Has it ever crossed your mind that sometimes people just refer to their home country because it's the first name that pops into their head? I'm sure I wouldn't be geting this sort of shit if I had said "Britain had defeated..." even though in many areas germany out produced Britain. I think you could live a much happier life by not looking for conspiracies where they don't exist.
Assuming we don't annihilate each other in the first 10 minutes of the next global conflict... I wonder if national distributed computing might become something of the norm. Obviously all of the processes would have to be encrypted and redundantly checked by various sources, but I'm curious if the government isn't looking into some sort of national emergency processing procedure.
In the last world war the united states was able to out defeat the enemy in a large part by our incredible industrial efforts, perhaps in the next we'll be able to wield the largest data processing center.
I also disagree with the reading/writing analogy.
Everybody that wants to and is able to watch TV does. Not only that, we have almost 100% market penetration on the TV market. So at this point television is actually ahead of reading/writing, it has such a large audience that it can't really grow any more. In comparison to reading/writing we're well past the printing press, or even blog culture.
When cable began to emerge as a dominant force in the 80s people predicted it would bring a new democratization of media. With local access channels the average Joe could produce a show and have it viewed by millions of viewers on their TVs at home. What came of that? Mystery Science Theater 3k (which promptly sold out at the first chance it got). But that was a rare case, and even then, they became popular thanks to a large network buying them.
At this time there are still only a handful of entities producing TV shows:
ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and on the side you have the smaller entities: like HBO. Almost every single other channel is either owned by one of those companies, and or simply is a re-run outlet mall for those channels.
The channels that will probably die out when VOD takes hold will be the: TNT, Spike and USAesque channels which are simply re-run channels.
You'll never get a talented actor or actress on an indie television show, because if you're working for free there'll be no contracts, and the moment someone discovers you have talent, you'll get snatched. This is why actors and actresses just starting out love indipendent short films. You can be in and out in a month if you get a better job.
Probably the only driving force behind the expansion of programming will come from an increase in population. With the increase of our population, smaller niche markets such as sci-fi can take hold because it costs X amount of dollars to produce a show. If your market is 4% of the market, as long as you get the required numbers of eyes, it doesn't matter if you're the 26th most popular show, you still have a large enough audience to make it economically feasible.
TV will never become democratized to the level of writing. Why? Because writing is a solitary activity. One person can write a screenplay. It takes one person to write a novel. You can keep a blog up to date by yourself. Filmmaking is a collaborative process, you can't have the lone filmmaker working all by himself in some attic somewhere creating the next starwars by himself.
I find this theory highly unlikely. The cost of producing even a simple show with actors payed minimum wage would be tens of thousands of dollars.
We're seeing lots of amateurs producing simple online shows for free online now, because every part of the process is donated. Many are still young and ambitious, they can't get a job, so they create a job for themselves. I think if you interviewed most amateur indie TV producers, they're not doing it because they want to produce indi features for the rest of their lives, they're doing it to get noticed and hired (think payed).
Costs are coming down on hardware and software (All that slashdot cares about) but HR won't come down in price any time soon, and that makes up a significant bulk of the cost of production. I just budgeted a 6 minute short film. 26 thousand went into wages, 5 thousand went into hardware. Let's say the cameras, lights, sound and post equipment is free. You still only come down by about 16%.
Multicasting will deal with the challenge faced with distributing a single live event. However, TV networks are moving into Video On Demand as quickly as they can. They will have to probably invest in two distribution bases.
1) Multicast for "Regularly scheduled programming"
2) P2P for day after and future VOD distribution.
Said box was made by an employee of EB Games on his mom's Dell. And he knows less than he should, since that little rumour was squashed long ago. It's common practice to create fake boxes at game outlets to give a tangible item to look at and pre-order.
You expected more from a stupid foo'?
... I want every microsoft product bundled for free with Windows. Am I alone in this? I don't want to have to install windows, download a browser, download or install an office suite, download or install an email client, download or install a chat client, download or install CD burning software or download or install streaming media software.
I remember the dark ages of streaming media, when I had to install that festering pile of stink called Real Player on my computer and every other computer I knew of, so that they could get the full web experience.
When Windows boots for the first time, there should be a full suite of "Good enough" software to at least operate in the short term until I can replace it with something I might like better.
As I see it I can either:
A) Boot up with no software, which forces me to download everything.
B) Boot up with crappy software that gets the job done.
I choose the latter. Knowing it doesn't matter what windows XP machine on earth I'm on, I'll have a media player and a chat client is a huge plus in my mind.
This principle has won Apple what percentage of the desktop market?
I think the fact that I have more than a 1,000 Processor/MotherBoard/Memory/Video Card options is a blessing not a curse.
This is going to be the thought process of the average consumer: "Home... basic, sounds nice I live at home, hmmm premium sounds better maybe I'll get that. Business... I don't own a business... must not mean me. Corporate... how am I even finding a bulk license at Wal-Mart... this doesn't make any sense. Nerfed... Wow, I found one of 3 stores in the EU selling it, I should buy this and put it on Ebay as a collectible. And finally starter... well I am starting out, but it's in a gray box, and I'm standing in sewage in bengal, I think I'll buy food instead."
Despite humankind's considerable capacity for war and violence, we/humans are highly sociable animals, according to anthropologists.
Really... because I've never started a war. I have been sociable. Besides isn't war a perfect example of a large number of organisms working together for a common goal? The fact there are usually only two over-riding goals is a testament to our social structure. Imagine anarchy.
They key to censorship is to keep the censored populace unaware of this fact.
This is why we have the Chinese government saying things like: "history demonstrates that only a totalitarian system needs news censorship, out of the delusion that it can keep the public locked in ignorance." Just a little bit of reassurance to the populace. "Don't worry we disagree with censorship, go back to your homes and sleep safe."
If you know you're being censored, the censorship has essentially failed and will need to be rethought. Same thing with propaganda. As soon as people realized that "Fair and balanced" was code for "Propaganda", they stopped paying attention. Unfortunately, the sad truth is, people like to hear what they want to hear.
My other complaint with pandora is it's really, really skittish. It seems to have a 5 second memory. An artist with a terrible singer will come up. I'll give it a thumbs down and all of a sudden I'll go from Rob Zombie to Enya. It doesn't seem to average your requests, it just looks at the last opinion you made. What would be nice is if you could take the "Why am I listening to this" and select properties in songs that you like and lock them down. I might not like the artist, but I still want the style of the artist.
I'll probably write up some feedback and email it off to him this week if I ever get some time.
Ask the average user about the first matrix (the most philisophical of all of them) and they'll tell you it's about a guy who discovers he lived in a computer and that humanity is enslaved. He goes back in to save them and kicks ass with cool kung-fu.
The lobby scene made the Matrix series popular. I doubt the average joe returns for the psychobabel.
I'm sure Pandora is just raking in the cash.
I've never experienced such a high "Itunes Temptations Per Hour" rate than when I'm listening to my playlist.
However I agree with some of the responses, Pandora is amazing for finding new material, but they need a "Safe mode" where they aren't quite as adventerous and perhaps only play songs you've given a thumbs up. If I want 100% music I like, I still just load up winamp.
I actually never really got hooked on the Halo 1 or 2 single or multiplayers.
What I thought Halo did brilliantly was Co-op. This is something the PC edition neglected, and as such, I had very little interest in it.
Console Co-op, in my opinion is the greatest game mode ever created. Not only is the action extremely refined since it's single player, but you get to play with a friend.
I have so many fond memories of trying to get the jeeps into places never intended. We got a jeep all the way to the map room once. Grea times.. *sigh*
I would like an answer to this question: Do you think that phrases such as "At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood." would give valid reason to doubt the meaningfulness of any HIV test?
I think all tests have a margin of error. Can any test be meaningful if it has a margin of error greater than 0? Yes. Even if their tests are only 80% accurate, it's meaningful in that it tells you that you "likely" do or do not have HIV. If we stopped giving credence to tests with >0% margin of error we wouldn't be able to operate. There are no guarantees in life, you have to operate with what you got.
However, that also doesn't mean that simply because we can't have definitive results, it doesn't exist. We don't know the position of any electrons currently in the universe, that doesn't imply they aren't there.
Well I was operating on a temporal average. His first message asked how it evolved the genre. His second referenced a game that followed the Halo formula. I could only presume then he was confused about the release order.
I Love battlefield, because it is the Tribes/Halo formula with a new innovation: massive player count. I disagree however that it's the same style as the Halo franchise. Combat evolved indeed.
Yes "unique" was a poor choice of words, I'm sure the fight schematic has been cloned somewhere else. But I can't remember a time when I've used a vehicle, a melee attack and a grenade in one fight in Battlefield. I apologize for jumping the gun all the same.
But in IMHO tribes also lacked quality weapons. If tribes had sported better weapons, I think it would have been a driving force in game sales and gameplay evolution.
No game is an island. Half-Life didn't really do anything innovative either, but it was a relatively revolutionairy game. Tribes was truely a revolutionairy game in many ways (Although all of its components had also been done previously in other games.) Halo was just culmination of that entire sub-genre of FPSs into a tight and well balanced game.
The model T was just a car, not too innovative.
The Battlefield series and UT2k4 are exactly the sorts of games which I think came about, at least in part, thanks to the success Halo.
Halo mixed up the "Underground Military complex" formula just like CS brought credibility to objective based DM.
If you doubt me I would like to point out just for the sake of chronology:
Halo 1 Release Date: November 15, 2001 Battlefield Release Date: September 11, 2002
The legacy of Halo I think will be the near mandatory inclusion of vehicles in FPSs
Halo was innovative because it pushed games into whole new areas of integration.
Besides tribes and a few other games vehicles were mostly viewed as single player feature, not a multiplayer asset. Look at just about any game now and the vehicle + dm model has really taken hold. I would say at least in a small part because of the success of Halo.
Single button grenade throw. The concept of being able to throw grenades whith a gun out was done before (Team Fortress) but nowhere to the level and integration that Halo sported. Throwing a grenade was part of combat in Halo, not just a weapon whose bullets happen to have a short range and bounce.
Single button melee attack. Halo brought the melee attack previously only found in sneaky shadow games like Metal gear to the FPS.
What made Halo the first-person that redefined first person combat were all of these things in tandem:
You're driving along in a jeep, someone throws a grenade onto your jeep. You jump out. Take a shot, they hide behind a rock. You throw a grenade over the rock to flush them out. As they come out you club them over the head.
This is an experience still unique to the halo franchise.