Yeah, I agree this solution is far from perfect, but the problem is that publishers/game makers want their DRM, and they've been having it for years.
Another solution would be a steam like online authentication service, you can have multiple installs, but can only play at 1 computer at a time. It will come to that eventually I am sure, but right now there is still much against it, because alot of people play single player games without internet. And alot of people still have something against online verification, not to talk about the the technical issue's of failing/unreachable authentication servers
The current state op IM's used is not what a broad majority of people want. (atleast here in europe, where msn and in much lesser sense icq is used).
MSN is primarily targetted at people under the age of 20, with it's excessive use of winks/smiley's/etc. Also it runs on windows only.
ICQ seems to be dying because AOL is supporting it's own messenger first.
That leaves alot of open space for people who want a native cross platform clean messenger without too much bells and whistles. Google's abilities and broad acceptance might be the only one which can break the monopoly of MSN (and yahoo/aol in the US).
There is ofcourse also the clone messengers, but most of them are having their own issue's which make them unsuitable for mass usage.
In europe, people either use ICQ (which is slowly dying), but mostly they use MSN.
And MSN is specifically targetted at highschool teens, with alot of annoying features, which many people from the pre MSN era dispise of (atleast myself).
I think there is a market for people who want a clean no-nonsense messenger. Alot of people I know use alternative messengers like miranda/trillian/etc to escape from the annoying native clients, but they all have their limitations. And currently I think only google would be capable of competing with the ever growing MSN userbase in europe.
And talking about trillian, did anyone notice that development of trillian has taken a hit? It's very quiet on the website, while on the boards people keeping reporting issue's. Would be ashame (even though it's not freeware like miranda) if trillian would die, it would drive alot of people back to msn/aim native clients.
Ever thought about the fact that google/ms might actually not be copying eachother and work independantly?
Besides, if you want your post to be independent and fact proof, why not stick to the facts only?
This is a first-generation web-based RSS aggregator, quite slick with AJAX.
"quite slick", not a fact but an opinion.
It's an interesting take on a "bookmar manager." It supports automatic importaing of IE favorites. Later, OPML support is added for other users.
"interesting take", yet not a fact, but a clear opinion.
This supports a far nicer version of the first page, although it does not incorporate the bookmark manager ideas of the second site. They tweak it weekly, sometimes daily, over the coming months (and continue to do so).
"Far nicer", you keep it no secret you are a clear admirer of start.com, and you have a clear opinion on google/start.com. But if you want your post to have any weight as a fact check, you should have kept your opinion for yourself.
Microsoft is only a Marketing Company, I hear that alot, and it makes sense.
When microsoft bought Giant their antispyware program was one of the best. When microsoft re-launched it under Microsoft AntiSpyware (and marketed as a new product), it got raving reviews.
The effects are that people will start to trust MS antispyware, and will be starting to ditch their other antispyware programs. As soon as the majority of the people are used to the program, microsoft can dictate their own terms to what is spyware and what is not. Ofcourse microsoft will never go too far, but the changes will be "subtle", not enough to get angry about and still have solid bunch of supporters defending the program for microsoft.
[i]The constant strikes, the 5+ weeks of vacation, the voting down of the EU constitution to avoid US-style capitalism.[/i]
There is no 5+ weeks of vacation, and people didn't vote down the constitution because of US-style capitalism, but rather because politicians never bothered to ask/explain the people anything about the EU.
It makes me sad to see these kinds of "facts" repeated over and over again.
Interesting bit, but it's interesting to see where it will lead too. Bill Gates said that hardware is eventually going to be so cheap, people would only buy the software (in this case: Microsoft Windows). Which would mean that software would eventually be more important then the hardware, and far less expensive or even free.
Apple is running the opposite filosophy, hardware and software thightly intergrated. With a large emphasis on controlling the supported hardware.
But considering the "pay for software, not for hardware" philisophy, you would expect Apple to be on a good position on the long run (if the hardware becomes cheap enough).
But i don't think that will be the case, i suspect an increasingly large marketshare for companies like google, who have created in essence an consistent operating system like UI for all their web applications. The computer running those web applications don't need Windows Longhorn or anything, a lightweight OS will do.
So, if Apple is smart, it would be wise to get on the webapplications bandwagon, and try to sell the OSX filosophy experience through webapplications.
Yes, I agree with you on most terms.
The problem is that there is no real breakthrough in gameplay anymore, and the question is are we gonna see something really innovative in the future ? I think the problems are indeed with the software and not the hardware:
Problem one is the increasing conglomerates of software houses. Making games more of business then an art, obvious example is ofcourse EA games. With it's main franchise existing of "recycling" games (especially with it's sports games).
Problems two, is the increased costs of making something really innovative. Only an idea is not enough, in the early days people would be satisfied with EGA graphics, but nowadays people want eye candy and pixel shaders, otherwise they won't even consider it.
Problem three is the increased shift of balance towards game consoles. The console world is in control of software houses, and there is in general a steep barrier for new game developers. Not to mention that the console lacks several input methods which make several games impossible (RTS, FPS).
But most importantly, for most of the gamers who have witnessed alot of games since the early days like doom, keen, etc, it's important to know that the level of expectancy has been raised also. I think the game industry is going the same way as the movie industry: Alot of average material, and once or twice a year something worthy.
Aluminum case was much noisier than my steel case, given that I have many more things in my case. Thicker materials (obviously) cut down on noise levels.
Indeed, as said on silentpcreview, there is no reason to by aluminium, except for weight reasons: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article75-page2.html Quote:
The Aluminum Myth - Some favor aluminum cases, citing an ability to better cool components mounted within. This is a myth. No heat producing component benefit in any significant way from being inside an aluminum case. The only heat producing devices that are normally mounted in direct contact with a case are the drives, particularly the hard drives. The difference between aluminum and steel in this cooling fuction is insignificant.
This does not mean aluminum cases cannot be used to make a silent computer, just that there are disadvantages with them when compared to similarly constructed steel cases. Regardless, many aluminum cases certainly look nice.
The Aluminum Drawback - One consistent acoustic property seems unavoidable: Aluminum cases tend to pick up hard drive and fan vibrations more readily than steel cases, and make a higher pitched, more audible humming or buzzing sound. This quality is directly related to the density of aluminum: It has only about 30% of the density of the cheaper, more commonly used steel. Internally applied panel damping materials (especially the heavier kinds) appear to damp the resonance down fairly effectively, but it is sometimes difficult and an added expense to eliminate entirely.
Well, isn't this happening on the lowest levels already? I don't live in the USA, but i heard Bush is planning to privatise most of the social security, so every citizen can be "in control" of his/her financial situation. Basically making citizens small corporations, with little or no (financial) goverment influence.
The real questions you gotta ask is then, how can all these citizen corporations make profit.. and how long will they stay in business ?
Re:He had a chance, he apparently blew it.
on
Google Fires Blogger?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Ok, think i'll take this this flamebait.
You know what happens if people shut up and just do their work and never tell to the outside what is going on? Especially in large companies it eventually creates an atmosphere of repression, and the feeling in the back of your head that you need to be carefull with what you say.
It also creates a sense of false truths, as the cnet article says, a microsoft employee taking pictures of apple computers being unloaded is fired, creating the impression that at microsoft only windows is used.
Eventually the company will have lost touch with reality, because the employees don't speak their mouth, creating for example a company like microsoft. I know speaking to the outside world is something different, but it's the beginning.
And like a fellow slashdotter once said, google is just a company, primarily aimed at making profit, that it's primary objective. All the "cool" google things are invented because they make a very nice profit.
You're absolutely right that this season is pretty enjoyable, if this was season 1 instead of season 2 it could have a huge potential.
But season 1 till 3 shouldn't be forgotten, a lesson needs to be learned that's especially important for science fiction: If you create an imaginary universe, at atleast make it consistent. The number one cause of inconsistency is (re)writing history.
We've seen it with Star Wars too, it was the prequel G.Lucas had in mind, but not what the majority of the fans thought of it.
Stargate, battlestar, farscape are all series which are continuous and succesful. So imho a prequel is a "bad idea" in all scifi enviroments, because you distrurb the imaginations of people.
I find this funny, especially from an european perspective. In for example my country, overly regulating the society is generally seen as leftish and socialist. Right wing (liberal) parties here are generally towards de-regulation, and as much freedom as possible (freedom means less taxes ofcourse).
But as you can see from the USA, there has been a turning point, now it's the right who believe they should regulate how citizens live their lives. The arguments used against the left for having a "too large a goverment and influence on society" suddenly has a different meaning.
As for games, those regulations will have little effect. It's how we raise our children which largly influence how they will grow up. How they will behave is influenced by society and their parents. If the kids grow up to be violent, it says more about the society then games they play.
Here in the netherlands the same violent games are played, but you don't see any crimes waves here.
Indeed, how horrible the movies and pictures might be, it shows the sad truth of what is really happening arround the world.
You can't deny that the existance of such a site is part of a free and uncensored web, which should be defended. But already some countries block the site, like spain because of the movies of the madrid bombings.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I agree this solution is far from perfect, but the problem is that publishers/game makers want their DRM, and they've been having it for years.
Another solution would be a steam like online authentication service, you can have multiple installs, but can only play at 1 computer at a time. It will come to that eventually I am sure, but right now there is still much against it, because alot of people play single player games without internet. And alot of people still have something against online verification, not to talk about the the technical issue's of failing/unreachable authentication servers
DRM can be tied to hardware also, like windows XP does.
It can easily be done during setup time, with online verification so that you can't lend your CD to you neighbor.
After setup is done, you can just start your game without CD.
The current state op IM's used is not what a broad majority of people want. (atleast here in europe, where msn and in much lesser sense icq is used).
MSN is primarily targetted at people under the age of 20, with it's excessive use of winks/smiley's/etc. Also it runs on windows only.
ICQ seems to be dying because AOL is supporting it's own messenger first.
That leaves alot of open space for people who want a native cross platform clean messenger without too much bells and whistles. Google's abilities and broad acceptance might be the only one which can break the monopoly of MSN (and yahoo/aol in the US).
There is ofcourse also the clone messengers, but most of them are having their own issue's which make them unsuitable for mass usage.
In europe, people either use ICQ (which is slowly dying), but mostly they use MSN.
And MSN is specifically targetted at highschool teens, with alot of annoying features, which many people from the pre MSN era dispise of (atleast myself).
I think there is a market for people who want a clean no-nonsense messenger. Alot of people I know use alternative messengers like miranda/trillian/etc to escape from the annoying native clients, but they all have their limitations. And currently I think only google would be capable of competing with the ever growing MSN userbase in europe.
And talking about trillian, did anyone notice that development of trillian has taken a hit? It's very quiet on the website, while on the boards people keeping reporting issue's. Would be ashame (even though it's not freeware like miranda) if trillian would die, it would drive alot of people back to msn/aim native clients.
Ever thought about the fact that google/ms might actually not be copying eachother and work independantly?
Besides, if you want your post to be independent and fact proof, why not stick to the facts only?
This is a first-generation web-based RSS aggregator, quite slick with AJAX.
"quite slick", not a fact but an opinion.
It's an interesting take on a "bookmar manager." It supports automatic importaing of IE favorites. Later, OPML support is added for other users.
"interesting take", yet not a fact, but a clear opinion.
This supports a far nicer version of the first page, although it does not incorporate the bookmark manager ideas of the second site. They tweak it weekly, sometimes daily, over the coming months (and continue to do so).
"Far nicer", you keep it no secret you are a clear admirer of start.com, and you have a clear opinion on google/start.com. But if you want your post to have any weight as a fact check, you should have kept your opinion for yourself.
Microsoft is only a Marketing Company, I hear that alot, and it makes sense.
When microsoft bought Giant their antispyware program was one of the best. When microsoft re-launched it under Microsoft AntiSpyware (and marketed as a new product), it got raving reviews.
The effects are that people will start to trust MS antispyware, and will be starting to ditch their other antispyware programs. As soon as the majority of the people are used to the program, microsoft can dictate their own terms to what is spyware and what is not. Ofcourse microsoft will never go too far, but the changes will be "subtle", not enough to get angry about and still have solid bunch of supporters defending the program for microsoft.
[i]The constant strikes, the 5+ weeks of vacation, the voting down of the EU constitution to avoid US-style capitalism.[/i] There is no 5+ weeks of vacation, and people didn't vote down the constitution because of US-style capitalism, but rather because politicians never bothered to ask/explain the people anything about the EU. It makes me sad to see these kinds of "facts" repeated over and over again.
Steve Jobs joins Ikea!s _joins_ikea/
s _volunteer/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/01/steve_job
And Bush's twins join the Air Force!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/01/bush_twin
Interesting bit, but it's interesting to see where it will lead too. Bill Gates said that hardware is eventually going to be so cheap, people would only buy the software (in this case: Microsoft Windows). Which would mean that software would eventually be more important then the hardware, and far less expensive or even free.
Apple is running the opposite filosophy, hardware and software thightly intergrated. With a large emphasis on controlling the supported hardware.
But considering the "pay for software, not for hardware" philisophy, you would expect Apple to be on a good position on the long run (if the hardware becomes cheap enough).
But i don't think that will be the case, i suspect an increasingly large marketshare for companies like google, who have created in essence an consistent operating system like UI for all their web applications. The computer running those web applications don't need Windows Longhorn or anything, a lightweight OS will do.
So, if Apple is smart, it would be wise to get on the webapplications bandwagon, and try to sell the OSX filosophy experience through webapplications.
Yes, I agree with you on most terms.
The problem is that there is no real breakthrough in gameplay anymore, and the question is are we gonna see something really innovative in the future ? I think the problems are indeed with the software and not the hardware:
Problem one is the increasing conglomerates of software houses. Making games more of business then an art, obvious example is ofcourse EA games. With it's main franchise existing of "recycling" games (especially with it's sports games).
Problems two, is the increased costs of making something really innovative. Only an idea is not enough, in the early days people would be satisfied with EGA graphics, but nowadays people want eye candy and pixel shaders, otherwise they won't even consider it.
Problem three is the increased shift of balance towards game consoles. The console world is in control of software houses, and there is in general a steep barrier for new game developers. Not to mention that the console lacks several input methods which make several games impossible (RTS, FPS).
But most importantly, for most of the gamers who have witnessed alot of games since the early days like doom, keen, etc, it's important to know that the level of expectancy has been raised also. I think the game industry is going the same way as the movie industry: Alot of average material, and once or twice a year something worthy.
Aluminum case was much noisier than my steel case, given that I have many more things in my case. Thicker materials (obviously) cut down on noise levels.l
Indeed, as said on silentpcreview, there is no reason to by aluminium, except for weight reasons:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article75-page2.htm
Quote:
The Aluminum Myth - Some favor aluminum cases, citing an ability to better cool components mounted within. This is a myth. No heat producing component benefit in any significant way from being inside an aluminum case. The only heat producing devices that are normally mounted in direct contact with a case are the drives, particularly the hard drives. The difference between aluminum and steel in this cooling fuction is insignificant.
This does not mean aluminum cases cannot be used to make a silent computer, just that there are disadvantages with them when compared to similarly constructed steel cases. Regardless, many aluminum cases certainly look nice.
The Aluminum Drawback - One consistent acoustic property seems unavoidable: Aluminum cases tend to pick up hard drive and fan vibrations more readily than steel cases, and make a higher pitched, more audible humming or buzzing sound. This quality is directly related to the density of aluminum: It has only about 30% of the density of the cheaper, more commonly used steel. Internally applied panel damping materials (especially the heavier kinds) appear to damp the resonance down fairly effectively, but it is sometimes difficult and an added expense to eliminate entirely.
Well, isn't this happening on the lowest levels already? I don't live in the USA, but i heard Bush is planning to privatise most of the social security, so every citizen can be "in control" of his/her financial situation. Basically making citizens small corporations, with little or no (financial) goverment influence.
.. and how long will they stay in business ?
The real questions you gotta ask is then, how can all these citizen corporations make profit
Ok, think i'll take this this flamebait.
You know what happens if people shut up and just do their work and never tell to the outside what is going on? Especially in large companies it eventually creates an atmosphere of repression, and the feeling in the back of your head that you need to be carefull with what you say.
It also creates a sense of false truths, as the cnet article says, a microsoft employee taking pictures of apple computers being unloaded is fired, creating the impression that at microsoft only windows is used.
Eventually the company will have lost touch with reality, because the employees don't speak their mouth, creating for example a company like microsoft. I know speaking to the outside world is something different, but it's the beginning.
And like a fellow slashdotter once said, google is just a company, primarily aimed at making profit, that it's primary objective. All the "cool" google things are invented because they make a very nice profit.
You're absolutely right that this season is pretty enjoyable, if this was season 1 instead of season 2 it could have a huge potential.
But season 1 till 3 shouldn't be forgotten, a lesson needs to be learned that's especially important for science fiction: If you create an imaginary universe, at atleast make it consistent. The number one cause of inconsistency is (re)writing history.
We've seen it with Star Wars too, it was the prequel G.Lucas had in mind, but not what the majority of the fans thought of it.
Stargate, battlestar, farscape are all series which are continuous and succesful. So imho a prequel is a "bad idea" in all scifi enviroments, because you distrurb the imaginations of people.
I find this funny, especially from an european perspective. In for example my country, overly regulating the society is generally seen as leftish and socialist. Right wing (liberal) parties here are generally towards de-regulation, and as much freedom as possible (freedom means less taxes ofcourse).
But as you can see from the USA, there has been a turning point, now it's the right who believe they should regulate how citizens live their lives. The arguments used against the left for having a "too large a goverment and influence on society" suddenly has a different meaning.
As for games, those regulations will have little effect. It's how we raise our children which largly influence how they will grow up. How they will behave is influenced by society and their parents. If the kids grow up to be violent, it says more about the society then games they play. Here in the netherlands the same violent games are played, but you don't see any crimes waves here.
A letter has appeared on the sci-fi forums, urging anyone who wants the serie to continue to watch it on television too, to keep the ratings of the show up. http://mboard.scifi.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=2 84022&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1#284022
Indeed, how horrible the movies and pictures might be, it shows the sad truth of what is really happening arround the world. You can't deny that the existance of such a site is part of a free and uncensored web, which should be defended. But already some countries block the site, like spain because of the movies of the madrid bombings.