The supreme court granted MLB an exemption from anti-trust laws. The court then said that only congress can undo the exemption. Therefore congress meddles in baseball to make sure that it's still for the public good (and therefore can keep its monopoly). That's why they have the power to ensure the integrity of MLB. Like many things congress engages in, it's not in the constitution explicitly, but rather an interpreted power.
Don't get me wrong. I agree it's a waste of their time and they have better things to do. But, that's why they're involved.
Saying that is pretty much code for "I'm unemployable." If I'm interviewing somebody and they're telling me that they left their last job over a disagreement with Management, I'm thinking, "OK, so if we disagree when you're working here, you're either going to quit or I'm going to have to fire you."
No, it's not. Hashing is one way (no decryption). Snuffle uses hashing, but a hash algorithm NOT what is doing the encryption (it's an XOR of 1)the text generated by hashing the key and 2)the text to be encrypted). Here's the relevant text from the wikipedia entry you referenced:
Stream ciphers work by taking a string (the encryption key) and deterministically generating a bunch of random-seeming text from that key. That text is then XORed against the message you want to encipher. To decipher the text, the recipient simply hands the same key to the stream cipher and XORs the results with the ciphertext, resulting in the original message.
Snuffle simply works by using a hash function to generate the random-seeming text by hashing the key with sequential integers (1, 2, 3, etc.).
7 million achievements is impressive. With 850k unique users, that is an average of ~8.25 achievements per user. The game has 49 achievements possible. Beating the game yields 7 achievements: one for each of the 5 acts, one for the prison breakout (the closest thing to getting an achievement by turning on the console), and one for completing the game. That means that on average, each player has played and completed the game. I realize that the stats are slightly skewed by those players that play all the time and have achieved 40+ achievements. I consider myself a pretty average gamer (for a 360 owner) and I have 11 achievements. But, wow, 7 million achievements for 850k users is really impressive -> almost everybody who plays this game plays it until the end. Granted, this game is fairly short (7-10 hrs?), but these stats highlight that the gameplay in Gears is very compelling. Well done CliffyB.
On a side note, was CliffyB famous before Gears of War? I had never heard of him. His wikipedia page doesn't make him sound like a game designer god by any means.
Your list is missing an important player in the BPM Suite space: Appian. Appian was named a leader in the Forrester Wave and the visionary with the highest ability to execute in Gartner's magic quadrant. Use these analyst evaluations when beginning your research - they've done a good part of the work for you already. Don't take theirs as the final word though - also contact the companies to find out the truth. Most will gladly give you demos and/or prototypes if you're serious.
If you're interested in an intro to BPM, check out http://www.bpmbasics.com/. I've seen way to many "WTF is BPM?" posts in this thread.
It's probably obvious that I'm a bit biased, but you really need to consider all of the top players if you are looking into BPM, and Appian is objectively (analyst reports, IT press articles) one of the top players.
Re:I read it - sounds interesting - but come on...
on
What Spore May Spawn
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Does this mean that my "planet", which I spent 2 months building after I spent 3 months evolving my race, can be wiped out by an evil player who simply wants to nuke everything in site?
No, your planet (or your species, rather) will appear on planets in other players' game instances. Interactions between those players and your species will be local to their game only, and not affect yours. Imagine it this way: instead of Spore shipping with a set of "other" creatures, it will reach out to a central DB and pull back creatures created by other players. Your creature may end up dominating my puny one-legged hoppers, but you'll never know.
Snakes on a Plane was going to be renamed Pacific Flight 121, but a huge uproar from internet fan sites caused the studio to keep the orginal (and much cooler) name.
I'm not optimistic that Nintendo will reverse its decision on this one, but I'm sure the online petition sites are starting up right now.
Is anyone else disappointed by how ugly the two models displayed on Microsoft's site are? The leaked video that was floating around Google Video showed a device that actually looked cool and might attract some of the iPod crowd. The two devices introduced today remind me of the little computer the fat server room guy uses to plug into the serial port and troubleshoot the servers when they barf. I'm not sure if I would like it any more if it looked cool, but the two models on display today spell flop.
I especially liked Geoffery Miller's dangerous idea: the reason we haven't made contact with ET is that advanced alien civlizations become too self-absorbed in the virtual universe to pay any attention to the physical universe. I think it's especially applicable to those of us who spend way too much time browsing and posting to slashdot (go out an procreate instead!).
I suppose our only hope is that some of the leaders of our virtual world (Bezos, Carmack, Allen) are also the pioneers of space exploration. Maybe we're not as doomed as Miller proposes.
My experience with the first 5 hours of use
on
Xbox 360 Very Unstable
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· Score: 4, Interesting
My XBOX 360 was waiting for me when I got home from work last night. I had pre-ordered from EBGames.com and selected next day air shipping. My first 5 hours with the machine were not as smooth as I had hoped.
After getting the old Xbox out of the way and hooking up the component cables, surround sound optical cable, wireless adapter, and ginormous power brick, the first thing I saw on the screen turning it on was an error screen. Black, with E74 in the center bottom - there was some other text as well, but I don't remember what it said and most of it was in another language. Not a great first impression, to say the least. I think the problem was the wireless adapter - I was using the one I bought for my original Xbox. I guess they don't play nice together. I'm not sure why really, I thought it was pretty much equivalent to a wireless bridge. Starting up the console without it plugged in resulted in the startup screen. A big error screen is a pretty harsh welcome - they could have at least set it up to start up the system as normal and then display a friendly error message about having to pony up more money for new accessories: "Sorry. Although your shiny new Xbox 360 might be able to play over 200 legacy Xbox games, the wireless adapter you bought is now just a paperweight with lights." That would be better than E74.
After getting the Xbox on finally, I discovered that turning on the controller is less than intuitive. Batteries are included, and simple enough to insert. There is a nice sticker with the finger-pointing-hand icon pointing right at the Xbox 360 semisphere button. The message was clear enough: "Press this button to make this thing work." Nope. I pressed it. I pressed it again. Nothing. I unwrapped the second controller that EBGames so kindly packaged for me, and had the same result. Those damned things wouldn't turn on - no lights, no nothing. It was several minutes before I discovered that you need to hold the button down for several seconds before controller will turn on. I even resorted to RTFM, and still didn't find this crucial tidbit of info. That sucked for a while.
Played PD0 first - no real issues. When I first inserted Project Gotham Racing, however, I saw a nice error screen that told that in order to play this game I must insert it into a Xbox 360 console. I thought that was what I did, but I ejected it and inserted it again just in case. It played the second time around, but when I was done and ready to try out Call of Duty 2, the Xbox 360 just went to a black screen, not the dashboard. Inserting a new disc did nothing - I tried all 4 of them. I had to turn the console off and back on again before it would recognize a game. What the hell? I felt like blowing on the disc and in the tray for old time's sake.
I could gripe a bit about how counterintuitive it is to get a second player to join in games, but I'll chalk that up to my lack of experience with the new interface...
After wading through most of the nonesense, I had a pretty good time my first night with the new system, but damn was it a rough start. The games are pretty fun (PDZ, PGR3, CoD2, Kameo), but at no time did I feel completely blown away by the graphics or the gameplay. Kameo is probably the best of the bunch. I fully expect to encounter more glitches, but there is little chance that I'll send the system away for repairs at this point when most people can't even get their hands on one until next year. That would just be insensitive.
The parent got modded "troll," but the parent is right. He/she offered a good explanation for why the majority of the posts in response to this article are hostile. The article submitter offered some ideas and the slashdot crowd responded... they thought the ideas and especially the name (Type Manager) were unoriginal and dumb. People want to see something more concrete. Mod the parent up.
I'll agree that the NES version of Rygar as one of the greatest games ever, but I don't remember it being underrated. In fact, I believe it was widely acclaimed.
Instead of listing games that didn't get their due, it seems like you just listed a bunch of good games that nobody has thought about in a while (save Guardian Legend and Tetrishpere, perhaps).
It seems like I found a magic disk on my system that will take unlimited data! I've been storing huge amounts of stuff there for the past few months, and still haven't run out of disk space. Try it out:/dev/null
Retrieving the data, on the other hand, has been problematic... I'm figuring that when I really need it, I'll just post to Ask Slashdot and somebody will help me out.
Yeah, ok, I'm confused. I naturally thought you were talking about running java application servers or the like on Itaniums. It didn't cross my mind that you bought nearly a million dollars in hardware to run applets in your browser.
Slashdot Mirror
The supreme court granted MLB an exemption from anti-trust laws. The court then said that only congress can undo the exemption. Therefore congress meddles in baseball to make sure that it's still for the public good (and therefore can keep its monopoly). That's why they have the power to ensure the integrity of MLB. Like many things congress engages in, it's not in the constitution explicitly, but rather an interpreted power. Don't get me wrong. I agree it's a waste of their time and they have better things to do. But, that's why they're involved.
Did you think about that statement before writing it?
tell them you had a disagreement with Management.
Saying that is pretty much code for "I'm unemployable." If I'm interviewing somebody and they're telling me that they left their last job over a disagreement with Management, I'm thinking, "OK, so if we disagree when you're working here, you're either going to quit or I'm going to have to fire you."
The corrected link to the Wikipedia article: the Mariner 10 probe
There is a handy preview feature though... Maybe it's disabled in IE7 - contact your tech support.
7 million achievements is impressive. With 850k unique users, that is an average of ~8.25 achievements per user. The game has 49 achievements possible. Beating the game yields 7 achievements: one for each of the 5 acts, one for the prison breakout (the closest thing to getting an achievement by turning on the console), and one for completing the game. That means that on average, each player has played and completed the game. I realize that the stats are slightly skewed by those players that play all the time and have achieved 40+ achievements. I consider myself a pretty average gamer (for a 360 owner) and I have 11 achievements. But, wow, 7 million achievements for 850k users is really impressive -> almost everybody who plays this game plays it until the end. Granted, this game is fairly short (7-10 hrs?), but these stats highlight that the gameplay in Gears is very compelling. Well done CliffyB.
On a side note, was CliffyB famous before Gears of War? I had never heard of him. His wikipedia page doesn't make him sound like a game designer god by any means.
Thanks for the heads up. I almost installed that shite. That would have been a rude suprise.
The only winning move is not to play.
Your list is missing an important player in the BPM Suite space: Appian. Appian was named a leader in the Forrester Wave and the visionary with the highest ability to execute in Gartner's magic quadrant. Use these analyst evaluations when beginning your research - they've done a good part of the work for you already. Don't take theirs as the final word though - also contact the companies to find out the truth. Most will gladly give you demos and/or prototypes if you're serious.
If you're interested in an intro to BPM, check out http://www.bpmbasics.com/. I've seen way to many "WTF is BPM?" posts in this thread.
It's probably obvious that I'm a bit biased, but you really need to consider all of the top players if you are looking into BPM, and Appian is objectively (analyst reports, IT press articles) one of the top players.
No, your planet (or your species, rather) will appear on planets in other players' game instances. Interactions between those players and your species will be local to their game only, and not affect yours. Imagine it this way: instead of Spore shipping with a set of "other" creatures, it will reach out to a central DB and pull back creatures created by other players. Your creature may end up dominating my puny one-legged hoppers, but you'll never know.
Snakes on a Plane was going to be renamed Pacific Flight 121, but a huge uproar from internet fan sites caused the studio to keep the orginal (and much cooler) name.
I'm not optimistic that Nintendo will reverse its decision on this one, but I'm sure the online petition sites are starting up right now.
Everytime MS buys a gamd company, the games then fall apart and then suck. I don't know what they do to them. Look at Bungie Soft
I'm confused. Haven't you played Halo2? Wasn't that developed by Bungie while under Microsoft? That's one of the best games ever made.
why don't you work on some connection pooling while you're at it.
Is anyone else disappointed by how ugly the two models displayed on Microsoft's site are? The leaked video that was floating around Google Video showed a device that actually looked cool and might attract some of the iPod crowd. The two devices introduced today remind me of the little computer the fat server room guy uses to plug into the serial port and troubleshoot the servers when they barf. I'm not sure if I would like it any more if it looked cool, but the two models on display today spell flop.
it came out in the arcade first
Nice, now I don't have to buy a Mac.
fp.
I especially liked Geoffery Miller's dangerous idea: the reason we haven't made contact with ET is that advanced alien civlizations become too self-absorbed in the virtual universe to pay any attention to the physical universe. I think it's especially applicable to those of us who spend way too much time browsing and posting to slashdot (go out an procreate instead!).
I suppose our only hope is that some of the leaders of our virtual world (Bezos, Carmack, Allen) are also the pioneers of space exploration. Maybe we're not as doomed as Miller proposes.
My XBOX 360 was waiting for me when I got home from work last night. I had pre-ordered from EBGames.com and selected next day air shipping. My first 5 hours with the machine were not as smooth as I had hoped.
After getting the old Xbox out of the way and hooking up the component cables, surround sound optical cable, wireless adapter, and ginormous power brick, the first thing I saw on the screen turning it on was an error screen. Black, with E74 in the center bottom - there was some other text as well, but I don't remember what it said and most of it was in another language. Not a great first impression, to say the least. I think the problem was the wireless adapter - I was using the one I bought for my original Xbox. I guess they don't play nice together. I'm not sure why really, I thought it was pretty much equivalent to a wireless bridge. Starting up the console without it plugged in resulted in the startup screen. A big error screen is a pretty harsh welcome - they could have at least set it up to start up the system as normal and then display a friendly error message about having to pony up more money for new accessories: "Sorry. Although your shiny new Xbox 360 might be able to play over 200 legacy Xbox games, the wireless adapter you bought is now just a paperweight with lights." That would be better than E74.
After getting the Xbox on finally, I discovered that turning on the controller is less than intuitive. Batteries are included, and simple enough to insert. There is a nice sticker with the finger-pointing-hand icon pointing right at the Xbox 360 semisphere button. The message was clear enough: "Press this button to make this thing work." Nope. I pressed it. I pressed it again. Nothing. I unwrapped the second controller that EBGames so kindly packaged for me, and had the same result. Those damned things wouldn't turn on - no lights, no nothing. It was several minutes before I discovered that you need to hold the button down for several seconds before controller will turn on. I even resorted to RTFM, and still didn't find this crucial tidbit of info. That sucked for a while.
Played PD0 first - no real issues. When I first inserted Project Gotham Racing, however, I saw a nice error screen that told that in order to play this game I must insert it into a Xbox 360 console. I thought that was what I did, but I ejected it and inserted it again just in case. It played the second time around, but when I was done and ready to try out Call of Duty 2, the Xbox 360 just went to a black screen, not the dashboard. Inserting a new disc did nothing - I tried all 4 of them. I had to turn the console off and back on again before it would recognize a game. What the hell? I felt like blowing on the disc and in the tray for old time's sake.
I could gripe a bit about how counterintuitive it is to get a second player to join in games, but I'll chalk that up to my lack of experience with the new interface...
After wading through most of the nonesense, I had a pretty good time my first night with the new system, but damn was it a rough start. The games are pretty fun (PDZ, PGR3, CoD2, Kameo), but at no time did I feel completely blown away by the graphics or the gameplay. Kameo is probably the best of the bunch. I fully expect to encounter more glitches, but there is little chance that I'll send the system away for repairs at this point when most people can't even get their hands on one until next year. That would just be insensitive.
The parent got modded "troll," but the parent is right. He/she offered a good explanation for why the majority of the posts in response to this article are hostile. The article submitter offered some ideas and the slashdot crowd responded... they thought the ideas and especially the name (Type Manager) were unoriginal and dumb. People want to see something more concrete. Mod the parent up.
I'll agree that the NES version of Rygar as one of the greatest games ever, but I don't remember it being underrated. In fact, I believe it was widely acclaimed.
Instead of listing games that didn't get their due, it seems like you just listed a bunch of good games that nobody has thought about in a while (save Guardian Legend and Tetrishpere, perhaps).
say what? (speak [english])
It seems like I found a magic disk on my system that will take unlimited data! I've been storing huge amounts of stuff there for the past few months, and still haven't run out of disk space. Try it out: /dev/null
Retrieving the data, on the other hand, has been problematic... I'm figuring that when I really need it, I'll just post to Ask Slashdot and somebody will help me out.
When and Where can i BUY this ?
Now. Here. EOM.
Yeah, ok, I'm confused. I naturally thought you were talking about running java application servers or the like on Itaniums. It didn't cross my mind that you bought nearly a million dollars in hardware to run applets in your browser.