Your comparison is simply ridiculous. The Guitar Hero controller is simple and cheap to produce, only intended to be used with one game, and bundled with that game. The Wii remote is the most complex mainstream controller ever produced, designed for use with many diverse games, and sold independently for $60 (when you include the nunchuk). Single-game peripherals certainly have worked many times before, but when has a console ever successfully changed its primary controller part-way through its life?
Adding the remote to the GameCube wouldn't even have been technically possible. Even if you were somehow able to reuse the old controller ports for this much more complicated controller, how would you attach the sensor bar?
As for Wii being "amost identical" to the GameCube, maybe you failed to notice that Wii has... - a new CPU (estimated to be twice as fast) - a new GPU (also estimated to be twice as fast) - a new optical drive - vastly different firmware - WiFi - Bluetooth - 512 MB built-in flash memory - an SD port - USB ports
Sure, its CPU and GPU are "only" incremental upgrades, but it's an entirely new console, no doubt about it.
Ever notice how Eclipse asks you which workspace you want to use when it starts up? (And that you can tell it to use one by default?) Ever wonder where it stores the information? It's a directory called "configuration" under the Eclipse install. Go ahead, go look for it.
Yes, information is cached there in a single-user scenario, when the user has write access to the install location. However (from the Eclipse help)...
Scenario #2 - shared install
In this scenario, a single install area is shared by many users. The "configuration" directory under the install area is home only to the config.ini as shipped with the product (it is not initialized). Every user has their own local standalone configuration location.
The set up for this scenario requires making the install area read-only for regular users. When users start Eclipse, this causes the configuration area to automatically default to a directory under the user home dir. If this measure is not taken, all users will end up using the same location for their configuration area, which is not supported.
The default location for a private configuration area is:
The user home dir is determined by the user.home Java system property. The product id and version are obtained from the product marker file.eclipseproduct under the Eclipse install.
No, Eclipse is not a Windows app. And, yes, Eclipse certainly support multi-user installs.
For me, the magic is far from gone. Though I've been trying since early December, I hadn't been able to get a Wii until about 4 weeks ago. It's still very new and very exciting. I play Wii Sports most days, though not for very long. I'll usually just take my fitness test and then play a couple of games. I just don't have hours each day to devote to this.
I have to ask the "hard-core gamers" who quickly tired of Wii Sports, are you able to consistently get a fitness age below 25? Are you a pro in all 5 sports? Have you got gold medals in all 15 training games? I keep playing because the games are fun and there's definitely lots of room to improve.
And then, there's the social aspect. I've enjoyed introducing many friends to the Wii, and laughing at each other as we play together. But even on my own, I've found lots of fun to be had within Wii Sports, a game that's often dismissed as a shallow demo.
I ordered Wii Play last week, largely because it seemed the easiest way to get my hands on a fourth and final controller. I also ordered WarioWare at the same time. I had intended to hold off until I got bored of the first couple games, but I went for it because it was discounted by 10%.
I expect to be entertained for quite some time to come.
The problem is that people don't necessarily agree on which 5% is imperfect. So, if you give everyone options for their missing 5%, then they also end up having to wade through 20 times more options than they want.
I'm a Gnome user. Several months ago, I sat down at my boyfriend's computer, and he was running KDE. There were a couple of basic things (I thought) that I didn't like about the way things worked, and I wanted to tweak them for my use. I waded through page after page of preferences, and finally gave up, with one thing still not working the way I wanted. For me, sitting down in front of KDE and going through all those preferences again, before I start to do anything, is most unappealing.
The more things you make configurable, the harder you make it to configure anything. People do understand that there's a trade-off involved here, right? Gnome and KDE have obviously tried to strike very different balances. Those basic positions aren't going to change now, though there's still obviously room for debate about any particular option.
To be honest, Linus's request (or most of it, anyway) is probably perfectly reasonable. If the UI to do all that button mapping would overwhelm the appropriate configuration dialog, then hide it away in gconf, but his changes to Metacity do seem to be an improvement. But, calling people defensive, accusing them of making excuses, and deriding their basic design choices are not effective ways to make your case. The diva attitude around Bugzilla doesn't help, either.
If they delay the release of their films in Canada, of course it will encourage illegal copying of these films here.
But, that's not all. It's not just our movie theatres that our dominated by American content. We get all their crappy entertainment media as well. So, the releases will not coincide with the media hype, no doubt leading to reduced interest in their films altogether.
Hopefully, this will result in more interest in domestic offerings. With any luck, we'll see more, and better, Canadian movies being made. Wouldn't that be fantastic?
New units are going on sale at both futureshop.ca and bestbuy.ca a couple of times a week. A batch of 100 sells out in about two minutes.
Wii Finder monitors the Wii pages from several online retailers and updates when they do. Check4Change is a Firefox plug-in that alerts you when a web page updates.
It's key that you create an account, and provide your address and credit card information, beforehand. You aboslutely will not have time to enter this stuff during the transaction. I only created accounts at Best Buy and Future Shop, as the other stores weren't seeming to get much new stock, anyway.
I was monitoring those two stores, checking for changes every 20 seconds. Last Tuesday, 96 units came in at Future Shop, and I was able to snag one in about a minute. They were all gone 30 seconds later. Make sure you know your CIN and any credit card security password (e.g. Verified by Visa) by heart, as you won't have time to look anything up. Click through the order quickly, just checking for sanity and accepting the defaults. The default shipping costs about $12, and will only take 2 days in Toronto.
I've also been able to score an additional remote and nunchuk using the same approach.
I think you misunderstand what the major music labels are saying to Apple: "You must sell our music with effective DRM and you must sell our music on equal footing with all other music you sell." This means that were Apple to sell some music without DRM, the major music labels would not allow Apple to sell their music.
I think you are imagining what you would like to believe the major music labels are saying to Apple. Unless, of course, you have some support for this claim.
Do you really believe that Apple is above practicing lock-in? Why won't they license FairPlay for use in competing digital music players or digital music stores?
My feeling is that this situation is changing rapidly.
Personally, I have a blog that would reveal to even the most casual observer that I'm gay. I have photos of Pride and other gay-oriented events posted on flickr, carrying tags like "gay" and "GLBT". It was very much a conscious decision that I made when I first started blogging and posting photos. I figure if anyone is going to hold any of this against me, I want nothing to do with them in real life, anyway. When it comes to employment, the most cited concern, I've already decided that I won't work for a company that scores less than 100 on the HRC Corporate Equality Index. Any company that doesn't fully embrace its GLBT employees isn't worth my time or effort.
I'm almost 30. These days, more and more queer kids are growing up without ever experiencing the closet. I suspect this is partly a result of the myspace culture, but no doubt it's also related to the growth of gay-straight alliances and non-discriminatory sex education in schools.
Of course, this is just one gay geek's perspective, from arguably the most queer-friendly city in North America. I realize that it's not like this everywhere, but it's only getting better, and the 'net is leading the change.
Wow, 6,000 pages to describe an "open" format? Never underestimate the power of committees.
This "standard" was not created by committee. It was simply offered by Microsoft and rubber-stamped in an effort to "recognize the reality" that "the vast amount of data in the world is in Microsoft format."
Granted, this vast amount of data is in older binary Microsoft formats, not this one, which isn't yet supported by any released products. But why let facts stand in the way of a good rationalization?
Naturally, a restatement of MathML is not included in the Open Document specification.
But here's the point: by reusing MathML, instead of reinventing the wheel, Open Document also allows existing implementations of that standard to be reused.
The size of Microsoft's spec is a real problem. A Word developer estimates more than 4 years for a team of 5 (within Microsoft) to implement just the Word portion in Word for Mac. Apparently, that's too much work, so they're just going to "port" the Windows version.
Is a standard with only one, proprietary implementation much use to anyone?
Here in Toronto, Sony has fully occupied the Eglinton subway station with PS3 advertising. The usual poster spaces are all PS3. Advertising has also been plastered on the columns, the walls, and even the floor (not on the platform, but in the commercial area above it).
Every one shows the launch date, 11.17.06. Though, I think there are actually more ads in that subway station than there will be PS3s in all of Canada that day.
Tivoli Software is the systems management brand of the IBM Software Group. IBM purchased Austin, Texas-based Tivoli Systems, Inc. in 1996[2] and allowed it to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary for a few years before forming the Software Group. In addition to Tivoli this IBM division includes WebSphere, DB2, Lotus Software and Rational Software.
I believe "this IBM division" refers to Software Group, not Tivoli.
Indeed, if you look here, you'll see the five IBM software brands are Information Management (for which I believe they used to use the label Data Management and the DB2 brand), Lotus, Rational, Tivoli, and WebSphere.
All three are offensive. There are many relevant ways they could have advertised the availability of a new colour. This "race war" campaign was totally uncalled for.
You totally missed his point. He doesn't mean that you're less of a person because you can't write such an application. He means that there's nothing about the document format itself that prevents you or anyone else from doing so.
So is Skerrett being disengenous when he says that and, if he is, is he just getting back at Gosling for over simplifying?
Actually, I think he was just being polite. "I don't believe James really understands how Eclipse works" is a whole lot nicer than "James is lying through his teeth," which is what I would say.
Thanks for trying, but as it's already been pointed out, open source licenses don't tend to place any restrictions on obtaining or using the code. You need only to agree to the license in order to redistribute.
The GPL goes so far as to explicitly state as much.
Anyhow, on to your main point, I think most people around here believe that having a complete, open source implementation of the latest version of the Java specs would be extremely beneficial to Java and the Java community as a whole. So, we can't quite understand why Sun is engaging in stupid double-talk instead of trying in earnest to make that happen. Obviously, the easiest way would be to open source their existing implementation.
The oft-stated idea that Sun's refusal to contribute is somehow protecting "write once, run anywhere" is simply ridiculous. First of all, that whole notion is pure fiction because new APIs are always being added to the platform. Any code that exploits a new API won't run on an older runtime. And now, with Java 5.0, it's even worse, as, by default, javac produces bytecode that won't run on a 1.4 JVM, regardless of what platform APIs are used.
Meanwhile, because of the Sun's license terms, most Linux distributions are forced to pick up various open source implementations, none of which are not complete. Instead of getting help from the distributions in solving the problem of Java platform version dependencies, Sun has forced them to make whole situation much, much worse. Write once, cross your fingers, and hope for the best!
Trying to install and run Java applications ranges from a pain to a nightmare on every single platform. But, really, there's no good reason that I shouldn't be able to launch a Java application as easily as a native binary. Sun can't solve this problem themselves, but they do have the power to take away the roadblocks preventing it from being solved for them.
Well, I'd expect that when some of the biggest names in Canadian music speak, the Ministry of Canadian Heritage might just listen. They're about to embark on another attempt to come up with a somewhat less objectionable version of the DMCA, spurred on by lobbyists from the big American record labels.
This isn't about convincing the labels. It'sz about ensuring that the government hears the other viewpoint.
Slashdot Mirror
Your comparison is simply ridiculous. The Guitar Hero controller is simple and cheap to produce, only intended to be used with one game, and bundled with that game. The Wii remote is the most complex mainstream controller ever produced, designed for use with many diverse games, and sold independently for $60 (when you include the nunchuk). Single-game peripherals certainly have worked many times before, but when has a console ever successfully changed its primary controller part-way through its life?
Adding the remote to the GameCube wouldn't even have been technically possible. Even if you were somehow able to reuse the old controller ports for this much more complicated controller, how would you attach the sensor bar?
As for Wii being "amost identical" to the GameCube, maybe you failed to notice that Wii has...
- a new CPU (estimated to be twice as fast)
- a new GPU (also estimated to be twice as fast)
- a new optical drive
- vastly different firmware
- WiFi
- Bluetooth
- 512 MB built-in flash memory
- an SD port
- USB ports
Sure, its CPU and GPU are "only" incremental upgrades, but it's an entirely new console, no doubt about it.
Ever notice how Eclipse asks you which workspace you want to use when it starts up? (And that you can tell it to use one by default?) Ever wonder where it stores the information? It's a directory called "configuration" under the Eclipse install. Go ahead, go look for it.
Yes, information is cached there in a single-user scenario, when the user has write access to the install location. However (from the Eclipse help)...
No, Eclipse is not a Windows app. And, yes, Eclipse certainly support multi-user installs.
For me, the magic is far from gone. Though I've been trying since early December, I hadn't been able to get a Wii until about 4 weeks ago. It's still very new and very exciting. I play Wii Sports most days, though not for very long. I'll usually just take my fitness test and then play a couple of games. I just don't have hours each day to devote to this.
I have to ask the "hard-core gamers" who quickly tired of Wii Sports, are you able to consistently get a fitness age below 25? Are you a pro in all 5 sports? Have you got gold medals in all 15 training games? I keep playing because the games are fun and there's definitely lots of room to improve.
And then, there's the social aspect. I've enjoyed introducing many friends to the Wii, and laughing at each other as we play together. But even on my own, I've found lots of fun to be had within Wii Sports, a game that's often dismissed as a shallow demo.
I ordered Wii Play last week, largely because it seemed the easiest way to get my hands on a fourth and final controller. I also ordered WarioWare at the same time. I had intended to hold off until I got bored of the first couple games, but I went for it because it was discounted by 10%.
I expect to be entertained for quite some time to come.
The MPAA won't sue you for music sharing, dude. Hint: the "MP" doesn't stand for "Recording Industry."
The problem is that people don't necessarily agree on which 5% is imperfect. So, if you give everyone options for their missing 5%, then they also end up having to wade through 20 times more options than they want.
I'm a Gnome user. Several months ago, I sat down at my boyfriend's computer, and he was running KDE. There were a couple of basic things (I thought) that I didn't like about the way things worked, and I wanted to tweak them for my use. I waded through page after page of preferences, and finally gave up, with one thing still not working the way I wanted. For me, sitting down in front of KDE and going through all those preferences again, before I start to do anything, is most unappealing.
The more things you make configurable, the harder you make it to configure anything. People do understand that there's a trade-off involved here, right? Gnome and KDE have obviously tried to strike very different balances. Those basic positions aren't going to change now, though there's still obviously room for debate about any particular option.
To be honest, Linus's request (or most of it, anyway) is probably perfectly reasonable. If the UI to do all that button mapping would overwhelm the appropriate configuration dialog, then hide it away in gconf, but his changes to Metacity do seem to be an improvement. But, calling people defensive, accusing them of making excuses, and deriding their basic design choices are not effective ways to make your case. The diva attitude around Bugzilla doesn't help, either.
Crisis levels? You mean like the ice caps are melting, the sea levels are rising, the glaciers are disappearing kind of crisis?
Well, that's good news. Last we heard, it was over half!
That's right. We don't care. We've got enough problems with our own mini-Dubyah up here. Now fuck off and leave us alone.
Interestingly, in the 50 minutes since you pointed this out, they've sold 2 units.
When I bought my Wii from Future Shop (using Wii Finder Canada & Check4Change, as described here, they sold out of 100 units in just under 2 minutes.
I think that's a pretty meaningful comparison of demand, right there.
Bring it!
If they delay the release of their films in Canada, of course it will encourage illegal copying of these films here.
But, that's not all. It's not just our movie theatres that our dominated by American content. We get all their crappy entertainment media as well. So, the releases will not coincide with the media hype, no doubt leading to reduced interest in their films altogether.
Hopefully, this will result in more interest in domestic offerings. With any luck, we'll see more, and better, Canadian movies being made. Wouldn't that be fantastic?
Here's the secret: Wii Finder Canada + Check4Change
http://www.corwin.ca/wii/index.php?item=console
http://check4change.mozdev.org/
New units are going on sale at both futureshop.ca and bestbuy.ca a couple of times a week. A batch of 100 sells out in about two minutes.
Wii Finder monitors the Wii pages from several online retailers and updates when they do. Check4Change is a Firefox plug-in that alerts you when a web page updates.
It's key that you create an account, and provide your address and credit card information, beforehand. You aboslutely will not have time to enter this stuff during the transaction. I only created accounts at Best Buy and Future Shop, as the other stores weren't seeming to get much new stock, anyway.
I was monitoring those two stores, checking for changes every 20 seconds. Last Tuesday, 96 units came in at Future Shop, and I was able to snag one in about a minute. They were all gone 30 seconds later. Make sure you know your CIN and any credit card security password (e.g. Verified by Visa) by heart, as you won't have time to look anything up. Click through the order quickly, just checking for sanity and accepting the defaults. The default shipping costs about $12, and will only take 2 days in Toronto.
I've also been able to score an additional remote and nunchuk using the same approach.
I think you misunderstand what the major music labels are saying to Apple: "You must sell our music with effective DRM and you must sell our music on equal footing with all other music you sell." This means that were Apple to sell some music without DRM, the major music labels would not allow Apple to sell their music.
I think you are imagining what you would like to believe the major music labels are saying to Apple. Unless, of course, you have some support for this claim.
Do you really believe that Apple is above practicing lock-in? Why won't they license FairPlay for use in competing digital music players or digital music stores?
My feeling is that this situation is changing rapidly.
Personally, I have a blog that would reveal to even the most casual observer that I'm gay. I have photos of Pride and other gay-oriented events posted on flickr, carrying tags like "gay" and "GLBT". It was very much a conscious decision that I made when I first started blogging and posting photos. I figure if anyone is going to hold any of this against me, I want nothing to do with them in real life, anyway. When it comes to employment, the most cited concern, I've already decided that I won't work for a company that scores less than 100 on the HRC Corporate Equality Index. Any company that doesn't fully embrace its GLBT employees isn't worth my time or effort.
I'm almost 30. These days, more and more queer kids are growing up without ever experiencing the closet. I suspect this is partly a result of the myspace culture, but no doubt it's also related to the growth of gay-straight alliances and non-discriminatory sex education in schools.
Of course, this is just one gay geek's perspective, from arguably the most queer-friendly city in North America. I realize that it's not like this everywhere, but it's only getting better, and the 'net is leading the change.
Wow, 6,000 pages to describe an "open" format? Never underestimate the power of committees.
This "standard" was not created by committee. It was simply offered by Microsoft and rubber-stamped in an effort to "recognize the reality" that "the vast amount of data in the world is in Microsoft format."
Granted, this vast amount of data is in older binary Microsoft formats, not this one, which isn't yet supported by any released products. But why let facts stand in the way of a good rationalization?
Naturally, a restatement of MathML is not included in the Open Document specification.
But here's the point: by reusing MathML, instead of reinventing the wheel, Open Document also allows existing implementations of that standard to be reused.
The size of Microsoft's spec is a real problem. A Word developer estimates more than 4 years for a team of 5 (within Microsoft) to implement just the Word portion in Word for Mac. Apparently, that's too much work, so they're just going to "port" the Windows version.
Is a standard with only one, proprietary implementation much use to anyone?
Here in Toronto, Sony has fully occupied the Eglinton subway station with PS3 advertising. The usual poster spaces are all PS3. Advertising has also been plastered on the columns, the walls, and even the floor (not on the platform, but in the commercial area above it).
Every one shows the launch date, 11.17.06. Though, I think there are actually more ads in that subway station than there will be PS3s in all of Canada that day.
Windows Vista will be out real Zune now.
Clap, clap, clap!
Or, in Windows, use ThinkVantage ThinkPad Configuration. Power Management > Battery Information, and look on the Information tab.
Yay, I've got a Sanyo!
It's not like they could just use libdvdcss.
Why force every Wii buyer to make a payment to their local friendly motion picture cartel? Who doesn't have a DVD player already?
I'd be happy to sell the GP a nice, inexpensive GC on November 20...without controllers, memory cards, or games, mind you.
From said article:
I believe "this IBM division" refers to Software Group, not Tivoli.
Indeed, if you look here, you'll see the five IBM software brands are Information Management (for which I believe they used to use the label Data Management and the DB2 brand), Lotus, Rational, Tivoli, and WebSphere.
From TFA...
I'd love to own a more affordable ThinkPad that is not black. But not if it doesn't have a TrackPoint!
All three are offensive. There are many relevant ways they could have advertised the availability of a new colour. This "race war" campaign was totally uncalled for.
You totally missed his point. He doesn't mean that you're less of a person because you can't write such an application. He means that there's nothing about the document format itself that prevents you or anyone else from doing so.
So is Skerrett being disengenous when he says that and, if he is, is he just getting back at Gosling for over simplifying?
Actually, I think he was just being polite. "I don't believe James really understands how Eclipse works" is a whole lot nicer than "James is lying through his teeth," which is what I would say.
Thanks for trying, but as it's already been pointed out, open source licenses don't tend to place any restrictions on obtaining or using the code. You need only to agree to the license in order to redistribute.
The GPL goes so far as to explicitly state as much.
Anyhow, on to your main point, I think most people around here believe that having a complete, open source implementation of the latest version of the Java specs would be extremely beneficial to Java and the Java community as a whole. So, we can't quite understand why Sun is engaging in stupid double-talk instead of trying in earnest to make that happen. Obviously, the easiest way would be to open source their existing implementation.
The oft-stated idea that Sun's refusal to contribute is somehow protecting "write once, run anywhere" is simply ridiculous. First of all, that whole notion is pure fiction because new APIs are always being added to the platform. Any code that exploits a new API won't run on an older runtime. And now, with Java 5.0, it's even worse, as, by default, javac produces bytecode that won't run on a 1.4 JVM, regardless of what platform APIs are used.
Meanwhile, because of the Sun's license terms, most Linux distributions are forced to pick up various open source implementations, none of which are not complete. Instead of getting help from the distributions in solving the problem of Java platform version dependencies, Sun has forced them to make whole situation much, much worse. Write once, cross your fingers, and hope for the best!
Trying to install and run Java applications ranges from a pain to a nightmare on every single platform. But, really, there's no good reason that I shouldn't be able to launch a Java application as easily as a native binary. Sun can't solve this problem themselves, but they do have the power to take away the roadblocks preventing it from being solved for them.
Well, I'd expect that when some of the biggest names in Canadian music speak, the Ministry of Canadian Heritage might just listen. They're about to embark on another attempt to come up with a somewhat less objectionable version of the DMCA, spurred on by lobbyists from the big American record labels.
This isn't about convincing the labels. It'sz about ensuring that the government hears the other viewpoint.