This entirely depends on how Apple locks down Mac OS X on their machines only. If it is simply an "apple brand" x86 motherboard with maybe an extra chip that says "this is an apple computer", then all you'll need to run windows is an appropriate driver. And, you can be sure Apple will likely provide those. Imagine the discomfort that must be going through all the PC clone distributors(like Dell) right now.
If an apple branded PC can run Windows better than a regular PC. Outside of price, why would you want to buy anything else?
There is a good possibility this has been Apple's strategy all along. Apple can't beat Microsoft head on(it wouldn't be healthy even to try). But, if you can control the hardware distrobution...
A) They don't have the budget they used to, which is a dang shame.
and
B) You can only glue something back together so many times before it totally breaks down. This is the state the shuttles are finding themselves entering now.
Why does it connecting through your PC have to make it *not* a router. You can do this right now really, if you like. Just hook your PC up directly to your internet connection, then using a second network card, hook it up to your router. It's still a router, its just passing through your PC first.
Way back in the day I actually used to do that sometimes because I needed my PC to be outside of the firewall and setting up the DMZ/opening ports on that older router was a pain. It was easier to just swap a couple of wires instead.
So, why would Nintendo's router work like this? To keep it simple. The people who are going to be buying this are probably not going to be slashdotters or tech gurus. They are going to be Kids and Parents with only basic understanding of the internet and PCs. And, a lot of these people might just still use dial up. Routing through your PC first means they'll be able to offer service to dial up users too. Dial-up should be all you need to download NES and SNES games anyway.
Regardless, its made for your Average Joe consumer and they kept it, as always, simple and intuitive. I can see the adds now: "Just buy this router and plug it into your PC. Now you can wirelessly connect all your nintendo devices to the internet hassle free." Sounds perfect for the market it will be designed for.
The problem is trying to balance between development costs and getting the most out of existing content. This is why "the grind" exists in one form or the other(slow progression, gating, etc).
You see, developers can not instantly produce endless wells of content. Nor can they stay in development beyond a certain period of time to build insane masses of content in advance. You have to draw a line somewhere based on development costs and development time.
A further issue that is arising is the increasing complexity of these games. As these newer games attempt to "do everything" and "look real/great" they exponentially increase the complexity to develop for them. Thjis causes it to take even longer to produce additional content and/or requires increased cost(more developers, better tools, etc).
To attempt to combat this, developers use some form of grind to milk existing content for as much as they feel is possible. Various games have also come up with varied solutions:
SWG relied for the longest time on really innovative social content to let the community come up with their own ways to occupy themselves while they dealt with the admittedly complex range of systems the game offered. SWG's fall was due to
A) Not infusing enough new content(and new social tools) into the game. Players could only do so much with what they were given. Albeit it took them a year or two to finally exhaust everything. B) The game was too complex for the development resources allocated towards it. The game had tremendous potential but never realized it because they just were not given the staff and funding needed to cope with the vastness of the game's systems. C) The game was pushed to release way to early, and given problem B, the result was the devs constantly having to play catchup yet constantly falling further behind.
WoW takes another approach. For that game, level progression is very easy, in fact, the grind is very limited compared to other games. What WoW relies on is the PvP aspect of the game and the overall quality of the existing content to keep players "hooked". While it doesn't have endless fountains of content, and you can go through what it does have rather swiftly, Blizzard hopes that either the PvP or compelling gameplay will either keep you playing when there is little content left, or inspire you to start over again with another character and do it again.
This strategy isn't perfect either. While it certainly has resulted in huge success and lots of people buying and playing the game. People get bored with WoW very quickly too. WoW has become "that game" that lots of people play until they beat the current content, then they go and do something else until an add-on comes along. Then they play it some more then go back to whatever else they were doing. What we have yet to see, however, is if Blizzard will be able to sustain its active subscribers or if they will eventually fall into a pattern of high subscription rates around expansions with a large lull in activity inbetween. I think, long term, the later will be what happens. WoW will still be a success, but in the end I don't think it will have the staying power Blizzard had hoped.
EQ2 takes another approach to the whole situation. EQ2 has massive content. And the game itself is highly modular allowing for new content to be added with ease. Likewise, the game was built with longetivity in mind with a powerful graphics engine, systems gear towards expansion, etc.
So, what hurts EQ2? Well, for one, reputation. Many people left EQ1 because of the grind so they tend to jump at shadows in EQ2. EQ2 definitely has the "most grind" of the three games mentioned here. But, it has tons for you to do too, plus they are actively adjusting the game in ways to attempt to eliminate or at least hide the feeling of "grind". Likewise, after the mess that SWG became, SOE has really gained a reputation as having poor customer service. While they aren't "that bad" in EQ2. T
The resulting weather and cultural shock will result in a strange reversion of cultural style to the mid 20th century. Likewise, the world will end up tightly in the grip of one evil super-corporation until their facilities are at last destroyed by a strange scotsman, who was really from another planet that looks a lot like Dune, chopping the heads off an assisgnation squad sent to kill him. Because, as we all know, there can be only one.
Now sometimes that fiction becomes fact, but in no small part it is because either:
A) Someone states something completely obvious like "Television will change the way people see the world".
or
B) People find certain science fiction concepts so cool, they try to make new technologies emulate the fiction. A good example of this? Star Trek and Cell phones. No, Star Trek didn't create cell phones, but it certainly influenced their direction and design.
Pop culture does that to all aspects. Something becomes engrained and "natural" to us. So we make that idea a reality.
But, no one can predict the future. You can guess of course, and the ones who get lucky tend to be the rich/successful ones. But more often than not people just guess wrong, in no small part because when you guess the future, you are focusing on one single(or maybea handful of things) and assuming that these things will evolve in a vaccum without outside influence. Problem is, very few things evolve in a vaccum, and the wants and needs of a culture change over time too.
All inventions and technology are created to fill a need(be it entertainment, travel, communication, etc). People change, needs change, making the future impossible to ever predict.
This will probably be integrated into existing genre's rather than creating a "new" one(and it isn't a new genre either, just an old one taken to a level of sophistication far beyond what we are used to).
This sort of technology would be ideal for a learning AI for real time strategy games and other military genres. It actually could be pretty cool. The computer would basically be learning to play the game with you, thus providing an increased challenge as you progress. Then later, you could just have your AI fight versus another player online and just watch the fun. This too, has already been done. A more recent example would actually be Virtua Fighter 4(a fighting game).
I think we are pretty much reaching the point where genre's are falling away. While they will always have their place, going forward instead of new genres, we're just going to see more an dmore technologies added to existing ones until we eventually get the "uber game" that simulates real life perfectly minus a few "boring" things like laws, etc.
The greatest game of all time will be the one that lets you create a fantasy version of your own life to every detail, and live it. Bit by bit we're getting there, and probably will achieve that within this century.
Frankly, this would be the single biggest advancement in medical science since the discovery of antibiotics, and would likely eclipse all others if this proves to be true.
It is very easy to make light of this because there is no way not to be incredibly skeptical of this entire experiment. It most definitely sounds like a "cold fusion" moment for medical science(ie detailed claims that no one can reproduce).
However, this is not a light matter. This is one technology that, god willing works, would save millions of lives and open up new avenues for all of mankind.
How many times has someone died enroute(or on) the operating table only to have someone exclaim "if only I had a few minutes more".
How many times have you heard about blood supplies being dangerously low in some areas/countries.
How many lives could be saved if they could cheat time and death for a short while until a cure is discovered.
And, of course, how many worlds could we explore with technology like this?
That is just the begining of what a hybernation technology like this could bring to mankind. So, while I agree completely that I am above and beyond doubtful that this is real, and am certainly not going to get my hopes up for this in any fashion until it has been confirmed, replicated, and reproduced in multiple situations by hundreds of non-partisan scientists and doctors, this is still, regardless, not a light matter.
This is an announcement that should be scrutinized with all seriousness, analyzed in every detail, then either the highest praise mankind can grant bestowed on this discovery, or the harshest of responses given depending on the truth(or levels of truth) in these claims.
- Bloated Client
- Treating its clients poorly
- Making the dollar its first and highest priority, and being obvious about it.
- Not truly changing with the times, instead just putting a new gloss(and more bloat)to its same, tired, design.
- Using spam type methods to try and hook new users(the famous coasters).
They did this to themselves through years of mismanagement and just settling for the status quo. They forgot they got to the top by out-innovating the competition like compuserve and prodigy, and making a smooth efficient internet portal for the time. Its like what happened to Netscape. Netscape was "the" browser because it was small, fast, efficient, and clean. When it bloated it died and took it mozilla and a reversion to its original design to bring it back.
The question is, can AOL really revert and recover from 10 years of bad reputation? I don't think it ever will.
Even if the program is kind of meh. The more tools floating around to stop this stuff the better.
Sure, many firefox users are already careful enough browsers that they don't stumble into bad stuff often, but as another post put it, there are a lot who aren't and tools like these help protect them.
A classic example? 2 months ago my friend's computer was so hosed by spyware and spam that he had me reformat it. I had already done this for him 4 times in the past so this time I was determined to protect him from himself!
4 hours of careful implementation later I had done it. Using a combination of free software from avg to spybot to firefox to personal firewalls to windows auto-update to a router to act as a hardware firewall, I set him up with every bit of automated protection I could.
He lost about 10% max performance from it all. But, he never noticed the difference because before hand his computer was so riddled with spyware and viruses that he was barely getting 50% performance.
End result? I visited him yesterday for the first time in 2 months. Every piece of software on his computer was updated, his system was totally clean, and get this, he was learning how to use the software himself and becoming a knowledgable computer user because he could be safely productive on his machine. Mission accomplished! Thats what this sort of software is designed for. It isn't for us slashdotters, its for us slashdotters to use to help protect others. And the more options we get, the better.
Believe it or not, there is. I grew up on the old movies too, and enjoyed the new ones only because I didn't take them seriously. They were just a ride that brought back some childhood memories. But, you better believe there is a new generation of kids growing up on these movies, just as we did back in our day.
Not so much the late teens, but the younger kids, absolutely. I have a lot of friends with families, friends the grew up on the original star wars movies(or even hated them). A lot of their kids love the new star wars films. Kids don't care about serious plots, excellent dialog, or anything like that. They care about the visual experience, and hands down Lucas is one of the best in the entertainment world when it comes to visual directing(he's just bad at the rest of it).
These movies really are made for kids(well not this last one, this last one is more fan service, or an attempt at it, than anything). And, I think thats why the new star wars movies were doomed to disapoint the old fans from the start. When we saw the original star wars films, we were kids. We enjoyed them for the fun experience. But, sadly, we have all grown up now(well physically at least lol) and when we see these new films, we are trying to recapture our childhoods again, and that is just something you can't do.
But yeah, for the kids these days, a lot of them are fans of the new films and are growing up on them just like we grew up on the first. Or, at the very least, all the hooplah has made them go back and watch the original star wars films for the first time, and made them fans of the same films that captured us, that captured me, when I walked into that theater 28 years ago.
I happen to be very good friends with one of the professional costumers who does this in her spare time. I also accompanied her to this year's celebration 3. I had never been to one of these, but I figured what the hey, its the last movie and I grew up on this stuff, it'll be a fun vacation.
Well, you might have seen her on TV. She was dressed as Bousch(spelling?) the bounty hunter Leia was disguised as in Return of the Jedi. She was on MSNBC, G4(yeah I shuddered too), and multiple other networks. She even had a number of Lucasfilm and ILM VIPs come up to her and ask for pictures/compliment her on the authenticity of her outfit. She also happens to be about the exact same height and build as Leia in RotJ so, to say the least, she was pretty spot on.
Anyway, why does she do it? She does it because it is a fun hobby, and because she likes to see the kids smile. She's a school teacher too, again in large part because of the kids. That's why a lot of the professionals(like the 501st) are doing this. To these people it is a hobby just like radio controlled airplanes, model boat building, etc. Only they end up wearing the final product. And they do it for the reactions and to see the kids smile and the adults remember a bit of their childhood.
Now, that said, there certainly are a few nuts out there. A lot of the time these people will show up in these lines and such. These are the people who just threw something together in a day or less. These are kind of like the big fat guys with painted beer bellies you see at sports events. The professionals are more like your cheerleaders, and they take their job pretty seriously. They get some nice perks too, the professionals that is. My friend has had private sit down dinners with the likes of Peter Mayhew, Jeremy Bulloch, Ian McDermand, Ben Burtt etc. You get to meet some neat people apparantly
Anyway, it isn't something I would choose to do as a hobby, but I gained a lot of respect towards the professionals who do this in their spare time after my trip to Celebration 3. So yeah, laugh, smile, joke, or have fun with them all, thats part of why they are there. But, hopefully this will let you see the people who do this sort of stuff as a serious hobby in a bit different light. I know I did.
We just need to wire everyone on the planet together and give them all those little gyroscope watches. The combined power generated by everyone moving around would surely supply the earth's power needs.
Well except for the US where we are all too lazy to move around enough.
Honestly, if the Sony dual shocks could ever be accused of ripping off a design, it would be Nintendo's controllers.
The basic button layout has remained unchanged from the original playstation controller design. This layout is an exact copy of the SNES controller with different button shapes and two more buttons on top.
This makes sense, of course, since the playstation started its life originally being intended to be a CD add on to Nintendo's snes in the first place.
Likewise, Sony only added the rumble and analog sticks to its controller in response to Nintendo's single analog stick and rumble pack for the n64.
Anyway, silly case, silly ruling but it isn't like copying designs is anything new in the gaming industry. Although this case could start a precident for a whole host of lawsuits.
WoW has, according to the recent charts, approximately 350k "players" and 1 million characters created(works out to an average of 3 characters per player). Keep in mind the 350k number is what counts since you can't play multiple characters at once.
This puts the game at about 50 to 100k more than Star Wars Galaxies at the moment, about 25k more than everquest 2, and about 300k less than Final Fantasy XI.
But, also keep in mind that Final Fantasy XI is worldwide, and WoW is not fully worldwide yet.
But, looking at those numbers, with 88 different servers(more than most MMORPGs) it really is no excuse that Blizzard should be having such hefty server problems.
It is a combination of no ability to move existing characters from one server to another, the reliance of a queue system instead of other methods to spread out the population, and issues with their netcode that have really made this a mess.
Note that it is not a problem on the low population servers, only some mid, and most high population ones. They really need to shape things up because it is impacting their potential growth.
Don't worry about all this. If you are not already living in America, come, live with us. Here in the United states we are an equal opportunity country. Here, we are *all* bad at math, men and women alike, because of our horrible school system.
What is dangerous is that EA is definitely trying to consolidate the industry. They are doing sports games right now, but how long till they start moving in on your company of choice? They already made an initial attempt at Ubisoft, and they are buying licenses from Nintendo. Who is going to be next on the list?
If EA gets enough control over the gaming industry, even if you never play their games they'll still be able to have an impact. How about, for example, increasing the price on their games to $60 a pop? If EA has enough marketshare in the industry, you don't think every other publisher wouldn't follow suit?
That's just one example. EA is out to win big. Check out this article here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4180453.stm
EA's stated long term goal is to become the largest Entertainment Firm in the world. They want to take on the big names in the movie industry via games. They cite Disney as one of their targets to beat in future years.
EA isn't going to stop this, it is just going to keep getting worse until they are either:
A) Forced to stop
B) The well dries up on them and they die from bloat.
Either way, this is bad for the consumer. This is most definitely *not* a healthy monolopy they are trying to form.
A man who has been predicting the end of world was issued a cease and desist order today. The world rejoiced at the threat to humanity being ended.
In other news, the government has begun issuing cease and desist orders to individuals predicting war, famine, plague, and other such sundries as part of their "early prevention system"
Why? Because if it turns into a part of their security center, and becomes standard on all windows machines, it will have a nice big target on its forehead.
That means, all these spyware writing scumbags are going to put the majority of their efforts into coming up with ways to circumvent this particular program so they can continue to scrounge for dollars at others expense.
With MS anti-spyware becoming the "main target" that will cut some slack off the other anti-spyware programs. Allowing all of us, who have been using a mix of various anti-spyware programs to have an even easier time combating whatever new comes down the pipe.
Besides, even if MS anti-virus and anti-spyware never proves to be exceptionally good, something is better than nothing for all those average joe users who don't use anything at all. And, it's their totally unprotected systems that are making life harder for the rest of us who know what we are doing. Better some cruddy protection than nothing at all. The rest of us will just turn it off, use our softwear of choice, and have a little more breathing room because of it.
So yeah, I agree with this guy's nebulous predictions that MS's protection products will fail. Not because the underlying softwear is bad, and not because MS won't try and keep it updated, but because they will make themselves into a massive target. But either which way, the rest of us win.
Slashdot Mirror
This entirely depends on how Apple locks down Mac OS X on their machines only. If it is simply an "apple brand" x86 motherboard with maybe an extra chip that says "this is an apple computer", then all you'll need to run windows is an appropriate driver. And, you can be sure Apple will likely provide those. Imagine the discomfort that must be going through all the PC clone distributors(like Dell) right now.
If an apple branded PC can run Windows better than a regular PC. Outside of price, why would you want to buy anything else?
There is a good possibility this has been Apple's strategy all along. Apple can't beat Microsoft head on(it wouldn't be healthy even to try). But, if you can control the hardware distrobution...
Window "cover" not window. Big difference there and they had more time when the cover fell off. This was a discovery found on a final check.
Because:
A) They don't have the budget they used to, which is a dang shame.
and
B) You can only glue something back together so many times before it totally breaks down. This is the state the shuttles are finding themselves entering now.
Why does it connecting through your PC have to make it *not* a router. You can do this right now really, if you like. Just hook your PC up directly to your internet connection, then using a second network card, hook it up to your router. It's still a router, its just passing through your PC first.
Way back in the day I actually used to do that sometimes because I needed my PC to be outside of the firewall and setting up the DMZ/opening ports on that older router was a pain. It was easier to just swap a couple of wires instead.
So, why would Nintendo's router work like this? To keep it simple. The people who are going to be buying this are probably not going to be slashdotters or tech gurus. They are going to be Kids and Parents with only basic understanding of the internet and PCs. And, a lot of these people might just still use dial up. Routing through your PC first means they'll be able to offer service to dial up users too. Dial-up should be all you need to download NES and SNES games anyway.
Regardless, its made for your Average Joe consumer and they kept it, as always, simple and intuitive. I can see the adds now: "Just buy this router and plug it into your PC. Now you can wirelessly connect all your nintendo devices to the internet hassle free." Sounds perfect for the market it will be designed for.
The problem is trying to balance between development costs and getting the most out of existing content. This is why "the grind" exists in one form or the other(slow progression, gating, etc).
You see, developers can not instantly produce endless wells of content. Nor can they stay in development beyond a certain period of time to build insane masses of content in advance. You have to draw a line somewhere based on development costs and development time.
A further issue that is arising is the increasing complexity of these games. As these newer games attempt to "do everything" and "look real/great" they exponentially increase the complexity to develop for them. Thjis causes it to take even longer to produce additional content and/or requires increased cost(more developers, better tools, etc).
To attempt to combat this, developers use some form of grind to milk existing content for as much as they feel is possible. Various games have also come up with varied solutions:
SWG relied for the longest time on really innovative social content to let the community come up with their own ways to occupy themselves while they dealt with the admittedly complex range of systems the game offered. SWG's fall was due to
A) Not infusing enough new content(and new social tools) into the game. Players could only do so much with what they were given. Albeit it took them a year or two to finally exhaust everything.
B) The game was too complex for the development resources allocated towards it. The game had tremendous potential but never realized it because they just were not given the staff and funding needed to cope with the vastness of the game's systems.
C) The game was pushed to release way to early, and given problem B, the result was the devs constantly having to play catchup yet constantly falling further behind.
WoW takes another approach. For that game, level progression is very easy, in fact, the grind is very limited compared to other games. What WoW relies on is the PvP aspect of the game and the overall quality of the existing content to keep players "hooked". While it doesn't have endless fountains of content, and you can go through what it does have rather swiftly, Blizzard hopes that either the PvP or compelling gameplay will either keep you playing when there is little content left, or inspire you to start over again with another character and do it again.
This strategy isn't perfect either. While it certainly has resulted in huge success and lots of people buying and playing the game. People get bored with WoW very quickly too. WoW has become "that game" that lots of people play until they beat the current content, then they go and do something else until an add-on comes along. Then they play it some more then go back to whatever else they were doing. What we have yet to see, however, is if Blizzard will be able to sustain its active subscribers or if they will eventually fall into a pattern of high subscription rates around expansions with a large lull in activity inbetween. I think, long term, the later will be what happens. WoW will still be a success, but in the end I don't think it will have the staying power Blizzard had hoped.
EQ2 takes another approach to the whole situation. EQ2 has massive content. And the game itself is highly modular allowing for new content to be added with ease. Likewise, the game was built with longetivity in mind with a powerful graphics engine, systems gear towards expansion, etc.
So, what hurts EQ2? Well, for one, reputation. Many people left EQ1 because of the grind so they tend to jump at shadows in EQ2. EQ2 definitely has the "most grind" of the three games mentioned here. But, it has tons for you to do too, plus they are actively adjusting the game in ways to attempt to eliminate or at least hide the feeling of "grind". Likewise, after the mess that SWG became, SOE has really gained a reputation as having poor customer service. While they aren't "that bad" in EQ2. T
The resulting weather and cultural shock will result in a strange reversion of cultural style to the mid 20th century. Likewise, the world will end up tightly in the grip of one evil super-corporation until their facilities are at last destroyed by a strange scotsman, who was really from another planet that looks a lot like Dune, chopping the heads off an assisgnation squad sent to kill him. Because, as we all know, there can be only one.
Now sometimes that fiction becomes fact, but in no small part it is because either:
A) Someone states something completely obvious like "Television will change the way people see the world".
or
B) People find certain science fiction concepts so cool, they try to make new technologies emulate the fiction. A good example of this? Star Trek and Cell phones. No, Star Trek didn't create cell phones, but it certainly influenced their direction and design.
Pop culture does that to all aspects. Something becomes engrained and "natural" to us. So we make that idea a reality.
But, no one can predict the future. You can guess of course, and the ones who get lucky tend to be the rich/successful ones. But more often than not people just guess wrong, in no small part because when you guess the future, you are focusing on one single(or maybea handful of things) and assuming that these things will evolve in a vaccum without outside influence. Problem is, very few things evolve in a vaccum, and the wants and needs of a culture change over time too.
All inventions and technology are created to fill a need(be it entertainment, travel, communication, etc). People change, needs change, making the future impossible to ever predict.
This will probably be integrated into existing genre's rather than creating a "new" one(and it isn't a new genre either, just an old one taken to a level of sophistication far beyond what we are used to).
This sort of technology would be ideal for a learning AI for real time strategy games and other military genres. It actually could be pretty cool. The computer would basically be learning to play the game with you, thus providing an increased challenge as you progress. Then later, you could just have your AI fight versus another player online and just watch the fun. This too, has already been done. A more recent example would actually be Virtua Fighter 4(a fighting game).
I think we are pretty much reaching the point where genre's are falling away. While they will always have their place, going forward instead of new genres, we're just going to see more an dmore technologies added to existing ones until we eventually get the "uber game" that simulates real life perfectly minus a few "boring" things like laws, etc.
The greatest game of all time will be the one that lets you create a fantasy version of your own life to every detail, and live it. Bit by bit we're getting there, and probably will achieve that within this century.
Frankly, this would be the single biggest advancement in medical science since the discovery of antibiotics, and would likely eclipse all others if this proves to be true.
It is very easy to make light of this because there is no way not to be incredibly skeptical of this entire experiment. It most definitely sounds like a "cold fusion" moment for medical science(ie detailed claims that no one can reproduce).
However, this is not a light matter. This is one technology that, god willing works, would save millions of lives and open up new avenues for all of mankind.
How many times has someone died enroute(or on) the operating table only to have someone exclaim "if only I had a few minutes more".
How many times have you heard about blood supplies being dangerously low in some areas/countries.
How many lives could be saved if they could cheat time and death for a short while until a cure is discovered.
And, of course, how many worlds could we explore with technology like this?
That is just the begining of what a hybernation technology like this could bring to mankind. So, while I agree completely that I am above and beyond doubtful that this is real, and am certainly not going to get my hopes up for this in any fashion until it has been confirmed, replicated, and reproduced in multiple situations by hundreds of non-partisan scientists and doctors, this is still, regardless, not a light matter.
This is an announcement that should be scrutinized with all seriousness, analyzed in every detail, then either the highest praise mankind can grant bestowed on this discovery, or the harshest of responses given depending on the truth(or levels of truth) in these claims.
Many thanks, none of us would be here without your work. You certainly made a difference.
George Lucas does all the same things with his Star Wars movies.....Could Lucas be a real life Batman? .
- Bloated Client
- Treating its clients poorly
- Making the dollar its first and highest priority, and being obvious about it.
- Not truly changing with the times, instead just putting a new gloss(and more bloat)to its same, tired, design.
- Using spam type methods to try and hook new users(the famous coasters).
They did this to themselves through years of mismanagement and just settling for the status quo. They forgot they got to the top by out-innovating the competition like compuserve and prodigy, and making a smooth efficient internet portal for the time. Its like what happened to Netscape. Netscape was "the" browser because it was small, fast, efficient, and clean. When it bloated it died and took it mozilla and a reversion to its original design to bring it back.
The question is, can AOL really revert and recover from 10 years of bad reputation? I don't think it ever will.
That these new drives do not also include Iomega's patented Click of Death technology.
So that we can legitimately claim that there is literally no place on earth safe from being slashdotted.
Even if the program is kind of meh. The more tools floating around to stop this stuff the better.
Sure, many firefox users are already careful enough browsers that they don't stumble into bad stuff often, but as another post put it, there are a lot who aren't and tools like these help protect them.
A classic example? 2 months ago my friend's computer was so hosed by spyware and spam that he had me reformat it. I had already done this for him 4 times in the past so this time I was determined to protect him from himself!
4 hours of careful implementation later I had done it. Using a combination of free software from avg to spybot to firefox to personal firewalls to windows auto-update to a router to act as a hardware firewall, I set him up with every bit of automated protection I could.
He lost about 10% max performance from it all. But, he never noticed the difference because before hand his computer was so riddled with spyware and viruses that he was barely getting 50% performance.
End result? I visited him yesterday for the first time in 2 months. Every piece of software on his computer was updated, his system was totally clean, and get this, he was learning how to use the software himself and becoming a knowledgable computer user because he could be safely productive on his machine. Mission accomplished! Thats what this sort of software is designed for. It isn't for us slashdotters, its for us slashdotters to use to help protect others. And the more options we get, the better.
Not only does it let you travel in style, but the stainless steel construction makes it ideal.
Believe it or not, there is. I grew up on the old movies too, and enjoyed the new ones only because I didn't take them seriously. They were just a ride that brought back some childhood memories. But, you better believe there is a new generation of kids growing up on these movies, just as we did back in our day.
Not so much the late teens, but the younger kids, absolutely. I have a lot of friends with families, friends the grew up on the original star wars movies(or even hated them). A lot of their kids love the new star wars films. Kids don't care about serious plots, excellent dialog, or anything like that. They care about the visual experience, and hands down Lucas is one of the best in the entertainment world when it comes to visual directing(he's just bad at the rest of it).
These movies really are made for kids(well not this last one, this last one is more fan service, or an attempt at it, than anything). And, I think thats why the new star wars movies were doomed to disapoint the old fans from the start. When we saw the original star wars films, we were kids. We enjoyed them for the fun experience. But, sadly, we have all grown up now(well physically at least lol) and when we see these new films, we are trying to recapture our childhoods again, and that is just something you can't do.
But yeah, for the kids these days, a lot of them are fans of the new films and are growing up on them just like we grew up on the first. Or, at the very least, all the hooplah has made them go back and watch the original star wars films for the first time, and made them fans of the same films that captured us, that captured me, when I walked into that theater 28 years ago.
I happen to be very good friends with one of the professional costumers who does this in her spare time. I also accompanied her to this year's celebration 3. I had never been to one of these, but I figured what the hey, its the last movie and I grew up on this stuff, it'll be a fun vacation.
Well, you might have seen her on TV. She was dressed as Bousch(spelling?) the bounty hunter Leia was disguised as in Return of the Jedi. She was on MSNBC, G4(yeah I shuddered too), and multiple other networks. She even had a number of Lucasfilm and ILM VIPs come up to her and ask for pictures/compliment her on the authenticity of her outfit. She also happens to be about the exact same height and build as Leia in RotJ so, to say the least, she was pretty spot on.
Anyway, why does she do it? She does it because it is a fun hobby, and because she likes to see the kids smile. She's a school teacher too, again in large part because of the kids. That's why a lot of the professionals(like the 501st) are doing this. To these people it is a hobby just like radio controlled airplanes, model boat building, etc. Only they end up wearing the final product. And they do it for the reactions and to see the kids smile and the adults remember a bit of their childhood.
Now, that said, there certainly are a few nuts out there. A lot of the time these people will show up in these lines and such. These are the people who just threw something together in a day or less. These are kind of like the big fat guys with painted beer bellies you see at sports events. The professionals are more like your cheerleaders, and they take their job pretty seriously. They get some nice perks too, the professionals that is. My friend has had private sit down dinners with the likes of Peter Mayhew, Jeremy Bulloch, Ian McDermand, Ben Burtt etc. You get to meet some neat people apparantly
Anyway, it isn't something I would choose to do as a hobby, but I gained a lot of respect towards the professionals who do this in their spare time after my trip to Celebration 3. So yeah, laugh, smile, joke, or have fun with them all, thats part of why they are there. But, hopefully this will let you see the people who do this sort of stuff as a serious hobby in a bit different light. I know I did.
We just need to wire everyone on the planet together and give them all those little gyroscope watches. The combined power generated by everyone moving around would surely supply the earth's power needs. Well except for the US where we are all too lazy to move around enough.
Honestly, if the Sony dual shocks could ever be accused of ripping off a design, it would be Nintendo's controllers.
The basic button layout has remained unchanged from the original playstation controller design. This layout is an exact copy of the SNES controller with different button shapes and two more buttons on top.
This makes sense, of course, since the playstation started its life originally being intended to be a CD add on to Nintendo's snes in the first place.
Likewise, Sony only added the rumble and analog sticks to its controller in response to Nintendo's single analog stick and rumble pack for the n64.
Anyway, silly case, silly ruling but it isn't like copying designs is anything new in the gaming industry. Although this case could start a precident for a whole host of lawsuits.
WoW has, according to the recent charts, approximately 350k "players" and 1 million characters created(works out to an average of 3 characters per player). Keep in mind the 350k number is what counts since you can't play multiple characters at once. This puts the game at about 50 to 100k more than Star Wars Galaxies at the moment, about 25k more than everquest 2, and about 300k less than Final Fantasy XI. But, also keep in mind that Final Fantasy XI is worldwide, and WoW is not fully worldwide yet. But, looking at those numbers, with 88 different servers(more than most MMORPGs) it really is no excuse that Blizzard should be having such hefty server problems. It is a combination of no ability to move existing characters from one server to another, the reliance of a queue system instead of other methods to spread out the population, and issues with their netcode that have really made this a mess. Note that it is not a problem on the low population servers, only some mid, and most high population ones. They really need to shape things up because it is impacting their potential growth.
Don't worry about all this. If you are not already living in America, come, live with us. Here in the United states we are an equal opportunity country. Here, we are *all* bad at math, men and women alike, because of our horrible school system.
What is dangerous is that EA is definitely trying to consolidate the industry. They are doing sports games right now, but how long till they start moving in on your company of choice? They already made an initial attempt at Ubisoft, and they are buying licenses from Nintendo. Who is going to be next on the list?
If EA gets enough control over the gaming industry, even if you never play their games they'll still be able to have an impact. How about, for example, increasing the price on their games to $60 a pop? If EA has enough marketshare in the industry, you don't think every other publisher wouldn't follow suit?
That's just one example. EA is out to win big. Check out this article here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4180453.stm
EA's stated long term goal is to become the largest Entertainment Firm in the world. They want to take on the big names in the movie industry via games. They cite Disney as one of their targets to beat in future years.
EA isn't going to stop this, it is just going to keep getting worse until they are either:
A) Forced to stop B) The well dries up on them and they die from bloat.
Either way, this is bad for the consumer. This is most definitely *not* a healthy monolopy they are trying to form.
A man who has been predicting the end of world was issued a cease and desist order today. The world rejoiced at the threat to humanity being ended. In other news, the government has begun issuing cease and desist orders to individuals predicting war, famine, plague, and other such sundries as part of their "early prevention system"
Why? Because if it turns into a part of their security center, and becomes standard on all windows machines, it will have a nice big target on its forehead.
That means, all these spyware writing scumbags are going to put the majority of their efforts into coming up with ways to circumvent this particular program so they can continue to scrounge for dollars at others expense.
With MS anti-spyware becoming the "main target" that will cut some slack off the other anti-spyware programs. Allowing all of us, who have been using a mix of various anti-spyware programs to have an even easier time combating whatever new comes down the pipe.
Besides, even if MS anti-virus and anti-spyware never proves to be exceptionally good, something is better than nothing for all those average joe users who don't use anything at all. And, it's their totally unprotected systems that are making life harder for the rest of us who know what we are doing. Better some cruddy protection than nothing at all. The rest of us will just turn it off, use our softwear of choice, and have a little more breathing room because of it.
So yeah, I agree with this guy's nebulous predictions that MS's protection products will fail. Not because the underlying softwear is bad, and not because MS won't try and keep it updated, but because they will make themselves into a massive target. But either which way, the rest of us win.