You can't put two elevators into the same shaft, because you never know when some idiot on the third floor is going to keep holding the door open to talk to his girlfriend. Meanwhile, the person on the 42nd floor wants to go down, but the other elevator is stuck waiting on the second under Mr. Talksalot on 3.
True. It'd be cool if some made a portable game unit with iPodesque hard drive space that games could copy themselves into automatically. To get around the borrowing issue, maybe after the first copy the game sets itself to "no more copying" mode, and needs to be inserted to be played. One step further-- when HD space is low, you can insert the game, then delete it from the HD, and then your game unlocks itself, so you can copy it again later!
Buy a small ziplock bag with a slider. Boom! You gotcher DS games on you for under $3 (and only that much because they won't sell them to you one at a time).
I actually have a pencil case that also fits all my GBA games in it.
According to Wil Shipley, there has been maybe one real virus for Mac OS X, maybe. Even then, it didn't spread much and no one's sure if it really existed in the wild and it may have just been a trojan.
The theme tune used in the Game Boy and NES editions of Tetris (Music A) has become very widely known. It is a Russian folk tune called "Korobeyniki" or "Korobeiniki."
Music C is an arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach's Suite No. 3 In B Minor, BWV 814, IV. Menuett - Trio.
and the exploit is arranged in such a manner that it cannot be detected by most intrusion detection systems
Flowers and furniture are arranged. Music is arranged. Why the hell is the bolded phrase even in there? Try "the exploit cannot be detected by most modern intrusion detection systems" on for size. That edit gets rid of the passive voice and that meaningless phrase all at once!
"Cannot be detected" is passive voice. Duh. "Most modern intrusion detection systems cannot detect the exploit" is not. But "most modern intrusion detection systems"? Like seriously? Ugh. Language nazi, nazi thyself.
If there are 750 million potential online gamers, but only 5 or 10 million people are online gamers, then what's the problem? Are these people refraining because they aren't able, because they don't know, or because they don't care? If the Xbox 360 generates a buzz, it may be able to reach a few more people who don't care and convert them and word of mouth may convince more people to try, but given that online gaming has been around in one form or another for more than 5 years, isn't it possible that a lot of people honestly don't care, and unless something new and different comes out, that won't change?
In my own case, I used to play Quake I online, but I haven't really tried any of the modern FPSes online in part because my computer probably isn't fast enough, and I'm not really interested in the hassle. On the other hand, I have played Mario Kart DS online a little lately, mostly because it's free and relatively easy to do. I don't think I'd be willing to pay for the privilege though.
D. Technologists promise the moon, fail to deliver, and disappoint the general public.
Think about it: we're already on the edge of falling off Moore's law. It's probably possible to make a computer a hundred times faster than it is today, but a million? Not likely using known physics. I think this will end up like the space race. Rockets kept getting more and more powerful in the 50s and 60s, so everyone assumed the process would continue indefinitely until we had moon bases and warp drive. Only, it turned out that the rocket fuel to mass requirements for things are a bitch, and unless we can magically make rocket fuel 100 times more efficient, space travel will never be that cheap.
It's fun to think about what if, but my guess is, after a certain level of complexity comes into technology, we just end up spending the rest of time asymptotically approaching a physical limit.
I would say that the US failed to integrate blacks hundreds of years ago (and no wonder, they were forced against their will, etc.), and we're still paying the price today. So, yes, there were and are problems with black integration. However, there aren't many problems to speak of concerning the integration of Irish, Eastern Europeans, Italians, East Asians, Indians, Hispanics, etc. in America today. You said America has an Islamic problem, but I don't see any evidence of that. The only Islamics that have caused problems in the US have been African-Americans who have converted to Islam, like the DC snipers. But, I already admitted America had a problem with black integration going back hundreds of years, so I don't think that counts as an Islamic problem, just a continuation of the failure of black integration. However, the problem is getting better with time. That you list MLK is bizarre, by the way. He was a proponent of peaceful integration, and probably saved America of untold strife. We should all hope that an Islamic MLK stands up in Europe and calms things there.
Cost of developing a thinking robot: Billions, perhaps trillions, of yen.
Cost of opening Japanese borders to foreigners: Zero yen. Oh yeah, and society will have to open up a little too.
As you can see, it's inevitable that the Japanese develop robots. The cost of not doing so is too high for the Japanese populous to bear, or even contemplate. Seriously, the Japanese are nice people and all, but they really insist on dividing the world into "Japan" and "everybody else" in a way that's not healthy at all. I like Japan, but they're going to have make some changes. On their current path, they're either going to end up like Europe, with a bunch of isolated and pissed off foreigners living inside their borders or like techno-Europe, with a bunch of isolated and pissed off robots living inside their borders. Or, heaven forbid, they could follow the US/Canadian model and integrate foreigners into their society, instead of isolating them and maybe the people would think of themselves as Japanese. But they might not have black hair, so scratch that idea.
This explains why the iTunes Music Store Japan is trouncing Sony: the Japanese are trying to fool us into thinking they've let their guard down. Clever. All too clever.
So whether is's 4 people trying to land their monkey on an island, or having a lan party, games as art allow for more social partaking than other artforms. (note, I said "allow for", which doesn't actually translate to real life, what with gamers demographics and all)
Yeah, Nintendo has tried to push socializing with Mario Party and 4 Swords, but sales have been mixed. It's hard to gather a group of friends.
The NYTimes had a quote the other day where Spielberg proves he doesn't get it. "The medium will come of age, he said, 'when somebody confesses that they cried at Level 17.'"
A.) Who numbers levels in this day and age?
B.) Ah yes, because painting will never be good until people cry when they see Guernica.
C.) Games are known not to induce any emotions whatsoever. That's why gamers are known to be so passive and unexcited, "Oh, I win? That's good I guess. Well, so long as my pulse isn't pounding, I guess it's time for a nice nap."
You're right, games are more about rhythm than 'story' or whatever. Games have stories, but that doesn't mean that games should use stories the way movies do than the fact that movies have sound means that all movies should be Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. Games are trying to do something different. Deal with it, yo!
I too found that fascinating. Do you think there's anyway that we could persuade a significant number of people and sites to go behind some kind of content wall and reverse this? Say, for example, Slashdot and all the sites it links to were part of some kind of revenue sharing scheme that divies up money based on hits. Is there any way to introduce such a scheme into today's internet?
Ebert is a dinosaur, but reviews do suck. Should Rolling Stone rate an album by giving 1 to 10 for fidelity, listenablity, cover art, replay value, and non-composite overall? Such a thing would be ridiculous, but that's basically what game reviews do. Game reviews need to be more like music reviews: don't tell me about the 'plot' (lyrics) or 'graphics' (fidelity). Tell me about what kind of experience I will have with this product! Compare it to past works and genres. Explain how it's better or worse than other things in its category, or how it creates a new category of its own. Say, "the emphasis on precision platforming of Super Mario Bros. returns in Super Mario Bros. 3." not "the graphics of Mario 3 are far better than SMB." You can mention technical innovations, like Mario 3's diagonal scrolling, but only do so in order to explain how this opens up countless new hidden areas. Don't just talk about tech for tech; talk about how it affects the gaming experience! Game reviews should be like movie reviews though, because movies only last for 3 hours and you only return once every couple years. Games are more like CDs: you get a new one and spin it for 10 or 20 hours over a few weeks, then you may or may not make it part of your regular set of old standbys that you keep returning to.
Um, could you tell me where on my Logitech Mx900 Bluetooth mouse to look, because I've had this mouse for a year and a half and still haven't found a power switch. But surely, you wouldn't make a blanket statement unless you knew it to be absolutely true, right?
Thanks. There used to be a funny translation of part of the Pillow Book into blog-speak at http://blog.simon-cozens.org/shonagon/ but it isn't working now. I don't know why. I left a note on the blog of the guy who made it. It's kind of a joke, but kind of accurate. Is there a difference between listing your favorite seasons and saying, "I'm listening to Radiohead now"? I haven't gotten into any other version enough to recommend one.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't put two elevators into the same shaft, because you never know when some idiot on the third floor is going to keep holding the door open to talk to his girlfriend. Meanwhile, the person on the 42nd floor wants to go down, but the other elevator is stuck waiting on the second under Mr. Talksalot on 3.
True. It'd be cool if some made a portable game unit with iPodesque hard drive space that games could copy themselves into automatically. To get around the borrowing issue, maybe after the first copy the game sets itself to "no more copying" mode, and needs to be inserted to be played. One step further-- when HD space is low, you can insert the game, then delete it from the HD, and then your game unlocks itself, so you can copy it again later!
Buy a small ziplock bag with a slider. Boom! You gotcher DS games on you for under $3 (and only that much because they won't sell them to you one at a time).
I actually have a pencil case that also fits all my GBA games in it.
According to Wil Shipley, there has been maybe one real virus for Mac OS X, maybe. Even then, it didn't spread much and no one's sure if it really existed in the wild and it may have just been a trojan.
McGwire: Hi, folks! I'm Mark McGwire.
Computer: Big Mac himself. Who'd have thunk it?
McGwire: Young Bart here is right. We are spying on you, pretty much around the clock.
Bart: But why, Mr. McGwire?
McGwire: Do you want to know the terrifying truth, or do you want to see me sock a few dingers?
Crowd: Dingers! Dingers!
"Cannot be detected" is passive voice. Duh. "Most modern intrusion detection systems cannot detect the exploit" is not. But "most modern intrusion detection systems"? Like seriously? Ugh. Language nazi, nazi thyself.
The iPod is trouncing Sony in Japan.
Consumers buy what consumers will buy.
If there are 750 million potential online gamers, but only 5 or 10 million people are online gamers, then what's the problem? Are these people refraining because they aren't able, because they don't know, or because they don't care? If the Xbox 360 generates a buzz, it may be able to reach a few more people who don't care and convert them and word of mouth may convince more people to try, but given that online gaming has been around in one form or another for more than 5 years, isn't it possible that a lot of people honestly don't care, and unless something new and different comes out, that won't change?
In my own case, I used to play Quake I online, but I haven't really tried any of the modern FPSes online in part because my computer probably isn't fast enough, and I'm not really interested in the hassle. On the other hand, I have played Mario Kart DS online a little lately, mostly because it's free and relatively easy to do. I don't think I'd be willing to pay for the privilege though.
Or
D. Technologists promise the moon, fail to deliver, and disappoint the general public.
Think about it: we're already on the edge of falling off Moore's law. It's probably possible to make a computer a hundred times faster than it is today, but a million? Not likely using known physics. I think this will end up like the space race. Rockets kept getting more and more powerful in the 50s and 60s, so everyone assumed the process would continue indefinitely until we had moon bases and warp drive. Only, it turned out that the rocket fuel to mass requirements for things are a bitch, and unless we can magically make rocket fuel 100 times more efficient, space travel will never be that cheap.
It's fun to think about what if, but my guess is, after a certain level of complexity comes into technology, we just end up spending the rest of time asymptotically approaching a physical limit.
I would say that the US failed to integrate blacks hundreds of years ago (and no wonder, they were forced against their will, etc.), and we're still paying the price today. So, yes, there were and are problems with black integration. However, there aren't many problems to speak of concerning the integration of Irish, Eastern Europeans, Italians, East Asians, Indians, Hispanics, etc. in America today. You said America has an Islamic problem, but I don't see any evidence of that. The only Islamics that have caused problems in the US have been African-Americans who have converted to Islam, like the DC snipers. But, I already admitted America had a problem with black integration going back hundreds of years, so I don't think that counts as an Islamic problem, just a continuation of the failure of black integration. However, the problem is getting better with time. That you list MLK is bizarre, by the way. He was a proponent of peaceful integration, and probably saved America of untold strife. We should all hope that an Islamic MLK stands up in Europe and calms things there.
Cost of developing a thinking robot: Billions, perhaps trillions, of yen.
Cost of opening Japanese borders to foreigners: Zero yen. Oh yeah, and society will have to open up a little too.
As you can see, it's inevitable that the Japanese develop robots. The cost of not doing so is too high for the Japanese populous to bear, or even contemplate. Seriously, the Japanese are nice people and all, but they really insist on dividing the world into "Japan" and "everybody else" in a way that's not healthy at all. I like Japan, but they're going to have make some changes. On their current path, they're either going to end up like Europe, with a bunch of isolated and pissed off foreigners living inside their borders or like techno-Europe, with a bunch of isolated and pissed off robots living inside their borders. Or, heaven forbid, they could follow the US/Canadian model and integrate foreigners into their society, instead of isolating them and maybe the people would think of themselves as Japanese. But they might not have black hair, so scratch that idea.
This is the funniest thing I've read on slashdot in a while. Well played.
(Insert obligatory "the power of the sun in the palm of my hand" comment.)
Your metaphor is delightfully mixed. Who puts their razor blades in gravy?
This explains why the iTunes Music Store Japan is trouncing Sony: the Japanese are trying to fool us into thinking they've let their guard down. Clever. All too clever.
Yeah, Nintendo has tried to push socializing with Mario Party and 4 Swords, but sales have been mixed. It's hard to gather a group of friends.
"Or so the Germans would have us believe."
The NYTimes had a quote the other day where Spielberg proves he doesn't get it. "The medium will come of age, he said, 'when somebody confesses that they cried at Level 17.'"
A.) Who numbers levels in this day and age?
B.) Ah yes, because painting will never be good until people cry when they see Guernica.
C.) Games are known not to induce any emotions whatsoever. That's why gamers are known to be so passive and unexcited, "Oh, I win? That's good I guess. Well, so long as my pulse isn't pounding, I guess it's time for a nice nap."
You're right, games are more about rhythm than 'story' or whatever. Games have stories, but that doesn't mean that games should use stories the way movies do than the fact that movies have sound means that all movies should be Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. Games are trying to do something different. Deal with it, yo!
Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mondays.
In the end, it will use John Titor's time machine to go back and invent itself. And spam.
You fools! Can't you see? Clearly, this a case where a late dinosaur had a body like bird, not the other way around!
I too found that fascinating. Do you think there's anyway that we could persuade a significant number of people and sites to go behind some kind of content wall and reverse this? Say, for example, Slashdot and all the sites it links to were part of some kind of revenue sharing scheme that divies up money based on hits. Is there any way to introduce such a scheme into today's internet?
Ebert is a dinosaur, but reviews do suck. Should Rolling Stone rate an album by giving 1 to 10 for fidelity, listenablity, cover art, replay value, and non-composite overall? Such a thing would be ridiculous, but that's basically what game reviews do. Game reviews need to be more like music reviews: don't tell me about the 'plot' (lyrics) or 'graphics' (fidelity). Tell me about what kind of experience I will have with this product! Compare it to past works and genres. Explain how it's better or worse than other things in its category, or how it creates a new category of its own. Say, "the emphasis on precision platforming of Super Mario Bros. returns in Super Mario Bros. 3." not "the graphics of Mario 3 are far better than SMB." You can mention technical innovations, like Mario 3's diagonal scrolling, but only do so in order to explain how this opens up countless new hidden areas. Don't just talk about tech for tech; talk about how it affects the gaming experience! Game reviews should be like movie reviews though, because movies only last for 3 hours and you only return once every couple years. Games are more like CDs: you get a new one and spin it for 10 or 20 hours over a few weeks, then you may or may not make it part of your regular set of old standbys that you keep returning to.
Um, could you tell me where on my Logitech Mx900 Bluetooth mouse to look, because I've had this mouse for a year and a half and still haven't found a power switch. But surely, you wouldn't make a blanket statement unless you knew it to be absolutely true, right?
Thanks. There used to be a funny translation of part of the Pillow Book into blog-speak at http://blog.simon-cozens.org/shonagon/ but it isn't working now. I don't know why. I left a note on the blog of the guy who made it. It's kind of a joke, but kind of accurate. Is there a difference between listing your favorite seasons and saying, "I'm listening to Radiohead now"? I haven't gotten into any other version enough to recommend one.