I understand the point of the story quite well, which is quite different from the title BTYW, but how is this a new discovery? Bacteria have been getting along without sex (mostly, see plasmid transfer for details) for a good 4+ billion years. Is it because this is a multicellular animal? I really don't see what the fuss would be.
Hear that? Its the sound of millions of Bible Belt Denizens NOT running out and buying 1080P televisions.
Screw the Bible Belt. Pandering to that market is like asking hobos what they look for in a sports car. Who gives a rat's ass what bible thumping, trailer park dwelling inbreds want? They don't have the cash to buy a PS3 in any case.
Here's a hint: If your kids are still so young that they need this kind of supervision, DON'T give them unsupervised access to on-line social networks, or the internet at all. You are the parent. It is YOUR responsibility. Don't want them surfing for porn? Don't let them surf the internet unsupervised! Because if you think Net Nanny et al are infalliable, boy are you in for a surprise. Gaming is an ADULT hobby. If you are letting your child have unsupervised access to Multiplayer Online games, you are giving tacit approval to whatever anyone wants to put out there. Your Responsibility, Your Problem. Not Mine, Not Society's.
Creative don't compete in the high end. They never did. The true "high end" is currently dominated by Mixers with integrated Firewire or USB 2.0 audio interfaces, and multi-in-out audio break-out boxes by companies like MOTU (Mark of the Unicorn), Mackie, and Apogee, with the "upper mid-range" being budget equipment by people like Edirol. They're for computer based audio production work. That's the real "high end." (Caveat, in reality most of the companies I just mentioned are mid-range audio production equipment companies, although Mackie competes in the multi-hundred thousand to multimillion dollar music production field as well) The only presence creative has left in that space is the mouldering remains of E-MU, who now produce a bunch of poorly regarded cheap crap.
No, in reality Creative missed the boat. Digital audio players are the future for computer based audio. Of course, Creative have competed in that space for quite a while, but by "miss the boat" I mean, they didn't make the iPod. Their digital audio players didn't inspire the same kind of mass market fervor that pushed the iPod into the mainstream. That was the end of creative.
Sure, you can't put a decent sized Tokamak in a public museum, but there's no reason to not put something like Philo Farnsworth Fuzor, which IS a tabletop sized Fusion reactor. A Sonoluminescence display would also be quite cool, although as far as I know its still unsettled whether it can actually be used to produce locally hot fusion.
I have no problem with anime, but make it good [google.com] anime [google.com].
Um, the 1980's called. They want their movies back. Seriously though, they didn't stop making good anime in 1995, man. Although I'm not too crazy about this season, there's been plenty of really solid series to come out in the last few years.
I realize that you're working on the definition of "consumer level camera" similar to "isn't weather sealed, and is lighter and has less metal than a pro body." However, a 5D isn't exactly cheap. Its a body that still retails for well over $2000. Somehow, I got the impression from the OP that by "digital camera" he probably meant a 10x-12x Zoom Bridge Camera (Like a Panasonic Lumix, or Canon S3 IS), or an SLR in the Digital Rebel/Nikon D40/D80 range. For back-packing purposes, I'd guess that that a Bridge camera would really be more practical (generally because of weight, and because he won't have access to a secure location to leave excess gear.) I rather like the Fujifilm 9100, because it runs off AA's and has a mechanically operated, rather than electronic, zoom.
Unfortunately, when you start talking about cameras in that price range, people tend balk at spending as much as they spent on their camera on memory cards. Which is why they start making things complicated by trying to scrape along with a single card.
Sir, I thank you for a most eloquent and precise exposition. Although the Grandparent seems to hold some truly horrifying ideas (perpetual copyright(!) does he even have any idea what that would mean? The impoverished state of the world that would imply?). This kind of creeping libertarianism is absolutely horrifying to me.
I'm not a teen, and I work for a living, but I'll still at least try to provide a reason why Music and Movie piracy is justifiable.
You talk as though the rules are sacrosanct. What you ignore is that they exist as a result of a social contract, the entire point of which is to grow the public domain. The idea is that we, society, benefit from the production and public release of works. Thus, to encourage this process, society agrees to certain provisions (copyright). However, the media industry has violated the spirit of the contract by manipulating the system. They are successfully preventing the growth of the public domain. We are thus no longer beholden to abide by the contract either.
So? The 360 can do most of the non-linux stuff. And I'm not buying a game console to be workstation anyway. Playstation Home seems to me like a huge scam to get people to buy advertising.
Little Big Planet does look awesome, but its going to take a lot more than that to get me to buy a PS3.
No, its not the same game. It's a Zelda game (Save the Princess!) with new dungeons, and new puzzles. Just like every other Zelda game has always been.
Remember when Wind Waker came out? "Zelda? More like Celda!" and the other protests. People wanted a game more like Ocarina of Time. So Nintendo gave it to us. Twilight Princess is more beautiful than any Zelda before it. (Although I definitely prefer the fishing game in OOT). My only other complain is that the boss battles are too easy, but lets face it, its not that the battles are really any easier than previous Zelda's; its that I've been playing Zelda games for nearly 20 years (and Ocarina of Time occasionally for about 10). Nintendo have simply wanted to keep Zelda accessible to newcomers. I'm willing to simply revel in the beautiful environments and enjoy the experience.
Exactly, it isn't just the costs of upgrading to Vista, its the cost of upgrading to Vista + Deployment + Retraining. I would also suspect that the FAA probably pays for some kind of actual support contract. They will still want to pay somebody like Redhat for a support contract (and probably Google as well), and they will still incur Deployment and Retraining Costs no matter what. The question really starts to become, who do they believe provides a product with the best productivity/TCO ratio.
Everybody's been through the Microsoft cycle multiple times now. Microsoft promises the world during development, but by the time a product actually ships, its years late, hugely over budget, and still has only 10% of the features originally promised (Remember Microsoft's database file system? The one that would revolutionize searches and data management and do away with folders? They've been promising that one since 1994 at least. It was supposed to be part of Windows 95!) And Microsoft's products End up having severe support issues during their lifetime (Business Crippling Worms anyone?) It heartens me that Organizations are really starting to think about going with other options.
Why is this modded Insightful? You do not need to know why something happens to take steps to prevent or mitigate a problem. There are fairly straightforward solutions to global warming that would reverse the trends regardless of cause. A shield or solar diffuser of sufficient size would cause the world to gradually cool no matter the cause. It isn't necessary for Pacific Islanders to understand WHY a volcano erupts, merely that it does and that they should take steps to mitigate the disaster (possibly by building their village in the safest location they have available).
Nice ad hominem attack there, my argument is invalid because I'm too stupid to build my own PC which you know must be true because I use an Apple Product? Clever, really clever.
I administer a Windows 2003 server, and do on-site tech support for a Windows network, at my job. I just don't want to fool with all that when I get home. Thus, I use a Mac for my home computer use. I do game, I game on consoles, because I get quite enough computer tweaking in at work thank you very much. I also get to see just how ignorant computer uses can be. If Apple created an environment like you're asking, it would be no end of trouble for them. The distinction between non-DRM music and DRM is far too subtle. Computers are magic to them, and we (the computer savvy) are sorcerers to them. They have no comprehension of what we do, or how we know how to do it, even if the answers are as mundane as simply adjusting a documented setting, which we know from long experience.
It isn't really that Sony did anything wrong per se. Just that they done (yet again) something monumentally stupid and possibly suicidal. The thing I think people are really taking issue with is Sony's "Fuck you! I don't need you, Kotaku, I don't need anybody, and I don't care who Knows!" attitude. Had Sony done as you described it wouldn't have been nearly as big a deal. But they DID get all pissy about it, and that's the point.
Kotaku has a fair degree of credibility to the core gamer demographic, which is exactly the people Sony expected to carry the PS3 through its loss period and into profitability and mainstream acceptance. Because let's face it, people going out and buying a $600 game machine, or a $600 DVD player, aren't casual anything. It is my opinion that a company should not be able to blatantly show this much disgust for their target market and survive. If Sony manages PS2 level success in 3-5 years, I will be utterly stupefied. If they are still in the game business in 10 years, I will be quite surprised.
That's a very twisted bit of trolling. The reason Apple forces DRM on even Indie music sold through itunes is for uniformity, to increase user friendliness. They could remove it, but then they would have users who would discover that some of their music could be transfered around, and some of it couldn't. Is the average iTunes user (as opposed to the average slashdotter) willing to take the time to understand why? Instead they avoid the problem. You may think that restricting user behavior unnecessarily is the wrong choice, but its hardly as sinister as you make it out to be.
No, you buy better hardware so that when you listen to high quality classical or other acoustic recordings, you have the dynamic range and frequency response to actually hear both the loud and the quiet parts of the music. The sounds of violin, cello, cymbals, or piano (as in a real concert grand) get damaged by lossy encoding.
When listening to hyper-compressed pop or electronica, yes, there's no point. I do indeed doubt its possible to tell the difference between such music encoded lossily at reasonable bitrates and lossless encodings. Enjoy. Those of us who enjoy classical need better equipment, of course our equipment also tends to be brutally revealing of the poor mastering practices used for pop music.
not with Corporations, but with attorneys. They're concerned about Vista's compatibility issues with legacy apps (and believe me, attorneys can hang onto some legacy apps!). I've urged them that they really should consider using Vista as an opportunity to ditch Microsoft. And they are thinking about it. They don't like microsoft. Many of them have been going through repetitions of the same process since the late 1980's. I've told them that they could in fact switch to linux or OS X platforms and then utilize VMware or Parallels to retain backwards compatibility with their old apps.
Unfortunately, the stats (posted by Dobeln) back me up. I may be exaggerating the situation, but all my basic premises are correct. Sony is not doing well, if they are going to "win" or even stay afloat this generation, they're going to have to start outselling the Xbox 360 at the very least at some point, and the longer they stay behind (both in numbers and sales), the more attractive the alternatives look to developers, which in turn drives more sales to those alternatives. They cannot retain their 3rd party exclusives with the market share they have. The 3rd parties can and will leave, and due to the extreme expense and long development times titles have these days, I'd think that the 3rd parties would be VERY reluctant to continue to back the PS3.
Um no, They aren't selling out, and we're not talking a console or two. We're talking even the smallest retailers have a a stack of half a dozen machines, with the big stores having stacks of the things. This isn't just the states either, its the same in Japan. Retailers in Japan have already started to discount the machines just to get rid of them. This isn't bad, its an out and out disaster. And Sony's not helping things either. Telling Europe they're getting crippled systems with impaired backwards compatibility isn't exactly drumming up excitement for the European launch (and its not really pleasing anybody else worldwide either).
If Sony wants to salvage the situation, they need to be doing something right now. Because here's what Sony's got: The worst development tools (vs. Xbox 360, great dev tools, and the Wii, with good tools, and lots of experienced developers in the field), the most expensive platform to develop for (partially due to poor tools, but also due to the use of expensive technologies like blu-ray), the smallest market share, and the slowest growing market share. If I were a developer, I'd be thinking long and hard about my commitment to the PS3 right now. The alternatives are looking very tempting. At this point I wouldn't even count on Final Fantasy remaining Sony exclusive. My guess is that Microsoft is probably flashing crap tons of "partnership" cash in their direction(It's what I would do if I were a Microsoft Gaming Division executive), while Nintendo is content to let their profitability and growth speak for themselves.
Exactly, I can imagine there being a day when hardware is so cheap, the malware companies start giving away windows PCs for free, preloaded with all their goodies, just to build the size of their audience. Mafia owned botnet organizations might do the same. After all, you'll be covering the expensive part: paying to keep their node supplied with an internet connection to launch DDOS and extortion schemes, and spam e-mail.
You may not be kidding, but you are a moron.
The 16th amendment to the constitution specifically gives congress the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes (regardless of source, which is specified in the amendment).
Not that there aren't government practices that are illegal, but I think income taxes are pretty hard to argue with.
I would argue that the Federal Reserve System, as it currently operates, is unconstitutional, on the basis that takes the Constitutionally granted power of Congress to mint and coin currency, and places it under the control of privately owned banks with minimal congressional oversight.
As another poster noted, this is dead on correct. And why did Bush direct the US government to protect Bin Laden's family? Because the Bushes and the Bin Ladens have been business partners for years.
Your last point is only partly true, but if it was true it would be a major advantage that WoW would have over FFXI. Reason: People are idiots, and as a result partying blows. Hell, I was in a very large Linkshell on FFXI, and I almost NEVER was able to party with any of them. Unfortunately, WoW also has forced partying, for instances, and it sucks just as much there.
Combat in both games is so boring I'd rather watch golf, or paint dry, or clean out my belly button lint. You sit and watch timers expire so you can press the right key again. This, in my opinion, makes my first point much much worse, as the boring nature causes people not to pay attention, and stupid mistakes can almost instantly become a TPK in either game.
I hope Age of Conan doesn't get screwed up. It really looks interesting. An MMO with interesting combat and decapitations? It's just not heard of!
Slashdot Mirror
I understand the point of the story quite well, which is quite different from the title BTYW, but how is this a new discovery? Bacteria have been getting along without sex (mostly, see plasmid transfer for details) for a good 4+ billion years. Is it because this is a multicellular animal? I really don't see what the fuss would be.
Screw the Bible Belt. Pandering to that market is like asking hobos what they look for in a sports car. Who gives a rat's ass what bible thumping, trailer park dwelling inbreds want? They don't have the cash to buy a PS3 in any case.
Here's a hint: If your kids are still so young that they need this kind of supervision, DON'T give them unsupervised access to on-line social networks, or the internet at all. You are the parent. It is YOUR responsibility. Don't want them surfing for porn? Don't let them surf the internet unsupervised! Because if you think Net Nanny et al are infalliable, boy are you in for a surprise. Gaming is an ADULT hobby. If you are letting your child have unsupervised access to Multiplayer Online games, you are giving tacit approval to whatever anyone wants to put out there. Your Responsibility, Your Problem. Not Mine, Not Society's.
No, in reality Creative missed the boat. Digital audio players are the future for computer based audio. Of course, Creative have competed in that space for quite a while, but by "miss the boat" I mean, they didn't make the iPod. Their digital audio players didn't inspire the same kind of mass market fervor that pushed the iPod into the mainstream. That was the end of creative.
Sure, you can't put a decent sized Tokamak in a public museum, but there's no reason to not put something like Philo Farnsworth Fuzor, which IS a tabletop sized Fusion reactor. A Sonoluminescence display would also be quite cool, although as far as I know its still unsettled whether it can actually be used to produce locally hot fusion.
Um, the 1980's called. They want their movies back. Seriously though, they didn't stop making good anime in 1995, man. Although I'm not too crazy about this season, there's been plenty of really solid series to come out in the last few years.
Unfortunately, when you start talking about cameras in that price range, people tend balk at spending as much as they spent on their camera on memory cards. Which is why they start making things complicated by trying to scrape along with a single card.
Sir, I thank you for a most eloquent and precise exposition. Although the Grandparent seems to hold some truly horrifying ideas (perpetual copyright(!) does he even have any idea what that would mean? The impoverished state of the world that would imply?). This kind of creeping libertarianism is absolutely horrifying to me.
You talk as though the rules are sacrosanct. What you ignore is that they exist as a result of a social contract, the entire point of which is to grow the public domain. The idea is that we, society, benefit from the production and public release of works. Thus, to encourage this process, society agrees to certain provisions (copyright). However, the media industry has violated the spirit of the contract by manipulating the system. They are successfully preventing the growth of the public domain. We are thus no longer beholden to abide by the contract either.
Little Big Planet does look awesome, but its going to take a lot more than that to get me to buy a PS3.
Remember when Wind Waker came out? "Zelda? More like Celda!" and the other protests. People wanted a game more like Ocarina of Time. So Nintendo gave it to us. Twilight Princess is more beautiful than any Zelda before it. (Although I definitely prefer the fishing game in OOT). My only other complain is that the boss battles are too easy, but lets face it, its not that the battles are really any easier than previous Zelda's; its that I've been playing Zelda games for nearly 20 years (and Ocarina of Time occasionally for about 10). Nintendo have simply wanted to keep Zelda accessible to newcomers. I'm willing to simply revel in the beautiful environments and enjoy the experience.
Everybody's been through the Microsoft cycle multiple times now. Microsoft promises the world during development, but by the time a product actually ships, its years late, hugely over budget, and still has only 10% of the features originally promised (Remember Microsoft's database file system? The one that would revolutionize searches and data management and do away with folders? They've been promising that one since 1994 at least. It was supposed to be part of Windows 95!) And Microsoft's products End up having severe support issues during their lifetime (Business Crippling Worms anyone?) It heartens me that Organizations are really starting to think about going with other options.
Why is this modded Insightful? You do not need to know why something happens to take steps to prevent or mitigate a problem. There are fairly straightforward solutions to global warming that would reverse the trends regardless of cause. A shield or solar diffuser of sufficient size would cause the world to gradually cool no matter the cause. It isn't necessary for Pacific Islanders to understand WHY a volcano erupts, merely that it does and that they should take steps to mitigate the disaster (possibly by building their village in the safest location they have available).
I administer a Windows 2003 server, and do on-site tech support for a Windows network, at my job. I just don't want to fool with all that when I get home. Thus, I use a Mac for my home computer use. I do game, I game on consoles, because I get quite enough computer tweaking in at work thank you very much. I also get to see just how ignorant computer uses can be. If Apple created an environment like you're asking, it would be no end of trouble for them. The distinction between non-DRM music and DRM is far too subtle. Computers are magic to them, and we (the computer savvy) are sorcerers to them. They have no comprehension of what we do, or how we know how to do it, even if the answers are as mundane as simply adjusting a documented setting, which we know from long experience.
Kotaku has a fair degree of credibility to the core gamer demographic, which is exactly the people Sony expected to carry the PS3 through its loss period and into profitability and mainstream acceptance. Because let's face it, people going out and buying a $600 game machine, or a $600 DVD player, aren't casual anything. It is my opinion that a company should not be able to blatantly show this much disgust for their target market and survive. If Sony manages PS2 level success in 3-5 years, I will be utterly stupefied. If they are still in the game business in 10 years, I will be quite surprised.
That's a very twisted bit of trolling. The reason Apple forces DRM on even Indie music sold through itunes is for uniformity, to increase user friendliness. They could remove it, but then they would have users who would discover that some of their music could be transfered around, and some of it couldn't. Is the average iTunes user (as opposed to the average slashdotter) willing to take the time to understand why? Instead they avoid the problem. You may think that restricting user behavior unnecessarily is the wrong choice, but its hardly as sinister as you make it out to be.
When listening to hyper-compressed pop or electronica, yes, there's no point. I do indeed doubt its possible to tell the difference between such music encoded lossily at reasonable bitrates and lossless encodings. Enjoy. Those of us who enjoy classical need better equipment, of course our equipment also tends to be brutally revealing of the poor mastering practices used for pop music.
not with Corporations, but with attorneys. They're concerned about Vista's compatibility issues with legacy apps (and believe me, attorneys can hang onto some legacy apps!). I've urged them that they really should consider using Vista as an opportunity to ditch Microsoft. And they are thinking about it. They don't like microsoft. Many of them have been going through repetitions of the same process since the late 1980's. I've told them that they could in fact switch to linux or OS X platforms and then utilize VMware or Parallels to retain backwards compatibility with their old apps.
Unfortunately, the stats (posted by Dobeln) back me up. I may be exaggerating the situation, but all my basic premises are correct. Sony is not doing well, if they are going to "win" or even stay afloat this generation, they're going to have to start outselling the Xbox 360 at the very least at some point, and the longer they stay behind (both in numbers and sales), the more attractive the alternatives look to developers, which in turn drives more sales to those alternatives. They cannot retain their 3rd party exclusives with the market share they have. The 3rd parties can and will leave, and due to the extreme expense and long development times titles have these days, I'd think that the 3rd parties would be VERY reluctant to continue to back the PS3.
If Sony wants to salvage the situation, they need to be doing something right now. Because here's what Sony's got: The worst development tools (vs. Xbox 360, great dev tools, and the Wii, with good tools, and lots of experienced developers in the field), the most expensive platform to develop for (partially due to poor tools, but also due to the use of expensive technologies like blu-ray), the smallest market share, and the slowest growing market share. If I were a developer, I'd be thinking long and hard about my commitment to the PS3 right now. The alternatives are looking very tempting. At this point I wouldn't even count on Final Fantasy remaining Sony exclusive. My guess is that Microsoft is probably flashing crap tons of "partnership" cash in their direction(It's what I would do if I were a Microsoft Gaming Division executive), while Nintendo is content to let their profitability and growth speak for themselves.
Exactly, I can imagine there being a day when hardware is so cheap, the malware companies start giving away windows PCs for free, preloaded with all their goodies, just to build the size of their audience. Mafia owned botnet organizations might do the same. After all, you'll be covering the expensive part: paying to keep their node supplied with an internet connection to launch DDOS and extortion schemes, and spam e-mail.
Not that there aren't government practices that are illegal, but I think income taxes are pretty hard to argue with.
I would argue that the Federal Reserve System, as it currently operates, is unconstitutional, on the basis that takes the Constitutionally granted power of Congress to mint and coin currency, and places it under the control of privately owned banks with minimal congressional oversight.
As another poster noted, this is dead on correct. And why did Bush direct the US government to protect Bin Laden's family? Because the Bushes and the Bin Ladens have been business partners for years.
Yeah, I'll pass on "Brittany Spears" "beautiful." I prefer something more classically beautiful than trendy white trash thank you very much.
Combat in both games is so boring I'd rather watch golf, or paint dry, or clean out my belly button lint. You sit and watch timers expire so you can press the right key again. This, in my opinion, makes my first point much much worse, as the boring nature causes people not to pay attention, and stupid mistakes can almost instantly become a TPK in either game.
I hope Age of Conan doesn't get screwed up. It really looks interesting. An MMO with interesting combat and decapitations? It's just not heard of!