As it turns out, the early builds of IE9 are starting to implement HTML 5. For instance, they support the video tag. However, they made a statement that they are only planning on implementing the intel INDEO video codec, with PWM audio. And they're finally supporting CSS and SVG propperly, but only if the color scheme matches the scheme they chose for Windows 7. And after years of debate, they now support an early draft of VRML.
I'm obviously lying, since Microsoft always plans on the "let's not improve the product until it's at least 10 years behind the times" plan.
Sadly, though, The way I described their new version of IE is waaaaaaaaaaaay too realistic.
"Slippery Slope" is an idea pushed by the ultra-conservative republicans in an attempt to prevent any kind of societal progress. A means to spread FUD, it is the absolute lowest of all attacks that can be given, as it needs no facts, proof, or any kind of truth to be taken for the claim to be considered truthful and factual. For a better example, see the false and flimsy arguments against gay marriage.
Also, where in hell did that last quote come from? It makes no sense in this context, and it doesn't appear in any of the links.
take your cell phone and duct-tape it to your netbook. Voila!
Honestly, though, trying to replace your working and well-proven cell phone, and tryingt to use two very unstable technologies in it's place, is extremely stupid. Netbooks and all laptops have the terrible condition of high breakability, and WIMAX isn't everywhere. In fact, I've never even been to a place that had WIMAX service.
Now it's time to reveal to the world a part of my philosophy. There is no such thing as controversy; controversy is simply an illusion that an issue is so big that it will effect everyone. The truth is that while there are events which can cause effect a great deal of people, there isn't really much that can effect everyone - all I can think of is someone accidentally creating a virus that kills everyone on the planet or nuclear holocaust.
Now as I mentioned before, people are illusioned into believing that something is extremely important. The reality is that most of the controversy is simply caused by stupidity. Sadly, I'm wrong when I say it's caused by stupidity; it's usually caused by willful ignorance in the form of religion. Though I do admit that there are some caused by bigotry, idiocy, and normal ignorance as well.
Think about it - What are the big controversies today in America? I'll list some for you:
abortion
evolution vs. creationism vs. intelligent design
stem cell research
civil rights for gays, especially marriage
pornography.
Those are all caused by religious institutions; the pope hates them all. and there's such opposition to these issues because, guess what? They hurt their feelings. And they remain controversial because of bigotry. But there are some very minor controversies out there that aren't caused by Christianity; gun control and the war on drugs, for instance. These issues are caused by sheer ignorance.
How does this relate to the topic in hand? It's hard to say. Games based on real, current wars aren't controversial because of people's bigotry, idiocy, stupidity, or willing or unknowing ignorance.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this type of game isn't controversial at all. What it is, however, is stigmatic. People have different views on the war, and because not everyone agrees with it, and even though it's a subject that people can have differing opinions on it without getting upset, it instantly becomes taboo.
So the real problem is that people and organizations have become so incredibly afraid of being politically incorrect, they're not even willing to go along with anything that people won't agree on. Which means that the shelves of the game stores will continue to be filled with endless sequels, because someone might be offended with anything new, and in an overly-sensitive global society, that's enough to get your game banned.
To sum up what I was trying to say, current-war games aren't controversial, but are simply too new of an idea.
I hope my message got across well; I'm actually doped out on sleeping pills right now. I'm not even sure that I wrote about the point I was trying to make.... I'm a very confused man at the moment.
P.S. I think I meant to say earlier that controversies are caused by intolerance. Ex: Fable was controversial for being able to play a gay character.
'You buy Microsoft software, and you buy it once and for all, the cost that we tell you is the total cost for ownership.'
It was when he said this that the fine print started to appear:
* Price does not include technical support, which is free for the first two sessions, but USD $99 for further sessions (and per hour via telephone), the price of new computers you will have to buy to feed our bloated clock-cycle-consuming system, the costs of upgrades,, the extra cost of Office, or the rediculous amounts of money you'll need before we give you a look at the source code, which will require you to sign an NDA. Microsoft claims no responsibility for health issues caused by our OS, including, but not limited to, cranial damage you'll get after banging your head against the wall in frustration of our poorly-designed un-interoperable amalgamation of legacy support and psychosis caused by using our compulsory poorly-maintained virus-catching browser. Offer only good on
Windows Vista Starter.
Have you ever worked in the music industry before? Do you know what actually happens when a song is produced? Or the amount of money the artist makes?
Let me tell you about production. An artist thinks of a song, and writes it down. He gives it to a producer, who gives the artist an extremely constrictive contract, which may have a provision limiting the amount of the profits he receives. From there, they hire technical staff, who actually do the audio production. It takes only an hour or so to make a song, depending on complexity and how much time it takes them to fine-tune the synthesizers. It's not so much a job then a short enjoyable gig.
Do the technical staff get a percentage of the album? No. They're paid a flat rate. In many cases, the artists hired to play the instruments are given a flat rate. This isn't taken as a loan from future sales; it is paid with profits from other albums, and that's the risk factor that goes along with any business.
Now, when you buy a CD, how is that ~$15 distributed? The record company, 99% of the time, takes more then half of the cash goes to the record company. Now, you may think that that goes to cover the costs of creation, but that's only about 10% of the sale, or less for more popular records. The artists often get a quarter of the profits, or less. More if they're a diva and scream at the record company long enough. I can guess that if only 15% of the people who obtained the album paid for it, the record company would get their risked capitol back.
With that in mind, can you honestly say that it's unfair to pirate if you send the money to the artist? I say it's even less fair to buy the album legally.
Let me reiterate: the money spent to produce a new album has already been made. The big 5 record companies are actually so big that they can produce hundreds of records consequentially and have them all flop without really hurting the company. The true purpose of the RIAA is to fuel the record companies' greed.
Note that it's the exact same way for digital books, except that there's no cost for reproduction and there are much fewer people in the production line and bureaucracy who need to be paid off.
P.S.: Your analogy does, however, works in the context of movies, since the tremendous amount of capitol required to film and market a movie is so large that they do need to make loans to make them.
That's strange.... Then why do record/movie/stock photography studios get payed the ridiculous amounts of money, when there's infinitely better choices of places to put it, like a charity, or more appropriately, a creative institution, instead of a creativity-zapping money-making machine?
Don't worry; in the end it'll all be blamed on bugs. But unlike Amazon's case, Google will attribute to bugs in their system andreal life.
You see, Google's genetic engineering department has had a security breach, and now their mutated insects (and a few arachnids) have escaped. A small band of them has formed an alliance to make the people at Google suffer. The guys who were interviewed for this article were dead. Their bodies were manipulated as giant marionettes by Preying Mantisi (note to grammar nazis: you find a better form), while the larvae feeding on him from their insides provided their voices.
That was supposed to be funny, but it just turned out nauseating....
Finding a distrobution that didn't crash. Linux wasn't always as easy to install as it is today (Have you tried to build your own Linux system? It's surprisingly easy to get a basic system going today.) Nearly every distrobution I found crashed as it booted from the CD. Eventually I discovered Ark linux, which worked beautifully. Then, for whatever reason (Ark crapped out), I installed collegelinux, which, unfortunately, wasn't as good a distro as Ark was.
I installed Mandrake Linux as soon as it was gifted to me. It was and still is the only decent linux system in a box. And the CDs! There were so many discs! Unfortunately, the distro was outdated before I even got it, so I eventually dropped it and went back to the dark side of computing. That is, Windows.
Note that this was all because of the frustration I had with Windows ME. ME wasn't really as bad an operating system as people said it was, but after about a year or two, it would crash every time you'd start it, with some undocumented problem you couldn't fix even if you knew the OS at a source code level.
So which linux distro am I using today? None; I'm running Windows XP, with all my unix-required needs and OS development tools in hardware-accelerated VMs (Has anyone ever told you how much better VirtualBox is than VMware?). SiS chips and a lack of expansion slots prevent me from running it. And I could never get NVidia's stupid driver to work, so I never even got a chance to play around with KDE4's special effects. Seriously, I've begun to think that people who say that their computers run with hardware graphics acceleration are lying - neither NVidia's nor ATI's drivers have ever worked for me.
Why do I think this? Because most online office application have a EULA, which states, more or less, that anything you write with it belongs to them. Who's saying that this doesn't apply to online IDE services? Software copyright is already insanely convoluted (or maybe just insane?) as it is. I can't even imagine a programmer who would use an application online where his source code is made available on a public-facing server (which is a big deal for those writing propriatary software) when a superior program is available natively for for their platform where they can keep their rights.
However, if the idea is that a company or individual sets up bespin for their private usage, then it would make sense.
It could possibly be the most lucrative income for your start-up for a little while, and it's way easier to implement then some of the other ideas presented here. All you need to purchase is a small block of IP addresses and a domain name. Assuming that you already have fast network hardware.
Just don't recycle them. People in china are dying because of the hazardous materials in electronic devices.
Let me demonstrate why we have binary distrobution.
"Hey dude, my copy of Adobe CS4 is coming today!"
"What? I thought you picked it up at the store a month ago?"
"Yeah, I did, but I had to wait for it to finish compiling!"
This is all without mentioning corperate need for code secrecy, and the need for an environment to compile an operating system on.
All you have to do is build RGBHV separator, put a resistor on the green channel, and bam! The picture is yellow! You can imagine that everyone is Asian!
Problem Solving in C++ Including Breadth and Laboratories is, without a doubt, the world's best book on C++. Over the years I have spent hundreds of dollars trying to teach myself C++. It was maddening! I was considering for the longest time taking out a loan and paying for classes. Then I discovered this book (ironically given to me for free by a community college during a technology expo they were hosting), and I could finally understand the concepts. Where these books which came so highly recommended to me failed, this simple somewhat obscure book succeeded with ease. It's a great book because it's extremely well organized (one of the first books with an index which didn't require 70 different look ups to find out what you need to know), written in plain language, defines everything (EVERYTHING!), gives you simple exercises to implement what you've learned, and even teaches you some interesting trivia about computing. These resources make it the best source for anyone who is not familiar with C-like languages, or maybe even people who are not familiar with computers at all.
Las Vegas has had an automated bus line for a few years now. It's called the MAX and it's actually on the way of becoming obsolete, being replaced with the ACE line, which is supposed to connect all the cities in Greater Las Vegas. (The RTC has removed their page on MAX already)
However, the MAX and ACE lines use optical technology, meaning they only need a painted line to operate. It's kinda cool, riding in a bus that follows a line just like those robot kits you give to kids.
(Here's to hoping we've PWNed Berkley!)
As typical on Slashdot, anything that relates to technology in a game system is attributed to the game system itself.
BD-J is Java for Blu-ray disc players. It's not PS3 homebrew - It's Blu-ray homebrew.
Slashdot Mirror
As it turns out, the early builds of IE9 are starting to implement HTML 5. For instance, they support the video tag. However, they made a statement that they are only planning on implementing the intel INDEO video codec, with PWM audio. And they're finally supporting CSS and SVG propperly, but only if the color scheme matches the scheme they chose for Windows 7. And after years of debate, they now support an early draft of VRML.
I'm obviously lying, since Microsoft always plans on the "let's not improve the product until it's at least 10 years behind the times" plan.
Sadly, though, The way I described their new version of IE is waaaaaaaaaaaay too realistic.
"Slippery Slope" is an idea pushed by the ultra-conservative republicans in an attempt to prevent any kind of societal progress. A means to spread FUD, it is the absolute lowest of all attacks that can be given, as it needs no facts, proof, or any kind of truth to be taken for the claim to be considered truthful and factual. For a better example, see the false and flimsy arguments against gay marriage.
Also, where in hell did that last quote come from? It makes no sense in this context, and it doesn't appear in any of the links.
take your cell phone and duct-tape it to your netbook. Voila!
Honestly, though, trying to replace your working and well-proven cell phone, and tryingt to use two very unstable technologies in it's place, is extremely stupid. Netbooks and all laptops have the terrible condition of high breakability, and WIMAX isn't everywhere. In fact, I've never even been to a place that had WIMAX service.
Now as I mentioned before, people are illusioned into believing that something is extremely important. The reality is that most of the controversy is simply caused by stupidity. Sadly, I'm wrong when I say it's caused by stupidity; it's usually caused by willful ignorance in the form of religion. Though I do admit that there are some caused by bigotry, idiocy, and normal ignorance as well.
Think about it - What are the big controversies today in America? I'll list some for you:
Those are all caused by religious institutions; the pope hates them all. and there's such opposition to these issues because, guess what? They hurt their feelings. And they remain controversial because of bigotry. But there are some very minor controversies out there that aren't caused by Christianity; gun control and the war on drugs, for instance. These issues are caused by sheer ignorance.
How does this relate to the topic in hand? It's hard to say. Games based on real, current wars aren't controversial because of people's bigotry, idiocy, stupidity, or willing or unknowing ignorance.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this type of game isn't controversial at all. What it is, however, is stigmatic. People have different views on the war, and because not everyone agrees with it, and even though it's a subject that people can have differing opinions on it without getting upset, it instantly becomes taboo.
So the real problem is that people and organizations have become so incredibly afraid of being politically incorrect, they're not even willing to go along with anything that people won't agree on. Which means that the shelves of the game stores will continue to be filled with endless sequels, because someone might be offended with anything new, and in an overly-sensitive global society, that's enough to get your game banned.
To sum up what I was trying to say, current-war games aren't controversial, but are simply too new of an idea.
I hope my message got across well; I'm actually doped out on sleeping pills right now. I'm not even sure that I wrote about the point I was trying to make.... I'm a very confused man at the moment.
P.S. I think I meant to say earlier that controversies are caused by intolerance. Ex: Fable was controversial for being able to play a gay character.
'You buy Microsoft software, and you buy it once and for all, the cost that we tell you is the total cost for ownership.'
It was when he said this that the fine print started to appear:
* Price does not include technical support, which is free for the first two sessions, but USD $99 for further sessions (and per hour via telephone), the price of new computers you will have to buy to feed our bloated clock-cycle-consuming system, the costs of upgrades,, the extra cost of Office, or the rediculous amounts of money you'll need before we give you a look at the source code, which will require you to sign an NDA. Microsoft claims no responsibility for health issues caused by our OS, including, but not limited to, cranial damage you'll get after banging your head against the wall in frustration of our poorly-designed un-interoperable amalgamation of legacy support and psychosis caused by using our compulsory poorly-maintained virus-catching browser. Offer only good on Windows Vista Starter.
Sounds like an easy choice for Africa.
Have you ever worked in the music industry before? Do you know what actually happens when a song is produced? Or the amount of money the artist makes?
Let me tell you about production. An artist thinks of a song, and writes it down. He gives it to a producer, who gives the artist an extremely constrictive contract, which may have a provision limiting the amount of the profits he receives. From there, they hire technical staff, who actually do the audio production. It takes only an hour or so to make a song, depending on complexity and how much time it takes them to fine-tune the synthesizers. It's not so much a job then a short enjoyable gig.
Do the technical staff get a percentage of the album? No. They're paid a flat rate. In many cases, the artists hired to play the instruments are given a flat rate. This isn't taken as a loan from future sales; it is paid with profits from other albums, and that's the risk factor that goes along with any business.
Now, when you buy a CD, how is that ~$15 distributed? The record company, 99% of the time, takes more then half of the cash goes to the record company. Now, you may think that that goes to cover the costs of creation, but that's only about 10% of the sale, or less for more popular records. The artists often get a quarter of the profits, or less. More if they're a diva and scream at the record company long enough. I can guess that if only 15% of the people who obtained the album paid for it, the record company would get their risked capitol back.
With that in mind, can you honestly say that it's unfair to pirate if you send the money to the artist? I say it's even less fair to buy the album legally.
Let me reiterate: the money spent to produce a new album has already been made. The big 5 record companies are actually so big that they can produce hundreds of records consequentially and have them all flop without really hurting the company. The true purpose of the RIAA is to fuel the record companies' greed.
Note that it's the exact same way for digital books, except that there's no cost for reproduction and there are much fewer people in the production line and bureaucracy who need to be paid off.
P.S.: Your analogy does, however, works in the context of movies, since the tremendous amount of capitol required to film and market a movie is so large that they do need to make loans to make them.
Legal note: percentages are all estimates.
That's strange.... Then why do record/movie/stock photography studios get payed the ridiculous amounts of money, when there's infinitely better choices of places to put it, like a charity, or more appropriately, a creative institution, instead of a creativity-zapping money-making machine?
Get out of the house and stop playing Dragon Quest.
Don't worry; in the end it'll all be blamed on bugs. But unlike Amazon's case, Google will attribute to bugs in their system and real life.
You see, Google's genetic engineering department has had a security breach, and now their mutated insects (and a few arachnids) have escaped. A small band of them has formed an alliance to make the people at Google suffer. The guys who were interviewed for this article were dead. Their bodies were manipulated as giant marionettes by Preying Mantisi (note to grammar nazis: you find a better form), while the larvae feeding on him from their insides provided their voices.
That was supposed to be funny, but it just turned out nauseating....
Finding a distrobution that didn't crash. Linux wasn't always as easy to install as it is today (Have you tried to build your own Linux system? It's surprisingly easy to get a basic system going today.) Nearly every distrobution I found crashed as it booted from the CD. Eventually I discovered Ark linux, which worked beautifully. Then, for whatever reason (Ark crapped out), I installed collegelinux, which, unfortunately, wasn't as good a distro as Ark was.
I installed Mandrake Linux as soon as it was gifted to me. It was and still is the only decent linux system in a box. And the CDs! There were so many discs! Unfortunately, the distro was outdated before I even got it, so I eventually dropped it and went back to the dark side of computing. That is, Windows.
Note that this was all because of the frustration I had with Windows ME. ME wasn't really as bad an operating system as people said it was, but after about a year or two, it would crash every time you'd start it, with some undocumented problem you couldn't fix even if you knew the OS at a source code level.
So which linux distro am I using today? None; I'm running Windows XP, with all my unix-required needs and OS development tools in hardware-accelerated VMs (Has anyone ever told you how much better VirtualBox is than VMware?). SiS chips and a lack of expansion slots prevent me from running it. And I could never get NVidia's stupid driver to work, so I never even got a chance to play around with KDE4's special effects. Seriously, I've begun to think that people who say that their computers run with hardware graphics acceleration are lying - neither NVidia's nor ATI's drivers have ever worked for me.
Yeah. I'm sick of hearing about Linux on these notebooks that don't have the kernel compiled with EVERY OPTION.
There is no such thing as a version of linux that is incomplete, unless, perhaps, you don't have the means to load the kernel.
Then it probably needs to be replaced. :P
Why do I think this? Because most online office application have a EULA, which states, more or less, that anything you write with it belongs to them. Who's saying that this doesn't apply to online IDE services? Software copyright is already insanely convoluted (or maybe just insane?) as it is. I can't even imagine a programmer who would use an application online where his source code is made available on a public-facing server (which is a big deal for those writing propriatary software) when a superior program is available natively for for their platform where they can keep their rights.
However, if the idea is that a company or individual sets up bespin for their private usage, then it would make sense.
It could possibly be the most lucrative income for your start-up for a little while, and it's way easier to implement then some of the other ideas presented here. All you need to purchase is a small block of IP addresses and a domain name. Assuming that you already have fast network hardware.
Just don't recycle them. People in china are dying because of the hazardous materials in electronic devices.
Time for everyone to switch to Enlightenment. Take that, desktop metaphor!
Let me demonstrate why we have binary distrobution.
"Hey dude, my copy of Adobe CS4 is coming today!"
"What? I thought you picked it up at the store a month ago?"
"Yeah, I did, but I had to wait for it to finish compiling!"
This is all without mentioning corperate need for code secrecy, and the need for an environment to compile an operating system on.
Honestly. I mean, that won't make their OpenGL 2.0 drivers actually work, and there's no doubt in my mind that the 3.0 code will be faulty as well.
All you have to do is build RGBHV separator, put a resistor on the green channel, and bam! The picture is yellow! You can imagine that everyone is Asian!
How stupid of me!
Of course they learn to curse from games! What a fool I was to think that they were learning from their friends!
They're going to have to write a driver that works before they get that to work.
Problem Solving in C++ Including Breadth and Laboratories is, without a doubt, the world's best book on C++. Over the years I have spent hundreds of dollars trying to teach myself C++. It was maddening! I was considering for the longest time taking out a loan and paying for classes. Then I discovered this book (ironically given to me for free by a community college during a technology expo they were hosting), and I could finally understand the concepts. Where these books which came so highly recommended to me failed, this simple somewhat obscure book succeeded with ease. It's a great book because it's extremely well organized (one of the first books with an index which didn't require 70 different look ups to find out what you need to know), written in plain language, defines everything (EVERYTHING!), gives you simple exercises to implement what you've learned, and even teaches you some interesting trivia about computing. These resources make it the best source for anyone who is not familiar with C-like languages, or maybe even people who are not familiar with computers at all.
Ha! I know! When I first saw the headline, I immediately thought, "Welcome to the nineties, Austin Powers."
Las Vegas has had an automated bus line for a few years now. It's called the MAX and it's actually on the way of becoming obsolete, being replaced with the ACE line, which is supposed to connect all the cities in Greater Las Vegas. (The RTC has removed their page on MAX already)
However, the MAX and ACE lines use optical technology, meaning they only need a painted line to operate. It's kinda cool, riding in a bus that follows a line just like those robot kits you give to kids.
(Here's to hoping we've PWNed Berkley!)
The number of things that don't work is very small these days. Its improving all the time.
This number is actually inverse for SiS products.
As typical on Slashdot, anything that relates to technology in a game system is attributed to the game system itself. BD-J is Java for Blu-ray disc players. It's not PS3 homebrew - It's Blu-ray homebrew.