I get upset when my fully loaded Cessna 172 only fits 4 hours of fuel. I can see getting by with two, *maybe* one hour of fuel in a jetpack. But seriously - what can you do in 5 minutes?!?
It's not even enough to consider a form of commuting; you can barely accomplish any task that wouldn't be done easier with a helicopter/climbing ropes/scissor lift, plus the huge pricetag...
For most aircraft, FAA requires your flying vehicle to be able to get you to your destination with 30 minutes of backup fuel for delays, emergencies, or unforseen weather. Having a 5 minute flight time kind of negates all that...
At best, I see this as a backyard novelty at worst and an airshow wonder at best.
Re:Speaking as a Game Marketer and Linux User...
on
Cedega and Linux Games
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I'm not a developer, all I see are bottom-line numbers. Hiring a QA team and a support team for Linux is probably two of the biggest cost factors. it is quite simply adding up all the associated costs with:
releasing, supporting, marketing, testing, and (rarely) developing something for a platform a developer is not familiar with (and quite frankly, scared of)..
Versus...
Potential sales to a platform comprising largely of a "free" atmosphere (that I enjoy myself), of limited and wide distribution (there's no 'region' that could be targeted), with a poor track record of profit for game releases.
Two ways to bring gaming to Linux are to (a) reduce costs (such as making smaller scale, indy-style games), or (b) waiting the Linux community grow to a size where potential profits outweight the potential costs (which could be caused by (A)).
Note: my Flash precursor and my highschool coding was in Turbo Pascal (ftw).
Speaking as a Game Marketer and Linux User...
on
Cedega and Linux Games
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I find it extremely difficult to justify porting or designing a game for Mac - and definately not profitable. When it's done it's usually an investment; garnering support for future releases or 'making a name' in the Mac community.
Considering Linux is even smaller... The numbers just don't add up yet.
It isn't really about market penetration or percentages, it's about pure numbers. How many Linux machines are on the planet; of those how many are used in a home-use desktop fashion; of those how many are willing to spend $40-60 on a game; and of those who would be willing to buy this particular game.
A lot of PHP bashing going on; I'd just like to chip in my 2 cents on the language (and demonstrate a mild interest in the book).
I was big on programming when I was younger - by 14 I had written an adventure game in Basic and I invented a DOS-based graphical application that is eerily similar to Flash (two stickmen and some props on the screen with keyframes and interpolation tracking). Needless to say I was well advanced of my classmates throughout highschool.
I also wrote a Chess AI (who hasn't?) in C.
But that was the end of it - about 10 years ago now. I longed for programming but Real Life(tm) got in the way and other career paths curbed my free time.
Needless to say I had lost a lot of skills and I don't even know what OOP stands for, but getting into the blogging world and creating a custom website to house it resulted in me having to learn some sort of web-based programming. I have to say that PHP was beautifully easy to (re-)learn and I was back in the programming seat with a big grin on my face with just a few weeks of self-learning (by looking at examples and open source, no books). I'm praising PHP as a very easy to learn, easy to use starting point for all my would-be programming friends.
IM and IRC is more about participating in a conversation, stutters, mumbles, slips of the tongue and all the other things that go along with it (with real lifedigital parallels). Plus, those that can't type as fast as they can talk may miss a key moment in conversation while they type out a thesis rebuttal, at which point conversation has likely moved on.
When writing thoughts that are to last for the ages (written pages, letters, some would argue Blogs), there is no need for a hurried response nor the hilarity or calamity of typos and mispellings (which make IRC and comment-posting just that much more interesting), and thusly are usually better prepared.
Of course, studies also show that 150 years ago English was a whole lot better spoken and written than it is today - you know, top hats and tea time and Ma'ams and Sirs all 'round. Hell, barkeeps in the Wild West talk more eloquently than I do (and I think that's the first time the word 'eloquently' has passed through my head in years).
This is obviously due to instant messaging and IRC. If I lived in the US I'd be filing a lawsuit against... whoever maintains this series of tubes.
If you are truly calling because of the emergency situation and require assistance - come out and say it! Tell them police are barging in without a warrant. Don't skirt around the issue or anything. I take offense to withholding information and making emergency response personell dispatch unnecessary resources (fire truck? ambulance? three squad cars?) to a situation that may only need a single squad car. Your conversation would be recorded in this manner as well.
By casually "withholding information" about them being police officers is your main tactic it's almost as if you're admitting that the call is only being made to use their recording services, not to actually gain an emergency response.
It troubles me that people would be using and abusing 911 resources for their own personal gain like this. Two wrongs don't make a right! I'd hate to call 911 and get a busy signal when I'm having a heart attack because 17 people in town that are being dragged off by police are using it as a personal answering machine.
Actually, that's a good idea - just call an answering machine and let it record it.
As technological advances increase and we start getting more and more covert cameras - such as the aforementioned belt-buckle instant-uploading dream-camera, we will soon be living in a society where you can't possibly stop anyone from taking a picture of anyone else at any given moment in time.
When that time arrives (and with some ingenuity, it could happen right now), how will we deal with the security and privacy of undercover police? When every single arrest is instantly uploaded to webservers and posted by automatic blogging software, who will protect our police then?
^ Whatever your answer is to that question is what I'd like to see implemented today. Failing an answer to that question, the police are going to have to learn to live with the problem, and they might as well start now.
I was a sales rep at a smallish computer store. I told a customer that Macs aren't immune to everything, which is why Symantec (amongst others) releases security tools.
The customer argued with me, saying Symantec was just trying to squeeze another buck out of people because their product does nothing. I briefly tried to explain the other risks, and how they differ from viruses - but he would have none of it. Practically spitting mad, he stormed out of the store.
The customer went back to the local Mac Users Group, and the whole town was aflame with my store's "hater" stance and how we were a big bunch of liars. All the other stores would advertise "the truth about macs" and pretty much rubbing salt in our wounds.
How did my store deal with the situation?
We sent a mac expert out to the M.U.G. to explain how we were mistaken, and I was fired. My store lost a lot of customers, apparantly.
I'm getting excited about the upcoming release of IE7. I've been using IE6 for so long now I can't really remember how long itsbeen since an update LOL!
Anyone know what some cool new features are?? I heard a rumor they were integrating msn messenger so you could chat ON websites! LOL that would be so cool!
When is Amazon going to learn that aggregation of patents is not the way to win over the hearts of the masses? When will amazon officially go evil on us and start reporting on our usage information?!? waahh
SO FAR... That's why they're TURNING evil. Their biggest mistake was to go public - it was a method to simply get a rapid infusion of cash so that they could... what?
Is not going public the epitome of evil in the first place?
Google no longer has control over their mission statement; the shareholders do. It can change the day after they get 100% market penetration.
Turns out that I don't value billions of dollars as an asset; it's a liability. You have 4.8 billion dollars worth of decision making at your helm, which can affect quite a few people.
But if I screw up and have to correct my mistakes, I just have to squeegee windows for a day to make up the difference.:P
When is google going to learn that aggregation is not the way of the future? They will eventually become so large their shareholders will be able to turn them into a giant evil machine, much lik current companies.
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I get upset when my fully loaded Cessna 172 only fits 4 hours of fuel. I can see getting by with two, *maybe* one hour of fuel in a jetpack. But seriously - what can you do in 5 minutes?!?
It's not even enough to consider a form of commuting; you can barely accomplish any task that wouldn't be done easier with a helicopter/climbing ropes/scissor lift, plus the huge pricetag...
For most aircraft, FAA requires your flying vehicle to be able to get you to your destination with 30 minutes of backup fuel for delays, emergencies, or unforseen weather. Having a 5 minute flight time kind of negates all that...
At best, I see this as a backyard novelty at worst and an airshow wonder at best.
I'm not a developer, all I see are bottom-line numbers. Hiring a QA team and a support team for Linux is probably two of the biggest cost factors. it is quite simply adding up all the associated costs with:
releasing, supporting, marketing, testing, and (rarely) developing something for a platform a developer is not familiar with (and quite frankly, scared of)..
Versus...
Potential sales to a platform comprising largely of a "free" atmosphere (that I enjoy myself), of limited and wide distribution (there's no 'region' that could be targeted), with a poor track record of profit for game releases.
Two ways to bring gaming to Linux are to (a) reduce costs (such as making smaller scale, indy-style games), or (b) waiting the Linux community grow to a size where potential profits outweight the potential costs (which could be caused by (A)).
Note: my Flash precursor and my highschool coding was in Turbo Pascal (ftw).
I find it extremely difficult to justify porting or designing a game for Mac - and definately not profitable. When it's done it's usually an investment; garnering support for future releases or 'making a name' in the Mac community. Considering Linux is even smaller... The numbers just don't add up yet. It isn't really about market penetration or percentages, it's about pure numbers. How many Linux machines are on the planet; of those how many are used in a home-use desktop fashion; of those how many are willing to spend $40-60 on a game; and of those who would be willing to buy this particular game.
Dude, you totally hacked the comments with that tirade!! awesome!
A lot of PHP bashing going on; I'd just like to chip in my 2 cents on the language (and demonstrate a mild interest in the book). I was big on programming when I was younger - by 14 I had written an adventure game in Basic and I invented a DOS-based graphical application that is eerily similar to Flash (two stickmen and some props on the screen with keyframes and interpolation tracking). Needless to say I was well advanced of my classmates throughout highschool. I also wrote a Chess AI (who hasn't?) in C. But that was the end of it - about 10 years ago now. I longed for programming but Real Life(tm) got in the way and other career paths curbed my free time. Needless to say I had lost a lot of skills and I don't even know what OOP stands for, but getting into the blogging world and creating a custom website to house it resulted in me having to learn some sort of web-based programming. I have to say that PHP was beautifully easy to (re-)learn and I was back in the programming seat with a big grin on my face with just a few weeks of self-learning (by looking at examples and open source, no books). I'm praising PHP as a very easy to learn, easy to use starting point for all my would-be programming friends.
I don't understand why the minors would get fined anyway. Like cigarettes, the fine should go to the retailer - if a fine should exist at all.
True, it is more polite to have descriptive away messages...
IM and IRC is more about participating in a conversation, stutters, mumbles, slips of the tongue and all the other things that go along with it (with real lifedigital parallels). Plus, those that can't type as fast as they can talk may miss a key moment in conversation while they type out a thesis rebuttal, at which point conversation has likely moved on.
When writing thoughts that are to last for the ages (written pages, letters, some would argue Blogs), there is no need for a hurried response nor the hilarity or calamity of typos and mispellings (which make IRC and comment-posting just that much more interesting), and thusly are usually better prepared.
IMHO of course.
Of course, studies also show that 150 years ago English was a whole lot better spoken and written than it is today - you know, top hats and tea time and Ma'ams and Sirs all 'round. Hell, barkeeps in the Wild West talk more eloquently than I do (and I think that's the first time the word 'eloquently' has passed through my head in years). This is obviously due to instant messaging and IRC. If I lived in the US I'd be filing a lawsuit against... whoever maintains this series of tubes.
As a Canadian, I'm more troubled by the Canadian Teens that spell Color and Flavor without the U. I blame AIM!
If you are truly calling because of the emergency situation and require assistance - come out and say it! Tell them police are barging in without a warrant. Don't skirt around the issue or anything. I take offense to withholding information and making emergency response personell dispatch unnecessary resources (fire truck? ambulance? three squad cars?) to a situation that may only need a single squad car. Your conversation would be recorded in this manner as well.
By casually "withholding information" about them being police officers is your main tactic it's almost as if you're admitting that the call is only being made to use their recording services, not to actually gain an emergency response.
It troubles me that people would be using and abusing 911 resources for their own personal gain like this. Two wrongs don't make a right! I'd hate to call 911 and get a busy signal when I'm having a heart attack because 17 people in town that are being dragged off by police are using it as a personal answering machine.
Actually, that's a good idea - just call an answering machine and let it record it.
As technological advances increase and we start getting more and more covert cameras - such as the aforementioned belt-buckle instant-uploading dream-camera, we will soon be living in a society where you can't possibly stop anyone from taking a picture of anyone else at any given moment in time. When that time arrives (and with some ingenuity, it could happen right now), how will we deal with the security and privacy of undercover police? When every single arrest is instantly uploaded to webservers and posted by automatic blogging software, who will protect our police then? ^ Whatever your answer is to that question is what I'd like to see implemented today. Failing an answer to that question, the police are going to have to learn to live with the problem, and they might as well start now.
Well, if you RTFA, you'd see they were slapped with an additional, unrelated $100 million bill for last year's tax returns. :P
And don't forget - these figures do NOT include penalties or interest. O_O
I was a sales rep at a smallish computer store. I told a customer that Macs aren't immune to everything, which is why Symantec (amongst others) releases security tools. The customer argued with me, saying Symantec was just trying to squeeze another buck out of people because their product does nothing. I briefly tried to explain the other risks, and how they differ from viruses - but he would have none of it. Practically spitting mad, he stormed out of the store. The customer went back to the local Mac Users Group, and the whole town was aflame with my store's "hater" stance and how we were a big bunch of liars. All the other stores would advertise "the truth about macs" and pretty much rubbing salt in our wounds. How did my store deal with the situation? We sent a mac expert out to the M.U.G. to explain how we were mistaken, and I was fired. My store lost a lot of customers, apparantly.
I'm getting excited about the upcoming release of IE7. I've been using IE6 for so long now I can't really remember how long itsbeen since an update LOL! Anyone know what some cool new features are?? I heard a rumor they were integrating msn messenger so you could chat ON websites! LOL that would be so cool!
When is Amazon going to learn that aggregation of patents is not the way to win over the hearts of the masses? When will amazon officially go evil on us and start reporting on our usage information?!? waahh
If you look up to the night sky, and cross your eyes just right, you can make the two cameras on the satellite overlap and it looks 3-D!
SO FAR... That's why they're TURNING evil. Their biggest mistake was to go public - it was a method to simply get a rapid infusion of cash so that they could... what? Is not going public the epitome of evil in the first place? Google no longer has control over their mission statement; the shareholders do. It can change the day after they get 100% market penetration.
Turns out that I don't value billions of dollars as an asset; it's a liability. You have 4.8 billion dollars worth of decision making at your helm, which can affect quite a few people. But if I screw up and have to correct my mistakes, I just have to squeegee windows for a day to make up the difference. :P
When is google going to learn that aggregation is not the way of the future? They will eventually become so large their shareholders will be able to turn them into a giant evil machine, much lik current companies.