I remember once when my eldest daughter was nearly 2 we were in the park and there was another parent with a boy of roughly the same age. She was running along giggling and looking at the boy and ran straight into the side of a slide, smacking her face on it and then falling backwards to the ground. Naturally the boy's dad was full of concern. My wife and i were rolling around laughing. She got up, dusted herself off and carried on playing. I bet that boy's a wuss.
I've been predicting for a while now that when Linux finally arrives on the desktop no home users will have desktops. Already the recycling sites and web sites and streets around where I live are filling up with unwanted computer desks while everyone migrates to PS3s, iPhones or laptops...
My music spend is rarely on shop-bought CDs, mainly goes on gig tickets. Also, when you are going to see a band live in another country - and wouldn't be travelling there otherwise - do the flights and hotel count?
I agree with your analysis and in my experience your points can all be found in the differences between Halo:CE and 2. The first Halo offers more in terms of all three of your points: The game environment is generally larger and there are more areas to explore (or at least, nooks and crannies if not full blown sections), There's a little non-linearity in certain sections, though not massively so you do get to do a few minor things (like getting 3 lots of marines air-lifted out) in a different order but also in terms of how you "attack" some of the larger scale battles (get a tank, or a warthog, or snipe) and this leads into the final point, there are entire sections of the game (mainly ones involving the flood) that you can charge through at high speed, or take your time to kill as many as possible. The former is more efficient but leads to the feeling that you've missed out.
Even though these three areas (and they do bleed into each other) aren't massively fleshed out in Halo:CE, when you play Halo 2, which feels more firmly on rails, and confines you to a number of set piece battles interspaced between sitting on an elevator/gondola/light-beam-thing/kayak and waiting you realize just what it is you are missing out on.
I think somewhere in my rambling was the point that it's sometimes more subtle than you realize, and that a game doesnt need to be GTA "open" to feel open.
I honestly believe that the sales guy's brain was in a state of "it costs more, it MUST BE BETTER" and no amount of logic or reasoning would have swayed him. It's a natural human situation to be in in my observation (see also: Man-Made-Climate-Change Sceptics (but the environment is SO MASSIVELY BIG it's impossible for humans to change it!) and all religions ever)
Actually, it's interesting that you mention Soderbergh - he has a great method of working with Hollywood (Nolan seems to be taking this approach too) - where he makes a big blockbuster on behalf of hollywood one year, then because he's made them a bunch of cash they let him make whatever film he wants to make next. A kind of give and take setup, cunning way to work the system IMO
exactly what I was going to post. For comparison I work in software (like most people here, I suspect) and I'm very happy being a developer with no managerial responsibility. Is this "making it" in software or is it mandatory to strive to be the next Linus?
or you could just place your maximum bid as your first bid. And laugh at the idiots who pay more for an item than what it's worth. The key to ebay is patience, you'll win the item you want at a price you want, but it may be the 4th/5th attempt (obviously this doesnt apply to rare items, but it does to everything else)
I use it on two computers, for IMAP access to my own mail server, which also has a webmail interface, oh and I can get to my email from my Android phone client too. Or at least I used to until about three weeks ago when my server died and I decided to bin it. Now my email lives inside my laptop and it feels like the 18th century or something. Must by a new fanless system for server 2.0!
This. I have a friend, she's not a big computer user, but every few days - or weeks - she fires up the laptop to check a few websites, do some emailing and perhaps do some writing. Thing is, it sometimes takes her HOURS to actually get started because in that time all of the software has pushed out new updates, and her bandwidth isn't that high.
Yeah, there's definitely an autism scale that goes from Vulcan to Empath and I'm closer to the left hand side than the mean population, but not massively so. I personally believe that scales apply to everything and that the human tendency to put things in neat boxes is one we need to leave behind. Dyslexia for example and of course sexuality, I personally reckon I'm about 2% homosexual (specifically 2% Androphile vs 98% Gynophile) - doesn't exactly make me Bi as that label suggests a 50/50 split.
I'm aspergeric, or whatever, or at least I was until I was 27 when I stopped (or at least, heavily regulated) my introspective musings about how every human interaction I'd endured had worked out (I once upset someone in a way that they probably had forgotten about the next day, I worried about it for years!) and started treating humans as a kind of scientific study.
People used to think I was arrogant (presumably because of being super pedantic), a robot (presumably because of my constant un-emotional state) and awkard. I used to suffer from depression and insomnia. I now have friends, a steady job, go out instead of staying in hiding and even get laid occasionally. Inside I'm still the same person but I think if you wear the disguise long enough you start to become the disguise...
I had a different, radical idea. That "cars" ("car" defined as having a non-convertible (seats folded down) goods-bearing area of less than a decent number of square metres so that your Chelsea Tractor does NOT count as a "goods vehicle") have a maximum weight... AND still have to pass all the safety tests. The maximum weight can then decrease linearly over a few decades to about 600kg - because the power plant won't have to drag as much weight down the road it wont need to do as much work = less power needed = less fuel consumed.
Dead simple, and works in motorsports, such as F1 or Le Mans, where they can crash at 200Mph then walk away.
it could be a modal average, based on the number of fat americans you see, and because they really stand out they stick in your mind. Whilst you forget about the plain looking ones.
I'm sorry but I disagree, your assessment is too broad. I have 23 Facebook friends. (yes, i didn't miss off a digit ~= two dozen). They're all people I know well in real life, some I've known for over two decades. Most live over 150 miles from me. It's great to be able to share holiday, kids and drunken photos, share music/videos/links and generally chat - as well as snoop on or interrupt other people's conversations (with a witty remark!) just like you could if you were all sat in a room actually talking. None of this takes place over email (though it used to > 5 years ago). Facebook is a lot better than email at making you feel "in touch" with people you love and don't get to see as often as you'd like.
Oh, and the only person who's hassled me to Friend them is my brother's Fiancée. I said "no" straight up, made a joke out of it (she's also friends with my ex), and that was that. We send direct messages occasionally in a way that emulates email/chat.
I wrote my own web server, a bastardised (i.e. vastly improved) bootstrapping of ASP.Net. It has what I call Fragments, so you'd just do
<Chan:Fragment runat="server" source="SideMenu"/>
Which is equivalent to the PHP mentioned elsewhere:
<?php require "menu.html"; ?>
Except that Fragments can have forms, logic and server side code in them (e.g. a login form that swaps itself with the currently logged in user's details ). Am currently in the midst of allowing fragments to postback and update themselves in-situ using AJAX, but I'm lazy
The problem with this analysis is that Silverlight can be used to deliver apps (slow, bloated apps, we're developing one here). That can run as a browser plugin or be "installed" out-of-browser, using sandboxed local storage. This is one feature that the HTML5/WPF divide can't bridge. We're a company that has web and desktop products because we work with institutions that may or may not be operating behind a double evil firewall, Silverlight lets us deliver both with exactly one codebase.
BBC iPlayer has this split too - they have flash web streaming and a desktop product (presumably it shares SOME code as it's Adobe Air based)
My prediction is that Silverlight will die, but WPF will get a browser-plugin, because we're forever asking "can we do this?" and the answer is "Yes in WPF but no in Silverlight". But there will likely be upgrade tools (but hey, anyone remember the VB6 to VB.Net tool!?)
The trick is that while avoiding all spoilers and trailers to keep an eye on the aggregate score on rotten tomatoes, that way you'll get an idea if something's actually any good without any plot points being revealed. Of course, this means waiting a week or so from release before you go and see it, and everyone in the 21st century seems to be impatient with the attention span of a goldfish, so this part might not work for most people
Slashdot Mirror
> The way I look at it, if you don't risk failure, you don't risk success, either
Brilliant. That's gonna be my next sig!
I remember once when my eldest daughter was nearly 2 we were in the park and there was another parent with a boy of roughly the same age. She was running along giggling and looking at the boy and ran straight into the side of a slide, smacking her face on it and then falling backwards to the ground. Naturally the boy's dad was full of concern. My wife and i were rolling around laughing. She got up, dusted herself off and carried on playing. I bet that boy's a wuss.
I've been predicting for a while now that when Linux finally arrives on the desktop no home users will have desktops. Already the recycling sites and web sites and streets around where I live are filling up with unwanted computer desks while everyone migrates to PS3s, iPhones or laptops...
This.
My music spend is rarely on shop-bought CDs, mainly goes on gig tickets. Also, when you are going to see a band live in another country - and wouldn't be travelling there otherwise - do the flights and hotel count?
I agree with your analysis and in my experience your points can all be found in the differences between Halo:CE and 2. The first Halo offers more in terms of all three of your points: The game environment is generally larger and there are more areas to explore (or at least, nooks and crannies if not full blown sections), There's a little non-linearity in certain sections, though not massively so you do get to do a few minor things (like getting 3 lots of marines air-lifted out) in a different order but also in terms of how you "attack" some of the larger scale battles (get a tank, or a warthog, or snipe) and this leads into the final point, there are entire sections of the game (mainly ones involving the flood) that you can charge through at high speed, or take your time to kill as many as possible. The former is more efficient but leads to the feeling that you've missed out.
Even though these three areas (and they do bleed into each other) aren't massively fleshed out in Halo:CE, when you play Halo 2, which feels more firmly on rails, and confines you to a number of set piece battles interspaced between sitting on an elevator/gondola/light-beam-thing/kayak and waiting you realize just what it is you are missing out on.
I think somewhere in my rambling was the point that it's sometimes more subtle than you realize, and that a game doesnt need to be GTA "open" to feel open.
ooh, me, me me!!
richardacre@[slashdot username].co.uk
I honestly believe that the sales guy's brain was in a state of "it costs more, it MUST BE BETTER" and no amount of logic or reasoning would have swayed him. It's a natural human situation to be in in my observation (see also: Man-Made-Climate-Change Sceptics (but the environment is SO MASSIVELY BIG it's impossible for humans to change it!) and all religions ever)
Actually, it's interesting that you mention Soderbergh - he has a great method of working with Hollywood (Nolan seems to be taking this approach too) - where he makes a big blockbuster on behalf of hollywood one year, then because he's made them a bunch of cash they let him make whatever film he wants to make next. A kind of give and take setup, cunning way to work the system IMO
exactly what I was going to post. For comparison I work in software (like most people here, I suspect) and I'm very happy being a developer with no managerial responsibility. Is this "making it" in software or is it mandatory to strive to be the next Linus?
or you could just place your maximum bid as your first bid. And laugh at the idiots who pay more for an item than what it's worth. The key to ebay is patience, you'll win the item you want at a price you want, but it may be the 4th/5th attempt (obviously this doesnt apply to rare items, but it does to everything else)
replace the insides with a capacitor across the data lines...
I use it on two computers, for IMAP access to my own mail server, which also has a webmail interface, oh and I can get to my email from my Android phone client too. Or at least I used to until about three weeks ago when my server died and I decided to bin it. Now my email lives inside my laptop and it feels like the 18th century or something. Must by a new fanless system for server 2.0!
This. I have a friend, she's not a big computer user, but every few days - or weeks - she fires up the laptop to check a few websites, do some emailing and perhaps do some writing. Thing is, it sometimes takes her HOURS to actually get started because in that time all of the software has pushed out new updates, and her bandwidth isn't that high.
Indeed, I always resize my pics to 1024 max before I upload them to facebook anyway, i have the original gargantuan ones right here, or on Picasa
Yeah, there's definitely an autism scale that goes from Vulcan to Empath and I'm closer to the left hand side than the mean population, but not massively so. I personally believe that scales apply to everything and that the human tendency to put things in neat boxes is one we need to leave behind. Dyslexia for example and of course sexuality, I personally reckon I'm about 2% homosexual (specifically 2% Androphile vs 98% Gynophile) - doesn't exactly make me Bi as that label suggests a 50/50 split.
nailed it (I'm also aspergery)
I'm aspergeric, or whatever, or at least I was until I was 27 when I stopped (or at least, heavily regulated) my introspective musings about how every human interaction I'd endured had worked out (I once upset someone in a way that they probably had forgotten about the next day, I worried about it for years!) and started treating humans as a kind of scientific study.
People used to think I was arrogant (presumably because of being super pedantic), a robot (presumably because of my constant un-emotional state) and awkard. I used to suffer from depression and insomnia. I now have friends, a steady job, go out instead of staying in hiding and even get laid occasionally. Inside I'm still the same person but I think if you wear the disguise long enough you start to become the disguise...
I had a different, radical idea. That "cars" ("car" defined as having a non-convertible (seats folded down) goods-bearing area of less than a decent number of square metres so that your Chelsea Tractor does NOT count as a "goods vehicle") have a maximum weight ... AND still have to pass all the safety tests. The maximum weight can then decrease linearly over a few decades to about 600kg - because the power plant won't have to drag as much weight down the road it wont need to do as much work = less power needed = less fuel consumed.
Dead simple, and works in motorsports, such as F1 or Le Mans, where they can crash at 200Mph then walk away.
it could be a modal average, based on the number of fat americans you see, and because they really stand out they stick in your mind. Whilst you forget about the plain looking ones.
I'm sorry but I disagree, your assessment is too broad. I have 23 Facebook friends. (yes, i didn't miss off a digit ~= two dozen). They're all people I know well in real life, some I've known for over two decades. Most live over 150 miles from me. It's great to be able to share holiday, kids and drunken photos, share music/videos/links and generally chat - as well as snoop on or interrupt other people's conversations (with a witty remark!) just like you could if you were all sat in a room actually talking. None of this takes place over email (though it used to > 5 years ago). Facebook is a lot better than email at making you feel "in touch" with people you love and don't get to see as often as you'd like.
Oh, and the only person who's hassled me to Friend them is my brother's Fiancée. I said "no" straight up, made a joke out of it (she's also friends with my ex), and that was that. We send direct messages occasionally in a way that emulates email/chat.
that would be the episode named, oddly enough: "The Game". And how come no one here remembers Robin Lefler's involvement?
I thought he was referring to the Späsmodica
I wrote my own web server, a bastardised (i.e. vastly improved) bootstrapping of ASP.Net. It has what I call Fragments, so you'd just do
<Chan:Fragment runat="server" source="SideMenu" />
Which is equivalent to the PHP mentioned elsewhere:
<?php require "menu.html"; ?>
Except that Fragments can have forms, logic and server side code in them (e.g. a login form that swaps itself with the currently logged in user's details ). Am currently in the midst of allowing fragments to postback and update themselves in-situ using AJAX, but I'm lazy
The problem with this analysis is that Silverlight can be used to deliver apps (slow, bloated apps, we're developing one here). That can run as a browser plugin or be "installed" out-of-browser, using sandboxed local storage. This is one feature that the HTML5/WPF divide can't bridge. We're a company that has web and desktop products because we work with institutions that may or may not be operating behind a double evil firewall, Silverlight lets us deliver both with exactly one codebase.
BBC iPlayer has this split too - they have flash web streaming and a desktop product (presumably it shares SOME code as it's Adobe Air based)
My prediction is that Silverlight will die, but WPF will get a browser-plugin, because we're forever asking "can we do this?" and the answer is "Yes in WPF but no in Silverlight". But there will likely be upgrade tools (but hey, anyone remember the VB6 to VB.Net tool!?)
The trick is that while avoiding all spoilers and trailers to keep an eye on the aggregate score on rotten tomatoes, that way you'll get an idea if something's actually any good without any plot points being revealed. Of course, this means waiting a week or so from release before you go and see it, and everyone in the 21st century seems to be impatient with the attention span of a goldfish, so this part might not work for most people