A few years ago, the game industry had (for the time) much better graphics than independant companies would use. Grand Theft Auto, however, still made its rounds. Large game companies are good at making games that are good logical progressions from other games on the market, but small game companies innovate. It's true that Rockstar did wind up selling the Grand Theft Auto name to a larger company, but they now have resources to make other games. Just as when, according to the article,
it was all geeks and nerds, who had long hair, ate pizza and drank Coke
there is not a huge market for the long-haired developers. Instead, there is a slightly smaller crows watching them, but independant games still have the ability to spread like wildfire. It's a wonderful thing when the geeks and nerds can write games, get it seen by a few hundred people through an independant gaming site, and if it's good enough, have them tell their friends and so on. I think this is much better than getting all of the attention of the thousand-person video-game crowd of the yester-year.
samhalliday, sorry about not being entirely clear about what my point is. The linux machines I use are Redhat, and I *think* it's version 7.2, but they're not my systems so I'm not positive. The fonts are *not* anti-aliased in KDE. It makes it a very ugly system to use. I don't know why anti-aliased fonts are not utilized in this system. When people glance at the systems, they immediately think they're on the same scale as Windows 3.1, not brand spankin new P4s. IMHO, it makes students that don't know what they are less likely to want to use them.
The one reason that people walk by a Linux system and immediately think it's arcane is typically the use of anti-aliased fonts. People feel much more comfortable learning systems that look pretty. After all, people never bought Windows because it was stable (not that I'm saying this is the only reason or anything, but it certainly helps...).
Wow! 8.5 Million copies! Image that! That makes me want to run my car through the glass wall in the video game store, steal the game, shoot some random person and bust out my flamethrower or bazooka to take out the cops when they come by. Megapoints here we come!
Of course, because this will be the first chipset to fail in the marketplace because computers are already fast enough for businesses, and gamers already have overkill. The first market failure is always an important landmark.
I've known about this service for quite a while, and I figure that it's just for people without a lot of book space. I'd much rather have a paper copy of the book than switch between screens on the computer. Besides that, books last forever. Online access to a book for $1.33 may be nice your first time through it, but what if I drop that book from my Safari shelf after a few months and want to take one more look at that sample code? Besides that, I probably wouldn't go through a technical book every two months, and the money for a subscription to the 10 book plan would buy me a paper book every two months. If I want an online reference, I will look for official documentation online. If I want a good walk through, I will buy an O'Reilly book on paper instead of switching screens.
Universities are for teaching students, and smaller universities don't have the resources to track down everyone who shares files accross a network. Larger universities don't have the resources because they're using their extra funds for research, which is far more valuable than cracking down on copyright law violations, especially from cracking down on the population that can't afford the copyrighted products in the first place.
As a college student, I've probably gotten about 20 MP3s through filesharing services, bought three CDs for $50, and three DVDs for $60. All of those purchases were made my freshman year, when I thought my money would go far. It is also worth noting that I downloaded the MP3s from two out of the three CDs before I made the purchase. Since then, I haven't had money to purchase these items, and I don't think that my filesharing would do anything to discourage me from purchasing CDs, because I don't have the money to make the purchases in the first place.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
on
Thin, Flat LEDs
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Perhaps this technology could also be used in computer displays? At this point, the backlight behind a flat screen display makes up for most of the bulk. The Apple 23 inch display is something like 8 inches thick where the the backlight is. This technology could be used to create flat panel displays that are even thinner than the ones we have now by providing a bright, flat backlight.
In 1993, programming was done in C and scripting was one in.bat files or shell scripts. It would be fine, even good to descriminate between scripters and programmers in that environment. Then HTML came along, which was more of the same thing. Any old joe can write HTML, but real programmers use C++.
In 2003, however, the difference between scripting languages and programming languages is not so clear cut. C can be used to script the CGI that holds up a simple website, and perl can be used for writing programs.
Is Java a scripting language? It has constraints similar to that of any other programming language, but technically runs on top of a virtual machine and is thus a scripting language. Scripting languages will continue to become more powerful and more difficult to use, and this will further blur the line. With perl even gaining the ability to be a compiled language, it's often hard to tell a programming language from a scripting language.
In this way, how can you really look down on a scripter because of the choice of programming language when C and perl are almost interchangeable for many tasks?
"Every year, we're just getting the computer to be a better and better tool,"[Gates] said
Right. Microsoft steals technology from Apple, buys out companies who have become the standard in their industry, and drives the rest out of their market by bundling a bad copy of their software with Windows. They tout badly integrated features instead of making a clean program. Microsoft are the innovators: they always come up with a new way to grab market share without pushing the envelope.
Of course this will do more than free dialup access. This is essentially the broadband equivalent. No longer will low income families be tieing up their phone lines because for slow access to the internet. This evens the playing field: now everyone (in Boston, anyways) has equal access to information.
Being that more websites are being built for high bandwidth users, this will truly allow equal access to information.
Wow, and for a minute there I thought "Maxis" had something to do with what women wear a few days a month. After reading a post further down, I realized you weren't talking about making a maxi pad wet with coffee...
Re:Extending the lifespan of the 68000
on
Real PDA Wristwatch
·
· Score: 4, Funny
There are some inherent problems with this solution. Screen size is an issue, ie. is there even enough space to display a full name on one line? How about their address and phone number?
Also, you had better hope there's a smart keylock implemented so you aren't walking around erasing all of your files without realizing it (damn, sure is crowded on these New York subways...)
Remember the February a while back that Microsoft decided to only fix bugs that month? You'd figure that they would have decided then that the big bang theory of programming (code the program, compile & test when you're done) is not the way to go.
In the next few weeks, nothing will happen as the enterprise customers get their fixes first, then in a month or so the fixes will slowly trickle down into the end users where a small percentage of users will download them. The fixes will, of course, be un-packaged and come out every day. Then, Microsoft will realize this isn't helping capital and go back to plan A.
Television (don't forget QVC and those ads for mix CDs like "NOW" you see every day) and traditional mail order methods still move products than internet sales, but the combined numbers are finally large enough to start taxing the entire market. After all, the internet is nothing but a cheap way to display catalogs and an altenate method of taking phone calls or opening mail order slips.
As much bad news as it is for this tech-savvy Slashdot crowd, I think the states are doing the right thing in taxing mail order sales.
Slashdot Mirror
A few years ago, the game industry had (for the time) much better graphics than independant companies would use. Grand Theft Auto, however, still made its rounds. Large game companies are good at making games that are good logical progressions from other games on the market, but small game companies innovate. It's true that Rockstar did wind up selling the Grand Theft Auto name to a larger company, but they now have resources to make other games. Just as when, according to the article,
it was all geeks and nerds, who had long hair, ate pizza and drank Coke
there is not a huge market for the long-haired developers. Instead, there is a slightly smaller crows watching them, but independant games still have the ability to spread like wildfire. It's a wonderful thing when the geeks and nerds can write games, get it seen by a few hundred people through an independant gaming site, and if it's good enough, have them tell their friends and so on. I think this is much better than getting all of the attention of the thousand-person video-game crowd of the yester-year.
samhalliday, sorry about not being entirely clear about what my point is. The linux machines I use are Redhat, and I *think* it's version 7.2, but they're not my systems so I'm not positive. The fonts are *not* anti-aliased in KDE. It makes it a very ugly system to use. I don't know why anti-aliased fonts are not utilized in this system. When people glance at the systems, they immediately think they're on the same scale as Windows 3.1, not brand spankin new P4s. IMHO, it makes students that don't know what they are less likely to want to use them.
The one reason that people walk by a Linux system and immediately think it's arcane is typically the use of anti-aliased fonts. People feel much more comfortable learning systems that look pretty. After all, people never bought Windows because it was stable (not that I'm saying this is the only reason or anything, but it certainly helps ...).
Wow! 8.5 Million copies! Image that! That makes me want to run my car through the glass wall in the video game store, steal the game, shoot some random person and bust out my flamethrower or bazooka to take out the cops when they come by. Megapoints here we come!
Intel's most important chipset in nearly a decade
Of course, because this will be the first chipset to fail in the marketplace because computers are already fast enough for businesses, and gamers already have overkill. The first market failure is always an important landmark.
I've known about this service for quite a while, and I figure that it's just for people without a lot of book space. I'd much rather have a paper copy of the book than switch between screens on the computer. Besides that, books last forever. Online access to a book for $1.33 may be nice your first time through it, but what if I drop that book from my Safari shelf after a few months and want to take one more look at that sample code? Besides that, I probably wouldn't go through a technical book every two months, and the money for a subscription to the 10 book plan would buy me a paper book every two months. If I want an online reference, I will look for official documentation online. If I want a good walk through, I will buy an O'Reilly book on paper instead of switching screens.
Universities are for teaching students, and smaller universities don't have the resources to track down everyone who shares files accross a network. Larger universities don't have the resources because they're using their extra funds for research, which is far more valuable than cracking down on copyright law violations, especially from cracking down on the population that can't afford the copyrighted products in the first place.
As a college student, I've probably gotten about 20 MP3s through filesharing services, bought three CDs for $50, and three DVDs for $60. All of those purchases were made my freshman year, when I thought my money would go far. It is also worth noting that I downloaded the MP3s from two out of the three CDs before I made the purchase. Since then, I haven't had money to purchase these items, and I don't think that my filesharing would do anything to discourage me from purchasing CDs, because I don't have the money to make the purchases in the first place.
Perhaps this technology could also be used in computer displays? At this point, the backlight behind a flat screen display makes up for most of the bulk. The Apple 23 inch display is something like 8 inches thick where the the backlight is. This technology could be used to create flat panel displays that are even thinner than the ones we have now by providing a bright, flat backlight.
Person1: What did you do with my laptop? Those things don't just grow legs and walk away!
...
Person2: Uhm, well, uhh, this one did
In 1993, programming was done in C and scripting was one in .bat files or shell scripts. It would be fine, even good to descriminate between scripters and programmers in that environment. Then HTML came along, which was more of the same thing. Any old joe can write HTML, but real programmers use C++.
In 2003, however, the difference between scripting languages and programming languages is not so clear cut. C can be used to script the CGI that holds up a simple website, and perl can be used for writing programs.
Is Java a scripting language? It has constraints similar to that of any other programming language, but technically runs on top of a virtual machine and is thus a scripting language. Scripting languages will continue to become more powerful and more difficult to use, and this will further blur the line. With perl even gaining the ability to be a compiled language, it's often hard to tell a programming language from a scripting language.
In this way, how can you really look down on a scripter because of the choice of programming language when C and perl are almost interchangeable for many tasks?
"Every year, we're just getting the computer to be a better and better tool,"[Gates] said
Right. Microsoft steals technology from Apple, buys out companies who have become the standard in their industry, and drives the rest out of their market by bundling a bad copy of their software with Windows. They tout badly integrated features instead of making a clean program. Microsoft are the innovators: they always come up with a new way to grab market share without pushing the envelope.
Humor for Geeks, Stuff that Doesn't Matter
Of course this will do more than free dialup access. This is essentially the broadband equivalent. No longer will low income families be tieing up their phone lines because for slow access to the internet. This evens the playing field: now everyone (in Boston, anyways) has equal access to information.
Being that more websites are being built for high bandwidth users, this will truly allow equal access to information.
News for Geeks, Stuff that Doesn't Matter
"The network is the computer" -- Sun Microsystems
"The programming language is the computer" -- Matthew Flat
Am I the only one who thinks this is funny?
Wow, and for a minute there I thought "Maxis" had something to do with what women wear a few days a month. After reading a post further down, I realized you weren't talking about making a maxi pad wet with coffee ...
ARM? I thought it was a WRIST architecture!
There are some inherent problems with this solution. Screen size is an issue, ie. is there even enough space to display a full name on one line? How about their address and phone number?
...)
Also, you had better hope there's a smart keylock implemented so you aren't walking around erasing all of your files without realizing it (damn, sure is crowded on these New York subways
Remember the February a while back that Microsoft decided to only fix bugs that month? You'd figure that they would have decided then that the big bang theory of programming (code the program, compile & test when you're done) is not the way to go.
In the next few weeks, nothing will happen as the enterprise customers get their fixes first, then in a month or so the fixes will slowly trickle down into the end users where a small percentage of users will download them. The fixes will, of course, be un-packaged and come out every day. Then, Microsoft will realize this isn't helping capital and go back to plan A.
Television (don't forget QVC and those ads for mix CDs like "NOW" you see every day) and traditional mail order methods still move products than internet sales, but the combined numbers are finally large enough to start taxing the entire market. After all, the internet is nothing but a cheap way to display catalogs and an altenate method of taking phone calls or opening mail order slips.
As much bad news as it is for this tech-savvy Slashdot crowd, I think the states are doing the right thing in taxing mail order sales.