I agree with not continuuing to make the game "more complex". I think the state of play in Civ 2 or Civ 3 was probably about right. About the only "complexity" I liked was the vehicle system from Alpha Centauri. What I'd want to see, instead, is:
1) "on line" play 2) future advancements (sort of a mix between the future advancements in Civ: Call to Power, and Alpha Centauri) 3) expansion into space... sort of like a cross between Civilization, Alpha Centauri (AC), and Master of Orion (MoO). You start in the stone age, and built up to space flight. Then exploring/conquering worlds is done like Civ/AC, but exploring/conquering the stars is done like MoO. In online play, you could have regions of space become obscured by "ion storms" or something, as the player who controls that space saves their game/etc. (or if space travel from system to system is done via star gates, then those worlds just stop being accessible via star gates until they re-join the online game).
The grand unification of these games would be: Civ, AC, MoO, and Master of Magic (MoM) -- mixing sci-fi and fantasy elements (obviously allowing players to pick sci-fi only games or fantasy only games, if they don't like to mix them). That could evolve into something sort of like a Star Wars level of mix of Space Opera and Magic. Star Gates, Magic Gates, Technologies, Spells, robots, cyborgs, fantasy creatures and monsters, etc.
MoM was like Civilization... only with a magical/fantasy emphasis instead of Civilization's technology emphasis. It also had 2 worlds... the day world, and a sort of "underworld" that you could get to through magic gates.
I'd update it, give it solo, multi-player (LAN, or closed list of players), and online modes (open to anyone on the internet, probably housed in a game company's servers)
and in the online mode, instead having the "underworld", the gates would lead to other online game groups where the overall power levels were comparable (so that the game could, in theory, keep building along, as long as there are other game worlds at a similar level of advancement... and that latter qualification (comparable/similar-level-of-advancement) would keep things relatively playable so that small empires aren't clashing with empires that span 12 worlds).
If a player conquers a world, then they could save and exit the game, which just means that all gates to that world (or group of worlds) close until the player resumes.
Definitely. A full update of Ultimate 1 and/or 2... not sure what type of interface I'd want though. Maybe something like Fallout 2? Though, if they did it as tiles, it might be interesting to see it as an ajax/web based game...
(Ultima 2, with the time gates, jumping around through the past and future of our world, that'd be rather cool)
I would LOVE to see an update of Sim Earth. Especially one where you could model an entire solar system (not just 1 planet, but many planets, planet types, moons, and star types), our entire solar system (not just the Earth, but also the moon, the other planets, etc.), use textured 3D maps from things like Google Maps and Google Earth for the modeling of our solar system, generate 3D terrains and maps from created planets/solar systems, and use it for things like Solar Clocks (like xearth... on steroids).
I've thought about this a lot over the years. I'd DEFINITELY buy this if it had an Ubuntu or Mac version.
It was a version of the old text-graphics "Star Trek" game, on steroids... and with any Star Trek trademark violations removed.
That's what I'd reboot. In fact, I'd probably:
1) combine it with the old Taipan game, so you can focus on economics or combat -- this might make it a 4-games-in-1 reboot: StarFleet/Star Trek, Taipan, and Sundog (which was sort of like Taipan in space, with graphics)
2) graphical front end, possibly 3D (the Sega "Star Trek" motion picture arcade game sort of did that, with wireframe vector graphics, but if you really pay attention, it's very similar to the text game's overall play), but maybe not 3D... maybe a lighter web/ajax oriented game, instead of of high end textured/rendered 3D graphics
3) both solo play, and MMO play in a persistent universe
4) Ability to pick among multiple political/economic factions, and multiple ship types
5) Whether web/ajax, or 3D, it would have to support multiple platforms -- at least Ubuntu and Mac OS X.
A high end 3D graphics version might turn out to be like Eve-Online, though (I haven't played it, but that's the impression that I get -- Eve is Taipan in space, with 3D graphics). For various reasons, I sort of lean toward graphics, but maybe something lower-tech than Eve or typical MMORPG type graphics and interfaces.
I think the last bit of criticism that's going to help them move forward is "You're innovating too much."
I disagree. One of the things I have ALWAYS found to be annoying about Linux based environments, and Linux oriented developers, is the rather immature development cycles, which lead to "upgrade-itis", instead of a more mature development cycle of "upgrade only when something has matured enough to be stable enough for all users". Linux distros have started to mature and become more stable in the last 10 years, but it used to be a COMPLETE crapshoot to upgrade. Things are better, but they're not yet mature -- there's still PLENTY of room for growth on this front.
There still seems to be a mentality of "release X times per year, whether you're ready or not, whether it's useful or not", "release code that isn't ready for prime time, just because it works for some people, and we haven't released recently", and it often seems that there's no real, publicly available, coherent, and user focused (as opposed to developer focused) release road map. That's critical for any Desktop platform, including Desktop focused Linux distros.
"Innovating too much" is exactly what those things spell out to me. Too often, too hastily, too haphazardly. Slow down, be more methodical, be anal retentive about stability and usability*, and have/follow a roadmap that will actually matter to users.
(* usability == user friendly/ergonomic, not has-useful-features/has-utility)
"Actually, for the experts, it's more fun to build the computer themselves and install whatever they feel like."
Actually, for this expert, it's a lot less annoying to buy a computer with the pre-installed OS that I want, and not HAVE to play sysadmin both at home and at work. Thus the reason I only buy system with a flavor of unix pre-installed. (which tends to mean a Mac, or something that runs vendor-supported ubuntu)
With warm fuzzies if it's also available on Ubuntu ARM... and I'm sure eventually they'll make it the Android browser (the webkit browser on Android is not Chrome).
Until then, there's no point in me running it... not just for ideological reasons, but also for practical reasons. Those are the OSes I run, so I can't run it at all until it's available on at least one of them. But, it's already annoying that I get a "firefox-like" browser on Maemo, and an oddball browser on Android. I'm not going to make that worse by throwing another browser into the mix. When I can run it on all of my devices/platforms, then I'll start deciding if I like it in comparison to Firefox.
The problem with Jabber/XMPP is that... it doesn't satisfy the "not used externally" part. Jabber is the basis of GoogleTalk, and several individual IM services.
But, that's a questionable goal of the request anyway. Any one of his coworkers can connect to AIM/Yahoo/GoogleTalk right now. If he doesn't want that happening, he can't just say "we said 'no no bad coworker'" and expect that this makes things all good and happy. If he wants to ensure that coworkers aren't going to connect to external IM services, he needs to block those IM services at the border (firewalls and/or routers).
In my opinion, he should block all IM traffic (Yahoo, AIM, MSN, IRC, ICB, ICQ, XMPP/Jabber, Simple, and the others (look at what pidgin supports, find out what ports those chat/IM services use, block all of them)) at the border, and then require legitimate external users to use a VPN to access the internal Jabber server. If there are remote offices, then either those workers would need to VPN in to the site that hosts the Jabber server... or each site should have its own Jabber server, and then the Jabber servers would all talk to each other via VPN.
That's how I'd set it up. Block every chat/IM protocol/port at the border (and at the border of each remote office). Set up a Jabber server at the central and at each remote office. Link the Jabber servers to each other via VPN/tunnel/etc.. Go from there.
I agree. Excellent ending. And the people who seem to be railing against it can't seem to come up with anything more than "I don't like God" or "I can't deal with not having 100% concrete answers."
Kara - angel who didn't know it until the end, or human resurrected and ascended after serving out the purpose of their resurrection.
The "Head Baltar" and "Head Six" - angels, that's how the "future" Baltar and Six are able to talk to the "past" Baltar and Six. They're not Baltar and Six, they just look that way for purpose of influencing Baltar and Six. When it happened 2000 years earlier, on the original Earth, Anders and Tory say they were approached by their own version of those two beings (only they could see them)... yet, if they had appeared as Baltar and Six back then, they would have recognized Six when they created her, and would have recognized Baltar when Anders got his memory back. Clearly they're not "future Baltar and Six", they're just beings that are presented to Baltar and Six in a particular guise (and we see them in that same guise in the epilogue so that we have continuity of their identities). Probably when they appeared to Anders and Tory, they looked like Tory and Anders.
I sort of like the "they blended in with the natives" story. For one, it's 150,000 years ago... not just around the time at which Mitochondrial Eve lived, but about the point when _modern_ homo sapiens appears on the scene (130k - 150k years ago). The "150,000 years later" wasn't some random number, and it's not just about Hera/Eve, it's about Modern Homo Sapiens vs Archaic Homo Sapiens.
God... maybe, or maybe just an advanced being. The fact that the two "angels" explain it as being "God" doesn't make it so. They're not themselves the absolute being, so we directly don't know what that absolute being is. Their influence on Anders and Tory is probably why the fleshy Cylons (except Caval) believe in a single god. We know it's a being with a complex understanding of time and systems, more complex that our own linear understanding of time and systems (because it's able to sense or cause complex actions to happen far in the future, and seed into things solutions to those problems). Aside from that, we don't really know much about it... and that's almost certainly a good thing (stories that try to "explain god" are typically rather hollow, and/or self-serving).
Which then also carries over to "angels" -- they're advanced beings with a different sense/understanding of time/space/etc. than ours. Divine? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe "God" and the two angels are more like Clarke's view of "Magic" and such. Advanced to the point that we can't distinguish them from being God and Angels, but maybe they're something else. Or maybe, like the heavy influence of Mormon-ism on the original series, they're a Mormon-ish type of advanced being ("As we are now, God once was; as God is now, we may become").
It's also something more palatable to me than the original series invocation of divine beings (the crystal ship beings). But it does so in a way that is open to both the original series being very Mormon, or being much less Mormon about it. By not being heavy handed "this is who God really is", they leave it to individual interpretations or musings. And that's a VERY good thing.
I don't know about being worse than gopher or not, but having worked among numerous network administrators at the time (in 4 different organizations), I don't know ANYONE who was wanting to block http, and certainly not in favor of gopher. I don't know anyone who preferred gopher.
I care MUCH more about the other 2 technologies presented in BttF than time travel:
1) Mr. Fusion... a device that will take a few liters organic waste and generate enough power to power your car like it was running on plutonium? heck yeah!
2) Anti-Gravity... for cars, skate boards, etc.
Those two technologies are FAR more interesting, compelling, and desirable, IMO, than the time travel technology. And, in the current climate, the energy source is probably more compelling than the levitation device.
I have some problems with Android right now. I've been replying to this idea (Android Netbooks) in other places, as it seems everyone is talking about it today:-)
There are certain things I have to "not do" on Android right now, that cause me to switch over to my desktop or my Samsung Q1 Ultra (with Ubuntu UMPC, don't worry, I haven't gone over to the darkside). These are all things I find annoying when I can't do them on my phone, but that I would find to be absolutely necessary on a netbook (or desktop). These are:
1) Google Reader - add/edit tags for an article, add subscriptions, change subscription settings. Also, there are some "UI shortcomings" on the Android version: lack of shortcuts, lack of "total article count" at the top of the article list.
2) Gmail - add/edit filters and labels, "filter messages like this", "send as" one of my other registered email addresses.
3) Google Docs - last I checked, Android doesn't support full read/write of Google Docs. I'm also not sure if it will fully display PDFs, Word, and Excel documents. What I would want is all of that, plus some ability to sync the various Android notes and tasks/to-do lists into some level of Google App (there's a new tasks/todo feature in Gmail or Google Calendar, so that's one option, and then just adding plain text and rich text support to Google Docs would probably handle the rest, along with a sync utility for the Android notepad and todo apps).
4) I haven't been able to get VNC Viewer and SSH (connectbot) to work together. This would be a "novelty" on my phone, but a necessity on a netbook or tablet. Further, on a netbook, I'm going to want to export my display some how (manipulate the netbook from my desktop) -- I do this on my Samsung, for example. But I mainly run the VNC server on my samsung because the software for mirroring the display out to the external VGA port is kind of broken (what it does: want to step down to 800x600 resolution; what it should do: display the 1024x600 screen with letter boxing on the 1024x768 screen).
5) The built-in IM client doesn't allow you to use non-Google Jabber accounts, nor IRC. I would want both of those handled. And I'm not sure the UI is ideal for managing multiple conversations. Further, I would want to be able to log conversations to plain text files on an SD card or something.
6) SyncML client for Calendar data. Funambol gives you SyncML client for contacts, but that doesn't help me with my work calendar server:-)
If those things got handled, I'd be interested in an Android netbook. And that's not a huge/insurmountable list.
Ideally, if they were to put it on a convertible/tablet netbook (like the Fujitsu U820), 7-8.9 screen (has to fit in my Maxpedition Colossus gear bag), at least an 800×480 resolution, at least one SDHC card slot, at least 1 USB Host port (external keyboard/mouse, hopefully OTG support), with an supported internal 3G option (such as a usable PCI-Express Mini card slot, with available antenna), and obviously wifi, I'd buy it. Bonus if it can charge and share its data via a USB client port.
The "year of Linux" thing gets about as boring/delusional/repetitive as the tired old claim of "this is the year that Microsoft (server versions of windows) will finally kill Unix/Linux/etc. in the data center!"
yeah. right. more hot air and attempts to sell articles.
Virus scanning code for my email servers at work? Probably not.
A game I wrote (for publication or private dist)... most likley yes.
I also, once, wrote international customs shipping forms, that would take FoxBase database sales entries and generate the customs forms. The company I was working for was doing this, under contract, for the San Diego offices of... a large japanese entertainment and electronics company. I snuck into each form a "meaningless code" at the bottom of every print out. I said it was a checksum of some backend data, that would change periodically, but that the probably wouldn't ever notice that fact.
It was actually a scramble of my birthday.
I think that's as close to an easter egg as I've ever actually written.
When reading this article via RSS, I couldn't tell if you meant Computer Gaming (or even pen and paper gaming), or Gambling ("The Gaming Industry" usually refers to gambling), or based upon the writing skills of some contributors, maybe even hunting (game == animals).
I had to actually open the article on/. to see that it has a "pcgames" tag to know that it's about computer games. I shouldn't have to do that.
Try to be nice to the RSS subscribers. Be a little more specific in your article summaries.
It merely changes the manner in which we think the universe was created.
Maybe the chaotic waters from which the firmament were drawn were... those other multitudes of string theory possibilities, where our universe the wheat that was sorted from the chaff of inhospitable solutions.
But, even if you say our universe doesn't need a creator, because we're just a consequence of one of the multitude of solutions... you haven't eliminated the creator question, you have merely deferred it up a level. Instead of asking "how did this universe get created, and by whom?", you now have to ask "how did the multiverse get created, and by whom?"
The question is still as valid (no matter which answer you believe is the right one), it just has a different scope. That's all this theory changes.
Slashdot Mirror
"reassuring the world that Microsoft can still turn out a strong, useful operating system."
Wouldn't that imply that they did, at some point, put out a strong, useful operating system?
I agree with not continuuing to make the game "more complex". I think the state of play in Civ 2 or Civ 3 was probably about right. About the only "complexity" I liked was the vehicle system from Alpha Centauri. What I'd want to see, instead, is:
1) "on line" play ... sort of like a cross between Civilization, Alpha Centauri (AC), and Master of Orion (MoO). You start in the stone age, and built up to space flight. Then exploring/conquering worlds is done like Civ/AC, but exploring/conquering the stars is done like MoO. In online play, you could have regions of space become obscured by "ion storms" or something, as the player who controls that space saves their game/etc. (or if space travel from system to system is done via star gates, then those worlds just stop being accessible via star gates until they re-join the online game).
2) future advancements (sort of a mix between the future advancements in Civ: Call to Power, and Alpha Centauri)
3) expansion into space
The grand unification of these games would be:
Civ, AC, MoO, and Master of Magic (MoM) -- mixing sci-fi and fantasy elements (obviously allowing players to pick sci-fi only games or fantasy only games, if they don't like to mix them). That could evolve into something sort of like a Star Wars level of mix of Space Opera and Magic. Star Gates, Magic Gates, Technologies, Spells, robots, cyborgs, fantasy creatures and monsters, etc.
MoM was like Civilization ... only with a magical/fantasy emphasis instead of Civilization's technology emphasis. It also had 2 worlds ... the day world, and a sort of "underworld" that you could get to through magic gates.
I'd update it, give it solo, multi-player (LAN, or closed list of players), and online modes (open to anyone on the internet, probably housed in a game company's servers)
and in the online mode, instead having the "underworld", the gates would lead to other online game groups where the overall power levels were comparable (so that the game could, in theory, keep building along, as long as there are other game worlds at a similar level of advancement ... and that latter qualification (comparable/similar-level-of-advancement) would keep things relatively playable so that small empires aren't clashing with empires that span 12 worlds).
If a player conquers a world, then they could save and exit the game, which just means that all gates to that world (or group of worlds) close until the player resumes.
Definitely. A full update of Ultimate 1 and/or 2 ... not sure what type of interface I'd want though. Maybe something like Fallout 2? Though, if they did it as tiles, it might be interesting to see it as an ajax/web based game...
(Ultima 2, with the time gates, jumping around through the past and future of our world, that'd be rather cool)
I would LOVE to see an update of Sim Earth. Especially one where you could model an entire solar system (not just 1 planet, but many planets, planet types, moons, and star types), our entire solar system (not just the Earth, but also the moon, the other planets, etc.), use textured 3D maps from things like Google Maps and Google Earth for the modeling of our solar system, generate 3D terrains and maps from created planets/solar systems, and use it for things like Solar Clocks (like xearth ... on steroids).
I've thought about this a lot over the years. I'd DEFINITELY buy this if it had an Ubuntu or Mac version.
It was a version of the old text-graphics "Star Trek" game, on steroids ... and with any Star Trek trademark violations removed.
That's what I'd reboot. In fact, I'd probably:
1) combine it with the old Taipan game, so you can focus on economics or combat -- this might make it a 4-games-in-1 reboot: StarFleet/Star Trek, Taipan, and Sundog (which was sort of like Taipan in space, with graphics)
2) graphical front end, possibly 3D (the Sega "Star Trek" motion picture arcade game sort of did that, with wireframe vector graphics, but if you really pay attention, it's very similar to the text game's overall play), but maybe not 3D ... maybe a lighter web/ajax oriented game, instead of of high end textured/rendered 3D graphics
3) both solo play, and MMO play in a persistent universe
4) Ability to pick among multiple political/economic factions, and multiple ship types
5) Whether web/ajax, or 3D, it would have to support multiple platforms -- at least Ubuntu and Mac OS X.
A high end 3D graphics version might turn out to be like Eve-Online, though (I haven't played it, but that's the impression that I get -- Eve is Taipan in space, with 3D graphics). For various reasons, I sort of lean toward graphics, but maybe something lower-tech than Eve or typical MMORPG type graphics and interfaces.
I think the last bit of criticism that's going to help them move forward is "You're innovating too much."
I disagree. One of the things I have ALWAYS found to be annoying about Linux based environments, and Linux oriented developers, is the rather immature development cycles, which lead to "upgrade-itis", instead of a more mature development cycle of "upgrade only when something has matured enough to be stable enough for all users". Linux distros have started to mature and become more stable in the last 10 years, but it used to be a COMPLETE crapshoot to upgrade. Things are better, but they're not yet mature -- there's still PLENTY of room for growth on this front.
There still seems to be a mentality of "release X times per year, whether you're ready or not, whether it's useful or not", "release code that isn't ready for prime time, just because it works for some people, and we haven't released recently", and it often seems that there's no real, publicly available, coherent, and user focused (as opposed to developer focused) release road map. That's critical for any Desktop platform, including Desktop focused Linux distros.
"Innovating too much" is exactly what those things spell out to me. Too often, too hastily, too haphazardly. Slow down, be more methodical, be anal retentive about stability and usability*, and have/follow a roadmap that will actually matter to users.
(* usability == user friendly/ergonomic, not has-useful-features/has-utility)
"Actually, for the experts, it's more fun to build the computer themselves and install whatever they feel like."
Actually, for this expert, it's a lot less annoying to buy a computer with the pre-installed OS that I want, and not HAVE to play sysadmin both at home and at work. Thus the reason I only buy system with a flavor of unix pre-installed. (which tends to mean a Mac, or something that runs vendor-supported ubuntu)
I'll use Chrome when it's available on _all_ of:
Mac OS X
Ubuntu x86
Maemo/Mer
With warm fuzzies if it's also available on Ubuntu ARM ... and I'm sure eventually they'll make it the Android browser (the webkit browser on Android is not Chrome).
Until then, there's no point in me running it ... not just for ideological reasons, but also for practical reasons. Those are the OSes I run, so I can't run it at all until it's available on at least one of them. But, it's already annoying that I get a "firefox-like" browser on Maemo, and an oddball browser on Android. I'm not going to make that worse by throwing another browser into the mix. When I can run it on all of my devices/platforms, then I'll start deciding if I like it in comparison to Firefox.
Me too. Privoxy is da bomb.
I just wish they were going to come out with an AT&T version...
I reinstalled FreeBSD over it.
Sounds a little bit (not a lot, but sort of) like they're trying to re-invent the wheel that was already invented in Project Xanadu ...
I'm legally blind in one eye (ambliopic). I hate 3D movies.
Luckily, as some 3D movies get released for TV and VHS/DVD, they get 2D-ified... hopefully we'll see the same here.
The problem with Jabber/XMPP is that ... it doesn't satisfy the "not used externally" part. Jabber is the basis of GoogleTalk, and several individual IM services.
But, that's a questionable goal of the request anyway. Any one of his coworkers can connect to AIM/Yahoo/GoogleTalk right now. If he doesn't want that happening, he can't just say "we said 'no no bad coworker'" and expect that this makes things all good and happy. If he wants to ensure that coworkers aren't going to connect to external IM services, he needs to block those IM services at the border (firewalls and/or routers).
In my opinion, he should block all IM traffic (Yahoo, AIM, MSN, IRC, ICB, ICQ, XMPP/Jabber, Simple, and the others (look at what pidgin supports, find out what ports those chat/IM services use, block all of them)) at the border, and then require legitimate external users to use a VPN to access the internal Jabber server. If there are remote offices, then either those workers would need to VPN in to the site that hosts the Jabber server ... or each site should have its own Jabber server, and then the Jabber servers would all talk to each other via VPN.
That's how I'd set it up. Block every chat/IM protocol/port at the border (and at the border of each remote office). Set up a Jabber server at the central and at each remote office. Link the Jabber servers to each other via VPN/tunnel/etc.. Go from there.
I agree. Excellent ending. And the people who seem to be railing against it can't seem to come up with anything more than "I don't like God" or "I can't deal with not having 100% concrete answers."
Kara - angel who didn't know it until the end, or human resurrected and ascended after serving out the purpose of their resurrection.
The "Head Baltar" and "Head Six" - angels, that's how the "future" Baltar and Six are able to talk to the "past" Baltar and Six. They're not Baltar and Six, they just look that way for purpose of influencing Baltar and Six. When it happened 2000 years earlier, on the original Earth, Anders and Tory say they were approached by their own version of those two beings (only they could see them)... yet, if they had appeared as Baltar and Six back then, they would have recognized Six when they created her, and would have recognized Baltar when Anders got his memory back. Clearly they're not "future Baltar and Six", they're just beings that are presented to Baltar and Six in a particular guise (and we see them in that same guise in the epilogue so that we have continuity of their identities). Probably when they appeared to Anders and Tory, they looked like Tory and Anders.
I sort of like the "they blended in with the natives" story. For one, it's 150,000 years ago ... not just around the time at which Mitochondrial Eve lived, but about the point when _modern_ homo sapiens appears on the scene (130k - 150k years ago). The "150,000 years later" wasn't some random number, and it's not just about Hera/Eve, it's about Modern Homo Sapiens vs Archaic Homo Sapiens.
God ... maybe, or maybe just an advanced being. The fact that the two "angels" explain it as being "God" doesn't make it so. They're not themselves the absolute being, so we directly don't know what that absolute being is. Their influence on Anders and Tory is probably why the fleshy Cylons (except Caval) believe in a single god. We know it's a being with a complex understanding of time and systems, more complex that our own linear understanding of time and systems (because it's able to sense or cause complex actions to happen far in the future, and seed into things solutions to those problems). Aside from that, we don't really know much about it ... and that's almost certainly a good thing (stories that try to "explain god" are typically rather hollow, and/or self-serving).
Which then also carries over to "angels" -- they're advanced beings with a different sense/understanding of time/space/etc. than ours. Divine? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe "God" and the two angels are more like Clarke's view of "Magic" and such. Advanced to the point that we can't distinguish them from being God and Angels, but maybe they're something else. Or maybe, like the heavy influence of Mormon-ism on the original series, they're a Mormon-ish type of advanced being ("As we are now, God once was; as God is now, we may become").
It's also something more palatable to me than the original series invocation of divine beings (the crystal ship beings). But it does so in a way that is open to both the original series being very Mormon, or being much less Mormon about it. By not being heavy handed "this is who God really is", they leave it to individual interpretations or musings. And that's a VERY good thing.
I don't know about being worse than gopher or not, but having worked among numerous network administrators at the time (in 4 different organizations), I don't know ANYONE who was wanting to block http, and certainly not in favor of gopher. I don't know anyone who preferred gopher.
Those who ignore history ... are doomed to post the same damn topics on /. every 6 months.
I care MUCH more about the other 2 technologies presented in BttF than time travel:
1) Mr. Fusion ... a device that will take a few liters organic waste and generate enough power to power your car like it was running on plutonium? heck yeah!
2) Anti-Gravity ... for cars, skate boards, etc.
Those two technologies are FAR more interesting, compelling, and desirable, IMO, than the time travel technology. And, in the current climate, the energy source is probably more compelling than the levitation device.
I have some problems with Android right now. I've been replying to this idea (Android Netbooks) in other places, as it seems everyone is talking about it today :-)
There are certain things I have to "not do" on Android right now, that cause me to switch over to my desktop or my Samsung Q1 Ultra (with Ubuntu UMPC, don't worry, I haven't gone over to the darkside). These are all things I find annoying when I can't do them on my phone, but that I would find to be absolutely necessary on a netbook (or desktop). These are:
1) Google Reader - add/edit tags for an article, add subscriptions, change subscription settings. Also, there are some "UI shortcomings" on the Android version: lack of shortcuts, lack of "total article count" at the top of the article list.
2) Gmail - add/edit filters and labels, "filter messages like this", "send as" one of my other registered email addresses.
3) Google Docs - last I checked, Android doesn't support full read/write of Google Docs. I'm also not sure if it will fully display PDFs, Word, and Excel documents. What I would want is all of that, plus some ability to sync the various Android notes and tasks/to-do lists into some level of Google App (there's a new tasks/todo feature in Gmail or Google Calendar, so that's one option, and then just adding plain text and rich text support to Google Docs would probably handle the rest, along with a sync utility for the Android notepad and todo apps).
4) I haven't been able to get VNC Viewer and SSH (connectbot) to work together. This would be a "novelty" on my phone, but a necessity on a netbook or tablet. Further, on a netbook, I'm going to want to export my display some how (manipulate the netbook from my desktop) -- I do this on my Samsung, for example. But I mainly run the VNC server on my samsung because the software for mirroring the display out to the external VGA port is kind of broken (what it does: want to step down to 800x600 resolution; what it should do: display the 1024x600 screen with letter boxing on the 1024x768 screen).
5) The built-in IM client doesn't allow you to use non-Google Jabber accounts, nor IRC. I would want both of those handled. And I'm not sure the UI is ideal for managing multiple conversations. Further, I would want to be able to log conversations to plain text files on an SD card or something.
6) SyncML client for Calendar data. Funambol gives you SyncML client for contacts, but that doesn't help me with my work calendar server :-)
If those things got handled, I'd be interested in an Android netbook. And that's not a huge/insurmountable list.
Ideally, if they were to put it on a convertible/tablet netbook (like the Fujitsu U820), 7-8.9 screen (has to fit in my Maxpedition Colossus gear bag), at least an 800×480 resolution, at least one SDHC card slot, at least 1 USB Host port (external keyboard/mouse, hopefully OTG support), with an supported internal 3G option (such as a usable PCI-Express Mini card slot, with available antenna), and obviously wifi, I'd buy it. Bonus if it can charge and share its data via a USB client port.
The "year of Linux" thing gets about as boring/delusional/repetitive as the tired old claim of "this is the year that Microsoft (server versions of windows) will finally kill Unix/Linux/etc. in the data center!"
yeah. right. more hot air and attempts to sell articles.
Depends on the app and the target audience.
Virus scanning code for my email servers at work? Probably not.
A game I wrote (for publication or private dist)... most likley yes.
I also, once, wrote international customs shipping forms, that would take FoxBase database sales entries and generate the customs forms. The company I was working for was doing this, under contract, for the San Diego offices of ... a large japanese entertainment and electronics company. I snuck into each form a "meaningless code" at the bottom of every print out. I said it was a checksum of some backend data, that would change periodically, but that the probably wouldn't ever notice that fact.
It was actually a scramble of my birthday.
I think that's as close to an easter egg as I've ever actually written.
When reading this article via RSS, I couldn't tell if you meant Computer Gaming (or even pen and paper gaming), or Gambling ("The Gaming Industry" usually refers to gambling), or based upon the writing skills of some contributors, maybe even hunting (game == animals).
I had to actually open the article on /. to see that it has a "pcgames" tag to know that it's about computer games. I shouldn't have to do that.
Try to be nice to the RSS subscribers. Be a little more specific in your article summaries.
It merely changes the manner in which we think the universe was created.
Maybe the chaotic waters from which the firmament were drawn were... those other multitudes of string theory possibilities, where our universe the wheat that was sorted from the chaff of inhospitable solutions.
But, even if you say our universe doesn't need a creator, because we're just a consequence of one of the multitude of solutions... you haven't eliminated the creator question, you have merely deferred it up a level. Instead of asking "how did this universe get created, and by whom?", you now have to ask "how did the multiverse get created, and by whom?"
The question is still as valid (no matter which answer you believe is the right one), it just has a different scope. That's all this theory changes.
Way underpowered.
Pay $100-$200 more and get an N810 or a Pandora.
But even at $180, this one is over priced.