It is good user interface design to make things very simple for novice users. Hence GUIs, icons, etc. etc. Users like to be able to sit down on some new bit of software and instantly be able to do most of what that program does.
However, good user interface design also entails giving power users the ability to do the same common tasks either from the keyboard or from some other shortcut, making them even more productive.
No one is talking about replacing GUIs and icons. They are providing power users more flexibility.
Of course you could make a WiiMote for anything you want. It wouldn't make a difference though. The reason that the wii is successful is that *everyone* who has a wii also has the WiiMote and sensor bar.
Everyone.
Lets say EA comes out with a cool game that requires the WiiMote and sensor bar. They would obviously release it for the Wii - however, they have the option of creating a third party peripheral addon for the 360 and sell the game+peripheral. This means that anyone wanting that game on the 360 would need to buy that extra "controller" just for the one game. (A WiiMote costs $40, so figure the game+remote would cost $100 total) That is a lot. Plus there would be no unified way for other games on the 360 to use that fake "WiiMote".
Think of it like the dance pads that people have. There are very few games that *require* either of these. This is because so few people actually have them that it doesn't make sense to develop for it. If every 360 or Wii came with one, you would see a lot more innovative uses for that input device.
There is nothing technologically that microsoft can't do with the 360 that Nintendo did with the Wii - there is just stuff that they DIDN'T do. And since every 360 owner doesn't have the imaginary "WiiMote360", no one is going to really develop games that use it.
He is assuming that all the consoles will be essentially the same, just by different brands.
Which, essentially, is true. Up until now at least. The Wii and the DS both have completely different input methods, which makes entire genres of games available which weren't available for other systems.
As long as new systems are not just "the same but FASTER", this prediction won't come true.
Re:I'm cynical
on
Plasma or LCD?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I had a plasma for 4 days.
On day 3 I watched an inning of baseball. Turned off the TV. Went to the store.
When I came back I could still see the score. (The red sox were winning). I was very angry.
I know that. They're like banks - banks "have" your money, but don't have EVERYONE's money on hand at any time. If everyone tried to take what is "theirs" at once, the banks would collapse (great depression style-y).
Thats not to say that I don't "have" my money in a bank. If I go to the bank, I can get my money. Just like if someone sends me 200 ten MB emails, I can get them without a problem. Therefore, I "have" 2.5gb.
Why the 500k limit? I have 2.5gb in my gmail, but I can only upload a small word document.
Anyone know why this is there?
I would start recommending this to people if they could actually use it in the real world, but word documents get pretty big. It happens. They should be able to deal with it.
With the DRM, poorer quality, and extras missing, you actually get much less than if you bought the DVD. Therefore it should cost much less. It is as simple as that.
Who would pay the same price (or near it) for less features?
I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm just saying that the general population doesn't understand what a digital signal REALLY means.
If you go to Best Buy, they sell HDMI cables for $60, $100 or $150 for premium. It is DIGITAL. Getting gold plated connectors on your cable isn't going to make a bit of difference.
The same misconception was being applied to the wireless signal by the parent poster. Of course the data still needs to get there - and it needs to get there reliably.
My TV actually had a setting where you could turn on or off "Instant On". If you had that setting on, the bigger (and louder) fan would stay on for 15 minutes after turning it off.
It was simply poor engineering. The TV had a standby power consumption of 36W (maybe only 32W - I forget). They simply never powered down some parts of it that had to be kept cool, so a fan was required.
DLPs require fans to keep the bulb cool. This can produce unreasonable noise while trying to watch something.
I had a Toshiba 46" DLP a couple months ago with two sets of fans in it. One was on when the TV was on, which was very loud. You had to run the TV way up just to make sure you could understand everything.
The other was on whenever the TV was plugged in, even when it was "off". You could really hear it across the room. (They claimed it was to "keep the bulb cool". To which I asked "Can I unplug my TV?" "Yes" "So then why does the fan need to be running???")
Quiet fans are something that a lot of manufacturers don't really pay attention to. (I know Toshiba didn't) Even if fans start out quiet, they often get louder as they age.
(Toshiba claimed the fans were "silent", and tried to fix it. Naturally they broke the TV more when attempting to fix it, so they authorized a refund and I bought a Samsung LCD and love it)
Anyway, my LCD is actually "silent", and I love it. Unless DLPs become fan-less I'll never buy one again.
Actually, according to IMDB he got $2 million for "The Long Kiss Goodnight" (which was the record at the time)
The point I was trying to make is that I think of it more like buying a finished work of art vs. commissioning a work of art.
And as far as "Spec scripts" never happening - that may be true for most people. But established writers with contacts do an ok job of it. My dad was at SNL and got a spec script to a few contacts through there. It was bought, and from that point on he worked for 20 years or so in the traditional sense.
I haven't asked him about this, but I remember at least a couple times when he was hired to "rewrite" a script that was bought on spec. (Where basically the studio liked the idea, and wanted to pursue it but thought the actual writing was horrible)
Selling on spec *does* happen. It's hard, but it happens. It helps if you already have contacts.
I didn't really read the article, I was just commenting to the Parent. It sounds very implausible for a whole bunch of reasons.
Typically, there are two ways of selling a screenplay.
You described way #1. You pitch an idea and they work out some sort of deal for your idea.
Way #2 is called writing it on "spec". That involves actually writing the full screenplay without having a deal in place, and then shopping it around to studios to see if anyone wants to buy it. Obviously this way is considerably more risky.
The difference is in the pay. Way #1 pays well, but not NEARLY as well as way #2 pays. There is a huge risk to studios in way #1, and in way #2, they KNOW what they are getting. Plus, if you can get two studios interested, you can get them into a bidding war. (I believe "The Long Kiss Goodnight" sold for about $4 million in this situation)
Bottom line: I can't imagine a situation where any studio would offer, or even mention $2 million without having script in hand.
I agree with you! Apparently I am poor at explaining my side of things.
My *sole* point was:
If a guy IMs a 13 year old and says "Hey i am 13 here is a pic of me" and then molests her - he gets in trouble and no one blames AIM
Like the post I responded to, if a guy could pretend to be 13 and hang out at malls (not possible, but whatever), and he molested a 13 year old - the mall wouldn't be held accountable
But if a guy makes a profile on MySpace and says, in his profile that he is 13 and finds a 13 year old and molests her - suddenly MySpace "should" have verified his age.
I'm not saying it is right, and this stupid example was only in response to the parent post.
Yes, if you assume that the mall gives you the opportunity to lie about your age, your sex, your face...
He was saying that because MySpace allows people to enter their age/sex/face, MySpace should be held more responsible than a mall.
People don't hold AIM accountable for all the crazy stuff that goes on there. Why is this? Is it because AIM doesn't have "age/sex/face" fields? It is clearly a free-for-all.
My point was that since AIM has less (almost no) "information" about you, they somehow are less responsible, yet MySpace gives you a forum to write about yourself and is now in the position where they are expected to do a background check on every member.
Yeah, but MySpace is no less safe than meeting in a chat room or on AIM - it's just that MySpace gives the users the opportunity to fill out an age field. On AIM, he would have had to lie himself. I don't see why that distiction would cause MySpace to have more responsibility than a normal chat room.
Because other people that have the same disease have died during pregnancy. Some live, some die. The ones that live often have problems the rest of their lives.
I'm just saying - if God is okay with spontaneous abortions, who are you to supercede him and say that every embryo's life is important?
And I know this argument can be used in reverse... "Why can't we give people cancer?" etc.
I also mean no disrespect - I (unlike many people I know) know that there are two sides to this argument and everyone feels very strong about this.
I am often distressed at the people I see protesting in front of planned parenthood. I understand they mean well, but the situation is often very complicated. I know someone who has a rare disease, where the pill and pregnancies are EXTREMELY dangerous. (Either could kill her) Needless to say, she is very pro-choice. And I agree with her. It'd be nice to say "All babies should live", but reality isn't that simple.
As a side note, and as a potentially good or bad analogy (I've been known to make very poor analogies)...
I consider a pregnancy like baking a cake. It takes a couple of ingredients. You mix them together, put it in an oven for a while. When you are done you have a cake.
At some point it turns into a cake. It is certainly a cake after it comes out of the oven. 5 minutes before it comes out, it is also clearly a cake (just not as good of one, but no one would mistake it for anything but a cake). However, just placing the ingredients in a bowl would certainly not constitute a cake.
Then how do you explain that a considerable number of pregnancies end in "spontaneous abortions"? A great deal of perfectly viable embryos just don't survive.
According to the second site there, only 10-15% of preganncies "spontanteous abort", "Ninety percent of all such abortions are due to rejection of a maldeveloped embryo or fetus".
That means 1%-2% of healthy babies are naturally aborted for no reason.
If God considered every embryo that important, and I'm assuming you think this to be more or less under his control, he would make sure that the viable embryoes lived.
I don't believe in God, but I respect people that do. The problem I have with this situation is that people like you are attempting to stop my friends and family members from getting the treatment that could be possible.
I'm not saying an embryo isn't living. I'm saying I don't consider it an equal to a born child. At some point during a pregnancy it becomes a "person". I can't answer when I believe that moment is. I *do* believe it is well after conception, and well before birth.
If one of your family members is ever afflicted by a debilitating disease that could be aided by stem cells, I want you to look them in their eyes and tell them: "Hey, if I mix semen with an egg I could potentially save your life... But unfortunately when semen gets mixed with an egg an embryo is formed which, under proper circumstances, could turn into a person. Their rights have to be protected too, so I guess you have to die".
Slashdot Mirror
They had 8 groups of people all make a game each in 36 hours.
Impressive still, but not really news.
It is good user interface design to make things very simple for novice users. Hence GUIs, icons, etc. etc. Users like to be able to sit down on some new bit of software and instantly be able to do most of what that program does.
However, good user interface design also entails giving power users the ability to do the same common tasks either from the keyboard or from some other shortcut, making them even more productive.
No one is talking about replacing GUIs and icons. They are providing power users more flexibility.
Of course you could make a WiiMote for anything you want. It wouldn't make a difference though. The reason that the wii is successful is that *everyone* who has a wii also has the WiiMote and sensor bar.
Everyone.
Lets say EA comes out with a cool game that requires the WiiMote and sensor bar. They would obviously release it for the Wii - however, they have the option of creating a third party peripheral addon for the 360 and sell the game+peripheral. This means that anyone wanting that game on the 360 would need to buy that extra "controller" just for the one game. (A WiiMote costs $40, so figure the game+remote would cost $100 total) That is a lot. Plus there would be no unified way for other games on the 360 to use that fake "WiiMote".
Think of it like the dance pads that people have. There are very few games that *require* either of these. This is because so few people actually have them that it doesn't make sense to develop for it. If every 360 or Wii came with one, you would see a lot more innovative uses for that input device.
There is nothing technologically that microsoft can't do with the 360 that Nintendo did with the Wii - there is just stuff that they DIDN'T do. And since every 360 owner doesn't have the imaginary "WiiMote360", no one is going to really develop games that use it.
He is assuming that all the consoles will be essentially the same, just by different brands.
Which, essentially, is true. Up until now at least. The Wii and the DS both have completely different input methods, which makes entire genres of games available which weren't available for other systems.
As long as new systems are not just "the same but FASTER", this prediction won't come true.
I had a plasma for 4 days.
On day 3 I watched an inning of baseball. Turned off the TV. Went to the store.
When I came back I could still see the score. (The red sox were winning). I was very angry.
The next morning the score was still there.
I returned the TV on day 4.
Are you implying that windows can't run a lynx-style web browser?
I know that. They're like banks - banks "have" your money, but don't have EVERYONE's money on hand at any time. If everyone tried to take what is "theirs" at once, the banks would collapse (great depression style-y).
Thats not to say that I don't "have" my money in a bank. If I go to the bank, I can get my money. Just like if someone sends me 200 ten MB emails, I can get them without a problem. Therefore, I "have" 2.5gb.
Why the 500k limit? I have 2.5gb in my gmail, but I can only upload a small word document.
Anyone know why this is there?
I would start recommending this to people if they could actually use it in the real world, but word documents get pretty big. It happens. They should be able to deal with it.
With the DRM, poorer quality, and extras missing, you actually get much less than if you bought the DVD. Therefore it should cost much less. It is as simple as that.
Who would pay the same price (or near it) for less features?
I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm just saying that the general population doesn't understand what a digital signal REALLY means.
If you go to Best Buy, they sell HDMI cables for $60, $100 or $150 for premium. It is DIGITAL. Getting gold plated connectors on your cable isn't going to make a bit of difference.
The same misconception was being applied to the wireless signal by the parent poster. Of course the data still needs to get there - and it needs to get there reliably.
Do your wireless downloads to your laptop degrade because it is wireless?
No. It works or it doesn't. It is digital.
My TV actually had a setting where you could turn on or off "Instant On". If you had that setting on, the bigger (and louder) fan would stay on for 15 minutes after turning it off.
It was simply poor engineering. The TV had a standby power consumption of 36W (maybe only 32W - I forget). They simply never powered down some parts of it that had to be kept cool, so a fan was required.
DLPs require fans to keep the bulb cool. This can produce unreasonable noise while trying to watch something.
I had a Toshiba 46" DLP a couple months ago with two sets of fans in it. One was on when the TV was on, which was very loud. You had to run the TV way up just to make sure you could understand everything.
The other was on whenever the TV was plugged in, even when it was "off". You could really hear it across the room. (They claimed it was to "keep the bulb cool". To which I asked "Can I unplug my TV?" "Yes" "So then why does the fan need to be running???")
Quiet fans are something that a lot of manufacturers don't really pay attention to. (I know Toshiba didn't) Even if fans start out quiet, they often get louder as they age.
(Toshiba claimed the fans were "silent", and tried to fix it. Naturally they broke the TV more when attempting to fix it, so they authorized a refund and I bought a Samsung LCD and love it)
Anyway, my LCD is actually "silent", and I love it. Unless DLPs become fan-less I'll never buy one again.
Actually, according to IMDB he got $2 million for "The Long Kiss Goodnight" (which was the record at the time)
The point I was trying to make is that I think of it more like buying a finished work of art vs. commissioning a work of art.
And as far as "Spec scripts" never happening - that may be true for most people. But established writers with contacts do an ok job of it. My dad was at SNL and got a spec script to a few contacts through there. It was bought, and from that point on he worked for 20 years or so in the traditional sense.
I haven't asked him about this, but I remember at least a couple times when he was hired to "rewrite" a script that was bought on spec. (Where basically the studio liked the idea, and wanted to pursue it but thought the actual writing was horrible)
Selling on spec *does* happen. It's hard, but it happens. It helps if you already have contacts.
I didn't really read the article, I was just commenting to the Parent. It sounds very implausible for a whole bunch of reasons.
Typically, there are two ways of selling a screenplay.
You described way #1. You pitch an idea and they work out some sort of deal for your idea.
Way #2 is called writing it on "spec". That involves actually writing the full screenplay without having a deal in place, and then shopping it around to studios to see if anyone wants to buy it. Obviously this way is considerably more risky.
The difference is in the pay. Way #1 pays well, but not NEARLY as well as way #2 pays. There is a huge risk to studios in way #1, and in way #2, they KNOW what they are getting. Plus, if you can get two studios interested, you can get them into a bidding war. (I believe "The Long Kiss Goodnight" sold for about $4 million in this situation)
Bottom line: I can't imagine a situation where any studio would offer, or even mention $2 million without having script in hand.
I agree with you! Apparently I am poor at explaining my side of things.
My *sole* point was:
If a guy IMs a 13 year old and says "Hey i am 13 here is a pic of me" and then molests her - he gets in trouble and no one blames AIM
Like the post I responded to, if a guy could pretend to be 13 and hang out at malls (not possible, but whatever), and he molested a 13 year old - the mall wouldn't be held accountable
But if a guy makes a profile on MySpace and says, in his profile that he is 13 and finds a 13 year old and molests her - suddenly MySpace "should" have verified his age.
I'm not saying it is right, and this stupid example was only in response to the parent post.
Yeah, but you missed my point.
Yes, if you assume that the mall gives you the opportunity to lie about your age, your sex, your face...
He was saying that because MySpace allows people to enter their age/sex/face, MySpace should be held more responsible than a mall.
People don't hold AIM accountable for all the crazy stuff that goes on there. Why is this? Is it because AIM doesn't have "age/sex/face" fields? It is clearly a free-for-all.
My point was that since AIM has less (almost no) "information" about you, they somehow are less responsible, yet MySpace gives you a forum to write about yourself and is now in the position where they are expected to do a background check on every member.
Yeah, but MySpace is no less safe than meeting in a chat room or on AIM - it's just that MySpace gives the users the opportunity to fill out an age field. On AIM, he would have had to lie himself. I don't see why that distiction would cause MySpace to have more responsibility than a normal chat room.
Because other people that have the same disease have died during pregnancy. Some live, some die. The ones that live often have problems the rest of their lives.
If I mix flour and eggs and all that stuff together, there's only a good chance of cake because I put it together in the hopes of making a cake.
However, while making cakes, I often like to eat cake batter. It's delicious. Is that cake? I think it could be cake, but isn't.
I'd rather have a cake than the batter. If you ever bake a cake, give me a ring, and I'll put together some cake batter and we'll trade.
What if she gets raped?
Would you rather her die than have an abortion?
I'm just saying - if God is okay with spontaneous abortions, who are you to supercede him and say that every embryo's life is important?
And I know this argument can be used in reverse... "Why can't we give people cancer?" etc.
I also mean no disrespect - I (unlike many people I know) know that there are two sides to this argument and everyone feels very strong about this.
I am often distressed at the people I see protesting in front of planned parenthood. I understand they mean well, but the situation is often very complicated. I know someone who has a rare disease, where the pill and pregnancies are EXTREMELY dangerous. (Either could kill her) Needless to say, she is very pro-choice. And I agree with her. It'd be nice to say "All babies should live", but reality isn't that simple.
What do you say to that situation?
As a side note, and as a potentially good or bad analogy (I've been known to make very poor analogies)...
I consider a pregnancy like baking a cake. It takes a couple of ingredients. You mix them together, put it in an oven for a while. When you are done you have a cake.
At some point it turns into a cake. It is certainly a cake after it comes out of the oven. 5 minutes before it comes out, it is also clearly a cake (just not as good of one, but no one would mistake it for anything but a cake). However, just placing the ingredients in a bowl would certainly not constitute a cake.
Then how do you explain that a considerable number of pregnancies end in "spontaneous abortions"? A great deal of perfectly viable embryos just don't survive.
l
here: http://www.physorg.com/news67783446.html
or, a site you trust: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jun/06060508.htm
According to the second site there, only 10-15% of preganncies "spontanteous abort", "Ninety percent of all such abortions are due to rejection of a maldeveloped embryo or fetus".
That means 1%-2% of healthy babies are naturally aborted for no reason.
If God considered every embryo that important, and I'm assuming you think this to be more or less under his control, he would make sure that the viable embryoes lived.
I don't believe in God, but I respect people that do. The problem I have with this situation is that people like you are attempting to stop my friends and family members from getting the treatment that could be possible.
Obviously they came from embryos.
I'm not saying an embryo isn't living. I'm saying I don't consider it an equal to a born child. At some point during a pregnancy it becomes a "person". I can't answer when I believe that moment is. I *do* believe it is well after conception, and well before birth.
If one of your family members is ever afflicted by a debilitating disease that could be aided by stem cells, I want you to look them in their eyes and tell them: "Hey, if I mix semen with an egg I could potentially save your life... But unfortunately when semen gets mixed with an egg an embryo is formed which, under proper circumstances, could turn into a person. Their rights have to be protected too, so I guess you have to die".