Well that's a simple answer. It takes somewhere around 20 seconds to spin your harddrive up to speed. After that the read/writes are pretty fast. So if it takes 20 seconds to get the harddrive going, plus say 10 to get windows into memory, you get a 30 second boot. Usually there's a ram check and a few other things (such as dual booting which will usually wait 10-20 seconds before picking a default) which tack on another few seconds here and there, to give you something between 30 seconds and a minute.
As for instant boot computers, they're beginning to make them. Hybrid drives with 16 Gigabytes of flash and 200 of harddrive space (i don't have exact numbers there) are already available for some laptops, and will come into more common use soon. These hold the boot information in the flash memory which is instant access, providing for an optimized boot time of under 10 seconds, maybe even less. Hope this helps.
Basic knowledge would probably be the ability to surf the internet w/o difficulty, use a basic editor/wordprocessor, read and send e-mail, and possibly run a few choice applications.
Advanced users should have an understanding of how to install/uninstall software and operating systems, navigate a command prompt/shell, and know the basics of how an operating system works. Ideally they should be able to write scripts and probably some code. They should be able to learn new operating systems and applications quickly.
The biggest factor in literacy is comfort. If you can read/write/speak a language without difficulty then you're literate. If you can get things done on a computer easily then you're computer literate.
I don't know about it phoning home, but I for one hate having to scramble for the speaker controls to mute the screaming ads every third time I log on. At the very least it's worth than your average popup. Probably the worst part is when you close the buddy list while playing games, and every 10 minutes the game minimizes so that a new ad can load.
I thought the 'clever car looked quite comfortable, and the helmet was probably only use in that there was no side panneling. In terms of improving comfort, simple ergonomical tweaks can usually be applied. It's also lower to the ground, which would concievably (assuming the electronics/hydraulics work right) would make it more stable than the BMW.
As the PSP and various other high end systems have proven, it really doesn't matter what kind of hardware you have in your box if your games don't live up to it. I rather hope that next gen games will focus more on being fun to play, and more importantly fun to replay, than just fun to look at. I'm not too optimistic on the MS and Sony front as I've seen the crap titles that launched with the 360 and Sony's too bogged down with hardware problems to worry about listening to users. The Revolution looks promising in it's own way, but if it can't pick up a decent marketshare then all of the gimmiks in the world won't save it. We can only hope that the best games will come out on top, and not the best hardware tech.
Microsoft is a lot like McDonalds... Both are global forces and probably aren't going anywhere soon. But you feel kinda guilty after buying anything from either of them, and you usually have a bad taste in your mouth for days...
I buy 90% of my games at Gamestop, and the other 10% on their website. The games are cheaper, and easier to sell back when I'm done. Besides, Walmart doesn't have refurbed systems.
I've said it again and again, package the UMDs along WITH the DVDs for a reasonable price ($5 - $10 above the price of either one seperately) and make a cheap ($20-30) PSP to TV connector that works with standard PSPs and your UMD sales will pick up DRAMATICALLY. Geeze Sony, pay attention to the consumers:P
Re:Less challenges on the moon?
on
US Plans Lunar Motel
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Putting a lathe in null gravity is just asking for trouble. Spin the wood/iron/whatever and you spin your whole spacecraft. Basic Newtonian physics, equal and opposite reactions. On earth all of the force goes straight into the ground. Same for the moon. If we really want to get moving in space we HAVE to do it from the lunar surface. Spacestations look cool in movies, but something the size of Mir or the ISS is useless for anything more than the most basic of research.
As humans we can build and manipulate our environment, but we have to have an environment to manipulate. We either need a space station the size of a city (and with costs to orbit somewhere around $15k per POUND that isn't happening soon) or we need a planetary (or lunar) base to start building from. The moon is ideal as a launch site with it's 1/6 of our gravity. Cost to orbit from the lunar surface is orders of magnitude less than from earth, as proved by the lunar landers used in the 60s.
We need to get to space. Life is expensive there, but everything else is cheap. Metal asteroid are easy pickings with a decent mining craft. Solar power is abundant when not diluted by Earth's atmosphere (the protection my skin is extremely thanful for). Lunar dust can even concievably be used to produce oxygen. Water can be recycled for a remarkably long time, food grown by the same plants that recycle the CO2 we love to exhale.
The devil's in the details. All of this is great in theory, but until we have a large enough base to test it on, we're out of luck. Mars is much too far away to use as a stepping stone with our current technology. After we've established a launching base on the Moon we can start looking to Mars, Io, Ganymede(sp). The rest of our solarsystem is just a staging ground for colonies on other earth like planets... assuming we find those.
The biggest problem with all of this is distance and time. Star Trek will probably never happen simply because a viable FTL drive is, sadly, rather unlikely. If we find planets similar to Earth, we'll colonize them eventually. Whether that society will look like Orson Scott Card's Ender universe, with instantanious communication allowing for a widespread government, or more like Pournelle and Niven's Legacy of Herot with individual planets, separated for decades at a time, noone knows. But assuming we don't kill each other off in one wonderful blast, and that we can learn to look farther into the future than 5 years, we'll get there. All it takes is time.
~Nec
RPGs are generally designed to be an evolution of movies, although the length lends more towards books. You tell a predefined story and allow the gamer to interact with it. His descisions really play no part in the game. Even the massive Morrowind (which I attmittedly never finished) has a pre-defined ending. So do the KOTOR games. The closest we usually get to open ended gaming are (suprise suprise) the types of games Will Wright and Maxis have created. The Civ games have obvious conlusions, but theoretically you can rule your kingdom however you want. Lionhead studios made some interesting efforts with Black and White and Fable, but even there you only have a set number options. MMORPGs probably have the most potential for hugely nonlinear gameplay, but sadly when you hit the level cap there's only so much endgame material. Until you turn the philosophy of Wikipedia into a game, you're stuck with some degree of linear gameplay.
Mr. Meier,
In reading about Maxis' new game Spore, I remember hearing that civilizations which players come in contact with will have been developed by other players as well as developers. What is the likelyhood of Spore becoming a persistant online community (preferably free of course) where each civilization is actively controled by a player? If price demands cause this to be an impossibility, how difficult will it be to obtain new opposing/cooperative civilizations to integrate with one's own world? Thanks, and I'm quite looking forward to seeing more about this game in the future.
Necoras
Slashdot Mirror
It was placed there to measure distance, speed and to extrapolate tidal pull.
Well that's a simple answer. It takes somewhere around 20 seconds to spin your harddrive up to speed. After that the read/writes are pretty fast. So if it takes 20 seconds to get the harddrive going, plus say 10 to get windows into memory, you get a 30 second boot. Usually there's a ram check and a few other things (such as dual booting which will usually wait 10-20 seconds before picking a default) which tack on another few seconds here and there, to give you something between 30 seconds and a minute.
As for instant boot computers, they're beginning to make them. Hybrid drives with 16 Gigabytes of flash and 200 of harddrive space (i don't have exact numbers there) are already available for some laptops, and will come into more common use soon. These hold the boot information in the flash memory which is instant access, providing for an optimized boot time of under 10 seconds, maybe even less. Hope this helps.
Basic knowledge would probably be the ability to surf the internet w/o difficulty, use a basic editor/wordprocessor, read and send e-mail, and possibly run a few choice applications. Advanced users should have an understanding of how to install/uninstall software and operating systems, navigate a command prompt/shell, and know the basics of how an operating system works. Ideally they should be able to write scripts and probably some code. They should be able to learn new operating systems and applications quickly. The biggest factor in literacy is comfort. If you can read/write/speak a language without difficulty then you're literate. If you can get things done on a computer easily then you're computer literate.
I don't know about it phoning home, but I for one hate having to scramble for the speaker controls to mute the screaming ads every third time I log on. At the very least it's worth than your average popup. Probably the worst part is when you close the buddy list while playing games, and every 10 minutes the game minimizes so that a new ad can load.
I thought the 'clever car looked quite comfortable, and the helmet was probably only use in that there was no side panneling. In terms of improving comfort, simple ergonomical tweaks can usually be applied. It's also lower to the ground, which would concievably (assuming the electronics/hydraulics work right) would make it more stable than the BMW.
As the PSP and various other high end systems have proven, it really doesn't matter what kind of hardware you have in your box if your games don't live up to it. I rather hope that next gen games will focus more on being fun to play, and more importantly fun to replay, than just fun to look at. I'm not too optimistic on the MS and Sony front as I've seen the crap titles that launched with the 360 and Sony's too bogged down with hardware problems to worry about listening to users. The Revolution looks promising in it's own way, but if it can't pick up a decent marketshare then all of the gimmiks in the world won't save it. We can only hope that the best games will come out on top, and not the best hardware tech.
Microsoft is a lot like McDonalds... Both are global forces and probably aren't going anywhere soon. But you feel kinda guilty after buying anything from either of them, and you usually have a bad taste in your mouth for days...
I buy 90% of my games at Gamestop, and the other 10% on their website. The games are cheaper, and easier to sell back when I'm done. Besides, Walmart doesn't have refurbed systems.
I've said it again and again, package the UMDs along WITH the DVDs for a reasonable price ($5 - $10 above the price of either one seperately) and make a cheap ($20-30) PSP to TV connector that works with standard PSPs and your UMD sales will pick up DRAMATICALLY. Geeze Sony, pay attention to the consumers :P
Putting a lathe in null gravity is just asking for trouble. Spin the wood/iron/whatever and you spin your whole spacecraft. Basic Newtonian physics, equal and opposite reactions. On earth all of the force goes straight into the ground. Same for the moon. If we really want to get moving in space we HAVE to do it from the lunar surface. Spacestations look cool in movies, but something the size of Mir or the ISS is useless for anything more than the most basic of research. As humans we can build and manipulate our environment, but we have to have an environment to manipulate. We either need a space station the size of a city (and with costs to orbit somewhere around $15k per POUND that isn't happening soon) or we need a planetary (or lunar) base to start building from. The moon is ideal as a launch site with it's 1/6 of our gravity. Cost to orbit from the lunar surface is orders of magnitude less than from earth, as proved by the lunar landers used in the 60s. We need to get to space. Life is expensive there, but everything else is cheap. Metal asteroid are easy pickings with a decent mining craft. Solar power is abundant when not diluted by Earth's atmosphere (the protection my skin is extremely thanful for). Lunar dust can even concievably be used to produce oxygen. Water can be recycled for a remarkably long time, food grown by the same plants that recycle the CO2 we love to exhale. The devil's in the details. All of this is great in theory, but until we have a large enough base to test it on, we're out of luck. Mars is much too far away to use as a stepping stone with our current technology. After we've established a launching base on the Moon we can start looking to Mars, Io, Ganymede(sp). The rest of our solarsystem is just a staging ground for colonies on other earth like planets... assuming we find those. The biggest problem with all of this is distance and time. Star Trek will probably never happen simply because a viable FTL drive is, sadly, rather unlikely. If we find planets similar to Earth, we'll colonize them eventually. Whether that society will look like Orson Scott Card's Ender universe, with instantanious communication allowing for a widespread government, or more like Pournelle and Niven's Legacy of Herot with individual planets, separated for decades at a time, noone knows. But assuming we don't kill each other off in one wonderful blast, and that we can learn to look farther into the future than 5 years, we'll get there. All it takes is time. ~Nec
RPGs are generally designed to be an evolution of movies, although the length lends more towards books. You tell a predefined story and allow the gamer to interact with it. His descisions really play no part in the game. Even the massive Morrowind (which I attmittedly never finished) has a pre-defined ending. So do the KOTOR games. The closest we usually get to open ended gaming are (suprise suprise) the types of games Will Wright and Maxis have created. The Civ games have obvious conlusions, but theoretically you can rule your kingdom however you want. Lionhead studios made some interesting efforts with Black and White and Fable, but even there you only have a set number options. MMORPGs probably have the most potential for hugely nonlinear gameplay, but sadly when you hit the level cap there's only so much endgame material. Until you turn the philosophy of Wikipedia into a game, you're stuck with some degree of linear gameplay.
Mr. Meier, In reading about Maxis' new game Spore, I remember hearing that civilizations which players come in contact with will have been developed by other players as well as developers. What is the likelyhood of Spore becoming a persistant online community (preferably free of course) where each civilization is actively controled by a player? If price demands cause this to be an impossibility, how difficult will it be to obtain new opposing/cooperative civilizations to integrate with one's own world? Thanks, and I'm quite looking forward to seeing more about this game in the future. Necoras