Quantum Computers will usher in a golden age in computing. There are all sorts of applications that they could be used for. For a time they'll serve a role that most super-computers today serve and that's for engineering computations and scientific experiments that require massive number crunching.
For long term space travel like the proposed mission to Mars a quantum computer would be invaluable. It would be able to monitor the crew and spacecraft faster than today's computers and will be able to react to any kind of critical issue 100x faster. Please, no "2001/Hal" comments. I'm being serious.
Also, quantum computers could be used for gene sequencing that can be done in minutes rather than hours, months, or years for the creation of new drugs or gene therapy. A single quantum computer could be used to replace dozens of computers in a corporation's server room. Just one machine could do the work of 20 or more so you don't need a separate database server, email server, web server, web proxy server, or any other kind of server a large company would need. These computers would benefit businesses like Ford, GM, and all the other car makers allowing them to make better engineered cars.
I can also imagine the graphics industry would benefit. Imagine if Pixar had one of these machines. Imagine being able to render a movie at final-draft production quality in "realtime". We'd also finally have a computer that could make Virtual Reality better than it has been in the past. The applications for this technology aren't as limited as you might think.
I totally agree with dada21. The time has come for the RIAA.
They are obsolete and are trying desperately to stay in control in an age where technology has outpaced them. Its either time for them to disband completely or change with the times. If they continue on their current course something similar or worse than the Sony/BMG Rootkit fiasco is destined to occur, and it may spell the end of the RIAA right then and their.
Or, iTunes and Napster could just put them out of business and artists and bands will publish their own music online or via their own privately owned studios. The Internet gives all of that freedom, but the RIAA just doen't get it yet and probably never will. Its sad really.
FasterFox, a network optimization extension for FireFox not only improves the performance of the browser but also helps block some ads. Its can block adds that use Macromedia popups which are designed to bypass standard pupup blockers.
Don't know if this stops X10's ads or not but you can try it.
I'm one the millions of users on the Net who stil use 56k. Yes, there are still people who use dialup! WHOA!
Google is good for users like me because their search pages, customizable homepage (which is love because I can add my own RSS Feeds to it) and Groups page have few if any graphics. GMail loads up really fast also!
So if your a low-bandwidth users on 56k, slow DSL or WiFi connections then Google is the way to go.
I'd welcome FREE WiFi from Google here in Michigan. Oakland County government, that's north of me since I live in the middle of Wayne Co., is installing FREE 512k high-speed Residential WiFi for the ENTIRE county! Looks like I'm moving up north!
I have a new business model for a new recording studio concept but I don't have the capital to pull it off.
Here are the main points: * Artists would retain all rights to their own music. Copyrights would be in the names of the artists and bands, not the studio. * All contracts with the studio are open ended, they never expire, and allow the artists and/or bands to back out of them at any time. The artists and bands ARE NOT employees of the studio, the studio is strictly a service to them to get their music published and on the radio. * The studio would only retain publishing rights, not ownership. The studio's publishing rights ends when the contracts end. * Music would be published on CD and via a paid P2P service similar to iTunes or Napster. Downloaded music could be used on MP3 players (including the iPod) and burned to CD an unlimited number of times. * Music CDs published by the studio would contain CD Extra content such as interviews with the artists and bands, music videos, printable lyrics sheets for all the music on the CD, and news about the artists or bands updated via RSS Feed daily. * A PR Department of the studio would help with merchandising the artist or band. The artist and/or band retains the copyrights and trademarks of all merchandise. The studio receives a percentage of sales as a fee. * The studio would pioneer the Open Media License, or OML. The OML like the GPL, but for music, video and literature, would apply to media that is offered free of copyrights and trademarks and can be downloaded, used, and even altered without restriction depending on the OML License that is used.
Basically, the artists and bands have full control over everything, and the studio becomes their client offering CD publishing services, P2P music sales and distribution, marketing and advertising, and the artists and bands retain all the copyrights and trademarks. A studio like this I think would set the whole recording industry on its head.
Any comments? If you know a VC who can help me please let me know.
Whatever happened to the "Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences"? A few years ago they had a really good awards show on the Sci-Fi channel hosted by Herbie Hancock and Thomas Dulby. The show gave out awards to the top video games for all of the consoles as well as awards for all of the latest technologies for games and graphics development.
It was a great show and not mega-hype driven like the current crop of videogame awards shows. The first G-forgia awards show was also better, but not its turned into a raunchy circus to promote XBox and PS2 games. Its the kind of lifestyle that videogames don't need to promote right now with all of the crybaby conservatives trying to ban M rated games all over the place.
I've got a better quality video (quicktime format) of the Unreal 3.0 engline demoed by nVidia at E3 earlier this year. It is incredible!
Basically the Unreal 3 engine packs all of the features found in the Half-Life 2 engine and a few more. Most of these are features that make graphical features look 3D while using the least amount of polygons such as bricks sticking out from a wall or the grill on a air vent. I can't wait to see the first games using this new engine.
Of course, many of the new features only work on the newest nVidia cards and only if you have DirectX 9.0c.
Apple's move to the world of x86 might spur new software development for the platform. We could see more developers making commercial apps for the Mac as well as more game developers embracing the Mac. From what I understand its easier to develop software for an x86 architecture than it is for the PPC.
Despite the comments made by a few/.ers here Gaming is a Big Business! DirectX is a direct result of Microsoft wanting to make it easier for game developers to make games for Windows. Without the ability to efficiently run games how well do you think Windows 95 would have done in the home market. In my opinion it would have failed or at least suffered. DirectX saved the Windows platform from failing from the outset. So, for those who say gaming is useless just remember that its a multi-billion dollar a year indusry and Apple's move to x86 will help make the Mac a more viable gaming platform.
"Personally, I'm rather taken with that nifty new controller they're putting on the Revolution..."
This is rather off-topic but I've got agree that the Nintendo Revolution's controller is intriguing. I can just image all the possibilities you might have with such a controller.
It breaks all normal conventions. People will buy it just to see if its any good since the price will be right. I think Nintendo may have a genuine "sure hit" on their hands with their new system.
The 64-Bit Editon of Windows XP still runs 32-Bit software. The requirements for a 64-Bit processor when AMD built theirs was that it had to be x86 compatible and able still run 32 and 16-bit apps. So, your 32-Bit games will still work on a 64-bit WinXP Athlon 64 box or a 64-Bit Longhorn Athlon 64 box. Intel has yet to release a processor in this class that's comparible.
This makes me wonder why Apple didn't switch to the Athlon 64 rather than the Intel architecture they are adopting now. You'd think they'd go with the better technology since they are going from 64-Bit PowerPC to a 32-Bit Intel processors (since Intel has yet to release an x86 compatible 64-bit chip). Why didn't they just go from 64-bit PowerPCs to 64-bit Athlon 64s.
Instability issues caused by memory leaks and just bad coding makes the Windows platform ill suited for mission critical server applications or anything requiring a robust server say like a database server that gets more than 100 queries a day or a web server.
MS tried to run Hotmail off a Windows platform a few years ago. I crashed almost all the time until the switched back to Unix.
I'd love to see a C64 laptop! Now that would be a ultimate geek's toy! I love the C64, I still load up and play "Miner 2049'er" or "Maniac Mansion" from time to time.
It will succeed because of one important thing; FEAR.
The recent mess with Sony's rootkit, security threats all over the place, and scares over the latest batch of nasty viruses have the average Joe-User terrified. Your average Techie like yourself and me know better and have enough smarts to keep safe, but Grandma sitting at her PC chatting in AIM will be scared out of her bloomers.
Its the reason why Antivirus companies are racking in the dough with virus definition update subscriptions and also why Adware recently nixed their free spyware scanner so you have to pay for it now. The only one that still free is Microsoft's beta program and a few smaller other scanners.
Fear of Spyware that compromises your computer and might let someone steal your identity online or infect you with a virus is what will drive the Average User (the majority of the Internet's population) to use these services. All of you fellow Slashdotters should have figured this out already...shame on you.
Re:To kill DRM, make Joe Consumer Mad...
on
Bad Day To Be Sony
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· Score: 1
"About the only way DRM will be tamed (I think, in the long run, it will be eliminated completely, but that will take people completely rethinking intellectual "property" as a lega concept) is if it intereferes or damages an average person's system. That is perhaps the biggest "problem" with DRM - its many failure modes usually screw you out of your content - or in this case, screw up your system. And it's a great, wonderful problem, because all we need are a few more screw-ups like this, and average people will start to associate "DRM" with "Sucks/Breaks" and avoid it like the plauge."
Ahmen to that brother!
Business seem to forget that their revenue comes from us consumers, and if they make us mad we'll stop buying from them. The almighty dollar speaks with a big voice my friends. When products with DRM start to loose money that is when you'll see the technology start to disappear. They have to listen to us or they won't get our business, plain and simple.
Easy, during the periods after the demise of the dinosaurs there was an explosion of mamallian life on Earth. Animals just got bigger and bigger.
There was a species of sloth that lived while humans roamed the Earth that was bigger than an elephant from today. Mamoths, big hairy elephant ancestors, roamed the land and they were twice the size of today elephants. A lot of animals were really huge during these periods. They are called Megafauna. Only two Megafauna from this time exists today; the Blue Whale and the Giant Squid.
I'm not really all that surprised by the existance of a giant ape. A lot of animals that are small today were really huge 100,000 years ago and earlier.
This of course leads to the possibility that other Megafauna might have survived like the Blue Whale and Giant Squid did. What is Nessie is a Megafauna, a species of some sort of giant fish or cold-blooded reptile (not a Dinosaur, but there were giant cold-blood reptiles after the Dinosaurs died out also) might be the answer.
Now there is a game. I started out playing D&D at the Role-Players Guild at Henry Ford Community College, and then one of guys asked if I wanted to try RIFTS.
I was instantly hooked. A post-apacalyptic world filled with magic, Anime inspired high-tech weapons and magic combined with technoogy, demons, an oppressive goverment that makes Hitler's Nazi Germany look like a paradise, a nation of vampires, and Atlantis ruled by trans-dimensional overlords. The average lifesapn of character in most games was about an hour, though one guy usually got killed within the first ten mintues. I'm one of the few who managed to survive the many skirmishs we had with black marketeers and the dreaded CS, and our DM had crafty and cunning (not to mention excessively disfiguring) ways to try and kill us all off.
With the concept of multiple dimensions, magic coupled with science, and using rifts to tranvel from one world to another RIFTS would make an excellent MMORPG.
This is all the more reason to invest more into TRUE ALTERNATIVE FUELS like Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology and improved Solar Technology, or a hydrid of the two. The rising cost of gasoline and the National Security risks of depending on oil from the Middle East should be more than enough reason to promote these technologies.
NES - (4 Stars) The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) came about not long after the bottom fell out of the US gaming market. Atari, Colecovision, Intellevision, and even Commodore were flooding the market with subpar game titles because in their minds quantity = profit, but today we know that quantity is no where nearly as important as "quality". The NES gave us quality games that were better than some of the title on many of the exisiting, and extinct gaming platforms.
Gameboy - (2 Stars) When it first appeared most people weren't all that certain about the Gameboy. The green/blue LCD screen was very hard to see, and its initial release wasn't too spectacular. As more and more games were released and the handheld became more and more popular that is when the system really took off, but it wasn't until it had been on the market for a few years.
Turbografx-16 - (2 Stars) Its sad but I have to give the launch of the TG-16 a small score. The TG-16 known also as the PC-Engine in Japan, during its day was the #1 Top Selling system in Japan. It had a vast and innovative library of cartridge and CD-ROM based games, but mismanagement and lackluster marketing on the part of NEC eventaully killed the system before it even had a chance to make an impact in the US. The TG-16 is technologically superior to the NES and the PC-Engine had a library of truely spectacular games, but NEC failed to bring many of the more innovative titles to the US. They should have, could have, done much better.
Sega Genesis - (3 Stars) The Sega Genesis was an overall success for Sega, by far it was their most successful console in the company's history. It wasn't all that technologicall superior to systems like the TG-16 and later the SNES, but during its day the system did well. The launch of the Genesis saw a lot of activity, but some of the first generation games for the console were subpar. It wasn't until a year later that some really impressive games started appearing. The Genesis was also the first console to offer games that broke the 8 megabit barrier.
SNES - (4 Stars) The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was almost as big a success as the NES but it fell slightly short. Their saving grace was the inclusion of Super Mario World which incorporated nearly every special effects feature the hardware could do and wasn't all that bad a game either. We also have the SNES to thank for the existance of the Playstation. Nintendo first made a deal with Sony to develop a CD-ROM addon for the SNES, but the deal fell through and Nintendo got in bed with Phillips and their CD-I technology. That also failed to show anyting, but in the meantime Sony was hard at work using what they learned from being burned by Nintendo to develop the Playstation. The SNES provided us with the first true 3D graphics games like StarFox, FX Traks, and Doom which used the SuperFX chip. The SNES not only had great graphics but its Sony designed sound chip forever changed the world of console game music. I still load up a SNES emulator to listen to the soundtrack of Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV in Japan).
Sega Saturn - (1 Star) This console had problems from the get go. Sega didn't have all of the developer support they needed to keep a steady stream of new games coming to the market, and their development tools were also lacking. Many game developers found the dual processor architecture of the system too difficult to work with. It wasn't until the system had been out for two years that really great games start to appear, but it was too little too late to save the system.
Nintendo 64 - (4 Stars) Critics blasted Nintendo for not using the popular CD-ROM format for the N64, but they followed SGI's recommendation that CD-ROMs would be too slow for the system. That would later come to haunt Nintendo as one of their most important developers, Squaresoft, jumped ship and began work on a game for the Playstation. That game was Final Fantasy VII, a
You can't teach the RIAA anything. They think they can stop P2P file sharing but the truth is all their legal efforts are driving it underground...where it was before Napster appeared.
There are a lot of very talented techies out there who can come up with some astonishing new tech. A fully encrypted P2P service that masks a user's IP address would make it hard for "the man" to find those who are illegally filesharing. Also, the hacker community can adapt to changing situations faster than any corporation. This is because they aren't hindered by office politics, ethics, patant and copyright compliance and legal compliance. They operate above the law, so it was really no surprise to me when Slashdot ran the story of the trojan that exploited the cloaking ability of Sony's DRM.
I wasn't surprised one bit.
Because of Grokster and others the RIAA bring down a new, bigger, and better P2P service will emerge with multiple layers of custom encryption, IP address masking, and no central server that can be distrupted. You could even block ports at the ISP level and they'll adapt again to support multiple ports at once. Its a loosing battle they just don't get it yet.
Why do you think Internet Security and Antivirus Industies are racking in so much money these days. They DON'T want to see the hacker put in jail because if all the security threats cease and no more viruses are being made they are all out of a job. It a multi-billion dollar industry.
The RIAA is utter and completely out of their league.
I will be thuroughly impressed if fiber can be brought from the pole into the home. A analog/digital converter would allow uses to keep using existing phones on an all fiber phone network, but a whole range of new products could be used for digital Internet access. DSL doesn't work via fiber optics, so an all fiber phone system could usher in a whole new type of Internet service via the telecoms and at speeds that exceed what DSL can offer right now. Regular modems would still work but much more efficiently than before since fiber isn't volunerable to EM interference like lightning from thunderstorms, high-tension powerlines, peak cellphone usage (yes this does effect copper landlines), raido signals (try going online via an unfiltered phone line if you live near an airport), and sun spots.
Fiber lines are harder to illegal tap. There is a device that can connect to a standard copper pbone cable without piercing the outer insulation. By turning a set of dials you can listen in on all of the phone conversations going on through that cable. Such a device wouldn't work on a fiber line because it exploits certain laws governing electromagentism and how electricity travels through wires. In order to illegally tap a fiber line you'd have to cut it, that would disrupt service for a while, and its would instantly be noticable.
It will eventually happen. As Quantum Computers become more widely available and used all over the world someone is going to try and devleop one for home use. I see this happening sometime 10 to 20 years down the line. The potential money-making opportunity in selling such a computer to home users will be overwhelmingly appealling.
Imagine a single PC no bigger than a DVD player that can receive thousands of HD channels via WiFi Broadband, plays music in your daughter's bedroom, lets your son fight aliens in his bedroom, calculate your latest tax forms, keep track of the environment inside the house and make adjustments where necessary, and utilize a voice-recognition A.I. based interface. Its the stuff of science fiction but then Quantum Computers were once thought of as sci-fi only a few years ago. Mark my words, this technology will eventually hit the consumer market in some way.
It would have made better sense for Apple to build their new hardware using AMD Athlon 64 processors. Intel has no "true" 64-bit x86 chips, only hybrids that don't perform anything like AMD's new chips. OSX could have taken advantage of AMD's multi-core technology found in the latest batch of 64-bit x86 Athlons.
Basically a multi-core Athlon 64 could have been managed by OSX like a multi-processor using SMTP or similar software technology to distribute the processor load between the two separate cores in the CPU. Choosing Intel was not a good move unless Intel can deliver a "true" x86 64-bit CPU that is comperable to what AMD is producing.
It also makes sense from a Mac Gaming perspective. If Apple wants their Macs become a better gaming platform as they've tried to push in the past they should have chosen AMD. The Athlon and Athlon 64 CPU have always out-performed Intel chips when it comes to 3D graphics and game performance.
Nintendo has kept a lot of info about the Revolution under tight security for some time. One of their most closely guarded secrets has been the design of the controllers. That's been revealed here:
Basically, its looks like a TV remote with a D-Pad and some buttons, but looks can be deceiving. The controller has 3D Directional Recognition meaning that you can point it at the screen and the game will know what you are pointing at, and it will be Tilt Sensitive. A port on the back of the controller will allow users to add a separate analog stick and buttons with Rumble features. The whole thing will be wireless and rechargable. This thing is pretty new and innovative and it will be interesting to see what sort of games they can make that works with a controller like this.
It is to rewrite current Copyright Laws into a system that diferenciates between different forms of Intellectual Property, and restrict Patants to actual physical objects and not abstract things like software.
I know this is just a pipe dream, they'd sooner be selling parkas in Hades before this happens but hear me out.
Restructure the Copyright Laws into different sets of rules that effectively protect each different variety of IP:
* Print Published Copyrights - These rules and laws would over only cover printed materials; ie. magazines, newspapers, books, etc. * Digital Media Copyrights - These rules and laws would only cover digial media like videos, audio, and images, but not software. * Software Copyrights - There rules and laws would cover software, and allows similar software to be written in competition as long as its different enough from the original product. Thus protecting innovation. * Name Copyrights - Would replace the current Trademark system. * Public Domain Bylaws - These would be a set of rules that determine if and when a certain IP becomes Public Domain, and enforces that status to prevent a company from cashing in on a Public Domain item in the future. Basically, if MS stops supporting an OS like it has with Win95/98 and soon ME then by the rules in the Bylaws that software would become Public Domain and MS cannot enforce any copyright protection on those products. Adding a provision that requires all Public Domain software to become Open Source would be wonderful.
Administering these new Copyrights in a way that mimicks the GPL would also be a good way to fix things. That way a vendor/publisher would be able to select the kind of copyright they need. Current laws are too narrow for the broad range of products out there today.
When will software/hardware businesses learn that if they make products that support multiple platforms, without skimping on the features, that they'll increase their profitability.
Slashdot Mirror
Quantum Computers will usher in a golden age in computing. There are all sorts of applications that they could be used for. For a time they'll serve a role that most super-computers today serve and that's for engineering computations and scientific experiments that require massive number crunching.
For long term space travel like the proposed mission to Mars a quantum computer would be invaluable. It would be able to monitor the crew and spacecraft faster than today's computers and will be able to react to any kind of critical issue 100x faster. Please, no "2001/Hal" comments. I'm being serious.
Also, quantum computers could be used for gene sequencing that can be done in minutes rather than hours, months, or years for the creation of new drugs or gene therapy. A single quantum computer could be used to replace dozens of computers in a corporation's server room. Just one machine could do the work of 20 or more so you don't need a separate database server, email server, web server, web proxy server, or any other kind of server a large company would need. These computers would benefit businesses like Ford, GM, and all the other car makers allowing them to make better engineered cars.
I can also imagine the graphics industry would benefit. Imagine if Pixar had one of these machines. Imagine being able to render a movie at final-draft production quality in "realtime". We'd also finally have a computer that could make Virtual Reality better than it has been in the past. The applications for this technology aren't as limited as you might think.
I totally agree with dada21. The time has come for the RIAA.
They are obsolete and are trying desperately to stay in control in an age where technology has outpaced them. Its either time for them to disband completely or change with the times. If they continue on their current course something similar or worse than the Sony/BMG Rootkit fiasco is destined to occur, and it may spell the end of the RIAA right then and their.
Or, iTunes and Napster could just put them out of business and artists and bands will publish their own music online or via their own privately owned studios. The Internet gives all of that freedom, but the RIAA just doen't get it yet and probably never will. Its sad really.
FasterFox, a network optimization extension for FireFox not only improves the performance of the browser but also helps block some ads. Its can block adds that use Macromedia popups which are designed to bypass standard pupup blockers.
Don't know if this stops X10's ads or not but you can try it.
I'm one the millions of users on the Net who stil use 56k. Yes, there are still people who use dialup! WHOA!
Google is good for users like me because their search pages, customizable homepage (which is love because I can add my own RSS Feeds to it) and Groups page have few if any graphics. GMail loads up really fast also!
So if your a low-bandwidth users on 56k, slow DSL or WiFi connections then Google is the way to go.
I'd welcome FREE WiFi from Google here in Michigan. Oakland County government, that's north of me since I live in the middle of Wayne Co., is installing FREE 512k high-speed Residential WiFi for the ENTIRE county! Looks like I'm moving up north!
I have a new business model for a new recording studio concept but I don't have the capital to pull it off.
Here are the main points:
* Artists would retain all rights to their own music. Copyrights would be in the names of the artists and bands, not the studio.
* All contracts with the studio are open ended, they never expire, and allow the artists and/or bands to back out of them at any time. The artists and bands ARE NOT employees of the studio, the studio is strictly a service to them to get their music published and on the radio.
* The studio would only retain publishing rights, not ownership. The studio's publishing rights ends when the contracts end.
* Music would be published on CD and via a paid P2P service similar to iTunes or Napster. Downloaded music could be used on MP3 players (including the iPod) and burned to CD an unlimited number of times.
* Music CDs published by the studio would contain CD Extra content such as interviews with the artists and bands, music videos, printable lyrics sheets for all the music on the CD, and news about the artists or bands updated via RSS Feed daily.
* A PR Department of the studio would help with merchandising the artist or band. The artist and/or band retains the copyrights and trademarks of all merchandise. The studio receives a percentage of sales as a fee.
* The studio would pioneer the Open Media License, or OML. The OML like the GPL, but for music, video and literature, would apply to media that is offered free of copyrights and trademarks and can be downloaded, used, and even altered without restriction depending on the OML License that is used.
Basically, the artists and bands have full control over everything, and the studio becomes their client offering CD publishing services, P2P music sales and distribution, marketing and advertising, and the artists and bands retain all the copyrights and trademarks. A studio like this I think would set the whole recording industry on its head.
Any comments? If you know a VC who can help me please let me know.
Whatever happened to the "Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences"? A few years ago they had a really good awards show on the Sci-Fi channel hosted by Herbie Hancock and Thomas Dulby. The show gave out awards to the top video games for all of the consoles as well as awards for all of the latest technologies for games and graphics development.
It was a great show and not mega-hype driven like the current crop of videogame awards shows. The first G-forgia awards show was also better, but not its turned into a raunchy circus to promote XBox and PS2 games. Its the kind of lifestyle that videogames don't need to promote right now with all of the crybaby conservatives trying to ban M rated games all over the place.
I've got a better quality video (quicktime format) of the Unreal 3.0 engline demoed by nVidia at E3 earlier this year. It is incredible!
Basically the Unreal 3 engine packs all of the features found in the Half-Life 2 engine and a few more. Most of these are features that make graphical features look 3D while using the least amount of polygons such as bricks sticking out from a wall or the grill on a air vent. I can't wait to see the first games using this new engine.
Of course, many of the new features only work on the newest nVidia cards and only if you have DirectX 9.0c.
Apple's move to the world of x86 might spur new software development for the platform. We could see more developers making commercial apps for the Mac as well as more game developers embracing the Mac. From what I understand its easier to develop software for an x86 architecture than it is for the PPC.
/.ers here Gaming is a Big Business! DirectX is a direct result of Microsoft wanting to make it easier for game developers to make games for Windows. Without the ability to efficiently run games how well do you think Windows 95 would have done in the home market. In my opinion it would have failed or at least suffered. DirectX saved the Windows platform from failing from the outset. So, for those who say gaming is useless just remember that its a multi-billion dollar a year indusry and Apple's move to x86 will help make the Mac a more viable gaming platform.
Despite the comments made by a few
"Personally, I'm rather taken with that nifty new controller they're putting on the Revolution..."
This is rather off-topic but I've got agree that the Nintendo Revolution's controller is intriguing. I can just image all the possibilities you might have with such a controller.
It breaks all normal conventions. People will buy it just to see if its any good since the price will be right. I think Nintendo may have a genuine "sure hit" on their hands with their new system.
The 64-Bit Editon of Windows XP still runs 32-Bit software. The requirements for a 64-Bit processor when AMD built theirs was that it had to be x86 compatible and able still run 32 and 16-bit apps. So, your 32-Bit games will still work on a 64-bit WinXP Athlon 64 box or a 64-Bit Longhorn Athlon 64 box. Intel has yet to release a processor in this class that's comparible.
This makes me wonder why Apple didn't switch to the Athlon 64 rather than the Intel architecture they are adopting now. You'd think they'd go with the better technology since they are going from 64-Bit PowerPC to a 32-Bit Intel processors (since Intel has yet to release an x86 compatible 64-bit chip). Why didn't they just go from 64-bit PowerPCs to 64-bit Athlon 64s.
Instability issues caused by memory leaks and just bad coding makes the Windows platform ill suited for mission critical server applications or anything requiring a robust server say like a database server that gets more than 100 queries a day or a web server. MS tried to run Hotmail off a Windows platform a few years ago. I crashed almost all the time until the switched back to Unix.
I'd love to see a C64 laptop! Now that would be a ultimate geek's toy! I love the C64, I still load up and play "Miner 2049'er" or "Maniac Mansion" from time to time.
It will succeed because of one important thing; FEAR.
The recent mess with Sony's rootkit, security threats all over the place, and scares over the latest batch of nasty viruses have the average Joe-User terrified. Your average Techie like yourself and me know better and have enough smarts to keep safe, but Grandma sitting at her PC chatting in AIM will be scared out of her bloomers.
Its the reason why Antivirus companies are racking in the dough with virus definition update subscriptions and also why Adware recently nixed their free spyware scanner so you have to pay for it now. The only one that still free is Microsoft's beta program and a few smaller other scanners.
Fear of Spyware that compromises your computer and might let someone steal your identity online or infect you with a virus is what will drive the Average User (the majority of the Internet's population) to use these services. All of you fellow Slashdotters should have figured this out already...shame on you.
"About the only way DRM will be tamed (I think, in the long run, it will be eliminated completely, but that will take people completely rethinking intellectual "property" as a lega concept) is if it intereferes or damages an average person's system. That is perhaps the biggest "problem" with DRM - its many failure modes usually screw you out of your content - or in this case, screw up your system. And it's a great, wonderful problem, because all we need are a few more screw-ups like this, and average people will start to associate "DRM" with "Sucks/Breaks" and avoid it like the plauge."
Ahmen to that brother!
Business seem to forget that their revenue comes from us consumers, and if they make us mad we'll stop buying from them. The almighty dollar speaks with a big voice my friends. When products with DRM start to loose money that is when you'll see the technology start to disappear. They have to listen to us or they won't get our business, plain and simple.
Easy, during the periods after the demise of the dinosaurs there was an explosion of mamallian life on Earth. Animals just got bigger and bigger.
There was a species of sloth that lived while humans roamed the Earth that was bigger than an elephant from today. Mamoths, big hairy elephant ancestors, roamed the land and they were twice the size of today elephants. A lot of animals were really huge during these periods. They are called Megafauna. Only two Megafauna from this time exists today; the Blue Whale and the Giant Squid.
I'm not really all that surprised by the existance of a giant ape. A lot of animals that are small today were really huge 100,000 years ago and earlier.
This of course leads to the possibility that other Megafauna might have survived like the Blue Whale and Giant Squid did. What is Nessie is a Megafauna, a species of some sort of giant fish or cold-blooded reptile (not a Dinosaur, but there were giant cold-blood reptiles after the Dinosaurs died out also) might be the answer.
Now there is a game. I started out playing D&D at the Role-Players Guild at Henry Ford Community College, and then one of guys asked if I wanted to try RIFTS.
I was instantly hooked. A post-apacalyptic world filled with magic, Anime inspired high-tech weapons and magic combined with technoogy, demons, an oppressive goverment that makes Hitler's Nazi Germany look like a paradise, a nation of vampires, and Atlantis ruled by trans-dimensional overlords. The average lifesapn of character in most games was about an hour, though one guy usually got killed within the first ten mintues. I'm one of the few who managed to survive the many skirmishs we had with black marketeers and the dreaded CS, and our DM had crafty and cunning (not to mention excessively disfiguring) ways to try and kill us all off.
With the concept of multiple dimensions, magic coupled with science, and using rifts to tranvel from one world to another RIFTS would make an excellent MMORPG.
This is all the more reason to invest more into TRUE ALTERNATIVE FUELS like Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology and improved Solar Technology, or a hydrid of the two. The rising cost of gasoline and the National Security risks of depending on oil from the Middle East should be more than enough reason to promote these technologies.
Here are my scores for console releases:
NES - (4 Stars)
The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) came about not long after the bottom fell out of the US gaming market. Atari, Colecovision, Intellevision, and even Commodore were flooding the market with subpar game titles because in their minds quantity = profit, but today we know that quantity is no where nearly as important as "quality". The NES gave us quality games that were better than some of the title on many of the exisiting, and extinct gaming platforms.
Gameboy - (2 Stars)
When it first appeared most people weren't all that certain about the Gameboy. The green/blue LCD screen was very hard to see, and its initial release wasn't too spectacular. As more and more games were released and the handheld became more and more popular that is when the system really took off, but it wasn't until it had been on the market for a few years.
Turbografx-16 - (2 Stars)
Its sad but I have to give the launch of the TG-16 a small score. The TG-16 known also as the PC-Engine in Japan, during its day was the #1 Top Selling system in Japan. It had a vast and innovative library of cartridge and CD-ROM based games, but mismanagement and lackluster marketing on the part of NEC eventaully killed the system before it even had a chance to make an impact in the US. The TG-16 is technologically superior to the NES and the PC-Engine had a library of truely spectacular games, but NEC failed to bring many of the more innovative titles to the US. They should have, could have, done much better.
Sega Genesis - (3 Stars)
The Sega Genesis was an overall success for Sega, by far it was their most successful console in the company's history. It wasn't all that technologicall superior to systems like the TG-16 and later the SNES, but during its day the system did well. The launch of the Genesis saw a lot of activity, but some of the first generation games for the console were subpar. It wasn't until a year later that some really impressive games started appearing. The Genesis was also the first console to offer games that broke the 8 megabit barrier.
SNES - (4 Stars)
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System was almost as big a success as the NES but it fell slightly short. Their saving grace was the inclusion of Super Mario World which incorporated nearly every special effects feature the hardware could do and wasn't all that bad a game either. We also have the SNES to thank for the existance of the Playstation. Nintendo first made a deal with Sony to develop a CD-ROM addon for the SNES, but the deal fell through and Nintendo got in bed with Phillips and their CD-I technology. That also failed to show anyting, but in the meantime Sony was hard at work using what they learned from being burned by Nintendo to develop the Playstation. The SNES provided us with the first true 3D graphics games like StarFox, FX Traks, and Doom which used the SuperFX chip. The SNES not only had great graphics but its Sony designed sound chip forever changed the world of console game music. I still load up a SNES emulator to listen to the soundtrack of Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV in Japan).
Sega Saturn - (1 Star)
This console had problems from the get go. Sega didn't have all of the developer support they needed to keep a steady stream of new games coming to the market, and their development tools were also lacking. Many game developers found the dual processor architecture of the system too difficult to work with. It wasn't until the system had been out for two years that really great games start to appear, but it was too little too late to save the system.
Nintendo 64 - (4 Stars)
Critics blasted Nintendo for not using the popular CD-ROM format for the N64, but they followed SGI's recommendation that CD-ROMs would be too slow for the system. That would later come to haunt Nintendo as one of their most important developers, Squaresoft, jumped ship and began work on a game for the Playstation. That game was Final Fantasy VII, a
You can't teach the RIAA anything. They think they can stop P2P file sharing but the truth is all their legal efforts are driving it underground...where it was before Napster appeared.
There are a lot of very talented techies out there who can come up with some astonishing new tech. A fully encrypted P2P service that masks a user's IP address would make it hard for "the man" to find those who are illegally filesharing. Also, the hacker community can adapt to changing situations faster than any corporation. This is because they aren't hindered by office politics, ethics, patant and copyright compliance and legal compliance. They operate above the law, so it was really no surprise to me when Slashdot ran the story of the trojan that exploited the cloaking ability of Sony's DRM.
I wasn't surprised one bit.
Because of Grokster and others the RIAA bring down a new, bigger, and better P2P service will emerge with multiple layers of custom encryption, IP address masking, and no central server that can be distrupted. You could even block ports at the ISP level and they'll adapt again to support multiple ports at once. Its a loosing battle they just don't get it yet.
Why do you think Internet Security and Antivirus Industies are racking in so much money these days. They DON'T want to see the hacker put in jail because if all the security threats cease and no more viruses are being made they are all out of a job. It a multi-billion dollar industry.
The RIAA is utter and completely out of their league.
I will be thuroughly impressed if fiber can be brought from the pole into the home. A analog/digital converter would allow uses to keep using existing phones on an all fiber phone network, but a whole range of new products could be used for digital Internet access. DSL doesn't work via fiber optics, so an all fiber phone system could usher in a whole new type of Internet service via the telecoms and at speeds that exceed what DSL can offer right now. Regular modems would still work but much more efficiently than before since fiber isn't volunerable to EM interference like lightning from thunderstorms, high-tension powerlines, peak cellphone usage (yes this does effect copper landlines), raido signals (try going online via an unfiltered phone line if you live near an airport), and sun spots.
Fiber lines are harder to illegal tap. There is a device that can connect to a standard copper pbone cable without piercing the outer insulation. By turning a set of dials you can listen in on all of the phone conversations going on through that cable. Such a device wouldn't work on a fiber line because it exploits certain laws governing electromagentism and how electricity travels through wires. In order to illegally tap a fiber line you'd have to cut it, that would disrupt service for a while, and its would instantly be noticable.
It will eventually happen. As Quantum Computers become more widely available and used all over the world someone is going to try and devleop one for home use. I see this happening sometime 10 to 20 years down the line. The potential money-making opportunity in selling such a computer to home users will be overwhelmingly appealling.
Imagine a single PC no bigger than a DVD player that can receive thousands of HD channels via WiFi Broadband, plays music in your daughter's bedroom, lets your son fight aliens in his bedroom, calculate your latest tax forms, keep track of the environment inside the house and make adjustments where necessary, and utilize a voice-recognition A.I. based interface. Its the stuff of science fiction but then Quantum Computers were once thought of as sci-fi only a few years ago. Mark my words, this technology will eventually hit the consumer market in some way.
Why did Apple choose Intel over AMD?
It would have made better sense for Apple to build their new hardware using AMD Athlon 64 processors. Intel has no "true" 64-bit x86 chips, only hybrids that don't perform anything like AMD's new chips. OSX could have taken advantage of AMD's multi-core technology found in the latest batch of 64-bit x86 Athlons.
Basically a multi-core Athlon 64 could have been managed by OSX like a multi-processor using SMTP or similar software technology to distribute the processor load between the two separate cores in the CPU. Choosing Intel was not a good move unless Intel can deliver a "true" x86 64-bit CPU that is comperable to what AMD is producing.
It also makes sense from a Mac Gaming perspective. If Apple wants their Macs become a better gaming platform as they've tried to push in the past they should have chosen AMD. The Athlon and Athlon 64 CPU have always out-performed Intel chips when it comes to 3D graphics and game performance.
Nintendo has kept a lot of info about the Revolution under tight security for some time. One of their most closely guarded secrets has been the design of the controllers. That's been revealed here:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000077059062/
Basically, its looks like a TV remote with a D-Pad and some buttons, but looks can be deceiving. The controller has 3D Directional Recognition meaning that you can point it at the screen and the game will know what you are pointing at, and it will be Tilt Sensitive. A port on the back of the controller will allow users to add a separate analog stick and buttons with Rumble features. The whole thing will be wireless and rechargable. This thing is pretty new and innovative and it will be interesting to see what sort of games they can make that works with a controller like this.
It is to rewrite current Copyright Laws into a system that diferenciates between different forms of Intellectual Property, and restrict Patants to actual physical objects and not abstract things like software.
I know this is just a pipe dream, they'd sooner be selling parkas in Hades before this happens but hear me out.
Restructure the Copyright Laws into different sets of rules that effectively protect each different variety of IP:
* Print Published Copyrights - These rules and laws would over only cover printed materials; ie. magazines, newspapers, books, etc.
* Digital Media Copyrights - These rules and laws would only cover digial media like videos, audio, and images, but not software.
* Software Copyrights - There rules and laws would cover software, and allows similar software to be written in competition as long as its different enough from the original product. Thus protecting innovation.
* Name Copyrights - Would replace the current Trademark system.
* Public Domain Bylaws - These would be a set of rules that determine if and when a certain IP becomes Public Domain, and enforces that status to prevent a company from cashing in on a Public Domain item in the future. Basically, if MS stops supporting an OS like it has with Win95/98 and soon ME then by the rules in the Bylaws that software would become Public Domain and MS cannot enforce any copyright protection on those products. Adding a provision that requires all Public Domain software to become Open Source would be wonderful.
Administering these new Copyrights in a way that mimicks the GPL would also be a good way to fix things. That way a vendor/publisher would be able to select the kind of copyright they need. Current laws are too narrow for the broad range of products out there today.
When will software/hardware businesses learn that if they make products that support multiple platforms, without skimping on the features, that they'll increase their profitability.