So after all the development they've been doing for the Phantom console, after a few years all they have to show for it is a keyboard that tilts up and a wireless mouse? Shouldn't the game system come first, then the peripherals? I can almost imagine their initial design meeting:
Boss: This system should have a tilted keyboard and a wireless mouse.
Lackey 1: Boss, that's genius! Let's get started on it right now.
Lackey 2: What about the rest of the console? Shouldn't we start designing those specs?
Boss: Nah, we'll worry about that part in 2009, after we've taken over the world with our Lapboard (TM). Bwaaaahahahahahaha Lackeys, get to work!
What do you see happening with your browser in 2006? Are there any exciting new features coming, or are you trying to get your browser bundled with any major PC company (ex: Dell with FireFox in the UK)? Give us a good reason to use Opera in the coming year.
Just set your browser to delete cookies when you close the browser. I think that is a basic setting on any browser. Now, if they had some kind of "supercookie" that you couldn't delete, that would be more interesting. Or if you tried to delete it and the Department of Homeland Security came knocking on your door.
Honestly, though, there are plenty of sites that install cookies. If you don't like them, delete them. It is as simple as that.
I just checked out technocrat, and it just seems like a poor copy of slashdot. It is kind of funny how most of the stories don't have any posts. Maybe all of the trolls here that just want to get first post could move to that site.
I also wasn't that impressed with the quality of the comments on digg.com. The site's news is okay sometimes, but I like the mix on slashdot, which is why I read this site.
However, for quality entertainment, I like www.i-am-bored.com
Where else can you see urban ninja, or a semi 'drifting' for three minutes, or play random flash games. I guess this is off-topic, but I don't really understand why the site we're supposed to be talking about didn't just comply, get certified and then re-display the list.
I telecommute, so my wife would just come over and hit me. Besides, I hear about her old boyfriends, so I can remember the old days with one of my old girlfriends too.
You know what made it even worse, though, was the fact she spent part of that summer in Germany, and I spent hundreds of dollars calling as often as I could. I worked at an internship in Virginia and had two cute interns always flirting and trying to get me to cheat on her or break up with her and date one of them. I always told them no, I wanted to marry this girl. A girl who loves video games, MacGyver, and Quantum Leap? And she was a gorgeous redhead to boot. So I just kept telling them both no all summer long as they kept trying harder and harder.
I go to see my girlfriend once after she gets back from Germany at her parents house, stay a couple of nights, and we have our first kiss. I find out from her that is her first kiss. Then I drove back, finished the internship and went back to college. When she got to college she came right up, and I offered to help her move in, and that is when she told me her family had decided we had to break up. I waited all summer for one kiss and to have her family pre-judge me and have us break up. I hate to admit it, but I cried for like an hour over the irony of it. After I got over her, I went to Yahoo Personals and met my wife there a couple of months later.
My mom tried to force me to break things off with my wife once they met, and I told her to go to hell, and married my wife anyway. People shouldn't pre-judge until they know others better.
No, I was going into my senior year, and she was going into her sophmore or junior year. She still lived at home on breaks and part of that summer where we were apart, but she also spent some time in Germany. She just did what they told her to, it was the way she was. She was shy and a good family girl.
If only I had it, I lost touch with her after the break up and haven't seen her in years. She was my favorite girlfriend, and I wish I could have said something when she broke up with me and said her parents had decided she had to do it. I wish I could have talked her into still dating me. I was just so caught off guard after just moving back into my dorm room, and then she said it, left, and I basically never saw her again. They are one in a million, that's for sure, and she was an engineer, too. *sob*
I actually had a girlfriend in college a few years ago who loved playing video games. She also liked watching Quantum Leap and a few other cool shows, loved reading and writing fan-fiction, and loved MacGyver. She was a really pretty redhead and I thought we were doing great, but I kissed her for the first time at her parents house (not around them and after we had been apart for three months), they found out and made her break up with me. I miss her sometimes, she was so much fun. My wife can't understand video games and has no interest. She'd rather go shopping.:( That's life, though. If you read Slashdot, Hi Christine!
I think you answered your own question. Intel and AMD aren't stupid, if they set up shop in China, the Chinese would have stolen their designs and we'd be seeing new IntelHorse (tm) chips that are 3.8 GHz and cost $25, and AMDragon (tm) chips that are 3000+ and cost $25, and that would totally kill AMD and Intel, since companies would flock to their new chips to save a lot of money. Just imagine how much cheaper servers could be if companies didn't have to pay a huge processor cost. Now I know those costs go to pay for further research to make faster processors, but companies only care about the bottom line, not the long term.
Chinese companies have had to start basically from scratch and research how to get to faster, better chips on the same cycles that Intel and AMD have had to do. I have a feeling they'll either catch up quick on their own or will find a way to steal some of the IP needed to catch up faster.
I already have a wife and two kids, one of which just turned two. I only have to work 40 hrs a week, and my wife doesn't like when I work 50 hrs a week. I like having them around, so I think I'll take your advice and just enjoy doing it in my spare time.
I just discovered the Adventure Game Studio a few weeks ago, so I'm planning to play with that some to get started again. I don't get much free time, but I love making games. I've heard that game developers are treated that way, but hearing from someone who actually did it helped me better appreciate what I have.
I know this is unrelated, but how do you get hired to write games?
When I graduated from college I wanted to work for Blizzard or Id, but they wanted five years of game development experience. How do you get the experience if they won't hire you?
I've ended up going a different route and do PHP/MySQL or J2EE development,
and don't really know how I could switch or gain the experience so that I could do game development. It's just always been a dream of mine.
Step 1, subscribe to Extended Basic cable (~40/month) - I don't bother with digital, I just like my HGTV, TLC, etc...
Step 2, a few months later switch to Basic cable (~10/month) - This is just the basic channels, mostly ABC, NBC, etc...
The best part, the cable companies NEVER come back and reduce you to Basic cable, so you pay $10 / month for Extended Basic cable. They'll reduce your bill, but the guy who turns on your cable told me that it isn't worth it for the installers to come back and switch you from Extended Basic to Basic, so they'll just leave it alone. I guess it is illegal, and I'm a bad person, but I only watch HGTV, TLC, and CBS a couple of times a week, so I consider this my a la carte pricing solution. This has worked in the last four places I've lived.
How expensive is it to build a large pipeline, like they use for oil, and pump ocean water to the deserts? Or if the salt is a bad thing, add some kind of desalination process along the way. If it was possible to do that, and then plant trees, I think it would be amazing if we could turn the Sahara Desert or other deserts into giant forests. I wonder how much climate change would occur from converting a desert back to forest?
I guess this is off-topic, but if countries will spend millions to make a couple of sunny spots, why can't they spend money to make the deserts more inhabitable?
I wish I could do this, but he only weighs 90 lbs and is not very strong, plus I'd need money, which is in short supply, and I'm in Nashville, TN. Cool idea, though. I did manage to get them to come upstairs last night, and they are looking forward to coming to my 2 year old's birthday party this Sunday. I just have to slowly keep trying with them, without looking like I'm pushing them. If I try pushing, they go the opposite way every time, it is so frustrating!
The younger one used to love riding dirt-bikes and other crazy sports when he was younger, but just let himself disappear into the video game world and abandoned everything once he had Crohns. Now that he is mostly better, he needs to start going out into the world again, somehow. Thanks for ideas, it has been hopeless for so long, I just want them to grow up!
Sadly, this is very, very true. The 25 year old suffers from Crohns disease and had an ostomy bag put in about 8 months ago, so he doesn't really suffer any more and has adjusted, so he could work. But he won't even try. He said he might want to try fiction writing, so I got him everything he could need for it, and books with great tips and exercises. He never touched them. He said he wanted to go to college once about 1.5 years ago, so I got him the ACT and SAT prep books and he never touched them. He at least got his GED about 4 years ago. I took both brothers hiking once and they complained the whole time. I helped my 25 year old brother find a girl who wanted to date him, but he'd never call her or anything after their first date, he just wanted to play his game. He liked her and had fun, but said the game was more important.
I've tried to get their access cut off, but failed. My mom used to cut the cords and smash the game systems until they became violent and tried to physically harm her once for it. She never tried again.
They both have cavities and need root canals in almost every tooth in their heads. They need to get all of their teeth yanked and get dentures, but have no money and I can't afford to help. So rather than trying to earn more to fix a basic health problem that hurts them like hell, they'd rather sit on their games.
Right after my mom died, I told them to just shut the games off and come up and talk with me about what to do as far as her getting cremated, where to bury her, what to do about all of her things, etc... They got into a huge fight with me and said I'd have to come back later in a few hours when they were done with killing an important dragon. They had to kill the dragon. My brothers do not live in reality anymore, and I really wish Everquest Online would get shut down somehow.
It is very serious, I agree. I have two brothers, 25 and 26, and one at least goes out to work for 8 hours a day, but spends 12 hours a day on Everquest Online. My 25 year old brother spends 20-22 hours a day on EO. He only gets off long enough to eat one meal a day and sometimes passes out for an hour or two. They always lived with my mom, and the last two years ignored her completely. When she died at the hospital I was the only one with her, they never visited her while she was there and cried a little when they found out, and then went straight back to their game.
They are still living in the same house, somehow paying rent, but the 25 year old never leaves the house for any reason and will not get a job, and the 26 year old works and gets groceries, but that is it. I can't get them off for anything. When I come by to visit with my wife and two kids (I'm 27), they just sit down in the basement and ignore us. I finally am just leaving them alone, I visit once every couple of weeks just to see that they are still alive. It is so sad, and I can't get them to realize there is a whole world to explore outside if they would just take the time.
They have three XBox's (sp?) in the basement, and 3 27" tvs and a dvd player, and a Nintendo DS. I was addicted to Ultima Online for about a year, so I understand a little of what they are going through, but I wish they would somehow realize they have a problem and quit.
Sadly, I expect one day I'll come by and they'll have killed each other over some mistake one of them made in a game, or they'll just die from lack of personal care. They will scream like 5 year olds at each other for an hour if one of them makes a mistake on Everquest. I wish there was something I could do.
Where can I buy one? I live in Nashville, TN and from what I understand the only electric vehicle on the market, the EV-1 was in California and they took them back from everyone who leased one. I'd love a one-seater electric car for my commute to work. Or the Smart car, whenever that is officially released in the U.S. for purchase. (I keep checking for availability). Not everyone in America is interested in horsepower and big vehicles. There are people who care about the environment too.
I'd like models and price lists, as well as dealers that I can actually buy them from. Thanks!
But is it a loss if you were going to have your computer on all of the time anyway? Or if you are using your computer and your spare cycles go towards crunching their project? I turn mine off at night, but some people leave their computers on 24/7. Or what if it was more for each milestone.
Couldn't a company work something out with BOINC where they pay BOINC $.01 per CPU-hour, and $.01 per milestone to each participating member?
I bet people would sign up in droves if they could earn a little money for their free computer cycles. It could be paid quarterly or monthly using an online payment service like PayPal or through good old fashioned checks in the mail.
Just an idea, and for only $.02 per hour instead of $1.00 per hour.
Slashdot Mirror
So after all the development they've been doing for the Phantom console, after a few years all they have to show for it is a keyboard that tilts up and a wireless mouse? Shouldn't the game system come first, then the peripherals? I can almost imagine their initial design meeting:
Boss: This system should have a tilted keyboard and a wireless mouse.
Lackey 1: Boss, that's genius! Let's get started on it right now.
Lackey 2: What about the rest of the console? Shouldn't we start designing those specs?
Boss: Nah, we'll worry about that part in 2009, after we've taken over the world with our Lapboard (TM). Bwaaaahahahahahaha
Lackeys, get to work!
What do you see happening with your browser in 2006? Are there any exciting new features coming, or are you trying to get your browser bundled with any major PC company (ex: Dell with FireFox in the UK)? Give us a good reason to use Opera in the coming year.
Thanks for your time,
Bob_Villa
Just set your browser to delete cookies when you close the browser. I think that is a basic setting on any browser. Now, if they had some kind of "supercookie" that you couldn't delete, that would be more interesting. Or if you tried to delete it and the Department of Homeland Security came knocking on your door.
Honestly, though, there are plenty of sites that install cookies. If you don't like them, delete them. It is as simple as that.
I just checked out technocrat, and it just seems like a poor copy of slashdot. It is kind of funny how most of the stories don't have any posts. Maybe all of the trolls here that just want to get first post could move to that site.
I also wasn't that impressed with the quality of the comments on digg.com. The site's news is okay sometimes, but I like the mix on slashdot, which is why I read this site.
However, for quality entertainment, I like www.i-am-bored.com
Where else can you see urban ninja, or a semi 'drifting' for three minutes, or play random flash games. I guess this is off-topic, but I don't really understand why the site we're supposed to be talking about didn't just comply, get certified and then re-display the list.
I telecommute, so my wife would just come over and hit me. Besides, I hear about her old boyfriends, so I can remember the old days with one of my old girlfriends too.
You know what made it even worse, though, was the fact she spent part of that summer in Germany, and I spent hundreds of dollars calling as often as I could. I worked at an internship in Virginia and had two cute interns always flirting and trying to get me to cheat on her or break up with her and date one of them. I always told them no, I wanted to marry this girl. A girl who loves video games, MacGyver, and Quantum Leap? And she was a gorgeous redhead to boot. So I just kept telling them both no all summer long as they kept trying harder and harder. I go to see my girlfriend once after she gets back from Germany at her parents house, stay a couple of nights, and we have our first kiss. I find out from her that is her first kiss. Then I drove back, finished the internship and went back to college. When she got to college she came right up, and I offered to help her move in, and that is when she told me her family had decided we had to break up. I waited all summer for one kiss and to have her family pre-judge me and have us break up. I hate to admit it, but I cried for like an hour over the irony of it. After I got over her, I went to Yahoo Personals and met my wife there a couple of months later. My mom tried to force me to break things off with my wife once they met, and I told her to go to hell, and married my wife anyway. People shouldn't pre-judge until they know others better.
No, I was going into my senior year, and she was going into her sophmore or junior year. She still lived at home on breaks and part of that summer where we were apart, but she also spent some time in Germany. She just did what they told her to, it was the way she was. She was shy and a good family girl.
If only I had it, I lost touch with her after the break up and haven't seen her in years. She was my favorite girlfriend, and I wish I could have said something when she broke up with me and said her parents had decided she had to do it. I wish I could have talked her into still dating me. I was just so caught off guard after just moving back into my dorm room, and then she said it, left, and I basically never saw her again. They are one in a million, that's for sure, and she was an engineer, too. *sob*
I actually had a girlfriend in college a few years ago who loved playing video games. She also liked watching Quantum Leap and a few other cool shows, loved reading and writing fan-fiction, and loved MacGyver. She was a really pretty redhead and I thought we were doing great, but I kissed her for the first time at her parents house (not around them and after we had been apart for three months), they found out and made her break up with me. I miss her sometimes, she was so much fun. My wife can't understand video games and has no interest. She'd rather go shopping. :( That's life, though. If you read Slashdot, Hi Christine!
I think you answered your own question. Intel and AMD aren't stupid, if they set up shop in China, the Chinese would have stolen their designs and we'd be seeing new IntelHorse (tm) chips that are 3.8 GHz and cost $25, and AMDragon (tm) chips that are 3000+ and cost $25, and that would totally kill AMD and Intel, since companies would flock to their new chips to save a lot of money. Just imagine how much cheaper servers could be if companies didn't have to pay a huge processor cost. Now I know those costs go to pay for further research to make faster processors, but companies only care about the bottom line, not the long term.
.02
Chinese companies have had to start basically from scratch and research how to get to faster, better chips on the same cycles that Intel and AMD have had to do. I have a feeling they'll either catch up quick on their own or will find a way to steal some of the IP needed to catch up faster.
Just my
I already have a wife and two kids, one of which just turned two. I only have to work 40 hrs a week, and my wife doesn't like when I work 50 hrs a week. I like having them around, so I think I'll take your advice and just enjoy doing it in my spare time.
I just discovered the Adventure Game Studio a few weeks ago, so I'm planning to play with that some to get started again. I don't get much free time, but I love making games. I've heard that game developers are treated that way, but hearing from someone who actually did it helped me better appreciate what I have.
I know this is unrelated, but how do you get hired to write games?
When I graduated from college I wanted to work for Blizzard or Id, but they wanted five years of game development experience. How do you get the experience if they won't hire you?
I've ended up going a different route and do PHP/MySQL or J2EE development, and don't really know how I could switch or gain the experience so that I could do game development. It's just always been a dream of mine.
On the blog, just click the link that says "Very thorough runthrough", which links to the following url: http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/temp/zango.htm
I think this link is actually pretty good. I agree, the blog wasn't the most clear.
This has worked for me wherever I've lived.
Step 1, subscribe to Extended Basic cable (~40/month) - I don't bother with digital, I just like my HGTV, TLC, etc...
Step 2, a few months later switch to Basic cable (~10/month) - This is just the basic channels, mostly ABC, NBC, etc...
The best part, the cable companies NEVER come back and reduce you to Basic cable, so you pay $10 / month for Extended Basic cable. They'll reduce your bill, but the guy who turns on your cable told me that it isn't worth it for the installers to come back and switch you from Extended Basic to Basic, so they'll just leave it alone. I guess it is illegal, and I'm a bad person, but I only watch HGTV, TLC, and CBS a couple of times a week, so I consider this my a la carte pricing solution. This has worked in the last four places I've lived.
How expensive is it to build a large pipeline, like they use for oil, and pump ocean water to the deserts? Or if the salt is a bad thing, add some kind of desalination process along the way. If it was possible to do that, and then plant trees, I think it would be amazing if we could turn the Sahara Desert or other deserts into giant forests. I wonder how much climate change would occur from converting a desert back to forest?
I guess this is off-topic, but if countries will spend millions to make a couple of sunny spots, why can't they spend money to make the deserts more inhabitable?
I wish I could do this, but he only weighs 90 lbs and is not very strong, plus I'd need money, which is in short supply, and I'm in Nashville, TN. Cool idea, though. I did manage to get them to come upstairs last night, and they are looking forward to coming to my 2 year old's birthday party this Sunday. I just have to slowly keep trying with them, without looking like I'm pushing them. If I try pushing, they go the opposite way every time, it is so frustrating!
The younger one used to love riding dirt-bikes and other crazy sports when he was younger, but just let himself disappear into the video game world and abandoned everything once he had Crohns. Now that he is mostly better, he needs to start going out into the world again, somehow. Thanks for ideas, it has been hopeless for so long, I just want them to grow up!
Dave
Sadly, this is very, very true. The 25 year old suffers from Crohns disease and had an ostomy bag put in about 8 months ago, so he doesn't really suffer any more and has adjusted, so he could work. But he won't even try. He said he might want to try fiction writing, so I got him everything he could need for it, and books with great tips and exercises. He never touched them. He said he wanted to go to college once about 1.5 years ago, so I got him the ACT and SAT prep books and he never touched them. He at least got his GED about 4 years ago. I took both brothers hiking once and they complained the whole time. I helped my 25 year old brother find a girl who wanted to date him, but he'd never call her or anything after their first date, he just wanted to play his game. He liked her and had fun, but said the game was more important.
I've tried to get their access cut off, but failed. My mom used to cut the cords and smash the game systems until they became violent and tried to physically harm her once for it. She never tried again.
They both have cavities and need root canals in almost every tooth in their heads. They need to get all of their teeth yanked and get dentures, but have no money and I can't afford to help. So rather than trying to earn more to fix a basic health problem that hurts them like hell, they'd rather sit on their games.
Right after my mom died, I told them to just shut the games off and come up and talk with me about what to do as far as her getting cremated, where to bury her, what to do about all of her things, etc... They got into a huge fight with me and said I'd have to come back later in a few hours when they were done with killing an important dragon. They had to kill the dragon. My brothers do not live in reality anymore, and I really wish Everquest Online would get shut down somehow.
It is very serious, I agree. I have two brothers, 25 and 26, and one at least goes out to work for 8 hours a day, but spends 12 hours a day on Everquest Online. My 25 year old brother spends 20-22 hours a day on EO. He only gets off long enough to eat one meal a day and sometimes passes out for an hour or two. They always lived with my mom, and the last two years ignored her completely. When she died at the hospital I was the only one with her, they never visited her while she was there and cried a little when they found out, and then went straight back to their game.
They are still living in the same house, somehow paying rent, but the 25 year old never leaves the house for any reason and will not get a job, and the 26 year old works and gets groceries, but that is it. I can't get them off for anything. When I come by to visit with my wife and two kids (I'm 27), they just sit down in the basement and ignore us. I finally am just leaving them alone, I visit once every couple of weeks just to see that they are still alive. It is so sad, and I can't get them to realize there is a whole world to explore outside if they would just take the time.
They have three XBox's (sp?) in the basement, and 3 27" tvs and a dvd player, and a Nintendo DS. I was addicted to Ultima Online for about a year, so I understand a little of what they are going through, but I wish they would somehow realize they have a problem and quit.
Sadly, I expect one day I'll come by and they'll have killed each other over some mistake one of them made in a game, or they'll just die from lack of personal care. They will scream like 5 year olds at each other for an hour if one of them makes a mistake on Everquest. I wish there was something I could do.
Where can I buy one? I live in Nashville, TN and from what I understand the only electric vehicle on the market, the EV-1 was in California and they took them back from everyone who leased one. I'd love a one-seater electric car for my commute to work. Or the Smart car, whenever that is officially released in the U.S. for purchase. (I keep checking for availability). Not everyone in America is interested in horsepower and big vehicles. There are people who care about the environment too.
I'd like models and price lists, as well as dealers that I can actually buy them from. Thanks!
But is it a loss if you were going to have your computer on all of the time anyway? Or if you are using your computer and your spare cycles go towards crunching their project? I turn mine off at night, but some people leave their computers on 24/7. Or what if it was more for each milestone.
;)
It was just an idea to think about.
Couldn't a company work something out with BOINC where they pay BOINC $.01 per CPU-hour, and $.01 per milestone to each participating member?
I bet people would sign up in droves if they could earn a little money for their free computer cycles. It could be paid quarterly or monthly using an online payment service like PayPal or through good old fashioned checks in the mail.
Just an idea, and for only $.02 per hour instead of $1.00 per hour.
Dave