"Why is evacuation of Israeli colonies in the West Bank unrealistic?"
Probably because if they do, then just like last time Hamas and sympathisers will shout and scream about how they've defeated the Israeli's and then continue firing rockets at Israel's civilian population. I think realistically if it was just Israel and Fatah on the scene there's some decent hope for eventual peace, we'd still see the odd suicide bombing or murder here and there for a while, hell even in Ireland there's still sectarian violence even now but eventually it'd die down.
Whilst Hamas is still on the scene though I'm less hopeful, Hamas seems to continue down the path of violence whatever Israel does. Unfortunately, a large portion of the Palestinian people are partly to blame for this for allowing Hamas to have any kind of legitimacy by voting them in.
After Israel pulled out before and when they started handing back land things were looking up. Then we got the infighting between Fatah and Hamas, Fatah got the West Bank, Hamas got Gaza. Ever since then Hamas has used Gaza to continuously launch rocket attacks, or at least not actively do anything to prevent launch of rocket attacks by tearaway groups from Gaza.
I've followed the debate on this war in various places since it broke out but whilst there's been a lot of good ideas from both sides there is still one question that I've yet to see answered- how do you deal with a faction that's going to continue to stir up violence regardless? Even when they weren't fighting Israel they were fighting the slightly more moderates in their own population. I think the best solution of course is that the Palestinians themselves say no to Hamas, but if they don't? then what? Is it really fair when many ask Israel to stop attacking Gaza that they do so knowing full well that they're going to continue to suffer rocket attacks indefinitely? and should they also open up the borders too that those attacks will get more intense and more deadly?
Israel is heavy handed for sure, but I think both Israel and Fatah are capable of reaching compromise as hard as it may be, Hamas however, I don't think will ever be willing to compromise, it really does seem to be an "us" or "them" situation for Israel with Hamas.
I'm kind of intrigued to know what features it has in place should the plane outright fail for some reason, such as a catastrophic airframe failure or if for some reason all engines failed or even a fire on board.
What are the evacuation features for a plane like this? Does it really have a kind of escape pod? does it just use parachutes?
Honestly, I have no idea. But as an MSDN subscriber I found this little tidbit on the Vista x86 and x64 download details both worrying and intriguing:
"Instructions and Resources
Update to Windows 7 Beta (KB961367)
To protect your MP3 files 1. Before you install this Beta release, back up all MP3 files that might be accessed by the computer, including those on removable media or network shares. 2. Install the Beta release of Windows 7; download and install the Update to Windows 7 Beta (KB961367) located on this page."
Further investigation using the KB number brings up a suggestion it's to do with Windows media player cutting the first few seconds off of all your MP3 files.
To this I have one question, why on earth would Windows or WMP ever under any circumstances need to seek out all your MP3s on your local drive, your network shares and your removable drives and then WRITE to them?
It's certainly one of the more concerning things I've seen so far.
I don't recall having any such issues switching to Windows 2000 as a gaming system for the most part and did so as soon as it was out.
The only issues I did encounter were with finding drivers for some peices of hardware (webcam was one) or with games that were still DOS based rather than written for Windows, which by the time 98 was in swing was a lot of them.
I didn't have any issues with reduced framerates in Quake and Quake II or anything. I can't remember what hardware I had at the time but my original graphics card was an Orchid Righteous 3D followed by the first GeForce that came out- I think that was after Windows 2000 though? I can't remember. If it was then I was still using my Orchid when it came out I guess as my 3D card, but can't remember what I had for 2D. Otherwise I was using my GeForce from the off with it.
I know a lot of people did complain of problems though so it could well be that I was just lucky in the games I played or the hardware I had that just worked for the most part. For me though, Windows 2000 was probably the best Windows switch for me (ironically until Vista- I had more probs with XP on release, but then I didn't switch to Vista until it was already SP1). 2000 was just such a painless switch for me with so many benefits, it was the biggest jump for me since 3.11 to 95. The only Windows OS I never installed was ME, although when I was working tech support I did have runins with it of course.
But again, going back to my Vista experience and comparing with that, I think this is often the crux of why some people view different Windows releases in different lights- the hardware you have etc. When I installed Vista it was both SP1 and I was doing so on a newly built machine which was well over spec compared to the high end machines around when Vista was originally released. Vista has for me hence been rather painless, but I know for sure had I installed it on my old hardware and done so at release it would probably have left me with a whole different impression.
So I guess that's the key really, how good you find a new MS OS depends on when you first really start to use it and/or what hardware you use it on. If you use it at release with hardware it works fine with you'll probably appreciate it, if you use it long after release on hardware that's capable you'll probably also appreciate it. If you use obscure hardware, or hardware that unfortunately just doesn't work well at release then you'll probably hate it. Microsoft could take note on this and try to minimise the problem because I'd guess most people's views of an OS is shaped early on and possibly never changes. I bet many of the early Vista complainers would find it a whole different experience now for example whereas something like ME that just never really improved (I think MS just gave up on it pretty quickly) would always have looked sour no matter what hardware and point in time.
I was quite impressed by the Eee PC when it came out and it was fantastic to see Linux on a system selling large amounts of units.
I haven't yet got a netbook but I do want one, I'm just not sure if I'd use it enough.
Last weekend whilst out shopping I had a quick look in all the electronic stores to see what was available, there's suddenly so many netbooks there.
The problem is, not one of them was Linux based anymore. To make it worse, they were all XP Home, not even professional.
Of course, you can install Linux on them but what the hell is the point in installing an OS that can actually do nothing of much use? The fact Home can't be connected to a domain even and such always left me feeling like it was kind of a trial version of Windows.
Selecting XP Home over XP Pro, Vista or Linux strikes me as a bit like selecting Windows ME over Windows 2000 or 98 8 years ago. I specifically will not buy a Netbook with XP Home on. I did make the point of seeking out the manager of each store and asking him whether they had any plans to stock an OS that was useful to professionals and business users such as Linux. All 4 managers across each store tried to convince me that I should just buy an XP Home one to which my response was along the lines of "At the end of the day, if it has a Microsoft OS on it, part of the cost of the system includes the cost of the OS. If I am going to pay for an OS, I will not pay for an OS that doesn't let me do half of what I want to do, therefore I either need XP Pro or one of the higher end Vista editions or even better, I need Linux, where the Netbook wont have any added cost built in for the OS". They all said they have no plans to bring in any new Linux based Netbooks, that they were all due to be XP based.
So unfortunately it seems 2008 was the year of the rise of Linux on Netbooks, but unfortunately shortly after was the fall of Linux on netbooks. Let's just hope there's a second rise at some point.
I can only guess you're very confused. GTA4 has no frame rate on the 360. Initially the PS3 version had some issues with framerates but these were fixed in a later patch.
The PC version you've never played, but seem to feel the need to speculate would never have problems was actually posted as a story here and on many other sites, because not only were bad frame rates a problem but the game wouldn't even work for many people and provided nothing more than extremely cryptic error codes. Even worse, because it was released via Steam it was so bad that Valve even decided to start issuing refunds to people!
The only thing the PC does better than consoles is higher resolutions, but what's noticable is how pointless these higher resolutions are when other graphical effects are simply too much for the non-gaming specific hardware and bus of PCs to handle. High end graphics cards rectify many, but not all of these issues.
I don't understand really how you can continuously speculate that things run bad on consoles. As has been pointed out by the response to my post above yours, console games are held to high standards which they have to meet before they can be released, that means a game with serious low frame rates and such simply wouldn't be allowed to be released, whilst on the PC it would be released anyway.
It doesn't really matter if a $60 is better than what's in the consoles which are now 3 years old (although I'm not sure that's even true), when that card still has to go through a bus that's designed for more generic applications than focussed on gaming specifically you're never going to get the level of optimization to match consoles of the same generation.
Look, I'm sorry mummy and daddy would only let you spend $1000 AUS on a PC and wont buy you a console but that isn't my problem, nor does it suddenly make lies you make up about GTA4 frame rates and friends with COD4 become true. Your personal guarantee that GTA4 wouldn't have problems on the PC doesn't really count for much when a very quick search shows quite the opposite, that it suffered some of the worst problems of any recent game on release.
2) To act as proof if the company feels I haven't paid them/been charged right/whatever
In case 1) I will chase them up pretty quickly if this occurs so the length isn't too important as long as it's reasonably long enough to get round to checking through the bill- 3 months would do but there's little reason they shouldn't hold them for a year or more as it's not expensive to hold them that long.
In case 2) I don't mind how long as long as there is a condition attached- that as soon as they wish to delete the bills they also accept they have no reason to dispute the bills or their payment. As soon as a company removes access to the bills they should also be entering an agreement that they accept that bill is done and dusted and there will be no more come back over it.
Whilst rare, I have heard of cases chasing people up over bills that were multiple years old before, generally due to system errors. If the bill is no longer available to me after this time though, they shouldn't have any comeback on me if they later dispute it because I can no longer verify their claims due to not being able to inspect the bill in question.
If they were really underhanded they could modify the bill online anyway of course so for anything particularly sensitive I prefer to keep my own local copies regardless but I think my above to points still hold.
That's not comparing like for like though, whilst as mentioned in my original post, things like Spore and Warhammer online certainly did run great it's not because the PC is a superior platform for gaming than consoles, it's because these games simply don't look as good.
The problem is the games that run well cater for much lower end systems as their best so that they can perform well to the widest audience but as a result they're also capping the quality of graphics.
So yeah, the games may run better (although I'm not sure that's even particularly, console games don't suffer from low performance like PC games because otherwise they wouldn't be sellable!) but the key point is they look nowhere near as good as console games. Even if you look at ports this is glaringly obvious, they simply don't look as good on the PC no matter whether it's a PC to console port or a console to PC port.
Huh? By community they mean the indie community who are developing for the XBox, it's still indies developing the games, it's certainly not studios.
"Easiest way to get your game published to a wide audience is to write a flash game."
That's certainly the easiest way to publish your game to a potential wide audience but the key word there is potential, you still have to find that audience and attract it somehow, that's a lot of work, the web is a big wide open space, it's not exactly easy convincing people to head to your extremely small part of it. XBox live provides the audience for you, Microsoft handles advertising and distribution, you don't have to worry about any of that. With XNA game studio there's no reason you can't distribute a Windows version of the game anyway to increase your audience on the web if you really want to. You only have to write once with XNA for it to work on both XBox 360 and Windows.
Yes you can, you can sell them at 200, 400, 800 or 1200 MS points (I think those are the right ranges anyway). Certainly Microsoft does take a cut (up to 30% I think) but seeing as they're handling distribution and marketing for you I don't think that's terrible.
Anyone who spends that kind of money on hardware to play last gen games is a fool.
Plenty of current and next gen games when they arrive utilise 4 cores, it seems to make sense if you're spending money on a PC like that for it to be able to still play the games of tommorrow than to play the games of yesterday that can be run perfectly well even if using only 1 of 4 cores anyway.
To create an example to make this point clear:
Game A is out now - it can be run on a single core higher clock speed CPU at 150fps - or a lower clock speed quad core CPU utilising only one of them at 140fps
The difference will be narrow (or may not even exist in fact) because the OS still utilises multiple cores to ensure the game has a core to itself whilst single core has to share the core with the OS and background processes so even if the game doesn't use 4 cores, the OS does. Then onto the next scenario, a new game:
Game B comes out in a month - it can be run on a single core higher clock speed CPU at 20fps due to not supporting the latest SIMD extensions etc. - or it can be run on a quad core CPU utilising all cores, with the latest SIMD extensions and such at 200fps
So tell me, if you're laying down this kind of cash for a PC that you'll probably want to last for a while, what makes the most sense to go for?
Only a fool uses the "quad core is pointless, existing games don't use them all" argument when spending the amount of cash required for a high end gaming PC.
Tell me about it, I built a new PC earlier this year having been playing mostly XBox 360 games for the past 2 and a half years.
I spent £1,600 (equivalent to $3,200 US at the time) on my new machine. I bought high end named RAM (something I never usually do), I bought a high end gaming motherboard (again, I always used to just go for any old board) etc. etc. So imagine my display when as soon as it was built I fired up Crysis to find it would not run smoothly anywhere even close to highest detail at 1920x1200 and nor would it run at max detail at lower resolutions. Whilst games like Spore and Warhammer Online ran perfectly, they're not exactly top end graphical marvels.
So yeah, I agree, PC gaming for games that show off the latest graphics is an absolute waste of time when there are consoles out there that due to having fixed hardware (at least the hardware that matters when optimizing) is so much cheaper and games can be so much better optimized for. Games like Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty 5 end up looking so so much better than Crysis on the PC even at full detail and yet also run amazingly smoothly and for a mere fraction of the cost of my gaming PC and without any of the hassle of making sure drivers are uptodate etc.
I'm not sure there's really a solution either unless we really move everything off of the standard PC hardware like we have graphics and just have "gaming boards" that are effectively like console hardware but that slot into the PC and just utilise it for display etc. but have some standardised specs to allow for proper optimization. As it stands, PC hardware now can't even compete with the graphical quality and smoothness of console hardware that is now 3 - 4 years old since release, and even older when you factor that it was developed long before release.
Perhaps what I miss most though is extensibility, games like Quake were fantastically fun to mod, but similarly even that became a little silly with newer games. The increased complexity of assets (higher poly counts, shaders etc.) means you can't really create decent mods as a one man band or small team anymore bar some smaller innovative code-only mods. Anything that requires a change in graphical style requires many more bodies working on it than before and if you do build a team of the right size and skills then why build a mod anyway? Why not just outright make a game when the workload is similar if you use one of the many great cheap engines out there (C4, PowerRender, Torque etc.) or even OSS engines (OGRE, Irrlicht).
I was taking a coach up North coming back from Heathrow from Canada once and our plane was late landing, I had 20minutes from the doors on the plane opening to catch my coach. I have no idea how I did it but by some miracle I managed it, I ran off the plane at Terminal 3, was lucky enough that at passport control there was no queue so could go straight through, I was desperate for the toilet so ran in there next to the luggage area, came out just as by another miracle my bag was coming out on the conveyor, grabbed my bag, ran to customs, walked through customs slowly (as I figure running through customs is probably a good way to get shot dead or at least slammed hard into the ground by a rugby tackle) and then ran downstairs, along the long tunnels to the central coach area and made it just in time to put my back in the coach hold and jump on.
So even Heathrow, the busiest airport in the world can be pretty efficient sometimes but it does admittedly require a stroke of luck. I think we were probably one of the first planes in (I think we landed around 7:05 when we were originally due in at 6:25 or something if I remember correctly with coach due to leave at 7:25) which is why luggage and passport control were so quick because nothing else yet had landed, or if it had, it had landed and already cleared out.
It's not something I ever want to do again though, I spent half the coach journey trying to get my breathe back! Running that kind of distance with a full set of bags including thick winter gear and skis is pretty hard, especially for someone like me that sits on his arse in front a computer for a living and sits on his arse in front of a computer for recreation too.
Northern Norway was best for me, didn't even need to show passport! Off the play and out the airport, simple as that.
I can only guess it's because the only people who'd go within the arctic circle must have an existing reason to be there because it's not the most exciting place to go otherwise!
"If your game is for XBLA or PS3 or Wii, then your game idea and code has to be approved by a committee of suits at one of those companies. That's about as un-independent as it gets."
Not sure what the setup for the PS3 and Wii is but the XBox's community games are peer reviewed by other developers and not by Microsoft officials. XNA is also extremely easy to use and has some fantastic samples available.
I'd argue XBox community games is probably one of the easiest ways for indies to get into game development and have their games published to a wide audience. Even if you develop yourself and advertise yourself games you've made for the PC people still have to find your game in the depths of the web, whilst with XBox community games your game is listed right there on the consolate equivalent of a desktop for the user to find. It takes away the pains of marketing and distribution and even the low level parts of PC game development (you don't need to cater for different LOD for different spec hardware for example), it allows indies to concentrate entirely on the important part- game development itself.
Also, article says this guy is going to be number three. The difference if McCain had been voted in is we'd see guys like this at numbers 1, 2 and 3.
I'd say the fact that out of all the appointments Obama has to make they've had to scratch all the way down to the 3rd line in some set of jobs to find something like this.
I'd be far more worried if we were seeing these kind of appointments at multiple points on the front line of staff he has to select.
When you compare to the likes of the Bush administration where we had this exact sort of scenario, albeit not with corrupt music industry officials at the top but with corrupt oil and finanace officials etc. at the top Obama is doing pretty well so far.
Particularly with Palin as VP who already has a track record of heavily abusing power to further personal goals we'd have seen far more corrupt people in far higher places than we're seeing here with Obama.
I find this interesting because whilst I've never suffered further questioning entering the US (it's been generally no different to anywhere else bar the fingerprint/retina scan) I did have major problems in Canada once.
The first time I ever visited I flew from Manchester UK to Philadelphia US to Ottawa. When I arrived and went through the first customs and immigration stand and was asked only a couple of simple questions (Purpose of being there etc.) and despite me answering them truthfully and as I have on many other trips I was for some unknown reason sent to their customs/immigration office just past the initial customs/immigration barriers. Here I was asked the same questions again which I thought nothing of at first, but after I was asked these questions the customs girl went away and came back a few minutes later and started asking me more and more invasive questions (How much do you earn etc.), soon after she dissapeared again and brought forward her male superior who also asked me some questions. I was sent into the baggage check area to have everything checked thoroughly, I was taken into an interview room and interviewed somewhat more formally (recorded etc.), my laptop was checked over, they asked me to login so they could search through my files. I was asked about my criminal record of which I have none to which they responded with "You better not be lying as we can check" to which I responded "Sure thing, go for it". Some other choice questions that somewhat amused me were "How much money do you have in your bank account?", "Do you have a girlfriend or are you married?", "Do you plan on doing any work on holiday?" and perhaps the greatest of all, which I really actually had to try hard not to laugh at was from the girl who checked my bags in the bag check area after putting on latex gloves (it scared me at first until I realised it was just so she didn't contaminate any evidence if they were to find any), she asked "Do you have any beastiality images on your laptop or camera?"- I answered no because that was the truth to which she responded "Do you know what beastiality is?", I mean, how do you answer that? I just went with "Yes", at which point she moved on.
Eventually after 3 hours they let me continue on to enjoy my holiday with a rather sour taste in my mouth regarding the start of my first ever visit there.
To this day I have absolutely no idea why I was pulled over but reading this article I wonder now if the officer at the initial desk had sent me into the immigration office on orders based on data that was sent beforehand and that perhaps there was something in this data they didn't like such as use of a public library IP for booking the tickets perhaps rather than my home IP as I was working in IT support at the time for libraries and had booked my tickets at work during lunch. A Canadian friend suggested it could be because the customs officials were French Canadian and just liked the idea of harassing a British citizen but I'd like to believe they're a little more professional than that.
Still, I really do not enjoy going through Canadian customs/immigration, they were far more invasive, far more harassing than the US and ironically even the Chinese border guards have ever been. That's not to say I don't love Canada as a nation (I try to visit on holiday at least once a year) but it is to say their customs/immigration folk seem more viscious little dictator wannabes than anywhere else I've been- even in times I've been since, where I haven't had this problem they often come across as rather nasty. At least the US border guys smile at you when they steal your biometrics and every other peice of information they can off of you.
In hindsight I feel I should've asked them to call the British embassy folk over and stand up to it a bit if they weren't going to tell me why they were being so invasive, but at the time when they also tell you if you don't comply (the worst part is I was complying, they just liked playing the tough guy/girl) with them you'll be on the next
The average price of what though? Every song or songs that matter?
Let's face it, the $0.69 stuff is going to be the tracks that are space fillers on albums, the tracks no one wants anyway.
The tracks everyone wants will be $1.29.
The music industry's profits are clearly going to increase here else they wouldn't have bothered. Effectively, the music industry has said "We'll allow removal of DRM, if you pay us more". This is somewhat confirmed rather worryingly in the following article on this by the BBC. I'm not sure what the quotes near the bottom are referring to but it almost sounds like the $0.69 tracks will still have DRM and you'll have to pay $1.29 to remove it. I hope that's not the case and the comments are mere speculation but it really wouldn't suprise me.
I think you're right in that the average price of a track should fall, but not that the average cost to the end user will fall because again, the stuff people actually buy will go up and the stuff they don't will go down.
Do anything that matters in your spare time on your own PC, just do what you need to do to get decent grades during uni time- chances are if you're inventing something that really is new then it's well above and beyond what would be expected for top marks. It would be impossible for a university to ask that top marks style stuff be something new and groundbreaking of every student.
I suppose there are fringe cases where you may really, really need the university's computing power, or at least you may think you do, but in this case innovate, either pay for some cloud computing time or build a distributed system with your friends or similar.
I guess it's kinda different for post-grad stuff but at that point you need to build a relationship with them, if you're paying them a small fortune to do post-grad stuff then you're well within your rights to ask what you can and can't keep in terms of intellectual property. If they're paying you as a researcher or similar then it's the same as any other job- tough shit because they're paying you to come up with this research and these new ideas.
The other question is of course, are you really doing anything so groundbreaking it's going to be worth patenting anyway? I've "discovered" things once or twice before only to find I'd been beaten to the punch albeit hidden in the deep depths of the net that I only discovered after doing searches that were somewhat related to my solution that I'd never have found had I not figured out what the solution to the problem was in the first place.
I was thinking someone had come up with the genius idea of doing something like punching Windows to close them, slapping them down to minimise them, uppercutting them to maximise them and other such exciting things. You could even have an onscreen keyboard where you have to machinegun the buttons to type.
Suddenly for a moment there the working day seemed like it was going to begin being a whole lot more exciting.
What happened to the great New Zealand from World War II that quite courageously proclaimed after Britain entered the war something along the lines of "Where Britain goes, we stand by them"?...Oh wait perhaps that's actually the problem here;)
I always figured New Zealand was a pretty liberal country, is that not the case?
I've thought the same thing myself and yet when it comes to, no one has actually suffered due to anti-piracy measures more than those in the US with the DMCA and the RIAA's lawsuits/threats etc. Even software patents are a similar issue to an extent. So despite the bad press about these other nations the US is still the worst for it. At the end of the day despite 3 strikes, despite threats of nationwide filtering none of it has actually happened yet to anyone in these countries.
This means one of two things:
1) It's all hot air and they're not really any worse than the US
2) They are worse than the US, but are just slow at implementing their worse ideas and they haven't had time to come around yet
Point 1 is possible, it could be that the hot air in these countries is enough to overturn these stupid laws- certainly in Canada this has been the case with some attempts so far. Possibility 2 frankly just scares the crap out of me as a UK citizen and I truly hope it's the former.
It's odd in a way because I know many "geeks" who have these ideas long before Apple pushes them onto the market.
I wonder then whether jobs just happens to be one of those geeks in the right place and whether he's not replaceable or whether it's a combination of his geek instinct coupled with another ability, such as being a great business man or leader that makes him stand out?
It'd be an interesting experiment to put one of the people on the ground who have equally good ideas in that kind of position for a while to see if the effect is the same or whether there's more to it than just good ideas and being in the right place at the right time.
I don't think there's a lack of people with the insight into the industry of jobs, I think it's just that they're largely the clever, but unfortunately rather introverted guys at the lower parts of the scale that perhaps have this insight. Perhaps the rarity then is in someone who both has the technical/industry insight AND the extroverted character and charisma required to make people listen to these ideas too.
I apologise in advance if this is a dumb question. But what exactly is Job's speciality that makes him so important to the company?
I get the impression he's not a technical guy as Woz did all that in the early days and he has plenty of other peons to do that now.
I understand he's not a designer, certainly credit for the iPod design goes to a British guy iirc and similarly the iPhone.
Is it simply that he's good at hiring the right guys? Is it down to making good business oriented decisions (i.e. what markets to go for?) or is it something else entirely?
I'm just intrigued to know what skill he has that's apparently so rare that the life of a major tech company depends on it and that they couldn't find easily in anyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
"Why is evacuation of Israeli colonies in the West Bank unrealistic?"
Probably because if they do, then just like last time Hamas and sympathisers will shout and scream about how they've defeated the Israeli's and then continue firing rockets at Israel's civilian population. I think realistically if it was just Israel and Fatah on the scene there's some decent hope for eventual peace, we'd still see the odd suicide bombing or murder here and there for a while, hell even in Ireland there's still sectarian violence even now but eventually it'd die down.
Whilst Hamas is still on the scene though I'm less hopeful, Hamas seems to continue down the path of violence whatever Israel does. Unfortunately, a large portion of the Palestinian people are partly to blame for this for allowing Hamas to have any kind of legitimacy by voting them in.
After Israel pulled out before and when they started handing back land things were looking up. Then we got the infighting between Fatah and Hamas, Fatah got the West Bank, Hamas got Gaza. Ever since then Hamas has used Gaza to continuously launch rocket attacks, or at least not actively do anything to prevent launch of rocket attacks by tearaway groups from Gaza.
I've followed the debate on this war in various places since it broke out but whilst there's been a lot of good ideas from both sides there is still one question that I've yet to see answered- how do you deal with a faction that's going to continue to stir up violence regardless? Even when they weren't fighting Israel they were fighting the slightly more moderates in their own population. I think the best solution of course is that the Palestinians themselves say no to Hamas, but if they don't? then what? Is it really fair when many ask Israel to stop attacking Gaza that they do so knowing full well that they're going to continue to suffer rocket attacks indefinitely? and should they also open up the borders too that those attacks will get more intense and more deadly?
Israel is heavy handed for sure, but I think both Israel and Fatah are capable of reaching compromise as hard as it may be, Hamas however, I don't think will ever be willing to compromise, it really does seem to be an "us" or "them" situation for Israel with Hamas.
I'm kind of intrigued to know what features it has in place should the plane outright fail for some reason, such as a catastrophic airframe failure or if for some reason all engines failed or even a fire on board.
What are the evacuation features for a plane like this? Does it really have a kind of escape pod? does it just use parachutes?
Anyone any idea?
Honestly, I have no idea. But as an MSDN subscriber I found this little tidbit on the Vista x86 and x64 download details both worrying and intriguing:
"Instructions and Resources
Update to Windows 7 Beta (KB961367)
To protect your MP3 files
1. Before you install this Beta release, back up all MP3 files that might be accessed by the computer, including those on removable media or network shares.
2. Install the Beta release of Windows 7; download and install the Update to Windows 7 Beta (KB961367) located on this page."
Further investigation using the KB number brings up a suggestion it's to do with Windows media player cutting the first few seconds off of all your MP3 files.
To this I have one question, why on earth would Windows or WMP ever under any circumstances need to seek out all your MP3s on your local drive, your network shares and your removable drives and then WRITE to them?
It's certainly one of the more concerning things I've seen so far.
I don't recall having any such issues switching to Windows 2000 as a gaming system for the most part and did so as soon as it was out.
The only issues I did encounter were with finding drivers for some peices of hardware (webcam was one) or with games that were still DOS based rather than written for Windows, which by the time 98 was in swing was a lot of them.
I didn't have any issues with reduced framerates in Quake and Quake II or anything. I can't remember what hardware I had at the time but my original graphics card was an Orchid Righteous 3D followed by the first GeForce that came out- I think that was after Windows 2000 though? I can't remember. If it was then I was still using my Orchid when it came out I guess as my 3D card, but can't remember what I had for 2D. Otherwise I was using my GeForce from the off with it.
I know a lot of people did complain of problems though so it could well be that I was just lucky in the games I played or the hardware I had that just worked for the most part. For me though, Windows 2000 was probably the best Windows switch for me (ironically until Vista- I had more probs with XP on release, but then I didn't switch to Vista until it was already SP1). 2000 was just such a painless switch for me with so many benefits, it was the biggest jump for me since 3.11 to 95. The only Windows OS I never installed was ME, although when I was working tech support I did have runins with it of course.
But again, going back to my Vista experience and comparing with that, I think this is often the crux of why some people view different Windows releases in different lights- the hardware you have etc. When I installed Vista it was both SP1 and I was doing so on a newly built machine which was well over spec compared to the high end machines around when Vista was originally released. Vista has for me hence been rather painless, but I know for sure had I installed it on my old hardware and done so at release it would probably have left me with a whole different impression.
So I guess that's the key really, how good you find a new MS OS depends on when you first really start to use it and/or what hardware you use it on. If you use it at release with hardware it works fine with you'll probably appreciate it, if you use it long after release on hardware that's capable you'll probably also appreciate it. If you use obscure hardware, or hardware that unfortunately just doesn't work well at release then you'll probably hate it. Microsoft could take note on this and try to minimise the problem because I'd guess most people's views of an OS is shaped early on and possibly never changes. I bet many of the early Vista complainers would find it a whole different experience now for example whereas something like ME that just never really improved (I think MS just gave up on it pretty quickly) would always have looked sour no matter what hardware and point in time.
I was quite impressed by the Eee PC when it came out and it was fantastic to see Linux on a system selling large amounts of units.
I haven't yet got a netbook but I do want one, I'm just not sure if I'd use it enough.
Last weekend whilst out shopping I had a quick look in all the electronic stores to see what was available, there's suddenly so many netbooks there.
The problem is, not one of them was Linux based anymore. To make it worse, they were all XP Home, not even professional.
Of course, you can install Linux on them but what the hell is the point in installing an OS that can actually do nothing of much use? The fact Home can't be connected to a domain even and such always left me feeling like it was kind of a trial version of Windows.
Selecting XP Home over XP Pro, Vista or Linux strikes me as a bit like selecting Windows ME over Windows 2000 or 98 8 years ago. I specifically will not buy a Netbook with XP Home on. I did make the point of seeking out the manager of each store and asking him whether they had any plans to stock an OS that was useful to professionals and business users such as Linux. All 4 managers across each store tried to convince me that I should just buy an XP Home one to which my response was along the lines of "At the end of the day, if it has a Microsoft OS on it, part of the cost of the system includes the cost of the OS. If I am going to pay for an OS, I will not pay for an OS that doesn't let me do half of what I want to do, therefore I either need XP Pro or one of the higher end Vista editions or even better, I need Linux, where the Netbook wont have any added cost built in for the OS". They all said they have no plans to bring in any new Linux based Netbooks, that they were all due to be XP based.
So unfortunately it seems 2008 was the year of the rise of Linux on Netbooks, but unfortunately shortly after was the fall of Linux on netbooks. Let's just hope there's a second rise at some point.
I can only guess you're very confused. GTA4 has no frame rate on the 360. Initially the PS3 version had some issues with framerates but these were fixed in a later patch.
The PC version you've never played, but seem to feel the need to speculate would never have problems was actually posted as a story here and on many other sites, because not only were bad frame rates a problem but the game wouldn't even work for many people and provided nothing more than extremely cryptic error codes. Even worse, because it was released via Steam it was so bad that Valve even decided to start issuing refunds to people!
The only thing the PC does better than consoles is higher resolutions, but what's noticable is how pointless these higher resolutions are when other graphical effects are simply too much for the non-gaming specific hardware and bus of PCs to handle. High end graphics cards rectify many, but not all of these issues.
I don't understand really how you can continuously speculate that things run bad on consoles. As has been pointed out by the response to my post above yours, console games are held to high standards which they have to meet before they can be released, that means a game with serious low frame rates and such simply wouldn't be allowed to be released, whilst on the PC it would be released anyway.
It doesn't really matter if a $60 is better than what's in the consoles which are now 3 years old (although I'm not sure that's even true), when that card still has to go through a bus that's designed for more generic applications than focussed on gaming specifically you're never going to get the level of optimization to match consoles of the same generation.
Look, I'm sorry mummy and daddy would only let you spend $1000 AUS on a PC and wont buy you a console but that isn't my problem, nor does it suddenly make lies you make up about GTA4 frame rates and friends with COD4 become true. Your personal guarantee that GTA4 wouldn't have problems on the PC doesn't really count for much when a very quick search shows quite the opposite, that it suffered some of the worst problems of any recent game on release.
I want my bills for two reasons:
1) To ensure I'm being charged correctly.
2) To act as proof if the company feels I haven't paid them/been charged right/whatever
In case 1) I will chase them up pretty quickly if this occurs so the length isn't too important as long as it's reasonably long enough to get round to checking through the bill- 3 months would do but there's little reason they shouldn't hold them for a year or more as it's not expensive to hold them that long.
In case 2) I don't mind how long as long as there is a condition attached- that as soon as they wish to delete the bills they also accept they have no reason to dispute the bills or their payment. As soon as a company removes access to the bills they should also be entering an agreement that they accept that bill is done and dusted and there will be no more come back over it.
Whilst rare, I have heard of cases chasing people up over bills that were multiple years old before, generally due to system errors. If the bill is no longer available to me after this time though, they shouldn't have any comeback on me if they later dispute it because I can no longer verify their claims due to not being able to inspect the bill in question.
If they were really underhanded they could modify the bill online anyway of course so for anything particularly sensitive I prefer to keep my own local copies regardless but I think my above to points still hold.
That's not comparing like for like though, whilst as mentioned in my original post, things like Spore and Warhammer online certainly did run great it's not because the PC is a superior platform for gaming than consoles, it's because these games simply don't look as good.
The problem is the games that run well cater for much lower end systems as their best so that they can perform well to the widest audience but as a result they're also capping the quality of graphics.
So yeah, the games may run better (although I'm not sure that's even particularly, console games don't suffer from low performance like PC games because otherwise they wouldn't be sellable!) but the key point is they look nowhere near as good as console games. Even if you look at ports this is glaringly obvious, they simply don't look as good on the PC no matter whether it's a PC to console port or a console to PC port.
"It's community games, not independent games."
Huh? By community they mean the indie community who are developing for the XBox, it's still indies developing the games, it's certainly not studios.
"Easiest way to get your game published to a wide audience is to write a flash game."
That's certainly the easiest way to publish your game to a potential wide audience but the key word there is potential, you still have to find that audience and attract it somehow, that's a lot of work, the web is a big wide open space, it's not exactly easy convincing people to head to your extremely small part of it. XBox live provides the audience for you, Microsoft handles advertising and distribution, you don't have to worry about any of that. With XNA game studio there's no reason you can't distribute a Windows version of the game anyway to increase your audience on the web if you really want to. You only have to write once with XNA for it to work on both XBox 360 and Windows.
Yes you can, you can sell them at 200, 400, 800 or 1200 MS points (I think those are the right ranges anyway). Certainly Microsoft does take a cut (up to 30% I think) but seeing as they're handling distribution and marketing for you I don't think that's terrible.
Anyone who spends that kind of money on hardware to play last gen games is a fool.
Plenty of current and next gen games when they arrive utilise 4 cores, it seems to make sense if you're spending money on a PC like that for it to be able to still play the games of tommorrow than to play the games of yesterday that can be run perfectly well even if using only 1 of 4 cores anyway.
To create an example to make this point clear:
Game A is out now
- it can be run on a single core higher clock speed CPU at 150fps
- or a lower clock speed quad core CPU utilising only one of them at 140fps
The difference will be narrow (or may not even exist in fact) because the OS still utilises multiple cores to ensure the game has a core to itself whilst single core has to share the core with the OS and background processes so even if the game doesn't use 4 cores, the OS does. Then onto the next scenario, a new game:
Game B comes out in a month
- it can be run on a single core higher clock speed CPU at 20fps due to not supporting the latest SIMD extensions etc.
- or it can be run on a quad core CPU utilising all cores, with the latest SIMD extensions and such at 200fps
So tell me, if you're laying down this kind of cash for a PC that you'll probably want to last for a while, what makes the most sense to go for?
Only a fool uses the "quad core is pointless, existing games don't use them all" argument when spending the amount of cash required for a high end gaming PC.
Tell me about it, I built a new PC earlier this year having been playing mostly XBox 360 games for the past 2 and a half years.
I spent £1,600 (equivalent to $3,200 US at the time) on my new machine. I bought high end named RAM (something I never usually do), I bought a high end gaming motherboard (again, I always used to just go for any old board) etc. etc. So imagine my display when as soon as it was built I fired up Crysis to find it would not run smoothly anywhere even close to highest detail at 1920x1200 and nor would it run at max detail at lower resolutions. Whilst games like Spore and Warhammer Online ran perfectly, they're not exactly top end graphical marvels.
So yeah, I agree, PC gaming for games that show off the latest graphics is an absolute waste of time when there are consoles out there that due to having fixed hardware (at least the hardware that matters when optimizing) is so much cheaper and games can be so much better optimized for. Games like Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty 5 end up looking so so much better than Crysis on the PC even at full detail and yet also run amazingly smoothly and for a mere fraction of the cost of my gaming PC and without any of the hassle of making sure drivers are uptodate etc.
I'm not sure there's really a solution either unless we really move everything off of the standard PC hardware like we have graphics and just have "gaming boards" that are effectively like console hardware but that slot into the PC and just utilise it for display etc. but have some standardised specs to allow for proper optimization. As it stands, PC hardware now can't even compete with the graphical quality and smoothness of console hardware that is now 3 - 4 years old since release, and even older when you factor that it was developed long before release.
Perhaps what I miss most though is extensibility, games like Quake were fantastically fun to mod, but similarly even that became a little silly with newer games. The increased complexity of assets (higher poly counts, shaders etc.) means you can't really create decent mods as a one man band or small team anymore bar some smaller innovative code-only mods. Anything that requires a change in graphical style requires many more bodies working on it than before and if you do build a team of the right size and skills then why build a mod anyway? Why not just outright make a game when the workload is similar if you use one of the many great cheap engines out there (C4, PowerRender, Torque etc.) or even OSS engines (OGRE, Irrlicht).
I was taking a coach up North coming back from Heathrow from Canada once and our plane was late landing, I had 20minutes from the doors on the plane opening to catch my coach. I have no idea how I did it but by some miracle I managed it, I ran off the plane at Terminal 3, was lucky enough that at passport control there was no queue so could go straight through, I was desperate for the toilet so ran in there next to the luggage area, came out just as by another miracle my bag was coming out on the conveyor, grabbed my bag, ran to customs, walked through customs slowly (as I figure running through customs is probably a good way to get shot dead or at least slammed hard into the ground by a rugby tackle) and then ran downstairs, along the long tunnels to the central coach area and made it just in time to put my back in the coach hold and jump on.
So even Heathrow, the busiest airport in the world can be pretty efficient sometimes but it does admittedly require a stroke of luck. I think we were probably one of the first planes in (I think we landed around 7:05 when we were originally due in at 6:25 or something if I remember correctly with coach due to leave at 7:25) which is why luggage and passport control were so quick because nothing else yet had landed, or if it had, it had landed and already cleared out.
It's not something I ever want to do again though, I spent half the coach journey trying to get my breathe back! Running that kind of distance with a full set of bags including thick winter gear and skis is pretty hard, especially for someone like me that sits on his arse in front a computer for a living and sits on his arse in front of a computer for recreation too.
Northern Norway was best for me, didn't even need to show passport! Off the play and out the airport, simple as that.
I can only guess it's because the only people who'd go within the arctic circle must have an existing reason to be there because it's not the most exciting place to go otherwise!
Why can't indies license engines and why should those that do probably not?
There's lots of good AAA quality engines out there with cheap/indie licenses:
www.terathon.com
www.powerrender.com
www.garagegames.com
There's also lots of games that have been built on them by indies and been quite successful.
"If your game is for XBLA or PS3 or Wii, then your game idea and code has to be approved by a committee of suits at one of those companies. That's about as un-independent as it gets."
Not sure what the setup for the PS3 and Wii is but the XBox's community games are peer reviewed by other developers and not by Microsoft officials. XNA is also extremely easy to use and has some fantastic samples available.
I'd argue XBox community games is probably one of the easiest ways for indies to get into game development and have their games published to a wide audience. Even if you develop yourself and advertise yourself games you've made for the PC people still have to find your game in the depths of the web, whilst with XBox community games your game is listed right there on the consolate equivalent of a desktop for the user to find. It takes away the pains of marketing and distribution and even the low level parts of PC game development (you don't need to cater for different LOD for different spec hardware for example), it allows indies to concentrate entirely on the important part- game development itself.
Exactly.
Also, article says this guy is going to be number three. The difference if McCain had been voted in is we'd see guys like this at numbers 1, 2 and 3.
I'd say the fact that out of all the appointments Obama has to make they've had to scratch all the way down to the 3rd line in some set of jobs to find something like this.
I'd be far more worried if we were seeing these kind of appointments at multiple points on the front line of staff he has to select.
When you compare to the likes of the Bush administration where we had this exact sort of scenario, albeit not with corrupt music industry officials at the top but with corrupt oil and finanace officials etc. at the top Obama is doing pretty well so far.
Particularly with Palin as VP who already has a track record of heavily abusing power to further personal goals we'd have seen far more corrupt people in far higher places than we're seeing here with Obama.
I find this interesting because whilst I've never suffered further questioning entering the US (it's been generally no different to anywhere else bar the fingerprint/retina scan) I did have major problems in Canada once.
The first time I ever visited I flew from Manchester UK to Philadelphia US to Ottawa. When I arrived and went through the first customs and immigration stand and was asked only a couple of simple questions (Purpose of being there etc.) and despite me answering them truthfully and as I have on many other trips I was for some unknown reason sent to their customs/immigration office just past the initial customs/immigration barriers. Here I was asked the same questions again which I thought nothing of at first, but after I was asked these questions the customs girl went away and came back a few minutes later and started asking me more and more invasive questions (How much do you earn etc.), soon after she dissapeared again and brought forward her male superior who also asked me some questions. I was sent into the baggage check area to have everything checked thoroughly, I was taken into an interview room and interviewed somewhat more formally (recorded etc.), my laptop was checked over, they asked me to login so they could search through my files. I was asked about my criminal record of which I have none to which they responded with "You better not be lying as we can check" to which I responded "Sure thing, go for it". Some other choice questions that somewhat amused me were "How much money do you have in your bank account?", "Do you have a girlfriend or are you married?", "Do you plan on doing any work on holiday?" and perhaps the greatest of all, which I really actually had to try hard not to laugh at was from the girl who checked my bags in the bag check area after putting on latex gloves (it scared me at first until I realised it was just so she didn't contaminate any evidence if they were to find any), she asked "Do you have any beastiality images on your laptop or camera?"- I answered no because that was the truth to which she responded "Do you know what beastiality is?", I mean, how do you answer that? I just went with "Yes", at which point she moved on.
Eventually after 3 hours they let me continue on to enjoy my holiday with a rather sour taste in my mouth regarding the start of my first ever visit there.
To this day I have absolutely no idea why I was pulled over but reading this article I wonder now if the officer at the initial desk had sent me into the immigration office on orders based on data that was sent beforehand and that perhaps there was something in this data they didn't like such as use of a public library IP for booking the tickets perhaps rather than my home IP as I was working in IT support at the time for libraries and had booked my tickets at work during lunch. A Canadian friend suggested it could be because the customs officials were French Canadian and just liked the idea of harassing a British citizen but I'd like to believe they're a little more professional than that.
Still, I really do not enjoy going through Canadian customs/immigration, they were far more invasive, far more harassing than the US and ironically even the Chinese border guards have ever been. That's not to say I don't love Canada as a nation (I try to visit on holiday at least once a year) but it is to say their customs/immigration folk seem more viscious little dictator wannabes than anywhere else I've been- even in times I've been since, where I haven't had this problem they often come across as rather nasty. At least the US border guys smile at you when they steal your biometrics and every other peice of information they can off of you.
In hindsight I feel I should've asked them to call the British embassy folk over and stand up to it a bit if they weren't going to tell me why they were being so invasive, but at the time when they also tell you if you don't comply (the worst part is I was complying, they just liked playing the tough guy/girl) with them you'll be on the next
The average price of what though? Every song or songs that matter?
Let's face it, the $0.69 stuff is going to be the tracks that are space fillers on albums, the tracks no one wants anyway.
The tracks everyone wants will be $1.29.
The music industry's profits are clearly going to increase here else they wouldn't have bothered. Effectively, the music industry has said "We'll allow removal of DRM, if you pay us more". This is somewhat confirmed rather worryingly in the following article on this by the BBC. I'm not sure what the quotes near the bottom are referring to but it almost sounds like the $0.69 tracks will still have DRM and you'll have to pay $1.29 to remove it. I hope that's not the case and the comments are mere speculation but it really wouldn't suprise me.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7813527.stm
I think you're right in that the average price of a track should fall, but not that the average cost to the end user will fall because again, the stuff people actually buy will go up and the stuff they don't will go down.
Do anything that matters in your spare time on your own PC, just do what you need to do to get decent grades during uni time- chances are if you're inventing something that really is new then it's well above and beyond what would be expected for top marks. It would be impossible for a university to ask that top marks style stuff be something new and groundbreaking of every student.
I suppose there are fringe cases where you may really, really need the university's computing power, or at least you may think you do, but in this case innovate, either pay for some cloud computing time or build a distributed system with your friends or similar.
I guess it's kinda different for post-grad stuff but at that point you need to build a relationship with them, if you're paying them a small fortune to do post-grad stuff then you're well within your rights to ask what you can and can't keep in terms of intellectual property. If they're paying you as a researcher or similar then it's the same as any other job- tough shit because they're paying you to come up with this research and these new ideas.
The other question is of course, are you really doing anything so groundbreaking it's going to be worth patenting anyway? I've "discovered" things once or twice before only to find I'd been beaten to the punch albeit hidden in the deep depths of the net that I only discovered after doing searches that were somewhat related to my solution that I'd never have found had I not figured out what the solution to the problem was in the first place.
I thought they meant for much more beyond games.
I was thinking someone had come up with the genius idea of doing something like punching Windows to close them, slapping them down to minimise them, uppercutting them to maximise them and other such exciting things. You could even have an onscreen keyboard where you have to machinegun the buttons to type.
Suddenly for a moment there the working day seemed like it was going to begin being a whole lot more exciting.
What happened to the great New Zealand from World War II that quite courageously proclaimed after Britain entered the war something along the lines of "Where Britain goes, we stand by them"? ...Oh wait perhaps that's actually the problem here ;)
I always figured New Zealand was a pretty liberal country, is that not the case?
I've thought the same thing myself and yet when it comes to, no one has actually suffered due to anti-piracy measures more than those in the US with the DMCA and the RIAA's lawsuits/threats etc. Even software patents are a similar issue to an extent. So despite the bad press about these other nations the US is still the worst for it. At the end of the day despite 3 strikes, despite threats of nationwide filtering none of it has actually happened yet to anyone in these countries.
This means one of two things:
1) It's all hot air and they're not really any worse than the US
2) They are worse than the US, but are just slow at implementing their worse ideas and they haven't had time to come around yet
Point 1 is possible, it could be that the hot air in these countries is enough to overturn these stupid laws- certainly in Canada this has been the case with some attempts so far. Possibility 2 frankly just scares the crap out of me as a UK citizen and I truly hope it's the former.
It's odd in a way because I know many "geeks" who have these ideas long before Apple pushes them onto the market.
I wonder then whether jobs just happens to be one of those geeks in the right place and whether he's not replaceable or whether it's a combination of his geek instinct coupled with another ability, such as being a great business man or leader that makes him stand out?
It'd be an interesting experiment to put one of the people on the ground who have equally good ideas in that kind of position for a while to see if the effect is the same or whether there's more to it than just good ideas and being in the right place at the right time.
I don't think there's a lack of people with the insight into the industry of jobs, I think it's just that they're largely the clever, but unfortunately rather introverted guys at the lower parts of the scale that perhaps have this insight. Perhaps the rarity then is in someone who both has the technical/industry insight AND the extroverted character and charisma required to make people listen to these ideas too.
I apologise in advance if this is a dumb question. But what exactly is Job's speciality that makes him so important to the company?
I get the impression he's not a technical guy as Woz did all that in the early days and he has plenty of other peons to do that now.
I understand he's not a designer, certainly credit for the iPod design goes to a British guy iirc and similarly the iPhone.
Is it simply that he's good at hiring the right guys? Is it down to making good business oriented decisions (i.e. what markets to go for?) or is it something else entirely?
I'm just intrigued to know what skill he has that's apparently so rare that the life of a major tech company depends on it and that they couldn't find easily in anyone else.