"Has anybody heard much about Sony/PS3 offerings at E3? So far, I've heard a lot more about Nintendo's upcoming stuff than I have about Sony's."
Sony's been quiet. I imagine they're going to try to wallop Nintendo at E3 with a bunch of info. My guess is we'll hear about the price, launch date, see a few games, and Sony will unveil a new PS3 controller that innovatively senses its orientation. (or a built in Eye Toy...)
" Mac users who said that Windows sucked, generally did so from a position of knowledge, whereas Windows users who said that Macs sucked, generally did so from a position of ignorance."
Kind of like how Linux users get modded up for making BSOD jokes. Position of ignorance and all.
Of course, I don't expect this comment to last very long here.
"The problem was that just one or two people in the group [out of 15 IT staff] could do that."
I worked for a company that started with Windows 2000 and moved to Linux. Before Linux, we only had a part-time sysadmin. By part time, I mean he had other tasks to handle and if the computers did break, he'd go work on them. Everybody there was familiar with Windows so they did a lot of their own repairs. (It's worth noting that Windows actually played quite nicely with everybody. No BSODs, crashes, workstation uptimes > 2 weeks, server uptimes > 6 months (stupid power failures)... Etc.) We switched to Linux because we had to. (Long story, but it wasn't some itch to save money or anything like that. It was related to the work.) When we switched to Linux, well only one person there really had the knowledge to maintain it, and she was busy with her job. So we had to hire a Linux admin to keep it up. Wow.. the transition was painful. The engineers all had experience with Unix, but we still had so many stupid little problems from setting up the networks to just plain getting printing going. The only way we were really able to pull it off was to use VM-Ware with a boot into 2K. Argh. I imagine by now that they're not using Win2K + VM-Ware anymore, but it's hard to say. There's so much that goes on with software development that I just cannot imagine it.
In that particular case, moving to Linux proved costly, mainly because the Windows licenses were already paid for (not that that was a huge expense to begin with) and everybody knew it well enough to maintain it. I imagine in the long run it paid off, but it's hard to say because the move to Linux wasn't optional. I doubt they'd be using Linux today if the technology didn't require a shift.
In any event, I'm not bashing Linux here, just providing anecdotal evidence that suggests that the quote you posted was correct. This is why I grit my teeth over TCO arguments for either side. The reality is somewhere in the middle.
"I am convinced that this started life as a bug. The 'no tea' joke was great, but the 'no tea' item led to weirdness."
Funny, I always thought that little gag started life as somebody getting coffee from a coffee dispenser. "Well... supposedly it's coffee.. but it isn't. Hey, check this out! I have both coffee and no coffee!" "That sounds like something Douglas Adams would say!"
You might be right, but I didn't get this joke until I tried the coffee machine at the train station.
"Were my first interractive fiction, I used to love those. Especially the ones where you could die really easily."
When I was in fifth grade (1988... I only mention that because I think the hooplah over D&D has died down since then.) I showed one of these books to my teacher. She basically said "I won't have anything to do with Dungeons and Dragons" and wouldn't have anything to do with me the rest of the day. I tried correcting her by telling her that it was a sci-fi set in space and had nothing to do with D&D. You see, there was a cartoon called Dungeons and Dragons on at the time... I didn't know about the RPG.
"Next step is to draft and enact a law making it a criminal offence not to lock your door. Won't take long 'till the whole family is gathered, together again, in prison/workcamp."
This is more like a law requiring businesses that house sensitive info (like credit card #s) to lock their doors when nobody's around. There is no 'next step' to arresting your family. You really should read the article.
"I think how you react to a work of art that someone has made available for free is a good litmus test of your outlook on life."
I think you'd be better off testing that on a site that doesn't have the word "Insightful" appear magically next to some posts. I think some people here find something wrong in every story just to earn that mod.
Because I don't want my credit card info stolen due to negligence from a company that's supposed to be holding my data securely.
"Laws should be our *last* resort when trying to deal with any sort of issue, and that includes technical ones."
Normally I would agree, but not this time. If my cc company were broken into because they had an insecure wireless router, I'd want to nail their asses to the wall as well as the person who stole in the first place. We're talking about securing sensitive data, here, not Joe Schmo sitting in his house playing quake over the wlan.
"FWIW, I currently see no industry interest in higher pixel density screens, in fact I see the total opposite. Most 19" screens on the market have the same number of pixels as 17" screens. This maybe good for filling a gamer's field of view but documents are much less readable on a 19" LCD than on a 17" one."
FWIW one of Vista's selling points is that it uses vector based rendering so it can use higher DPI monitors without shrinking all the text. Years ago (meaning I have no idea now if this is still being considered) there was an announcement that Microsoft was working with a LCD manufacturer to release a 5000+ pixel wide monitor. That may or may not happen any time soon, but a couple of years ago I worked at a company with monitors running at 2560 by 1920. For what we were doing, that was great. But for desktop apps, that was a little hard on the eyes. There's no industry interest, yet.
"It really doesn't matter how much power the phone uses... the fact is that it still uses power. Consuming power from a limited source means that it will reach a point when the battery is depleted, except now it just takes 10 days longer than before."
You're absolutely right. I don't even know WHY they're bothering! *places hands on his and sadly shakes his head*
"What if AMD's chips were better than Intel's in every conceivable aspect (price, preformance, power dissipation, etc) and they can only manage a 20% market share? Doesn't that scream that's there's an artificial constraint placed on the market somehow?"
No. Inferior products win all the time. Oh, and on a totally unrelated note, Intel markets their brand. There are Intel commercials on TV. From a mass-market (i.e. not well informed) perspective, how can AMD be seen as anything other than a cheap knock-off?
So, no, it doesn't scream "artificial constraint". That doesn't mean it isn't there, but that rationale alone doesn't float the boat.
"if they increase the storage capacity it gives people less incentive to buy a more expensive regular iPod."
This is probably why the other iPods support video, now. In any event, yes there's less incentive to buy the more expensive regular ipod, but there's also more incentive to those (like me) who don't want to pay $300+ for that iPod. I actually never seriously considered buying an iPod until the Nano came out. $200ish price tag + really small + adequate storage == MobileTatsu friendly. (I only really need between 2 and 4 gig.) If a little more disposable income had come my way, I probalby would have bought it. From where I sit, it expanded their market. But, that's just my humble opinion.:)
This question is going to seem rude, and I apologize for this, but why didn't this happen years ago? I'm asking out of curiosity, not as a jab at the community. It seems to me that this sort of standard would have been quite valuable as soon as GUIs became prevalent with Linux.
"Does this sound like a (bad) joke taken out of context to anybody else?"
It sounds like yet another attempt to discredit the president.
There's a big big flaw in my suggestion, though: It takes a lot more work to spin-doctor a story to make GWB sound untruthful than it does to set the TiVo whenever he makes a speech.
... said the guy suggesting that the movie should have ended with David dying.
"So while fairy tales with neat, happy endings are nice and make us feel good, they do not reflect the human condition. But people do not like to be reminded of the ultimate pointlessness of it all, so you have endings like A.I.'s."
Oh brother. That is not the reason at all why these stories are told. They're told to make the audience's time worthwhile. If the journey doesn't take the character somewhere, happy ending or not, then it is pointless. You have given your audience no reason to invest their time. Remember Poochie the Dog? Yes, I'm talking about the Itchy and Scratchy cartoon from an episode of the Simpsons. The cartoon opens with Itchy and Scratchy driving down a road. On the way, they passed signs saying "Fireworks Factory 10 mi", "Fireworks Factory 5 mi", "Fireworks Factory 1 mi", until they came across Poochy. Poochy then went into spaz overload... to the EXTREEEEEEEME! Suddenly, an angry cry rang out. "When are they going to get to the FIREWORKS FACTORY!?!" This was a brilliant and wonderfully satirical example of bad story writing. This is exactly why these movies that follow a character's journey always end with the successful completion of the adventure. (By successful, I don't mean happy ending. I mean they reached their destination and took the final step to complete their mission.) This isn't some cheap Hollywood invented gimmick to make everybody feel all warm and bubbly inside, it's to take us on a ride from beginning to end. Itchy and Scratchy didn't arrive at the Fireworks Factory, and it left Milhouse frustrated. There was no closure.
So you say this movie does not reflect the human condition. Well, I'm all too happy to argue with that. David had a wish that the odds were against him attaining. Guess what? This is a VERY human condition. It is the human condition that drives people to take classes, apply to star on the Apprentice, or make a demo reel that will land them a CGI job on Battlestar Galactica. The thing about wishes like these is that simply having a wish is not enough. You have to pursue it. All of those people have to start their own journeys to make their wishes come true. This is EXACTLY what David did. He was seperated from the person he wanted to spend eternity with. Logically, he should have just given up. A lot of people would have. Just like a lot of people drop out of school, don't send in their applications to the Apprentice, or learn what they need to learn to get that gold-plated CGI job at Zoic. He didn't. He went on his journey, and others became aware of his wish. They sought to help him. His journey ended when he found somebody who actually could help him, and they did. If he had not made progress towards his wish, then blammo, that's it. It would never be granted. The people who are successful in life are the ones that pursue their dreams. This is an important message that many many people out there just do not seem to get. If there is any question at all about that, try watching tryouts for American Idol. Human conidition, indeed. This story addresses one of the fundamental weaknesses of humans.
So here we have a story about a little boy trying to get his wish fulfilled. Let's pretend it ended with him dying at the bottom of the ocean. Okay. The world is unfair, lesson learned. So what is the value in this story, then? The world is always unfair. You cannot live on this planet without being taught this lesson. So why do you need a 90 minute movie to illustrate this to you? To make you sad? Well, okay. A cute little boy dies. Boo hoo. Now all that's left is to imagine what would have happened had he managed to get.. just.. a... little... further...
"There is no angel to step in and rescue us from death."
You are absolutely right. This is why you have to stand up and do something
"Data from Star Trek TNG should of course be included in the hall of fame. Though technically he's an android, not a robot, and so are many of the other nominees."
Well if yer gonna let Data in, then we need to let Daleks in, too. Yes, I know, they're more like little green blobs driving salt-shaker-tanks, but... well ok my argument ran out of of steam right there.
*walks away*
I probably... should have thought that through a little better..
"Ok geeks: Yes, that movie should have ended when he found the Blue Fairy. We all know this. It's been beat to death. I know. You know. We all know."
The super robots found a creative solution to a seemingly unsolvable endless loop. Cool. David dies at the bottom of the ocean sitting in front of the statue of the Blue Fairy. Big journey that comes to a pointless end. Dumb. Hopefully now you understand why people like me come out of the woodwork every time this is suggested and beat it to death.
Go ahead and read this. Hopefully this will lead to a little clarification AND (hopefully) a little less dead horse beating.
Slashdot Mirror
"Has anybody heard much about Sony/PS3 offerings at E3? So far, I've heard a lot more about Nintendo's upcoming stuff than I have about Sony's."
Sony's been quiet. I imagine they're going to try to wallop Nintendo at E3 with a bunch of info. My guess is we'll hear about the price, launch date, see a few games, and Sony will unveil a new PS3 controller that innovatively senses its orientation. (or a built in Eye Toy...)
Heh. I think the mods missed the joke. (or they should have used Redundant.)
"Well, my wife seems to find uses for my tongue."
To moisten your lips so you can inflate her?
" Mac users who said that Windows sucked, generally did so from a position of knowledge, whereas Windows users who said that Macs sucked, generally did so from a position of ignorance."
Kind of like how Linux users get modded up for making BSOD jokes. Position of ignorance and all.
Of course, I don't expect this comment to last very long here.
"The problem was that just one or two people in the group [out of 15 IT staff] could do that."
I worked for a company that started with Windows 2000 and moved to Linux. Before Linux, we only had a part-time sysadmin. By part time, I mean he had other tasks to handle and if the computers did break, he'd go work on them. Everybody there was familiar with Windows so they did a lot of their own repairs. (It's worth noting that Windows actually played quite nicely with everybody. No BSODs, crashes, workstation uptimes > 2 weeks, server uptimes > 6 months (stupid power failures)... Etc.) We switched to Linux because we had to. (Long story, but it wasn't some itch to save money or anything like that. It was related to the work.) When we switched to Linux, well only one person there really had the knowledge to maintain it, and she was busy with her job. So we had to hire a Linux admin to keep it up. Wow.. the transition was painful. The engineers all had experience with Unix, but we still had so many stupid little problems from setting up the networks to just plain getting printing going. The only way we were really able to pull it off was to use VM-Ware with a boot into 2K. Argh. I imagine by now that they're not using Win2K + VM-Ware anymore, but it's hard to say. There's so much that goes on with software development that I just cannot imagine it.
In that particular case, moving to Linux proved costly, mainly because the Windows licenses were already paid for (not that that was a huge expense to begin with) and everybody knew it well enough to maintain it. I imagine in the long run it paid off, but it's hard to say because the move to Linux wasn't optional. I doubt they'd be using Linux today if the technology didn't require a shift.
In any event, I'm not bashing Linux here, just providing anecdotal evidence that suggests that the quote you posted was correct. This is why I grit my teeth over TCO arguments for either side. The reality is somewhere in the middle.
"I am convinced that this started life as a bug. The 'no tea' joke was great, but the 'no tea' item led to weirdness."
Funny, I always thought that little gag started life as somebody getting coffee from a coffee dispenser. "Well... supposedly it's coffee.. but it isn't. Hey, check this out! I have both coffee and no coffee!" "That sounds like something Douglas Adams would say!"
You might be right, but I didn't get this joke until I tried the coffee machine at the train station.
"Were my first interractive fiction, I used to love those. Especially the ones where you could die really easily."
When I was in fifth grade (1988... I only mention that because I think the hooplah over D&D has died down since then.) I showed one of these books to my teacher. She basically said "I won't have anything to do with Dungeons and Dragons" and wouldn't have anything to do with me the rest of the day. I tried correcting her by telling her that it was a sci-fi set in space and had nothing to do with D&D. You see, there was a cartoon called Dungeons and Dragons on at the time... I didn't know about the RPG.
"Next step is to draft and enact a law making it a criminal offence not to lock your door. Won't take long 'till the whole family is gathered, together again, in prison/workcamp."
This is more like a law requiring businesses that house sensitive info (like credit card #s) to lock their doors when nobody's around. There is no 'next step' to arresting your family. You really should read the article.
"I most certainly did read both articles. Really, there's nothing new other than the law has now been passed."
Um, that's a pretty big 'new'. Sorry, but 'Informative' mods and narrow rationalization do not make this a dupe.
"I think how you react to a work of art that someone has made available for free is a good litmus test of your outlook on life."
I think you'd be better off testing that on a site that doesn't have the word "Insightful" appear magically next to some posts. I think some people here find something wrong in every story just to earn that mod.
"So why pass a law in the first place??"
Because I don't want my credit card info stolen due to negligence from a company that's supposed to be holding my data securely.
"Laws should be our *last* resort when trying to deal with any sort of issue, and that includes technical ones."
Normally I would agree, but not this time. If my cc company were broken into because they had an insecure wireless router, I'd want to nail their asses to the wall as well as the person who stole in the first place. We're talking about securing sensitive data, here, not Joe Schmo sitting in his house playing quake over the wlan.
ERm, you're not, by chance, living in a complex called Wimbledon are you? Because that sounds exactly like my experience living in Portland. Heh.
"FWIW, I currently see no industry interest in higher pixel density screens, in fact I see the total opposite. Most 19" screens on the market have the same number of pixels as 17" screens. This maybe good for filling a gamer's field of view but documents are much less readable on a 19" LCD than on a 17" one."
FWIW one of Vista's selling points is that it uses vector based rendering so it can use higher DPI monitors without shrinking all the text. Years ago (meaning I have no idea now if this is still being considered) there was an announcement that Microsoft was working with a LCD manufacturer to release a 5000+ pixel wide monitor. That may or may not happen any time soon, but a couple of years ago I worked at a company with monitors running at 2560 by 1920. For what we were doing, that was great. But for desktop apps, that was a little hard on the eyes. There's no industry interest, yet.
"Clearly you've never sucked dick for crack."
I'm flattered you've noticed!
"Would this be a bad time to bring up the Aristocrats? I love that joke!"
Man.. I can't believe it! Bob Saget made me... laugh?
"It really doesn't matter how much power the phone uses... the fact is that it still uses power. Consuming power from a limited source means that it will reach a point when the battery is depleted, except now it just takes 10 days longer than before."
You're absolutely right. I don't even know WHY they're bothering! *places hands on his and sadly shakes his head*
You should read the second line of my previous post. :P
"What if AMD's chips were better than Intel's in every conceivable aspect (price, preformance, power dissipation, etc) and they can only manage a 20% market share? Doesn't that scream that's there's an artificial constraint placed on the market somehow?"
No. Inferior products win all the time. Oh, and on a totally unrelated note, Intel markets their brand. There are Intel commercials on TV. From a mass-market (i.e. not well informed) perspective, how can AMD be seen as anything other than a cheap knock-off?
So, no, it doesn't scream "artificial constraint". That doesn't mean it isn't there, but that rationale alone doesn't float the boat.
"if they increase the storage capacity it gives people less incentive to buy a more expensive regular iPod."
:)
This is probably why the other iPods support video, now. In any event, yes there's less incentive to buy the more expensive regular ipod, but there's also more incentive to those (like me) who don't want to pay $300+ for that iPod. I actually never seriously considered buying an iPod until the Nano came out. $200ish price tag + really small + adequate storage == MobileTatsu friendly. (I only really need between 2 and 4 gig.) If a little more disposable income had come my way, I probalby would have bought it. From where I sit, it expanded their market. But, that's just my humble opinion.
This question is going to seem rude, and I apologize for this, but why didn't this happen years ago? I'm asking out of curiosity, not as a jab at the community. It seems to me that this sort of standard would have been quite valuable as soon as GUIs became prevalent with Linux.
"Does this sound like a (bad) joke taken out of context to anybody else?"
It sounds like yet another attempt to discredit the president.
There's a big big flaw in my suggestion, though: It takes a lot more work to spin-doctor a story to make GWB sound untruthful than it does to set the TiVo whenever he makes a speech.
"Boring, unoriginal, uninspired, and banal."
... to the EXTREEEEEEEME! Suddenly, an angry cry rang out. "When are they going to get to the FIREWORKS FACTORY!?!" This was a brilliant and wonderfully satirical example of bad story writing. This is exactly why these movies that follow a character's journey always end with the successful completion of the adventure. (By successful, I don't mean happy ending. I mean they reached their destination and took the final step to complete their mission.) This isn't some cheap Hollywood invented gimmick to make everybody feel all warm and bubbly inside, it's to take us on a ride from beginning to end. Itchy and Scratchy didn't arrive at the Fireworks Factory, and it left Milhouse frustrated. There was no closure.
... said the guy suggesting that the movie should have ended with David dying.
"So while fairy tales with neat, happy endings are nice and make us feel good, they do not reflect the human condition. But people do not like to be reminded of the ultimate pointlessness of it all, so you have endings like A.I.'s."
Oh brother. That is not the reason at all why these stories are told. They're told to make the audience's time worthwhile. If the journey doesn't take the character somewhere, happy ending or not, then it is pointless. You have given your audience no reason to invest their time. Remember Poochie the Dog? Yes, I'm talking about the Itchy and Scratchy cartoon from an episode of the Simpsons. The cartoon opens with Itchy and Scratchy driving down a road. On the way, they passed signs saying "Fireworks Factory 10 mi", "Fireworks Factory 5 mi", "Fireworks Factory 1 mi", until they came across Poochy. Poochy then went into spaz overload
So you say this movie does not reflect the human condition. Well, I'm all too happy to argue with that. David had a wish that the odds were against him attaining. Guess what? This is a VERY human condition. It is the human condition that drives people to take classes, apply to star on the Apprentice, or make a demo reel that will land them a CGI job on Battlestar Galactica. The thing about wishes like these is that simply having a wish is not enough. You have to pursue it. All of those people have to start their own journeys to make their wishes come true. This is EXACTLY what David did. He was seperated from the person he wanted to spend eternity with. Logically, he should have just given up. A lot of people would have. Just like a lot of people drop out of school, don't send in their applications to the Apprentice, or learn what they need to learn to get that gold-plated CGI job at Zoic. He didn't. He went on his journey, and others became aware of his wish. They sought to help him. His journey ended when he found somebody who actually could help him, and they did. If he had not made progress towards his wish, then blammo, that's it. It would never be granted. The people who are successful in life are the ones that pursue their dreams. This is an important message that many many people out there just do not seem to get. If there is any question at all about that, try watching tryouts for American Idol. Human conidition, indeed. This story addresses one of the fundamental weaknesses of humans.
So here we have a story about a little boy trying to get his wish fulfilled. Let's pretend it ended with him dying at the bottom of the ocean. Okay. The world is unfair, lesson learned. So what is the value in this story, then? The world is always unfair. You cannot live on this planet without being taught this lesson. So why do you need a 90 minute movie to illustrate this to you? To make you sad? Well, okay. A cute little boy dies. Boo hoo. Now all that's left is to imagine what would have happened had he managed to get.. just.. a... little... further...
"There is no angel to step in and rescue us from death."
You are absolutely right. This is why you have to stand up and do something
"Data from Star Trek TNG should of course be included in the hall of fame. Though technically he's an android, not a robot, and so are many of the other nominees."
... well ok my argument ran out of of steam right there.
Well if yer gonna let Data in, then we need to let Daleks in, too. Yes, I know, they're more like little green blobs driving salt-shaker-tanks, but
*walks away*
I probably... should have thought that through a little better..
"Click here for the patch."
GRRR they didn't finish testing this patch, either! Office looks funny and none of my games work!
"Ok geeks: Yes, that movie should have ended when he found the Blue Fairy. We all know this. It's been beat to death. I know. You know. We all know."
The super robots found a creative solution to a seemingly unsolvable endless loop. Cool. David dies at the bottom of the ocean sitting in front of the statue of the Blue Fairy. Big journey that comes to a pointless end. Dumb. Hopefully now you understand why people like me come out of the woodwork every time this is suggested and beat it to death.
Go ahead and read this. Hopefully this will lead to a little clarification AND (hopefully) a little less dead horse beating.