Although it didn't seem like anything great from the summary, I went ahead and went to the article and watched the videos.
I found it very creepy. The way it handled the towels and turned them while 'looking' for the next step. It was reminiscent of what I felt was a child learning to fold towels (although, I'm fairly certain the robot wasn't doing any learning). For whatever reason, and despite it's appearance, this robot seems more human than any other robot I've seen previously.
I'm no fan of Flash, but there is no denying it's market penetration.
Sure current flash sites might not work perfect, but if you are developing for the iPhone, Android, Maemo, etc, I'm sure you could take into account the unique interface and make it work properly.
Saying it's not possible never moved anyone further. Computer science, especially gaming, is an industry built on finding ways to make things work on resources and interfaces they shouldn't work on.
I see a lot of comments here comparing the "First Sale" profits of video games to cars or TVs or other physical utilitarian devices.
The main difference, in my opinion, is that in the first year of owning a car or TV, only the first owner can get value from it. In the first year of life of a game disc, 12 people can get value from that one disc.
I don't think you'll see Bungie, Epic, or Infinity Ward complaining about this. They've figured it out... you sell people the game and give them a great multiplayer mode (or some other reason) to hang onto it, and they will. Used copies will be few and far between.
The people who are really suffering are those that make truly fantastic single player games. Prince of Persia comes to mind... it was great, I thoroughly enjoyed it. All 20 hours of it... and on my schedule, that's 5 days of having the game to do 100% of everything there is to do. So I rent it. I actually rent all games that have no multiplayer aspect. The only games I purchase are the ones I can see myself playing online still, 6 months down the line. You might say make the games longer, which is an option, but I personally don't WANT to invest more than 20 hours into any single player experience, and to be honest, when it is longer, like 100+ hours for a Final Fantasy game, you spend most of that time not having fun, just trying to level up to do everything.
This applies to DVDs and to a lesser extend music as well. One DVD can easily fully serve a group of 20 people in one week if they pass it around and watch it in groups.
I'll leave you with this... I think more than the disc, game companies, movie companies, etc are selling you the experience. The experience of playing through the game or the experience of watching the movie. And I believe they should be compensated for each experience they provide. I do think that $60 is a bit much for a video game, but I think it's to compensate for rentals and used game sales. Once everything goes digital, we will see a shift. Let's say that for every 1 copy of a new game that is bought, 2 people probably play that disc, on average, could be more or less, not sure. So $60 provides 2 play experiences. The publisher sees approx $30 per experience in this model, but assuming the first copy was $60 and the used copy was $55. That's $115 spent, and Gamestop probably paid the original owner about $25 for it, so they paid $35 for the experience. If the second owner sells it back very quickly for $25, then he would have paid only $30, bringing this in line with the above of $30 per experience. So $65 spent total for two plays, or $32.5 per experience. If the publishers had complete control over this, the players could have each spent less money for the same amount of, or more (because they get to keep the game), game.
However, it may be be a utopian thought to think the publishers would pass these savings onto us completely, I like to dream.
Seriously, tilt control for bomb disposal robots? I hope that is a joke or an assumption and not actually true.
I've never personally owned an iPhone, but I work IT on a college campus therefore have the device shoved in my face literally multiple times a week by students and faculty wanting to show me the new game they just got from the App store. And from what I can tell, the accelerometers are barely accurate enough for simple games, much less expensive military robots.
Even a Wii Remote, which one might consider the "top of the line" in consumer grade accelerometer technology, isn't ideal. If your going to control something remotely, changes are you are going to want something that has a spring or some sort of mechanism to return it to neutral when no pressure is applied. Having to guess how the accelerometer is calibrated and hold the device neutral is far less than ideal.
One of the stipulations of the fair use clause of the copyright act is:
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
I'm not sure what the test is for, but I can certainly see how posting any of the questions of a test, wherein the questions aren't already known, greatly decreases it's value in the eyes of test givers.
I really hate this phrase. The more I see it used, the more I'm convinced it's just people trying to sound smart.
If correlation never implies causation, then every study ever done is invalidated.
Sure you can take something and twist facts any way you want to make something correlate to something else, and in that case, sure correlation does not imply causation. And perhaps an initial correlation does not imply causation, but typically warrants further investigation and studies. But when you have a studies that take years of data, good, large, samples, and some generally smart people doing it, saying "correlation is not causation", especially without any argument or justification, is just silly.
The first constitution does not apply to services provided by a company. This woman isn't going to jail, she's been removed from a service provided by a company.
Microsoft isn't really concerned. They aren't going to lose any significant number of customers over this. There isn't going to be a backlash. Nobody is gonna care.
It's just some person wanting express themselves everywhere and realizing that they can't win every battle. If more GLBT would learn this lesson they would probably be perceived better by the general public.
I've seen this too many times, especially in laptops. A failed fan or detached heatsink will do it on desktops and laptops, but also a broken heatpipe on laptops.
If the user uses their laptop on a cushion or something that cuts off air flow, it will get so hot that it can completely evaporate the liquid in the heatpipe and then the processors gets almost no cooling and the heatpipe permanently ceases to function. A good test is to use the laptop fro something taxing, then check if you feel warm air coming out of the laptop exhaust or not. Warm = functioning heatpipe, cool/room temp = broken heatpipe. No air = malfunctioning fan, lol.
Also check the fins on the exhaust, getting clogged up with dust can lessen the heat dissipation and cause the processor to enter the slow failsafe state.
Most laptop manufacturers provide detailed disassembly diagrams for their laptops, and you can commonly find a replacement heatpipe for less than $20, even you've only ever worked on desktops, most laptops aren't that difficult to work on. Give it a shot if it's out of warranty.
You've listed 3 purely single player games. All of which have a finite experience. Some have a lot of content, but all eventually end.
So while maybe people may still be talking about those games, people will still be PLAYING Gears of War 2 in the next year.
Proof: Major Nelson blog updates the current played games each week, here is a recent one. Gears of War has reliably been in the top 5, and still is since it's release 2 years ago. It will likely be replaced by Gears of War 2.
I remember when Pidgin came out with green balls to represent online status rather than the AIM/MSN/Yahoo/etc icons like in Gaim. Hundred of users complained, however reports kept getting closed saying it wasn't gonna be revered and just to deal with it.
Seems like a similar case here. Pidgin devs are very anti-options and generally make it the way they decide it and refuse to allow it to work any other way.
Not really, if he posted just the end result, it would be a bunch of "BS" or "Not Real" comments, you really have to show everything unless you want the MythBusters knocking at your door.
Re:Editing for the win...
on
BioShock Review
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Since then the internet has been ablaze with outcry about the game's high rating scores. It's hard to understand why.
I think he means to say "It's hard to understand why there has been controversy (outcry) on the internet over this game receiving high rating scores."
I will agree thought that it could have been written slightly better, but it does make sense.
This was a review of the game, not of the content protection and packaging.
Also, it seems he was reviewing primarily the XBox 360 version of the game.
While advertised based on the songs they hold... basically 4mb = 1 song. You will notice that the iPod database becomes bloated and the iPod becomes more and more unresponsive and slow when you get past 12,000 to 15,000 songs. It haven't tried it, but I believe the iPod would cease to function usefully if loaded with a full 40,000 songs (it would probably still function to the extent that you can't sue Apple, as they make no guarantee of usability when loaded to the advertised maximum).
I imagine the only reason Apple is adding more space is almost exclusively for TV, movie, and music video content.
I don't think that Slashdot, or computer literate mp3 player owners in general, are really the target audience of this, or many other physical media marketing and deployment strategies.
The extent of technology that many non-tech people are familiar with is their cell phone; and for their music, their cd player. This combines those things. So while we, the tech friendly crowd, may have been finding value in purchasing singles from online music stores for a few years, others have not, and still buy full albums for $12 to $16 from retail outlets even though they know they only want one track. While this may not provide an alternative as cheap as the luxury that we have with online content distribution, it does provide and alternative that certain consumers will find valuable.
I'm also sure that these will fill many stockings and snail mail gifts this holiday season as well. Sure you can buy someone a gift card for their favorite online store... but the consumer often feels that they can provide greater sentimentality by showing that they know what the giftee wants and getting them an actual gift.
I don't understand what your issue with this is.
The applications they distribute are compatible with Windows. It's somehow wrong for them to inform you of that fact?
Although I have no factual information to back this up, I would assume that auto manufacturer's stand to profit far more from developing low cost fuel efficient engines than by stifling innovation to benefit oil companies who kick money back to them.
When you consider that the main concern of many company fleet purchases is mpg and it's also on many consumer car checklists, I would imagine that the market interest created by a low cost fuel efficient vehicle would overcome any perceived loss of profit from deals with oil companies.
Being an avid Burnout 3 and Burnout Revenge player, I'd say playing these games increases my reflexes to unexpected terrain pop-up in real life.
One time, after playing Burnout Revenge for about 6 consecutive hours, I went to go get some energy drink from the grocery store. Of course I found the secret shortcut through my neighborhood and behind the store, when out of nowhere a semi-truck was reversing from the store's loading dock right in front of me. My instinctual Burnout skills kicked in a swerved and avoided him and made it to the store safe and sound.
Granted, had I not been playing Burnout Revenge for the past 6 hours I probably wouldn't have been going 90mph behind a grocery store, but that's besides the point.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Allocate computer time to cancer. 2. ??? 3. Cure cancer!
Although it didn't seem like anything great from the summary, I went ahead and went to the article and watched the videos.
I found it very creepy. The way it handled the towels and turned them while 'looking' for the next step. It was reminiscent of what I felt was a child learning to fold towels (although, I'm fairly certain the robot wasn't doing any learning). For whatever reason, and despite it's appearance, this robot seems more human than any other robot I've seen previously.
I'm no fan of Flash, but there is no denying it's market penetration.
Sure current flash sites might not work perfect, but if you are developing for the iPhone, Android, Maemo, etc, I'm sure you could take into account the unique interface and make it work properly.
Saying it's not possible never moved anyone further. Computer science, especially gaming, is an industry built on finding ways to make things work on resources and interfaces they shouldn't work on.
I see a lot of comments here comparing the "First Sale" profits of video games to cars or TVs or other physical utilitarian devices.
The main difference, in my opinion, is that in the first year of owning a car or TV, only the first owner can get value from it. In the first year of life of a game disc, 12 people can get value from that one disc.
I don't think you'll see Bungie, Epic, or Infinity Ward complaining about this. They've figured it out... you sell people the game and give them a great multiplayer mode (or some other reason) to hang onto it, and they will. Used copies will be few and far between.
The people who are really suffering are those that make truly fantastic single player games. Prince of Persia comes to mind... it was great, I thoroughly enjoyed it. All 20 hours of it... and on my schedule, that's 5 days of having the game to do 100% of everything there is to do. So I rent it. I actually rent all games that have no multiplayer aspect. The only games I purchase are the ones I can see myself playing online still, 6 months down the line. You might say make the games longer, which is an option, but I personally don't WANT to invest more than 20 hours into any single player experience, and to be honest, when it is longer, like 100+ hours for a Final Fantasy game, you spend most of that time not having fun, just trying to level up to do everything.
This applies to DVDs and to a lesser extend music as well. One DVD can easily fully serve a group of 20 people in one week if they pass it around and watch it in groups.
I'll leave you with this... I think more than the disc, game companies, movie companies, etc are selling you the experience. The experience of playing through the game or the experience of watching the movie. And I believe they should be compensated for each experience they provide. I do think that $60 is a bit much for a video game, but I think it's to compensate for rentals and used game sales. Once everything goes digital, we will see a shift. Let's say that for every 1 copy of a new game that is bought, 2 people probably play that disc, on average, could be more or less, not sure. So $60 provides 2 play experiences. The publisher sees approx $30 per experience in this model, but assuming the first copy was $60 and the used copy was $55. That's $115 spent, and Gamestop probably paid the original owner about $25 for it, so they paid $35 for the experience. If the second owner sells it back very quickly for $25, then he would have paid only $30, bringing this in line with the above of $30 per experience. So $65 spent total for two plays, or $32.5 per experience. If the publishers had complete control over this, the players could have each spent less money for the same amount of, or more (because they get to keep the game), game.
However, it may be be a utopian thought to think the publishers would pass these savings onto us completely, I like to dream.
Seriously, tilt control for bomb disposal robots? I hope that is a joke or an assumption and not actually true.
I've never personally owned an iPhone, but I work IT on a college campus therefore have the device shoved in my face literally multiple times a week by students and faculty wanting to show me the new game they just got from the App store. And from what I can tell, the accelerometers are barely accurate enough for simple games, much less expensive military robots.
Even a Wii Remote, which one might consider the "top of the line" in consumer grade accelerometer technology, isn't ideal. If your going to control something remotely, changes are you are going to want something that has a spring or some sort of mechanism to return it to neutral when no pressure is applied. Having to guess how the accelerometer is calibrated and hold the device neutral is far less than ideal.
One of the stipulations of the fair use clause of the copyright act is:
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
I'm not sure what the test is for, but I can certainly see how posting any of the questions of a test, wherein the questions aren't already known, greatly decreases it's value in the eyes of test givers.
I really hate this phrase. The more I see it used, the more I'm convinced it's just people trying to sound smart.
If correlation never implies causation, then every study ever done is invalidated.
Sure you can take something and twist facts any way you want to make something correlate to something else, and in that case, sure correlation does not imply causation. And perhaps an initial correlation does not imply causation, but typically warrants further investigation and studies. But when you have a studies that take years of data, good, large, samples, and some generally smart people doing it, saying "correlation is not causation", especially without any argument or justification, is just silly.
Parent is either +1 Funny or -1 Troll.
Technically this downtime already brought GMail down to 3 nines.
The first constitution does not apply to services provided by a company. This woman isn't going to jail, she's been removed from a service provided by a company.
Microsoft isn't really concerned. They aren't going to lose any significant number of customers over this. There isn't going to be a backlash. Nobody is gonna care.
It's just some person wanting express themselves everywhere and realizing that they can't win every battle. If more GLBT would learn this lesson they would probably be perceived better by the general public.
Mod parent up.
I've seen this too many times, especially in laptops. A failed fan or detached heatsink will do it on desktops and laptops, but also a broken heatpipe on laptops.
If the user uses their laptop on a cushion or something that cuts off air flow, it will get so hot that it can completely evaporate the liquid in the heatpipe and then the processors gets almost no cooling and the heatpipe permanently ceases to function. A good test is to use the laptop fro something taxing, then check if you feel warm air coming out of the laptop exhaust or not. Warm = functioning heatpipe, cool/room temp = broken heatpipe. No air = malfunctioning fan, lol.
Also check the fins on the exhaust, getting clogged up with dust can lessen the heat dissipation and cause the processor to enter the slow failsafe state.
Most laptop manufacturers provide detailed disassembly diagrams for their laptops, and you can commonly find a replacement heatpipe for less than $20, even you've only ever worked on desktops, most laptops aren't that difficult to work on. Give it a shot if it's out of warranty.
It's not the wild west here in Oklahoma, lol.
I think a lot of people have this perception that there is nothing in Oklahoma but fields and cows.
We may not be jam packed border to border, but our major cities are just as populated as any other state.
You've listed 3 purely single player games. All of which have a finite experience. Some have a lot of content, but all eventually end.
So while maybe people may still be talking about those games, people will still be PLAYING Gears of War 2 in the next year.
Proof: Major Nelson blog updates the current played games each week, here is a recent one. Gears of War has reliably been in the top 5, and still is since it's release 2 years ago. It will likely be replaced by Gears of War 2.
A fool and his money are easily parted.
I believe it is allegations, but by going to trial is has the potential to set a legal precedent.
You may come to find that when it comes to technology, judges are not the best judges of how the laws should be applied.
I remember when Pidgin came out with green balls to represent online status rather than the AIM/MSN/Yahoo/etc icons like in Gaim. Hundred of users complained, however reports kept getting closed saying it wasn't gonna be revered and just to deal with it.
Seems like a similar case here. Pidgin devs are very anti-options and generally make it the way they decide it and refuse to allow it to work any other way.
It's a shame because the core is so robust.
Not really, if he posted just the end result, it would be a bunch of "BS" or "Not Real" comments, you really have to show everything unless you want the MythBusters knocking at your door.
Since then the internet has been ablaze with outcry about the game's high rating scores. It's hard to understand why.
I think he means to say "It's hard to understand why there has been controversy (outcry) on the internet over this game receiving high rating scores."
I will agree thought that it could have been written slightly better, but it does make sense.
This was a review of the game, not of the content protection and packaging. Also, it seems he was reviewing primarily the XBox 360 version of the game.
While advertised based on the songs they hold... basically 4mb = 1 song. You will notice that the iPod database becomes bloated and the iPod becomes more and more unresponsive and slow when you get past 12,000 to 15,000 songs. It haven't tried it, but I believe the iPod would cease to function usefully if loaded with a full 40,000 songs (it would probably still function to the extent that you can't sue Apple, as they make no guarantee of usability when loaded to the advertised maximum).
I imagine the only reason Apple is adding more space is almost exclusively for TV, movie, and music video content.
I don't think that Slashdot, or computer literate mp3 player owners in general, are really the target audience of this, or many other physical media marketing and deployment strategies.
The extent of technology that many non-tech people are familiar with is their cell phone; and for their music, their cd player. This combines those things. So while we, the tech friendly crowd, may have been finding value in purchasing singles from online music stores for a few years, others have not, and still buy full albums for $12 to $16 from retail outlets even though they know they only want one track. While this may not provide an alternative as cheap as the luxury that we have with online content distribution, it does provide and alternative that certain consumers will find valuable.
I'm also sure that these will fill many stockings and snail mail gifts this holiday season as well. Sure you can buy someone a gift card for their favorite online store... but the consumer often feels that they can provide greater sentimentality by showing that they know what the giftee wants and getting them an actual gift.
I don't understand what your issue with this is. The applications they distribute are compatible with Windows. It's somehow wrong for them to inform you of that fact?
I pick 78.
This seems like conspiracy theory at best.
Although I have no factual information to back this up, I would assume that auto manufacturer's stand to profit far more from developing low cost fuel efficient engines than by stifling innovation to benefit oil companies who kick money back to them.
When you consider that the main concern of many company fleet purchases is mpg and it's also on many consumer car checklists, I would imagine that the market interest created by a low cost fuel efficient vehicle would overcome any perceived loss of profit from deals with oil companies.
Being an avid Burnout 3 and Burnout Revenge player, I'd say playing these games increases my reflexes to unexpected terrain pop-up in real life.
One time, after playing Burnout Revenge for about 6 consecutive hours, I went to go get some energy drink from the grocery store. Of course I found the secret shortcut through my neighborhood and behind the store, when out of nowhere a semi-truck was reversing from the store's loading dock right in front of me. My instinctual Burnout skills kicked in a swerved and avoided him and made it to the store safe and sound.
Granted, had I not been playing Burnout Revenge for the past 6 hours I probably wouldn't have been going 90mph behind a grocery store, but that's besides the point.