that the game was "good" to begin with. I'm not trying to troll here but I can honestly recall a lot of people hating this game from it's initial release. Most of the people I knew considered it a novel idea but a grand waste of money and not worth more than an hour or two of game play.
And to be clear, I was often mocked for actually enjoying the original.
I've always considered these types of projects pointless. It's not because I think that we are necessarily alone but because the use of radio waves for communication seems like such a simple and quickly evolvable technology that we would never find them. Here's my reasoning.
Let's assume that we are a 'typical' univeral life form. I'm haven't brushed up on my radio broadcasting history but I'll assume that we've been broadcasting information in some form since the 1910's. Let's now say that for the next 400 years we use this type of technology to communicate. I think that is a very large estimate, though. By that time the human race will have progressed so far (IMHO) that we will need much quicker and reliable forms of communication because of advancements in space travel and that type of communication will even trickle down into normal, everyday communication on earth. Using all modern forms of communication will not suffice if we have bases of operation even as close as our nearest star. I don't know what it will be, but a solution will provide itself and I doubt it will be anything close to what we have now.
So, Let's assume then that we as humans use radio waves for 500 years, total. If you want, give or take an extra couple 100 years. It doesn't matter for the point I am trying to make. If we only use radio waves for a span of 500 years, than that amount of time is a drop in the bucket compared to the entire, vast expanse of time that has past in our universe.
If there is another civilization out there. I'm pretty sure that they are either way behind or way ahead of us in technological advancements. If they progressed at even a fraction of the rate that we have (and will), then the span of time at which that have transmitted any type of communication that we can currently understand and interpret is so short that it's a practical impossiblity that we will 'catch' it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the entire search for intelligent life in space isn't important. I'm just saying that the current technology that we have is in such an infantile state that it's a waste of time and resources that could be put towards better works of science.
You do realize that if they didn't charge for their services, they wouldn't make money to do further research? Sure if a cure for cancer was found today, for the next 5-10 years it would be an expensive treatment. The reason is because the 100's of millions, if not billions, of dollars it took to come up with the treatment need to be recooperated. People have been looking for a cure for years and every $100,000,000 failed attempt at finding a treatment is a write-off until a solution is found. When that starts to happen, prices always drop and treatment becomes more common.
Also, for some reason the express site seems SLOOOOWWW. It took about 1 minute for the main page to come up just now (from 2 different locations on 2 different networks), ugh.
It's the slashdot effect. Their sales have been doing so poorly that they've cut down on the bandwidth resources to lower costs.
You know, I've actually had a thought along those lines in trying to explain to untechnologically savvy individuals why Digital Rights laws are screwed up and that handling digital content on the web is a grey area. Consider the following.
Most web sites have a copyright statement on them some where (even this one!). Technically speaking, if I go to that web site, my browser copies the page along with all it's media content and caches it. Since many of those sites do not have a terms of service posted allowing the viewing of the content through regular web browsing my computer is therefore violating copyright laws, right?
Every single web user out there is breaking the law!
These glasses look a lot better than the old, bulky VR glasses that first emerged a long time ago but the wearer still looks like a huge dork. (No offense to anyone who would consider owning these.)
I can't wait until OLED technology (or something similiar) progresses to the point to where the display can be imprinted on the lens. We're probably still a few years off from that point but, until then, I don't think this type of techonology will ever become mainstream.
Thanks for the response! Actually, I'm following many of your suggestions already. To give you (and others) a little background I work for a company that has one IT supervisor and I am the sole, dedicated software engineer. We are a manufacturing company and the point of the project that I am currently working on is to build an advanced, in-house system that will be used by hundreds of people all across the globe, some in very remote locations for internal tracking.
The idea for the system was the brain child of my boss who has loosely speced out the system and it's my job to make the software magic happen. I'm quite confident that I could make this a rather robust and [reasonably] bug free application by the release but when requests come up (on an almost weekly bases) to change the code and rework specific modules entirely at the whim of management, things start to get complicated. Code that might have been written four or five months ago might have been appropriate and efficient but now is pointless or problematic because of changes that have had to be made due to specification changes.
I'm doing a fair job at 'managing' the situation but as this project grows, I am reaching my mental limits of recalling and remembering what each method in that application does and why I even wrote some of them in the first place. Sure, I comment my code and even try to give my methods meaningful handlers but some routines consist of thousands of lines of code and hundreds of method calls from initiation to finish. It gets confusing after a while when you hit a bug that is hidden in code that's been written months ago.
During the 80s, Apple inundated the public schools with cheap computers in the hopes of getting us young, impressionable children use to the idea of using Apple PCs. It was a good idea but, sadly for them, most of our parents bought IBM compatible.
For me the idea of a good Apple computer that I enjoy using is an old IIe that I played the Oregan Trail on in elementary school. Many of those teachers from the 80's, however, are still die-hard Mac fans. That's what they used in their work environment and they have often been hesitant toward changing even if they are now 20 years behind. Now, those teachers are 40+.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on "The Art of Software Testing"? It appears that there was an update to the book in 2004-- the first since it's initial publishing in 1976. Is it worth getting the second ed. over the first?
... the storage space won't matter. If DRM legislators have their way, you won't be able to have any video on your iPod do to some stupid copy right law.
Crap! The Article wouldn't load until now. And when it does, The Facility is the first thing I see. I apologize for the waste of time of the last post.
Golden Eye's Facility Level. It was excellent as a multi-player level and excellent to play when trying to beat the clock. Not to mention, their was the bug where at the end of the level where you could go up to the second level and the enemies would run up to the door below to the entrance of floor you were on. Either by lack of coder insight or some game bug they never opened the door to kill you. That meant you could camp out and just mow them down from above as an endless sea of enemies poured out from the other side of the main room. Once you ran out of ammo, you simply would simply run back down stairs and open the door and 'click' instant refill of 400 rounds! Man, those were the good ole days.
As someone who talks to teachers all day in software support, you'd be surprised how hard it is for people to simply click on the right button.
Do you mean 'right' as in 'left/right' or 'right' as in 'correct'.
First off, I read the/. post but not the linked article. I just wanted to put it out there. I believe, however, that this is significant news because this provides a method of decoding that I would assume to be lossless. If you burn an iTunes file to a CD and then rip the CD, even at the highest quality settings, there is going to be a slight degradation in quality. Converting it is going to be a much better option for any serious audiofile.
It will be tough for congress to a way to systematically tax those who are making money from MMO games. Part of the reason is because each MMO is it's own micro-economy and monetary transactions are handled differently both in and out of the game. If congress does try to come up with some (lame, I'm sure) method for taxing the profits of American gamers, an international banking solution for such transactions will most likely provide itself before congress has even signed the bill into law.
Fowl! Is it necessary to state a source as 'conservative'. Rightists typically view sites like BBC and CNN as 'Liberal' while leftists view sites like Fox News as 'conservative'.
Most people can distinguish when any other site tends to lean in the direction they disagree with. Must we label conservative sources and only conservative sources?
Slashdot Mirror
that the game was "good" to begin with. I'm not trying to troll here but I can honestly recall a lot of people hating this game from it's initial release. Most of the people I knew considered it a novel idea but a grand waste of money and not worth more than an hour or two of game play.
And to be clear, I was often mocked for actually enjoying the original.
Robert Kahn? I thought this article was going to be about Al Gore...
Has anyone else found out about these guys?
It's an old site but it's still just as awesome. I almost considered trying this out myself but I'm not exactly sure if such a thing is legal.
RTFA! It states that it's a buy-2, get-1, send-1-into-the-third-world policy.
I've always considered these types of projects pointless. It's not because I think that we are necessarily alone but because the use of radio waves for communication seems like such a simple and quickly evolvable technology that we would never find them. Here's my reasoning.
Let's assume that we are a 'typical' univeral life form. I'm haven't brushed up on my radio broadcasting history but I'll assume that we've been broadcasting information in some form since the 1910's. Let's now say that for the next 400 years we use this type of technology to communicate. I think that is a very large estimate, though. By that time the human race will have progressed so far (IMHO) that we will need much quicker and reliable forms of communication because of advancements in space travel and that type of communication will even trickle down into normal, everyday communication on earth. Using all modern forms of communication will not suffice if we have bases of operation even as close as our nearest star. I don't know what it will be, but a solution will provide itself and I doubt it will be anything close to what we have now.
So, Let's assume then that we as humans use radio waves for 500 years, total. If you want, give or take an extra couple 100 years. It doesn't matter for the point I am trying to make. If we only use radio waves for a span of 500 years, than that amount of time is a drop in the bucket compared to the entire, vast expanse of time that has past in our universe.
If there is another civilization out there. I'm pretty sure that they are either way behind or way ahead of us in technological advancements. If they progressed at even a fraction of the rate that we have (and will), then the span of time at which that have transmitted any type of communication that we can currently understand and interpret is so short that it's a practical impossiblity that we will 'catch' it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the entire search for intelligent life in space isn't important. I'm just saying that the current technology that we have is in such an infantile state that it's a waste of time and resources that could be put towards better works of science.
You do realize that if they didn't charge for their services, they wouldn't make money to do further research? Sure if a cure for cancer was found today, for the next 5-10 years it would be an expensive treatment. The reason is because the 100's of millions, if not billions, of dollars it took to come up with the treatment need to be recooperated. People have been looking for a cure for years and every $100,000,000 failed attempt at finding a treatment is a write-off until a solution is found. When that starts to happen, prices always drop and treatment becomes more common.
You've obviously never been married... or have watched Sienfeld.
Also, for some reason the express site seems SLOOOOWWW. It took about 1 minute for the main page to come up just now (from 2 different locations on 2 different networks), ugh.
It's the slashdot effect. Their sales have been doing so poorly that they've cut down on the bandwidth resources to lower costs.
I'll place the first bet.
I'll bet that in one week you will be sued for operating an illegal gambling site that also lures children to it because it's "video game" centric.
You know, I've actually had a thought along those lines in trying to explain to untechnologically savvy individuals why Digital Rights laws are screwed up and that handling digital content on the web is a grey area. Consider the following.
Most web sites have a copyright statement on them some where (even this one!). Technically speaking, if I go to that web site, my browser copies the page along with all it's media content and caches it. Since many of those sites do not have a terms of service posted allowing the viewing of the content through regular web browsing my computer is therefore violating copyright laws, right?
Every single web user out there is breaking the law!
These glasses look a lot better than the old, bulky VR glasses that first emerged a long time ago but the wearer still looks like a huge dork. (No offense to anyone who would consider owning these.)
I can't wait until OLED technology (or something similiar) progresses to the point to where the display can be imprinted on the lens. We're probably still a few years off from that point but, until then, I don't think this type of techonology will ever become mainstream.
'What difference do you see?' I asked back. 'Nothing, really.'
Microsoft has already released their new modded version of SUSE?
Thanks for the response! Actually, I'm following many of your suggestions already. To give you (and others) a little background I work for a company that has one IT supervisor and I am the sole, dedicated software engineer. We are a manufacturing company and the point of the project that I am currently working on is to build an advanced, in-house system that will be used by hundreds of people all across the globe, some in very remote locations for internal tracking. The idea for the system was the brain child of my boss who has loosely speced out the system and it's my job to make the software magic happen. I'm quite confident that I could make this a rather robust and [reasonably] bug free application by the release but when requests come up (on an almost weekly bases) to change the code and rework specific modules entirely at the whim of management, things start to get complicated. Code that might have been written four or five months ago might have been appropriate and efficient but now is pointless or problematic because of changes that have had to be made due to specification changes. I'm doing a fair job at 'managing' the situation but as this project grows, I am reaching my mental limits of recalling and remembering what each method in that application does and why I even wrote some of them in the first place. Sure, I comment my code and even try to give my methods meaningful handlers but some routines consist of thousands of lines of code and hundreds of method calls from initiation to finish. It gets confusing after a while when you hit a bug that is hidden in code that's been written months ago.
During the 80s, Apple inundated the public schools with cheap computers in the hopes of getting us young, impressionable children use to the idea of using Apple PCs. It was a good idea but, sadly for them, most of our parents bought IBM compatible. For me the idea of a good Apple computer that I enjoy using is an old IIe that I played the Oregan Trail on in elementary school. Many of those teachers from the 80's, however, are still die-hard Mac fans. That's what they used in their work environment and they have often been hesitant toward changing even if they are now 20 years behind. Now, those teachers are 40+.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on "The Art of Software Testing"? It appears that there was an update to the book in 2004-- the first since it's initial publishing in 1976. Is it worth getting the second ed. over the first?
M$ never gets anything right the first time...and what about the X-Box?
... the storage space won't matter. If DRM legislators have their way, you won't be able to have any video on your iPod do to some stupid copy right law.
Crap! The Article wouldn't load until now. And when it does, The Facility is the first thing I see. I apologize for the waste of time of the last post.
Golden Eye's Facility Level. It was excellent as a multi-player level and excellent to play when trying to beat the clock. Not to mention, their was the bug where at the end of the level where you could go up to the second level and the enemies would run up to the door below to the entrance of floor you were on. Either by lack of coder insight or some game bug they never opened the door to kill you. That meant you could camp out and just mow them down from above as an endless sea of enemies poured out from the other side of the main room. Once you ran out of ammo, you simply would simply run back down stairs and open the door and 'click' instant refill of 400 rounds! Man, those were the good ole days.
Mega-dittos c6.
As someone who talks to teachers all day in software support, you'd be surprised how hard it is for people to simply click on the right button. Do you mean 'right' as in 'left/right' or 'right' as in 'correct'.
First off, I read the /. post but not the linked article. I just wanted to put it out there. I believe, however, that this is significant news because this provides a method of decoding that I would assume to be lossless. If you burn an iTunes file to a CD and then rip the CD, even at the highest quality settings, there is going to be a slight degradation in quality. Converting it is going to be a much better option for any serious audiofile.
It will be tough for congress to a way to systematically tax those who are making money from MMO games. Part of the reason is because each MMO is it's own micro-economy and monetary transactions are handled differently both in and out of the game. If congress does try to come up with some (lame, I'm sure) method for taxing the profits of American gamers, an international banking solution for such transactions will most likely provide itself before congress has even signed the bill into law.
Fowl! Is it necessary to state a source as 'conservative'. Rightists typically view sites like BBC and CNN as 'Liberal' while leftists view sites like Fox News as 'conservative'.
Most people can distinguish when any other site tends to lean in the direction they disagree with. Must we label conservative sources and only conservative sources?
Yes, but they are most just a bunch of garbled cognitive non-sense.
This comes from an oberver of teens who realizes he once was one.