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Comment Re:Class action lawsuit ? (Score 1) 295

by nitroscen (#31135664) Attached to: Where Microsoft's Profits Come From

Microsoft doesn't pay dividends.

Microsoft has been paying a quarterly dividend since 2004. Also, even if they did not pay a dividend, companies sometimes buy their own stock to un-dilute the shares. The shareholders then have stock that is worth more money. http://www.google.com/finance?q=microsoft Click the "5years" button.

Comment Re:Easy but far too simple solution (Score 2, Insightful) 216

by nitroscen (#30657960) Attached to: Adobe Security Chief Defends JavaScript Support
You should really read the posts you are replying to before bashing them. The guy was just saying it won't solve the problem. He didn't say it 'has had no impact'. He was simply stating that the solution to this problem requires some action on Adobe's part... just like how the solution to most security problems you bring up require some action on Microsoft's part.
Databases

Submission + - How can we slay the varchar date monster?

Submitted by infinite9
infinite9 writes: I've been given the task of designing the architecture and common tools for our new 3-tier .net environment with oracle. Some of our users are in the UK, which means we need to support globalized dates. I've argued that globalization is a job for the presentation tier, and that everything below that should use the provided date data types. I'm getting a lot of resistance from the other developers however. They're claiming that the best way is to store the dates in the database in yyyyMMdd format in varchar fields, or at least convert them all to that before returning from the stored procedures. This is obviously a bad idea. But I've argued this 100 ways and they refuse to "get it". Can anyone suggest a source I can point them at to educate them on proper system design?
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Why Motivation is Key for Artificial Intelligence (technologyreview.com) 1

Submitted by
Al
Al writes: "MIT neuroscientist Ed Boyden has a column on Technology Review discussing the potential dangers of building super-intelligent machines without building in some sort of motivation or drive. Boyden warns that a very clever AI without a sense of purpose might very well "realize the impermanence of everything, calculate that the sun will burn out in a few billion years, and decide to play video games for the remainder of its existence". He also notes that the complexity and uncertainty of the universe could easily overwhelm the decision-making process of this intelligence--a problem that many humans also struggle with. Boyden will give a talk on the subject at the forthcoming Singularity Summit."

Comment From TFA.. (Score 1) 439

by nitroscen (#29120341) Attached to: Average Gamer Is 35, Fat and Bummed
"...analyzed survey data from 552 adults in the Seattle-Tacoma area. The subjects ranged in age from 19 to 90, according to the study.." Yes- I'm sure this is enough data. 552 adults in the Seattle-Tacoma area that were willing to participate in the study is all you need to prove your hypothesis! Seriously- I read this on MSNBC yesterday and was finally fed up enough to remove MSNBC from my RSS reader. This crap is meaningless.
The Internet

Japanese Political Candidates Go Dark Online 91

Posted by kdawson from the sounds-relaxing-actually dept.
maximus1 writes "A 59-year-old election law prevents Japanese candidates from blogging and twittering during the campaigning window. So, on Tuesday, 1,370 Japanese will stop all online activity. Candidates get a brief slot on public television, usually in the early or late-night hours when few are watching, to make their pitch. The rest of the time is spent campaigning in neighborhoods, walking through the streets, and making speeches outside railway stations. If opinion polls are to be believed, the Aug. 30 election could be the law's last stand. Voter turnout among the young is poor, and some believe it's because the old-fashioned method of campaigning has failed to energize a population that is surrounded by digital media from the day they are born. 'The Internet must be made available for election campaigns as soon as possible,' the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's second-largest newspaper, wrote in a recent editorial."

Comment Correlation... Causation?? (Score 1) 389

by nitroscen (#29091613) Attached to: C# and Java Weekday Languages, Python and Ruby For Weekends?

This means that more programmers are using Python and Ruby on the weekend for their personal projects, showing that these languages are more fun to use.

This isn't necessarily true. How many of you choose your language based on how fun it is? I choose mine on practicality. I'm working and I just got out of college. All of my weekend projects are written in languages I do not know, as I'm trying to get a little bit of experience with them all. Since I haven't encountered Python or Ruby at work, they would be good choices. All of my work projects are in older languages- and I don't really have time to program my weekend projects on the weekdays.
Biotech

Hacking Our Five Senses and Building New Ones 290

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the where-is-my-x-ray-vision dept.
ryanguill writes "Wired has an article about expanding your five (maybe six) senses to allow you to sense other things such as direction. It also talks about hijacking other senses to compensate for missing senses, such as using electrodes in your mouth to compensate for lack of eyesight. Another example is a subject wearing a belt with 13 vibrating pads. The pad pointing north would vibrate giving you a sense of direction no matter your orientation: '"It was slightly strange at first," Wächter says, "though on the bike, it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. He learned to deal with the stares he got in the library, his belt humming like a distant chain saw. Deep into the experiment, Wächter says, "I suddenly realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home. Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new place."'"
The Courts

Do We Want ISPs Penalizing Music Fans? 263

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the rhetorical-questions dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Noted singer songwriter Billy Bragg has written an excellent column in The Guardian, coming out against the pro-RIAA '3-strikes' legislation the big 4 record labels are trying to push through. In the article, entitled 'Do we want ISPs penalizing our fans?', Bragg writes: 'Having failed miserably in previous attempts to stamp out illicit filesharing, the record industry has now joined forces with other entertainment lobby groups to demand that the government takes action to protect their business model.' He goes on: 'Fearful of the prospect of dragging their customers though the courts, with all the attendant costs and bad publicity, members of the record industry have come up with a simple, cost-free solution to their problem: get the ISPs to do their dirty work for them. They are asking the government to force the ISPs to cut off the broadband connection of customers who persistently download unauthorized material, without any recourse to appeal in the courts.'"

A System For Handling 'Impostor' Complaints 165

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the just-let-everyone-fight-to-the-death dept.
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A woman sued Yahoo because they wouldn't remove a page created by her ex-boyfriend pretending to be her and soliciting strangers for sex. What would be an effective system for large companies like Yahoo to handle 'impostor' complaints, without getting bogged down by phony complaints and unrelated disputes? This is a harder problem than it seems because of the several possible cases that have to be considered. One possible solution is given here." Read on for Bennett's analysis.
Biotech

13,000 Volunteer To Put Personal Genomes Online 126

Posted by CmdrTaco from the will-c0de-for-f00d dept.
Lucas123 writes "The Personal Genome Project, which opened itself up to the public on April 25, has to date signed up 13,000 of the target 100,000 volunteers needed to create the world's first publicly accessible genome database. Volunteers will go through a battery of written tests and then offer DNA samples from which their genetic code will be derived and then published to help scientists discover links between genes and hereditary traits. While the Personal Genome Project won't publish names, just about everything else will be made public, including photos and complete medical histories. Scientists hope to some day have millions of genomes in the database."
Classic Games (Games)

Submission + - Vintage Games (armchairarcade.com)

Submitted by
Aeonite
Aeonite writes: "Featuring a subtitle that is almost longer than the preface,Vintage Games: An Inside Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time offers a retrospective look at those games which authors Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton feel were, in their words, "paradigm shifters; the games that made a difference." As the preface points out, these are not necessarily best-selling games, innovative games, or novel games, but rather titles that, "in their own special way changed videogames forever."

The book itself features 25 chapters, each devoted to the study of a particular title that best stands out as "vintage" in its particular genre. Those games chosen as particularly "vintage" are (in order): Alone in the Dark, Castle Wolfenstein, Dance Dance Revolution, Diablo, Doom, Dune II, Final Fantasy VII, Flight Simulator, Grand Theft Auto III, John Madden Football, King's Quest, Myst, Pac-Man, Pole Position, SimCity, Space Invaders, Street Fighter II, Super Mario 64 (covered in tandem with Tomb Raider), Super Mario Bros.,Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, The Sims, Ultima, Ultima Online, and Zork. In addition, nine additional "Bonus Chapters" are available online at the book's website, covering Defender, Elite, Pinball Construction Set, Pong, Robotron: 2084, Rogue, Spacewar!, Star Raiders, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

Though listing the titles here seems a bit tedious, it does serve two purposes. First, it demonstrates the broad range of game genres and titles covered in the book, with selections made from across four decades of gaming history. Worth noting in this regard is that each chapter is not solely dedicated only to the titular game; related games that both preceded and followed the selected title are also discussed, and although I didn't keep count many hundreds of titles are at least mentioned, if not covered in some depth. Indeed, this broad range leads to one of the minor issues I have with the book, which is a slight feeling of imbalance and inconsistency between chapters.

By way of example, the first chapter on 1992's Alone in the Dark begins with a two page look at the title itself, followed by a brief peek back at other "horror" games such as 1981's Haunted House, 1982's Dracula and 1988's Splatterhouse. The chapter then dives back into a detailed overview of the introductory scene of Alone in the Dark (along with illustrative screenshots), followed by four pages covering the game's sequels and some brief mentions of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Chapter 2, covering Castle Wolfenstein, follows more or less the same formula of focusing on the titular game, as do Chapter 7, covering Final Fantasy VII, Chapter 9, covering GTA III, and Chapter 15, on SimCity.

However, this "formula" is not followed in many of the other chapters, which makes reading the book from cover-to-cover a somewhat uneven experience. Chapter 3, covering Dance Dance Revolution only really devotes about four of the chapter's 11 pages to DDR itself, instead choosing to spend more collective time (and screenshots) on related subjects like Dragon's Lair, Video Jogger, the Nintendo Power Pad, Sega's Activator, and Karaoke Revolution (among others). Chapter 10, covering John Madden Football goes for over a dozen pages before it truly covers the title in question on five entertaining and screenshot-packed pages. Chapter 14, covering Pole Position and Chapter 17, on Street Fighter II are other notable examples where the focus is not as tightly aimed at the vintage title in question.

This is not to say that the writing is flawed; on the contrary, it is always entertaining and interesting, and frequently illuminating. Loguidice and Barton cover a lot of terrain, and they are not afraid to point out the warts as well as the beauty marks in their selections. For those who grew up with video games in their house starting with the Atari 2600 (or before), the book is like a trip through time, giving the reader a chance to reminisce about days gone by while also learning about the many titles he or she didn't even known existed. All of this material is written in an informative yet casual style that never feels stilted or pretentious, nor too fanboyish. Indeed, the only awkwardness is the inconsistency in coverage from chapter to chapter, which sort of feels like the authors — rather than co-write each chapter — sort of divided the book in half. I have no idea if this is the case, and there are certainly no glaring stylistic differences from chapter to chapter; all are equally entertaining.

The above chapter list also demonstrates that the titles are arranged in alphabetical order, as opposed to release date or genre. While this certainly makes a sort of structural sense, it does feel a bit awkward while reading the book cover-to-cover, as the reader is constantly dancing back and forth through time, from 1992 to 1981, followed by five titles released in the '90s, a title from 1980, and then 2001's GTA III. In addition, the decision to alphabetize The Legend of Zelda and The Sims in the T's, rather than the L's and S's respectively, does feel a bit odd (especially since the titles are listed under L and S in the index). Whereas Ultima and Ultima Online, and Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Bros. are in adjacent chapters, The Sims and SimCity are separated by six chapters. This is an admittedly minor quibble, however.

If there is a more-than-minor flaw with the book, it is the same flaw that seems to beset all books covering the video game industry: the screenshots, and their inconsistent placement throughout the text. Occasionally, a screenshot will actually fall on the same page where the game it depicts is being mentioned, but in many cases screenshots appear a page or two away (a mention of Second Life comes to mind in this regard. In several cases, screenshots actually overwhelm the text (most notably on pages 312-313), and fewer would have served better. There are also a number of "back of box" shots, which hardly seem as interesting to the reader as an in-game screenshot would be; in one case, almost an entire page is given over to a blown-up back-of-box shot of Maxwell Manor, which otherwise barely gets a mention in the main text.

Also worth mentioning is that screenshots do not always guarantee title mentions, and vice versa. In some cases, the vintage title being covered in a chapter is given many screenshots, whereas in other cases there are only one or two devoted to that game title. Some other mentioned titles are given a lot of text but no screenshot, such as Resident Evil, Metal Gear, and Half-Life. Other screenshots depict titles that are not even mentioned in the text (though they are still relevant to the subject at hand, as the captions generally make clear); examples include Silent Service, Blades of Steel and Mario Kart: Super Circuit. In places it often feels as if the authors are "making do" with the art resources available to them, rather than placing the images that would best suit the topic.

Whatever the reason for these sorts of issues, they present only the occasional bump in what is otherwise a very smooth and entertaining ride. The somewhat inconsistent coverage of titles means that readers looking to read about their particular favorite game may be in for a treat, or may be disappointed, depending on which particular game they're looking to read about. However, this is not that book. What Vintage Games is, is a four-decade retrospective on 25 games that have truly made a difference, and readers who expect just that (as you now do) will come away wholly entertained."

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