My friend had an Amiga 600 back in the day it was new and his sister was having a party while we were chilling out and sneaking beers (we were like 13 or 14 at the time). Totally drunk off his ass, my friend pours a 3/4 full can of beer on his running Amiga, saves all his open files WITH THE BEER INSIDE, turns it off, pours the beer out, and boots it up perfectly. He also used to hot-swap hard drives with that thing, but the file system he used was so sturdy (he claims) that he could unplug a hard drive in the middle of a file transfer and it would not only still run, but it would pick up where it left off. I never saw this feat myself though, so I don't know if he was bullshitting me or not.
Dell sold somewhere in the range of 10,000 system (3500 notebooks and 6500 desktops) with XP on them about a month ago. People are calling in to Dell's tech support with XP questions before us techs were even trained for it. Hell, one of my co-workers got one Saturday night!
I work as an L1 tech for Dell systems, and the Dimension XPS systems are vulnerable to having the motherboard fried from static electricity when hooking a palm up to a serial port (NOT a USB port). The specific systems affected are the XPS L, XPS T, XPS B, and XPS R (the ones without a letter). If you have one of these systems, do NOT use the serial port on your system to sync with a Palm unless you want to make the sheepish call to me saying your board is dead. Please note that, if you do have a Dell, your service contract will cover replacement of the fried board, but ONCE and ONLY ONCE. The support person will replace the board and warn you to not do it again. If you've used a palm and your Dell PC serial port, and you want to know if your motherboard is damaged, pop open the case (no, that doesn't void your service contract like with other manufacturers) and check the board for burns. If there aren't, hook something else up to the serial port and see if it works. Usually the damage is only that it shorts out the controller for the serial port, but I have seen a case or two where it fries the entire board, turning the system to a paperweight.
I also thought of pursueing a career in video game creation, however, I have little to no programming skills. I'd like to be the person that writes the stories for games such as Final Fantasy, ChronoCross, or Parasite Eve. As video games stories become more and more complex and moving, is there a job market for a Video Game Writer?
Between this and the judge that threw out the DVD injunction (the first one at least), it seems like our judicial system may finally, in fact, "get it"!
The question isn't of whether the big companies should be scared of piracy as we've been able to pirate CDs if different formats for years. Simply buy a $20 piece of hardware for a playstation and voila, $3 and a rental at schlockbuster gets you a $30+ video game. An hour online at 56k and a CD burner and $3 gets you an entire audio CD. Neither of these markets have colapsed yet. Even though it doesn't have the quality of of a digital copy, analog video copies offer very good quality until you get to about the 4th generation or so. The same goes for audio tapes. I can record a program off HBO or Showtime and save myself $19.95. You know why this market hasn't colapsed? Because people are willing to pay $20 for a video or DVD or $15 for a CD or $50 for a video game. It's inexpensive, and honestly not worth the effort of illegal piracy. Only when piracy becomes impossible will people be forced to pay more than they should; and then this will be the time in which piracy will be needed most.
Maybe this will replace all those paintball gun places everywhere where it's impossible to play unless you're a vietnam vet and spent $1500 on all the equiptment... Naw, I doubt it...mainstream culture rarely ever latches on to anything really cool...
So thanks to the guy giving play-by-play of the local junior high football game in panish on AM560, I lose somewhere near 2MBps? I'd sacrifice the bandwidth only if people would play decent crap on the radio...
New York and Los Angeles are the cities of the past in filmmaking. Most of the forward-thinking indie filmmakers are coming from Austin, TX these days. Check out the South By Southwest Film and Media conferences for great coverage on both computer and filmmaking info. It's going to be in March of 2000 and is an annual event. Check out http://www.sxsw.com for more info. The best thing to do if you're really interested is to just get the equiptment and play around. That's the best way to get your own style and will give your films a different feel than all the others out there. Good luck!
I work in a bookstore, and I got in three new books today all of which I was looking forward two but this one was undoubtedly the best. I have read the online archives of User Friendly and I am an avid reader (and archiver) of the online strip, but lacking a laptop I can never bring them with me to work or class or whatever. Plus, I know many people who feel weird about the strip because "If it were a good comic it would be i the newspaper or in a book now wouldn't it?" Well screw 'em, it's in a book now! Besides, it's was fun to freak out a customer at the store by busting out laughing for 10 minutes straight at the iWack spitting out the NT disc...PAH-TOOEY! BTW...does anyone know what Pitr has that stupid accent now?
Slashdot Mirror
My friend had an Amiga 600 back in the day it was new and his sister was having a party while we were chilling out and sneaking beers (we were like 13 or 14 at the time). Totally drunk off his ass, my friend pours a 3/4 full can of beer on his running Amiga, saves all his open files WITH THE BEER INSIDE, turns it off, pours the beer out, and boots it up perfectly. He also used to hot-swap hard drives with that thing, but the file system he used was so sturdy (he claims) that he could unplug a hard drive in the middle of a file transfer and it would not only still run, but it would pick up where it left off. I never saw this feat myself though, so I don't know if he was bullshitting me or not.
The Abstruse One
I'd like to see Clerks on IMAX, just for the absurdity factor of watching a movie originally shot on 16mm film projected from 75mm film.
Who needs a Pentium 4?! When are these supposed to come out?
Dell sold somewhere in the range of 10,000 system (3500 notebooks and 6500 desktops) with XP on them about a month ago. People are calling in to Dell's tech support with XP questions before us techs were even trained for it. Hell, one of my co-workers got one Saturday night!
Jason Byrons
The Abstruse One
I work as an L1 tech for Dell systems, and the Dimension XPS systems are vulnerable to having the motherboard fried from static electricity when hooking a palm up to a serial port (NOT a USB port). The specific systems affected are the XPS L, XPS T, XPS B, and XPS R (the ones without a letter). If you have one of these systems, do NOT use the serial port on your system to sync with a Palm unless you want to make the sheepish call to me saying your board is dead. Please note that, if you do have a Dell, your service contract will cover replacement of the fried board, but ONCE and ONLY ONCE. The support person will replace the board and warn you to not do it again. If you've used a palm and your Dell PC serial port, and you want to know if your motherboard is damaged, pop open the case (no, that doesn't void your service contract like with other manufacturers) and check the board for burns. If there aren't, hook something else up to the serial port and see if it works. Usually the damage is only that it shorts out the controller for the serial port, but I have seen a case or two where it fries the entire board, turning the system to a paperweight.
So now we can pirate Metallica and Dr. Dre's music in a DIFFERENT codec. That'll teach us!
Jason Byrons
The Abstruse One
"You all laugh at me because I'm different. I laugh at you because you're all the same."
I also thought of pursueing a career in video game creation, however, I have little to no programming skills. I'd like to be the person that writes the stories for games such as Final Fantasy, ChronoCross, or Parasite Eve. As video games stories become more and more complex and moving, is there a job market for a Video Game Writer?
Between this and the judge that threw out the DVD injunction (the first one at least), it seems like our judicial system may finally, in fact, "get it"!
The question isn't of whether the big companies should be scared of piracy as we've been able to pirate CDs if different formats for years. Simply buy a $20 piece of hardware for a playstation and voila, $3 and a rental at schlockbuster gets you a $30+ video game. An hour online at 56k and a CD burner and $3 gets you an entire audio CD. Neither of these markets have colapsed yet. Even though it doesn't have the quality of of a digital copy, analog video copies offer very good quality until you get to about the 4th generation or so. The same goes for audio tapes. I can record a program off HBO or Showtime and save myself $19.95. You know why this market hasn't colapsed? Because people are willing to pay $20 for a video or DVD or $15 for a CD or $50 for a video game. It's inexpensive, and honestly not worth the effort of illegal piracy. Only when piracy becomes impossible will people be forced to pay more than they should; and then this will be the time in which piracy will be needed most.
Maybe this will replace all those paintball gun places everywhere where it's impossible to play unless you're a vietnam vet and spent $1500 on all the equiptment...
Naw, I doubt it...mainstream culture rarely ever latches on to anything really cool...
I love any sentence that includes the words "software", "windows", "fully-functional" and "free" since they're rarely ever together
So thanks to the guy giving play-by-play of the local junior high football game in panish on AM560, I lose somewhere near 2MBps? I'd sacrifice the bandwidth only if people would play decent crap on the radio...
New York and Los Angeles are the cities of the past in filmmaking. Most of the forward-thinking indie filmmakers are coming from Austin, TX these days. Check out the South By Southwest Film and Media conferences for great coverage on both computer and filmmaking info. It's going to be in March of 2000 and is an annual event. Check out http://www.sxsw.com for more info. The best thing to do if you're really interested is to just get the equiptment and play around. That's the best way to get your own style and will give your films a different feel than all the others out there. Good luck!
I work in a bookstore, and I got in three new books today all of which I was looking forward two but this one was undoubtedly the best. I have read the online archives of User Friendly and I am an avid reader (and archiver) of the online strip, but lacking a laptop I can never bring them with me to work or class or whatever. Plus, I know many people who feel weird about the strip because "If it were a good comic it would be i the newspaper or in a book now wouldn't it?" Well screw 'em, it's in a book now! Besides, it's was fun to freak out a customer at the store by busting out laughing for 10 minutes straight at the iWack spitting out the NT disc...PAH-TOOEY! BTW...does anyone know what Pitr has that stupid accent now?