Babylon 5 almost did get cancelled early. There was enough information before the 4th season started that a fifth might not occur that JMS scrunched the plans for 4 and 5 togther. The Shadow war should have been all of season 4, and the fight towards Earth as the 5th season. This is why the Shadow War seems to end oddly, he rushed it to get more of the season dedicated to the more human aspect.
TNT bought the rights for the show and gave life to the 5th season and the movies. JMS came up with a season wrapped around the stuff he has created after Earth was retaken. He also went to start a new series, Crusade, but TNT botched that to hell and both parties mutually ended it. TNT wouldn't even air the episodes in the proper order.
JMS tried again with SciFi with The Legend of the Rangers. All of it had been planned out and an air date set. Then 9/11/01 occured, delaying the NFL season. This pushed a critical post game show onto the timespot of the new series movie, and SciFi refused to move it. Due to people watching the game, the show didn't get the raitings SciFi wanted to continue it on as a series. Even though on the west coast where it didn't compete with the game it rated higher then most of SciFi's other shows.
Seconded on the Logitech Playstation keyboard. I have one in my Shuttle XPC bag and use it at LAN parties. It's the perfect size to sit in the Shuttle case instead of having to be carried seperatly.
I had my first DVD game in 1998, The Journeyman Project 3. Soon after, I got Riven on DVD as well. Years later, I have my CD wallet full of games that didn't give me the choice and take up 4-7 slots for their discs. It's actually costing publishers more money to distribute a game on even 2 CDs these days then it is for one DVD.
Looking at the Steam survey results, more people on that list fall below the Doom 3 memory requirements compared to the amount of people lacking a DVD-Rom drive.
The iBook problem wasn't even found until users had the product for several months, if not years. Apple is good enough to admit problems like this and fix any one they see. This is costing them money, not saving them anything, and it wasn't due to them slashing quality in the iBook.
The Powerbook display issue was out of their control too. The company who assembled the screens was putting the spacers in the wrong place, causing pressure on the screen over time to form the white spots. Once again an issue that takes time to show up, so Apple has once again of their own free will decided to fix any they see with that issue.
All in all, the new Powerbooks are built way better then the Titanium ones. No flimsy screen hinges to break, no paint to chip and overall a better build then the old.
Several owners of the empeg units do indeed have them hooked to an 802.11 access point in their car and upload music wirelessly. The one do it yourself part of this will be to make the ethernet dockable. To do so, pull the tab off a cable and shave a bit of the plastic off. Then just mount the connector firmly on the dock the empeg comes with.
There are still used empegs being sold on the empeg boards at www.empegbbs.com . Feel free to stop on by and introduce yourself, the community is very much alive and active development from both Rio and the empeg community occurs. In fact, we now have lyrics displaying on our displays thanks to a third party developer.
As far as the PhatBox, it's ok, but you loose a lot of control the empeg gives you. Kinda a shame that the empeg was the first car player on the market, and still nothing has gone beyond it in features or usability in 5 years now.
The source code theft (an in fact theft of all of the property) didn't delay it much. The code the guy then released to the internet proved Valve could not have made the September 30th 2003 deadline they set.
The only feasable delay I could see it causing is if they recoded the network stack enough to prevent cheets. It's still not a year delay for that though.
Ok, for the top end of the market, games really need to start being DVD only.
Survey says 77.93% of the machines had a DVD drive. Start putting games out only on DVD, and that will rise quickly.
I bought my first DVD game in 1998. I'm damn tired of seeing my game wallet have a full page just dedicated to one multi CD game. Lets get the market moved to DVD-Rom before BD-Rom starts in...
Do you trust your credit card to be stored on Valve servers? The same ones comprimised by a simple e-mail exploiting an Outlook vunerability sent to Gabe?
I don't. I also don't like online constant activation of my programs. People dislike the Windows XP activation, but don't seem to balk at the Counter Strike activation process that has to happen at some time, even for LAN play. And before you say "offline mode", I've seen it fail so many times while running the helpdesk at Quakecon. If it decides it wants to reactivate on the internet, the player is screwed.
One big reason I did this. I now have two ISPs coming into the house, and my attempts to get my Linux router to use both in a stable way were not met with sucess. After several hours of pouring over documentation scraps from one site and another, hacking the kernel, and rebooting, I gave up.
In the end I spent $200 on a nice Xincom Twin Wan Router XC-DPG502. With all it's options and configuration, I got both ISPs working very quickly and got my server set up behind it with no problem.
Anything advanced for networking under Linux becomes very hard to implement, and even harder due to the fact that there are very few good documentation sites for such things. Most of your research will be from scraps of info off listserves from people attempting this before you.
If you ever go to Quakecon and watch the Quake 3 players, any of them that get into the higher ranked matches make their game look, well, like ass and worse then Quake 1. Why? Well, they do things to increase contrast, change view angles to unreasonable amounts to practicially see 360, and ensure no eye candy might distract them. It's absolute lunacy that they feel they can't compete without making the game practicially flash ENEMY IS HERE.
This isn't about trying to prevent people from making the game run better. It's to prevent people from playing a completly different looking game in competitions.
I've been waiting for this technology to come out ever since I saw it at E3. It will finally turn my Wintendo into a full game box. I buy a game, drop it in, and play. New patch comes out, it's taken care of for me. The less time I spend fixing my PC gaming box, the more time I spend playing. Some people get a kick out of administering their equipment, I get a kick out of getting something done. Thats why a Powerbook running OS X is my main system for production work, and not Linux or Windows. I also know Macs are not good for gaming due to the current market of not releasing hybrid games, hence keeping a Windows box around. Linux does well at serving stuff, so it sits in my basement, waiting for me to run emerge -U world from time to time, but otherwise just working beyond my initial setup.
I don't intend to play games on my TV. Partially because I don't own one, but instead own a 27 inch monitor for TV watching. But I am highly interested in the tech behind it to just let me play.
Running Internet Explorer is like pulling your pants down and screaming "rape me" in the middle of the motorway.
Great quote I won't forget anytime soon. I believe he told this to his bank on the phone after they said they only supported Internet Explorer and Netscape 4.5 to access the account part of their site.
Cool, didn't know cell phones were being used to even allow people to buy gas. That should finally put that damn urban legend to rest.
The Muthbusters even visited the myth twice, the second time addressing everyones concerns that wrote in about the first attempt. They went to the extreme of trying to short out the battery after killing the short protection, and still couldn't generate a spark to set off a gas filled chamber, one a human would probably not survive in due to the air mixture.
Good to know about the job offer with the whole Watson issue. I skim read the article being at work and so I quickly moved over that area of it.
It seems he got something else now anyhow, Watson users who helped support him after Sherlock 3 are going to be left out in the cold by October.
I'm not buying a license to Konfabulator because I fear similar will happen. My main holdoff was always the resource issues in Konfabulator. Now I have a second. The widgets were nice when I had a second monitor on my Powerbook.
The article is a good response I think, though not official from Apple. It points out how they are different, why they didn't buy Konfabulator, and why they didn't steal anything. The idea for these widgets is ancient, think 1984 and the first Mac OS.
I do wonder about Watson though. It was the app like Sherlock 3. Apple awarded the developer best application of WWDC 2002, then went on to show off the clone at WWDC 2003 with no acknowledgment. Sure, it made logical sense for Sherlock to move in that direction, but to not even give credit after recognizing the developer one year past always seemed odd.
On the flip side, you have the KHTML group loging life since Apple swooped in and helped their project. Is this a lesson Apple is trying to teach, in that if you create a good open source project, they may help it along and use it. Create a closed source app, and they simply duplicate it if they want it in the OS?
Two of the top names people know in gaming, Thresh being the first, Fatal1ty being the current one prove this guy right. They both have won several tournaments at the top spot, but still find the need to have other sources of income. Both have managed to turn their popularity into a source of income. Thresh has done well behind the scenes helping on things and giving endorsements. And Fatal1ty has teamed with ABit to help make gamer products, with his name on it, so some kickback cash there.
This isn't like some highly rated sports figure signing off on some product for a bit more spending cash. It's because they know gaming is not a way to support themselves alone yet. While some "large" prizes have been given out, Fatal1ty only won $20,000 for Quakecon. After tax, thats probably less then what minimum wage full time would gross in a year. So, something else has to pay the bills too.
But even better would be a dash mp3 player with internal hard drive and a wireless network adaptor. when you park in the garage it just jumps on your network.
Several empeg-car owners have been doing this since, oh, 2000. empeg + wireless base station or bridge = wireless music sync.
Regarding the iPod+BMW thing, I'm very disappointed. You can't play normal playlists, you have to make 5 "BMW" playlists with a limited number of tracks, and treat it like a 5 disc changer. I'd just buy a used empeg and throw it in the dash instead.
Oh, and don't mind the big disclaimer: Not available on vehicles with navigation system, CD changer, DSP cassette player or satellite radio.
"Microsoft doesn't allow the Xbox Live service to be used for anything other than patches that affect online play."
Except for their own games. MechAssault has been patched, specificially the game loading code to close the exploit that allowed software modding the XBox. Deleting the MechAssault save data gets rid of the patch and reopens the exploit.
I've been wanting to play with smart card authentication on my Powerbook, but would only consider implementing it on a permenant basis if it is a PCMCIA reader. That way, I don;t have to have some USB reader hanging off the laptop no matter where it goes.
Anyone seen a PCMCIA reader that follows the needed standard for OS X to use it?
Everquest LANs!?!? Is there such a thing as a everquest server emulator? Or does your friend just share his broadband connection with his friends when they come over? He just shares his broadband, and we all play togther in a group going into dungeons and such. It is more of a good personal social experience, since we do cookouts and such. Kinda like an RPG session, but without the GM having to run things.
Isn't it the server that they are talking about? I very much doubt that the server makes use of 3dfx or DirectX.
The graphics engine can impact the network code and server more then people think. Things like collision detection are done, and differences between how clients do this could lead to client/server mismatch issues. And while I know EverQuest doesn't use DirectX for network code, many other games do causing porting issues beyond the Direct3D use.
Minor differences in floating point calculations between x86 and PPC caused C&C Generals to be incompatible network wise between the Mac and PC version, and aparently some minor issues even exist PC to PC between some processors. I'd be really curious to see why these issues exist. I'm sure using a more standard method would have helped.
This type of thing is not a major issue for companies like Wolfpack and Blizzard, makers of Shadowbane and Worlds of Warcraft. Both chose to go with more open standards, and have cross compatibility with no issues.
Verant choose 3dfx Glide way back when, and then DirectX. It's not a wonder they coudn't easially make a Mac client that could play in the same worlds as the PC users. I would have bought Mac Everquest in a heartbeat for the EQ LANs my friend throws, but alas, stupidity prevailed and they released a non compatible game.
The lesson at the end of the day? Open standards makes life easier. Closed standards puts you into a tough position eventually.
The only thing I can think of anymore that someone might have a use for is a memory card reader-- but why buy a PC Card one and limit yourself when you can use a USB one on any computer?
Because the PC card one fits inside the laptop. The USB one doesn't. Thus, I can put the PC card in, then carry my Powerbook around in a slim case and still be able to read memory cards. USB, I'd have to carry it around with me separately.
Having the PCMCIA slot is a good thing. I've also used it to wardrive, since the Airport Extreme still doesn't have open source drivers. I also know of video options for the slot, allowing people to have 2 23 inch cinema displays running off their Powerbook.
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Babylon 5 almost did get cancelled early. There was enough information before the 4th season started that a fifth might not occur that JMS scrunched the plans for 4 and 5 togther. The Shadow war should have been all of season 4, and the fight towards Earth as the 5th season. This is why the Shadow War seems to end oddly, he rushed it to get more of the season dedicated to the more human aspect.
TNT bought the rights for the show and gave life to the 5th season and the movies. JMS came up with a season wrapped around the stuff he has created after Earth was retaken. He also went to start a new series, Crusade, but TNT botched that to hell and both parties mutually ended it. TNT wouldn't even air the episodes in the proper order.
JMS tried again with SciFi with The Legend of the Rangers. All of it had been planned out and an air date set. Then 9/11/01 occured, delaying the NFL season. This pushed a critical post game show onto the timespot of the new series movie, and SciFi refused to move it. Due to people watching the game, the show didn't get the raitings SciFi wanted to continue it on as a series. Even though on the west coast where it didn't compete with the game it rated higher then most of SciFi's other shows.
Seconded on the Logitech Playstation keyboard. I have one in my Shuttle XPC bag and use it at LAN parties. It's the perfect size to sit in the Shuttle case instead of having to be carried seperatly.
I had my first DVD game in 1998, The Journeyman Project 3. Soon after, I got Riven on DVD as well. Years later, I have my CD wallet full of games that didn't give me the choice and take up 4-7 slots for their discs. It's actually costing publishers more money to distribute a game on even 2 CDs these days then it is for one DVD.
Looking at the Steam survey results, more people on that list fall below the Doom 3 memory requirements compared to the amount of people lacking a DVD-Rom drive.
Slashed quality? How so?
The iBook problem wasn't even found until users had the product for several months, if not years. Apple is good enough to admit problems like this and fix any one they see. This is costing them money, not saving them anything, and it wasn't due to them slashing quality in the iBook.
The Powerbook display issue was out of their control too. The company who assembled the screens was putting the spacers in the wrong place, causing pressure on the screen over time to form the white spots. Once again an issue that takes time to show up, so Apple has once again of their own free will decided to fix any they see with that issue.
All in all, the new Powerbooks are built way better then the Titanium ones. No flimsy screen hinges to break, no paint to chip and overall a better build then the old.
Several owners of the empeg units do indeed have them hooked to an 802.11 access point in their car and upload music wirelessly. The one do it yourself part of this will be to make the ethernet dockable. To do so, pull the tab off a cable and shave a bit of the plastic off. Then just mount the connector firmly on the dock the empeg comes with.
There are still used empegs being sold on the empeg boards at www.empegbbs.com . Feel free to stop on by and introduce yourself, the community is very much alive and active development from both Rio and the empeg community occurs. In fact, we now have lyrics displaying on our displays thanks to a third party developer.
As far as the PhatBox, it's ok, but you loose a lot of control the empeg gives you. Kinda a shame that the empeg was the first car player on the market, and still nothing has gone beyond it in features or usability in 5 years now.
The source code theft (an in fact theft of all of the property) didn't delay it much. The code the guy then released to the internet proved Valve could not have made the September 30th 2003 deadline they set.
The only feasable delay I could see it causing is if they recoded the network stack enough to prevent cheets. It's still not a year delay for that though.
Ok, for the top end of the market, games really need to start being DVD only.
Survey says 77.93% of the machines had a DVD drive. Start putting games out only on DVD, and that will rise quickly.
I bought my first DVD game in 1998. I'm damn tired of seeing my game wallet have a full page just dedicated to one multi CD game. Lets get the market moved to DVD-Rom before BD-Rom starts in...
Do you trust your credit card to be stored on Valve servers? The same ones comprimised by a simple e-mail exploiting an Outlook vunerability sent to Gabe?
I don't. I also don't like online constant activation of my programs. People dislike the Windows XP activation, but don't seem to balk at the Counter Strike activation process that has to happen at some time, even for LAN play. And before you say "offline mode", I've seen it fail so many times while running the helpdesk at Quakecon. If it decides it wants to reactivate on the internet, the player is screwed.
Know any way to get them to work on a Mac?
One big reason I did this. I now have two ISPs coming into the house, and my attempts to get my Linux router to use both in a stable way were not met with sucess. After several hours of pouring over documentation scraps from one site and another, hacking the kernel, and rebooting, I gave up.
In the end I spent $200 on a nice Xincom Twin Wan Router XC-DPG502. With all it's options and configuration, I got both ISPs working very quickly and got my server set up behind it with no problem.
Anything advanced for networking under Linux becomes very hard to implement, and even harder due to the fact that there are very few good documentation sites for such things. Most of your research will be from scraps of info off listserves from people attempting this before you.
If you ever go to Quakecon and watch the Quake 3 players, any of them that get into the higher ranked matches make their game look, well, like ass and worse then Quake 1. Why? Well, they do things to increase contrast, change view angles to unreasonable amounts to practicially see 360, and ensure no eye candy might distract them. It's absolute lunacy that they feel they can't compete without making the game practicially flash ENEMY IS HERE.
This isn't about trying to prevent people from making the game run better. It's to prevent people from playing a completly different looking game in competitions.
I've been looking for the smallest box I can get away with for my Powerbook that can do one thing:
Display the signal from a component or SVideo source on the screen.
I don't need a tuner or anything else fancy. Firewire or USB is fine, whatever works on the Powerbook.
I've been waiting for this technology to come out ever since I saw it at E3. It will finally turn my Wintendo into a full game box. I buy a game, drop it in, and play. New patch comes out, it's taken care of for me. The less time I spend fixing my PC gaming box, the more time I spend playing. Some people get a kick out of administering their equipment, I get a kick out of getting something done. Thats why a Powerbook running OS X is my main system for production work, and not Linux or Windows. I also know Macs are not good for gaming due to the current market of not releasing hybrid games, hence keeping a Windows box around. Linux does well at serving stuff, so it sits in my basement, waiting for me to run emerge -U world from time to time, but otherwise just working beyond my initial setup.
I don't intend to play games on my TV. Partially because I don't own one, but instead own a 27 inch monitor for TV watching. But I am highly interested in the tech behind it to just let me play.
Running Internet Explorer is like pulling your pants down and screaming "rape me" in the middle of the motorway.
Great quote I won't forget anytime soon. I believe he told this to his bank on the phone after they said they only supported Internet Explorer and Netscape 4.5 to access the account part of their site.
Cool, didn't know cell phones were being used to even allow people to buy gas. That should finally put that damn urban legend to rest.
The Muthbusters even visited the myth twice, the second time addressing everyones concerns that wrote in about the first attempt. They went to the extreme of trying to short out the battery after killing the short protection, and still couldn't generate a spark to set off a gas filled chamber, one a human would probably not survive in due to the air mixture.
Good to know about the job offer with the whole Watson issue. I skim read the article being at work and so I quickly moved over that area of it.
It seems he got something else now anyhow, Watson users who helped support him after Sherlock 3 are going to be left out in the cold by October.
I'm not buying a license to Konfabulator because I fear similar will happen. My main holdoff was always the resource issues in Konfabulator. Now I have a second. The widgets were nice when I had a second monitor on my Powerbook.
The article is a good response I think, though not official from Apple. It points out how they are different, why they didn't buy Konfabulator, and why they didn't steal anything. The idea for these widgets is ancient, think 1984 and the first Mac OS.
I do wonder about Watson though. It was the app like Sherlock 3. Apple awarded the developer best application of WWDC 2002, then went on to show off the clone at WWDC 2003 with no acknowledgment. Sure, it made logical sense for Sherlock to move in that direction, but to not even give credit after recognizing the developer one year past always seemed odd.
On the flip side, you have the KHTML group loging life since Apple swooped in and helped their project. Is this a lesson Apple is trying to teach, in that if you create a good open source project, they may help it along and use it. Create a closed source app, and they simply duplicate it if they want it in the OS?
Two of the top names people know in gaming, Thresh being the first, Fatal1ty being the current one prove this guy right. They both have won several tournaments at the top spot, but still find the need to have other sources of income. Both have managed to turn their popularity into a source of income. Thresh has done well behind the scenes helping on things and giving endorsements. And Fatal1ty has teamed with ABit to help make gamer products, with his name on it, so some kickback cash there.
This isn't like some highly rated sports figure signing off on some product for a bit more spending cash. It's because they know gaming is not a way to support themselves alone yet. While some "large" prizes have been given out, Fatal1ty only won $20,000 for Quakecon. After tax, thats probably less then what minimum wage full time would gross in a year. So, something else has to pay the bills too.
But even better would be a dash mp3 player with internal hard drive and a wireless network adaptor. when you park in the garage it just jumps on your network.
Several empeg-car owners have been doing this since, oh, 2000. empeg + wireless base station or bridge = wireless music sync.
Regarding the iPod+BMW thing, I'm very disappointed. You can't play normal playlists, you have to make 5 "BMW" playlists with a limited number of tracks, and treat it like a 5 disc changer. I'd just buy a used empeg and throw it in the dash instead.
Oh, and don't mind the big disclaimer:
Not available on vehicles with navigation system, CD changer, DSP cassette player or satellite radio.
"Microsoft doesn't allow the Xbox Live service to be used for anything other than patches that affect online play."
Except for their own games. MechAssault has been patched, specificially the game loading code to close the exploit that allowed software modding the XBox. Deleting the MechAssault save data gets rid of the patch and reopens the exploit.
I've been wanting to play with smart card authentication on my Powerbook, but would only consider implementing it on a permenant basis if it is a PCMCIA reader. That way, I don;t have to have some USB reader hanging off the laptop no matter where it goes.
Anyone seen a PCMCIA reader that follows the needed standard for OS X to use it?
Everquest LANs!?!? Is there such a thing as a everquest server emulator? Or does your friend just share his broadband connection with his friends when they come over?
He just shares his broadband, and we all play togther in a group going into dungeons and such. It is more of a good personal social experience, since we do cookouts and such. Kinda like an RPG session, but without the GM having to run things.
Isn't it the server that they are talking about? I very much doubt that the server makes use of 3dfx or DirectX.
The graphics engine can impact the network code and server more then people think. Things like collision detection are done, and differences between how clients do this could lead to client/server mismatch issues. And while I know EverQuest doesn't use DirectX for network code, many other games do causing porting issues beyond the Direct3D use.
Minor differences in floating point calculations between x86 and PPC caused C&C Generals to be incompatible network wise between the Mac and PC version, and aparently some minor issues even exist PC to PC between some processors. I'd be really curious to see why these issues exist. I'm sure using a more standard method would have helped.
This type of thing is not a major issue for companies like Wolfpack and Blizzard, makers of Shadowbane and Worlds of Warcraft. Both chose to go with more open standards, and have cross compatibility with no issues.
Verant choose 3dfx Glide way back when, and then DirectX. It's not a wonder they coudn't easially make a Mac client that could play in the same worlds as the PC users. I would have bought Mac Everquest in a heartbeat for the EQ LANs my friend throws, but alas, stupidity prevailed and they released a non compatible game.
The lesson at the end of the day? Open standards makes life easier. Closed standards puts you into a tough position eventually.
The only thing I can think of anymore that someone might have a use for is a memory card reader-- but why buy a PC Card one and limit yourself when you can use a USB one on any computer?
Because the PC card one fits inside the laptop. The USB one doesn't. Thus, I can put the PC card in, then carry my Powerbook around in a slim case and still be able to read memory cards. USB, I'd have to carry it around with me separately.
Having the PCMCIA slot is a good thing. I've also used it to wardrive, since the Airport Extreme still doesn't have open source drivers. I also know of video options for the slot, allowing people to have 2 23 inch cinema displays running off their Powerbook.