The computer mag I read that comes to mind is Wired, which also has a lot of ads. However, most of them are pretty entertaining, so they usually don't bother me.
Must everything be such a big deal to Katz? I've never posted on his stories, but I have to say that that I have to because he reminds me so much of my English teacher. Everything he writes always points to some event which he considers to be "revolutionary" and a foreshadowing of an amazing change in the way the human race views things. It's ALWAYS the same idea.
Can't he take a step back and tell a story? He should stop stating how he thinks it's "the next big thing" or going to change this or that about this society, or this industry, or this operating system:).. if he tells the story and makes subtle statements about these things, I'll look forward to his articles a lot more. He doesn't have to shove the idea that a Christian game is controversial down our throats for us to come up with an opinion about it. Tell us the story, and BREIFLY what you think about it, and then let the/.'ers do the rest. That's how it works for all the other stories on here.. and it never ceases to amaze me that 200 posts can accumulate about a story regarding dental floss:)
I know I'm now put into the category of "Katz-basher", but hell I can't help it.
IMHO, it's either like Highlander(tm) "There can be only one", or there can be a limitless number of systems.
in any two-cent econ course they tell you exactly what you wrote. there is either the one absolute best platform that comforts everyone, or there is a limitless number of startups who are smart enough to make a new box with a kick-ass game.
but deeper analysis says, "not really!" gaming industry follows more conventional rules than computer/internet industry. in most cases, an oligopoly settles in the market. Such as the car industry, banking, even electronics. Computer industry might have an order of magnitude more companies in the game, but still
There simply cannot be a limitless number!
after all, if there was a large number of Sony's, you wouldn't know which one to buy. chances are, games wouldn't be so lucrative if people were staring at 200 different games.
There is a limit at how many different companies and types of game you can have! There are shoot-em up's, rpg's, driving, fighting, strategy, board, but that is about it. this way people know what they like.
same with manufacturers, it is very nice that once you go to a store you know that you ONLY have to choose between PSX and N64! any new platform will either be rejected, or push someone out of the picture.
that is it. (don't flame)
p.s. prediction, X-Box will never settle in, while Dreamcast will probably push Nintendo into financial trouble.
Hah! You've hit the nail right on the head. This is a trend I've noticed so much, and I can't seem to understand why they can't make things more realistic. I avoid computer-related movies b/c they just piss me off.
Independence day cracked me up particularly because of the way that they uploaded a "virus" to the alien "mainframe".. good thing those alien ships had serial interfaces, eh?:)
One of my favorites is the movie GUI. Anytime you see people using computers in the movies, the windows ALWAYS zoom, make neato swooshing sounds, the mouse clicks always are audiable (*click!*), etc. etc. Hollywood computers are the most audiable computers, even more than the Game Boy. Being a geek, this ticks me off for some reason. Hell, they usually do such a ugly mock up GUI, I find myself asking "Why don't they just use friggin Enlightenment, it's alot cooler looking than that!"
The South Park movie made a good joke relating to this, I'm not sure if everyone picked it up. When the kids are trying to look at the Internet porn of Stan's mom, it says in big red letters "ACCESS DENIED" (something you always see on computers these days..:)). Kyle (I think) then says "I'm going to try to bypass their security code" or something along those lines, typical Hollywood computer hacker line, and presses random keys and the huge "ACCESS DENIED" letters turn to "ACCESS GRANTED". Really funny.
Also, it gets annoying when computers always talk to their users in movies with that oh so pleasant female voice.
I always love it when people staring at computer screens don't have just a glow over their face, but the letters on the screen are actually reflecting off their face! That's always funny. Usually this is used when a person is looking at random "code" or something (or even ones and zeros) flying by on the screen Matrix style.
The list goes on, but I'll let everyone else go off from here.
I listen to NIN almost exclusively for coding. Sometimes I listen to UB40. The Fragile is amazing coding music.. I coded for 4 hours last night to it and didn't even notice it. "A Warm Place" on TDS is amazing also.
Beastie boys are good too, though not very good for concentrating.
I have to agree that the Velo 1 is a very cool little computer. I too have had my hinge problems (as well as anyone else) and I'm on Velo #3 (works perfectly so far).. I haven't really used it much b/c it's a pain to carry around and my classes are all engineering based so i do very little writing/note taking in class that can be done on a hpc. It was great in High School though. I just read about the linuxce project, and I'm not sure if there's a version for the Velo yet (can't get to the site) but I think it may be reason for me to wipe of the dust and turn that puppy on again!
I met weird al the other day backstage at the Myrtle Beach show (after getting hooked up by Steve Jay, the bassist).. and I complemented him on the accuracy of "It's All About the Pentiums":)
I work for Lucent Technologies and we've been using another crappy dynamic HTML software, Informix's Web-Blade. It basically is like PHP but has many more bugs and is a bit more cryptic to write. PHP blows anything and everything out of the water that i've tried thusfar, works perfectly, and works quickly. We're already in the process of re-doing out entire internal site using PHP3. I've written two small web applications which use it and they were developed in about half the time it would've taken in Perl or Web-Blade. I highly suggest anyone who is looking for an easy way to generate HTML (or even images or pdf files, as stated already) to jump over to their homepage and check it out!
It would be neat to see if they could engineer a fractal antenna using the latest in micro-eletronics that would be a really really deep physical copy of the Mandelbrot set:)
I've heard alot of posts on hear about AP complaining that the repeated jokes were bad. I thought it was pretty hysterical! I don't think they were expecting you to think they were funny for the same reason you did in the first movie, I think they wanted you to think they were funny just because they were being done again!
Though the other reply relating to PM is probably more accurate, I had heard that he was working on music for Apogee back in the days of shareware games galore:) (This was like a few years ago.)
BTW - I have two CDs in my car which contain primarily Purple Motion/Skaven tracks:) pretty good stuff.. SCREAM TRACKER WILL NEVER DIE!
Oh my gawd! I remember you man, you made renegade add-ons! Wow. I made a few myself, my handle was Nebula and I was into the NJ BBS Scene.. I was in CiA as a coder.
The cases would be a bit more appealing if they switched the colored part with the translucent white part. Too much dark cyan for my eyes. Makes me sick to my stomach even.
Every time they come up with some idea like this it seems that there's a way around it. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but if all the bits you need to play a game are actually on the rental cd's, you can bet the farm that there will be a crack or whatever it takes to get to them within a few days after they start being sold. If all the bits aren't there, then I guess that blockbuster is just selling demoware, pretty lame if you ask me.
I started playing with Linux myself about 6-8 months ago. To make some kind of point as to how easy linux is to setup, in the past three days, I:
Built a PC from spare parts I had (p60 MB, 16MB RAM, VGA, 2 ethernet cards, 150 & 250MB HDs, and fd0).
Made 9 floppies for Debian install (first time using Debian was the same week.)
Installed Debian base, manually configured DHCP to get my cable modem.
Ran dselect, which ftp'd the rest of what I needed (GNU, etc.)
Recompiled the kernel w/ IP masqing
Setup ethernet & IP masqing
Coming to you live right now off a IP masq'ed windows box with my very own web server in my closet running debian linux. Took me 2 1/2 days. Now I just have to put some web pages up:)
This is the reason I get annoyed when technical competent people (like hotel sysadmins) complain about the hard installation of linux.
Easy way to make your keyboard dvorak.
on
The Myth of QWERTY
·
· Score: 1
I forgot to mention this in my previous post, and it seems to be a factor in the issue of dvorak vs qwerty. When switching, a major problem with getting your brain to memorize the keys is to have them in front of you. Well, instead of popping off the keys and all that I just went down to my local drug store, bought a VHS videocassette, and stuck those little letter stickers that come with a blank tape to all the keys in the right positions. Once I got the keyboard layout down in my head, I took them off so my family members would no longer be out of their minds:) I think I posted this tip to the dvorak international people but I dunno if it got anywhere from there.
I was typing one day and realized my wrists started to hurt. Surfing around I stumbled upon the heaps of pro-dvorak sites on the web. Well, I was convinced and started to change over. It took me about 3 or 4 weeks and I got up to speed on dvorak no problem (thank you Mavis Beacon!).
The best thing about dvorak off the bat wasn't any type of speed increase (though I KNOW that if I stuck with it I would have gotten much faster because it's so easy to type on), but the fact that my hands didn't hurt at all anymore. You don't really move your hands around like a QWERTY.. it's pretty crazy how far your hands jump around the keyboard on a QWERTY. In dvorak, the home row has all the vowels and major consonants, and you'd be surprised how many entire words you form just by typing along the home row without even moving your hands!
As for the cons, there were a few. First of all, if I wanted to use dvorak anywhere but home, I had to setup the computer to be dvorak (not a big deal, but a pain no less). Also, if I left it on dvorak and didn't switch it back to QWERTY, oh man were people scared then!:) Using a QWERTY keyboard took about 5 minutes for a "brain-shift".. which was pretty cool in itself anyway, but again a pain in the neck.
However, the MAIN drawback to dvorak has got to be hotkeys. My hands were so used to key combinations in programs and things such as copy and paste that didn't make sense after dvorak. Ctrl-Z is undo, and is a very easy one-handed key combo. With dvorak (if I remember correctly) it's a little more out of the way. This was the main thing that brought me back to qwerty, among the other small things. If dvorak was everywhere and well supported, however, I'd be very happy.
P.S. - The best trick I would do with my dvorak typing skill would to open up notepad and tell someone "Hey you! Type something!".. of course they'd jump away from the computer once they realized the keys were all messed up. Then I'd just go over and type like it was no big deal, and it would really freak em out:) hehe
Slashdot Mirror
The computer mag I read that comes to mind is Wired, which also has a lot of ads. However, most of them are pretty entertaining, so they usually don't bother me.
What if you consider the theory that Aliens are further evolved formations of humans. Future time travelers?
I saw the band "Man, or Astroman?" play a Therman once. It was cool. They also played a computer keyboard and some other weird stuff.
-Greg
Must everything be such a big deal to Katz? I've never posted on his stories, but I have to say that that I have to because he reminds me so much of my English teacher. Everything he writes always points to some event which he considers to be "revolutionary" and a foreshadowing of an amazing change in the way the human race views things. It's ALWAYS the same idea.
:) .. if he tells the story and makes subtle statements about these things, I'll look forward to his articles a lot more. He doesn't have to shove the idea that a Christian game is controversial down our throats for us to come up with an opinion about it. Tell us the story, and BREIFLY what you think about it, and then let the /.'ers do the rest. That's how it works for all the other stories on here.. and it never ceases to amaze me that 200 posts can accumulate about a story regarding dental floss :)
Can't he take a step back and tell a story? He should stop stating how he thinks it's "the next big thing" or going to change this or that about this society, or this industry, or this operating system
I know I'm now put into the category of "Katz-basher", but hell I can't help it.
IMHO, it's either like Highlander(tm) "There can be only one", or there can be a limitless number of systems.
in any two-cent econ course they tell you exactly what you wrote. there is either the one absolute best platform that comforts everyone, or there is a limitless number of startups who are smart enough to make a new box with a kick-ass game.
but deeper analysis says, "not really!" gaming industry follows more conventional rules than computer/internet industry. in most cases, an oligopoly settles in the market. Such as the car industry, banking, even electronics. Computer industry might have an order of magnitude more companies in the game, but still
There simply cannot be a limitless number!
after all, if there was a large number of Sony's, you wouldn't know which one to buy. chances are, games wouldn't be so lucrative if people were staring at 200 different games.
There is a limit at how many different companies and types of game you can have! There are shoot-em up's, rpg's, driving, fighting, strategy, board, but that is about it. this way people know what they like.
same with manufacturers, it is very nice that once you go to a store you know that you ONLY have to choose between PSX and N64! any new platform will either be rejected, or push someone out of the picture.
that is it. (don't flame)
p.s. prediction, X-Box will never settle in, while Dreamcast will probably push Nintendo into financial trouble.
Oh no! Here comes another nostalgic thread about BBSes.. sniff sniff..
:(
:)
I miss Telegard hacks
-Greg
or should I say
-NÉßÜ£Æ!-
[CiA/BROkEN]
hehe
Hah! You've hit the nail right on the head. This is a trend I've noticed so much, and I can't seem to understand why they can't make things more realistic. I avoid computer-related movies b/c they just piss me off.
Independence day cracked me up particularly because of the way that they uploaded a "virus" to the alien "mainframe".. good thing those alien ships had serial interfaces, eh?
One of my favorites is the movie GUI. Anytime you see people using computers in the movies, the windows ALWAYS zoom, make neato swooshing sounds, the mouse clicks always are audiable (*click!*), etc. etc. Hollywood computers are the most audiable computers, even more than the Game Boy. Being a geek, this ticks me off for some reason. Hell, they usually do such a ugly mock up GUI, I find myself asking "Why don't they just use friggin Enlightenment, it's alot cooler looking than that!"
The South Park movie made a good joke relating to this, I'm not sure if everyone picked it up. When the kids are trying to look at the Internet porn of Stan's mom, it says in big red letters "ACCESS DENIED" (something you always see on computers these days
Also, it gets annoying when computers always talk to their users in movies with that oh so pleasant female voice.
I always love it when people staring at computer screens don't have just a glow over their face, but the letters on the screen are actually reflecting off their face! That's always funny. Usually this is used when a person is looking at random "code" or something (or even ones and zeros) flying by on the screen Matrix style.
The list goes on, but I'll let everyone else go off from here.
I listen to NIN almost exclusively for coding. Sometimes I listen to UB40. The Fragile is amazing coding music.. I coded for 4 hours last night to it and didn't even notice it. "A Warm Place" on TDS is amazing also.
Beastie boys are good too, though not very good for concentrating.
-Greg
I have to agree that the Velo 1 is a very cool little computer. I too have had my hinge problems (as well as anyone else) and I'm on Velo #3 (works perfectly so far).. I haven't really used it much b/c it's a pain to carry around and my classes are all engineering based so i do very little writing/note taking in class that can be done on a hpc. It was great in High School though. I just read about the linuxce project, and I'm not sure if there's a version for the Velo yet (can't get to the site) but I think it may be reason for me to wipe of the dust and turn that puppy on again!
He lives two blocks from me too :) I'm in Holmdel (well, I was up until a few days ago when I left for Cornell)..
I met weird al the other day backstage at the Myrtle Beach show (after getting hooked up by Steve Jay, the bassist).. and I complemented him on the accuracy of "It's All About the Pentiums" :)
I just e-mailed him an offer of $849,999.99..
:)
Let's see what he says
hehe.
I work for Lucent Technologies and we've been using another crappy dynamic HTML software, Informix's Web-Blade. It basically is like PHP but has many more bugs and is a bit more cryptic to write. PHP blows anything and everything out of the water that i've tried thusfar, works perfectly, and works quickly. We're already in the process of re-doing out entire internal site using PHP3. I've written two small web applications which use it and they were developed in about half the time it would've taken in Perl or Web-Blade. I highly suggest anyone who is looking for an easy way to generate HTML (or even images or pdf files, as stated already) to jump over to their homepage and check it out!
You got me there :)
It would be neat to see if they could engineer a fractal antenna using the latest in micro-eletronics that would be a really really deep physical copy of the Mandelbrot set :)
I've heard alot of posts on hear about AP complaining that the repeated jokes were bad. I thought it was pretty hysterical! I don't think they were expecting you to think they were funny for the same reason you did in the first movie, I think they wanted you to think they were funny just because they were being done again!
The "Zip It" scene was pretty damn funny IMHO
Don't forget, he also played the role of Fat Bastard, which was funny as all hell as well!
Though the other reply relating to PM is probably more accurate, I had heard that he was working on music for Apogee back in the days of shareware games galore :) (This was like a few years ago.)
:) pretty good stuff.. SCREAM TRACKER WILL NEVER DIE!
BTW - I have two CDs in my car which contain primarily Purple Motion/Skaven tracks
Oh my gawd! I remember you man, you made renegade add-ons! Wow. I made a few myself, my handle was Nebula and I was into the NJ BBS Scene.. I was in CiA as a coder.
Pretty freakin awesome
The cases would be a bit more appealing if they
switched the colored part with the translucent
white part. Too much dark cyan for my eyes.
Makes me sick to my stomach even.
Oh my. The wood case thing was a scam :)
:)
I hope you wouldn't want to run your computer
in a wooden case.. that'd be just silly
Every time they come up with some idea like this it seems that there's a way around it. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but if all the bits you need to play a game are actually on the rental cd's, you can bet the farm that there will be a crack or whatever it takes to get to them within a few days after they start being sold. If all the bits aren't there, then I guess that blockbuster is just selling demoware, pretty lame if you ask me.
To make some kind of point as to how easy linux is to setup, in the past three days, I:
- Built a PC from spare parts I had (p60 MB, 16MB RAM, VGA, 2 ethernet cards, 150 & 250MB HDs, and fd0).
- Made 9 floppies for Debian install (first time using Debian was the same week.)
- Installed Debian base, manually configured DHCP to get my cable modem.
- Ran dselect, which ftp'd the rest of what I needed (GNU, etc.)
- Recompiled the kernel w/ IP masqing
- Setup ethernet & IP masqing
- Coming to you live right now off a IP masq'ed windows box with my very own web server in my closet running debian linux. Took me 2 1/2 days. Now I just have to put some web pages up
:)
This is the reason I get annoyed when technical competent people (like hotel sysadmins) complain about the hard installation of linux.Have fun!
The best thing about dvorak off the bat wasn't any type of speed increase (though I KNOW that if I stuck with it I would have gotten much faster because it's so easy to type on), but the fact that my hands didn't hurt at all anymore. You don't really move your hands around like a QWERTY.. it's pretty crazy how far your hands jump around the keyboard on a QWERTY. In dvorak, the home row has all the vowels and major consonants, and you'd be surprised how many entire words you form just by typing along the home row without even moving your hands!
As for the cons, there were a few. First of all, if I wanted to use dvorak anywhere but home, I had to setup the computer to be dvorak (not a big deal, but a pain no less). Also, if I left it on dvorak and didn't switch it back to QWERTY, oh man were people scared then!
However, the MAIN drawback to dvorak has got to be hotkeys. My hands were so used to key combinations in programs and things such as copy and paste that didn't make sense after dvorak. Ctrl-Z is undo, and is a very easy one-handed key combo. With dvorak (if I remember correctly) it's a little more out of the way. This was the main thing that brought me back to qwerty, among the other small things. If dvorak was everywhere and well supported, however, I'd be very happy.
P.S. - The best trick I would do with my dvorak typing skill would to open up notepad and tell someone "Hey you! Type something!".. of course they'd jump away from the computer once they realized the keys were all messed up. Then I'd just go over and type like it was no big deal, and it would really freak em out