I'm sorry to disagee, but I think Tivi is becoming a part of the public consciosness. When I hear a local radio dj ralking about how he used his tivo to record a show he wanted to check out, a huge chunk of the local population just went to tivo.com.
Tivo has mindshare, is simple, cheaper, and does one thing very well. I actually predict tivo will gain more mind and market share.
Look, I'm sorry. I personally don't give a flying fuck about Michael or any others of the Slashdot crowd.
This is not a professional news organization - for that, I'll watch 60 Minutes, Dan Rather, or people who make a good buck doing nothing but finding shit out that I think is important.
Michael, Taco, Cowboy, and the rest are just guys saying "Hey, this is something I thought (or some poster) thought was interesting, and here's my $0.02 on it."
Don't like - go get your own damn web site. I don't have time for arrogant pricks like yourself who feel you have to bash somebody because you a) don't agree with them, b) don't share there interests, or c) expect them to be more/less than they are.
I'm getting off my soapbox now. I'm gonna go have some toast with peach and raspberry jam.
I hate to sound like a whiner, but this card would be perfect on my Mac. Between my game reviews, this would do it all - render by OS X games great, for my console reviews I could plug the svideo cables in for screenshot captures right to Quicktime/iMovie video.
At the moment I ue a Formac Tevion, which works well through the Firewire, but as someone who believes that less hardware is better, ATI should really think about making a Mac version of this card. I can't imagine it would be all that hard - the hardware is AGP on both platforms, so it would just be someone at ATI writing some OS X drivers for this device.
Not sure if anyone else cares about this, but I've been annoyed by ATI's lack of good video capture tools on the Mac since - well, since I started using Mac's in February of this year.
Now, personally, I think a halfway point is better here.
For some people, "rm" means "rm" - for my wife, "rm" means "delete this", which is different, since she might want to get that back.
So I'd simply include an undelete function by default - but let "experts" such as yourself set a flag to truly remove the file. No muss, no fuss. Everybody happy.
I look back at the days when people were racing to the moon - sure, it was for the really good reason of "Well, um, we have to beat the Russians!", but still, it was there. Look at the incredible explosion of technology that happened during the Moon program - new materials, computers growing smaller for space - we're still benefitting to this day.
But now, nobody wants to fund science unless it "makes something useful". Which is well and good - without practical science, we'd still be wearing bushes for shorts.
But science progresses from the accidents - looking at the mold eating your sugars, and trying to figure out why the bacteria don't kill it. Looking at a clock and wondering what would happen if you left it at the speed of light.
We get minimul funding for projects like Supercolliders, which could reveal who knows what amazing secrets to the universe? What if one of those secrets was anti-gravity, or a huge breakthrough in quantum computing we never would have found if we hadn't just gone "Damn - let's just see what it is for no other reason than we can." We should be going to Mars - for no reason greater than saying "I don't know - because it's there". The scientific benefits of such endeavors would be huge.
But I don't see that happening until we're pretty much forced off this rock by overpopulation or pollution or trying to find a new way to get rid of criminals or something. And then the new advances will come - about the time I can start getting biogrown teeth.
I agree - I don't think that people are going to Pay for Downloading Music services because the RIAA is stomping on P2P networks. People like you and me are checking out the "pay for downloaded music" sites because we actually want to buy quality music without worrying about downloading a file and discovering a virus or that it's the wrong file or its in 64kbps encryption.
I have no problem buying software/music/ebooks or the rest - as long as I can do so on my terms. I want my ebooks in text so I know 10 years from now I can still read them. I want my music in MP3 or Ogg so I know I can still convert them to a new media later and listen to them.
So far, all the music download sites I've seen a) don't work with my Mac, b) don't let me download music to my iPod, c) either only let me "stream" the song, or only let me check out so many songs at a time.
For now, then, I'll check out the options, say "Eh, fuck that" to most of them, and wait for someone to give me what I want - because those are the folks who are going to get my money.
Biggest damn plot hole in the history of all plot holes:
C3PO: Hi, I'm a droid. Owen: Hey, didn't I meet you before? C3PO: No, I don't think so. Owen: Yeah, you're C3PO. Build by Anakin Skywalker, right? You're the one who told everybody how itchy you were so you could get Padme to oil you up. C3PO: I have no idea what you're talking about. Owen: My dad married his mom! We worked together for about 10 years or so. Remember the whole sandpeople incident, where they came and kidnapped her for no reason? Or how we've been raising her grandson - your creator's son - for 18 years now? By the way - why didn't he ever come back and look in the local phone directory under "Skywalker" - he might have found out his son was right here. C3PO: (Waves his hand before Owen.) We are not the droids you remember. Owen: (Dazed.) You are not the droids I remember. C3PO: (Waves hand again.) You want to purchase us. And give me an oil bath. Owen: Bath.
Call me strange, but I think there was just a little plot hole there. Maybe a small one.
Considering that Mr. Brin has written some of the best science fiction out there (I particulary enjoyed Earth), I'd say he *can* do, and does very well.
I don't care about the "Eat steak and win a chance to go to Emmy's so see a bunch of self-centered pretty people do stuff", or "Eat Nachos and meet Dr. Phil", or even "Win a computer by kissing the ass fo the 'Dude, you're getting a Dell' guy!"
But this - I would actually find some way to chug-a-lug the fowl battery acid combination they call "cola" for a chance to go into space. If for no other reason than I can take a pee in zero-gee. And puke from the nausea.
But damn - wouldn't that be something to tell my kids. Daddy took a pee in space. Then played Warcraft III on how Powerbook just because he could;). (Though a mouse in zero-gee would be interesting - better get the optical out for the trip....)
So I did something a little weird with my PS2 network connector.
On the place where it plugs into the PS2, there's another pair of holes that line up exactly to a standard IDE hard drive power and data port.
So I plugged in an extra hard drive I had and plugged it in.
Nothing happened.
But...there's no reason why something *can't* happen. We know this system is used in Japan for their hard drive/network connector kit (used in games like Final Fantasy X and XI). So hopefully the folks at Sony will get off their goddamn asses and release the HDD in the US so we can use it for TIVO things like this with just a DVD stuck in the tray.
Then again, they're probably making us wait until the PS3.
Re:Is there time for negative reviews?
on
ChronoSpace
·
· Score: 2
Bad AI. Puke green graphics.
Sorry to pimp myself, but I think it's put best here:
I also bought it for $5 - and found it was $4.99 too much.
Re:Is there time for negative reviews?
on
ChronoSpace
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Actually, I think there is a good time for negative reviews.
There are two examples:
When the subject matter is bad, a negative review is useful for preventing the spending of money on experimental items - ie, the "impulse buy". If I look at a book/movie/game and wonder "Hm - I've got an extra $20 in my pocket I want to spend - maybe I'll buy this", a negative review is useful in filtering out the obvious non-choices.
When it's just plain fun. There are some things so awful (Swimfan), to stupid (Daikatana), and so worthless (Space Bunnies Must Die!), that its fun just to see how someone will trash it. Sometimes, reading a good review of a bad product can be just as much fun as reading a bad review of a good product - no, wait, that makes no sense....
The only thing that I have a worry with not being able to reboot into OS 9 are the older games - Myth, Myth II, Rune (granted, not a *good* game, but still...).
If they had good 3D accelleration[sic] support under classic, this wouldn't be a worry at all.
I've been transferring the old video tapes of my daughter onto DVD (thank you, Superdrive and iDVD), and it's not surprising how fast these things get eaten up. As more people start using their home machines as digital editing stations, they'll be happy they've got these drives.
Well, that and when you try to review Icewind Dale II and it takes up 1.5 Gigs of space...
And just give the market to Sony? Sony, who at least has a Linux kit (granted, they make it just about as proprietary as possible, but it's the thought that counts, I guess) would laugh their asses off if Microsoft raised the price of the Xbox to make up for heavy linux based sales.
There's a reason why I think this is a Good Thing, and it goes beyond some stupid "Microsoft sucks, make them spend money!"
This is the true beginning of a low cost, easy to use system. If the boot up totally doesn't destroy the system, for $200 you can get yourself a machine that:
Plays games (hopefully, the Xbox will have better exclusive games than just Halo and Shenmue II).
Plays DVD movies.
Plugs into a TV (which every American has), monitor (which most people can get for cheap).
Runs Linux for network admin types (imagine a few of these suckers in your business - $200 for a Staroffice/web browsing/java running machine).
With one hardware base to deal with, it should be easy to develop driers for - a major thing for developers. In some way, the Xbox Linux system could help for quick development (much the way that Quake III first came out for the Mac systems, since hardware wise there was a set "known" value for hardwae).
This won't be perfection or anything as silly as that, but I'm curious to see where it goes. Great work to the team.
I would expect this anyway, but watch TV from the 50's - product placement. You see it now to a small extent (most people seem on TV seem to use Nokia phones on Alias, for example).
You see more of characters saying "Hey, toss me that Pepsi Blue - I love that berry flavor", thing like that.
till, even in the PVR era, I don't see commercals ever fully going away. Sometimes, thats the best part of the show (especially those Nads commerials;)).
Why would a company sell you a mistitled song? What, somebody's going to stick the CD in and type in "Britney Spears" when it's clearly a Beatles song?
It's simple: You pay $2 for the song. The song is downloaded. Whoops - that's not it - you have a digital reciept showing you paid for the Beatles, and you got Burke Backarack. You email/contact retailer, give sale ID number, they go "Whoops - our bad", and they let you have the one you want. Why? Because they know if they don't, you'll tell your friends how they hosed you, and most companies don't like negative press (especially of a fledgling business model).
Because they want a steady stream of revenue, the odds are greater they'll check the songs they put up for sale to make sure they've got it right. To say they won't is (except for a few human mistakes sure to sneak in), to be honest, just a little silly.
I agree. My wish list is very simple (see Janis Ian for more - and if you have the link, post it, 'cause I lost my bookmarks:) ).
Downloads MP3's from 64 to 320 bit encryption; costs increase for quality. Now I can put them in on my iPod if I want.
Cost: $1 or $2 per song, do bulk sales (like an entire "album" is $10, or each song is $2).
Statement that 33% of revenue from song sales goes to the artist, 33% to the writer, and 33% to the distributor (and no cheesy "we're charging the artist $0.50 per song for recording/distribution costs).
If they did this, I estimate 75% of the peer to peer music systems (Gnutella, Kaaza, etc) would drop in traffic as people could get the music they want cheap, available, and useable.
Most of the plans I've seen (like those from Sony) are either only for streaming music (blech - like I'm going to sit in my fucking car streaming music), or require proprietary solutions (like "Must have Windows Super DRM Protection Version").
Look, I know Utah isn't exactly the center of culture. I mean, we've got weird liquer laws. We've got jackasses in the southern end that like to marry their 14 year old cousins - all 5 of them.
But why punish us and not give us an Apple store, Apple? It might make Novell consider making apps for someone other than, well, they're #1 competitor.
If a piece of technology has a use, but it annoys the hell out of me and costs me more to use it (Divx, anyone?), I think it perfectly acceptable to refuse to use it.
There should be a donation system to finance a lawsuit for the GPL - perhaps with the EFF or the Free Software Foundation being the collector.
We are the GPL. We are the ones who use it, live it breath it - and if we are truly a community that believes that the sharing of ideas is more powerful then the hording of them, then we must be the ones to pay for its support.
I love Unix - I love the power and the stability. I still use Linux as a server system (though, I admit I wouldn't mind trying out an Apple server just to compare).
But the biggest reason why I switched just deals with making it work. Do I have to worry about whether my clock program, which has the features I want, works under Gnome or KDE or not? Will I be able to cut and paste between Emacs and Mozilla? How do I install the serial port adapter software - oh, wait, I'm using Red Hat, and the designer made it to work with Suse....
Again, it's not that Linux is bad at all, it just takes that much more work to tweak. Want to change resolution in Xwindows? Get out to a prompt and run Xconfigurator.
Then I use OS X, and I get the best of both worlds. I get the power of Unix (I spend more time in Terminal than anything else), but I still get a slick interface and programs that look great. I don't worry about whether the program I'm looking at needs Windows Manager or something else - it fits in. I can still run Gimp (because I'm too damn cheap for Photo Shop) under XDarwin.
I'd love for Linux to make huge desktop roads, but that will take a change of paradigm[sic]. Linux developers will have to give up some things - say "Let's stop the KDE vs Gnome arguments, and say *this* is the standard - let folks experiment with things if they want, but we will heretofore say *this* is the way to do things", then go out and make it. They'll have to have an Interface guideline, and try to hold to it. They'll have to get follow up programmer who don't just focus on cool technology - which we need, and I thank God they make it - but then they need someone to come along after them and say "All right, let's put a good interface on this puppy."
Is OS X better? Probably not - the stability is about the same, the speed is probably less than Linux, but the interface is great. Linux is faster, but isn't as pleasing to work with.
So that's why I switched. I keep up with the Linux stuff for my servers, but my day to day gaming/typing/communicating is done on OS X.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, I'm sorry. I personally don't give a flying fuck about Michael or any others of the Slashdot crowd.
This is not a professional news organization - for that, I'll watch 60 Minutes, Dan Rather, or people who make a good buck doing nothing but finding shit out that I think is important.
Michael, Taco, Cowboy, and the rest are just guys saying "Hey, this is something I thought (or some poster) thought was interesting, and here's my $0.02 on it."
Don't like - go get your own damn web site. I don't have time for arrogant pricks like yourself who feel you have to bash somebody because you a) don't agree with them, b) don't share there interests, or c) expect them to be more/less than they are.
I'm getting off my soapbox now. I'm gonna go have some toast with peach and raspberry jam.
I hate to sound like a whiner, but this card would be perfect on my Mac. Between my game reviews, this would do it all - render by OS X games great, for my console reviews I could plug the svideo cables in for screenshot captures right to Quicktime/iMovie video.
At the moment I ue a Formac Tevion, which works well through the Firewire, but as someone who believes that less hardware is better, ATI should really think about making a Mac version of this card. I can't imagine it would be all that hard - the hardware is AGP on both platforms, so it would just be someone at ATI writing some OS X drivers for this device.
Not sure if anyone else cares about this, but I've been annoyed by ATI's lack of good video capture tools on the Mac since - well, since I started using Mac's in February of this year.
As long as it's not Legend of Alon Dar, we'll all be fine.
Seriously - from the screenshots I've seen, it looks like Stormfront has done a decent job. Best of luck on the game's release.
Now, personally, I think a halfway point is better here.
For some people, "rm" means "rm" - for my wife, "rm" means "delete this", which is different, since she might want to get that back.
So I'd simply include an undelete function by default - but let "experts" such as yourself set a flag to truly remove the file. No muss, no fuss. Everybody happy.
I look back at the days when people were racing to the moon - sure, it was for the really good reason of "Well, um, we have to beat the Russians!", but still, it was there. Look at the incredible explosion of technology that happened during the Moon program - new materials, computers growing smaller for space - we're still benefitting to this day.
But now, nobody wants to fund science unless it "makes something useful". Which is well and good - without practical science, we'd still be wearing bushes for shorts.
But science progresses from the accidents - looking at the mold eating your sugars, and trying to figure out why the bacteria don't kill it. Looking at a clock and wondering what would happen if you left it at the speed of light.
We get minimul funding for projects like Supercolliders, which could reveal who knows what amazing secrets to the universe? What if one of those secrets was anti-gravity, or a huge breakthrough in quantum computing we never would have found if we hadn't just gone "Damn - let's just see what it is for no other reason than we can." We should be going to Mars - for no reason greater than saying "I don't know - because it's there". The scientific benefits of such endeavors would be huge.
But I don't see that happening until we're pretty much forced off this rock by overpopulation or pollution or trying to find a new way to get rid of criminals or something. And then the new advances will come - about the time I can start getting biogrown teeth.
I agree - I don't think that people are going to Pay for Downloading Music services because the RIAA is stomping on P2P networks. People like you and me are checking out the "pay for downloaded music" sites because we actually want to buy quality music without worrying about downloading a file and discovering a virus or that it's the wrong file or its in 64kbps encryption.
I have no problem buying software/music/ebooks or the rest - as long as I can do so on my terms. I want my ebooks in text so I know 10 years from now I can still read them. I want my music in MP3 or Ogg so I know I can still convert them to a new media later and listen to them.
So far, all the music download sites I've seen a) don't work with my Mac, b) don't let me download music to my iPod, c) either only let me "stream" the song, or only let me check out so many songs at a time.
For now, then, I'll check out the options, say "Eh, fuck that" to most of them, and wait for someone to give me what I want - because those are the folks who are going to get my money.
My money, my rules. Simple.
Biggest damn plot hole in the history of all plot holes:
C3PO: Hi, I'm a droid.
Owen: Hey, didn't I meet you before?
C3PO: No, I don't think so.
Owen: Yeah, you're C3PO. Build by Anakin Skywalker, right? You're the one who told everybody how itchy you were so you could get Padme to oil you up.
C3PO: I have no idea what you're talking about.
Owen: My dad married his mom! We worked together for about 10 years or so. Remember the whole sandpeople incident, where they came and kidnapped her for no reason? Or how we've been raising her grandson - your creator's son - for 18 years now? By the way - why didn't he ever come back and look in the local phone directory under "Skywalker" - he might have found out his son was right here.
C3PO: (Waves his hand before Owen.) We are not the droids you remember.
Owen: (Dazed.) You are not the droids I remember.
C3PO: (Waves hand again.) You want to purchase us. And give me an oil bath.
Owen: Bath.
Call me strange, but I think there was just a little plot hole there. Maybe a small one.
Um, yeah.
Considering that Mr. Brin has written some of the best science fiction out there (I particulary enjoyed Earth), I'd say he *can* do, and does very well.
Just my opinion. I could be wrong.
A) I already have Kids.
B) See A
C) See A.
But thanks for thinking I'm so young. (Must be my skin tone.)
I don't care about the "Eat steak and win a chance to go to Emmy's so see a bunch of self-centered pretty people do stuff", or "Eat Nachos and meet Dr. Phil", or even "Win a computer by kissing the ass fo the 'Dude, you're getting a Dell' guy!"
;). (Though a mouse in zero-gee would be interesting - better get the optical out for the trip....)
But this - I would actually find some way to chug-a-lug the fowl battery acid combination they call "cola" for a chance to go into space. If for no other reason than I can take a pee in zero-gee. And puke from the nausea.
But damn - wouldn't that be something to tell my kids. Daddy took a pee in space. Then played Warcraft III on how Powerbook just because he could
So I did something a little weird with my PS2 network connector.
On the place where it plugs into the PS2, there's another pair of holes that line up exactly to a standard IDE hard drive power and data port.
So I plugged in an extra hard drive I had and plugged it in.
Nothing happened.
But...there's no reason why something *can't* happen. We know this system is used in Japan for their hard drive/network connector kit (used in games like Final Fantasy X and XI). So hopefully the folks at Sony will get off their goddamn asses and release the HDD in the US so we can use it for TIVO things like this with just a DVD stuck in the tray.
Then again, they're probably making us wait until the PS3.
Bad AI. Puke green graphics.
Sorry to pimp myself, but I think it's put best here:
Daikatana Review.
I also bought it for $5 - and found it was $4.99 too much.
There are two examples:
The only thing that I have a worry with not being able to reboot into OS 9 are the older games - Myth, Myth II, Rune (granted, not a *good* game, but still...).
If they had good 3D accelleration[sic] support under classic, this wouldn't be a worry at all.
I've been transferring the old video tapes of my daughter onto DVD (thank you, Superdrive and iDVD), and it's not surprising how fast these things get eaten up. As more people start using their home machines as digital editing stations, they'll be happy they've got these drives.
Well, that and when you try to review Icewind Dale II and it takes up 1.5 Gigs of space...
And just give the market to Sony? Sony, who at least has a Linux kit (granted, they make it just about as proprietary as possible, but it's the thought that counts, I guess) would laugh their asses off if Microsoft raised the price of the Xbox to make up for heavy linux based sales.
This is the true beginning of a low cost, easy to use system. If the boot up totally doesn't destroy the system, for $200 you can get yourself a machine that:
This won't be perfection or anything as silly as that, but I'm curious to see where it goes. Great work to the team.
I would expect this anyway, but watch TV from the 50's - product placement. You see it now to a small extent (most people seem on TV seem to use Nokia phones on Alias, for example).
;)).
You see more of characters saying "Hey, toss me that Pepsi Blue - I love that berry flavor", thing like that.
till, even in the PVR era, I don't see commercals ever fully going away. Sometimes, thats the best part of the show (especially those Nads commerials
This doesn't make any sense at all.
Why would a company sell you a mistitled song? What, somebody's going to stick the CD in and type in "Britney Spears" when it's clearly a Beatles song?
It's simple: You pay $2 for the song. The song is downloaded. Whoops - that's not it - you have a digital reciept showing you paid for the Beatles, and you got Burke Backarack. You email/contact retailer, give sale ID number, they go "Whoops - our bad", and they let you have the one you want. Why? Because they know if they don't, you'll tell your friends how they hosed you, and most companies don't like negative press (especially of a fledgling business model).
Because they want a steady stream of revenue, the odds are greater they'll check the songs they put up for sale to make sure they've got it right. To say they won't is (except for a few human mistakes sure to sneak in), to be honest, just a little silly.
If they did this, I estimate 75% of the peer to peer music systems (Gnutella, Kaaza, etc) would drop in traffic as people could get the music they want cheap, available, and useable.
Most of the plans I've seen (like those from Sony) are either only for streaming music (blech - like I'm going to sit in my fucking car streaming music), or require proprietary solutions (like "Must have Windows Super DRM Protection Version").
Look, I know Utah isn't exactly the center of culture. I mean, we've got weird liquer laws. We've got jackasses in the southern end that like to marry their 14 year old cousins - all 5 of them.
But why punish us and not give us an Apple store, Apple? It might make Novell consider making apps for someone other than, well, they're #1 competitor.
I don't believe it to be narrow minded at all.
If a piece of technology has a use, but it annoys the hell out of me and costs me more to use it (Divx, anyone?), I think it perfectly acceptable to refuse to use it.
Us.
There should be a donation system to finance a lawsuit for the GPL - perhaps with the EFF or the Free Software Foundation being the collector.
We are the GPL. We are the ones who use it, live it breath it - and if we are truly a community that believes that the sharing of ideas is more powerful then the hording of them, then we must be the ones to pay for its support.
Basically, it boils down to "make it work".
I love Unix - I love the power and the stability. I still use Linux as a server system (though, I admit I wouldn't mind trying out an Apple server just to compare).
But the biggest reason why I switched just deals with making it work. Do I have to worry about whether my clock program, which has the features I want, works under Gnome or KDE or not? Will I be able to cut and paste between Emacs and Mozilla? How do I install the serial port adapter software - oh, wait, I'm using Red Hat, and the designer made it to work with Suse....
Again, it's not that Linux is bad at all, it just takes that much more work to tweak. Want to change resolution in Xwindows? Get out to a prompt and run Xconfigurator.
Then I use OS X, and I get the best of both worlds. I get the power of Unix (I spend more time in Terminal than anything else), but I still get a slick interface and programs that look great. I don't worry about whether the program I'm looking at needs Windows Manager or something else - it fits in. I can still run Gimp (because I'm too damn cheap for Photo Shop) under XDarwin.
I'd love for Linux to make huge desktop roads, but that will take a change of paradigm[sic]. Linux developers will have to give up some things - say "Let's stop the KDE vs Gnome arguments, and say *this* is the standard - let folks experiment with things if they want, but we will heretofore say *this* is the way to do things", then go out and make it. They'll have to have an Interface guideline, and try to hold to it. They'll have to get follow up programmer who don't just focus on cool technology - which we need, and I thank God they make it - but then they need someone to come along after them and say "All right, let's put a good interface on this puppy."
Is OS X better? Probably not - the stability is about the same, the speed is probably less than Linux, but the interface is great. Linux is faster, but isn't as pleasing to work with.
So that's why I switched. I keep up with the Linux stuff for my servers, but my day to day gaming/typing/communicating is done on OS X.
And just to self pimp (or for more on this subject): Penguin2Apple: How a Linux Lover turned to a Macintosh