What kind of funky definition of "planet" are you using that includes the Moon?
Some highly trained astronauts have been to the moon. A lot of us would still love to go to the moon. And for a more interesting trip, there are other, larger, and more distant clestial bodies.
DDR is quite sad and funny. The funniest part is of course when the announcer says stupid things like "you're such a cool guy!" or "the crowd loves you!", when neither of those are anything close to the truth.
I don't play DDR myself, but I know a lot of people who do. For them it really has nothing to do with dancing at all. It's just the button mashing combos of fighting games and the simple action of puzzle games extended and abstracted a few levels. Play the home version sometime without the music and with a normal controller. It's just like Tetris or any other puzzle game. Watch the screen, time your movements, and keep up with the action.
DDR will pass, of course, like any other video game. But what I think DDR has shown the industry is a path to success for arcades. You can buy the home game and a mat, but the experience isn't the same and can't be duplicated easily. So people have to come back to get their fix. This idea can be adapted easily to other games, and apparently it's already started in Japan.
I've played Time Crisis and I really liked it with the foot pedal thing. It's nothing like Quake or any computer FPS. There's instant and constant action that works because it's so simple and easy to pick up.
I've played Police 911, I think. You're fighting the Japanese mafia or something. Yeah, just did a Google search and that is it. Anyway, it was really annoying to play because you had to really exaggerate your movements if you wanted the sensors to pick them up. I found it to be quite distracting so I just left and played Time Crisis again.
Apple already confused people with the Trash/Eject function. It's not logical. To my knowledge, Apple is the only computer manufacturer in history not to include an eject button. Anyway, further down the article you'll notice the following:
Wozniak's hack was to change the routines of the trash so that if you drag a disk to the trash, it gave you the option of either ejecting the disk or erasing it.
The key word here is option. So, anyone used to ejecting their disks via the trash can will still be able to. However, people who want to erase the disk will also be able to. And no one is going to accidentally format the disk, especially if they don't have this hack installed anyway.
And the exodus is continuing, partially the general dissatisfaction with Win2000
Maybe I'm in a world apart from you, but most Windows users I know think Win2k is the best OS to come out of Microsoft in years. Actually, most Windows users I know can't tell the difference between Win95 and Win2k, and so aren't put off by it any more than any other version of Windows. I don't see any "general dissatisfaction" at all, nor any exodus. Granted, people aren't turning to Win2k in droves, but only because Microsoft charges so much even for the upgrade version. ($149 from NT, $219 from 98.)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that those people who took the Powerbook probably have a Mac at home or have used Macs heavily in the past and generally consider themselves to be Mac users. They've been forced to use PC's at work for years. When given the choice, they return to what's comfortable. No mystery, no exodus.
Sadly (for me), it seems even the fast food places I''ve attempted - yes - would rather hire someone just at the point of being able to do the job, than someone with more experience at anything at all.
This is well known and well understood. The idea is that over-qualified people will just use the job as a stepping stone and leave soon after being hired. The barely competent, on the other hand, cannot likely land a better job and so will be stuck there for quite some time.
As for your "seceding" troll - it could be nothing else
I dunno, how about a joke? We're still petitioning W3C for the <sarcasm> tag, but so far we've been out of luck. I would have to be a really brazen troll to think people would believe that.
I mean, come on, you're even debating how many out of state power plants California could grab. It's silly, we all know it, and you're taking it way too seriously.
Contrary to popular belief and the buzzword "rolling blackouts", California has avoided blackouts for some time now (save for accidental/unplanned ones). IIRC, there were only two in my area, and the power wasn't out for long.
California is far from third-world status. In fact, we recently passed France to become the world's fifth largest economy, despite the power crisis and the market slump. Frankly we're thinking about seceding so we can get all those leecher states off our backs. (What has Idaho ever done for us?)
You appear to be right. From Burton's translation:
IT hath reached me, O King of the Age, that there dwelt in a city of the cities of China a man which was a tailor, withal a pauper, and he had one son, Aladdin hight.
Which one was Memento? Maybe it was just a rip-off of The Limey. Where in hell do the X-Men fit in?
Those seven stories have to be some broad genres to fit everything, and even then you'd be missing a lot of the differences between movies. Those differences, on the other hand, are what make movies entertaining.
Show that message to your daughter and her friends when she turns 15. Please.
She's how old? Four months or something? Somehow I doubt she knows or cares what's on the TV at this point. I get this strange feeling that Sakura will grow up to be some sort of Anime heroine and you'll be her perverted father, always trying to sneak panty shots of her sailor-suit-wearing friends.
For me, the "whitelist" sounds like an attractive offer. Doesn't take too long to expand the list to everything they want, and you'll always be up to date on what they're doing online. If they want access to a site with adult content, then you have your chance to discuss it and you can approve it if you feel they're ready for it.
You see these problems as the failings of Web-TV. I see them as inherant to any "embedded" device designed to be simple, easy, and cheap. How many plugins can you fit in 16mb of flash memory when most of it is taken up by the operating system and browser? Linux users on full-fledged machines struggle with Microsoft's and Apple's proprietary formats. Shockwave.com consumes 90% of my 800Mhz CPU just sitting there! If users on full computers can barely keep up with the Internet, I don't see how IA users have any chance.
Flexibility varies inversely with easy of use. The easier it is for me to install programs and extend functionality, the easier it is for me to remove necessary components unintentionally and reduce functionality. Windows users have a hard time regulating what applications do to their systems, and as a result, many have dozens of programs that run at start up and stay resident, consuming system resources and reducing stability. We blame these problems on the user, but we must remember that these are the same users that are being targeted by IA devices.
--
Re:PS2 manufacturing cost.
on
PS2 As PC
·
· Score: 2
Try a Pioneer unit. I got my DV-333 for 200 USD, and the visual quality is far superior to the PS2. It's being replaced by the DV-343, which supposedly has a better picture yet costs the same. It supports VCD and SVCD, even burnt to CD-RW. If visual clarity isn't worth that much to you, there's an Apex player with MP3 support that goes for $130! So, breaking it down, you can either get: a much better quality player for $100 less, or a similar quality player with MP3 support for $170 less! Of course, neither of these players will play PS2 games, but if all you want to do is watch DVD's, there are better options.
I don't deny that people buy the PS2 to watch DVD's, but I think they're not well informed about the DVD quality that the PS2 provides. I watched the animated series Clerks DVD on a PS2 and on my DV-333, and the difference was striking (even for a cartoon!). During scenes with action (like someone moving their arm!), the image would become quite pixelated. Well, not quite pixelated; it's hard to describe. Only half of the frame would be rendered (every other line of the frame), so action scenes have a weird blurry/see-through quality. Even the owner of the PS2 had to admit it was pretty bad.
As for the networking stuff, I don't see how they're going to do it. Few PS2 games out now support anything beyond the standard setup (few even support the multi-tap!), and someone else mentioned the game designer's rule of thumb that only 5-10% of all consoles have any given add-on. Had they included it with the initial shipment of the PS2, I think it would have worked well, with lots of games supporting it. Q3 and UT, two games that could have had a lot of luck with online multiplayer (against PC's and DC's), are already out for the PS2, without support for any networking option.
I suppose that last message seemed a little harsh, but don't take it as any sort of attack on you. An attack on Prince, maybe. I'm just quite adament about this, I don't know why. Anyway, you left out the next sentence: "The way they are written is decided by natural convention to promote clarity and uniformity, not personal whim." How else would you write the sound of "Fred Ferrigno" if you wanted to remain uniform? And given that it's not too hard to write it the conventional way (neither is it hard to write "to you"), there isn't a sufficient reason to write it otherwise. Prince is merely trying to garner attention and create his own idea of what's cool, just so he can lead it.
Interestingly enough, he turns 43 today. I do not think they could have picked a worse picture of him, though...
Sorry for the long winded rant/lecture. Slashdot just makes it too easy to post half-cocked stuff. What was this story about? Napster?
--
Re:PS2 manufacturing cost.
on
PS2 As PC
·
· Score: 1
Eh.. why? As a DVD player it's pretty crappy, and there are much better DVD players that retail for much, much less.
My grandmother has never used a computer in her 80+ years (to my knowledge), and somehow I think she'll get buy without shelling out $300 for email. If she had $2000, I'm sure she'd buy a new sofa set or something else she'd actually use.
The IA craze is all hype. No one wants to buy a shell of a computer for nearly the price of a real computer. Have you talked to anyone with Web-TV? They likely have a whole litany of sites they want to visit but can't, email attachments they can't open, programs they can't run, games they can't play, etc. Their Internet experience is dominated by "what you can't do that everyone else can", which doesn't engender brand loyalty. Every Web-TV user I've talked to says, generally, "I'm stuck with it until I can afford a real computer".
You're the type I really hate to get mp3s from. Good thing we seem to have different music tastes, so it's less likely I'll ever see anything that's gone through your horrid naming scheme. (If you've only got the single, do you care what album it's from or what track it is on that album? If you've got the full album, wouldn't folders be easier to organize and label the songs?)
Prince has been on a kick for quite some time to initiate English spelling reform so we all write like retarded teenagers chatting on AOL. (Check out his website.) I won't stand for it, and just because he wrote the song doesn't mean he can co-opt the English language.
Saying it aloud you say "nothing compares to you", don't you? Why shouldn't you write it that way? Here's the simple fact: names (of songs, corporations, software, television shows, etc.) are defined by the way they are said, not by the way they are written. The way they are written is decided by natural convention to promote clarity and uniformity, not personal whim. Everything else is styling done to the name, no different than a special font, which is to be ignored when you're referencing the name of something.
Once the (read: any useful) technology is available to help the handicapped it'd be politically incorrect to not have it installed in all public buildings.
Eh, I dunno. How many intersections near you are equipped with beeping crosswalk signals? There's also a system similar to this that "reads" street signs for blind people (provided that the sign is equiped with a transmitter) though I don't think it's too common except in major metropolitan areas.
The simple problem is that there just aren't enough blind or otherwise disabled people to justify the cost of installing these sorts things everywhere. Handicapped parking and ramp access are more feasible because they're less specific to any one disability. On the other hand, areas that tend to deal with lots and lots of people (and therefore more disabled people), like airports, are more likely to adopt such a system.
I'm tired of downloading poorly ripped mp3s that have filenames that don't include the album name, track number, or even the artist's name!
I'm tired of downloading mp3s that have filenames that include the album name or track number! Urk. I suppose all your mp3s are named -ALBUM_NAME-001_of_015_(Artist)_Title_FEAT._Someon e_Else-(3:14:15.93)-rsk2001.mp3.
For singles:
Artist - Title.mp3
Ex: CmdrTaco - Slashdot Baby.mp3
For albums:
Artist - Album\Track - Title.mp3
Ex: CmdrTaco - A Very Slashdot Christmas\07 - Troll's Nuts Roasting on an Open Source Fire.mp3
Side rant: Prepositions and words like "an" and "the" are not to be capitalized! I don't CARE if the album cover says otherwise. Sinead O'Connor's song is called "Nothing Compares to You" even if she and Prince want us to believe otherwise. (Prince wrote the song. And for the record, his name is Prince, and has always been Prince, regardless of what he tells you.)
I remember Chumbawumba (the stupid anarchist band that went nowhere with songs about the revolution, but suddenly had a hit with a song about getting drunk) saying that if you stole their album from the store they'd still get paid, so go ahead and steal it. Stores then proceeded to remove their albums from the shelves. Gee, too bad they only had one hit.
Slashdot Mirror
What kind of funky definition of "planet" are you using that includes the Moon?
Some highly trained astronauts have been to the moon. A lot of us would still love to go to the moon. And for a more interesting trip, there are other, larger, and more distant clestial bodies.
--
Yeah, so they weren't the only ones. It seems a silly point of contention, though.
--
Now, why would I go to an arcade again?
Because the only DDR mat worth using for the home version is madly expensive. Most people get tired after 5 songs and want to take a rest anyway.
Once again, DDR and related games = teh gold mine. Arcades that realize this will kill the ones that don't.
--
DDR is quite sad and funny. The funniest part is of course when the announcer says stupid things like "you're such a cool guy!" or "the crowd loves you!", when neither of those are anything close to the truth.
I don't play DDR myself, but I know a lot of people who do. For them it really has nothing to do with dancing at all. It's just the button mashing combos of fighting games and the simple action of puzzle games extended and abstracted a few levels. Play the home version sometime without the music and with a normal controller. It's just like Tetris or any other puzzle game. Watch the screen, time your movements, and keep up with the action.
DDR will pass, of course, like any other video game. But what I think DDR has shown the industry is a path to success for arcades. You can buy the home game and a mat, but the experience isn't the same and can't be duplicated easily. So people have to come back to get their fix. This idea can be adapted easily to other games, and apparently it's already started in Japan.
--
I've played Time Crisis and I really liked it with the foot pedal thing. It's nothing like Quake or any computer FPS. There's instant and constant action that works because it's so simple and easy to pick up.
I've played Police 911, I think. You're fighting the Japanese mafia or something. Yeah, just did a Google search and that is it. Anyway, it was really annoying to play because you had to really exaggerate your movements if you wanted the sensors to pick them up. I found it to be quite distracting so I just left and played Time Crisis again.
--
Apple already confused people with the Trash/Eject function. It's not logical. To my knowledge, Apple is the only computer manufacturer in history not to include an eject button. Anyway, further down the article you'll notice the following:
Wozniak's hack was to change the routines of the trash so that if you drag a disk to the trash, it gave you the option of either ejecting the disk or erasing it.
The key word here is option. So, anyone used to ejecting their disks via the trash can will still be able to. However, people who want to erase the disk will also be able to. And no one is going to accidentally format the disk, especially if they don't have this hack installed anyway.
--
And the exodus is continuing, partially the general dissatisfaction with Win2000
Maybe I'm in a world apart from you, but most Windows users I know think Win2k is the best OS to come out of Microsoft in years. Actually, most Windows users I know can't tell the difference between Win95 and Win2k, and so aren't put off by it any more than any other version of Windows. I don't see any "general dissatisfaction" at all, nor any exodus. Granted, people aren't turning to Win2k in droves, but only because Microsoft charges so much even for the upgrade version. ($149 from NT, $219 from 98.)
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that those people who took the Powerbook probably have a Mac at home or have used Macs heavily in the past and generally consider themselves to be Mac users. They've been forced to use PC's at work for years. When given the choice, they return to what's comfortable. No mystery, no exodus.
--
Sadly (for me), it seems even the fast food places I''ve attempted - yes - would rather hire someone just at the point of being able to do the job, than someone with more experience at anything at all.
This is well known and well understood. The idea is that over-qualified people will just use the job as a stepping stone and leave soon after being hired. The barely competent, on the other hand, cannot likely land a better job and so will be stuck there for quite some time.
--
As for your "seceding" troll - it could be nothing else
I dunno, how about a joke? We're still petitioning W3C for the <sarcasm> tag, but so far we've been out of luck. I would have to be a really brazen troll to think people would believe that.
I mean, come on, you're even debating how many out of state power plants California could grab. It's silly, we all know it, and you're taking it way too seriously.
--
Contrary to popular belief and the buzzword "rolling blackouts", California has avoided blackouts for some time now (save for accidental/unplanned ones). IIRC, there were only two in my area, and the power wasn't out for long.
California is far from third-world status. In fact, we recently passed France to become the world's fifth largest economy, despite the power crisis and the market slump. Frankly we're thinking about seceding so we can get all those leecher states off our backs. (What has Idaho ever done for us?)
--
You appear to be right. From Burton's translation:
IT hath reached me, O King of the Age, that there dwelt in a city of the cities of China a man which was a tailor, withal a pauper, and he had one son, Aladdin hight.
http://mfx.dasburo.com/an/a_night_29.html
I'm having a bitch of a time trying to get the original French translation though.
--
Which one was Memento? Maybe it was just a rip-off of The Limey. Where in hell do the X-Men fit in?
Those seven stories have to be some broad genres to fit everything, and even then you'd be missing a lot of the differences between movies. Those differences, on the other hand, are what make movies entertaining.
--
"I am not an IANAI" is what I think he means.
So, the world's first self-contradictory, palindromic, recursive, self-referential acronym, which is also potentially existentialist.
--
Show that message to your daughter and her friends when she turns 15. Please.
She's how old? Four months or something? Somehow I doubt she knows or cares what's on the TV at this point. I get this strange feeling that Sakura will grow up to be some sort of Anime heroine and you'll be her perverted father, always trying to sneak panty shots of her sailor-suit-wearing friends.
For me, the "whitelist" sounds like an attractive offer. Doesn't take too long to expand the list to everything they want, and you'll always be up to date on what they're doing online. If they want access to a site with adult content, then you have your chance to discuss it and you can approve it if you feel they're ready for it.
--
You see these problems as the failings of Web-TV. I see them as inherant to any "embedded" device designed to be simple, easy, and cheap. How many plugins can you fit in 16mb of flash memory when most of it is taken up by the operating system and browser? Linux users on full-fledged machines struggle with Microsoft's and Apple's proprietary formats. Shockwave.com consumes 90% of my 800Mhz CPU just sitting there! If users on full computers can barely keep up with the Internet, I don't see how IA users have any chance.
Flexibility varies inversely with easy of use. The easier it is for me to install programs and extend functionality, the easier it is for me to remove necessary components unintentionally and reduce functionality. Windows users have a hard time regulating what applications do to their systems, and as a result, many have dozens of programs that run at start up and stay resident, consuming system resources and reducing stability. We blame these problems on the user, but we must remember that these are the same users that are being targeted by IA devices.
--
Try a Pioneer unit. I got my DV-333 for 200 USD, and the visual quality is far superior to the PS2. It's being replaced by the DV-343, which supposedly has a better picture yet costs the same. It supports VCD and SVCD, even burnt to CD-RW. If visual clarity isn't worth that much to you, there's an Apex player with MP3 support that goes for $130! So, breaking it down, you can either get: a much better quality player for $100 less, or a similar quality player with MP3 support for $170 less! Of course, neither of these players will play PS2 games, but if all you want to do is watch DVD's, there are better options.
I don't deny that people buy the PS2 to watch DVD's, but I think they're not well informed about the DVD quality that the PS2 provides. I watched the animated series Clerks DVD on a PS2 and on my DV-333, and the difference was striking (even for a cartoon!). During scenes with action (like someone moving their arm!), the image would become quite pixelated. Well, not quite pixelated; it's hard to describe. Only half of the frame would be rendered (every other line of the frame), so action scenes have a weird blurry/see-through quality. Even the owner of the PS2 had to admit it was pretty bad.
As for the networking stuff, I don't see how they're going to do it. Few PS2 games out now support anything beyond the standard setup (few even support the multi-tap!), and someone else mentioned the game designer's rule of thumb that only 5-10% of all consoles have any given add-on. Had they included it with the initial shipment of the PS2, I think it would have worked well, with lots of games supporting it. Q3 and UT, two games that could have had a lot of luck with online multiplayer (against PC's and DC's), are already out for the PS2, without support for any networking option.
--
I suppose that last message seemed a little harsh, but don't take it as any sort of attack on you. An attack on Prince, maybe. I'm just quite adament about this, I don't know why. Anyway, you left out the next sentence: "The way they are written is decided by natural convention to promote clarity and uniformity, not personal whim." How else would you write the sound of "Fred Ferrigno" if you wanted to remain uniform? And given that it's not too hard to write it the conventional way (neither is it hard to write "to you"), there isn't a sufficient reason to write it otherwise. Prince is merely trying to garner attention and create his own idea of what's cool, just so he can lead it.
Interestingly enough, he turns 43 today. I do not think they could have picked a worse picture of him, though...
Sorry for the long winded rant/lecture. Slashdot just makes it too easy to post half-cocked stuff. What was this story about? Napster?
--
Eh.. why? As a DVD player it's pretty crappy, and there are much better DVD players that retail for much, much less.
--
My grandmother has never used a computer in her 80+ years (to my knowledge), and somehow I think she'll get buy without shelling out $300 for email. If she had $2000, I'm sure she'd buy a new sofa set or something else she'd actually use.
The IA craze is all hype. No one wants to buy a shell of a computer for nearly the price of a real computer. Have you talked to anyone with Web-TV? They likely have a whole litany of sites they want to visit but can't, email attachments they can't open, programs they can't run, games they can't play, etc. Their Internet experience is dominated by "what you can't do that everyone else can", which doesn't engender brand loyalty. Every Web-TV user I've talked to says, generally, "I'm stuck with it until I can afford a real computer".
--
You're the type I really hate to get mp3s from. Good thing we seem to have different music tastes, so it's less likely I'll ever see anything that's gone through your horrid naming scheme. (If you've only got the single, do you care what album it's from or what track it is on that album? If you've got the full album, wouldn't folders be easier to organize and label the songs?)
Prince has been on a kick for quite some time to initiate English spelling reform so we all write like retarded teenagers chatting on AOL. (Check out his website.) I won't stand for it, and just because he wrote the song doesn't mean he can co-opt the English language.
Saying it aloud you say "nothing compares to you", don't you? Why shouldn't you write it that way? Here's the simple fact: names (of songs, corporations, software, television shows, etc.) are defined by the way they are said, not by the way they are written. The way they are written is decided by natural convention to promote clarity and uniformity, not personal whim. Everything else is styling done to the name, no different than a special font, which is to be ignored when you're referencing the name of something.
--
Uh.. where the hell have you been? Search for "Bleem!" on Google. It's supposed to be funny, or so they say.
--
Once the (read: any useful) technology is available to help the handicapped it'd be politically incorrect to not have it installed in all public buildings.
Eh, I dunno. How many intersections near you are equipped with beeping crosswalk signals? There's also a system similar to this that "reads" street signs for blind people (provided that the sign is equiped with a transmitter) though I don't think it's too common except in major metropolitan areas.
The simple problem is that there just aren't enough blind or otherwise disabled people to justify the cost of installing these sorts things everywhere. Handicapped parking and ramp access are more feasible because they're less specific to any one disability. On the other hand, areas that tend to deal with lots and lots of people (and therefore more disabled people), like airports, are more likely to adopt such a system.
--
I'm tired of downloading poorly ripped mp3s that have filenames that don't include the album name, track number, or even the artist's name!
n e_Else-(3:14:15.93)-rsk2001.mp3.
I'm tired of downloading mp3s that have filenames that include the album name or track number! Urk. I suppose all your mp3s are named -ALBUM_NAME-001_of_015_(Artist)_Title_FEAT._Someo
For singles:
Artist - Title.mp3
Ex: CmdrTaco - Slashdot Baby.mp3
For albums:
Artist - Album\Track - Title.mp3
Ex: CmdrTaco - A Very Slashdot Christmas\07 - Troll's Nuts Roasting on an Open Source Fire.mp3
Side rant: Prepositions and words like "an" and "the" are not to be capitalized! I don't CARE if the album cover says otherwise. Sinead O'Connor's song is called "Nothing Compares to You" even if she and Prince want us to believe otherwise. (Prince wrote the song. And for the record, his name is Prince, and has always been Prince, regardless of what he tells you.)
--
I remember Chumbawumba (the stupid anarchist band that went nowhere with songs about the revolution, but suddenly had a hit with a song about getting drunk) saying that if you stole their album from the store they'd still get paid, so go ahead and steal it. Stores then proceeded to remove their albums from the shelves. Gee, too bad they only had one hit.
--
Feh, you're just moving the 'b'. I think back-asswards is better.
--