$1250 a month for half of a 2-bedroom apartment? I live in the Baltimore area, where there are plenty of tech jobs (even more if you have or are willing to get a government security clearance). My wife and I pay $990 a month total for a 1500 sq. foot 2-bedroom apartment.
Maybe it's time for people in the Bay Area to consider moving to the Chesapeake Bay Area?
The "compelling interest" that we should care about is that we, the people, "own" the airwaves that the broadcasters are using. The government is the steward of those airwaves. And what we have here is basically the sale of those airwaves at the expense of the taxpayer. This probably drives up the cost of CDs and all that other stuff, so we're the ones that are really getting hosed here.
You kids and your 150 MB hard drives. I remember having to uninstall Windows 3.1 so I would have space to put King's Quest 5 (which took up ~18 MB) on my IBM PS2 Model 30 with a 20 MB disk.
And I won't even bring up my Apple ][.
I can think of 2 recent, excellent games that have been done in the so-called "basement" style. They are Combat Mission:Beyond Overlord by Big Time Software and Steel Beasts (don't remember the URL).
For those of you who don't know, Combat Mission is a WWII squad-combat simulator with what I consider a revolutionary AI and excellent gameplay, even for non-grognards like me. Steel Beasts is a tank simulator that was good enough for the US military to buy 1000 copies.
Combat Mission was put together by a small indie team, and Steel Beasts was done by one guy. So it can still be done.
Re:angry, bitter patent related rant
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Surround Lights
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· Score: 2
I think it was called "Battling Seizure Robots"
Re:Is Gene Simmons the chief engineer on this?
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Robotic Scorpions?
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· Score: 1
I also want one of those little remote control cars that blows up the @#!% person tailgating me. Wasn't that also the movie that had the "smart bullets" that could follow people in a crowd?
IBM tried to foist that on us back in the early 90s. All their PS/2 models (save for the 30/286) only took Microchannel expansion cards. It was actually better than ISA, but they kept it proprietary. The result - the cards for it cost twice as much. I think a Microchannel Soundblaster went for something like $300 while the ISA version was significantly cheaper.
The end result - Microchannel vanished. And a lot of people were stuck with useless cards.
Let's hope this doesn't happen again.
I wonder if setting up a satellite-based ISP on a boat or something in international waters would work. Basically a big floating server farm, with high-speed satellite links.
If the Simpsons has taught me anything (and it has), it's that anything is legal in international waters:)
But seriously. It would have the benefits of being mobile and outside the jurisdiction of everyone. Of course, you would probably have some weather-related problems, plus the fact that you might have to "go down with the server"
It's worth reading if you're really into Dune, because it provides an interesting historical background. The book has decent plot and structure, but falls short on the writing. Anderson just can't hope to match the caliber of Herbert's writing. It does have the advantage of being an easy read, though. I remember reading Dune for the first time, and actually getting chills reading some of the passages. The only chills I got reading D:HA were when I spilled beer on my lap. So, to summarize, it's not a bad book to kill a couple of rainy summer days with. But don't go out of your way, there's better fish in the sea.
$1250 a month for half of a 2-bedroom apartment? I live in the Baltimore area, where there are plenty of tech jobs (even more if you have or are willing to get a government security clearance). My wife and I pay $990 a month total for a 1500 sq. foot 2-bedroom apartment.
Maybe it's time for people in the Bay Area to consider moving to the Chesapeake Bay Area?
The "compelling interest" that we should care about is that we, the people, "own" the airwaves that the broadcasters are using. The government is the steward of those airwaves. And what we have here is basically the sale of those airwaves at the expense of the taxpayer. This probably drives up the cost of CDs and all that other stuff, so we're the ones that are really getting hosed here.
You kids and your 150 MB hard drives. I remember having to uninstall Windows 3.1 so I would have space to put King's Quest 5 (which took up ~18 MB) on my IBM PS2 Model 30 with a 20 MB disk.
And I won't even bring up my Apple ][.
Yep. It was called Pyroto Mountain. In fact, it's still alive and well on the WWW. You can find it here.
I can think of 2 recent, excellent games that have been done in the so-called "basement" style. They are Combat Mission:Beyond Overlord by Big Time Software and Steel Beasts (don't remember the URL).
For those of you who don't know, Combat Mission is a WWII squad-combat simulator with what I consider a revolutionary AI and excellent gameplay, even for non-grognards like me. Steel Beasts is a tank simulator that was good enough for the US military to buy 1000 copies.
Combat Mission was put together by a small indie team, and Steel Beasts was done by one guy. So it can still be done.
I think it was called "Battling Seizure Robots"
Only Tom Selleck can save us now!
I also want one of those little remote control cars that blows up the @#!% person tailgating me. Wasn't that also the movie that had the "smart bullets" that could follow people in a crowd?
IBM tried to foist that on us back in the early 90s. All their PS/2 models (save for the 30/286) only took Microchannel expansion cards. It was actually better than ISA, but they kept it proprietary. The result - the cards for it cost twice as much. I think a Microchannel Soundblaster went for something like $300 while the ISA version was significantly cheaper.
The end result - Microchannel vanished. And a lot of people were stuck with useless cards. Let's hope this doesn't happen again.
Nothing could ever suck more hours than Elite. That game was an amazing piece of work for something that fit on 1 side of a 5 1/4" floppy.
Of course, since I had an Apple ][, you couldn't get DM for it (which frustrated me), I had to stick with Bard's Tale and Wizardry.
I wonder if setting up a satellite-based ISP on a boat or something in international waters would work. Basically a big floating server farm, with high-speed satellite links.
If the Simpsons has taught me anything (and it has), it's that anything is legal in international waters :)
But seriously. It would have the benefits of being mobile and outside the jurisdiction of everyone. Of course, you would probably have some weather-related problems, plus the fact that you might have to "go down with the server"
It's worth reading if you're really into Dune, because it provides an interesting historical background. The book has decent plot and structure, but falls short on the writing. Anderson just can't hope to match the caliber of Herbert's writing. It does have the advantage of being an easy read, though. I remember reading Dune for the first time, and actually getting chills reading some of the passages. The only chills I got reading D:HA were when I spilled beer on my lap. So, to summarize, it's not a bad book to kill a couple of rainy summer days with. But don't go out of your way, there's better fish in the sea.
There's one in the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, MD. Actually they have a few of them, but they have one out in the open so that you can mess with it and encrypt/decrypt stuff. It's quite amusing to play with, but you gotta wonder how long it took to send any message of serious length with it. Think of typing on a REALLY SLOW manual typewriter with a pencil in your other hand writing stuff down. If you're ever in the area check it out.