Urban legend, yes. The US used pencils too, or felt markers (which also work just fine in zero gravity). Then Fischer spent millions of their own cash designing the Space Pen, and sold them at a nominal rate to NASA for the publicity.
I've raved about them before, but no harm in doing so again.
What you're after are the new Designer sets. Themed into different subjects including cars, Big Japanese Robots (which rocks), Construction site stuff and even animals, they are all made of 'proper' bricks, and each has a whole shedload of suggestions on the theme to get you going; the theme is more connected to your suggestions and the sorts of colours you get (including a rather snazzy new orange) than limiting what you can build at all.
Nothing at all wrong with the Bionicle bricks, it just requires a bit more work to get interesting things out of it. Unfortunately I've lost the link, but somewhere out there on the the big wide net are all the main ships from the mighty Ikaruga, made out of Bionicle stuff; amazing work I'd recommend hunting for.
"The only set I would consider buying now is the empirial destroyer set, because it's just so freakishly huge. But, it's too expensive and I don't have the room to display it anyway."
With the Star Wars stuff I've actually gone in the opposite direction. There is a Star Destroyer in the 2004 mini range that looks stunning (though they haven't hit shelves yet), and the 2002 and 2003 ranges were both brilliant. They are only like $10 little things, but to get something the looks right using almost entirely standard parts is probably even more of a challenge for the designers than the huge models in the collector series.
So what if its offtopic. Its just too bloody cool to not mention. Thanks for that, I completely forgot about it (my name is on the DVD, like about a million others).
Seriously - go look at the Designer range. Sensibly priced, and all 'proper' Lego. Plus, rather than just one model to build, they have suggestions for like 10 more you could do with the bricks; its Lego like it used to be.
If you're still buying space stuff, take a look over on the lego shop website (shop.lego.com) - the actual NASA sets are just stunning. Plus, the nanofig scale Star Destroyer for 2004 is pretty cool, too.
Presumably, even if the next game isn't San Andreas, its entirely possible they will want to use the title somewhere down the line. Since obvious speculation points to it now, its best to get the phrase locked down before anyone steals it.
"The new discs are magneto-optical just like the old ones, which makes them ideal for archival use. But with that DRM you wouldn't be able to back anything up onto them."
That assumes that the DRM is in place for all files, not just the audio section, which I don't think (unless I mis-R'd TFA) will apply for data as well.
"Am I the only one that finds it strange that Sony used to call the original playstation the PSX?"
Apparently not, someone else mentioned this earlier in the thread.
And had pointed out to them that Sony never did any such thing; it was the same 'trendy' clever-clever magazine types doing this as the ones that kept using the dev-title of 'Ultra64' for the Nintendo 64. Sony only ever used PS or PlayStation.
"You could buy all the different players seperate and still come out ahead"
Yes, you could. However, they wouldn't then be all in one stylish box. Sony haven't really made much fuss about these boxes being aimed at anyone other than people who want cool gadgets that look good next to their plasma screens and iMacs; boxes aimed at the more cost-conscious buyer, or at least price-cuts to reach them, will come once the first lot have been sold for a fortune, just like with the PS2.
Homer's Odyssey wasn't SF by a long shot, in my book, though. Its far more like the literary equivalent of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie; big dumb action scenes strung together with a flimsy quest tale, but ending up as a good laugh.
"I'd rather download a rip off the net for a DVD I own that try to rip a DVD with the current set of utilities"
I wouldn't disagree with you, having taken weeks to get a decent transfer from my own laserdiscs of The Trilogy, but why would you bother to rip your own DVDs? I find that my DVDs work perfectly fine on my DVD player; rather better than some SVCD copy that took 12 hours to download.
Yes, it is your fault. If you had a laserdisc player (or even just bought the VHS releases when they came out), you could play the perfectly legal versions that the divxes were ripped from, like the rest of us.
Laserdisc is great, and complaining that you need one in order to be able to watch Star Wars properly is only a little more relevant than the fact that I needed to buy an XBox as well as my Gamecube when I wanted to play Halo.
As for Miramax's frankly useless attempts at Asian cinema, get yourself a multi-region DVD player and import the good versions like the rest of us.
There are a hell of a lot of things that people get pirated, that they could have legitimate (and better quality) versions of if they only did a bit of extra work.
Re:Good book
on
Oryx and Crake
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
"Atwood has said that she does not write science fiction"
Science Fiction can't be good. This is good. Therefore it can't be SF. Its the same annoying argument that has English professors claiming 1984 and Slaughterhouse 5 are greats, while refusing to have anything to do with the latest Stephenson or whatever. Banksie must drive them up the wall.
Re:my opinion of 'Oryx and Crake'
on
Oryx and Crake
·
· Score: 1
Umm, you don't think its Science Fiction/because/ it has similarities to Fahrenheit 451?
"You're telling me the next gen consoles are all planning on a 7ghz CPU? They better not be planning on releasing until 2007 or so, if that's the case, and they want to keep their consoles under $300."
To be fair to the guy, the XBox came out late 2001 in the US, 2002 everywhere else. So that would only be roughly the standard 5 year wait to 2007.
"Yes but with all of those examples it means hacking the shit out of things"
Not with the Dreamcast, it doesn't. I've not done anything to the insides of mine except clean them once or twice, and yet it plays Spectrum, NES, Master System and MAME stuff just fine from nothing more expensive than a CDR or two. There are Genesis and SNES emulators as well, but they aren't full speed on a lot of games.
I don't think the iPod will be ubiquitous, no. But I do think that it, and other similiar devices like Sony's NetMD, the iRiver and RioVolt are becoming popular amongst the people who would otherwise buy the most CDs. To a fair extent, people who currently don't want to pay full price for a CD are the sort of people who still wouldn't buy that many CDs if you took their pirate copies away, but the ones who buy lots (myself included) are put off by the fact that they can't be placed on their portable players.
Apart from anything else, I only buy CD copies of anything because they are convenient for listening on the move - if I'm sat at home with a proper CD player, I'll be using the proper vinyl record deck that lives just above it.
Since the iPod was this Christmas's "must have" item, and continues to get massive publicity along with selling as fast as they can make the things, I have to wonder:
How much longer will it be before a 'copy-protection' scheme that effectively stops you making any sales to iPod (or similiar) owners harms sales more than the increased level of copying that supposedly happens with non-protected CDs?
When you factor in that its going to be the people most into music who are prepared to shell out for devices like this, these "copy protections" have to be be at best of dubious value.
Best known for the David Beckham Soccer series? I'd have thought more people would like to remember Rage for their excellent Rocky game, the wonderfully promising Lamborghini and the under-rated Hostile Waters. David Beckham Soccer was famous for five minutes when it flopped horribly, but that was all, really. Even Go-Go Beckam, their GBA platformer, was rather more memorable.
Actually, I think I was violently agreeing with you. There is (in most countries, certainly) a generic law called Driving Without Due Care And Attention (or some variant of this), which does what you're after.
The point of this particular law, as I understand it, is to clarify that the legislature regards the distraction of a screen running to be bad, without the need to prove in court that you weren't paying attention to the road. Its similiar to the mobile phones law we've just had in the UK, where its been possible to do people for DWoCaA all along, but this is now easier because you being on the phone is easier to prove than that your conversation was definitely distracting.
Read That Fine Article. There is a specific exemption for GPS devices, Sat Nav devices and even generic devices if they are rigged in such a way to lock out the other features while the vehicle is moving.
Driving at 200kph (even if you're on one of the rare stretches of road in the world where this isn't speeding) and rummaging around on the back seat counts as driving without due care and attention; its illegal already, yes? Certainly would be in the UK.
Many people (myself included) have raised a point about wanting the front passenger to run mapquest/autoroute/whatever. Well, here is the exemption info from the bill:
(b) Subdivision (a) does not apply to the following equipment when installed in a vehicle: (1) A vehicle information display. (2) A global positioning display. (3) A mapping display. (4) A visual display used to enhance or supplement the driver's view forward, behind, or to the sides of a motor vehicle for the purpose of maneuvering the vehicle. (5) A television receiver, video monitor, television or video screen, or any other, similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast or video signal, if that equipment has an interlock device that, when the motor vehicle is driven, disables the equipment for all uses except as a visual display as described in paragraphs (1) to (4), inclusive.
So, as I see it, what we really need then is some sort of Knoppix-alike that boots straight into the map application of your choice. Either that, or your navigator is going to have to sit in the back.
Slashdot Mirror
Urban legend, yes. The US used pencils too, or felt markers (which also work just fine in zero gravity). Then Fischer spent millions of their own cash designing the Space Pen, and sold them at a nominal rate to NASA for the publicity.
I've raved about them before, but no harm in doing so again.
What you're after are the new Designer sets. Themed into different subjects including cars, Big Japanese Robots (which rocks), Construction site stuff and even animals, they are all made of 'proper' bricks, and each has a whole shedload of suggestions on the theme to get you going; the theme is more connected to your suggestions and the sorts of colours you get (including a rather snazzy new orange) than limiting what you can build at all.
Nice big thread you've got going here... ;)
Nothing at all wrong with the Bionicle bricks, it just requires a bit more work to get interesting things out of it. Unfortunately I've lost the link, but somewhere out there on the the big wide net are all the main ships from the mighty Ikaruga, made out of Bionicle stuff; amazing work I'd recommend hunting for.
"The only set I would consider buying now is the empirial destroyer set, because it's just so freakishly huge. But, it's too expensive and I don't have the room to display it anyway."
With the Star Wars stuff I've actually gone in the opposite direction. There is a Star Destroyer in the 2004 mini range that looks stunning (though they haven't hit shelves yet), and the 2002 and 2003 ranges were both brilliant. They are only like $10 little things, but to get something the looks right using almost entirely standard parts is probably even more of a challenge for the designers than the huge models in the collector series.
So what if its offtopic. Its just too bloody cool to not mention. Thanks for that, I completely forgot about it (my name is on the DVD, like about a million others).
Seriously - go look at the Designer range. Sensibly priced, and all 'proper' Lego. Plus, rather than just one model to build, they have suggestions for like 10 more you could do with the bricks; its Lego like it used to be.
If you're still buying space stuff, take a look over on the lego shop website (shop.lego.com) - the actual NASA sets are just stunning. Plus, the nanofig scale Star Destroyer for 2004 is pretty cool, too.
covering their asses over what?
Presumably, even if the next game isn't San Andreas, its entirely possible they will want to use the title somewhere down the line. Since obvious speculation points to it now, its best to get the phrase locked down before anyone steals it.
"The new discs are magneto-optical just like the old ones, which makes them ideal for archival use. But with that DRM you wouldn't be able to back anything up onto them."
That assumes that the DRM is in place for all files, not just the audio section, which I don't think (unless I mis-R'd TFA) will apply for data as well.
"Am I the only one that finds it strange that Sony used to call the original playstation the PSX?"
Apparently not, someone else mentioned this earlier in the thread.
And had pointed out to them that Sony never did any such thing; it was the same 'trendy' clever-clever magazine types doing this as the ones that kept using the dev-title of 'Ultra64' for the Nintendo 64. Sony only ever used PS or PlayStation.
"You could buy all the different players seperate and still come out ahead"
Yes, you could. However, they wouldn't then be all in one stylish box. Sony haven't really made much fuss about these boxes being aimed at anyone other than people who want cool gadgets that look good next to their plasma screens and iMacs; boxes aimed at the more cost-conscious buyer, or at least price-cuts to reach them, will come once the first lot have been sold for a fortune, just like with the PS2.
Homer's Odyssey wasn't SF by a long shot, in my book, though. Its far more like the literary equivalent of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie; big dumb action scenes strung together with a flimsy quest tale, but ending up as a good laugh.
"I'd rather download a rip off the net for a DVD I own that try to rip a DVD with the current set of utilities"
I wouldn't disagree with you, having taken weeks to get a decent transfer from my own laserdiscs of The Trilogy, but why would you bother to rip your own DVDs? I find that my DVDs work perfectly fine on my DVD player; rather better than some SVCD copy that took 12 hours to download.
Yes, it is your fault. If you had a laserdisc player (or even just bought the VHS releases when they came out), you could play the perfectly legal versions that the divxes were ripped from, like the rest of us.
Laserdisc is great, and complaining that you need one in order to be able to watch Star Wars properly is only a little more relevant than the fact that I needed to buy an XBox as well as my Gamecube when I wanted to play Halo.
As for Miramax's frankly useless attempts at Asian cinema, get yourself a multi-region DVD player and import the good versions like the rest of us.
There are a hell of a lot of things that people get pirated, that they could have legitimate (and better quality) versions of if they only did a bit of extra work.
"Atwood has said that she does not write science fiction"
Science Fiction can't be good. This is good. Therefore it can't be SF. Its the same annoying argument that has English professors claiming 1984 and Slaughterhouse 5 are greats, while refusing to have anything to do with the latest Stephenson or whatever. Banksie must drive them up the wall.
Umm, you don't think its Science Fiction /because/ it has similarities to Fahrenheit 451?
Hmm...
"You're telling me the next gen consoles are all planning on a 7ghz CPU? They better not be planning on releasing until 2007 or so, if that's the case, and they want to keep their consoles under $300."
To be fair to the guy, the XBox came out late 2001 in the US, 2002 everywhere else. So that would only be roughly the standard 5 year wait to 2007.
"Yes but with all of those examples it means hacking the shit out of things"
Not with the Dreamcast, it doesn't. I've not done anything to the insides of mine except clean them once or twice, and yet it plays Spectrum, NES, Master System and MAME stuff just fine from nothing more expensive than a CDR or two. There are Genesis and SNES emulators as well, but they aren't full speed on a lot of games.
I don't think the iPod will be ubiquitous, no. But I do think that it, and other similiar devices like Sony's NetMD, the iRiver and RioVolt are becoming popular amongst the people who would otherwise buy the most CDs. To a fair extent, people who currently don't want to pay full price for a CD are the sort of people who still wouldn't buy that many CDs if you took their pirate copies away, but the ones who buy lots (myself included) are put off by the fact that they can't be placed on their portable players.
Apart from anything else, I only buy CD copies of anything because they are convenient for listening on the move - if I'm sat at home with a proper CD player, I'll be using the proper vinyl record deck that lives just above it.
Since the iPod was this Christmas's "must have" item, and continues to get massive publicity along with selling as fast as they can make the things, I have to wonder:
How much longer will it be before a 'copy-protection' scheme that effectively stops you making any sales to iPod (or similiar) owners harms sales more than the increased level of copying that supposedly happens with non-protected CDs?
When you factor in that its going to be the people most into music who are prepared to shell out for devices like this, these "copy protections" have to be be at best of dubious value.
Best known for the David Beckham Soccer series? I'd have thought more people would like to remember Rage for their excellent Rocky game, the wonderfully promising Lamborghini and the under-rated Hostile Waters. David Beckham Soccer was famous for five minutes when it flopped horribly, but that was all, really. Even Go-Go Beckam, their GBA platformer, was rather more memorable.
Actually, I think I was violently agreeing with you. There is (in most countries, certainly) a generic law called Driving Without Due Care And Attention (or some variant of this), which does what you're after.
The point of this particular law, as I understand it, is to clarify that the legislature regards the distraction of a screen running to be bad, without the need to prove in court that you weren't paying attention to the road. Its similiar to the mobile phones law we've just had in the UK, where its been possible to do people for DWoCaA all along, but this is now easier because you being on the phone is easier to prove than that your conversation was definitely distracting.
Read That Fine Article. There is a specific exemption for GPS devices, Sat Nav devices and even generic devices if they are rigged in such a way to lock out the other features while the vehicle is moving.
Driving at 200kph (even if you're on one of the rare stretches of road in the world where this isn't speeding) and rummaging around on the back seat counts as driving without due care and attention; its illegal already, yes? Certainly would be in the UK.
Many people (myself included) have raised a point about wanting the front passenger to run mapquest/autoroute/whatever. Well, here is the exemption info from the bill:
(b) Subdivision (a) does not apply to the following equipment when
installed in a vehicle:
(1) A vehicle information display.
(2) A global positioning display.
(3) A mapping display.
(4) A visual display used to enhance or supplement the driver's view
forward, behind, or to the sides of a motor vehicle for the purpose of
maneuvering the vehicle.
(5) A television receiver, video monitor, television or video screen,
or any other, similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast
or video signal, if that equipment has an interlock device that, when the
motor vehicle is driven, disables the equipment for all uses except as a
visual display as described in paragraphs (1) to (4), inclusive.
So, as I see it, what we really need then is some sort of Knoppix-alike that boots straight into the map application of your choice. Either that, or your navigator is going to have to sit in the back.