The C-64 game Neuromancer had an audio clip from a song on its title screen. Sadly, I haven't seen an emulator that's emulated it properly yet (although I haven't done all that much searching either).
I think the Friday the 13th game had digitized screaming.
Although not part of games, I remember hearing digitized audio clips of the songs "Pump up the Jam" and "Rock me Amadeus" as standalone clips (ie: not part of any game).
What I'd like to have seen was a game that had a digitized clip and movement on the screen simulataneously. If I remember right, the whole game froze every time there was a clip in Impossible Mission.
I don't really see the stats as being "tired" just as being something different.
If I want to go the statsless RPG route, I play something like Zelda, where the focus is more on puzzle solving and quick fingers. Guys who once knocked off X amount of energy no longer do so once I understand their pattern.
On the other hand, if I feel like getting gratification by fighting guys who would have annihilated me 20 game-hours ago thanks to my shiny new weapon, armour, and stats, I play a Final Fantasy or Baldur's Gate type of game.
Is there a medium between the two? I dunno, it seems like a pretty clear line to me: Either you have in-game stats that empower you or you gain empowerment through getting better at playing the game itself. Is there a third option? I'm not saying there *isn't*, but I'd like to hear what the 3rd one is:)
The only thing I can even come close to thinking of is a MMORPG scenario where real people imbue you with abilities based on how they feel you've contributed to the community (in the case of good alignment) or shit disturbing (in the case of evil alignment). You wouldn't KNOW what your stat is via a number or meter, you would just have to test your mettle once in a while to see if you "feel" any stronger in a certain ability.
As far as magic goes, it's hard to say. Would FF7's magic system via Materia(?) be considered a more freeform type of magic? Linking types through putting them in weapon slots?
To be honest, most of my satisfaction through playing mage-types in RPGs has been from having a rough ride starting off the game (and a steeper learning curve) but then being able to obliterate things later on. The spells themselves haven't felt boring to me, and I've been playing the games since Ultima III.
The games that have impressed me lately don't really seem to have a specific genre. What are Deus Ex, Black and White, and Anachronox? Adventure? RPG? FPS? A puzzle game? (I know, I know.. B+W = Most overrated of all time:))
I argued that this was not so. I suggested that fully differentiated cells of a given tissue type would divide a specific number of times and then stop dividing (Hayflick Limit). I hypothesized the existence of a counter in each cell that kept track of how many more times that cell could divide. Today, those counters are called Tellomeres.
Does this statement contradict with the following statement from the article:
"It's been assumed that the reason things live longer when they diet is that there is a slowing down of age-related damage," Dr. Partridge said. But, she added, it now appears that cannot be true. "The system has no memory."
--
So the idea of waiting until 48 hours before your natural dead would not extend your life by much at all. Sorry.
I took that idea from:
In a detailed demographic analysis of life and death among 7,492 fruit flies, published today in Science magazine, Dr. Partridge and her colleagues discovered that the protective effect of dieting snaps into place within 48 hours, whether the diet starts early in life or late
To use the article's word of "armour", it seems to me that whether you wore this "armour" of dieting 10 years ago or 48 hours prior to your "natural" death is irrelevant.
Maybe a happy medium to bridge the idea of Tellomeres and what the article is saying is to say that the body ignores the "knot count" if you've restricted your diet. IANAB:)
Thanks for the response, though. Interesting stuff. You definitely deserve some modding up.
People with the "supersize" this and the "extra large" that are slowly killing themselves each time they order more than they need.
According to the article, "supersizing" your french fries would only kill you IF you supersized 48 hours prior to your expected date of death. Otherwise your body would have no memory of it.
Can anyone really usefully apply this information to their lives? I don't mean this sarcastically, but in order to practically apply what was learned in this article, we'd have to know our date of death given our current diet. Then, 48 hours before the date of death (assuming we work the same as a fruit fly, which I doubt), we would begin our life-extending diet.
Maybe when we reach a day where we can tell our date of death and are able to keep any permanent damage from happening in the meantime, ie: a heart attack, kidney damage, etc, this would be useful.
On top of that, I didn't see a mention as to what kind of calories the fruit flies were being fed. Does a person who has 1200 calories of McDonalds a day vs someone who has 1200 calories of fruits/veggies/grains a day get the same "armour" effect?
So as it is now, the message is: Restrict your calorie intake NOW and you might live longer. We can't say if you were going to die at 25 given your diet or 90, but start NOW.
In other news: Not skydiving, driving, and living near a coal plant can extend your life.
Ever hear of a "straw man argument"? Well thats exactly what you are making. You invent a problem (in this case "all Linux support sucks")
The problem wasn't "all Linux support sucks." The problem was "There is a sense of snideness in the Linux community, and trying to ask for support is one of those examples of snideness."
My final paragraph was more to silence anyone who might have asked "Have you tried Linux?" more than to "brag" about the state of my computer or add to my argument.
The general public doesn't hate stability, but the general public does hate snideness.
If I want to join a club (ie: a community of linux users) where the price of knowledge is either A) being laughed at before being helped, or B) Dozens of hours of reading (countless more if you wish to learn to debug compilation errors) I probably wouldn't join.
This is the current state of the Linux community. Not only the case on Slashdot, but go to any IRC help channel and you'll find the same the majority of the time. Once you become a part of the "club," asking for features (even politely) will usually net you an "IT'S OPEN SOURCE!! YOU CAN ADD IT YOURSELF!!"
I remember googling a mailing list's archives yesterday to see some problems someone was having with mplayer. In order for him to get a straight answer he had to pre-emptively insult himself "Guys, I know I'm entirely retarded, but does anyone know how to get mplayer to play X?"
Personally, I dual boot between Linux and Windows. I don't trust my resume to OpenOffice, nor can I run Streets and Trips or Encarta. I don't trust wine's development enough to run VC++, and the majority of games don't work. I have nothing against Linux, but I do have something against some of its zealots.
I've got a C compiler that doesn't like my syntax. I mean, I know I've read the spec and it lays out the syntax, but I don't really like it. I mean, can't they change the C spec to suit my code?
I know it costs $0.48 to mail something, but I only want to use my $0.47 stamps. Can't something be done? It's only $0.01 difference. Sometimes I'll be willing to pay $0.49 to make up!
Does anyone know how to go 130 kph when the speed limit is 100? I mean, people keep giving me tickets. Can't something be done about this? Really, the rules should be changed.
If your hours are stated in some form of contract, then honour it. If you don't like it, try to work with management. If that doesn't work, you can literally quit your job.
If you don't like getting there early and having nothing to do, bring a book, bring some music, bring an audiobook, etc, etc. The worst that can happen is that on days where there's traffic/construction, you won't be stressed out because you'll be 3 mins late for work. Instead, you'll arrive there 20 mins early instead of 30.
In all honesty, it does look disrespectful to other people when you get there late and most everyone else got there on time (or early). Especially those that travel longer distances to get to work in the first place.
I have nothing to say about the game itself. It looks strange, but nothing mind-blowing.
On the other hand, I am interested in the title and its translation.. "Chou Aniki: Sei Naru Protein Densetsu. In English, the title translates to Mighty Brothers: The Legend of the Holy Protein."
Does this title sound as cheesy/campy in Japanese as it does in English? Or is there some element of Japanese culture which makes this title acceptable and taken with a straight face?
I've noticed this with other old-school game titles as well, such as "Space Mega Force." Even modern games with Engrish-sounding titles such as "Dance Dance Revolution 2nd Remix Append Club Version" have me wondering if it's done intentionally or not. I'm sure an arcade game which has probably sucked up millions of dollars in money can afford to hire a person for oh, say, 2 minutes to come up with a somewhat literary translation.
Secure IDE, says Abit, has a special decoder without a special key, and that means hard drives can "never be opened by anyone".
Then from the paragraph before: "... its Secure IDE technology will 'keep government supercomputers busy for weeks.'"
So it can never be opened by anyone except the government, which will require a few weeks to decrypt what's on the drive? Are they mixing a physical opening of the drive with reading the data on the drive itself?
4) Books. I have mixed feelings about this. I remember seeing a recent article about how a lot of publishers seem to be teetering on being "in the red." I feel bad, but then I see the newest Harry Potter book costing $5 more for no particularly good reason. 1) They know it's going to sell well so it's not as risky as some academic book. 2) The prices of publishing haven't gone up $5.
----
And another obvious solution that I completely forgot: Grab the books/movies (now in VHS and DVD format)/music from your local library for a test run. Sometimes the waiting lists are huge (In fact, my local library has a waiting list of 6000 people for 600 copies of Harry Potter's newest book available in the city) but at least you're not blowing cash for nothing.
I'll probably just shy away from buying new CDs and DVDs in general. That's not to say I will go on a pirating rampage, but I'll stick to free and currently legal alternatives that don't leave me with a sour taste in my mouth.
One thing I do know is that current mainstream media distribution methods are horrible. Let's take a look:
1) Television. Most any content consists of 30% ads. Even paid content can be costly (esp. in the US) b/c if you subscribe to a blanket movie network, you may find a competing one gets exclusive access to a certain studio's movies.
2) Radio. I live in a city with a population in the millions. I am into electronic music and have a very hard time being able to find any at, say, 4 in the afternoon. Even when I do hear it it's during some "live-to-air" session where they're continuously plugging the club's name and how great the atmosphere is. Again, it's interrupted by huge amounts of ads. I know I'm not the only one feeling this way as I've heard the same kind of gripes for different genres.
3) PC Gaming. I can't say how many games I've wanted to try and ended up purchasing due to a lack of a demo that ended up being terrible. It was even worse in the C-64 days, where a games' box art would have screenshots from the arcade rather than the C-64 screenshots. Ever play a demo of The Sims or Sim City 4000? Neither have I.
All that said and done, it's not hugely traumatic, just a shift in lifestyle. Don't buy games unless they have demos or incredible word of mouth, be very stingy with how many times you go to the movies (or at least support directors/writers/studios who aren't just creating the next cash grab movie), try to find an internet radio station playing what you like.
It's not like we're going to war here and lives are at stake. I could just go nuts and warez the universe, but spending even 1ms in jail just b/c I wanted to download Glitter to see if it REALLY WAS that bad doesn't seem worth it to me.
I know someone can reply and say I have my head in the sand, but I think it's more a matter of picking your battles carefully.
1) If the installer is text based, the terminal screen must be cleared and a message in all capitals saying "THE PROGRAM YOU ARE ABOUT TO INSTALL CONTAINS SPYWARE. PRESS Y TO CONTINUE, N TO ABORT, OR D FOR DETAILS OF THE SPYWARE." before ANY installation takes place.
2) If the installer is GUI based, a dialog box that is completely viewable on the screen (ie: not stuffed one pixel in the corner) displaying a 40+ point font with the same message as above appears. Instead of the Y/N/D you have 3 buttons indicating the same. Details can bring down a text box with the details. This takes place before any EULA happens or the filesystem/registry is altered in any way.
How hard would it be to word it like this? IANAL in the least.
Here are some of the funny jokes you might get to hear:
1)
"What time is it?"
"I don't know, my watch just blue-screened, it must be running TEH WINDOWZE"
2)
"Johnny just got Doom III, let's go check it out on his computer."
"Is it going run? He's using Windows XP"
3)
"Want to try "
" Do I have to boot into Windows? I hate doing it." (actually, some of the editors have gone for this in actual article headlines)
4)
Any scenario involving a computer freezing at a presentation/workshop:
scenario a, using windows: "HAHA, WINDOWS IS TEH SUCKS."
scenario b, using linux: "HAHA, DID YOU INSMOD WINDOWS???"
The list goes on and on. I wish people would get over it. Yes, Linux is now somewhat usable for a normal human being that doesn't want to invest 4 hours reading up 4 tree levels deep of manpages. Yes, Linux is stable. Why can't you just be happy with this and enjoy yourself?
Can you imagine Luddites visiting a place with a loom 20 years later and going "Your sweater didn't turn out right? I guess your loom froze!! HAHAHAHA" This is how I feel every time I see this sentiment on Slashdot.
"More than 100 products were launched in rapid succession over 18 months, from childhood creativity (Fine Artist) to a cartoony "social interface" to make Windows appear friendlier to the pathologically computer phobic (1995's Microsoft Bob, a much-maligned happy face with geek glasses)."
I know this can be misconstrued as karma whoring, but I think it's more of a Geraldo-style expose on why RTFAing is necessary.
Let's say you had a CD reading drive which had N pickup heads. If each of these heads were focused on a different bit of the CD drive (ie: these particular bits were "on loan" at a point in time) would letting N people listen (each on a distinct head) be legal?
Here's what I'm getting at: If I have an 80 minute CD with songs, and "loan" song #1 to listener 1, song #2 to listener 2, etc, is there any law which states this can't specifically be done as long as what is being borrowed is physically exclusive?
Or in another way, say a library purchases a 300 page book and literally rips it into 150 double-sided pages. Can it then *legally* loan out each page and "effectively" allow 150 people to read a portion of this book simultaneously?
Electronically, the book example seems feasible. Offer two book formats: One complete copy that you can borrow for an extended period of time, and one split copy where your borrowing of a page expires after five minutes.
Has anyone seen any information on this kind of deal?
I too have heard of that beautiful thing called a University library. Let me tell you a bit about mine:
#1 Professors could take out books for very long (months) periods of time.
#2 Despite the wide selection of books, MANY of the books surrounding course materials were out, requiring you to put it on hold. Now, with a 3 week withdrawal time and 12 weeks in a semester, that's 1/4 of a semester to wait.
#3 There were a set of books you could get access to any time, but the borrowing period was 2 hours with a $5 an hour charge if you're late.
Maybe your school has many many copies of any given math text and the borrowing rate wasn't so high, but at my uni (which will go unnamed) this was not the case.
I see about 20 replies so far, and at least a dozen unique books. Most of the suggestions have been along the lines of "This is a good book. We used it in a course and although it was X or Y, I recommend it." Others were just name dropping of 3 or 4 books at once.
From that, and knowing that your local bookstore isn't going to stock all of these, and knowing that 12 textbooks will cost you close to $1200, how are YOU going to decide what to buy? Are you going to go on amazon and read reviews from here?
If developing for windows makes you a sharecropper
on
Don't Be a Sharecropper
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Then what does developing the cygwin libraries make you? A serf? A blockbuster?
Also, an inaccuracy in the article:
"Are You a Sharecropper? If you're developing software for the Windows platform, yes. Or for the Apple platform, or the Oracle platform, or the SAP platform, or, well, any platform that is owned and operated by a company. They own the ground you're building on, and if they decide they don't like you, or they can do something better with the ground, you're toast."
This doesn't even make sense to me. The analogy doesn't work. If I code a game made to work in windows 98, Microsoft can not (at this point) block your game from being run at the OS level (aka "taking away land") but really only through suing you to stop the game from being distributed.
Do I have this wrong? This doesn't sound like being a sharecropper, but living next door to a cranky neighbour who might sue you for keeping your lawn unkempt and lowering neighbouring property values.
Talk to most anyone who works on an assembly line and they will tell you that their job is as boring as hell. Some might say that they almost feel like a machine themselves.
Contrast this with a labourer who builds furniture from scratch or a shoemaker and you find yourself in a different situation. While their actions are the same, their efforts have tangible results. If they have their own business selling what they've created the satisfaction runs deeper.
How are goggles shining lights in your face saying "Unscrew this next" going to make you feel any closer to the work that you're doing? It just seems like another level of detachment to me.
Why did the article discuss hardware problems but not social problems regarding the goggles?
Mind you, from a Slashdot geek perspective, the goggles are a cool idea, but I don't feel envious of the people who are going to have to use these things on an assembly line.
Scientific American has an article about Hellmouth, a challenging new game created by Junis that runs on large clusters of computers. Sponsorship from SCO looks to be confirmed and celebrities such as Natalie Portman promoting grits are in tow.
Sadly, the death of Stephen King during the game's promotion at E3 and LinuxWorld (where no one showed up) put a damper on things, while in Soviet Russia the people controlled YOU.
After many months of digging I have finally unveiled the Phantom game console.
The first thing I tried was to modify it to play my Baywatch VCD and SVCDs. These run just fine on my Commodore-64 but the console has no CD/DVD-ROM. What was I to do?
That's fine. I can handle that. I felt around in the sand for a bit looking for the buried T1 cable (buried so no one trips on it at night). After 30 minutes of searching I found it and plugged it into the console.
I crossed my fingers as I turned the power on (the wind speeds were low) and was wowed by the title screen. It says "Please enter your name, credit card number, and expiry." I did this and I was set to go.
After that a huge fanfare played and congratulated me on my credit card being approved. It told me that my system was now physically tied to my credit card and future purchases would be charged without any recourse for a refund.
The first game I downloaded was "Tony Hawk 2." It took about 40 minutes to get but they show you a really neat progress bar that looks like brushed metal.
While the game was downloading I decided to dig up the latest Linux journals and found myself fuming at the latest SCO scandal. Poor Linux Torwellars.
Anyway, I digress. The game finally started and it was fantastic. Tony Hawk looked really good, and so did the console. Soon enough, hundreds of people were huddling around my new-found console. The whole village was near tears. Someone asked "Can I borrow that game?" I explained that I'd have to lend them my whole console. After many tears I broke down and just gave it to him, but asked him to promise not to buy any more games while he was using it. He said "OK."
Anyway, with the console out of my hands I re-hooked my Commodore-64 to the T1 line and resumed downloading the latest VIP episodes. I can't get enough of Pamela Anderson. I will get back to you after I have purchased more games.
I really think this console is the future. Soon enough we'll have linux working on it and I will be able to again run the great programs such as "ls" "rm" and "mv" instead of playing games.
"How in the hell do you conclude that anyone that wants to overclock is likely to be a liar as well?"
That is not my conclusion. My conclusion is that someone is going to notice the selling point for this particular adaptor, namely what I quoted with a stress on "The warranty of your processor can be kept alive." And will think they now have a risk-free overclocking experience.
I have NO problems with people that want to overclock and risk burning out their system, as long as they don't ask for a refund the next day. You can overclock it, use it as a paperweight, or use it as a heater in the Winter for all I care.
The example I gave of Joe Smith returning his CPU was in the context of what the original company was pushing, not a general statement of overclockers.
Slashdot Mirror
"should be released on some form of DVD media (looks like this could this be a movie, not a game?)"
Looking at the bottom picture on that magazine cover, if that's a movie then they should have used voice actors rather than two text boxes.
Here's to hoping it's a game...
The C-64 game Neuromancer had an audio clip from a song on its title screen. Sadly, I haven't seen an emulator that's emulated it properly yet (although I haven't done all that much searching either).
I think the Friday the 13th game had digitized screaming.
Although not part of games, I remember hearing digitized audio clips of the songs "Pump up the Jam" and "Rock me Amadeus" as standalone clips (ie: not part of any game).
What I'd like to have seen was a game that had a digitized clip and movement on the screen simulataneously. If I remember right, the whole game froze every time there was a clip in Impossible Mission.
I don't really see the stats as being "tired" just as being something different.
:)
:))
If I want to go the statsless RPG route, I play something like Zelda, where the focus is more on puzzle solving and quick fingers. Guys who once knocked off X amount of energy no longer do so once I understand their pattern.
On the other hand, if I feel like getting gratification by fighting guys who would have annihilated me 20 game-hours ago thanks to my shiny new weapon, armour, and stats, I play a Final Fantasy or Baldur's Gate type of game.
Is there a medium between the two? I dunno, it seems like a pretty clear line to me: Either you have in-game stats that empower you or you gain empowerment through getting better at playing the game itself. Is there a third option? I'm not saying there *isn't*, but I'd like to hear what the 3rd one is
The only thing I can even come close to thinking of is a MMORPG scenario where real people imbue you with abilities based on how they feel you've contributed to the community (in the case of good alignment) or shit disturbing (in the case of evil alignment). You wouldn't KNOW what your stat is via a number or meter, you would just have to test your mettle once in a while to see if you "feel" any stronger in a certain ability.
As far as magic goes, it's hard to say. Would FF7's magic system via Materia(?) be considered a more freeform type of magic? Linking types through putting them in weapon slots?
To be honest, most of my satisfaction through playing mage-types in RPGs has been from having a rough ride starting off the game (and a steeper learning curve) but then being able to obliterate things later on. The spells themselves haven't felt boring to me, and I've been playing the games since Ultima III.
The games that have impressed me lately don't really seem to have a specific genre. What are Deus Ex, Black and White, and Anachronox? Adventure? RPG? FPS? A puzzle game? (I know, I know.. B+W = Most overrated of all time
I argued that this was not so. I suggested that fully differentiated cells of a given tissue type would divide a specific number of times and then stop dividing (Hayflick Limit). I hypothesized the existence of a counter in each cell that kept track of how many more times that cell could divide. Today, those counters are called Tellomeres.
:)
Does this statement contradict with the following statement from the article:
"It's been assumed that the reason things live longer when they diet is that there is a slowing down of age-related damage," Dr. Partridge said. But, she added, it now appears that cannot be true. "The system has no memory."
--
So the idea of waiting until 48 hours before your natural dead would not extend your life by much at all. Sorry.
I took that idea from:
In a detailed demographic analysis of life and death among 7,492 fruit flies, published today in Science magazine, Dr. Partridge and her colleagues discovered that the protective effect of dieting snaps into place within 48 hours, whether the diet starts early in life or late
To use the article's word of "armour", it seems to me that whether you wore this "armour" of dieting 10 years ago or 48 hours prior to your "natural" death is irrelevant.
Maybe a happy medium to bridge the idea of Tellomeres and what the article is saying is to say that the body ignores the "knot count" if you've restricted your diet. IANAB
Thanks for the response, though. Interesting stuff. You definitely deserve some modding up.
People with the "supersize" this and the "extra large" that are slowly killing themselves each time they order more than they need.
According to the article, "supersizing" your french fries would only kill you IF you supersized 48 hours prior to your expected date of death. Otherwise your body would have no memory of it.
Can anyone really usefully apply this information to their lives? I don't mean this sarcastically, but in order to practically apply what was learned in this article, we'd have to know our date of death given our current diet. Then, 48 hours before the date of death (assuming we work the same as a fruit fly, which I doubt), we would begin our life-extending diet.
Maybe when we reach a day where we can tell our date of death and are able to keep any permanent damage from happening in the meantime, ie: a heart attack, kidney damage, etc, this would be useful.
On top of that, I didn't see a mention as to what kind of calories the fruit flies were being fed. Does a person who has 1200 calories of McDonalds a day vs someone who has 1200 calories of fruits/veggies/grains a day get the same "armour" effect?
So as it is now, the message is: Restrict your calorie intake NOW and you might live longer. We can't say if you were going to die at 25 given your diet or 90, but start NOW.
In other news: Not skydiving, driving, and living near a coal plant can extend your life.
Ever hear of a "straw man argument"? Well thats exactly what you are making. You invent a problem (in this case "all Linux support sucks")
The problem wasn't "all Linux support sucks." The problem was "There is a sense of snideness in the Linux community, and trying to ask for support is one of those examples of snideness."
My final paragraph was more to silence anyone who might have asked "Have you tried Linux?" more than to "brag" about the state of my computer or add to my argument.
The general public doesn't hate stability, but the general public does hate snideness.
If I want to join a club (ie: a community of linux users) where the price of knowledge is either A) being laughed at before being helped, or B) Dozens of hours of reading (countless more if you wish to learn to debug compilation errors) I probably wouldn't join.
This is the current state of the Linux community. Not only the case on Slashdot, but go to any IRC help channel and you'll find the same the majority of the time. Once you become a part of the "club," asking for features (even politely) will usually net you an "IT'S OPEN SOURCE!! YOU CAN ADD IT YOURSELF!!"
I remember googling a mailing list's archives yesterday to see some problems someone was having with mplayer. In order for him to get a straight answer he had to pre-emptively insult himself "Guys, I know I'm entirely retarded, but does anyone know how to get mplayer to play X?"
Personally, I dual boot between Linux and Windows. I don't trust my resume to OpenOffice, nor can I run Streets and Trips or Encarta. I don't trust wine's development enough to run VC++, and the majority of games don't work. I have nothing against Linux, but I do have something against some of its zealots.
I've got a C compiler that doesn't like my syntax. I mean, I know I've read the spec and it lays out the syntax, but I don't really like it. I mean, can't they change the C spec to suit my code?
I know it costs $0.48 to mail something, but I only want to use my $0.47 stamps. Can't something be done? It's only $0.01 difference. Sometimes I'll be willing to pay $0.49 to make up!
Does anyone know how to go 130 kph when the speed limit is 100? I mean, people keep giving me tickets. Can't something be done about this? Really, the rules should be changed.
If your hours are stated in some form of contract, then honour it. If you don't like it, try to work with management. If that doesn't work, you can literally quit your job.
If you don't like getting there early and having nothing to do, bring a book, bring some music, bring an audiobook, etc, etc. The worst that can happen is that on days where there's traffic/construction, you won't be stressed out because you'll be 3 mins late for work. Instead, you'll arrive there 20 mins early instead of 30.
In all honesty, it does look disrespectful to other people when you get there late and most everyone else got there on time (or early). Especially those that travel longer distances to get to work in the first place.
I have nothing to say about the game itself. It looks strange, but nothing mind-blowing.
On the other hand, I am interested in the title and its translation.. "Chou Aniki: Sei Naru Protein Densetsu. In English, the title translates to Mighty Brothers: The Legend of the Holy Protein."
Does this title sound as cheesy/campy in Japanese as it does in English? Or is there some element of Japanese culture which makes this title acceptable and taken with a straight face?
I've noticed this with other old-school game titles as well, such as "Space Mega Force." Even modern games with Engrish-sounding titles such as "Dance Dance Revolution 2nd Remix Append Club Version" have me wondering if it's done intentionally or not. I'm sure an arcade game which has probably sucked up millions of dollars in money can afford to hire a person for oh, say, 2 minutes to come up with a somewhat literary translation.
Secure IDE, says Abit, has a special decoder without a special key, and that means hard drives can "never be opened by anyone".
Then from the paragraph before: "... its Secure IDE technology will 'keep government supercomputers busy for weeks.'"
So it can never be opened by anyone except the government, which will require a few weeks to decrypt what's on the drive? Are they mixing a physical opening of the drive with reading the data on the drive itself?
Just to add a bit more to this...
4) Books. I have mixed feelings about this. I remember seeing a recent article about how a lot of publishers seem to be teetering on being "in the red." I feel bad, but then I see the newest Harry Potter book costing $5 more for no particularly good reason. 1) They know it's going to sell well so it's not as risky as some academic book. 2) The prices of publishing haven't gone up $5.
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And another obvious solution that I completely forgot: Grab the books/movies (now in VHS and DVD format)/music from your local library for a test run. Sometimes the waiting lists are huge (In fact, my local library has a waiting list of 6000 people for 600 copies of Harry Potter's newest book available in the city) but at least you're not blowing cash for nothing.
I'll probably just shy away from buying new CDs and DVDs in general. That's not to say I will go on a pirating rampage, but I'll stick to free and currently legal alternatives that don't leave me with a sour taste in my mouth.
One thing I do know is that current mainstream media distribution methods are horrible. Let's take a look:
1) Television. Most any content consists of 30% ads. Even paid content can be costly (esp. in the US) b/c if you subscribe to a blanket movie network, you may find a competing one gets exclusive access to a certain studio's movies.
2) Radio. I live in a city with a population in the millions. I am into electronic music and have a very hard time being able to find any at, say, 4 in the afternoon. Even when I do hear it it's during some "live-to-air" session where they're continuously plugging the club's name and how great the atmosphere is. Again, it's interrupted by huge amounts of ads. I know I'm not the only one feeling this way as I've heard the same kind of gripes for different genres.
3) PC Gaming. I can't say how many games I've wanted to try and ended up purchasing due to a lack of a demo that ended up being terrible. It was even worse in the C-64 days, where a games' box art would have screenshots from the arcade rather than the C-64 screenshots. Ever play a demo of The Sims or Sim City 4000? Neither have I.
All that said and done, it's not hugely traumatic, just a shift in lifestyle. Don't buy games unless they have demos or incredible word of mouth, be very stingy with how many times you go to the movies (or at least support directors/writers/studios who aren't just creating the next cash grab movie), try to find an internet radio station playing what you like.
It's not like we're going to war here and lives are at stake. I could just go nuts and warez the universe, but spending even 1ms in jail just b/c I wanted to download Glitter to see if it REALLY WAS that bad doesn't seem worth it to me.
I know someone can reply and say I have my head in the sand, but I think it's more a matter of picking your battles carefully.
1) If the installer is text based, the terminal screen must be cleared and a message in all capitals saying "THE PROGRAM YOU ARE ABOUT TO INSTALL CONTAINS SPYWARE. PRESS Y TO CONTINUE, N TO ABORT, OR D FOR DETAILS OF THE SPYWARE." before ANY installation takes place.
2) If the installer is GUI based, a dialog box that is completely viewable on the screen (ie: not stuffed one pixel in the corner) displaying a 40+ point font with the same message as above appears. Instead of the Y/N/D you have 3 buttons indicating the same. Details can bring down a text box with the details. This takes place before any EULA happens or the filesystem/registry is altered in any way.
How hard would it be to word it like this? IANAL in the least.
Here are some of the funny jokes you might get to hear:
1)
"What time is it?"
"I don't know, my watch just blue-screened, it must be running TEH WINDOWZE"
2)
"Johnny just got Doom III, let's go check it out on his computer."
"Is it going run? He's using Windows XP"
3)
"Want to try "
" Do I have to boot into Windows? I hate doing it." (actually, some of the editors have gone for this in actual article headlines)
4)
Any scenario involving a computer freezing at a presentation/workshop:
scenario a, using windows: "HAHA, WINDOWS IS TEH SUCKS."
scenario b, using linux: "HAHA, DID YOU INSMOD WINDOWS???"
The list goes on and on. I wish people would get over it. Yes, Linux is now somewhat usable for a normal human being that doesn't want to invest 4 hours reading up 4 tree levels deep of manpages. Yes, Linux is stable. Why can't you just be happy with this and enjoy yourself?
Can you imagine Luddites visiting a place with a loom 20 years later and going "Your sweater didn't turn out right? I guess your loom froze!! HAHAHAHA" This is how I feel every time I see this sentiment on Slashdot.
and 3 of them ask "What about Microsoft Bob?"
The article says:
"More than 100 products were launched in rapid succession over 18 months, from childhood creativity (Fine Artist) to a cartoony "social interface" to make Windows appear friendlier to the pathologically computer phobic (1995's Microsoft Bob, a much-maligned happy face with geek glasses)."
I know this can be misconstrued as karma whoring, but I think it's more of a Geraldo-style expose on why RTFAing is necessary.
to Junis and all other lovers of the Commodore-64 platform. Long live the Commodore-64!
GEOS: The first windowed OS.
Let's say you had a CD reading drive which had N pickup heads. If each of these heads were focused on a different bit of the CD drive (ie: these particular bits were "on loan" at a point in time) would letting N people listen (each on a distinct head) be legal?
Here's what I'm getting at: If I have an 80 minute CD with songs, and "loan" song #1 to listener 1, song #2 to listener 2, etc, is there any law which states this can't specifically be done as long as what is being borrowed is physically exclusive?
Or in another way, say a library purchases a 300 page book and literally rips it into 150 double-sided pages. Can it then *legally* loan out each page and "effectively" allow 150 people to read a portion of this book simultaneously?
Electronically, the book example seems feasible. Offer two book formats: One complete copy that you can borrow for an extended period of time, and one split copy where your borrowing of a page expires after five minutes.
Has anyone seen any information on this kind of deal?
I too have heard of that beautiful thing called a University library. Let me tell you a bit about mine:
#1 Professors could take out books for very long (months) periods of time.
#2 Despite the wide selection of books, MANY of the books surrounding course materials were out, requiring you to put it on hold. Now, with a 3 week withdrawal time and 12 weeks in a semester, that's 1/4 of a semester to wait.
#3 There were a set of books you could get access to any time, but the borrowing period was 2 hours with a $5 an hour charge if you're late.
Maybe your school has many many copies of any given math text and the borrowing rate wasn't so high, but at my uni (which will go unnamed) this was not the case.
I see about 20 replies so far, and at least a dozen unique books. Most of the suggestions have been along the lines of "This is a good book. We used it in a course and although it was X or Y, I recommend it." Others were just name dropping of 3 or 4 books at once.
From that, and knowing that your local bookstore isn't going to stock all of these, and knowing that 12 textbooks will cost you close to $1200, how are YOU going to decide what to buy? Are you going to go on amazon and read reviews from here?
Then what does developing the cygwin libraries make you? A serf? A blockbuster?
Also, an inaccuracy in the article:
"Are You a Sharecropper? If you're developing software for the Windows platform, yes. Or for the Apple platform, or the Oracle platform, or the SAP platform, or, well, any platform that is owned and operated by a company. They own the ground you're building on, and if they decide they don't like you, or they can do something better with the ground, you're toast."
This doesn't even make sense to me. The analogy doesn't work. If I code a game made to work in windows 98, Microsoft can not (at this point) block your game from being run at the OS level (aka "taking away land") but really only through suing you to stop the game from being distributed.
Do I have this wrong? This doesn't sound like being a sharecropper, but living next door to a cranky neighbour who might sue you for keeping your lawn unkempt and lowering neighbouring property values.
Talk to most anyone who works on an assembly line and they will tell you that their job is as boring as hell. Some might say that they almost feel like a machine themselves.
Contrast this with a labourer who builds furniture from scratch or a shoemaker and you find yourself in a different situation. While their actions are the same, their efforts have tangible results. If they have their own business selling what they've created the satisfaction runs deeper.
How are goggles shining lights in your face saying "Unscrew this next" going to make you feel any closer to the work that you're doing? It just seems like another level of detachment to me.
Why did the article discuss hardware problems but not social problems regarding the goggles?
Mind you, from a Slashdot geek perspective, the goggles are a cool idea, but I don't feel envious of the people who are going to have to use these things on an assembly line.
Scientific American has an article about Hellmouth, a challenging new game created by Junis that runs on large clusters of computers. Sponsorship from SCO looks to be confirmed and celebrities such as Natalie Portman promoting grits are in tow.
Sadly, the death of Stephen King during the game's promotion at E3 and LinuxWorld (where no one showed up) put a damper on things, while in Soviet Russia the people controlled YOU.
After many months of digging I have finally unveiled the Phantom game console.
The first thing I tried was to modify it to play my Baywatch VCD and SVCDs. These run just fine on my Commodore-64 but the console has no CD/DVD-ROM. What was I to do?
That's fine. I can handle that. I felt around in the sand for a bit looking for the buried T1 cable (buried so no one trips on it at night). After 30 minutes of searching I found it and plugged it into the console.
I crossed my fingers as I turned the power on (the wind speeds were low) and was wowed by the title screen. It says "Please enter your name, credit card number, and expiry." I did this and I was set to go.
After that a huge fanfare played and congratulated me on my credit card being approved. It told me that my system was now physically tied to my credit card and future purchases would be charged without any recourse for a refund.
The first game I downloaded was "Tony Hawk 2." It took about 40 minutes to get but they show you a really neat progress bar that looks like brushed metal.
While the game was downloading I decided to dig up the latest Linux journals and found myself fuming at the latest SCO scandal. Poor Linux Torwellars.
Anyway, I digress. The game finally started and it was fantastic. Tony Hawk looked really good, and so did the console. Soon enough, hundreds of people were huddling around my new-found console. The whole village was near tears. Someone asked "Can I borrow that game?" I explained that I'd have to lend them my whole console. After many tears I broke down and just gave it to him, but asked him to promise not to buy any more games while he was using it. He said "OK."
Anyway, with the console out of my hands I re-hooked my Commodore-64 to the T1 line and resumed downloading the latest VIP episodes. I can't get enough of Pamela Anderson. I will get back to you after I have purchased more games.
I really think this console is the future. Soon enough we'll have linux working on it and I will be able to again run the great programs such as "ls" "rm" and "mv" instead of playing games.
"How in the hell do you conclude that anyone that wants to overclock is likely to be a liar as well?"
That is not my conclusion. My conclusion is that someone is going to notice the selling point for this particular adaptor, namely what I quoted with a stress on "The warranty of your processor can be kept alive." And will think they now have a risk-free overclocking experience.
I have NO problems with people that want to overclock and risk burning out their system, as long as they don't ask for a refund the next day. You can overclock it, use it as a paperweight, or use it as a heater in the Winter for all I care.
The example I gave of Joe Smith returning his CPU was in the context of what the original company was pushing, not a general statement of overclockers.