The article itself was fairly decent although well written, although I could make a comment or two about taking your photographs at an angle so you don't get your silly reflection in there...
The only thing that kept catching my mind was the guy's constant banter about their not being a backlight. He tried to make it easier by saying that it increases battery life, which it of course does...but he's missing the point that the Game Boy in any form has NEVER had a backlight. So all of his complaining about not being able to play in certain venues certainly hasn't stopped anyone in the last ten years, so I really doubt that its something worth mentioning.
Maybe he was a Game Gear player or a Lynx player (I had a Game Gear)...but between me and you, not having a backlight suits me just fine. Now only if Palm would use that reflective-TFT in their color displays...then we could finally use them outside!
--The very fact that they need this kind of supervision says something. I'm not for one believing that the media & games are responsible for more violence in schools today, just worse parenting. No--I'm not calling everyone out there bad parents, just on the average, I'd bet that parents spend a lot less time with their children today than they did 15, 20, or even 40 years ago.
Children need guidance. Without guidance, things become chaotic. I don't know what else to call what's been going on in schools the last few years besides chaotic.Hopefully this will change, eventually.
I'm not sue whether or not its the process that was used to take them or the way that they were scanned, but I can't help but marvel at the clarity and quality of these images.
Black & White film has always been shown to be able to produce higher contrast and sharpness than color images, and I can't help but wonder if using this kind of process isn't a better method of producing color photographs than what we traditionally use. But these images are just so clear and so lifelike that I can't help but wonder. (and if this process was used today, we could most likely eliminate the "artifacts" in color-shifting that others have noted by making the simultanous lenses much closer together)
But even if it was just the scanning process, I have to say these images are still incredible..just to be able to see this time in history in such vibrant realism, is incredible.
But as much flak as MS has caught for Windows, I don't think I could ever use an AOL OS. I would never want to, either.
I read the memo with one of two things on my mind...a)AOL could try this and fail *one good thing*, b)it could be fake so we won't have to worry about it *another good thing*, or c)It's the truth, and they succeed *then we'd all be screwed*
It's one thing to be using some AOL software (Winamp, Netscape, ICQ, or even AIM), but I will not allow AOL to control my desktop or my operating system. (And no, AOL doesn't already, because any such options that the software tries to put on I disable immediately)
I believe the IIIc (and the m505) is what he was referring to. All color Palms thus far have used active-matrix displays, so they look like crap outside.
This one, however uses a reflective (or transflective as you called it) display, similar to the Game Boy Color, which will be wonderful for use anywhere.
We still have Voodoo Extreme, which has somehow survived most of this. It's on UGO now, which while it has had problems and probably will eventually go under as well too, Billy Wilson isn't one to give up without a fight. It's been pretty widely reported(or rumored?) that he and the rest of the VE crew have been trying to take the site independent.
In my opinion, its one of the best sources for gaming news, and has been for a very long time. So as long as VE &/. are around, I'll be happy.
-Julius X
Why have I never heard of this movie?
on
Review: The Dish
·
· Score: 1
I haven't seen any previews or anything....are they even publicizing this one?
-Julius X
Re:Ok, Dvorak is a spank but...
on
Calling Out TiVo
·
· Score: 2
I could be mistaken here....but I know I pay nearly $40 a month for my cable service (I know others pay much more in some areas), and at least a small part of that goes back to the channels that broadcast the programming, and some part of that goes back to the networks that air them. Therefore, whether or not you are watching commercials is largely irrelevent, because the networks are still getting their funds.
And let's not forget that it's the advertisers that pay the networks. No matter what, a superbowl commercial will still cost $1million for 30seconds, because they know people will watch them. People will always be watching events live, even if it isn't quite as often as it always has been, and as they do so, they'll be watching the commercials with them.
The show is apparently been airing continuously in Australia since 1985, and is in its 15th season (or "series" as everyone there calls it). The website has information about it here:
Yeah, I used to watch that show all the time as well. When they went to doing "The Next Step" later in the 90's, the co-creator of the show went on to host CNET Central, which went off the air a couple years ago. He's still doing News.com broadcasts on CNBC, but as far as I know, Beyond2000 and Next Step went off the air completely some time ago. I was shocked to see that they still have a website up.
...as I've had absolutely no problem with the "need" to keep up with the latest hardware. The author of the story went through and looked at a selection of games, a _very_ small selection of games, and found two with system requirements close to his system. Then apparently he didn't buy them because he mentioned that they would most likely run fine on his system. His error is in not trying.
The author himself mentioned that while he had a 486/66 system when he tried out Doom (a game that requires a 386, FAR inferior to that 486) he made the decision to go with a Pentium 90. Looking at system requirements won't do anything for you. Playing newer games that only require a 200-300mhz processor such as Alice, Serious Sam, No one Lives forever, or Mechwarrior 4 only requires a certain type/speed of a processor, but to make them run well (read high framerate), then you're going to need something quite a bit faster.
When you're using a Pentium II 350, a GeForce2 will be a nice boost (depending on the existing video processor you just replaced), but it won't give nearly the boost that it would if you had a faster processor...so just slapping in a video card really isn't the answer.
There are plenty of apps out there that will stress this guys system, but looking at system requirements ain't gonna show him jack. We all know that the new DOOM game is going to rock everyone's world and be that killer app, but until then, don't say there isn't anything comparable...because there's lots out there.
Logic Bomb seems to be under the impression that The speed of sound is 1000mph. It's more like 730-750mph last time I checked.... Mach 7 is 5000 mph, not Mach 5.
The mph speeds are correct as stated, but all of the mach speeds are off. The SR-71 does go 2100mph, but thats nearly Mach 3, not Mach 2.1. And the new craft in question which will go 5000mph is Mach 7, not 5.
Just nitpicking here folks, but someone should clarify this....
Suprisingly as it might seem, Microsoft isn't on the evil side of this autoupdate feature--yet. (What WinXP has in store for us may change that). The service pack, as well as all of the other addons that are traditionally installed via network-download (aka Active Setup) are able to be downloaded and saved from the MS Windows 2000 page (it states it as network administrator download, just because they figure they'd be the only ones using it), which easily allows for download and then offline installation.
WMP7 and MP6 both store their info as basic Windows codecs. WMP comes with a better selection than MP6 did though.
However...WMP will not phone home without your consent if you dont' want it to. Just change the options in the WMP Options menu for autoupdates and codec downloads. Very easy.
However, I like your idea about RealPlayer. I'd go all the way back to 4.0 if I could, before they adopted the nonstandard interface that always seems to slow things down. For me, I just always disabled their *barf* SmartCenter "feature" and run it in small mode so I don't have to deal with the crap.
I have to admit that hearing of ReplayTV disabling features is pretty sorry, and definitely makes for just cause to complain about the "autoupdate" features that have begun to appear in just about everything these days.
But a better example would be of one of the oldest and best Intant Messengers, ICQ. I've been using ICQ since 1996 now, and although people constantly have complained about the "feature bloat" that seems to find its way into each new revision, I've stuck through it, because that "bloat" has been merely surface deep in my opinion with the option of being disabled once I found my way deeper into the preferences.
But I returned from Spring Break three weeks ago to find that ICQ's new "autoupdate" feature (which it doesn't give you the option to enable or disable) had added advertisements to all of my ICQ windows. (This is with ICQ 2000a/b for Win32) I was horrified...how dare they change the way my program works without even consulting me? They could also be sending my personal information up to ICQ for their advertising purposes....the bastards! --Somehow I can't help but think that it's all AOL's fault for buying ICQ in the first place.
Thankfully, a few hacks and tweaks later, I was able to kill the damned advertisements (you can read how to do it from my site here, although various programs and utilities for doing the same duties have recently popped up). But although the autoupdate feature is now disabled, I am very disconcerted by the possibility that this will begin to happen in other software.
Will Netscape/Mozilla soon be autoupdating itself with advertisements and Spam to appear in the titlebar? We all know what RealPlayer already does...so what happens if they decide to autoupdate us all to no more media player (the media player only makes up 10% of a RealPLayer window anyway) and just make the whole thing one large advertisement?
We need to band together to send these companies a message that this kind of treatment will not be tolerated. We should not and will not sit by and allow companies to take control of our software from us. How should we go about doing this? Any ideas?
Let's band together...and prevent further atrocities like ICQ and ReplayTV from continuing.
This looks like the type of thing that would warrant companies such as NVIDIA to expand into PDA/Handheld 3D graphics acceleration. I would love to be able to render something while I'm sitting on a bus or play a little Tux-racer while I'm in the middle of a boring lecture.
Because Nintendo doesn't care about its old standby, Mario anymore. Nintendo's biggest problem is that it has become a company which will seemingly only cater to the execessively young, and when the GameCube comes out, I'll bet 10-1 the game it ships with won't be any Mario game, but a Pokemon game.
The crucial mistake here is that Nintendo doesn't understand that while it can lead the pack with the Gameboy, its because the Gameboy costs $50-70 and parents won't have a problem buying it and the 10,000 Pokemon games that float around for it. Consoles, especially these days, need to be aimed a little higher towards teenagers & young adults, because they cost so much. A parent isn't going to buy a $300 game system and pay another $300 on all the Pokemon games, especially when they can't enjoy it at all themselves.
Nintendo is going to die a horrible death when it discovers its biggest franchise go out of style in about 9 months, and then all the money spent on special edition Gameboys, games, and addonpacks that do nothing but feature Pokemon colors and characters. And I will look forward to it.
The ball is in Microsoft's court, unfortunately. If MS can pull off a system that is better looking and most importantly better playing than the Playstation2, then the X-box has a chance. Perhaps Sony will pull something nice from under its hat with some really good must-have games...but for now, the console market languishes. The rest of us will just wait patiently for Doom3.:-)
On your Windows test, you should have used either Cinemaster(on an ATI Chipset, using ATI DVD player) or PowerDVD (2.55+, 3.0 preferably), because those two players are well known to provide the highest support and the best picture on the Wintel platform. They're both software players, and should provide more than equal performance to the Apple G4, especially if you're matching the technology (i.e., using a ATI Rage128 or Radeon chipset with ATI DVD, which is what the G4 uses). Your results would probably hold up better on the x86 side then.
Otherwise....those Mitsubishi monitors are nice aren't they? I picked up one of those Diamond Pro 200's myself about nine months ago...I love it:)
The article states that they are striving for a 10,000 hour screen life for the display.. Doesn't this seem a little short to anyone? Unless they are going for a disposable product, a 10,000 hour life would barely last 2 years, depending on how much you use the screen. (If you use it 24/7 it will last a little over a year with that life)
For a product that is to be most certainly more expensive than LCDs when they come out, you'd think they would be a little more long lasting. I really don't feel like spending $5000 on a product that I will have to scrap in a year, we already have enough of those(e.g., the box sitting under my desk).
-Julius X
Re:So when is /. going to get a decent design?
on
Freshmeat II
·
· Score: 2
Not a bad idea....I have been wondering for a VERY long time when/. would get its first real design upgrade.
Not to say the current design looks bad....they never do while they're in place. But its definitely true that the design could use a nice (if subtle) overhaul.
It's really interesting when you look at older designs/designed pages from 96-97 and compare them to now....very noticable. Even nostalgic. But I would hate to feel that way about/., that saying that a site that thrives on the latest happenings of the geek community is "nostalgic" of a site designed in the "late 90's".
Oh well...whatever happens, I'll probably still read the site.:)
Where have you been? The Unreal engine does NOT have a 256x256 texture restriction...in fact was one of the first--if not THE first--game to use S3TC to support higher resolution textures two and a half years ago, right after the original Unreal came out. I'm sure a few of us can remember---I know I do--looking at those shots and going WOW! that's incredible. Besides that, the textures have always been 16 or 32-bit, because I remember at the time, the competition, Quake 2, had the 8bit pallette restriction on textures, which is what caused the game to have the brownish tinge that it did...but Unreal definitely did not.
The engine may have its difficulties (the older Glide issue is one of them, which some say has been solved)...but texture restrictions were NEVER one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
The article itself was fairly decent although well written, although I could make a comment or two about taking your photographs at an angle so you don't get your silly reflection in there...
The only thing that kept catching my mind was the guy's constant banter about their not being a backlight. He tried to make it easier by saying that it increases battery life, which it of course does...but he's missing the point that the Game Boy in any form has NEVER had a backlight. So all of his complaining about not being able to play in certain venues certainly hasn't stopped anyone in the last ten years, so I really doubt that its something worth mentioning.
Maybe he was a Game Gear player or a Lynx player (I had a Game Gear)...but between me and you, not having a backlight suits me just fine. Now only if Palm would use that reflective-TFT in their color displays...then we could finally use them outside!
-Julius X
Power supplys aren't that expensive...a brand new ATX 300W power supply runs about $60 I think---an older one for a P166 should be much cheaper.
-Julius X
What does this say about kids?
--The very fact that they need this kind of supervision says something. I'm not for one believing that the media & games are responsible for more violence in schools today, just worse parenting. No--I'm not calling everyone out there bad parents, just on the average, I'd bet that parents spend a lot less time with their children today than they did 15, 20, or even 40 years ago.
Children need guidance. Without guidance, things become chaotic. I don't know what else to call what's been going on in schools the last few years besides chaotic.Hopefully this will change, eventually.
-Julius X
Gee, I thought it was "Hey y'all, watch thee-is!"
-Julius X
I'm not sue whether or not its the process that was used to take them or the way that they were scanned, but I can't help but marvel at the clarity and quality of these images.
Black & White film has always been shown to be able to produce higher contrast and sharpness than color images, and I can't help but wonder if using this kind of process isn't a better method of producing color photographs than what we traditionally use. But these images are just so clear and so lifelike that I can't help but wonder. (and if this process was used today, we could most likely eliminate the "artifacts" in color-shifting that others have noted by making the simultanous lenses much closer together)
But even if it was just the scanning process, I have to say these images are still incredible..just to be able to see this time in history in such vibrant realism, is incredible.
-Julius X
But as much flak as MS has caught for Windows, I don't think I could ever use an AOL OS. I would never want to, either.
I read the memo with one of two things on my mind...a)AOL could try this and fail *one good thing*, b)it could be fake so we won't have to worry about it *another good thing*, or c)It's the truth, and they succeed *then we'd all be screwed*
It's one thing to be using some AOL software (Winamp, Netscape, ICQ, or even AIM), but I will not allow AOL to control my desktop or my operating system. (And no, AOL doesn't already, because any such options that the software tries to put on I disable immediately)
This is one occasion that I'm wishing MS to win.
-Julius X
I believe the IIIc (and the m505) is what he was referring to. All color Palms thus far have used active-matrix displays, so they look like crap outside.
This one, however uses a reflective (or transflective as you called it) display, similar to the Game Boy Color, which will be wonderful for use anywhere.
-Julius X
We still have Voodoo Extreme, which has somehow survived most of this. It's on UGO now, which while it has had problems and probably will eventually go under as well too, Billy Wilson isn't one to give up without a fight. It's been pretty widely reported(or rumored?) that he and the rest of the VE crew have been trying to take the site independent.
/. are around, I'll be happy.
In my opinion, its one of the best sources for gaming news, and has been for a very long time. So as long as VE &
-Julius X
I haven't seen any previews or anything....are they even publicizing this one?
-Julius X
I could be mistaken here....but I know I pay nearly $40 a month for my cable service (I know others pay much more in some areas), and at least a small part of that goes back to the channels that broadcast the programming, and some part of that goes back to the networks that air them. Therefore, whether or not you are watching commercials is largely irrelevent, because the networks are still getting their funds.
And let's not forget that it's the advertisers that pay the networks. No matter what, a superbowl commercial will still cost $1million for 30seconds, because they know people will watch them. People will always be watching events live, even if it isn't quite as often as it always has been, and as they do so, they'll be watching the commercials with them.
-Julius X
The show is apparently been airing continuously in Australia since 1985, and is in its 15th season (or "series" as everyone there calls it). The website has information about it here:
http://www.beyond2000.com/show/index.html
-Julius X
Yeah, I used to watch that show all the time as well. When they went to doing "The Next Step" later in the 90's, the co-creator of the show went on to host CNET Central, which went off the air a couple years ago. He's still doing News.com broadcasts on CNBC, but as far as I know, Beyond2000 and Next Step went off the air completely some time ago. I was shocked to see that they still have a website up.
-Julius X
...as I've had absolutely no problem with the "need" to keep up with the latest hardware. The author of the story went through and looked at a selection of games, a _very_ small selection of games, and found two with system requirements close to his system. Then apparently he didn't buy them because he mentioned that they would most likely run fine on his system. His error is in not trying.
The author himself mentioned that while he had a 486/66 system when he tried out Doom (a game that requires a 386, FAR inferior to that 486) he made the decision to go with a Pentium 90. Looking at system requirements won't do anything for you. Playing newer games that only require a 200-300mhz processor such as Alice, Serious Sam, No one Lives forever, or Mechwarrior 4 only requires a certain type/speed of a processor, but to make them run well (read high framerate), then you're going to need something quite a bit faster.
When you're using a Pentium II 350, a GeForce2 will be a nice boost (depending on the existing video processor you just replaced), but it won't give nearly the boost that it would if you had a faster processor...so just slapping in a video card really isn't the answer.
There are plenty of apps out there that will stress this guys system, but looking at system requirements ain't gonna show him jack. We all know that the new DOOM game is going to rock everyone's world and be that killer app, but until then, don't say there isn't anything comparable...because there's lots out there.
-Julius X
Logic Bomb seems to be under the impression that The speed of sound is 1000mph. It's more like 730-750mph last time I checked.... Mach 7 is 5000 mph, not Mach 5.
The mph speeds are correct as stated, but all of the mach speeds are off. The SR-71 does go 2100mph, but thats nearly Mach 3, not Mach 2.1. And the new craft in question which will go 5000mph is Mach 7, not 5.
Just nitpicking here folks, but someone should clarify this....
-Julius X
Since no one has posted it yet....this could be useful.
http://www.teleportec.com/
They've got flash and nonflash versions...Let's hope they can handle being Slashdotted!
-Julius X
Geoff,
Suprisingly as it might seem, Microsoft isn't on the evil side of this autoupdate feature--yet. (What WinXP has in store for us may change that). The service pack, as well as all of the other addons that are traditionally installed via network-download (aka Active Setup) are able to be downloaded and saved from the MS Windows 2000 page (it states it as network administrator download, just because they figure they'd be the only ones using it), which easily allows for download and then offline installation.
-Julius X
WMP7 and MP6 both store their info as basic Windows codecs. WMP comes with a better selection than MP6 did though.
However...WMP will not phone home without your consent if you dont' want it to. Just change the options in the WMP Options menu for autoupdates and codec downloads. Very easy.
However, I like your idea about RealPlayer. I'd go all the way back to 4.0 if I could, before they adopted the nonstandard interface that always seems to slow things down. For me, I just always disabled their *barf* SmartCenter "feature" and run it in small mode so I don't have to deal with the crap.
-Julius X
I have to admit that hearing of ReplayTV disabling features is pretty sorry, and definitely makes for just cause to complain about the "autoupdate" features that have begun to appear in just about everything these days.
But a better example would be of one of the oldest and best Intant Messengers, ICQ. I've been using ICQ since 1996 now, and although people constantly have complained about the "feature bloat" that seems to find its way into each new revision, I've stuck through it, because that "bloat" has been merely surface deep in my opinion with the option of being disabled once I found my way deeper into the preferences.
But I returned from Spring Break three weeks ago to find that ICQ's new "autoupdate" feature (which it doesn't give you the option to enable or disable) had added advertisements to all of my ICQ windows. (This is with ICQ 2000a/b for Win32) I was horrified...how dare they change the way my program works without even consulting me? They could also be sending my personal information up to ICQ for their advertising purposes....the bastards! --Somehow I can't help but think that it's all AOL's fault for buying ICQ in the first place.
Thankfully, a few hacks and tweaks later, I was able to kill the damned advertisements (you can read how to do it from my site here, although various programs and utilities for doing the same duties have recently popped up). But although the autoupdate feature is now disabled, I am very disconcerted by the possibility that this will begin to happen in other software.
Will Netscape/Mozilla soon be autoupdating itself with advertisements and Spam to appear in the titlebar? We all know what RealPlayer already does...so what happens if they decide to autoupdate us all to no more media player (the media player only makes up 10% of a RealPLayer window anyway) and just make the whole thing one large advertisement?
We need to band together to send these companies a message that this kind of treatment will not be tolerated. We should not and will not sit by and allow companies to take control of our software from us. How should we go about doing this? Any ideas?
Let's band together...and prevent further atrocities like ICQ and ReplayTV from continuing.
-Julius X
This looks like the type of thing that would warrant companies such as NVIDIA to expand into PDA/Handheld 3D graphics acceleration. I would love to be able to render something while I'm sitting on a bus or play a little Tux-racer while I'm in the middle of a boring lecture.
Bring on the GeForce3Go!
-Julius X
Because Nintendo doesn't care about its old standby, Mario anymore. Nintendo's biggest problem is that it has become a company which will seemingly only cater to the execessively young, and when the GameCube comes out, I'll bet 10-1 the game it ships with won't be any Mario game, but a Pokemon game.
:-)
The crucial mistake here is that Nintendo doesn't understand that while it can lead the pack with the Gameboy, its because the Gameboy costs $50-70 and parents won't have a problem buying it and the 10,000 Pokemon games that float around for it. Consoles, especially these days, need to be aimed a little higher towards teenagers & young adults, because they cost so much. A parent isn't going to buy a $300 game system and pay another $300 on all the Pokemon games, especially when they can't enjoy it at all themselves.
Nintendo is going to die a horrible death when it discovers its biggest franchise go out of style in about 9 months, and then all the money spent on special edition Gameboys, games, and addonpacks that do nothing but feature Pokemon colors and characters. And I will look forward to it.
The ball is in Microsoft's court, unfortunately. If MS can pull off a system that is better looking and most importantly better playing than the Playstation2, then the X-box has a chance. Perhaps Sony will pull something nice from under its hat with some really good must-have games...but for now, the console market languishes. The rest of us will just wait patiently for Doom3.
-Julius X
On your Windows test, you should have used either Cinemaster(on an ATI Chipset, using ATI DVD player) or PowerDVD (2.55+, 3.0 preferably), because those two players are well known to provide the highest support and the best picture on the Wintel platform. They're both software players, and should provide more than equal performance to the Apple G4, especially if you're matching the technology (i.e., using a ATI Rage128 or Radeon chipset with ATI DVD, which is what the G4 uses). Your results would probably hold up better on the x86 side then.
:)
Otherwise....those Mitsubishi monitors are nice aren't they? I picked up one of those Diamond Pro 200's myself about nine months ago...I love it
-Julius X
For those who are interested:
IGN Filmforce posted some pictures a few months ago of the work being done by Foundation Imaging for the TMP special edition:
The new CGI Enterprise model.
And another article featuring the CGI fixes done to the scene on planet Vulcan.
Overall this looks like it will be pretty interesting...I can't wait to see it.
-Julius X
The article states that they are striving for a 10,000 hour screen life for the display.. Doesn't this seem a little short to anyone? Unless they are going for a disposable product, a 10,000 hour life would barely last 2 years, depending on how much you use the screen. (If you use it 24/7 it will last a little over a year with that life)
For a product that is to be most certainly more expensive than LCDs when they come out, you'd think they would be a little more long lasting. I really don't feel like spending $5000 on a product that I will have to scrap in a year, we already have enough of those(e.g., the box sitting under my desk).
-Julius X
Not a bad idea....I have been wondering for a VERY long time when /. would get its first real design upgrade.
/., that saying that a site that thrives on the latest happenings of the geek community is "nostalgic" of a site designed in the "late 90's".
:)
Not to say the current design looks bad....they never do while they're in place. But its definitely true that the design could use a nice (if subtle) overhaul.
It's really interesting when you look at older designs/designed pages from 96-97 and compare them to now....very noticable. Even nostalgic. But I would hate to feel that way about
Oh well...whatever happens, I'll probably still read the site.
-Julius X
Where have you been? The Unreal engine does NOT have a 256x256 texture restriction...in fact was one of the first--if not THE first--game to use S3TC to support higher resolution textures two and a half years ago, right after the original Unreal came out. I'm sure a few of us can remember---I know I do--looking at those shots and going WOW! that's incredible. Besides that, the textures have always been 16 or 32-bit, because I remember at the time, the competition, Quake 2, had the 8bit pallette restriction on textures, which is what caused the game to have the brownish tinge that it did...but Unreal definitely did not.
The engine may have its difficulties (the older Glide issue is one of them, which some say has been solved)...but texture restrictions were NEVER one of them.
Next time, you may want to check your history...
-Julius X