A little offtopic here, but a little anecdote. I was sorting through some old floppies and managed to find my backup of Keen.
Yes, I actually registered and got Keens 2 & 3.
Well, to bring back the nostalgia, I fired it up, without even thinking about needing to run moslo or something similar to cut the 400MHz down a few notches. Guess what folks, it ran just like on my 386. Smooth as butter and not even a touch of mad-crack-induced speed that most old games tend to get when I run them. THAT is nice work;)
So now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to driving everyone insane with the weird noises from my PC as I go prove that Mr. 314 is still damn good.
I've noticed that Carmack has mentioned the 'texture painting' idea a few times. However, each time he's made sure to point out that he's not so sure the benefits of totally unique textures outweigh the hell it would take to get them.
Not only would bitchy driver issues need to be solved, but as he stated, you'd need a much larger artist staff to be able to actually do that sort of thing. That's not something he wants, it'd create a large enough group of people that politics, yes even at id, would begin to come into play. It'd get in the way of coding, which as people have so eloquently put it before, is Carmack's religion.
I do agree with the idea that Carmack has a lot of new ideas for rendering. Realtime shadows is one, but if you want a few more ideas, just go check out his.plan archive. Hell, maybe once again Father Carmack is gonna push the industry, which.. as Not Good as that is (the fact that we need Carmack to kick industry ass into doing common sense), I suppose some advance is better than no advance.
I don't think Carmack wants to make a followup to quake III. He's stated for a long time before it was even close to finished that There will be no quake 4. I can't even pretend to have any idea of what's going on inside id, or his head. I'm pretty sure at some point here, he'll let us know here.
5,237,157 - Kiosk apparatus and method for point of preview and for compilation of market data (pertains to their iStation device)
5,963,916 - Network apparatus and method for preview of music products and compilation of market data (pertains to www.worldwidemusic.com)
From their webpage: Intouch owns copyrights in its database of musical selections, including rights to the entire compilation and the edit points for the specific tracks. Intouch is also the owner of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,237,157 and 5,963,916 directed to interactive music sampling combined with a subscriber code. Intouch has also filed a continuation in part application directed to online sampling. Intouch believes that web sites allowing customers to sample music after logging on will be covered by U.S. patent 5,963,916
Before all of you start waxing about poetic justice (too late), go read the article, or check Intouch's site. You'll note that link is straight to the particular product that holds the patents that they claim are being violated.
Redundant summary for the billions of you too lazy to read the article:
According to the CNet article they got one patent back in 1993 and another in 1999. They feel sites such as Amazon.com, Liquid Audio, Discover.music.com, and more have violated this patent repeatedly and are stealing their market share.
The particular product that's being abused is the iStation (a name as original as the patent) that allows customers at a CD store to listen to music online. Note the database is accessible only from the CD store, not to the common internet surfer.
This suit has no relevance in my opinion, because the audiences are completely different. It seems as if InTouch is suggesting that all online music-samples should come from their database.
This isn't poetic, this is far lower and more frivolous than Amazon's One-Click patent.
They've got a number of their works under the Aardman Observer section including Creature Comforts, one about a rambling old man's war story, and too many more.
You are given the choice of high or low bandwidth Real Media G2, or Windows Media.
Rant: while aardman's great animation, is it really slashdot news?
A lot of people miss decent skins if they can't find something good within the first 5 minutes.
I'm using Windowblinds myself, the Elegant 2000 theme. The buttons/menu headings are inside button pictures that are brighter than the rest of the grey interface and thus are easy to recognize. The titlebar of the window has the same three buttons w/ extremely similar icons. The new items are on the left of the titlebar, those being a pushpin icon to force the window to always stay on top and a windowshade mode icon. The title of the window is centered and in yellow text over navy blue, making it easily noticeable.
The theme doesn't break conformity from the OS, it only slightly changes the feel of the windows and buttons (and scrollbars if you are so lucky). The added functionality (which I'm extremely thankful for) does not replace any of the current standard stuff, it is instead added in a place where there's normally nothing to clearly show there is something different.
I've had my parents use my computer with ease and they knew right away what the new buttons meant. I didn't have to explain it to them nor are they fantastically proficient (my mom still "uses the e-mail"). My mom really liked the ability to stamp down IM conversations with the rest of the family while she was writing e-mail.
This is an example of skinning done RIGHT. All the other crap is what you put up with to get stuff like this.
There is no reason to bitch about skins. The thing to bitch about is poor UI design.
The average user wouldn't know what the hell I meant by "skinned app." If you're going to get into skins, you probably know enough about computers to not get terribly frightened when suddenly the 'look' of your program changes.
If there's anything that can be rightfully bitched about it's poor design in the default interface. We Geeks may know enough to get a better interface/skin, but the average user may not. If the default breaks consistency, the average use is stuck with a crappy UI. (example: Sonique though cool looking isn't rectangular in it's default start-up state; they make up for this in coolness and still putting the X in the top-right)
The ability to change the interface/shape of the app is a little worse, cause things will have both moved and changed looks when you change a skin (eg: Sonique, K-Jofol), so even a Geek will get lost from time to time. It's a hazard we put up with.
The biggest advantage to skins/shape changes is they allow you to update the interface about as easily as you update the program. If I release an app that's got full skin/theme/shape support and my design is royally crappy, I can shift stuff around based on user feedback really easily. It's almost like the OOP applied to UI design.
Computers are fast becoming the multi-purpose appliance of today. They are the typewriter, the fax, the e-mail, the internet, the jukebox, etc. If you look at all of those equivalents in real life you will find totally different designs. I see no reason why this can't be in a computer. The best design of all would be to make the computer totally transparent to the user, but that is a far way off.
So.. do not bitch to me about how skins are the downfall of useability. It's just the fact that we're entering a period where computers are used by everyone, not just those of us willing to 'train.' Programs are still being programmed and designed by programmers, not UI experts and designers. Hell, the easiest way to remedy this is to make it as easy as possible for the aforementioned to change stuff about the app and move it around and.. hey! Isn't that what skinning is?
Ever wonder how it is that B5 always seems so crowded? It's not cause they had the money to hire all those extras and makeup for them...
Also, a TON of the scenery was CG/enhanced.
The raw space battles may have seemed a little flat or too plasticy I agree, but they were good enough for suspension of disbelief, and as has been mentioned, were done on a tight budget. B5 was to tv shows what Episode One was to films (on the technical merits of their production that is...)
God when I first saw him I immediately thought of his role in star trek. By the end of the epispode I was ready to rip this guy to shreds... that takes skill;)
At the same time, somehow he managed to almost make me feel sorry for him at times, and he son become more than just the one dimensional character.
And who can forget the whole 'psi-corps spy' affair!? Phew....
This is the one show that I got hooked on religiously. I have none of the extra paraphenalia nor have I tried to extend its universe. I just found it to be a damn good show, one that was (pardon the fanaticism) extremely well written with intertwining plots and a human race that seemed believable.
This was the first show I saw where I felt the politics were believable. Most of the star treks always felt like they assumed that going into space would unite humanity. Babylon 5 went with the idea that... 'ooo, space' and life moved on. Perhaps it felt believable because that world was as cynical as the one I live in today, but I really got lost in the show when it came on.
Since I know we're all going to start mentioning favorite episodes, let me submit mine. I think it was called "The Deconstruction of a Star" but that doesn't seem right. In any case it right after the new alliance was created and everything seemed alright.. so this one episode sidetracked and stepped ahead into the future at different intervals. I don't remember all of it, but I know it showed the alliance after sheridan's death, a new 1984ish government complete with its brand of newspeak attempting to change history, and even a race of people without technology following a religion that worshipped sheridan and the alliance.
You can bet that 7:00pm is now booked solid from now on for me.
Personally I think this is jumping the gun. As experts have said, this really isn't for ppl who don't know what they're doing and they can even have more adverse effects than usual. Wireless networking period needs to become better implemented before this starts gaining much momentum.
Kinda funny PVP's strip (today/yesterday depending on when you read this) just covered this.. though oddly enough, going with the rumour that she wasn't Lara croft.
I think Chuck D's blind enthusiasm while nice isn't the right attitude. He's been talking about digital music the whole time, but so far the visions that he's talked about have yet to come. Blame it on the record companies attempts to slow digital music's evolution if you want, but it could also be because that's just not going to happen.
The biggest problem with digital music aside from artists getting payment, is that it's damn hard to get recognition. Take mp3.com. The top 10 charts rarely change because they are based upon dl's, and they're also not even close to accurate of the quality. Getting on those is hard, and mp3.com recognized this and now offers payola where you pay money to put your tracks alongside those top10 tracks. How many DL's you think that's gonna get? A bandname and songname suddenly become really tough to choose, because that's all a listener will base their choice on for even visiting the page of the artist.
Digital music has indeed opened the floodgates, so much so that it's the equivalent of sticking a firehose in your mouth and opening the valve. It's damn near impossible to discern the good from the bad. So what's going to arise? Review sites may pop up, ditto for radio sites, but they're just as inundated as us. You watch, soon after the 'revolution' there will be big promoting labels pulling evil trickery all over again.
I'm glad Chuck D loves digital media. I just wish he'd figure out the best way to make it work for the consumer and the artist, because right now I don't think we have that perfect 'good artists get recognition' liquidity that's needed. Sheer volume is preventing that.
From the challenge site: "There are two Challenge Levels: Level I, comprising a 109-bit and a 131-bit challenge; and Level II, comprising 163-bit, 191-bit, 239-bit and 359-bit challenges. The 109-bit challenges are considered feasible and could be solved within a few months, while the 131-bit challenges will require significantly more resources to solve. All Level II challenges are believed to be computationally infeasible."
Maybe I'm a fool but I could not notice on the page which of these "levels" was solved. I think that's kindof an important distinction to make.
...was awful, terrible, and not worth the FF name. The graphics were half-ass, the music was.. okay.. the story was just not there, and it lasted for about 3 seconds. I agree, this was a bastard spin off but the official roots of it I cannot remember.
Yeah, you beat me to FFA, I own that. Not the greatest either, but it's decent. Gee, so I guess it's somewhat well known that Secret of Mana wasn't the first in its series.. drat, no more specialness for me;)
Seiken Detsu 3... shoot me for asking this cause my memory is rusty but is that in any way related to Bahamut Lagoon or is it just that they were put out at about the same time that's confusing me. In any case, looks like it's time to get in touch w/ my SNES;)
Fscking FF 1 & 2 were for the NES, not the PSX. As I recall it goes something like... Japan - 1 Japan - 2 (US - 1, NES) Japan - 3 Japan - 4 Japan - 5(US - 2, SNES) Japan - 6(US - 3, SNES) Then finally 7 & 8 PSX.
To sound all olsk00lish or something... FF3(us) and Chrono Trigger still beat all hands down;)
Redundant, but face it, this is huge. No matter what happens, this is day that will be remembered in history. It'll be referred to just like AT&T has been referred to in this case. The question is, what monopoly are we going to be talking about then?
One wonders why it is that illegal stuff is the "primary" purpose of these systems (which I agree, it is). My theory: the demand for legal stuff is higher than anything else.
I mean, in a perfect world, I think it would be great if the latest patches for X software, or the latest Y documents were easily accessible, but for the most part, it's not necessary. You don't NEED gnutella to get the latest distro of you favorite flavor of OS. FTP searching generally will suffice, and odds are FTP's aren't going to be highly over-crowded. You don't NEED gnutella to get the latest issue of Info Weekly, it's easy enough to get it from their webserver.
Really, gnutella and napster arose out of the need to get illegal stuff. This is stuff that probably isn't going to live long if it had a well known central distribution center. This is stuff that is therefore hosted on smaller, overcrowded, hard to access FTP or HTTP sites. Work is still required. So then this new distributed idea is formed, it's basically the idea of the 'underground' taken a little further.. people trading mp3's with whomever they want.
You see, Napster and Gnutella and whatever else were made because it's still hard to get the illegal stuff. Like I said, getting the latest patches and magazines or what not has become amazingly easy lately. Yes, it should be hard to get the illegal stuff, but that's still not going to stop us from making it easier to get it (either warez people, or people who are interested in seeing how a distributed thing like this could work, which I respect)
So, really, the reason you find mostly illegal stuff on these guys is because that's all they're good for. If you have other, easy ways of getting legal stuff, why bother putting it up here? I think it's a shame, cause the convenience could be great and could maybe even in the future help slashdot effect-type scenarios. However, I fear that because of the aforementioned arguement, it will either take a while, or get shut down.
Note I've not read the article and never heard of the service. It's just as easy to go elsewhere, and if they are going to stop people from using their service, well.. they're going to lose that audience then. Advertisers might notice that....
Honestly though, a service not many people have heard of (judging by the comments I've read so far), and easily duplicable by whatever IRC nets already out there.. why was this newsworthy? Oh, you mean cause they excluded linux? Heavens no!!! It can't be!!! Seems to me if you're using linux you're more inclined to use straight IRC anyway...
First off, the headline, as is the trend these days, is not entirely accurate:
"After a foray with thin clients using Sun Microsystems' Java software and then the Linux operating system, Wyse has settled on a special versions of Microsoft Windows or its own operating system."
I have to agree with Wyse's move here. It's a chicken vs egg thing once again, folks. In business, unless you have the muscle, you don't want to be the egg waiting for chickens to come along, which is where Wyse was standing. Linux on a thin client is the way to go, I'd be preaching to the choir if I had to explain why; however support for it is still not there ("didn't have adequate support from companies that made bar-code readers, scanners, printers and other hardware with which the thin clients had to be able to communicate.").
What we're seeing is a company using Windows products because the software is already there. Had they stayed with Linux, they would have had to do some heavy work to get the software. I think (hope anyway) that yes, they will come crawling back. But they're not going to come crawling back, they'll come back when the market exists and it makes sense (read "profit") for them to come back. Chicken and egg:P
Oh come on now, how did this one not make the list? I know a ton of computer literate people who thought this was completely true.
A company called Aureate is using secret spy software on your computer. You'll know you have it if you find any of the following DLL's on your computer. You'll also most likely have it if you installed the following list of programs.
Not one person I've talked to about this laughed when they got it. Nooooo. They checked to see if any of their programs were on the list (CuteFTP, GoZilla usually did it for them). Then they checked to see if they had the DLL's. Then the more knowledgeable ones check their registry for the 'spy' keys. Then they started religiously monitoring netstat to check what connections were taking place.
Heck, one guy was about ready to break it all open and start checking the contents of his packets! That's when I couldn't hold it in any longer and just started laughing and laughing.
What makes this one good is it hasn't gotten mass exposure and thus mass dis-proof. We all know about Good Times, cause The Public knows about it. Most of the public wouldn't care what the hell the Aureate scam is, PointClick's actions seem to show that. As such, geeks are taken for a nice little ride.
- Hollywood continues to amaze me at how hard they can pat themselves on the back. I mean really, I thought they damn near broke their arm off last time, but oh... oh no. Because of one kid's fantastic job in a movie this year, we got to see other fantastic kids in other movies in other years. There must have been about an hour and a half of this useless junk.
- Roberto Beninni should host the oscars. You'd never know what was coming next. He was just as excited to stand up there giving an award as he was receiving it.
- Spielberg. Just get on, and say here are the nominees.. oh damn! Smile! I knew I forgot something!
- Blame Canada was given the full treatment, I was pretty impressed. They went at it full force (even though it was ironically censored at points).
- Warren Beaty... please, next time you have to make a speech, have some of whatever Roberto's drinking.
- Billy Crystal... yeah, you were funny... the first time. The parodies were lacking this year, although the opening songs weren't bad.
- Was it just me or did it look like Sean Penn was praying come time for the best actor award. Dude, look around you... you actually think you had that much of a chance?
- Tommy Lee Jones is waaay cooler. He at least knows when to get a haircut.
All in all I liked the choices they made for oscars, but the show was so obviously bloated and forced, it set a new low.
If TheBench.org is ever going to live, it needs a voting/moderation system. Honestly, those strips either really suck or are really funny. I don't think it would be too hard to have a simple funny/not funny poll on each page.
If The Bench is going to become a daily spot for me like Real Life, PvP, or its father, I NEED some way to sort through the.. 30-80 odd submissions a day is it?
Open Source only really works when everyone is striving at a common good, yes? The most successful open source projects (/. included) always have a central cabal or something leading the way. Right now all The Bench has is Gabe, Tycho, and their weekly pick for Sunday.
So Gabe, Tycho, if you guys are reading this (damn well better be)... you need a voting/moderation system on The Bench.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I actually registered and got Keens 2 & 3.
Well, to bring back the nostalgia, I fired it up, without even thinking about needing to run moslo or something similar to cut the 400MHz down a few notches. Guess what folks, it ran just like on my 386. Smooth as butter and not even a touch of mad-crack-induced speed that most old games tend to get when I run them. THAT is nice work ;)
So now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to driving everyone insane with the weird noises from my PC as I go prove that Mr. 314 is still damn good.
I've noticed that Carmack has mentioned the 'texture painting' idea a few times. However, each time he's made sure to point out that he's not so sure the benefits of totally unique textures outweigh the hell it would take to get them.
Not only would bitchy driver issues need to be solved, but as he stated, you'd need a much larger artist staff to be able to actually do that sort of thing. That's not something he wants, it'd create a large enough group of people that politics, yes even at id, would begin to come into play. It'd get in the way of coding, which as people have so eloquently put it before, is Carmack's religion.
I do agree with the idea that Carmack has a lot of new ideas for rendering. Realtime shadows is one, but if you want a few more ideas, just go check out his .plan archive. Hell, maybe once again Father Carmack is gonna push the industry, which.. as Not Good as that is (the fact that we need Carmack to kick industry ass into doing common sense), I suppose some advance is better than no advance.
I don't think Carmack wants to make a followup to quake III. He's stated for a long time before it was even close to finished that There will be no quake 4. I can't even pretend to have any idea of what's going on inside id, or his head. I'm pretty sure at some point here, he'll let us know here.
5,963,916 - Network apparatus and method for preview of music products and compilation of market data (pertains to www.worldwidemusic.com)
From their webpage:
Intouch owns copyrights in its database of musical selections, including rights to the entire compilation and the edit points for the specific tracks.
Intouch is also the owner of U.S. Patent Nos. 5,237,157 and 5,963,916 directed to interactive music sampling combined with a subscriber code. Intouch has also filed a continuation in part application directed to online sampling. Intouch believes that web sites allowing customers to sample music after logging on will be covered by U.S. patent 5,963,916
Before all of you start waxing about poetic justice (too late), go read the article, or check Intouch's site. You'll note that link is straight to the particular product that holds the patents that they claim are being violated.
Redundant summary for the billions of you too lazy to read the article:
According to the CNet article they got one patent back in 1993 and another in 1999. They feel sites such as Amazon.com, Liquid Audio, Discover.music.com, and more have violated this patent repeatedly and are stealing their market share.
The particular product that's being abused is the iStation (a name as original as the patent) that allows customers at a CD store to listen to music online. Note the database is accessible only from the CD store, not to the common internet surfer.
This suit has no relevance in my opinion, because the audiences are completely different. It seems as if InTouch is suggesting that all online music-samples should come from their database.
This isn't poetic, this is far lower and more frivolous than Amazon's One-Click patent.
They've got a number of their works under the Aardman Observer section including Creature Comforts, one about a rambling old man's war story, and too many more.
You are given the choice of high or low bandwidth Real Media G2, or Windows Media.
Rant: while aardman's great animation, is it really slashdot news?
I'm using Windowblinds myself, the Elegant 2000 theme. The buttons/menu headings are inside button pictures that are brighter than the rest of the grey interface and thus are easy to recognize. The titlebar of the window has the same three buttons w/ extremely similar icons. The new items are on the left of the titlebar, those being a pushpin icon to force the window to always stay on top and a windowshade mode icon. The title of the window is centered and in yellow text over navy blue, making it easily noticeable.
The theme doesn't break conformity from the OS, it only slightly changes the feel of the windows and buttons (and scrollbars if you are so lucky). The added functionality (which I'm extremely thankful for) does not replace any of the current standard stuff, it is instead added in a place where there's normally nothing to clearly show there is something different.
I've had my parents use my computer with ease and they knew right away what the new buttons meant. I didn't have to explain it to them nor are they fantastically proficient (my mom still "uses the e-mail"). My mom really liked the ability to stamp down IM conversations with the rest of the family while she was writing e-mail.
This is an example of skinning done RIGHT. All the other crap is what you put up with to get stuff like this.
There is no reason to bitch about skins. The thing to bitch about is poor UI design.
The average user wouldn't know what the hell I meant by "skinned app." If you're going to get into skins, you probably know enough about computers to not get terribly frightened when suddenly the 'look' of your program changes.
If there's anything that can be rightfully bitched about it's poor design in the default interface. We Geeks may know enough to get a better interface/skin, but the average user may not. If the default breaks consistency, the average use is stuck with a crappy UI. (example: Sonique though cool looking isn't rectangular in it's default start-up state; they make up for this in coolness and still putting the X in the top-right)
The ability to change the interface/shape of the app is a little worse, cause things will have both moved and changed looks when you change a skin (eg: Sonique, K-Jofol), so even a Geek will get lost from time to time. It's a hazard we put up with.
The biggest advantage to skins/shape changes is they allow you to update the interface about as easily as you update the program. If I release an app that's got full skin/theme/shape support and my design is royally crappy, I can shift stuff around based on user feedback really easily. It's almost like the OOP applied to UI design.
Computers are fast becoming the multi-purpose appliance of today. They are the typewriter, the fax, the e-mail, the internet, the jukebox, etc. If you look at all of those equivalents in real life you will find totally different designs. I see no reason why this can't be in a computer. The best design of all would be to make the computer totally transparent to the user, but that is a far way off.
So.. do not bitch to me about how skins are the downfall of useability. It's just the fact that we're entering a period where computers are used by everyone, not just those of us willing to 'train.' Programs are still being programmed and designed by programmers, not UI experts and designers. Hell, the easiest way to remedy this is to make it as easy as possible for the aforementioned to change stuff about the app and move it around and.. hey! Isn't that what skinning is?
Ever wonder how it is that B5 always seems so crowded? It's not cause they had the money to hire all those extras and makeup for them...
Also, a TON of the scenery was CG/enhanced.
The raw space battles may have seemed a little flat or too plasticy I agree, but they were good enough for suspension of disbelief, and as has been mentioned, were done on a tight budget. B5 was to tv shows what Episode One was to films (on the technical merits of their production that is...)
At the same time, somehow he managed to almost make me feel sorry for him at times, and he son become more than just the one dimensional character.
And who can forget the whole 'psi-corps spy' affair!? Phew....
This is the one show that I got hooked on religiously. I have none of the extra paraphenalia nor have I tried to extend its universe. I just found it to be a damn good show, one that was (pardon the fanaticism) extremely well written with intertwining plots and a human race that seemed believable.
This was the first show I saw where I felt the politics were believable. Most of the star treks always felt like they assumed that going into space would unite humanity. Babylon 5 went with the idea that... 'ooo, space' and life moved on. Perhaps it felt believable because that world was as cynical as the one I live in today, but I really got lost in the show when it came on.
Since I know we're all going to start mentioning favorite episodes, let me submit mine. I think it was called "The Deconstruction of a Star" but that doesn't seem right. In any case it right after the new alliance was created and everything seemed alright.. so this one episode sidetracked and stepped ahead into the future at different intervals. I don't remember all of it, but I know it showed the alliance after sheridan's death, a new 1984ish government complete with its brand of newspeak attempting to change history, and even a race of people without technology following a religion that worshipped sheridan and the alliance.
You can bet that 7:00pm is now booked solid from now on for me.
Personally I think this is jumping the gun. As experts have said, this really isn't for ppl who don't know what they're doing and they can even have more adverse effects than usual. Wireless networking period needs to become better implemented before this starts gaining much momentum.
Kinda funny PVP's strip (today/yesterday depending on when you read this) just covered this.. though oddly enough, going with the rumour that she wasn't Lara croft.
You can check it out here
I've got the impulse to run, pick up the rail, drop by the red armor, pick up a buddy or two, and go cap a flag. How about you?
The biggest problem with digital music aside from artists getting payment, is that it's damn hard to get recognition. Take mp3.com. The top 10 charts rarely change because they are based upon dl's, and they're also not even close to accurate of the quality. Getting on those is hard, and mp3.com recognized this and now offers payola where you pay money to put your tracks alongside those top10 tracks. How many DL's you think that's gonna get? A bandname and songname suddenly become really tough to choose, because that's all a listener will base their choice on for even visiting the page of the artist.
Digital music has indeed opened the floodgates, so much so that it's the equivalent of sticking a firehose in your mouth and opening the valve. It's damn near impossible to discern the good from the bad. So what's going to arise? Review sites may pop up, ditto for radio sites, but they're just as inundated as us. You watch, soon after the 'revolution' there will be big promoting labels pulling evil trickery all over again.
I'm glad Chuck D loves digital media. I just wish he'd figure out the best way to make it work for the consumer and the artist, because right now I don't think we have that perfect 'good artists get recognition' liquidity that's needed. Sheer volume is preventing that.
Of course, that's just my opinion....
Maybe I'm a fool but I could not notice on the page which of these "levels" was solved. I think that's kindof an important distinction to make.
...was awful, terrible, and not worth the FF name. The graphics were half-ass, the music was.. okay.. the story was just not there, and it lasted for about 3 seconds. I agree, this was a bastard spin off but the official roots of it I cannot remember.
Yeah, you beat me to FFA, I own that. Not the greatest either, but it's decent. Gee, so I guess it's somewhat well known that Secret of Mana wasn't the first in its series.. drat, no more specialness for me ;)
Seiken Detsu 3... shoot me for asking this cause my memory is rusty but is that in any way related to Bahamut Lagoon or is it just that they were put out at about the same time that's confusing me. In any case, looks like it's time to get in touch w/ my SNES ;)
Fscking FF 1 & 2 were for the NES, not the PSX.
;)
As I recall it goes something like...
Japan - 1
Japan - 2 (US - 1, NES)
Japan - 3
Japan - 4
Japan - 5(US - 2, SNES)
Japan - 6(US - 3, SNES)
Then finally 7 & 8 PSX.
To sound all olsk00lish or something... FF3(us) and Chrono Trigger still beat all hands down
Hey, what about a car payment plan... buy now, don't pay for a year! ;)
Redundant, but face it, this is huge. No matter what happens, this is day that will be remembered in history. It'll be referred to just like AT&T has been referred to in this case. The question is, what monopoly are we going to be talking about then?
One wonders why it is that illegal stuff is the "primary" purpose of these systems (which I agree, it is). My theory: the demand for legal stuff is higher than anything else.
I mean, in a perfect world, I think it would be great if the latest patches for X software, or the latest Y documents were easily accessible, but for the most part, it's not necessary. You don't NEED gnutella to get the latest distro of you favorite flavor of OS. FTP searching generally will suffice, and odds are FTP's aren't going to be highly over-crowded. You don't NEED gnutella to get the latest issue of Info Weekly, it's easy enough to get it from their webserver.
Really, gnutella and napster arose out of the need to get illegal stuff. This is stuff that probably isn't going to live long if it had a well known central distribution center. This is stuff that is therefore hosted on smaller, overcrowded, hard to access FTP or HTTP sites. Work is still required. So then this new distributed idea is formed, it's basically the idea of the 'underground' taken a little further.. people trading mp3's with whomever they want.
You see, Napster and Gnutella and whatever else were made because it's still hard to get the illegal stuff. Like I said, getting the latest patches and magazines or what not has become amazingly easy lately. Yes, it should be hard to get the illegal stuff, but that's still not going to stop us from making it easier to get it (either warez people, or people who are interested in seeing how a distributed thing like this could work, which I respect)
So, really, the reason you find mostly illegal stuff on these guys is because that's all they're good for. If you have other, easy ways of getting legal stuff, why bother putting it up here? I think it's a shame, cause the convenience could be great and could maybe even in the future help slashdot effect-type scenarios. However, I fear that because of the aforementioned arguement, it will either take a while, or get shut down.
At least.. that's my take on it....
Note I've not read the article and never heard of the service. It's just as easy to go elsewhere, and if they are going to stop people from using their service, well.. they're going to lose that audience then. Advertisers might notice that....
Honestly though, a service not many people have heard of (judging by the comments I've read so far), and easily duplicable by whatever IRC nets already out there.. why was this newsworthy? Oh, you mean cause they excluded linux? Heavens no!!! It can't be!!! Seems to me if you're using linux you're more inclined to use straight IRC anyway...
First off, the headline, as is the trend these days, is not entirely accurate:
"After a foray with thin clients using Sun Microsystems' Java software and then the Linux operating system, Wyse has settled on a special versions of Microsoft Windows or its own operating system."
I have to agree with Wyse's move here. It's a chicken vs egg thing once again, folks. In business, unless you have the muscle, you don't want to be the egg waiting for chickens to come along, which is where Wyse was standing. Linux on a thin client is the way to go, I'd be preaching to the choir if I had to explain why; however support for it is still not there ("didn't have adequate support from companies that made bar-code readers, scanners, printers and other hardware with which the thin clients had to be able to communicate.").
What we're seeing is a company using Windows products because the software is already there. Had they stayed with Linux, they would have had to do some heavy work to get the software. I think (hope anyway) that yes, they will come crawling back. But they're not going to come crawling back, they'll come back when the market exists and it makes sense (read "profit") for them to come back. Chicken and egg :P
A company called Aureate is using secret spy software on your computer. You'll know you have it if you find any of the following DLL's on your computer. You'll also most likely have it if you installed the following list of programs.
Not one person I've talked to about this laughed when they got it. Nooooo. They checked to see if any of their programs were on the list (CuteFTP, GoZilla usually did it for them). Then they checked to see if they had the DLL's. Then the more knowledgeable ones check their registry for the 'spy' keys. Then they started religiously monitoring netstat to check what connections were taking place.
Heck, one guy was about ready to break it all open and start checking the contents of his packets! That's when I couldn't hold it in any longer and just started laughing and laughing.
What makes this one good is it hasn't gotten mass exposure and thus mass dis-proof. We all know about Good Times, cause The Public knows about it. Most of the public wouldn't care what the hell the Aureate scam is, PointClick's actions seem to show that. As such, geeks are taken for a nice little ride.
- Hollywood continues to amaze me at how hard they can pat themselves on the back. I mean really, I thought they damn near broke their arm off last time, but oh... oh no. Because of one kid's fantastic job in a movie this year, we got to see other fantastic kids in other movies in other years. There must have been about an hour and a half of this useless junk.
- Roberto Beninni should host the oscars. You'd never know what was coming next. He was just as excited to stand up there giving an award as he was receiving it.
- Spielberg. Just get on, and say here are the nominees.. oh damn! Smile! I knew I forgot something!
- Blame Canada was given the full treatment, I was pretty impressed. They went at it full force (even though it was ironically censored at points).
- Warren Beaty... please, next time you have to make a speech, have some of whatever Roberto's drinking.
- Billy Crystal... yeah, you were funny... the first time. The parodies were lacking this year, although the opening songs weren't bad.
- Was it just me or did it look like Sean Penn was praying come time for the best actor award. Dude, look around you... you actually think you had that much of a chance?
- Tommy Lee Jones is waaay cooler. He at least knows when to get a haircut.
All in all I liked the choices they made for oscars, but the show was so obviously bloated and forced, it set a new low.
If The Bench is going to become a daily spot for me like Real Life, PvP, or its father, I NEED some way to sort through the.. 30-80 odd submissions a day is it?
Open Source only really works when everyone is striving at a common good, yes? The most successful open source projects (/. included) always have a central cabal or something leading the way. Right now all The Bench has is Gabe, Tycho, and their weekly pick for Sunday.
So Gabe, Tycho, if you guys are reading this (damn well better be)... you need a voting/moderation system on The Bench.