My friend's mom used to work at Midway. She gave us dozens of the those plastic signs that sat above the screen, you know the ones, as you're looking straight at the machine the thin ones up above the monitor...
I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. What signs?
and an 8MB card as Decimal craves is only about $15...
You missed the point completely. I said that I would settle for an 8 MB storage medium because a floppy-size disk could be sold CHEAP. For $15, I might as well buy a ZIP disk.
The floppy drive is quite possibly the one component inside a computer that most users trust the most.
They've been around for many a year, and imho, many people would be reluctant to see them go - three months ago I wired my mum's computer onto Tim-Net (my home network and information control system) and she still believes in sneakernet as opposed to drag and drop through shared directories.
It's a real pity that LS-120 drives never caught on. These drives could read floppy disks (Unlike ZIP) in addition to their own 120 MB magneto-optical disks.
You know what I want? Cheap, reliable 8 MB disks. I don't need any more than that to carry my work and class documents on. Most of the hype today is on cramming as much information onto the smallest space possible and then charging $40+ *PER CARD*. Disks that pop in and out quickly, won't scratch, that will fit in a pocket and cost 50 cents to replace. It could be done and I believe that there is a large market for it. The people with the patents and the money to do it, however, don't seem to have the vision.
The quality of 3 1/2 floppy disks has gone down because only the four corners of today's floppys are glued, whereas they used to be sealed all around the corners. Find an older 3 1/2 disk (Microsoft DOS era) and open it up to see for yourself.
One has to wonder if the same reason that this has been changed is for the same reason that planned obsolescence occurs in other products (VCRs, automobiles) -- securing future income.
There is a great article in this month's edge magazine (in the UK) that goes through the history of the Saturn. You are indeed right, it was modified at the last minute to try and handle 3D as well, as with all these things tho ultimately you can put it down to bad management.
Not only modified at the last minute, but the last minute came way early! A "preview" release of the Saturn happened in April, surprising even developers. There weren't enough games ready for the system, and this made it a major disaster. Just like the SegaCD, about 7 months too early to be a success.
The Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast both have two processors as well.
Saturn, yes. Dreamcast -- I believe not. The dreamcast used a Hitachi SH4 as it's main processor and had an additional (PowerVR) graphics processor -- which really shouldn't count, because most modern systems do.
The Saturn had a second processor thrown in at the last minute to up its power to compete with the Playstation's 3D capability. If it wasn't for the second processor and the Saturn's quad-polygon engine instead of tri-polygon like everybody else was using, I think the Saturn may have been more successful and the Dreamcast could have been easily designed for backwards compatability with the Saturn. If not for those two things, I speculate that the Dreamcast would probably have come out later and be more powerful and a smashing success even today.
It's called protest by lawlessness. The best example I've heard is the speed limit, if they changed the speed limit on highways to 20 MPH, and no one followed it and kept doing 60, they CANNOT fine everyone, and therefor the law would be changed eventually.
No, but they can fine everybody who they catch. Not only does this encourage selective enforcement, but it makes a nice revenue stream from ticket fines. Just because everybody keeps going 55 or higher does not mean that the speed limit will change back.
(Questions generally end with question marks. You really should try it.)
Simple - GameSphere / GameOrb. A perfectly spherical console on a flat base, probably ornamented with translucent plastic. The top will slide away or open up in a really keen manner and everybody will want one. (Personally, I'm hoping they add a cart slot on the back for N64 games, but who am I kidding?)
Directory structure. Windows users use the backslash \. *nix users use the (fore)slash/. (Call me petty, but I prefer the backslash over the slash. It makes more sense -- in fraction form, the bigger directory goes under the smaller one) Microsoft will demand the use of the backslash. Microsoft may adapt easy to software that tries to use the wrong slash, but the biggest headaches this will cause is trying to use all of the Linux software that is specifically programmed to use the foreslash. A whole bunch of code will have to be changed and recompiled, which isn't a problem, but I think it would cause a huge flamefest from the Linux side.
> For example, what good is a technologically sound voting system when all the candidates are shit
Sounds like a good case for having "None of these candidates" as an option.
Sounds like a good case for voting reform -- see my.sig. Consider a system with many candidates that voters can cast multiple (equal) votes for. It's called plurality voting.
I just can't wait for the days when things are $1/TB.
Yes, but will I be able to purchase a hard drive for $1? What ticks me off about hearing that hard drives are "down to" 1$/GB is that I can't just go to the store and spend $20 + tax to get a 20GB hard drive. Right now I'm running on 6GB and just about any hard drive over that amount is out of my price range.
As long as there are files to be shared, people will find ways to share them. Napster is down, Scour is down, now Kazaa will probably go down. I guess it's back to using IRC until someone figures out how to make a free, open source P2P network that costs nothing, isn't incorporated, and doesn't rely on a central server so that the courts can't sue any single person. Hopefully it will last longer.
You mean like Freenet? The freepages don't have everything, but they are often completely anonymous.
Of course, Zoloft, Xanthax, Prozac, Lithium and other popular happy pills which are regularly consumed by a third of americans are considered to be a normal way of life
What you say is more true than you know. When I started taking Prozac, my life turned around. My life became normal again. So yes, a lot of people probably shouldn't be taking the drugs they do. But a lot of other people should. Please don't associate scientifically tested and proven useful medical drugs with common street drugs. Anybody who scoffs at the use of medications such as SSRIs and thinks of them as nothing more than "happy pills" probably hasn't been or known someone in their life who has suffered from and been diagnosed with major depression.
Before you jump on the what-about...-train, I'll admit that drugs like marijuana do have ligitimate medical uses. However, recent research has isolated the elements of the plant that work for pain relief from the other elements, such as those that cause the "high" that can permanently damage the brain's pleasure receptors after frequent use. If that first element can be administered seperately in a refined form, say in a pill, shot or nasal spray, it can be safely taken. Heck, even a patch (strangely, sounds almost on-topic). That is the difference between street drugs and prescription drugs.
Now if advocates put half the energy into fighting the medical industry as they did getting their pet stoner-drug legalized, these prescriptions would be cheap enough for anyone (who needs them) to afford. But prescription drugs make a nice scapegoat (mischaracterise, scream "me too!") for anyone who is cranky that they can't get their daily high.
Can't someone just analyze an X-Box disc that already has the code on it? Or copy the first however many bits on the DVD and program new games from there?
I have all 3, and I can guarantee that they all do, in fact, spin in the same 'normal' direction.
Yep. But XBox DVDs are written with track 1 on the outside so that the more important data can be read faster. Nintendo made their DVDs small, so a normal DVD+RW wouldn't fit inside the machines. Both had a thought of copy protection in the making.
A billion! So they only had a bazillion gajillion to go.
What if the encryption was broken anonymously? A group could form and distribute software using a Freenet-style network and the page providing the files and info for the project could also be hosted on Freenet.
And don't kid yourself: We can't count on AOL's massive firepower on this one. This is the wrong time to expect AOL to help us; they're not in any position to make big changes. Besides, Netscape is not Mozilla.
This is something we have to answer and answer well in the coming year, and I mean the next couple, not the next ten.
How about small courtesies, like letting the user remove that annoying "M" image / webpage link in the upper right hand corner of the Mozilla browser?
A prime number is a number that can only be divided by one and itself, one can not "fix" this. I was merely pointing out why 0 and 1 are so special, 11 is not, and therefore can not be "fixed" as you say.
Did you just hear something? That was the sound of the 747 flying over your head, with big letters on it reading "joke". I was making fun of the point that it doesn't matter what we WANT a number to be, it just is what it is. The only difference it would make if the number is officially prime would be that most mathematical proofs that reference prime numbers would have to have a little disclaimer in them saying "all prime numbers (with the exception of 1)..."
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My friend's mom used to work at Midway. She gave us dozens of the those plastic signs that sat above the screen, you know the ones, as you're looking straight at the machine the thin ones up above the monitor...
I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. What signs?
and an 8MB card as Decimal craves is only about $15...
You missed the point completely. I said that I would settle for an 8 MB storage medium because a floppy-size disk could be sold CHEAP . For $15, I might as well buy a ZIP disk.
The floppy drive is quite possibly the one component inside a computer that most users trust the most.
They've been around for many a year, and imho, many people would be reluctant to see them go - three months ago I wired my mum's computer onto Tim-Net (my home network and information control system) and she still believes in sneakernet as opposed to drag and drop through shared directories.
It's a real pity that LS-120 drives never caught on. These drives could read floppy disks (Unlike ZIP) in addition to their own 120 MB magneto-optical disks.
You know what I want? Cheap, reliable 8 MB disks. I don't need any more than that to carry my work and class documents on. Most of the hype today is on cramming as much information onto the smallest space possible and then charging $40+ *PER CARD*. Disks that pop in and out quickly, won't scratch, that will fit in a pocket and cost 50 cents to replace. It could be done and I believe that there is a large market for it. The people with the patents and the money to do it, however, don't seem to have the vision.
The quality of 3 1/2 floppy disks has gone down because only the four corners of today's floppys are glued, whereas they used to be sealed all around the corners. Find an older 3 1/2 disk (Microsoft DOS era) and open it up to see for yourself.
One has to wonder if the same reason that this has been changed is for the same reason that planned obsolescence occurs in other products (VCRs, automobiles) -- securing future income.
Al Gores [sic] great great great grandfather
Ah. Must have been before the invention of the apostrophe.
There is a great article in this month's edge magazine (in the UK) that goes through the history of the Saturn. You are indeed right, it was modified at the last minute to try and handle 3D as well, as with all these things tho ultimately you can put it down to bad management.
Not only modified at the last minute, but the last minute came way early! A "preview" release of the Saturn happened in April, surprising even developers. There weren't enough games ready for the system, and this made it a major disaster. Just like the SegaCD, about 7 months too early to be a success.
The Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast both have two processors as well.
Saturn, yes. Dreamcast -- I believe not. The dreamcast used a Hitachi SH4 as it's main processor and had an additional (PowerVR) graphics processor -- which really shouldn't count, because most modern systems do.
The Saturn had a second processor thrown in at the last minute to up its power to compete with the Playstation's 3D capability. If it wasn't for the second processor and the Saturn's quad-polygon engine instead of tri-polygon like everybody else was using, I think the Saturn may have been more successful and the Dreamcast could have been easily designed for backwards compatability with the Saturn. If not for those two things, I speculate that the Dreamcast would probably have come out later and be more powerful and a smashing success even today.
It's called protest by lawlessness. The best example I've heard is the speed limit, if they changed the speed limit on highways to 20 MPH, and no one followed it and kept doing 60, they CANNOT fine everyone, and therefor the law would be changed eventually.
No, but they can fine everybody who they catch. Not only does this encourage selective enforcement, but it makes a nice revenue stream from ticket fines. Just because everybody keeps going 55 or higher does not mean that the speed limit will change back.
What are they going to call it.
(Questions generally end with question marks. You really should try it.)
Simple - GameSphere / GameOrb. A perfectly spherical console on a flat base, probably ornamented with translucent plastic. The top will slide away or open up in a really keen manner and everybody will want one. (Personally, I'm hoping they add a cart slot on the back for N64 games, but who am I kidding?)
Man, I can't believe someone would consider Nintendo a mom and pop operation.
Didn't Nintendo make dirty playing cards before they got into the console business?
Directory structure. Windows users use the backslash \. *nix users use the (fore)slash /. (Call me petty, but I prefer the backslash over the slash. It makes more sense -- in fraction form, the bigger directory goes under the smaller one) Microsoft will demand the use of the backslash. Microsoft may adapt easy to software that tries to use the wrong slash, but the biggest headaches this will cause is trying to use all of the Linux software that is specifically programmed to use the foreslash. A whole bunch of code will have to be changed and recompiled, which isn't a problem, but I think it would cause a huge flamefest from the Linux side.
:p
It will be called the holy war of slash.
Who can garuntee that now with the papaer based systems? At some point you have to trust somebody.
Hard to know what you're talking about, considering that the U.S. can't trust people to actually count the paper vote.
Hey, thanks for the answer.
This may sound like a silly question... but why don't you just pave more of the ground outside of cities and build newer buildings with more brick?
> For example, what good is a technologically sound voting system when all the candidates are shit
.sig. Consider a system with many candidates that voters can cast multiple (equal) votes for. It's called plurality voting.
Sounds like a good case for having "None of these candidates" as an option.
Sounds like a good case for voting reform -- see my
You mean refer to a pot advocacy site for "myths" on pot use? Gee, that's reliable.
I just can't wait for the days when things are $1/TB.
Yes, but will I be able to purchase a hard drive for $1? What ticks me off about hearing that hard drives are "down to" 1$/GB is that I can't just go to the store and spend $20 + tax to get a 20GB hard drive. Right now I'm running on 6GB and just about any hard drive over that amount is out of my price range.
As long as there are files to be shared, people will find ways to share them. Napster is down, Scour is down, now Kazaa will probably go down. I guess it's back to using IRC until someone figures out how to make a free, open source P2P network that costs nothing, isn't incorporated, and doesn't rely on a central server so that the courts can't sue any single person. Hopefully it will last longer.
You mean like Freenet? The freepages don't have everything, but they are often completely anonymous.
Of course, Zoloft, Xanthax, Prozac, Lithium and other popular happy pills which are regularly consumed by a third of americans are considered to be a normal way of life
What you say is more true than you know. When I started taking Prozac, my life turned around. My life became normal again. So yes, a lot of people probably shouldn't be taking the drugs they do. But a lot of other people should. Please don't associate scientifically tested and proven useful medical drugs with common street drugs. Anybody who scoffs at the use of medications such as SSRIs and thinks of them as nothing more than "happy pills" probably hasn't been or known someone in their life who has suffered from and been diagnosed with major depression.
Before you jump on the what-about...-train, I'll admit that drugs like marijuana do have ligitimate medical uses. However, recent research has isolated the elements of the plant that work for pain relief from the other elements, such as those that cause the "high" that can permanently damage the brain's pleasure receptors after frequent use. If that first element can be administered seperately in a refined form, say in a pill, shot or nasal spray, it can be safely taken. Heck, even a patch (strangely, sounds almost on-topic). That is the difference between street drugs and prescription drugs.
Now if advocates put half the energy into fighting the medical industry as they did getting their pet stoner-drug legalized, these prescriptions would be cheap enough for anyone (who needs them) to afford. But prescription drugs make a nice scapegoat (mischaracterise, scream "me too!") for anyone who is cranky that they can't get their daily high.
Can't someone just analyze an X-Box disc that already has the code on it? Or copy the first however many bits on the DVD and program new games from there?
I have all 3, and I can guarantee that they all do, in fact, spin in the same 'normal' direction.
Yep. But XBox DVDs are written with track 1 on the outside so that the more important data can be read faster. Nintendo made their DVDs small, so a normal DVD+RW wouldn't fit inside the machines. Both had a thought of copy protection in the making.
A billion! So they only had a bazillion gajillion to go.
What if the encryption was broken anonymously? A group could form and distribute software using a Freenet-style network and the page providing the files and info for the project could also be hosted on Freenet.
And don't kid yourself: We can't count on AOL's massive firepower on this one. This is the wrong time to expect AOL to help us; they're not in any position to make big changes. Besides, Netscape is not Mozilla.
This is something we have to answer and answer well in the coming year, and I mean the next couple, not the next ten.
How about small courtesies, like letting the user remove that annoying "M" image / webpage link in the upper right hand corner of the Mozilla browser?
A prime number is a number that can only be divided by one and itself, one can not "fix" this. I was merely pointing out why 0 and 1 are so special, 11 is not, and therefore can not be "fixed" as you say.
Did you just hear something? That was the sound of the 747 flying over your head, with big letters on it reading "joke". I was making fun of the point that it doesn't matter what we WANT a number to be, it just is what it is. The only difference it would make if the number is officially prime would be that most mathematical proofs that reference prime numbers would have to have a little disclaimer in them saying "all prime numbers (with the exception of 1)..."
So that's why we don't WANT 1 to be a prime.
I don't want 11 to be prime, either. Would you mind doing some of that math work and fixing this, please?