The writing needs to be tightend up... or loosened up. They are trying to be both an "Excel Saga" type show while trying to stay "grounded" in the standard "family sitcom" format... These are mutually opposing goals, leading to a wishy-washy feeling to the show.
They should either let loose and shoot for getting cult status at the risk of losing mainstream ratings... (think Police Squad!) Or they can tighten up the premise in the hopes that it can last long term but risk alienating their original intended audience. (e.g. The Simpsons in recent years)
I take it this has some sort of geek classic status?
I don't know about other geeks, but I remember this being in heavy circulation during the early 80's when cable was first trying to get a toe hold in American households.
Cable channels were still having difficulty selling ad time to fill in between show breaks, so many early cable channels filled the time will short subjects. It was a golden era for the short subject, and "Bambi Meets Godzilla" was a frequently used choice for filling air time.
Another short I rememeber was about the job hunter visiting an abandoned office in reply to an interview request. It turned out the office was empty because of a reel of carnivorous magnetic tape. (I kid you not.) Despite briefly fending it off with a magnet (which caused it pain), he was eventually "mummified" and digested by the tape. The end of the short had the unrolled tape perched in front of a typewriter creating another interview invitation letter... I also have memories of an animated short about "skywhales."
I could go on and on with the nostalgia. The era ended with MTV and it's bastardization of the short as the "music video." It also had the side effect of increasing the presence of advertisements on cable.
Reading this kind of thing always depresses me. Because of the Cold War and fear of Communism, we Americans have degenerated into a mindset where prosperity and plenty is considered a "problem." Economics is said to be the study of scarcity and how humans deal with it.
I hope someday that humanity realizes the folly of such thinking and seeks to make a society or technology that can transcend economics, not stay in thrall to it.
Except for the life size game consoles, there's really nothing new about this game concept. Merit Industries and, until recently, Midway made bar kiosks that had trivia/game show like games on them. (As well as gambling games, Photoshop'ed image matching, porn games, as well as games combining all of the above.)
Every 6-12 months, they would release a new rev that would update the image art and trivia databases. I can't read the Japanesse site, but I'm also guessing there might be some kind of cartridge or CD reader than can load in new questions as well...
Re:Mini Ipod Review on WinXP
on
iPod Mini Ships
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
My wife syncs her iPod Mini using USB 1.1 without difficulty. She's on a Sony Vaio GR-something-or-other laptop.
Are you sure? I was under the impression that all Vaios all came with iLink ports, which are just another branding of IEEE 1394 aka Firewire. You can't charge the battery with most iLink ports, but it works just fine for uploads.
John could hear the ghost of video game music from the kid's headphones. He wasn't actually playing games -- John had checked on that personally -- he was just listening to the soundtracks. That was only the most superficial evidence of Tom's deeply flawed psychology, but John was the only one who seemed concerned.
Not that I should criticize... To my horror, I recognized the music some music from FF playing in a software store the other day... The horror was from remembering that it was from the Auction House in FF 3/6j. I haven't played that since high school, yet I remembered listening to that melody for hours on end just to get Magicite shards...
Listen. You losing interest in video games at 28 is a *good* thing.
*sigh* Yet another fool who equates video games with childishness.
Remember, video games were first introduced as bar/pub entertainment, as a replacement for pinball. Such establishments were where Pong was first introduced, and you can still find Merit kiosks on bar counters. And most of the surviving arcades in the States are "dating" destinations like GameWorks and Dave & Buster's which have things like Ladies Nights and ID check.
Video games ended up pigeon holed as "juvenile" like comic books and animation did. While I'm familar with the political history that doomed comics and cartoons to the children's ghetto, I'm not sure why video games shared this fate... Can any one offer any theories about this?
But I digress, besides the quote about "becoming old when you stop playing," there's another relevant quote. This one's by C. S. Lewis...
When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be grown up.
hate to disappoint everyone but Apple put themselves on hold for 5 years to make Carbon run in OS X.
Balderdash. The delays were mostly due to Apple abandoning NuKernel/Copland in favor of Mach-O, and also due to introducing a sub-layer based on BSD. These have nothing to do with programming APIs. Also, you need to understand that much of Carbon is based on concepts that never existed under the classic Mac Toolbox, like Carbon Events.
But since 1997 the plan has and continues to be OS X Cocoa which will benefit everyone.
Then explain Apple's continued support for QuickTime... the QuickTime API's are heavily dependant upon conventions introduced during the Mac Toolbox era. OS X also exposes BSD/POSIX, Java and X-Windows APIs for application development, all of which are orthagonal to Cocoa. Even AppleScript Studio relegates Cocoa to the sidelines as "glue." Importantly, Carbon is the best way to get procedural-level programming support under native OS X APIs. Procedural conventions tend to be easier to work with than object-oriented designs when targeting for cross-platform development, especially when trying to write code that targets both Windows and Macs. (Though one can argue this is as much a fault of Microsoft's design than OOP's limitations.)
Based on past discussions I've had and read, the advocacy that Cocoa seems to get arises from a confusion between Carbon/Cocoa and CFM/MachO. A Carbon application linked using MachO is just as much a native OS X citizen as a Cocoa app would be. Under the hood, parts of Cocoa are implemented as wrappers to Carbon functionality, and vice versa.
And in many alphabets (all the Asian langauges I know enough about) case does not exist
Know much about Japanese? They have both Katakana and Hiragana syllabaries that both represent the same sounds. Just as Roman scripts use case to make distinctions between normal and proper nouns, *kana is used to make a distinction between native and foreign words. (And sometimes, gender...)
That was Warner Communications, which was a division of Warner Brothers. Also the Intellivision was a Mattel Product, not a division. (Not sure if you were alluding to it being a seperate company)
Wow. Talk about splitting hairs... Miramax is Disney; the MacBU is Microsoft. Regardless if it's one "entity" or many in the eyes of the tax people, it's still one "company" to the public at large.
As for Mattel, the way the Blue Sky Rangers say things, Mattel Electronics was an autonomous unit from the company. If this made me sound vague, gomen ne.
I believe it was Warner who had ownership of the original Atari that produced the 2600. Just like Mattel did with the Intellivision, Warner divested themselves of Atari when the Great Video Game Crash of '84 occured.
Seeing how Mattel is now re-releasing old Mattel Electronics portables, I guess it was only a matter of time before Warner stuck their toes back into the waters...
SF writers always look their most foolish when
trying to make up future slang or cuss-words.
Funny, I always though Niven's "tanj" was plausable and seemed right for what it meant. Orwell used "newspeak" to good effect and Clockwork Orange was almost completely written in invented slang.
Do you honestly believe that our language is going to stay fixed in stone? What's so foolish about using lingustics as a plot device?
You're not really in the market for a backup system; you're in the market for a restore system.
Amen. I'm working on a project involving management of multimedia assets, and one key part of the functionality is to archive and restore old artwork. My project leader and other stakeholders went through half a dozen providers, and they kept coming back to the same problem. They all stored data that was handed to them, but none of them provided an easy or programmable means of restoring that data. It seems backup providers seem to think that data restoration is a manual, labor-intensive process when for our needs we required it to be done on an automated, systematic basis. (We have much more data than we have capacity to keep accessable, hence a regular archive/restore cycle for many projects.)
The object syntax using brackets instead of dots is apparently uncomprehendable to your average programmer.
I don't know... C++ has some strange syntax and greater-than/less-than usage, especially when you get to using templates.
Obj-C didn't take off because NeXT didn't take off. The only reason Obj-C is still being talked about is that Apple inherited it for the once and future Mac OS.
A lot of people have Zapf Dingbats, but it is delivered with a third party application. Possibly WordPerfect or some Adobe applications?
Zapf Dingbats and Zapf Chancery used to be common fonts that were installed on Macs, usually when the user installed a printer driver for an Apple branded-printer. Both Zapf fonts are less common now since the popularization of the web and the standard use of fonts like Wingdings.
The same font packages that included the Zapf fonts usually included my favorite font of all time: New Century Schoolbook. I remember Squaresoft using it for some interface elements of some of their older RPGs. (I really need to dig up a copy to install it on my modern system again.)
Having finally found a decent driver(?) for my CanoScan 656, I installed all the packages. While GraphicConverter acknowledges SANE, and the sane-find-scanner CLI tool detects my scanner, the scanimage command doesn't work. How the sane-find-scanner tool could work but not scanimage escapes me...
"Officially," Pachinko's a redemption game, like Skee-ball. The skill element is adjusting a dial to determine how far into the playfield individual balls are ejected. A good player can usually look at the wear and pin arrangement to determine which machines are more likely to pay out. (Parlor operators are always hammering and bending the pins to thwart such efforts.)
The "seedy" rep comes from two aspects...
On most machines, there's a special hole or bucket that triggers a mini-game. This is usually some variation on slots. Pachinko machines tends to be rather noisy when this happens, making a parlor sound much like a Las Vegas casino.
Most prizes that are redeemed can usually be taken to a nearby pawn shop and sold. Many shops and parlors are said to have "below board" ties that encourage this, leading to weird exchange rates and cash values for seemingly worthless trinkets.
The game's Hanafuda, sometimes called Go Stop in Korea. Nintendo still makes non-video game stuff in Japan, including playing cards. That page is Japanese, but there are enough pictures for anyone to figure out where the links go.
It's the last surviving profitable form of bagatelle or pinball in the world right now. And pachinko's a destinctinly Asian, if not Japanese, gaming form. You would think that this game would have more success as a cultural export. (I find Japanese slot machines all the time here in the Midwest, but rarely find a pachinko machine.)
I own one, and I can say that it's very fun to play with. The only prob is keeping the machine fed with ball bearings. They don't recycle their own bearings; they have to be mounted in a special wall for that. I really ought to dig it back out of that attic sometime...
The sad part of this is that pinball machines got nixed in the process. Midway shutdown there operation in 1999, and the only company realy pouring money into it these days is Sega.
Don't you mean...
The sad part of this is that pinball machines got nixed in the process. Williams (the maker of Bally tables) shutdown their operation in 1999, and the only company realy pouring money into it these days is Stern. (who inherited the Data East/Sega legacy)
Slashdot Mirror
They should either let loose and shoot for getting cult status at the risk of losing mainstream ratings... (think Police Squad!) Or they can tighten up the premise in the hopes that it can last long term but risk alienating their original intended audience. (e.g. The Simpsons in recent years)
I don't know about other geeks, but I remember this being in heavy circulation during the early 80's when cable was first trying to get a toe hold in American households.
Cable channels were still having difficulty selling ad time to fill in between show breaks, so many early cable channels filled the time will short subjects. It was a golden era for the short subject, and "Bambi Meets Godzilla" was a frequently used choice for filling air time.
Another short I rememeber was about the job hunter visiting an abandoned office in reply to an interview request. It turned out the office was empty because of a reel of carnivorous magnetic tape. (I kid you not.) Despite briefly fending it off with a magnet (which caused it pain), he was eventually "mummified" and digested by the tape. The end of the short had the unrolled tape perched in front of a typewriter creating another interview invitation letter... I also have memories of an animated short about "skywhales."
I could go on and on with the nostalgia. The era ended with MTV and it's bastardization of the short as the "music video." It also had the side effect of increasing the presence of advertisements on cable.
Reading this kind of thing always depresses me. Because of the Cold War and fear of Communism, we Americans have degenerated into a mindset where prosperity and plenty is considered a "problem." Economics is said to be the study of scarcity and how humans deal with it.
I hope someday that humanity realizes the folly of such thinking and seeks to make a society or technology that can transcend economics, not stay in thrall to it.
Every 6-12 months, they would release a new rev that would update the image art and trivia databases. I can't read the Japanesse site, but I'm also guessing there might be some kind of cartridge or CD reader than can load in new questions as well...
Are you sure? I was under the impression that all Vaios all came with iLink ports, which are just another branding of IEEE 1394 aka Firewire. You can't charge the battery with most iLink ports, but it works just fine for uploads.
John could hear the ghost of video game music from the kid's headphones. He wasn't actually playing games -- John had checked on that personally -- he was just listening to the soundtracks. That was only the most superficial evidence of Tom's deeply flawed psychology, but John was the only one who seemed concerned.
Not that I should criticize... To my horror, I recognized the music some music from FF playing in a software store the other day... The horror was from remembering that it was from the Auction House in FF 3/6j. I haven't played that since high school, yet I remembered listening to that melody for hours on end just to get Magicite shards...
That's the second time today I've encountered this misconception.
*sigh* Yet another fool who equates video games with childishness.
Remember, video games were first introduced as bar/pub entertainment, as a replacement for pinball. Such establishments were where Pong was first introduced, and you can still find Merit kiosks on bar counters. And most of the surviving arcades in the States are "dating" destinations like GameWorks and Dave & Buster's which have things like Ladies Nights and ID check.
Video games ended up pigeon holed as "juvenile" like comic books and animation did. While I'm familar with the political history that doomed comics and cartoons to the children's ghetto, I'm not sure why video games shared this fate... Can any one offer any theories about this?
But I digress, besides the quote about "becoming old when you stop playing," there's another relevant quote. This one's by C. S. Lewis...
When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be grown up.
Balderdash. The delays were mostly due to Apple abandoning NuKernel/Copland in favor of Mach-O, and also due to introducing a sub-layer based on BSD. These have nothing to do with programming APIs. Also, you need to understand that much of Carbon is based on concepts that never existed under the classic Mac Toolbox, like Carbon Events.
But since 1997 the plan has and continues to be OS X Cocoa which will benefit everyone.
Then explain Apple's continued support for QuickTime... the QuickTime API's are heavily dependant upon conventions introduced during the Mac Toolbox era. OS X also exposes BSD/POSIX, Java and X-Windows APIs for application development, all of which are orthagonal to Cocoa. Even AppleScript Studio relegates Cocoa to the sidelines as "glue." Importantly, Carbon is the best way to get procedural-level programming support under native OS X APIs. Procedural conventions tend to be easier to work with than object-oriented designs when targeting for cross-platform development, especially when trying to write code that targets both Windows and Macs. (Though one can argue this is as much a fault of Microsoft's design than OOP's limitations.)
Based on past discussions I've had and read, the advocacy that Cocoa seems to get arises from a confusion between Carbon/Cocoa and CFM/MachO. A Carbon application linked using MachO is just as much a native OS X citizen as a Cocoa app would be. Under the hood, parts of Cocoa are implemented as wrappers to Carbon functionality, and vice versa.
Know much about Japanese? They have both Katakana and Hiragana syllabaries that both represent the same sounds. Just as Roman scripts use case to make distinctions between normal and proper nouns, *kana is used to make a distinction between native and foreign words. (And sometimes, gender...)
Wow. Talk about splitting hairs... Miramax is Disney; the MacBU is Microsoft. Regardless if it's one "entity" or many in the eyes of the tax people, it's still one "company" to the public at large.
As for Mattel, the way the Blue Sky Rangers say things, Mattel Electronics was an autonomous unit from the company. If this made me sound vague, gomen ne.
I believe it was Warner who had ownership of the original Atari that produced the 2600. Just like Mattel did with the Intellivision, Warner divested themselves of Atari when the Great Video Game Crash of '84 occured. Seeing how Mattel is now re-releasing old Mattel Electronics portables, I guess it was only a matter of time before Warner stuck their toes back into the waters...
Are you the same twoflower (Stelan Gagne) by any chance that wrote the "Future We'd Like To See" online series? Or are you just another Pratchet fan?
Funny, I always though Niven's "tanj" was plausable and seemed right for what it meant. Orwell used "newspeak" to good effect and Clockwork Orange was almost completely written in invented slang.
Do you honestly believe that our language is going to stay fixed in stone? What's so foolish about using lingustics as a plot device?
Amen. I'm working on a project involving management of multimedia assets, and one key part of the functionality is to archive and restore old artwork. My project leader and other stakeholders went through half a dozen providers, and they kept coming back to the same problem. They all stored data that was handed to them, but none of them provided an easy or programmable means of restoring that data. It seems backup providers seem to think that data restoration is a manual, labor-intensive process when for our needs we required it to be done on an automated, systematic basis. (We have much more data than we have capacity to keep accessable, hence a regular archive/restore cycle for many projects.)
I don't know... C++ has some strange syntax and greater-than/less-than usage, especially when you get to using templates.
Obj-C didn't take off because NeXT didn't take off. The only reason Obj-C is still being talked about is that Apple inherited it for the once and future Mac OS.
Zapf Dingbats and Zapf Chancery used to be common fonts that were installed on Macs, usually when the user installed a printer driver for an Apple branded-printer. Both Zapf fonts are less common now since the popularization of the web and the standard use of fonts like Wingdings.
The same font packages that included the Zapf fonts usually included my favorite font of all time: New Century Schoolbook. I remember Squaresoft using it for some interface elements of some of their older RPGs. (I really need to dig up a copy to install it on my modern system again.)
Having finally found a decent driver(?) for my CanoScan 656, I installed all the packages. While GraphicConverter acknowledges SANE, and the sane-find-scanner CLI tool detects my scanner, the scanimage command doesn't work. How the sane-find-scanner tool could work but not scanimage escapes me...
"Officially," Pachinko's a redemption game, like Skee-ball. The skill element is adjusting a dial to determine how far into the playfield individual balls are ejected. A good player can usually look at the wear and pin arrangement to determine which machines are more likely to pay out. (Parlor operators are always hammering and bending the pins to thwart such efforts.)
The "seedy" rep comes from two aspects...
The game's Hanafuda, sometimes called Go Stop in Korea. Nintendo still makes non-video game stuff in Japan, including playing cards. That page is Japanese, but there are enough pictures for anyone to figure out where the links go.
I own one, and I can say that it's very fun to play with. The only prob is keeping the machine fed with ball bearings. They don't recycle their own bearings; they have to be mounted in a special wall for that. I really ought to dig it back out of that attic sometime...
Actually, my correction's part of the commentary. The pinball market imploded in a very messy fashion, with consolidations and selloffs.
Don't you mean...
The sad part of this is that pinball machines got nixed in the process. Williams (the maker of Bally tables) shutdown their operation in 1999, and the only company realy pouring money into it these days is Stern. (who inherited the Data East/Sega legacy)
I shall now put on my Troll-Slaying Cestus, which has a +9 against Trolls.
POW!
I'm even more doubtful, I remember this...
Then again, maybe third time's the charm?