The news here is that Corel themselves have officially announced they are looking to spin off their Linux division: until now it's just been "industry speculation". Now, whether or not an official announcement deserves it's own posting is debatable, I'll grant you. Personally, I think it is newsworthy, considering how it looked like Corel might be a major Linux player not too terribly long ago.
Companies have every right to copyright their material, but in the rush to stop illegal copying of their content, they're intruding on their consumers rights to said content.
Why should I be denied the right to record an HDTV broadcast of Monday Night Football? Recording live sporting events might seem silly to some, but there's been many times I've recorded a "big game" when I had to be somewhere else during the broadcast, and simply avoided all sports reports until I could watch it. Same applies to live concert events, or things like the Oscars and such.
Why should I be forced to buy a traditional, rack DVD player to watch The Matrix? If I have a DVD-Rom player in my PC, I can watch it, provided I run Windows. But I don't want to run Windows, I want to run Linux, or BeOS, or whatever. If I have the skill to write a player for said OS, why should I suddenly be breaking a law?
True media pirates, the kind that operate large-scale copying houses out of Taiwan or wherever, aren't stopped by such copy protection methods. There's always a way to break encryption, or bit-copy a Macrovision DVD, or hack an install-key generator. The only people these copy protection methods inconvienience are honest consumers.
Please, don't you think your being a little over-dramatic? This isn't the first time Nintendo's pissed anyone off; I'm sure they've recieved flame mails before. Yes, undoubtedly many Slashdot proles, armed with the information posted, took it upon themselves to send scathing, profanity laced, uninformed emails. So what? No one at Nintendo's going to get fired over it; no one reading the mails is going to need counseling because their so traumatic.
If the answer were really so obvious, the judge would throw out the case!
Uh, been paying attention to the American legal system over the past 20 years? Our courts/judges/lawyers are fscked up. This is the country where you can sue McDonalds for not knowing their coffee is served hot, and can use Twinkie addiction as a legal defense for murder.
According to the Daily Radar article, Nintendo is objecting to Imagine's use of screenshots in their strategy guide, and it's trademarks (i.e., the word Pokemon). I would suspect that Nintendo's problem is that Imagine is using their copyrighted work (screenshots and Pokemon) to sell an unofficial strategy guide. While this lawsuit apparently only applies to the strategy guide in question, one might think that it could, if successful, be applied to web sites as well. After all, if I post, say, a review of a game on my web site using screenshots, etc, and I have banner ads above said review, I'm earning money using their stuff.
I'm no big fan of Daily Radar's site, but I think they did the right think in refusing to run any more Nintendo related reviews, previews, etc. Frankly, I would have gone a step farther, and called for an industry wide boycott of Nintendo related articles (though not likely to happen). This crap's got to stop somewhere.
...for the Internet these days. Is there a social issue or cause left that hasn't blamed the Internet for something?
Of course, it is a big, easy target for blame. There's no one company behind it, pretty much everyone uses it in some form, so everyone has to share the blame. And most importantly, you can't really consider shutting it down as a solution.
When people start bitching about the Internet causing Problem X, they're not looking for solutions to the problem, they're just looking to shift blame from themselves, to make themselves feel better. Whether it's politicians taking the Stance-O-The-Day, or parents wanting to know why Junior doesn't listen to them, the results are the same.
buying a car is no longer the worst purchasing experience. Buying a computer is now number one.
This statement isn't true for me (nor most geeks), but I suspect it is probably true for many. Undoubtedly, bad salespeople have a lot to do with this, but equally to blame are uninformed consumers.
Consider the process most people go through in buying a new car. For most, it's a process measured in weeks and months. They read Consumer Reports, they shop around for different makes/models, they ask people who own similar cars what they're experiences are. When it comes time to buy, they visit several dealerships, not hesitating to drive out of town in many cases.
Now, buying a computer. There are some who go to great lengths to get informed, but the vast majority don't. They see an add for a cheap HP in the Sunday paper. Maybe they call their nephew "who knows about computers" to get his opinion. But usually, the first words out of their mouth when they meet the salesman are "Is this a good machine?"
My point is that people still rely too much on computer salesmen for their buying information. Most people don't trust car salesmen any farther than they can throw them: why should it be any different with computer salesmen?
In the end, this will all probably work itself out anyway. Customer service is a commodity, driven by supply and demand like everything else. If customers aren't happy with the service they're getting, they'll take their business elsewhere. Retailers will respond in kind.
It's not, yet. But some day it may be, if only for brand name recognition value. And IIRC, something like 80+% of people use AOL instant messenger programs (through either AOL own IM or ICQ).
Astronomers never cease to amaze me. This guy found an event that happened for 0.2 seconds, approximately 35,194,176,000,000,000 miles away, that happened 6000 years ago. And could actually recognize the significance of the event.
As you all know, Marketing has long known that we geeks are technologies Pavolvian Dogs. They've used publications like Popular Science and Byte to whip us into a frenzy about their "latest, greatest" thing. Now, as many of us have long suspected, it appears that the Internet has been compromised as well. For many years, we have used the Internet to calmly and rationally discuss what's new in technology. However, I think this article makes it clear that the hype-free days are now officially over.
I propose the following steps be immediately taken:
- Begin carrying random magazines wherever you go, and make it a point to be seen enthusiastically reading one by a Marketing Wonk. Perhaps spreading disinformation about our information sources will help stem the tide.
- Encrypt all emails that contain the subject lines "Dude, you've got to check this out", "Schweeeet!", and "OMG, when's payday!". Also encrypt all emails with the subject line "D00D, FR33 PR0N N WAR3Z H3R3!", just to keep them guessing.
- Try to keep the geek-drool traffic to a minimum, at least until one of us can invent another totally new information medium that only we can understand.
And for God's sake, don't tell anyone you don't trust about Indrema!
Just 1 inch thick and weighing a mere 5.3 pounds, the PowerBook G4 is a heavyweight in an ultralight body-the world's first notebook computer made of 99.5% pure grade CP1 (meaning commercially pure) titanium.
It's nice to see that Apple has taken a cue from the rest of the marketing world, and decided to try and convince us that titanium is the next cure for cancer/solution to world hunger/answer to all your spiritual questions.
But my God, that laptop does look sweet. It's interesting, though, that it takes Apple to give us a "wide screen" laptop like this. I wonder how long before we start seeing Dell's and IBM's like this?
I think the point is that you can throw away a ball-point pen if you think it's been exposed to infected blood or what not. It's hard to sterilize a Palm.
It's an interesting question, I think. Consider how they wrap or otherwise sterilize everything that comes into contact with you (tounge depressors, ear lookers, etc). Everything in the doctors office either get's thrown away after it's used, or get's sterilized. What happens if a doctor washes his hands, opens up his Palm to look something up, then touches something that get's put inside you. Has he just run an infection risk?
I honestly don't know, but considering how careful they are with everything else, I'd say it's an issue.
Every inch of floor in more than four buildings was covered with two-by-two-foot squares of bleak brown carpet. When the astronomers tried to replace it, they discovered it was welded with tiny metal fibers to the floor. The result, they eventually realized, is that the rugs prevent the buildings from conducting static electricity.
Somewhere, a government-contract carpet layer is reading this and having some nasty flashbacks to that job.
You know, this copying pay-per-view movies argument has always struck me as kind of funny.
My dad got a DSS system about 5 years ago, and started taping the pay-per-view movies whenever he rented them. He's pretty fanatical about it, tapes and keeps every movie he buys, even if he doesn't like it. He once got mad that I didn't tape Mortal Kombat while I was home one Christmas break. It didn't matter to him that he wouldn't watch this movie if you paid him: I bought it over the DSS, he wanted it taped. Last time I checked, he probably had over 100 movies he'd recorded from the DSS and various other TV broadcasts.
Now, Dad's VCR is old enough that when he bought it, it was a big deal that it was a 4-head model: it's a good machine, but definitely showing it's age. I asked him one day why he didn't upgrade, pointing out that even though his still works, he could get a new one that would record in much better picture quality. He told me he really didn't care about picture quality that much: what he had was good enough for him.
The funny thing is, I don't think he probably watches any of these movies on tape. It's almost reached collection status for him. If he sees a movie on pay-per-view that he thinks is good, or has heard good things about, he rents it, tapes it, lables it, and put's it in a drawer. My mom will sometimes watch them, or they'll get pulled out if a niece or nephew comes over to borrow it, but that's about it. So in my dad's case, taping has probably added to the number of pay-per-views he's bought. Sometimes he'll rent and record shows he's not interested in, just on the off chance that someone in the family will want to watch it.
My point is, how long have people been recording TV shows, sporting events, pay-per view movies, etc? About 2 days after the VCR was invented. It hasn't hurt Hollywood one bit. Just because people will suddenly have the ability to make digitally-perfect copies doesn't mean that they'll all start their own pirating business. The vast majority will do just like my Dad does: record them, save them, and watch them once in a great while.
Hollywood, like the record industry, would do themselves a favor (and make a butt-load of money in the process) to embrace this new technology. It's not unreasonable to want payment for the product, but give your consumers viewing/listening options, and they will thank you for it.
I agree that this is pure marketing muck from Microsoft, but it's at least a step in the right direction. Wireless is the future. Once affordable, full-featured Palm/cell phone combos become widely available, this sort thing will start taking off. Businesses who would have never even thought about providing wireless access before will start putting it in all their stores, simply because it provides a marketing opportunity. Heck, Wal-Mart would probably love to provide wireless access in all their stores, provided they could throw in a few ads.
Still, it would be incredibly cool to see an RJ-45 sticking out of a coffee house table.
A monolith appears, and here we are, with not one computer virus dangerous enough that we have to keep it on a secret vault on the moon. Honestly, the worst virus we have now simply delete a few files, corrupts some Jpegs, or maybe emails itself to others. How are we going to stop this monolith when it tries to blow us all up without an ultra-dangerous virus?
Oh well, we're lucky in one regard: it appeared in Seattle. If any new viruses are developed capable of taking out the monolith, chances are they'll have something to do with software out of Redmond.
It's unfortunate what happened, but I think that Blizzard is handling this extemely well. Automatically rolling back dead Hardcore characters, and allowing normal character players to "flag" their character for restore, allowing them to choose whether they want to load from a backup or not. The only real flaw I see is players who lost characters or items through normal means now have a chance to get them back, but really that's a small issue.
Blizzards taken some heat in the past (some of it justified) for their policies and support, but considering how damaging this hack was to the D2 community, it seems that Blizzard has really stepped up to the plate.
So, whether you agree with their choices or not, it's not necessarily a crock that their favorite 10 of the millennium are all from a single century.
Let's take a look at some other works written in this millenium, but were not written in the past century:
- War and Peace (1863-69)
- Les Miserables (1862)
- Adventures of Huck Finn (1884)
- Moby Dick (1851)
- Dante's Divine Comedy, others (early 1300's)
- A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
I could go on, but I think you get the point. Whether any of these books deserves to be remembered as a Top10 of the millenium is debatable (they all made Amazon's Top 100 at least), but I guarentee you they deserve to be there more than "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" or "The Stand".
Of "throw it on the wall, see what sticks" policies in the "New Economy". So what if it's totally unenforcable and utterly against the whole concept of the internet in general? If this doesn't work, they just go back to the way things were. If it does, they're "innvovators".
The ironic thing is, does anybody really care about the content of the Albuquerque Jornal? No offense intended to those of you in New Mexico, but this is hardly one of my major sources of news.
Yup, but they've got a long way to go before they reach the kings of all hit-trolling, ZDNet. Through the magic of Headlin-o-Vision, let's take a look at what that aritcle would have been like over at PCWeek...
LINUX IS OUT OF DATE! EVERONE WHO MATTERS TO HATE IT BY Q4 2001!
Whoa. On second thought, let's not.
I think referring to 2.4 as vaporware, while not technically accurate, has some merit. OpenSource is different from software held behind a companies castle walls: it's always out in the open (ideally). So yes, we know it exists in some form: but the fact is, we've been hearing how 2.4 would be out Real-Soon-Now for quite some time, and still waiting.
Not that I think this is a bad thing; on the contrary, having publically availably betas and waiting until the code is golden is a strength.
I think your starting to see rumors like this mainly because Nintendo is nervous about the competition from Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo has been able to get by on the strengths of their titles/characters since the NES/SNES glory days. But Sony and Microsoft have developers lined up around the block (or in Microsofts case, stuffed in their wallet) to develop games for their consoles.
Nintendo needs some meat to their lineup. The N64 sold well, and there were some great games for it, but some new blood is definitely needed. The problem with consoles is that you have a limited time window that you have to get your games into: if you run too late, the cosole is history. Pokemon is probably due to flame out soon. The Zelda line has 2 great N64 games, but there's only so many of those you can put out in a systems lifetime (seems to be about 2). Mario and Donkey Kong will of course have a plethora of "scrollers", racing games, party games, etc...which will make up the core of the title line-up. Rare with the GoldenEye/Perfect Dark types games is a heavy-hitter; but again, there's only so many games they can put out.
Think back to the glory days of NES/SNES. Sure, we all got and played the Marios and the Zeldas, but look at all the other great games from 3rd party developers that kept you playing the deck. Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger, Tecmo Super Bowl, Street Fighter series, EA sports titles. Slowly but surely, these developers, who were once Nintendo exclusive, have migrated to other consoles. Some still develop for the N64, some don't.
Maybe the hardware mistakes made by the N64 had the most to do with it's "lack of previous success" (you can't really call it a failure). It looks like the Cube is going to have some kick-ass specs, which would cure that problem. Still, Nintendo has lost some big third party developers (EA and Square topping the list), and a purchase of Sega would help them gain back some much needed titles. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. Like most things in life, this has a relevant Simpson's quote:
"It's funny because it's true." - Fat Tony
The news here is that Corel themselves have officially announced they are looking to spin off their Linux division: until now it's just been "industry speculation". Now, whether or not an official announcement deserves it's own posting is debatable, I'll grant you. Personally, I think it is newsworthy, considering how it looked like Corel might be a major Linux player not too terribly long ago.
Companies have every right to copyright their material, but in the rush to stop illegal copying of their content, they're intruding on their consumers rights to said content.
Why should I be denied the right to record an HDTV broadcast of Monday Night Football? Recording live sporting events might seem silly to some, but there's been many times I've recorded a "big game" when I had to be somewhere else during the broadcast, and simply avoided all sports reports until I could watch it. Same applies to live concert events, or things like the Oscars and such.
Why should I be forced to buy a traditional, rack DVD player to watch The Matrix? If I have a DVD-Rom player in my PC, I can watch it, provided I run Windows. But I don't want to run Windows, I want to run Linux, or BeOS, or whatever. If I have the skill to write a player for said OS, why should I suddenly be breaking a law?
True media pirates, the kind that operate large-scale copying houses out of Taiwan or wherever, aren't stopped by such copy protection methods. There's always a way to break encryption, or bit-copy a Macrovision DVD, or hack an install-key generator. The only people these copy protection methods inconvienience are honest consumers.
I don't think the phrase "b4k3-0ffz" is copyrighted yet.
Your right. Trolling Slashdot is much more fun.
Please, don't you think your being a little over-dramatic? This isn't the first time Nintendo's pissed anyone off; I'm sure they've recieved flame mails before. Yes, undoubtedly many Slashdot proles, armed with the information posted, took it upon themselves to send scathing, profanity laced, uninformed emails. So what? No one at Nintendo's going to get fired over it; no one reading the mails is going to need counseling because their so traumatic.
If the answer were really so obvious, the judge would throw out the case!
Uh, been paying attention to the American legal system over the past 20 years? Our courts/judges/lawyers are fscked up. This is the country where you can sue McDonalds for not knowing their coffee is served hot, and can use Twinkie addiction as a legal defense for murder.
Who wants to impress his boss, apparently.
According to the Daily Radar article, Nintendo is objecting to Imagine's use of screenshots in their strategy guide, and it's trademarks (i.e., the word Pokemon). I would suspect that Nintendo's problem is that Imagine is using their copyrighted work (screenshots and Pokemon) to sell an unofficial strategy guide. While this lawsuit apparently only applies to the strategy guide in question, one might think that it could, if successful, be applied to web sites as well. After all, if I post, say, a review of a game on my web site using screenshots, etc, and I have banner ads above said review, I'm earning money using their stuff.
I'm no big fan of Daily Radar's site, but I think they did the right think in refusing to run any more Nintendo related reviews, previews, etc. Frankly, I would have gone a step farther, and called for an industry wide boycott of Nintendo related articles (though not likely to happen). This crap's got to stop somewhere.
...for the Internet these days. Is there a social issue or cause left that hasn't blamed the Internet for something?
Of course, it is a big, easy target for blame. There's no one company behind it, pretty much everyone uses it in some form, so everyone has to share the blame. And most importantly, you can't really consider shutting it down as a solution.
When people start bitching about the Internet causing Problem X, they're not looking for solutions to the problem, they're just looking to shift blame from themselves, to make themselves feel better. Whether it's politicians taking the Stance-O-The-Day, or parents wanting to know why Junior doesn't listen to them, the results are the same.
One quote from Jobs that I find interesting:
buying a car is no longer the worst purchasing experience. Buying a computer is now number one.
This statement isn't true for me (nor most geeks), but I suspect it is probably true for many. Undoubtedly, bad salespeople have a lot to do with this, but equally to blame are uninformed consumers.
Consider the process most people go through in buying a new car. For most, it's a process measured in weeks and months. They read Consumer Reports, they shop around for different makes/models, they ask people who own similar cars what they're experiences are. When it comes time to buy, they visit several dealerships, not hesitating to drive out of town in many cases.
Now, buying a computer. There are some who go to great lengths to get informed, but the vast majority don't. They see an add for a cheap HP in the Sunday paper. Maybe they call their nephew "who knows about computers" to get his opinion. But usually, the first words out of their mouth when they meet the salesman are "Is this a good machine?"
My point is that people still rely too much on computer salesmen for their buying information. Most people don't trust car salesmen any farther than they can throw them: why should it be any different with computer salesmen?
In the end, this will all probably work itself out anyway. Customer service is a commodity, driven by supply and demand like everything else. If customers aren't happy with the service they're getting, they'll take their business elsewhere. Retailers will respond in kind.
It's not, yet. But some day it may be, if only for brand name recognition value. And IIRC, something like 80+% of people use AOL instant messenger programs (through either AOL own IM or ICQ).
Astronomers never cease to amaze me. This guy found an event that happened for 0.2 seconds, approximately 35,194,176,000,000,000 miles away, that happened 6000 years ago. And could actually recognize the significance of the event.
As you all know, Marketing has long known that we geeks are technologies Pavolvian Dogs. They've used publications like Popular Science and Byte to whip us into a frenzy about their "latest, greatest" thing. Now, as many of us have long suspected, it appears that the Internet has been compromised as well. For many years, we have used the Internet to calmly and rationally discuss what's new in technology. However, I think this article makes it clear that the hype-free days are now officially over.
I propose the following steps be immediately taken:
- Begin carrying random magazines wherever you go, and make it a point to be seen enthusiastically reading one by a Marketing Wonk. Perhaps spreading disinformation about our information sources will help stem the tide.
- Encrypt all emails that contain the subject lines "Dude, you've got to check this out", "Schweeeet!", and "OMG, when's payday!". Also encrypt all emails with the subject line "D00D, FR33 PR0N N WAR3Z H3R3!", just to keep them guessing.
- Try to keep the geek-drool traffic to a minimum, at least until one of us can invent another totally new information medium that only we can understand.
And for God's sake, don't tell anyone you don't trust about Indrema!
From the Apple page.
Just 1 inch thick and weighing a mere 5.3 pounds, the PowerBook G4 is a heavyweight in an ultralight body-the world's first notebook computer made of 99.5% pure grade CP1 (meaning commercially pure) titanium.
It's nice to see that Apple has taken a cue from the rest of the marketing world, and decided to try and convince us that titanium is the next cure for cancer/solution to world hunger/answer to all your spiritual questions.
But my God, that laptop does look sweet. It's interesting, though, that it takes Apple to give us a "wide screen" laptop like this. I wonder how long before we start seeing Dell's and IBM's like this?
I think the point is that you can throw away a ball-point pen if you think it's been exposed to infected blood or what not. It's hard to sterilize a Palm.
It's an interesting question, I think. Consider how they wrap or otherwise sterilize everything that comes into contact with you (tounge depressors, ear lookers, etc). Everything in the doctors office either get's thrown away after it's used, or get's sterilized. What happens if a doctor washes his hands, opens up his Palm to look something up, then touches something that get's put inside you. Has he just run an infection risk?
I honestly don't know, but considering how careful they are with everything else, I'd say it's an issue.
Every inch of floor in more than four buildings was covered with two-by-two-foot squares of bleak brown carpet. When the astronomers tried to replace it, they discovered it was welded with tiny metal fibers to the floor. The result, they eventually realized, is that the rugs prevent the buildings from conducting static electricity.
Somewhere, a government-contract carpet layer is reading this and having some nasty flashbacks to that job.
You know, this copying pay-per-view movies argument has always struck me as kind of funny.
My dad got a DSS system about 5 years ago, and started taping the pay-per-view movies whenever he rented them. He's pretty fanatical about it, tapes and keeps every movie he buys, even if he doesn't like it. He once got mad that I didn't tape Mortal Kombat while I was home one Christmas break. It didn't matter to him that he wouldn't watch this movie if you paid him: I bought it over the DSS, he wanted it taped. Last time I checked, he probably had over 100 movies he'd recorded from the DSS and various other TV broadcasts.
Now, Dad's VCR is old enough that when he bought it, it was a big deal that it was a 4-head model: it's a good machine, but definitely showing it's age. I asked him one day why he didn't upgrade, pointing out that even though his still works, he could get a new one that would record in much better picture quality. He told me he really didn't care about picture quality that much: what he had was good enough for him.
The funny thing is, I don't think he probably watches any of these movies on tape. It's almost reached collection status for him. If he sees a movie on pay-per-view that he thinks is good, or has heard good things about, he rents it, tapes it, lables it, and put's it in a drawer. My mom will sometimes watch them, or they'll get pulled out if a niece or nephew comes over to borrow it, but that's about it. So in my dad's case, taping has probably added to the number of pay-per-views he's bought. Sometimes he'll rent and record shows he's not interested in, just on the off chance that someone in the family will want to watch it.
My point is, how long have people been recording TV shows, sporting events, pay-per view movies, etc? About 2 days after the VCR was invented. It hasn't hurt Hollywood one bit. Just because people will suddenly have the ability to make digitally-perfect copies doesn't mean that they'll all start their own pirating business. The vast majority will do just like my Dad does: record them, save them, and watch them once in a great while.
Hollywood, like the record industry, would do themselves a favor (and make a butt-load of money in the process) to embrace this new technology. It's not unreasonable to want payment for the product, but give your consumers viewing/listening options, and they will thank you for it.
I agree that this is pure marketing muck from Microsoft, but it's at least a step in the right direction. Wireless is the future. Once affordable, full-featured Palm/cell phone combos become widely available, this sort thing will start taking off. Businesses who would have never even thought about providing wireless access before will start putting it in all their stores, simply because it provides a marketing opportunity. Heck, Wal-Mart would probably love to provide wireless access in all their stores, provided they could throw in a few ads.
Still, it would be incredibly cool to see an RJ-45 sticking out of a coffee house table.
A monolith appears, and here we are, with not one computer virus dangerous enough that we have to keep it on a secret vault on the moon. Honestly, the worst virus we have now simply delete a few files, corrupts some Jpegs, or maybe emails itself to others. How are we going to stop this monolith when it tries to blow us all up without an ultra-dangerous virus?
Oh well, we're lucky in one regard: it appeared in Seattle. If any new viruses are developed capable of taking out the monolith, chances are they'll have something to do with software out of Redmond.
Yeah, the story submitter makes it sound like the return of Big Brother, but really, this seems more like Corporate CYA than anything else.
Roadrunner cable service, at least in my area, has a very similar TOS.
It's unfortunate what happened, but I think that Blizzard is handling this extemely well. Automatically rolling back dead Hardcore characters, and allowing normal character players to "flag" their character for restore, allowing them to choose whether they want to load from a backup or not. The only real flaw I see is players who lost characters or items through normal means now have a chance to get them back, but really that's a small issue.
Blizzards taken some heat in the past (some of it justified) for their policies and support, but considering how damaging this hack was to the D2 community, it seems that Blizzard has really stepped up to the plate.
So, whether you agree with their choices or not, it's not necessarily a crock that their favorite 10 of the millennium are all from a single century.
Let's take a look at some other works written in this millenium, but were not written in the past century:
- War and Peace (1863-69)
- Les Miserables (1862)
- Adventures of Huck Finn (1884)
- Moby Dick (1851)
- Dante's Divine Comedy, others (early 1300's)
- A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
I could go on, but I think you get the point. Whether any of these books deserves to be remembered as a Top10 of the millenium is debatable (they all made Amazon's Top 100 at least), but I guarentee you they deserve to be there more than "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" or "The Stand".
Horrible game, but you can't watch a movie or TV character play a video game these days without hearing the "death" sound from it.
That, or the "swirl of death" launch sound from Yars Revenge. My friends and I treat it like a game: name that Atari Sound!
Of "throw it on the wall, see what sticks" policies in the "New Economy". So what if it's totally unenforcable and utterly against the whole concept of the internet in general? If this doesn't work, they just go back to the way things were. If it does, they're "innvovators".
The ironic thing is, does anybody really care about the content of the Albuquerque Jornal? No offense intended to those of you in New Mexico, but this is hardly one of my major sources of news.
Wired: Will Troll For Hits
Yup, but they've got a long way to go before they reach the kings of all hit-trolling, ZDNet. Through the magic of Headlin-o-Vision, let's take a look at what that aritcle would have been like over at PCWeek...
LINUX IS OUT OF DATE! EVERONE WHO MATTERS TO HATE IT BY Q4 2001!
Whoa. On second thought, let's not.
I think referring to 2.4 as vaporware, while not technically accurate, has some merit. OpenSource is different from software held behind a companies castle walls: it's always out in the open (ideally). So yes, we know it exists in some form: but the fact is, we've been hearing how 2.4 would be out Real-Soon-Now for quite some time, and still waiting.
Not that I think this is a bad thing; on the contrary, having publically availably betas and waiting until the code is golden is a strength.
I think your starting to see rumors like this mainly because Nintendo is nervous about the competition from Sony and Microsoft. Nintendo has been able to get by on the strengths of their titles/characters since the NES/SNES glory days. But Sony and Microsoft have developers lined up around the block (or in Microsofts case, stuffed in their wallet) to develop games for their consoles.
Nintendo needs some meat to their lineup. The N64 sold well, and there were some great games for it, but some new blood is definitely needed. The problem with consoles is that you have a limited time window that you have to get your games into: if you run too late, the cosole is history. Pokemon is probably due to flame out soon. The Zelda line has 2 great N64 games, but there's only so many of those you can put out in a systems lifetime (seems to be about 2). Mario and Donkey Kong will of course have a plethora of "scrollers", racing games, party games, etc...which will make up the core of the title line-up. Rare with the GoldenEye/Perfect Dark types games is a heavy-hitter; but again, there's only so many games they can put out.
Think back to the glory days of NES/SNES. Sure, we all got and played the Marios and the Zeldas, but look at all the other great games from 3rd party developers that kept you playing the deck. Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger, Tecmo Super Bowl, Street Fighter series, EA sports titles. Slowly but surely, these developers, who were once Nintendo exclusive, have migrated to other consoles. Some still develop for the N64, some don't.
Maybe the hardware mistakes made by the N64 had the most to do with it's "lack of previous success" (you can't really call it a failure). It looks like the Cube is going to have some kick-ass specs, which would cure that problem. Still, Nintendo has lost some big third party developers (EA and Square topping the list), and a purchase of Sega would help them gain back some much needed titles. It will be interesting to see where this goes.