I don't know what it is about the year 1999 for technology but both my laptops, my blue-and-white Mac minitower and my MiniDisc recorder are all 1999 vintage and they perform like champions.
I've been using the same MD recorder for 5 years (bought refurbed on eBay) and it's kept right on going. It doesn't get babied. It gets knocked about something fierce. And it is still in great shape.
Yeah, it uses shitty ATRAC compression. You can only NOW (past couple of years) get MD recorders that can record in raw PCM digital. And at that rate, a 1GB MD only will record 15 minutes. And you can only NOW get MD recorders that will dump digital data to computers. I have to use the "analog hole" to transfer interviews to my computer. But guess what? It's JUST FINE for something recorded for a podcast! And it sounds way better than analog cassette! And it takes up less space than a recording analog cassette recorder!
When this little chibi-chibi finally ascends to the Akihabara District in the High Plains of Heaven, guess what I'm going to go searching on eBay for? You got it. Another MZ-R70 MD recorder.
Oh yeah, this Xmas I got a DV camcorder. Refurbed Sony. From eBay. It's sweet.
Sony sucks in so many ways. But they got famous for their electronics for a reason.
I live in LA, and maybe we're not at the Blade Runner future yet, but there are definitely trends in that direction. They are yuppifying Downtown. Spanglish is the trend in slang. We had a really wet rainy season last winter, and the winter that just ended leaked into spring with rain as late as a couple of weeks ago. We don't have replicants as servants, or flying cars, but the general feel of our society is such that Philip K. Dick (author of original short story) and Syd Mead (conceptual artist on Blade Runner) have to be acknowledged as having insight into LA's future.
We might not get there in 2019, but we might get there a bit later. We may never have a replicant problem but crime will always be with us. We may never migrate Off-World but the environment seems to be permanently, irreparably knocked out of balance. The wild climate oscillations foreseen by Philip K. Dick and his protege KW Jeter, who wrote an excellent "sequel" novel to Blade Runner "The Edge Of Human" have begun, and will probably only get worse.
I just want those cool little biological "toys" that JR Sebastian built for himself. "Home again, home again, jiggity-jig! GOOOOOOD evening, Mr. Sebastian!" Where can I find the living teddy bear and the living toy soldiers?
OK, let me break it down to you: it's not just religious allegory, it's WWII in allegory-vision!
Gandalf: Jesus Christ Saruman: Hitler Sauron: Satan The Hobbits: The British The Elves: The French The Men: The Americans The Uruk-Hai: The German "Master Race"
Re-read the books with those ideas in mind. It's basically World War II seen through an apocalyptic prism.
This is probably quite basement-level for usability. Microsoft has a history of lowballing the requirements for their operating systems.
For example: Windows NT4 Workstation had as its low-end system requirements a Pentium with 16MB of RAM. Windows 2000 Professional (In my opinion the high-water mark for Windows) had as its low-end system requirements a Pentium 133MHz with 64MB of RAM and 2GB of HD space. XP Pro has as its low-end system requirements a Pentium 233MHz, 64MB RAM, a CD-ROM drive, 1.5GB of free HD space (that can't be right considering W2K's requirements) and a video card with 800 x 600 pixel resolution.
Now think about it a little. NT4 on an 80MHz Pentium with 16MB RAM? XP Pro on a 233MHz Pentium with 64MB RAM? I don't have to imagine W2KPro on a P133MHz with 64MB of RAM: during study for certification I installed 2K on a machine with exactly those specs, and it CRAWLED.:P
Believe me, you are going to need a hellified system to run Vista at this rate. Double the "Premium Ready" specs and you will have the specs you will need to actually run Vista.
Oh yeah, and I run Panther on a 300MHz iBook with 544MB RAM and a 30GB hard drive. No those weren't the original specs. No, it isn't Tiger, even though there is a way of tricking Tiger to run on a machine without built-in firewire. And you know what? Panther is a happy camper on that machine. Go figure.
LucasArts made a very coy comment about how they are "looking into" doing a Lightsabre title for Wii. This will be the absolute reason for Wii's existence, folks. Expect a title in time for the 30th anniversary of the first Star Wars movie. 5/25/2007, baby. That's my fearless prediction.
Of course, it will be even cooler if they built the game around Master Mace Windu, but who knows. A "secret level" where he has to deal with a snake-filled starship would be the ultimate in kewlness.
...which are, by their very nature, much more fiddly than the average desktop install.
Example: IBM 600e. IBM had the bright idea to put three chips on the mobo that look to Linux like sound cards. And moreover, the sound card chip is only addressable as a ISA module even though you need to use emulation of a PCI interface chip to kick it over. And worst of all, the chip gives a different ID than it's supposed to, thanks to an error in manufacturing at Cirrus Logic. Windows 2000 finds it and kicks it over because IBM let Microsoft know about the quirks of this particular chip. However, Linux has a beastly time because it assumes that the chip is reporting its identity correctly. In order to kick the chip over, you have to rmmod the wrong driver and insmod the correct driver AFTER EVERYTHING ELSE LOADS. Including your Graphical User Interface.
The IBM 600x was a partial redesign, and so you don't have the sonic fiddliness. However, there is fiddliness with video. You have to edit the X.org or XFree86 configuration file to get the video to display at the native resolution of 1024 x 768. That's not intuitive.
Modern lappies are equally finicky, particularly those with newer ATI video chipsets. Intel video and NVidia video is fine, but the ATI open source drivers aren't quite there yet, and the binary blob drivers are flaky and tend to cause showstopper crashes of a type you don't see with just about any other kind of driver. NVidia's binary blob drivers actually work, which no doubt pisses RMS off but is OK for almost everyone else. And Intel, bless its heart, actually does a F/OSS driver for its onboard video chips.
If you want an effortless, uneventful Linux install, build a dog-standard white box desktop. Stay away from newer ATI chipsets and stick with NVidia onboard or on-card video or Intel onboard video. Use a PATA disk as your boot drive, and leave SATA for other storage and for your swap. Use your onboard sound or a standard name-brand sound card.
Trying to install and tweak Linux on a laptop is not for noobs. This was an unfair test. Fuck the article, it's FUD, pure and simple.
Just so you know, WWF Attitude takes a grand total of 5 seconde from load to ready to play if you take all the defaults on Dreamcast. Heh. Progress. What a concept.
The winner and new cham-peen: Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!
Seriously. Both Microsoft and Sony have basically priced themselves out of the market. When a gaming-class PC costs less than a console, you know that you have an overpriced white elephant on your hands.
(I'm sorry, every time I think of that new name Nintendo came up with for Revolution I think of that meme video from a few years back, hence the title.)
...published all its shop manuals for all its ThinkPads. I don't know whether Lenovo will continue this tradition or not, but I have my shop manual for my 600e and my 600x and my 365x. In glorious.PDF format. They are available for open download.
Another good anime series with "Teh funny" is All-Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku OAV and Nuku Nuku TV. Avoid Nuku Nuku Dash! because that's an attempt to play Nuku Nuku straight and you lose the point of the whole series when you do that. The original OAV was done in 1992, the TV series was done in 1998. Both date from well before Excel Saga and FLCL but I think they are better and funnier and a more accurate spoof of anime than either of those. Nuku Nuku is voiced by Hayashibara Megumi, the June Foray of Japan, and is one of her best vocal performances. She also sings the songs, and in the TV series the songs featured her lyrics.
ADV buried the DVD releases like so much kitty excreta in the litterbox. Too bad, it rocks. You can probably find it remaindered really cheap now.
Start of series Producer: "Hey, let's make an anime about mecha! That always sells! Writer: "Great idea!"
No, more like: Producer: Anno-san! We really like your mecha! Could you do a series with lots of mecha? Anno Hideaki: Hai hai...if it's mecha you want, mecha you get...
Roughly halfway through the series Producer: "This really isn't very good - let's turn it into a mystical/psychological story!" Writer: "Great idea!"
Producer: Anno-san, WTF is all this mystical/psychological/Qabalistic crap you're throwing into the series? Anno Hideaki: Trust me.
Three episodes before the end Producer: "I have no idea how to wrap this up - let's get totally hammered for the next few weeks!" Writer: "GREAT IDEA!!"
Producer: Anno! We aren't happy with the most recent shows, ratings are diving, we're cutting your funding...now finish it! Anno Hideaki: (has nervous breakdown)
Two words: laptop trouble. That's when buying an extended warranty is a good thing. If you go and buy a laptop, best to spring for the little bit extra for the warranty.
For people who are used to the Windows way of doing things, the deliberately simplified Linspire way of doing things is a very good thing. It's good that they are "getting religion" about the inadvisability of running as root. And the ultimate best thing of all might be CNR technology being opened up. Imagine alternative Free CNR repositories! With CNR 100% opened up, there will be no stopping people from creating a F/OSS-only CNR repository that people who might not want to get chained to Linspire, Inc. might use instead. This was something the Lycoris community was trying to do with IRIS, Lycoris' answer to CNR.
With Lycoris by and large a dead issue, a Freespire might be just the ticket for folks who are just not ready for Ubuntu/Kubuntu yet.
Wired connectivity ONLY on networks that pass information about credit cards around. That shit has no business being on a WiFi network. I will *not* do anything on a wireless network that requires sensitive data being thrown around.
All WiFi networks, even those with WEP (Ha! It is to laugh! Wired Equivalent Privacy my ass!) or WPA, should be dealt with as *untrusted* networks. As in be careful what you do on them and don't give out any personal info on them.
I was horrified when I was working at this one place that sold computer media online. This was about three years ago. The computer I was using for order entry was connected via WiFi to their network. Any dumbass with a sniffer could have had a lot of fun with the info that was being thrown around in the clear. I complained about this and told them they should have my computer on a wired link. They fired me for insubordination. Fuckers. I bet they still have that same in-the-clear WiFi link to that same computer, and they still use it for mail order entry.
If you've ever seen the Anime OAV "Otaku no Video" you might remember the guy who was a videotaping freak. That was me from about 1987 until 2 years ago when I canceled my cable TV. I have boxes and boxes and shelves full of VHS tapes, primarily of movies and TV series, but also stuff from my tape trading days. It used to be that you couldn't download fansubbed anime, you would have to trade tapes with people. Tape traders lived by a strict code. No money was to change hands...you "repaid" your fellow tape trader with blank tape and stamps, or a nominal sum to cover blank tape and postage. If a legit release came out of a particular title, you stopped circulating the tape.
I have been thinking about getting a DVD recorder, but have been hesitant due to the expense. However, they are coming down in price. And now that I have a camcorder (thank you eBay) I have a need to burn footage to DVD+R to free up the expensive little DV tapes it consumes. And they *are* expensive, dammit. $4/tape! Damn, I remember when Maxell, TDK and Fuji VHS tape were that price...now they're a buck a tape or less.
It's amusing to look at my little chibi-DV camcorder and think about the gargantuan machine Ampex built. The thing fits in the palm of my hand. The tapes are about 2" x 1" x 1/4". And you can hear the mechanism wrapping the tape around the helical scan drum just like with any other videotape format. And DV tape is on its way out as a standard, replaced by mini-DVD and in camera hard drives. Looks like DV tape is going to eventually wind up at Total Rewind on display. Oh well, it's working for me now.
Yes but you can get a good quality CD-R for $0.25. So it makes more sense. "Here's a quarter, kid. Go back to school, download a Debian Net Install.ISO and burn yourself a real OS."
Mac OS X has been able to use the right mouse button since the beginning. Mac OS 9 and below sees both buttons of a two button mouse as the uni-button. This was useful for the times that a button would stop functioning on a mouse. Not so useful when you wanted to do contextual menu stuff. But how long has it been since Mac OS X started being useful and you stopped booting into Mac OS 9? At least since Jagwire.
Yeah, the trackpad on a Mac laptop only has a single button. Boo hoo hoo. You just whip out Mr. 2-button mouse/trackball and you are good to go. The Logitech Marble Mouse has been my standby for years and years and years, since they were beige instead of that smoky grey metallic color.
Next Windows whine...I've got a nice wheel of Gouda here that will enhance that vintage whine of yours.
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I don't know what it is about the year 1999 for technology but both my laptops, my blue-and-white Mac minitower and my MiniDisc recorder are all 1999 vintage and they perform like champions.
I've been using the same MD recorder for 5 years (bought refurbed on eBay) and it's kept right on going. It doesn't get babied. It gets knocked about something fierce. And it is still in great shape.
Yeah, it uses shitty ATRAC compression. You can only NOW (past couple of years) get MD recorders that can record in raw PCM digital. And at that rate, a 1GB MD only will record 15 minutes. And you can only NOW get MD recorders that will dump digital data to computers. I have to use the "analog hole" to transfer interviews to my computer. But guess what? It's JUST FINE for something recorded for a podcast! And it sounds way better than analog cassette! And it takes up less space than a recording analog cassette recorder!
When this little chibi-chibi finally ascends to the Akihabara District in the High Plains of Heaven, guess what I'm going to go searching on eBay for? You got it. Another MZ-R70 MD recorder.
Oh yeah, this Xmas I got a DV camcorder. Refurbed Sony. From eBay. It's sweet.
Sony sucks in so many ways. But they got famous for their electronics for a reason.
Eternal Forces: Left Behind, The Video Game.
Can I get a HALLELUYAH? [/snark]
I live in LA, and maybe we're not at the Blade Runner future yet, but there are definitely trends in that direction. They are yuppifying Downtown. Spanglish is the trend in slang. We had a really wet rainy season last winter, and the winter that just ended leaked into spring with rain as late as a couple of weeks ago. We don't have replicants as servants, or flying cars, but the general feel of our society is such that Philip K. Dick (author of original short story) and Syd Mead (conceptual artist on Blade Runner) have to be acknowledged as having insight into LA's future.
We might not get there in 2019, but we might get there a bit later. We may never have a replicant problem but crime will always be with us. We may never migrate Off-World but the environment seems to be permanently, irreparably knocked out of balance. The wild climate oscillations foreseen by Philip K. Dick and his protege KW Jeter, who wrote an excellent "sequel" novel to Blade Runner "The Edge Of Human" have begun, and will probably only get worse.
I just want those cool little biological "toys" that JR Sebastian built for himself. "Home again, home again, jiggity-jig! GOOOOOOD evening, Mr. Sebastian!" Where can I find the living teddy bear and the living toy soldiers?
The hockey player striptease is the climactic scene in the classic movie Slap Shot.
OK, let me break it down to you: it's not just religious allegory, it's WWII in allegory-vision!
Gandalf: Jesus Christ
Saruman: Hitler
Sauron: Satan
The Hobbits: The British
The Elves: The French
The Men: The Americans
The Uruk-Hai: The German "Master Race"
Re-read the books with those ideas in mind. It's basically World War II seen through an apocalyptic prism.
but to get tattooed to show your devotion to evil? That's just sad.
Sort of like this guy?
I think this laptop is meant to be rugged and able to take a hit.
Sort of like...this, and this.
This is probably quite basement-level for usability. Microsoft has a history of lowballing the requirements for their operating systems.
:P
For example: Windows NT4 Workstation had as its low-end system requirements a Pentium with 16MB of RAM. Windows 2000 Professional (In my opinion the high-water mark for Windows) had as its low-end system requirements a Pentium 133MHz with 64MB of RAM and 2GB of HD space. XP Pro has as its low-end system requirements a Pentium 233MHz, 64MB RAM, a CD-ROM drive, 1.5GB of free HD space (that can't be right considering W2K's requirements) and a video card with 800 x 600 pixel resolution.
Now think about it a little. NT4 on an 80MHz Pentium with 16MB RAM? XP Pro on a 233MHz Pentium with 64MB RAM? I don't have to imagine W2KPro on a P133MHz with 64MB of RAM: during study for certification I installed 2K on a machine with exactly those specs, and it CRAWLED.
Believe me, you are going to need a hellified system to run Vista at this rate. Double the "Premium Ready" specs and you will have the specs you will need to actually run Vista.
Oh yeah, and I run Panther on a 300MHz iBook with 544MB RAM and a 30GB hard drive. No those weren't the original specs. No, it isn't Tiger, even though there is a way of tricking Tiger to run on a machine without built-in firewire. And you know what? Panther is a happy camper on that machine. Go figure.
Home taping is killing the music, don't you know? Heh, I'm old enough to remember this first-hand. C30! C60! C90! GO!
LucasArts made a very coy comment about how they are "looking into" doing a Lightsabre title for Wii. This will be the absolute reason for Wii's existence, folks. Expect a title in time for the 30th anniversary of the first Star Wars movie. 5/25/2007, baby. That's my fearless prediction.
Of course, it will be even cooler if they built the game around Master Mace Windu, but who knows. A "secret level" where he has to deal with a snake-filled starship would be the ultimate in kewlness.
...which are, by their very nature, much more fiddly than the average desktop install.
Example: IBM 600e. IBM had the bright idea to put three chips on the mobo that look to Linux like sound cards. And moreover, the sound card chip is only addressable as a ISA module even though you need to use emulation of a PCI interface chip to kick it over. And worst of all, the chip gives a different ID than it's supposed to, thanks to an error in manufacturing at Cirrus Logic. Windows 2000 finds it and kicks it over because IBM let Microsoft know about the quirks of this particular chip. However, Linux has a beastly time because it assumes that the chip is reporting its identity correctly. In order to kick the chip over, you have to rmmod the wrong driver and insmod the correct driver AFTER EVERYTHING ELSE LOADS. Including your Graphical User Interface.
The IBM 600x was a partial redesign, and so you don't have the sonic fiddliness. However, there is fiddliness with video. You have to edit the X.org or XFree86 configuration file to get the video to display at the native resolution of 1024 x 768. That's not intuitive.
Modern lappies are equally finicky, particularly those with newer ATI video chipsets. Intel video and NVidia video is fine, but the ATI open source drivers aren't quite there yet, and the binary blob drivers are flaky and tend to cause showstopper crashes of a type you don't see with just about any other kind of driver. NVidia's binary blob drivers actually work, which no doubt pisses RMS off but is OK for almost everyone else. And Intel, bless its heart, actually does a F/OSS driver for its onboard video chips.
If you want an effortless, uneventful Linux install, build a dog-standard white box desktop. Stay away from newer ATI chipsets and stick with NVidia onboard or on-card video or Intel onboard video. Use a PATA disk as your boot drive, and leave SATA for other storage and for your swap. Use your onboard sound or a standard name-brand sound card.
Trying to install and tweak Linux on a laptop is not for noobs. This was an unfair test. Fuck the article, it's FUD, pure and simple.
Just so you know, WWF Attitude takes a grand total of 5 seconde from load to ready to play if you take all the defaults on Dreamcast. Heh. Progress. What a concept.
The winner and new cham-peen: Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!
Seriously. Both Microsoft and Sony have basically priced themselves out of the market. When a gaming-class PC costs less than a console, you know that you have an overpriced white elephant on your hands.
(I'm sorry, every time I think of that new name Nintendo came up with for Revolution I think of that meme video from a few years back, hence the title.)
...published all its shop manuals for all its ThinkPads. I don't know whether Lenovo will continue this tradition or not, but I have my shop manual for my 600e and my 600x and my 365x. In glorious .PDF format. They are available for open download.
Apple is being retarded.
Reality catches up to Anime.
_ 21.jpg
http://www.inetres.com/gp/anime/bebop/09/bebop_09
Give me a Data Dog and a Mac mini and I'm set.
Another good anime series with "Teh funny" is All-Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku OAV and Nuku Nuku TV. Avoid Nuku Nuku Dash! because that's an attempt to play Nuku Nuku straight and you lose the point of the whole series when you do that. The original OAV was done in 1992, the TV series was done in 1998. Both date from well before Excel Saga and FLCL but I think they are better and funnier and a more accurate spoof of anime than either of those. Nuku Nuku is voiced by Hayashibara Megumi, the June Foray of Japan, and is one of her best vocal performances. She also sings the songs, and in the TV series the songs featured her lyrics.
ADV buried the DVD releases like so much kitty excreta in the litterbox. Too bad, it rocks. You can probably find it remaindered really cheap now.
Start of series
Producer: "Hey, let's make an anime about mecha! That always sells!
Writer: "Great idea!"
No, more like:
Producer: Anno-san! We really like your mecha! Could you do a series with lots of mecha?
Anno Hideaki: Hai hai...if it's mecha you want, mecha you get...
Roughly halfway through the series
Producer: "This really isn't very good - let's turn it into a mystical/psychological story!"
Writer: "Great idea!"
Producer: Anno-san, WTF is all this mystical/psychological/Qabalistic crap you're throwing into the series?
Anno Hideaki: Trust me.
Three episodes before the end
Producer: "I have no idea how to wrap this up - let's get totally hammered for the next few weeks!"
Writer: "GREAT IDEA!!"
Producer: Anno! We aren't happy with the most recent shows, ratings are diving, we're cutting your funding...now finish it!
Anno Hideaki: (has nervous breakdown)
...would be for misbehaving Johns.
Dubya is Sven Hoek.
"Daaah, he is Ole, you are Sven...He is Ole, you are Svaaaaaan..."
Two words: laptop trouble. That's when buying an extended warranty is a good thing. If you go and buy a laptop, best to spring for the little bit extra for the warranty.
For people who are used to the Windows way of doing things, the deliberately simplified Linspire way of doing things is a very good thing. It's good that they are "getting religion" about the inadvisability of running as root. And the ultimate best thing of all might be CNR technology being opened up. Imagine alternative Free CNR repositories! With CNR 100% opened up, there will be no stopping people from creating a F/OSS-only CNR repository that people who might not want to get chained to Linspire, Inc. might use instead. This was something the Lycoris community was trying to do with IRIS, Lycoris' answer to CNR.
With Lycoris by and large a dead issue, a Freespire might be just the ticket for folks who are just not ready for Ubuntu/Kubuntu yet.
Wired connectivity ONLY on networks that pass information about credit cards around. That shit has no business being on a WiFi network. I will *not* do anything on a wireless network that requires sensitive data being thrown around.
All WiFi networks, even those with WEP (Ha! It is to laugh! Wired Equivalent Privacy my ass!) or WPA, should be dealt with as *untrusted* networks. As in be careful what you do on them and don't give out any personal info on them.
I was horrified when I was working at this one place that sold computer media online. This was about three years ago. The computer I was using for order entry was connected via WiFi to their network. Any dumbass with a sniffer could have had a lot of fun with the info that was being thrown around in the clear. I complained about this and told them they should have my computer on a wired link. They fired me for insubordination. Fuckers. I bet they still have that same in-the-clear WiFi link to that same computer, and they still use it for mail order entry.
If you've ever seen the Anime OAV "Otaku no Video" you might remember the guy who was a videotaping freak. That was me from about 1987 until 2 years ago when I canceled my cable TV. I have boxes and boxes and shelves full of VHS tapes, primarily of movies and TV series, but also stuff from my tape trading days. It used to be that you couldn't download fansubbed anime, you would have to trade tapes with people. Tape traders lived by a strict code. No money was to change hands...you "repaid" your fellow tape trader with blank tape and stamps, or a nominal sum to cover blank tape and postage. If a legit release came out of a particular title, you stopped circulating the tape.
I have been thinking about getting a DVD recorder, but have been hesitant due to the expense. However, they are coming down in price. And now that I have a camcorder (thank you eBay) I have a need to burn footage to DVD+R to free up the expensive little DV tapes it consumes. And they *are* expensive, dammit. $4/tape! Damn, I remember when Maxell, TDK and Fuji VHS tape were that price...now they're a buck a tape or less.
It's amusing to look at my little chibi-DV camcorder and think about the gargantuan machine Ampex built. The thing fits in the palm of my hand. The tapes are about 2" x 1" x 1/4". And you can hear the mechanism wrapping the tape around the helical scan drum just like with any other videotape format. And DV tape is on its way out as a standard, replaced by mini-DVD and in camera hard drives. Looks like DV tape is going to eventually wind up at Total Rewind on display. Oh well, it's working for me now.
Yes but you can get a good quality CD-R for $0.25. So it makes more sense. "Here's a quarter, kid. Go back to school, download a Debian Net Install .ISO and burn yourself a real OS."
Mac OS X has been able to use the right mouse button since the beginning. Mac OS 9 and below sees both buttons of a two button mouse as the uni-button. This was useful for the times that a button would stop functioning on a mouse. Not so useful when you wanted to do contextual menu stuff. But how long has it been since Mac OS X started being useful and you stopped booting into Mac OS 9? At least since Jagwire.
Yeah, the trackpad on a Mac laptop only has a single button. Boo hoo hoo. You just whip out Mr. 2-button mouse/trackball and you are good to go. The Logitech Marble Mouse has been my standby for years and years and years, since they were beige instead of that smoky grey metallic color.
Next Windows whine...I've got a nice wheel of Gouda here that will enhance that vintage whine of yours.