They need to bundle the DVD kit anyway, to compete on price/features with the PS/2, which already has that functionality built in at that price (though Sony does charge extra for a remote).
much as I may have enjoyed Tron in the day, it's not a great movie.
I agree. It may have been groundbreaking in its graphics, and we may all believe secretly that little people live in ou computers, but it's not that great a movie.
On the other hand, Wargames is. Ignore the surface silliness, and treat it as a near-future parable of what could happen now that machines run our "defense" networks, etc. This is a classic tale of the creation almost overthrowing the creator.
As the staircase separates the upper and lower floors of the house, the DNA molecule divides society into valid and invalid classes.
Yup. With the irony being that Jerome is "down the ladder." =)
Thing is, if drive is something afected by DNA (and it probably has as much to do with brain chemistry as with nurture, so why not?) Vincent is "up the ladder." I mean, look, Jerome had all these other abilities that were unaffected by his accident, and yet he basically curls up, waiting to die. Surely adaptibility is a "survival trait" and therefore something genetically linked; it's the foundation of Darwinian Evolution Theory, after all.
All fears about genetic manipulation aside, I wish it was possible to just analyze DNA, to hear "you really need a special diet to avoid heart attacks" or "this indicates you might be subject to depression, if this fits, we can offer you classes and/or medication." Ever seen "Lorenzo's Oil?" Imagine if Lorenzo had been put on that diet at birth.
To the extent that testing would offer opportunities, it's a good thing. To the extent that it limits them, it's not. A world where grade school kids could be tested and treated for schizophrenia would be a good thing. But a world where your mom says to your girlfriend, "honey, stay away from my son. He's rated as highly intospective and also easily distracted, and I don't want you messing up his life. Go find a nice jock" would not be such a good thing.
Would critics still praise Hemingway if he never got drunk? On the other hand, if you were Hemingway as a child, wouldn't you easily choose long life over misery?
- girlfriend came over and felt kinda hot for the jedi outfit
And I thought only Sith Lords had hot pink sabres.
"No, baby, I promise you I'm not trying to convert you to the dark side... Look, I'll leave the lights on... My metachlorans wanna meet yours, that's all!"
But is it consistently giving you that throughput? And if it has to throttle down for momentary radio noise, does it have the ability to throttle back up quickly?
I'm just wondering - people with 56K modems often wonder why their connections are slow when they initially sync at high rates, and it's all about the adaptiveness to changing conditions. From what I hear, plain old 802.11b isn't so great at this... I hope this is better.
Is is AOL's fault M$ spagetti coded everything to break if you want an ISP that is not M$?
Did you read the article? DUN (Microsoft's Dial Up Networking applet) isn't the problem, here. DUN works fine with non-MS ISPs. Other ISPs are not on trial here for screwing up settings with their broken proprietary software.
Or is your idea of a real ISP someone who forces you to install a proprietary dialer and other software that tracks your usage and tries to market to you, and also uses proprietary protocols for mail, etc.?
This isn't talk radio. Get a clue, or at least read the article, before you spew. It is definitely AOL's fault, not only for releasing buggy code, but for denying that it was a problem for days and weeks afterwords, after it became public knowledge and we began warning our customers. You would be all over Microsoft if they did this; why are you defending AOL?
Look at the numbers. Are one in ten techs at your ISP on standby for Apple calls? How about Linux? No? How about the number of acutal calls?
*nix installs, with the exception of OSX, are not sufficiently end-user-friendly enough for us to do much troubleshooting for customers. Just think of where all your RPMs might be, whether your permissions are set properly, etc. Oh, yah, and do you think maybe the reason that a huge number of our calls are for MS Windows boxes is because almost all of our end users use MS Windows, anyway? Mac users would know to delete and rebuild if things get "corrupted" (they "corrupt" more often than our MS users) and *nix users either know how to administer their systems or have admins on staff.
and who had to do dialup support back when this came out, and had customers bitching and moaning at US because they were dumb enough to pop a CD someone mailed them into their computer... as always, there will be nothing.
I swear, we should have kept track of the hours spent, and then billed AOL or something.
I think Sony just saw a marketing niche for geek hobbyists and are making money off it - they already have assembly-level development tools for their real designers. The fact that the kit won't let you read from the internal cd rom makes it clear they don't want people doing production code with the kit. =(
"You will obey us - we are the superior beings!" (content policing)
"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" (attitude to unlicensed companies)
In the Borg vs. Dalek vs. Empire depate, I'd have to go with the Empire... some human individuals could retain identities apart from what they belong to, and might even be "happy." In real life, however, I've been staying with Sony, so far.
Yes. However, for $400 (cost of console and linux kit) you can buy an e-machine or other clone P4 from places like Fry's.
Sure, you can play games on the console, but remember, if you want to store game data, you'll have to buy another game drive (whenever it's released) - this included drive is only good for dev kit use. And with the PS/3 already in the pipeline, I'm not sure how cool this dev kit really is. Maybe if it was a port by SuSE or OpenBSD, I'd be a lot more interested.
Put the guts of a laptop in a nice looking box, and make holes for the game ports, sound ports and TV adaptor. Then, modify the linux kernel so it is suited just for playing games straight off the CD. I hear thats what the PS2 is but I have no clue really =)
Then you heard wrong. =) The XBOX would be the closest thing to a converted PC, using an actual x86 CPU and an NVidia GeForce derivative. Both of the other systems use proprietary cpus and sound chips.
Sure it doesn't play DVD's (but according to recent market survey's people are buying game system to play games, not watch their movies)
This may be true about the first game console you buy, but when you go to make your second (or third, etc.) you should be aksing yourself, what does this give me that the last one(s) didn't? You can bet that parents are looking to stretch their dollars a bit more, and something with DVD playback for the same price is a no-brainer when adding consoles to kids' rooms. Heck, that was my biggest excuse at the time I bought the PS/2, before the other two consoles were out: there may not have been many games out, but I was sure tired of watching DVDs on my computer =)
By the way: the PS/2 is the only one with DVD playback out of the box. Sure, you have to use the joystick to control it unless you buy one of the remotes, but still... XBOX's DVD remains a $30+ "option."
Fact is, since I already have a PS/2, I'm interested in the games that XBOX and Gamecube can provide. So far, I don't see anything really worth having, and I would need multiple games for a platform before buying it. (If you buy a console when there's only one game you like, you're nuts, anyway - your effective cost is console+game just to play one game) When I heard about the A.I. games that were supposedly going to be out at the XBOX launch, I was all set to buy... but they seem to have been vaporware =(
I don't understand how the DMCA applies to running free software on any machine. Please clarify? If you're talking about getting around the encryption in the box, I think that can only be applied if the effect is getting access to content.
Sony's been rereleasing some of their flagship games at $20. Ironically for your situation, these are all titles that appeal more to older kids or adults, like Final Fantasy X or GT3. However, this should increase the downward pricing pressure on used game resellers. Unfortunately for Sony, this is also going to delay sales of new releases, as people are going to be more likely to fill in their libraries with the older titles, and wait for the markdowns they are led to expect will happen from now on. So... good news ahead for consumers, not-so-good news ahead for vendors.
If you look at verisign.com, of course, you see no evidence that there is anything wrong.
I wonder if there are any stockholders in this company that might be upset over the concealment of information about issues detrimental to the growth of the business?
If they fail to include this issue in their quarterly report, the stockholders should file a class-action suit against the company.
That being said, I think my major worry is not that I might start saturating my bandwidth to my storage system, it's that my storage system (7200 RPM hard drives) could fail at any time. This is due to all the media attention on the recalls and the low margins on all of these drives.
Frankly, I'd pay 50% more for the piece of mind that I won't wake up tomorrow to find that my data is gone. So far, that's not enough to justify the cost/performance hit of redundant drives in a RAID, but it's getting there (I already have the adapter on hand)...
shurly not on Star Trek or? Picard: "Geordi, I think it's time we replace that old warp core with a brand new Hundai, affordable quality "
Geordi: "Shure Captain, i'll just finish my happy meal with a go large for just 3$, soooo tasty"
Why not? Star Trek has pushed social agendas for years. =)
(My problem isn't that they do it, it's that it seems those writers hardly ever do background research into the concepts of social issues they seek to portray, and still adopt pretty Western-centric approaches to finding answers)
But for digital cable and premium channels, you'll have to use their box.
If you really want PVR functions and you have to use their box, you should look into "SnapStream PVS" from www.snapstream.com. I'm not sure if they have their premium channel guide off the ground yet, but the program works with tv tuner cards and MS Windows, and you can buy remote-controllers for cable boxes to use with it. Best part is, it stores the programs in something at least generally editable: the WMA format.
It's not the idea of pr0n so much as the idea of a kid having access to a vibrator with built in porn dispenser... =)
I'd suggest someone should do a study on effects of cell phone radiation as it affects geeky teens' gonads, except the researchers would probably get accused of child abuse.
They know the bill is stupid. They also know it won't pass. But the attempt will look good at the next election.
Unfortunately, this is probably true; most of the populace will not think at all about why this bill is bad.
The scary thing is that we think a lot about these issues here, but there are certainly many other issues that we don't know much about, and we probably fall just as easily for the tactic of letting the politician define the problem.
The White House announced that it's taking another look at its Middle-East policies in response to the media having become unaccountably IRack-friendly...
I wonder does clearing the CMOS NVRAM and getting a decent 300 watt ATX power supply will help things along.
Yah... I keep my BIOS as barren as possible, and I use a 400-watt in my tower =) Although from reading other comments, there may be a real issue with some SMP systems that people have...
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They need to bundle the DVD kit anyway, to compete on price/features with the PS/2, which already has that functionality built in at that price (though Sony does charge extra for a remote).
much as I may have enjoyed Tron in the day, it's not a great movie.
I agree. It may have been groundbreaking in its graphics, and we may all believe secretly that little people live in ou computers, but it's not that great a movie.
On the other hand, Wargames is. Ignore the surface silliness, and treat it as a near-future parable of what could happen now that machines run our "defense" networks, etc. This is a classic tale of the creation almost overthrowing the creator.
If you liked Ernest Borgnine in the version shown on HBO, you really should catch the extra scenes from the DVD version.
Huh? Where does five become 2.6 then become seven?
With all the extra calculations that have to be done, compared to other OSes like OpenBSD, I am starting to see why they call it "Slowlaris." =)
As the staircase separates the upper and lower floors of the house, the DNA molecule divides society into valid and invalid classes.
Yup. With the irony being that Jerome is "down the ladder." =)
Thing is, if drive is something afected by DNA (and it probably has as much to do with brain chemistry as with nurture, so why not?) Vincent is "up the ladder." I mean, look, Jerome had all these other abilities that were unaffected by his accident, and yet he basically curls up, waiting to die. Surely adaptibility is a "survival trait" and therefore something genetically linked; it's the foundation of Darwinian Evolution Theory, after all.
All fears about genetic manipulation aside, I wish it was possible to just analyze DNA, to hear "you really need a special diet to avoid heart attacks" or "this indicates you might be subject to depression, if this fits, we can offer you classes and/or medication." Ever seen "Lorenzo's Oil?" Imagine if Lorenzo had been put on that diet at birth.
To the extent that testing would offer opportunities, it's a good thing. To the extent that it limits them, it's not. A world where grade school kids could be tested and treated for schizophrenia would be a good thing. But a world where your mom says to your girlfriend, "honey, stay away from my son. He's rated as highly intospective and also easily distracted, and I don't want you messing up his life. Go find a nice jock" would not be such a good thing.
Would critics still praise Hemingway if he never got drunk? On the other hand, if you were Hemingway as a child, wouldn't you easily choose long life over misery?
- girlfriend came over and felt kinda hot for the jedi outfit
And I thought only Sith Lords had hot pink sabres.
"No, baby, I promise you I'm not trying to convert you to the dark side... Look, I'll leave the lights on... My metachlorans wanna meet yours, that's all!"
It says it connects at 72 Mbps consistently
But is it consistently giving you that throughput?
And if it has to throttle down for momentary radio noise, does it have the ability to throttle back up quickly?
I'm just wondering - people with 56K modems often wonder why their connections are slow when they initially sync at high rates, and it's all about the adaptiveness to changing conditions. From what I hear, plain old 802.11b isn't so great at this... I hope this is better.
Is is AOL's fault M$ spagetti coded everything to break if you want an ISP that is not M$?
Did you read the article? DUN (Microsoft's Dial Up Networking applet) isn't the problem, here.
DUN works fine with non-MS ISPs. Other ISPs are not on trial here for screwing up settings with their broken proprietary software.
Or is your idea of a real ISP someone who forces you to install a proprietary dialer and other software that tracks your usage and tries to market to you, and also uses proprietary protocols for mail, etc.?
This isn't talk radio. Get a clue, or at least read the article, before you spew. It is definitely AOL's fault, not only for releasing buggy code, but for denying that it was a problem for days and weeks afterwords, after it became public knowledge and we began warning our customers. You would be all over Microsoft if they did this; why are you defending AOL?
Look at the numbers. Are one in ten techs at your ISP on standby for Apple calls? How about Linux? No? How about the number of acutal calls?
*nix installs, with the exception of OSX, are not sufficiently end-user-friendly enough for us to do much troubleshooting for customers. Just think of where all your RPMs might be, whether your permissions are set properly, etc. Oh, yah, and do you think maybe the reason that a huge number of our calls are for MS Windows boxes is because almost all of our end users use MS Windows, anyway? Mac users would know to delete and rebuild if things get "corrupted" (they "corrupt" more often than our MS users) and *nix users either know how to administer their systems or have admins on staff.
and who had to do dialup support back when this came out, and had customers bitching and moaning at US because they were dumb enough to pop a CD someone mailed them into their computer... as always, there will be nothing.
I swear, we should have kept track of the hours spent, and then billed AOL or something.
You're right. I was just thinking of the huge other chips in the system, and forgot to double check =)
I think Sony just saw a marketing niche for geek hobbyists and are making money off it - they already have assembly-level development tools for their real designers. The fact that the kit won't let you read from the internal cd rom makes it clear they don't want people doing production code with the kit. =(
I guess that makes Nintendo the Daleks.
Remember their practices in the 80s?
"You will obey us - we are the superior beings!" (content policing)
"EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" (attitude to unlicensed companies)
In the Borg vs. Dalek vs. Empire depate, I'd have to go with the Empire... some human individuals could retain identities apart from what they belong to, and might even be "happy." In real life, however, I've been staying with Sony, so far.
Yes. However, for $400 (cost of console and linux kit) you can buy an e-machine or other clone P4 from places like Fry's.
Sure, you can play games on the console, but remember, if you want to store game data, you'll have to buy another game drive (whenever it's released) - this included drive is only good for dev kit use. And with the PS/3 already in the pipeline, I'm not sure how cool this dev kit really is. Maybe if it was a port by SuSE or OpenBSD, I'd be a lot more interested.
Put the guts of a laptop in a nice looking box, and make holes for the game ports, sound ports and TV adaptor.
Then, modify the linux kernel so it is suited just for playing games straight off the CD.
I hear thats what the PS2 is but I have no clue really =)
Then you heard wrong. =) The XBOX would be the closest thing to a converted PC, using an actual x86 CPU and an NVidia GeForce derivative. Both of the other systems use proprietary cpus and sound chips.
Sure it doesn't play DVD's (but according to recent market survey's people are buying game system to play games, not watch their movies)
This may be true about the first game console you buy, but when you go to make your second (or third, etc.) you should be aksing yourself, what does this give me that the last one(s) didn't? You can bet that parents are looking to stretch their dollars a bit more, and something with DVD playback for the same price is a no-brainer when adding consoles to kids' rooms. Heck, that was my biggest excuse at the time I bought the PS/2, before the other two consoles were out: there may not have been many games out, but I was sure tired of watching DVDs on my computer =)
By the way: the PS/2 is the only one with DVD playback out of the box. Sure, you have to use the joystick to control it unless you buy one of the remotes, but still... XBOX's DVD remains a $30+ "option."
Fact is, since I already have a PS/2, I'm interested in the games that XBOX and Gamecube can provide. So far, I don't see anything really worth having, and I would need multiple games for a platform before buying it. (If you buy a console when there's only one game you like, you're nuts, anyway - your effective cost is console+game just to play one game) When I heard about the A.I. games that were supposedly going to be out at the XBOX launch, I was all set to buy... but they seem to have been vaporware =(
I don't understand how the DMCA applies to running free software on any machine. Please clarify? If you're talking about getting around the encryption in the box, I think that can only be applied if the effect is getting access to content.
Sony's been rereleasing some of their flagship games at $20. Ironically for your situation, these are all titles that appeal more to older kids or adults, like Final Fantasy X or GT3.
However, this should increase the downward pricing pressure on used game resellers. Unfortunately for Sony, this is also going to delay sales of new releases, as people are going to be more likely to fill in their libraries with the older titles, and wait for the markdowns they are led to expect will happen from now on.
So... good news ahead for consumers, not-so-good news ahead for vendors.
If you look at verisign.com, of course, you see no evidence that there is anything wrong.
I wonder if there are any stockholders in this company that might be upset over the concealment of information about issues detrimental to the growth of the business?
If they fail to include this issue in their quarterly report, the stockholders should file a class-action suit against the company.
This was an excellent response.
That being said, I think my major worry is not that I might start saturating my bandwidth to my storage system, it's that my storage system (7200 RPM hard drives) could fail at any time. This is due to all the media attention on the recalls and the low margins on all of these drives.
Frankly, I'd pay 50% more for the piece of mind that I won't wake up tomorrow to find that my data is gone. So far, that's not enough to justify the cost/performance hit of redundant drives in a RAID, but it's getting there (I already have the adapter on hand)...
shurly not on Star Trek or?
Picard: "Geordi, I think it's time we replace that old warp core with a brand new Hundai, affordable quality "
Geordi: "Shure Captain, i'll just finish my happy meal with a go large for just 3$, soooo tasty"
Why not? Star Trek has pushed social agendas for years. =)
(My problem isn't that they do it, it's that it seems those writers hardly ever do background research into the concepts of social issues they seek to portray, and still adopt pretty Western-centric approaches to finding answers)
But for digital cable and premium channels, you'll have to use their box.
If you really want PVR functions and you have to use their box, you should look into "SnapStream PVS" from www.snapstream.com. I'm not sure if they have their premium channel guide off the ground yet, but the program works with tv tuner cards and MS Windows, and you can buy remote-controllers for cable boxes to use with it. Best part is, it stores the programs in something at least generally editable: the WMA format.
Why is pr0n 'bad' for kids?
It's not the idea of pr0n so much as the idea of a kid having access to a vibrator with built in porn dispenser... =)
I'd suggest someone should do a study on effects of cell phone radiation as it affects geeky teens' gonads, except the researchers would probably get accused of child abuse.
They know the bill is stupid. They also know it won't pass. But the attempt will look good at the next election.
Unfortunately, this is probably true; most of the populace will not think at all about why this bill is bad.
The scary thing is that we think a lot about these issues here, but there are certainly many other issues that we don't know much about, and we probably fall just as easily for the tactic of letting the politician define the problem.
The White House announced that it's taking another look at its Middle-East policies in response to the media having become unaccountably IRack-friendly...
Yah... I keep my BIOS as barren as possible, and I use a 400-watt in my tower =) Although from reading other comments, there may be a real issue with some SMP systems that people have...