> Why *wouldn't* you care about the first watch ever? The Accutron was scarcely "the first watch ever".
> I wear my watch every day and couldn't imagine how folks in the '50s went through life without one! I haven't worn a watch for about 10 years, since I find them uncomfortable (for reasons which I won't go into). I manage fine, because I live in a world full of clocks. If things get really bad, I can always look up at the sky and get a reasonably good idea of the time.
> I for one REALLY doubt that the movie studios are going to come out with 20 hour movies.
Studios don't like movies which run much over two hours, since they get less showings in an evening at the theatre. Fewer showings means fewer seats, which means fewer paying customers, which means less profits for the industry.
That's at least part of the reason that Terry Gilliam's masterpiece "Brazil" was show for many years in many cinemas as the 90-odd minute "studio" cut, whilst Gilliam's edit (the "Director's cut" I guess) is more like 140 minutes. Gilliam's version is, IM(NS)HO, is by far the superior version of the movie. (OK, it's more complex that that - there's Gilliam's "European" version at 140-ish minutes, his US version at about 130 and the "Studio" version at 90ish. This is far more information than you will ever need, and I apologise now for the fact that I am rambling on in an almost completly off-topic direction about one of my favourite movies. Sorry
Re:one thing I think everyone is ignoring
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· Score: 2
> This could be one of the reasons for keeping with red laser, if blue was used then it wouldn't read the old media.
Of course, high-end players could probably just have multiple lasers if necessary.
I was crying by the end of the first paragraph...
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· Score: 5, Funny
"It was hard to tell but I think Emacs came out as the better utility vehicle."
Absolutelty hilarious. I'll go and read the rest of it now...
> I use AIM, Yahoo Instant Messenger, and ICQ In that case, I suggest you take a look at Trillian, which is a client for all of the above (as well as MSN and IRC) in a single program.
> now I can stop selling stuff to minorities! Of course you can. Of course, if they suspect that it's motivated by their minority status, they can still try to sue you for discrimination. It's important to realise that it's discrimination that you'd be being sued for, rather than not selling the stuff.
> With the primary feature that you can play and control your xbox from literally anywhere in the world. No, with the primary feature that they can play and control your xbox from literally anywhere in the world...
> I'm sure a lot more Americans are familiar with it than Mein Kampf. That's probably true - but the comment was about *impact on freedom and human rights*, not familiarity. Oh, and there are countries other than America which have had human rights/freedom issues. I'd still argue (not particularly strenously) that Mein Kampf has had a bigger impact on freedom and human rights that the bible (largely because of all the nasty things that happened 50 years ago as a consequence of MK)
It's a pity you chose to ignore the salient part of my post and instead chose to call me naive for adding a throw-away line. (There's a reason I added a smiley)
> Brand name and quality becomes a issues that are secondary to price and convenience. Which is pretty much what I was saying w.r.t. printers and branding. I don't really want to go so far off-topic as to debate the soft drink choices of fast food outlets.
> To do anything less would be uneconomic and simply bad business. It would be dam-well unAmerican! Whilst that's probably true, I suspect you'll find it's the sellers OPTION. I don't know of any state tyrannical enough to COMPELL such a sale (which was what the original post implied)
> User goes to buy a computer, doesn't know printers that well, but has heard of HP being a solid brand of printers. Sees the Dell brand as a "cheesy rip off store brand" and buys the HP... Tortilla chips and computers are somewhat different (see, I have learnt something after being in software for 20 years:-) The majority of consumers know much more about tortilla chips than they do about computers. When they set out to buy a computer, they go out to buy a computer - and might even have done some research. But it's the computer they're looking for - the printer is, well, peripheral. So they decide which computer they want and then think "oh yeah, I need something to print out on" - and start asking the seller's advice. If the seller (in this case, Dell), says "buy a Dell printer" then the consumer will think that's a good idea. He'll just assume that a Dell printer will be compatible with a Dell PC, but he might wonder if an HP printer is. Add to that the fact that I doubt you'll ever be in a "store" where both Dell and HP printers are on offer (Dell continue to do almost all - if not all - their selling direct), so the comparison won't arise.
> are any other PC manufacturers going to be willing to purchase/sell Dell printers? Probably not - at least, not YET (once upon HP had no reputation in the printer market) - but I doubt that's Dell's intended business model. I suspect you'll find that it's currently quite rare for Dell to sell an HP printer to someone who hasn't bought a Dell PC. So what Dell are probably going to do is sell Dell printers to people who have bought (or are buying) Dell computers.
> lots of other fast food chains were selling Coca Cola products because selling Pepsi was in essence giving money to their competitor I don't suppose it could possibly be be Coke tastes better than Pepsi, could it? (And, since this is clearly a personal choice, you're entitled to hold my opinion:-))
> you can't sell your goods only to selected companies - you MUST sell it to everyone who will pay listed price. Not at all true. You can refuse to sell anything to anyone. Or do you think that arms manufacturers MUST sell guns to terrorists?
> What advantage is there to buying a printer from the same place you order your computer from? In a word, convenience. Almost everyone I know who isn't "in" the industry who has bought a computer has bought a printer from the same source. They have a warm fuzzy feeling that since they came from the same source, they'll be compatible. And the vast majority of the computer-buying public isn't "in" the industry. When you look at corporate customers, then there's an even bigger tendancy to buying everything from a single source ("preferred supplier"), since it's easier to deal with from an bookkeeping/admin point of view and there's only one place to go when things go wrong. If you buy your computer and printer from the same source, there's nobody else for them to to blame any incompatibility on.
> Has Dell been selling HP printers less than what I could buy from any other mail order outlet? I can't say for sure, but I'd be willing to take a bet that if you buy a computer and printer at the same time from Dell, you'd pay less that if you purchased them seperatly.
> Less than what I could buy the same HP printer from Fry's (or wherever)? I don't know about Frys (I don't know of one I could reach today from here), but I'd be surprised if Dell couldn't beat a retail store for price. Mail order/phone order/internet is inherently less expensive for the vendor than retail, since the overheads are much lower (and the bigger the area you cover, the bigger the saving).
I don't need to give you a list of all the "prior art" for JPEG, do I. And do you know for an absolute fact that ASCII art hasn't already been patended, but that the patent holders have kept quiet about it (as has happened with JPEG/Forgent)
> they had a police officer on there describing how he felt while they showed the main character of the game beating on a cop Did they ask him to comment on the film of cops beating on Rodney King? Or did they manage to draw the distinction between entertainment and real life there?
> It frightens me that we allow these sort of games to be played by our youth Grand Theft Auto III is clearly marked with an "18" certificate (at least, my copy is). If parents are allowing their kids to play it, then attack the parents - not the game. Or would you rather we banned all "18" cert movies? What else would you like to censor because certain individuals fail to exercise good judgement in raising their children?
> games like this, Postal, and Doom may be all it takes to trigger a mass murderer. We had mass murders before computers (or TV) were invented. I really don't think we can blame mankind's inhumanity to itself on technology.
> but the fact that there were four thirteen year olds on the show playing the game See my previous comment re: 18 certificate. The bad judgement is not in the making of the game, it is in allowing it to be viewed by an unsuitable audience. Again, the parents should take some responsibility rather than relying on an electronic babysitter.
> we need to curb our liberties to guard our safety. No. You need to EXERCISE the liberty to stop your children playing those games which you feel are a negative influence in order to safeguard those liberties. If you place "safety" above liberty, presumably you wouldn't fight a war to preserve your liberty, since fighting a war is inherently unsafe? Wish we'd though of that when Hitler was threatening Europe.
Either the moderation is right, and you are a troll. Or the moderations wrong and you're sadly misguided. I hope for all our sake's that you're a troll.
> Half-life is built on Quake 2 engine, which in turn is built on Quake 1. Whilst it's true that HL uses the Q2 engine, it's inaccurate to say that Q2 is "built on" Q1. It was written by the same people (primarily Carmack) and he clearly learnt some lessons whilst writing Q1 that he carried over into Q2, but to say that one is built on the other is, I'm afraid, wrong. Go look at the source code if you don't beleive me.
Slashdot Mirror
> Do you even know what that word means? :-)
Of course he does. He's heard the song...
> Why *wouldn't* you care about the first watch ever?
The Accutron was scarcely "the first watch ever".
> I wear my watch every day and couldn't imagine how folks in the '50s went through life without one!
I haven't worn a watch for about 10 years, since I find them uncomfortable (for reasons which I won't go into). I manage fine, because I live in a world full of clocks. If things get really bad, I can always look up at the sky and get a reasonably good idea of the time.
1961 is a whole millenium ago.
> I for one REALLY doubt that the movie studios are going to come out with 20 hour movies.
Studios don't like movies which run much over two hours, since they get less showings in an evening at the theatre. Fewer showings means fewer seats, which means fewer paying customers, which means less profits for the industry.
That's at least part of the reason that Terry Gilliam's masterpiece "Brazil" was show for many years in many cinemas as the 90-odd minute "studio" cut, whilst Gilliam's edit (the "Director's cut" I guess) is more like 140 minutes. Gilliam's version is, IM(NS)HO, is by far the superior version of the movie. (OK, it's more complex that that - there's Gilliam's "European" version at 140-ish minutes, his US version at about 130 and the "Studio" version at 90ish. This is far more information than you will ever need, and I apologise now for the fact that I am rambling on in an almost completly off-topic direction about one of my favourite movies. Sorry
> This could be one of the reasons for keeping with red laser, if blue was used then it wouldn't read the old media.
Of course, high-end players could probably just have multiple lasers if necessary.
"It was hard to tell but I think Emacs came out as the better utility vehicle."
Absolutelty hilarious. I'll go and read the rest of it now...
> A pack of 200 squid is slightly unbelievable.
Would that be a Beosquid cluster?
> I use AIM, Yahoo Instant Messenger, and ICQ
In that case, I suggest you take a look at Trillian, which is a client for all of the above (as well as MSN and IRC) in a single program.
> now I can stop selling stuff to minorities!
Of course you can. Of course, if they suspect that it's motivated by their minority status, they can still try to sue you for discrimination. It's important to realise that it's discrimination that you'd be being sued for, rather than not selling the stuff.
Hey, I never said which "they" I was referring to, did I :-)
> My question here is, why are they reinventing the wheel?
Because they want to lock you into their own proprietary technology, of course.
> With the primary feature that you can play and control your xbox from literally anywhere in the world.
No, with the primary feature that they can play and control your xbox from literally anywhere in the world...
In that case, you may delete the second sentence of my response :D
> I'm sure a lot more Americans are familiar with it than Mein Kampf.
That's probably true - but the comment was about *impact on freedom and human rights*, not familiarity. Oh, and there are countries other than America which have had human rights/freedom issues. I'd still argue (not particularly strenously) that Mein Kampf has had a bigger impact on freedom and human rights that the bible (largely because of all the nasty things that happened 50 years ago as a consequence of MK)
It's a pity you chose to ignore the salient part of my post and instead chose to call me naive for adding a throw-away line. (There's a reason I added a smiley)
> Brand name and quality becomes a issues that are secondary to price and convenience.
Which is pretty much what I was saying w.r.t. printers and branding. I don't really want to go so far off-topic as to debate the soft drink choices of fast food outlets.
> To do anything less would be uneconomic and simply bad business. It would be dam-well unAmerican!
Whilst that's probably true, I suspect you'll find it's the sellers OPTION. I don't know of any state tyrannical enough to COMPELL such a sale (which was what the original post implied)
> This is the LAW.
Can you say which LAW? Or is this just a troll?
> User goes to buy a computer, doesn't know printers that well, but has heard of HP being a solid brand of printers. Sees the Dell brand as a "cheesy rip off store brand" and buys the HP... :-)
Tortilla chips and computers are somewhat different (see, I have learnt something after being in software for 20 years
The majority of consumers know much more about tortilla chips than they do about computers. When they set out to buy a computer, they go out to buy a computer - and might even have done some research. But it's the computer they're looking for - the printer is, well, peripheral. So they decide which computer they want and then think "oh yeah, I need something to print out on" - and start asking the seller's advice. If the seller (in this case, Dell), says "buy a Dell printer" then the consumer will think that's a good idea. He'll just assume that a Dell printer will be compatible with a Dell PC, but he might wonder if an HP printer is.
Add to that the fact that I doubt you'll ever be in a "store" where both Dell and HP printers are on offer (Dell continue to do almost all - if not all - their selling direct), so the comparison won't arise.
> are any other PC manufacturers going to be willing to purchase/sell Dell printers?
:-))
Probably not - at least, not YET (once upon HP had no reputation in the printer market) - but I doubt that's Dell's intended business model.
I suspect you'll find that it's currently quite rare for Dell to sell an HP printer to someone who hasn't bought a Dell PC. So what Dell are probably going to do is sell Dell printers to people who have bought (or are buying) Dell computers.
> lots of other fast food chains were selling Coca Cola products because selling Pepsi was in essence giving money to their competitor
I don't suppose it could possibly be be Coke tastes better than Pepsi, could it? (And, since this is clearly a personal choice, you're entitled to hold my opinion
> you can't sell your goods only to selected companies - you MUST sell it to everyone who will pay listed price.
Not at all true. You can refuse to sell anything to anyone. Or do you think that arms manufacturers MUST sell guns to terrorists?
> What advantage is there to buying a printer from the same place you order your computer from?
In a word, convenience. Almost everyone I know who isn't "in" the industry who has bought a computer has bought a printer from the same source. They have a warm fuzzy feeling that since they came from the same source, they'll be compatible. And the vast majority of the computer-buying public isn't "in" the industry.
When you look at corporate customers, then there's an even bigger tendancy to buying everything from a single source ("preferred supplier"), since it's easier to deal with from an bookkeeping/admin point of view and there's only one place to go when things go wrong. If you buy your computer and printer from the same source, there's nobody else for them to to blame any incompatibility on.
> Has Dell been selling HP printers less than what I could buy from any other mail order outlet?
I can't say for sure, but I'd be willing to take a bet that if you buy a computer and printer at the same time from Dell, you'd pay less that if you purchased them seperatly.
> Less than what I could buy the same HP printer from Fry's (or wherever)?
I don't know about Frys (I don't know of one I could reach today from here), but I'd be surprised if Dell couldn't beat a retail store for price. Mail order/phone order/internet is inherently less expensive for the vendor than retail, since the overheads are much lower (and the bigger the area you cover, the bigger the saving).
I don't need to give you a list of all the "prior art" for JPEG, do I. And do you know for an absolute fact that ASCII art hasn't already been patended, but that the patent holders have kept quiet about it (as has happened with JPEG/Forgent)
What makes you think "ASCII art" is unpatentable?
> they had a police officer on there describing how he felt while they showed the main character of the game beating on a cop
Did they ask him to comment on the film of cops beating on Rodney King? Or did they manage to draw the distinction between entertainment and real life there?
> It frightens me that we allow these sort of games to be played by our youth
Grand Theft Auto III is clearly marked with an "18" certificate (at least, my copy is). If parents are allowing their kids to play it, then attack the parents - not the game. Or would you rather we banned all "18" cert movies? What else would you like to censor because certain individuals fail to exercise good judgement in raising their children?
> games like this, Postal, and Doom may be all it takes to trigger a mass murderer.
We had mass murders before computers (or TV) were invented. I really don't think we can blame mankind's inhumanity to itself on technology.
> but the fact that there were four thirteen year olds on the show playing the game
See my previous comment re: 18 certificate. The bad judgement is not in the making of the game, it is in allowing it to be viewed by an unsuitable audience. Again, the parents should take some responsibility rather than relying on an electronic babysitter.
> we need to curb our liberties to guard our safety.
No. You need to EXERCISE the liberty to stop your children playing those games which you feel are a negative influence in order to safeguard those liberties. If you place "safety" above liberty, presumably you wouldn't fight a war to preserve your liberty, since fighting a war is inherently unsafe? Wish we'd though of that when Hitler was threatening Europe.
Either the moderation is right, and you are a troll. Or the moderations wrong and you're sadly misguided. I hope for all our sake's that you're a troll.
> Half-life is built on Quake 2 engine, which in turn is built on Quake 1.
Whilst it's true that HL uses the Q2 engine, it's inaccurate to say that Q2 is "built on" Q1. It was written by the same people (primarily Carmack) and he clearly learnt some lessons whilst writing Q1 that he carried over into Q2, but to say that one is built on the other is, I'm afraid, wrong. Go look at the source code if you don't beleive me.