Stern was in the past always the 2nd (or 3rd) on the market, never the market leader.
The company started as Data East, and their hardware was almost an identical copy of Williams boards at the time. (and if you read back on rec.games.pinball, there were some lawsuits going on about this). Later Sega took over DE, and Stern took over the pinball division from Sega.
But they were always 2nd on the market, behing Williams, and generally making cheaper (less innovative, less fun, less reliable games) btw I'm generalising now, so don't complain that game X is more fun or more reliable. OK reliability was maybe better for electronics, but when you see beneath the playfield or look at some assemblies, some things are just cheap plastic whilst Williams used metal parts for them.
Anyway, Stern became market leader because WMS closed it's pinball division in 1999. Stern did not become market leader because they did an effort to, or because they were that good. Improvements came from Williams, and Stern copied if they needed to.
And the last 5 years, Stern has still kept going on the way they did the 10 previous years: just keep going on the way they do, don't innovate, as long as they produce games that are 'just good enough' they sell them and make a profit.
In 2000 most operators said there were no pins for sale. Stern only had Striker Extreme and that pin just was awful. No fun to play at all and playfield-wise it looked as it was 15 years old.
Only the last 2 years this has changed, when Stern started to hire designers which worked previously at Williams. But those guys also clearly said to not expect a game like Twilight Zone, as there just wasn't any budget at Stern for this.
So don't expect large technological innovations from Stern. They never did, don't have the mentality/need to do so, and probably don't have the budget.
Now Mr Pinball Australia will start making his own pins which are based on a modern hardware system (software updates through something like sd-cards instead of burning eproms i.e.), Stern will have to do something.
It's know that Stern is working for about a year now on a new hardware platform (with better sound as the Sterns sound system has awful quality) but there's no news about that. Don't know if it's because there's no budget or they don't want to rush things. Personally I now think they will wait a little longer and see what Mr Pinball Australia comes up with (ie color dmd/lcd ?) and how this does on the market. So they can come up with their own improved hardware not long after that (and again become the follower and not the leader on the market for innovative improvements).
btw for those interested in pins, check the newbie guide on my website:)
You're talking about the Bally machines from the 80ies. Bally was a seperate company then and in the end (85-88) their games were very cheap produced.
He's talking about bally/williams games from the 90ies. Williams bought Bally's pinball division in 88 and continued to make games with the Bally name on them. Quality of Bally in the 90ies was identical to Williams (same factory, same people,..)
It's lighter than a normal pinball, which makes it much faster in gameplay..
If you get it in the game then the machine will say 'give it back' and you have to shoot it in the right orbit to put it back into the gumball machine (which starts a multiball).
And no the ceramic ball doesn't break, it's very strong.
it's doomed for failure, but will probably the cheapest method which gets sold as 'safe' and will therefor be implemented:(
my problem with biometrics: 1. man in the middle attack 2. the detail of them
with 2 I mean: yes, fingerprints, retina scans and dna are unique (or should be:) But only if you check the complete set of information. However, most scanners only take a limited sub-set. For fingerprints only a limited set of points are scanned and compared. So my unique fingerprint, may have a not so unique set of say 50 points which someone else may also have. Now these things are used on a small base, it's not a problem. But if there's a database with information of millions of people in it, doubles will occur.
then shift to neutral for downhill/flat coasting will really decrease your car's fuel consumption
I heard this a few months ago on a car program on tv: don't shift to neutral but just don't press the accelerator, will save more energy. Because if you shift in neutral the car still burns fuel to keep the motor going, if you let it roll on itself it doesn't (only works for 'modern' engines).
yes they do, therefor you better don't install them in rooms in which you keep (valuable) collectibles which have paint/color which will fade.. (ie pinball machines in my case)
Something funny/interesting about this Opel/Vauxhall stuff.. The Vauxhalls are made on mainland Europe, as the british shouldn't trust a uk-produced car ? (at least that's what I heard, don't know how much of this is true) but the general motors factories in the uk produce Opels..
I heard from people who work for a company which ships cars across the northsea, that it's funny to see a ship come in from the UK with Opels on it, and going back filled with Vauxhalls.. (same models, just a different badge and right steering).
Re:Not very scientific
on
Killer Ozone?
·
· Score: 1
exactly my opinion too - is this news ? here in belgium in the summer there's sometimes an 'ozone alert', if the measured ozone concentrations get too high then on the news/weather forecast they warn for it, that older people and children shouldn't do any heavy activities in the middle of the day..
The concept of a remote controlled rifle is dangerous.. I was thinking about this earlier.. got the idea from an Isaac Asimov novel. (and instead of posting it I should patent this and become very rich:-)
With current technology, what stops someone from constructing a totally remote controled sniper rifle ?
When JFK was shot they found a rifle and a suspect.. In the near future the only thing left could be a rifle, somewhere set up in a building; or maybe intergrated in a secret corner when a building was constructed, many years before, waiting for the right time to be activated..
and have a near zero rate of illegal duplication, an absolute zero rate of misuse of the types of misuses discussed here, and they are effective.
And why is there a near-zero rate up to now ? Because up they were used in such specific situations where usually nobody could have personal gain from misusing them.
Once the technology gets more widespread, people may have valid reasons to crack or misuse the system and will find a way around it.
Usually prices for old replacement parts go up a lot once the inventory the company has themselves becomes too small and they still need the part for their own support.
So if you had a maintenance contract, you probably could've bought that part for much less.. or they'd given it to you if it was in warranty.
If you don't have a maintenance contract, well, then the server probably isn't worth that much to you.. and if it is you'll pay their price.
I only read the first paragraph and already disagree..
Battery corrosion can and must be cleaned up. Yes you need an acid. But this does not sound as bad as it looks.
Vinager wil do the job.. I neutralised some battery-corroded cpu boards of 25 year old pinball machines this way.. www.marvin3m.com/fix.htm explains how to deal with battery corrosion.
Leaving the problem like the author suggests is the worst thing you can do ! Because battery corrosion just keeps on burning and traveling over pcb's and if you wait long enough, nothing will survive anymore. It can even travel through connectors and wires and attack other pcb's which are connected to it.
I recently fixed a pinball cpu with battery corrosion.. bought the game cheap, 'it always worked and stopped working one day' the cpu looked ok, no obvious signs (green color) of leakage, battery had even be removed in the past.. however 2 ic sockets didn't make any contact at all anymore. So my guess is that the battery had leaked and it had been cleaned off but not really neutralised, and the stuff that got under the ic's kept burning away..
Anyway, the main reason why this idea gets so much attention to become implemented, is that statistically a lot of police officers get killed with their own gun.
So someone thinks: disable cop gun for anyone else => no more cops get shot
Stupid logic which will not work, but the weapon industry and their sales people have seen a new opportunity to sell a lot of guns to police forces over the whole world.
It only takes a little logic to consider that the first real problem is that cops should learn not to let anyone grab their weapon.. if they surrender their weapon to someone, it's probably because they are already under gunpoint.. and these bad guys prefer to kill the cops with their own guns as not to leave a trace. Disabling cop guns may prevent a few rare kills but will probably not make a huge difference.. cops will still be killed, but there will be a trace of another gun so the detectives can do some research later.. (not that they probably will ever find this gun, as it'll be resold or thrown away).
So behind all this is just some marketing by gun-companies..
It can even get worse, I believe there are even prototype guns which don't shoot if they're pointed in the direction of the owners (he has a sort of transmitter in his pocked), so what will happen if the 'bad guys' can crack this code ? Robbers which become invulnarable because police guns don't want to shoot them..
Europe was into nucluar power in the 70ies and 80ies.. but now some countries are also planning to shut down some/all of their nuclear plants, and much earlier than designed.
Either you've got a permission to carry and then you carry it on you. And no burgler who comes into your empty house would steal your gun as there's no gun to steal; like the parent poster complained about. And it works for selfdefence as you complain about.
Or you are at home and then you either keep it also on you, or you put it in a gun safe.
And yes there are small gun safes to place in your bedroom with electronic locks, which allow very fast access to it in case you were sleeping and hear something in your house. So a locked away gun can still be used by its owner for selfdefence. Read a bit on rec.guns about it.
As a good owner, you should put your gun in a gun-safe where it belongs and no junkie can get it.
The problem is that pro- and anti-gun groups are very extreme.. the pro group wants everyone to own a gun and be able to walk around with it, while the anti-group wants no gun to exist on this world.
Guess what.. they're both wrong and the best way is somewhere in the middle. I'm in Belgium myself and like the Netherlands, I think there aren't many problems with gun ownership. Although here in Belgium there's now a discussion if they should also be allowed for the defense of property, as legally you're only allowed to use a gun for self-defense (ie the past years there were some problems with juwelers who shot the robbers).
It all depends on where you live.. live in a large city or very populated country like in Europe, and everyone walking around with a gun isn't the best idea and should be restricted. But people living in the USA on their farm with no neighbours for miles around and one sheriff who lives 200 miles away.. they'll find it necessary to have the right to own a gun and defend their family with it.
The 'gun-grabbers' seem to forget it is too late to get rid of all guns. A gun is not something like a car or plastic toy which breaks after a few years and you throw away. 50 year old guns which are maintained still work as good as they were new. And there are already millions out there which have never be registered. So it's an illusion to ever get rid of them all (and then people will use baseball bats or other weapens).
As long as people feel safe where they live, only a small minority of people will have the need to own a gun for self-defense. Problems start when criminality becomes too high and everyone wants to own a gun to defends his house/family.
Makes me remind of a book I read as a kid - it came of my father, was written somewhere in the early 60ies.. chemical tests for teenagers. One of them involved scraping off the luminous clock face and some photo paper. Didn't test this one though (I read the book somewhere in the 80ies..) But it's quite interesting to see how things have evolved.
Scientists are different. You don't go into science to make money, or to get power. You go into science because you have a fundamental desire to understand the truth about the world we live in.
That's true. That's why you get into science.
But then you're graduated and you are a scientist. Only a few scientists can stay at university, the others will work for a company.. and then it's the company and the business-people who decide what direction your research goes.
I think 80% of all Smart cars sold in Belgium are company cars.. Especially when they were new, the only Smarts you saw were covered with logos from a company. Most of them are from i.e. mobile phone shops, hairdressers, and especially people in promotion: the people who are at a booth handing out things at trade shows, supermarkets,..
Smart was launched with a very good marketing campaign which is still effective. If a boss wants to give his secretary a cheap company car, he'll get a Smart. If a shop wants to buy a car to put decals with their logo all over it, they'll buy a Smart.
The Roadster and Forfour are not like this, these are being bought by private persons (esp Roadsters, ForFours you hardly see yet).
So the price of fuel imo has not a lot to do with the success of the Smart. There are enough of other cheap cars available in Europe.
And the success of the Roadster.. well it is just cool, and from what I've heard is fun to drive. So if you want a new small roadster, there's not much competition anymore.. The Fiat Barchetta is and old model, Mazda MX5 (Miata) also, Porsche Boxter or Mercedes SLK are too expensive. The MG F is also on the expensive side.. So if you are the kind of person who's interested in a small roadster, the Smart is the way to go. Only competition I can think of is Opel who just launched a new Tigra.
and put enough litter sand in it.. not barely enough so only the bottom is covered, but enough so the cat can cover everything.
Re:Er... "20 Million users a week"??
on
Ceefax Turns 30
·
· Score: 1
and why not ? a lot of information is on there.. missed the news, want to know the headlines, sports, weather forcast, or even what's on tv tonight or the whole week with movie reviews of what's showing..
I use it often, not daily but almost. Usually to check the weather forcast or to see what's on tv.
I read some time ago that teletext usually is used much more when there's some sports event, like soccer championships or olympic games, as people then watch their tv and want to up-to-date information about scores.
I would wager trains are more fuel efficient per person/kg, No they're not.. at least in BBC's Top Gear program this has been said a few months ago - someone calculated it and even when the train was full of passengers it still used more energy to move than if all the people had taken their individual cars.
If you take into account all the infrastructure then it may be a different result though.
Slashdot Mirror
Stern was in the past always the 2nd (or 3rd) on the market, never the market leader.
:)
The company started as Data East, and their hardware was almost an identical copy of Williams boards at the time. (and if you read back on rec.games.pinball, there were some lawsuits going on about this). Later Sega took over DE, and Stern took over the pinball division from Sega.
But they were always 2nd on the market, behing Williams, and generally making cheaper (less innovative, less fun, less reliable games)
btw I'm generalising now, so don't complain that game X is more fun or more reliable. OK reliability was maybe better for electronics, but when you see beneath the playfield or look at some assemblies, some things are just cheap plastic whilst Williams used metal parts for them.
Anyway, Stern became market leader because WMS closed it's pinball division in 1999. Stern did not become market leader because they did an effort to, or because they were that good.
Improvements came from Williams, and Stern copied if they needed to.
And the last 5 years, Stern has still kept going on the way they did the 10 previous years: just keep going on the way they do, don't innovate, as long as they produce games that are 'just good enough' they sell them and make a profit.
In 2000 most operators said there were no pins for sale. Stern only had Striker Extreme and that pin just was awful. No fun to play at all and playfield-wise it looked as it was 15 years old.
Only the last 2 years this has changed, when Stern started to hire designers which worked previously at Williams. But those guys also clearly said to not expect a game like Twilight Zone, as there just wasn't any budget at Stern for this.
So don't expect large technological innovations from Stern. They never did, don't have the mentality/need to do so, and probably don't have the budget.
Now Mr Pinball Australia will start making his own pins which are based on a modern hardware system (software updates through something like sd-cards instead of burning eproms i.e.), Stern will have to do something.
It's know that Stern is working for about a year now on a new hardware platform (with better sound as the Sterns sound system has awful quality) but there's no news about that. Don't know if it's because there's no budget or they don't want to rush things. Personally I now think they will wait a little longer and see what Mr Pinball Australia comes up with (ie color dmd/lcd ?) and how this
does on the market. So they can come up with their own improved hardware not long after that (and again become the follower and not the leader on the market for innovative improvements).
btw for those interested in pins, check the newbie guide on my website
You're talking about the Bally machines from the 80ies. Bally was a seperate company then and in the end (85-88) their games were very cheap produced.
..)
He's talking about bally/williams games from the 90ies. Williams bought Bally's pinball division in 88 and continued to make games with the Bally name on them. Quality of Bally in the 90ies was identical to Williams (same factory, same people,
hey mr transistor, can you contact me by email please ?
It's lighter than a normal pinball, which makes it much faster in gameplay..
If you get it in the game then the machine will say 'give it back' and you have to shoot it in the right orbit to put it back into the gumball machine (which starts a multiball).
And no the ceramic ball doesn't break, it's very strong.
it's doomed for failure, but will probably the cheapest method which gets sold as 'safe' and will therefor be implemented :(
:)
my problem with biometrics:
1. man in the middle attack
2. the detail of them
with 2 I mean: yes, fingerprints, retina scans and dna are unique (or should be
But only if you check the complete set of information.
However, most scanners only take a limited sub-set. For fingerprints only a limited set of points are scanned and compared. So my unique fingerprint, may have a not so unique set of say 50 points which someone else may also have.
Now these things are used on a small base, it's not a problem. But if there's a database with information of millions of people in it, doubles will occur.
then shift to neutral for downhill/flat coasting will really decrease your car's fuel consumption
I heard this a few months ago on a car program on tv: don't shift to neutral but just don't press the accelerator, will save more energy.
Because if you shift in neutral the car still burns fuel to keep the motor going, if you let it roll on itself it doesn't (only works for 'modern' engines).
yes they do, therefor you better don't install them in rooms in which you keep (valuable) collectibles which have paint/color which will fade..
(ie pinball machines in my case)
Opel as some corrected you already.
Something funny/interesting about this Opel/Vauxhall stuff.. The Vauxhalls are made on mainland Europe, as the british shouldn't trust a uk-produced car ? (at least that's what I heard, don't know how much of this is true) but the general motors factories in the uk produce Opels..
I heard from people who work for a company which ships cars across the northsea, that it's funny to see a ship come in from the UK with Opels on it, and going back filled with Vauxhalls.. (same models, just a different badge and right steering).
exactly my opinion too - is this news ?
here in belgium in the summer there's sometimes an 'ozone alert', if the measured ozone concentrations get too high then on the news/weather forecast they warn for it, that older people and children shouldn't do any heavy activities in the middle of the day..
The concept of a remote controlled rifle is dangerous.. I was thinking about this earlier.. got the idea from an Isaac Asimov novel. :-)
(and instead of posting it I should patent this and become very rich
With current technology, what stops someone from constructing a totally remote controled sniper rifle ?
When JFK was shot they found a rifle and a suspect..
In the near future the only thing left could be a rifle, somewhere set up in a building; or maybe intergrated in a secret corner when a building was constructed, many years before, waiting for the right time to be activated..
and have a near zero rate of illegal duplication, an absolute zero rate of misuse of the types of misuses discussed here, and they are effective.
And why is there a near-zero rate up to now ?
Because up they were used in such specific situations where usually nobody could have personal gain from misusing them.
Once the technology gets more widespread, people may have valid reasons to crack or misuse the system and will find a way around it.
Usually prices for old replacement parts go up a lot once the inventory the company has themselves becomes too small and they still need the part for their own support.
So if you had a maintenance contract, you probably could've bought that part for much less.. or they'd given it to you if it was in warranty.
If you don't have a maintenance contract, well, then the server probably isn't worth that much to you.. and if it is you'll pay their price.
I only read the first paragraph and already disagree..
Battery corrosion can and must be cleaned up.
Yes you need an acid. But this does not sound as bad as it looks.
Vinager wil do the job.. I neutralised some battery-corroded cpu boards of 25 year old pinball machines this way.. www.marvin3m.com/fix.htm explains how to deal with battery corrosion.
Leaving the problem like the author suggests is the worst thing you can do ! Because battery corrosion just keeps on burning and traveling over pcb's and if you wait long enough, nothing will survive anymore. It can even travel through connectors and wires and attack other pcb's which are connected to it.
I recently fixed a pinball cpu with battery corrosion.. bought the game cheap, 'it always worked and stopped working one day'
the cpu looked ok, no obvious signs (green color) of leakage, battery had even be removed in the past..
however 2 ic sockets didn't make any contact at all anymore.
So my guess is that the battery had leaked and it had been cleaned off but not really neutralised, and the stuff that got under the ic's kept burning away..
I have no idea if this can be implemented or not.
Anyway, the main reason why this idea gets so much attention to become implemented, is that statistically a lot of police officers get killed with their own gun.
So someone thinks:
disable cop gun for anyone else => no more cops get shot
Stupid logic which will not work, but the weapon industry and their sales people have seen a new opportunity to sell a lot of guns to police forces over the whole world.
It only takes a little logic to consider that the first real problem is that cops should learn not to let anyone grab their weapon..
if they surrender their weapon to someone, it's probably because they are already under gunpoint..
and these bad guys prefer to kill the cops with their own guns as not to leave a trace.
Disabling cop guns may prevent a few rare kills but will probably not make a huge difference.. cops will still be killed, but there will be a trace of another gun so the detectives can do some research later.. (not that they probably will ever find this gun, as it'll be resold or thrown away).
So behind all this is just some marketing by gun-companies..
It can even get worse, I believe there are even prototype guns which don't shoot if they're pointed in the direction of the owners (he has a sort of transmitter in his pocked), so what will happen if the 'bad guys' can crack this code ? Robbers which become invulnarable because police guns don't want to shoot them..
Europe was into nucluar power in the 70ies and 80ies..
but now some countries are also planning to shut down some/all of their nuclear plants, and much earlier than designed.
ok smartass.. I'll elaborate on that.
Either you've got a permission to carry and then you carry it on you. And no burgler who comes into your empty house would steal your gun as there's no gun to steal; like the parent poster complained about. And it works for selfdefence as you complain about.
Or you are at home and then you either keep it also on you, or you put it in a gun safe.
And yes there are small gun safes to place in your bedroom with electronic locks, which allow very fast access to it in case you were sleeping and hear something in your house.
So a locked away gun can still be used by its owner for selfdefence.
Read a bit on rec.guns about it.
As a good owner, you should put your gun in a gun-safe where it belongs and no junkie can get it.
The problem is that pro- and anti-gun groups are very extreme.. the pro group wants everyone to own a gun and be able to walk around with it, while the anti-group wants no gun to exist on this world.
Guess what.. they're both wrong and the best way is somewhere in the middle. I'm in Belgium myself and like the Netherlands, I think there aren't many problems with gun ownership. Although here in Belgium there's now a discussion if they should also be allowed for the defense of property, as legally you're only allowed to use a gun for self-defense (ie the past years there were some problems with juwelers who shot the robbers).
It all depends on where you live.. live in a large city or very populated country like in Europe, and everyone walking around with a gun isn't the best idea and should be restricted. But people living in the USA on their farm with no neighbours for miles around and one sheriff who lives 200 miles away.. they'll find it necessary to have the right to own a gun and defend their family with it.
The 'gun-grabbers' seem to forget it is too late to get rid of all guns. A gun is not something like a car or plastic toy which breaks after a few years and you throw away. 50 year old guns which are maintained still work as good as they were new. And there are already millions out there which have never be registered. So it's an illusion to ever get rid of them all (and then people will use baseball bats or other weapens).
As long as people feel safe where they live, only a small minority of people will have the need to own a gun for self-defense. Problems start when criminality becomes too high and everyone wants to own a gun to defends his house/family.
and those really affected by it are probably not in the possibility to post about it on /.
8. paperless office
Makes me remind of a book I read as a kid - it came of my father, was written somewhere in the early 60ies.. chemical tests for teenagers.
One of them involved scraping off the luminous clock face and some photo paper.
Didn't test this one though (I read the book somewhere in the 80ies..)
But it's quite interesting to see how things have evolved.
Scientists are different. You don't go into science to make money, or to get power. You go into science because you have a fundamental desire to understand the truth about the world we live in.
That's true. That's why you get into science.
But then you're graduated and you are a scientist.
Only a few scientists can stay at university, the others will work for a company.. and then it's the company and the business-people who decide what direction your research goes.
I think 80% of all Smart cars sold in Belgium are company cars.. Especially when they were new, the only Smarts you saw were covered with logos from a company. Most of them are from i.e. mobile phone shops, hairdressers, and especially people in promotion: the people who are at a booth handing out things at trade shows, supermarkets, ..
Smart was launched with a very good marketing campaign which is still effective. If a boss wants to give his secretary a cheap company car, he'll get a Smart. If a shop wants to buy a car to put decals with their logo all over it, they'll buy a Smart.
The Roadster and Forfour are not like this, these are being bought by private persons (esp Roadsters, ForFours you hardly see yet).
So the price of fuel imo has not a lot to do with the success of the Smart. There are enough of other cheap cars available in Europe.
And the success of the Roadster.. well it is just cool, and from what I've heard is fun to drive.
So if you want a new small roadster, there's not much competition anymore..
The Fiat Barchetta is and old model, Mazda MX5 (Miata) also, Porsche Boxter or Mercedes SLK are too expensive. The MG F is also on the expensive side..
So if you are the kind of person who's interested in a small roadster, the Smart is the way to go.
Only competition I can think of is Opel who just launched a new Tigra.
and put enough litter sand in it.. not barely enough so only the bottom is covered, but enough so the cat can cover everything.
and why not ? a lot of information is on there..
missed the news, want to know the headlines, sports, weather forcast, or even what's on tv tonight or the whole week with movie reviews of what's showing..
I use it often, not daily but almost. Usually to check the weather forcast or to see what's on tv.
I read some time ago that teletext usually is used much more when there's some sports event, like soccer championships or olympic games, as people then watch their tv and want to up-to-date information about scores.
I would wager trains are more fuel efficient per person/kg,
No they're not.. at least in BBC's Top Gear program this has been said a few months ago - someone calculated it and even when the train was full of passengers it still used more energy to move than if all the people had taken their individual cars.
If you take into account all the infrastructure then it may be a different result though.