Exactly! There's no better teacher than adversity. When your computer works flawlessly, you never learn anything.
But when you've completely hosed your system after getting a new piece of hardware or tinkering an obscure file, you learn a lot about how your system used to work. A recent example of this happening to me what when I tried to install Mandrake over my old installation. I soon learned of the wide world of bootloaders, and why you should never install LILO twice.:P
Well, I'm a bit cynical about all this, but here's my theory:
MTV built itself up in the 80s as being a cool, rebellious channel that played all sorts of music. Because old habits die hard, they still have this reputation today. I think that somewhere along the line, MTV's bottom line changed from playing music videos to being a profitable corporation. Marketing became the controlling force, and if a show wasn't generating buzz or good ratings it would be axed. Anyone remember Headbanger's Ball?
So then comes along shows like The Real World. People watched them, and MTV decided to experiment a little more with what people would watch. As I recall, in the early 90s they experimented with animated shows like Aeon Flux and Beavis & Butthead. But on the whole, shows like Road Rules probably got higher ratings than videos, as well as being a better target for merchandising.
I think MTV today is just a further reflection of this trend. It has little or nothing to do with music any more, it's just shows that are designed to be watched by a certain demographic (teens who need someone to tell them what's cool). Unfortunately, that demographic isn't terribly intelligent, and the shows reflect that. MTV will never take a risk on anything that would potentially bring them lower ratings and less advertising cash.
Or maybe I'm just completely off-base. You be the judge!
Well, I don't know if he's the kiss of death for any new show. He (Warburton) has been on Family Guy for a few seasons. He's the voice of Peter's disabled neighbor, whose name escapes me at the moment. Joe?
I suspected this would happen. The thing is about The Tick is that your average Fox viewer isn't intelligent enough to get any of the jokes.
Now, I'm not saying everyone who watches Fox is cranially deficient, but think about the kind of shows the network survives on. Ally McBeal. Melrose Place. Temptation freakin' Island! The network is built on running low-brow shows that copy from other successful shows. When The Tick delivers one of his trademark metaphors, most of the audience is wondering why they aren't seeing any car chases or strippers.
Now I'll admit that Fox's early reason for surviving was the Simpsons, but that's an exception in a sea of low-quality knock-offs.
Yeah, after my friend and I saw Pirates of Silicon Valley we thought it would be the coolest thing in the world to make one based on John Romero and John Carmack.
I think it really would be great. You could start back in the days of SoftDisk and work all the way up to the Quake games and Daikatana. It would be great to see the wacky environment that was Ion Storm Dallas in a movie.
Didn't you read the beginning of the article? Warren Spector's branch of Ion Storm is going to be renamed. Admittedly, they announced they were going to rename it several months ago in PC Gamer, but apparently they still have yet to do it. Last I heard they were considering the name "Manifesto Games".
I sure hope the reason they haven't renamed themselves yet is that they're focusing on something more important, like maybe making games.:P
If I may ask, who was the congresswoman you wrote to?
A few months back I wrote to Senator Maria Cantwell (she's a democrat from Washington State, where I live) as part of an English assignment. I wrote about those silly export laws that restrict companies from exporting computers over a certain MTOP (Measured(?) Theoretical Operations per second) limit. I said they were counterproductive and needed to be repealed. To my surprise, a few months later I got a letter back saying she agreed with my point of view and was sponsoring a bill that would help address the problem.
I don't know if she or an aide actually did the writing, but I was impressed that she'd actually heard of the problem.
Well, overclocking was never regarded as a practical hobby. A lot of overclockers are just excited by getting some extra mHz out of their processor.
And besides, lets say you did buy that chip. If you were a zany overclocker, you could probably get another 200 or 300 mHz out of that chip, which could save you from buying an XP 1900+. That is until it melts.:P
Well, I agree that money definitely is the deciding factor in getting legislation passed, but keep in mind that most congresspeople aren't too tech-savvy (at least that's my impression).
As public servants, they hear about a lot of things. Save the whales! Cut down the forests! Nuke Canada! I imagine that after a while most legislators just tune out anything that doesn't sound important. Spam is a distant problem to them, so I'm not surprised that they're not falling over each other to draft new laws.
It'll probably take a big company like Microsoft or IBM to get mad about spam before they do anything. Until then they'll just keep arguing about taxes and guns.
My guess is that NASA is under pressure not to release information on routine space life because China is now pursuing their space program.
I think the government attitude is to make China do all their own dang research. The longer the Chinese take to be able to send men into space, the better. That means more time for our big SDI plan, right?
Not that I agree with any of this, I'm just speculating.
They're even cheaper on Pricewatch. If you don't mind getting some weird in-house brand, that is.
Last I checked (Sunday night), the lowest-priced GeForce3 Ti200 was only $137 plus shipping. Pretty spiffy for a video card that's almost as powerful as a card that retailed for $500 a few months ago.
I'd be more inclined to believe you when you say (admittedly I'm paraphrasing) "We don't have to worry so much, guys, this is just all paranoid ranting!" if there wasn't a Russian programmer sitting in jail because of new laws like the DMCA.
I mean, if I'd brought up the Dimitry scenario back when the act got passed, would you have called me a rebellious anti-government teenager then? I'm guessing a lot of people would have.
...oh, and if you don't want to read these kinds of stories, you could always filter out the Your Rights Online catagory in your/. preferences.
The problem is, one of these labels probably have some band signed that you actually do like. If there isn't much of a public outcry about this whole copy prevention scheme, the labels will happily stick the technology on every CD they release. If you check out the list at Fat Chuck's, Universal is doing this already.
Don't have any favorite bands on big labels? This may not even matter after a while, either, because (as I understand it) there are a lot of smaller labels that are members of the RIAA as well. They might get bullied into copy preventing their CDs too.
I sure hope this doesn't happen. It would render my Nomad near useless.:(
How exactly did Xenogears bring up any issues specifically dealing with nanotechnology? As I recall, the Omnigears used some sort of nano, but it didn't play much of a role in the plotline.
The only other instance of nano that I can think of in that game is with Deus. Didn't it try to rebuild its body using some sort of nano? Actually, I think Deus was powered by the "wave existance", which was the only actual divine influence in the game.
That game had a great plot. I had to play it through twice before I understood it, but after that, the storyline's complexity just blew me away.
While this may be a bit offtopic, I disagree with your assertion that 3d games can't have a good plot. While many games nowadays don't have much in the way of a plot, this is definitely not a new phenomenon. There have always been "quick sell" games that are just churned out to make a fast buck, and DOS had its share of them.
If you're interested in 3d games with a plot, I'd suggest:
Deus Ex
System Shock 2
Half-Life
Of course, one could make a much bigger list, but as you can see I'm big on FPS's.
I don't feel that this war's outcome can be adequately predicted based on military conflicts we've had in the past. For one, this military action has a the vast majority of the population behind it, and it's likely to stay that way. Second, we have a much clearer objective going into this: Kill the terrorists. Most of our recent military actions have had fuzzier objectives. This time we're not trying to get anyone to surrender, we're concentrating on eliminating the terrorists.
Of course, if anyone has any thoughts to the contrary I'd be interested in hearing 'em.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this yet, but a while back there was a Slashdot Review of a book called Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters by a fella named Adam Barr. He talks about his 10 or so years at MS and a small start-up that was bought by MS. If you look through the comments you can find a link to a page that has the entire contents of the book online.
Re:Its interesting that Internal...
on
Breaking Windows
·
· Score: 1
What about Valve Software? Gabe Newell and Mike Huntington (I think that's his name, but I probably got it wrong) started the company up shortly after leaving Microsoft. Then they made Half-Life.
Of course, it's not like they're competing with MS on any level, but it is an example of a successful company started by ex-MS employees.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly! There's no better teacher than adversity. When your computer works flawlessly, you never learn anything.
:P
But when you've completely hosed your system after getting a new piece of hardware or tinkering an obscure file, you learn a lot about how your system used to work. A recent example of this happening to me what when I tried to install Mandrake over my old installation. I soon learned of the wide world of bootloaders, and why you should never install LILO twice.
Well, I'm a bit cynical about all this, but here's my theory:
MTV built itself up in the 80s as being a cool, rebellious channel that played all sorts of music. Because old habits die hard, they still have this reputation today. I think that somewhere along the line, MTV's bottom line changed from playing music videos to being a profitable corporation. Marketing became the controlling force, and if a show wasn't generating buzz or good ratings it would be axed. Anyone remember Headbanger's Ball?
So then comes along shows like The Real World. People watched them, and MTV decided to experiment a little more with what people would watch. As I recall, in the early 90s they experimented with animated shows like Aeon Flux and Beavis & Butthead. But on the whole, shows like Road Rules probably got higher ratings than videos, as well as being a better target for merchandising.
I think MTV today is just a further reflection of this trend. It has little or nothing to do with music any more, it's just shows that are designed to be watched by a certain demographic (teens who need someone to tell them what's cool). Unfortunately, that demographic isn't terribly intelligent, and the shows reflect that. MTV will never take a risk on anything that would potentially bring them lower ratings and less advertising cash.
Or maybe I'm just completely off-base. You be the judge!
Well, I don't know if he's the kiss of death for any new show. He (Warburton) has been on Family Guy for a few seasons. He's the voice of Peter's disabled neighbor, whose name escapes me at the moment. Joe?
I suspected this would happen. The thing is about The Tick is that your average Fox viewer isn't intelligent enough to get any of the jokes.
Now, I'm not saying everyone who watches Fox is cranially deficient, but think about the kind of shows the network survives on. Ally McBeal. Melrose Place. Temptation freakin' Island! The network is built on running low-brow shows that copy from other successful shows. When The Tick delivers one of his trademark metaphors, most of the audience is wondering why they aren't seeing any car chases or strippers.
Now I'll admit that Fox's early reason for surviving was the Simpsons, but that's an exception in a sea of low-quality knock-offs.
I'll miss ya, Tick.
Yeah, after my friend and I saw Pirates of Silicon Valley we thought it would be the coolest thing in the world to make one based on John Romero and John Carmack.
I think it really would be great. You could start back in the days of SoftDisk and work all the way up to the Quake games and Daikatana. It would be great to see the wacky environment that was Ion Storm Dallas in a movie.
I sure hope the reason they haven't renamed themselves yet is that they're focusing on something more important, like maybe making games. :P
If I may ask, who was the congresswoman you wrote to?
A few months back I wrote to Senator Maria Cantwell (she's a democrat from Washington State, where I live) as part of an English assignment. I wrote about those silly export laws that restrict companies from exporting computers over a certain MTOP (Measured(?) Theoretical Operations per second) limit. I said they were counterproductive and needed to be repealed. To my surprise, a few months later I got a letter back saying she agreed with my point of view and was sponsoring a bill that would help address the problem.
I don't know if she or an aide actually did the writing, but I was impressed that she'd actually heard of the problem.
Careful! Get the Hurd before the stampede!
*ducks*
Well, overclocking was never regarded as a practical hobby. A lot of overclockers are just excited by getting some extra mHz out of their processor.
:P
And besides, lets say you did buy that chip. If you were a zany overclocker, you could probably get another 200 or 300 mHz out of that chip, which could save you from buying an XP 1900+. That is until it melts.
Well, I agree that money definitely is the deciding factor in getting legislation passed, but keep in mind that most congresspeople aren't too tech-savvy (at least that's my impression).
As public servants, they hear about a lot of things. Save the whales! Cut down the forests! Nuke Canada! I imagine that after a while most legislators just tune out anything that doesn't sound important. Spam is a distant problem to them, so I'm not surprised that they're not falling over each other to draft new laws.
It'll probably take a big company like Microsoft or IBM to get mad about spam before they do anything. Until then they'll just keep arguing about taxes and guns.
I agree, it's really cool to have an interviewee that's more interested in getting our questions answered than just pulling a PR move.
:P
By the way, Satch, you gotta find a new nickname. I believe your nickname was already taken by Mr. Joe Satriani.
This is why I started using Mozilla.
My guess is that NASA is under pressure not to release information on routine space life because China is now pursuing their space program.
I think the government attitude is to make China do all their own dang research. The longer the Chinese take to be able to send men into space, the better. That means more time for our big SDI plan, right?
Not that I agree with any of this, I'm just speculating.
Last I checked (Sunday night), the lowest-priced GeForce3 Ti200 was only $137 plus shipping. Pretty spiffy for a video card that's almost as powerful as a card that retailed for $500 a few months ago.
Sounds like China is trying to get the jump on us! We all know what we must do...
We must be the first country to send a Chinese man to the moon!
Wow, I count 16 acronyms in your post. 18 if you count "PC".
Feel free to ignore me, I just thought it was kind of funny.
I'd be more inclined to believe you when you say (admittedly I'm paraphrasing) "We don't have to worry so much, guys, this is just all paranoid ranting!" if there wasn't a Russian programmer sitting in jail because of new laws like the DMCA.
/. preferences.
I mean, if I'd brought up the Dimitry scenario back when the act got passed, would you have called me a rebellious anti-government teenager then? I'm guessing a lot of people would have.
...oh, and if you don't want to read these kinds of stories, you could always filter out the Your Rights Online catagory in your
The problem is, one of these labels probably have some band signed that you actually do like. If there isn't much of a public outcry about this whole copy prevention scheme, the labels will happily stick the technology on every CD they release. If you check out the list at Fat Chuck's, Universal is doing this already.
:(
Don't have any favorite bands on big labels? This may not even matter after a while, either, because (as I understand it) there are a lot of smaller labels that are members of the RIAA as well. They might get bullied into copy preventing their CDs too.
I sure hope this doesn't happen. It would render my Nomad near useless.
How exactly did Xenogears bring up any issues specifically dealing with nanotechnology? As I recall, the Omnigears used some sort of nano, but it didn't play much of a role in the plotline.
The only other instance of nano that I can think of in that game is with Deus. Didn't it try to rebuild its body using some sort of nano? Actually, I think Deus was powered by the "wave existance", which was the only actual divine influence in the game.
That game had a great plot. I had to play it through twice before I understood it, but after that, the storyline's complexity just blew me away.
While this may be a bit offtopic, I disagree with your assertion that 3d games can't have a good plot. While many games nowadays don't have much in the way of a plot, this is definitely not a new phenomenon. There have always been "quick sell" games that are just churned out to make a fast buck, and DOS had its share of them.
If you're interested in 3d games with a plot, I'd suggest:
Deus Ex
System Shock 2
Half-Life
Of course, one could make a much bigger list, but as you can see I'm big on FPS's.
I don't feel that this war's outcome can be adequately predicted based on military conflicts we've had in the past. For one, this military action has a the vast majority of the population behind it, and it's likely to stay that way. Second, we have a much clearer objective going into this: Kill the terrorists. Most of our recent military actions have had fuzzier objectives. This time we're not trying to get anyone to surrender, we're concentrating on eliminating the terrorists.
Of course, if anyone has any thoughts to the contrary I'd be interested in hearing 'em.
'cuz you can make a lot more money if you throw in a few more features into your standard OS, give it a new name, then charge people even more for it.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this yet, but a while back there was a Slashdot Review of a book called Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters by a fella named Adam Barr. He talks about his 10 or so years at MS and a small start-up that was bought by MS. If you look through the comments you can find a link to a page that has the entire contents of the book online.
Of course, it's not like they're competing with MS on any level, but it is an example of a successful company started by ex-MS employees.
By the way, according to the statistics here, FPS games aren't even as common as RPGs in their top 50.