Were the games back then really good or not? By todays standards, will they still be entertaining for any length of time?
Well I don't know about you, but me and a bunch of friends pulled out the original NES and the 50+ games we have for the system a few months back... And the games are still as fun. Remember back then the graphics were rather shitty (I can say that cause they said it on Cop Drama;) ) so the companies had to come up with actual stuff that had good replay value. One example I can say for sure hasn't lost it's appeal is the old-school 2D platformer. Mega Man and the Super Mario games have kept us entertained for weeks, even when the new, glitsy games get boring in a few days.
Remember: Good graphics != good games. Stuff from the old days is just as fun as it was when we were kids, and maybe a bit more so since we don't usually lose our temper as quickly as we did back then.
I can see it now. The market for the lower storage devices is going to explode... and the ammount of low GB hard drives that are tossed in the trash (after people hack their tivo/ultimateTV/whatever with a much larger hard drive) will also rise quickly. Maybe the person who bought the device can't do it themselves, but with the proliferation of tech-savy people that can do such an easy mod (boot from floppy disk, have new hard drive set up as master, click ok and wait 30 minutes) and will do it for say a case of beer, hacking these boxes is about to get a lot more common.
personally if im going to pay for something I want a solid object in my mitts, a physical CD, liner notes, pictures, etc....
Then maybe the record company needs to take it one step further... offer the cd for $9.99 off of the website in 196kbs mp3's, and leave an option for the customer. If they decide that they like the CD enough to buy the actual disk, let them come back within say 2 weeks, pay an extra $3-4 (S&H) and have the CD itself mailed to them. They've already made the bulk of their profit (bandwidth for an entire CD is probably only a few cents out of the $9.99) and it would be a good way to get an extra $2 out of the customer. Shipping, labor, and the materials for the physical CD are probably only about a dollar or two, and the band/promoters/radio stations have been paid out of the profits from the downloaded version.
I see that as an option where everyone wins. Too bad it'll never happen (unless the physical CD would only be discounted from the regular price of $15 down to $10 if you've already paid for the full cd off the web site)
Better than rental at some places
on
DVDs By Mail?
·
· Score: 1
I just had a discussion about netflix with my grandmother the other day. She lives in Hawaii on the island of Kauai. One thing that she was frustrated with was the total lack of movie rental places over in the area. The one place that was possible to rent from only had a selection of about 50 movies and they were all very old movies (it was their condo's lobby rental store). They have been using netflix for a few months now and completely rave about it. The shipping time between the continental us and hawaii is rather annoying to them, but they can see the newer movies coming out without having to buy the actual dvd and spend 20-30 dollars on it.
All for a snaking line of cars at dusk with headlights on. Tell me computers couldn't have done that:)
Well seeing that FoD was made back in 1989 I'm sure that it would have looked like crap in the finished product. We can do that now with our technology, but back 13 years ago that would have been hella expensive and still looked shitty.
Whoda thunk it. We can slashdot a site that is hosting just regular text, and then we link to a site hosting movies. I bet that film88.com lasted about 5 minutes after the story was posted. Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait till later to watch Harry Potter for free.
On another note... for all the people who hate the MPAA for price gouging, yatta yatta yatta, etc, and are boycotting it... If you can watch the movie for free from this site are you still going to boycott it?
If I don't want the email/news/chat cruft (and I don't), but I do want the basic browser on 3 systems, why should I download a 200K.exe three times, click on the same options three times, and download the same few-megabytes browser, three times?
Just gimme a damn URL where I can get the installer that contains everything needed for the basic browser. (That is, tell me where to find the thing the stub's downloading). Then let me download it ONCE. I can then FTP or copy it on my LAN, or even burn it to CD and use SneakerNet to get it to other machines.
JESUS FUCKING H. CHRIST! Can't people ever be happy? No matter what people do for free there are always people who feel the need to find something wrong with the system. If you've got 3 computers and your connection to the internet is only a 56k modem then tough shit! Bite the bullet and spend the half an hour downloading the 10 meg package. You could even set it to download while you're on the crapper. People put in hundreds of hours developing this piece of software and all you can say is "10 megs is too big, give me a download option where I can only download 500k at the max, and BTW I won't use a web installer because I don't want to spend the 20 seconds checking the options I want and don't want." That's the exact reason so many people thing computer people are jerks. Anyone else would have just started the download, got a soda, and came back just as it was finishing.
If I have a computer that I bought 15 years ago that's running a critical function in my workplace, it quickly becomes more expensive (in hardware costs) to support that piece of equipment than it does to buy a whole new machine. That's fine except that we then need to convert all the data over to new formats and operating systems, interface all our surrounding systems with the new system and generally spend a bunch of time and money replicating the functions of the old machine.
Don't forget the joys of emulation. You may end up having to replace the physical hardware itself, but projects like VMWare are always getting better. 20 years from now your P4 2.533A system may be running a system critical server, and the chips might be obsolete... BUT your an emulator away from making your P8 400Ehz have a virtual machine running Slackware 7.0 from back in the day.
what they are going to do with the old hardware. I can see it now your very own piece of ebay right at your house! I wonder if they'll sell it on the new ebay?
Am I like the ONLY person in the world who has not seen ANY hype at all for this movie? I have seen like ONE preview before a movie (I forget which movie it was in fact) and I have seen no ads on TV, no billboards, nothing.
It doesn't count if you use a tivo to skip commercials, have add blocking software on your computer, and never leave the glow of your computer monitor to venture outside.
Now my father is on Earthlink, and my mother on AOL, and Gateway.net has apparently become part of CompuServe.
All the customers on Gateway.net were pushed to AOL over the course of a year. This caused no end of arguments when people came into our stores asking what the letter they recieved about switching meant. It was a horrible changeover that made many people bitter. Gateway.net was a horrible service and being switched to AOL is barely 1 step up on the ladder.
And now, for a special annoucement from the President of the United States. Presidetn Clinton: [from the Oval Office] My fellow Americans, I wish to address the concerns many of us have over the growing number of Microsoft licensing agreements appearing in the United States. The new Japanese emperor, Bill Gates, has made our own children into fighter pilots who will soon fly to Hawaii and attack Pearl Harbor. I spoke with Mr. Gates this morning, and he assured me that I have a very large penis. He said it was mammoth, dinosauric, and absolutely dwarfed his penis, which, he assured me, was nearly microscopic in size. My penis, he said, was most likely one of the biggest on the planet. I applaud Mr. Gates in his honesty. Thank you.
Robot cameras 'will predict crimes before they happen' CCTV: By learning behaviour patterns, computers could soon alert police when an unmanned camera sees 'suspicious' activity By Andrew Johnson 21 April 2002 Computers and CCTV cameras could be used to predict and prevent crime before it happens.
Scientists at Kingston University in London have developed software able to anticipate if someone is about to mug an old lady or plant a bomb at an airport.
It works by examining images coming in from close circuit television cameras (CCTV) and comparing them to behaviour patterns that have already programmed into its memory.
The software, called Cromatica, can then mathematically work out what is likely to happen next. And if it is likely to be a crime it can send a warning signal to a security guard or police officer.
The system was developed by Dr Sergio Velastin, of Kingston University's Digital Imaging Research Centre, to improve public transport.
By predicting crowd flow, congestion patterns and potential suicides on the London Underground, the aim was to increase the efficiency and safety of transport systems.
The software has already been tested at London's Liverpool Street Station.
Dr Velastin explained that not feeling safe was a major reason why some people did not use public transport. "In some ways, women and the elderly are effectively excluded from the public transport system," he said.
CCTV cameras help improve security, he said, but they are monitored by humans who can lose concentration or miss things. It is especially difficult for the person watching CCTV to remain vigilant if nothing happens for a long period of time, he said.
"Our technology excels at carrying out the boring, repetitive tasks and highlighting potential situations that could otherwise go unnoticed," he added.
While recent studies have shown that cameras tend to move crime on elsewhere rather than prevent it completely, in certain environments, such as train stations, they are still useful.
And Dr Velastin believes his creation has a much wider social use than just improving transport.
His team of European researchers are improving the software so that eventually it will be capable of spotting unattended luggage in an airport. And it will be able to tell who left it there and where that person has gone.
However, the computer is not yet set to replace the human being altogether.
"The idea is that the computer detects a potential event and shows it to the operator, who then decides what to do - so we are still a long way off from machines replacing humans," Dr Velastin says.
I have just patented a way to drink beverages out of an aluminum can. I place a tab at the top with a slightly scored circle around it. When the person raises the tab the sealed can is opened at the top. The person is then able to drink from the can at their own leisure.
Send $50,000,000 paypal to me and I won't have all you fools charged the billions I am owed.
I didn't know that until now, thank you. That made my night so much better now that the flaming pile of crap called MSN Messenger is gone from my system.
In exchange for the halting of DoS attacks on Slashdot...I demand 1 free subscription to yours truly. If you do not submit to my demand, you will feel the full wrath that is my 31337 |-|@X0r SkI11z.
Yeah, those 56k modems can be just nasty on a web site.
I mean, how does the glass know when the drinker has drunk enough for the night? Obviously it doesn't....and because everyone is different, there's no algorithm that can tell you how much a person should be allowed to drink, and that'd be treading on the person's privacy anyway.
How about this: When the chair next to the person suddenly becomes 300lbs heavier, the person has had too much to drink. Obviously this person will be horrified the next morning when they roll over and see what they went home with. Possible extra charge: If the chair next to them becomes 300 lbs heavier, call a taxi, take the person to a "safe house" for the night.
APRIL FOOLS DAY IS OVER! GIVE IT UP! We've even already had the "nighttime wrap-up"
This has now progressed beyond stupid and annoying to outright maddening. You guys have really sunk low today. I'm taking a week long hiatus from Slashdot, possibly more, because of this drivel you've been spewing all day. Goodbye
Just about every single broadband ISP has it in their license agreement that you will not run servers or otherwise saturate your connection to them. If this ever starts taking off, expect to immediately see one of three things: either the ISP's initiate a per month bandwidth limit that is very low, the ISP's start enforcing some form of MAC address verification, or they charge a per-megabyte bandwidth fee (in addition to the $40+ you pay already just for the "privilage" of being hooked up to their network).
This idea is ludicrous, and is doomed to fail right from the start. What are these people smoking?
Slashdot Mirror
Well I don't know about you, but me and a bunch of friends pulled out the original NES and the 50+ games we have for the system a few months back... And the games are still as fun. Remember back then the graphics were rather shitty (I can say that cause they said it on Cop Drama
Remember: Good graphics != good games. Stuff from the old days is just as fun as it was when we were kids, and maybe a bit more so since we don't usually lose our temper as quickly as we did back then.
I can see it now. The market for the lower storage devices is going to explode... and the ammount of low GB hard drives that are tossed in the trash (after people hack their tivo/ultimateTV/whatever with a much larger hard drive) will also rise quickly. Maybe the person who bought the device can't do it themselves, but with the proliferation of tech-savy people that can do such an easy mod (boot from floppy disk, have new hard drive set up as master, click ok and wait 30 minutes) and will do it for say a case of beer, hacking these boxes is about to get a lot more common.
Then maybe the record company needs to take it one step further... offer the cd for $9.99 off of the website in 196kbs mp3's, and leave an option for the customer. If they decide that they like the CD enough to buy the actual disk, let them come back within say 2 weeks, pay an extra $3-4 (S&H) and have the CD itself mailed to them. They've already made the bulk of their profit (bandwidth for an entire CD is probably only a few cents out of the $9.99) and it would be a good way to get an extra $2 out of the customer. Shipping, labor, and the materials for the physical CD are probably only about a dollar or two, and the band/promoters/radio stations have been paid out of the profits from the downloaded version.
I see that as an option where everyone wins. Too bad it'll never happen (unless the physical CD would only be discounted from the regular price of $15 down to $10 if you've already paid for the full cd off the web site)
I just had a discussion about netflix with my grandmother the other day. She lives in Hawaii on the island of Kauai. One thing that she was frustrated with was the total lack of movie rental places over in the area. The one place that was possible to rent from only had a selection of about 50 movies and they were all very old movies (it was their condo's lobby rental store). They have been using netflix for a few months now and completely rave about it. The shipping time between the continental us and hawaii is rather annoying to them, but they can see the newer movies coming out without having to buy the actual dvd and spend 20-30 dollars on it.
Well seeing that FoD was made back in 1989 I'm sure that it would have looked like crap in the finished product. We can do that now with our technology, but back 13 years ago that would have been hella expensive and still looked shitty.
Yvan eht nioj...
Yvan eht nioj...
Yvan eht nioj...
Yvan eht nioj...
Whoda thunk it.
We can slashdot a site that is hosting just regular text, and then we link to a site hosting movies. I bet that film88.com lasted about 5 minutes after the story was posted. Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait till later to watch Harry Potter for free.
On another note... for all the people who hate the MPAA for price gouging, yatta yatta yatta, etc, and are boycotting it... If you can watch the movie for free from this site are you still going to boycott it?
JESUS FUCKING H. CHRIST! Can't people ever be happy? No matter what people do for free there are always people who feel the need to find something wrong with the system. If you've got 3 computers and your connection to the internet is only a 56k modem then tough shit! Bite the bullet and spend the half an hour downloading the 10 meg package. You could even set it to download while you're on the crapper. People put in hundreds of hours developing this piece of software and all you can say is "10 megs is too big, give me a download option where I can only download 500k at the max, and BTW I won't use a web installer because I don't want to spend the 20 seconds checking the options I want and don't want." That's the exact reason so many people thing computer people are jerks. Anyone else would have just started the download, got a soda, and came back just as it was finishing.
If I have a computer that I bought 15 years ago that's running a critical function in my workplace, it quickly becomes more expensive (in hardware costs) to support that piece of equipment than it does to buy a whole new machine. That's fine except that we then need to convert all the data over to new formats and operating systems, interface all our surrounding systems with the new system and generally spend a bunch of time and money replicating the functions of the old machine.
Don't forget the joys of emulation. You may end up having to replace the physical hardware itself, but projects like VMWare are always getting better. 20 years from now your P4 2.533A system may be running a system critical server, and the chips might be obsolete... BUT your an emulator away from making your P8 400Ehz have a virtual machine running Slackware 7.0 from back in the day.
www.themexp.org
And it's free too.
what they are going to do with the old hardware. I can see it now your very own piece of ebay right at your house!
I wonder if they'll sell it on the new ebay?
Email photos via mail.
Send the photos to an online photo printer and have the pics sent to the address you chose?
Am I like the ONLY person in the world who has not seen ANY hype at all for this movie? I have seen like ONE preview before a movie (I forget which movie it was in fact) and I have seen no ads on TV, no billboards, nothing.
It doesn't count if you use a tivo to skip commercials, have add blocking software on your computer, and never leave the glow of your computer monitor to venture outside.
Now my father is on Earthlink, and my mother on AOL, and Gateway.net has apparently become part of CompuServe.
All the customers on Gateway.net were pushed to AOL over the course of a year. This caused no end of arguments when people came into our stores asking what the letter they recieved about switching meant. It was a horrible changeover that made many people bitter. Gateway.net was a horrible service and being switched to AOL is barely 1 step up on the ladder.
And now, for a special annoucement from the President of the United States.
Presidetn Clinton: [from the Oval Office] My fellow Americans, I wish to address the concerns many of us have over the growing number of Microsoft licensing agreements appearing in the United States. The new Japanese emperor, Bill Gates, has made our own children into fighter pilots who will soon fly to Hawaii and attack Pearl Harbor. I spoke with Mr. Gates this morning, and he assured me that I have a very large penis. He said it was mammoth, dinosauric, and absolutely dwarfed his penis, which, he assured me, was nearly microscopic in size. My penis, he said, was most likely one of the biggest on the planet. I applaud Mr. Gates in his honesty. Thank you.
Robot cameras 'will predict crimes before they happen'
CCTV: By learning behaviour patterns, computers could soon alert police when an unmanned camera sees 'suspicious' activity
By Andrew Johnson
21 April 2002
Computers and CCTV cameras could be used to predict and prevent crime before it happens.
Scientists at Kingston University in London have developed software able to anticipate if someone is about to mug an old lady or plant a bomb at an airport.
It works by examining images coming in from close circuit television cameras (CCTV) and comparing them to behaviour patterns that have already programmed into its memory.
The software, called Cromatica, can then mathematically work out what is likely to happen next. And if it is likely to be a crime it can send a warning signal to a security guard or police officer.
The system was developed by Dr Sergio Velastin, of Kingston University's Digital Imaging Research Centre, to improve public transport.
By predicting crowd flow, congestion patterns and potential suicides on the London Underground, the aim was to increase the efficiency and safety of transport systems.
The software has already been tested at London's Liverpool Street Station.
Dr Velastin explained that not feeling safe was a major reason why some people did not use public transport. "In some ways, women and the elderly are effectively excluded from the public transport system," he said.
CCTV cameras help improve security, he said, but they are monitored by humans who can lose concentration or miss things. It is especially difficult for the person watching CCTV to remain vigilant if nothing happens for a long period of time, he said.
"Our technology excels at carrying out the boring, repetitive tasks and highlighting potential situations that could otherwise go unnoticed," he added.
While recent studies have shown that cameras tend to move crime on elsewhere rather than prevent it completely, in certain environments, such as train stations, they are still useful.
And Dr Velastin believes his creation has a much wider social use than just improving transport.
His team of European researchers are improving the software so that eventually it will be capable of spotting unattended luggage in an airport. And it will be able to tell who left it there and where that person has gone.
However, the computer is not yet set to replace the human being altogether.
"The idea is that the computer detects a potential event and shows it to the operator, who then decides what to do - so we are still a long way off from machines replacing humans," Dr Velastin says.
I have just patented a way to drink beverages out of an aluminum can. I place a tab at the top with a slightly scored circle around it. When the person raises the tab the sealed can is opened at the top. The person is then able to drink from the can at their own leisure.
Send $50,000,000 paypal to me and I won't have all you fools charged the billions I am owed.
I didn't know that until now, thank you. That made my night so much better now that the flaming pile of crap called MSN Messenger is gone from my system.
nologin/nologin
Use that from now on in NYTimes. Don't make it hard on yourself by making a new password every time.
In exchange for the halting of DoS attacks on Slashdot...I demand 1 free subscription to yours truly. If you do not submit to my demand, you will feel the full wrath that is my 31337 |-|@X0r SkI11z.
Yeah, those 56k modems can be just nasty on a web site.
HOLY CRAP! Is that Elvis?!?!
LA loses a skyscraper.
The question now is will Taco Bell put another big bulls-eye out in the general area and offer free tacos to the world if it gets hit again?
I mean, how does the glass know when the drinker has drunk enough for the night? Obviously it doesn't....and because everyone is different, there's no algorithm that can tell you how much a person should be allowed to drink, and that'd be treading on the person's privacy anyway.
How about this: When the chair next to the person suddenly becomes 300lbs heavier, the person has had too much to drink. Obviously this person will be horrified the next morning when they roll over and see what they went home with. Possible extra charge: If the chair next to them becomes 300 lbs heavier, call a taxi, take the person to a "safe house" for the night.
-C
APRIL FOOLS DAY IS OVER! GIVE IT UP! We've even already had the "nighttime wrap-up"
This has now progressed beyond stupid and annoying to outright maddening. You guys have really sunk low today. I'm taking a week long hiatus from Slashdot, possibly more, because of this drivel you've been spewing all day. Goodbye
Just about every single broadband ISP has it in their license agreement that you will not run servers or otherwise saturate your connection to them. If this ever starts taking off, expect to immediately see one of three things: either the ISP's initiate a per month bandwidth limit that is very low, the ISP's start enforcing some form of MAC address verification, or they charge a per-megabyte bandwidth fee (in addition to the $40+ you pay already just for the "privilage" of being hooked up to their network).
This idea is ludicrous, and is doomed to fail right from the start. What are these people smoking?