Imagine the boon to dieters if these guys come up with something that could be sprinkled on a slice of low-cal breador a rice cake to make it taste just like a steak or a slice of pizza.
Hell, breakthroughs could revolutionize the chewing gum industry, too-- imagine flavors like "Filet Mignon" or "Boston Cream Pie" or "Bacon Cheeseburger"
I just did a search for "shuttle Columbia" on eBay, and lots of things were listed this morning just after the news broke. One that stuck out was an STS-107 mission patch, listed for a starting bid of $100. Other stuff that was already listed as been bid into the stratosphere this morning.
The fucking vultures that try to make money off things like this, and the souvenir hunters that reward them just make me want to vomit. I hope eBay pulls the plug on Columbia-related things for a while.
It looks like as long as you've got the little dongle-thingy your drive will work; without it you're toast.
I imagine in places that deal with a lot of data that must be secured, it would be a lot easier to lock all the USB keys in a safe than to do so with the drives themselves.
Wow... if the development environment was that godawful I'm amazed that great games like Return Fire and Samurai Showdown and Demolition Man (the 3DO version was one of the coolest movie tie-in games I ever played) managed to be produced.
Colecovision was awesome and it was a runaway success, thanks to the superior graphics and (in large part) to Donkey Kong, the pack-in game. And how can you call the ONLY home system in the U.S. to EVER actually have company-sanctioned expansion modules available for its expansion module slot a failure?:-)
My friends all had 2600s, but somehow they always showed up at MY house after school, once Christmas of 1982 passed.
Coleco killed themselves with the ADAM. I have one (bought in the mid 90's on eBay just as a curiosity), and I think its main flaw was that it tried so hard to be a Serious Computer and a video game system at once, that it was impossible to do either thing really well. Coleco should have stuck with the Expansion Module 3 that was originally planned, which stored games on some sort of then-new 'wafer' that had enough space to allow games to have intermission scenes, and the ability to write to the media for the purpose of storing high scores.
Looking back, it's hard to blame Coleco for switching their focus-- computers like the C64 were just coming into vogue at the time, and I suppose everyone thought that the one-trick-pony consoles would lose out to the more versatile computers.
What's funny is, they picked this name without looking to see who else had it, because there is a company called Altria Healthcare.
There must have been some sort of legal tussle over Philip Morris' choice of moniker, because this is now on the healthcare company's site.
You'd think a healthcare company would have put up more of a fight against a company that makes products that make people sick when used as intended, but I guess a few dump trucks full of cash ran over their principles.
Explain to me again how a school buying more expensive hardware that isn't generally used in the real world is going to help my kid get a better education?
1) Macs remain viable computers much longer than Windows PCs. Hell, wouldn't surprise me if there were STILL a few schools with labs of Apple IIs that are plenty of machine for what they're used for.
2) Macs have been historically easier to maintain. Those schools that save so much money on their Dell hardware don't like to talk about the one or two dedicated Windows support guys they had to unexpectedly hire to keep the labs running. Mac labs were usually maintained by the teachers in their free time with little effort. Once OS X becomes prevalent in schools this should be even easier with the use of NetBooting and/or the utilities that automate re-imaging of the drive.
3) "Isn't used in the real world" is a bullshit argument. You shouldn't teach a child to use Windows, you should teach him/her how to use a GUI so they can apply the concepts to whatever they happen upon by the time they get to the real world. You shouldn't teach a child how to use Word, you should teach him/her how to use a word processing application so they can apply the concepts to whatever they happen upon by the time they get to the real world. Trade schools don't teach future plumbers only how to install Delta fixtures. They don't teach future carpenters only how to build stuff with Weyerhauser wood. Likewise they shouldn't teach children only how to use Windows and Windows applications.
When kids come out of school not knowing how to use a two-button mouse, there is something wrong.
Oh, please. ADULTS don't know how to use a two-button mouse. Kids today are far more adaptable when it comes to technology and will pick it up in about a minute. You have just won the award for the most weak-ass argument I have ever read on Slashdot.
If I only had a nickel for every time this exchange has taken place during a tech support call I have taken from a Windows user:
Me: "Okay, now right-click on that icon to bring up the context menu, and select 'Properties' from it." Them: "Ok, I clicked on it, but the icon just goes dark." Me: "Did you click, or right-click?" Them: "What do you mean, 'right-click'? Me: "Right-click, as in, click the right mouse button." Them [astonished]: "You mean, it does something else?"
Mind you, these were all people who had been using Windows computers for years in the business world, and were still clueless.
I really wish people would just drop the God damned one button mouse argument altogether, because it's 100% bullshit. The one button mouse has been PROVEN in usability testing to be the way to go for the uninitiated user. People who aren't new to or afraid of computers who want more bells and whistles on their mouse will just buy whatever trackpad/trackball/mouse they want and toss the Apple one in a drawer.
If Apple left this input device choice up to people by not including a mouse at all with their systems, you trolls would be all over them for THAT, too.
If you want it so bad, buy a USB2 card. Jaguar has built-in support for it, Apple just doesn't include it in their machines.
Most if not all of the USB2 peripherals can be connected to a USB1 bus as well (but will just run at USB1 speeds), so there's pretty much no reason why you couldn't buy them if you REALLY wanted to.
~Philly
Re:PVR to skip football so I can watch commercials
on
Superbowl XXXVII
·
· Score: 1
I did exactly that with my TiVo. I just paused it at the start of the game.
Then I spent 30 minutes reading/playing RtCW, zoomed through the buffered 30 minutes of TV slowing only for the commercials, and then kept repeating the process until the game ended. I doubt TiVo will ever provide statistics on the "fuck the game, let's see the ads" contingent, but I'm curious about how many of us are out there.
And to any smack-talkers out there, I would have cared just as much about the game if the Eagles were in it.
~Philly
Re:what about the technologies ? legal issues?
on
Dealers of Lightning
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I'm also curious to know if the book covers the reasons Xerox didn't pursue legally look-n-feel issues? From what I understand, they could have made claims against both MSFT and Apple.
Xerox had/has no case against Apple, because Xerox was compensated by Apple from the very beginning:
When Adele Goldberg, formerly of PARC, was interviewed in Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds" documentary, she made it known that the Xerox executives were very aware of the possibility of PARC ideas walking out the door with the Apple people-- because Goldberg herself refused to demo anything for the Apple contingent for just that reason, unless she were ordered to do so from her Xerox superiors. The order was given without hesitation, the demos were shown, and the rest is history.
This thing looks like a G4 that got broadsided by a PC that was reversing at a high rate of speed-- or maybe what you'd get if you were teleporting a G4 and a PC fell into the pod.
I can remember those old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercials where the one guy's chocolate fell into the other guy's peanut butter. Except that that was a good idea, and this isn't. Somehow I don't think "You got your P4 in my G4!" "No, you got your G4 in my P4!" would be much of an ad campaign.
All they have to do is allow the Mac to connect to the TV and let iMovie record stuff off the TV. Once they integrate iCal with iMovie, they've made the Mac the ultimate Personal Video Recorder.
Absolutely not. I don't want to have to leave my Mac on all the time to record stuff-- and I could connect my TV to my Mac with about 15' of cable (my old beige G3 actually was connected to it for years), whereas many people don't have their Macs in the same room as their TV. If I don't want to do it that way, then surely they won't.
If Apple does anything, they should partner with TiVo on a set-top box (maybe Apple-branded, maybe not) that's much like existing TiVo units, but able to be controlled by the Mac. Give the Mac the ability to pull/push video to the set-top's hard drive. With a sufficiently-large hard drive in the set-top, you could record a program, suck it over to your Mac, edit out the commercials, and push it back over to the set-top for a video library with no getting up to insert a tape or DVD. Or burn the programs to DVD or VCD. Whatever you want.
Give the set-top a 10/100/1000 wired Ethernet port, a slot for AirPort Extreme, and a FireWire 800 port. Build in Rendezvous (we already know they're doing that). That would pretty much cover everyone's options-- connect the box as a local FireWire hard drive to access the streams, or do it like a network server volume.
...is the ability to pull shows into my Mac, edit out the commercials, and burn the episodes to DVD for addition to my personal entertainment library. My 120GB-upgraded TiVo is chock full of my favorite New Twilight Zone and Outer Limits episodes that I'm keeping on there until a solution presents itself. If nothing concrete comes along by spring, I'll just buy one of those RCA A/V-to-FireWire boxes and do it all myself. But I'd rather use someone else's more elegant solution.
Jobs has a fairly distinctive signature, and the one on the mag looks a lot like the one in the PDF you linked to. And they both look like what's molded into the case of the very early Macs.I'd be inclined to believe that this is legit.
Not when the boycott victim can run to Congress with their diminished (due to the boycott) sales figures and say, "See? Look what the thievery is doing to our sales! We need a bigger, badder sequel to the DMCA, and legislated DRM!"
P-spot (pee' spaht) - n. The area directly above the urinal in public restrooms that men stare at, knowing a glance in any other direction would arouse suspicion.
Waaaaay back in 1997, there was a problem with a version of Lasso (a 3rd-party database-access CGI) that could be exploited. I believe it was discovered during a 'hack this Mac web server and get $10,000' sort of contest-- it was so long ago, I don't really remember the details, but it has been done. This hole was closed very quickly with an update to Lasso.
People just using the web service built into the Mac OS, however, have never had anything to fear. Unlike IIS, Personal Web Sharing and the AppleShare IP Web Service were always airtight.
It has all the enjoyment of a computer football game, but without having to play defense. I view that as a strength, because sometimes you just want to pass, rush, and try to score, and to hell with playing D. (Don't get me wrong, I was also hopelessly addicted to NES Tecmo Super Bowl for a while.)
I never played 10 Yard Fight it when it was in the arcades-- I never knew it existed. I only discovered it when I discovered MAME and was looking for games I wasn't familiar with. Now I play it all the time when I'm bored. I'll probably keep playing it until I manage to run back a kickoff for a touchdown-- I haven't done that yet, but I've come pretty close.
It was Donkey Kong for the Intellivision. Yeah, I'm sure it was worse than the other versions, but hey, I didn't know any better.
I've never played Intellivision Donkey Kong, but I have played it on the 2600 and trust me, no matter how bad anyone says the Intellivision version is, the 2600 version is far, FAR worse-- it is simply awful.
Funny thing is, for years (and very occasionally to this day) the sound effects from 2600 Donkey Kong were used in TV shows and some commercials as 'generic video game sound'... the one example I can remember off the top of my head is in an episode of Sliders ("Obsession"?), during a scene in the hotel bar.
If measured by the fact that, "Hey, it's 198x and I'm sitting in my HOUSE playing Pac-Man!", then yeah, it was cool.
But face the reality: It was a blocky, flickery, badly-done piece of shit. I mean, come on! No matter what direction he's traveling in, Pac Man's mouth always points in the SAME direction? What kind of cheesy shit is that?
Atari put the absolute minimum of effort into producing it, because they knew that the game would be a huge seller just because of the name. I have Pac Man in my collection of 2600 carts, but only for reasons of nostalgia. When I want to play a fun game on my 2600, I pull out the titles Activision produced.
If you want to play a quality home version of Pac Man, hunt down a copy of the ColecoVision version. I bought one at a classic game convention last year. I'm not sure if it was an unreleased prototype, a bootleg copy of a finished game that was just never released, or an 'original' recently programmed by a classic game fan who just wanted to play Pac Man on the ColecoVision. Anyway, it's great-- plays and sounds like the arcade game, and even has intermissions IIRC.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine the boon to dieters if these guys come up with something that could be sprinkled on a slice of low-cal breador a rice cake to make it taste just like a steak or a slice of pizza.
Hell, breakthroughs could revolutionize the chewing gum industry, too-- imagine flavors like "Filet Mignon" or "Boston Cream Pie" or "Bacon Cheeseburger"
~Philly
Here's another PBG3 mod. This one employed adhesive vinyl, and produced pretty nice results in the photos I've seen.
~Philly
I just did a search for "shuttle Columbia" on eBay, and lots of things were listed this morning just after the news broke. One that stuck out was an STS-107 mission patch, listed for a starting bid of $100. Other stuff that was already listed as been bid into the stratosphere this morning.
The fucking vultures that try to make money off things like this, and the souvenir hunters that reward them just make me want to vomit. I hope eBay pulls the plug on Columbia-related things for a while.
It looks like as long as you've got the little dongle-thingy your drive will work; without it you're toast.
I imagine in places that deal with a lot of data that must be secured, it would be a lot easier to lock all the USB keys in a safe than to do so with the drives themselves.
~Philly
Wow... if the development environment was that godawful I'm amazed that great games like Return Fire and Samurai Showdown and Demolition Man (the 3DO version was one of the coolest movie tie-in games I ever played) managed to be produced.
~Philly
Colecovision was awesome and it was a runaway success, thanks to the superior graphics and (in large part) to Donkey Kong, the pack-in game. And how can you call the ONLY home system in the U.S. to EVER actually have company-sanctioned expansion modules available for its expansion module slot a failure? :-)
My friends all had 2600s, but somehow they always showed up at MY house after school, once Christmas of 1982 passed.
Coleco killed themselves with the ADAM. I have one (bought in the mid 90's on eBay just as a curiosity), and I think its main flaw was that it tried so hard to be a Serious Computer and a video game system at once, that it was impossible to do either thing really well. Coleco should have stuck with the Expansion Module 3 that was originally planned, which stored games on some sort of then-new 'wafer' that had enough space to allow games to have intermission scenes, and the ability to write to the media for the purpose of storing high scores.
Looking back, it's hard to blame Coleco for switching their focus-- computers like the C64 were just coming into vogue at the time, and I suppose everyone thought that the one-trick-pony consoles would lose out to the more versatile computers.
~Philly
What's funny is, they picked this name without looking to see who else had it, because there is a company called Altria Healthcare.
There must have been some sort of legal tussle over Philip Morris' choice of moniker, because this is now on the healthcare company's site.
You'd think a healthcare company would have put up more of a fight against a company that makes products that make people sick when used as intended, but I guess a few dump trucks full of cash ran over their principles.
~Philly
Explain to me again how a school buying more expensive hardware that isn't generally used in the real world is going to help my kid get a better education?
1) Macs remain viable computers much longer than Windows PCs. Hell, wouldn't surprise me if there were STILL a few schools with labs of Apple IIs that are plenty of machine for what they're used for.
2) Macs have been historically easier to maintain. Those schools that save so much money on their Dell hardware don't like to talk about the one or two dedicated Windows support guys they had to unexpectedly hire to keep the labs running. Mac labs were usually maintained by the teachers in their free time with little effort. Once OS X becomes prevalent in schools this should be even easier with the use of NetBooting and/or the utilities that automate re-imaging of the drive.
3) "Isn't used in the real world" is a bullshit argument. You shouldn't teach a child to use Windows, you should teach him/her how to use a GUI so they can apply the concepts to whatever they happen upon by the time they get to the real world. You shouldn't teach a child how to use Word, you should teach him/her how to use a word processing application so they can apply the concepts to whatever they happen upon by the time they get to the real world. Trade schools don't teach future plumbers only how to install Delta fixtures. They don't teach future carpenters only how to build stuff with Weyerhauser wood. Likewise they shouldn't teach children only how to use Windows and Windows applications.
~Philly
When kids come out of school not knowing how to use a two-button mouse, there is something wrong.
Oh, please. ADULTS don't know how to use a two-button mouse. Kids today are far more adaptable when it comes to technology and will pick it up in about a minute. You have just won the award for the most weak-ass argument I have ever read on Slashdot.
If I only had a nickel for every time this exchange has taken place during a tech support call I have taken from a Windows user:
Me: "Okay, now right-click on that icon to bring up the context menu, and
select 'Properties' from it."
Them: "Ok, I clicked on it, but the icon just goes dark."
Me: "Did you click, or right-click?"
Them: "What do you mean, 'right-click'?
Me: "Right-click, as in, click the right mouse button."
Them [astonished]: "You mean, it does something else?"
Mind you, these were all people who had been using Windows computers for years in the business world, and were still clueless.
I really wish people would just drop the God damned one button mouse argument altogether, because it's 100% bullshit. The one button mouse has been PROVEN in usability testing to be the way to go for the uninitiated user. People who aren't new to or afraid of computers who want more bells and whistles on their mouse will just buy whatever trackpad/trackball/mouse they want and toss the Apple one in a drawer.
If Apple left this input device choice up to people by not including a mouse at all with their systems, you trolls would be all over them for THAT, too.
~Philly
If you want it so bad, buy a USB2 card. Jaguar has built-in support for it, Apple just doesn't include it in their machines.
Most if not all of the USB2 peripherals can be connected to a USB1 bus as well (but will just run at USB1 speeds), so there's pretty much no reason why you couldn't buy them if you REALLY wanted to.
~Philly
I did exactly that with my TiVo. I just paused it at the start of the game.
Then I spent 30 minutes reading/playing RtCW, zoomed through the buffered 30 minutes of TV slowing only for the commercials, and then kept repeating the process until the game ended. I doubt TiVo will ever provide statistics on the "fuck the game, let's see the ads" contingent, but I'm curious about how many of us are out there.
And to any smack-talkers out there, I would have cared just as much about the game if the Eagles were in it.
~Philly
I'm also curious to know if the book covers the reasons Xerox didn't pursue legally look-n-feel issues? From what I understand, they could have made claims against both MSFT and Apple.
Xerox had/has no case against Apple, because Xerox was compensated by Apple from the very beginning:
Xerox was allowed to buy a piece of Apple (before Apple went public) in exchange for the Apple employees' tour of PARC and the research demos.
When Adele Goldberg, formerly of PARC, was interviewed in Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds" documentary, she made it known that the Xerox executives were very aware of the possibility of PARC ideas walking out the door with the Apple people-- because Goldberg herself refused to demo anything for the Apple contingent for just that reason, unless she were ordered to do so from her Xerox superiors. The order was given without hesitation, the demos were shown, and the rest is history.
~Philly
...this beast comes along and redefines the term.
This thing looks like a G4 that got broadsided by a PC that was reversing at a high rate of speed-- or maybe what you'd get if you were teleporting a G4 and a PC fell into the pod.
I can remember those old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercials where the one guy's chocolate fell into the other guy's peanut butter. Except that that was a good idea, and this isn't. Somehow I don't think "You got your P4 in my G4!" "No, you got your G4 in my P4!" would be much of an ad campaign.
~Philly
All they have to do is allow the Mac to connect to the TV and let iMovie record stuff off the TV. Once they integrate iCal with iMovie, they've made the Mac the ultimate Personal Video Recorder.
Absolutely not. I don't want to have to leave my Mac on all the time to record stuff-- and I could connect my TV to my Mac with about 15' of cable (my old beige G3 actually was connected to it for years), whereas many people don't have their Macs in the same room as their TV. If I don't want to do it that way, then surely they won't.
If Apple does anything, they should partner with TiVo on a set-top box (maybe Apple-branded, maybe not) that's much like existing TiVo units, but able to be controlled by the Mac. Give the Mac the ability to pull/push video to the set-top's hard drive. With a sufficiently-large hard drive in the set-top, you could record a program, suck it over to your Mac, edit out the commercials, and push it back over to the set-top for a video library with no getting up to insert a tape or DVD. Or burn the programs to DVD or VCD. Whatever you want.
Give the set-top a 10/100/1000 wired Ethernet port, a slot for AirPort Extreme, and a FireWire 800 port. Build in Rendezvous (we already know they're doing that). That would pretty much cover everyone's options-- connect the box as a local FireWire hard drive to access the streams, or do it like a network server volume.
~Philly
...is the ability to pull shows into my Mac, edit out the commercials, and burn the episodes to DVD for addition to my personal entertainment library. My 120GB-upgraded TiVo is chock full of my favorite New Twilight Zone and Outer Limits episodes that I'm keeping on there until a solution presents itself. If nothing concrete comes along by spring, I'll just buy one of those RCA A/V-to-FireWire boxes and do it all myself. But I'd rather use someone else's more elegant solution.
~Philly
Jobs has a fairly distinctive signature, and the one on the mag looks a lot like the one in the PDF you linked to. And they both look like what's molded into the case of the very early Macs.I'd be inclined to believe that this is legit.
~Philly
A boycott is a well-proven means of protext.
Not when the boycott victim can run to Congress with their diminished (due to the boycott) sales figures and say, "See? Look what the thievery is doing to our sales! We need a bigger, badder sequel to the DMCA, and legislated DRM!"
~Philly
...if you can't walk into a store and pick it off a shelf, or otherwise acquire it, it is vaporware.
Companies can demo it and say it's 'almost ready' all they want, but until you can get product in exchange for payment, it's vaporware.
~Philly
When the request for nominations went out, I posted my nomination, QuarkXPress for OS X, in the previous /. discussion, and also submitted it to Wired.
Lo and behold, not only is it #7 on the list, but they quoted me in the article!
To quote Bart Simpson, "There's only one thing to do at a moment like this: strut!" <cues up "Stayin' Alive">
~Philly
When the request for nominations went out, I posted my nomination, QuarkXPress for OS X, in the previous /. discussion, and also submitted it to Wired.
Lo and behold, not only is it #7 on the list, but they quoted me in the article!
To quote Bart Simpson, "There's only one thing to do at a moment like this: strut!"
<cues up "Stayin' Alive">
~Philly
Anyone guess what "p" would stand for?
P-spot (pee' spaht) - n. The area directly above the urinal in public restrooms that men stare at, knowing a glance in any other direction would arouse suspicion.
~Philly
Waaaaay back in 1997, there was a problem with a version of Lasso (a 3rd-party database-access CGI) that could be exploited. I believe it was discovered during a 'hack this Mac web server and get $10,000' sort of contest-- it was so long ago, I don't really remember the details, but it has been done. This hole was closed very quickly with an update to Lasso.
People just using the web service built into the Mac OS, however, have never had anything to fear. Unlike IIS, Personal Web Sharing and the AppleShare IP Web Service were always airtight.
~Philly
It has all the enjoyment of a computer football game, but without having to play defense. I view that as a strength, because sometimes you just want to pass, rush, and try to score, and to hell with playing D. (Don't get me wrong, I was also hopelessly addicted to NES Tecmo Super Bowl for a while.)
I never played 10 Yard Fight it when it was in the arcades-- I never knew it existed. I only discovered it when I discovered MAME and was looking for games I wasn't familiar with. Now I play it all the time when I'm bored. I'll probably keep playing it until I manage to run back a kickoff for a touchdown-- I haven't done that yet, but I've come pretty close.
~Philly
It was Donkey Kong for the Intellivision. Yeah, I'm sure it was worse than the other versions, but hey, I didn't know any better.
I've never played Intellivision Donkey Kong, but I have played it on the 2600 and trust me, no matter how bad anyone says the Intellivision version is, the 2600 version is far, FAR worse-- it is simply awful.
Funny thing is, for years (and very occasionally to this day) the sound effects from 2600 Donkey Kong were used in TV shows and some commercials as 'generic video game sound'... the one example I can remember off the top of my head is in an episode of Sliders ("Obsession"?), during a scene in the hotel bar.
~Philly
Dude, you are completely in denial.
If measured by the fact that, "Hey, it's 198x and I'm sitting in my HOUSE playing Pac-Man!", then yeah, it was cool.
But face the reality: It was a blocky, flickery, badly-done piece of shit. I mean, come on! No matter what direction he's traveling in, Pac Man's mouth always points in the SAME direction? What kind of cheesy shit is that?
Atari put the absolute minimum of effort into producing it, because they knew that the game would be a huge seller just because of the name. I have Pac Man in my collection of 2600 carts, but only for reasons of nostalgia. When I want to play a fun game on my 2600, I pull out the titles Activision produced.
If you want to play a quality home version of Pac Man, hunt down a copy of the ColecoVision version. I bought one at a classic game convention last year. I'm not sure if it was an unreleased prototype, a bootleg copy of a finished game that was just never released, or an 'original' recently programmed by a classic game fan who just wanted to play Pac Man on the ColecoVision. Anyway, it's great-- plays and sounds like the arcade game, and even has intermissions IIRC.
~Philly