As usual, the devil is in the details. Your little home computers DID have many of the problems you mentioned. They weren't built for the environment, so the environment was going to kill them. And where DO you mount that monitor? Sitting it atop a surface is a good way to get it knocked off. And how will an uneducated user manage to type fast enough to enter the order?
The people who are gazillionaires right now are the ones who found solutions to these problems. They built the ruggedized equipment, created the necessary ceiling mounts, developed the picture-based touch screens for the illiterate employees, and broke down the components of a special order to make it digestable by a computer. They then set out to prove these designs, fighting wave after wave of broken and scarred hardware. Ideas that seemed good at the time didn't work out in practice. Financial losses were heavy with the first models, but the kinks were slowly worked out.
Today, nearly every restaurant in existance uses a digital register system of some sort. All because enterprising individuals invested the hard work and the capital to make it happen.;-)
"So we're going to flip over this giant Expo on its back, then attack its weak point for MASSIVE DAMAGE."
Seriously, anything that keeps Sony from blundering as bad next year as they did this year is probably a good thing for Sony. A smaller expo might allow them to better connect with gamers (read: control information via the mainstream press) than they have in recent years. Sony (and other large companies) will be able to treat the expo as one large press release rather than trying to pander to the crowd. Which means no more embarrassing moments like shouting "Riiiiidge Racer!" and not getting a response from the audience.
Unfortunately, it's probably only bad for gamers.:(
Basically, you don't know what you're talking about, but you like to air it out anyway.
Topview and GEM were alternatives to Windows and therefore competitors.
QNX is an alternative to Windows and therefore a competitor. No? How about, a typewriter is an alternative to a wordprocessor and therefore a competitor?
The point is that neither one was a serious competitor. TopView went all of nowhere, and GEM was mainly focused on non-PC and alternative DOS platforms.
The reason Windows didn't get adoption until 3.1 (as you say) was it took til that time for anyone to want to run anything that required it.
Whereas the Mac and VisiOn had applications that people wanted to run. Windows had Windows calculator and notepad because it was only intended to hold the competitors out of the market.
Macs had useful applications from day 1, including a WYSIWYG word processor and graphics editing tools. Windows had nothing because Microsoft both failed to attract third party support as well as failed to write their own applications. Microsoft's key apps continued to be DOS mode applications.
VisiOn shipped with a graphical version of VisiCalc (a very popular spreadsheet at the time), a word processor, a charting app, and a few other high-quality apps that were ahead of there time. Everyone who used the system loved it. Too bad most people never got the chance. VisiCorp could have made a good living if the OEMs weren't waiting on Microsoft Windows to bundle with their cool new XT and AT machines.
The "the first round of GUI wars" as you call it was irrelevant. People ran Wordstar.
What you mean is that they "continued to run WordStar" because there were no better options once the GUI dust had settled. Consumers were intially very excited about DOS GUIs. The introduction of Windows 1.0 killed the concept in its infancy. If you were "alive at the time" and using a PC as you claim, you would have been aware of all the buzz DOS GUIs were generating.
I'd say the price alone doomed it, not anything MS did. Apple couldn't sell the Lisa either.
In a day in age when both PC's AND Macs cost $2000-$3000? Nonsense. The price was a sticking point (which was why it was later reduced to $990 for the complete bundle), but it was by no means all that far off from a Mac equipped with comperable applications. Similarly, WordStar cost $495, which was a good chunk of what the complete VisiOn package ended up marketing for.
You also seem to have ignored the paragraph proceeding the one you quoted:
Adding to the release's problems was Bill Gates, who took a page from VisiCorp's book and announced that their own product, Microsoft Windows, would be available in May 1984. This muddied the waters significantly, notably when he further claimed it would have a similar feature set, didn't require a hard disk, and cost only $250. Ironically, Windows was released with an even longer delay than VisiOn, only shipping in late 1985, and was lacking the features that forced VisiOn to demand a hard drive.
Why yes, yes I was. Which is how I know you're talking out your hindquarters.
Topview was introduced the same year as Windows, and was not a competitor in the GUI space. Primarily because it didn't have a GUI! (Kind of blows away your argument there, doesn't it?) It never gained any real following. GEM was also released in 1985, but was generally ignored in the PC world because it didn't run on DOS. By the time DOS support was added, Windows had already done too much damage to the DOS GUI market.
Windows was actually an announcement made by Microsoft to prevent people from purchasing the first true GUI system for DOS PCs, which was VisiOn. (Ref: Barbarians Led by Bill Gates) As it so happened, Windows was already in the works by the time Microsoft learned of the Mac. What they learned from Apple wouldn't make it into the first version of Windows (and it showed), but would help them in improving the usability of later versions.
The ploy worked. Consumers delayed purchasing VisiOn in favor of Windows because Microsoft was considered the "source" for OS software at the time. (Yes, even then they had a bit of monopoly power.) When Windows was finally released, everyone realized it sucked. This negatively impacted ALL DOS-based GUIs (including Windows) until Windows 95 finally convinced the market otherwise.
Your history is years later, after the first round of GUI wars was over. It wasn't until Windows 3.1 that PC users were willing to try again, and even then they tried to spend as little time in the environment as possible.
Dude, you just said the same thing I did, nearly word for word. Stop that, it's freaking me out.:-P
Then it turned out that IBM could eventually produce a superior operating system (OS/2), but didn't know how to market it. Gah! Idiots!
Just an FYI on this, Microsoft and IBM collaborated on OS/2. Microsoft provided most of the usability while IBM provided the underlying technology. A few Microsofties then managed to get Windows to boot into Protected Mode, which caused Microsoft to back out of OS/2 in favor of retrofitting Windows with their Chicago technology & Win32 library to create Win95.
So IBM was never actually able to successfully create a consumer operating system. If they had such skills, they would have nailed the market after Microsoft backed out. Instead they put up a weak fight with, "Wow, I can do more than one thing!" advertisments that just didn't have any staying power.
Since I'm replying again anyway, I think it's important to clarify: Microsoft was never in a position where they weren't a dominant power in the market. From their Microsoft BASIC empire, all the way to Windows, they have always had power to weild over others, and they have always abused that power. The world might be a far more interesting place today if Microsoft had never existed.
Fair enough. How about, "Apple shot themselves in the foot when they fired Steve Jobs, thus paving the way for Microsoft to gain market dominance through illegal practices?"
Of course, the reality is that it's actually a bit more complex than that. Microsoft gained their market dominance early on by hanging on the coat tails of a much older monopoly. (IBM) Once IBM had successfully evicted the other competitors from the market, Microsoft became a software monopoly. Considering that they had no scruples to begin with, that was a very bad thing. Microsoft then used their position to lock out all competitors from the market (bye, bye, CP/M & DR DOS) and push their substandard ripoff of VisiOn's and Apple's technologies.
Ever since then, Microsoft has been the bully holding the face of the struggling victims as they fail about in an attempt to escape Microsoft's influence. Only with the popularity of Java, the return of Jobs, and the rise of Google have any companies managed to land solid blows against Microsoft's dominance.
Considering that the internet has existed as a distribution method for adventure games for...oh, over a decade now and that there hasn't been a huge resurgence, I've got my doubts here.
I'm not sure what it'll take to revive the genre, but we haven't hit on it yet.
How about a nice letter to SciFi Channel Productions saying that we love this game and we want an official one created just like it? Preferrably with the humor intact, and without all the Three-Dee crud all the game companies try to shove down our throats. Far too many attempts at reviving the genre tend to throw away the very elements that made it entertaining to begin with.
SHOT: Archer is packing a shuttle craft with technology.
Commander Rob: I can't let you do this Archer. The risk to the timeline is too great!
Archer: I have to, I can't let Earth be destroyed.
Archer reaches for his phaser in slowmotion. Rob reaches for his in slowmotion. Archers beam shoots wide of Rob, and Rob's beam shoots wide of archer. It looks like they both missed. But the camera focuses on Rob's phaser blast as he hit the airlock button. The airlock starts opening.
Archer: What have you done!??
Rob: I've saved the time line.
Archer is sucked out into space.
Rob goes back and hangs out with Deanna, he is depressed because he had to kill Captain Archer.
Rob: I can't believe I had to do that.
Deanna: Don't worry, you did the right thing. You saved us all. Besides I know how I can make you feel better.
So, Commander Rob killed a key historical figure to "save" the timeline?
After watching the first *cough* "film", I thought you guys MUST have taken a few liberties in order to lampoon the guy. Imagine my amazement when I read the script and found such choice lines as "(raises arms) Hooray!" in it. "Commander Rob" must be happy as a clam-who-just-lost-his-pearl over these films.
Once again, I'm amazed at how much stranger truth is over fiction.
BTW, any chance you could publish more scripts? It's amusing to see how close the films are to the source material.:P
One of my bigger complaints is the heavy handed use of digital effects. Considering this film's budget, I doubt that that will be a problem.
If this is anything like the fan videos that have come before it, it will probably have incredibly high production values (e.g. CGI effects, space ships, awesome compositing work, and realistic weapons), but will suffer from poor audio and acting.
For example, I was just watching the latest Star Trek: Exeter the other day. While the acting is not the worst (that title goes to a good-looking Star Wars fan film I saw a while back), it often suffers from the "spitting out the lines"-itis. Instead of training the actors and/or editing for proper timing, the actors are allowed to speak their lines one after another without any sort of pausing. The result is that they come across as emotionless actors speaking lines.
Now Shatner did have a propensity for overacting. (It's my... ship... my... ship!) However, he was at least acting. By not taking the time to slow down and deliver the lines, the actors never manage any real emotional expression. Which makes their lines that much harder to follow.
I say, "that much harder", because the voice audio is usually terrible in these amatuer productions. They need to either get a good mic *really* close to the actors, or they need to re-dub the audio in post-production. A combination of both wouldn't be such a bad idea. It would also help to try and clean up the audio that they do record. Try to remove any background noise or echoing (it's *really* hard to get perfectly clean audio without a sound booth) and boost the volume to be louder than the incessant background effects.
Exeter has one more annoyance that's actually quite unique to the production. They allow the actors to make nervous movements. While it's not that big of a deal for someone to rock a chair in real life, it's incredibly distracting in a movie. Hopefully they'll realize this and make their actors sit still for their lines.
That's my opinion, anyway. I imagine that someone trained in the field could provide more precise advice.
FWIW, I think it's amazing what fan films have been doing these days. If we wait a few more years, we may find that what used to be Internet fan films will become the Internet television of tomorrow. I just hope someone reboots Blake's 7. It would be a wonderful show to see back on the air.:-)
owever, if the movie is encoded at true HD (at least 720p), how the hell is the an iPod going to be able to decode the video? Apple recommends a 2.8 Ghz Pentium 4 PC with 512 MB of RAM and a 64 MB video card or a 1.8 Ghz G5/1.83 Ghz Intel Core Duo Mac.
* Looks into crystal ball
My crystal ball tells all! I see... I see... AN ASIC in your future!
Seriously, decoding is the least of the concerns. Video encoding standards are almost always followed up by large-run ASIC decoders, that are usually quite affordable. Problems like bus bandwidth, storage, media electromechanics, framebuffer, etc. all add to the cost. In the case of this iPod attachment, I imagine it just shunts the encoded video directly to the HD attachment. All the real bandwidth, display, and decoding problems then happen there.
And what would you pay for such a miracle device?!? Probably about $200 - $250. Which brings the price of the iPod + HD attachment pretty close to your $500 figure.
A hydrogen fuel cell is very unlike a reciprocating engine in that it doesn't NEED to generate constant power. The very idea of a fuel cell, in fact, is that the energy is able to be drawn on demand like a battery, but with the greater energy density of a fuel-based engine.
In plain english, battery backup for a fuel cell would be redundant. All it would do is add extra weight that reduces the number of miles per gallon!
Apparently you think that "Mildly Obese" is the same thing as "unhealthily overweight". You must be one of those people who was highly offended by the Dove Soap advertisements? I'm sure you would have just died trying to find a woman skinny enough for your tastes a hundred years ago. Never mind that they were naturally bulkier than the unnaturally skinny women you apparently so covet. Medical science (read: the mob-rule) has decided that bucking nature is again the best bet for fitness!
Honestly, the way guys react towards women these days is disgusting. Unless the women actually are at an unhealthy weight (which is to say, too skinny to survive into their 30's) they're branded as "fat". I see plenty of thin women like that walk down the street here in Chicago, and I just want to puke. They're so skinny that there's practicly no muscle attached to the bone. I've seen some women with arms and legs having a radius of barely 2 inches. 2 INCHES! And I just know that these women aren't going to survive long, or will have to go through serious therapy if they do. And it's all because society keeps telling them that they're too fat. How does it feel to be encouraging women to die from painful conditions like anorexia and bulimia? Hmm?
Is there a problem with obesity in this nation? Yes, but that photograph is NOT IT. Especially if you understand that any photograph automatically makes the subject look heavier. (Why the hell do you think that super-models are so skinny?) As it so happens, she will probably lead a long and healthy life. Unfortunately, it's difficult to say the same for the women in these photos.
Be careful when searching the net for pics, or you may end up with this on your monitor.
Oh my God. It's a normal looking woman. Run for the hills. The disgust is palpable. I can't believe that anyone would allow photos of real women on the Internet. They must all be super-models that are so skinny they only look right in the warping of a camera lense. Viva la myspace.
*rolls eyes*
What I get a kick out of, is that the "reviewer" (and I use the term loosely) chose to give Ms. Holt a poor score while letting Ms. Webb completely off the hook. Apparently, he has no problem sacrificing journalistic integrity in favor of broadcasting his fantasies about Ms. Webb in the slight hope that she might one day fullfill them. (Which is pretty pathetic when you think about it.)
The truth is that Ms. Webb and Mr. Sessler are painful to watch on the screen. All their jokes are delivered exactly as if they were reading from a script (which they are), they constantly look back and forth between each other and the camera (that's a very distracting movement, and should be minimized), they need to get their damn hands out of their pockets so that they don't look like pretzels, and they really need to loosen up and act more natural. Would it kill them to adlib a bit? Perhaps jump off into unscripted side conversations? Or does G4 believe them to be so void of any intelligence that they can't loosen the leash for even a second?
X-Play could be a decent show. Too bad it's hosts are strangling the life out of it.
I don't necessarily disagree with your main point, but the "They just wouldn't understand what it's like here!" argument tends to cut both ways.
Without question. Which is why the system is designed to prevent abuses on either side. It's also why we tend to oscillate between Democrat and Republican Presidents. The balance is setup carefully so that eventually the needs of all are met rather than just the needs of any specific group.
There is no local issue that couldn't explained or understood in a matter of minutes to the whole population of the US if it was necessary to save the whole country from starving let's say.
Oh yes, because those powerful Virtual Reality Computers let you become a farmer so that you can understand the difficulties farmers have. Or it lets you become a researcher so that you can understand the difficulties they have. Or it lets you become a powerplant manager so you can understand the difficulties they have.
Hot damn. This technology is brilliant.
Wait, let me guess. You think Bush won the election because "the blue states are full of morons". Of course, those same voters think that the Kerry supporters were morons. Neither side was correct, per se, as they merely have different experiences, opinions, and points of view.
Of course, I'm sure you already know that thanks to your Gee Whiz Bang Virtual Reality Computer System From the Sixteenth Dimension.
Do you really think that a Democratic president would have screwed up our nation THAT badly compared to Bush?
Failing to represent the small states? Bah! If the Senate and Congress stay they way they are, the small states still have plenty of representation in Washington.
Until some moron comes along and claims that it's "unfair" that the Senator from New York should have the same power as the Senator from Wyoming. Why don't we kick out all the checks and balances while we're at it?
I think the change would be positive, as it would give the majority of people control of one branch of government, while the majority of states has control of two, leading to a more balanced, less partisan federal government.
Have you been paying any attention? If the less populated states are not represented, they will be at the mercy of the large states. Causing damage to the less populated states (unintentionally or otherwise) could cause a complete economic collapse of US production and trade! I know the big shots in New York think they're the only ones of any importance, but the truth is that they're only managing the movement of goods that are produced elsewhere.
Why should the Wyoming citizen's vote count for twice as much as the New York citizen's vote?
Because that was the way our founding fathers configured it. Intentionally.
Or perhaps I should say that our Founding Fathers configured it so that each state would have a say, not the individual. The only reason why a person in New York has a vote at all is because the state of New York decides that you have a vote. Comparing your vote to the fellow in Wyoming is ridiculous. He's voting for how his state's electoral votes will be counted, and the New York fellow is voting for how his state's votes will be counted.
If Mr. New York wants to be a prick about it (Whaaa! Mr. Wyoming has more of a fraction of his state's vote! Whaa!) then I suggest that the state of New York remove voting privledges from its population, and decide the matter inside the state government. The population will then be forced to chose between their existing leadership and the right to vote for their state's electoral votes.
That is a patently unfair system
The only way it's "patently unfair" is if Mr. New York thinks his state should decide the outcome of ALL federal elections. In which case, what do we have states for anyway? Better dissolve the individual governments, and subject them all to total rule from the Federal government. It's so much better to give the President and Congress absolute power so that we can ensure that they are absolutely corrupted. While we're at it, why don't we dissolve the Senate? Wyoming has way too much power there, as well. Ooo, and why don't we eliminate the Supreme Court? They've been a real pain in the rear for the Soviet Socialist Republic of New York.
In case you're not catching on to the sarcasm, the electoral college is one of the many checks and balances built into the US constitution. Each of those checks that gets knocked out further weakens the nation. Thus whining about your "right to vote" is exactly that: Whining. The nation might even be a better place if we removed your right to vote. At least THAT would be constitutional.
You know, I've heard more and more about how long some of these systems were around but it generally just doesn't jive with personal experience. Lived through most of that era and never saw a 2600 or Intellivision in a store.
A certain fellow by the name of Jack Trameil decided that consoles weren't important. As a result, Atari's units were hard to find after the crash of '83/'84. INTV Corp was mostly mail-order, although they did sell many units and games through Toys'R'Us until the NES displaced the console.
Am I wrong or was the electoral college not setup first to make it easier to tally the votes and who won?
Oh, you're quite wrong. The answer to the problem is in the name of our nation: "The United States of America"
Under the original constitution, each state was a separate entity with its own laws that banded together for common defense under a singular Federal entity. Federal powers were always intended to be weak so as to allow for the diversity present in each state governing itself.
The electoral college was setup because the states were concerned that they would not be fairly represented. The concern was that since New York had the largest population, all the elections would follow their desires without the opinions and diversity of the rest of the nation coming into play. As a result, the EC was developed to allow even the smallest state to have a bit of weight in their vote.
In case the implications of that aren't clear, let me spell it out: The electoral college is designed to NOT reflect the popular vote.
Sometimes the popular vote reflects the college vote (especially in the case of a landslide), but in many close races the two will differ. (e.g. Bush vs. Gore '00)
What's interesting is that the people demanding a change in the method used to count the vote is almost always the folks from heavily populated areas. i.e. The exact people the electoral college was setup to protect against. The concern is that these people have little understanding of other areas, and would do insurmountable damage to the rest of the nation. Considering that our food production as well as many forms of research and manufacturing are handled in rural areas, failing to represent them could be disasterous.
Slashdot Mirror
As usual, the devil is in the details. Your little home computers DID have many of the problems you mentioned. They weren't built for the environment, so the environment was going to kill them. And where DO you mount that monitor? Sitting it atop a surface is a good way to get it knocked off. And how will an uneducated user manage to type fast enough to enter the order?
The people who are gazillionaires right now are the ones who found solutions to these problems. They built the ruggedized equipment, created the necessary ceiling mounts, developed the picture-based touch screens for the illiterate employees, and broke down the components of a special order to make it digestable by a computer. They then set out to prove these designs, fighting wave after wave of broken and scarred hardware. Ideas that seemed good at the time didn't work out in practice. Financial losses were heavy with the first models, but the kinks were slowly worked out.
Today, nearly every restaurant in existance uses a digital register system of some sort. All because enterprising individuals invested the hard work and the capital to make it happen.
"So we're going to flip over this giant Expo on its back, then attack its weak point for MASSIVE DAMAGE."
:(
Seriously, anything that keeps Sony from blundering as bad next year as they did this year is probably a good thing for Sony. A smaller expo might allow them to better connect with gamers (read: control information via the mainstream press) than they have in recent years. Sony (and other large companies) will be able to treat the expo as one large press release rather than trying to pander to the crowd. Which means no more embarrassing moments like shouting "Riiiiidge Racer!" and not getting a response from the audience.
Unfortunately, it's probably only bad for gamers.
QNX is an alternative to Windows and therefore a competitor. No? How about, a typewriter is an alternative to a wordprocessor and therefore a competitor?
The point is that neither one was a serious competitor. TopView went all of nowhere, and GEM was mainly focused on non-PC and alternative DOS platforms.
Whereas the Mac and VisiOn had applications that people wanted to run. Windows had Windows calculator and notepad because it was only intended to hold the competitors out of the market.
Macs had useful applications from day 1, including a WYSIWYG word processor and graphics editing tools. Windows had nothing because Microsoft both failed to attract third party support as well as failed to write their own applications. Microsoft's key apps continued to be DOS mode applications.
VisiOn shipped with a graphical version of VisiCalc (a very popular spreadsheet at the time), a word processor, a charting app, and a few other high-quality apps that were ahead of there time. Everyone who used the system loved it. Too bad most people never got the chance. VisiCorp could have made a good living if the OEMs weren't waiting on Microsoft Windows to bundle with their cool new XT and AT machines.
What you mean is that they "continued to run WordStar" because there were no better options once the GUI dust had settled. Consumers were intially very excited about DOS GUIs. The introduction of Windows 1.0 killed the concept in its infancy. If you were "alive at the time" and using a PC as you claim, you would have been aware of all the buzz DOS GUIs were generating.
In a day in age when both PC's AND Macs cost $2000-$3000? Nonsense. The price was a sticking point (which was why it was later reduced to $990 for the complete bundle), but it was by no means all that far off from a Mac equipped with comperable applications. Similarly, WordStar cost $495, which was a good chunk of what the complete VisiOn package ended up marketing for.
You also seem to have ignored the paragraph proceeding the one you quoted:
Adding to the release's problems was Bill Gates, who took a page from VisiCorp's book and announced that their own product, Microsoft Windows, would be available in May 1984. This muddied the waters significantly, notably when he further claimed it would have a similar feature set, didn't require a hard disk, and cost only $250. Ironically, Windows was released with an even longer delay than VisiOn, only shipping in late 1985, and was lacking the features that forced VisiOn to demand a hard drive.
Why yes, yes I was. Which is how I know you're talking out your hindquarters.
Topview was introduced the same year as Windows, and was not a competitor in the GUI space. Primarily because it didn't have a GUI! (Kind of blows away your argument there, doesn't it?) It never gained any real following. GEM was also released in 1985, but was generally ignored in the PC world because it didn't run on DOS. By the time DOS support was added, Windows had already done too much damage to the DOS GUI market.
Windows was actually an announcement made by Microsoft to prevent people from purchasing the first true GUI system for DOS PCs, which was VisiOn. (Ref: Barbarians Led by Bill Gates) As it so happened, Windows was already in the works by the time Microsoft learned of the Mac. What they learned from Apple wouldn't make it into the first version of Windows (and it showed), but would help them in improving the usability of later versions.
The ploy worked. Consumers delayed purchasing VisiOn in favor of Windows because Microsoft was considered the "source" for OS software at the time. (Yes, even then they had a bit of monopoly power.) When Windows was finally released, everyone realized it sucked. This negatively impacted ALL DOS-based GUIs (including Windows) until Windows 95 finally convinced the market otherwise.
Your history is years later, after the first round of GUI wars was over. It wasn't until Windows 3.1 that PC users were willing to try again, and even then they tried to spend as little time in the environment as possible.
Just an FYI on this, Microsoft and IBM collaborated on OS/2. Microsoft provided most of the usability while IBM provided the underlying technology. A few Microsofties then managed to get Windows to boot into Protected Mode, which caused Microsoft to back out of OS/2 in favor of retrofitting Windows with their Chicago technology & Win32 library to create Win95.
So IBM was never actually able to successfully create a consumer operating system. If they had such skills, they would have nailed the market after Microsoft backed out. Instead they put up a weak fight with, "Wow, I can do more than one thing!" advertisments that just didn't have any staying power.
Since I'm replying again anyway, I think it's important to clarify: Microsoft was never in a position where they weren't a dominant power in the market. From their Microsoft BASIC empire, all the way to Windows, they have always had power to weild over others, and they have always abused that power. The world might be a far more interesting place today if Microsoft had never existed.
Fair enough. How about, "Apple shot themselves in the foot when they fired Steve Jobs, thus paving the way for Microsoft to gain market dominance through illegal practices?"
Of course, the reality is that it's actually a bit more complex than that. Microsoft gained their market dominance early on by hanging on the coat tails of a much older monopoly. (IBM) Once IBM had successfully evicted the other competitors from the market, Microsoft became a software monopoly. Considering that they had no scruples to begin with, that was a very bad thing. Microsoft then used their position to lock out all competitors from the market (bye, bye, CP/M & DR DOS) and push their substandard ripoff of VisiOn's and Apple's technologies.
Ever since then, Microsoft has been the bully holding the face of the struggling victims as they fail about in an attempt to escape Microsoft's influence. Only with the popularity of Java, the return of Jobs, and the rise of Google have any companies managed to land solid blows against Microsoft's dominance.
How about a nice letter to SciFi Channel Productions saying that we love this game and we want an official one created just like it? Preferrably with the humor intact, and without all the Three-Dee crud all the game companies try to shove down our throats. Far too many attempts at reviving the genre tend to throw away the very elements that made it entertaining to begin with.
Illegal anti-trust activities perpetrated by a less-than ethical company?
I'll settle for the film having top-notch audio. Thanks for trying, though.
Sweet! I'm glad to have been of service.
To answer my own question, "Commander Rob" has posted another of his scripts here:
http://commanderriker.bravehost.com/movie_scripts
The choice bit:
So, Commander Rob killed a key historical figure to "save" the timeline?
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA! Priceless, absolutely priceless.
After watching the first *cough* "film", I thought you guys MUST have taken a few liberties in order to lampoon the guy. Imagine my amazement when I read the script and found such choice lines as "(raises arms) Hooray!" in it. "Commander Rob" must be happy as a clam-who-just-lost-his-pearl over these films.
:P
Once again, I'm amazed at how much stranger truth is over fiction.
BTW, any chance you could publish more scripts? It's amusing to see how close the films are to the source material.
If this is anything like the fan videos that have come before it, it will probably have incredibly high production values (e.g. CGI effects, space ships, awesome compositing work, and realistic weapons), but will suffer from poor audio and acting.
For example, I was just watching the latest Star Trek: Exeter the other day. While the acting is not the worst (that title goes to a good-looking Star Wars fan film I saw a while back), it often suffers from the "spitting out the lines"-itis. Instead of training the actors and/or editing for proper timing, the actors are allowed to speak their lines one after another without any sort of pausing. The result is that they come across as emotionless actors speaking lines.
Now Shatner did have a propensity for overacting. (It's my... ship... my... ship!) However, he was at least acting. By not taking the time to slow down and deliver the lines, the actors never manage any real emotional expression. Which makes their lines that much harder to follow.
I say, "that much harder", because the voice audio is usually terrible in these amatuer productions. They need to either get a good mic *really* close to the actors, or they need to re-dub the audio in post-production. A combination of both wouldn't be such a bad idea. It would also help to try and clean up the audio that they do record. Try to remove any background noise or echoing (it's *really* hard to get perfectly clean audio without a sound booth) and boost the volume to be louder than the incessant background effects.
Exeter has one more annoyance that's actually quite unique to the production. They allow the actors to make nervous movements. While it's not that big of a deal for someone to rock a chair in real life, it's incredibly distracting in a movie. Hopefully they'll realize this and make their actors sit still for their lines.
That's my opinion, anyway. I imagine that someone trained in the field could provide more precise advice.
FWIW, I think it's amazing what fan films have been doing these days. If we wait a few more years, we may find that what used to be Internet fan films will become the Internet television of tomorrow. I just hope someone reboots Blake's 7. It would be a wonderful show to see back on the air.
I don't think that anyone is expecting a company that thinks there were Giant Crabs in Ancient Japan's history to do anything logically.
It's Ridge Racer! RIIIII-DGE RACER!
* Looks into crystal ball
My crystal ball tells all! I see... I see... AN ASIC in your future!
Seriously, decoding is the least of the concerns. Video encoding standards are almost always followed up by large-run ASIC decoders, that are usually quite affordable. Problems like bus bandwidth, storage, media electromechanics, framebuffer, etc. all add to the cost. In the case of this iPod attachment, I imagine it just shunts the encoded video directly to the HD attachment. All the real bandwidth, display, and decoding problems then happen there.
And what would you pay for such a miracle device?!? Probably about $200 - $250. Which brings the price of the iPod + HD attachment pretty close to your $500 figure.
But wait! It gets better!
A hydrogen fuel cell is very unlike a reciprocating engine in that it doesn't NEED to generate constant power. The very idea of a fuel cell, in fact, is that the energy is able to be drawn on demand like a battery, but with the greater energy density of a fuel-based engine.
In plain english, battery backup for a fuel cell would be redundant. All it would do is add extra weight that reduces the number of miles per gallon!
Apparently you think that "Mildly Obese" is the same thing as "unhealthily overweight". You must be one of those people who was highly offended by the Dove Soap advertisements? I'm sure you would have just died trying to find a woman skinny enough for your tastes a hundred years ago. Never mind that they were naturally bulkier than the unnaturally skinny women you apparently so covet. Medical science (read: the mob-rule) has decided that bucking nature is again the best bet for fitness!
Honestly, the way guys react towards women these days is disgusting. Unless the women actually are at an unhealthy weight (which is to say, too skinny to survive into their 30's) they're branded as "fat". I see plenty of thin women like that walk down the street here in Chicago, and I just want to puke. They're so skinny that there's practicly no muscle attached to the bone. I've seen some women with arms and legs having a radius of barely 2 inches. 2 INCHES! And I just know that these women aren't going to survive long, or will have to go through serious therapy if they do. And it's all because society keeps telling them that they're too fat. How does it feel to be encouraging women to die from painful conditions like anorexia and bulimia? Hmm?
Is there a problem with obesity in this nation? Yes, but that photograph is NOT IT. Especially if you understand that any photograph automatically makes the subject look heavier. (Why the hell do you think that super-models are so skinny?) As it so happens, she will probably lead a long and healthy life. Unfortunately, it's difficult to say the same for the women in these photos.
Oh my God. It's a normal looking woman. Run for the hills. The disgust is palpable. I can't believe that anyone would allow photos of real women on the Internet. They must all be super-models that are so skinny they only look right in the warping of a camera lense. Viva la myspace.
*rolls eyes*
What I get a kick out of, is that the "reviewer" (and I use the term loosely) chose to give Ms. Holt a poor score while letting Ms. Webb completely off the hook. Apparently, he has no problem sacrificing journalistic integrity in favor of broadcasting his fantasies about Ms. Webb in the slight hope that she might one day fullfill them. (Which is pretty pathetic when you think about it.)
The truth is that Ms. Webb and Mr. Sessler are painful to watch on the screen. All their jokes are delivered exactly as if they were reading from a script (which they are), they constantly look back and forth between each other and the camera (that's a very distracting movement, and should be minimized), they need to get their damn hands out of their pockets so that they don't look like pretzels, and they really need to loosen up and act more natural. Would it kill them to adlib a bit? Perhaps jump off into unscripted side conversations? Or does G4 believe them to be so void of any intelligence that they can't loosen the leash for even a second?
X-Play could be a decent show. Too bad it's hosts are strangling the life out of it.
Without question. Which is why the system is designed to prevent abuses on either side. It's also why we tend to oscillate between Democrat and Republican Presidents. The balance is setup carefully so that eventually the needs of all are met rather than just the needs of any specific group.
Oh yes, because those powerful Virtual Reality Computers let you become a farmer so that you can understand the difficulties farmers have. Or it lets you become a researcher so that you can understand the difficulties they have. Or it lets you become a powerplant manager so you can understand the difficulties they have.
Hot damn. This technology is brilliant.
Wait, let me guess. You think Bush won the election because "the blue states are full of morons". Of course, those same voters think that the Kerry supporters were morons. Neither side was correct, per se, as they merely have different experiences, opinions, and points of view.
Of course, I'm sure you already know that thanks to your Gee Whiz Bang Virtual Reality Computer System From the Sixteenth Dimension.
Carter. 'Nuff said.
You do know that your employer is required by law to give you time off to vote, don't you?
No?
*sigh*
Until some moron comes along and claims that it's "unfair" that the Senator from New York should have the same power as the Senator from Wyoming. Why don't we kick out all the checks and balances while we're at it?
Have you been paying any attention? If the less populated states are not represented, they will be at the mercy of the large states. Causing damage to the less populated states (unintentionally or otherwise) could cause a complete economic collapse of US production and trade! I know the big shots in New York think they're the only ones of any importance, but the truth is that they're only managing the movement of goods that are produced elsewhere.
Because that was the way our founding fathers configured it. Intentionally.
Or perhaps I should say that our Founding Fathers configured it so that each state would have a say, not the individual. The only reason why a person in New York has a vote at all is because the state of New York decides that you have a vote. Comparing your vote to the fellow in Wyoming is ridiculous. He's voting for how his state's electoral votes will be counted, and the New York fellow is voting for how his state's votes will be counted.
If Mr. New York wants to be a prick about it (Whaaa! Mr. Wyoming has more of a fraction of his state's vote! Whaa!) then I suggest that the state of New York remove voting privledges from its population, and decide the matter inside the state government. The population will then be forced to chose between their existing leadership and the right to vote for their state's electoral votes.
The only way it's "patently unfair" is if Mr. New York thinks his state should decide the outcome of ALL federal elections. In which case, what do we have states for anyway? Better dissolve the individual governments, and subject them all to total rule from the Federal government. It's so much better to give the President and Congress absolute power so that we can ensure that they are absolutely corrupted. While we're at it, why don't we dissolve the Senate? Wyoming has way too much power there, as well. Ooo, and why don't we eliminate the Supreme Court? They've been a real pain in the rear for the Soviet Socialist Republic of New York.
In case you're not catching on to the sarcasm, the electoral college is one of the many checks and balances built into the US constitution. Each of those checks that gets knocked out further weakens the nation. Thus whining about your "right to vote" is exactly that: Whining. The nation might even be a better place if we removed your right to vote. At least THAT would be constitutional.
A certain fellow by the name of Jack Trameil decided that consoles weren't important. As a result, Atari's units were hard to find after the crash of '83/'84. INTV Corp was mostly mail-order, although they did sell many units and games through Toys'R'Us until the NES displaced the console.
Oh, you're quite wrong. The answer to the problem is in the name of our nation: "The United States of America"
Under the original constitution, each state was a separate entity with its own laws that banded together for common defense under a singular Federal entity. Federal powers were always intended to be weak so as to allow for the diversity present in each state governing itself.
The electoral college was setup because the states were concerned that they would not be fairly represented. The concern was that since New York had the largest population, all the elections would follow their desires without the opinions and diversity of the rest of the nation coming into play. As a result, the EC was developed to allow even the smallest state to have a bit of weight in their vote.
In case the implications of that aren't clear, let me spell it out: The electoral college is designed to NOT reflect the popular vote.
Sometimes the popular vote reflects the college vote (especially in the case of a landslide), but in many close races the two will differ. (e.g. Bush vs. Gore '00)
What's interesting is that the people demanding a change in the method used to count the vote is almost always the folks from heavily populated areas. i.e. The exact people the electoral college was setup to protect against. The concern is that these people have little understanding of other areas, and would do insurmountable damage to the rest of the nation. Considering that our food production as well as many forms of research and manufacturing are handled in rural areas, failing to represent them could be disasterous.