I know no one is going to believe me -- no one ever DOES believe me. But one night, when I was like 5 or 6, I was staying at my grandmother's house for the weekend, and my 10/11-year old brother had basically taught me the joys of staying up until 4 or 5 in the am... i was playing some board game with my brother, and we had the disney channel on behind us.. and THEY FREAKING PLAYED A VIDEO RECORDING OF WALT DISNEY TELLING THE WORLD THAT HE WAS BEING FROZEN!
I swear to Any Supreme Being You Might Believe In, that this is true -- but my brother doesn't remember it.:(
2. For OptiPlex and Precision - purchase one of the new "nSeries" products (offered for GX260, WS340 & WS530 - details in the attached FAQ) that are being created to address a different OS support requirement other than a current standard Microsoft OS.
Obviously this doesn't mean that Dell is going to be selling computers only with Microsoft operating systems. Stop freaking out, people. It's just for one line of computers, not their whole company.
Well, I don't read Japanese very well (at all), so I guess I can't be SURE... but that's what the name on the front glass said a couple weeks ago.. lol
wow someone on this thread even with a pinball name.. bangback.. somethign i have never been able to do. (but then again, i've never been able to even get good at nudging, because everyone sets their tilt censors to absolutely impossible settings these days... i'd be willing to bet that i'm one of the best players in the world without nudging... some days... lol! today i went back to the bar with the Attack from Mars game, and was only able to even score 2B on it once. bleah!)
Perhaps he just threw in a ball bearing that he picked up somewhere. I don't know. One of the balls is DEFINITELY slightly larger, it will NOT fit through many of the targets on that game.
Yeah, that's the one that I can think of within 100 miles. Well, maybe Pinball Pete's in East Lansing is still operating, I guess that's within 100 miles, too.
Last time I was at Pinball Pete's in A2, basically the only thing that had any players was DDR. They've got like DDR Super Megamix volume 134 or some crap like that. And ten other editions. All in Japanese. I tried to play the pinball machines, and they were HORRIBLY out of whack - not that the ones that were turned on weren't operating properly.. but they were SERIOUSLY off balance. It was worse than at drunk hangouts where they tilt them horribly and hope no one notices.
They had that Atari 3d fps game, and they had Soul Calibur (I hear Soul Calibur 2 is out... any idea if they have that? If so, I might have to stop by there...), and a few of the classic oldies.. many of which I've completely forgotten how to play... (i used to be the King of Jungle Hunt... now I can't even play the damn thing)
To keep on the thread of pinball, it's pretty funny that Pinball Pete's is the only real arcade left around, aside from a few small mall-based outlets that are mostly kiddie games with ticket redemption, and the gigantic megaplexes like GameWorks. 'course I liked my experience with GameWorks, getting boozed up while at the arcade is always preferable to carrying the alcohol with you, getting boozed up in the car, and then going in. Though GameWorks has smoking sections, and Pete's is just plain smokign all around.. (which was really awesome when I first moved out to Detroit, because there were NO arcades that allowed smokign in Kalamazoo) ack.. I digress again...
It's sad that Pinball Pete's pinball games, though in pretty decent shape compared to most of the crap that's out there, are tilted into an unplayable state. course they never break - anyone who knows pinball knows not to play them after one game if they don't bother to check the legs first, and anyone who doesn't know pinball gets discouraged at hitting three targets before losing all their balls.
oh my GOD, Twilight Zone Pinball is the greatest video / pinball game ever CREATED. That game TOTALLY involved me, and I never ONCE reached "Lost In The Zone". I spent entire paychecks on that machine, and it always eluded me. I dropped out of high school for this game. (but then, 2 months later, I re-enrolled in a different school, and graduated 6 months ahead of my class, so that I could... go and play more Twilight Zone!) lol.
I am virtually the only person (until tonight, when I promptly set Grand Champion status on the machine) at the local bar/grille that plays the pinball machine. There's the occasional guy that drops a couple quarters in, flails around on the flippers for a little bit, and walks away. Maybe plays two or three games.. but these aren't the people that will understand the game.
When I came back to this bar three weeks ago, I dropped 5 dollars into the pinball machine and played from 7pm until 2am. The operator (and not the people who run the bar..)'s response: crank up the replay value, and put non-standard weight/sized pinballs into the machine.
Two of the five balls in this machine are QUITE noticeably heavier than a normal pinball, and one of them is obviously LARGER. The game is virtually impossible to play with the LARGER ball, though the heavier one tends to just change the bounce patterns.. with the lighter balls ( all the jet bumpers and flipper bumpers are dead) , the ball, when it hits the top part of the right hand flipper bumper, will almost ALWAYS bounce to the left flipper.. with the heavier balls, it will just roll dead-like to the right flipper.. and if you haven't yet realised the ball is one of the heavier ones, you're hitting the left flipper, and it's going out the middle hole. bleah!
Tables in bars, and increasingly so in arcades, are often way off balance. If you search Google for Pinball Rule Sheets, you'll find a lot of tips on how to make the games play the right way.
I was in a bar last weekend that had an AWESOME condition Addams' Family, but the balance on the table was set WAY off. The back right and back left legs were NOT set to the same height.. nowhere NEAR it. So I lifted the machine up, set my wallet under the frnt leg, and promptly played some of the best Pinball I've seen in the years since High School (about 8 of them)
Atari made a coin-op 3-d FPS, I don't recall what it was called.. and I have seen a couple of arcades (Putt Putts and the like, since there's only one real arcade within 100 miles of Detroit it seems) with multiplayer cabinets for "Sin" - looks like they took a PC, slapped Windows on it, slapped Sin on it, slapped a trackball and 5 buttons onto a box, and called it a multiplayer game.
It plays like shit, but it's a lot of fun to decimate other people on, considering i was decent at Sin when it came out.
I believe it was Williams, that created... oh god,... Cyclone? I think it was.. that had a shot advertised right on the playfield labelled "Pinball's first ever 1 million point target!" or some such... totally impossible shot.. then again,the last time I saw a Cyclone machine, was when I was 6.
You missed it. Williams created "Pinball 2k" which projected video images of targets onto the playfield. They did a couple of really cool designs, and it was basically a plug-in-a-new-playfield and a new-rom, and have a new-game.. which brought it in line with a lot of the video games.. but it still didn't get popular.. the star wars game was awful.. the attack frolm mars sequel was awesome...
And rather relevant, considering I was just out at the local bar/grille mastering a slightly broken "Attack from Mars". I actually had the 10 other people in the bar around the machine by the time I was done racking up free games, and handed the machine off to someone else.
This is old news, though. Williams and Gottlieb closed their pinball manufacturng in 2000. Stern is the final company, though they made Playboy and most of the other games mentioned in the article long before they were the last company left. And they didn't make South Park, Sega did. Though Stern is sort of what Sega Pinball was... Stern was sold to Sega many years ago, and Sega pawned them back off into their own company when they no longer wanted to do pinball.
That is EXACTLY what I am saying. Now, 1MB per MINUTE is -nuts-, but my primary machine has 512MB and I realise that '98 still has other issues besides just "total free ram" that affect "Total System Resources", but having to reboot every 2-3 days just because the programs that are running suck everything down in that time. and all i basically use is messengers!
You probably didn't read the Technical Documentation, which I wouldn't necessarily have expected, particularly for someone with a legalish background.. so don't consider this a flame at all. Normal conversational tone applies here:
The technical documentation basically implies that there is no MODIFICATION going on. valgrind simulates an x86 processor, and while it does it, keeps tallies on all sorts of debugging statistical stuff like that.
No "modifying relocatable object code".
I guess technically, just by reading the title, that patent would also apply to operating systems, since Operating SYstems modify relocatable object code and monitor the programs.
I wonder: Is there really any commercial, say Windows based, software developer that gives one rat's ass about memory leaks? Just throw more memory at the problem. When I'm in Windows, this is what I run, continuously:
The only other program i occasionally use is telnet.
I would expect ANY system could handle this for days, weeks, even MONTHS.. after 2-3 days in windows, suddenly all my icons and controls and gagets disappear, the screen won't re-draw anymore, and if i try to open anything, I get "There are not enough resources to run this program." (then closing programs tends to crash the OS)
It'd sure be nice if more developers DID care about memory issues. I don't think that's nearly as much of a problem on Unix based systems, because the developers care more about their code.
My USB based camera used to get about 4 frames per second on my P3/600, with USB 1. Plugging it into USB 2.0, I achieve constant frame rates around 25fps at the same color depth and resolution.
OK, sure, there's lots of software to sync the iPaq with. There's just nothing USEFUL to sync the iPaq with.
I'm going to have to agree with most people so far - almost a year behind means "we" suck.
I installed a USB 2.0 card in my machine, and the system recognizes it as a USB 1.0 device, but it operates a HELL of a lot faster in Windows, even with USB 1.0 devices. Then again, there are no Linux drivers for most of my USB hardware, so that point is irrelevant really.
About the only thing I can do in Linux with USB is sync my iPaq. BUt there's nothign to sync it WITH. lol
Having been to a semi-successful MeetUp (Ann Arbor, Michigan), I'd like to add in a few comments that I hope get modded UP so that people will see them, and make their Future MeetUps (if they intend to have them...) a lot easier to deal with.
Pick a restaurant, or other relatively well known public place, that you know EXISTS. This is what Venue Voting is for. If you see places that don't exist, you might want to contact MeetUp, so that they don't continue to get people looking for places that don't exist! If you're in an area where people might be travelling long distances, vote for a site that's EASY to find for people who might not be familiar with your area - something near a Highway/Interstate, or at least near some major crossroads. Our location was just about perfect - although packed as heck, and we had to wait 40 minutes or so for a table, at the corner of US 23 and M17/Washtenaw is a pretty easy to identify location.
First person there (or, even before hand) should let the staff know that there's a group of people by the name of "slashdot" (or "slashdog" if your waitress is too busy checking out Reverend George, when you tell her the name). Get some space reserved. I thought 8 people was pretty decent, esp since there were only 5 RSVP'd when I last checked before leaving for the restaurant. Brendan (probably the youngest person at any of the meetups - 7th grade makes you.. what.. 12? 13?) had the wonderful thought of reserving a spot for as many as he saw on the RSVP board, and then the waitresses got to help put us together.. though by that point, we had amassed into a group of 5 not-at-all-looking-like-we-would-be-together people, so when the next person wanders by they're like "oh, you're slashdot."
Second.. wear some geek clothing, or something. Just by chance, Tomo and I happened to pull into the parking lot, and park nose-to-nose at the exact same moment, and then after not finding anyone, we returned to our vehicles to hang out.. obviously looking like we were waiting for something. If anyone owns a/. hat or t-shirt, that's probably a REALLY good indicator, I just picked the geekiest looking thing that I could find.. (yeah, I know my employer's not THAT geeky, but i didn't want to wear my Sprint t-shirt as that got me deluded with insults the last time i wore it to a gathering) Since my vehicle is pretty beat up, I might just spray paint a big "/." on the hood of my truck next time. lol.
Third: Stick around. if you're going to a spot that's got food, even if there's only one or two people that pop in, grab some food. play some video games. Just hang out.. do SOMETHING at the location. We're geeks. Many of us are habitually very late. Many of us are referred to by our co-workers as operating in our very own time zones. People will come in late. Also, people might be driving in from a way away, and not familiar with directions or traffic issues.
Fourth: voice your concerns with the people at Meetup. Obviously since slashdot represents the largest number of people on meetup so far, it's quite new. I think the people who set it up did an excellent job on the site, but obviously there's a few things that need to be addressed. If they don't soon setup any way to communicate amongst people in the site, then I'd like to welcome everyone to come and make use of the message boards and instant messaging at my site ( http://mage.kicks-ass.net/ ). Yes, Slashdot is a big message board. It's sheer size makes it almost a difficult medium to use to communicate with people, back and forth. I rarely see any CONVERSATION on slashdot, just comments on stories.
Fifth: Have fun!
Hey.. did anyone show for the meeting in Southgate, MI? I went to head over that way after I got back home and did what I had to do there, but encountered some really bad construction zones that yahoo's driving directions took me through, and all the street signs were missing, so i couldn't find anything.
Thanks for showing up George, Martin, Eric, Brendan, Tomo, Jason, anyone I forgot...
I don't know if this is nationwide or not, but until 9pm in Michigan, you can go into a bar at ANY age. Which certainly seems to be a good idea as to why meetups for most events seem to start at 7 -- that can give a time/place for everyone to get together, and then if they want to find another venue, the option is open.
Having been to a semi-successful MeetUp (Ann Arbor, Michigan), I'd like to add in a few comments that I hope get modded UP so that people will see them, and make their Future MeetUps (if they intend to have them...) a lot easier to deal with.
Pick a restaurant, or other relatively well known public place, that you know EXISTS. This is what Venue Voting is for. If you see places that don't exist, you might want to contact MeetUp, so that they don't continue to get people looking for places that don't exist! If you're in an area where people might be travelling long distances, vote for a site that's EASY to find for people who might not be familiar with your area - something near a Highway/Interstate, or at least near some major crossroads. Our location was just about perfect - although packed as heck, and we had to wait 40 minutes or so for a table, at the corner of US 23 and M17/Washtenaw is a pretty easy to identify location.
First person there (or, even before hand) should let the staff know that there's a group of people by the name of "slashdot" (or "slashdog" if your waitress is too busy checking out Reverend George, when you tell her the name). Get some space reserved. I thought 8 people was pretty decent, esp since there were only 5 RSVP'd when I last checked before leaving for the restaurant. Brendan (probably the youngest person at any of the meetups - 7th grade makes you.. what.. 12? 13?) had the wonderful thought of reserving a spot for as many as he saw on the RSVP board, and then the waitresses got to help put us together.. though by that point, we had amassed into a group of 5 not-at-all-looking-like-we-would-be-together people, so when the next person wanders by they're like "oh, you're slashdot."
Second.. wear some geek clothing, or something. Just by chance, Tomo and I happened to pull into the parking lot, and park nose-to-nose at the exact same moment, and then after not finding anyone, we returned to our vehicles to hang out.. obviously looking like we were waiting for something. If anyone owns a/. hat or t-shirt, that's probably a REALLY good indicator, I just picked the geekiest looking thing that I could find.. (yeah, I know my employer's not THAT geeky, but i didn't want to wear my Sprint t-shirt as that got me deluded with insults the last time i wore it to a gathering) Since my vehicle is pretty beat up, I might just spray paint a big "/." on the hood of my truck next time. lol.
Third: Stick around. if you're going to a spot that's got food, even if there's only one or two people that pop in, grab some food. play some video games. Just hang out.. do SOMETHING at the location. We're geeks. Many of us are habitually very late. Many of us are referred to by our co-workers as operating in our very own time zones. People will come in late. Also, people might be driving in from a way away, and not familiar with directions or traffic issues.
Fourth: voice your concerns with the people at Meetup. Obviously since slashdot represents the largest number of people on meetup so far, it's quite new. I think the people who set it up did an excellent job on the site, but obviously there's a few things that need to be addressed. If they don't soon setup any way to communicate amongst people in the site, then I'd like to welcome everyone to come and make use of the message boards and instant messaging at my site ( http://mage.kicks-ass.net/ ). Yes, Slashdot is a big message board. It's sheer size makes it almost a difficult medium to use to communicate with people, back and forth. I rarely see any CONVERSATION on slashdot, just comments on stories.
Fifth: Have fun!
Hey.. did anyone show for the meeting in Southgate, MI? I went to head over that way after I got back home and did what I had to do there, but encountered some really bad construction zones that yahoo's driving directions took me through, and all the street signs were missing, so i couldn't find anything.
Thanks for showing up George, Martin, Eric, Brendan, Tomo, Jason, anyone I forgot...
Considering that there IS location voting going on, I have to wonder WHO exactly voted for these locations that were coming up bad?
Although correct that they shouldn't be in the database to begin with, I would expect people who LIVE in an area to KNOW that something doesn't exist anymore. I hit a few other meetups on the site, for other topics, and voted for locations that are (a) closer to me and (b) i know exist! heh
Seriously, if there's bad information in the databases, these guys need to know this.
you can also click "See other cities" or some such, and have it come up with a huge list of all the cities. Also if you enter a venue/location search, you can enter your state, and find all the meetups in the area... but i do think that they need to combine geographical areas together into state or 50% of a state or some such until there are more people available on the site...
Slashdot Mirror
I know no one is going to believe me -- no one ever DOES believe me. But one night, when I was like 5 or 6, I was staying at my grandmother's house for the weekend, and my 10/11-year old brother had basically taught me the joys of staying up until 4 or 5 in the am... i was playing some board game with my brother, and we had the disney channel on behind us.. and THEY FREAKING PLAYED A VIDEO RECORDING OF WALT DISNEY TELLING THE WORLD THAT HE WAS BEING FROZEN!
:(
I swear to Any Supreme Being You Might Believe In, that this is true -- but my brother doesn't remember it.
Obviously this doesn't mean that Dell is going to be selling computers only with Microsoft operating systems. Stop freaking out, people. It's just for one line of computers, not their whole company.
Obviously they are finding a workaround.
Well, I don't read Japanese very well (at all), so I guess I can't be SURE... but that's what the name on the front glass said a couple weeks ago.. lol
wow someone on this thread even with a pinball name.. bangback.. somethign i have never been able to do. (but then again, i've never been able to even get good at nudging, because everyone sets their tilt censors to absolutely impossible settings these days... i'd be willing to bet that i'm one of the best players in the world without nudging... some days... lol! today i went back to the bar with the Attack from Mars game, and was only able to even score 2B on it once. bleah!)
Perhaps he just threw in a ball bearing that he picked up somewhere. I don't know. One of the balls is DEFINITELY slightly larger, it will NOT fit through many of the targets on that game.
The arcade in the mall I work in, has DDR 9th Mix.
It's an import. When I had been to Pinball Pete's in A2, there were 9 different DDR machines, but here in the U.S. only 3 had come out.
Yeah, that's the one that I can think of within 100 miles. Well, maybe Pinball Pete's in East Lansing is still operating, I guess that's within 100 miles, too.
Last time I was at Pinball Pete's in A2, basically the only thing that had any players was DDR. They've got like DDR Super Megamix volume 134 or some crap like that. And ten other editions. All in Japanese. I tried to play the pinball machines, and they were HORRIBLY out of whack - not that the ones that were turned on weren't operating properly.. but they were SERIOUSLY off balance. It was worse than at drunk hangouts where they tilt them horribly and hope no one notices.
They had that Atari 3d fps game, and they had Soul Calibur (I hear Soul Calibur 2 is out... any idea if they have that? If so, I might have to stop by there...), and a few of the classic oldies.. many of which I've completely forgotten how to play... (i used to be the King of Jungle Hunt... now I can't even play the damn thing)
To keep on the thread of pinball, it's pretty funny that Pinball Pete's is the only real arcade left around, aside from a few small mall-based outlets that are mostly kiddie games with ticket redemption, and the gigantic megaplexes like GameWorks. 'course I liked my experience with GameWorks, getting boozed up while at the arcade is always preferable to carrying the alcohol with you, getting boozed up in the car, and then going in. Though GameWorks has smoking sections, and Pete's is just plain smokign all around.. (which was really awesome when I first moved out to Detroit, because there were NO arcades that allowed smokign in Kalamazoo) ack.. I digress again...
It's sad that Pinball Pete's pinball games, though in pretty decent shape compared to most of the crap that's out there, are tilted into an unplayable state. course they never break - anyone who knows pinball knows not to play them after one game if they don't bother to check the legs first, and anyone who doesn't know pinball gets discouraged at hitting three targets before losing all their balls.
oh my GOD, Twilight Zone Pinball is the greatest video / pinball game ever CREATED. That game TOTALLY involved me, and I never ONCE reached "Lost In The Zone". I spent entire paychecks on that machine, and it always eluded me. I dropped out of high school for this game. (but then, 2 months later, I re-enrolled in a different school, and graduated 6 months ahead of my class, so that I could... go and play more Twilight Zone!) lol.
I am virtually the only person (until tonight, when I promptly set Grand Champion status on the machine) at the local bar/grille that plays the pinball machine. There's the occasional guy that drops a couple quarters in, flails around on the flippers for a little bit, and walks away. Maybe plays two or three games.. but these aren't the people that will understand the game.
When I came back to this bar three weeks ago, I dropped 5 dollars into the pinball machine and played from 7pm until 2am. The operator (and not the people who run the bar..)'s response: crank up the replay value, and put non-standard weight/sized pinballs into the machine.
Two of the five balls in this machine are QUITE noticeably heavier than a normal pinball, and one of them is obviously LARGER. The game is virtually impossible to play with the LARGER ball, though the heavier one tends to just change the bounce patterns.. with the lighter balls ( all the jet bumpers and flipper bumpers are dead) , the ball, when it hits the top part of the right hand flipper bumper, will almost ALWAYS bounce to the left flipper.. with the heavier balls, it will just roll dead-like to the right flipper.. and if you haven't yet realised the ball is one of the heavier ones, you're hitting the left flipper, and it's going out the middle hole. bleah!
Tables in bars, and increasingly so in arcades, are often way off balance. If you search Google for Pinball Rule Sheets, you'll find a lot of tips on how to make the games play the right way.
I was in a bar last weekend that had an AWESOME condition Addams' Family, but the balance on the table was set WAY off. The back right and back left legs were NOT set to the same height.. nowhere NEAR it. So I lifted the machine up, set my wallet under the frnt leg, and promptly played some of the best Pinball I've seen in the years since High School (about 8 of them)
Atari made a coin-op 3-d FPS, I don't recall what it was called.. and I have seen a couple of arcades (Putt Putts and the like, since there's only one real arcade within 100 miles of Detroit it seems) with multiplayer cabinets for "Sin" - looks like they took a PC, slapped Windows on it, slapped Sin on it, slapped a trackball and 5 buttons onto a box, and called it a multiplayer game.
It plays like shit, but it's a lot of fun to decimate other people on, considering i was decent at Sin when it came out.
I believe it was Williams, that created ... oh god, ... Cyclone? I think it was.. that had a shot advertised right on the playfield labelled "Pinball's first ever 1 million point target!" or some such... totally impossible shot.. then again ,the last time I saw a Cyclone machine, was when I was 6.
You missed it. Williams created "Pinball 2k" which projected video images of targets onto the playfield. They did a couple of really cool designs, and it was basically a plug-in-a-new-playfield and a new-rom, and have a new-game .. which brought it in line with a lot of the video games.. but it still didn't get popular.. the star wars game was awful.. the attack frolm mars sequel was awesome...
And rather relevant, considering I was just out at the local bar/grille mastering a slightly broken "Attack from Mars". I actually had the 10 other people in the bar around the machine by the time I was done racking up free games, and handed the machine off to someone else.
:)
This is old news, though. Williams and Gottlieb closed their pinball manufacturng in 2000. Stern is the final company, though they made Playboy and most of the other games mentioned in the article long before they were the last company left. And they didn't make South Park, Sega did. Though Stern is sort of what Sega Pinball was... Stern was sold to Sega many years ago, and Sega pawned them back off into their own company when they no longer wanted to do pinball.
Pinball is wonderful.
That is EXACTLY what I am saying. Now, 1MB per MINUTE is -nuts-, but my primary machine has 512MB and I realise that '98 still has other issues besides just "total free ram" that affect "Total System Resources", but having to reboot every 2-3 days just because the programs that are running suck everything down in that time. and all i basically use is messengers!
You probably didn't read the Technical Documentation, which I wouldn't necessarily have expected, particularly for someone with a legalish background.. so don't consider this a flame at all. Normal conversational tone applies here:
The technical documentation basically implies that there is no MODIFICATION going on. valgrind simulates an x86 processor, and while it does it, keeps tallies on all sorts of debugging statistical stuff like that.
No "modifying relocatable object code".
I guess technically, just by reading the title, that patent would also apply to operating systems, since Operating SYstems modify relocatable object code and monitor the programs.
ICQ, Yahoo, MSN Messenger, Mozilla, Outbreak Express.
The only other program i occasionally use is telnet.
I would expect ANY system could handle this for days, weeks, even MONTHS
It'd sure be nice if more developers DID care about memory issues. I don't think that's nearly as much of a problem on Unix based systems, because the developers care more about their code.
My USB based camera used to get about 4 frames per second on my P3/600, with USB 1. Plugging it into USB 2.0, I achieve constant frame rates around 25fps at the same color depth and resolution.
OK, sure, there's lots of software to sync the iPaq with. There's just nothing USEFUL to sync the iPaq with.
I'm going to have to agree with most people so far - almost a year behind means "we" suck.
I installed a USB 2.0 card in my machine, and the system recognizes it as a USB 1.0 device, but it operates a HELL of a lot faster in Windows, even with USB 1.0 devices. Then again, there are no Linux drivers for most of my USB hardware, so that point is irrelevant really.
About the only thing I can do in Linux with USB is sync my iPaq. BUt there's nothign to sync it WITH. lol
Having been to a semi-successful MeetUp (Ann Arbor, Michigan), I'd like to add in a few comments that I hope get modded UP so that people will see them, and make their Future MeetUps (if they intend to have them...) a lot easier to deal with.
.. what.. 12? 13?) had the wonderful thought of reserving a spot for as many as he saw on the RSVP board, and then the waitresses got to help put us together.. though by that point, we had amassed into a group of 5 not-at-all-looking-like-we-would-be-together people, so when the next person wanders by they're like "oh, you're slashdot."
/. hat or t-shirt, that's probably a REALLY good indicator, I just picked the geekiest looking thing that I could find.. (yeah, I know my employer's not THAT geeky, but i didn't want to wear my Sprint t-shirt as that got me deluded with insults the last time i wore it to a gathering) Since my vehicle is pretty beat up, I might just spray paint a big "/." on the hood of my truck next time. lol.
Pick a restaurant, or other relatively well known public place, that you know EXISTS. This is what Venue Voting is for. If you see places that don't exist, you might want to contact MeetUp, so that they don't continue to get people looking for places that don't exist! If you're in an area where people might be travelling long distances, vote for a site that's EASY to find for people who might not be familiar with your area - something near a Highway/Interstate, or at least near some major crossroads. Our location was just about perfect - although packed as heck, and we had to wait 40 minutes or so for a table, at the corner of US 23 and M17/Washtenaw is a pretty easy to identify location.
First person there (or, even before hand) should let the staff know that there's a group of people by the name of "slashdot" (or "slashdog" if your waitress is too busy checking out Reverend George, when you tell her the name). Get some space reserved. I thought 8 people was pretty decent, esp since there were only 5 RSVP'd when I last checked before leaving for the restaurant. Brendan (probably the youngest person at any of the meetups - 7th grade makes you
Second.. wear some geek clothing, or something. Just by chance, Tomo and I happened to pull into the parking lot, and park nose-to-nose at the exact same moment, and then after not finding anyone, we returned to our vehicles to hang out.. obviously looking like we were waiting for something. If anyone owns a
Third: Stick around. if you're going to a spot that's got food, even if there's only one or two people that pop in, grab some food. play some video games. Just hang out.. do SOMETHING at the location. We're geeks. Many of us are habitually very late. Many of us are referred to by our co-workers as operating in our very own time zones. People will come in late. Also, people might be driving in from a way away, and not familiar with directions or traffic issues.
Fourth: voice your concerns with the people at Meetup. Obviously since slashdot represents the largest number of people on meetup so far, it's quite new. I think the people who set it up did an excellent job on the site, but obviously there's a few things that need to be addressed. If they don't soon setup any way to communicate amongst people in the site, then I'd like to welcome everyone to come and make use of the message boards and instant messaging at my site ( http://mage.kicks-ass.net/ ). Yes, Slashdot is a big message board. It's sheer size makes it almost a difficult medium to use to communicate with people, back and forth. I rarely see any CONVERSATION on slashdot, just comments on stories.
Fifth: Have fun!
Hey.. did anyone show for the meeting in Southgate, MI? I went to head over that way after I got back home and did what I had to do there, but encountered some really bad construction zones that yahoo's driving directions took me through, and all the street signs were missing, so i couldn't find anything.
Thanks for showing up George, Martin, Eric, Brendan, Tomo, Jason, anyone I forgot...
-out
I don't know if this is nationwide or not, but until 9pm in Michigan, you can go into a bar at ANY age. Which certainly seems to be a good idea as to why meetups for most events seem to start at 7 -- that can give a time/place for everyone to get together, and then if they want to find another venue, the option is open.
Having been to a semi-successful MeetUp (Ann Arbor, Michigan), I'd like to add in a few comments that I hope get modded UP so that people will see them, and make their Future MeetUps (if they intend to have them...) a lot easier to deal with.
.. what.. 12? 13?) had the wonderful thought of reserving a spot for as many as he saw on the RSVP board, and then the waitresses got to help put us together.. though by that point, we had amassed into a group of 5 not-at-all-looking-like-we-would-be-together people, so when the next person wanders by they're like "oh, you're slashdot."
/. hat or t-shirt, that's probably a REALLY good indicator, I just picked the geekiest looking thing that I could find.. (yeah, I know my employer's not THAT geeky, but i didn't want to wear my Sprint t-shirt as that got me deluded with insults the last time i wore it to a gathering) Since my vehicle is pretty beat up, I might just spray paint a big "/." on the hood of my truck next time. lol.
Pick a restaurant, or other relatively well known public place, that you know EXISTS. This is what Venue Voting is for. If you see places that don't exist, you might want to contact MeetUp, so that they don't continue to get people looking for places that don't exist! If you're in an area where people might be travelling long distances, vote for a site that's EASY to find for people who might not be familiar with your area - something near a Highway/Interstate, or at least near some major crossroads. Our location was just about perfect - although packed as heck, and we had to wait 40 minutes or so for a table, at the corner of US 23 and M17/Washtenaw is a pretty easy to identify location.
First person there (or, even before hand) should let the staff know that there's a group of people by the name of "slashdot" (or "slashdog" if your waitress is too busy checking out Reverend George, when you tell her the name). Get some space reserved. I thought 8 people was pretty decent, esp since there were only 5 RSVP'd when I last checked before leaving for the restaurant. Brendan (probably the youngest person at any of the meetups - 7th grade makes you
Second.. wear some geek clothing, or something. Just by chance, Tomo and I happened to pull into the parking lot, and park nose-to-nose at the exact same moment, and then after not finding anyone, we returned to our vehicles to hang out.. obviously looking like we were waiting for something. If anyone owns a
Third: Stick around. if you're going to a spot that's got food, even if there's only one or two people that pop in, grab some food. play some video games. Just hang out.. do SOMETHING at the location. We're geeks. Many of us are habitually very late. Many of us are referred to by our co-workers as operating in our very own time zones. People will come in late. Also, people might be driving in from a way away, and not familiar with directions or traffic issues.
Fourth: voice your concerns with the people at Meetup. Obviously since slashdot represents the largest number of people on meetup so far, it's quite new. I think the people who set it up did an excellent job on the site, but obviously there's a few things that need to be addressed. If they don't soon setup any way to communicate amongst people in the site, then I'd like to welcome everyone to come and make use of the message boards and instant messaging at my site ( http://mage.kicks-ass.net/ ). Yes, Slashdot is a big message board. It's sheer size makes it almost a difficult medium to use to communicate with people, back and forth. I rarely see any CONVERSATION on slashdot, just comments on stories.
Fifth: Have fun!
Hey.. did anyone show for the meeting in Southgate, MI? I went to head over that way after I got back home and did what I had to do there, but encountered some really bad construction zones that yahoo's driving directions took me through, and all the street signs were missing, so i couldn't find anything.
Thanks for showing up George, Martin, Eric, Brendan, Tomo, Jason, anyone I forgot...
-out
Considering that there IS location voting going on, I have to wonder WHO exactly voted for these locations that were coming up bad?
Although correct that they shouldn't be in the database to begin with, I would expect people who LIVE in an area to KNOW that something doesn't exist anymore. I hit a few other meetups on the site, for other topics, and voted for locations that are (a) closer to me and (b) i know exist! heh
Seriously, if there's bad information in the databases, these guys need to know this.
So, how's it feel to be beta test everyone? lol
that seems somehow bizarre. The waitress at ann arbor commented that there were no girls at our table, just a bunch of guys. lol
anyway, was fun. 7 or 8 of us there, i left when everyone decided to go over to starbucks though. Had to be back in the home area for some stuff.
you can also click "See other cities" or some such, and have it come up with a huge list of all the cities. Also if you enter a venue/location search, you can enter your state, and find all the meetups in the area... but i do think that they need to combine geographical areas together into state or 50% of a state or some such until there are more people available on the site...