I could forsee this company being able to make a competitive (but not superior) game platform modeled into a cable box.
Take the xbox for example, when it comes down to it, it's nothing more than a glorified PC with some proprietary bits thrown here and there with the dashboard frontend. I could see these guys at least being able to come up with some nvidia/x86 based guts to put in their cablebox.
You could get even more ghetto, go mini-itx, linux frontend and the rest of the digital cable crap in there for good measure. I think it could be easily done...
What I don't believe is that they'll be successful in launching this fabled platform and get games developed for it. Which is kinda a bummer, I believe that digital content delivery over broadband is gonna happen, but I just don't think these guys are gonna be the ones to pull this off.
Sega had a testmarket for SegaTV out of Chattanooga, TN, a little different, but similar in some ways. Had a gizmo that hooked up to a Sega Genesis and you could download games off of the cable straight into the box. At the time, it wasn't that cool cause you were limited by the number of titles and the cost. A good model is gonna have to be in place to pull games-on-demand off, but before then you'll need the games. Titles people are going to want to play, that's the biggest hangup I see.
Software can be such a risk, a lot of time, money and capital invested in the hopeful success, taking a risk on a flakey positioned product like a game/cable box to me, sounds dangerous. Especially with matured platforms from Sony/Nintendo/MS have proven theirselves to be safe markets.
Who knows, that's the fun thing about the future. You can sit back and arm-chair analyze it to death, but you won't know till it's done and over with. God bless 20:20 hindsight.
Unemployment insurance in volitile businesses like IT are a smart move, with so many tallented and smart people unemployed due to layoffs, find a new job can be tough.
Having some unemployment insurance really can save your butt.
Invest in ramen noodles while you're at it. Never know when the doorknob is looking for love in all the wrong places.
I remember WordPerfect fondly, ever since the first release, later down the road to Windows versions. Then sadly, work dictated that I must use Word, never cared for it very much it's improved greatly.
Now I've switched to OSX as my primary focus, and Novell/Corel have left us out to die (I'm sure many of you are happy about that). But I'd like some more established alternatives, it'd be great to see WordPerfect come back to the Mac.
OpenOffice is slated for a native version for OSX, but that's years down the road. The X11 version is pretty nice, I like it, but for my spoiled habits, it's not cutting it just yet. But I have high hopes for it none-the-less.
ThinkFree is interesting, but it's responsiveness is frustrating on older equipment.
Appleworks, nuff said...
We want more from Corel than just KPT and Painter. Office X 2004 looks nice, but the price and ethics aren't. Bring us WordPerfect.
A nerdy approach that certainly outweighs mine
on
DIY HVAC
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I have a fairly paltry income, I was willing to do anything to cut back on expenses to make my daily life a little easier to live.
Started with the electric bill, did the obvious things, knocked the thermostat in a direction that'd keep the costs down. Replaced all the bulbs in the house with florecents. Switched to more energy effecient devices and appliances. It helped, but didn't make a real dent. My problem was heating and cooling. I live in a location with all the seasons. Very hot, very cold.
Then a co-worker inspired an idea. He faught in Viet Nam, told me bout how the guys rotated back to the world and stopped in Hawaii for refueling. All the guys in combat were so used to the hot humid jungle that the 88F weather of Hawaii was just too cold for them, they all had on leather jackets trying to beat the chill.
It was then I realized, that to a degree, my battles with TVA were more easily won by conditioning. All these years I had been spoiled by AC and electric heat. So I did a little experiment this Winter.
I vowed never to turn on the heat unless there was a chance that the pipes might freeze. Went and bought a coleman sleeping bag and a bunkbed at a thriftstore, kept myself closer to the cieling and snuggly in my sleeping bag. Kept very warm at night, during the day I'd burn a few candles just to take the chill out of the room, wore long sleaves.
My electric bill went from 270$ a month to around 30$.
Success through suffering. But the experiment worked, now I can run around in shorts when it's 38F out and it's not big deal to me.
How will I fair during the Summer tho? Many people die in the South from heat stroke, so I'm a little concerned about that. I really don't wanna die or get sick to save a dollar. So I think I'm going to do some zone cooling, reasonable AC set on 80 and lots of fans.
The methods illustrated in the story would have been tempting, but I'm a renter. Not a whole like I can apply to the living structure without violating my lease and being homeless where it's gonna be really cold out.
I wonder if this will have any impact on the development and direction of Mad Hatter, with IBM's ongoing journey to bring linux to a wider audience. These two companies in bed, in marriage, could produce some interesting offspring for Java and ultimately could very well trickle down to Mad Hatter.
Could this venture open up doors for Mad Hatter to become a part of IBM's fleet of products? Any thoughts?
This jostled my memory of an event taken place about 20 years ago, Wal-Mart had a contest where whoever got the most points in Super Mario Bros in their age bracket won a free game of their choice. I was all excited being a nintendo-nerd kid, I would sit and practice at home to get a stratedgy developed so I could win me that game!
After my training regiment, it was time to enter the contest. Well there was only one other person in my age bracket (13+ and older), a woman in her 20's, so I was stoked. "I'm gonna win this" came time to play and I missed a calculated jump and fell into a hole, screwed my chances right there.
It was then I had to say goodbye to my dreams of owning "Skate or Die"... eventually I bought it, but it was the whole glory of it all.
I hope the record breaker basks in all his glory, someone hook that man up with a copy of Ultra's Skate or Die, he earned it!
Mac OS X could be a good solution, it has a nice on the fly and controllable zoom feature for those of us with poor vision. You can hold down cmnd+option+ -/+ to increase and decrease the zoom around the cursor. Quartz text is very smooth to start with so it makes it easy to read once zoomed in.
Combined with that feature, you have inverted color modes which can sometimes be easier to read depending on the impairment. The enhanced contrast feature also takes out the drop shadows on elements making objects more defined. Large on screen command keys will also overlay if you desire to help ensure that you're holding down the correct keys and combinations.
Built in voice recognition for commands may speed up the process a bit as well. Although it's not flawless and takes some time to 'train' the computer to your Father's voice.
Text highlighted by the cursor will be spoken aloud via the tex-to-voice feature, and most applications will allow you to highlight bodies of text and will attempt to read them aloud to you via the same tech.
Any simple G3 or G4 would suffice, a model that has the capacity to output to a larger display/television would also help.
Those of us with severe handicaps can benefit from this a lot, hope you find some way to help out your old man.
Somewhat related to the topic. Before the internet, I wanted to record long radio programs in the morning/afternoon while I was away at work and was not allowed to listen to the radio. I needed a way to record radio programs that were 4-6 hours long, a cassette deck didn't cut it...
Ghetto engineering! I jacked my stereo through the back of a VCR's audio in, used a VHS tape set on SLP, program the VCR to start and stop recording at a predetermined time, and abracadabra: 6 hours of hassle free recording.
Glad to know that there are less ghetto ways of doing it now, the Griffin Technology RadioSHARK looks promising for OSX. www.griffintechnology.com
Skateboarding for 22 years and two knee replacements later, I agree with czion3. Very comfortable, durrable and mostly made out of synthetics so no beep beep beeping Ellen Fliess style. But which brand of skate shoes?
Vans are known to be a bit narrower than other brands, they also have sizes and half sizes all the way up to 18 1/2. Far as their classic shoes, like the 86 lo-cuts, you can have them taylored of any color, pattern and material that you like (for an additional cost)
Emerica/Etnies are a bit more customizable for the foot, you can pull out the insole and remove a blue foam wedge to deduct the ammount of arch support if you have fallen arches. Their solid sole shoes are the most durable, but their foam soled ones are the most shock absorbing.
DC shoes are the british knights of footwear, not very business attire friendly. But you can jump off the roof of your home onto concrete all day.
DuFFs are a good all around performer.
Nike's new skate shoes are a contender as well...
By far this is one very dull post, go barefoot. Those cross country runners that go barefoot seem to be more comfortable than I do running 100 feet in my shoes.
Slashdot Mirror
I could forsee this company being able to make a competitive (but not superior) game platform modeled into a cable box.
Take the xbox for example, when it comes down to it, it's nothing more than a glorified PC with some proprietary bits thrown here and there with the dashboard frontend. I could see these guys at least being able to come up with some nvidia/x86 based guts to put in their cablebox.
You could get even more ghetto, go mini-itx, linux frontend and the rest of the digital cable crap in there for good measure. I think it could be easily done...
What I don't believe is that they'll be successful in launching this fabled platform and get games developed for it. Which is kinda a bummer, I believe that digital content delivery over broadband is gonna happen, but I just don't think these guys are gonna be the ones to pull this off.
Sega had a testmarket for SegaTV out of Chattanooga, TN, a little different, but similar in some ways. Had a gizmo that hooked up to a Sega Genesis and you could download games off of the cable straight into the box. At the time, it wasn't that cool cause you were limited by the number of titles and the cost. A good model is gonna have to be in place to pull games-on-demand off, but before then you'll need the games. Titles people are going to want to play, that's the biggest hangup I see.
Software can be such a risk, a lot of time, money and capital invested in the hopeful success, taking a risk on a flakey positioned product like a game/cable box to me, sounds dangerous. Especially with matured platforms from Sony/Nintendo/MS have proven theirselves to be safe markets.
Who knows, that's the fun thing about the future. You can sit back and arm-chair analyze it to death, but you won't know till it's done and over with. God bless 20:20 hindsight.
Unemployment insurance in volitile businesses like IT are a smart move, with so many tallented and smart people unemployed due to layoffs, find a new job can be tough.
Having some unemployment insurance really can save your butt.
Invest in ramen noodles while you're at it. Never know when the doorknob is looking for love in all the wrong places.
I remember WordPerfect fondly, ever since the first release, later down the road to Windows versions. Then sadly, work dictated that I must use Word, never cared for it very much it's improved greatly.
Now I've switched to OSX as my primary focus, and Novell/Corel have left us out to die (I'm sure many of you are happy about that). But I'd like some more established alternatives, it'd be great to see WordPerfect come back to the Mac.
OpenOffice is slated for a native version for OSX, but that's years down the road. The X11 version is pretty nice, I like it, but for my spoiled habits, it's not cutting it just yet. But I have high hopes for it none-the-less.
ThinkFree is interesting, but it's responsiveness is frustrating on older equipment.
Appleworks, nuff said...
We want more from Corel than just KPT and Painter. Office X 2004 looks nice, but the price and ethics aren't. Bring us WordPerfect.
I have a fairly paltry income, I was willing to do anything to cut back on expenses to make my daily life a little easier to live.
Started with the electric bill, did the obvious things, knocked the thermostat in a direction that'd keep the costs down. Replaced all the bulbs in the house with florecents. Switched to more energy effecient devices and appliances. It helped, but didn't make a real dent. My problem was heating and cooling. I live in a location with all the seasons. Very hot, very cold.
Then a co-worker inspired an idea. He faught in Viet Nam, told me bout how the guys rotated back to the world and stopped in Hawaii for refueling. All the guys in combat were so used to the hot humid jungle that the 88F weather of Hawaii was just too cold for them, they all had on leather jackets trying to beat the chill.
It was then I realized, that to a degree, my battles with TVA were more easily won by conditioning. All these years I had been spoiled by AC and electric heat. So I did a little experiment this Winter.
I vowed never to turn on the heat unless there was a chance that the pipes might freeze. Went and bought a coleman sleeping bag and a bunkbed at a thriftstore, kept myself closer to the cieling and snuggly in my sleeping bag. Kept very warm at night, during the day I'd burn a few candles just to take the chill out of the room, wore long sleaves.
My electric bill went from 270$ a month to around 30$.
Success through suffering. But the experiment worked, now I can run around in shorts when it's 38F out and it's not big deal to me.
How will I fair during the Summer tho? Many people die in the South from heat stroke, so I'm a little concerned about that. I really don't wanna die or get sick to save a dollar. So I think I'm going to do some zone cooling, reasonable AC set on 80 and lots of fans.
The methods illustrated in the story would have been tempting, but I'm a renter. Not a whole like I can apply to the living structure without violating my lease and being homeless where it's gonna be really cold out.
Microsoft will soon take away Ford's glory, Bill vs Henry round two with Traffodata 04.
Nerd history of the Traffodata is located in Fire in the Valley, a great computer history book.
I wonder if this will have any impact on the development and direction of Mad Hatter, with IBM's ongoing journey to bring linux to a wider audience. These two companies in bed, in marriage, could produce some interesting offspring for Java and ultimately could very well trickle down to Mad Hatter.
Could this venture open up doors for Mad Hatter to become a part of IBM's fleet of products? Any thoughts?
This jostled my memory of an event taken place about 20 years ago, Wal-Mart had a contest where whoever got the most points in Super Mario Bros in their age bracket won a free game of their choice. I was all excited being a nintendo-nerd kid, I would sit and practice at home to get a stratedgy developed so I could win me that game!
After my training regiment, it was time to enter the contest. Well there was only one other person in my age bracket (13+ and older), a woman in her 20's, so I was stoked. "I'm gonna win this" came time to play and I missed a calculated jump and fell into a hole, screwed my chances right there.
It was then I had to say goodbye to my dreams of owning "Skate or Die"... eventually I bought it, but it was the whole glory of it all.
I hope the record breaker basks in all his glory, someone hook that man up with a copy of Ultra's Skate or Die, he earned it!
Mac OS X could be a good solution, it has a nice on the fly and controllable zoom feature for those of us with poor vision. You can hold down cmnd+option+ -/+ to increase and decrease the zoom around the cursor. Quartz text is very smooth to start with so it makes it easy to read once zoomed in.
Combined with that feature, you have inverted color modes which can sometimes be easier to read depending on the impairment. The enhanced contrast feature also takes out the drop shadows on elements making objects more defined. Large on screen command keys will also overlay if you desire to help ensure that you're holding down the correct keys and combinations.
Built in voice recognition for commands may speed up the process a bit as well. Although it's not flawless and takes some time to 'train' the computer to your Father's voice.
Text highlighted by the cursor will be spoken aloud via the tex-to-voice feature, and most applications will allow you to highlight bodies of text and will attempt to read them aloud to you via the same tech.
Any simple G3 or G4 would suffice, a model that has the capacity to output to a larger display/television would also help.
Those of us with severe handicaps can benefit from this a lot, hope you find some way to help out your old man.
Somewhat related to the topic. Before the internet, I wanted to record long radio programs in the morning/afternoon while I was away at work and was not allowed to listen to the radio. I needed a way to record radio programs that were 4-6 hours long, a cassette deck didn't cut it...
Ghetto engineering! I jacked my stereo through the back of a VCR's audio in, used a VHS tape set on SLP, program the VCR to start and stop recording at a predetermined time, and abracadabra: 6 hours of hassle free recording.
Glad to know that there are less ghetto ways of doing it now, the Griffin Technology RadioSHARK looks promising for OSX. www.griffintechnology.com
http://www.applefritter.com/sell/datagraph.html
Skateboarding for 22 years and two knee replacements later, I agree with czion3. Very comfortable, durrable and mostly made out of synthetics so no beep beep beeping Ellen Fliess style. But which brand of skate shoes?
Vans are known to be a bit narrower than other brands, they also have sizes and half sizes all the way up to 18 1/2. Far as their classic shoes, like the 86 lo-cuts, you can have them taylored of any color, pattern and material that you like (for an additional cost)
Emerica/Etnies are a bit more customizable for the foot, you can pull out the insole and remove a blue foam wedge to deduct the ammount of arch support if you have fallen arches. Their solid sole shoes are the most durable, but their foam soled ones are the most shock absorbing.
DC shoes are the british knights of footwear, not very business attire friendly. But you can jump off the roof of your home onto concrete all day.
DuFFs are a good all around performer.
Nike's new skate shoes are a contender as well...
By far this is one very dull post, go barefoot. Those cross country runners that go barefoot seem to be more comfortable than I do running 100 feet in my shoes.
Spelling never got anyone laid...