Pulver is Swedish for powder. Since it appears in Swedish I sort of assumed the same word could appear in English, but Merriam-Webster Online didn't recognize it, so I guess not.
Anyway, when I first read the headline, I wondered what the hell is a powder-free world dialup, or more importantly, what the hell is a dialup that has powder in it. Guess I'll never know.
I know Guybrush Threepwood always went around claiming to be a mighty pirate, but he really was pretty harmless. Oh well, guess the wait for the next Monkey Island game is going to be pretty long.
What's that you say? A different kind of videogame pirate was jailed, not Guybrush? Oh, my bad, I just read the headline and assumed the worst.
Baltar is not the evil person from the original, he's just a confused computer geek.
Wait, you didn't hear? Computer geeks ARE evil persons, I mean, what's wanting to rule or alternatively wipe out all humanity compared to file-sharing and decoding legally purchased content (DeCSS)?
You really should pay more attention to the friendly people at MPAA/RIAA.
I've been following the warppipe forums, and it seems like Chad, one of the devs, is just acting plain paranoid and childish. He's cited some forum posts as "proof" that they stole his code, but when I read the posts, I didn't see the proof.
Maybe Chad has been smoking pipe. Or maybe Chad hasn't been smoking pipe, which is why he's so twitchy and aggressive.
Unfortunately for the world, that leaves only one option - it must be Virtual Boy II!
I've actually thought for some time now that Nintendo may be coming up with something equally crazy to sink some money in (remember, Nintendo don't have a shortage of cash, every console of theirs except that Virtual Boy was profitable) and try to "innovate" to get some new market share. What follows is my idea of what they might be up to.
So what I've been having in mind is a dedicated portable real 3D gaming machine using an autostereo display that doesn't need 3D glasses at all. They now have the N64 hardware in nearly portable size (iQue), so all they need to do is trim it for some more speed and less size to be perfectly acceptable for a next-gen portable gaming system. The current GBA can already play compressed video (Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories coming from Square Enix is using it) so the new console could obviously do it, in real 3D no less! And if it can do compressed video it pretty obviously can handle compressed audio, and in real 3D no less! (just kidding, just kidding, although I am going to mention that surround audio can be produced using just standard stereo headphones as output, so you could theoretically enjoy movies on the go with this thing in real 3d visuals and a surround sound experience). Not that I really care that much about movie and music playback in my gaming machine, but some of you do, so the new device could easily have it.
The only things to solve are the media to use and battery life. Nintendo probably would like to stick to their current cartridge format since using spinning disks create problems in portable environments, but they might be bold and use their Gamecube mini-dvd format for it, since a mini-dvd has more than enough space for a portable device with low resolution. With cheapening manufacturing costs the cartridge capacities could also be increased a lot while keeping the price down, obviously not to mini-dvd levels but for a low resolution device it could be sufficient even for 3D gaming and compressed video.
The battery life is trickier, especially if there is disk that needs to be spun. So Nintendo will solve it by having some very serious problem with the device that the consumers just have to deal with a couple of years before the new model the fixes the problem arrives. They had the dark screens for the GBA but I think they'll have a new problem for this new device, maybe if it uses a disk format the device doesn't have a motor to spin the disk but instead there's a hand crank the user spins when the device needs to load the next level or next movie portion from the disk.
(Yes, I am joking again. Don't shoot me.)
So there you have it. By now you should have a fair impression that I am completely INSANE, but remember, so is Nintendo when they're at their best (well, not COMPLETELY insane), and being a loyal Nintendo fan I hope they'll be at their best the following years.
Developers are working with prototype PS3 hardware right now. I am betting on a release in late 2004.
PS3 in late 2004? Haha, you're funny. You are right in that developers already have dev kits for PS3 (although they might be just software emulation of the expected capabilities of the PS3, not actual prototype hardware), but that doesn't mean the release of PS3 is imminent. A little over a year of development does not a good game make, and Sony probably wants at least one good launch title for PS3, not that Sony got where it was by having good games on its consoles (*ducks*).
But seriously, next year will be the time for handheld battle, with Sony bringing forth PSP and Nintendo possibly countering with a new handheld offering (and then there's Nokia, they are funny too). The first next-gen home console to come out will most likely be Nintendo's next-gen device, which they haven't even officially announced yet. They may announce it early next year, giving it the launch date of late 2004 earliest, and I still wouldn't bet on it. Sony and Microsoft would then follow in 2005/2006.
Why I consider Nintendo to be first? They already dropped GC's price to $99. They can sell it at that price maybe for a year, at which time Sony and MS will have probably dropped price too, making GC a less actractive choice for console buyers. A new console with new games could sell nicely then, especially if the competition's next gen hardware isn't there yet (although their hype most certainly will be). Nintendo also doesn't obsess with doing the mainstream stuff, so they're happy to release whatever it is they have when they feel like it. Sony and MS will probably be more keen on observing the competition and making sure the competion doesn't have anything considered cool by mainstream players that they themselves don't have in their own consoles.
And then there's the games. Sure, PS3 dev kits are around, but so are dev kits for all the other next generation consoles. And Nintendo hasn't been a slow mover there, either. For example, Metroid Prime 2 may well have been in various stages of development ever since the release of the first MP, and it probably was already then known what hardware platform it will be released on (not the current GC). And notice how many of big Ninty published games come from third party developers? Makes you wonder what the hell Nintendo's internal R&D teams have been up to all this time.
The GBA is a game console, albeit a portable one. I can turn a functioning GBA into something not a game console, but turning one into a game console when it's already one is -1 Redundant.
Coming on Slashdot next: "Turn your MS Windows into on operating system"
"Turn Slashdot into a news for nerds site"
"Turn your +5 Funny posts into something funny"...and other great stories.
who cares how fun it is if your friends are calling you gay because your playing Pikamin.
I'd say you need better friends than more adult content in this case.
more adults would buy it because instead of it being some cutesy wootsy furry monkey, its a ravenous drooling ape
I do understand that some people would indeed rather purchase those ravenous drooling ape games than cutesy monkey games. I consider that sad. Now don't get me wrong, I've had moments in my life where I've been a bit nervous standing in front of a shelf selling Nintendo products, but in the end, who fucking cares: not anybody I care about. If somebody thinks I'm gay because I walk out of the store with a Nintendo kiddy game they're no friends of mine. It's a sad thing indeed if someone has such weak confidence in his own sexuality that he needs to boost his self-image with adult content games. Me, given the choice of cutesy monkeys or psycho apes, other things being equal I'd go with the cutesy monkeys, but maybe that's just me.
If Nokia wants to help their N-Gage sales, they should make a TV desktop box that can handle N-Gage games. If people had the chance to play those games on the big screen as well it would be a nice bonus for the (would-be) N-Gage owners (although that tall-screen aspect ratio would suck on wide-screen TVs). Now it obviously wouldn't help the N-Gage be a huge success or even a small one (the only thing that could do that would be N-Gage exclusive original quality games, and plenty of them, to be able to compete with GBA's current and upcoming games collection), but it should make it sell a bit better.
I like clowns. A great deal better than I like mimes, at least.
Somebody should explain to me this hatred of mimes all Americans seem to share (and is constantly referenced to in American popular culture). Where did it originate and why? I'm baffled. (OK, so mimes may not be the most entertaining of performers, but I don't think they deserve to die any more than the Jackass etc. dudes).
Zalman actually does have a heatpipe solution for graphics cards. Unfortunately, they don't work as a fanless solution with modern accelerator cards (at least not all of them). I got myself one hoping to silence my GeForce Ti4200 based graphics card, but found out that the heatpipe solution just didn't cool it enough (got a system hang shortly after boot) without good airflow, which requires a fan to blow at the heatpipe solutions heatsinks. Zalman even acknowledges this since their newest heatpipe graphics card solution has a handy place for attaching a fan.
So cooling that $400 card without a fan is probably impossible right now, however it can be done with a big low-noise fan instead of the possibly high-noise small fan it comes with (and you might not even need heatpipes to do it, just disable the onboard fan on the graphics card and put a new big fan blowing on the cards heatsink instead and see if it works, it has worked for me in the past, YMMV).
Man from BBC (John Cleese) is driving Man from the mill (who didn't expect the Spanish inquisition, Graham Chapman) to open a door in the next sketch.
Man from the mill: Do you do a lot of this sort of thing? Man from BBC: Quite a lot, yes, quite a lot. Mainly in comedy. I'd like to be in program planning actually, but unfortunately I've got a degree.
What are you taling about? Guns don't kill people.
Whaat? Who's been claiming gnus do kill people? It's absurd to think that such lovely animals would harm humans... Oh you were talking about GUNS, not GNUS, sorry, my bad.
1. You purchase the song for.99 euros.
2. You get access to download the song for 3 days. 3. At the 3rd day, a team of Microsoft employees comes to your house to remove all the songs from your computer and electronic devices. They destroy all cdrs, Pen drives, flash cards or anything else you could have used to pirate music. 4. The microsoft team reformats your hard drive, and reinstalls windows at a discounted cost of $129. 5. A private detective who has been following you over the past 3 days, visits everyone you've come in contact with and performs the same process on them.
6. ??? 7. Profit!
Okay, this shows I've spent too much time on slashdot. I'd get a life, but there was that SCO story I still haven't read...
Do you know that the modified GCC has not created a problem? If you can't rebuild from source and make it *match*, you don't have control over the binary! You can't fix any bugs, nor can you verify (without extensive effort) that the binary was derived from said source.
The mods to GCC and any other build tools *MUST* be provided.
Well, that's an interesting standpoint. What about those who distribute binaries of GPL software compiled with a non-GPL licensed compiler (e.g. a Microsoft product), are they in violation of the GPL since they are not providing the source for the compiler used with a GPL-compatible license?
There are tricks around this problem but none are clean.
You mean like reference counting? Makes copying large objects efficient and you should be using something like the handle-body idiom anyway (because of certain stupidities of the C++ language and its implementations).
Slashdot Mirror
Pulver is Swedish for powder. Since it appears in Swedish I sort of assumed the same word could appear in English, but Merriam-Webster Online didn't recognize it, so I guess not.
Anyway, when I first read the headline, I wondered what the hell is a powder-free world dialup, or more importantly, what the hell is a dialup that has powder in it. Guess I'll never know.
No no no! Blame Canada!
I know Guybrush Threepwood always went around claiming to be a mighty pirate, but he really was pretty harmless. Oh well, guess the wait for the next Monkey Island game is going to be pretty long.
What's that you say? A different kind of videogame pirate was jailed, not Guybrush? Oh, my bad, I just read the headline and assumed the worst.
And buying a Mac is SO much cheaper than buying a Windows license.
If you didn't take the hint, those Mac binaries don't do you much good on an Intel platform.
Wait, you didn't hear? Computer geeks ARE evil persons, I mean, what's wanting to rule or alternatively wipe out all humanity compared to file-sharing and decoding legally purchased content (DeCSS)?
You really should pay more attention to the friendly people at MPAA/RIAA.
Rat: The key to being a great poet is to be so obscure that nobody can understand you, much less criticize you.
"Atop the fog
the zebra's buttocks
angry at my
mother's sloth"
Don't tell anyone my secret.
Goat: I don't think I'll have to.
Pearls Before Swine
Maybe Chad has been smoking pipe. Or maybe Chad hasn't been smoking pipe, which is why he's so twitchy and aggressive.
I've actually thought for some time now that Nintendo may be coming up with something equally crazy to sink some money in (remember, Nintendo don't have a shortage of cash, every console of theirs except that Virtual Boy was profitable) and try to "innovate" to get some new market share. What follows is my idea of what they might be up to.
So what I've been having in mind is a dedicated portable real 3D gaming machine using an autostereo display that doesn't need 3D glasses at all. They now have the N64 hardware in nearly portable size (iQue), so all they need to do is trim it for some more speed and less size to be perfectly acceptable for a next-gen portable gaming system. The current GBA can already play compressed video (Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories coming from Square Enix is using it) so the new console could obviously do it, in real 3D no less! And if it can do compressed video it pretty obviously can handle compressed audio, and in real 3D no less! (just kidding, just kidding, although I am going to mention that surround audio can be produced using just standard stereo headphones as output, so you could theoretically enjoy movies on the go with this thing in real 3d visuals and a surround sound experience). Not that I really care that much about movie and music playback in my gaming machine, but some of you do, so the new device could easily have it.
The only things to solve are the media to use and battery life. Nintendo probably would like to stick to their current cartridge format since using spinning disks create problems in portable environments, but they might be bold and use their Gamecube mini-dvd format for it, since a mini-dvd has more than enough space for a portable device with low resolution. With cheapening manufacturing costs the cartridge capacities could also be increased a lot while keeping the price down, obviously not to mini-dvd levels but for a low resolution device it could be sufficient even for 3D gaming and compressed video.
The battery life is trickier, especially if there is disk that needs to be spun. So Nintendo will solve it by having some very serious problem with the device that the consumers just have to deal with a couple of years before the new model the fixes the problem arrives. They had the dark screens for the GBA but I think they'll have a new problem for this new device, maybe if it uses a disk format the device doesn't have a motor to spin the disk but instead there's a hand crank the user spins when the device needs to load the next level or next movie portion from the disk.
(Yes, I am joking again. Don't shoot me.)
So there you have it. By now you should have a fair impression that I am completely INSANE, but remember, so is Nintendo when they're at their best (well, not COMPLETELY insane), and being a loyal Nintendo fan I hope they'll be at their best the following years.
PS3 in late 2004? Haha, you're funny. You are right in that developers already have dev kits for PS3 (although they might be just software emulation of the expected capabilities of the PS3, not actual prototype hardware), but that doesn't mean the release of PS3 is imminent. A little over a year of development does not a good game make, and Sony probably wants at least one good launch title for PS3, not that Sony got where it was by having good games on its consoles (*ducks*).
But seriously, next year will be the time for handheld battle, with Sony bringing forth PSP and Nintendo possibly countering with a new handheld offering (and then there's Nokia, they are funny too). The first next-gen home console to come out will most likely be Nintendo's next-gen device, which they haven't even officially announced yet. They may announce it early next year, giving it the launch date of late 2004 earliest, and I still wouldn't bet on it. Sony and Microsoft would then follow in 2005/2006.
Why I consider Nintendo to be first? They already dropped GC's price to $99. They can sell it at that price maybe for a year, at which time Sony and MS will have probably dropped price too, making GC a less actractive choice for console buyers. A new console with new games could sell nicely then, especially if the competition's next gen hardware isn't there yet (although their hype most certainly will be). Nintendo also doesn't obsess with doing the mainstream stuff, so they're happy to release whatever it is they have when they feel like it. Sony and MS will probably be more keen on observing the competition and making sure the competion doesn't have anything considered cool by mainstream players that they themselves don't have in their own consoles.
And then there's the games. Sure, PS3 dev kits are around, but so are dev kits for all the other next generation consoles. And Nintendo hasn't been a slow mover there, either. For example, Metroid Prime 2 may well have been in various stages of development ever since the release of the first MP, and it probably was already then known what hardware platform it will be released on (not the current GC). And notice how many of big Ninty published games come from third party developers? Makes you wonder what the hell Nintendo's internal R&D teams have been up to all this time.
This is what glitching looks like. So go glitch to your heart's content tonight. Beware of mean ninja cuties.
Coming on Slashdot next:
"Turn your MS Windows into on operating system"
"Turn Slashdot into a news for nerds site"
"Turn your +5 Funny posts into something funny"
I'd say you need better friends than more adult content in this case.
I do understand that some people would indeed rather purchase those ravenous drooling ape games than cutesy monkey games. I consider that sad. Now don't get me wrong, I've had moments in my life where I've been a bit nervous standing in front of a shelf selling Nintendo products, but in the end, who fucking cares: not anybody I care about. If somebody thinks I'm gay because I walk out of the store with a Nintendo kiddy game they're no friends of mine. It's a sad thing indeed if someone has such weak confidence in his own sexuality that he needs to boost his self-image with adult content games. Me, given the choice of cutesy monkeys or psycho apes, other things being equal I'd go with the cutesy monkeys, but maybe that's just me.
If Nokia wants to help their N-Gage sales, they should make a TV desktop box that can handle N-Gage games. If people had the chance to play those games on the big screen as well it would be a nice bonus for the (would-be) N-Gage owners (although that tall-screen aspect ratio would suck on wide-screen TVs). Now it obviously wouldn't help the N-Gage be a huge success or even a small one (the only thing that could do that would be N-Gage exclusive original quality games, and plenty of them, to be able to compete with GBA's current and upcoming games collection), but it should make it sell a bit better.
Seems so.
Goddammit that omen really is EVIL, caused me to press submit instead of preview... Just ignore me like you usually do.
The comet was seen as an EVIL OMEN. Look, was it really that EVIL or BAD that you need to type it in all caps, twice?-)
Somebody should explain to me this hatred of mimes all Americans seem to share (and is constantly referenced to in American popular culture). Where did it originate and why? I'm baffled. (OK, so mimes may not be the most entertaining of performers, but I don't think they deserve to die any more than the Jackass etc. dudes).
My favorite patent idea is patenting energy.
Zalman actually does have a heatpipe solution for graphics cards. Unfortunately, they don't work as a fanless solution with modern accelerator cards (at least not all of them). I got myself one hoping to silence my GeForce Ti4200 based graphics card, but found out that the heatpipe solution just didn't cool it enough (got a system hang shortly after boot) without good airflow, which requires a fan to blow at the heatpipe solutions heatsinks. Zalman even acknowledges this since their newest heatpipe graphics card solution has a handy place for attaching a fan.
So cooling that $400 card without a fan is probably impossible right now, however it can be done with a big low-noise fan instead of the possibly high-noise small fan it comes with (and you might not even need heatpipes to do it, just disable the onboard fan on the graphics card and put a new big fan blowing on the cards heatsink instead and see if it works, it has worked for me in the past, YMMV).
Man from BBC (John Cleese) is driving Man from the mill (who didn't expect the Spanish inquisition, Graham Chapman) to open a door in the next sketch.
Man from the mill: Do you do a lot of this sort of thing?
Man from BBC: Quite a lot, yes, quite a lot. Mainly in comedy. I'd like to be in program planning actually, but unfortunately I've got a degree.
Whaat? Who's been claiming gnus do kill people? It's absurd to think that such lovely animals would harm humans... Oh you were talking about GUNS, not GNUS, sorry, my bad.
6. ???
7. Profit!
Okay, this shows I've spent too much time on slashdot. I'd get a life, but there was that SCO story I still haven't read...
Well, that's an interesting standpoint. What about those who distribute binaries of GPL software compiled with a non-GPL licensed compiler (e.g. a Microsoft product), are they in violation of the GPL since they are not providing the source for the compiler used with a GPL-compatible license?
According
Linux Counter Machine Report, the distributions
of choice on Linux machines is as follows:
Red Hat 28.60%
Debian 19.36%
Mandrake 16.37%
Slackware 11.37%
SuSE 11.35%
Others 9.80%
Gentoo 2.02%
Conectiva 1.29%
Do-it-yourself 1.24%
Naturally, these statistics may or may not accurately represent the real world. (Btw. if you add up those percentages you get 101.4%)
You mean like
reference counting? Makes copying large objects efficient and you should be using something like the handle-body idiom anyway (because of certain stupidities of the C++ language and its implementations).