I can concur, and offer solid evidence of this, coming from a Canadian city where the populace is well known for being a tad, shall we say, frugal. These people drive 15 miles out of their way to save 10 cents on a gallon of gas, for example.
When the original stadium seating first arrived, movies were around $9 (CDN). Within a few months, prices had gone first to $11, then to $14. Attendance dropped incredibly. It was so bad that I actually went to the #1 movie of a summer blockbuster on the second night it was playing, and there were 5 people in a theatre that could seat easily 200.
Within a year or two, someone wised up and lowered prices to $8. Ever since then, theatres have been packed. Line ups galore, sometimes you even have to buy your tickets the day before as shows will sell out.
We often make the claim of "lower your prices and people will buy more", which is generally not true. Believe me, all business want to maximize their profit. This, however, was a genuine case of it. The theatre chain ended up building an entire new theatre with 14 screens just to handle the demand.
200 seats @ $8 is a LOT more profit than 5 seats @ $14.
It could also be that you're a lot more tolerant of others than I (and a lot of Slashdotters, apparently) am. I generally go out to movies with several people, so I see a wide range of personality types.
Me? I've literally started yelling at the screen lately once the 4th or 5th commercial comes on. A couple of my friends get VERY offended at this, and tell me to "chill out, it's just a commercial, it's like TV".
Me? When some asshat 2 rows behind me starts discussing the plot with his wife, who hasn't seen the first 2 Lord of the Rings movies and is only there because her man wants to see it, I instantly focus in on their conversation and stop paying attention to the movie. When I make snarky comments about this as we leave the theatre, I'm often told by friends that they didn't hear a thing from behind us.
Me? Cellphones do not have to ring constantly to be an annoyance. A single ring drives me up the wall, because I really don't see why it's so difficult to put your phone on vibrate. My friends will often be a little more generous, saying "everyone forgets sometimes".
Also, I suspect you don't go to as busy a theatre as I do:
lines are decently short... they quite often run small-run movies
The more people in a theatre, the more distracions/annoyances, I find. It's gotten to the point that I try as hard as possible to go to afternoon matinees during the week (hey, gotta use up that vacation time somehow!), and I'm almost never bothered then.
But a packed house for a popular movie? Forget it. Sometimes as many as 20 people are talking/ringing/kicking my chair. It's intolerable.
You may simply be more tolerant, and quite frankly I wish I could be like you:)
My cellphone has only work contacts programmed into it, because the only time I'm going to need these numbers is when I'm on the clock, and when I'm carrying the cellphone.
But personal contacts? I've learned over the years to deliberately NOT program these in - forced repetition of typing in the numbers means I commit them to memory. Extremely handy for when I don't have my cellphone on me, or its battery dies.
Personally, I found bookmarks were almost harmful. I'd lose them somehow, and suddenly couldn't remember the URL of a site I visited regularly. It was pretty weird, and in some cases, very frustrating.
It didn't come with all the cards, but as far as I could tell it didn't have many features.
No worries. The Odyssey (NOT the Odyssey 2, btw) came out in 1972, years before the microchip. It was made entirely of discrete electronic components, and there was no such thing as RAM/ROM.
The "cards" you refer to, analagous to modern game cartridges (which of course the younger folk won't even know about... sigh, progress) were simply jumpers. Shorting a specific pin combination would essentially re-wire the internal circuitry in the Odyssey, and change the ball/paddle behaviour to a different game. Long story short, if you're willing to experiment you can make your Odyssey play ANY game it's capable of, just by connecting the right pins together. Now, without the proper overlays (there were some expansion packs release) the games aren't as much fun. Then again, on a modern TV the overlays don't fit very well anyway:)
Pretty cool for its time, and there certainly hasn't been anything like it since. Every "multi-game" Pong clone I've ever seen has actually been on a chip, although the original Pong was in fact discrete circuitry as well.
Further proof that at no time, under any circumstances, should YOUR opinions or beliefs have ANY bearing on what I can see or hear.
Allowing censorship, in any form, is abhorrent - because there's always someone out there who wants to censor something you want to see. No matter how "normal", "average", "innocent", "moral", or "decent" you think you might be, there's always going to be someone who disagrees.
I'll leave it up to the reader to wonder why I put those particular words in quotation marks.
the vast majority of the workstations auto update themselves and hence this is a non issue for any properly run network.
Ha.
HAHA.
Let me repeat: HAHAHAHAHAHA.
Here in the business world, we have these machines called servers. They, like your workstations, often run Windows. However, unlike a university workstation, they cannot just be rebooted willy-nilly because of an "auto-update". These servers will actually be used, 7x24, by other people, and in order to take them offline to apply a patch, you need to actually co-ordinate this, or you could potentially lose huge amounts of data.
There's also the issue of OS patches breaking applications, which happens a good 3-4 times a year. Sometimes it's no big deal, other times the company can lose tens of thousands of dollars a day in lost productivity. Hence, we need to actually test these patches manually, on many differing systems, in order to know we're safe to roll with it.
For the record, the time between patch and worm was 5 days. 3 of those working days. You have a very bizarre sense of "badly behind in patching".
The real news story is: you work at a university. It matters very little if your shit breaks, which is why this is a non-issue for you. However, in the real world, it matters. It matters a lot. Which is why you're seeing news about it.
Of course, why anyone would run critical systems on Windows is beyond me, but then again, I don't pay the bills. I just write them up:)
My first thought was that this was another foolhardy attempt at a white-hat worm, where the intention is to help clean a victim's machine, maybe of a lot of malware...
But having just spent an all-nighter in the office cleaning up the B variant, this new D doesn't do nearly enough to actually fix the damage.
What really pisses me off about Windows, is that this worm somehow has enough permissions to delete other worms in %SYSTEM%, but I, as an Administrator, don't.
Microsoft: please, for the love of god, implement KILL -9. Without a reboot. Thanks.
Don't joke. Looks like someone came in and connected an infected laptop up to our network. Guess what our 300+ Win32 servers are running? 2000, mostly.
Slashdotters living in the basement can joke about "obsolete" OS's all you want, and rant on about patching, but the fact remains that for many enterprise level installs, 2000 is where it's at, and where it will be for many more years to come. Not everyone sits on the upgrade treadmill, especially when you're trying to not kill a business with constant outages.
5 days from patch to exploit. Hell, with the weekend, that's 3. 3 days to test this patch with hundreds of applications and hardware combinations. I'd love to see any of you naysayers manage that. Oh yeah, and scheduled outages on darn near every 7x24 service we offer.
Come work in enterprise sometime, when PHB's force Win32 down your throat. It's enough to make you want to tear your hair out.
And maybe this time they'll release a patch that shuts off all these damn default listening services. Yeah right. About as likely as vendors finally porting their offerings to Linux.
Oh well, I didn't need sleep anyway. At least I got a bit of private time this evening while our paging system was down as a result of this thing and no one could find me:)
I remember back when I was taking the "Psychology of Gambling" class back in college
You know, instead of taking a class on something, and then using that to judge an activity, maybe try participating. If you don't like it, more power to you.
even if people won, they'd continue, because it wasn't the winning that was important - it was the high from the risk-taking behaviour. Of course, then there's the low from losing. So, how to get out of that low? Get another "high" from taking another risk. Sounds like another form of crack to me.
Sounds like most athletic behaviour to me, ESPECIALLY the so-called "extreme sports". No one ever seems to complain about skiing accidents in the same vein as gambling, however.
Do you REALLY think these people are having fun
I don't need to "think", because I am one of these people. I have a ton of fun gambling. I don't kill myself, I don't blow thousands of dollars a week at the track, and I most certainly don't sit around complaining about what other people do for fun on the basis of the few who can't control themselves.
Believe me. I lived in one of the most nanny-state provinces in Canada, and even they admit that problem gambling is less than a single digit percentage of gamblers. This is nowhere near the majority of gamblers you seem to think it is.
Want to crusade against something that actually is a problem for most of its participants? Go visit the local bar sometime.
No kididng. I think this article was written around 1994 or so.
If the typical Las Vegas slot player wants to switch to playing "Wheel of Fortune" after hours on a "Monopoly" box, he has to take his cup of quarters and go trolling for a different machine.
Um. Yeah. It's been a decade since multi-game, all digital slots appeared in CANADA, and as these machines all come from Nevada, I can only assume they were in Vegas sooner.
It's to the point now that you can pretty much sit on any machine, and play any denomiation (1,2,5,10,25 cents, dollar), one of about 15 games (slots, cards, keno), and never move the entire night, getting in pretty much what you would have gotten at a smaller casino 20 years ago.
And yeah, as a "me too", hardly any machines deal in coins anymore. It bothered me a lot at first, but it's far more convenient with the little bar-coded papers - feels more secure, too. Someone's a lot less likely to try a "grab n run" when they'd have to go to a cashier's wicket.
Most of us prefer the word "enjoy entertainment". There really is no difference between spending $100 on a concert/play/sporting event, and dropping $100 in a casino for the evening, except for the fact that there's a very tiny possibility of winning more at the casino.
Oh, and self-riteous folks like yourself who figure everyone at the casino is out spending their entire paycheque.
Get over yourself. The vast majority of people at a casino know damn well that the house always wins. Otherwise, why would there even be a house? You can't use the few addicts out there to generalize the rest.
The rich got to be rich by shopping at places like Wal-Mart.
Commom falacy. I'm amazed I've never seen this one listed in those lists of incorrect reasoning/urban legends, as I see it parroted pretty much daily by people who don't seem to understand math.
The rich got to be rich by making and/or inheriting a ton of money. They STAY rich by not wasting it all, and for some, that means going to Wal-Mart.
However, you're not going to become rich by shopping at Wal-Mart if you're making $10/hour. Period.
Ugh. Several others have pointed out your mistakes, let me take it further with what I can pull off the top of my head:
* First 4-way directional pad
First GOOD 4-way directional pad. The Intellivision had a pad years before the NES/Game & Watch.
* First expandable system (Famicom + Disk System)
Many pre-NES systems were expandable. Intellivoice is one example, but a better example is the Supercharger (might have the name wrong) for the original Atari 2600. Basically, a tape drive that allowed you to hold larger and more complex games. A lot closer to the functionality the Famicom offered with the FDS. Note also that only Japan ever got the FDS.
* First game not fixed on one static screen (Super Mario Bros)
Many, MANY Atari games had scrolling screens.
* First battery-save catridge
Nope. I have at least one 2600 game that did this. Didn't save more than a handful of bytes, mind you, but it was battery-backed.
* First portable gaming system (Game & Watch)
Nonsense. Portable, electronic, digital games have been around since the mid 70s.
* First portable multi-title console (Gameboy)
Again, nonsense. I have one from about 1982 or so. Predates the Gameboy by 7 years, roughly. Didn't sell worth a damn though, so you've probably never heard of it:)
* First 4-player games (NES Satellite)
At least one Atari system allowed for 4 player games, and in fact the original VCS did if you allow for paddle games like Warlords.
* First game console gun (Zapper)
HAHAHAHA. Virtually every PONG type system had a gun accessory, in fact the very first home console system, the Odyssey, had one. This was in 1972.
* Idea to include system upgrades right in the game cartridge (Super FX/Star Fox)
Many 2600 games did this, with RAM expansions that the system could use.
* First analog stick for games (N64)
Analog sticks were present on the Atari 5200. They sucked, but they existed. Contrary to what another posted claimed, however, the vast majority (read: everything else except paddles) of controllers were all digital.
* First backwards-compatible system (Gameboy Color, or Advance if you're picky)
The Atari 7800 could play 2600 games long before the original Gameboy even came out. Also the Sega Genesis predates the Gameboy Colour. Oh, to the poster who said that the Intellivision 2 could play Intellivision games: they were the EXACT SAME CONSOLE in a different case. Of course they could! However, even this wasn't perfect - some 3rd party titles like Donkey Kong wouldn't play due to a primitive lockout scheme.
* First attempt at 3D virtual reality in a console
The Sega Master System had (still unbeaten today) awesome 3D LCD glasses, around 1996. The Virtual Boy was nearly a decade later.
* First writable catridge/flash-memory based console (Gameboy Advance)
Huh? If you mean the flash carts people use to pirate games, first, I had one for my original Gameboy. Also, they existed for nearly every other system in one form or another, going back to the original Atari.
* First handheld-to-console connection
This always struck me as a silly gimick, and I'm a die-hard Nintendo fan. I've never seen the point of a GBA on a Gamecube, although I guess if you really like Tingle...:)
I think you're either a bit young, or you forget your history. Nintendo has brought a lot of these innovations to the masses, but they didn't pioneer nearly any of it. Most ideas were tried and passed over - a lot of video game innovation is w
Her mom is not stupid, but she does hit the wrong button on her mouse. To her, there's no difference -- they both click.
Imagine this woman behind the wheel of a car. Her mom is not stupid, but she does hit the wrong pedal on her car. To her, there's no difference -- they both go down.
I understand the simplicity behind a single-button mouse, but I really have to question how the hell people survive daily life if they honestly cannot differentiate between *2* controls. How the hell does she use a 101+ key keyboard? All the keys click.
Can she tell her left and right shoes apart at least?
There are vendors now selling far more accurate monitoring software than that. These apps will sit on your workstation and track when (for example) IE is open and has focus, and if you're actively using the keyboard and/or mouse.
Proxy logs, as you pointed out, are next to worthless, especially is these days of auto-refreshing content (Google News, anyone?). However, there are far more insidious ways to track every last minute of web surfing.
I'm surprised you didn't say RE 4. Zero was a decent update to the original RE style, and had a few graphical tricks, but it was basically more of the same. RE 4 was the first consumer product that I actually agree 100% with the advertising on: "Quite possibly the best video game ever made". I've been gaming on and off for going on 30 years now, and I've never put the time into a game like I did RE 4. I'm quite the old fart these days, as new games just don't seem as fun, and they're WAY too long to hold my interest (to give you an idea, I'm the only person on the planet who found Windwaker too long). But RE 4 kept me playing for several hours every night until I had beaten it. The extras that get unlocked with completion, which I almost universally ignore, are still keeping my interest.
It *better* come out for the Revolution. If it's half the game RE 4 was, and it brings back ZOMBIES (drool), It's a must-have for me. I'm already sold on the Revolution with the classic games, and buying multiple consoles early in their lifecycle is a bit pricey:)
Slashdot Mirror
I can concur, and offer solid evidence of this, coming from a Canadian city where the populace is well known for being a tad, shall we say, frugal. These people drive 15 miles out of their way to save 10 cents on a gallon of gas, for example.
When the original stadium seating first arrived, movies were around $9 (CDN). Within a few months, prices had gone first to $11, then to $14. Attendance dropped incredibly. It was so bad that I actually went to the #1 movie of a summer blockbuster on the second night it was playing, and there were 5 people in a theatre that could seat easily 200.
Within a year or two, someone wised up and lowered prices to $8. Ever since then, theatres have been packed. Line ups galore, sometimes you even have to buy your tickets the day before as shows will sell out.
We often make the claim of "lower your prices and people will buy more", which is generally not true. Believe me, all business want to maximize their profit. This, however, was a genuine case of it. The theatre chain ended up building an entire new theatre with 14 screens just to handle the demand.
200 seats @ $8 is a LOT more profit than 5 seats @ $14.
It could also be that you're a lot more tolerant of others than I (and a lot of Slashdotters, apparently) am. I generally go out to movies with several people, so I see a wide range of personality types.
... they quite often run small-run movies
:)
Me? I've literally started yelling at the screen lately once the 4th or 5th commercial comes on. A couple of my friends get VERY offended at this, and tell me to "chill out, it's just a commercial, it's like TV".
Me? When some asshat 2 rows behind me starts discussing the plot with his wife, who hasn't seen the first 2 Lord of the Rings movies and is only there because her man wants to see it, I instantly focus in on their conversation and stop paying attention to the movie. When I make snarky comments about this as we leave the theatre, I'm often told by friends that they didn't hear a thing from behind us.
Me? Cellphones do not have to ring constantly to be an annoyance. A single ring drives me up the wall, because I really don't see why it's so difficult to put your phone on vibrate. My friends will often be a little more generous, saying "everyone forgets sometimes".
Also, I suspect you don't go to as busy a theatre as I do:
lines are decently short
The more people in a theatre, the more distracions/annoyances, I find. It's gotten to the point that I try as hard as possible to go to afternoon matinees during the week (hey, gotta use up that vacation time somehow!), and I'm almost never bothered then.
But a packed house for a popular movie? Forget it. Sometimes as many as 20 people are talking/ringing/kicking my chair. It's intolerable.
You may simply be more tolerant, and quite frankly I wish I could be like you
typing them in everytime exercises my memory
Exactly!
My cellphone has only work contacts programmed into it, because the only time I'm going to need these numbers is when I'm on the clock, and when I'm carrying the cellphone.
But personal contacts? I've learned over the years to deliberately NOT program these in - forced repetition of typing in the numbers means I commit them to memory. Extremely handy for when I don't have my cellphone on me, or its battery dies.
Personally, I found bookmarks were almost harmful. I'd lose them somehow, and suddenly couldn't remember the URL of a site I visited regularly. It was pretty weird, and in some cases, very frustrating.
It didn't come with all the cards, but as far as I could tell it didn't have many features.
:)
No worries. The Odyssey (NOT the Odyssey 2, btw) came out in 1972, years before the microchip. It was made entirely of discrete electronic components, and there was no such thing as RAM/ROM.
The "cards" you refer to, analagous to modern game cartridges (which of course the younger folk won't even know about... sigh, progress) were simply jumpers. Shorting a specific pin combination would essentially re-wire the internal circuitry in the Odyssey, and change the ball/paddle behaviour to a different game. Long story short, if you're willing to experiment you can make your Odyssey play ANY game it's capable of, just by connecting the right pins together. Now, without the proper overlays (there were some expansion packs release) the games aren't as much fun. Then again, on a modern TV the overlays don't fit very well anyway
Pretty cool for its time, and there certainly hasn't been anything like it since. Every "multi-game" Pong clone I've ever seen has actually been on a chip, although the original Pong was in fact discrete circuitry as well.
Bunny!
Should people be able to have abortions purely because of their lack of planning? I'm against it.
Which sums up exactly what I hear as the complete argument from the Pro-Life crowd:
You did something wrong, now suffer the consequences.
It's still a moral argument, but the moral they're trying to defend is something rather different than what is argued.
"Abortion is murder" is another cover-up for "sex is sinfull".
I just tried the link they suggested, copied and pasted the link, and it showed up as to boingboing.net.
Maybe this happens when you log into Google, or have some special personalized options set, but by no means is it on by default.
What, no one's linked to that Tron costume yet???
Nearly everybody knows that prostitution cannot be entirely eradicated (especially when they exist in the form of marrying for money).
I think I hear DeBeers calling.
Dear god. So to speak, anyway.
Further proof that at no time, under any circumstances, should YOUR opinions or beliefs have ANY bearing on what I can see or hear.
Allowing censorship, in any form, is abhorrent - because there's always someone out there who wants to censor something you want to see. No matter how "normal", "average", "innocent", "moral", or "decent" you think you might be, there's always going to be someone who disagrees.
I'll leave it up to the reader to wonder why I put those particular words in quotation marks.
the vast majority of the workstations auto update themselves and hence this is a non issue for any properly run network.
:)
Ha.
HAHA.
Let me repeat: HAHAHAHAHAHA.
Here in the business world, we have these machines called servers. They, like your workstations, often run Windows. However, unlike a university workstation, they cannot just be rebooted willy-nilly because of an "auto-update". These servers will actually be used, 7x24, by other people, and in order to take them offline to apply a patch, you need to actually co-ordinate this, or you could potentially lose huge amounts of data.
There's also the issue of OS patches breaking applications, which happens a good 3-4 times a year. Sometimes it's no big deal, other times the company can lose tens of thousands of dollars a day in lost productivity. Hence, we need to actually test these patches manually, on many differing systems, in order to know we're safe to roll with it.
For the record, the time between patch and worm was 5 days. 3 of those working days. You have a very bizarre sense of "badly behind in patching".
The real news story is: you work at a university. It matters very little if your shit breaks, which is why this is a non-issue for you. However, in the real world, it matters. It matters a lot. Which is why you're seeing news about it.
Of course, why anyone would run critical systems on Windows is beyond me, but then again, I don't pay the bills. I just write them up
My first thought was that this was another foolhardy attempt at a white-hat worm, where the intention is to help clean a victim's machine, maybe of a lot of malware...
But having just spent an all-nighter in the office cleaning up the B variant, this new D doesn't do nearly enough to actually fix the damage.
What really pisses me off about Windows, is that this worm somehow has enough permissions to delete other worms in %SYSTEM%, but I, as an Administrator, don't.
Microsoft: please, for the love of god, implement KILL -9. Without a reboot. Thanks.
air travel is a "product" now. Maybe I can re-sell it. What do I do if it breaks, can I take it back?
Well, your estate can try...
Don't joke. Looks like someone came in and connected an infected laptop up to our network. Guess what our 300+ Win32 servers are running? 2000, mostly.
:)
Slashdotters living in the basement can joke about "obsolete" OS's all you want, and rant on about patching, but the fact remains that for many enterprise level installs, 2000 is where it's at, and where it will be for many more years to come. Not everyone sits on the upgrade treadmill, especially when you're trying to not kill a business with constant outages.
5 days from patch to exploit. Hell, with the weekend, that's 3. 3 days to test this patch with hundreds of applications and hardware combinations. I'd love to see any of you naysayers manage that. Oh yeah, and scheduled outages on darn near every 7x24 service we offer.
Come work in enterprise sometime, when PHB's force Win32 down your throat. It's enough to make you want to tear your hair out.
And maybe this time they'll release a patch that shuts off all these damn default listening services. Yeah right. About as likely as vendors finally porting their offerings to Linux.
Oh well, I didn't need sleep anyway. At least I got a bit of private time this evening while our paging system was down as a result of this thing and no one could find me
I remember back when I was taking the "Psychology of Gambling" class back in college
You know, instead of taking a class on something, and then using that to judge an activity, maybe try participating. If you don't like it, more power to you.
even if people won, they'd continue, because it wasn't the winning that was important - it was the high from the risk-taking behaviour. Of course, then there's the low from losing. So, how to get out of that low? Get another "high" from taking another risk. Sounds like another form of crack to me.
Sounds like most athletic behaviour to me, ESPECIALLY the so-called "extreme sports". No one ever seems to complain about skiing accidents in the same vein as gambling, however.
Do you REALLY think these people are having fun
I don't need to "think", because I am one of these people. I have a ton of fun gambling. I don't kill myself, I don't blow thousands of dollars a week at the track, and I most certainly don't sit around complaining about what other people do for fun on the basis of the few who can't control themselves.
Believe me. I lived in one of the most nanny-state provinces in Canada, and even they admit that problem gambling is less than a single digit percentage of gamblers. This is nowhere near the majority of gamblers you seem to think it is.
Want to crusade against something that actually is a problem for most of its participants? Go visit the local bar sometime.
No kididng. I think this article was written around 1994 or so.
If the typical Las Vegas slot player wants to switch to playing "Wheel of Fortune" after hours on a "Monopoly" box, he has to take his cup of quarters and go trolling for a different machine.
Um. Yeah. It's been a decade since multi-game, all digital slots appeared in CANADA, and as these machines all come from Nevada, I can only assume they were in Vegas sooner.
It's to the point now that you can pretty much sit on any machine, and play any denomiation (1,2,5,10,25 cents, dollar), one of about 15 games (slots, cards, keno), and never move the entire night, getting in pretty much what you would have gotten at a smaller casino 20 years ago.
And yeah, as a "me too", hardly any machines deal in coins anymore. It bothered me a lot at first, but it's far more convenient with the little bar-coded papers - feels more secure, too. Someone's a lot less likely to try a "grab n run" when they'd have to go to a cashier's wicket.
Generally, they answer to the name "loser."
Nice flamebait.
Most of us prefer the word "enjoy entertainment". There really is no difference between spending $100 on a concert/play/sporting event, and dropping $100 in a casino for the evening, except for the fact that there's a very tiny possibility of winning more at the casino.
Oh, and self-riteous folks like yourself who figure everyone at the casino is out spending their entire paycheque.
Get over yourself. The vast majority of people at a casino know damn well that the house always wins. Otherwise, why would there even be a house? You can't use the few addicts out there to generalize the rest.
The rich got to be rich by shopping at places like Wal-Mart.
Commom falacy. I'm amazed I've never seen this one listed in those lists of incorrect reasoning/urban legends, as I see it parroted pretty much daily by people who don't seem to understand math.
The rich got to be rich by making and/or inheriting a ton of money. They STAY rich by not wasting it all, and for some, that means going to Wal-Mart.
However, you're not going to become rich by shopping at Wal-Mart if you're making $10/hour. Period.
Ugh. Several others have pointed out your mistakes, let me take it further with what I can pull off the top of my head:
:)
:)
* First 4-way directional pad
First GOOD 4-way directional pad. The Intellivision had a pad years before the NES/Game & Watch.
* First expandable system (Famicom + Disk System)
Many pre-NES systems were expandable. Intellivoice is one example, but a better example is the Supercharger (might have the name wrong) for the original Atari 2600. Basically, a tape drive that allowed you to hold larger and more complex games. A lot closer to the functionality the Famicom offered with the FDS. Note also that only Japan ever got the FDS.
* First game not fixed on one static screen (Super Mario Bros)
Many, MANY Atari games had scrolling screens.
* First battery-save catridge
Nope. I have at least one 2600 game that did this. Didn't save more than a handful of bytes, mind you, but it was battery-backed.
* First portable gaming system (Game & Watch)
Nonsense. Portable, electronic, digital games have been around since the mid 70s.
* First portable multi-title console (Gameboy)
Again, nonsense. I have one from about 1982 or so. Predates the Gameboy by 7 years, roughly. Didn't sell worth a damn though, so you've probably never heard of it
* First 4-player games (NES Satellite)
At least one Atari system allowed for 4 player games, and in fact the original VCS did if you allow for paddle games like Warlords.
* First game console gun (Zapper)
HAHAHAHA. Virtually every PONG type system had a gun accessory, in fact the very first home console system, the Odyssey, had one. This was in 1972.
* Idea to include system upgrades right in the game cartridge (Super FX/Star Fox)
Many 2600 games did this, with RAM expansions that the system could use.
* First analog stick for games (N64)
Analog sticks were present on the Atari 5200. They sucked, but they existed. Contrary to what another posted claimed, however, the vast majority (read: everything else except paddles) of controllers were all digital.
* First backwards-compatible system (Gameboy Color, or Advance if you're picky)
The Atari 7800 could play 2600 games long before the original Gameboy even came out. Also the Sega Genesis predates the Gameboy Colour. Oh, to the poster who said that the Intellivision 2 could play Intellivision games: they were the EXACT SAME CONSOLE in a different case. Of course they could! However, even this wasn't perfect - some 3rd party titles like Donkey Kong wouldn't play due to a primitive lockout scheme.
* First attempt at 3D virtual reality in a console
The Sega Master System had (still unbeaten today) awesome 3D LCD glasses, around 1996. The Virtual Boy was nearly a decade later.
* First writable catridge/flash-memory based console (Gameboy Advance)
Huh? If you mean the flash carts people use to pirate games, first, I had one for my original Gameboy. Also, they existed for nearly every other system in one form or another, going back to the original Atari.
* First handheld-to-console connection
This always struck me as a silly gimick, and I'm a die-hard Nintendo fan. I've never seen the point of a GBA on a Gamecube, although I guess if you really like Tingle...
I think you're either a bit young, or you forget your history. Nintendo has brought a lot of these innovations to the masses, but they didn't pioneer nearly any of it. Most ideas were tried and passed over - a lot of video game innovation is w
That's ok. Sometimes, as in this case, the poster who misses the point entirely is in fact more informative than the parent was funny.
Her mom is not stupid, but she does hit the wrong button on her mouse. To her, there's no difference -- they both click.
Imagine this woman behind the wheel of a car. Her mom is not stupid, but she does hit the wrong pedal on her car. To her, there's no difference -- they both go down.
I understand the simplicity behind a single-button mouse, but I really have to question how the hell people survive daily life if they honestly cannot differentiate between *2* controls. How the hell does she use a 101+ key keyboard? All the keys click.
Can she tell her left and right shoes apart at least?
If you lived in a town with 90% brick houses, and 10% straw, guess which houses the wolves would try blowing down.
Sorry, marketshare has sweet fuck all to do with infectability.
There are vendors now selling far more accurate monitoring software than that. These apps will sit on your workstation and track when (for example) IE is open and has focus, and if you're actively using the keyboard and/or mouse.
Proxy logs, as you pointed out, are next to worthless, especially is these days of auto-refreshing content (Google News, anyone?). However, there are far more insidious ways to track every last minute of web surfing.
Gotta love it when companies trust employees.
Yeah, and it it's like anything else in the Tivoli suite, it'll cost you $500 for each and every node you want it to protect :)
I'm surprised you didn't say RE 4. Zero was a decent update to the original RE style, and had a few graphical tricks, but it was basically more of the same. RE 4 was the first consumer product that I actually agree 100% with the advertising on: "Quite possibly the best video game ever made". I've been gaming on and off for going on 30 years now, and I've never put the time into a game like I did RE 4. I'm quite the old fart these days, as new games just don't seem as fun, and they're WAY too long to hold my interest (to give you an idea, I'm the only person on the planet who found Windwaker too long). But RE 4 kept me playing for several hours every night until I had beaten it. The extras that get unlocked with completion, which I almost universally ignore, are still keeping my interest.
:)
It *better* come out for the Revolution. If it's half the game RE 4 was, and it brings back ZOMBIES (drool), It's a must-have for me. I'm already sold on the Revolution with the classic games, and buying multiple consoles early in their lifecycle is a bit pricey