Every eccentric geek needs one? No. Only people that actually like pinball 'needs' a machine. From the sounds of it, you don't play any pins based on a tv/movie theme. I noticed you crammed Addams Family in there with a lot of loser pins. In case you weren't aware, Addams Family pinball was the highest sold and highest grossing (quarter-wise) game of all time. It may have been based on a movie, but there's one thing that makes a great game - game play. If it weren't for the incredible game play, and the addictiveness because of it, I wouldn't have lost 6 months from my life playing the hell out of it. Similarly, I've lost countless hours of sleep due to low frequency buzzing being practically etched in my brain thanks to Demolition Man. It was a crappy movie, but killer pin. I've been tortured by phrases of "Now you're asking yourself one question - did I fire six shots or only five?" compliments of Dirty Harry pinball. You can't rule out Twilight Zone or Creature from the Black Lagoon either. In fact, some of my favorite pins have been based on movies. Then again, put me in front of any pinball machine and arm me with a couple quarters, and I will play it. You can't say that about any video game. I'm someone that needs pinball. You aren't even close.
In case you weren't aware, Williams = Williams/Bally/Midway. Gottlieb, Sega, and Data East were always substandard games anyway. It's a shame about Williams, though. P2K must have been the best concept for pins that, IMHO, would bring revived interest in pinball. Sadly, operators began to let their machines slip away. Jacked up prices and no maintenance. Nobody wants to play, for example, a Star Wars: Episode 1 pin that tilts when both lasers are fired. And since the op doesn't give a rat's ass about maintaining the machine, nobody will play it. Then since nobody is playing the game, it gets yanked, and replaced with a ratty-ass Bad Dudes game or something similarly unpopular. Then those same ops advertise a non-working pin as MINT, get the highest possible price for it, thus continually screwing the customer. It's f'ing sad.
Just because a song is long and stupid doesn't mean it's Napster-proof. Metallica's critics agree: "It's a horrible song." Then who in their right mind would go to the store and buy it? And Metallica spent how much studio time and money producing this? If anything, it's Metallica-proof. Proof that few people give a rat's ass about that pathetic hardcore turned pop band.
While I'd be a millionnaire if I actually actively pursued every bit of spam I've received in the last 4 years, it's generally not worth the trouble. I'm not going to waste my time and money just to take some spammer to court. I get satisfaction on a weekly basis from ISPs that email me back to say, "Dear Xxxxxxx, we have identified the spammer and terminated the account. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention." And all it takes is 30 seconds to peruse the headers and forward them to the appropriate abuse accounts. While I'm not making a dime off it, the satisfaction of knowing that dickhead's two accounts (usually uu.net or yahoo.com and their actual ISP accounts) are gone for good and he/she'll forfeit the amount of $ left on that account, in addition to having to find a new ISP. That's justice enough - for me at least.
How many will NetPD find?
on
An MP3 Update
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· Score: 1
Let me take a stab in the dark of how many Dre-traders NetPD is going to find. Hmm, 317,377? Let me also guess there's going to be 60,000 hand-delivered pages? In any rate, the number 317,377 still looks way too much like 31337. Coincidence?
Uh, it's a lot faster to rip an entire CD than it is to download one song. For example, I use MusicMatch at work on my meager crappy HP pII-400, and the average CD takes 11 minutes. I managed to rip 140 CDs in slightly over 24 hours. That was the bulk of my rip-worthy CDs. MusicMatch rocks, even if it is for Windows. If there was a good Linux equivalent, I'd even buy it.
Granted, I haven't in quite some time, but I used to use it on a daily basis. I have never been one to take decent care of my audio media. I have hundreds of cassettes shoved in boxes without the case, and hundreds more CDs laying in heaps. The CDs are in that condition mostly trying to find ones I haven't ripped yet, but nonetheless, probably a fourth of my CD collection has some physical defect on the disc in which a track won't properly rip. I paid good money for each CD I own. I have the right to posess each track. If I can rip 17 out of 18 tracks on a CD, and I want to have the one that couldn't rip, I'll download it. As far as cassettes go, I purchased them many, many years ago, and I'm not going to pay double the money to get the exact same album on different media. I *WILL* download albums I own. As far as 'pirating' music, I prefer to call it 'sampling' - the ol' try before you buy method. Last time I downloaded a song 'illegally' was "Forgot About Dre" - and after hearing it, I WENT OUT AND BOUGHT THE ALBUM. Ironic, eh?
I just discovered Dotster earlier in the week, and was quite happy to be able to register my domain for $150, which will have to be renewed in April, 2010. That's pretty hard to beat.
PKWARE is still around and is still somewhat successful. I've been working in Brown Deer right next door to PKWARE since I moved to Milwaukee in 1992. In 1999, the company I work for 'bought' approximately half of PKWARE's office space that was previously being used for little more than storage. There has been no information from the owners/managers of the business park we share to indicate that they're leaving the software scene. I don't know why Katz hasn't been as involved with the company in the last few years. I hadn't personally seen him since around 1997. Regardless, the company is still around, and despite his personal problems, he was a helluva guy that did a helluva lot for the software community. He will be missed.
Back in the early 80's, there were tons of ripped off ideas. Taxman was made by HAL Labs in either 1980 or 1981, which was, for all practical purposes, a direct ripoff of PacMan. The boards were slightly different, and the ghosts had names such as Gollum and Smugpuff, but aside from that, it was identical. Same thing as Gobbler. Even classic Apple][ games like Galaxian existed, and didn't even bother to change the name! I'm not sure if the Taxman in question is the one I mentioned, but it's the only one I'm aware of. If it is the one, what's the point of going after them 20 years later? Or are they just pissed off that their Mr Potato Head "Welcome to Rhode Island" mascots are being vandalized and are seeking cheap revenge?
What I'm getting sick of is people that think that just because someone owns a domain name means that they have to have a web site. How about confused@coke.ch? How about [ftp.]coke.ch? How about [irc.]coke.ch? Just because there's little/no HTML content on coke.ch, doesn't mean the domain isn't being used.
Re:Saw this on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart
on
Date Pagers
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· Score: 1
I hadn't seen that, but I was reading News of the Weird this morning, and they mentioned that Gaydar thing. Check it out at http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/index.ht ml, and search for cliche.
The recall may have been bogus, but the cards still have bugs. The Daily Radar reported that Sony denies the recall, but that the DR has replicated the bug that Sony vehemently denies exists. So yesterday's story may have been not 100% accurate, but there still is a problem.
I find myself reading all major news sources online twice daily. These include my local paper (jsonline.com), abcnews.com, and cnn.com. The local paper offers local topics of interest to me, while the latter offers up-to-the-minute world news. Plus, the online sources are free. I don't mind paying $.50 for daily papers or $1.75 for the behemoth Sunday edition, but it seems like a waste of paper and ink to me, considering it's available for free. However, after reading some of the posts, I have become totally dependent on using online news services. Last time I bought an actual newspaper was last week (apartment hunting) and before that, 2 years ago (apartment hunting). Paper media will probably never die, at least not in my lifetime, but while I'm becoming more dependent on online services, I'm becoming less dependent on paper.
Re:Reruns are on cable
on
Muppets Sold
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· Score: 1
Yeah, TW in our area finally picked it up. But alas, it seems like the ONLY thing to watch on Odyssey (one of 3 whopping 'new' channels) is The Muppet Show. Best one I saw in a long time was when the Swedish Chef was 'teaching' how to boil a lobster. After a bunch of rambling on, 2 or 3 muppet lobsters busted in on the Chef, wearing masks and holding guns. They started shooting up the place, rescued the to-be-boiled lobster, and left the Chef in his classic befuddled "Duhee?!" look. Truly classic. Gangster muppet lobsters. And go figure I appreciate The Muppet Show tons more now than I did when I was a kid.
Back in the days when I was an hourly employee roughly 4 years ago, I used to regularly pull 60 hour weeks. The company realized my loyalty and dedication, gave me a few dollar/hr raise and stuck me on salary. Since then, I've gradually lessened my hours to the point I drive myself insane if I work more than 43, the minimum number of hours we have to work per week. I've accumulated hundreds and hundreds of "comp" time, enough to take 2 solid months off, but I take on average 10 hours a year. With the huge amount of hours I've put in above and beyond the call of duty, I'm actually making less now than I was 4 years ago. I love what I do. I just hate where I do it.
I stopped reading the article after reading why they feel the need to include a 4GB drive... For PATCHES. I don't know about you, but like hell I'm going to buy a console based gaming system that will need to download patches for games. Typical Microsoft nature. Step 1: Release product as fast as possible. Step 2: Release a flurry of patches to make product work.
Apparently, you and I are two of the few people who actually read the article before posting senseless crap. When they are actually able to recreate the effects of ball lightning in the lab, then I'll be mighty impressed. BTW, methinks you should be moderated to 3:OnTopic.
Sheesh! Make one minor error and a flame war erupts. Big deal. The guy didn't have his damn coffee/mt dew this morning. That 'story' should not have generated 190 comments as of this posting. Who really gives a damn if zero is odd, even, or neither? Who also gives a damn when the next all-odd date is going to occur? You'll all be dead by then. And finally, who gives a damn if the calendar changed between the last all even date. The bottom line is: Who cares?!
One of the few mentionings of Linux on microsoft.com has to do with "How to Uninstall Linux." It has become apparent that Microsoft isn't worried about Linux domination (from their press releases and such), yet they now see a need for writing a media player for Linux?
Very informative article, yet when I voted for my favorite operating system, I had to pick Red Hat Linux because there was no other Linux option. It looks as if Red Hat and Linux are now synonymous, or at least to the media. Not that I have any (major) gripes against Red Hat, but Red Hat and Linux are NOT interchangeable.
Sounds more like a USENET spelling flame war to me. It was understood what the guy meant. It still drives me up the wall when I see people use incorrect forms of words, but I've deemed it best to not bother to say anything.
: OS code could be put on the cartridge since it can hold 64 MEGS.
That's 64 megaBITS, not megaBYTES. So in reality, it would be rather difficult to get the OS code stuffed into an 8MB cartridge. Other than the above flaw, it appeared that he knew what he was doing. How could he miss the bit/byte factor?
Like it's difficult to 1) Remove contents from box 2) Open microwave door 3) Put foodstuff in microwave 4) Close door 5) Hit "Nuke for 5 minutes" (or however long) Freakin' laziness... With a heftier price tag. Just what I need. Not.
Slashdot Mirror
Every eccentric geek needs one? No. Only people that actually like pinball 'needs' a machine. From the sounds of it, you don't play any pins based on a tv/movie theme. I noticed you crammed Addams Family in there with a lot of loser pins. In case you weren't aware, Addams Family pinball was the highest sold and highest grossing (quarter-wise) game of all time. It may have been based on a movie, but there's one thing that makes a great game - game play. If it weren't for the incredible game play, and the addictiveness because of it, I wouldn't have lost 6 months from my life playing the hell out of it. Similarly, I've lost countless hours of sleep due to low frequency buzzing being practically etched in my brain thanks to Demolition Man. It was a crappy movie, but killer pin. I've been tortured by phrases of "Now you're asking yourself one question - did I fire six shots or only five?" compliments of Dirty Harry pinball. You can't rule out Twilight Zone or Creature from the Black Lagoon either. In fact, some of my favorite pins have been based on movies. Then again, put me in front of any pinball machine and arm me with a couple quarters, and I will play it. You can't say that about any video game. I'm someone that needs pinball. You aren't even close.
In case you weren't aware, Williams = Williams/Bally/Midway. Gottlieb, Sega, and Data East were always substandard games anyway. It's a shame about Williams, though. P2K must have been the best concept for pins that, IMHO, would bring revived interest in pinball. Sadly, operators began to let their machines slip away. Jacked up prices and no maintenance. Nobody wants to play, for example, a Star Wars: Episode 1 pin that tilts when both lasers are fired. And since the op doesn't give a rat's ass about maintaining the machine, nobody will play it. Then since nobody is playing the game, it gets yanked, and replaced with a ratty-ass Bad Dudes game or something similarly unpopular. Then those same ops advertise a non-working pin as MINT, get the highest possible price for it, thus continually screwing the customer. It's f'ing sad.
Just because a song is long and stupid doesn't mean it's Napster-proof. Metallica's critics agree: "It's a horrible song." Then who in their right mind would go to the store and buy it? And Metallica spent how much studio time and money producing this? If anything, it's Metallica-proof. Proof that few people give a rat's ass about that pathetic hardcore turned pop band.
While I'd be a millionnaire if I actually actively pursued every bit of spam I've received in the last 4 years, it's generally not worth the trouble. I'm not going to waste my time and money just to take some spammer to court. I get satisfaction on a weekly basis from ISPs that email me back to say, "Dear Xxxxxxx, we have identified the spammer and terminated the account. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention." And all it takes is 30 seconds to peruse the headers and forward them to the appropriate abuse accounts. While I'm not making a dime off it, the satisfaction of knowing that dickhead's two accounts (usually uu.net or yahoo.com and their actual ISP accounts) are gone for good and he/she'll forfeit the amount of $ left on that account, in addition to having to find a new ISP. That's justice enough - for me at least.
Let me take a stab in the dark of how many Dre-traders NetPD is going to find. Hmm, 317,377? Let me also guess there's going to be 60,000 hand-delivered pages?
In any rate, the number 317,377 still looks way too much like 31337. Coincidence?
Heh. I created an account last week on metallica.com... You can probably still contact me at metallica_ate_my_balls@metallica.com
Uh, it's a lot faster to rip an entire CD than it is to download one song. For example, I use MusicMatch at work on my meager crappy HP pII-400, and the average CD takes 11 minutes. I managed to rip 140 CDs in slightly over 24 hours. That was the bulk of my rip-worthy CDs. MusicMatch rocks, even if it is for Windows. If there was a good Linux equivalent, I'd even buy it.
Granted, I haven't in quite some time, but I used to use it on a daily basis. I have never been one to take decent care of my audio media. I have hundreds of cassettes shoved in boxes without the case, and hundreds more CDs laying in heaps. The CDs are in that condition mostly trying to find ones I haven't ripped yet, but nonetheless, probably a fourth of my CD collection has some physical defect on the disc in which a track won't properly rip.
I paid good money for each CD I own. I have the right to posess each track. If I can rip 17 out of 18 tracks on a CD, and I want to have the one that couldn't rip, I'll download it.
As far as cassettes go, I purchased them many, many years ago, and I'm not going to pay double the money to get the exact same album on different media. I *WILL* download albums I own.
As far as 'pirating' music, I prefer to call it 'sampling' - the ol' try before you buy method. Last time I downloaded a song 'illegally' was "Forgot About Dre" - and after hearing it, I WENT OUT AND BOUGHT THE ALBUM. Ironic, eh?
I just discovered Dotster earlier in the week, and was quite happy to be able to register my domain for $150, which will have to be renewed in April, 2010. That's pretty hard to beat.
PKWARE is still around and is still somewhat successful. I've been working in Brown Deer right next door to PKWARE since I moved to Milwaukee in 1992. In 1999, the company I work for 'bought' approximately half of PKWARE's office space that was previously being used for little more than storage. There has been no information from the owners/managers of the business park we share to indicate that they're leaving the software scene. I don't know why Katz hasn't been as involved with the company in the last few years. I hadn't personally seen him since around 1997. Regardless, the company is still around, and despite his personal problems, he was a helluva guy that did a helluva lot for the software community. He will be missed.
Back in the early 80's, there were tons of ripped off ideas. Taxman was made by HAL Labs in either 1980 or 1981, which was, for all practical purposes, a direct ripoff of PacMan. The boards were slightly different, and the ghosts had names such as Gollum and Smugpuff, but aside from that, it was identical. Same thing as Gobbler. Even classic Apple][ games like Galaxian existed, and didn't even bother to change the name!
I'm not sure if the Taxman in question is the one I mentioned, but it's the only one I'm aware of. If it is the one, what's the point of going after them 20 years later? Or are they just pissed off that their Mr Potato Head "Welcome to Rhode Island" mascots are being vandalized and are seeking cheap revenge?
What I'm getting sick of is people that think that just because someone owns a domain name means that they have to have a web site. How about confused@coke.ch? How about [ftp.]coke.ch? How about [irc.]coke.ch?
Just because there's little/no HTML content on coke.ch, doesn't mean the domain isn't being used.
I hadn't seen that, but I was reading News of the Weird this morning, and they mentioned that Gaydar thing. Check it out att ml, and search for cliche.
http://www.newsoftheweird.com/archive/index.h
The recall may have been bogus, but the cards still have bugs. The Daily Radar reported that Sony denies the recall, but that the DR has replicated the bug that Sony vehemently denies exists.
So yesterday's story may have been not 100% accurate, but there still is a problem.
I find myself reading all major news sources online twice daily. These include my local paper (jsonline.com), abcnews.com, and cnn.com. The local paper offers local topics of interest to me, while the latter offers up-to-the-minute world news.
Plus, the online sources are free. I don't mind paying $.50 for daily papers or $1.75 for the behemoth Sunday edition, but it seems like a waste of paper and ink to me, considering it's available for free.
However, after reading some of the posts, I have become totally dependent on using online news services. Last time I bought an actual newspaper was last week (apartment hunting) and before that, 2 years ago (apartment hunting).
Paper media will probably never die, at least not in my lifetime, but while I'm becoming more dependent on online services, I'm becoming less dependent on paper.
Yeah, TW in our area finally picked it up. But alas, it seems like the ONLY thing to watch on Odyssey (one of 3 whopping 'new' channels) is The Muppet Show.
Best one I saw in a long time was when the Swedish Chef was 'teaching' how to boil a lobster. After a bunch of rambling on, 2 or 3 muppet lobsters busted in on the Chef, wearing masks and holding guns. They started shooting up the place, rescued the to-be-boiled lobster, and left the Chef in his classic befuddled "Duhee?!" look. Truly classic. Gangster muppet lobsters.
And go figure I appreciate The Muppet Show tons more now than I did when I was a kid.
Back in the days when I was an hourly employee roughly 4 years ago, I used to regularly pull 60 hour weeks. The company realized my loyalty and dedication, gave me a few dollar/hr raise and stuck me on salary. Since then, I've gradually lessened my hours to the point I drive myself insane if I work more than 43, the minimum number of hours we have to work per week.
I've accumulated hundreds and hundreds of "comp" time, enough to take 2 solid months off, but I take on average 10 hours a year. With the huge amount of hours I've put in above and beyond the call of duty, I'm actually making less now than I was 4 years ago.
I love what I do. I just hate where I do it.
I stopped reading the article after reading why they feel the need to include a 4GB drive... For PATCHES.
I don't know about you, but like hell I'm going to buy a console based gaming system that will need to download patches for games.
Typical Microsoft nature. Step 1: Release product as fast as possible. Step 2: Release a flurry of patches to make product work.
Apparently, you and I are two of the few people who actually read the article before posting senseless crap.
When they are actually able to recreate the effects of ball lightning in the lab, then I'll be mighty impressed.
BTW, methinks you should be moderated to 3:OnTopic.
Sheesh! Make one minor error and a flame war erupts. Big deal. The guy didn't have his damn coffee/mt dew this morning.
That 'story' should not have generated 190 comments as of this posting. Who really gives a damn if zero is odd, even, or neither? Who also gives a damn when the next all-odd date is going to occur? You'll all be dead by then. And finally, who gives a damn if the calendar changed between the last all even date.
The bottom line is: Who cares?!
One of the few mentionings of Linux on microsoft.com has to do with "How to Uninstall Linux."
It has become apparent that Microsoft isn't worried about Linux domination (from their press releases and such), yet they now see a need for writing a media player for Linux?
Very informative article, yet when I voted for my favorite operating system, I had to pick Red Hat Linux because there was no other Linux option.
It looks as if Red Hat and Linux are now synonymous, or at least to the media. Not that I have any (major) gripes against Red Hat, but Red Hat and Linux are NOT interchangeable.
Sounds more like a USENET spelling flame war to me. It was understood what the guy meant. It still drives me up the wall when I see people use incorrect forms of words, but I've deemed it best to not bother to say anything.
: OS code could be put on the cartridge since it can hold 64 MEGS.
That's 64 megaBITS, not megaBYTES. So in reality, it would be rather difficult to get the OS code stuffed into an 8MB cartridge.
Other than the above flaw, it appeared that he knew what he was doing. How could he miss the bit/byte factor?
Like it's difficult to
1) Remove contents from box
2) Open microwave door
3) Put foodstuff in microwave
4) Close door
5) Hit "Nuke for 5 minutes" (or however long)
Freakin' laziness... With a heftier price tag. Just what I need. Not.