I can see that you're right... I just don't want to.
I so very want the Restored-but-non-cgi-messed with versions... so very, very badly... I horridly have them on VHS (well, my wife does), and we have the Special editions on the official VCDs (Hey... they're an oddity at least.:) )
But how I want to be able to watch Star Wars with NO CGI JABBA, no CGI walking slugs with pencil leg things, NONE of that crud... just give me the original version nicely cleaned up so it looks like it did when it was released... you did that... you cleaned them up, you polished the soundtracks... now leave them be...
Oh yes there was... in fact I still have it on disk somewhere... it was called Web 3D and it was made by a company called Asymetrix. It was really easy to create 3D objects and light and texture them... it really was... I'm tempted to try and find the disk and see if it works under XP... Problem is that it is discontinued, and Asymetrix have changed their name and corporate image to Click2Learn.
When I bought it many years ago it was only about $15 and it came with HEAPS of models already supplied.
Here is a site which has some shots of what it could do. Although... EEP! these guys seem to still sell it, and for a sizable chunk of money.
"Granted my site is not all that interesting except to friends and family, but I am willing to cough up the cost to say and do what I want to say and do with my site." But there's the exact thing that allows you to provide your site for free and why the web used to be free... it didn't and doesn't cost much.
Take that same site, start getting a few thousand hits a day, each person downloading just a meg or so, or even say, just 500K, and your 3Gig cap for the month (well, that's what mine is for the $5 a month I pay) is blown out... and not just that, but the shared servers your site is sitting on start struggling under the strain... so you need a more expensive service with higher bandwidth allowance, and more powerful servers... now start being so giving when it starts climbing into the thousands a year to serve your site... get a few more visitors than that and you're getting even worse.
It's the popularity of the web, and the work involved in creating enough content in a website to keep people coming back, that makes it cost money... and they need to recoup the money somewhere... I mean... look up there... look! A banner ad... don't see it? Either you're a paying subscriber (good for you), OR you're blocking it and depriving Slashdot of the funds to run this site that you visit everyday.
But you said " PDA's are getting pretty powerful these days, but trying to compete with the likes of Nintendo and Sony is just insane."
Whereas if you had RTFA you would have seen the page on games and noted games with graphics like this which really are above and beyond what the GBA can handle... so really, they can be better, and the comparison is very valid.
It's this attitude that is the problem really. People are not stupid for ending up with these spyware things on their machines... it takes a real knowledge of what's going on on the web, and an innate distrust of things to spot these things easily.
With the amount of things that say "Your internet connection has been tested and is slow, click here to fix" and things like that, to someone who doesn't know any better seem like a reasonable thing to click on.
The Gator popups seem somewhat reasonable if you aren't initially thinking that all things that popup without your asking are bad.
You may well say "Well people should learn more about these things before they get on the internet"... well, maybe so, but then also the internet is all pervasive now, and whether you like it or not you sort of almost need to get on it these days... and its the people who are just curious, or need to get online to read the e-mails from their family overseas etc who are most vunerable... in fact I have an Aunt who is around 70 or so, and just got Broadband internet installed... and I'm heading over to her place on the weekend (She's interstate), and I hate to think what's been installed on her machine after just 4 weeks of having it installed.
And trying to say "Well, install Firebird then, that stops all sorts of things", yeah, and it also makes playing back streaming video and almost anything needing a plugin a nightmare... I'm yet to have it playback streaming Windows Media files as theres no obvious way to have a plugin installed for it... and if I can't work it out, there's no way she would.
Stop thinking everyone thinks like a geek or is dumb... there's many different ways of thinking, and they aren't all IT-centric
That would be the same as me saying: "You know, my website is hosted by the same hosting company as some completely unrelated site that may be holding some illegal MP3s, I'll turn myself in for... um... what exactly?"
You've gone to far in the analogy and it's fallen over.
Actually, that was a promo for Summoner and Red Faction... It was called Summoner Geeks... funny.:) You can find it: hereand probably many other better places than iFilm too.
There was also a followup which I got on a coverdisc once which was also piss funny...
...what's your favourite Machinima? Do you agree with their choices, do you know of any little known Machinima that you wish others would... or have you done some yourself?
But then you loose your commonality: "Why didn't my document work on your PC?" "Well, what did you use to make the diagrams?" "Ahh, well, I used the extra super diagram maker plugin... why, don't you have it?" "No, never heard of it." "Ahh, well you can easily download it from , then just go to options, preferences, plugins, stock functions, diagrams, replace with that plugin... of course, you don't want to use it for everything as that plugin has a couple of bugs, so just switch between that and the standard one depending on what you're drawing... Easy mate." "Errrrrr"
Nope... while plugins are great, and the ability to start with a relatively bare bones install and just add on as required this does lead to both: "HEY! Why can't I edit this picture?" "Oh, you must not have chosen to install it... easy, just get the install disk and update to include it... where's your install disk?" "I don't know... the IT department has it" "Ahh, well, that'll take a week or so"
AND
"Word is a piece of shit, it keeps crashing!" "Um, actually it's that third party plugin you installed..."
The good thing about office is that you write up your word document, and someone with the same version of office (or a few versions back) can open it... no dramas... in fact I don't remember the last document I couldn't open, or didn't display properly on opening... it's just not an issue.
Yeah, and OSX is completely compatible with OS9 or even the first version of OSX.
And what about Linux, it's not like it's entirely backwards compatible.
Geeze... you people are never happy: "When will they give up on legacy items and get with the times? All this bloat to remain compatible with the past is stupid" And then: "Why won't my 7 year old software work with the software released today?"
Yet strangely with the Mac and Linux you're all hunky dory... Shut up already... make your mind up what you want.
Basically hovercrafts are a bitch to control... they slip all over the place and you have to 'telegraph' your moves well before you actually want it to happen.
You get rid of some problems (wheel slippage etc.), but you add more.
My next laptop is definitely going to be a Mac... I have used PCs pretty much exclusively for 10 years or so (*nix and a little bit of mac sneak in occasionally), and it wasn't until I started using Movie Maker 2 on XP that I just spat it and got fed up with Microsoft.
I made my little movie and then simply wanted to burn it to a VCD or DVD format on a CD so that my family could see it...
Could I?
Nope.
Oh, they do have a 'burn to CD' option... but what format does it burn to? Some bloody MS format I've never heard of that apparently will be in all sorts of consumer products... bull... why would anyone bother putting that in their product when burning movies to DVD with a Mac is so straight forward?
There's no option to save to MPG, just nothing other than Microsoft (Other than ridiculously large DV files).
Bah to them... They've completely given up trying to make things as easy as possible and decided to try and force people to only use their software.
These are problems that were solved many years ago.
Are you really sure about this? Windows is built like a land fill. They just keep piling it on.
Um... well I for one haven't had any sort of IRQ conflict of any sort for... man I can't remember how long, years in any case... Geeze you are one bitter person... do you think that Linux doesn't carry legacy stuff around as well? Plus Windows dropped its Win9x lineage with Windows 2K...
I mean, really... a self updating virus checker (and yes, free ones like AVG) is all that's really required here... set it up to check e-mail, websites and files automatically, and they're really quite safe.
Exactly, this needs more modding up... DNA DID want a movie to happen, worked really hard at it in fact, and it's so very sad that it took his death to kick it into action.
In this interview he said: Question: When will we here in the US be able to see [one of] your books put to movie? DNA:
The Dirk Gently books are currently in development as a television series. The "Hitchhiker's Guide" is currently under development. I'm very confident that it will actually go into production any decade now. When... I want to know when too.
So this is what he wanted, and I hope it's done well.
Geeze... this hardly warrented Flamebait... you made perfectly valid points, the 'benchmarks' here show nothing to suggest that this mac is faster than ANYTHING else... it just doesn't even try to, what a pointless article to link to.
It just shows that Slashdot editors will link to ANYTHING Mac related.
Slashdot Mirror
It's at the end of the trailer... *pop*... he he.
Just for the last joke with Donkey in the carriage... comedy gold, right there. :)
I can see that you're right... I just don't want to.
:) )
I so very want the Restored-but-non-cgi-messed with versions... so very, very badly... I horridly have them on VHS (well, my wife does), and we have the Special editions on the official VCDs (Hey... they're an oddity at least.
But how I want to be able to watch Star Wars with NO CGI JABBA, no CGI walking slugs with pencil leg things, NONE of that crud... just give me the original version nicely cleaned up so it looks like it did when it was released... you did that... you cleaned them up, you polished the soundtracks... now leave them be...
leave them be.
Oh yes there was... in fact I still have it on disk somewhere... it was called Web 3D and it was made by a company called Asymetrix. It was really easy to create 3D objects and light and texture them... it really was... I'm tempted to try and find the disk and see if it works under XP... Problem is that it is discontinued, and Asymetrix have changed their name and corporate image to Click2Learn.
:)
When I bought it many years ago it was only about $15 and it came with HEAPS of models already supplied.
Here is a site which has some shots of what it could do.
Although... EEP! these guys seem to still sell it, and for a sizable chunk of money.
Happy days...
"Granted my site is not all that interesting except to friends and family, but I am willing to cough up the cost to say and do what I want to say and do with my site."
But there's the exact thing that allows you to provide your site for free and why the web used to be free... it didn't and doesn't cost much.
Take that same site, start getting a few thousand hits a day, each person downloading just a meg or so, or even say, just 500K, and your 3Gig cap for the month (well, that's what mine is for the $5 a month I pay) is blown out... and not just that, but the shared servers your site is sitting on start struggling under the strain... so you need a more expensive service with higher bandwidth allowance, and more powerful servers... now start being so giving when it starts climbing into the thousands a year to serve your site... get a few more visitors than that and you're getting even worse.
It's the popularity of the web, and the work involved in creating enough content in a website to keep people coming back, that makes it cost money... and they need to recoup the money somewhere... I mean... look up there... look! A banner ad... don't see it? Either you're a paying subscriber (good for you), OR you're blocking it and depriving Slashdot of the funds to run this site that you visit everyday.
But you said " PDA's are getting pretty powerful these days, but trying to compete with the likes of Nintendo and Sony is just insane."
Whereas if you had RTFA you would have seen the page on games and noted games with graphics like this which really are above and beyond what the GBA can handle... so really, they can be better, and the comparison is very valid.
Bloody hell... gets modded insightful because it points out the obvious... Gee, an Australian site quotes Australian prices!
You don't see posts marked up for saying "Gee, that seems cheap... oh, must be those new fangled American dollars, as it's much more in Australia".
I'm amazed at how spoon fed people who call themselves 'geeks' have to be.
It's this attitude that is the problem really. People are not stupid for ending up with these spyware things on their machines... it takes a real knowledge of what's going on on the web, and an innate distrust of things to spot these things easily.
With the amount of things that say "Your internet connection has been tested and is slow, click here to fix" and things like that, to someone who doesn't know any better seem like a reasonable thing to click on.
The Gator popups seem somewhat reasonable if you aren't initially thinking that all things that popup without your asking are bad.
You may well say "Well people should learn more about these things before they get on the internet"... well, maybe so, but then also the internet is all pervasive now, and whether you like it or not you sort of almost need to get on it these days... and its the people who are just curious, or need to get online to read the e-mails from their family overseas etc who are most vunerable... in fact I have an Aunt who is around 70 or so, and just got Broadband internet installed... and I'm heading over to her place on the weekend (She's interstate), and I hate to think what's been installed on her machine after just 4 weeks of having it installed.
And trying to say "Well, install Firebird then, that stops all sorts of things", yeah, and it also makes playing back streaming video and almost anything needing a plugin a nightmare... I'm yet to have it playback streaming Windows Media files as theres no obvious way to have a plugin installed for it... and if I can't work it out, there's no way she would.
Stop thinking everyone thinks like a geek or is dumb... there's many different ways of thinking, and they aren't all IT-centric
That would be the same as me saying: "You know, my website is hosted by the same hosting company as some completely unrelated site that may be holding some illegal MP3s, I'll turn myself in for... um... what exactly?"
You've gone to far in the analogy and it's fallen over.
The second amusing short, 'The Interview' is here. Just wait a sec while I download it... :)
Actually, that was a promo for Summoner and Red Faction... It was called Summoner Geeks... funny. :)
You can find it: hereand probably many other better places than iFilm too.
There was also a followup which I got on a coverdisc once which was also piss funny...
...what's your favourite Machinima? Do you agree with their choices, do you know of any little known Machinima that you wish others would... or have you done some yourself?
But then you loose your commonality:
"Why didn't my document work on your PC?"
"Well, what did you use to make the diagrams?"
"Ahh, well, I used the extra super diagram maker plugin... why, don't you have it?"
"No, never heard of it."
"Ahh, well you can easily download it from , then just go to options, preferences, plugins, stock functions, diagrams, replace with that plugin... of course, you don't want to use it for everything as that plugin has a couple of bugs, so just switch between that and the standard one depending on what you're drawing... Easy mate."
"Errrrrr"
Nope... while plugins are great, and the ability to start with a relatively bare bones install and just add on as required this does lead to both:
"HEY! Why can't I edit this picture?"
"Oh, you must not have chosen to install it... easy, just get the install disk and update to include it... where's your install disk?"
"I don't know... the IT department has it"
"Ahh, well, that'll take a week or so"
AND
"Word is a piece of shit, it keeps crashing!"
"Um, actually it's that third party plugin you installed..."
The good thing about office is that you write up your word document, and someone with the same version of office (or a few versions back) can open it... no dramas... in fact I don't remember the last document I couldn't open, or didn't display properly on opening... it's just not an issue.
am I the only one who read this and went... "WAH?"
How the hell does tar compare to word... one is a packaging app, the other is a word processor...
Yeah, and OSX is completely compatible with OS9 or even the first version of OSX.
And what about Linux, it's not like it's entirely backwards compatible.
Geeze... you people are never happy:
"When will they give up on legacy items and get with the times? All this bloat to remain compatible with the past is stupid"
And then:
"Why won't my 7 year old software work with the software released today?"
Yet strangely with the Mac and Linux you're all hunky dory... Shut up already... make your mind up what you want.
Basically hovercrafts are a bitch to control... they slip all over the place and you have to 'telegraph' your moves well before you actually want it to happen.
You get rid of some problems (wheel slippage etc.), but you add more.
Plus they're just so loud!
My next laptop is definitely going to be a Mac... I have used PCs pretty much exclusively for 10 years or so (*nix and a little bit of mac sneak in occasionally), and it wasn't until I started using Movie Maker 2 on XP that I just spat it and got fed up with Microsoft.
I made my little movie and then simply wanted to burn it to a VCD or DVD format on a CD so that my family could see it...
Could I?
Nope.
Oh, they do have a 'burn to CD' option... but what format does it burn to? Some bloody MS format I've never heard of that apparently will be in all sorts of consumer products... bull... why would anyone bother putting that in their product when burning movies to DVD with a Mac is so straight forward?
There's no option to save to MPG, just nothing other than Microsoft (Other than ridiculously large DV files).
Bah to them... They've completely given up trying to make things as easy as possible and decided to try and force people to only use their software.
Well piss off.
Ok, that's just damn cool.... Beautifully made...
:)
I hadn't seen the GameMan either... that's also a thing of... well.... art I suppose.
Fine stuff
Or... considering it's a HUMOUR(yes, that's how we spell it in Australia) site... maybe it's just a bit of FUN?
Geeze, calm down.
These are problems that were solved many years ago.
Are you really sure about this? Windows is built like a land fill. They just keep piling it on.
Um... well I for one haven't had any sort of IRQ conflict of any sort for... man I can't remember how long, years in any case... Geeze you are one bitter person... do you think that Linux doesn't carry legacy stuff around as well? Plus Windows dropped its Win9x lineage with Windows 2K...
I mean, really... a self updating virus checker (and yes, free ones like AVG) is all that's really required here... set it up to check e-mail, websites and files automatically, and they're really quite safe.
Um... Actually...
In this interview he said:
Question: When will we here in the US be able to see [one of] your books put to movie?
DNA: The Dirk Gently books are currently in development as a television series. The "Hitchhiker's Guide" is currently under development. I'm very confident that it will actually go into production any decade now. When... I want to know when too.
So this is what he wanted, and I hope it's done well.
Geeze... this hardly warrented Flamebait... you made perfectly valid points, the 'benchmarks' here show nothing to suggest that this mac is faster than ANYTHING else... it just doesn't even try to, what a pointless article to link to.
It just shows that Slashdot editors will link to ANYTHING Mac related.