In the case of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth [swiftvets.com], here was a story the MSM didn't want to touch with a ten-foot poll because it went against the narrative the had already decided on ("John Kerry, War Hero Turned Protestor").
If the MSM committed any sins in the SBVfT situation (and they did), it was in giving their story credibility without backup. Nothing in the official record, or in the recollections of those on Kerry's boat, supported their version of the story, but the MSM gave them scads of free publicity with very little scrutiny. It wasn't blogs that gave the SBVfT their audience, it was the mainstream media.
It's kinda similar, in a way, to the whole Linux "charge for support" model, isn't it? The OS is free, but you pay for installation and ongoing support, so the incentive is for the distro producer to make it as obtuse and difficult to use as possible so you're required to stay in a support agreement. Same logic.
Agreed... how in the hell did this make the front page of Slashdot? Surely anyone reading this site can figure how all the h4X0rZ that these books surely contain.
Ah, right -- it's about the iPod. That explains it.
I have a dumb question, only mildly offtopic: why would you preorder something that you'll have no trouble finding in stores? I don't think I've ever preordered anything (unless the deal was too good to pass up) because usually the incentives to buy in-store on opening week are better than what you'd have been offered six months in advance.
Is it just fanboy enthusiasm (which is a completely legitimate reason), or is there some other reason that I'm missing?
[I'm really not asking to be an ass -- I'm genuinely curious.]
I'm with you on TimeSplitters 2. I've been playing FPS's since Wolfenstein and I had to trade-in TimeSplitters because I was ready to ralf after an hour of playing. Never could figure out why that is, though...
Re:and a slightly more cynical view...
on
The Cult of Mac
·
· Score: 1
So, wait... what does Craiglist prove again? That old Macs are cheap or that they have a great resale value? Your post seems to suggest both.:)
Either way, resale value is kind of a bizarre reason to buy one computer over another.
The Xbox library is actually really great. There are tons of solid exclusives (Halo, KOTOR, Fable, Project Gotham 1/2, Rallisport 1/2, Top Spin) and, more importantly, the best versions of multiplatform games (EA and Sega's sports lineup, Ubi's lineup, etc.) are almost always on Xbox. Live is really sweet as well. Plus you don't need memory cards, it supports HD, voice chat, 5.1 sound in pretty much every game -- it's pretty hard to go wrong for $150.
It does lack Japanese RPGs, but that's about it. I
Sorry... not true. Recent financial statements from both companies show the Xbox leading the Gamecube. Not by a great deal, but definitely leading worldwide.
Nintendo's making more money, sure, but they're losing third-parties and multiplatform games sell like crap on that platform.
Saying "well, outside of their own data" isn't very comforting. Who gives a rip if the operating system survives but the data doesn't? My data is the one thing I don't want getting chewed up by a script.
Yeah, yeah, I know people should make backups of their data, but they don't do it often enough and, if you're going to use that excuse, who cares about security anyway? Just back up everything and let the kiddiez run wild.
The fix for Norton should be released very soon via LiveUpdate. Apparently Norton doesn't advertise its status to any processes to prevent tampering. My university has a new corporate installer already that works fine with SP2 and it's supposed to be publicly available any day now.
According to the Digital Bits, the DVD versions will actually be a little bit different. Han will again shoot first, some effects will be tweaked and a few shots will be restored. Take it with a grain of salt, but they seemed pretty convinced of it.
Here's the writeup:
"We've been saying for months now that there were going to be changes made to these films for DVD, and while many believed us, a number of Star Wars fans have e-mailed to say we must be on crack. Nevertheless, believe it or not, we know for a FACT that several more changes are being made to these films. Trust us on this - our contacts are in positions to know. Like it or not, the films we will get on DVD on 9/21 are NOT going to be the original theatrical versions and they're not going to be the 1997 special editions either. Even Lucasfilm's Steve Sansweet has confirmed this, saying at the recent WonderCon convention that the films contained on the discs would be the incarnations of the films "as George Lucas sees them today."
Of course, how Qui-Gon (aside: Hey, continuity! *squish of balls being kicked*) could think balancing the force was a GOOD thing (Hmm... Many light side, two dark side... how could this be balanced...?) is another matter entirely.
I think it has to do with the fact that the light side Jedi aren't so much about being "good" as they are about maintaining justice (ergo, balance). Having all-powerful evil in the universe throws the ability to maintain justice out of balance, so by eradicating all the bad guys, you're left with basically a bunch of peacekeeping knights.
That's how I figure it; who knows what the real story is.
I know there were umpteen versions of the Star Wars movies on videotape, but that was five years ago... people need to get over it. I know it's hip to rag on Lucas around here, but you need to find a different avenue to go down than double-dipping these days.
[A]cting pursuant to the Constitution and [the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002] is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
--President Bush, in a letter to Congress outlining the legal justification for commencing war against Iraq, March 18, 2003
I have to call bullshit on that. I'm a beta member and I have to say that Gmail is the *most* impressive email client I have ever laid eyes on. Anyone who says otherwise is a stakeholder on another project, or just playing devil's advocate for some obscure reasons.
It's not "bullshit," dude... it's an opinion. I'm a beta member too and I'm not trying to "derail" gmail. I just don't think it's all that. The contact tools in gmail are really primitive and for features, Hotmail and Yahoo kinda own it right now.
Not just a plan. My wife has a paid plan with Yahoo and she had 2GB this morning.
I've gotta say, I think it's going to be hard for Gmail to compete. The Gmail Web interface isn't all that impressive and presuming that Yahoo and MSN can get their spam filtering and storage space up to snuff (Yahoo's got the space and the hotmail spam filtering is actually really good now), Google doesn't really have the breadth of services that the other guys do.
That said, they're smart guys, so hopefully they're working on something better than what they're beta testing.
In what dimension do Slashdotters care about counting calories? I'd have thought that the discussion would be about how to circumvent the Sony DRM. or building a beowulf cluster of McDonalds pedometers -- something more befitting of this community.
Be proud of the ketchup stains on your t-shirt, goddammit!
Try to win your boss over away from the "we're a Microsoft Partner" way of thinking! Show him that everytime you violate the standard to appease IE, you are taking money out of your pocket and giving it to Microsoft, and are moving one step closer to a Microsoft-only Internet, complete with Microsoft-only viruses and trojans.
While I agree with your general concept (which I think is that standards are a good thing and we shouldn't use browser-specific extensions on public-facing Web sites), I don't really understand how making sure sites work in the browser that 90% of my customers use "takes money out of my pocket and gives it to Microsoft." If my customers can't get to my content, they keep their money to themselves and spend it elsewhere.
Don't make any consessions for IE. In fact, turn IE users away at the door. Put up some links for them to get with the program and download a standards-compliant browser.
Uh, dude. C'mon. I really think you've gone over the hedge here. People don't want to be hassled when they go to a Web site -- they just want it to work. I'm all for making sure things work in Moz, Safari, etc., but most bosses rightly won't let their employees turn their Web sites into some kind of crusade for the software they prefer.
I've never heard anybody say they were thankful that they were able to phone-up MS support.
I hear that a lot, but I'm willing to bet those people have never tried contacting MS support. I've contacted them twice, most recently with a Visio problem, and I received via email a follow-up and a solution within a few hours.
Don't believe the hype about MS's support -- it's actually pretty good when you have to use it.
Aside from this, we see an article above where the text mentions "increased competition" to OpenGL from D3D. Another abuse of monopoly power. The OGL implementations I've seen so far way out-perform D3D. The problem is that D3D ships with 90+ per cent of the new desktop machines out there, so it can still be a piece of trash and still dominate the market.
That's kinda silly. OpenGL/D3D aren't end-user products. If a developer wants to use OpenGL, he puts the installers as part of the game install process, just like developers do with D3D. You can kvetch about a lot of things, but D3D is really useful stuff for developers. As a bonus, it's the focus of a lot of dev work on MS's side so it's getting better all the time.
I put the CD in, now what? Oh, I have to click My Computer? Ok. Ooh, I have to double-click? Open my CD-ROM, what's that? Double click on setup.exe, what's an.exe? Ok. It's asking me where to install it to, what's a "cee colon slash Program Files?"...
I think 99's point was that on most Windows machines, all you do is put a CD in, it autoruns and, if you accept the defaults, the vast majority of the time your program is installed and you can find it in the Start Menu. Most people never have to open My Computer or run a setup.exe.
Slashdot Mirror
In the case of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth [swiftvets.com], here was a story the MSM didn't want to touch with a ten-foot poll because it went against the narrative the had already decided on ("John Kerry, War Hero Turned Protestor").
If the MSM committed any sins in the SBVfT situation (and they did), it was in giving their story credibility without backup. Nothing in the official record, or in the recollections of those on Kerry's boat, supported their version of the story, but the MSM gave them scads of free publicity with very little scrutiny. It wasn't blogs that gave the SBVfT their audience, it was the mainstream media.
It's kinda similar, in a way, to the whole Linux "charge for support" model, isn't it? The OS is free, but you pay for installation and ongoing support, so the incentive is for the distro producer to make it as obtuse and difficult to use as possible so you're required to stay in a support agreement. Same logic.
Uh... JP 3 made $181M in the US alone. Hardly "direct to video."
Agreed... how in the hell did this make the front page of Slashdot? Surely anyone reading this site can figure how all the h4X0rZ that these books surely contain.
Ah, right -- it's about the iPod. That explains it.
I have a dumb question, only mildly offtopic: why would you preorder something that you'll have no trouble finding in stores? I don't think I've ever preordered anything (unless the deal was too good to pass up) because usually the incentives to buy in-store on opening week are better than what you'd have been offered six months in advance.
Is it just fanboy enthusiasm (which is a completely legitimate reason), or is there some other reason that I'm missing?
[I'm really not asking to be an ass -- I'm genuinely curious.]
I'm with you on TimeSplitters 2. I've been playing FPS's since Wolfenstein and I had to trade-in TimeSplitters because I was ready to ralf after an hour of playing. Never could figure out why that is, though...
So, wait... what does Craiglist prove again? That old Macs are cheap or that they have a great resale value? Your post seems to suggest both. :)
Either way, resale value is kind of a bizarre reason to buy one computer over another.
The Xbox library is actually really great. There are tons of solid exclusives (Halo, KOTOR, Fable, Project Gotham 1/2, Rallisport 1/2, Top Spin) and, more importantly, the best versions of multiplatform games (EA and Sega's sports lineup, Ubi's lineup, etc.) are almost always on Xbox. Live is really sweet as well. Plus you don't need memory cards, it supports HD, voice chat, 5.1 sound in pretty much every game -- it's pretty hard to go wrong for $150.
It does lack Japanese RPGs, but that's about it. I
Sorry... not true. Recent financial statements from both companies show the Xbox leading the Gamecube. Not by a great deal, but definitely leading worldwide.
Nintendo's making more money, sure, but they're losing third-parties and multiplatform games sell like crap on that platform.
Yeah, they hid it under Tools / Options / Rip Music in a slider called "Audio quality."
Those bastards.
Saying "well, outside of their own data" isn't very comforting. Who gives a rip if the operating system survives but the data doesn't? My data is the one thing I don't want getting chewed up by a script.
Yeah, yeah, I know people should make backups of their data, but they don't do it often enough and, if you're going to use that excuse, who cares about security anyway? Just back up everything and let the kiddiez run wild.
Not nearly as delicious as an ice-cold Coca-Cola and a crispity, crunchity, peanut-buttery Butterfinger!
The fix for Norton should be released very soon via LiveUpdate. Apparently Norton doesn't advertise its status to any processes to prevent tampering. My university has a new corporate installer already that works fine with SP2 and it's supposed to be publicly available any day now.
According to the Digital Bits, the DVD versions will actually be a little bit different. Han will again shoot first, some effects will be tweaked and a few shots will be restored. Take it with a grain of salt, but they seemed pretty convinced of it.
Here's the writeup:
"We've been saying for months now that there were going to be changes made to these films for DVD, and while many believed us, a number of Star Wars fans have e-mailed to say we must be on crack. Nevertheless, believe it or not, we know for a FACT that several more changes are being made to these films. Trust us on this - our contacts are in positions to know. Like it or not, the films we will get on DVD on 9/21 are NOT going to be the original theatrical versions and they're not going to be the 1997 special editions either. Even Lucasfilm's Steve Sansweet has confirmed this, saying at the recent WonderCon convention that the films contained on the discs would be the incarnations of the films "as George Lucas sees them today."
Of course, how Qui-Gon (aside: Hey, continuity! *squish of balls being kicked*) could think balancing the force was a GOOD thing (Hmm... Many light side, two dark side... how could this be balanced...?) is another matter entirely.
I think it has to do with the fact that the light side Jedi aren't so much about being "good" as they are about maintaining justice (ergo, balance). Having all-powerful evil in the universe throws the ability to maintain justice out of balance, so by eradicating all the bad guys, you're left with basically a bunch of peacekeeping knights.
That's how I figure it; who knows what the real story is.
Er... do you mean Sam Raimi? Or Quentin Tarantino? Or James Cameron? Because George Lucas hasn't double-dipped on a DVD release yet.
I know there were umpteen versions of the Star Wars movies on videotape, but that was five years ago... people need to get over it. I know it's hip to rag on Lucas around here, but you need to find a different avenue to go down than double-dipping these days.
I'm not sure if you put that in to bolster my argument or to try to counter it. If it's the former, thanks. If it's the latter, I'm confused.
What about this?
[A]cting pursuant to the Constitution and [the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002] is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
--President Bush, in a letter to Congress outlining the legal justification for commencing war against Iraq, March 18, 2003
I have to call bullshit on that. I'm a beta member and I have to say that Gmail is the *most* impressive email client I have ever laid eyes on. Anyone who says otherwise is a stakeholder on another project, or just playing devil's advocate for some obscure reasons.
It's not "bullshit," dude... it's an opinion. I'm a beta member too and I'm not trying to "derail" gmail. I just don't think it's all that. The contact tools in gmail are really primitive and for features, Hotmail and Yahoo kinda own it right now.
Not just a plan. My wife has a paid plan with Yahoo and she had 2GB this morning.
I've gotta say, I think it's going to be hard for Gmail to compete. The Gmail Web interface isn't all that impressive and presuming that Yahoo and MSN can get their spam filtering and storage space up to snuff (Yahoo's got the space and the hotmail spam filtering is actually really good now), Google doesn't really have the breadth of services that the other guys do.
That said, they're smart guys, so hopefully they're working on something better than what they're beta testing.
In what dimension do Slashdotters care about counting calories? I'd have thought that the discussion would be about how to circumvent the Sony DRM. or building a beowulf cluster of McDonalds pedometers -- something more befitting of this community.
Be proud of the ketchup stains on your t-shirt, goddammit!
Try to win your boss over away from the "we're a Microsoft Partner" way of thinking! Show him that everytime you violate the standard to appease IE, you are taking money out of your pocket and giving it to Microsoft, and are moving one step closer to a Microsoft-only Internet, complete with Microsoft-only viruses and trojans.
While I agree with your general concept (which I think is that standards are a good thing and we shouldn't use browser-specific extensions on public-facing Web sites), I don't really understand how making sure sites work in the browser that 90% of my customers use "takes money out of my pocket and gives it to Microsoft." If my customers can't get to my content, they keep their money to themselves and spend it elsewhere.
Don't make any consessions for IE. In fact, turn IE users away at the door. Put up some links for them to get with the program and download a standards-compliant browser.
Uh, dude. C'mon. I really think you've gone over the hedge here. People don't want to be hassled when they go to a Web site -- they just want it to work. I'm all for making sure things work in Moz, Safari, etc., but most bosses rightly won't let their employees turn their Web sites into some kind of crusade for the software they prefer.
I've never heard anybody say they were thankful that they were able to phone-up MS support.
I hear that a lot, but I'm willing to bet those people have never tried contacting MS support. I've contacted them twice, most recently with a Visio problem, and I received via email a follow-up and a solution within a few hours.
Don't believe the hype about MS's support -- it's actually pretty good when you have to use it.
Aside from this, we see an article above where the text mentions "increased competition" to OpenGL from D3D. Another abuse of monopoly power. The OGL implementations I've seen so far way out-perform D3D. The problem is that D3D ships with 90+ per cent of the new desktop machines out there, so it can still be a piece of trash and still dominate the market.
That's kinda silly. OpenGL/D3D aren't end-user products. If a developer wants to use OpenGL, he puts the installers as part of the game install process, just like developers do with D3D. You can kvetch about a lot of things, but D3D is really useful stuff for developers. As a bonus, it's the focus of a lot of dev work on MS's side so it's getting better all the time.
I put the CD in, now what? Oh, I have to click My Computer? Ok. Ooh, I have to double-click? Open my CD-ROM, what's that? Double click on setup.exe, what's an .exe? Ok. It's asking me where to install it to, what's a "cee colon slash Program Files?"...
I think 99's point was that on most Windows machines, all you do is put a CD in, it autoruns and, if you accept the defaults, the vast majority of the time your program is installed and you can find it in the Start Menu. Most people never have to open My Computer or run a setup.exe.