Google abandoned the "Google = search" idea long ago. Since Google makes 99% of its revenue from advertising, they've been diversifying the way they can serve you ads. How is a beta Jabber server "search"? How is a JavaScript map client "search"? (Sure you can "search" for businesses, but the results are pretty unreliable.) How is a JavaScript spreadsheet program "search"?
The now-defunct Icepick house had a food display on its website: every time someone removed an item from the fridge or threw it away, they scanned a bar code and it went on the web. Hook up a web services interface to your neighborhood grocer's inventory system and you've got a fully integrated e-kitchen.
That would suck. You could only visit a web page if it were popular enough to have a swarm surrounding it. Whatever happened to the elitist "everything popular must be bad" attitude I've come to expect from Slashdot?
So the new world order is "proof by intimidation"? Throwing one's marketshare around to get whatever one wants sounds pretty evil to me.
The AP is one of the few worldwide organizations that is actually in the business of news gathering. Google News is basically a big AP/Reuters gateway considering how all the big stories are 90% wire reports. I'm glad to hear that Google is actually paying to license some of the content they shovel at you.
Both of the launch games for the Nintendo 64 (yes, only two launch games) cost $60. Your "extra peripheral" theory falls flat since neither Super Mario 64 nor Pilotwings 64 supported any sort of multiplayer capability.
Nintendo was roundly criticized for pricing games at $60 and prices eventually dropped, though.
Based on the fact that you say "neighbourhood", I'm assuming that you live in either Australia or Canada, where the dollar has been worth less than the U.S. dollar (but the American dollar has been losing a lot of value lately). The PS2 started with an MSRP of US$300, but there were widespread reports of people spending over $1,000 for one at launch. I haven't seen a PS2 game debut with an MSRP of higher than US$50, except for games that include extra hardware like DDR pads or guitars.
That said, the Xbox 360 was selling for well over its MSRP after launch: many people ended up spending more than $600 for a platinum bundle. Perhaps the $500/$600 price points are just a way for Sony to milk money from the early adopters leading up to Christmas this year.
Listen closely. They're all screaming "DON'T BUY THE FIRST REVISION OF AN APPLE PRODUCT!" as if the MacBook were the first Apple product ever to feature a wireless card.
"It's the first consumer-priced Intel Mac notebook available in both white and black. OF COURSE THERE WILL BE PROBLEMS!"
Jon Stewart has "balls" in that he can throw as many stones as he likes, but when someone criticizes him he brushes it off with "I'm a COMEDIAN. I'm on COMEDY central. My show is a SATIRE."
By the same token, ballsy folks like Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, Michael Moore, and Ann Coulter* never run for public office either. It's so much easier just to voice opinions than to actually do anything.
Racing games seem like a special case. I remember Burnout 3 actually putting blur on everything around you when you drive really fast so you only notice what's straight ahead. FPSes like Halo are very frustrating to play in 320x240 by contrast; you can barely see well around you, and you actually need to in order to play the game.
You act like at EA meetings, you have a bunch of guys in suits saying, "well, this game could be more fun, but we really need to tighten up the graphics more." Haven't you ever played a game in higher-than-VGA resolution that you considered fun?
I really can't see myself playing a four-player game in split screen, looking at my 320x240 quadrant, thinking, "this is as good as it needs to be."
Frankly, I'd appreciate if they put the scaremongering political activism in the politics section, so my preferences not to see such crap would be honored.
I find ThinkPads gorgeous for the same reason people find Mag-Lite flashlights and most Apple laptops gorgeous: simple, unfettered design that emphasizes usability. No unnecessary chrome except for a simple, tasteful logo. (Yes the Apple logo is large, but it's still more subtle than the Xbox-1-controller-jewel-like bumps on the top of many Dell and Compaq laptops.)
I've been pretty happy with the design of their mice, and I've known many people who swear by their Natural Keyboards. Hell, I know plenty of Mac fans who hook up Microsoft mice to their stylish computaters.
FUD. Apple crams more shit onto their systems than Dell does. (What use is iDVD to me when I don't have a DVD burner -- and iDVD won't support an external burner?) By the time I was done cleaning off all the shit I didn't need, I had reclaimed several gigs of space. (GarageBand, along with all its support libraries and sample files, was more than 2 GB in size all by itself.)
Hell, you can't even play a video file in full-screen on a MacOSX system out of the box -- for that you have to pay $30 for QuickTime Pro, learn some AppleScript, or download one of the many free players that have this essential feature.
Also, Windows has supported.zip files without extra software since Windows ME and XP.
And you wonder why nobody but Mac fans take the "Get a Mac" campaign seriously.
Sure, but when Joe Smug "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC Too" says that on the Apple commercial, he uses PC in the sense of "computer that runs Microsoft Windows."
You know, like all PCs have since their introduction. (rolls eyes)
There's a nice, glossy page on BootCamp Beta linked from the top Mac OS X home page. Parallels is not mentioned on either of these two pages. If Apple wants me to use Parallels, they're doing a lousy job of telling me so. (Wasn't BootCamp supposed to be a selling point of Mac OS X 10.5?)
I think it's very disingenuous of Apple to claim that the Mac "is a PC too," when they have no interest (other than offering beta/shareware software) in helping users use it as a PC. Windows is not an add-on application like Half-Life 2. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if Apple chose to support Windows with yet another extra-cost service, considering all the things AppleCare already doesn't cover for $350.
OEM copies of Windows are subject to different licensing agreements than the full retail copies. Yes, they're cheaper and Slashdot users don't give a shit about EULAs, but I'm just saying. As I was taught in Fake Law School, when you buy an OEM copy of software you have to buy it with a piece of hardware; the OEM copy is then tethered to that piece of hardware. No hardware, no license, and you go to Fake Jail for life.
I have a $300 Dell that didn't come with a Windows CD. It has a hard disk partition with recovery files on it, and the "recovery CD" merely boots to that HD partition so that it can re-image the primary partition with the factory settings. If I could extract the copy of Windows and throw it onto an Intel Mac, it would violate the OEM EULA just the same as if I threw Mac OS X/Intel onto a Dell system.
Before I had the $300 Dell, I bought Virtual PC. It was incredibly slow to the point of unusability. As I watched individual widgets in my Quicken* window draw and redraw, I thought, "man, this sucks."
* Yes, I bought a Windows machine to run Quicken. No, this will not read my Quicken for Windows file.
Yes. (pause) I. (pause) Remember. (pause) Using. (pause) That. (pause) I. (pause) Even. (pause) Bought. (pause) Begin number. One-six. End number. Begin spelling. M. B. End spelling. Of. (pause) Memory. (pause) To. (pause) Use. (pause) It. (pause) Period. (pause) It. (pause) Was. (pause) Useful. (pause) (right-click, correct mis-recognized "useful") When. (pause) I. (pause) Hurt. (pause) My. (pause) Wrist. (pause) And. (pause) Couldn't. (pause) Type.
End dictation.
With. Robust. Performance. Like. That. It's. A. Wonder. That. People. Besides. William. Begin spelling. S-H-A-T-N-E-R. End Spelling. Could. Use. It.
Slashdot Mirror
Google abandoned the "Google = search" idea long ago. Since Google makes 99% of its revenue from advertising, they've been diversifying the way they can serve you ads. How is a beta Jabber server "search"? How is a JavaScript map client "search"? (Sure you can "search" for businesses, but the results are pretty unreliable.) How is a JavaScript spreadsheet program "search"?
The now-defunct Icepick house had a food display on its website: every time someone removed an item from the fridge or threw it away, they scanned a bar code and it went on the web. Hook up a web services interface to your neighborhood grocer's inventory system and you've got a fully integrated e-kitchen.
dot com.
That would suck. You could only visit a web page if it were popular enough to have a swarm surrounding it. Whatever happened to the elitist "everything popular must be bad" attitude I've come to expect from Slashdot?
So the new world order is "proof by intimidation"? Throwing one's marketshare around to get whatever one wants sounds pretty evil to me.
The AP is one of the few worldwide organizations that is actually in the business of news gathering. Google News is basically a big AP/Reuters gateway considering how all the big stories are 90% wire reports. I'm glad to hear that Google is actually paying to license some of the content they shovel at you.
Or say, "I'm not interested, please take me off your list."
But hey, everyone needs to feel important.
Both of the launch games for the Nintendo 64 (yes, only two launch games) cost $60. Your "extra peripheral" theory falls flat since neither Super Mario 64 nor Pilotwings 64 supported any sort of multiplayer capability.
Nintendo was roundly criticized for pricing games at $60 and prices eventually dropped, though.
Based on the fact that you say "neighbourhood", I'm assuming that you live in either Australia or Canada, where the dollar has been worth less than the U.S. dollar (but the American dollar has been losing a lot of value lately). The PS2 started with an MSRP of US$300, but there were widespread reports of people spending over $1,000 for one at launch. I haven't seen a PS2 game debut with an MSRP of higher than US$50, except for games that include extra hardware like DDR pads or guitars.
That said, the Xbox 360 was selling for well over its MSRP after launch: many people ended up spending more than $600 for a platinum bundle. Perhaps the $500/$600 price points are just a way for Sony to milk money from the early adopters leading up to Christmas this year.
Computer: u pwned 2149 lbs of food but u can only take 200 lbs back to ur wagon
Bison: rofl noob
http://shatneriskirk.ytmnd.com/ (Flash, sound)
Listen closely. They're all screaming "DON'T BUY THE FIRST REVISION OF AN APPLE PRODUCT!" as if the MacBook were the first Apple product ever to feature a wireless card.
"It's the first consumer-priced Intel Mac notebook available in both white and black. OF COURSE THERE WILL BE PROBLEMS!"
Jon Stewart has "balls" in that he can throw as many stones as he likes, but when someone criticizes him he brushes it off with "I'm a COMEDIAN. I'm on COMEDY central. My show is a SATIRE."
By the same token, ballsy folks like Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, Michael Moore, and Ann Coulter* never run for public office either. It's so much easier just to voice opinions than to actually do anything.
* yes, ballsy. Not so much on the "decency" part.
Racing games seem like a special case. I remember Burnout 3 actually putting blur on everything around you when you drive really fast so you only notice what's straight ahead. FPSes like Halo are very frustrating to play in 320x240 by contrast; you can barely see well around you, and you actually need to in order to play the game.
You act like at EA meetings, you have a bunch of guys in suits saying, "well, this game could be more fun, but we really need to tighten up the graphics more." Haven't you ever played a game in higher-than-VGA resolution that you considered fun?
I really can't see myself playing a four-player game in split screen, looking at my 320x240 quadrant, thinking, "this is as good as it needs to be."
Frankly, I'd appreciate if they put the scaremongering political activism in the politics section, so my preferences not to see such crap would be honored.
(Not that I support oppressive police action, but getting political news from Slashdot is like getting workout advice from McDonald's.)
I find ThinkPads gorgeous for the same reason people find Mag-Lite flashlights and most Apple laptops gorgeous: simple, unfettered design that emphasizes usability. No unnecessary chrome except for a simple, tasteful logo. (Yes the Apple logo is large, but it's still more subtle than the Xbox-1-controller-jewel-like bumps on the top of many Dell and Compaq laptops.)
I've been pretty happy with the design of their mice, and I've known many people who swear by their Natural Keyboards. Hell, I know plenty of Mac fans who hook up Microsoft mice to their stylish computaters.
Considering how much Slashdot hates the PS3, I think it's safe to say that it will never sell at all.
After all, it was with Slashdot's derision that the iPod was doomed to failure against the far superior Creative Nomad.
It's only a passing mention in the article, but Atari Jaguar enclosures are now used for dental camera systems?! That (PDF) is awesome.
FUD. Apple crams more shit onto their systems than Dell does. (What use is iDVD to me when I don't have a DVD burner -- and iDVD won't support an external burner?) By the time I was done cleaning off all the shit I didn't need, I had reclaimed several gigs of space. (GarageBand, along with all its support libraries and sample files, was more than 2 GB in size all by itself.)
.zip files without extra software since Windows ME and XP.
Hell, you can't even play a video file in full-screen on a MacOSX system out of the box -- for that you have to pay $30 for QuickTime Pro, learn some AppleScript, or download one of the many free players that have this essential feature.
Also, Windows has supported
And you wonder why nobody but Mac fans take the "Get a Mac" campaign seriously.
Sure, but when Joe Smug "I'm a Mac / I'm a PC Too" says that on the Apple commercial, he uses PC in the sense of "computer that runs Microsoft Windows."
You know, like all PCs have since their introduction. (rolls eyes)
There's a nice, glossy page on BootCamp Beta linked from the top Mac OS X home page. Parallels is not mentioned on either of these two pages. If Apple wants me to use Parallels, they're doing a lousy job of telling me so. (Wasn't BootCamp supposed to be a selling point of Mac OS X 10.5?)
I think it's very disingenuous of Apple to claim that the Mac "is a PC too," when they have no interest (other than offering beta/shareware software) in helping users use it as a PC. Windows is not an add-on application like Half-Life 2. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if Apple chose to support Windows with yet another extra-cost service, considering all the things AppleCare already doesn't cover for $350.
OEM copies of Windows are subject to different licensing agreements than the full retail copies. Yes, they're cheaper and Slashdot users don't give a shit about EULAs, but I'm just saying. As I was taught in Fake Law School, when you buy an OEM copy of software you have to buy it with a piece of hardware; the OEM copy is then tethered to that piece of hardware. No hardware, no license, and you go to Fake Jail for life.
I have a $300 Dell that didn't come with a Windows CD. It has a hard disk partition with recovery files on it, and the "recovery CD" merely boots to that HD partition so that it can re-image the primary partition with the factory settings. If I could extract the copy of Windows and throw it onto an Intel Mac, it would violate the OEM EULA just the same as if I threw Mac OS X/Intel onto a Dell system.
Before I had the $300 Dell, I bought Virtual PC. It was incredibly slow to the point of unusability. As I watched individual widgets in my Quicken* window draw and redraw, I thought, "man, this sucks."
* Yes, I bought a Windows machine to run Quicken. No, this will not read my Quicken for Windows file.
My favorite is the Mac commercial that says "you can even run Windows on a Mac," despite:
So after spending $1400+* on a MacBook, you have to drop another $200 to try and run Windows in a completely unsupported fashion? Sign me up!
* Price includes $300 for a warranty, because everyone needs a warranty for their laptop
Begin dictation.
Yes. (pause) I. (pause) Remember. (pause) Using. (pause) That. (pause) I. (pause) Even. (pause) Bought. (pause) Begin number. One-six. End number. Begin spelling. M. B. End spelling. Of. (pause) Memory. (pause) To. (pause) Use. (pause) It. (pause) Period. (pause) It. (pause) Was. (pause) Useful. (pause) (right-click, correct mis-recognized "useful") When. (pause) I. (pause) Hurt. (pause) My. (pause) Wrist. (pause) And. (pause) Couldn't. (pause) Type.
End dictation.
With. Robust. Performance. Like. That. It's. A. Wonder. That. People. Besides. William. Begin spelling. S-H-A-T-N-E-R. End Spelling. Could. Use. It.
You could just ask Fox. After all, Fox TV and MySpace are both owned by News Corporation now...