I told the guy I was using a router. He freaked. "OMG OMG HOW MANY COMPUTERS DO YOU HAVE?" he asked.
"Just one. I just trust hardware firewalls more than software ones. I don't want to get infected with a worm that would then lower ATTBI's bandwidth."
He then let me go on my way.
Now, this article is a case of "i know a friend of a friend who's doing this dispicable act!!!" so I'm not taking it to heart. And as for me, only my Linux box is on 24/7...My Windows box is a seperate box that's only up if I want to play EverQuest.:) So, if they had a way to scan my system, there's only one machine up.
I find it quite amusing to hear people complain about how "not fun" this game is without ever playing it.
I mean, sure, history says that games based on franchises aren't doing well. But sitting here bashing a games playability or fun factor without ever playing it is kinda a little over the top, right? Or is there some part of the logic I'm missing? (Let me know if there is!)
The sad thing is, they just went and deleted all the mediaone.* newsgroups and created a new attbroadband.* hierarchy to replace them. No doubt they'll want to move them to attbi.* now.
According to what I've read and what I'm experiencing, there IS no newsgroup server anymore to house the newsgroups.
I'm I the only one who finds the practice of releasing a "vanilla" DVD, then releasing a "extra groovy" DVD six months or a year later totally annoying?
I agree with you on this, however Tron was initially released on DVD about 4 years ago, if I remember correctly. It was the first DVD I ever bought. (Second was Ghostbusters.)
Saw the news blurb about N'Sync on Sci-fi, and looked through the headlines...Didn't see a title about it. (N'Synch just didn't enter into my mind to make the connection at this late hour after coding.)
So what did I do?
Resubmit the story.
Makes me wish I could reject it myself for the reason of "Stupidity" so the editors won't have to look at it and risk reposting it.
The IR emitter is on the front panel of the TiVo. I have my AT&T Broadband Digital Cable box sitting on top of the TiVo, so what it does is blast the IR out, bounces off the wall, and comes back and hits the digital cable box - and it acts just like you used the remote control. (It has a bunch of remote control codes built into the TiVo already.)
It takes about 3 seconds to change a channel (a second between each number just to be safe, I have it in slow mode) and it only drops a number if I'm standing in front of the TiVo at a weird angle where the IR bounces off of me and goes a different direction than the Digital Cable box.
Actually a bunch of folks on the TiVo Underground on the AVS forum actually sniffed the data.
It sells composite viewing habits by area code. Basicailly, it knows that 25% of the TiVo Owners in zip code 30075 (for instance) watched Buffy on Tuesday night...But that's it. Nothing about your personal viewing habits - just your zip code's viewing habits.
And it takes a whole whopping 5 minutes to opt out. Unfortunately, I actually like the fact that they know I have Babylon 5 and MST3K season passes. Call me dumb and naive, but I want these shows to stay on the air (and possibly make spinoffs to have new episodes!)
Mainly it's because I like using a remote on my couch to list through the TV shows I want to watch. I don't feel like continually standing up to go to the computer to watch a different show.
And on that note, my computer is nowhere near my TV, so that'd be a lot of cabling to run through the house.
And, for me at least, the composite out on my video card leaves a little black border and isn't as sharp as normal TV, however I have an old card (voodoo3 3500 TV) though, and it's been replaced already, so I don't know how the composite out on my new card is.
There is a difference between Phantasy Star Online and Final Fantasy XI. Let's compare two similar games, Diablo II and EverQuest.
In PSO and Diablo II, you have a chat lobby, create a team, and go into a special game that just belongs to you and your team.
In EverQuest and (supposedly) FFXI, you're in the same world with everyone else. You create a team and go off to fight monsters, and will see the OTHER teams fighting monsters as well.
That's the line that seperates Multiplayer Online RPG's and Massively Multiplayer Online RPG's. In PSO, you couldn't interact with everybody playing the game at once, in FFXI, you (supposedly) can.
Glad to see I was not the only one in the late 80s blowing an NES. Goddamn duckhunt!!
Only in the late 80's? Hell, I still have to blow on it TODAY to play Final Fantasy 1.
I had WORSE problems with my PS2 at launch!
on
XBox Defects Draw Ire
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Here's my timeline:
October 26th, 2000: Was all alone at CompUSA for 3 hours before person #2 showed up at about 5AM - People were camped out at the Best Buy next door and the Circuit City across the street, but never thought of little ol' CompUSA. Even one of the radio DJ's came by to keep me company. Got the first of the 6 units at that store.
That day, take it home, stick my Madden 2001 game in, and nothing happened. Stuck in a DVD, and nothing happened. Nothing. Nada. No spinning. No "Detecting".
Called store, and they said they probably wouldn't get any more units until March of 2001, but would gladly refund my money.
Called Sony, and they tried to get me to run diagnostics on the CD, which wouldn't work since it has to be able to know the CD was in the drive to do the diagnostic. So, they said they'd send me an airbill and I could send it to their Repair Depot in California.
October 30th, 2000: Called Sony back, and said that they'll send the airbill tomorrow.
November 2nd, 2000: Called Sony back, and they said they'd send the airbill tomorrow. I said screw it and sent it on my own dime.
November 20th, 2000: After several calls to the repair depot, I get the tracking number of my repaired unit. They sent it UPS Ground during Thanksgiving. Thanks, Sony.
November 28th, 2000: Received my replacement PS2, plugged it in. Put Madden 2001 in, listened to the CD spin...But that was all. Put in a DVD, listened to the CD spin...But that was all. It wasn't detecting the CD at all.
Called Sony, and the guy said "Well we'll send you an airbill and you can send it back to the department..." Wanted to speak to his manager. "All of our managers are busy, sir, they'll call you back later tonight." Right. Sure.
Amazingly, I got a phone call 45 minutes later. He reiterated the "send it back to our repair depot". I then asked for the address where my attorney could contact them. He then told me that he would personally send me an airbill (via FedEx this time) where I could send him my PS2 and he'd just send me a new one.
November 30th, 2000: Amazingly, I receive an airbill in a timely fashion. I send out my PS2 directly to the guy.
December 8th, 2000: Receive new PS2, and have been playing it to this day. I also have two of those blue boxes I keep just to mess with people, as I only sent the unit, but not the packaging materials.
Remember, I sat in line for about 8 hours on October 26th to get a unit that I didn't get to actually play until December 8th. Let's just say, I'll never do that again. (Actually, I did, but I only was in line 30 minutes for an XBox.)
Moral of the story: This happens with ANY console. PS2 had just as bad of a launch as XBox did to this respect. I have gotten lucky with my XBox, but the Software Etc. I go to said that they had 10 returns on launch day from the hard drive crashing.
If anybody remembers the dot-bomb that was Pseudo (streaming network), they had a gaming channel called the All Games Network, headed by Scot Rubin. When Pseudo changed their format, Rubin left the company.
He is now part of this new project, along with several people from the old AGN.
There are two choices for 30 minute shows on gaming today, one is Extended Play on TechTV, and the other is Electric Playground on Discovery Science. (Thank you TiVo for finding that one for me!) They're both okay, hell, Electric Playground has a chick from the Real World New Orleans on it (Julie, the girl who got kicked out of BYU for those who follow MTV), but these two shows are only an hour a week, hardly enough time to get in reviews of about maybe 4 or 5 different games.
I want to give G4 a chance, mainly because I used to watch AGN for years back in college, and it was sad to see them go. They're going to start small, repeating the same 4 or 6 hours over and over again (that way I won't have any conflicts on my TiVo Season Passes, heh heh) so let's not bash someone for trying, eh?
Who knows, they might have a Linux show and then you'd all be praising them for helping bring your baby to the masses.
Why can't users just act the same as they do with Hotmail? Open up separate accounts for different uses, most with false information that can't be tied back to you without a search warrant?
Probably because, in the case of Asheron's Call, they have to have credit card information to bill you with (or they want to use the Passport to bill you instead?) and they need your real information.
For the free stuff, sure, I understand completely making a different account. But some Zone games are subscription based, so this solution won't work.
Thank god I don't play any subscription-based Zone games.:>
I remember hearing reports that Lucas would not allow the individual theatres to screen their copies before the first public showing. So on the midnight showing on opening morning, the film reels would sometimes roll off and cause the movie to stop while the employees fixed the film and restarted.
The potential is still there. I don't see why the fact the launch went bad is going to alter your decision to buy the expansion in a few weeks when it's stabalized.
I couldn't get in to Star Wars Episode 1 on the day it came out either, didn't stop me from trying to see it later.
...Now that they've tried to listen to the players and update it, people whine that it is now too much updated. No-win situation here.
36 hours is definately not enough time to write a review of something like this, heck, the reviewer hasn't even SEEN the new race, and in effect, 25% of what the expansion offers. Kind of like reviewing The Sims Hot Date without ever going downtown.
It does suck that Verant had some last minute problems. They even stated a pre-emptive apology that there are things that can only be caught with a load of 400,000 players and the strict scrutiny. If the game is still unplayable at the end of the weekend, then let's start roasting. The latest patch was a step in the right direction.
Back when one of the other lovely vbs viruses was going around (not ILOVEYOU, but a later one...There have been so many I've lost track) our sysadmin ran around our office saying to not open the attachment if they got it. This was because one of my coworkers opened it. He told her not to open it.
Well, it got sent back to her, and what did she do...OPEN IT AGAIN.
So he got out of his office, and went to her, and asked her if she opened it again.
"Oh, I wasn't supposed to?"
So he goes back to his office, and what does she do? SHE OPENS IT AGAIN. "I wanted to see the picture!"
The sysadmin ran out of his office, YANKED the network cable out of her machine and said "GO TO LUNCH. NOW."
She didn't return for the rest of the day, and the incident allowed our sysadmin to receive the funding neccessary to install virus scanners on all of our servers and workstations. Goner only hit one person, and she was smart enough to not open it.
After having played Halo a few times online...
on
XBox Netplay Already
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I can safely say that these launch titles were not supposed to be on the Internet in the first place. Now, I have a cable modem, which is second tier to the DSL's I was running agianst. I realize this. But, the game was created with LAN play in mind, with 1ms ping times. However, when I was getting a 350ms ping time (awful, I know), it wasn't compensating at all.
For instance, you can look around when you lag, but can't move or shoot in Halo. Since there's no error detection built into these games, you wind up in strange places when you resync with the server, and then get blown to bits. Many times.
The server doesn't lag, obviously. But the clients do.
Now, the game isn't bad multiplayer, but it was made with a LAN in mind. So, before everybody goes out and buys XBox's because of this, have that in mind. The programmers didn't think they would have to deal with Internet Latency in Halo, so there is nothing to help you if you have a high ping.
I just came back from a spree of hitting all of the stores nearby (I work near a major mall in Atlanta, so I was able to hit them all on my lunch break.) Most of them laughed at me when I asked, except for the Walmart. Now, I'm not too sure if the guy was BS'ing me or not, but he said they were selling some (it was rumored they were at another store) but once they heard the story was posted here they stopped selling them voluntarily, so they would still have some leftover for the official launch on Sunday.
First time I've ever heard of the Slashdot Effect on a brick and mortor store, that's for sure.
A reference to Future Crew would probably be included in the "Greetz" section in the credits or during the demo. Future Crew was probably the most greeted demogroup out there, because of what they achived.
Wow, the good ol' days. I was late, I didn't start getting around to the demoscene until Second Reality came out at Assembly'94. Then I was hooked. There were many hoaxes of "Third Reality" coming out at the next big demoparty, as I recall.
A lot of the old FC crew created a company called "Remedy" which creates the 3dmark benchmarks and recently released the game Max Payne. Purple Motion even did the music for part of 3dmark2001.
A few people on an IRC channel I used to frequent just found a 64k intro from The Party 2000. They said "wow, when did people do this?" When I started telling them about the good ol days of MS-DOS and the demos and intros (and 4k intros!) of that time, they all turned their noses and said "EWWW DOS was NEVER good for ANYTHING! Yuck!"
Of course, back then, the amount of polygons you could fit on a torus was the big challenge. It was what originally got me into programming. I feel so old now.
Of course now, it's so easy to create jaw dropping images without optimized code, so it's nice to see that there is something to really test your skills on like the iPaq. I miss seeing elegant code.
I felt the same way in college, that the projects I were doing were pretty boring. So, I coded other things. I got books in DirectX and started writing games, and I learned that I actually did use stuff I learned in these classes in my own programs. It made going to class easier, because I knew that even if I didn't see it right now, someday down the line I will use that knowledge in the most unexpected place.
And sometimes, being able to say "Instead of going to the bars at night, I sat in my dorm room coding" in an interview helps you out to get a good job. Most jobs aren't cutting edge, but you might get lucky. Never lose hope.
However, if you really get burned out on it, you might want to look into getting a second major in the science field. I was working towards getting a Music Composition Minor (never finished it) when I was in college, which probably helped on the burnout factor. I enjoyed going to the CS lab after having to sit through tonal recgonition.
I'm sure we've all heard of the arcade game from 1982, but there is actually a DVD version that you play with your DVD remote control. It doesn't run on your computer natively (you still use your DVD software to play it). Even in the store I bought it, it was in the movie section.
But is this really a movie? Or is it software?
(Ok ok, I know the first reply would be "But do we care?")
Actually, yes. I used to work at a Blockbuster Video, and it was like this.
Remember how you'd see Videos for RENTAL only? That's because the wholesale price is something insane, like $99.99. Then, after the studio believed that the rentals were sagging, they'd lower the price to $19.99 or whatever, and then Blockbuster would be able to take the rentals and "PVT" them (sell them at a used price).
If you accidentally destroyed a rented video, you had to fork over the $100 to buy it. (We had a customer who left the video on top of his car, and then he drove over it when he was returning it. Oops.)
The insane part was that there were some people that would actually pay the $100 to own the video when it came out for rentals.
Slashdot Mirror
I told the guy I was using a router. He freaked. "OMG OMG HOW MANY COMPUTERS DO YOU HAVE?" he asked.
:) So, if they had a way to scan my system, there's only one machine up.
"Just one. I just trust hardware firewalls more than software ones. I don't want to get infected with a worm that would then lower ATTBI's bandwidth."
He then let me go on my way.
Now, this article is a case of "i know a friend of a friend who's doing this dispicable act!!!" so I'm not taking it to heart. And as for me, only my Linux box is on 24/7...My Windows box is a seperate box that's only up if I want to play EverQuest.
Is there a term for "vaporware" jobs?
I find it quite amusing to hear people complain about how "not fun" this game is without ever playing it.
I mean, sure, history says that games based on franchises aren't doing well. But sitting here bashing a games playability or fun factor without ever playing it is kinda a little over the top, right? Or is there some part of the logic I'm missing? (Let me know if there is!)
The sad thing is, they just went and deleted all the mediaone.* newsgroups and created a new attbroadband.* hierarchy to replace them. No doubt they'll want to move them to attbi.* now.
According to what I've read and what I'm experiencing, there IS no newsgroup server anymore to house the newsgroups.
Problem solved.
I'm I the only one who finds the practice of releasing a "vanilla" DVD, then releasing a "extra groovy" DVD six months or a year later totally annoying?
I agree with you on this, however Tron was initially released on DVD about 4 years ago, if I remember correctly. It was the first DVD I ever bought. (Second was Ghostbusters.)
Saw the news blurb about N'Sync on Sci-fi, and looked through the headlines...Didn't see a title about it. (N'Synch just didn't enter into my mind to make the connection at this late hour after coding.)
So what did I do?
Resubmit the story.
Makes me wish I could reject it myself for the reason of "Stupidity" so the editors won't have to look at it and risk reposting it.
You don't even need the IR blaster, really.
The IR emitter is on the front panel of the TiVo. I have my AT&T Broadband Digital Cable box sitting on top of the TiVo, so what it does is blast the IR out, bounces off the wall, and comes back and hits the digital cable box - and it acts just like you used the remote control. (It has a bunch of remote control codes built into the TiVo already.)
It takes about 3 seconds to change a channel (a second between each number just to be safe, I have it in slow mode) and it only drops a number if I'm standing in front of the TiVo at a weird angle where the IR bounces off of me and goes a different direction than the Digital Cable box.
Actually a bunch of folks on the TiVo Underground on the AVS forum actually sniffed the data.
It sells composite viewing habits by area code. Basicailly, it knows that 25% of the TiVo Owners in zip code 30075 (for instance) watched Buffy on Tuesday night...But that's it. Nothing about your personal viewing habits - just your zip code's viewing habits.
And it takes a whole whopping 5 minutes to opt out. Unfortunately, I actually like the fact that they know I have Babylon 5 and MST3K season passes. Call me dumb and naive, but I want these shows to stay on the air (and possibly make spinoffs to have new episodes!)
Mainly it's because I like using a remote on my couch to list through the TV shows I want to watch. I don't feel like continually standing up to go to the computer to watch a different show.
And on that note, my computer is nowhere near my TV, so that'd be a lot of cabling to run through the house.
And, for me at least, the composite out on my video card leaves a little black border and isn't as sharp as normal TV, however I have an old card (voodoo3 3500 TV) though, and it's been replaced already, so I don't know how the composite out on my new card is.
There is a difference between Phantasy Star Online and Final Fantasy XI. Let's compare two similar games, Diablo II and EverQuest.
In PSO and Diablo II, you have a chat lobby, create a team, and go into a special game that just belongs to you and your team.
In EverQuest and (supposedly) FFXI, you're in the same world with everyone else. You create a team and go off to fight monsters, and will see the OTHER teams fighting monsters as well.
That's the line that seperates Multiplayer Online RPG's and Massively Multiplayer Online RPG's. In PSO, you couldn't interact with everybody playing the game at once, in FFXI, you (supposedly) can.
Glad to see I was not the only one in the late 80s blowing an NES. Goddamn duckhunt!!
Only in the late 80's? Hell, I still have to blow on it TODAY to play Final Fantasy 1.
Here's my timeline:
October 26th, 2000: Was all alone at CompUSA for 3 hours before person #2 showed up at about 5AM - People were camped out at the Best Buy next door and the Circuit City across the street, but never thought of little ol' CompUSA. Even one of the radio DJ's came by to keep me company. Got the first of the 6 units at that store.
That day, take it home, stick my Madden 2001 game in, and nothing happened. Stuck in a DVD, and nothing happened. Nothing. Nada. No spinning. No "Detecting".
Called store, and they said they probably wouldn't get any more units until March of 2001, but would gladly refund my money.
Called Sony, and they tried to get me to run diagnostics on the CD, which wouldn't work since it has to be able to know the CD was in the drive to do the diagnostic. So, they said they'd send me an airbill and I could send it to their Repair Depot in California.
October 30th, 2000: Called Sony back, and said that they'll send the airbill tomorrow.
November 2nd, 2000: Called Sony back, and they said they'd send the airbill tomorrow. I said screw it and sent it on my own dime.
November 20th, 2000: After several calls to the repair depot, I get the tracking number of my repaired unit. They sent it UPS Ground during Thanksgiving. Thanks, Sony.
November 28th, 2000: Received my replacement PS2, plugged it in. Put Madden 2001 in, listened to the CD spin...But that was all. Put in a DVD, listened to the CD spin...But that was all. It wasn't detecting the CD at all.
Called Sony, and the guy said "Well we'll send you an airbill and you can send it back to the department..." Wanted to speak to his manager. "All of our managers are busy, sir, they'll call you back later tonight." Right. Sure.
Amazingly, I got a phone call 45 minutes later. He reiterated the "send it back to our repair depot". I then asked for the address where my attorney could contact them. He then told me that he would personally send me an airbill (via FedEx this time) where I could send him my PS2 and he'd just send me a new one.
November 30th, 2000: Amazingly, I receive an airbill in a timely fashion. I send out my PS2 directly to the guy.
December 8th, 2000: Receive new PS2, and have been playing it to this day. I also have two of those blue boxes I keep just to mess with people, as I only sent the unit, but not the packaging materials.
Remember, I sat in line for about 8 hours on October 26th to get a unit that I didn't get to actually play until December 8th. Let's just say, I'll never do that again. (Actually, I did, but I only was in line 30 minutes for an XBox.)
Moral of the story: This happens with ANY console. PS2 had just as bad of a launch as XBox did to this respect. I have gotten lucky with my XBox, but the Software Etc. I go to said that they had 10 returns on launch day from the hard drive crashing.
If anybody remembers the dot-bomb that was Pseudo (streaming network), they had a gaming channel called the All Games Network, headed by Scot Rubin. When Pseudo changed their format, Rubin left the company.
He is now part of this new project, along with several people from the old AGN.
There are two choices for 30 minute shows on gaming today, one is Extended Play on TechTV, and the other is Electric Playground on Discovery Science. (Thank you TiVo for finding that one for me!) They're both okay, hell, Electric Playground has a chick from the Real World New Orleans on it (Julie, the girl who got kicked out of BYU for those who follow MTV), but these two shows are only an hour a week, hardly enough time to get in reviews of about maybe 4 or 5 different games.
I want to give G4 a chance, mainly because I used to watch AGN for years back in college, and it was sad to see them go. They're going to start small, repeating the same 4 or 6 hours over and over again (that way I won't have any conflicts on my TiVo Season Passes, heh heh) so let's not bash someone for trying, eh?
Who knows, they might have a Linux show and then you'd all be praising them for helping bring your baby to the masses.
Why can't users just act the same as they do with Hotmail? Open up separate accounts for different uses, most with false information that can't be tied back to you without a search warrant?
:>
Probably because, in the case of Asheron's Call, they have to have credit card information to bill you with (or they want to use the Passport to bill you instead?) and they need your real information.
For the free stuff, sure, I understand completely making a different account. But some Zone games are subscription based, so this solution won't work.
Thank god I don't play any subscription-based Zone games.
[i]More ram, and changing the OS requirement does not equall updated.[/i]
They upgraded the engine to DirectX 8.1, and Microsoft refuses to fix DX8.1 run in Windows 95. I blame Microsoft on that one.
I'm wondering how they're supposed to update the engine when it was already maxed at the minumum specs.
I remember hearing reports that Lucas would not allow the individual theatres to screen their copies before the first public showing. So on the midnight showing on opening morning, the film reels would sometimes roll off and cause the movie to stop while the employees fixed the film and restarted.
The potential is still there. I don't see why the fact the launch went bad is going to alter your decision to buy the expansion in a few weeks when it's stabalized.
I couldn't get in to Star Wars Episode 1 on the day it came out either, didn't stop me from trying to see it later.
...Now that they've tried to listen to the players and update it, people whine that it is now too much updated. No-win situation here.
36 hours is definately not enough time to write a review of something like this, heck, the reviewer hasn't even SEEN the new race, and in effect, 25% of what the expansion offers. Kind of like reviewing The Sims Hot Date without ever going downtown.
It does suck that Verant had some last minute problems. They even stated a pre-emptive apology that there are things that can only be caught with a load of 400,000 players and the strict scrutiny. If the game is still unplayable at the end of the weekend, then let's start roasting. The latest patch was a step in the right direction.
Back when one of the other lovely vbs viruses was going around (not ILOVEYOU, but a later one...There have been so many I've lost track) our sysadmin ran around our office saying to not open the attachment if they got it. This was because one of my coworkers opened it. He told her not to open it.
Well, it got sent back to her, and what did she do...OPEN IT AGAIN.
So he got out of his office, and went to her, and asked her if she opened it again.
"Oh, I wasn't supposed to?"
So he goes back to his office, and what does she do? SHE OPENS IT AGAIN. "I wanted to see the picture!"
The sysadmin ran out of his office, YANKED the network cable out of her machine and said "GO TO LUNCH. NOW."
She didn't return for the rest of the day, and the incident allowed our sysadmin to receive the funding neccessary to install virus scanners on all of our servers and workstations. Goner only hit one person, and she was smart enough to not open it.
I can safely say that these launch titles were not supposed to be on the Internet in the first place. Now, I have a cable modem, which is second tier to the DSL's I was running agianst. I realize this. But, the game was created with LAN play in mind, with 1ms ping times. However, when I was getting a 350ms ping time (awful, I know), it wasn't compensating at all.
For instance, you can look around when you lag, but can't move or shoot in Halo. Since there's no error detection built into these games, you wind up in strange places when you resync with the server, and then get blown to bits. Many times.
The server doesn't lag, obviously. But the clients do.
Now, the game isn't bad multiplayer, but it was made with a LAN in mind. So, before everybody goes out and buys XBox's because of this, have that in mind. The programmers didn't think they would have to deal with Internet Latency in Halo, so there is nothing to help you if you have a high ping.
I just came back from a spree of hitting all of the stores nearby (I work near a major mall in Atlanta, so I was able to hit them all on my lunch break.) Most of them laughed at me when I asked, except for the Walmart. Now, I'm not too sure if the guy was BS'ing me or not, but he said they were selling some (it was rumored they were at another store) but once they heard the story was posted here they stopped selling them voluntarily, so they would still have some leftover for the official launch on Sunday.
First time I've ever heard of the Slashdot Effect on a brick and mortor store, that's for sure.
A reference to Future Crew would probably be included in the "Greetz" section in the credits or during the demo. Future Crew was probably the most greeted demogroup out there, because of what they achived.
Wow, the good ol' days. I was late, I didn't start getting around to the demoscene until Second Reality came out at Assembly'94. Then I was hooked. There were many hoaxes of "Third Reality" coming out at the next big demoparty, as I recall.
A lot of the old FC crew created a company called "Remedy" which creates the 3dmark benchmarks and recently released the game Max Payne. Purple Motion even did the music for part of 3dmark2001.
A few people on an IRC channel I used to frequent just found a 64k intro from The Party 2000. They said "wow, when did people do this?" When I started telling them about the good ol days of MS-DOS and the demos and intros (and 4k intros!) of that time, they all turned their noses and said "EWWW DOS was NEVER good for ANYTHING! Yuck!"
Of course, back then, the amount of polygons you could fit on a torus was the big challenge. It was what originally got me into programming. I feel so old now.
Of course now, it's so easy to create jaw dropping images without optimized code, so it's nice to see that there is something to really test your skills on like the iPaq. I miss seeing elegant code.
I felt the same way in college, that the projects I were doing were pretty boring. So, I coded other things. I got books in DirectX and started writing games, and I learned that I actually did use stuff I learned in these classes in my own programs. It made going to class easier, because I knew that even if I didn't see it right now, someday down the line I will use that knowledge in the most unexpected place.
And sometimes, being able to say "Instead of going to the bars at night, I sat in my dorm room coding" in an interview helps you out to get a good job. Most jobs aren't cutting edge, but you might get lucky. Never lose hope.
However, if you really get burned out on it, you might want to look into getting a second major in the science field. I was working towards getting a Music Composition Minor (never finished it) when I was in college, which probably helped on the burnout factor. I enjoyed going to the CS lab after having to sit through tonal recgonition.
I'm sure we've all heard of the arcade game from 1982, but there is actually a DVD version that you play with your DVD remote control. It doesn't run on your computer natively (you still use your DVD software to play it). Even in the store I bought it, it was in the movie section.
But is this really a movie? Or is it software?
(Ok ok, I know the first reply would be "But do we care?")
Actually, yes. I used to work at a Blockbuster Video, and it was like this.
Remember how you'd see Videos for RENTAL only? That's because the wholesale price is something insane, like $99.99. Then, after the studio believed that the rentals were sagging, they'd lower the price to $19.99 or whatever, and then Blockbuster would be able to take the rentals and "PVT" them (sell them at a used price).
If you accidentally destroyed a rented video, you had to fork over the $100 to buy it. (We had a customer who left the video on top of his car, and then he drove over it when he was returning it. Oops.)
The insane part was that there were some people that would actually pay the $100 to own the video when it came out for rentals.