The iMac is a good computer for what it is: an entry level Mac. Anyone who thinks that it's comparable to the latest greatest PIII or G4 or whatever is just being stupid.
OTOH, I have a Mac and I think that the iMouse is the best thing since spam in a can. Much more comfortable than any other mouse I've ever used. I'd prefer it had five buttons, but you can't have everything. The point is that preference in mice, keyboards and monitors - the I/O that connects you to the computer - are a personal matter. Don't like the iMouse, get a different mouse. USB mice are usually pretty cheap. Lord knows I trashed the iKeyboard in favor of my reliable ol' Nimitz.
Regarding the memo you describe... I used to sell Macs and while I realize that price protection is mostly a thing of the past, it's better to preserve an excellent relationship with a customer than it is to clear merchandise and make a quick buck. You should ignore that kind of thing and even tell your customers to go elsewhere if they'll save money. Do freebie work for them (if it's not serious, like adding RAM). It's a lousy idea to run a business based solely on money.
Idiot star trek writers. They took a perfectly good distributed system and installed a single point of failure. That's the sort of thing that put me off of star trek (excepting the old series) and on to B5.
Oh yeah? Buy a share of MS stock and you can sue him till the cows come home. Winning is another matter, but you can sue him.
Personally, I think it's nuts that corporations (which are, like copyright laws, supposed to be for the common good and as often as not are perverted) get a privileged status so readily. And no one ever revokes corporate charters anymore either (which is quite legal to do, if they aren't serving the common good, though the judicial system has forgotten this lately).
However, I don't recall that corporations have freedom of speech, certainly not (de facto at any rate) at the interstate level.
Their reputations just started a power dive to the lowest levels of hell. Relatively few people will trust them to have an opinion that isn't rented out to the highest bidder from here on in. Past opinions will be called into question. So long as people remember and associate them with this, they're screwed. I'd be pissed off if I were them.
Brandeis is down to 22% Macs? Really? I guess this is because they finally got a fscking clue and changed the craptastic appletalk network over to ethernet. I remember people bitching about it when i was a freshman in '94. We'd've lived in any dorm and paid extra for ethernet....
Don't be so sure. A lot of popular kid hangouts - video arcades, theaters, malls, often kick kids out during school hours. I never got thrown out of the library when I cut school though;)
But who wants to send nuclear waste into the sun anyway? If you've got cheap spaceflight, pick a spot on the moon, dump or bury it all there, and forget about it. It won't hurt anybody, and it'll be useful someday.
Yeah, but September 13, 1999 has already come and gone.
Everyone knows there's life on Europa. Those lines on the surface are from ice skating. I haven't seen a picture of it yet that didn't have a Figure-Zorb in it somewhere. I just hope that when they do send a probe they don't accidently have it arrive during the off-season, when everyone's over at South Molten Lead Beach on Venus.
The power company always has trouble with trees. Remember how a few years ago when the load was very high there was a blackout across much of the city? IIRC it was because the lines sagged (due to the waste heat generated by the passage of so many electrons) and hit a tree that was _way_ too close to the lines.
But other than Kate, which didn't really do much in my neighborhood, I can't remember a single serious storm in Tally for as long as I lived there. (I now live in Seattle where I'm told they're expecting a magnitude 8 or 9 quake any time now. Crap)
Not necessarily. I'm from Tallahassee, which has previously been described on/. as being the armpit of Florida. Which is actually pretty close to the truth if you're trying to figure out what part of the state it's in.
Anyway, we rarely ever get 'canes, and the last one that was major was back in '85, IIRC. Basically, 'canes would have to either cross the penninsula where it connects to the mainland, which is tricky; circle the entire way around the Gulf clockwise; or make a sharp right after entering the Gulf.
So you can live in Florida and be pretty safe from hurricanes. My younger siblings have, I'm sure, no idea what it's like to get hit by a hurricane. Thunderstorms, sure, but not a 'cane.
Yeah and it's a good thing that the news media doesn't rely on anonymous sources. Oh wait, they do.
Your stance would appear to include dismissing a cancer cure or the Secret of the Universe(TM) if it were posted by an AC. Even if they're right.
It would be a much better idea to read the post and decide based solely on the merits of the content whether or not it should be moderated. One's ability to sign their name does not indicate that they're stupid. Lord knows we've got lots of stupid users around here.
is the V-chip what's at the end of the rainbow connection?
No. At the end of the Rainbow Connection is a mixture of partially hydrogenated soybean oil, cats, cellulose gum, chicken wire, dipotassium phosphate, thiamin, riboflavin, red dye #2, mono and diglycerides, shredded Office97 documentation and artificial colors and flavorings. And it's owned by Viacom.
Let me clarify: The mouse is inaccurate for just running around and shooting. It doesn't stay level and/or I tend to overshoot. Plus, since I'm right handed, it's easier to control everything important with my right hand than to switch to the mouse.
If I'm sniping, it means that no one is shooting back (yet) so I have more time to delicately move the mouse into position and blow some poor creature's head off. I wouldn't use the mouse in the thick of things, but then I wouldn't use a sniping rifle then either.
I don't have anything against analog control however; Goldeneye 007 uses a thumbstick pretty extensively for aiming and that's fine. But there's a big difference between the amazingly comfortable and well-thought out N64 controller and my keyboard and mouse.
Looks quite boring to me. I guess this is as good as it get's on a platform that doesn't have a broad selection of industry recognized multmedia standards. Oh well I guess that's what DC and 95 ar for.
Amazing... why do you feel that in order to be interesting a game must have lots of graphics and sound, and such. While there's nothing inherently wrong with either, it's quite rare to see a game that really takes advantage of them.
Myst is probably the best, and it's nothing more than a glorified text game.
And much as I like Marathon, first person shooters have a lot more to do with reflexes than anything else. Slapjack is not wholly dissimilar. (and id games are really ugly anyway... so much brown...)
I'm a big fan of text games. I played most of the old Infocom games on an Apple II in their hayday. And there are still a *lot* of really good ones out there. Of course, it's not usually listed in the system requirements, but you need to have a functional IMAGINATION. When you 'look' you have to use your brain to interpret the flavor text. But, as it happens, the imagination is very good at this sort of thing, if you've got one. The scariest picture in the world can't come close to what really scares you. 'You see a shady glen.' tells me a great deal with a mere 20-odd bytes. Maybe there are birches. I like them, so there are. I'm not reliant on what some other guy thinks it looks like.
While pretty much any computer nowadays can put up 3d spaceships and a midi soundtrack (hell, I played flight sims on a Mac Plus many moons ago) this does not always mean that a good game requires 3d spaceships and midi. Or whatever.
Text games are more or less the heart of computer games. They create a story and a setting with a minimum of cruft. At the heart of any good game (barring cards, or number games, or basic things like that) is going to be some kind of story. Multimedia just narrows down the possibilities that the story might contain to the narrow few that the author envisioned. It leaves little room for interpretation. It doesn't really let you make the story _your_own_.
I haven't played this particular game, but it might easily be a jillion times better than the best game on Dreamcast or Windows. Try to imagine it, but maybe it'll be a jillion times better because it gets you involved and isn't just eye candy. Crappy games are going to be crappy no matter how sparkly they are. Good games are going to be good even if they're 7bit ASCII text and require you to invest in a good stock of graph paper.
I suggest that you try it. If you let yourself, you might even like it....
Well what if the mp3s are located in, and were ripped by a citizen of, a country which does not have copyright laws? Is it illegal to tell people to go to a different country to take advantage of different laws?
Wouldn't that mean that I could face jail time if I told people which countries legalized (or at least don't prosecute for use/possession of) certain drugs? This could be good, OTOH, because at least we'd be rid of some lawyers;)
Depending on where you're at, you can post 'illegal' mp3s, because they're not illegal everywhere.
I thought that the Iridium sats couldn't be repaired in space and had ~5 year lifespans before either breaking or more likely crashing into Australia (the target of choice for falling debris).
Whoever came up with the idea of building Iridium didn't seem to think it all through too well. The sat-to-sat routing is neat though, I'll give them that.
No, no, microwave ranges come from RADAR work done during and around WW2. People who walked in front of big radars with food (one story claims it was a candy bar) found that they heated up.
Early, primitive ranges were sold for consumers in the 50's. They were as big as large refrigerators, but they really did work. They didn't shrink to a managable size and price until the late 70's and early 80's, however.
And just to get this off of my chesst, I really hate microwaves. Conventional stoves and ovens work fine for me: there are few kinds of food that I make that can be zapped. More intracate preparation is usually required.
Well, as far as Japanese go, here's my opinion, which is probably not worth a wooden nickel, but what the hell:
During the Shogunate, which is what most people think of when they think medieval Japan, was quite similar to medieval Europe. There was a lot of social stratification, and not much social mobility.
When Perry opened Japan in the 19th century, some groups saw the advantages that access to the west could grant them, and this sparked the Meiji Restoration. During this period, Japan adopted a lot of things from the west, and it became possible for people to actually work hard and increase their, or at least their descendant's chances in life.
It's impressive as hell that the Japanese could go from their medieval culture to one that was a major world power in less than a hundred years. Given that this was happening at the same time as a dynastic cycle was ending in China (exacerbated by similar contact with the west), it doesn't seem likely that it's genetic.
Anyway, the culture hadn't changed _that_ significantly in some ways though. After we thoroughly destroyed Japan during the war, and sent MacArthur to rebuild it in his image, then Japanese culture was massively altered.
Flashing back to Perry, the nobility and samurai began to listen after they kept getting beaten in combat. This was a very basic way of measuring superiority, and new tactics (like adopting some of ours) were a smart plan. To keep trying the same thing would have been futile.
After the war it again became evident that old tactics, like conquering the Pacific Ocean and everything in and near it, were not going to go over well.
During the economic bubble of the 80's was probably Japan's height (so far) as a world power. They're still way the hell up there, but no one is seriously considering that they'll own everything anymore. Oddly enough, this is what people thought about Americans during the 50s and 60s.
I'd say that all of those generations, for whom failure was fresh in their minds, tried new things harder and found success.
Now we face the current generation, which is riding on the success of the prior one and is not actively going forward. IIRC they've got a nasty recession in Asia (and Japan specifically) right now. This should not daunt sufficiently motivated people. The US went from a crippling depression to being the #1 country in the world in less than twenty years. Japan went from rubble to a major world economic power in less than forty.
We, ourselves, may be having trouble, but it's interesting to note that the in charge generation here are the Baby Boomers, who also rode their parent's success and as they took over in the 70's and 80's we started having problems. My generation is up next, but a significant number (it's really stupid to measure these things by birthdate, I know - there will always be people too dumb to achieve anything no matter how rich or poor they are) are pretty hard driven sorts. I am, and my friends are. So this could be good, although it's horribly depressing if the failure that eggs us on to success is internal in origin.
So as for Japan, the 'otaku' generation (which only describes a small number of people, but is the only nickname I've heard) is probably going to screw up, and the one after that may do much better.
YMMV - I'm not a fortune teller, nor do I know very much about the Japanese. Corrections are gladly accepted.
Slashdot Mirror
Space Sanitation Local 322
Just imagine how this would lend itself towards death by aspiration as well. Better wear a mask when you go to Six Flags Over L5
Check
Elevator
Check
Doorknob
Check
Cat
ehhh... let's say half a check for now
Wife
Not applicable (besides, no one knows how women work anyway)
Stereo System
Check
Pocket Knife
Check
Key
Check
Comb
Check
Toaster
Check
Oven
Check
Light Switch
Check
Dresser Drawer
Wish I had one right now, but Check
This was easy. Mostly because you didn't mention sewing machines. Sewing machines give me fits.
Gee with this sort of behavior, I can only wonder how long it'll be before there's financial security in our time.
Idiots.
The iMac is a good computer for what it is: an entry level Mac. Anyone who thinks that it's comparable to the latest greatest PIII or G4 or whatever is just being stupid.
OTOH, I have a Mac and I think that the iMouse is the best thing since spam in a can. Much more comfortable than any other mouse I've ever used. I'd prefer it had five buttons, but you can't have everything. The point is that preference in mice, keyboards and monitors - the I/O that connects you to the computer - are a personal matter. Don't like the iMouse, get a different mouse. USB mice are usually pretty cheap. Lord knows I trashed the iKeyboard in favor of my reliable ol' Nimitz.
Regarding the memo you describe... I used to sell Macs and while I realize that price protection is mostly a thing of the past, it's better to preserve an excellent relationship with a customer than it is to clear merchandise and make a quick buck. You should ignore that kind of thing and even tell your customers to go elsewhere if they'll save money. Do freebie work for them (if it's not serious, like adding RAM). It's a lousy idea to run a business based solely on money.
Idiot star trek writers. They took a perfectly good distributed system and installed a single point of failure. That's the sort of thing that put me off of star trek (excepting the old series) and on to B5.
Oh yeah? Buy a share of MS stock and you can sue him till the cows come home. Winning is another matter, but you can sue him.
Personally, I think it's nuts that corporations (which are, like copyright laws, supposed to be for the common good and as often as not are perverted) get a privileged status so readily. And no one ever revokes corporate charters anymore either (which is quite legal to do, if they aren't serving the common good, though the judicial system has forgotten this lately).
However, I don't recall that corporations have freedom of speech, certainly not (de facto at any rate) at the interstate level.
Their reputations just started a power dive to the lowest levels of hell. Relatively few people will trust them to have an opinion that isn't rented out to the highest bidder from here on in. Past opinions will be called into question. So long as people remember and associate them with this, they're screwed. I'd be pissed off if I were them.
Brandeis is down to 22% Macs? Really? I guess this is because they finally got a fscking clue and changed the craptastic appletalk network over to ethernet. I remember people bitching about it when i was a freshman in '94. We'd've lived in any dorm and paid extra for ethernet....
Don't be so sure. A lot of popular kid hangouts - video arcades, theaters, malls, often kick kids out during school hours. I never got thrown out of the library when I cut school though ;)
Yeah, but September 13, 1999 has already come and gone.
Everyone knows there's life on Europa. Those lines on the surface are from ice skating. I haven't seen a picture of it yet that didn't have a Figure-Zorb in it somewhere. I just hope that when they do send a probe they don't accidently have it arrive during the off-season, when everyone's over at South Molten Lead Beach on Venus.
The power company always has trouble with trees. Remember how a few years ago when the load was very high there was a blackout across much of the city? IIRC it was because the lines sagged (due to the waste heat generated by the passage of so many electrons) and hit a tree that was _way_ too close to the lines.
But other than Kate, which didn't really do much in my neighborhood, I can't remember a single serious storm in Tally for as long as I lived there. (I now live in Seattle where I'm told they're expecting a magnitude 8 or 9 quake any time now. Crap)
Not necessarily. I'm from Tallahassee, which has previously been described on /. as being the armpit of Florida. Which is actually pretty close to the truth if you're trying to figure out what part of the state it's in.
Anyway, we rarely ever get 'canes, and the last one that was major was back in '85, IIRC. Basically, 'canes would have to either cross the penninsula where it connects to the mainland, which is tricky; circle the entire way around the Gulf clockwise; or make a sharp right after entering the Gulf.
So you can live in Florida and be pretty safe from hurricanes. My younger siblings have, I'm sure, no idea what it's like to get hit by a hurricane. Thunderstorms, sure, but not a 'cane.
Yeah and it's a good thing that the news media doesn't rely on anonymous sources. Oh wait, they do.
Your stance would appear to include dismissing a cancer cure or the Secret of the Universe(TM) if it were posted by an AC. Even if they're right.
It would be a much better idea to read the post and decide based solely on the merits of the content whether or not it should be moderated. One's ability to sign their name does not indicate that they're stupid. Lord knows we've got lots of stupid users around here.
No. At the end of the Rainbow Connection is a mixture of partially hydrogenated soybean oil, cats, cellulose gum, chicken wire, dipotassium phosphate, thiamin, riboflavin, red dye #2, mono and diglycerides, shredded Office97 documentation and artificial colors and flavorings. And it's owned by Viacom.
Let me clarify: The mouse is inaccurate for just running around and shooting. It doesn't stay level and/or I tend to overshoot. Plus, since I'm right handed, it's easier to control everything important with my right hand than to switch to the mouse.
If I'm sniping, it means that no one is shooting back (yet) so I have more time to delicately move the mouse into position and blow some poor creature's head off. I wouldn't use the mouse in the thick of things, but then I wouldn't use a sniping rifle then either.
I don't have anything against analog control however; Goldeneye 007 uses a thumbstick pretty extensively for aiming and that's fine. But there's a big difference between the amazingly comfortable and well-thought out N64 controller and my keyboard and mouse.
Amazing... why do you feel that in order to be interesting a game must have lots of graphics and sound, and such. While there's nothing inherently wrong with either, it's quite rare to see a game that really takes advantage of them.
Myst is probably the best, and it's nothing more than a glorified text game.
And much as I like Marathon, first person shooters have a lot more to do with reflexes than anything else. Slapjack is not wholly dissimilar. (and id games are really ugly anyway... so much brown...)
I'm a big fan of text games. I played most of the old Infocom games on an Apple II in their hayday. And there are still a *lot* of really good ones out there. Of course, it's not usually listed in the system requirements, but you need to have a functional IMAGINATION. When you 'look' you have to use your brain to interpret the flavor text. But, as it happens, the imagination is very good at this sort of thing, if you've got one. The scariest picture in the world can't come close to what really scares you. 'You see a shady glen.' tells me a great deal with a mere 20-odd bytes. Maybe there are birches. I like them, so there are. I'm not reliant on what some other guy thinks it looks like.
While pretty much any computer nowadays can put up 3d spaceships and a midi soundtrack (hell, I played flight sims on a Mac Plus many moons ago) this does not always mean that a good game requires 3d spaceships and midi. Or whatever.
Text games are more or less the heart of computer games. They create a story and a setting with a minimum of cruft. At the heart of any good game (barring cards, or number games, or basic things like that) is going to be some kind of story. Multimedia just narrows down the possibilities that the story might contain to the narrow few that the author envisioned. It leaves little room for interpretation. It doesn't really let you make the story _your_own_.
I haven't played this particular game, but it might easily be a jillion times better than the best game on Dreamcast or Windows. Try to imagine it, but maybe it'll be a jillion times better because it gets you involved and isn't just eye candy. Crappy games are going to be crappy no matter how sparkly they are. Good games are going to be good even if they're 7bit ASCII text and require you to invest in a good stock of graph paper.
I suggest that you try it. If you let yourself, you might even like it....
Unfortunately Amazon doesn't carry it, but anyone planning on creating life will probably find "How I Did It" to be a handy guide.
Well what if the mp3s are located in, and were ripped by a citizen of, a country which does not have copyright laws? Is it illegal to tell people to go to a different country to take advantage of different laws?
;)
Wouldn't that mean that I could face jail time if I told people which countries legalized (or at least don't prosecute for use/possession of) certain drugs? This could be good, OTOH, because at least we'd be rid of some lawyers
Depending on where you're at, you can post 'illegal' mp3s, because they're not illegal everywhere.
I thought that the Iridium sats couldn't be repaired in space and had ~5 year lifespans before either breaking or more likely crashing into Australia (the target of choice for falling debris).
Whoever came up with the idea of building Iridium didn't seem to think it all through too well. The sat-to-sat routing is neat though, I'll give them that.
Well if they have a web page and can BTO I may just consider it....
No, no, microwave ranges come from RADAR work done during and around WW2. People who walked in front of big radars with food (one story claims it was a candy bar) found that they heated up.
Early, primitive ranges were sold for consumers in the 50's. They were as big as large refrigerators, but they really did work. They didn't shrink to a managable size and price until the late 70's and early 80's, however.
And just to get this off of my chesst, I really hate microwaves. Conventional stoves and ovens work fine for me: there are few kinds of food that I make that can be zapped. More intracate preparation is usually required.
No I don't. Although the proper American English spelling of the word is 'color' there are a lot of bad spellers in America.
coler, culer, kulur.... you reading this Altus? ;)
Well, as far as Japanese go, here's my opinion, which is probably not worth a wooden nickel, but what the hell:
During the Shogunate, which is what most people think of when they think medieval Japan, was quite similar to medieval Europe. There was a lot of social stratification, and not much social mobility.
When Perry opened Japan in the 19th century, some groups saw the advantages that access to the west could grant them, and this sparked the Meiji Restoration. During this period, Japan adopted a lot of things from the west, and it became possible for people to actually work hard and increase their, or at least their descendant's chances in life.
It's impressive as hell that the Japanese could go from their medieval culture to one that was a major world power in less than a hundred years. Given that this was happening at the same time as a dynastic cycle was ending in China (exacerbated by similar contact with the west), it doesn't seem likely that it's genetic.
Anyway, the culture hadn't changed _that_ significantly in some ways though. After we thoroughly destroyed Japan during the war, and sent MacArthur to rebuild it in his image, then Japanese culture was massively altered.
Flashing back to Perry, the nobility and samurai began to listen after they kept getting beaten in combat. This was a very basic way of measuring superiority, and new tactics (like adopting some of ours) were a smart plan. To keep trying the same thing would have been futile.
After the war it again became evident that old tactics, like conquering the Pacific Ocean and everything in and near it, were not going to go over well.
During the economic bubble of the 80's was probably Japan's height (so far) as a world power. They're still way the hell up there, but no one is seriously considering that they'll own everything anymore. Oddly enough, this is what people thought about Americans during the 50s and 60s.
I'd say that all of those generations, for whom failure was fresh in their minds, tried new things harder and found success.
Now we face the current generation, which is riding on the success of the prior one and is not actively going forward. IIRC they've got a nasty recession in Asia (and Japan specifically) right now. This should not daunt sufficiently motivated people. The US went from a crippling depression to being the #1 country in the world in less than twenty years. Japan went from rubble to a major world economic power in less than forty.
We, ourselves, may be having trouble, but it's interesting to note that the in charge generation here are the Baby Boomers, who also rode their parent's success and as they took over in the 70's and 80's we started having problems. My generation is up next, but a significant number (it's really stupid to measure these things by birthdate, I know - there will always be people too dumb to achieve anything no matter how rich or poor they are) are pretty hard driven sorts. I am, and my friends are. So this could be good, although it's horribly depressing if the failure that eggs us on to success is internal in origin.
So as for Japan, the 'otaku' generation (which only describes a small number of people, but is the only nickname I've heard) is probably going to screw up, and the one after that may do much better.
YMMV - I'm not a fortune teller, nor do I know very much about the Japanese. Corrections are gladly accepted.