At least Orlando has wind. I'm from Tallahassee and it's hotter in the summer, colder in the winder, no wind ever, and last I heard piss poor prospects for DSL &| cable modems.
Currently I'm in Boston, which is better (although in Boston proper, we have few cheap high speed connections. It's beginning to change though. Suburbs are better for that)
Well I think that the reason that Omaha has so much fiber that you can bury people with their computers and they _still_ get better connections than I do, is because it's basically the largest city in the geographic center of the US.
This made it a favorite switching station for the phone companies - LOTS of calls get routed through Omaha.
IIRC, from a book I have (the name escapes me - if anyone's interested say so and I'll dig it up) in the planning stages for the ARPANet, a centralized system was considered, which would probably have also been in Omaha. Then they decided to go with the distributed topology. At least, that was the idea anyhow.
But the point is that while there's a lot of fiber there, there are not as many connections that originate there, and that's more interesting for the poll.
I'd have to agree here. Dreamweaver is probably the best GUI HTML editor you're going to find. I'm especially fond of it because it comes with BBEdit, which is one of the best text editors on the Mac.
Yeah, I know all that. But unless you already do know it, then all you think about is the clock. Ever wonder why Apple switched from calling it's processors by name (e.g. 68040, 604e) to vague psuedonames (i.e. G3, G4 - which are not the actual processor names). I think it's to compete with the Pentia. The G3 sounds better than the P2. The G4 sounds better than the P3 (and pretty certainly is too, software notwithstanding) First, higher MHz does yield a performance benefit all across the board, without having to rewrite software (which tend to have their own speed governors if they really need them). New instructions are also good, but do not provide an immediate benefit. They require effort on the part of programmers. Like subprocessors (DSPs are the best example, but there are others) their popularity waxes and wanes. For decades there's been oscillations between speeding up systems through higher efficiency CPUs, or speeding up systems through lots of ancillary chips. I like the idea of software 3D accellerators better than HW ones. At the moment this is not the best way to go, but at some point it probably will be. Then it'll become too much overhead, and we'll be back to chips. I like the Altivec stuff, and I think it will make the system better. But marketing is important. If no one buys a good system because of confusion (..cough..Mac..cough..Amiga..cough..Connection Machine..cough) then it's screwed. A faster clock and continued high percieved performance (including bencharks and other lies) would probably benefit the mac more than an MMX like set of instructions. Even if they kick ass. Again, I'd _really_ like to have both. And I realize that a lot of the support for Altivec comes not from programmers per se, but just recompiling with the new libraries and such. (fine tuning can't hurt though) Having sold Macs before, I know that it is annoying as hell to get someone clueless to believe that a slower clock is not necessarily bad, as all other things are not equal. Same goes for multiple processors - Intel is probably annoyed at the complexities added by P3 vs. P2 vs. Celeron. Trust me, if AIM brings out chips that are faster than the P3, similarly priced or better, with good performance they'll sell a lot. Slower, higher performance chips, similar cost will not work quite as well. (A cryo-cooler option would be nice !_!) So go Motorola! Go IBM! Go Apple! Go banana!
The announcement is about an embedded chip. That's nice but I'm more interested in the larger processors... G4 and such. Honestly I side with IBM, in that faster chips are better (that is in that it will speed up all operations w/o rewriting anything & makes for better marketing) than additional instructions. 'Course, I'd rather have both - I won't deny that Altivec is cool, I just think that higher clock speeds would be better overall.
Well Albequerque was where MITS was located. IIRC, Gates was at that time failing at Harvard and Allen was working for Honeywell. Gates convinced Allen to quit his job and go to Albequerque whilst Gates stayed in Cambridge. They developed a BASIC for the Altair using computers at Harvard, and managed to get some sort of deal with MITS.
Although they had already developed some stuff (a car-counter, as Traf-O-Data, or something like that) they really weren't doing crap until the Altair came along. 4.1 seconds after deciding to sell their BASIC software, Bill decided that other people copying his software was bad. He has not yet come to the conclusion that his copying other people's software is bad.;)
No, I realize that staves are very useful weapons (although the difficulty in holding a lightsaber of any kind, along the blade is a problem here). It's just that that's _exactly_ the sort of thing that a fanboy would come up with. A movie entirely about Boba Fett is also the sort of thing that fans would go nuts over, but might not hold any more interest to 'normal' fans than a movie centered around another character. My point was just that the lightstaff feels to me like something that was tacked on, rather than really meshing in with the 'history' of the SW series. I dunno, it just doesn't sit too well with me, I guess. Maybe my opinion will change once I see it.
Those cameras are also computer peripherals. You can hook 'em up directly to the computer and shuffle video back and forth. Most firewire devices are in fact peers (it reminds me of a small LAN), but not all devices can send commands to other devices like a computer or camcorder almost certainly would. The hotswappableness of the drives (even during transfers) is _very_ nice i hear. Still, my next drive will be SCSI, because I still have room on that bus for internal devices. Might as well make the most of it, you know. I'll get to externals once i fill my drive bays.
Are you seriously going to tell me that any of the SW movies were designed for the adult or die-hard fan? Screw that. Personally I think the double sided lightsaber is too much of a fan invention - I don't like it much.
Nah man, I was 7 when Jedi came out. And I loved it. If Lucas made a movie that appeals best to kids, I've got no problems with it - the others appealed to me when I was a kid. Why should he target me specifically?
I think that a lot of the disappointment about the new movie can be traced back to this. How many people here grew up on the Star Wars movies? A crapload. I did't see SW till ~1981, on a friends' Beta, because I was born in '76. Saw Empire at day camp, after it had just about finished it's theatrical release. Saw Jedi when it came out in '83. Naturally I love 'em all.
I suspect though that relatively few people who were in their 20's or older back in '77 are as big fans as we are (YMMV). Basically it's nostalgia. I mean, they kick ass and all, but a lot of our enthusiasm is due to having been exposed to SW a lot growing up.
Anyhow, although a lot of us have matured, and want to see a more mature SW film (More mature than the Ewok movies, probably less than 'Leia does Alderaan';)
*BUT*, although the new movies will be darker and probably cooler, the first one is going to have to be fairly light (otherwise it wouldn't be able to contrast with the later movies). And Lucas is still making movies that will appeal best to kids. We've aged, but the 'intended' audience of the movies has not. If kids who are currently growing up see the new movie, I bet you dollars to donuts they'll be as hooked as we are. We just have to remember our inner lil' geek and we'll love 'em too.
I am _SO_ there on the 19th. And that weekend. And maybe a couple other times....
That's a good point. Basically I think that there's two ways to go about this, but your idea might be better. I had been thinking that if you release a lot of compelling games that rely on the new peripheral they'll drive sales of it. Your idea is that if you release a perhiperhal that enhances all (more or less) existing games the quality will encourage upgrades, although the games continue to be playable. I like the second much better, but it would mean that programmers would have to be VERY careful to code for not only the standard hardware, but unspecified hardware too. If made _really_ cheap I can immediately see some good stuff there. For instance, a better set of default sound samples (I know that the storage medium doesn't encourage this...) could be replaced for ~$5-10 with clearer ones. Since they'd be basically the same (maybe some standard additional ones - appending them to the spec) it would be an easy upgrade. Better 3d hardware would be a lot more difficult and expensive, but I do like this idea.
Why not do this: Build some sort of commonplace drive (I'm thinking ultra low power zip - cd probably won't work). Then at the same time sell an IR perhiperhal that passes data into the mpeg player via the drive. Think of the 'casette tapes' used to bridge cd walkmen and car stereos. Same deal. I like the Zip because they're pretty common, hold more than 1.5MB (floppies are pretty useless for mpegs at current compression ratios) and it's not so exotic that i'd never use it for anything else. I already have a zip. Added uses for the thing are a bonus. OTOH, I have little or no reason to get a Clik or something like that because they're quite rare.
Well, while it sounds pretty cool, I have to say that there are two important factors for what people will want to buy. 1st off, there's performance. PS2 sounds like it will kick quite a lot of booty, although I think that the Emotion Engine thing is basically hype. 2nd, and more important to most people, is price. If PS2 sells at ~$100-150 it'll sell like heroin hotcakes. At ~$500+ it'll sell like, oh, NeoGeo, or 3DO. Hell man, after the Rev. C iMacs appeared, the earlier revisions dropped in price and outsold the new models. People would much rather save a few hundred bucks than get a better system. What I'd like to see is an expandable architecture. I know that add-ons for games have never done well in the past, but a dirt cheap add on that significantly increases performance, and which new games require to run would be the best bet. Consoles are not a market I'd want to deal with. Too scary.
Well, this is why I like to tell people the sorts of things that MS is up to. How they tend to invade people's privacy, illegally (or at least immorally) squash their competition, etc. Pretty much everyone tends to agree that they're doing bad stuff and need to be stopped by one mean or another. Having evangelized the Mac for years, I can offer you this point which I always try to remember, and has served me well. Don't bother discussing the relative merits of two technologies in the context of technology. Rather, adopt the view of an ordinary person who becomes aware of bad stuff. Discuss it as seen through their eyes (e.g. Open Source is good because you get to inspect the goods; who would spend big bucks on a product that you aren't allowed to inspect? What sort of service do you get from other monopolies? Cable? Local phone? Pretty lousy.) Just talk to people as one of the people. Even if it's just one person at a time, it's a start.
I rather liked the bit about how if he didn't cut out pages from his book (it currently stands at ~900 pgs - he had to remove some stuff, which will now be in a future book) it would be unprintable. Cool. (unfortunately, I devour text in both hardcopy and onscreen, so I wish it were longer. Clavell got away with 1400 page novels, why not Stephenson?)
I think you're missing my point. Why would someone practice golfing, for instance, when they can just pay someone to hit the ball for them? Or they can just tee off, or even just drop the ball any old place.
The point of most games is not to win, but to have played. If you want a 'badass' character then you should earn it. Otherwise two things result: 1st, you cheapen the entire experience of playing into an exercise in comparing disposable incomes. 2nd, you destroy the worth of such a character, because what's stopping other people from buying or making up better ones?
The point of a car, OTOH, is to go places. But I think that people who build their own cars have a better appreciation for cars, and the things that go into them, etc. than I ever will. They learned something, and they're better for having taken some time and expended some effort and having done so.
Anyway, no, I haven't played any of the Ultima games. I don't like computer roleplaying much, as it seems much more limited than regular playing. But I've read a bit about Ultima, and it seems to me that the point of the game is to impart a rather good set of morals/values to the player. Being the sort of person who immediately reads the end of a book does nothing for you. Give a hoot, don't cheat.
I never understood that about Magic (aka cardboard crack). Who the hell would play a game that was based pretty much entirely on spending cash? If I played cards (I don't really - I do role play, but Magic is not role playing AFAIK) then I'd just make my own. Either copies of existing cards stats (unlikely to be a copyright violation then) or just make up new ones. Who spends all that money on a piece of mass-printed cardboard when they could be buying Grape Squishies?
People are dumber than even *I* had thought possible.
Amazing! Of course, they're cheating (if you consider it a game) and buying a character, who succeeds primarily because of the player's skills and personality - not necessarily stats, screws things up. If I were playing a game, and a friend's behavior is replaced with that of a total stranger, I'll stop being friends.
Ultimately people who buy love are just fooling themselves, and people who cheat shouldn't play in the first place. Unfortunately I have a suspicion that my brother has just found a job as a professional gamer.;)
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Which way? ;)
At least Orlando has wind. I'm from Tallahassee and it's hotter in the summer, colder in the winder, no wind ever, and last I heard piss poor prospects for DSL &| cable modems.
Currently I'm in Boston, which is better (although in Boston proper, we have few cheap high speed connections. It's beginning to change though. Suburbs are better for that)
Well I think that the reason that Omaha has so much fiber that you can bury people with their computers and they _still_ get better connections than I do, is because it's basically the largest city in the geographic center of the US.
This made it a favorite switching station for the phone companies - LOTS of calls get routed through Omaha.
IIRC, from a book I have (the name escapes me - if anyone's interested say so and I'll dig it up) in the planning stages for the ARPANet, a centralized system was considered, which would probably have also been in Omaha. Then they decided to go with the distributed topology. At least, that was the idea anyhow.
But the point is that while there's a lot of fiber there, there are not as many connections that originate there, and that's more interesting for the poll.
I'd have to agree here. Dreamweaver is probably the best GUI HTML editor you're going to find. I'm especially fond of it because it comes with BBEdit, which is one of the best text editors on the Mac.
And as we all know, BBEdit doesn't suck.
Moderate that one up!
Yeah, I know all that. But unless you already do know it, then all you think about is the clock.
Ever wonder why Apple switched from calling it's processors by name (e.g. 68040, 604e) to vague psuedonames (i.e. G3, G4 - which are not the actual processor names). I think it's to compete with the Pentia. The G3 sounds better than the P2. The G4 sounds better than the P3 (and pretty certainly is too, software notwithstanding)
First, higher MHz does yield a performance benefit all across the board, without having to rewrite software (which tend to have their own speed governors if they really need them). New instructions are also good, but do not provide an immediate benefit. They require effort on the part of programmers. Like subprocessors (DSPs are the best example, but there are others) their popularity waxes and wanes. For decades there's been oscillations between speeding up systems through higher efficiency CPUs, or speeding up systems through lots of ancillary chips. I like the idea of software 3D accellerators better than HW ones. At the moment this is not the best way to go, but at some point it probably will be. Then it'll become too much overhead, and we'll be back to chips.
I like the Altivec stuff, and I think it will make the system better. But marketing is important. If no one buys a good system because of confusion (..cough..Mac..cough..Amiga..cough..Connection Machine..cough) then it's screwed. A faster clock and continued high percieved performance (including bencharks and other lies) would probably benefit the mac more than an MMX like set of instructions. Even if they kick ass. Again, I'd _really_ like to have both. And I realize that a lot of the support for Altivec comes not from programmers per se, but just recompiling with the new libraries and such. (fine tuning can't hurt though)
Having sold Macs before, I know that it is annoying as hell to get someone clueless to believe that a slower clock is not necessarily bad, as all other things are not equal. Same goes for multiple processors - Intel is probably annoyed at the complexities added by P3 vs. P2 vs. Celeron. Trust me, if AIM brings out chips that are faster than the P3, similarly priced or better, with good performance they'll sell a lot. Slower, higher performance chips, similar cost will not work quite as well. (A cryo-cooler option would be nice !_!)
So go Motorola! Go IBM! Go Apple! Go banana!
The announcement is about an embedded chip. That's nice but I'm more interested in the larger processors... G4 and such. Honestly I side with IBM, in that faster chips are better (that is in that it will speed up all operations w/o rewriting anything & makes for better marketing) than additional instructions. 'Course, I'd rather have both - I won't deny that Altivec is cool, I just think that higher clock speeds would be better overall.
That was awful. You'll be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes. ;)
I invented artificial dairy sweeteners, and for that I'm sorry.
Oh yes it is.
Geez. Kibo hasn't replied to this post yet? If this were usenet, I'd think something had gone horribly horribly right^H^H^H^H^H wrong.
Well Albequerque was where MITS was located. IIRC, Gates was at that time failing at Harvard and Allen was working for Honeywell. Gates convinced Allen to quit his job and go to Albequerque whilst Gates stayed in Cambridge. They developed a BASIC for the Altair using computers at Harvard, and managed to get some sort of deal with MITS.
;)
Although they had already developed some stuff (a car-counter, as Traf-O-Data, or something like that) they really weren't doing crap until the Altair came along. 4.1 seconds after deciding to sell their BASIC software, Bill decided that other people copying his software was bad. He has not yet come to the conclusion that his copying other people's software is bad.
No, I realize that staves are very useful weapons (although the difficulty in holding a lightsaber of any kind, along the blade is a problem here). It's just that that's _exactly_ the sort of thing that a fanboy would come up with. A movie entirely about Boba Fett is also the sort of thing that fans would go nuts over, but might not hold any more interest to 'normal' fans than a movie centered around another character. My point was just that the lightstaff feels to me like something that was tacked on, rather than really meshing in with the 'history' of the SW series. I dunno, it just doesn't sit too well with me, I guess. Maybe my opinion will change once I see it.
Those cameras are also computer peripherals. You can hook 'em up directly to the computer and shuffle video back and forth. Most firewire devices are in fact peers (it reminds me of a small LAN), but not all devices can send commands to other devices like a computer or camcorder almost certainly would.
The hotswappableness of the drives (even during transfers) is _very_ nice i hear. Still, my next drive will be SCSI, because I still have room on that bus for internal devices. Might as well make the most of it, you know. I'll get to externals once i fill my drive bays.
No one who saw the movie would say that.
Itchy's a jerk.
Are you seriously going to tell me that any of the SW movies were designed for the adult or die-hard fan? Screw that. Personally I think the double sided lightsaber is too much of a fan invention - I don't like it much.
Nah man, I was 7 when Jedi came out. And I loved it. If Lucas made a movie that appeals best to kids, I've got no problems with it - the others appealed to me when I was a kid. Why should he target me specifically?
I think that a lot of the disappointment about the new movie can be traced back to this. How many people here grew up on the Star Wars movies? A crapload. I did't see SW till ~1981, on a friends' Beta, because I was born in '76. Saw Empire at day camp, after it had just about finished it's theatrical release. Saw Jedi when it came out in '83. Naturally I love 'em all.
;)
I suspect though that relatively few people who were in their 20's or older back in '77 are as big fans as we are (YMMV). Basically it's nostalgia. I mean, they kick ass and all, but a lot of our enthusiasm is due to having been exposed to SW a lot growing up.
Anyhow, although a lot of us have matured, and want to see a more mature SW film (More mature than the Ewok movies, probably less than 'Leia does Alderaan'
*BUT*, although the new movies will be darker and probably cooler, the first one is going to have to be fairly light (otherwise it wouldn't be able to contrast with the later movies). And Lucas is still making movies that will appeal best to kids. We've aged, but the 'intended' audience of the movies has not. If kids who are currently growing up see the new movie, I bet you dollars to donuts they'll be as hooked as we are. We just have to remember our inner lil' geek and we'll love 'em too.
I am _SO_ there on the 19th. And that weekend. And maybe a couple other times....
That's a good point. Basically I think that there's two ways to go about this, but your idea might be better.
I had been thinking that if you release a lot of compelling games that rely on the new peripheral they'll drive sales of it.
Your idea is that if you release a perhiperhal that enhances all (more or less) existing games the quality will encourage upgrades, although the games continue to be playable.
I like the second much better, but it would mean that programmers would have to be VERY careful to code for not only the standard hardware, but unspecified hardware too. If made _really_ cheap I can immediately see some good stuff there. For instance, a better set of default sound samples (I know that the storage medium doesn't encourage this...) could be replaced for ~$5-10 with clearer ones. Since they'd be basically the same (maybe some standard additional ones - appending them to the spec) it would be an easy upgrade. Better 3d hardware would be a lot more difficult and expensive, but I do like this idea.
Why not do this:
Build some sort of commonplace drive (I'm thinking ultra low power zip - cd probably won't work). Then at the same time sell an IR perhiperhal that passes data into the mpeg player via the drive. Think of the 'casette tapes' used to bridge cd walkmen and car stereos. Same deal. I like the Zip because they're pretty common, hold more than 1.5MB (floppies are pretty useless for mpegs at current compression ratios) and it's not so exotic that i'd never use it for anything else. I already have a zip. Added uses for the thing are a bonus. OTOH, I have little or no reason to get a Clik or something like that because they're quite rare.
Watchoo talkin' about Willis? My PowerMac G3 already has an IBM copper chip in it. And it's about five months old. (good god this market is insane)
Well, while it sounds pretty cool, I have to say that there are two important factors for what people will want to buy.
1st off, there's performance. PS2 sounds like it will kick quite a lot of booty, although I think that the Emotion Engine thing is basically hype.
2nd, and more important to most people, is price. If PS2 sells at ~$100-150 it'll sell like heroin hotcakes. At ~$500+ it'll sell like, oh, NeoGeo, or 3DO.
Hell man, after the Rev. C iMacs appeared, the earlier revisions dropped in price and outsold the new models. People would much rather save a few hundred bucks than get a better system. What I'd like to see is an expandable architecture. I know that add-ons for games have never done well in the past, but a dirt cheap add on that significantly increases performance, and which new games require to run would be the best bet.
Consoles are not a market I'd want to deal with. Too scary.
Well, this is why I like to tell people the sorts of things that MS is up to. How they tend to invade people's privacy, illegally (or at least immorally) squash their competition, etc. Pretty much everyone tends to agree that they're doing bad stuff and need to be stopped by one mean or another.
Having evangelized the Mac for years, I can offer you this point which I always try to remember, and has served me well. Don't bother discussing the relative merits of two technologies in the context of technology. Rather, adopt the view of an ordinary person who becomes aware of bad stuff. Discuss it as seen through their eyes (e.g. Open Source is good because you get to inspect the goods; who would spend big bucks on a product that you aren't allowed to inspect? What sort of service do you get from other monopolies? Cable? Local phone? Pretty lousy.)
Just talk to people as one of the people. Even if it's just one person at a time, it's a start.
I rather liked the bit about how if he didn't cut out pages from his book (it currently stands at ~900 pgs - he had to remove some stuff, which will now be in a future book) it would be unprintable. Cool. (unfortunately, I devour text in both hardcopy and onscreen, so I wish it were longer. Clavell got away with 1400 page novels, why not Stephenson?)
I think you're missing my point. Why would someone practice golfing, for instance, when they can just pay someone to hit the ball for them? Or they can just tee off, or even just drop the ball any old place.
The point of most games is not to win, but to have played. If you want a 'badass' character then you should earn it. Otherwise two things result: 1st, you cheapen the entire experience of playing into an exercise in comparing disposable incomes. 2nd, you destroy the worth of such a character, because what's stopping other people from buying or making up better ones?
The point of a car, OTOH, is to go places. But I think that people who build their own cars have a better appreciation for cars, and the things that go into them, etc. than I ever will. They learned something, and they're better for having taken some time and expended some effort and having done so.
Anyway, no, I haven't played any of the Ultima games. I don't like computer roleplaying much, as it seems much more limited than regular playing. But I've read a bit about Ultima, and it seems to me that the point of the game is to impart a rather good set of morals/values to the player. Being the sort of person who immediately reads the end of a book does nothing for you. Give a hoot, don't cheat.
I never understood that about Magic (aka cardboard crack). Who the hell would play a game that was based pretty much entirely on spending cash? If I played cards (I don't really - I do role play, but Magic is not role playing AFAIK) then I'd just make my own. Either copies of existing cards stats (unlikely to be a copyright violation then) or just make up new ones. Who spends all that money on a piece of mass-printed cardboard when they could be buying Grape Squishies?
People are dumber than even *I* had thought possible.
;)
Amazing! Of course, they're cheating (if you consider it a game) and buying a character, who succeeds primarily because of the player's skills and personality - not necessarily stats, screws things up. If I were playing a game, and a friend's behavior is replaced with that of a total stranger, I'll stop being friends.
Ultimately people who buy love are just fooling themselves, and people who cheat shouldn't play in the first place. Unfortunately I have a suspicion that my brother has just found a job as a professional gamer.