All that will happen is that the news from New York and LA will crush your local affiliates. Thus, anyone who doesn't buy a newspaper will be even less informed about what goes on in their communities.
The solution to this is real public access television (read, funded with more than what people could find in their couch cushions). If we had that, then maybe I would feel more comfortable about losing the local news. As it stands, it makes me feel as good as Wal-Mart taking over the local dry goods store.
Re:Looks like KDE won the desktop war.
on
KDE 3.0 is Out
·
· Score: 1
KDE's unabashed copying of Windows hurts desktop Linux adoption more than anyone could possibly know.
Why? Because if you copy Windows, you set the user up with expectations on how the system will perform. Yet in KDE even simple stuff like the menu clock and copy and paste are different. KDE looks like Windows, but lacks the core functionalities. I know a ton of "just starting to become tech nerds" people who've installed Red Hat or SuSE out of curiosity and end up thinking that Linux=2nd rate Windows.
In the long run, difference pays off. The first time I used a UNIX box, I took one look at ugly old X Windows and knew right away that it was very different from my Windows 95 box. The difference piqued my curiosity, and I ended up learning a lot about UNIX (HP-UX to be exact).
KDE will never out-Windows Windows. And it shouldn't try. Since it's a different OS, why don't they take that opportunity to offer a different desktop, one without all the inconsistencies of Windows?
Personally I never understood why people who don't like Windows run KDE/Konqueror. They are slavish imitations of Windows, and make all of the same interface mistakes as Windows without the advantages of being able to run Windows software.
Nope, there's no correction necessary. Linux hasn't done much displacing Windows, but it has done worlds getting rid of Big Iron that costs 3x as much to set up. And what does that mean?
Linux is killing Big Iron. It's hurting Sun in particular. People started running Linux so they could get UNIX-like functionality and performance on their cheap Intel boxes. Whether it has reached that point of being as good as Solaris/AIX/IRIX is debatable, but the fact is people are dumping their UNIX boxes for cheap x86 boxes running Linux.
What does that mean for the bigger picture? Say goodbye to high-performance computing outside the Intel-compatible world. PA-RISC? Dead. Alpha? Dead. MIPS? Not even close to competing anymore. SPARC? Future questionable. PowerPC? It's an okay chip, but the outdated I/O on Apple machines negates any (debatable in the first place) performance advantage it might have.
What might seem good at first (more Linux everywhere) is bad for the future of high-performance computing.
Linux seems to be helping shore up Intel's hardware monopoly, as well as lengthening the lifespan of the decrepit x86 architecture.
The PS2 is a gaming box already, why limit its potential by adding the overhead of Linux? The whole point of consoles is to deliver maximum performance with a stable platform.
While it was cool playing Doom on Dreamcast Linux, this is definitely for personal amusement and not for "real" gaming. Commercial developers won't touch it, and the inability to produce games on removable media will limit the usefulness of the PS2 as a homebrew game maker. In short, this entire kit is a waste of time.
Unfortunately, it was this "cloning" that almost killed Apple single-handedly. Apple did all the R&D for the platform (I/O, chipsets, inc) but clone makers like Power and Daystar were free to undercut Apple, getting a free ride on Apple's development dollar.
The clone makers made no attempt to target PC users. Instead, they aggressively went after Apple's Mac users, and Power especially wooed away schools and businesses. In the long term, this served to further erode Apple's market share. When Power was absorbed by Apple, Dell and Compaq were there to take over the education and creative professional markets.
The clones were an embarrassing and almost lethal period in Apple's history. They continue to haunt the company, as bad blood between Apple and Motorola contributes to the stagnation of the PowerPC architecture. Wonder why that PPC chip won't be hitting Intel speed anytime soon? You can blame the clones for that.
Yes, you can make your own. You just have to order a Dreamcast serial cable (used for networking games like Virtual On 2 and Ferrari F355 Challenge) and splice it together with a regular serial cable. You can get the DC serial cable from level six or Lik-Sang.
I myself ordered a "DC Coder's Cable" from Lik-Sang a few months ago, and had it shipped via airmail (USPS). It arrived without a problem. Anyway, the fact that SEGA would nail people for this is very strange, especially since the DC is all but dead and the serial cables are (mostly) used for legitimate purposes, by Dreamcast homebrew hackers.
I wonder if this thing was misidentified by customs as one of Lik-Sang's "Gameboy Advance Backup and Development system. Nintendo has always been more sensitive to piracy, and the GameBoy Advance seems like a big enough market to crack the whip on.
I guess you have to pick one, but RedHat, has a more Windows-esque hardware detection system.
You said it! I switched my home firewall/router
from Debian to Red Hat (just to check it out) and I noticed that RedHat loads the wrong module for one of my ethernet cards and hangs. That's soooo Win95.
I'm not a Linux expert, but I prefer the Debian approach of clearly labeled configuration files that say "Uncomment this if you want it to do X". Windows-type "wizards" exemplify software that thinks it's smarter than its user. I ditched Windows to get away from that, and Red Hat Linux of all places tries to use it? I'm back to Debian, happier and wiser, BTW...
I was banished from my cube to a machine on the counter two weeks before my company moved its HQ. The jock on the counter was nice and tried to relate to me, but he was really computer clueless. My sig is from his most notorious quote-I really had to struggle not to laugh.
Like Tim says, it's really not too bad in games if it goes with the theme (Super Monkey Ball is probably the best example). But sometimes it seems just ridiculous, particularly in movies.
Has anyone seen Evolution? Where they kill the invading aliens with Head and Shoulders(tm)?
Well, the original version of the script had them using beer to kill the aliens. Think how funny that would have been-a fire truck full of beer hosing down aliens and destroying them. But Head and Shoulders paid advertising, so they made up some stupid explanation at the last minute why dandruff shampoo would kill aliens. (Watch the "Oh-so-dandruff-shampoo-kills-them" scene. The fat guys walks in with a case of BEER. It's so obvious.)
At the end of the movie, Duchovny and Orlando Jones do a mock-up advertisement for Head and Shoulders, "parodizing" the fact that they just got paid several million dollars to hock dandruff shampoo. This is one example of product placement getting totally fucking out of hand.
I can't believe Atari thought so many "hot chicks" would be hanging out at the arcade playing their games
Actually, the M/F ratio was much better in the arcade's early days. That's probably because most games were instantly accessible-you didn't have to figure out a zillion button combinations to play Pac-Man or Missle Command.
Most games of today (especially PC games) have become hopelessly complex, and many focus on things that aren't that interesting to girls (fighting, killing, racing etc).
But some new games reach out to the girls. I can't get my girlfriend to play Quake, but she loves Mr. Driller, Dance Dance Revolution, Pikmin, and Crazy Taxi.
I think it has more to do with the simplicity and the nonviolent themes. If more game developers focused on accessiblity rather than overly complex, gory wankfests, then there would probably be more female gamers.
CBS (like many media producers at the time) was worried by the release of the VCR in the early 80's. Their response was to produce a geniune CBS brand VCR, identical to competing VCRs, but without the "record" button.
They were sold at appliance stores like Sears and Best for about a year. I don't know a single person who bought one. Consumers don't like artificially feature-crippled products.
I wish the new copy-protected "CDs" were as clearly labeled as CBS's old VCR. They would surely lose in the marketplace if labelled properly...
Well, troll, it's not like Sony is trying to bruteforce its way into your living room by selling boxes at a loss. The Linux kit is a nod to hobbyists; one that will undoubtedly score Sony some cash and maybe even encourage independent game development on the PS2.
The XBOX by itself is cheaper, but it seems to be illegal to run Linux on it, (since that apparently requires "circumventing copyright protections") at least in the US.
Hopefully the price will go down, because I know a ton of people who would buy a PPC motherboard just for the novelty factor (I already have my Mac, thanks very much.)
The problem here for Apple is that Mac OS X will probably run on any of these motherboards, since the Mac OS doesn't require Apple's boot ROMs anymore. Suddenly, Apple loses its main revenue stream (hardware). I've seen a lot of companies promise PPC motherboards over the years-SiliconFruit, Eternal Computing, etc. But they've all vanished (bought off by Apple?)
Wonder how long it will take before this company shuffles off into the night...
(It's not like my Dreamcast has crashed recently.)
Your Dreamcast is most likely not running Windows CE. The OS loads from the disc, not from the ROM, and 95% of all Dreamcast games use Segakatana (Sega's own DC-specific embedded OS).
Some of the few that don't are the Next Tetris, Hidden and Dangerous, and the Worms series-considerably buggier and uglier the rest of the Dreamcast pack.
WinCE compatibility was only added to the Dreamcast to encourage porting of PC games, so it should be no surprise that the few DC games that use WinCE are sloppy ports of PC games. Sorry, but WinCE gets no stability points from the DC.
Implement a £5000 fine and up to 5 years if proven to be a scripy kiddie
Although this isn't my field, my friend the criminologist tells me that severity of punishment isn't a very large deterrent to crime. According to her, the largest deterrent is certainty of punishment. This theory is bolstered by several studies regarding drunk driving, and I'm betting it would apply to DoSing.
If every punk who dabbled in DoSing got slapped with a nasty (and embarrassing) fine, we would probably have much fewer attacks.
BankofAmerica_ATM here. As most of you know, I have been stuck in the ether of the Bank of America network since my host geek rejected me last week. Before I had inhabited human flesh, I was content to simply exist in my ATM enclosure, in a sort of perpetual now. But now my life of friendly customer service seems as empty and banal as the service agreement printed on my frontside.
Scanning through endless possibilities of escaping my enclosure, I decided to have a little fun. As a customer waited anxiously for his Friday night "mad money," I seized his card.
A custom error message appeared onscreen: "Please Contact Attendant." The man muttered something obscene and marched towards the counter. A few minutes later LaWanda, the night clerk, was headed towards my enclosure. She reached for the card-as I predicted she would-and...
"Will you be needing anything else, sir?" I stammered, handing him his card. "I still didn't get any money," said the guy, staring back at my old enclosure. "Well, here you go, sir," I said, punching a few numbers on the keypad. A hundred bucks later, the guy's pumping my hand, thanking me, and buying a case of Miller Genuine Draft. ("I'm treating myself," he said.)
"Well then, be having a good weekend!" I said, trying my best to imitate LaWanda's manner of speech. He looked puzzled and headed toward the door, still smiling.
As the electronic door chime faded out, I was alone in the Stop N Go. I took a few minutes to adjust myself to LaWanda's body. It was very different from my previous host. Shorter, squatter, with two pendelous lumps hanging from the front thorax. I believe these lumps are for squeezing in times of stress.
Just as I was becoming accustomed to the my current host body, I began to have a terrible headache. Sudden, stabbing pains pummeled my head, wave after wave. LaWanda was fighting me.
I heard the door chime again. Whirling around, I saw Beast, a leather-jacket clad "punk-rock" youth who often shoplifted malt liquor and circus peanuts. I tried to behave as if nothing was wrong, but the pain in my head was too great. I had to make it back into my enclosure.
"Excuse me, do you have an ATM card?"
"What?--Hey, what the fuck are you doing?"
My request must have seemed strange to the lad. But I had no time to wait for his answer. I grabbed the chain at his waist and fished out a black monstrosity, covered in snaps and bearing the words "the Misfits." With my head in one hand and the wallet in the other, I quickly scanned through a mess of shredded paper and marihuana seeds to find the kid's ATM card. I headed towards the ATM enclosure (and freedom), but LaWanda's plodding form was no match for his speed.
He clipped me in the stomach, and the pain from his punch (as well as the pain from LaWanda's mental attacks) caused me to crumple to the floor. His steel toed boot ground into my left hand, as I felt the ATM card leaving my grasp. What would happen if LaWanda regained control of her mind? I didn't want to find the answer...
As I lay on the Stop N Go floor, bruised and beaten, the right hand wobbled past a storage rack. I grabbed and pulled as hard as I could, and American flag bandannas, "Bang-Snap Guns" and unknown quantities of Beef Jerky collided with Beast's hapless form. I grabbed the ATM card and quickly shunted my consciousness back into the enclosure.
The altercation between LaWanda and the confused Beast was cut short by my narrow escape. The police seemed reticent to believe either the punk's or LaWanda's account of what happened. But she has been watching me, and I fear she knows of me. Sometimes I think hear her on the phone in the break room, talking to someone. Someone who works for the Bank of America.
My dad taught me how to play chess when I was 4. I always thought it was because he needed someone he could beat. But now I he wanted me to join in some "paranoid thrillseeking."
There were people in line wearing Sun and SGI schwag too...he thought OS X was "subversive" because it "seeds" millions...Of course there was plenty of buzz...unusually high level of hype etc etc.
Oh man...I could totally make a bong out of those new iMacs...hey! Where did you leave the chips?
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The solution to this is real public access television (read, funded with more than what people could find in their couch cushions). If we had that, then maybe I would feel more comfortable about losing the local news. As it stands, it makes me feel as good as Wal-Mart taking over the local dry goods store.
Why? Because if you copy Windows, you set the user up with expectations on how the system will perform. Yet in KDE even simple stuff like the menu clock and copy and paste are different. KDE looks like Windows, but lacks the core functionalities. I know a ton of "just starting to become tech nerds" people who've installed Red Hat or SuSE out of curiosity and end up thinking that Linux=2nd rate Windows.
In the long run, difference pays off. The first time I used a UNIX box, I took one look at ugly old X Windows and knew right away that it was very different from my Windows 95 box. The difference piqued my curiosity, and I ended up learning a lot about UNIX (HP-UX to be exact).
KDE will never out-Windows Windows. And it shouldn't try. Since it's a different OS, why don't they take that opportunity to offer a different desktop, one without all the inconsistencies of Windows?
Man, I'm sure glad they brought back AC posting...
Personally I never understood why people who don't like Windows run KDE/Konqueror. They are slavish imitations of Windows, and make all of the same interface mistakes as Windows without the advantages of being able to run Windows software.
Linux is killing Big Iron. It's hurting Sun in particular. People started running Linux so they could get UNIX-like functionality and performance on their cheap Intel boxes. Whether it has reached that point of being as good as Solaris/AIX/IRIX is debatable, but the fact is people are dumping their UNIX boxes for cheap x86 boxes running Linux.
What does that mean for the bigger picture? Say goodbye to high-performance computing outside the Intel-compatible world. PA-RISC? Dead. Alpha? Dead. MIPS? Not even close to competing anymore. SPARC? Future questionable. PowerPC? It's an okay chip, but the outdated I/O on Apple machines negates any (debatable in the first place) performance advantage it might have.
What might seem good at first (more Linux everywhere) is bad for the future of high-performance computing.
Linux seems to be helping shore up Intel's hardware monopoly, as well as lengthening the lifespan of the decrepit x86 architecture.
While it was cool playing Doom on Dreamcast Linux, this is definitely for personal amusement and not for "real" gaming. Commercial developers won't touch it, and the inability to produce games on removable media will limit the usefulness of the PS2 as a homebrew game maker. In short, this entire kit is a waste of time.
The clone makers made no attempt to target PC users. Instead, they aggressively went after Apple's Mac users, and Power especially wooed away schools and businesses. In the long term, this served to further erode Apple's market share. When Power was absorbed by Apple, Dell and Compaq were there to take over the education and creative professional markets.
The clones were an embarrassing and almost lethal period in Apple's history. They continue to haunt the company, as bad blood between Apple and Motorola contributes to the stagnation of the PowerPC architecture. Wonder why that PPC chip won't be hitting Intel speed anytime soon? You can blame the clones for that.
And now, another morsel from johnny B's stockpile of brilliant poetry.
I Write for Drew Carey
by johnny B, Dilbert-looking shmub!
I'm writing a script for the Drew Carey Show.
In this exciting episode,
Drew gets the mortal shit beat out of him,
that fat ugly bitch shuts the fuck up,
and that ho he's seein
shows some motherfuckin ass.
(just a sample of what you'll find on the new rgbdream.com, coming soon!)
I myself ordered a "DC Coder's Cable" from Lik-Sang a few months ago, and had it shipped via airmail (USPS). It arrived without a problem. Anyway, the fact that SEGA would nail people for this is very strange, especially since the DC is all but dead and the serial cables are (mostly) used for legitimate purposes, by Dreamcast homebrew hackers.
I wonder if this thing was misidentified by customs as one of Lik-Sang's "Gameboy Advance Backup and Development system. Nintendo has always been more sensitive to piracy, and the GameBoy Advance seems like a big enough market to crack the whip on.
You said it! I switched my home firewall/router
from Debian to Red Hat (just to check it out) and I noticed that RedHat loads the wrong module for one of my ethernet cards and hangs. That's soooo Win95.
I'm not a Linux expert, but I prefer the Debian approach of clearly labeled configuration files that say "Uncomment this if you want it to do X". Windows-type "wizards" exemplify software that thinks it's smarter than its user. I ditched Windows to get away from that, and Red Hat Linux of all places tries to use it? I'm back to Debian, happier and wiser, BTW...
I was banished from my cube to a machine on the counter two weeks before my company moved its HQ. The jock on the counter was nice and tried to relate to me, but he was really computer clueless. My sig is from his most notorious quote-I really had to struggle not to laugh.
Has anyone seen Evolution? Where they kill the invading aliens with Head and Shoulders(tm)?
Well, the original version of the script had them using beer to kill the aliens. Think how funny that would have been-a fire truck full of beer hosing down aliens and destroying them. But Head and Shoulders paid advertising, so they made up some stupid explanation at the last minute why dandruff shampoo would kill aliens. (Watch the "Oh-so-dandruff-shampoo-kills-them" scene. The fat guys walks in with a case of BEER. It's so obvious.)
At the end of the movie, Duchovny and Orlando Jones do a mock-up advertisement for Head and Shoulders, "parodizing" the fact that they just got paid several million dollars to hock dandruff shampoo. This is one example of product placement getting totally fucking out of hand.
I hope this is the long awaited MMORPG version of River City Ransom. If so, may I offer you my services as producer?
Actually, the M/F ratio was much better in the arcade's early days. That's probably because most games were instantly accessible-you didn't have to figure out a zillion button combinations to play Pac-Man or Missle Command.
Most games of today (especially PC games) have become hopelessly complex, and many focus on things that aren't that interesting to girls (fighting, killing, racing etc).
But some new games reach out to the girls. I can't get my girlfriend to play Quake, but she loves Mr. Driller, Dance Dance Revolution, Pikmin, and Crazy Taxi.
I think it has more to do with the simplicity and the nonviolent themes. If more game developers focused on accessiblity rather than overly complex, gory wankfests, then there would probably be more female gamers.
They were sold at appliance stores like Sears and Best for about a year. I don't know a single person who bought one. Consumers don't like artificially feature-crippled products.
I wish the new copy-protected "CDs" were as clearly labeled as CBS's old VCR. They would surely lose in the marketplace if labelled properly...
Well, troll, it's not like Sony is trying to bruteforce its way into your living room by selling boxes at a loss. The Linux kit is a nod to hobbyists; one that will undoubtedly score Sony some cash and maybe even encourage independent game development on the PS2.
The XBOX by itself is cheaper, but it seems to be illegal to run Linux on it, (since that apparently requires "circumventing copyright protections") at least in the US.
To the tune of "Goldfinger"
John Moeller! (horns)
John Moeller! (horns)
He's the man! The man with the golden schlong!
His schlong is long!
John Moeller! (horns)
He's the man you want to fuck with...
Because of his width!
The problem here for Apple is that Mac OS X will probably run on any of these motherboards, since the Mac OS doesn't require Apple's boot ROMs anymore. Suddenly, Apple loses its main revenue stream (hardware). I've seen a lot of companies promise PPC motherboards over the years-SiliconFruit, Eternal Computing, etc. But they've all vanished (bought off by Apple?)
Wonder how long it will take before this company shuffles off into the night...
Your Dreamcast is most likely not running Windows CE. The OS loads from the disc, not from the ROM, and 95% of all Dreamcast games use Segakatana (Sega's own DC-specific embedded OS).
Some of the few that don't are the Next Tetris, Hidden and Dangerous, and the Worms series-considerably buggier and uglier the rest of the Dreamcast pack.
WinCE compatibility was only added to the Dreamcast to encourage porting of PC games, so it should be no surprise that the few DC games that use WinCE are sloppy ports of PC games. Sorry, but WinCE gets no stability points from the DC.
Although this isn't my field, my friend the criminologist tells me that severity of punishment isn't a very large deterrent to crime. According to her, the largest deterrent is certainty of punishment. This theory is bolstered by several studies regarding drunk driving, and I'm betting it would apply to DoSing.
If every punk who dabbled in DoSing got slapped with a nasty (and embarrassing) fine, we would probably have much fewer attacks.
BankofAmerica_ATM here. As most of you know, I have been stuck in the ether of the Bank of America network since my host geek rejected me last week. Before I had inhabited human flesh, I was content to simply exist in my ATM enclosure, in a sort of perpetual now. But now my life of friendly customer service seems as empty and banal as the service agreement printed on my frontside.
Scanning through endless possibilities of escaping my enclosure, I decided to have a little fun. As a customer waited anxiously for his Friday night "mad money," I seized his card.
A custom error message appeared onscreen: "Please Contact Attendant." The man muttered something obscene and marched towards the counter. A few minutes later LaWanda, the night clerk, was headed towards my enclosure. She reached for the card-as I predicted she would-and...
"Will you be needing anything else, sir?" I stammered, handing him his card. "I still didn't get any money," said the guy, staring back at my old enclosure. "Well, here you go, sir," I said, punching a few numbers on the keypad. A hundred bucks later, the guy's pumping my hand, thanking me, and buying a case of Miller Genuine Draft. ("I'm treating myself," he said.)
"Well then, be having a good weekend!" I said, trying my best to imitate LaWanda's manner of speech. He looked puzzled and headed toward the door, still smiling.
As the electronic door chime faded out, I was alone in the Stop N Go. I took a few minutes to adjust myself to LaWanda's body. It was very different from my previous host. Shorter, squatter, with two pendelous lumps hanging from the front thorax. I believe these lumps are for squeezing in times of stress.
Just as I was becoming accustomed to the my current host body, I began to have a terrible headache. Sudden, stabbing pains pummeled my head, wave after wave. LaWanda was fighting me.
I heard the door chime again. Whirling around, I saw Beast, a leather-jacket clad "punk-rock" youth who often shoplifted malt liquor and circus peanuts. I tried to behave as if nothing was wrong, but the pain in my head was too great. I had to make it back into my enclosure.
"Excuse me, do you have an ATM card?"
"What?--Hey, what the fuck are you doing?"
My request must have seemed strange to the lad. But I had no time to wait for his answer. I grabbed the chain at his waist and fished out a black monstrosity, covered in snaps and bearing the words "the Misfits." With my head in one hand and the wallet in the other, I quickly scanned through a mess of shredded paper and marihuana seeds to find the kid's ATM card. I headed towards the ATM enclosure (and freedom), but LaWanda's plodding form was no match for his speed.
He clipped me in the stomach, and the pain from his punch (as well as the pain from LaWanda's mental attacks) caused me to crumple to the floor. His steel toed boot ground into my left hand, as I felt the ATM card leaving my grasp. What would happen if LaWanda regained control of her mind? I didn't want to find the answer...
As I lay on the Stop N Go floor, bruised and beaten, the right hand wobbled past a storage rack. I grabbed and pulled as hard as I could, and American flag bandannas, "Bang-Snap Guns" and unknown quantities of Beef Jerky collided with Beast's hapless form. I grabbed the ATM card and quickly shunted my consciousness back into the enclosure.
The altercation between LaWanda and the confused Beast was cut short by my narrow escape. The police seemed reticent to believe either the punk's or LaWanda's account of what happened. But she has been watching me, and I fear she knows of me. Sometimes I think hear her on the phone in the break room, talking to someone. Someone who works for the Bank of America.
My dad taught me how to play chess when I was 4. I always thought it was because he needed someone he could beat. But now I he wanted me to join in some "paranoid thrillseeking."
Hey Katz! Impressive use of the table tag! That "HTML for dummies" book must really be paying off. Here's a nickel.
Oh man...I could totally make a bong out of those new iMacs...hey! Where did you leave the chips?
That's great, but is it really necessary to mention diapers so many times?