Oh, freaking cry me a river, Katz. This movie was great - but not because it had good acting or a good plot.
This film had a lot of redeeming characteristics - excellent soundtrack, humorous, witty one-liners, and those little pigmy demon things (cute and hillarious). But what made me enjoy the film was being able to go without some idiot telling me not to see it because it sucked, and going knowing it would suck as far as a 'work of art'. I went to be entertained, knowing that it would be a cheesy action flick, with poor acting and no plot, with lots of factual screw-ups. (Jet propulsion in 1933? Please.) But all in all, these things made the movie more entertaining. I laughed and laughed while watching this movie - due to the incredibly silly acting, horrid plot, and sometimes-screwy CGI. That entertained me. It was a farce on good films like Indiana Jones I and III, whether intended to be or not. And as far as being a repetitive 'mummy' film? Who gives a crap. Popular themes are oft redone, since people like them. Yes, people like them, Katz.
All in all, this film reminded me of "Army of Darkness," which was a complete farce, and quite entertaining. I'm sure many geeks would agree. While Army of Darkness was intended to be a farce, Mummy2 prolly wasn't, but who cares.
There was a certain device just about 10 years ago which I fell in love with which had a comparable functionality to a palm, and was sturdy enough to be Army issue.
I am, of course, talking about a Gameboy original.
Thrown, stepped on, driven over, hit - all these things have been done to it and it's still in tip-top shape (besides some relatively minor - all considering - cosmetic defects on the casing). And to top it off, the things ran really freaking long on just 4 batteries. We're talking months of frequent play. Definately something that Mom and Dad liked - the beast didn't have to have batteries replaced every week, as never gb's do.
They had the design right for the first gameboys, as far as 'safety' is concerned. Very hard, durable plastic formed in a shape and pattern which made it more difficult to crush. Sure, it was bulky and slightly heavy, but I'd gladly carry around a PDA that large if it had a little more functionality of a palm - and I can see that happening, to. A gb classic is/plenty/ small. Put it in a camera-type case on your hip. Get a 'bullet belt' style sling and put it over your shoulder, having it centered in the middle your chest (for a more cosmetic look).
Such a handheld would be my undoing, not to mention really effing useful (provided it were durable). Having to not worry about it falling and breaking, or being paticularly fragile *cough* palm *cough* is just no fun. the Palm Pro, and several others, are like that. Only one I've seen that isn't is the PalmV.
That wasn't my arguement. My arguement was that the Bastard Katz continually caters to the 'elite high school geniuses' that are so apparently prevelant on slashdot (especially with the whole fp, hot grits, nat portman, goat sex, etc etc items). Since day one, with a possible exception to his Hellmouth items, he has simply written to let people hear what they want to.
John, not only 'brainy' people get addicted to things online. I've met hundreds of people that are addicted to instant messaging and don't have a clue as to what they're really doing. Heck, my freaking grandmother is addicted to the internet. It's quite sad. The assertion that The Net is a magnet for brainy, even addictive obsessives, an outlet for their curiousity and creativity
that is often much more appealing than home, school or work is just wrong. Most people don't use the 'net for any creative persuits. In all seriousness, what creative persuits are available for most people? The only ones I can think of are online publishing and web design. Very small percentages do these things.
The whole 'brainy' assumption is ass full of crap as it gets. If you're going to write a book review, review the book, not try and sell it to the croud. You're reviewing this book, Jon, like you were paid to. Never mind that the book is targetted at the mass of society in general, you wanted to portray it as if it were for the techie elite.
In my experience, most tech is done by workers who are either non-college students, having never gotten a degree that truely know their stuff, 2 year tech., unskilled people who don't even know what they're doing, or college students who don't know what they're doing.
Having both played Black and White with a mouse, and done some various artwork and basic navigation with a wacom tablet 'pen', I think that using a pen for this type of interface would be ideal. It's a fairly accurate device, and it allows for the 'motion' type commands that B&W needs. With a mouse these gestures are a pain in the ass, since they're essentially 'drawing'.
However, I'd like to add that such a device as a pen is fairly cumbersome for the traditional GUI, since they're based off entirely different principles.
I've run some of the most beta software out there, and I've never had that happen. The occassional crash, yes, but not dying that frequently. What the heck dies like that?
No thanks, for those of us who have seasonal depression, the winter time is already a dark enough period of time. I'd rather freeze and be happy than be depressed for 6 months of the year. (South Dakota)
Hrm, good idea. Make IBM donate money to public schools so they can wisely spend it on purchasing more licenses for extra copies of Office 2k and Windows 2k pro... splended idea.
Or they could waste it on the teachers.
Public school in general is a total waste of time and money for most people. The teachers and students generally don't want to be there.
I've been studying the culture surrounding the whole hippy era, and well... this post is kind of funny, from my perspective. Sure, it's racist, but it's making fun of the era... anywho...
The guy is better off having never gone to high school and missing the whole 'social atmosphere,' while being home schooled than he would be in school. If 'social engagement' is simply harassment, who needs it? Besides the fact that 'trials make us stronger' it's not doing anything for him. One, maybe two years of this kind of crap is plenty.
Home school your son. He'll thank you for it later, even if he doesn't paticularly care for it now. Not only will he expand his mind many times over what his peers will, he'll do some actual learning, as opposed to simply doing busy work, which public school is well known for. He'll learn how to think for himself and have his own thoughts - traits which are drastically lacking in this society, as is portrayed by the assinine behavior of the administrators.
As for you, Katz, STFU. Please. Enough of this 'defend the poor, helpless, underage geeks!' These kids are capable of defending themselves in such situations - I did. Granted, my parents backed me up, but I took the initiative. A kid has been picking on you? Talk to the administration about the harassment, or simply tell the kid to leave you alone. If he doesn't, talk to the administration. If still nothing helps due to stupid school politics revolving around athletics or other items, sue the bastard child's ass off, or the school district, for being negligent.
Heck, knocking out a few teeth would even be reasonable compared to the bloody stupid approach Katz suggests - I'm sure you could plead temporary insanity or provoked violence in a court of law and get away free, if it came to that. Invasion of self and property and physical harassment/abuse are probably means enough to defend yourself.
...doesn't revolutionize the industry has had their head in the sand for way too long. I remember going to 'warez' and 'crackz' sites years ago and getting popup window after pop-up window with ads in them.
Now, just recently, it seems like this phenomenon has caught on overnight with every web site and advertising company on the 'net. It's really freaking irritating. Just go to yahoo! or somewhere and search for something random, and go to a few of the relevant sites. Notice that no matter what it is, there's likely to be at least one site that has those bloody popups.
Time to write a nice little script to disable javascript and automatic popups.
Not everyone is fortunate to own a cell phone, nor financially well enough off to do so. Some of us simply don't/want/ a cell phone - they're another complication in an already-busy world. I personally value the time I can get away from people.
What about people who don't have phones in their houses, and only rarely make a long-distance call from a pay phone w/ a phone card? What about people who don't have cell phones and travel? (Like students - pay phones save our asses many times!) What about youth? What about the majority of the working class? All these people still use cell phones, especially in more populated areas.
Most importantly, where will Superman change?
The viewpoint that phone booths are dying out is crap. It illustrates a small-minded outlook on life, from someone who has never known anything other than upper-class living.
Having been a once-reader of Dvorak in PC Magazine back in my uncultured, uninformed, drone days, I can attest to the fact that Dvorak is simply the mouth of the beast. He has no real opinions of his own, but seems to pull all of his 'opinions' from the ass of the corporate beast. His 'reviews' are almost always strewn with view-altering misinformation, incorrect facts, blatant FUD, and corporate brainwashing. He's been the drone of MS for a long time, and done some relatively substantial linux bashing. I wouldn't be surprised if he were paid to do this covert advertising.
This man is simply a worn-out business manager has-been wind bag who no longer has the skills necessary to perform a normal job. He has retreated to the world of journalism. We see this happen with programmers relatively frequently, where they retreat to colleges to teach.
This hits on a very important aspect of software in the commericial market: people use computers for the software packages, not the operating system. This is one reason why MS has been so strongly focusing on screwing 3rd party makers out of the market. If MS is able to be the sole provider, or at least majority provider, of office tools, then other companies aren't able to potentially make their office suite into a cross-platform package, which would damage MS in the long run, since that might convert people from Windows.
So fundamentally, MS might be screwing themselves here, by breaking the software (more than likely, WMP) that people use. People use winamp because it's simple, gets the job done, and has a consistent interface. Many people use the DivX;) player or winamp as opposed to WMP for most of their media (in windows), since MS has already cripled their codecs and various other things fairly severely.
If MS makes it so other programs can't associate to.mp3's and such other than WMP, then I fear MS is going to have some further problems down the road. So much for the "we give the customers what they want", which was so lividly portrayed in the recent interview here on Slashdot. That was nothing more than a PR ploy, and contained nothing of factual ordinance.
IBM Model M, 1982.
The part numbers got wet, and are no longer distinguishable, sadly. I've got a couple more like this one back home (in college now), and have access to an even larger stash of them.
This is the type of keyboard that people get really irritated over if they're in the room.:)
It may not actually be older than I, since I turn 19 this month. But it very well might be.:) Certainly older than my siblings.
Haha... There happens to be a couple Sun Sparcs systems under the false floor in the NOC at my college, somewhere in what is deemed the 'computer center.'
The network center is now in a small(ish) room with stairs to the left, and a room above it. The NOC used to span that small room, as well as the one above it and down a hall leading from the above room. It was quite larger, with the servers strewn about, amongst parital systems and workshops. Somewhere, throughout the years, as things got moved, one was lost. Supposedly it's still running, but I've not been able to find it by port scanning. The sysadmin says it's still up, however. I suspect that it's either dead, behind a firewall, or not even there in the first place. But at any rate... this type of thing is exceedingly cool.:)
I should find a small server box somewhere and stash it in the ceiling tiles of one of the rooms, off in some dark corner, and put nice air filters on the thing. Possibly steal some rogue cat5, and plug it in. Then, if I ever happen to come back to this school after graduation, I'd come looking for it.:) That... would be awesome.
Almost as awesome as the fact that the keyboard I'm using is older than I am. *shiver*
You sir, fail to see the issues at hand and at the core of the conflict.
The peace between China and the US has never been one of mutual friendship; it has always been one of strained political ties in order to reap the economical benefits. Thus, America aided China in becoming more economically stable, and China provided the sweatshops for American industry.
Something you must understand, Katz (make your time!), is that Communism is the arch enemy of Commercialism, in the eyes of the US and the eyes of China (and other Communist countries). This makes the US the sworn enemy of China. You simply can't keep going around spouting your idealist slashdotist ideals - they're cultish and removed from reality. Please correct this.
Progeny is to Stormix like a modern distro is to slackware. It's just taking what was good of Stormix and making it better, while changing the negative things.
Being that Stormix doesn't exactly exist as a commerical entity, Progeny effectively replaces it.
Star Trek? I'm pretty sure the poster has his science fiction confused. Star Trek generally uses viewscreens. Star Wars, however, uses 3d holograms. I'm guessing this is what the poster meant.
I recently designed a system with a similar goal in mind. It didn't come out precisely how I'd wanted, namely due to time restraints and lack of supplies, but here's what I'd do were I to start over and do it again:
First, the processor has to be taken into consideration. I picked a Duron 700 at the time, and grabbed a micro-ATX (or whatever the smallest form factor is, I don't recall) board for this. It had integrated audio and ethernet.
I grabbed a decent 30$ power supply. Anything decent should suffice.
I grabbed a geforce2mx, for economical reasons in part, but also because it's relatively 'short' and was only 85$ at the time.
All I put in this thing was a CDROM drive, since floppy drives are virtually useless nowadays.
I took an old compaq presario case, and cut it up a bit, and slapped the board in it. Not exactly what I was looking for, but next time I'll do things differently...
Next time, I'll get moderately thick plexiglass and use that for the entire frame, while using metal L braces to connect the 4 sides. cutting the metal to fit for the ATX form factor board was a pain in the ass, and plexiglass is quite sturdy, not to mention a heck of a lot easier to work with. Provided you don't want a high level of complexity in case shape and design, you can rip out the normal bay mounting points from a normal case, and connect them in relatively easily to the plexiglass. I'd probably recomment 1/4th inch plexiglass, provided you support everything well. (putting metal strips along the the side that has the motherboard might be advisable).
This way, it not only looks awesome, but it's small and portable. You could even throw a black light into it, get some clear fish aquarium tubing, and make a closed-circuit tube full of antifreeze and put it around the seams of the case - you'd have a very nice glowing system. (I plan to do something similar.) Ideally, you can also make one of the sides easily removable or on a hinge, so hardware upgrades are feasable.
Something I've got in my design template is a small compartment near the bottom where all the system cables are easily retracted and extracted without too much mess and table. You might want to design something like that for yourself. (mouse and headphones fit nicely as well.)
...that can write PHP, DHTML and HTML 4 in full specification without an HTML 'editor' like Frontpage or Dreamweaver, and I will show you a man who hates his existence due to inefficiency and excessive convolutedness.
Slashdot Mirror
This film had a lot of redeeming characteristics - excellent soundtrack, humorous, witty one-liners, and those little pigmy demon things (cute and hillarious). But what made me enjoy the film was being able to go without some idiot telling me not to see it because it sucked, and going knowing it would suck as far as a 'work of art'. I went to be entertained, knowing that it would be a cheesy action flick, with poor acting and no plot, with lots of factual screw-ups. (Jet propulsion in 1933? Please.) But all in all, these things made the movie more entertaining. I laughed and laughed while watching this movie - due to the incredibly silly acting, horrid plot, and sometimes-screwy CGI. That entertained me. It was a farce on good films like Indiana Jones I and III, whether intended to be or not. And as far as being a repetitive 'mummy' film? Who gives a crap. Popular themes are oft redone, since people like them. Yes, people like them, Katz.
All in all, this film reminded me of "Army of Darkness," which was a complete farce, and quite entertaining. I'm sure many geeks would agree. While Army of Darkness was intended to be a farce, Mummy2 prolly wasn't, but who cares.
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CAIMLAS
I am, of course, talking about a Gameboy original.
Thrown, stepped on, driven over, hit - all these things have been done to it and it's still in tip-top shape (besides some relatively minor - all considering - cosmetic defects on the casing). And to top it off, the things ran really freaking long on just 4 batteries. We're talking months of frequent play. Definately something that Mom and Dad liked - the beast didn't have to have batteries replaced every week, as never gb's do.
They had the design right for the first gameboys, as far as 'safety' is concerned. Very hard, durable plastic formed in a shape and pattern which made it more difficult to crush. Sure, it was bulky and slightly heavy, but I'd gladly carry around a PDA that large if it had a little more functionality of a palm - and I can see that happening, to. A gb classic is /plenty/ small. Put it in a camera-type case on your hip. Get a 'bullet belt' style sling and put it over your shoulder, having it centered in the middle your chest (for a more cosmetic look).
Such a handheld would be my undoing, not to mention really effing useful (provided it were durable). Having to not worry about it falling and breaking, or being paticularly fragile *cough* palm *cough* is just no fun. the Palm Pro, and several others, are like that. Only one I've seen that isn't is the PalmV.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
The whole 'brainy' assumption is ass full of crap as it gets. If you're going to write a book review, review the book, not try and sell it to the croud. You're reviewing this book, Jon, like you were paid to. Never mind that the book is targetted at the mass of society in general, you wanted to portray it as if it were for the techie elite.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
However, I'd like to add that such a device as a pen is fairly cumbersome for the traditional GUI, since they're based off entirely different principles.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
Or they could waste it on the teachers.
Public school in general is a total waste of time and money for most people. The teachers and students generally don't want to be there.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
Home school your son. He'll thank you for it later, even if he doesn't paticularly care for it now. Not only will he expand his mind many times over what his peers will, he'll do some actual learning, as opposed to simply doing busy work, which public school is well known for. He'll learn how to think for himself and have his own thoughts - traits which are drastically lacking in this society, as is portrayed by the assinine behavior of the administrators.
As for you, Katz, STFU. Please. Enough of this 'defend the poor, helpless, underage geeks!' These kids are capable of defending themselves in such situations - I did. Granted, my parents backed me up, but I took the initiative. A kid has been picking on you? Talk to the administration about the harassment, or simply tell the kid to leave you alone. If he doesn't, talk to the administration. If still nothing helps due to stupid school politics revolving around athletics or other items, sue the bastard child's ass off, or the school district, for being negligent.
Heck, knocking out a few teeth would even be reasonable compared to the bloody stupid approach Katz suggests - I'm sure you could plead temporary insanity or provoked violence in a court of law and get away free, if it came to that. Invasion of self and property and physical harassment/abuse are probably means enough to defend yourself.
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CAIMLAS
Now, just recently, it seems like this phenomenon has caught on overnight with every web site and advertising company on the 'net. It's really freaking irritating. Just go to yahoo! or somewhere and search for something random, and go to a few of the relevant sites. Notice that no matter what it is, there's likely to be at least one site that has those bloody popups.
Time to write a nice little script to disable javascript and automatic popups.
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CAIMLAS
What about people who don't have phones in their houses, and only rarely make a long-distance call from a pay phone w/ a phone card? What about people who don't have cell phones and travel? (Like students - pay phones save our asses many times!) What about youth? What about the majority of the working class? All these people still use cell phones, especially in more populated areas.
Most importantly, where will Superman change?
The viewpoint that phone booths are dying out is crap. It illustrates a small-minded outlook on life, from someone who has never known anything other than upper-class living.
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CAIMLAS
This man is simply a worn-out business manager has-been wind bag who no longer has the skills necessary to perform a normal job. He has retreated to the world of journalism. We see this happen with programmers relatively frequently, where they retreat to colleges to teach.
-------
CAIMLAS
So fundamentally, MS might be screwing themselves here, by breaking the software (more than likely, WMP) that people use. People use winamp because it's simple, gets the job done, and has a consistent interface. Many people use the DivX;) player or winamp as opposed to WMP for most of their media (in windows), since MS has already cripled their codecs and various other things fairly severely.
If MS makes it so other programs can't associate to .mp3's and such other than WMP, then I fear MS is going to have some further problems down the road. So much for the "we give the customers what they want", which was so lividly portrayed in the recent interview here on Slashdot. That was nothing more than a PR ploy, and contained nothing of factual ordinance.
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CAIMLAS
This is the type of keyboard that people get really irritated over if they're in the room. :)
It may not actually be older than I, since I turn 19 this month. But it very well might be. :) Certainly older than my siblings.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
The network center is now in a small(ish) room with stairs to the left, and a room above it. The NOC used to span that small room, as well as the one above it and down a hall leading from the above room. It was quite larger, with the servers strewn about, amongst parital systems and workshops. Somewhere, throughout the years, as things got moved, one was lost. Supposedly it's still running, but I've not been able to find it by port scanning. The sysadmin says it's still up, however. I suspect that it's either dead, behind a firewall, or not even there in the first place. But at any rate... this type of thing is exceedingly cool. :)
I should find a small server box somewhere and stash it in the ceiling tiles of one of the rooms, off in some dark corner, and put nice air filters on the thing. Possibly steal some rogue cat5, and plug it in. Then, if I ever happen to come back to this school after graduation, I'd come looking for it. :) That... would be awesome.
Almost as awesome as the fact that the keyboard I'm using is older than I am. *shiver*
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CAIMLAS
The peace between China and the US has never been one of mutual friendship; it has always been one of strained political ties in order to reap the economical benefits. Thus, America aided China in becoming more economically stable, and China provided the sweatshops for American industry.
Something you must understand, Katz (make your time!), is that Communism is the arch enemy of Commercialism, in the eyes of the US and the eyes of China (and other Communist countries). This makes the US the sworn enemy of China. You simply can't keep going around spouting your idealist slashdotist ideals - they're cultish and removed from reality. Please correct this.
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CAIMLAS
Being that Stormix doesn't exactly exist as a commerical entity, Progeny effectively replaces it.
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS
First, the processor has to be taken into consideration. I picked a Duron 700 at the time, and grabbed a micro-ATX (or whatever the smallest form factor is, I don't recall) board for this. It had integrated audio and ethernet.
I grabbed a decent 30$ power supply. Anything decent should suffice.
I grabbed a geforce2mx, for economical reasons in part, but also because it's relatively 'short' and was only 85$ at the time.
All I put in this thing was a CDROM drive, since floppy drives are virtually useless nowadays.
I took an old compaq presario case, and cut it up a bit, and slapped the board in it. Not exactly what I was looking for, but next time I'll do things differently...
Next time, I'll get moderately thick plexiglass and use that for the entire frame, while using metal L braces to connect the 4 sides. cutting the metal to fit for the ATX form factor board was a pain in the ass, and plexiglass is quite sturdy, not to mention a heck of a lot easier to work with. Provided you don't want a high level of complexity in case shape and design, you can rip out the normal bay mounting points from a normal case, and connect them in relatively easily to the plexiglass. I'd probably recomment 1/4th inch plexiglass, provided you support everything well. (putting metal strips along the the side that has the motherboard might be advisable).
This way, it not only looks awesome, but it's small and portable. You could even throw a black light into it, get some clear fish aquarium tubing, and make a closed-circuit tube full of antifreeze and put it around the seams of the case - you'd have a very nice glowing system. (I plan to do something similar.) Ideally, you can also make one of the sides easily removable or on a hinge, so hardware upgrades are feasable.
Something I've got in my design template is a small compartment near the bottom where all the system cables are easily retracted and extracted without too much mess and table. You might want to design something like that for yourself. (mouse and headphones fit nicely as well.)
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CAIMLAS
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CAIMLAS