If you get into the habit of repeating a monotoned "Whoa" every fifteen or twenty minutes you could land the title role in Johnny Mnemonic 2: Pr0n Boogaloo.
Addtronics doesn't make many products themselves, they repackage other people's stuff pretty much across their entire line of products (cases or otherwise).
That said, a couple of those full-size towers are identical to ones I've purchased in the past from other vendors. Not only can you sit on them (and I'm no fly-weight), you can lay them on the side and sit on them on that axis too. In other words, damn sturdy.
However, I don't think their entire line is that bulletproof. I've got some serious stinkers from them in the past, but then again, this makes sense given that they are just repackaging other people's goods.
Hmm. Well, I'd say 2/3 of our company (roughly 100 people) went off to see Episode 2 during the day.
One catch though - our company paid for three closed theatre showings, to which you could bring friends and family. One of which was at 12:15 (midnight showing), the other two were scheduled at more sane hours during the day.
For Episode 1 we rented one theatre @ 9am a couple days after the debut. But it was a big-ass 500+ seat theatre, for Ep. 2 we had to go with a small local theatre (hence the multiple shows) - of course, we had to do it this way this time around due to the Lucas' ego. The small theatre flew under his radar, whereas the big multiplex couldn't avoid it.
Everything said and done, I'm just happy I didn't pay for Episode 2, just like I'm happy I didn't pay for Episode 1. Heck, if George's head expands any further, he may have to start watching out for pointy objects...
The home entertainment division, which is the only Atari left. It was sold to Infogrames a while back, and since Infogrames is in the story, that's the division involved.
Midway's arcade division shut down months ago (a few months after the Williams pinball division got axed), so for all intents and purposes Atari Games (the arcade division) is dead. Midway, the home entertainment division, is still alive and kicking.
I'm not sure how the intellectual property is all handled, since Infogrames has been putting out PC ports of old arcade games under the Atari brand. Seems like Midway might be able to do the same with old Atari games.
But, then again, Midway needs profitability at this point... putting out old titles seems like wonderful ideas, I just so rarely see it actually result in profits.
Though, personally, I wish I had picked up more Infocom Treasures collections... I only got the first one released for the Mac, and there were one or two after that. Then there were a few that never made it far enough to get ported... (sigh)
Sure, I agree with what you're saying - in principle.
But you have to take these things in the appropriate context.
The issue is that Mossberg is well known in Mac circles for being a crotchety journalist who thinks computers mean WinTel. It's akin to pulling teeth to get him to admit that Macs had their purpose, which he has done on a few occasions (hey, he likes eye candy, tooth loss was inevitable).
So just because Mossberg couldn't get it working or had a tough time with it, doesn't mean it definately sucks. It just means that he had trouble. Given the unit (Linux-based handheld), and his history (Intel/Microsoft cheerleader), the fact that he has trouble with it isn't exactly surprising. (I don't mean to push the conspiracy aspect, only the "this is different than what I'm used to" aspect)
Nor should it be an outright condemnation of the unit, except maybe for sales forces who install/manage their own hardware. I only say that because one of our sales guys managed to disable his modem (and therefore his ability to send/receive email while on the road) after installing a Palm. A *Palm*.
It's not so much the resolution of the hardware conflict, half the battle is getting them to admit that they changed something. (grumble)
For a short time I worked for a company which got very good press from virtually every magazine, but didn't sell hardly any units.
Brand name recognition counts for a whole hell of a lot. If buyers aren't sold on your game, good luck seeing it on store shelves, which is much easier to do if you have a previous reputation via a best-selling title (can you say catch-22?). Word of mouth can make or break a game after that point. "Buzz" can be started by magazines, but it cannot solely be carried by previews & reviews.
I still feel that the biggest fish in the pond, who has repeatedly shown itself to be willing to stray into the grey area of legality, is the only one who allegedly benefits from this. Every time I've ever heard these rumors, from games to office productivity to multimedia and beyond, it's involved them (though the rumors almost always involved a particular publishing empire who has fallen on hard times as of late, one who forced both marketing and editorial staffs to hold meetings over reviews). Is it true? Hell if I know.
I just think it's a little silly to expand specific rumors to encompass the entire industry, when I've known plenty of marketing departments that would have done far, far better with opportunities like that.
Many of my former coworkers are now employed at a certain Redmond campus due to all acquisitions made over the past few years, so I tend not to discuss these matters with them. Best to keep the discussions on the light side, like when their title will be ported to the Mac. (chuckle)
FWIW, my best friend from grade school up 'til high school dropped out and moved to CA to work for a developer of C=64, Amiga, and other platforms during the mid-80s. He helped me get my foot in the door a couple years later, and kept me abreast of what the hell was going on when coming back to the home town every couple months...
Mega Drive/Genesis wasn't even a twinkle in Sega's eye at that point. Though I do remember preferring the SMS over Nintendo for some odd reason...
Pfft. Sure, right, and I bet you think black NSA/CIA helicopters are following your every move.
Conspiracy theories have that fun "interesting" aspect and all the rest, but they're rarely correct. (see: X-Files)
The only company which has been rumored to get "preferential" treatment is Microsoft, simply due to the sheer size of their marketing budget and their willingness to use unethical tactics (see antitrust case). "Give us a bad review? Fine, we'll pull all our ads from your magazine and all your sister magazines..."
Everyone else WISHES they could buy good reviews. It'd be a lot cheaper over the long haul than releasing games that nobody hears about, and even fewer buy.
Of course, what do I know, I've only worked for PC/console developers/publishers for 12 years.
Ah, but that's a geek's way of getting around the problem.
These space-cases actually sat there changing the passwords by hand, and since they couldn't touch-type it took time to hunt-and-peck their way through.
Yeah, I don't think he has the cahunas to fake something like this either.
As for him liking it - well, remember, he LOVED the US Godzilla movie too. It wasn't until he saw it a 2nd time several days later that he saw it as a big-budget craptacular.
Me, I'm not going to see Episode 2. Jar-Jar, 'n Sync, another whiny bitch chosen to play Darth - in short, signs that George learned all the wrong lessons from Phantom Menace. Not even a metal bikini could save this thing.
Well, yes, that's probably the best method for creating a secure password that you can remember. Not exactly what you're saying but the gist...
Take a phrase you enjoy or at least can remember, longer the better. Take the first letter of each word, that's the basis for your password. Now either add numbers to the middle of it or convert some letters to numbers. Then add a random couple numbers to the beginning or end.
Some of my best passwords are literally the first half of a phrase, replace one of the words with a 4 digit number so that it makes pseudo-sense, remainder of the phrase, then another 4-digit number for the last word, again making warped sense given the phrase.
Mixing case is a great idea, but the problem is that not every system remembers case (cough NT cough). But most "real" systems do (yes, I know, NT is case sensitive from NT clients, but it's case-insensitive from a Win9x client).
I have several "unsecure" passwords that I use across different sites, like slashdot, etc. which are very easy to remember. I keep my "real" passwords in an encrypted database, because they're freakin' impossible to remember, if only due to the sheer number - and the fact that the most important ones ARE, literally, random.
About all I remember are those BS passwords, my login passwords, admin passwords (personal & work), and the password to open up that encrypted database. That's about all I can stuff in my noodle.
Of course, I've known people so moronic that their password was their first name. Even though their login was firstname + last initial. Anything more complex was literally beyond them.
Expire the password, make it so they have to change their password 50 times before it lets them choose it again? THEY CHANGED THEIR PASSWORD 50 TIMES *JUST* TO PUT IT BACK! Seriously, they didn't know if it was even possible, they just sat there methodically changing the password until it accepted their old password, literally HOURS of wasted time. Yes, the productivity of american management is SO impressive...
Er. Wouldn't the power switch be a little easier? Unless you were a young 'un and couldn't reach the top of the cabinet... (I'm assuming it wasn't at the bottom of the back panel, then it'd be even sillier)
On a related note, are you sure there was a tilt switch? You were probably just jiggling a loose harness which caused the reset. I don't remember any video games that included any kind of "tilt" switch.
Only mention a harness because the JAMMA connector is held by tension, not any locking mechanism, and even today it's possible for it to become disconnected during major moves. Since this supplies power to the board, that means a reboot is certainly possible by bnody checking a powered-on machine.
Though if you check a modern machine, be expected to have a very angry operator on your hands. Destroying a hard drive costs them money.
I have OSX but can't do everything under it that I can do under OS 9.
Losing functionality is not acceptable. Until OS X has the necessary support (hardware is the big stickler here) to display 640x480 video in a window (best, which is the situation I'm at under OS 9, is full screen on a 2nd display), I won't be moving to it.
I'd also like to have 4-speaker surround under OS X but I've given up on Creative actually releasing drivers for the SB Live. Probably going to replace my SBL + DTT3500 setup for a CAVIT and a 5.1 Yamaha speaker setup.
I woudl have had a secret cabal of top programmers going through it obfuscating and repairing deliberatly anti-competitive routines.
[sarcasm]
Or not so secret... come on, you didn't think Bill would force Microsoft to spend February sifting through source code looking for bugs, did you?
[/sarcasm]
I own a Tyan Tiger MP, and in the users manual it only supports up to the Althon 1600.
Well, at least you read the manual. That's more than I can say for most people putting PCs together!
Anyhoo, manufacturers typically add support for newer/better/faster processors through BIOS updates. Obviously miracles are impossible, but if the chipset can support the processor it should be possible for the manufacturer to add support. Witness those Socket370->Slot1 adapters from a couple years ago - the processors were much faster than originally spec'd, but with a BIOS update (and the slocket) you could usually use them.
Only thing I don't like about Tyan is they never seem to keep on top of updates like some other manufacturers. Granted they're much better than most no-name places, but...
I think that when Intel released the Celerons, they relised that the Cache doesn't make that big a deal.
Really? The original Celerons had zero L2 cache. It took the "A" series, released a few months later, to add L2 cache to the package, running at full processor speed no less. There were less than a handful of name-brand systems released that were based on that original Celeron, due to horrible performance.
Cache size matters, as does the speed of the cache. A Coppermine P3 has no problem keeping up with an older P3, despite having half the cache size. So size matters, but speed (and I know I'm oversimplifying and ignoring bus lines, latency, etc) does too.
This is why taking a Celeron 300A and overclocking it to 450Mhz (changing the 66Mhz FSB to 100Mhz FSB) was just a big thing. Sure, you only had 128K of L2 cache, but it was running so damn fast that the difference 90% of the time was negligible. Just needed to keep that sucker cool...
I think the idea is that AMD needs to keep a nice wide margin between the cut-throat (Duron) and the profitable (Athlon) chips. The slimmer the margin, the less money they make, and in this economy...
Re:errr what's today? Did people stop reading it?
on
XBox Defects Draw Ire
·
· Score: 1
Yes, but how many XBoxes/GameCubes/PS2s that were purchased during the holiday season were presents?
I don't know of anyone - ANYONE - at my employer (arcade game developer) who got an XB or GC for christmas. They all bought the units themselves, for themselves.
Hell, my family even agreed on a $50 cap for christmas presents several years ago, and we've kept at it.
If you've got a group of people spending $400+ on christmas presents for one another, may I suggest you all cap the presents at $50 and donate the $350 to charity instead? You know, christmas, goodwill towards men, and all the rest?
Hmm. Then again, maybe someone needs to buy you some "They Live" sunglasses. Then maybe you can see all those "Consume" signs for what they really are...
radio and TV airplay is not "based on sales of media".
Huh? Last time I checked, Saturday Night Live wasn't hosting many unknown bands.
Radio & TV airplay is considered "advertising" by music media. They promote and do everything possible to push onto the airwaves in order to sell more records.
Because if they didn't, they sure as hell wouldn't be selling any records made by those talentless hacks.
No, "the music industry" puts out all kinds of music. The reason you see so much crap is because that's what most people like to listen to.
No. The reason you see so much crap is because that's what the people BUYING ALBUMS like to listen to. It's an important difference.
Really? I mean, in the past 10 years, I've gone from buying 10 or so albums/CDs/tapes a month to buying 10 or so CDs a YEAR.
Granted, most of it is due to the bubblegum pop explosion (Spears, Backstreet, Sync, etc.) that "makes me want to vomit in terror" any time they're played, but the other part is a genuine disgust with the recording industry as a whole.
Hell, half the CDs I've bought this year were anime soundtracks (yes, I'm a sick little monkey) imported from overseas... does the RIAA get their pound of flesh on imports?
One cannot mention Ico and Penny Arcade without mentioning another link to Penny Arcade.
Ico is kinda interesting, but very damned annoying at a couple points. Zero replayability gets in it's way too. Frankly, I rented it from Blockbuster and *finished* it, playing only an hour or two each night.
In other words, a very good rental, but a bad purchase.
Rather than just switching DHCP servers around and getting everyone up on the new network after a simple reboot, they're forcing every DNS resolution to take the user to a server they've setup with SOFTWARE that must be installed to use the new network.
This decreases their support load... how?
Once Joe User with an unstable Win9x box installs this software, thereby pushing their system over the edge and making it a hunk of metal and plastic instead of a computer, AT&T is going to... recompense this guy for lost data? Of course not! "There was no other way we could have done the move!"
Uh huh. As someone who just migrated from one T1 provider to another, let me say: Bullshit. This is the #1 reason I tell everyone to avoid cable modems like the plague unless they absolutely have no other way to get broadband access. They can take their proprietary crap and shove it up their ass.
Of course, the #2 reason is all that @Home was a spamhaven, and as a result had ridiculous packet loss due to all the bullshit floating around their network.
Uh. Yeah. Sure it did. You sure seem to know a whole lot for someone who doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground.
#1) My friends homepage is hosted on his PC at work.
#2) His homepage went NOWHERE. His network, according to AT&T, will not be available for SEVEN days.
#3) When the network comes back up, it WILL take him to his regular homepage. This is because he doesn't use AT&T's DNS servers (@Home's were so ridiculously overloaded that he had to switch).
So rather than be an AT&T apologist, and immediately finding fault with everyone who says opposite what you "KNOW!" is true, why not open your puny little mind to the concept that maybe, just maybe, you don't know all the facts.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that, or a jog wheel. Or a volume knob. Or soft power-on and -off.
Actually, all of these, at the same time. The software can switch functionality depending on which application you have open.
Wow, really?
If you get into the habit of repeating a monotoned "Whoa" every fifteen or twenty minutes you could land the title role in Johnny Mnemonic 2: Pr0n Boogaloo.
I suggest Pentiumed. The past-tense indicates that the next chip Intel releases will be a new architecture for the first time in 20 years.
Addtronics doesn't make many products themselves, they repackage other people's stuff pretty much across their entire line of products (cases or otherwise).
That said, a couple of those full-size towers are identical to ones I've purchased in the past from other vendors. Not only can you sit on them (and I'm no fly-weight), you can lay them on the side and sit on them on that axis too. In other words, damn sturdy.
However, I don't think their entire line is that bulletproof. I've got some serious stinkers from them in the past, but then again, this makes sense given that they are just repackaging other people's goods.
Hmm. Well, I'd say 2/3 of our company (roughly 100 people) went off to see Episode 2 during the day.
One catch though - our company paid for three closed theatre showings, to which you could bring friends and family. One of which was at 12:15 (midnight showing), the other two were scheduled at more sane hours during the day.
For Episode 1 we rented one theatre @ 9am a couple days after the debut. But it was a big-ass 500+ seat theatre, for Ep. 2 we had to go with a small local theatre (hence the multiple shows) - of course, we had to do it this way this time around due to the Lucas' ego. The small theatre flew under his radar, whereas the big multiplex couldn't avoid it.
Everything said and done, I'm just happy I didn't pay for Episode 2, just like I'm happy I didn't pay for Episode 1. Heck, if George's head expands any further, he may have to start watching out for pointy objects...
Atari. ;)
The home entertainment division, which is the only Atari left. It was sold to Infogrames a while back, and since Infogrames is in the story, that's the division involved.
Midway's arcade division shut down months ago (a few months after the Williams pinball division got axed), so for all intents and purposes Atari Games (the arcade division) is dead. Midway, the home entertainment division, is still alive and kicking.
I'm not sure how the intellectual property is all handled, since Infogrames has been putting out PC ports of old arcade games under the Atari brand. Seems like Midway might be able to do the same with old Atari games.
But, then again, Midway needs profitability at this point... putting out old titles seems like wonderful ideas, I just so rarely see it actually result in profits.
Though, personally, I wish I had picked up more Infocom Treasures collections... I only got the first one released for the Mac, and there were one or two after that. Then there were a few that never made it far enough to get ported... (sigh)
Sure, I agree with what you're saying - in principle.
But you have to take these things in the appropriate context.
The issue is that Mossberg is well known in Mac circles for being a crotchety journalist who thinks computers mean WinTel. It's akin to pulling teeth to get him to admit that Macs had their purpose, which he has done on a few occasions (hey, he likes eye candy, tooth loss was inevitable).
So just because Mossberg couldn't get it working or had a tough time with it, doesn't mean it definately sucks. It just means that he had trouble. Given the unit (Linux-based handheld), and his history (Intel/Microsoft cheerleader), the fact that he has trouble with it isn't exactly surprising. (I don't mean to push the conspiracy aspect, only the "this is different than what I'm used to" aspect)
Nor should it be an outright condemnation of the unit, except maybe for sales forces who install/manage their own hardware. I only say that because one of our sales guys managed to disable his modem (and therefore his ability to send/receive email while on the road) after installing a Palm. A *Palm*.
It's not so much the resolution of the hardware conflict, half the battle is getting them to admit that they changed something. (grumble)
But that's a story for another day...
Yes, and no.
For a short time I worked for a company which got very good press from virtually every magazine, but didn't sell hardly any units.
Brand name recognition counts for a whole hell of a lot. If buyers aren't sold on your game, good luck seeing it on store shelves, which is much easier to do if you have a previous reputation via a best-selling title (can you say catch-22?). Word of mouth can make or break a game after that point. "Buzz" can be started by magazines, but it cannot solely be carried by previews & reviews.
I still feel that the biggest fish in the pond, who has repeatedly shown itself to be willing to stray into the grey area of legality, is the only one who allegedly benefits from this. Every time I've ever heard these rumors, from games to office productivity to multimedia and beyond, it's involved them (though the rumors almost always involved a particular publishing empire who has fallen on hard times as of late, one who forced both marketing and editorial staffs to hold meetings over reviews). Is it true? Hell if I know.
I just think it's a little silly to expand specific rumors to encompass the entire industry, when I've known plenty of marketing departments that would have done far, far better with opportunities like that.
Many of my former coworkers are now employed at a certain Redmond campus due to all acquisitions made over the past few years, so I tend not to discuss these matters with them. Best to keep the discussions on the light side, like when their title will be ported to the Mac. (chuckle)
FWIW, my best friend from grade school up 'til high school dropped out and moved to CA to work for a developer of C=64, Amiga, and other platforms during the mid-80s. He helped me get my foot in the door a couple years later, and kept me abreast of what the hell was going on when coming back to the home town every couple months...
Mega Drive/Genesis wasn't even a twinkle in Sega's eye at that point. Though I do remember preferring the SMS over Nintendo for some odd reason...
Pfft. Sure, right, and I bet you think black NSA/CIA helicopters are following your every move.
Conspiracy theories have that fun "interesting" aspect and all the rest, but they're rarely correct. (see: X-Files)
The only company which has been rumored to get "preferential" treatment is Microsoft, simply due to the sheer size of their marketing budget and their willingness to use unethical tactics (see antitrust case). "Give us a bad review? Fine, we'll pull all our ads from your magazine and all your sister magazines..."
Everyone else WISHES they could buy good reviews. It'd be a lot cheaper over the long haul than releasing games that nobody hears about, and even fewer buy.
Of course, what do I know, I've only worked for PC/console developers/publishers for 12 years.
Ah, but that's a geek's way of getting around the problem.
These space-cases actually sat there changing the passwords by hand, and since they couldn't touch-type it took time to hunt-and-peck their way through.
Yeah, I don't think he has the cahunas to fake something like this either.
As for him liking it - well, remember, he LOVED the US Godzilla movie too. It wasn't until he saw it a 2nd time several days later that he saw it as a big-budget craptacular.
Me, I'm not going to see Episode 2. Jar-Jar, 'n Sync, another whiny bitch chosen to play Darth - in short, signs that George learned all the wrong lessons from Phantom Menace. Not even a metal bikini could save this thing.
Well, yes, that's probably the best method for creating a secure password that you can remember. Not exactly what you're saying but the gist...
Take a phrase you enjoy or at least can remember, longer the better. Take the first letter of each word, that's the basis for your password. Now either add numbers to the middle of it or convert some letters to numbers. Then add a random couple numbers to the beginning or end.
Some of my best passwords are literally the first half of a phrase, replace one of the words with a 4 digit number so that it makes pseudo-sense, remainder of the phrase, then another 4-digit number for the last word, again making warped sense given the phrase.
Mixing case is a great idea, but the problem is that not every system remembers case (cough NT cough). But most "real" systems do (yes, I know, NT is case sensitive from NT clients, but it's case-insensitive from a Win9x client).
I have several "unsecure" passwords that I use across different sites, like slashdot, etc. which are very easy to remember. I keep my "real" passwords in an encrypted database, because they're freakin' impossible to remember, if only due to the sheer number - and the fact that the most important ones ARE, literally, random.
About all I remember are those BS passwords, my login passwords, admin passwords (personal & work), and the password to open up that encrypted database. That's about all I can stuff in my noodle.
Of course, I've known people so moronic that their password was their first name. Even though their login was firstname + last initial. Anything more complex was literally beyond them.
Expire the password, make it so they have to change their password 50 times before it lets them choose it again? THEY CHANGED THEIR PASSWORD 50 TIMES *JUST* TO PUT IT BACK! Seriously, they didn't know if it was even possible, they just sat there methodically changing the password until it accepted their old password, literally HOURS of wasted time. Yes, the productivity of american management is SO impressive...
Er. Wouldn't the power switch be a little easier? Unless you were a young 'un and couldn't reach the top of the cabinet... (I'm assuming it wasn't at the bottom of the back panel, then it'd be even sillier)
On a related note, are you sure there was a tilt switch? You were probably just jiggling a loose harness which caused the reset. I don't remember any video games that included any kind of "tilt" switch.
Only mention a harness because the JAMMA connector is held by tension, not any locking mechanism, and even today it's possible for it to become disconnected during major moves. Since this supplies power to the board, that means a reboot is certainly possible by bnody checking a powered-on machine.
Though if you check a modern machine, be expected to have a very angry operator on your hands. Destroying a hard drive costs them money.
I have OSX but can't do everything under it that I can do under OS 9.
Losing functionality is not acceptable. Until OS X has the necessary support (hardware is the big stickler here) to display 640x480 video in a window (best, which is the situation I'm at under OS 9, is full screen on a 2nd display), I won't be moving to it.
I'd also like to have 4-speaker surround under OS X but I've given up on Creative actually releasing drivers for the SB Live. Probably going to replace my SBL + DTT3500 setup for a CAVIT and a 5.1 Yamaha speaker setup.
[sarcasm]
Or not so secret... come on, you didn't think Bill would force Microsoft to spend February sifting through source code looking for bugs, did you?
[/sarcasm]
Anyhoo, manufacturers typically add support for newer/better/faster processors through BIOS updates. Obviously miracles are impossible, but if the chipset can support the processor it should be possible for the manufacturer to add support. Witness those Socket370->Slot1 adapters from a couple years ago - the processors were much faster than originally spec'd, but with a BIOS update (and the slocket) you could usually use them.
You should be able to find your latest BIOS here.
Only thing I don't like about Tyan is they never seem to keep on top of updates like some other manufacturers. Granted they're much better than most no-name places, but...
No, no, no - not micro-softies. MicroSerfs.
They live in eternal servitude to Microsoft.
Cache size matters, as does the speed of the cache. A Coppermine P3 has no problem keeping up with an older P3, despite having half the cache size. So size matters, but speed (and I know I'm oversimplifying and ignoring bus lines, latency, etc) does too.
This is why taking a Celeron 300A and overclocking it to 450Mhz (changing the 66Mhz FSB to 100Mhz FSB) was just a big thing. Sure, you only had 128K of L2 cache, but it was running so damn fast that the difference 90% of the time was negligible. Just needed to keep that sucker cool...
I think the idea is that AMD needs to keep a nice wide margin between the cut-throat (Duron) and the profitable (Athlon) chips. The slimmer the margin, the less money they make, and in this economy...
Yes, but how many XBoxes/GameCubes/PS2s that were purchased during the holiday season were presents?
I don't know of anyone - ANYONE - at my employer (arcade game developer) who got an XB or GC for christmas. They all bought the units themselves, for themselves.
Hell, my family even agreed on a $50 cap for christmas presents several years ago, and we've kept at it.
If you've got a group of people spending $400+ on christmas presents for one another, may I suggest you all cap the presents at $50 and donate the $350 to charity instead? You know, christmas, goodwill towards men, and all the rest?
Hmm. Then again, maybe someone needs to buy you some "They Live" sunglasses. Then maybe you can see all those "Consume" signs for what they really are...
Yes, it's so much more socially acceptable to have an ex-girlfriend call you during a fancy dinner and threaten your life.
Radio & TV airplay is considered "advertising" by music media. They promote and do everything possible to push onto the airwaves in order to sell more records.
Because if they didn't, they sure as hell wouldn't be selling any records made by those talentless hacks.
No. The reason you see so much crap is because that's what the people BUYING ALBUMS like to listen to. It's an important difference.
Really? I mean, in the past 10 years, I've gone from buying 10 or so albums/CDs/tapes a month to buying 10 or so CDs a YEAR.
Granted, most of it is due to the bubblegum pop explosion (Spears, Backstreet, Sync, etc.) that "makes me want to vomit in terror" any time they're played, but the other part is a genuine disgust with the recording industry as a whole.
Hell, half the CDs I've bought this year were anime soundtracks (yes, I'm a sick little monkey) imported from overseas... does the RIAA get their pound of flesh on imports?
One cannot mention Ico and Penny Arcade without mentioning another link to Penny Arcade.
Ico is kinda interesting, but very damned annoying at a couple points. Zero replayability gets in it's way too. Frankly, I rented it from Blockbuster and *finished* it, playing only an hour or two each night.
In other words, a very good rental, but a bad purchase.
I'm still not sold on this concept.
Rather than just switching DHCP servers around and getting everyone up on the new network after a simple reboot, they're forcing every DNS resolution to take the user to a server they've setup with SOFTWARE that must be installed to use the new network.
This decreases their support load... how?
Once Joe User with an unstable Win9x box installs this software, thereby pushing their system over the edge and making it a hunk of metal and plastic instead of a computer, AT&T is going to... recompense this guy for lost data? Of course not! "There was no other way we could have done the move!"
Uh huh. As someone who just migrated from one T1 provider to another, let me say: Bullshit. This is the #1 reason I tell everyone to avoid cable modems like the plague unless they absolutely have no other way to get broadband access. They can take their proprietary crap and shove it up their ass.
Of course, the #2 reason is all that @Home was a spamhaven, and as a result had ridiculous packet loss due to all the bullshit floating around their network.
Uh. Yeah. Sure it did. You sure seem to know a whole lot for someone who doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground.
#1) My friends homepage is hosted on his PC at work.
#2) His homepage went NOWHERE. His network, according to AT&T, will not be available for SEVEN days.
#3) When the network comes back up, it WILL take him to his regular homepage. This is because he doesn't use AT&T's DNS servers (@Home's were so ridiculously overloaded that he had to switch).
So rather than be an AT&T apologist, and immediately finding fault with everyone who says opposite what you "KNOW!" is true, why not open your puny little mind to the concept that maybe, just maybe, you don't know all the facts.