So would somebody please tell us all what was so great about the Amiga?
The very short and simple answer is that when it was introduced it was at least ten years ahead of anything else on the market.
Perhaps this analogy will help: There you are playing with your brand new Nintendo Entertainment System, and your neighbor shows you a Playstation. Does your jaw drop or what?
And the ST sweat blood making it move. On Amy it took maybe 4% of the CPU. Ah, the old flame wars...
Has anyone bothered to emulate the ST? For reasons I cannot explain I've decided I need to emulate everything I can on my new Laptop. I've already got the Atari 800, TRS-80, Atari 7800, Amiga, Odyssey2 (ok, so I'm a sick puppy), Game Boy... must have more! MORE!
(Shoot! Amost forgot, need to d/l a Z-machine for it)
I'm curious, aside from not being wintel and therefore spiffy, what's the big deal bitch? what is or ever was so great about amiga anyway.
It did most of what Win95 does about 10 years before Microsoft. And it did it without a hard drive, and with half a meg of RAM.
Real multitasking, decent GUI, etc. It had powerful graphics hardware (handled by a separate processor) and was easily interfaced with video systems - there are still small TV stations that do their production on Amiga stuff (I remember the preview channel on my local cable company showing a Guru Meditation error).
The Amiga was so far ahead of it's time that no one knew what to do with it. People were interested in spreadsheets and dBase.
Now that the hardware and software have caught up to where the Amiga was 15 years ago, I don't see any real comeback happening.
If the owner of the name doesn't want it to be used in a certain way (perhaps Richard doesn't like to be called Dick), it's a very small effort on my part to comply and make them happy. What a concept! Expending just a bit of effort in an attempt to lubricate the wheels of civility. Oh, yeah, I know, it's an "Evil Corporate Entity(tm)" but what the heck, I like to keep in practice for Real People too.
We've come damned close to the end of the road with this culture if people think "pedantic" means "self-righteously regurgitating television commercials".
We've come much closer if simple politeness is extinct.
Is it illegal to decrypt the code (in the US)? I think not. The terms of the license agreement that restrict reverse-engineering are, IMHO, unenforceable because they attempt to restrict rights granted by Federal Copyright law by a contract of adhesion.
IANAL, but I don't think "unenforceable" is the same as "legal".
Is it unethical to decrypt the code? You are not bound by a coerced promise.
What coersion? In the first place no one puts a gun to your head and makes you click the "I agree" button - if you don't like the agreement, don't install the software, my guess is you'll find some way to live your life without it. But secondly and more importantly the designers of this hack installed the software with the intention of hacking it. With "malice and aforethought" did they break the agreement. In order for this to be ethical you have to operate from the standpoint that clicking affirmative to a license agreement has absolutely zero moral weight. From that point it's a slippery slope... you're within spitting distance of reneging on an E-Bay bid being "ethical".
As to whether it's illegal, depends on (a) jurisdiction, and (b) whether the court upholds some laws that a lot of us (myself included) think are pretty dumb.
Exactly what is "unethical" about reviewing a commercial product and if needs pulling it apart?
I guess it would be the fact that, by reverse-engineering the code, you are violating the terms of the license agreement you clicked "I Agree" to when you installed the software. It's definitely unethical (you're breaking a promise outright), and depending on the jurisdiction, perhaps illegal as well.
This is accepted with any other kind of product, why should software be treated differently?
Because software is licensed, other products are bought outright - ie, I don't think Consumer Labs runs their roll tests on rented cars.
What does that mean - in 25 words or less? "In charge of policy". What skillsets are necesary to be "in charge of policy"? I'm guessing pointy hair.
We have several MCSE-trained staff in my department whose job currently involves administrating the system, and it is my opinion that they must be fully trained in the use of Windows 2000 before we upgrade.
It strikes me that if your staff were really bright, well trained and had a wide experience base to draw on then they would be the ones setting IT policy and deciding on which tools will give the best leverage.
Any time I feel like it. Which is the point - freedom. If I were content to deal with scheduling my comings and goings around someone else's timetable, I probably wouldn't own a car.
But for day-to-day commuting of, say, 50 miles or less each way, (and if you commute more than that you need to re-evaluate the value of your time!) they work great.
Does that 50 miles include NE Ohio winters? IE, snow, cold, dark, heater, defroster, headlights and windshield wipers on 100% of the drive?
And if it does, I still have to wait for the blessed thing to recharge before I can go home. Bad news if there's an emergency that requires me to leave right now.
I'm owning a pc-Dvd sollution and was thinking of bying a ps2 allmost only because it's a kinda cheap dvd-player.
Not very "cheap" if you ask me - you can get (locally) an Apex 600 DVD player for US$160, it has a "hidden" menu that will allow you to disable region coding and shut down Macrovision. Oh, and it'll play CDs full of MP3s, too!
Granted, the Apex will never play "Flaming Kung-Fu Buttmonkeys", but this talk of buying a PS2 because it's a cheap DVD player seems silly to me.
...it's endurance. When I can jump into an electric car and drive from Akron to Detroit non-stop, heater, defroster, wipers, headlights and stereo all going full-blast, I'll take electric cars seriously. Until then they just don't cut the mustard.
Sorry, eco-geeks. But pound for pound, gasoline rules over batteries. I'd love to see a leap in technology that changes this, but I'm not holding my breath.
So, in other words, you must object to the whole of the United States government, both federal and state.
I'm not aware of any of my state taxes undwriting NASA projects, so I'll leave them out of this. As to the Federales -
On one hand I have all the goods and services that the federal government has blessed me with this year. On the other I have $0.28 out of every single fscking dollar I earned.
This is a trick question, right?
If you choose to live here, either voluntarily or making excuses as to why you can't leave, then you're accepting governmental overhead.
I sure am! I'm "accepting" it bigtime, cheeks spread. But asking me to smile while I "accept" is a bit much, I think. Please grant me the small indulgence of a pitiful whimper now and again.
Which is not how these projects are being funded, therefore my objection to them. It's "ask" vs. "take".
Hint: If someone held me up, took my money, then used it to find a cure for cancer, I'd still be pissed off that I was robbed. Even more pissed if the robber had said "Listen, I know what's best here, so be a good boy and hand over the wallet before I shoot you". It's one thing to be a thug, another to be an Annointed thug.
NASA always likes crashing things. In fact they are getting real good at it lately.
If they could get the tech and bandwidth going to relay back high-res 5000fps video (so you can later savor every frame in super slo-mo) on the way down they'd have some killer pay-per-view potential there. Great potential revenue stream.
I know I'd pay US$40.00 to watch a piece of space junk slam into a planet. Earth, even
Yes but can your DVD player outperform all PC's on the market like the PSX2 does?
Yes, it does - it plays DVDs on my home television better than any PC on the market. Which is what I bought it for.
If I'd wanted to run Linux, connect to the internet, do cellular automata experiments, write code, or play "Street-Fighting Kung-Fu Butt Monkeys" on it, the Aphex 600 is probably not the info-appliance I would have picked first.
It might help if you defined "outperform". For all I know that means the PSX2 gets hotter faster than any PC on the market.
I'm just sick of exagerations, even if it's only $20.00.
Apex 600, Circuit city, 18-Feb-2000, on sale.
After reading about it (on/. no less) I went to the CC website, paid for it online to be picked up on the way home from work that day. When I got there the sales droid informed me it was on sale. Life is good.
The PSX2 promises to be the cheapest DVD player on the market, that alone is worth the price.
Really? I just picked up a DVD player for $160+tax that also plays MP3s recorded to CD-R, and has a menu that allows you to defeat the region coding & Macrovision.
It isn't the importing of the PS2 that is illegal, it is the exporting it from Japan that is illegal.
Bingo. But to be fair, the headline on the original article was also wrong. Far be it for the story poster to actually read the entire 144 words before submitting it. Or do the moderators pick the headlines...?
BTW, it's not specifically exporting, but simply transporting one outside of Japan. Meaning you can't take your PS2 on vacation with you, at least not legally.
They should just post links saying "click on the banner ad above" and get it over with already.
On the other side of the coin, it's thanks to Slashdot that I know about things like Junkbuster and Intermute - so I'm blissfully banner-free. Self imposed web censorship! I love it!
Slashdot Mirror
So would somebody please tell us all what was so great about the Amiga?
The very short and simple answer is that when it was introduced it was at least ten years ahead of anything else on the market.
Perhaps this analogy will help: There you are playing with your brand new Nintendo Entertainment System, and your neighbor shows you a Playstation. Does your jaw drop or what?
Bah. We had the Boing Ball on the Atari ST too.
And the ST sweat blood making it move. On Amy it took maybe 4% of the CPU. Ah, the old flame wars...
Has anyone bothered to emulate the ST? For reasons I cannot explain I've decided I need to emulate everything I can on my new Laptop. I've already got the Atari 800, TRS-80, Atari 7800, Amiga, Odyssey2 (ok, so I'm a sick puppy), Game Boy... must have more! MORE!
(Shoot! Amost forgot, need to d/l a Z-machine for it)
I know this is an awkward question but what defines an Amiga?
The Boing Ball.
Well, actually I would have thought the Operating System, maybe I'm missing something.
I'm curious, aside from not being wintel and therefore spiffy, what's the big deal bitch? what is or ever was so great about amiga anyway.
It did most of what Win95 does about 10 years before Microsoft. And it did it without a hard drive, and with half a meg of RAM.
Real multitasking, decent GUI, etc. It had powerful graphics hardware (handled by a separate processor) and was easily interfaced with video systems - there are still small TV stations that do their production on Amiga stuff (I remember the preview channel on my local cable company showing a Guru Meditation error).
The Amiga was so far ahead of it's time that no one knew what to do with it. People were interested in spreadsheets and dBase.
Now that the hardware and software have caught up to where the Amiga was 15 years ago, I don't see any real comeback happening.
...Amiga's back from the dead again.
There's no need to be that obedient.
If the owner of the name doesn't want it to be used in a certain way (perhaps Richard doesn't like to be called Dick), it's a very small effort on my part to comply and make them happy. What a concept! Expending just a bit of effort in an attempt to lubricate the wheels of civility. Oh, yeah, I know, it's an "Evil Corporate Entity(tm)" but what the heck, I like to keep in practice for Real People too.
We've come damned close to the end of the road with this culture if people think "pedantic" means "self-righteously regurgitating television commercials".
We've come much closer if simple politeness is extinct.
Now where did I put that stainless-steel hanky...
Is it illegal to decrypt the code (in the US)? I think not. The terms of the license agreement that restrict reverse-engineering are, IMHO, unenforceable because they attempt to restrict rights granted by Federal Copyright law by a contract of adhesion.
IANAL, but I don't think "unenforceable" is the same as "legal".
Is it unethical to decrypt the code? You are not bound by a coerced promise.
What coersion? In the first place no one puts a gun to your head and makes you click the "I agree" button - if you don't like the agreement, don't install the software, my guess is you'll find some way to live your life without it. But secondly and more importantly the designers of this hack installed the software with the intention of hacking it. With "malice and aforethought" did they break the agreement. In order for this to be ethical you have to operate from the standpoint that clicking affirmative to a license agreement has absolutely zero moral weight. From that point it's a slippery slope... you're within spitting distance of reneging on an E-Bay bid being "ethical".
As to whether it's illegal, depends on (a) jurisdiction, and (b) whether the court upholds some laws that a lot of us (myself included) think are pretty dumb.
Exactly what is "unethical" about reviewing a commercial product and if needs pulling it apart?
I guess it would be the fact that, by reverse-engineering the code, you are violating the terms of the license agreement you clicked "I Agree" to when you installed the software. It's definitely unethical (you're breaking a promise outright), and depending on the jurisdiction, perhaps illegal as well.
This is accepted with any other kind of product, why should software be treated differently?
Because software is licensed, other products are bought outright - ie, I don't think Consumer Labs runs their roll tests on rented cars.
I'm in charge of policy...
What does that mean - in 25 words or less? "In charge of policy". What skillsets are necesary to be "in charge of policy"? I'm guessing pointy hair.
We have several MCSE-trained staff in my department whose job currently involves administrating the system, and it is my opinion that they must be fully trained in the use of Windows 2000 before we upgrade.
It strikes me that if your staff were really bright, well trained and had a wide experience base to draw on then they would be the ones setting IT policy and deciding on which tools will give the best leverage.
But hey, I'm a dreamer.
Kung-fu Buttmonkeys? Man, where do you get your games?
You're not cleared for that information fnord.
How often do you drive from Akron to Detroit?
Any time I feel like it. Which is the point - freedom. If I were content to deal with scheduling my comings and goings around someone else's timetable, I probably wouldn't own a car.
But for day-to-day commuting of, say, 50 miles or less each way, (and if you commute more than that you need to re-evaluate the value of your time!) they work great.
Does that 50 miles include NE Ohio winters? IE, snow, cold, dark, heater, defroster, headlights and windshield wipers on 100% of the drive?
And if it does, I still have to wait for the blessed thing to recharge before I can go home. Bad news if there's an emergency that requires me to leave right now.
It's the freedom angle again.
For the "secret" menu try:
_ menu.html
http://www.nerd-out.com/apex/Secret_Menu/secret
Dunno about video CDs - sorry.
I'm owning a pc-Dvd sollution and was thinking of bying a ps2 allmost only because it's a kinda cheap dvd-player.
Not very "cheap" if you ask me - you can get (locally) an Apex 600 DVD player for US$160, it has a "hidden" menu that will allow you to disable region coding and shut down Macrovision. Oh, and it'll play CDs full of MP3s, too!
Granted, the Apex will never play "Flaming Kung-Fu Buttmonkeys", but this talk of buying a PS2 because it's a cheap DVD player seems silly to me.
...it's endurance. When I can jump into an electric car and drive from Akron to Detroit non-stop, heater, defroster, wipers, headlights and stereo all going full-blast, I'll take electric cars seriously. Until then they just don't cut the mustard.
Sorry, eco-geeks. But pound for pound, gasoline rules over batteries. I'd love to see a leap in technology that changes this, but I'm not holding my breath.
1) Get one of those 14" X 14" Rubbermaid sink tubs
2) Fill it with ice cubes and cold water...
Waitaminnut - at what point do you overclock the CPU? I missed that part.
Whoa - Parrapa on crank!
So, in other words, you must object to the whole of the United States government, both federal and state.
I'm not aware of any of my state taxes undwriting NASA projects, so I'll leave them out of this. As to the Federales -
On one hand I have all the goods and services that the federal government has blessed me with this year. On the other I have $0.28 out of every single fscking dollar I earned.
This is a trick question, right?
If you choose to live here, either voluntarily or making excuses as to why you can't leave, then you're accepting governmental overhead.
I sure am! I'm "accepting" it bigtime, cheeks spread. But asking me to smile while I "accept" is a bit much, I think. Please grant me the small indulgence of a pitiful whimper now and again.
How much is science worth to you?
As much as I'm willing to pay.
Which is not how these projects are being funded, therefore my objection to them. It's "ask" vs. "take".
Hint: If someone held me up, took my money, then used it to find a cure for cancer, I'd still be pissed off that I was robbed. Even more pissed if the robber had said "Listen, I know what's best here, so be a good boy and hand over the wallet before I shoot you". It's one thing to be a thug, another to be an Annointed thug.
Silly principles and all that.
This lets people work and possibly get off wellfare to do the factory work created either directly or indirectly by the NASA projects
That's wonderful! But let's cut out the middle-man and just pay people to sit around and watch TV.
Oh, wait - we already do that. Nevermind.
NASA always likes crashing things. In fact they are getting real good at it lately.
If they could get the tech and bandwidth going to relay back high-res 5000fps video (so you can later savor every frame in super slo-mo) on the way down they'd have some killer pay-per-view potential there. Great potential revenue stream.
I know I'd pay US$40.00 to watch a piece of space junk slam into a planet. Earth, even
Yes but can your DVD player outperform all PC's on the market like the PSX2 does?
Yes, it does - it plays DVDs on my home television better than any PC on the market. Which is what I bought it for.
If I'd wanted to run Linux, connect to the internet, do cellular automata experiments, write code, or play "Street-Fighting Kung-Fu Butt Monkeys" on it, the Aphex 600 is probably not the info-appliance I would have picked first.
It might help if you defined "outperform". For all I know that means the PSX2 gets hotter faster than any PC on the market.
I'm just sick of exagerations, even if it's only $20.00.
/. no less) I went to the CC website, paid for it online to be picked up on the way home from work that day. When I got there the sales droid informed me it was on sale. Life is good.
Apex 600, Circuit city, 18-Feb-2000, on sale.
After reading about it (on
The PSX2 promises to be the cheapest DVD player on the market, that alone is worth the price.
Really? I just picked up a DVD player for $160+tax that also plays MP3s recorded to CD-R, and has a menu that allows you to defeat the region coding & Macrovision.
PSX2 will be cheaper? Does it come with a remote?
It isn't the importing of the PS2 that is illegal, it is the exporting it from Japan that is illegal.
Bingo. But to be fair, the headline on the original article was also wrong. Far be it for the story poster to actually read the entire 144 words before submitting it. Or do the moderators pick the headlines...?
BTW, it's not specifically exporting, but simply transporting one outside of Japan. Meaning you can't take your PS2 on vacation with you, at least not legally.
Must be some Amercian Colloquialism.
Like the word "fanny" being a cuter form of "butt"?
They should just post links saying "click on the banner ad above" and get it over with already.
On the other side of the coin, it's thanks to Slashdot that I know about things like Junkbuster and Intermute - so I'm blissfully banner-free. Self imposed web censorship! I love it!