Hehe. I'm not a fan of DragonBall, but I know what you mean. Some of the fights in Rurouni Kenshin span something like 5 episodes (the never ending battle with Shishio comes to mind). 1 hour and 40 minutes (20 min. episodes) for one fight. Good lord.
Brewster would have had no problems in 1999. Most Dotcoms burnt through way more than $30 million, and have absoultely nothing to show for it. All he would have to do is make sure everything was leased.
A lot of Tetris and Tetris type games had a two player mode that had the option for CPU controlled player two if you didn't have any friends. If you set the AI to the maximum level, you would be instantly crushed no matter how good you were. The CPU could instantly decide where to place the blocks, and never made a bad move. Try setting Tetris Attack for the SNES to play against itself for a while. It's kind of impressive.
My question is this: How is it Nintendo et. al. can program an incredibly skilled Tetris AI, but scientists at MIT cannot?
It's not so bad. These days, with so much competition in the cell phone market (there are 5 cell phone providers available in my area), cell phone plans keep getting better and better. I don't know how it is in Europe, but in the US cell phone service is probably 10x cheeper now than it was 3 years ago. Companies are adding all sorts of new free crap to their service plans to make things even cheeper, such as free long distance calling, free roaming, and free calls to your provider's other customers.
For example, for $40/mo, Cingular Wireless offer 500 anytime minutes, and 3000 night and weekend minutes. Any unused minutes roll over to next month. You also get free long distance, free roaming, and I beleive the first minute on incoming calls is free. I think 3500 minutes is more than most people can use in a month. Verizon, while they don't get free roaming, offer 300 anyime, 4000 night and weekend, and 1000 mobile to mobile minutes for $40/mo.
Also, the cell phone companies have promos all the time where you can get stuff like unlimited night and weekend or unlimited mobile to mobile if you sign up during the promo.
So sure incoming calls count against your minutes, but with the sheer amount of minutes given out these days it's not really a big concern.
Actually, at my first IT job the office was overcrowded and they didn't have a place to put me, so they set me up with a desk in the server room. It's not so bad. When people can't access the room, it makes it harder for them to bother you. You can play games without fear of being watched. And you get used to it being 60 degrees all the time after a while. I can now stand outside in the dead of winter with a t-shirt and shorts on and I'm A-OK.
Or you could just go to Netcraft and discover that they are using Apache (and something called Rapidsite) on IRIX, and that their page was apparently created with Frontpage 5.0. In addition they use mod_ssl and OpenSSL.
GAMES! That's why. Many games want to run at a different resolution and color depth than I have Windows set at. Back in the 3.1 days I had to change my color depth and resolution and reboot in order to accomodate those Sierra adventure games for Windows. These days the game changes it for me, on the fly, with no rebooting/reloading/re-anything. There are other reasons too, but I'd say that's the major one.
How can a Mac possibly have a lower TCO for the home user? First things first, they cost twice as much as a comperable PC. Second, if the logic board or one of the other pieces of proprietary hardware breaks you have to replace it with Apple parts from an Apple authorized vendor, and that will cost a fortune. I cannot possibly see how an Apple can end up with a lower TCO than a PC. I'm very curious. Please explain the logic behind that statement to me.
Whatever. I haven't bought a RIAA label CD in years, instead spending my hard earned cash on indie music and shows at small venues (gonna go see Dread Zeppelin at Slims on the 25th). I ask everyone I know to do the same, trying to convince them to join the cause. Most don't listen to me, but if I can convince just a few people then at least I feel that I made a difference; that I'm out fighting the good fight. A little activism can be pretty powerful. But instead you prefer to use the Napster-of-the-month and complain about how people on Slashdot only complain about complaining.
This worked great at my old job. The mail room guy would come and deliver the packages to my desk when they arrived. At my current job however, I am lucky to ever see the package. More than likely it will sit in a bin underneath a shelf for 5 days until the mailroom staff finally gets around to sorting it, then they will put it near my (not in) my mailbox. If I want it, I have to go find it.
I don't want any of my money going to the ??AAs that I can avoid
How about not giving them any money? I haven't bought a new RIAA label CD in about 2 years, but that doesn't mean I stopped buying music. The RIAA gets nothing if you buy from indie labels, or buy used CDs. Shopping at independent music stores doesn't hurt either. These days I buy mostly indie punk rock and ska albums. I have discovered many great bands and found some excellent music by digging around in the indie sections at Amoeba and Rasputin in Berkeley; music that is a lot better than anything they play on the radio anyhow. And not a penny of my purchase goes to a faceless corporation.
If you really must buy Metallica or whatever at least buy it used. Even though at one point money went to the RIAA from that CD purchase, at least it wasn't your money.
No kidding. My piece-of-shit Dell Optiplex GX1 at work (with a whopping 350Mhz PII) is running W2k and has been up since Aug 23, 40 days straight without so much as a hiccup. Prior to that it had been up for about 60 days but had to be rebooted after some asshole installed some software that required a reboot.
Of course the only reason I don't reboot is because I am running ProgressQuest all the time and I don't want to lose my place. My charater, Captain Dingleberry is currently ranked 196 out of 39600 players. I was pissed when that guy rebooted my PC and I come back 2 days later to discover that ProgressQuest had been shut down.
Re:If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.
on
Microsoft Buys Rare
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· Score: 5, Insightful
What makes PS2 and GameCube "superior"? Because they are not Microsoft? Bear in mind that Sony and Nintendo areevil ruthless/faceless/heartless companies too (Nintendo to a lesser extent).
Fact is, beside the lack of games and the silly controller, the Xbox is a superior system. If you have ever played one you would know. The graphics on the PS2 just can't come anywhere close to the Xbox. The built in hard drive is a brilliant feature. It has an MP3 (or maybe it's WMA) ripper built in, as well as the ability to play your MP3s in certain games. It's got built in networking. People also like to bitch about how you have to buy a remote to watch DVDs on the Xbox. But with the PS2 you have to buy a network adapter to play online, a multitap for 4 player games, and a memory card just to be able to save.
Quit dissing the Xbox. It actually is pretty cool, even if it is from Microsoft.
The only movie I've seen this guy work well in was The Matrix
Aren't you forgetting Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, the greatest movie ever made? "Ted" was by far Keanu's best performace to date. He was the perfect choice to portray a SoCal airhead. His performance just seemed so natural.
remember that what the Reuters/AP wires carry is all that most people will ever know about any particular issue.
Is that such a bad thing? You wouldn't see a story that well balanced on TV. TV news offers nothing except one sided stories. Then of course you have specialty news sites like Slashdot or The Register. Can you tell me with a straight face that The Register offers fairly balanced articles?
Reuters, the Associated Press, and local newspaper staff writers are the last bastion of fair reporting. You have to admit that this article was very fairly written. It offered no opinions of it's own, and reported both sides of the argument without trying to say which one was "right". If Joe Sixpack were to read this, he would be free to make his own opinion based on the facts, not have one shoved down his throat. I think we should be thankful that fair reporting still exists in this corporation dominated society.
OS/400 commands are incredibly logical, as explained in another post above me. Once you learn the logic behind it, you can pretty much guess the name of the command you need. Try saying that about Unix. cat? grep? In what way do those names make sense?
To make things even easier OS/400 gives you an abundance of assistance with command parameters. Type in a command and press F4 and you are then prompted with all possible parameters for the command. And the parameter explanations are written in plain english. The F4 trick works from anywhere, even within system utilities. If you need to change a setting, but don't know what options are available, hit F4 for a list. If you hit F4 on a blank command line, you will be given a menu that helps you find the utility you need. Very helpful.
In addition, OS/400 has better online help than any operating system ever. If you type in a command and hit F1, you get detailed help for that command, written in plain, easy to understand english. Try saying that about man pages. Also if you are in a utility and you move the cursor over to something you don't understand, press F1 and you will get help on that component of the utility. Help on OS/400 is incredibly useful.
Newspapers: the last bastion of real, unslanted news. Newspapers are typically far less biased regarding these types of issues than TV news and they actually report the facts. Bay Area papers(the Chronicle and the Merc anyway) have stories regarding the DMCA, copy-protection, and other "right on-line" kind of issues all the time. They don't necessarily give an opinion, but they definatly report both sides of the story and all the possible affects. Just today in fact, I saw a story in the Chronicle about RIAA members suing internet backbones to block Listen4Ever, complete with quotes from both the RIAA and EFF (actually the story is from the Associated Press).
People will quickly find out who caused their VCR to stop working. Even if Joe Sixpack doesn't read the paper, when he mentions his VCR that wont record to the informed John Aged-Red-Wine or Stan Mountaindew at work, he will get an answer.
When someone at work asked me why his new CD wouldn't play in his computer, he got more of an answer than I think he wanted. I can get a little preachy at times.
IBM registers are just dumb terminals controlled by a controller in the back office of the store or at a central location. Their program is sent to them when they boot up and loaded into RAM (via BOOTP I think). Update the software on the controller, and the registers are automagically updated too! I think the version of IBM General Sales App that we use only supports 12 digit barcodes, but the next version will most likeley support these new barcodes. It's not like all those POS terminals, scanners, and controllers will need to be replaced. All that they will need is a software upgrade
Really, all a barcode scanner does is decode it and inputs the numbers. It's really not all that different from typing in the numbers by hand. If those numbers match an item record on the controller, it will ring it up, else it wont. There's no magic behind it.
BTW all the K-Mart's I have been to use IBM 4683/4694 registers.
Really, you can blame Fox. They don't care about you, your family, the loyal viewers, or anyone else. They care about one thing: selling advertising. The more people watching, the more they can sell advertising time for. Football probably gets higer ratings than anything else they show, and also has way more opertunities for advertising. If football runs late, of course they are going to pre-empt regular programming. However if they "planned for it" like you said, and football ended "early", then they would have to fill that dead air with a post-game show or some crap that no one would watch.
Or something like that. I'm sure they have a team of experts working around the clock to figure out how to squeeze in the most advertising and how to sell it for the most money.
Re:Why the need for ROMs?
on
Borrowing ROMs
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· Score: 1
Arrr... I concur. Nothing was more frustrating as a kid than wanting to play Megaman, putting in the cartridge, pressing power, and then seeing that aggravating blinking purple screen. Take the cart out, blow, try again, and once more you get the blinking purple. Repeat x30 and maybe it will work. Sometimes you just had to ask God to make it work, cuz blowing in it really didn't do any damn good.
But at the same time, assuming you can get the carts to work, playing on an old NES does have a certain aesthetic value that emulators can't give you. Not sure what it is, perhaps the nostalgia, but holding that uncomfortable, primitive 2 button controller connected to that ugly gray box, listening to those game bleeps and blips they called music is somehow very pleasing.
Have you tried Neon Genesis Evangelion yet? I know it's a little cliche, and a lot of people think it is pretentions, but it wont leave you "underwhelmed" and will probably make you think "Wow!". You didn't mention if you had seen Akira, which another classic that might be classified as "serious". Also I really like Vampire Hunter D (the sequel is really good too). .
But really, why are you insisting that anime has to be serious and have a deep message? It's just entertainment. Sure it's a little different to see a "cartoon" have a deep message, but that isn't what it's all about. One of my favorite anime series is Ranma 1/2, which is about as silly as they come. I certainly don't watch it for the deep spirtual meaning. I watch it to have fun!
But keep trying anyway. Anime is very entertaining and enjoyable. Just don't expect to have a spirtual revalation from watching it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hehe. I'm not a fan of DragonBall, but I know what you mean. Some of the fights in Rurouni Kenshin span something like 5 episodes (the never ending battle with Shishio comes to mind). 1 hour and 40 minutes (20 min. episodes) for one fight. Good lord.
That doesn't mean they support alternatives. It means the alternatives can adapt to support them. Does it work without the IE masq?
Brewster would have had no problems in 1999. Most Dotcoms burnt through way more than $30 million, and have absoultely nothing to show for it. All he would have to do is make sure everything was leased.
My question is this: How is it Nintendo et. al. can program an incredibly skilled Tetris AI, but scientists at MIT cannot?
For example, for $40/mo, Cingular Wireless offer 500 anytime minutes, and 3000 night and weekend minutes. Any unused minutes roll over to next month. You also get free long distance, free roaming, and I beleive the first minute on incoming calls is free. I think 3500 minutes is more than most people can use in a month. Verizon, while they don't get free roaming, offer 300 anyime, 4000 night and weekend, and 1000 mobile to mobile minutes for $40/mo.
Also, the cell phone companies have promos all the time where you can get stuff like unlimited night and weekend or unlimited mobile to mobile if you sign up during the promo. So sure incoming calls count against your minutes, but with the sheer amount of minutes given out these days it's not really a big concern.
Actually, at my first IT job the office was overcrowded and they didn't have a place to put me, so they set me up with a desk in the server room. It's not so bad. When people can't access the room, it makes it harder for them to bother you. You can play games without fear of being watched. And you get used to it being 60 degrees all the time after a while. I can now stand outside in the dead of winter with a t-shirt and shorts on and I'm A-OK.
Now then, where is my karma/respect/beer?
GAMES! That's why. Many games want to run at a different resolution and color depth than I have Windows set at. Back in the 3.1 days I had to change my color depth and resolution and reboot in order to accomodate those Sierra adventure games for Windows. These days the game changes it for me, on the fly, with no rebooting/reloading/re-anything. There are other reasons too, but I'd say that's the major one.
How can a Mac possibly have a lower TCO for the home user? First things first, they cost twice as much as a comperable PC. Second, if the logic board or one of the other pieces of proprietary hardware breaks you have to replace it with Apple parts from an Apple authorized vendor, and that will cost a fortune. I cannot possibly see how an Apple can end up with a lower TCO than a PC. I'm very curious. Please explain the logic behind that statement to me.
Whatever. I haven't bought a RIAA label CD in years, instead spending my hard earned cash on indie music and shows at small venues (gonna go see Dread Zeppelin at Slims on the 25th). I ask everyone I know to do the same, trying to convince them to join the cause. Most don't listen to me, but if I can convince just a few people then at least I feel that I made a difference; that I'm out fighting the good fight. A little activism can be pretty powerful. But instead you prefer to use the Napster-of-the-month and complain about how people on Slashdot only complain about complaining.
This worked great at my old job. The mail room guy would come and deliver the packages to my desk when they arrived. At my current job however, I am lucky to ever see the package. More than likely it will sit in a bin underneath a shelf for 5 days until the mailroom staff finally gets around to sorting it, then they will put it near my (not in) my mailbox. If I want it, I have to go find it.
How about not giving them any money? I haven't bought a new RIAA label CD in about 2 years, but that doesn't mean I stopped buying music. The RIAA gets nothing if you buy from indie labels, or buy used CDs. Shopping at independent music stores doesn't hurt either. These days I buy mostly indie punk rock and ska albums. I have discovered many great bands and found some excellent music by digging around in the indie sections at Amoeba and Rasputin in Berkeley; music that is a lot better than anything they play on the radio anyhow. And not a penny of my purchase goes to a faceless corporation.
If you really must buy Metallica or whatever at least buy it used. Even though at one point money went to the RIAA from that CD purchase, at least it wasn't your money.
Fight back. Every little bit helps.
Can't you get KBHK (Channel 44) in Santa Cruz? Simpsons repeats three times a night (6:00, 10:00, and 11:00).
Of course the only reason I don't reboot is because I am running ProgressQuest all the time and I don't want to lose my place. My charater, Captain Dingleberry is currently ranked 196 out of 39600 players. I was pissed when that guy rebooted my PC and I come back 2 days later to discover that ProgressQuest had been shut down.
Fact is, beside the lack of games and the silly controller, the Xbox is a superior system. If you have ever played one you would know. The graphics on the PS2 just can't come anywhere close to the Xbox. The built in hard drive is a brilliant feature. It has an MP3 (or maybe it's WMA) ripper built in, as well as the ability to play your MP3s in certain games. It's got built in networking. People also like to bitch about how you have to buy a remote to watch DVDs on the Xbox. But with the PS2 you have to buy a network adapter to play online, a multitap for 4 player games, and a memory card just to be able to save.
Quit dissing the Xbox. It actually is pretty cool, even if it is from Microsoft.
I actually had a Barcode Battler when I was a kid. How pathetic is that?
Aren't you forgetting Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, the greatest movie ever made? "Ted" was by far Keanu's best performace to date. He was the perfect choice to portray a SoCal airhead. His performance just seemed so natural.
Is that such a bad thing? You wouldn't see a story that well balanced on TV. TV news offers nothing except one sided stories. Then of course you have specialty news sites like Slashdot or The Register. Can you tell me with a straight face that The Register offers fairly balanced articles?
Reuters, the Associated Press, and local newspaper staff writers are the last bastion of fair reporting. You have to admit that this article was very fairly written. It offered no opinions of it's own, and reported both sides of the argument without trying to say which one was "right". If Joe Sixpack were to read this, he would be free to make his own opinion based on the facts, not have one shoved down his throat. I think we should be thankful that fair reporting still exists in this corporation dominated society.
To make things even easier OS/400 gives you an abundance of assistance with command parameters. Type in a command and press F4 and you are then prompted with all possible parameters for the command. And the parameter explanations are written in plain english. The F4 trick works from anywhere, even within system utilities. If you need to change a setting, but don't know what options are available, hit F4 for a list. If you hit F4 on a blank command line, you will be given a menu that helps you find the utility you need. Very helpful.
In addition, OS/400 has better online help than any operating system ever. If you type in a command and hit F1, you get detailed help for that command, written in plain, easy to understand english. Try saying that about man pages. Also if you are in a utility and you move the cursor over to something you don't understand, press F1 and you will get help on that component of the utility. Help on OS/400 is incredibly useful.
You shouldn't dis an OS you know nothing about.
People will quickly find out who caused their VCR to stop working. Even if Joe Sixpack doesn't read the paper, when he mentions his VCR that wont record to the informed John Aged-Red-Wine or Stan Mountaindew at work, he will get an answer.
When someone at work asked me why his new CD wouldn't play in his computer, he got more of an answer than I think he wanted. I can get a little preachy at times.
Obviously you have never heard of eBay
Really, all a barcode scanner does is decode it and inputs the numbers. It's really not all that different from typing in the numbers by hand. If those numbers match an item record on the controller, it will ring it up, else it wont. There's no magic behind it.
BTW all the K-Mart's I have been to use IBM 4683/4694 registers.
Or something like that. I'm sure they have a team of experts working around the clock to figure out how to squeeze in the most advertising and how to sell it for the most money.
But at the same time, assuming you can get the carts to work, playing on an old NES does have a certain aesthetic value that emulators can't give you. Not sure what it is, perhaps the nostalgia, but holding that uncomfortable, primitive 2 button controller connected to that ugly gray box, listening to those game bleeps and blips they called music is somehow very pleasing.
But really, why are you insisting that anime has to be serious and have a deep message? It's just entertainment. Sure it's a little different to see a "cartoon" have a deep message, but that isn't what it's all about. One of my favorite anime series is Ranma 1/2, which is about as silly as they come. I certainly don't watch it for the deep spirtual meaning. I watch it to have fun!
But keep trying anyway. Anime is very entertaining and enjoyable. Just don't expect to have a spirtual revalation from watching it.