Well hey, at least they were quick with the update. I didn't even know the bloody thing was out before I saw the news on the fixed problem. Microsoft _still_ hasn't recalled Windows, and it's been out for, what, nearly twenty years?
Dilbert was bloody popular among engineers and the blue-collar workforce in general. User Friendly does the same thing. Illiad may be a rather lacking in the talent department (goodbye, karma), but he does know how to appeal to a certain audience. Dilbert got your cublicle workers, User Friendly your nerdy Unix freaks, Doonesbury your political liberals, Garfield your fat lasagna-loving cats (?), and so on...
Anyway, Penny Arcade is far superior in both art and content, and the jokes aren't nearly as obscure.
The afore-mentioned Diamond age is really an interesting look into nanotechnology and its consequences. Neil Stephenson paints a picture of a future where nanobots are just... there. They're another part of everyday life. His ideas are interesting, if not always plausible, and it's a damn good book besides. Read!
I remember going to see A Bug's Life in th theater with my young cousins. I was fully prepared to enjoy an entertaining and pretty, if not brain-exercising, movie. Imagine my surprise when I was treated to one of the best bloody little animations I've ever seen. When Geri moves around to the other side and moves the first black piece, his triumphant laugh is priceless. It's the most wonderfully twisted surreal piece that ever graced a Disney movie. Sure, the animation looks a little dated now, but it's still brilliant. Anyway, I'm ranting...
That doesn't mean it can't shrink later on or that their calculations regarding the time it should take for it to start were wrong. *shrug* I was just tossing it out there.
There are definitely both. Mass storage is good, but if I had a nickel for every time I've brought a floppy to school to print out a report and had it fail... Digital media is notoriously unreliable. CDs are good, but you have to take care of them (there really should be another layer of plastic on top of the label - most fatal scratching comes from the top). It seems to me that cart-based optical storage media is best for long-term preservation.
My theory, after watching Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, and based on an extremely limited understanding of all this crap, is that time is circular rather than linear as we commonly depict it. At a certain point in that circle or loop or whatever. is the Big Bang. After the Big Bang, the universe expands until it runs out of steam, then it slowly starts to contract again, bringing all the matter and anti-matter together where they annhilate each other and turn into energy, which is compressed further and further into an itty-bitty little space, then BOOM, it starts all over again. So basically, in nerdspeak, I think the universe/time is an endless loop.
But, you know, I could be wrong. It has happened once or twice...
I haven't used Netscape in forever. I switched to iCab on my old computer and now, though it rubs me wrong, am using IE (iCab's a great little piece of software, but proper javascript support kicks ass.) Anyway, is Netscape worth the download? Is it still as huge and RAM-hungry as I remember it? What about Omniweb or Opera? I'd love to hear from other OS X users about what they use and why.
Not much will come of idle discussion of the issue. bin Laden hates the U.S. so much, he twisted his own religion to give himself an excuse to declare war on it (or maybe it happened the other way around, regardless...). He's not going to stop trying to get us infidels unil he's dead and buried. I'm definitely not a pro-war person, but it's simple math. His one life for countless others. Indiscriminate bombing is certainly not the way about it, though. Hopefully the ground troops we've put in there will be able to take him down/out/whatever, but I fear there may be too many casualties: their civilians and our soldiers.
I dunno.. just another example of why religion is the deadliest force on earth.
...is whether or not they'll help keep down the level of bullshit patents (defensive patents or whatever you call them) so certain companies *cough*adobe*cough*macromedia*cough*microsoft* won't be able to sue willy-nilly anymore. Well, I'm sure they'll find a way to do that anyway, but it might slow them down a bit.
That's where I preordered mine. I got the black bundle (difference between black and indigo was that it had Madden 2002. I didn't particularly want it, but the indigos sold out faster. *shrug*). Then like the next day they had more up for sale, and, much to my chagrin, I found I could have easily gotten an indigo bundle and saved myself 50 bucks. Oh well. Anyway, here's the link to sign up for their mailing list. http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/ads/promos/gamecube_new sletter/ They'll e-mail you the day before a new batch gets put up and tell you approximately what time they'll go on sale. Hope this helps.
Quite a bit, I'd imagine, but the resulting TV mvie would net them millions due to the intrinsic humor value in the image of cute little robot dogs gone mad. I know I'd pay good money to see that. What I'd be a little more worried about is a tech-savvy terrorist/anarchist/generally insane person rigging one of those bad boys to blow and running him into a crowd/building/whatever. A suicide bomber without the loss in manpower sounds like a good deal to me.
Counterstrike would run at, like, a billion frames a second!
I bet Square's pissed they didn't come up with that until _after_ they'd spent all that time rendering the FF movie. 10 megs a frame or some silliness like that? Sheesh.
Well at least when you get that all-right-this-is-the-last-straw-you-piece-of-shit BSoD, you can just toss the whole OS in the trash and rid yourself of it. I wonder if there's a digital equivalent for that week old apple juice/macaroni/rancid milk smell that likes to stick around the wastebasket...
No firewire? Gah. Good luck filling up 9000 tracks by USB. And what does it have over me bloody computer? If you need a computer in the first place to load the thing up, why not invest in some good speakers instead? (Yes, I know it can download from the internet, but don't think for a minute they're gonna get away with a direct connection to any of the napster wannabes.) I suppose if you hacked it to get around that stuff it might be cool, but anybody who can hack something like that most assuredly has a computer, so we're back to square one. To wit, nice idea, but unnecessary and fairly useless.
Their souls are probably pissed at the people who are getting all righteous and/or killing people in their name, too. Have you gotten particularly indignant about all the starving children of Africa and all the other back-asswards places that don't have food or medical care? Last I checked, a hell of a lot more of them die than Americans every day. If I'm gonna cry over the people who died in those planes, shouldn't I mourn over everyone else I don't know who dies? Or do you argue that American lives are worth more? (Here's a hint: drinking Budweiser in your tanktop and boxers and saluting the American flag is *not* getting on with your life, nor is it accomplishing much)
For those of you who are too lazy to actually go through the bill, I pulled this gem of a clause. That's nice of them to protect Sikhs, but, uh..., what about everyone else?
FINDINGS- Congress finds that--
(1) all Americans are united in condemning, in the strongest possible terms, the terrorists who planned and carried out the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, and in pursuing all those responsible for those attacks and their sponsors until they are brought to justice; (No shit?)
(2) Sikh-Americans form a vibrant, peaceful, and law-abiding part of America's people; (I like blanket assumptions.)
(3) approximately 500,000 Sikhs reside in the United States and are a vital part of the Nation; (Vital?)
(4) Sikh-Americans stand resolutely in support of the commitment of our Government to bring the terrorists and those that harbor them to justice; (What was I saying about blanket assumptions?)
(5) the Sikh faith is a distinct religion with a distinct religious and ethnic identity that has its own places of worship and a distinct holy text and religious tenets; (Good thing we've established that)
(6) many Sikh-Americans, who are easily recognizable by their turbans and beards, which are required articles of their faith, have suffered both verbal and physical assaults as a result of misguided anger toward Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack; (Along with every other minority member/excessively tan person in the U.S.)
(7) Sikh-Americans, as do all Americans, condemn acts of prejudice against any American; and
(8) Congress is seriously concerned by the number of crimes against Sikh-Americans and other Americans all across the Nation that have been reported in the wake of the tragic events that unfolded on September 11, 2001.
(b) SENSE OF CONGRESS- Congress--
(1) declares that, in the quest (Nice choice of words). to identify, locate, and bring to justice the perpetrators and sponsors of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans, including Sikh-Americans, should be protected;
(2) condemns bigotry and any acts of violence or discrimination against any Americans, including Sikh-Americans;
(3) calls upon local and Federal law enforcement authorities to work to prevent crimes against all Americans, including Sikh-Americans; and
(4) calls upon local and Federal law enforcement authorities to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law all those who commit crimes. (Brilliant plan! I love our legislators.)
Anyway, for a good laugh/cry, check out Section X of the bill. Great stuff about issuance of hazmat licenses, telemarketing fraud, and a new DEA training school (?). Thanks, Congress!
"SHORT TITLE- This Act may be cited as the `Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001'."
Good thing they spent so much time figuring out a good acronym. Sheesh.
If they're voluntary, what's the point? It sort of has to be all or nothing if it's going to work. I, for one, will remain squarely on the side of nothing. Besides, won't it be assumed that you have something to hide if you decide to opt out?
My $0.02
PhReaKy D. MoNKeY
I agree. I, for one, am rather disenchanted with games in general at the moment. The only thing that has kept my interest in Quake 3 has been Q3F, and I'm even getting a bit tired of that.I was sick of CounterStrike the day I played it. UT lasted quite a bit longer, but despite its valiant efforts, it too faded from my mind.
Then there are the non-FPS's (a category in itself these days). FF VIIII kept my attention for a while, but as the credits scrolled by, I knew it was over. I think I played Everquest twice. After spending 15 minutes trying to chase down and kill wombats or marmots or whatever the hell the random-ass creature of the day was, I spent the rest of the time running around yelling "Hail!" and molesting the general populace. I was so tired of all the games typically played in the local gaming room (internet cafe, but not), I started playing Descent 3. That game provided for more amusement than I'd enjoyed in a long time.
The N64 has kept me reasonably sane throughout this drought, with such absurdity as Super Smash Bros., Mario Party, Perfect Dark, and the Rush games. I'm waiting with bated breath for the Gamecube, with hopes that it might delay my nervous breakdown for at least a few more years.
Slashdot Mirror
More ammunition for anti-Apple people. Yay.
Well hey, at least they were quick with the update. I didn't even know the bloody thing was out before I saw the news on the fixed problem. Microsoft _still_ hasn't recalled Windows, and it's been out for, what, nearly twenty years?
Dilbert was bloody popular among engineers and the blue-collar workforce in general. User Friendly does the same thing. Illiad may be a rather lacking in the talent department (goodbye, karma), but he does know how to appeal to a certain audience. Dilbert got your cublicle workers, User Friendly your nerdy Unix freaks, Doonesbury your political liberals, Garfield your fat lasagna-loving cats (?), and so on...
Anyway, Penny Arcade is far superior in both art and content, and the jokes aren't nearly as obscure.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553380966/ ref=bxgy_sr_text_a/107-7865889-4434140
The afore-mentioned Diamond age is really an interesting look into nanotechnology and its consequences. Neil Stephenson paints a picture of a future where nanobots are just... there. They're another part of everyday life. His ideas are interesting, if not always plausible, and it's a damn good book besides. Read!
I remember going to see A Bug's Life in th theater with my young cousins. I was fully prepared to enjoy an entertaining and pretty, if not brain-exercising, movie. Imagine my surprise when I was treated to one of the best bloody little animations I've ever seen. When Geri moves around to the other side and moves the first black piece, his triumphant laugh is priceless. It's the most wonderfully twisted surreal piece that ever graced a Disney movie. Sure, the animation looks a little dated now, but it's still brilliant. Anyway, I'm ranting...
That doesn't mean it can't shrink later on or that their calculations regarding the time it should take for it to start were wrong. *shrug* I was just tossing it out there.
There are definitely both. Mass storage is good, but if I had a nickel for every time I've brought a floppy to school to print out a report and had it fail... Digital media is notoriously unreliable. CDs are good, but you have to take care of them (there really should be another layer of plastic on top of the label - most fatal scratching comes from the top). It seems to me that cart-based optical storage media is best for long-term preservation.
==braces for karma hit==
My theory, after watching Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, and based on an extremely limited understanding of all this crap, is that time is circular rather than linear as we commonly depict it. At a certain point in that circle or loop or whatever. is the Big Bang. After the Big Bang, the universe expands until it runs out of steam, then it slowly starts to contract again, bringing all the matter and anti-matter together where they annhilate each other and turn into energy, which is compressed further and further into an itty-bitty little space, then BOOM, it starts all over again. So basically, in nerdspeak, I think the universe/time is an endless loop.
But, you know, I could be wrong. It has happened once or twice...
I haven't used Netscape in forever. I switched to iCab on my old computer and now, though it rubs me wrong, am using IE (iCab's a great little piece of software, but proper javascript support kicks ass.) Anyway, is Netscape worth the download? Is it still as huge and RAM-hungry as I remember it? What about Omniweb or Opera? I'd love to hear from other OS X users about what they use and why.
Not much will come of idle discussion of the issue. bin Laden hates the U.S. so much, he twisted his own religion to give himself an excuse to declare war on it (or maybe it happened the other way around, regardless...). He's not going to stop trying to get us infidels unil he's dead and buried. I'm definitely not a pro-war person, but it's simple math. His one life for countless others. Indiscriminate bombing is certainly not the way about it, though. Hopefully the ground troops we've put in there will be able to take him down/out/whatever, but I fear there may be too many casualties: their civilians and our soldiers.
I dunno.. just another example of why religion is the deadliest force on earth.
From the first page of hits in a Google search for "microsoft patents." *shrug* You decide.
m ai n/0,14179,2808548,00.html
t ml
n ts .html
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/04/169219.sh
http://www.advogato.org/article/101.html
http://www.theonion.com/onion3311/microsoftpate
I will concede to you on that point since I'm too lazy to research the issue. I'll stick with what I know: approximately dick.
...is whether or not they'll help keep down the level of bullshit patents (defensive patents or whatever you call them) so certain companies *cough*adobe*cough*macromedia*cough*microsoft* won't be able to sue willy-nilly anymore. Well, I'm sure they'll find a way to do that anyway, but it might slow them down a bit.
Damn the evil corporations!
That's where I preordered mine. I got the black bundle (difference between black and indigo was that it had Madden 2002. I didn't particularly want it, but the indigos sold out faster. *shrug*). Then like the next day they had more up for sale, and, much to my chagrin, I found I could have easily gotten an indigo bundle and saved myself 50 bucks. Oh well. Anyway, here's the link to sign up for their mailing list. http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/ads/promos/gamecube_new sletter/ They'll e-mail you the day before a new batch gets put up and tell you approximately what time they'll go on sale. Hope this helps.
Quite a bit, I'd imagine, but the resulting TV mvie would net them millions due to the intrinsic humor value in the image of cute little robot dogs gone mad. I know I'd pay good money to see that. What I'd be a little more worried about is a tech-savvy terrorist/anarchist/generally insane person rigging one of those bad boys to blow and running him into a crowd/building/whatever. A suicide bomber without the loss in manpower sounds like a good deal to me.
Counterstrike would run at, like, a billion frames a second!
I bet Square's pissed they didn't come up with that until _after_ they'd spent all that time rendering the FF movie. 10 megs a frame or some silliness like that? Sheesh.
Well at least when you get that all-right-this-is-the-last-straw-you-piece-of-shit BSoD, you can just toss the whole OS in the trash and rid yourself of it. I wonder if there's a digital equivalent for that week old apple juice/macaroni/rancid milk smell that likes to stick around the wastebasket...
No firewire? Gah. Good luck filling up 9000 tracks by USB. And what does it have over me bloody computer? If you need a computer in the first place to load the thing up, why not invest in some good speakers instead? (Yes, I know it can download from the internet, but don't think for a minute they're gonna get away with a direct connection to any of the napster wannabes.) I suppose if you hacked it to get around that stuff it might be cool, but anybody who can hack something like that most assuredly has a computer, so we're back to square one. To wit, nice idea, but unnecessary and fairly useless.
Just make sure your player is at least two miles away before you begin playback. Gamma radiation isn't nearly as cool as The Hulk makes it out to be.
Maybe you should make Anonymous Cowards start out at -1.
Their souls are probably pissed at the people who are getting all righteous and/or killing people in their name, too. Have you gotten particularly indignant about all the starving children of Africa and all the other back-asswards places that don't have food or medical care? Last I checked, a hell of a lot more of them die than Americans every day. If I'm gonna cry over the people who died in those planes, shouldn't I mourn over everyone else I don't know who dies? Or do you argue that American lives are worth more? (Here's a hint: drinking Budweiser in your tanktop and boxers and saluting the American flag is *not* getting on with your life, nor is it accomplishing much)
Peace.
FINDINGS- Congress finds that--
(1) all Americans are united in condemning, in the strongest possible terms, the terrorists who planned and carried out the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, and in pursuing all those responsible for those attacks and their sponsors until they are brought to justice; (No shit?)
(2) Sikh-Americans form a vibrant, peaceful, and law-abiding part of America's people; (I like blanket assumptions.)
(3) approximately 500,000 Sikhs reside in the United States and are a vital part of the Nation; (Vital?)
(4) Sikh-Americans stand resolutely in support of the commitment of our Government to bring the terrorists and those that harbor them to justice; (What was I saying about blanket assumptions?)
(5) the Sikh faith is a distinct religion with a distinct religious and ethnic identity that has its own places of worship and a distinct holy text and religious tenets; (Good thing we've established that)
(6) many Sikh-Americans, who are easily recognizable by their turbans and beards, which are required articles of their faith, have suffered both verbal and physical assaults as a result of misguided anger toward Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack; (Along with every other minority member/excessively tan person in the U.S.)
(7) Sikh-Americans, as do all Americans, condemn acts of prejudice against any American; and
(8) Congress is seriously concerned by the number of crimes against Sikh-Americans and other Americans all across the Nation that have been reported in the wake of the tragic events that unfolded on September 11, 2001.
(b) SENSE OF CONGRESS- Congress--
(1) declares that, in the quest (Nice choice of words). to identify, locate, and bring to justice the perpetrators and sponsors of the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans, including Sikh-Americans, should be protected;
(2) condemns bigotry and any acts of violence or discrimination against any Americans, including Sikh-Americans;
(3) calls upon local and Federal law enforcement authorities to work to prevent crimes against all Americans, including Sikh-Americans; and
(4) calls upon local and Federal law enforcement authorities to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law all those who commit crimes. (Brilliant plan! I love our legislators.)
Anyway, for a good laugh/cry, check out Section X of the bill. Great stuff about issuance of hazmat licenses, telemarketing fraud, and a new DEA training school (?). Thanks, Congress!
"SHORT TITLE- This Act may be cited as the `Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001'."
Good thing they spent so much time figuring out a good acronym. Sheesh.
If they're voluntary, what's the point? It sort of has to be all or nothing if it's going to work. I, for one, will remain squarely on the side of nothing. Besides, won't it be assumed that you have something to hide if you decide to opt out? My $0.02 PhReaKy D. MoNKeY
You have to remember it's not Nintendo's controller. It's third-party.
I agree. I, for one, am rather disenchanted with games in general at the moment. The only thing that has kept my interest in Quake 3 has been Q3F, and I'm even getting a bit tired of that.I was sick of CounterStrike the day I played it. UT lasted quite a bit longer, but despite its valiant efforts, it too faded from my mind.
Then there are the non-FPS's (a category in itself these days). FF VIIII kept my attention for a while, but as the credits scrolled by, I knew it was over. I think I played Everquest twice. After spending 15 minutes trying to chase down and kill wombats or marmots or whatever the hell the random-ass creature of the day was, I spent the rest of the time running around yelling "Hail!" and molesting the general populace. I was so tired of all the games typically played in the local gaming room (internet cafe, but not), I started playing Descent 3. That game provided for more amusement than I'd enjoyed in a long time.
The N64 has kept me reasonably sane throughout this drought, with such absurdity as Super Smash Bros., Mario Party, Perfect Dark, and the Rush games. I'm waiting with bated breath for the Gamecube, with hopes that it might delay my nervous breakdown for at least a few more years.