I hope they run XP. Otherwise, it's an expensive proposition. Suddenly a $750 laptop becomes a $950 laptop. I know this isn't going to be a popular comment, but not everybody can or wants to run Linux.
"So, what does this have to do with the ipod? we've had walkmen for 20 years or so, but now it's socially acceptable to walk up to someone and listen to their music?"
There's a difference, it's not so subtle either. Each song on an iPod is, in theory, hand picked to the user's tastes. You're getting a peek into an individual's tastes, as opposed to the marketing success of the RIAA as with your Walkman example.
""Monzy" has a bunch of good games that can be played (see bottom) when the members of a movie audience have laser pointers. Just make sure you get them back before the movie starts.;)"
When I was 16, I forked over $100 to buy a laser pointer. (Wasn't like I was blowing the money on dates or anything.) You have to understand, back in 94/95 (give or take a year), NOBODODY had these. They were very expensive. I had fun with it. People'd try to brush the red dot off like it was a bug. One person tried to cover it with their hand, only to have it appear on her knuckle. heh. Amusing reactions.
Anybody remember that movie the Substitute? In short, the movie was about a substitute teacher who was assaulted by one of her students. (or a gang, my memory is fuzzy.) Her bf was an ex marine/mercenary who wasn't too happy about this, so he went to be substitute in order to find who did it. Eventually the movie turned into a major shootout at the school. The merc with all his merc buddies had a shootout with a bunch of gang members. Lotsa bullets and machine guns with laser scopes on them. You can imagine this, right? Laser dot appears == somebody's about to get shot. I brought my laser to the theater. There's a scene where the main character crawls through a window, and for a moment his ass is protruding from it. I shined my laser on his ass and the audience started laughing. They all thought he presented a target and was about to be shot in the ass!
I swear somebody out was in that theater the same time I was in there and rented the movie later to show their buddies that scene. It still cracks me up to imagine the confusion that might have caused. Heh.
"Output the grid reference to a web page - it should now be relatively easy for your friends to track your exact position in the garden while talking on the phone"
You know, I can see somebody spending 5 minutes with the game and complaining that it's not much different from Mario Kart 64. Play it a little longer than that, and a bunch of things come to light:
- The GCN version uses 3D models instead of the pre-rendered sprites like the 64-bit version did. The difference? Now you can choose your vehicle. Different character combinations result in different behaviour from the karts. Result? You can have your own individual style while you drive. Play a few races against a friend, and the difference slowly seeps in.
- The GCN version is much higher res, plus much smoother frame rate. That alone makes the multiplayer so much easier to play.
- The GCN version has the broadband adapter support. Presumably this means you can have two GCs in different rooms playing against each other. I'd *love* to play the battle modes without being able to see the otehr person's screen.
- The 2 driver addition adds some interesting subtleties to the game. For example, if you get bumped hard, the occupant gets dragged across the ground for a while before he hops back on. You notice this when you find yourself unable to swap drivers for a bit. Managing two items (one per occupant) really deepens the strategy to the game. My gf was a littler perterbed at me last night because I held on to a fire flower until the end of the race. I blasted her just long enough to cross the finish line first. To put it another way, strategy in this version of the game has a broader meaning than it did in the 64 version,
- The maps are far more imaginitive. As mentioned before by another poster here, the DK level is a blast. (no pun intended.) Much more challenging, and entertaining to boot. It's hard to describe with words, but I can tell you that the map upgrades have been quite noticable.
- There are two more battle modes to this game than in the 64 version, and they are far more entertaining. Not only do they require more skill than luck, but at times they are quite suspenseful. When you play the star battle mode (the name escapes me) when you score, it takes a point from the other person. The goal is to reach 3 points. My gf and I had a lot of fun with that one last night.
This is just the stuff off the top of my tired mind. There's more to it, though lots of it is subtle. Take any of these features on their own, and it doesn't sound so exciting. Take the way everything wraps up together in one big package, and you'll find the game to be much more entertaining than the 64 version. It really is a cool game. Revolutionary? Eh, maybe not. But it's been years since a Mario Kart game was made, and the work put into this one shows.
Sometimes I wonder if reviewers are just jaded. I mean, if it was just a re-release of MK64 with high res 60fps graphics, I'd understand. There's a lot more here. The only real complaint I guess they could have is that, on a fundamental level, it's still the same formula.
I don't agree with servers having a UI. I agree that the fluff that tends to come with Windows servers is definitely a security risk. (I can't believe NT Server comes with Outlook Express installed.) The nice thing about Windows servers is that you can like see what you wanna do, and just click and it's ready to go. This is in stark contrast to Apache where you have to muck with conf files to make things work. You can be up and running real fast with NT Server with the stuff you want or don't want, but with Apache it initially takes some nasty research. Found that out the hard way. However, I've climbed the learning curve with Apache and prefer to use it now. (You get addicted to SSH...)
Can ya name a specific prob or two you had with Aston? Just curious. I've been using it for months and haven't had any real problems. The only nitpick I have is that I lost a couple of features I liked. For example, Windows explorer lets you ctrl+click on a bunch of windows and then close/min/max/restore them. I agree it's a little 'hacky'.
I'm not terribly impressed with the Matrix series either. The first one was kinda fun to watch (remember, I'm really into VFX...) but the second time around I was like really really bored. The second movie was a total waste of time. Funny thing is, you can draw some paralelles between Terminator 3 and Matrix 2, and T3 wins in all the places that Reloaded misses. Reloaded was such a letdown for me that when Revolutions came around, it had nowhere to go but up. And it did. I liked the ending to it. (Though my interpretation of it seems to be different from everybody else's.) I really liked that Neo wasn't the hero of it, and if I'm right about what was happening then it also explains why a compputer hacker like Keanu is so fucking brainless. Revolutions is not anywhere close to being my favorite movie of all time, but it was a pleasant surprise for me. I also liked the big'ol machines they used to take on the sentinels. In case your curious, that's the type of 3D modelling and animation I an strongest at. I may find myself working on a project sorta like that down the road. I know I'd enjoy the heck of it.
Wanna see some of my artwork? http://www.nanogator.com/gallery As you can see, I've still got some learning to do, but I've grown a lot in the last 2 years.
Let me know after you've read Red Dwarf?
I read an interview with Groenig (or was it Cohen?) recently that discussed having Futurama picked up. Unfortunately, for a cartoon, it's an expensive show to produce. Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, etc are not terribly enthused with the per-episode price. From the read, it seems as though a continuation of the show could result in a noticable budget cuts. However, they did say that they could really cheaply make a movie. They're so good at getting the animation out quickly and at decent quality that 10 mill could make a movie. They seem to think that coould happen.
I'd like to see the Sopranos. Going to get the DVDs one of these days. Speaking of drama, ER reaally impressed me last week. I'm getting into that show. Ever watch it?
Cheers, and sorry about the delay. Just been busy.
Boy am I sick of hearing this. "Let's bomb an evil dictator out of his country, but not spend the money to leave the country in better shape than we left it."
"The DVD format was the most quickly adopted new media format ever."
To be fair, the difference between CD's and cassettes is not as big as the difference between DVDs and VHS. CDs were nice because they were higher quality and you could instantly skip to other songs, but they were trouble to jog/travel with. DVDs are higher visual/audio quality than VHS, but they're also smaller (CD's weren't as compact as casettes) and they have extra bonus features that VHS couldn't hope to do.
CD's were an upgrade to casettes with tradeoffs, whereas DVDs are a much larger upgrade to VHS with much fewer in terms of tradeoffs. It's not all that surprising that DVDs took off.
EVDs are higher resolution and may be cheaper, but is that enough to be adopted? Boy do I doubt it.
They also call it "light speed" when they travel several solar systems over in the time it takes to hit a convenience store. Yeah, they're so good at labelling thins properly.
"If you're going to be a Microsoft shill, could you be a little more subtle?"
Yeah whatever. I don't hate Microsoft, therefore I'm tricking people into using something they don't want for free. That's heaps more logical than using it, liking it, and knowing other people have too.
'Just like with IE vs. Netscape, M$ doesn't expect a profit. And it needs to do two things with their music service that will provide advantages in the long run."
The serious flaw in your prediction here is that it assumes Microsoft can just roll in and win. Won't work. If MS doesn't satisfy customers, it won't gain monopoly share. It won't tie people to DRM. It won't even kick anybody else out of the market. In order for this to work, it'll have to work the same way it did with Windows and IE: Microsoft's Music service has to be a product in demand. Microsoft does not make a monopoly out of everything it touches. Don't believe me? Look at the XBOX.
Microsoft cannot win a monopoly here and force anybody to do anything. They can, however, make money if they make a good service. If Microsoft wins, and then they crack down with DRM, then it opens the door for somebody else to come in and defeat them.
"Um, it's Microsoft. When was the last time they produced something that wasn't second-rate?"
Windows 2000 Internet Explorer Office Optical Mice and Keyboards PocketPCs, particularly the 2002
Etc.
*Sigh* Now I'm going to get a bunch of people telling me why each of those products sucks even though millions of people use each of them quite happily.
"Because they broke Windows 3.1 running under DR-DOS and made it look like an DR-DOS error."
That is not what happened. A beta version of Windows 3.1 popped up an error message (Note: Not a crash, simply an error message that you okay to get through.) that said you're not running MS-DOS. This did not appear in the commercial version of Windows 3.1.
Monopoly conspiracies aside, there is a legitimate reason for said message to exist: Microsoft can't fix Dr Dos if it's broken.
Microsoft may or may not have been 'evil' with that event. Doesn't really matter that much. It didn't 'broke' Windows 3.1 with DR-DOS, nor was it out of the bounds of something reasonable to do during a beta.
Getting back on topic here, I'd be surprised if Microsoft broke something that gave Mac users an edge.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope they run XP. Otherwise, it's an expensive proposition. Suddenly a $750 laptop becomes a $950 laptop. I know this isn't going to be a popular comment, but not everybody can or wants to run Linux.
"Dude: You're getting a Walmart!"
If you see a red dot floating around your house, duck. It's Dell enforcing their trademark.
"Putting several hundred megs of video online and then posting it on slashdot has never been a good idea."
It's just a reminder that those of us that don't RTFA are underappreciated.
"Uh, you ever heard of burning a CD?"
I'd like to see you walk down the street and tell they're using a custom burnt CD.
"Jackass"
That might get to me if you actually made a good point.
"How about calling it "jack-dipping"?"
How about writing an episode of Seinfeld around it?
"meet girls,....all kinds of "odd" stuff."
Too bad your use of only one mouse-button leaves you ill-experienced to please a woman.
"So, what does this have to do with the ipod? we've had walkmen for 20 years or so, but now it's socially acceptable to walk up to someone and listen to their music?"
There's a difference, it's not so subtle either. Each song on an iPod is, in theory, hand picked to the user's tastes. You're getting a peek into an individual's tastes, as opposed to the marketing success of the RIAA as with your Walkman example.
""Monzy" has a bunch of good games that can be played (see bottom) when the members of a movie audience have laser pointers. Just make sure you get them back before the movie starts. ;)"
When I was 16, I forked over $100 to buy a laser pointer. (Wasn't like I was blowing the money on dates or anything.) You have to understand, back in 94/95 (give or take a year), NOBODODY had these. They were very expensive. I had fun with it. People'd try to brush the red dot off like it was a bug. One person tried to cover it with their hand, only to have it appear on her knuckle. heh. Amusing reactions.
Anybody remember that movie the Substitute? In short, the movie was about a substitute teacher who was assaulted by one of her students. (or a gang, my memory is fuzzy.) Her bf was an ex marine/mercenary who wasn't too happy about this, so he went to be substitute in order to find who did it. Eventually the movie turned into a major shootout at the school. The merc with all his merc buddies had a shootout with a bunch of gang members. Lotsa bullets and machine guns with laser scopes on them. You can imagine this, right? Laser dot appears == somebody's about to get shot. I brought my laser to the theater. There's a scene where the main character crawls through a window, and for a moment his ass is protruding from it. I shined my laser on his ass and the audience started laughing. They all thought he presented a target and was about to be shot in the ass!
I swear somebody out was in that theater the same time I was in there and rented the movie later to show their buddies that scene. It still cracks me up to imagine the confusion that might have caused. Heh.
"Output the grid reference to a web page - it should now be relatively easy for your friends to track your exact position in the garden while talking on the phone"
What, you mean outside?
Borrowing a quote from a movie to make it fit the topic at hand is funny. Pasting a script from a movie isn't.
You know, I can see somebody spending 5 minutes with the game and complaining that it's not much different from Mario Kart 64. Play it a little longer than that, and a bunch of things come to light:
- The GCN version uses 3D models instead of the pre-rendered sprites like the 64-bit version did. The difference? Now you can choose your vehicle. Different character combinations result in different behaviour from the karts. Result? You can have your own individual style while you drive. Play a few races against a friend, and the difference slowly seeps in.
- The GCN version is much higher res, plus much smoother frame rate. That alone makes the multiplayer so much easier to play.
- The GCN version has the broadband adapter support. Presumably this means you can have two GCs in different rooms playing against each other. I'd *love* to play the battle modes without being able to see the otehr person's screen.
- The 2 driver addition adds some interesting subtleties to the game. For example, if you get bumped hard, the occupant gets dragged across the ground for a while before he hops back on. You notice this when you find yourself unable to swap drivers for a bit. Managing two items (one per occupant) really deepens the strategy to the game. My gf was a littler perterbed at me last night because I held on to a fire flower until the end of the race. I blasted her just long enough to cross the finish line first. To put it another way, strategy in this version of the game has a broader meaning than it did in the 64 version,
- The maps are far more imaginitive. As mentioned before by another poster here, the DK level is a blast. (no pun intended.) Much more challenging, and entertaining to boot. It's hard to describe with words, but I can tell you that the map upgrades have been quite noticable.
- There are two more battle modes to this game than in the 64 version, and they are far more entertaining. Not only do they require more skill than luck, but at times they are quite suspenseful. When you play the star battle mode (the name escapes me) when you score, it takes a point from the other person. The goal is to reach 3 points. My gf and I had a lot of fun with that one last night.
This is just the stuff off the top of my tired mind. There's more to it, though lots of it is subtle. Take any of these features on their own, and it doesn't sound so exciting. Take the way everything wraps up together in one big package, and you'll find the game to be much more entertaining than the 64 version. It really is a cool game. Revolutionary? Eh, maybe not. But it's been years since a Mario Kart game was made, and the work put into this one shows.
Sometimes I wonder if reviewers are just jaded. I mean, if it was just a re-release of MK64 with high res 60fps graphics, I'd understand. There's a lot more here. The only real complaint I guess they could have is that, on a fundamental level, it's still the same formula.
I don't agree with servers having a UI. I agree that the fluff that tends to come with Windows servers is definitely a security risk. (I can't believe NT Server comes with Outlook Express installed.) The nice thing about Windows servers is that you can like see what you wanna do, and just click and it's ready to go. This is in stark contrast to Apache where you have to muck with conf files to make things work. You can be up and running real fast with NT Server with the stuff you want or don't want, but with Apache it initially takes some nasty research. Found that out the hard way. However, I've climbed the learning curve with Apache and prefer to use it now. (You get addicted to SSH...)
Can ya name a specific prob or two you had with Aston? Just curious. I've been using it for months and haven't had any real problems. The only nitpick I have is that I lost a couple of features I liked. For example, Windows explorer lets you ctrl+click on a bunch of windows and then close/min/max/restore them. I agree it's a little 'hacky'.
I'm not terribly impressed with the Matrix series either. The first one was kinda fun to watch (remember, I'm really into VFX...) but the second time around I was like really really bored. The second movie was a total waste of time. Funny thing is, you can draw some paralelles between Terminator 3 and Matrix 2, and T3 wins in all the places that Reloaded misses. Reloaded was such a letdown for me that when Revolutions came around, it had nowhere to go but up. And it did. I liked the ending to it. (Though my interpretation of it seems to be different from everybody else's.) I really liked that Neo wasn't the hero of it, and if I'm right about what was happening then it also explains why a compputer hacker like Keanu is so fucking brainless. Revolutions is not anywhere close to being my favorite movie of all time, but it was a pleasant surprise for me. I also liked the big'ol machines they used to take on the sentinels. In case your curious, that's the type of 3D modelling and animation I an strongest at. I may find myself working on a project sorta like that down the road. I know I'd enjoy the heck of it.
Wanna see some of my artwork? http://www.nanogator.com/gallery As you can see, I've still got some learning to do, but I've grown a lot in the last 2 years.
Let me know after you've read Red Dwarf?
I read an interview with Groenig (or was it Cohen?) recently that discussed having Futurama picked up. Unfortunately, for a cartoon, it's an expensive show to produce. Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, etc are not terribly enthused with the per-episode price. From the read, it seems as though a continuation of the show could result in a noticable budget cuts. However, they did say that they could really cheaply make a movie. They're so good at getting the animation out quickly and at decent quality that 10 mill could make a movie. They seem to think that coould happen.
I'd like to see the Sopranos. Going to get the DVDs one of these days. Speaking of drama, ER reaally impressed me last week. I'm getting into that show. Ever watch it?
Cheers, and sorry about the delay. Just been busy.
"hmmm what's a better way to spend the money???"
Boy am I sick of hearing this. "Let's bomb an evil dictator out of his country, but not spend the money to leave the country in better shape than we left it."
Eventually the most zealous Laserdisc owner would get tired of the 9" discs.
"The DVD format was the most quickly adopted new media format ever."
To be fair, the difference between CD's and cassettes is not as big as the difference between DVDs and VHS. CDs were nice because they were higher quality and you could instantly skip to other songs, but they were trouble to jog/travel with. DVDs are higher visual/audio quality than VHS, but they're also smaller (CD's weren't as compact as casettes) and they have extra bonus features that VHS couldn't hope to do.
CD's were an upgrade to casettes with tradeoffs, whereas DVDs are a much larger upgrade to VHS with much fewer in terms of tradeoffs. It's not all that surprising that DVDs took off.
EVDs are higher resolution and may be cheaper, but is that enough to be adopted? Boy do I doubt it.
"Put that in your pod and launch it. :P"
They also call it "light speed" when they travel several solar systems over in the time it takes to hit a convenience store. Yeah, they're so good at labelling thins properly.
All disputable, none relevant.
"If you're going to be a Microsoft shill, could you be a little more subtle?"
Yeah whatever. I don't hate Microsoft, therefore I'm tricking people into using something they don't want for free. That's heaps more logical than using it, liking it, and knowing other people have too.
"Why didn't anyone ever think of that before? Oh wait, they did. It's called Morse Code."
Morse Code would be so much cooler if they adapted R2s Frrpbpbp sound.
ditdit dit, dahdahdah, ditditdit, frpbpbpbpbpb.
Conveys more emotion, dont'cha think?
"I'm tone deaf You insensitive clod!"
Shortly after getting a square on the Hollywood walk of fame, Britney posts on Slashdot.
"His OS could not detect the sound card. So he had to resort to the good ol PC speaker."
No wonder Slashdot never had a story about R2D2 running KDE.
"Luke Skywalker did in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi."
Luke Skywalker wasn't human. "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away."
'Just like with IE vs. Netscape, M$ doesn't expect a profit. And it needs to do two things with their music service that will provide advantages in the long run."
The serious flaw in your prediction here is that it assumes Microsoft can just roll in and win. Won't work. If MS doesn't satisfy customers, it won't gain monopoly share. It won't tie people to DRM. It won't even kick anybody else out of the market. In order for this to work, it'll have to work the same way it did with Windows and IE: Microsoft's Music service has to be a product in demand. Microsoft does not make a monopoly out of everything it touches. Don't believe me? Look at the XBOX.
Microsoft cannot win a monopoly here and force anybody to do anything. They can, however, make money if they make a good service. If Microsoft wins, and then they crack down with DRM, then it opens the door for somebody else to come in and defeat them.
"Then they got laughed at because Sony and Nintendo weren't losing a cent on console sales..."
Sony spent something like 2 billion dollars to R&D the PS2. Something tells me it took them a while to find Microsoft's situation amusing.
"Um, it's Microsoft. When was the last time they produced something that wasn't second-rate?"
Windows 2000
Internet Explorer
Office
Optical Mice and Keyboards
PocketPCs, particularly the 2002
Etc.
*Sigh* Now I'm going to get a bunch of people telling me why each of those products sucks even though millions of people use each of them quite happily.
"Because they broke Windows 3.1 running under DR-DOS and made it look like an DR-DOS error."
That is not what happened. A beta version of Windows 3.1 popped up an error message (Note: Not a crash, simply an error message that you okay to get through.) that said you're not running MS-DOS. This did not appear in the commercial version of Windows 3.1.
Monopoly conspiracies aside, there is a legitimate reason for said message to exist: Microsoft can't fix Dr Dos if it's broken.
Microsoft may or may not have been 'evil' with that event. Doesn't really matter that much. It didn't 'broke' Windows 3.1 with DR-DOS, nor was it out of the bounds of something reasonable to do during a beta.
Getting back on topic here, I'd be surprised if Microsoft broke something that gave Mac users an edge.