"You're right. Version number jokes never get old. They are repeated and repeated, year after year, but they are still just as clever and inventive as they were five years ago."
I can't wait until a minor update to Mozilla is made so that it gets a small increment to it's version number. Then it'll make it to the/.'s front page and I can let fly a whole slew of version number jokes!
"Actually, the funny thing about the prostitution in the game, I never knew about it till the news media told me. It's not required and, honestly, not very obvious."
Another thing that's amusing this is that if you don't know what prostitution is, this game won't teach you.
Here's what happens:
- Pull up to a prostitute (who, btw, only looks like a prostitute because we're aware of what they are and how they stereotypically dress. To a child, she's just woman dressing up slightly fancier than other women.)
- She gets in the car.
- When you get into a secluded area, the car will shake. However, there's no movement inside the car. Turn the camera around, switch to 'cockpit view', do anything you can to peek inside and you see two people sitting in the car on their own side.
I find the media's attention to the prostitute aspect of that game ridiculous. It's okay to show 'Girls Gone Wild' commercials on TV, but we need to pick on GTA3 because we can sensationalize it and scare those parents out there who have no idea what the game is really like.
"I can see this game being entertaining for the first week, but I've watched it being played and found myself quite uninterested, after having seen the various obligitory guns and stuff. I recommend renting the game before you buy it, unless you have a short attention span and are easily amused."
I can understand you not liking it, but the 'short attention span and are easily amused' comment is not really what makes these games appealing in the longer-term sense. What makes this game unique in contrast to FPS games is that it takes place within a simulation of a city, completely with traffic and all. This is in stark contrast to modern FPS games where you run around and shoot everybody AND anybody.
The replay value here is that much like life, what's about to happen in GTA is unpredictable. I have to say also that the missions are far more interesting than most of the action games you see. Things can always go wrong, and when they do, you can find yourself on the edge of your seat trying to figure out how to get out of this sticky situation. Mix the city-simulation in this and you've got yourself a rather engaging game that never plays the same way twice.
Frankly, I'd rather play a game with this type a variety over a "click, build, click, build, click oh-shit-he's-got-twice-as-many-units-as-i-do" strategy game that hasn't significantly improved since StarCraft. The funny thing is that strategy games could learn a lot from GTA3. If a C&C type game was set in a city simulation where the goal was to minimize collateral damage, and deal with the randomness that human behaviour generates, they could find themselves on top again. In the mean time, though, strategy has turned stale.
"Sorry, we only like free software around here. Though your price is quite reasonable for the service you provide, we do not feel anybody should ever actually be compensated for their time. When you give it to us for free, we also want the source code too. Of course none of us will actually do anything to improve the software, we just want to make the point that we could fix it if we actually wanted to. Just being honest though, we only modify the software when we can use that to flip off M$. So yes, it's appreciated, but your reasonable price is too high.;) "
Oh boy. My satire was modded as insightful. I detect a mod-bomb approaching at high velocity!
"Never heard of it? It's a laptop that's designed by F.A. Porsche (the guys who designed the 911 and some Samsung LCD monitors)"
I'd prefer a laptop designed by the guys who did the Firebird. They could put a red light ping-pong'ing back and forth and going 'whoosh whoosh...'. That'd be much cooler than this Ferrari laptop that probably can't even Turbo Boost.
"There's no way an airline "cabin crew" member can be expected to know whether your PDA has a phone built into it, or whether your laptop computer has WiFi permanently on."
I hate to say it, but there's a point to be made here. There are lotsa ppl out there who don't know the ins and outs of their hardware. They don't understand things like "wireless means radio". On the flip side, though, I find it strange that they haven't figured out how to properly shield the planes to allow for this sort of thing. I mean, if RF jamming is really that serious, what's preventing Hassant-bin-Lade from taking out planes with it?
"Also, since this is an ASCII related post, must spam my program MosASCII [mosascii.com] (for windows, $8):) "
Sorry, we only like free software around here. Though your price is quite reasonable for the service you provide, we do not feel anybody should ever actually be compensated for their time. When you give it to us for free, we also want the source code too. Of course none of us will actually do anything to improve the software, we just want to make the point that we could fix it if we actually wanted to. Just being honest though, we only modify the software when we can use that to flip off M$.
So yes, it's appreciated, but your reasonable price is too high.;)
"Next time, read the entire comment, okay? Shame on those of you who moderated him up; he didn't even bother to read the whole comment. "
Shame on the guy who modded this comment as 'informative'. He must not have known the difference between a brute force attack and a dictionary attack either.;)
"Aside from the usual "don't buy anything from these people [americangreetings.com]," it seems the easiest and surest way to get the word out is to refuse any mail with AG's logo on the envelope. Just write "Refused, return to sender" along with a note on the envelope that says something to the effect of "Nothing personal, I'm just boycotting the publishers of this card."
So what do you suggest for those of us who don't get greeting cards?
" Spaceballs parodying Star Wars is cool... Spaceballs parodying Star Wars with a title character named Strawberry Shortcake might be a different story."
Wow. That put an image in my head that might actually work.
Star Trek style communicators on the way?
on
Cisco's Wi-Fi Phone
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think it'd be kinda cool to have VOIP networks at the office that yield more insntantaneous communications.
Right now my company's building a couple of systems and we've got ppl running around all over the place. It's hard to reach people at their desks. It'd be kinda cool if we had a form of walkie talkie with a list of ppl we wanna talk to on it, tap their name and start talking. Beats using cell phones, plus we only bug the particular person we wanna bug. (as opposed to having broadcast convos over a walkie-talkie...)
It's not something we'd spend a whole lotta money on right now as it's not solving that big of problem (small office...) but if we did have it it'd be a huge help. I'd like to call over to the guy in charge of the database just to ask a quick question rather than run to the other side of the office with the error message I'm seeing memorized.
Don't be so negative. There are brilliant opportunities here. Thanks to my cell phone, I got to tell the founder of my company I was taking a shit once. Heh. (I'm not kidding...) Opportunities like that only multiply when the calls are easier to make!
"Apple's service is nothing like what you describe. Sorry. "
You're right, I misread it. Allow me to make a few corrections:
- Mac only: It's vapor until it appears.
- AAC Encoding: If you have an iPod that plays that format.
- Unlimited access to 200,000 songs: Well 30 seconds of each song. (as opposed to Listen.com where you get the whole song...
I'm glad you pointed out my error so I could research this a little more. This service isn't really that interesting, especially considering that I'm not a Mac nor iPod owner and don't plan to be. I'll stick with Listen.com and the $10/mo. fee. For now, it's better for me.
This sounds sorta similar (but better in some ways) to what listen.com does. Sadly, though, I'm not an iPod or a Mac user so it's not that interesting. In the mean time, I have been using Listen.com for a week or so, here's a quick mini-review of my experience with it:
- $10 a month gets you unlimited access to their music database. It's reasonably extensive and will likely grow, but I was surprised at some of the songs it didn't have. Still, I've found music I enjoy.
- The music is in copmressed format, I think it's Mp3 or a variant. Unfortuantely, it does not let you save it to your computer so I have no idea what it really is. I can tell you, though, that it sounds pretty close to my 128kbit Mp3s. No complaints here, but I'm not exactly an audiophile. YMMV.
-You can only play it when you're logged on. That sounds bad except I have a good connect at home and at work, so no real biggie. Some of you may find that unreasonable, and I would agree. I think they just want to make sure you're paid up. Why it doesn't download an "he's okay for this month!" certificate I'm not really sure. In any case, for only $10 (less than the cost of a single album...) it's fine with me.
- Most songs can be burned for $.99 a track. That's your fee if you want it off your computer. I wish they'd let me keep an mp3 version for $.99 to burn to CD on my whim. I guess they're worried I'm going to give it away or something, I dunno. I think it's pretty cool, though. Imagine paying $10 for a CD where you like every single song that's on it. Wow. I tried this once and it was alright. If I had a CD player in my car this would be a lot more exciting.
- Very responsive. One thing I really like about Listen.com's service is that if there's a song I want to hear, I can usually find it pretty quick, and within seconds of clicking it I'm listening to it. It's not really streaming in the sense of having to buffer or anything, it's more like Quicktime in the respect that it dumps the data into a resevoir and starts playing as soon as it can. Also, it's caching is pretty reasonable. I have a couple of entire albums on my computer right now I've been listening to at work. I don't have to re-download it every time I listen to it. Every day my playlist gets a bit longer and it's all music that's interesting.
- Linux/Mac users need not apply. This is a Windows only app that runs, not a web based search or antyhing. This will turn a lot of you off. The flip side, though, is that you don't have to leave a browser open or anything like that. I've had 0 stability issues with it. I do wish they had a 'Minimize to tray' button.
Since I've started using Listen.com, I haven't even been tempted to fire up Kazaa. Most of the songs I'd want to listen to (plus comedy!) are there. Plus, they have 'radio stations' (it's actually just a playlist, so it's not like you come in on the middle of a song, you can just 'next' to the next song if you don't like the one that's playing) that make it easier to find songs of interest. Their comedy radio channel's a hoot. I think this service is superior than P2P when using it to find new music of interest. Music is found faster, consistent quality, plus tools that make it easy to find songs I like. $10 is reasonable to me as I can spend it without missing it. I would, however, miss this service if I discontinued it.
It sounds as though that Apple's using a similar business model here, only it goes to your iPod. That's damn cool. Any of you into music would probably really enjoy this service that Apple's providing. Rhapsody (Listen.com) would probably be #2 if Apple's not an option.
No no, it was everybody. Didn't you notice Slashdot's outage since I posted? That's because 6 billion people logged on to view my post!;)
Heh.
I bet he doesn't respond. The reason I know of their brute force techniques is that I've seen a few of the CC's that go out with messages like that. It don't matter if there are numbers there or not, they through anyway. All they have to do is have a list of every name possible, permutations and all (already done), then they just add a domain to the end of it (like msn.com) then they have a few people go through a chunk of the list sending stuff out.
"Please add this number to your Do Not Call list."
My girlfriend's mom does something like this. Only the message to remove her number is in the answering machine. Unfortunately, most telemarketers know how to get around that.
"If you're a telemarketer, please put this number on the do..." *click*
"Microsoft and Disney both see the advantages to un-tethered and relatively "free" (as in open road) access to the Internet for consumers... "..and the DMCA.
Slashdot Mirror
"You're right. Version number jokes never get old. They are repeated and repeated, year after year, but they are still just as clever and inventive as they were five years ago."
/.'s front page and I can let fly a whole slew of version number jokes!
I can't wait until a minor update to Mozilla is made so that it gets a small increment to it's version number. Then it'll make it to the
"Actually, the funny thing about the prostitution in the game, I never knew about it till the news media told me. It's not required and, honestly, not very obvious."
Another thing that's amusing this is that if you don't know what prostitution is, this game won't teach you.
Here's what happens:
- Pull up to a prostitute (who, btw, only looks like a prostitute because we're aware of what they are and how they stereotypically dress. To a child, she's just woman dressing up slightly fancier than other women.)
- She gets in the car.
- When you get into a secluded area, the car will shake. However, there's no movement inside the car. Turn the camera around, switch to 'cockpit view', do anything you can to peek inside and you see two people sitting in the car on their own side.
I find the media's attention to the prostitute aspect of that game ridiculous. It's okay to show 'Girls Gone Wild' commercials on TV, but we need to pick on GTA3 because we can sensationalize it and scare those parents out there who have no idea what the game is really like.
"I can see this game being entertaining for the first week, but I've watched it being played and found myself quite uninterested, after having seen the various obligitory guns and stuff. I recommend renting the game before you buy it, unless you have a short attention span and are easily amused."
I can understand you not liking it, but the 'short attention span and are easily amused' comment is not really what makes these games appealing in the longer-term sense. What makes this game unique in contrast to FPS games is that it takes place within a simulation of a city, completely with traffic and all. This is in stark contrast to modern FPS games where you run around and shoot everybody AND anybody.
The replay value here is that much like life, what's about to happen in GTA is unpredictable. I have to say also that the missions are far more interesting than most of the action games you see. Things can always go wrong, and when they do, you can find yourself on the edge of your seat trying to figure out how to get out of this sticky situation. Mix the city-simulation in this and you've got yourself a rather engaging game that never plays the same way twice.
Frankly, I'd rather play a game with this type a variety over a "click, build, click, build, click oh-shit-he's-got-twice-as-many-units-as-i-do" strategy game that hasn't significantly improved since StarCraft. The funny thing is that strategy games could learn a lot from GTA3. If a C&C type game was set in a city simulation where the goal was to minimize collateral damage, and deal with the randomness that human behaviour generates, they could find themselves on top again. In the mean time, though, strategy has turned stale.
... if these games didn't appear on PC well before they will on XBOX/GC.
;)
Hopefully Rockstar won't be dumb enough to sign another exclusivity contract, unless it's with the platform I already have, then it'd be okay.
Oh boy. My satire was modded as insightful. I detect a mod-bomb approaching at high velocity!
"Never heard of it? It's a laptop that's designed by F.A. Porsche (the guys who designed the 911 and some Samsung LCD monitors)"
I'd prefer a laptop designed by the guys who did the Firebird. They could put a red light ping-pong'ing back and forth and going 'whoosh whoosh...'. That'd be much cooler than this Ferrari laptop that probably can't even Turbo Boost.
So, when ya going to apologize for your misunderstanding there?
... when ya listen to techno and trance as much as I do, ya dun notice encoding artifacts.
11. mozillagetsaminorversionnumberupdate.slashdot.org
"There's no way an airline "cabin crew" member can be expected to know whether your PDA has a phone built into it, or whether your laptop computer has WiFi permanently on."
I hate to say it, but there's a point to be made here. There are lotsa ppl out there who don't know the ins and outs of their hardware. They don't understand things like "wireless means radio". On the flip side, though, I find it strange that they haven't figured out how to properly shield the planes to allow for this sort of thing. I mean, if RF jamming is really that serious, what's preventing Hassant-bin-Lade from taking out planes with it?
"Rather than waste time writing copyright laws, why don't they fix their infrastructure, health/education systems and provide essential services. "
Do you honestly think that Hilary's good for anything else? Do you really want her working on human rights or providing essential services?
"ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI."
The last time I made a bitter beer face like that, my gf was talking about her period.
"Also, since this is an ASCII related post, must spam my program MosASCII [mosascii.com] (for windows, $8) :) "
;)
Sorry, we only like free software around here. Though your price is quite reasonable for the service you provide, we do not feel anybody should ever actually be compensated for their time. When you give it to us for free, we also want the source code too. Of course none of us will actually do anything to improve the software, we just want to make the point that we could fix it if we actually wanted to. Just being honest though, we only modify the software when we can use that to flip off M$.
So yes, it's appreciated, but your reasonable price is too high.
"Next time, read the entire comment, okay? Shame on those of you who moderated him up; he didn't even bother to read the whole comment. "
;)
Shame on the guy who modded this comment as 'informative'. He must not have known the difference between a brute force attack and a dictionary attack either.
"Aside from the usual "don't buy anything from these people [americangreetings.com]," it seems the easiest and surest way to get the word out is to refuse any mail with AG's logo on the envelope. Just write "Refused, return to sender" along with a note on the envelope that says something to the effect of "Nothing personal, I'm just boycotting the publishers of this card."
So what do you suggest for those of us who don't get greeting cards?
"Joke 'em if they cant take a fsck, fsck 'em if they cant take a joke... and above all else... dont sweat the petty stuff...Pet the sweaty stuff. "
Check the file system on his disk if they can't take a joke?! Is this how you Linux users cope with being too serious?
" Spaceballs parodying Star Wars is cool ... Spaceballs parodying Star Wars with a title character named Strawberry Shortcake might be a different story."
Wow. That put an image in my head that might actually work.
I think it'd be kinda cool to have VOIP networks at the office that yield more insntantaneous communications.
Right now my company's building a couple of systems and we've got ppl running around all over the place. It's hard to reach people at their desks. It'd be kinda cool if we had a form of walkie talkie with a list of ppl we wanna talk to on it, tap their name and start talking. Beats using cell phones, plus we only bug the particular person we wanna bug. (as opposed to having broadcast convos over a walkie-talkie...)
It's not something we'd spend a whole lotta money on right now as it's not solving that big of problem (small office...) but if we did have it it'd be a huge help. I'd like to call over to the guy in charge of the database just to ask a quick question rather than run to the other side of the office with the error message I'm seeing memorized.
Well I can dream.
"Another company leash!!!"
Don't be so negative. There are brilliant opportunities here. Thanks to my cell phone, I got to tell the founder of my company I was taking a shit once. Heh. (I'm not kidding...) Opportunities like that only multiply when the calls are easier to make!
"Available today is an iPod firmware updater for existing/older iPods which provides AAC support. "
:) I hate mondays!
I phrased that badly. I meant to say "if you have an iPod + one that supports that style of encoding."
Heh you can see I'm not at my best today.
"Apple's service is nothing like what you describe. Sorry. "
You're right, I misread it. Allow me to make a few corrections:
- Mac only: It's vapor until it appears.
- AAC Encoding: If you have an iPod that plays that format.
- Unlimited access to 200,000 songs: Well 30 seconds of each song. (as opposed to Listen.com where you get the whole song...
I'm glad you pointed out my error so I could research this a little more. This service isn't really that interesting, especially considering that I'm not a Mac nor iPod owner and don't plan to be. I'll stick with Listen.com and the $10/mo. fee. For now, it's better for me.
Hey all,
This sounds sorta similar (but better in some ways) to what listen.com does. Sadly, though, I'm not an iPod or a Mac user so it's not that interesting. In the mean time, I have been using Listen.com for a week or so, here's a quick mini-review of my experience with it:
- $10 a month gets you unlimited access to their music database. It's reasonably extensive and will likely grow, but I was surprised at some of the songs it didn't have. Still, I've found music I enjoy.
- The music is in copmressed format, I think it's Mp3 or a variant. Unfortuantely, it does not let you save it to your computer so I have no idea what it really is. I can tell you, though, that it sounds pretty close to my 128kbit Mp3s. No complaints here, but I'm not exactly an audiophile. YMMV.
-You can only play it when you're logged on. That sounds bad except I have a good connect at home and at work, so no real biggie. Some of you may find that unreasonable, and I would agree. I think they just want to make sure you're paid up. Why it doesn't download an "he's okay for this month!" certificate I'm not really sure. In any case, for only $10 (less than the cost of a single album...) it's fine with me.
- Most songs can be burned for $.99 a track. That's your fee if you want it off your computer. I wish they'd let me keep an mp3 version for $.99 to burn to CD on my whim. I guess they're worried I'm going to give it away or something, I dunno. I think it's pretty cool, though. Imagine paying $10 for a CD where you like every single song that's on it. Wow. I tried this once and it was alright. If I had a CD player in my car this would be a lot more exciting.
- Very responsive. One thing I really like about Listen.com's service is that if there's a song I want to hear, I can usually find it pretty quick, and within seconds of clicking it I'm listening to it. It's not really streaming in the sense of having to buffer or anything, it's more like Quicktime in the respect that it dumps the data into a resevoir and starts playing as soon as it can. Also, it's caching is pretty reasonable. I have a couple of entire albums on my computer right now I've been listening to at work. I don't have to re-download it every time I listen to it. Every day my playlist gets a bit longer and it's all music that's interesting.
- Linux/Mac users need not apply. This is a Windows only app that runs, not a web based search or antyhing. This will turn a lot of you off. The flip side, though, is that you don't have to leave a browser open or anything like that. I've had 0 stability issues with it. I do wish they had a 'Minimize to tray' button.
Since I've started using Listen.com, I haven't even been tempted to fire up Kazaa. Most of the songs I'd want to listen to (plus comedy!) are there. Plus, they have 'radio stations' (it's actually just a playlist, so it's not like you come in on the middle of a song, you can just 'next' to the next song if you don't like the one that's playing) that make it easier to find songs of interest. Their comedy radio channel's a hoot.
I think this service is superior than P2P when using it to find new music of interest. Music is found faster, consistent quality, plus tools that make it easy to find songs I like. $10 is reasonable to me as I can spend it without missing it. I would, however, miss this service if I discontinued it.
It sounds as though that Apple's using a similar business model here, only it goes to your iPod. That's damn cool. Any of you into music would probably really enjoy this service that Apple's providing. Rhapsody (Listen.com) would probably be #2 if Apple's not an option.
"Technically, only three people, but yeah... ;"
;)
No no, it was everybody. Didn't you notice Slashdot's outage since I posted? That's because 6 billion people logged on to view my post!
Heh.
I bet he doesn't respond. The reason I know of their brute force techniques is that I've seen a few of the CC's that go out with messages like that. It don't matter if there are numbers there or not, they through anyway. All they have to do is have a list of every name possible, permutations and all (already done), then they just add a domain to the end of it (like msn.com) then they have a few people go through a chunk of the list sending stuff out.
"Of course, the best thing to say is:
"Please add this number to your Do Not Call list."
My girlfriend's mom does something like this. Only the message to remove her number is in the answering machine. Unfortunately, most telemarketers know how to get around that.
"If you're a telemarketer, please put this number on the do..." *click*
"Microsoft and Disney both see the advantages to un-tethered and relatively "free" (as in open road) access to the Internet for consumers... " ..and the DMCA.