I was writing it Dreamfactory: Doki Doki Panic... they didn't. They have the title Dreamfactory on the screen with doki doki panic flashing around the screen like little explosions.
Doki Doki Panic is not "the" name of the game, never was.
I guess if you repeat something enough it will become true.
I would like to put forth the opinion that "Americans are too stupid for SMB2" is not the reason (or at least not the only reason) that we didn't get the game. The real reasons are much more complex.
In Japan, Nintendo was releasing an upgrade to their Family Computer game system that used disks (looked a lot like floppy disks). This Famicom disk system needed games for launch. This is what the Super Mario Brothers 2 we never saw was for. From what I've read Miyamoto wasn't even truly involved with making Super Mario Brothers 2 and in fact was really just a "creative consultant" or something. Because he was busy making another disk system game 'Dreamfactory: Doki Doki Panic' (note that the name is Dreamfactory with a subtitle of Doki Doki Panic. doki doki is japanese onomatopoeia for a beating heart, i.e. excitement and danger.) I've even heard it rumored that "Doki Doki Panic" was really supposed to be the next mario but wasn't going to be ready in time so they made the rushed SMB2 and "Doki Doki Panic" evolved in a different direction. This makes sense to me. When I look at the Japanese Super Mario 2 I don't see some "extremely difficult game that Americans won't be able to play." What I see is a rushed expansion pack that was branded as an entirely new game. But why didn't we get this game? In my opinion there are two main reasons.
1) Because the NES was new in the USA. We had just gotten our Super Mario Bros. 1 and the Japanese SMB2 would be too close on its heels with almost no real evolution of gameplay. Sure SMB2 works fine when your launching a new disk system in Japan but Nintendo wasn't sure if another almost clone like SMB game would work on the NES.
2) Because we didn't have the disk system upgrade. Nintendo thought about bringing out the disk system upgrade in the USA eventually but never did. This is because we didn't need it anymore and Nintendo didn't want us to have it.
The disk system was created for two reasons. One was to allow to-disk saving of games, the other was to reduce costs of publishing the games. By the time the NES came out the famicom disk system was having problems. Due to some draconian copy right rules many companies didn't want to publish their games on the disk system. Also, companies were losing money due to the extremely easy to copy disk format. Nintendo was afraid of pirating if they used the disk system in foreign markets. What cinched our cartridge only platform was the fact that the other benefit of the disk system, saving to disk, wasn't as important anymore. Some of the disk system games were ported to the NES with password features instead of the save-to-disk ability the disk system used. Also, when Nintendo developed the disk system battery backup was very expensive. This price dropped pretty quickly, allowing the NES to use battery backup for games. Now there was no great need for the disk system for the NES.
I think the "SMB2 is too difficult for us" idea is perhaps partially correct but not exactly for the reasons everyone seems to believe. The japanese SMB2 could be saved. You could save and restore. If a warp took you backwards you could restore your game. The game is "too difficult" because the NES did not have the save feature that the disk system had.
Now because we didn't have a save feature and because the game was too much like SMB1, we didn't get it. It just didn't make commercial sense for the NES.
Miyamoto then got to take the game he had been working on and make a Super Mario 2 for the NES. Is it a real SMB2? I would argue yes. Miyamoto may have even originally planned for it to be the actual Super Mario Bros. 2 for everyone. But in any case it was released as SMB2 for the NES and eventually was released for the Japanese market as an alternate super mario bros 2.
We might not have got the expansion pack that was the Japanese SMB2 but we got an excellent, interesting, and fun game in its place. It just doesn't make sense to say our SMB2 is
Perhaps the Tennis one is over the top, but I was just trying to make a point and certainly you can see them calling a game Mario Wii or some mutation of that.
(I can see it now at E3 next year. Someone dressed as the Tingle character will announce the new Zelda Wii.)
They like the short names that can be used in the manner I suggested. That's why we saw GAME_NAME 64 and why we see GAME_NAME DS. I don't believe it is contrived in the least that they will at least *try* to put that Wii crap at the end of games. It's not as crazy as you make it sound:
I keep reading comments like yours both on Slashdot and various other places that say basicly that Wii doesn't (and wasn't supposed to) appeal to the *hardcore* gamer.
I'm not a hardcore gamer. I don't play FPS games, nor do I play MMORPGs. I don't own a PS1, PS2, XBOX, or XBOX360. I have a gamecube and rarely play it. I am a casual gamer that likes fun over graphics anyday.
I am not a Nintendo apologist like so many of the so-called "non hardcore" people's comments I keep reading. Wii is a lame name on so many levels. Even removing the childish innuendos the name is still confusing and innefectual. Still want to argue? Try imagining this: You haven't had much time in the last month to play with your new Wii. But now that the kids are asleep, you and your wife break out the new game you picked up. "Oh, honey I can't wait to play Mario Wii with you." "But dear I thought you wanted me to pick up Super Peach's Tennis Wii."
If you can say that without feeling a little bit stupid then I envy you. Appending Wii to game names sounds terrible and it's bound to happen.
In short, if you have to explain how to pronounce the products name and explain some "deep meaning" that it embodies... it's probably not such a great name. Add in the fact that wee has bad connotations and Wii becomes an even worse choice for a name. The only reason I can see to choose the name is to create the hoopla we now see surrounding this marketing circus act. Perhaps that's what they want but in the end when the 12 year old jokes get old, the machine once known lovingly as the Revolution is still going to be... the Nintendo Wii.
It's not exactly what you are asking for but I find it useful. Try the SessionSaver extension for Firefox. If the browser crashes it will reload the tabs you had open when you restart the browser.
I own a Toshiba DLP. I looked for a long time at all the options and DLP simply has an amazing picture. I love my TV. I highly suggest others look into it... if you don't need to hang it on a wall DLP might be the way to go.
When I convert people from IE I give them the option of Firefox... if they start whining "I don't waaaant to run firewhatever" I say "Ok then you are going to run Opera"...
Ok so now Sun is saying that they will open source Solaris? I thought we just had a story on how Sun says software is going to be all subscription based and the hardware will be free... hmmm
I've spoken to quite a few chinese people about Tibet and no one has ever told me that they believe Tibet has been China's all along. Instead they use the argument that Tibet is so much better then it was before. They'll talk about how backward and sub third world Tibet was before China helped them. Then they'll list on and on the wonders China has brought to the people of Tibet: electricity, TVs, water, etc.
You hit the nail on the head. This is how most of my friends and myself feel on this issue. Why oh why do cartoons, video games, etc have to polarize so much? On one side we have super corny kiddish humor, and on the other side we have heads exploding hooker rape fetish gangsters.
I had no problem with the cell shading of the latest Zelda. What I did have a problem with were the droopy stumbling monsters, the booger hanging kid, etc etc. You don't need to go and make your games humiliating for the adults to make it approachable to the children. I grew up on Zelda and envisioned it a little more epic than it's currently being done. Perhaps that's because you can't make stupid dancing scarecrows on the old 8bit NES.
Mario is and always has been the "candy gumdrop" type of world and I can live with that. But can't we make Zelda a little more cool?
This is not the Atkins diet... this is a sure way to drive yourself insane...
Even the atkin's diet, the most restrictive of the low-carb diets, has you go down to =20 carbs a day only durring the first phase: Induction. After which you increase your carb count durring the next 3 stages.
I have done this and do *not* suggest it if you don't want to feel destroyed for the first week to 4 weeks. Extreme carb restriction is fine if that 's the way you want to do it, but go slowly and decrease to that level slowly. By going slowly you will build up the enzymes that help digest fats and proteins... it's the lack of these enzymes that causes brain fog and extreme fatigue, etc. durring atkin's first phase.
Want to know the secret of Atkins: he causes you pain and suffering in the first phase to cause an extreme diaretic effect leading to major body weight loss of mostly water. This is the "miracle" of atkins. Afterwards you lose weight at the same rate like you were doing a low fat diet... the difference and *only* difference between a low carb and a low fat diet is this:
1) Low carb diet helps reduce how much one eat's for a large chunk of the population (not everyone though! Still will be easier to control your portions if you eat this way though.)
2) Low carb diets, while not helping you lose *weight* faster do help a lot with body composition. You will lose a larger percentage of *fat* versus lean body mass (muscles and organs) then on a high carb / low fat diet...
That's it! There are no "metabolic advantages! There are no fat mobilizing hormones like Atkin's describes. He's a nut job mostly... but that doesn't mean the low carb diet can't be done and done well to great effect.
But low carb versus low fat is just about optimizing things. The real equation is calories in = calories out to maintain weight. If you want to lose weight, burn more calories then you take in. If you are gaining weight then you are taking in more calories then you are burning. Simple...
The *best* and most healthy way to lose weight is to increase exercise _first_ and primarily. Then only slightly reduce calorie consumption. Create a deficit in this manor... it's the best for healthy and sustainable weight loss... otherwise you will eventually go nuts cutting insane amounts of calories. Exercise is the key to success people... period.
"That's fine for a computer literate person but for the hair dresser who just want's to pick up her email that's not going to work"
I hear arguments like this all the time as comebacks to the above post... We need to make Linux (or mandrake linux, or whatever) simple enough for grandma to use, etc.
I want Linux simple enough for a *geek* to *use* without having to configure every stupid program and configuration script, blah blah blah.
I can and have configured Linux the hard way... it was fun as a freshmen... even sophomore in college. But you know what? Years and years later I simply want my computer to work so I can get some other work done. I want the mouse to be detected and my scanner to be detected and my USB drawing tablet, etc etc etc. Can I install these manually? Sure, but I don't want to. If Mandrake can probe and find my harware then great. If it can't find something or doesn't know about a new piece of hardware... ok then I'll get my hands dirty. But don't presume that it's wrong or evil to autodetect and simply work *as often as possible*!
There's a large difference between Windows (auto configure for you and make it difficult or sometimes impossible to tweak things *if I want*), vs Mac (let's hide everything and pretend a computer is a gameboy.... excuse me I like pretty too but even a pretty car requires a license and training before I can drive it) vs Linux (interesting but too in-your-face-complex for times when I just want to do something other than play with my OS or fine tune a server)
I'm sorry I've ranted and formatted this like crap. And I can't spell... Anyway, for the record I've used many Linux distros but have settled on Mandrake as my normal Linux distro I use to get stuff done. I still play with other distros from time to time, but Mandrake 9.0 PowerPak is happily installed on my PC. It's powerful, full of choice, autodetects the best of any distro... but yet comes from an extremely Open Source friendly company and allows the poweruser full control to do whatever they want or need to do.
Do you or anyone else know if you can change this behaviour, perhaps with javascript in the preferences file... so that the image repeats X amount of times? there's a big difference between infinite and once. I'd like... say 5, or maybe even just 3 *shrug*.
They did it to me... my company incorrectly had on their records that I wasn't paying my basic cable fee (which I'm forced to pay) and so they came and installed a filter.. Now all I get is a scrambled black and white public television channel 2... and nothing else.. just static for the rest of the channels.
They told me i'd have my TV back in three days when I called and had the problem "resolved"... but that was 3 weeks ago... but that's another story...
What he said is that he wants a native Mozilla.... I use the gecko based browsers, and they feel nothing like mozilla.. they don't have the features, etc. Think Opera... It's multiplatform, but it's interface is rendered natively on each platform that I've used.
I forgot to mention how awesome the community around Mandrake is. There's so many pages for documention, to forums. It's really a great help for anyone from the newbie to the elder linux hacker.
I agree, the only thing I don't like about Mandrake are their butt ugly icons!
But I'm running Mandrake 8.2 on two of my computers, one of which was running Sorcery before. I'm as happy as a cat now. Autodetection (and setup) of my hardware including my TV card is slick, and with every release their tools are getting more and more polished. Now they have an install that lets you do a minimum package installation for those that hate bloat, and if you don't like one or all of their tools, you don't need to use them. They've set things up pretty well so that you can pick and choose the level of complexity for settings daemons, etc. But one of the greatest things about Mandrake is the new software manager (based around their urpmi package management scripts.) This tool when used in graphical mode makes installation simple. And when used on the command line, is super powerfull. I can set up removable media as RPM repositories, FTP, local, etc. And then can designate them as used for updates (can set cutting edge in testing, or fixes, normal updates or security.) It's hard to explain in a few lines on slashdot if you haven't got your hands dirty in it. Now I love apt-get but urpmi is getting better real quick and is already approaching the features of apt-get if it hasn't already. Oh and I shouldn't forget security! You can set security levels for your box that lock the box up to what level you want, then you can tweak from their. But their software update tools make keeping up to date with patches so easy it's amazing. All this plus a great gaming/desktop platform! (just check out the gaming edition with The Sims included) Mandrake's patched kernel that allows auto mounting and unmounting of removable media (supermount) is something I have trouble living without now also....
Anyway just my two cents. No one will probably read my post so deeply threaded anyway. *shrug* heh
"Now the only hurdle left is convincing people that don't play complex DirectX video games that Linux does everything for them and more when properly configured (which took me only 2 hours - Win2k took 4hrs BTW, and I've been using it longer than Linux)."
First of all, I use Win2k on my main machine and Sorcery (or sometimes Mandrake) on my secondary machine (which is also my television at the moment... Linux works fine for me in that dept.)
I would love to remove Windows from my machine (not that I have anything against Win2k.. it's stable and fast... but I believe in open source and just have more fun when using Linux.)
*But* I have more than DirectX games that I can not run on Linux. Let me give you a quick list:
Trillian (like Gaim, but better w/ file xfer
mIRC (I have very specific scripts I use and I don't like how it runs in wine)
CuteFTP (Is there anything that's really like this and not a weak copy in Linux? I'd love to find a replacement.)
Teleport Pro (for spidering sites like my University Classes homepages, etc.)
Columbine Bookmark Merge (which lets me convert between IE, Netscape and Opera bookmarks and keep them all in synch)
Kyodai (I love this game... w/ 3D and all effects... does it work in Wine?)
Snood (It's fun... )
Unreal Tournament (How well does this work and perform?)
Simcity 3000
Age of Empires and Kings!!!!! Darn you Microsoft!
Cygwin (just joking;-)
The Windows breeds of old gaming emulation.. yeah I know Linux has them too but they are *never* as good, especially with lack of guis and all sorts of other things missing and my game controllers never work right.)
PSpice
LogicWorks digital logic design
Matlab
Mathematica
Maple
Other engineering / scholastic programs (like physics simulations programs I have)
Akoff music composer
Cool Edit Pro!! I have never seen anything this good in linux... and I use this program all the time.
KaZaA (yeah yeah, spyware, but I got the Wheel of Time PDF off this... I own all the books but this helps me do searches and stuff.)
Musicmatch Jukebox (yes there is a linux version but it sucks compared to the windows one... I use the pay per month music match radio to get my "cd quality" legal music streamed to me)
Noteworthy Composer (I've used some of the Linux equivs but I don't feel anywhere as productive or comfortable)
Adobe Photoshop (I know.. the Gimp, but I dislike the UI for the Gimp and am much more productive in Photoshop... plus all the tutorials etc that are easy to find everywhere on the internet to help me accomplish anything practicly.)
Voice over IP PC to Telephone!!!!!!! ARGH!
Pinball! I want a good pinball game!
ActiveX (i know it's evil but some things use it on the web that I need) and compatible (that means non standard or old in the ms world;-) java and plugin support. How many times have I went to load a java program that refused to work like it does in windows are not at all....
My scanner never works right in any distro I've tried... not sure why, it's a supported HP scanner but SANE hates me:(
Real Good DVD software... I want stable, easy to full screen, full menu functionality, etc.
Corel Painter Classic (I love to play with this with my pen tablet)
Plugin and video capability free without using another plugin I have to pay for (this doesn't bother me much)
Borland C++ Builder (not too worried about this because of KDevelop)
JCreator (I use for simple java and haskell)
Komodo
Good asian support (My girlfriend is Thai)
Weatherbug
Outlook and Access
Getright! Nothing is as good as getright! Argh...
Now I know some of this can run in Wine but I don't usually like how they perform or "feel".... and some have Linux "equivs" but I don't think they measure up.... hmmm
If anyone knows some really good alternatives I'd love to hear about them... in fact I implore you to suggest things. Please give me a reason to dump MS...
It sure does have a limit. Does anyone know what it is? It seems everytime I go to any site on geocities now I get the "This site has exceeded..blahblah"
Makes geocities kind of useless now (supposing you didn't consider it useless before.)
Another site I find useful and interesting to see and here different viewpoints about various subjects (geek and non geek) is http://www.plastic.com
Although this site has a very liberal taste to it, and doesn't always stick up for the other side... the commentary by the readers, etc make for a vastly greater view of many subjects then I would get from a mainstream news medium. Plus it runs slashcode;)
Slashdot Mirror
I was writing it Dreamfactory: Doki Doki Panic... they didn't. They have the title Dreamfactory on the screen with doki doki panic flashing around the screen like little explosions.
Doki Doki Panic is not "the" name of the game, never was.
I guess if you repeat something enough it will become true.
I would like to put forth the opinion that "Americans are too stupid for SMB2" is not the reason (or at least not the only reason) that we didn't get the game. The real reasons are much more complex.
In Japan, Nintendo was releasing an upgrade to their Family Computer game system that used disks (looked a lot like floppy disks). This Famicom disk system needed games for launch. This is what the Super Mario Brothers 2 we never saw was for. From what I've read Miyamoto wasn't even truly involved with making Super Mario Brothers 2 and in fact was really just a "creative consultant" or something. Because he was busy making another disk system game 'Dreamfactory: Doki Doki Panic' (note that the name is Dreamfactory with a subtitle of Doki Doki Panic. doki doki is japanese onomatopoeia for a beating heart, i.e. excitement and danger.) I've even heard it rumored that "Doki Doki Panic" was really supposed to be the next mario but wasn't going to be ready in time so they made the rushed SMB2 and "Doki Doki Panic" evolved in a different direction. This makes sense to me. When I look at the Japanese Super Mario 2 I don't see some "extremely difficult game that Americans won't be able to play." What I see is a rushed expansion pack that was branded as an entirely new game. But why didn't we get this game? In my opinion there are two main reasons.
1) Because the NES was new in the USA. We had just gotten our Super Mario Bros. 1 and the Japanese SMB2 would be too close on its heels with almost no real evolution of gameplay. Sure SMB2 works fine when your launching a new disk system in Japan but Nintendo wasn't sure if another almost clone like SMB game would work on the NES.
2) Because we didn't have the disk system upgrade. Nintendo thought about bringing out the disk system upgrade in the USA eventually but never did. This is because we didn't need it anymore and Nintendo didn't want us to have it.
The disk system was created for two reasons. One was to allow to-disk saving of games, the other was to reduce costs of publishing the games. By the time the NES came out the famicom disk system was having problems. Due to some draconian copy right rules many companies didn't want to publish their games on the disk system. Also, companies were losing money due to the extremely easy to copy disk format. Nintendo was afraid of pirating if they used the disk system in foreign markets. What cinched our cartridge only platform was the fact that the other benefit of the disk system, saving to disk, wasn't as important anymore. Some of the disk system games were ported to the NES with password features instead of the save-to-disk ability the disk system used. Also, when Nintendo developed the disk system battery backup was very expensive. This price dropped pretty quickly, allowing the NES to use battery backup for games. Now there was no great need for the disk system for the NES.
I think the "SMB2 is too difficult for us" idea is perhaps partially correct but not exactly for the reasons everyone seems to believe. The japanese SMB2 could be saved. You could save and restore. If a warp took you backwards you could restore your game. The game is "too difficult" because the NES did not have the save feature that the disk system had.
Now because we didn't have a save feature and because the game was too much like SMB1, we didn't get it. It just didn't make commercial sense for the NES.
Miyamoto then got to take the game he had been working on and make a Super Mario 2 for the NES. Is it a real SMB2? I would argue yes. Miyamoto may have even originally planned for it to be the actual Super Mario Bros. 2 for everyone. But in any case it was released as SMB2 for the NES and eventually was released for the Japanese market as an alternate super mario bros 2.
We might not have got the expansion pack that was the Japanese SMB2 but we got an excellent, interesting, and fun game in its place. It just doesn't make sense to say our SMB2 is
Contrived?
1 52rv.jpg
Perhaps the Tennis one is over the top, but I was just trying to make a point and certainly you can see them calling a game Mario Wii or some mutation of that.
(I can see it now at E3 next year. Someone dressed as the Tingle character will announce the new Zelda Wii.)
They like the short names that can be used in the manner I suggested. That's why we saw GAME_NAME 64 and why we see GAME_NAME DS. I don't believe it is contrived in the least that they will at least *try* to put that Wii crap at the end of games. It's not as crazy as you make it sound:
http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/9264/116095922
Hopefully the american companies and american divisions of foreign companies will see that Wii does not fit well with any game title.
Why not name it Nintendo Us or something (You know, us as in we!)
Whatever, it's their marketing campaign. Perhaps I'm just not privied to their genius.
I keep reading comments like yours both on Slashdot and various other places that say basicly that Wii doesn't (and wasn't supposed to) appeal to the *hardcore* gamer.
I'm not a hardcore gamer. I don't play FPS games, nor do I play MMORPGs. I don't own a PS1, PS2, XBOX, or XBOX360. I have a gamecube and rarely play it. I am a casual gamer that likes fun over graphics anyday.
I am not a Nintendo apologist like so many of the so-called "non hardcore" people's comments I keep reading. Wii is a lame name on so many levels. Even removing the childish innuendos the name is still confusing and innefectual. Still want to argue? Try imagining this: You haven't had much time in the last month to play with your new Wii. But now that the kids are asleep, you and your wife break out the new game you picked up. "Oh, honey I can't wait to play Mario Wii with you." "But dear I thought you wanted me to pick up Super Peach's Tennis Wii."
If you can say that without feeling a little bit stupid then I envy you. Appending Wii to game names sounds terrible and it's bound to happen.
In short, if you have to explain how to pronounce the products name and explain some "deep meaning" that it embodies... it's probably not such a great name. Add in the fact that wee has bad connotations and Wii becomes an even worse choice for a name. The only reason I can see to choose the name is to create the hoopla we now see surrounding this marketing circus act. Perhaps that's what they want but in the end when the 12 year old jokes get old, the machine once known lovingly as the Revolution is still going to be... the Nintendo Wii.
Ugh.
It's not exactly what you are asking for but I find it useful. Try the SessionSaver extension for Firefox. If the browser crashes it will reload the tabs you had open when you restart the browser.
Watch out... too much zinc when not properly balanced with copper can cause heart problems later in life.
I own a Toshiba DLP. I looked for a long time at all the options and DLP simply has an amazing picture. I love my TV. I highly suggest others look into it... if you don't need to hang it on a wall DLP might be the way to go.
Ummm.. I watched all the debates live on msnbc.com
When I convert people from IE I give them the option of Firefox... if they start whining "I don't waaaant to run firewhatever" I say "Ok then you are going to run Opera" ...
then I donkey punch them
> Is your copy of VMWare a legally purchased one?
yes it is. Is yours?
Ok so now Sun is saying that they will open source Solaris? I thought we just had a story on how Sun says software is going to be all subscription based and the hardware will be free... hmmm
I've spoken to quite a few chinese people about Tibet and no one has ever told me that they believe Tibet has been China's all along. Instead they use the argument that Tibet is so much better then it was before. They'll talk about how backward and sub third world Tibet was before China helped them. Then they'll list on and on the wonders China has brought to the people of Tibet: electricity, TVs, water, etc.
AMEN!
You hit the nail on the head. This is how most of my friends and myself feel on this issue. Why oh why do cartoons, video games, etc have to polarize so much? On one side we have super corny kiddish humor, and on the other side we have heads exploding hooker rape fetish gangsters.
I had no problem with the cell shading of the latest Zelda. What I did have a problem with were the droopy stumbling monsters, the booger hanging kid, etc etc. You don't need to go and make your games humiliating for the adults to make it approachable to the children. I grew up on Zelda and envisioned it a little more epic than it's currently being done. Perhaps that's because you can't make stupid dancing scarecrows on the old 8bit NES.
Mario is and always has been the "candy gumdrop" type of world and I can live with that. But can't we make Zelda a little more cool?
I believe the URL that you are looking for (there was just a story on it on the public radio station the other day) is:
:)
http://www.mailblocks.com
Have a nice day
This is not the Atkins diet... this is a sure way to drive yourself insane...
Even the atkin's diet, the most restrictive of the low-carb diets, has you go down to =20 carbs a day only durring the first phase: Induction. After which you increase your carb count durring the next 3 stages.
I have done this and do *not* suggest it if you don't want to feel destroyed for the first week to 4 weeks. Extreme carb restriction is fine if that 's the way you want to do it, but go slowly and decrease to that level slowly. By going slowly you will build up the enzymes that help digest fats and proteins... it's the lack of these enzymes that causes brain fog and extreme fatigue, etc. durring atkin's first phase.
Want to know the secret of Atkins: he causes you pain and suffering in the first phase to cause an extreme diaretic effect leading to major body weight loss of mostly water. This is the "miracle" of atkins. Afterwards you lose weight at the same rate like you were doing a low fat diet... the difference and *only* difference between a low carb and a low fat diet is this:
1) Low carb diet helps reduce how much one eat's for a large chunk of the population (not everyone though! Still will be easier to control your portions if you eat this way though.)
2) Low carb diets, while not helping you lose *weight* faster do help a lot with body composition. You will lose a larger percentage of *fat* versus lean body mass (muscles and organs) then on a high carb / low fat diet...
That's it! There are no "metabolic advantages! There are no fat mobilizing hormones like Atkin's describes. He's a nut job mostly... but that doesn't mean the low carb diet can't be done and done well to great effect.
But low carb versus low fat is just about optimizing things. The real equation is calories in = calories out to maintain weight. If you want to lose weight, burn more calories then you take in. If you are gaining weight then you are taking in more calories then you are burning. Simple...
The *best* and most healthy way to lose weight is to increase exercise _first_ and primarily. Then only slightly reduce calorie consumption. Create a deficit in this manor... it's the best for healthy and sustainable weight loss... otherwise you will eventually go nuts cutting insane amounts of calories. Exercise is the key to success people... period.
"That's fine for a computer literate person but for the hair dresser who just want's to pick up her email that's not going to work"
I hear arguments like this all the time as comebacks to the above post... We need to make Linux (or mandrake linux, or whatever) simple enough for grandma to use, etc.
I want Linux simple enough for a *geek* to *use* without having to configure every stupid program and configuration script, blah blah blah.
I can and have configured Linux the hard way... it was fun as a freshmen... even sophomore in college. But you know what? Years and years later I simply want my computer to work so I can get some other work done. I want the mouse to be detected and my scanner to be detected and my USB drawing tablet, etc etc etc. Can I install these manually? Sure, but I don't want to. If Mandrake can probe and find my harware then great. If it can't find something or doesn't know about a new piece of hardware... ok then I'll get my hands dirty. But don't presume that it's wrong or evil to autodetect and simply work *as often as possible*!
There's a large difference between Windows (auto configure for you and make it difficult or sometimes impossible to tweak things *if I want*), vs Mac (let's hide everything and pretend a computer is a gameboy.... excuse me I like pretty too but even a pretty car requires a license and training before I can drive it) vs Linux (interesting but too in-your-face-complex for times when I just want to do something other than play with my OS or fine tune a server)
I'm sorry I've ranted and formatted this like crap. And I can't spell... Anyway, for the record I've used many Linux distros but have settled on Mandrake as my normal Linux distro I use to get stuff done. I still play with other distros from time to time, but Mandrake 9.0 PowerPak is happily installed on my PC. It's powerful, full of choice, autodetects the best of any distro... but yet comes from an extremely Open Source friendly company and allows the poweruser full control to do whatever they want or need to do.
Ok I'll shut up now...
Do you or anyone else know if you can change this behaviour, perhaps with javascript in the preferences file... so that the image repeats X amount of times? there's a big difference between infinite and once. I'd like... say 5, or maybe even just 3 *shrug*.
They did it to me... my company incorrectly had on their records that I wasn't paying my basic cable fee (which I'm forced to pay) and so they came and installed a filter.. Now all I get is a scrambled black and white public television channel 2... and nothing else.. just static for the rest of the channels.
They told me i'd have my TV back in three days when I called and had the problem "resolved"... but that was 3 weeks ago... but that's another story...
What he said is that he wants a native Mozilla.... I use the gecko based browsers, and they feel nothing like mozilla.. they don't have the features, etc. Think Opera... It's multiplatform, but it's interface is rendered natively on each platform that I've used.
I forgot to mention how awesome the community around Mandrake is. There's so many pages for documention, to forums. It's really a great help for anyone from the newbie to the elder linux hacker.
I agree, the only thing I don't like about Mandrake are their butt ugly icons!
But I'm running Mandrake 8.2 on two of my computers, one of which was running Sorcery before. I'm as happy as a cat now. Autodetection (and setup) of my hardware including my TV card is slick, and with every release their tools are getting more and more polished. Now they have an install that lets you do a minimum package installation for those that hate bloat, and if you don't like one or all of their tools, you don't need to use them. They've set things up pretty well so that you can pick and choose the level of complexity for settings daemons, etc. But one of the greatest things about Mandrake is the new software manager (based around their urpmi package management scripts.) This tool when used in graphical mode makes installation simple. And when used on the command line, is super powerfull. I can set up removable media as RPM repositories, FTP, local, etc. And then can designate them as used for updates (can set cutting edge in testing, or fixes, normal updates or security.) It's hard to explain in a few lines on slashdot if you haven't got your hands dirty in it. Now I love apt-get but urpmi is getting better real quick and is already approaching the features of apt-get if it hasn't already. Oh and I shouldn't forget security! You can set security levels for your box that lock the box up to what level you want, then you can tweak from their. But their software update tools make keeping up to date with patches so easy it's amazing. All this plus a great gaming/desktop platform! (just check out the gaming edition with The Sims included) Mandrake's patched kernel that allows auto mounting and unmounting of removable media (supermount) is something I have trouble living without now also....
Anyway just my two cents. No one will probably read my post so deeply threaded anyway. *shrug* heh
First of all, I use Win2k on my main machine and Sorcery (or sometimes Mandrake) on my secondary machine (which is also my television at the moment... Linux works fine for me in that dept.)
I would love to remove Windows from my machine (not that I have anything against Win2k.. it's stable and fast... but I believe in open source and just have more fun when using Linux.)
*But* I have more than DirectX games that I can not run on Linux. Let me give you a quick list:
Trillian (like Gaim, but better w/ file xfer
mIRC (I have very specific scripts I use and I don't like how it runs in wine)
CuteFTP (Is there anything that's really like this and not a weak copy in Linux? I'd love to find a replacement.)
Teleport Pro (for spidering sites like my University Classes homepages, etc.)
Columbine Bookmark Merge (which lets me convert between IE, Netscape and Opera bookmarks and keep them all in synch)
Kyodai (I love this game... w/ 3D and all effects... does it work in Wine?)
Snood (It's fun... )
Unreal Tournament (How well does this work and perform?)
Simcity 3000
Age of Empires and Kings!!!!! Darn you Microsoft!
Cygwin (just joking ;-)
The Windows breeds of old gaming emulation.. yeah I know Linux has them too but they are *never* as good, especially with lack of guis and all sorts of other things missing and my game controllers never work right.)
PSpice
LogicWorks digital logic design
Matlab
Mathematica
Maple
Other engineering / scholastic programs (like physics simulations programs I have)
Akoff music composer
Cool Edit Pro!! I have never seen anything this good in linux... and I use this program all the time.
KaZaA (yeah yeah, spyware, but I got the Wheel of Time PDF off this... I own all the books but this helps me do searches and stuff.)
Musicmatch Jukebox (yes there is a linux version but it sucks compared to the windows one... I use the pay per month music match radio to get my "cd quality" legal music streamed to me)
Noteworthy Composer (I've used some of the Linux equivs but I don't feel anywhere as productive or comfortable)
Adobe Photoshop (I know.. the Gimp, but I dislike the UI for the Gimp and am much more productive in Photoshop... plus all the tutorials etc that are easy to find everywhere on the internet to help me accomplish anything practicly.)
Voice over IP PC to Telephone!!!!!!! ARGH!
Pinball! I want a good pinball game!
ActiveX (i know it's evil but some things use it on the web that I need) and compatible (that means non standard or old in the ms world ;-) java and plugin support. How many times have I went to load a java program that refused to work like it does in windows are not at all....
My scanner never works right in any distro I've tried... not sure why, it's a supported HP scanner but SANE hates me :(
Real Good DVD software... I want stable, easy to full screen, full menu functionality, etc.
Corel Painter Classic (I love to play with this with my pen tablet)
Plugin and video capability free without using another plugin I have to pay for (this doesn't bother me much)
Borland C++ Builder (not too worried about this because of KDevelop)
JCreator (I use for simple java and haskell)
Komodo
Good asian support (My girlfriend is Thai)
Weatherbug
Outlook and Access
Getright! Nothing is as good as getright! Argh...
Now I know some of this can run in Wine but I don't usually like how they perform or "feel".... and some have Linux "equivs" but I don't think they measure up.... hmmm If anyone knows some really good alternatives I'd love to hear about them... in fact I implore you to suggest things. Please give me a reason to dump MS...
Ok back to work...
The command line version of mandrakeupdate is urpmi...
Sometimes it's a lot easier to use the command line version instead of MandrakeUpdate.
It sure does have a limit. Does anyone know what it is? It seems everytime I go to any site on geocities now I get the "This site has exceeded..blahblah"
Makes geocities kind of useless now (supposing you didn't consider it useless before.)
Although this site has a very liberal taste to it, and doesn't always stick up for the other side... the commentary by the readers, etc make for a vastly greater view of many subjects then I would get from a mainstream news medium. Plus it runs slashcode ;)