This is freaking weird - the age, the timing, everything kind of parallels somewhat with my experience as well. I've even wondered the exact same thing - why most people remember further back than I do when most of my earliest memories are when I was 6 or 7.
I'm currently 33 years old - I was born in the US and at about 4 years old, went with my parents to go live in Japan. I started learning to speak Japanese and it actually started becoming my primary language for me before we moved back to the states when I was 6 or 7 and encountered a culture shock that I don't think I ever really got over until later on in high school. I never felt at home anywhere, I never mixed in with the crowd, and was generally ostracised. I remember getting picked on and beat up all the time because I came from Japan with all kinds of toys, clothes, etc that no one had seen before, and boy, was I out of place.
My sister, who's 5 years older than I, didn't have this issue and managed to keep her ability to speak Japanese. I have the impression that she went through a little bit of a similar culture problem because back when she was in Junior High, she had all of this "Hello Kitty" stuff years and years before it was even introduced into the states. Her comment was that people would say, "what's all this Hello Kitty crap?" and she thinks its funny that they have entire stores dedicated to this stuff now.
Anyhow, I think this poster may be on to something. Before 6 or 7 years old, I only really remember vague shards of impressions, feelings and memories, but nothing really cohesive... I dunno... maybe it's a combination of language change and culture shock...
You know, geeks are the perfect target for raelians...
Rael [the guru of the raelian sect] recruits loonies that are often scientifically-inclined. This guy just found another good 'build-your-cult-and-steal-money-from-geeks-cheme'. Here are the ingredients:
- Science fiction theme
- free sex
Of course, this cult is mostly drawing 'converts' thanks to the second item.
YAY! Let's join a cult so we can have free wild rampant sex with other/.'ers!!
I thought getting a +1 for being insightful was kind of weird too, but getting modded down to a -1 to compensate? Geez, it's not like I was trolling or anything. Sheesh...
Let's hope we don't see a repeat of the guy who died after playing a game for 84 hours straight.
News at 11:
5000 people at a gaming conference died today after everyone forgot to go to the bathroom. Toxic waste officials said that the stench alone would be enough to keep all of Sweden's grass fertilized until 2022. The scene, as described by one passerby remarked, "It could only be described as disgustingly gross, yet strangely hilarious".
I think I remember what the Newton looked like (been a while) and it certainly has garnered quite a following. However, I think I'd prefer a 10.4in portrait screen form factor just a little more.
Incidentally, I just got back from checking out the Toshiba TabletPC at Fry's - the first time I've played with one (incidentally, Fry's was a $*%&ing nightmare, big surprise...).
My impression of the tablet pc: cool, but I just don't think this is anywhere near ready for prime time. I'd probably just use it as a notebook most of the time. Gotta admit, the ability to flip the keyboard over and attach it to the back is gimmicky, but very, very cool. The XP pen stuff kind of annoyed me, though - I found it really disconcerting having the cursor following the pen movement in-between strokes when it wasn't touching the pad. I'm sure this is necessary behavior and maybe it can be changed, but it still kind of bugged me anyhow.
Aside from that, as a notebook, I'm sure it's fine - though there's no way I'd pay extra for the pen functionality. I'd probably wait for the 3rd or 4th generation for tabletpc before considering it. Hopefully by then, there'll be something that'll give me what I really want for under $1000 - an embedded OS would be okay, too.
Personally, I don't really care WHAT os is running on it, be it Apple, Linux, Microsoft, Beos, etc). The functionality that I really care about is:
Web browsing (with https and java support) E-mail (pop and http client required, mapi would be a plus) Ability to play mp3 (video and divx would be a real plus) Ability to sync with Outlook and Mozilla/Netscape USB or firewire sync
Anything else, as far I'm concerned is optional.
Hmm... it'd be REALLY bitchin' if Apple could remake the iPod into something like this - I don't know of any PDAs that have 20GB hard drives in them!
... but I think I'd really rather have a pocketpc style device with a larger screen to accomplish the same thing if it'd be cheaper. I'd end up spending an awful lot of money for something that I'd just use as a web browser/e-mail checker.
One the technical guys at Exodus that was helping us out over at the datacenter once told me that because of a recurring spam problem, he had a customer ask him "if he could block all of the IP addresses in China"...
... they'll probably end up blocking some legitimate sites in the process. Besides, if some kid really wants to get access to porn, they'll generally find a way to do it - they don't need a library.
Maybe they wanted to kill it at first, but I think that even Intel's had to accept that on some level people want it. Their D845PEBT2 motherboard has an option available for 3 firewire ports built in.
Another link they had on that page was the missle silo home on ebay that sold for 2 million! I think I'd rather have one of these instead of the airplane..
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MfcISAPICom ma nd=ViewItem&item=1771107126
This was called the "common reference hardware platform". Before Apple usurped back the Power Computing, Motorola, and Umax clones, this was supposed to be one potential answer to building a non-mac powerpc box. Motorola came the closest to accomplishing this by implementing standard PC parts (like ps/2 ports) on their computer.
At one time, back when Microsoft actually supported the PowerPC architecture, Firmworks and IBM actually made a dual-booting macintosh/NT computer in 1996. IBM's motivation was linux, I believe. Check these links out:
http://www.firmworks.com/www/chrp.htm
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CHRP.html
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/9908/19.ibm. sh tml
I personally LOVED the thought of being able to go to a computer show and putting together an NT or a linux or a mac-compatible computer by purchasing individual parts.
You know, it's really a damn shame this wasn't meant to be.
1. Good Solaris/HP admins can make serious $$$$. If you can add Veritas software and Oracle to that, it goes up substantially from there.
2. Solaris (SPARC version only, of course) will scale almost linearly when moved above 8-CPU's. It was designed to comfortably run on systems of 100 CPU's and above. If I remember right, x86 doesn't really scale well past 4 processors.
3. If it wasn't for linux, there'd be no way that I could've even touched Solaris. Without Solaris x86, there's no way I would have been able to learn it without going out and purchasing a sparc machine. I will help support the Sun x86 community in this and will purchase a production release copy for $99 when it comes out.
I use linux for just about everything I have at home (PA-Risc linux, familiar linux on my ipaq, yellow dog on my mac, linux for mips on my Playstation 2), but I also use Solaris x86 as my primary server at home.
If I didn't like it, I wouldn't complain - I just wouldn't buy it.
Ain't variety wonderful? It's all pretty much unix, people - can't we all just get along?
... that maybe they need to start looking at creating better storylines instead of focusing on overpriced retarded predictable "special effects" movies?
I mean, I like special effects as much as the next guy, but I won't spend $10 on a 2 1/2 hour movie where I know that:
1. The bad guy is going to die horribly either by the main character or by his own creation.
2. There's only one really pretty girl in the enitre movie and obviously she's going to end up with the main hero.
If there isn't a girl, it'll end up being a kid that'll have one parent to generate some sympathy (Disney's really well known for doing this - how many cartoons has Disney had where the kid has had both parents throughout the entire movie?)
3. In action movies, they always have some special minor move or device which they downplay at first but will end up leading to the villan's ultimate downfall.
4. A victim that dies (usually in the beginning or middle) always does something that gets them killed that absolutely no one in their right mind would do unless they had tapioca for brains.
5. Many times, as a variant to the last statement, it's the hero's friend that gets threatened, hurt or killed, then the hero (with some special skill or military history) has to go on and get revenge on the Big Bad Guy.
Another thing that happens a lot is where the girl or friend of the hero gets taken hostage at the end - and the hero has to make a choice to save the world or save the girl - which he'll end up doing both, and killing the enemy, which goes back to point 1.
These clearly aren't all of the commonalities, but you get the picture...
I think that the main problem here is that you have an oversaturation of the same old storylines without any real innovation. I can't tell you how many movies I've seen where I can figure out the plot and the ending within the first 15 minutes of the film. I just can't bring myself to watch this unmitigated crud anymore.
Both the movie and the music recording studios are using formulas for creating absolute junk that will cater to the lowest possible denominator of the masses. And they wonder why they're hurting... sheesh.
"Honestly, at today's prices I view hard drives as twinkies--they're cheap and they'll probably last 3 years anyway.
"There's plenty of worse things to get upset about than only getting a 1 year warranty with a $79 80GB 7200 RPM hard drive"
That's fine until you lose all of the porn that you've spent months collecting;-)
I'd normally agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that there's no really good cheap way to back up 80GBs worth of data other than to buy another drive for a RAID 1 (unless you want to spend over a grand on a good tape backup system), and even mirroring doesn't help if your data gets corrupted - the corruption would just get copied over to the other drive. Even backing it up to DVD would amount to about 18 discs.
The fact that they've cut the warranty down to one year really sucks - I'm going to try avoid purchasing one year warranty drives as long as I can.
Besides, I can't tell you the number of times I've had to "hack" something on linux to make it work with something that wasn't designed to work with it anyhow - wireless cards included.
Re:C64, CoCo II, Apple IIe, 8086? What was your's?
on
The Aging Gamer
·
· Score: 1
Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 model II (1.77Mhz Z-80 running CP/M) w/16k ram and cassette drive! Played an entirely text-based Star Trek game written in Microsoft Basic where:
(*) was a starbase
-=+ was a Klingon ship
and
O-= was the enterprise
We'd "warp" to go into battle with the Klingons and repair and refuel at the starbase. Sometimes the starbases would come under attack and we'd have to try to rescue it. The text based fonts looked more appropriate for the ships back then. Atari later released a more entertaining version of that same game later on called "Star Raiders"
But man, we played that TRS-80 for HOURS at a time with my best friend when we were in second grade! Working at Radio Shack was our dream job back then (LOL) not to mention I would have absolutely died for a Heathkit computer.
Then I migrated to an Atari 800 (my mom went apple IIe), then I went to an Atari ST (my mom went to macintosh), then I went PC.
... now I'm a network guy and I can finally AFFORD all of this stuff!!
Re:why would anyone quit gaming?
on
The Aging Gamer
·
· Score: 1
Every generation has its own form of gamers. The gamers that grow up that say "games aren't as fun as they used to be" (I think) have definitely grown out of them because the novelty and surprise of seeing something so spectacular and new has largely worn out for them. I also think that for many, as they get older, it WILL be harder to fill that void - nostaligia of the newness and excitement of a new game as a kid is a tough contender. Once you get over that, a lot of games seemingly starts becoming a rehash of what's already been done.
I know that I look back at when I used to walk (okay, so it was run) into an arcade as a kid, I'd feel the adrenaline rush as I'd hear and see a Space Invaders or an Asteroids game and watch the quarters line up on the bottom of the screen as people tried to reserve their games, and I remember plunking down $40 for a Defender game for the Atari 2600 thinking just HOW COOL it was to be able to play this at home!
I'm 33, and like you, I have some extremely fond memories of games - just different ones. I posted this question a long time ago on the Virtual Hideout forums and near as I could tell the current mid-20's generation looked upon the Nintendo as their all-time favorite system. Clearly a huge chunk of my age group felt that way about the Atari 2600.
I know I'm dating myself here, but as far as consoles go, I grew up on the Atari 2600, the Intellivision, the Vectrex, and (remember this?) the Microvision (the first portable cartridge based-system that at least I can remember). And man, do I have some great memories of playing Adventure and Slot Racers with my friends. Man! This stuff has come far!
I'll definitely say one thing: I honestly believe that my burning interest in games helped in no small way to foster my interest in computers and led to my current career as a Senior Network Geek. I can tell that my 8 year old son is having the same new experiences that I had all over again with different game systems - only his fondest memories will be of playing games with his friends on the Playstation 2 and Xbox. I'm okay with that as long as it doesn't get in the way of his homework.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get my rear kicked in UT2003 by some 15 year old that has waaaay more time to play than I'll ever have!
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/Dec0 2/12-17PlusDigitalMediaPR.asp
This is freaking weird - the age, the timing, everything kind of parallels somewhat with my experience as well. I've even wondered the exact same thing - why most people remember further back than I do when most of my earliest memories are when I was 6 or 7.
I'm currently 33 years old - I was born in the US and at about 4 years old, went with my parents to go live in Japan. I started learning to speak Japanese and it actually started becoming my primary language for me before we moved back to the states when I was 6 or 7 and encountered a culture shock that I don't think I ever really got over until later on in high school. I never felt at home anywhere, I never mixed in with the crowd, and was generally ostracised. I remember getting picked on and beat up all the time because I came from Japan with all kinds of toys, clothes, etc that no one had seen before, and boy, was I out of place.
My sister, who's 5 years older than I, didn't have this issue and managed to keep her ability to speak Japanese. I have the impression that she went through a little bit of a similar culture problem because back when she was in Junior High, she had all of this "Hello Kitty" stuff years and years before it was even introduced into the states. Her comment was that people would say, "what's all this Hello Kitty crap?" and she thinks its funny that they have entire stores dedicated to this stuff now.
Anyhow, I think this poster may be on to something. Before 6 or 7 years old, I only really remember vague shards of impressions, feelings and memories, but nothing really cohesive... I dunno... maybe it's a combination of language change and culture shock...
Dr. Emmett Brown, is that YOU?!
Rael [the guru of the raelian sect] recruits loonies that are often scientifically-inclined. This guy just found another good 'build-your-cult-and-steal-money-from-geeks-cheme
Here are the ingredients:
- Science fiction theme
- free sex
Of course, this cult is mostly drawing 'converts' thanks to the second item.
YAY! Let's join a cult so we can have free wild rampant sex with other
ummmmmm....
no.
... for the first bird that'll get sucked into that contraption by accident... ... but it won't keep me from laughing my ass off!
Anyone that's surprised that a political party has accepted money by a special interest group in return for personal favors, raise your hand.
I thought getting a +1 for being insightful was kind of weird too, but getting modded down to a -1 to compensate? Geez, it's not like I was trolling or anything. Sheesh...
Let's hope we don't see a repeat of the guy who died after playing a game for 84 hours straight.
News at 11:
5000 people at a gaming conference died today after everyone forgot to go to the bathroom. Toxic waste officials said that the stench alone would be enough to keep all of Sweden's grass fertilized until 2022. The scene, as described by one passerby remarked, "It could only be described as disgustingly gross, yet strangely hilarious".
I think I remember what the Newton looked like (been a while) and it certainly has garnered quite a following. However, I think I'd prefer a 10.4in portrait screen form factor just a little more.
Incidentally, I just got back from checking out the Toshiba TabletPC at Fry's - the first time I've played with one (incidentally, Fry's was a $*%&ing nightmare, big surprise...).
My impression of the tablet pc: cool, but I just don't think this is anywhere near ready for prime time. I'd probably just use it as a notebook most of the time. Gotta admit, the ability to flip the keyboard over and attach it to the back is gimmicky, but very, very cool. The XP pen stuff kind of annoyed me, though - I found it really disconcerting having the cursor following the pen movement in-between strokes when it wasn't touching the pad. I'm sure this is necessary behavior and maybe it can be changed, but it still kind of bugged me anyhow.
Aside from that, as a notebook, I'm sure it's fine - though there's no way I'd pay extra for the pen functionality. I'd probably wait for the 3rd or 4th generation for tabletpc before considering it. Hopefully by then, there'll be something that'll give me what I really want for under $1000 - an embedded OS would be okay, too.
Personally, I don't really care WHAT os is running on it, be it Apple, Linux, Microsoft, Beos, etc). The functionality that I really care about is:
Web browsing (with https and java support)
E-mail (pop and http client required, mapi would be a plus)
Ability to play mp3 (video and divx would be a real plus)
Ability to sync with Outlook and Mozilla/Netscape
USB or firewire sync
Anything else, as far I'm concerned is optional.
Hmm... it'd be REALLY bitchin' if Apple could remake the iPod into something like this - I don't know of any PDAs that have 20GB hard drives in them!
By the way, did Apple ever make a color newton?
... but I think I'd really rather have a pocketpc style device with a larger screen to accomplish the same thing if it'd be cheaper. I'd end up spending an awful lot of money for something that I'd just use as a web browser/e-mail checker.
One the technical guys at Exodus that was helping us out over at the datacenter once told me that because of a recurring spam problem, he had a customer ask him "if he could block all of the IP addresses in China"...
... they'll probably end up blocking some legitimate sites in the process. Besides, if some kid really wants to get access to porn, they'll generally find a way to do it - they don't need a library.
Maybe they wanted to kill it at first, but I think that even Intel's had to accept that on some level people want it. Their D845PEBT2 motherboard has an option available for 3 firewire ports built in.
h tm ?iid=ipp_dlc_deskmb+spot_d845pebt2&
http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/bt2/index.
"Could you actually make a Beowulf cluster out of these?"
Well, apparently there is a cluster project for ipaq linux, why not for the Zaurus?
http://handhelds.org/projects/ipaqsetup.html
Another link they had on that page was the missle silo home on ebay that sold for 2 million! I think I'd rather have one of these instead of the airplane..
m ma nd=ViewItem&item=1771107126
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MfcISAPICo
This was called the "common reference hardware platform". Before Apple usurped back the Power Computing, Motorola, and Umax clones, this was supposed to be one potential answer to building a non-mac powerpc box. Motorola came the closest to accomplishing this by implementing standard PC parts (like ps/2 ports) on their computer.
. sh tml
At one time, back when Microsoft actually supported the PowerPC architecture, Firmworks and IBM actually made a dual-booting macintosh/NT computer in 1996. IBM's motivation was linux, I believe. Check these links out:
http://www.firmworks.com/www/chrp.htm
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CHRP.html
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/9908/19.ibm
I personally LOVED the thought of being able to go to a computer show and putting together an NT or a linux or a mac-compatible computer by purchasing individual parts.
You know, it's really a damn shame this wasn't meant to be.
1. Good Solaris/HP admins can make serious $$$$. If you can add Veritas software and Oracle to that, it goes up substantially from there.
2. Solaris (SPARC version only, of course) will scale almost linearly when moved above 8-CPU's. It was designed to comfortably run on systems of 100 CPU's and above. If I remember right, x86 doesn't really scale well past 4 processors.
3. If it wasn't for linux, there'd be no way that I could've even touched Solaris. Without Solaris x86, there's no way I would have been able to learn it without going out and purchasing a sparc machine. I will help support the Sun x86 community in this and will purchase a production release copy for $99 when it comes out.
I use linux for just about everything I have at home (PA-Risc linux, familiar linux on my ipaq, yellow dog on my mac, linux for mips on my Playstation 2), but I also use Solaris x86 as my primary server at home.
If I didn't like it, I wouldn't complain - I just wouldn't buy it.
Ain't variety wonderful? It's all pretty much unix, people - can't we all just get along?
... could hire Steve Ballmer to dance for him in his place too!
Hmmm.... you know, I would pay to see that... kinda like a spectator at a traffic accident...
... that maybe they need to start looking at creating better storylines instead of focusing on overpriced retarded predictable "special effects" movies?
I mean, I like special effects as much as the next guy, but I won't spend $10 on a 2 1/2 hour movie where I know that:
1. The bad guy is going to die horribly either by the main character or by his own creation.
2. There's only one really pretty girl in the enitre movie and obviously she's going to end up with the main hero.
If there isn't a girl, it'll end up being a kid that'll have one parent to generate some sympathy (Disney's really well known for doing this - how many cartoons has Disney had where the kid has had both parents throughout the entire movie?)
3. In action movies, they always have some special minor move or device which they downplay at first but will end up leading to the villan's ultimate downfall.
4. A victim that dies (usually in the beginning or middle) always does something that gets them killed that absolutely no one in their right mind would do unless they had tapioca for brains.
5. Many times, as a variant to the last statement, it's the hero's friend that gets threatened, hurt or killed, then the hero (with some special skill or military history) has to go on and get revenge on the Big Bad Guy.
Another thing that happens a lot is where the girl or friend of the hero gets taken hostage at the end - and the hero has to make a choice to save the world or save the girl - which he'll end up doing both, and killing the enemy, which goes back to point 1.
These clearly aren't all of the commonalities, but you get the picture...
I think that the main problem here is that you have an oversaturation of the same old storylines without any real innovation. I can't tell you how many movies I've seen where I can figure out the plot and the ending within the first 15 minutes of the film. I just can't bring myself to watch this unmitigated crud anymore.
Both the movie and the music recording studios are using formulas for creating absolute junk that will cater to the lowest possible denominator of the masses. And they wonder why they're hurting... sheesh.
"Honestly, at today's prices I view hard drives as twinkies--they're cheap and they'll probably last 3 years anyway.
;-)
"There's plenty of worse things to get upset about than only getting a 1 year warranty with a $79 80GB 7200 RPM hard drive"
That's fine until you lose all of the porn that you've spent months collecting
I'd normally agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that there's no really good cheap way to back up 80GBs worth of data other than to buy another drive for a RAID 1 (unless you want to spend over a grand on a good tape backup system), and even mirroring doesn't help if your data gets corrupted - the corruption would just get copied over to the other drive. Even backing it up to DVD would amount to about 18 discs.
The fact that they've cut the warranty down to one year really sucks - I'm going to try avoid purchasing one year warranty drives as long as I can.
I suppose that I don't have as much an issue with the wi-fi "hacking", per se, as much as I have an issue with it being "news"...
l oriousnoise.com/l en/
Both Ellen and Apple must be doing _something_ right - Ellen apparently has a bit of a following:
http://www.ellenfeiss.net/
http://ellenfeiss.g
http://www.wemakedotcoms.com/el
Besides, I can't tell you the number of times I've had to "hack" something on linux to make it work with something that wasn't designed to work with it anyhow - wireless cards included.
"In fact, some are suggesting the PPC 970 chip might be closely related to the PS3's 'Cell' processor..."
Even though it's really doubtful, it'd be extremely cool to see a PS3 emulator on the mac if the processors are that closely related.
I remember running Mac OS 6.0.5 on my Atari ST. Because it had the same processor, it didn't need much to make it run.
Oh well, I can at least dream, can't I?
"[itvt]: Will you be able to plug your portable device into the ReplayTV 4500 and record from there?"
4 7. html?country=cn
"Ballard: It's unclear if it will be for the 4500 or for future devices. It's all still up for debate."
Can anyone say the Archos Jukebox Multimedia? I'd like to see Replay interface with this little gadget.
http://www.archos.com/lang=en/products/prw_5003
(*) was a starbase
-=+ was a Klingon ship
and
O-= was the enterprise
We'd "warp" to go into battle with the Klingons and repair and refuel at the starbase. Sometimes the starbases would come under attack and we'd have to try to rescue it. The text based fonts looked more appropriate for the ships back then. Atari later released a more entertaining version of that same game later on called "Star Raiders"
But man, we played that TRS-80 for HOURS at a time with my best friend when we were in second grade! Working at Radio Shack was our dream job back then (LOL) not to mention I would have absolutely died for a Heathkit computer.
Then I migrated to an Atari 800 (my mom went apple IIe), then I went to an Atari ST (my mom went to macintosh), then I went PC.
I know that I look back at when I used to walk (okay, so it was run) into an arcade as a kid, I'd feel the adrenaline rush as I'd hear and see a Space Invaders or an Asteroids game and watch the quarters line up on the bottom of the screen as people tried to reserve their games, and I remember plunking down $40 for a Defender game for the Atari 2600 thinking just HOW COOL it was to be able to play this at home!
I'm 33, and like you, I have some extremely fond memories of games - just different ones. I posted this question a long time ago on the Virtual Hideout forums and near as I could tell the current mid-20's generation looked upon the Nintendo as their all-time favorite system. Clearly a huge chunk of my age group felt that way about the Atari 2600.
I know I'm dating myself here, but as far as consoles go, I grew up on the Atari 2600, the Intellivision, the Vectrex, and (remember this?) the Microvision (the first portable cartridge based-system that at least I can remember). And man, do I have some great memories of playing Adventure and Slot Racers with my friends. Man! This stuff has come far!
I'll definitely say one thing: I honestly believe that my burning interest in games helped in no small way to foster my interest in computers and led to my current career as a Senior Network Geek. I can tell that my 8 year old son is having the same new experiences that I had all over again with different game systems - only his fondest memories will be of playing games with his friends on the Playstation 2 and Xbox. I'm okay with that as long as it doesn't get in the way of his homework. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get my rear kicked in UT2003 by some 15 year old that has waaaay more time to play than I'll ever have!