Circuit City screwed me on my IBM laptop. The latch on DVD player stopped working causing the tray to pop out. This happened one time when I was pulling it out of my bag and the whole cd tray snapped off. They gave me the physical damage, misuse yadayada and screwed me out of my $480 3 Year Covers Everything Under the Sun fancy schmancy warranty I paid for.
IBM wanted $450 for the DVD. I bought a wrong model on Ebay(my bad, but IBM's whole FRU thing will drive you crazy until you figure it out). Then I bought another that's showing a corrupt firmware(AS-IS, damnit).
I've wasted hundreds of $ and time and I still have a otherwise nice Laptop with no DVD/CD player. I finally gave up and went out and bought a new one 2 months ago.
While i do think the term 'vaporware' is being tossed about a bit too freely in this case, this has definatally been id's longest development cycle. The game was announced June 1, 2000 and the famed E3 demo was over 1 1/2 years ago. If they make Fool's day release they will come in just under 4 years.
There will probably be many derivitives and mission packs to follow over the next couple of years. At this pace, however, we can expect to see Carmack's next graphics engine in 2010.
I was feeling jipped at the end of the article too.
In the near future, Bocquet said he and his colleagues hope to attempt the world record with their machine, testing the equations and theory of what's required to achieve the maximum number of bounces.
Come on! In the near future?!? How many damn skips did the freakin' robot get? They mention the record twice in the article. The least they coudl have done is said 'the robot is getting 18-20 Skips right now, but once we tune it up we hope to have s shot at the record'
A few years back a few friends and I were cruising around Lake Powell in Utah. For those not familiar with Lake Powell, most of the lake is sheer canyon walls with little vegitation and few places to exit the lake.
We are cruising up one of the side canyons and the only place to exit is surrounded by boats and has no trees. My friend has to take a dump. So he jumps into the lake and drops his bathing suit. As soon as it hits the water, he is immediately attacked by 20-30 Huge carp in a big feeding frenzy. The water was boiling, my friend was screaming and we were crying from laughter.
I worked on a project in Phoenix, AZ a couple of years ago. Fry's is a geek's dream store. Think BestBuy/CircuitCity + CompUSA + RadioShack all in a store the size of a Sam's Club/Costco. I've heard rumors they are going to be opening a store in Atlanta, GA, but nothing yet:(
Speaking of Wormtongue, I was just clicking around and found this neat info.
Brad Dourif has one of the best villian resumes that I have ever seen.
Amoung them:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).... Billy Bibbit
Child's Play (1988).... Charles Lee Ray/Chucky's Voice
Dune (1984).... Piter De Vries
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002).... Grima Wormtongue
I've been following the Moller skycar for over 20 years.(I'm not kidding, he gets an articale in Popular Science every couple of years). We should have been expecting a flying prototype each year in the past 20 years, still nothing more than short hops and tethered jumps.
So these people are going to build a prototype next year sometime when they find facilties and have this thing working in a year or two? yea right, next...
I use RFID's in my video rental business for tracking DVD's. The Tagsys tags are 1.5" circle labels that go around DVD center hub. They have 128bit 13.56Mhz chip that is about 1mm long surounded by a long antenae that wrap around in 4 circles making it about 7 inches long. The tags cost me ~.80 each. Not sure about the Gemini HF210 reader, I guess it's slightly more than standard laser barcode reader.
The problem with these tags are that they are very fragile. They are fine when properly placed on a DVD, but if they are removed and replaced ro probably if the were wrapped around something other than flat, they stop working. The reader will only read them from a few inches away.
Years ago in college we had a fun game we played at the library. Our library had a scanner on the exit much like ones in most electronics stores today(They probably still have something similar, just haven't been in it in 10 years).
The little tags were very easy to pull out of the magazines. We would then put them in someones backpack or in their notebook or try to get them to step on it.
it was lots of fun to watch them leave and set off the alarm and confuse everyone as they tried to figure out what was setting off the alarm.
Has anyone on Slashdot ever participated in a survey that asked if you had deleted mp3's?
I took a couple of marketing classes and I understand the principals involed in calculating marketing data, but where are they getting their data?
In May, 606,000 households deleted ALL mp3's. 1,400,000 in August. Let's just say that 1mil/month for 4 months. 4,000,000 HOUSEHOLDS(not people) in 4 months. At that rate mp3's will be wiped from existence sometime next year. It just doesn't add up.
The Tomatometer is currently at 38/100. In contrast, Matrix I was 86% and Reloaded was 73%.
I though Reloaded was a huge drop off from the orignal and this one may be a huge disappointment. Too bad, because the orignal was one of the best SciFi movies in Years.
The machines are attacking tomorrow, lets have a Rave.
I remember this one well, even though it's been 30 years. I actually finished it. It took me a couple of weeks.
We brought it down to the field at the end of the street. When it launched, it quickly shot up to about twelve(yes 12) feet and begun spinning in circles wildly in place at first then right towards us. Just missed my brother as he dove behind the dirt mound that it slammed into and shattered all my hard work.
Probably my poor construction that caused the misfire. And what a range of emotions in those few quick moments:
Surprise -> Scared Shitless -> Elation -> Sadness
Speaking of the Sadness after the crash, I just thought I'd mention this as I just remembered and it made me laugh again. A few years later my brother got into model airplane building. These things were a Ton of work. He brought his plane down to the elementary school as they had a nice wide open space. About 15 seconds into flight it banks left and smashes into a tree completely wasting it. He builds a second plane, back to school, 15 seconds, smashes into side of school.
take an existing open source project, change a few graphics, and call it a revolutionary new product which will change the world.
Isn't this one of the main things we see in the Linux/Open Source arena? What is Mandrake? All of the Distros and other projects? The changes may have been minor to begin with, but eventually they grow into very different products. If he's putting resources and keeping it open source behind it might just turn into a nice editor.
What version and exactly when does Windows phone home? I have several versions installed and it seems like I would be getting ZoneAlarm alerts if Windows was trying to phone home.
Slashdot Mirror
General manager ... Uncle Fester has suggested that Windows emerging dominance would be bad for consumers, because it would limit them to the Windows.
Thanks for the great link. I'll definately give that a try.
IBM wanted $450 for the DVD. I bought a wrong model on Ebay(my bad, but IBM's whole FRU thing will drive you crazy until you figure it out). Then I bought another that's showing a corrupt firmware(AS-IS, damnit).
I've wasted hundreds of $ and time and I still have a otherwise nice Laptop with no DVD/CD player. I finally gave up and went out and bought a new one 2 months ago.
I swear I've seen a porno shot in that apartment.
There will probably be many derivitives and mission packs to follow over the next couple of years. At this pace, however, we can expect to see Carmack's next graphics engine in 2010.
Sell em on Ebay
In the near future, Bocquet said he and his colleagues hope to attempt the world record with their machine, testing the equations and theory of what's required to achieve the maximum number of bounces.
Come on! In the near future?!? How many damn skips did the freakin' robot get? They mention the record twice in the article. The least they coudl have done is said 'the robot is getting 18-20 Skips right now, but once we tune it up we hope to have s shot at the record'
It grossed me out then and 20+ years later it still grosses me out. Just thought I'd share :)
'This application does not allow the unauthorized viewing of pornographic images...'
We are cruising up one of the side canyons and the only place to exit is surrounded by boats and has no trees. My friend has to take a dump. So he jumps into the lake and drops his bathing suit. As soon as it hits the water, he is immediately attacked by 20-30 Huge carp in a big feeding frenzy. The water was boiling, my friend was screaming and we were crying from laughter.
I worked on a project in Phoenix, AZ a couple of years ago. Fry's is a geek's dream store. Think BestBuy/CircuitCity + CompUSA + RadioShack all in a store the size of a Sam's Club/Costco. I've heard rumors they are going to be opening a store in Atlanta, GA, but nothing yet :(
Brad Dourif has one of the best villian resumes that I have ever seen.
Amoung them: .... Billy Bibbit .... Charles Lee Ray/Chucky's Voice .... Piter De Vries .... Grima Wormtongue
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Child's Play (1988)
Dune (1984)
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002)
Also, the thought of a liquid methanol next to all those hot electronics make me wince.
Akmed to airport security: "I told you, I'm a laptop battery salesman..."
I've been following the Moller skycar for over 20 years.(I'm not kidding, he gets an articale in Popular Science every couple of years). We should have been expecting a flying prototype each year in the past 20 years, still nothing more than short hops and tethered jumps.
So these people are going to build a prototype next year sometime when they find facilties and have this thing working in a year or two? yea right, next...
Well, at least it's a start to head off MS dominance. If SVG does become popular, I'm sure more resources will be devoted to this project.
They should make it sound more 'Chinesey' like their Fireworks and Food:
'Eternal Visual Delight'
The problem with these tags are that they are very fragile. They are fine when properly placed on a DVD, but if they are removed and replaced ro probably if the were wrapped around something other than flat, they stop working. The reader will only read them from a few inches away.
The little tags were very easy to pull out of the magazines. We would then put them in someones backpack or in their notebook or try to get them to step on it. it was lots of fun to watch them leave and set off the alarm and confuse everyone as they tried to figure out what was setting off the alarm.
I took a couple of marketing classes and I understand the principals involed in calculating marketing data, but where are they getting their data?
In May, 606,000 households deleted ALL mp3's. 1,400,000 in August. Let's just say that 1mil/month for 4 months. 4,000,000 HOUSEHOLDS(not people) in 4 months. At that rate mp3's will be wiped from existence sometime next year. It just doesn't add up.
I though Reloaded was a huge drop off from the orignal and this one may be a huge disappointment. Too bad, because the orignal was one of the best SciFi movies in Years.
The machines are attacking tomorrow, lets have a Rave.
We brought it down to the field at the end of the street. When it launched, it quickly shot up to about twelve(yes 12) feet and begun spinning in circles wildly in place at first then right towards us. Just missed my brother as he dove behind the dirt mound that it slammed into and shattered all my hard work.
Probably my poor construction that caused the misfire. And what a range of emotions in those few quick moments:
Surprise -> Scared Shitless -> Elation -> Sadness
Speaking of the Sadness after the crash, I just thought I'd mention this as I just remembered and it made me laugh again. A few years later my brother got into model airplane building. These things were a Ton of work. He brought his plane down to the elementary school as they had a nice wide open space. About 15 seconds into flight it banks left and smashes into a tree completely wasting it. He builds a second plane, back to school, 15 seconds, smashes into side of school.
'Better go to aisle 9 to pick up some soap and deoderant if you want in chance in hell of using your condoms.'
Isn't this one of the main things we see in the Linux/Open Source arena? What is Mandrake? All of the Distros and other projects? The changes may have been minor to begin with, but eventually they grow into very different products. If he's putting resources and keeping it open source behind it might just turn into a nice editor.
What version and exactly when does Windows phone home? I have several versions installed and it seems like I would be getting ZoneAlarm alerts if Windows was trying to phone home.
Ummm, nevermind...