If there is a distance which we cannot cross, then asking what lies beyond it is as silly as asking if there are invisible faries in the room. If we can get an instrument across the boundary to measure it, then it isn't really a boundary.
.. and William James smiles at me from beyond the grave...
Sadly I only heard of them in 1999, so I never got to see them live (and I live in Athens! Graaa!) though I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Jeff once or twice. He's an interesting fellow.
Fortunately last year I saw the Circulatory System, and Mr. Mangum sang on 4 of the songs. His voice is so... bizarrely amazing.
No, that's not what I'm saying. And it's not what I think.
The point of my post was to reccomend a bunch of bands that don't get airplay. Because I've also been listening to the white stripes so much lately, I went a bit off topic and reccomended them.
Popular bands I have known and loved:
Pearl Jam Nirvana Beck Bjork The Strokes REM The Butthole Surfers The Eels The Chemical Brothers Radiohead etc. etc. etc.
The White Stripes but me in a bit of a conundrum though. Hey're a ripoff. But they ripoff things that people haven't ripped off in quite a while. If the radio were filled with Stripes clones, it would be irritating. But by themselves, they're refreshingly different.
Oh I know the Pistols, don't get me wrong. But the Pistols weren't that innovative really. Listen to early Stooges and Ramones and other New York 70s punk scenemakers, the sex pistols are really just a strange imitation of it. The Clash and Wire are my fave British 1st and 2nd wave punks.
The White Stripes are pretty derivative, but they draw from a lot of sources. There's definitely a punk sound, but if you listen to their albums (especially their first album) you *have* to hear Zepplin I & II in there. But there's also a good amount of Stones, Big Star, and general blues-rock in there as well. I'm impressed by their ability to keep so much of rock intact even when stripping it down to the barest essentials (just a drum and guitar, occasional keyboard)
See 'em live, they're fun.
Audiogalaxy for yourself
on
Homogenized Music
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· Score: 4, Insightful
OK Tired of radio and MTV? Me too! Who the heck decided that bad Eddie Vedder impressions would be popular this year?
Here's some bands worth checking out: (reply and post your own)
Neutral Milk Hotel The Microphones The Shins The Dismemberment Plan Need New Body The Mountain Goats Boards of Canada ... and You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead Sparklehorse Belle & Sebastian Brighteyes Matmos The Hot Snakes The White Stripes (yeah, they've got a video, but they rock harder than anything since Zepplin)
music has always been comercial and pandering to trends, but in the past five years or so it has gotten *much* worse. There has not been a single innovative band to make it to the popular stage, music hasn't seen anything like this since the dark ages of the late 50s/early 60s. Think about it, what was the last novelty hit? What was the last song that got popular just because some DJ thought it was amusing? It's been quite a while. The early 90s saw innovative acts like Nirvana, Beck, and Liz Phair getting tons of airplay, and now we just have 1001 Pearl Jam/Creed rip-off acts. I won't comment on the R&B teen pop, that's obviously commercial fluff, and it wouldn't bother me if there were good things elsewhere. When we had the New Kids on the Block, we also had U2 and REM. Rap is, thankfully, still going strong, it probably has a good 10 or 15 years of life left in it.
Rock and Roll is approaching death. It will soon be as dead as Jazz. It will still be made. There will still be people doing amazing and creative things with it. But it's period of cultural relevancy is nearing the end.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the Strokes/White Stripes garage/blues punk thing will take off. That would be cool.
The precedent is not "One ISP gets sued for one particular type of offensive content" the precedent is that ISPs can be sued for the actions of their customers. This is *bad* because the only way they can protect themselves is to examine and censor *everything* that people publish through their service online.
If I say something bad about the chinese government, and my ISP is an international company, will I be censored because my ISP wants to be in good relations with Beijing?
To normal, thinking adults, there is a pretty obvious divide between juvinile and offensive libel and the free speech worth protecting. But remember, we're not dealing with normal, thinking adults, we're dealing with lawyers, zealots, politicians, and corporations. If you don't think there's a possibility that this case will translate into real-world free speach violations, then you fail to grasp the way legal precedent works in practice.
Oh well... just my $.02, until Slashdot gets sued into removing them, that is.
A T-Rex would look for something bigger and slower than you, raptors probably ate mostly carrion. Researchers go and live among wolves and lions all the time, and rarely are harmed. You have more to fear from the truck carrying dinosaur embryos than from cloned dinosaurs.
I'm sure that in every single one of those contracts there is a clause that states they are allowed to revise pricing and other policies without consulting the customer.
Boy, this sure wouldn't be a problem if there were competition, would it? Silly government-allowed telco monopolies.
Your barriers to Lego nirvana are purely mental. If you think having a wife and child will enable you to have *more* Legos, then you are not spending enough of your single income on legos right now. If you would just re-prioritize legos above things like food and rent, then your problems would all be solved.
There is a Bionic Commando sequel for GBC, which plays just fine on GBA. It's cool and fun.
There's going to be a new Super Metroid style Metroid for GBA coming out in the next year.
A new 2D Castlevanaia was one of the better release titles for GBA, I highly reccomend it.
They're coming out with a port of Yoshi's Island.
I agree about Kid Icarus and Life Force, though. Also it would be mad rad if Capcom would release Megaman 2, 3, X, and X2 for GBA.
And Super Streetfighter, my god, that game Ruled. but I guess there wouldn't be enough buttons.
The real question is if Square could release FFIV, FFVI, Secret of Mana, and Chrono Trigger for the GBA. I would be *first* in line for any of those titles, especially CT.
Saying that Super Metroid was exactly the same as Metroid is like saying Half Lifew was exactly the same as Doom. Sure they're the same genre, and being from the same franchise they have some of the same characters and items, but it's a significantly different experience.
The GameCube Metroid is going to be first person, so it will actually be a completely different game. can Nintendo make a console first person shooter that is heavily exploration and power-up based work? We'll see. But it won't be "the same" as the earlier games.
The Gameboy advance seems to be all about 8 and 16-bit nostalgia. The new games play remarkably like old ones, and there are many re-issues. The fact that it is so widely successful (the fastest selling video game system of all time,) I think is testament to the fact that, despite the technology, 2D sidescrollers are not dead. People still want them, and only Nintendo is providing.
Re:OFMG I thought it could never happen...
on
Google Experiments
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· Score: 2
Seriously though, I'd like to thank Google for running a web service the way I would, were I given the chance. They don't half-ass the thing.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that this is going to be the end of increased CPU speed, just the end of the usefulness of a certain technology.
I think perhaps the best thing that could happen would be about a five year freeze on increasing CPU power, so that the burden would again fall on the programmers to write good fast code.
In the past five years, CPUs have increased in speed tenfold, but computers have gained little apparent speed (applications don't load any quicker, OSes don't boot any faster) and certainly haven't gotten *ten times* more useful.
We have all these extra cycles, and all we can think to do with them is write slow, clunky but pretty window managers. (A criticism I lay against, MS, Apple, and OS) A pause in the mad rush for speed might give some time to think of what to *do* with all that power. DivX is a pretty specific use for so much general purpose hardware.
Hitler's police actions killed 12 Million civilians. The 6 Million figure is the number of Jews, he also executed gypsies, homosexuals, dissidents, and other innocents.
While Mao was a monster, a lot of that 50 million is from starvation which was caused by poor agricultural policy. Horrible, yes, but not exactly a mechanized deathcamp in its intent.
You know what I just watched?....Return of the Jedi....There was something else going on in Jedi. I never noticed it until today....All right, Vader's boss....the Emperor. Now the Emperor is kind of a spiritual figure, yes?....He's like the Pope for the dark side of the Force. He's a holy man; a shaman, kind of, albeit an evil one....Now he's in charge of the Empire. The Imperial government is under his control. And the entire galaxy is under Imperial rule....Then wouldn't it logically mean that it's a theocracy? If the head of the Empire is a priest of some sort, then it stands to reason that the government is therefore one based on religion....Hence, the Empire was a fascist theocracy, and the Rebel forces were therefore battling religious persecution....The only problem is that at no point in the series did I ever hear Leia or any of the Rebels declare a particular religious belief....You know what else I noticed in Jedi?....They build another Death Star, right?....Now the first one they built was completed and fully operational before the Rebels destroyed it....And the second one was still being built when they blew it up. Compliments of Lando Calrissian. Something just never sat right with me the second time they destroyed it. I could never put my finger on it--something just wasn't right....the thing is, the first Death Star was manned by the Imperial army--stormtroopers, dignitaries--the only people on board were Imperials....So when they blew it up, no prob. Evil is punished....The second time around, it wasn't even finished yet. They were still under construction. A construction job of that magnitude would require a helluva lot more manpower than the Imperial army had to offer. I'll bet there were independent contractors working on that thing: plumbers, aluminum siders, roofers. Not just Imperials....In order to get it built quickly and quietly they'd hire anybody who could do the job. Do you think the average stormtrooper knows how to install a toilet main? All they know is killing and white uniforms....All those innocent contractors hired to do a job were killed--casualties of a war they had nothing to do with. All right, look--you're a roofer, and some juicy government contract comes your way; you got the wife and kids and the two-story in suburbia--this is a government contract, which means all sorts of benefits. All of a sudden these left-wing militants blast you with lasers and wipe out everything within a three-mile radius. You didn't ask for that. You have no personal politics. You're just trying to scrape out a living. That never sat right with me.
So I'm guessing it will be big, slow, and poorly designed. It will contain few notable features, and will be generally unaesthetic. While the device will be able to withstand blistering heat, the moment the tempeture gets a degree below freezing, the whole thing will shut down until help can arrive from a more northern device. While it will be connected to the information superhighway, it will be unable to handle traffic of any volume, and will utterly lack alternative methods of connectivity. While it will claim to have a better display, most users will still find that it choses to view things in black and white.
Slashdot Mirror
The only question is: are there boundaries?
...
If there is a distance which we cannot cross, then asking what lies beyond it is as silly as asking if there are invisible faries in the room. If we can get an instrument across the boundary to measure it, then it isn't really a boundary.
.. and William James smiles at me from beyond the grave
Sadly I only heard of them in 1999, so I never got to see them live (and I live in Athens! Graaa!) though I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Jeff once or twice. He's an interesting fellow.
Fortunately last year I saw the Circulatory System, and Mr. Mangum sang on 4 of the songs. His voice is so... bizarrely amazing.
I (heart) Godspeed you Black Emperor. Disk 1 of Raise Your Skinny Fists... is in my CD player right now.
No, that's not what I'm saying. And it's not what I think.
The point of my post was to reccomend a bunch of bands that don't get airplay. Because I've also been listening to the white stripes so much lately, I went a bit off topic and reccomended them.
Popular bands I have known and loved:
Pearl Jam
Nirvana
Beck
Bjork
The Strokes
REM
The Butthole Surfers
The Eels
The Chemical Brothers
Radiohead
etc. etc. etc.
The White Stripes but me in a bit of a conundrum though. Hey're a ripoff. But they ripoff things that people haven't ripped off in quite a while. If the radio were filled with Stripes clones, it would be irritating. But by themselves, they're refreshingly different.
Oh I know the Pistols, don't get me wrong. But the Pistols weren't that innovative really. Listen to early Stooges and Ramones and other New York 70s punk scenemakers, the sex pistols are really just a strange imitation of it. The Clash and Wire are my fave British 1st and 2nd wave punks.
The White Stripes are pretty derivative, but they draw from a lot of sources. There's definitely a punk sound, but if you listen to their albums (especially their first album) you *have* to hear Zepplin I & II in there. But there's also a good amount of Stones, Big Star, and general blues-rock in there as well. I'm impressed by their ability to keep so much of rock intact even when stripping it down to the barest essentials (just a drum and guitar, occasional keyboard)
See 'em live, they're fun.
OK Tired of radio and MTV? Me too! Who the heck decided that bad Eddie Vedder impressions would be popular this year?
Here's some bands worth checking out: (reply and post your own)
Neutral Milk Hotel
The Microphones
The Shins
The Dismemberment Plan
Need New Body
The Mountain Goats
Boards of Canada
... and You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
Sparklehorse
Belle & Sebastian
Brighteyes
Matmos
The Hot Snakes
The White Stripes (yeah, they've got a video, but they rock harder than anything since Zepplin)
music has always been comercial and pandering to trends, but in the past five years or so it has gotten *much* worse. There has not been a single innovative band to make it to the popular stage, music hasn't seen anything like this since the dark ages of the late 50s/early 60s. Think about it, what was the last novelty hit? What was the last song that got popular just because some DJ thought it was amusing? It's been quite a while. The early 90s saw innovative acts like Nirvana, Beck, and Liz Phair getting tons of airplay, and now we just have 1001 Pearl Jam/Creed rip-off acts. I won't comment on the R&B teen pop, that's obviously commercial fluff, and it wouldn't bother me if there were good things elsewhere. When we had the New Kids on the Block, we also had U2 and REM. Rap is, thankfully, still going strong, it probably has a good 10 or 15 years of life left in it.
Rock and Roll is approaching death. It will soon be as dead as Jazz. It will still be made. There will still be people doing amazing and creative things with it. But it's period of cultural relevancy is nearing the end.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the Strokes/White Stripes garage/blues punk thing will take off. That would be cool.
Oh, I think they're plenty backhanded.
Ask any Sysadmin: the real problem in Microsoft's game is that they're really crappy servers.
Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people.
The precedent is not "One ISP gets sued for one particular type of offensive content" the precedent is that ISPs can be sued for the actions of their customers. This is *bad* because the only way they can protect themselves is to examine and censor *everything* that people publish through their service online.
If I say something bad about the chinese government, and my ISP is an international company, will I be censored because my ISP wants to be in good relations with Beijing?
To normal, thinking adults, there is a pretty obvious divide between juvinile and offensive libel and the free speech worth protecting. But remember, we're not dealing with normal, thinking adults, we're dealing with lawyers, zealots, politicians, and corporations. If you don't think there's a possibility that this case will translate into real-world free speach violations, then you fail to grasp the way legal precedent works in practice.
Oh well... just my $.02, until Slashdot gets sued into removing them, that is.
Dangerous animals are rarely that dangerous.
A T-Rex would look for something bigger and slower than you, raptors probably ate mostly carrion. Researchers go and live among wolves and lions all the time, and rarely are harmed. You have more to fear from the truck carrying dinosaur embryos than from cloned dinosaurs.
and have about 8% of the wealth.
while the top 1% pays a larger percentage of taxes, they have a *FAR* larger share of the wealth.
the americans getting screwed the worst are middle class single workers, as far as money held / taxes paid.
No restricted use?
I'm sure that in every single one of those contracts there is a clause that states they are allowed to revise pricing and other policies without consulting the customer.
Boy, this sure wouldn't be a problem if there were competition, would it? Silly government-allowed telco monopolies.
News for Nerds: Stuff that Matters
/. is rapidly loosing whatever standards it once had.
or
We'll publish anything!
This review reads like a 6th grade book report. I'm sorry, but it seems like
Your barriers to Lego nirvana are purely mental. If you think having a wife and child will enable you to have *more* Legos, then you are not spending enough of your single income on legos right now. If you would just re-prioritize legos above things like food and rent, then your problems would all be solved.
I'm sick of this joke© It's based on a quote taken wildly out of context©
IIRC, the quote actually is *about* Internet2, and Al Gore was one of the key figures in passing the bill that sponsored the Internet2 program©
Gore was one of our more tech-savvy politicians, and we may have killed his presidency run with a dumb joke© ¥In a race that close, you can blame anything
There is a Bionic Commando sequel for GBC, which plays just fine on GBA. It's cool and fun.
There's going to be a new Super Metroid style Metroid for GBA coming out in the next year.
A new 2D Castlevanaia was one of the better release titles for GBA, I highly reccomend it.
They're coming out with a port of Yoshi's Island.
I agree about Kid Icarus and Life Force, though. Also it would be mad rad if Capcom would release Megaman 2, 3, X, and X2 for GBA.
And Super Streetfighter, my god, that game Ruled. but I guess there wouldn't be enough buttons.
The real question is if Square could release FFIV, FFVI, Secret of Mana, and Chrono Trigger for the GBA. I would be *first* in line for any of those titles, especially CT.
Saying that Super Metroid was exactly the same as Metroid is like saying Half Lifew was exactly the same as Doom. Sure they're the same genre, and being from the same franchise they have some of the same characters and items, but it's a significantly different experience.
The GameCube Metroid is going to be first person, so it will actually be a completely different game. can Nintendo make a console first person shooter that is heavily exploration and power-up based work? We'll see. But it won't be "the same" as the earlier games.
The Gameboy advance seems to be all about 8 and 16-bit nostalgia. The new games play remarkably like old ones, and there are many re-issues. The fact that it is so widely successful (the fastest selling video game system of all time,) I think is testament to the fact that, despite the technology, 2D sidescrollers are not dead. People still want them, and only Nintendo is providing.
Seriously though, I'd like to thank Google for running a web service the way I would, were I given the chance. They don't half-ass the thing.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that this is going to be the end of increased CPU speed, just the end of the usefulness of a certain technology.
I think perhaps the best thing that could happen would be about a five year freeze on increasing CPU power, so that the burden would again fall on the programmers to write good fast code.
In the past five years, CPUs have increased in speed tenfold, but computers have gained little apparent speed (applications don't load any quicker, OSes don't boot any faster) and certainly haven't gotten *ten times* more useful.
We have all these extra cycles, and all we can think to do with them is write slow, clunky but pretty window managers. (A criticism I lay against, MS, Apple, and OS) A pause in the mad rush for speed might give some time to think of what to *do* with all that power. DivX is a pretty specific use for so much general purpose hardware.
Well I could certainly take the karma hit. I wasn't trying to pass it off as my own, i doubt I'd start a post with "you know what I just watched"
ah well, whatever.
"As good a metaphysics as anything else I've read"
Read some Carnap or Ayer.
Hitler's police actions killed 12 Million civilians. The 6 Million figure is the number of Jews, he also executed gypsies, homosexuals, dissidents, and other innocents.
While Mao was a monster, a lot of that 50 million is from starvation which was caused by poor agricultural policy. Horrible, yes, but not exactly a mechanized deathcamp in its intent.
You know what I just watched?....Return of the Jedi....There was something else going on in Jedi. I never noticed it until today....All right, Vader's boss....the Emperor. Now the Emperor is kind of a spiritual figure, yes?....He's like the Pope for the dark side of the Force. He's a holy man; a shaman, kind of, albeit an evil one....Now he's in charge of the Empire. The Imperial government is under his control. And the entire galaxy is under Imperial rule....Then wouldn't it logically mean that it's a theocracy? If the head of the Empire is a priest of some sort, then it stands to reason that the government is therefore one based on religion....Hence, the Empire was a fascist theocracy, and the Rebel forces were therefore battling religious persecution....The only problem is that at no point in the series did I ever hear Leia or any of the Rebels declare a particular religious belief....You know what else I noticed in Jedi?....They build another Death Star, right?....Now the first one they built was completed and fully operational before the Rebels destroyed it....And the second one was still being built when they blew it up. Compliments of Lando Calrissian. Something just never sat right with me the second time they destroyed it. I could never put my finger on it--something just wasn't right....the thing is, the first Death Star was manned by the Imperial army--stormtroopers, dignitaries--the only people on board were Imperials....So when they blew it up, no prob. Evil is punished....The second time around, it wasn't even finished yet. They were still under construction. A construction job of that magnitude would require a helluva lot more manpower than the Imperial army had to offer. I'll bet there were independent contractors working on that thing: plumbers, aluminum siders, roofers. Not just Imperials....In order to get it built quickly and quietly they'd hire anybody who could do the job. Do you think the average stormtrooper knows how to install a toilet main? All they know is killing and white uniforms....All those innocent contractors hired to do a job were killed--casualties of a war they had nothing to do with. All right, look--you're a roofer, and some juicy government contract comes your way; you got the wife and kids and the two-story in suburbia--this is a government contract, which means all sorts of benefits. All of a sudden these left-wing militants blast you with lasers and wipe out everything within a three-mile radius. You didn't ask for that. You have no personal politics. You're just trying to scrape out a living. That never sat right with me.
Rosebud is a sled!
They're calling it Atlanta.
So I'm guessing it will be big, slow, and poorly designed. It will contain few notable features, and will be generally unaesthetic. While the device will be able to withstand blistering heat, the moment the tempeture gets a degree below freezing, the whole thing will shut down until help can arrive from a more northern device. While it will be connected to the information superhighway, it will be unable to handle traffic of any volume, and will utterly lack alternative methods of connectivity. While it will claim to have a better display, most users will still find that it choses to view things in black and white.