My kids are 16, 14 & 4. within a week of a new console game coming in the house, it starts to get scratched. Mod chips and backups have been standard house policy since the playstation 1 came out; I've had to make new backups of Final Fantasy VII at least 8 times. I think what I'm saying here is that they can have my fair use enabling devices when they pry them from my cold dead fingers. Unless, of course, they institute a TOTALLY FREE media replacement program.
Actually I was thinking cary elwes, but he's too old. moved over to Tim Allen, but they already made a Star Trek parody with him. and he's WAY too old. After that, I give up. If there is a actor that could do a decent Kirk parody of the right age, I don't know who it would be. As to playing a straight Kirk...Impossible. Kirk was a happy accident that could not be repeated.
That sounds like a movie I would pay good money to see. I'm a old school trekkie (I watched TOS when it came out, sure I was 7, but still), but if they are going to even ATTEMPT to find someone to play Kirk, it had better be as a farce or parody.
I have running: a SLOT A thunderbird board with PS/2 type M keyboard and basic 2-button ibm mouse, ISA slots (for my Sound Blaster AWE64 board, my daughter plays with Midi), who's primary job is to act as a network interface for my Lexmark Optra laser printer and my old parallel scanner. it also has a Matrox Marvel 2 video capture card in it and a VCR sitting nearbye, for when I feel like copying my old VHS collection to DVD. A IBM Server 320, which I use as secondary domain controller, which I hook up all my SCSI stuff to, I only power this up to make backups to it. once again, Type M and 2-button IBM mouse. My sons computer is a tbird 1100, with type M and a logitech PS/2 mouse. his only complaint with it is it won't play Oblivion. with a upgraded video card, it would. MY main computer is a AMD 3000XP, with a (wait for it) Type M keyboard and a USB Logitech mouse. the only reason i'm using a USB one is that my PS/2 mouse wore out, and I like thumb ball mice. I use the firewire more than I use the USB. In the basement, I've got a DX4-120, VLB, ISA system that I keep around for when I want to play Masters of Magic, Harpoon 2 or Wing Commander or any of the other fantastic games that it is a complete pain in the ass to run in emulation. it's also just a freakin' neat machine to keep alive to show off. The only system that we really use the USB on is my laptop, a 17" core duo HP. it gets all the cameras plugged in to it via USB, and I sometime use the USB to charge and/or backup our phones or my palm TX. I won't go into the Solaris & other weird stuff. So yeah, I use PS/2. it's easier. I'll keep using it in order to make use of the still valuable and perfectly usable hardware i purchased over the years, rather than blindly running out and buying stuff that in many cases JUST WOULDN'T WORK AS WELL, like the the Marvel 2, the AWE-64, and of course, the bulletproof, last forever, type M keyboard.
This sucks. I have mod points. ah, well. Microsoft is giving away tens of thousands of Vista licenses to universities and the government. they gave away thousands at 2007 CES; if you were a beta tester and sent in a bug report, you get a free copy. this really isn't anything new, I got a free copy of Win2k server (The Ultimate Windows, IMO), free copies of Office 2000, pretty much free copies of EVERYTHING due to my past jobs, but this is on a completely different scale. It is a dog. they know it's a dog. they know the only way it will be widely adopted is if it is free; I'm sort of surprised they haven't got rid of the validation feature completely in order to promote piracy.
you work at one of the fun places. The place I worked is with a similar group. I think I did meet him once at Atsugi. He is friends with some of my friends; are you at the San Diego branch? I know you are not at Guam, as you can still come across as borderline sane.
yup. first thing is coffee. after that, check the whiteboard on the door to my office to see where the problems are; when you have 6000+ systems and a cluster in each state and a few overseas, their is always a problem somewhere. If anything is on fire, head to level 2 and check with the nightshift to see what the heck is going on before they escape. If the fire is local, walk down to the NOC and see whats up, put out fire if appropriate. if it's in Dallas or Seattle or Guam, see the status of the local admin on the ticket queue, get on the phone if I see something they don't; start a team re-tasking operations at the site if it looks like it's going to take a while; downtime is not an option. if it is Biz as usual, walk in, fire up the computer, and check the infrastructure; check the queue on SMS to see if anything major is being pushed today, basically just look around to see if there is anything that is going to require me to earn my salary. if everything is smooth, or being handled, check e-mail; then, slashdot until the 10AM meeting.
sometimes I wonder why I retired. then, I remember. Paperwork sucks.
Sometimes, when I look around at the "Your papers, Citizen" culture we have become, I hope that this sort of thing actually becomes a law; that the legislature, or the Prez by Executive Decree, will try to push something that will trip every fundy christians "end times" buttons, and we get a new constitutional convention going. our government is corrupted, time to hit the reset switch and reinstall.
How many man-hours played criteria. hmm. lets see. Civilization I Railroad Tycoon Super Mario Brothers X-COM / UFO: Enemy Unknown
below this I don't think the order is completely accurate. By the way, if you've never played one of these games you might want to think about giving them a try, except for Civ I, Railroad Tycoon I & Masters of Magic; you really need to be able to ignore extremely outdated graphics for at least 30 minutes before the phenominal gameplay will have you not caring; that Especially applies to Masters of Magic; it's the only game on the list where they could just provide updated graphics, slightly better music & leave the underlying code ALONE and have something that would totally dominate the sales charts for the next year.
Sim City 2000 Masters of Magic Civilization II The Movies Transport Tycoon Deluxe Railroad Tycoon II Doom Civilization IV Tropico Sim City IV Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic GTAIII: Vice City Master of Orion II Europa Universalis II Morrowind Steel Panthers III Panzer General Dungeon Keeper II Steel Panthers: World at War Janes Fleet Command The Sims Harpoon Galactic Civilizations The Sims 2 Starcraft Star Control III
There is a Win2k patch for Halo 2 that has been on P2P since the first week in June. I have no idea if it works with WinXP, but I imagine it would; if it's anything like the AOEIII win2k fix, it'll also make the game a lot more playable. I might take a crack at making a win2k patch for shadowrun; I know a few people in my "Win2k infinite" group have been messing with fixing the version checking. I'm hoping someone will get it quick, I love Shadowrun, but don't like multiplayer online games very much. Having to buy a $60 Vista game just for the pleasure of making it work on Win2k doesn't sound like a good investment.
So, what do you think was the biggest problem? guy talking on phone, guy driving in rain with lights off, guy running a red light, or guy walking IN THE ROAD when it is raining and visibility is reduced? You are always multitasking a little when you drive; you have to watch your mirrors, you might listen to the radio, you might think about which route you are going to take, you might think about how things went for you the night before.
The whole cell phone things is just like "Homeland Security"; do we REALLY need a gestapo like unit to protect us from an old threat, do we need "the patriot act" to illegalize things that were already illegal? Reckless Driving is against the law. whether or not I had a beer with my Pizza for lunch, I'm smoking a cigarette, talking on my handsfree, talking to my passenger, thinking bad thoughts about the Nanny Stste, WHATEVER. The guy who tried to run you over was a reckless driver, it is already against the law.
Link, please? If you could link to the section that shows statistics for drivers in a non-urban environment, it would be greatly appreciated. A break down by age / experience would be cool, also; I would be very interested in seeing stats for over-under 23 years old (I've decided that people, on the average, are complete total idiots until age 23. I've seen variations, people who had a clue at age 14 that I would trust to drive, and people at 40 who shouldn't be allowed to make a decision that would effect the well being of others. but 23 on the average). But, aside from that... Yes, I am above average, now that you mention it. + insightful.
That is called "paying attention to road conditions"; it is something that everyone is supposed to do. I have to admit that most of the time when I'm on the phone, I pull off to a side street or someplace to park, since I have a jeep and it's too noisy otherwise. But even if this was not the case, i just don't see cell phone usage as being something dangerous in those conditions; if a person can't pay attention to the road, drive & talk on the phone in A uncluttered environment, they probably either already darwinated themselves or are not capable of passing a driving test.
Smoking? I quit smoking a while back, but I'm pretty sure that outside of the lighting process, absolutely no brain activity is required whatsover to smoke. Which might be why so many people do it, come to think of it.
Which is why you say either "hey, I'll call you back, I'm in traffic" or "hey, shut up for a minute, weirdness is afoot". If I'm in a Heavy traffic area, i don't talk on the phone, I need all my attention on the road. But if I'm driving back home 6 miles from getting groceries, where I will see maybe 4 cars, total, after i get out of the city limits? The problem is, like everything else, the State wants to be my Mommy. I have a mother, i don't need OR want another one. I'm a adult, I've been driving for almost 30 years in all sorts of environments, I haven't had a accident for over 20 years, and that one wasn't my fault. If you are going to let me vote & drive in the first place, don't you sort of kind of think I can be trusted to NOT do something suicidally stupid?
OK. Here is how my version of the conspiracy goes. Haliburton and friends nned something to assure profits and continued dominance; they contact their insiders at the various intelligence agencies, and see what sort of investigations are going on. after sorting through the various threats available, they come across a relatively promising one, some guys planning to hijack some planes & use them as weapons. They sign off on the op, and direct their intel agents to make sure that the people of this group are left alone; no support, just losing documentation on the group, making sure any agents working on them are reassigned elewhere, etc. they keep their controlled agents looking at things, so they know what is going down and when, in general. If anyone gets curious, they tell them that the group is low threat, or that they don't have enough evidence yet. when they find out that there is a date set for the terrorist, and what the target is, they go ahead and let only their most trustworthy friends know; some of them probably make use of the information to make a fortune on the stock market, others make sure they don't lose anything. Other, more high profile types, make sure they have optimum propaganda plans in effect. Maybe, someone goes in and plants thermite packets on the internal supports of the building. can't be proved or disproved, but it goes along with the theory well. Everyone makes out like a bandit. of the 10-70 people who are "in the know", they know better than to say anything, life will be destroyed for themselves and their loved ones if they talk.
I can't really think of when the last time I defended microsoft, but.. all you have to do is open the services CP and disable indexing. whats so hard about that? I am, of course, basing this post on non-vista operating systems; if you use vista, you deserve whatever happens to you. "it came with my computer" is no better an excuse than "I was just following orders".
I think I have that problem. I chose Micrografx Picture Publisher back when it was a contender for being "The" graphics app. I currently use v8.1 for most of my image editing, with some help from irfanview. When "to photoshop" became a common expression, I tried it. I got a copy of photoshop 6. The majority of the tools I used in PP8 I just can't find a analogue for in PS6, like the clone brushs. I do not doubt that photoshop does have something similar, but where it is....? So I'm stuck with a program that has a small footprint, is easy to use/intuitive, and supports photoshop plugins. sucks being me.
Slashdot Mirror
My kids are 16, 14 & 4. within a week of a new console game coming in the house, it starts to get scratched.
Mod chips and backups have been standard house policy since the playstation 1 came out; I've had to make new backups of Final Fantasy VII at least 8 times.
I think what I'm saying here is that they can have my fair use enabling devices when they pry them from my cold dead fingers.
Unless, of course, they institute a TOTALLY FREE media replacement program.
Your honesty is refreshing.
Still Evil, but refreshing.
Actually I was thinking cary elwes, but he's too old.
moved over to Tim Allen, but they already made a Star Trek parody with him. and he's WAY too old.
After that, I give up. If there is a actor that could do a decent Kirk parody of the right age, I don't know who it would be.
As to playing a straight Kirk...Impossible. Kirk was a happy accident that could not be repeated.
Surely you are not saying this is a good thing?
Firefly with Whedon is the closest thing to a spiritual heir to TOS that I've seen.
That sounds like a movie I would pay good money to see.
I'm a old school trekkie (I watched TOS when it came out, sure I was 7, but still), but if they are going to even ATTEMPT to find someone to play Kirk, it had better be as a farce or parody.
By the way, if anyone who has had a Matrox Marvel 2 has managed to find something better at doing what it does, I would appreciate a heads-up.
I have running:
a SLOT A thunderbird board with PS/2 type M keyboard and basic 2-button ibm mouse, ISA slots (for my Sound Blaster AWE64 board, my daughter plays with Midi), who's primary job is to act as a network interface for my Lexmark Optra laser printer and my old parallel scanner. it also has a Matrox Marvel 2 video capture card in it and a VCR sitting nearbye, for when I feel like copying my old VHS collection to DVD.
A IBM Server 320, which I use as secondary domain controller, which I hook up all my SCSI stuff to, I only power this up to make backups to it. once again, Type M and 2-button IBM mouse.
My sons computer is a tbird 1100, with type M and a logitech PS/2 mouse. his only complaint with it is it won't play Oblivion. with a upgraded video card, it would.
MY main computer is a AMD 3000XP, with a (wait for it) Type M keyboard and a USB Logitech mouse. the only reason i'm using a USB one is that my PS/2 mouse wore out, and I like thumb ball mice. I use the firewire more than I use the USB.
In the basement, I've got a DX4-120, VLB, ISA system that I keep around for when I want to play Masters of Magic, Harpoon 2 or Wing Commander or any of the other fantastic games that it is a complete pain in the ass to run in emulation. it's also just a freakin' neat machine to keep alive to show off.
The only system that we really use the USB on is my laptop, a 17" core duo HP. it gets all the cameras plugged in to it via USB, and I sometime use the USB to charge and/or backup our phones or my palm TX.
I won't go into the Solaris & other weird stuff.
So yeah, I use PS/2. it's easier. I'll keep using it in order to make use of the still valuable and perfectly usable hardware i purchased over the years, rather than blindly running out and buying stuff that in many cases JUST WOULDN'T WORK AS WELL, like the the Marvel 2, the AWE-64, and of course, the bulletproof, last forever, type M keyboard.
This sucks. I have mod points.
ah, well.
Microsoft is giving away tens of thousands of Vista licenses to universities and the government. they gave away thousands at 2007 CES; if you were a beta tester and sent in a bug report, you get a free copy.
this really isn't anything new, I got a free copy of Win2k server (The Ultimate Windows, IMO), free copies of Office 2000, pretty much free copies of EVERYTHING due to my past jobs, but this is on a completely different scale.
It is a dog. they know it's a dog. they know the only way it will be widely adopted is if it is free; I'm sort of surprised they haven't got rid of the validation feature completely in order to promote piracy.
you work at one of the fun places. The place I worked is with a similar group.
I think I did meet him once at Atsugi.
He is friends with some of my friends; are you at the San Diego branch? I know you are not at Guam, as you can still come across as borderline sane.
A unspecified branch of the United States Government.
I wouldn't be your boss anymore, anyway; I retired a few years back.
Got a old microwave oven your not using, a car, and a portable generator? zap, no more robot overlord. some minor waveguide work required.
yup. first thing is coffee.
after that, check the whiteboard on the door to my office to see where the problems are; when you have 6000+ systems and a cluster in each state and a few overseas, their is always a problem somewhere.
If anything is on fire, head to level 2 and check with the nightshift to see what the heck is going on before they escape.
If the fire is local, walk down to the NOC and see whats up, put out fire if appropriate. if it's in Dallas or Seattle or Guam, see the status of the local admin on the ticket queue, get on the phone if I see something they don't; start a team re-tasking operations at the site if it looks like it's going to take a while; downtime is not an option.
if it is Biz as usual, walk in, fire up the computer, and check the infrastructure; check the queue on SMS to see if anything major is being pushed today, basically just look around to see if there is anything that is going to require me to earn my salary.
if everything is smooth, or being handled, check e-mail; then, slashdot until the 10AM meeting.
sometimes I wonder why I retired. then, I remember. Paperwork sucks.
Sometimes, when I look around at the "Your papers, Citizen" culture we have become, I hope that this sort of thing actually becomes a law; that the legislature, or the Prez by Executive Decree, will try to push something that will trip every fundy christians "end times" buttons, and we get a new constitutional convention going. our government is corrupted, time to hit the reset switch and reinstall.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
I meant II not III. didn't proofread.
How many man-hours played criteria. hmm. lets see.
Civilization I
Railroad Tycoon
Super Mario Brothers
X-COM / UFO: Enemy Unknown
below this I don't think the order is completely accurate. By the way, if you've never played one of these games you might want to think about giving them a try, except for Civ I, Railroad Tycoon I & Masters of Magic; you really need to be able to ignore extremely outdated graphics for at least 30 minutes before the phenominal gameplay will have you not caring; that Especially applies to Masters of Magic; it's the only game on the list where they could just provide updated graphics, slightly better music & leave the underlying code ALONE and have something that would totally dominate the sales charts for the next year.
Sim City 2000
Masters of Magic
Civilization II
The Movies
Transport Tycoon Deluxe
Railroad Tycoon II
Doom
Civilization IV
Tropico
Sim City IV
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic
GTAIII: Vice City
Master of Orion II
Europa Universalis II
Morrowind
Steel Panthers III
Panzer General
Dungeon Keeper II
Steel Panthers: World at War
Janes Fleet Command
The Sims
Harpoon
Galactic Civilizations
The Sims 2
Starcraft
Star Control III
There is a Win2k patch for Halo 2 that has been on P2P since the first week in June. I have no idea if it works with WinXP, but I imagine it would; if it's anything like the AOEIII win2k fix, it'll also make the game a lot more playable.
I might take a crack at making a win2k patch for shadowrun; I know a few people in my "Win2k infinite" group have been messing with fixing the version checking.
I'm hoping someone will get it quick, I love Shadowrun, but don't like multiplayer online games very much. Having to buy a $60 Vista game just for the pleasure of making it work on Win2k doesn't sound like a good investment.
So, what do you think was the biggest problem?
guy talking on phone, guy driving in rain with lights off, guy running a red light, or guy walking IN THE ROAD when it is raining and visibility is reduced?
You are always multitasking a little when you drive; you have to watch your mirrors, you might listen to the radio, you might think about which route you are going to take, you might think about how things went for you the night before.
The whole cell phone things is just like "Homeland Security"; do we REALLY need a gestapo like unit to protect us from an old threat, do we need "the patriot act" to illegalize things that were already illegal?
Reckless Driving is against the law. whether or not I had a beer with my Pizza for lunch, I'm smoking a cigarette, talking on my handsfree, talking to my passenger, thinking bad thoughts about the Nanny Stste, WHATEVER. The guy who tried to run you over was a reckless driver, it is already against the law.
Link, please? If you could link to the section that shows statistics for drivers in a non-urban environment, it would be greatly appreciated.
A break down by age / experience would be cool, also; I would be very interested in seeing stats for over-under 23 years old (I've decided that people, on the average, are complete total idiots until age 23. I've seen variations, people who had a clue at age 14 that I would trust to drive, and people at 40 who shouldn't be allowed to make a decision that would effect the well being of others. but 23 on the average).
But, aside from that...
Yes, I am above average, now that you mention it. + insightful.
That is called "paying attention to road conditions"; it is something that everyone is supposed to do.
I have to admit that most of the time when I'm on the phone, I pull off to a side street or someplace to park, since I have a jeep and it's too noisy otherwise.
But even if this was not the case, i just don't see cell phone usage as being something dangerous in those conditions; if a person can't pay attention to the road, drive & talk on the phone in A uncluttered environment, they probably either already darwinated themselves or are not capable of passing a driving test.
Smoking?
I quit smoking a while back, but I'm pretty sure that outside of the lighting process, absolutely no brain activity is required whatsover to smoke.
Which might be why so many people do it, come to think of it.
Which is why you say either "hey, I'll call you back, I'm in traffic" or "hey, shut up for a minute, weirdness is afoot".
If I'm in a Heavy traffic area, i don't talk on the phone, I need all my attention on the road.
But if I'm driving back home 6 miles from getting groceries, where I will see maybe 4 cars, total, after i get out of the city limits?
The problem is, like everything else, the State wants to be my Mommy. I have a mother, i don't need OR want another one. I'm a adult, I've been driving for almost 30 years in all sorts of environments, I haven't had a accident for over 20 years, and that one wasn't my fault.
If you are going to let me vote & drive in the first place, don't you sort of kind of think I can be trusted to NOT do something suicidally stupid?
"Upgrading"? I think that word doesn't mean what you think it does.
OK. Here is how my version of the conspiracy goes.
Haliburton and friends nned something to assure profits and continued dominance; they contact their insiders at the various intelligence agencies, and see what sort of investigations are going on.
after sorting through the various threats available, they come across a relatively promising one, some guys planning to hijack some planes & use them as weapons.
They sign off on the op, and direct their intel agents to make sure that the people of this group are left alone; no support, just losing documentation on the group, making sure any agents working on them are reassigned elewhere, etc.
they keep their controlled agents looking at things, so they know what is going down and when, in general. If anyone gets curious, they tell them that the group is low threat, or that they don't have enough evidence yet.
when they find out that there is a date set for the terrorist, and what the target is, they go ahead and let only their most trustworthy friends know; some of them probably make use of the information to make a fortune on the stock market, others make sure they don't lose anything. Other, more high profile types, make sure they have optimum propaganda plans in effect.
Maybe, someone goes in and plants thermite packets on the internal supports of the building. can't be proved or disproved, but it goes along with the theory well.
Everyone makes out like a bandit. of the 10-70 people who are "in the know", they know better than to say anything, life will be destroyed for themselves and their loved ones if they talk.
I can't really think of when the last time I defended microsoft, but.. all you have to do is open the services CP and disable indexing. whats so hard about that?
I am, of course, basing this post on non-vista operating systems; if you use vista, you deserve whatever happens to you. "it came with my computer" is no better an excuse than "I was just following orders".
I think I have that problem.
I chose Micrografx Picture Publisher back when it was a contender for being "The" graphics app. I currently use v8.1 for most of my image editing, with some help from irfanview.
When "to photoshop" became a common expression, I tried it. I got a copy of photoshop 6. The majority of the tools I used in PP8 I just can't find a analogue for in PS6, like the clone brushs. I do not doubt that photoshop does have something similar, but where it is....?
So I'm stuck with a program that has a small footprint, is easy to use/intuitive, and supports photoshop plugins.
sucks being me.