The difference between 2 pounds and five or six pounds is, well, four pounds. Which isn't much. Anyway, six pounds is pretty freaking light. If I get a little less than an hour of battery life per pound, which is the way it seems, since my 6lb ThinkPad battery lasts five+ hours, I'm willing to deal with a PC that weighs as much as a textbook.
I'd actually argue that you *don't* want to have to draw clear lines about whether or not she's an employee or partner, friend or whatever. Here's why: if there's even an INKLING in your mind that things might get messed up down the road, and that you better draw clear lines right away, just forget the entire thing. Unless she's already your real 'partner' in everything you do, don't bother trying to work with her too.
The Apple II was still fairly state of the art in '84, if not cutting edge (it was used a lot in home and small office/lab scenarios, while CPM dominated larger offices, although it was rapidly losing share to that IBM with its fancy PC-DOS, which was a clone of CPM made by some company in Seattle). It wasn't cheap then, either, costing well more than a C64, TRS-80, Vic, or other hobbiest computer. '84 was the year the//c came out, and well before the GS came out. Apple even still sold the IIe until around 2000.
Wow, on a flight recently from LA to SFO the same thing happened to me! Oh, and on a flight from San Diego to OAK. Oh, and a flight from SEA to OAK. And SFO to DTW! Man, it was like I WAS BEING RANDOMLY SELECTED FOR THE INCREASED SECURITY SCREENING! This happens to hundreds of people every day, sometimes randomly, sometimes psuedo-randomly (like if you have a one way ticket, or swarthy skin and a beard, like me). This wasn't some dumb screener being afraid of your batteries, it was total standard procedure. Unless there was a backup at the airport it typically adds like maybe five minutes, tops, to the security screening.
In my experience, the TSA people have always been unfailingly polite, but I suspect that's because I start out by being polite to them, for two reasons. First, why not be polite to everyone? Second, Why be rude to someone who is capable of making your life miserable and leaving you with no recourse?
There is a defense that you weren't intending to break the law -- which you could probably use if your "dinsey.com" site redirectted to a site that had something that only some people thought was offensive. I'm torn though: clearly this guy's actions seem to fall directly within the scope of the law, and it's tough to argue with them, but I still worry about abuse of the law by an activist prosecuter.
For the record, I like France. Anytime I've been there the people have been nice -- as long as you at least attempt to speak French -- and the culture, food and scenery is pretty great. But, that said, there is at least a perceived vein of arrogence that runs in the Gaulist style, which makes poking fun at the French and their military failures (since Waterloo basically), much more fun that making fun of, say, the Italians, who've proven relatively hapless at modern warfare, despite having once ruled basically their entire known world, and introducing what we might term modern civilization to much of Europe (including France, Asterix novels to the contrary).
At the same time, if you're looking at reality, the notion of the brave, doomed, member of the French Underground in WWII is at least a strong a cultural "meme" as that of the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." Certainly it's gotten more play than the euqually brave actions of Czech partisans, for instance.
Man, I have mod points, and yet there is no "-1 doesn't get the joke" modifier. Weird.
Yeah, France rules. They ruled everything. All our miltary victories earned us nothing.
Except I never saw the Nazis goose-stepping past the Washington Monument...
Here's a thought: all your previous victories come to nothing when you let the most evil army in the history of mankind waltz into your capital. That resets things to zero. And what has France done since we liberated Paris? Oh yeah, sunk some environmentalists' boat. . Very impressive.
I've played a lot of space simulators, and I loved SSM; one of the first pieces of software I bought when I got a PC laptop (previously I was a Mac user and console gamer). I think you hit the nail on the head -- worrying about "originality" is way less important than making sure the game is fun. The graphics alone make the game feel different than the earlier 8-bit games.
WTF? Decathalon was fun! It was no Zork, but for good times on the Apple ][ (not ][+, not ][e, not//c, just old school, tape drive-having, green-screen Apple ][) it was pretty good.
Buy an Atari 800 on ebay and get Kaboom for it. It has an AWESOME 2-player mode (take turns being the mad bomber and the guy with the buckets... er... the buckets themselves... er... those weird paddles that the manual said were buckets).
Definitely worth the cash.
Re:Bill Gates, Hall of Fame Hacker? (P.S. First Po
on
Hackers Hall of Fame
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Damn, I have mod points and I was really looking mod up anyone who bashed Tsutomu Shimomura, who is a grade A tool IMHO, but I gotta say this:
Paul Allen may be more 'techie' but BASIC for the Altair, as well as their previous projects, like the Traf-O-Data stuff, were really, really, joint collaborations. It wasn't a Wozniak/Jobs relationship, where one guy did the tech stuff and the other guy did the marketing. They *both* did the tech stuff, but Bill was more comfortable doing the business stuff as well.
Check out the Tandy Model 100 -- it's a super elegant piece of early portable computing with a great (for the time) BASIC-enabled OS. Creating that system was Bill Gate's last project that he personally pulled off alone, and it is really a fantastic system.
You may be able to have issues with his later business practices, and I'd agree that he was never part of the hacker culture, as evidenced by his early concern for copyrights when others were sharing everything, but the guy could definitely pull his weight on the code side.
The weird thing is, I have a few things on auto-renewal that have an old credit card # associated with them -- an expired Amex. Yet Amex just approves away, regardless, and charges me. In fact, Xbox Live was one of those situations. I didn't care -- I heart Xbox Live, but it was weird.
Oh, and for Xbox Live subscribers -- be aware: your "auto renew" option renews you for month to month (at $70 a year) instead of the yearly rate ($50). You have to manually make the change.
I read an interesting review of Wolfram's book and another, self-published, theory-of-everything book. (Probably in SciAm, but I don't recall.)
The review started by briefly laying out both theories, and asking which one you'd hear a lot about, and which one you'd never see again. As I recall, they seemed about equal as theories, all things considered.
Then it went on to say, basically "this guy is rich and famous, so you'll all discuss his theory, while this other guy is a nobody, so you won't. But they're both equally crack-pot theories." (emphasis added)
I thought that was the best comment on the book, which, I should note, I haven't read, so I may be missing the boat. (I didn't read the other guy's either, fwiw.)
Even if you buy a house for $XK and resell it for $XK (*just* making your money back), you've still lived rent free for those years. Compare even a significant loss against the cost of rent and you're better off buying.
My company has a LEGEND (a true one) about a "Tech Director" who couldn't run a batch file. He kept calling us for days saying it didn't work, until we finally stepped him through it. What a freaking moron. Of course, we also joke about Visual Batch ++, so maybe we're the morons.
They really screwed SJG, but I don't know if a 13 year old case is the best example of how the Feds treat confiscated hardware *today.* Anyone have any more recent examples?
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The difference between 2 pounds and five or six pounds is, well, four pounds. Which isn't much. Anyway, six pounds is pretty freaking light. If I get a little less than an hour of battery life per pound, which is the way it seems, since my 6lb ThinkPad battery lasts five+ hours, I'm willing to deal with a PC that weighs as much as a textbook.
Your parents bought you a laptop and you're complaining? And you have a desktop PC? I know parents are irritating, but please!
Redoing drywall is actually pretty cheap, especially if it's just a small patch. It also looks impressive to the ladies without being hard at all.
Crap. I'm not a geek. Ok, off to www.thestreet.com...
The fact that you confused the DS and Virtual Boy is probably telling...
The Apple II was still fairly state of the art in '84, if not cutting edge (it was used a lot in home and small office/lab scenarios, while CPM dominated larger offices, although it was rapidly losing share to that IBM with its fancy PC-DOS, which was a clone of CPM made by some company in Seattle). It wasn't cheap then, either, costing well more than a C64, TRS-80, Vic, or other hobbiest computer. '84 was the year the //c came out, and well before the GS came out. Apple even still sold the IIe until around 2000.
In my experience, the TSA people have always been unfailingly polite, but I suspect that's because I start out by being polite to them, for two reasons. First, why not be polite to everyone? Second, Why be rude to someone who is capable of making your life miserable and leaving you with no recourse?
Informative? You didn't check the link before modding, did you?
There is a defense that you weren't intending to break the law -- which you could probably use if your "dinsey.com" site redirectted to a site that had something that only some people thought was offensive. I'm torn though: clearly this guy's actions seem to fall directly within the scope of the law, and it's tough to argue with them, but I still worry about abuse of the law by an activist prosecuter.
Of course, those sites are so packed with ads they're functionally unusable, but still...
At the same time, if you're looking at reality, the notion of the brave, doomed, member of the French Underground in WWII is at least a strong a cultural "meme" as that of the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." Certainly it's gotten more play than the euqually brave actions of Czech partisans, for instance.
Yeah, France rules. They ruled everything. All our miltary victories earned us nothing.
Except I never saw the Nazis goose-stepping past the Washington Monument...
Here's a thought: all your previous victories come to nothing when you let the most evil army in the history of mankind waltz into your capital. That resets things to zero. And what has France done since we liberated Paris? Oh yeah, sunk some environmentalists' boat. . Very impressive.
I've played a lot of space simulators, and I loved SSM; one of the first pieces of software I bought when I got a PC laptop (previously I was a Mac user and console gamer). I think you hit the nail on the head -- worrying about "originality" is way less important than making sure the game is fun. The graphics alone make the game feel different than the earlier 8-bit games.
WTF? Decathalon was fun! It was no Zork, but for good times on the Apple ][ (not ][+, not ][e, not //c, just old school, tape drive-having, green-screen Apple ][) it was pretty good.
Definitely worth the cash.
Paul Allen may be more 'techie' but BASIC for the Altair, as well as their previous projects, like the Traf-O-Data stuff, were really, really, joint collaborations. It wasn't a Wozniak/Jobs relationship, where one guy did the tech stuff and the other guy did the marketing. They *both* did the tech stuff, but Bill was more comfortable doing the business stuff as well.
Check out the Tandy Model 100 -- it's a super elegant piece of early portable computing with a great (for the time) BASIC-enabled OS. Creating that system was Bill Gate's last project that he personally pulled off alone, and it is really a fantastic system.
You may be able to have issues with his later business practices, and I'd agree that he was never part of the hacker culture, as evidenced by his early concern for copyrights when others were sharing everything, but the guy could definitely pull his weight on the code side.
Oh, and for Xbox Live subscribers -- be aware: your "auto renew" option renews you for month to month (at $70 a year) instead of the yearly rate ($50). You have to manually make the change.
The review started by briefly laying out both theories, and asking which one you'd hear a lot about, and which one you'd never see again. As I recall, they seemed about equal as theories, all things considered.
Then it went on to say, basically "this guy is rich and famous, so you'll all discuss his theory, while this other guy is a nobody, so you won't. But they're both equally crack-pot theories." (emphasis added)
I thought that was the best comment on the book, which, I should note, I haven't read, so I may be missing the boat. (I didn't read the other guy's either, fwiw.)
Even if you buy a house for $XK and resell it for $XK (*just* making your money back), you've still lived rent free for those years. Compare even a significant loss against the cost of rent and you're better off buying.
Yeah it could, but that wouldn't neccessarily make it untrue, would it?
Macs! Man. My heart bleeds for you!
My company has a LEGEND (a true one) about a "Tech Director" who couldn't run a batch file. He kept calling us for days saying it didn't work, until we finally stepped him through it. What a freaking moron. Of course, we also joke about Visual Batch ++, so maybe we're the morons.
LEGO is privately held.