I remember Whiz Kids. It was a Simon & Simon spinoff, wasn't it? I haven't seen it since it originally aired. Are there downloads anywhere?
Re:Where is our Pixar/Disney Sequal?
on
The Story of Tron
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· Score: 1
I remember reading in Variety or something a few years back that they were working on a sequel: Tron 2.0, and I'm not talking about the video game. It was supposed to coincide with the 20th anniversary. But all we got was a "special edition" DVD and the video game. What happened to this? Was it cancelled in favor of just doing the video game?
Yeah. IMO, a project like this has to come in under $500 for it to be worthwhile. You can lease an HD PVR from your cable company or satellite company for a long time for $2200. (Typically ~$6 a month).
Also, and I'm speaking from personal experience here, if you build your own PVR, be prepared to spend a LOT of time finding just the right software/hardware combination and tweaking it just-so.
And for the love of God, make sure your swap file is on another drive on another bus. I don't care how fast your machine is if some menial background task shoots the drive head to the other end of the platter while you're buffering/playing at the same time... and turn off indexing too.
Ringworld Engineers is, IMO the best story of the 4 books.
Ringworld is just kind of an ooh-ahh introduction. Throne
and Children are a bit more simplistic and contrived, but fun
nonetheless. Anyone considering reading Children (or any of the
sequels, come to think of it), might want to read Protector first.
Problem is that if you had more than the 3k expander, the screen memory moved from 7680 to 4096 for some reason, so you had to pull the cartridge to run most prewritten software or modify the code yourself, unless it was really well written (rare!) and would check how much memory was available before choosing a screen start constant.
I had the 3k expander for the longest time (6655 BYTES FREE, baby!) and eventually got the Xetec 32k cartridge that had the DIP switches so you could change the memory configuration to suit your needs. Of course 3 months after I got that, I got a 64 and none of that mattered anymore.
Got it for my 12th birthday, 1982 (September). Didn't get the tape drive until Christmas, which was okay because I was just learning Basic at the time and wasn't typing anything long enough to bother saving anyway.
I still have it too. I also still have the C64 I got later on, and the 1541 floppy, all my Amigas... I just can't bring myself to throw away a computer.
I've been meaning to get the VIC up and running again for years. It just needs a power supply.
I totally agree. I can see charging $30 for Pro if you've downloaded it, but the version that comes pre-installed when you BUY a Mac should be Pro. I've gotten higher retail value software freebies with hardware 1/10 the cost of a new Mac. "We'll throw in a DVD mastering app for free, but you have to pay for Mpeg-2 encoding in our media player." WTF?
I have a G3-800 that had the logic board failure after about 17 months of use. (Bought 5/03) Sending it in under the special warranty extension was amazingly hassle-free. I also got it back in about a week - way quicker than I expected. It has been rock-solid ever since. I've since upgraded it to a full 640MB of RAM, and a Hitachi 7K100 7200 rpm hard drive. The battery doesn't hold a charge as long as it used to, but that's to be expected.
The only complaints I have are minor and more directed at the software end of things: * Why won't Apple's DVD player app work with FW DVD drives? * Why won't iDVD even run on a G3? I know it would be slower,
and I'm okay with that. Don't decide for me what's "too slow". * Why don't they tell you, specifically, what elements of Quicktime
Pro won't work on a G3 before you pay for it? Why, if you're
paying $1000+ for a computer, don't they throw in the full
(freaking) $30 version of Quicktime?! I've bought $45 DVD drives
that bundle in software of greater retail value than Quicktime
Pro! * Why does the iTunes (Quicktime?) video-podcast-playing mpeg-4
codec drop 90% of frames and take 100% CPU while the free one
in VLC will play the same mpeg-4 files fullscreen, full frame
rate while on average using only 70% CPU?! * And the classic: Why does closing the last window of a program
NOT CLOSE THE FREAKING PROGRAM?! I know this is a MacOS thing
from way back, but there should be a preferences option for it.
Does anyone find this method of operation useful? * (and as long as I'm venting) Why does MacOS still insist on
disabling CD drive eject buttons after all these years? It's
not like you will corrupt the data by ejecting a CD prematurely.
Just annoyances really, but it's fun to vent. Overall I love OSX, and plan to use this machine as my primary general purpose computer for another year or two and then upgrade to an Intel iBook.
Gotta love those US sugar tariffs & corn subsidies.
When I was in NY I used to go to Canada to get the real-sugar Coke. One time coming back across the border the border guard asked me what I had in the trunk and I told him just some cases of Coca Cola. He pressed me, "Come on? What else have you got." I said "Just that" and went into my speech about how US sugar tariffs caused all US soda to use high fructose corn syrup, etc. He just got a glazed over look, sighed, and waved me through. 8^)
There is a compromise here, and it is what is often done in Canada.
Sell by theme-based packages instead of tiers.
Sports, movies, variety, news, education, lifestyle, music, etc... This permits some more popular/less popular bundling by the channel owners, and lets people opt out of categories they don't care about. Channels that permit it can also be sold individually.
It works like this: You pay a base "maintenance fee" which covers your connection to the system and provides a common set of public interest channels (C-span, local government, etc.). On top of that you buy packages, including local broadcast channels. The cable/satellite provider then charges a market rate for each package or a bundle discount for buying 3 packages, all packages, etc.
The main opponents of this type of system are the media conglomerates that have very profitable, limited-appeal channels (Disney/ESPN, Viacom/MTV) that get big advertising dollars because they can claim huge distribution (aka theoretical eyeballs). If it could be quantified just how many people DON'T watch these channels, they'd lose millions in advertising, to say nothing of the diminished subscription fees, and the people who do watch ESPN , for example would finally feel the full force of what the NFL is costing them.
Lesser channels could still be bundled into their respective theme packs, and new channels could be free for several months to hook viewers, and even be used to lure customers into buying a pack they don't subscribe to.
I think the prefix "cyber" needs to be taken out back and shot. It's been run into the ground, through to the other side of the Earth and then back through again.
Price is usually secondary. I'll buy a Revolution when Mario128 comes out. I'll buy a PS3 when Sly Cooper 4 or Rez 2 comes out.
I'll buy an XBox-360 when it gets really cheap and Perfect Dark 0 or a new Banjo/Kazooie title is out (and actually lives up to its lineage. Rare hasn't quite been up to par since the MS buyout.) So far, there is nothing on the XBox platform that would compel me to buy one.
Right now I'm still enjoying the heck out of my PS2 and GC and really have no major complaints about the graphics or sound capabilities of either of them. They could use a bit more CPU horsepower, but I suspect that's mostly what these new machines address.
We have a couple of those 44" Mitsubishis where I work. They're beautiful TV's, but we had to build a special heavy duty cart to move one around on. The other is in a "kiosk" exhibit, and has a problem with the HV circuit. It is literally too heavy to be safely moved from its current location to be serviced. Those things are at least 200 lbs, and front-heavy.
My CET major was pretty good: basically CE with a de-emphasis of the math, and a greater emphasis on hands-on design; exactly what I wanted. I often encountered CE's or EE's who could do differential equations in their sleep upside down behind their backs, but couldn't solder two wires together to save their lives.
I started out as CS. WAY too much math for the applications programming jobs they were supposedly preparing us for, and projects so boring it burned me out on everything but machine-level programming inside 2 years.
"Also, at least the last time I read up on the subject, Macrovision only exists on the composite video circuits; an S-VHS recording on the S-Video in or a Beta SP machine (if you can afford one) on the component in."
Macrovision rides on the "Y" (luminance) signal used in both S-Video and Component video. This is part of the reason Component was chosen as the standard hi-res output for DVD players instead of RGB. So it was intended to foil all analog recordings. CGMS (Basically just an analog "don't record me" flag embedded in each video frame) came along later to foil digital recordings.
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IIRC, the printer that came witht he Adam was daisy-wheel, and
the power supply for the whole system was in the printer!
I remember Whiz Kids. It was a Simon & Simon spinoff, wasn't it?
I haven't seen it since it originally aired. Are there downloads
anywhere?
I remember reading in Variety or something a few years back that they were
working on a sequel: Tron 2.0, and I'm not talking about the video game. It
was supposed to coincide with the 20th anniversary. But all we got was a
"special edition" DVD and the video game. What happened to this? Was it cancelled
in favor of just doing the video game?
You mean you had headrest screens and a Gamecube?!
AWESOME! 8^D
Yeah. IMO, a project like this has to come in under $500 for it to
be worthwhile. You can lease an HD PVR from your cable company or
satellite company for a long time for $2200. (Typically ~$6 a month).
Also, and I'm speaking from personal experience here, if you build
your own PVR, be prepared to spend a LOT of time finding just the
right software/hardware combination and tweaking it just-so.
And for the love of God, make sure your swap file is on another
drive on another bus. I don't care how fast your machine is if
some menial background task shoots the drive head to the other
end of the platter while you're buffering/playing at the same
time... and turn off indexing too.
Ringworld Engineers is, IMO the best story of the 4 books. Ringworld is just kind of an ooh-ahh introduction. Throne and Children are a bit more simplistic and contrived, but fun nonetheless. Anyone considering reading Children (or any of the sequels, come to think of it), might want to read Protector first.
Fuck that. That mouse/keyboard shit is why I never play FPS's on anything but consoles. Too cumbersome... and painful.
Problem is that if you had more than the 3k expander, the screen memory
moved from 7680 to 4096 for some reason, so you had to pull the cartridge
to run most prewritten software or modify the code yourself, unless it
was really well written (rare!) and would check how much memory was available
before choosing a screen start constant.
I had the 3k expander for the longest time (6655 BYTES FREE, baby!) and
eventually got the Xetec 32k cartridge that had the DIP switches so you
could change the memory configuration to suit your needs. Of course 3
months after I got that, I got a 64 and none of that mattered anymore.
Got it for my 12th birthday, 1982 (September). Didn't get the tape drive until
Christmas, which was okay because I was just learning Basic at the time and
wasn't typing anything long enough to bother saving anyway.
I still have it too. I also still have the C64 I got later on, and the 1541
floppy, all my Amigas... I just can't bring myself to throw away a computer.
I've been meaning to get the VIC up and running again for years. It just
needs a power supply.
I totally agree. I can see charging $30 for Pro if you've
downloaded it, but the version that comes pre-installed when
you BUY a Mac should be Pro. I've gotten higher retail value
software freebies with hardware 1/10 the cost of a new Mac.
"We'll throw in a DVD mastering app for free, but you have
to pay for Mpeg-2 encoding in our media player." WTF?
I have a G3-800 that had the logic board failure after about 17
months of use. (Bought 5/03) Sending it in under the special
warranty extension was amazingly hassle-free. I also got it back in
about a week - way quicker than I expected. It has been rock-solid
ever since. I've since upgraded it to a full 640MB of RAM, and a
Hitachi 7K100 7200 rpm hard drive. The battery doesn't hold a
charge as long as it used to, but that's to be expected.
The only complaints I have are minor and more directed at the
software end of things:
* Why won't Apple's DVD player app work with FW DVD drives?
* Why won't iDVD even run on a G3? I know it would be slower,
and I'm okay with that. Don't decide for me what's "too slow".
* Why don't they tell you, specifically, what elements of Quicktime
Pro won't work on a G3 before you pay for it? Why, if you're
paying $1000+ for a computer, don't they throw in the full
(freaking) $30 version of Quicktime?! I've bought $45 DVD drives
that bundle in software of greater retail value than Quicktime
Pro!
* Why does the iTunes (Quicktime?) video-podcast-playing mpeg-4
codec drop 90% of frames and take 100% CPU while the free one
in VLC will play the same mpeg-4 files fullscreen, full frame
rate while on average using only 70% CPU?!
* And the classic: Why does closing the last window of a program
NOT CLOSE THE FREAKING PROGRAM?! I know this is a MacOS thing
from way back, but there should be a preferences option for it.
Does anyone find this method of operation useful?
* (and as long as I'm venting) Why does MacOS still insist on
disabling CD drive eject buttons after all these years? It's
not like you will corrupt the data by ejecting a CD prematurely.
Just annoyances really, but it's fun to vent. Overall I love OSX, and plan to use this machine as my primary general purpose computer for another year or two and then upgrade to an Intel iBook.
Whoah. I didn't know Boost was real. Scary.
That was the funniest AquaTeen since Frat Aliens, though.
Good stuff. Way better than Sunday's Simpsons. God, is that
show over the hill...
Gotta love those US sugar tariffs & corn subsidies.
When I was in NY I used to go to Canada to get the real-sugar
Coke. One time coming back across the border the border guard
asked me what I had in the trunk and I told him just some cases
of Coca Cola. He pressed me, "Come on? What else have you got." I
said "Just that" and went into my speech about how US sugar tariffs
caused all US soda to use high fructose corn syrup, etc. He just
got a glazed over look, sighed, and waved me through. 8^)
There is a compromise here, and it is what is often done in Canada.
Sell by theme-based packages instead of tiers.
Sports, movies, variety, news, education, lifestyle, music, etc...
This permits some more popular/less popular bundling by the channel
owners, and lets people opt out of categories they don't care about.
Channels that permit it can also be sold individually.
It works like this:
You pay a base "maintenance fee" which covers your connection
to the system and provides a common set of public interest
channels (C-span, local government, etc.). On top of that
you buy packages, including local broadcast channels. The
cable/satellite provider then charges a market rate for each
package or a bundle discount for buying 3 packages, all packages,
etc.
The main opponents of this type of system are the media
conglomerates that have very profitable, limited-appeal channels
(Disney/ESPN, Viacom/MTV) that get big advertising dollars because
they can claim huge distribution (aka theoretical eyeballs). If
it could be quantified just how many people DON'T watch these
channels, they'd lose millions in advertising, to say nothing
of the diminished subscription fees, and the people who do watch
ESPN , for example would finally feel the full force of what the
NFL is costing them.
Lesser channels could still be bundled into their respective
theme packs, and new channels could be free for several months
to hook viewers, and even be used to lure customers into buying
a pack they don't subscribe to.
I think the prefix "cyber" needs to be taken out back and shot.
It's been run into the ground, through to the other side of
the Earth and then back through again.
It's not clever anymore, media! Jeez...
It's funny from Star to Finnish!
...Sean.
Zing!
I'm here all week, etc...
Indeed. Even if it's something I like, I still think they're
idiots.
And they always have them turned up so LOUD! Do they work
at an airport or something? Half their battery must get used
during the ring!
The best ringtone I've heard is the one that sounds like
an old phone with real bells in it.
I was (am) a Lego freak, but I never really "got" Monty
Python... just never thought it was that funny. Red Dwarf,
yes. Can I substitute MST3K?
Agreed. I think, for example, Bourne Supremecy would have been more
watchable in a 60FPS medium. At 24FPS, the action scenes were just a
blur.
Price is usually secondary.
I'll buy a Revolution when Mario128 comes out.
I'll buy a PS3 when Sly Cooper 4 or Rez 2 comes out.
I'll buy an XBox-360 when it gets really cheap and Perfect Dark 0 or a
new Banjo/Kazooie title is out (and actually lives up to its lineage. Rare hasn't quite been up to par since the MS buyout.) So far, there is nothing on the XBox platform that would compel me to buy one.
Right now I'm still enjoying the heck out of my PS2 and GC and really have
no major complaints about the graphics or sound capabilities of either of them.
They could use a bit more CPU horsepower, but I suspect that's mostly what these new machines address.
...and I've never been able to figure out why people would want frame rates faster than their monitor can scan!
We have a couple of those 44" Mitsubishis where I work. They're
beautiful TV's, but we had to build a special heavy duty cart
to move one around on. The other is in a "kiosk" exhibit, and
has a problem with the HV circuit. It is literally too heavy to
be safely moved from its current location to be serviced. Those
things are at least 200 lbs, and front-heavy.
My CET major was pretty good: basically CE with a de-emphasis
of the math, and a greater emphasis on hands-on design; exactly
what I wanted. I often encountered CE's or EE's who could do
differential equations in their sleep upside down behind their
backs, but couldn't solder two wires together to save their lives.
I started out as CS. WAY too much math for the applications
programming jobs they were supposedly preparing us for, and
projects so boring it burned me out on everything but machine-level
programming inside 2 years.
"Also, at least the last time I read up on the subject, Macrovision only exists on the composite video circuits; an S-VHS recording on the S-Video in or a Beta SP machine (if you can afford one) on the component in."
Macrovision rides on the "Y" (luminance) signal used in both
S-Video and Component video. This is part of the reason Component
was chosen as the standard hi-res output for DVD players instead
of RGB. So it was intended to foil all analog recordings. CGMS
(Basically just an analog "don't record me" flag embedded in each video frame) came along later to foil digital recordings.
LMAO!
Did you ever notice that there are ZERO pictures of that guy
with his mouth closed?