Fair enough, and I was a bit harsh in my generalizations. Also, I should point out that I am a big fan of the Zelda and Metroid series. And I concede that many of the games in the mentioned series have improved over the previous sendups.
But think about it. These three lines, with their respective characters, plot, themes - all date to before 1986. Now think about the point about creativity. Even if my sequence of causality is off, it is kind of a damning corrollary that Nintendo has gone through three machines since the NES without adding a fourth member to that exclusive list.
It confirmed that I was right not to buy a GameCube.
This replacement^H^H^H err... upgrade cycle is the reason I have totally lost interest in
console gaming.
If you are intelligent enough to use a computer, use it as your gaming platform too. After all, it is better with regards to price/performance and very hack friendly. In fact, you can even make it do productive things;-)
But here is what really ticks me off. The NES had a very long (store) shelf life. In that time, developers really learned the boundaries of that machine and developed the art of programming on it. Now I recognize that what happened nearly 20 years ago does not fully apply today, and the example of the NES may not be the case in general, but I dont see how this really helps the quality of games to force a new platform every couple of years;
get a few title which are Nintendo/Sony/MS only,
recycle some old video game lines (Metroid, Mario, Zelda),
poorly adapt some PC titles
- and then the whole thing dies within two years as developers rush to plan for the new platform (with its more expensive games). This short development window has got to impact negatively on both the overall creativity of the games and the full use of a console's potential. The home console market imploded several times. This may do it once more.
I understand that new tech begs to be used in gaming - I just think its best used through a graphics card with a TV-out. Longer S-Video cables, anyone?
Yes there is. There is an issue as to whether the duties paid should have been at 6.8% (as paid) or 12%. If the judge ruled that the figures were dolls, Toy Biz would have owed the balance of 5.2% for the time it was applicable. That is probably a considerable amount - and I am sure that customs would have hit them with something like a "late fee.":-)
Not only does this follow reasoning, it follows the text of the article:
Toy Biz had good cause to pursue this line. Having its action figures declared toys would mean a hefty reimbursement of past duties, though the company declines to give specifics on how much was at stake.
A bit OT, I think, but I wanted to correct a point made in the thread-
Actually, there are some cases where things other than eating are prohibited - namely, in the case of mixing milk and meat, cooking and deriving benefit (e.g. selling) are also prohibited.
However, since this only applies to kosher animals, while you would be forbidden to sell a cheeseburger, selling a cheese BLT would technically be ok. Counter-intuitive, but quite true.
Anyway, back on topic - clearly the situation would be one of saving a life, in which case, it is not just permissible to use such measures - it would be a requirement (as long at it were the best option: here is the fudge factor - e.g. no one will claim rejecting an operation with a 50% mortality rate is violating anything). That is, Kashrut (Kosher laws) are not suspended for serious medicine, they simply don't apply.
Depending on the company, having a DVD-R burner is not such a bad idea, if budget allows. The readers are cheap, and if DVD-R becomes antiquated, at least your data is not locked up. Of course, with standards up in the air, I would not recommend a company wide distribution, relying on an unsettled technology. Moreover, for online, accessible data, a HDD seems to be a wiser choice, regardless of the price and ultimate stability of the the DVD-R* standard, no?
I suspect individual consumers are going to have trouble proving this on their own. Hence, class action suits, therfore lawyers recieve the principal benefit from this ruling. Consumers, should Bell not manage to have this struck down, might see a change in future practices, but who are we kidding?
Well, maybe I'll get a check for $9 or something in the future... though more likely, free caller ID or something else not of the green paper variety.
Why couldnt they teach them something important,
like those nice robots from Krikkit...
Re:Netanyahu sued by Yahoo! for Netanyahu.com
on
Ruling the Root
·
· Score: 0
While this is interesting, it has one minor flaw.
Benjamin Netanyahu (or, Bibi preferred by everyone in Israel)isn't the Prime Minister of Israel. That would be Ariel Sharon. Mind you, Bibi *was* the Prime Minister - and given his appearances on CNN and recent PR moves in internal Israeli politics, is jockeying to be so again.
So, the question is, does anyone want bibi.com/co.il?:-)
Why does this feel like another entertainment technology that will take too long to catch on, spend many years fighting through competing propietary implementations, and in the end, obsoleting expensive technology, causing the enduser/little guy to spend more money.
Some days you feel like a Marxist, some days you don't. This would be a yes day.
Fair enough - except the term download is used for the other direction (server->client) in the first sentence of the paragraph. Not a case of switched terms, just using download for any sort of data transfer. This isn't a familiarity with mainframes. This is a flat out misunderstanding of the term.
Long, long, ago, I used Netscape (well, a little longer ago it was Mosaic, but I digress). IE was usually slower and dumber. Things changed. I stayed with Netscape for quite a while - until I needed Hebrew webpages. The cludgy integration of non-Latin fonts into Netscape made me want to kill it. So, I switched to IE in version four - and it was wonderful - full support for many wacky charsets (and their damned variants) I sometimes need. I used to use IE with Opera, using IE only for sites that needed it, but recently, I stopped using Opera (though it remains installed) because 6.x has been buggy on my machine.
It will probably stay that way, because the advantages mentioned with regards to Mozilla (rather, specific features - there remains the advantage of non-MS products) can be had with a couple of small addons - such as Crazy Browser and more importantly, The Proximitron which allow pretty sophisticated control over what gets displayed. For me, IE with add on adkillers is the best solution - and before you suggest that I am a unique case, keep in mind there are a lot of odd languages out there. For example, Farsi, Syriac, and of course, Arabic are not only RTL, but use contextual fonts.
I think there is a shortsightedness that MS actually avoided here. For example, I was on the Syrcom mailing list for a while. Microsoft worked with the list's moderator and other interested developers to make ISO adhereing contextual RTL fonts. In W2K, they would show up as an Arabic font, but in WinXP, Syriac is an independant language, with the user developed fonts available on the standard release CD (at least on Pro, I dunno about Home). A quick check of Sourceforge says Ayuta for Linux (Ayuta=letter in Syriac) is in development stage 1. Huzzah.
To add support for a foriegn language in W2K/XP is both trivial and well integrated from notepad on up - instead of using Hebrew word processors, MS Word works quite nicely - and spell checks in Arabic and Hebrew. This may be another element of Microsoft's monopoly, but many monopoly's are built in areas that no one thought to care about. Multilanguage support for bilingual users is something that microsoft spent a considerable time on and it is reaping the benefits - everyone using "strange" fonts plus Latin chars is using 2K or XP. This is not altruistic on MS's part - having an OS where the only regional component is the text in the help files and GUI is handy for MS - but more so for developers, and users.
Sorry for the rant, but this has bugged me about both Netscape and Linux in the past - ultimately *functionality* weaned me off both. When I build a firewall, using Linux is a no brainer. But for anyone who might need other languages in addition to those which use the Latin set, anything but 2K/XP is kludgy, non-standard or only supports some of the standards.
I hope this is rectified at some point in the future, because it does limit one's options. And if something else, be it Mac, Linux or whatever has managed to rival this level of integration without me noticing, please let me know - without flaming - I am interested only in using a computer as best suits my needs, not to advance a platform... though maybe to advance a social platform too:-).
P.S. To the curious or confused, in simple terms, Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic primarily used for religious purposes in the various Syrian churches. Rather important for academics in Relgious Studies, Comparative Linguistics, and sometimes Classics and historical Philosophy - when Greek philosophy was banned by the Church, it was available in Arabic editions which had been translated from Syriac editions, which in turn, were done from the Greek.
The old Estrangela style of font is my favorite, it looks like it came out of Star Trek or something:-).
Actually, what ticks me off about the Independence Day review is that while the reviewer rightly makes fun of the compatibility problem (appreciate how well ST:TNG dealt with this regarding the Borg) - he cannot make the simple differentiation between client and server, up and down:
"Goldblum loads his Macintosh on the craft along with a nuclear bomb and flies off with Smith to download the virus inside the mother RV."
He went to upload the virus. If you want to be picky, at least *sound* computer literate.
The crappiness of the movie, however, is not to be debated.
NEW YORK (AP) - It has being reported that there has been a wave of suicide among Star Trek fans in the past week. The definite cause of such a statistically unlikely event remains unknown, however, all victims were found somewhere near a computer playing a one hour loop of the introductory credits for Enterprise, Paramount's latest addition to the Star Trek franchise. In other entertainment news, the RIAA has sent the MPAA a sizable bill. Details are still unclear, but sources report that it is a draft settlement for assertions that a member of the MPAA did severe harm to the music industry through the use of peer to peer sharing software and "one hour of 100% dreck." Disputing this claim, the MPAA notes that p2p usage has dropped some 70% in the last week.
I have to admit, I have something of an emotional attachment to the F-15 design - not just in its concept of being (or having been) the epitome of air superiority, bar none, but even the aesthetics of the plane.
But, I'd like to ask a question of those more in the know when it comes to military avionics - is it just me, or has overall airspeed become less important in military designs? I appreciate the advantages in both range and agility that the F-22 design provides... But the fact that an F-15 could pull Mach 2.5 (if memory serves) seems to me to be of value in the ability to cover several areas in the same theater...
I do not proclaim to be anything near an expert in these issues, nor have I really followed them in the last five years or so (though I do subscribe to the Jane's mailing lists:-)
So, a question to the experts out there - the fact that successive generations of fighters do not seem retaining the same maximum or cruising airspeed as the F-15, be it F-14, -16, -22 or -35:
is this because such speed, past a certain point, is tactically irrelevant for a fighter, or is this a cost issue (not necessarily exclusive points)?
Hope the question makes some sense, seeing as it owes a lot to my memory of the specs on the designs mentioned:-)
No, it was the 5200 with the overlays - I remeber, because it was my first gaming system. Complete with 2600 emulator... ah - the old days of Frogger and the Empire Strikes Back.
Incidentally, the overlays were just one feature on a rather nicely designed system - the controllers were neat, a little storage case for wires, and a black and brushed steel look which has remained the best looking case for a gaming system ever. And supporting 4 controllers, IIRC.
How the hell did Atari - the same company that designed the 2600, a classic, but a design reminiscent of a 70s station wagon - design such a pretty box?
Anyone been to Venice? (Italy, not Cali)
Not much use for cars there.
Though given the fact that the city smells like a sewer (I wonder why...) less than 100% realism would be nice - Thank god no one has built a OlfactoryBlaster 3D...
Slashdot Mirror
Fair enough, and I was a bit harsh in my generalizations. Also, I should point out that I am a big fan of the Zelda and Metroid series. And I concede that many of the games in the mentioned series have improved over the previous sendups.
But think about it. These three lines, with their respective characters, plot, themes - all date to before 1986. Now think about the point about creativity. Even if my sequence of causality is off, it is kind of a damning corrollary that Nintendo has gone through three machines since the NES without adding a fourth member to that exclusive list.
And no, Pokemon doesn't count.
Actually, I had a similar reaction.
;-)
It confirmed that I was right not to buy a GameCube.
This replacement^H^H^H err... upgrade cycle is the reason I have totally lost interest in console gaming.
If you are intelligent enough to use a computer, use it as your gaming platform too. After all, it is better with regards to price/performance and very hack friendly. In fact, you can even make it do productive things
But here is what really ticks me off. The NES had a very long (store) shelf life. In that time, developers really learned the boundaries of that machine and developed the art of programming on it. Now I recognize that what happened nearly 20 years ago does not fully apply today, and the example of the NES may not be the case in general, but I dont see how this really helps the quality of games to force a new platform every couple of years;
get a few title which are Nintendo/Sony/MS only,
recycle some old video game lines (Metroid, Mario, Zelda),
poorly adapt some PC titles
- and then the whole thing dies within two years as developers rush to plan for the new platform (with its more expensive games). This short development window has got to impact negatively on both the overall creativity of the games and the full use of a console's potential. The home console market imploded several times. This may do it once more.
I understand that new tech begs to be used in gaming - I just think its best used through a graphics card with a TV-out. Longer S-Video cables, anyone?
Yup, 100%. My stupidity.
Also caused by scanning a ridiculous article, and paying selective attention to the facts.
Sigh.
Yes there is. There is an issue as to whether the duties paid should have been at 6.8% (as paid) or 12%. If the judge ruled that the figures were dolls, Toy Biz would have owed the balance of 5.2% for the time it was applicable. That is probably a considerable amount - and I am sure that customs would have hit them with something like a "late fee." :-)
Not only does this follow reasoning, it follows the text of the article:
Toy Biz had good cause to pursue this line. Having its action figures declared toys would mean a hefty reimbursement of past duties, though the company declines to give specifics on how much was at stake.
A bit OT, I think, but I wanted to correct a point made in the thread- Actually, there are some cases where things other than eating are prohibited - namely, in the case of mixing milk and meat, cooking and deriving benefit (e.g. selling) are also prohibited.
However, since this only applies to kosher animals, while you would be forbidden to sell a cheeseburger, selling a cheese BLT would technically be ok. Counter-intuitive, but quite true.
Anyway, back on topic - clearly the situation would be one of saving a life, in which case, it is not just permissible to use such measures - it would be a requirement (as long at it were the best option: here is the fudge factor - e.g. no one will claim rejecting an operation with a 50% mortality rate is violating anything). That is, Kashrut (Kosher laws) are not suspended for serious medicine, they simply don't apply.
"Palladium is all about deciding what's trustworthy. It not only lets your computer know that you're you..."
I refuse to have my computer settle any existential problems before I do.
Especially when running software sold by the pasty white guy with a red light on his head.
Yes - the drive runs so hot it should be considered vaporware.
Heh. Sorry.
Ooooooo..... kinda like mood rings for computers?
Neato.
Depending on the company, having a DVD-R burner is not such a bad idea, if budget allows. The readers are cheap, and if DVD-R becomes antiquated, at least your data is not locked up. Of course, with standards up in the air, I would not recommend a company wide distribution, relying on an unsettled technology. Moreover, for online, accessible data, a HDD seems to be a wiser choice, regardless of the price and ultimate stability of the the DVD-R* standard, no?
So where is the handy dandy dorm room size version?
Hell, you sit your PC on top of it and have a hell of a cooling system.
I suspect individual consumers are going to have trouble proving this on their own. Hence, class action suits, therfore lawyers recieve the principal benefit from this ruling. Consumers, should Bell not manage to have this struck down, might see a change in future practices, but who are we kidding?
Well, maybe I'll get a check for $9 or something in the future... though more likely, free caller ID or something else not of the green paper variety.
Why couldnt they teach them something important, like those nice robots from Krikkit...
While this is interesting, it has one minor flaw. Benjamin Netanyahu (or, Bibi preferred by everyone in Israel)isn't the Prime Minister of Israel. That would be Ariel Sharon. Mind you, Bibi *was* the Prime Minister - and given his appearances on CNN and recent PR moves in internal Israeli politics, is jockeying to be so again.
:-)
So, the question is, does anyone want bibi.com/co.il?
Why does this feel like another entertainment technology that will take too long to catch on, spend many years fighting through competing propietary implementations, and in the end, obsoleting expensive technology, causing the enduser/little guy to spend more money.
Some days you feel like a Marxist, some days you don't. This would be a yes day.
Fair enough - except the term download is used for the other direction (server->client) in the first sentence of the paragraph. Not a case of switched terms, just using download for any sort of data transfer. This isn't a familiarity with mainframes. This is a flat out misunderstanding of the term.
Long, long, ago, I used Netscape (well, a little longer ago it was Mosaic, but I digress). IE was usually slower and dumber. Things changed. I stayed with Netscape for quite a while - until I needed Hebrew webpages. The cludgy integration of non-Latin fonts into Netscape made me want to kill it. So, I switched to IE in version four - and it was wonderful - full support for many wacky charsets (and their damned variants) I sometimes need. I used to use IE with Opera, using IE only for sites that needed it, but recently, I stopped using Opera (though it remains installed) because 6.x has been buggy on my machine.
:-).
:-).
It will probably stay that way, because the advantages mentioned with regards to Mozilla (rather, specific features - there remains the advantage of non-MS products) can be had with a couple of small addons - such as Crazy Browser and more importantly, The Proximitron which allow pretty sophisticated control over what gets displayed. For me, IE with add on adkillers is the best solution - and before you suggest that I am a unique case, keep in mind there are a lot of odd languages out there. For example, Farsi, Syriac, and of course, Arabic are not only RTL, but use contextual fonts.
I think there is a shortsightedness that MS actually avoided here. For example, I was on the Syrcom mailing list for a while. Microsoft worked with the list's moderator and other interested developers to make ISO adhereing contextual RTL fonts. In W2K, they would show up as an Arabic font, but in WinXP, Syriac is an independant language, with the user developed fonts available on the standard release CD (at least on Pro, I dunno about Home). A quick check of Sourceforge says Ayuta for Linux (Ayuta=letter in Syriac) is in development stage 1. Huzzah.
To add support for a foriegn language in W2K/XP is both trivial and well integrated from notepad on up - instead of using Hebrew word processors, MS Word works quite nicely - and spell checks in Arabic and Hebrew. This may be another element of Microsoft's monopoly, but many monopoly's are built in areas that no one thought to care about. Multilanguage support for bilingual users is something that microsoft spent a considerable time on and it is reaping the benefits - everyone using "strange" fonts plus Latin chars is using 2K or XP. This is not altruistic on MS's part - having an OS where the only regional component is the text in the help files and GUI is handy for MS - but more so for developers, and users.
Sorry for the rant, but this has bugged me about both Netscape and Linux in the past - ultimately *functionality* weaned me off both. When I build a firewall, using Linux is a no brainer. But for anyone who might need other languages in addition to those which use the Latin set, anything but 2K/XP is kludgy, non-standard or only supports some of the standards.
I hope this is rectified at some point in the future, because it does limit one's options. And if something else, be it Mac, Linux or whatever has managed to rival this level of integration without me noticing, please let me know - without flaming - I am interested only in using a computer as best suits my needs, not to advance a platform... though maybe to advance a social platform too
P.S. To the curious or confused, in simple terms, Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic primarily used for religious purposes in the various Syrian churches. Rather important for academics in Relgious Studies, Comparative Linguistics, and sometimes Classics and historical Philosophy - when Greek philosophy was banned by the Church, it was available in Arabic editions which had been translated from Syriac editions, which in turn, were done from the Greek. The old Estrangela style of font is my favorite, it looks like it came out of Star Trek or something
Actually, what ticks me off about the Independence Day review is that while the reviewer rightly makes fun of the compatibility problem (appreciate how well ST:TNG dealt with this regarding the Borg) - he cannot make the simple differentiation between client and server, up and down:
"Goldblum loads his Macintosh on the craft along with a nuclear bomb and flies off with Smith to download the virus inside the mother RV."
He went to upload the virus. If you want to be picky, at least *sound* computer literate.
The crappiness of the movie, however, is not to be debated.
NEW YORK (AP) - It has being reported that there has been a wave of suicide among Star Trek fans in the past week. The definite cause of such a statistically unlikely event remains unknown, however, all victims were found somewhere near a computer playing a one hour loop of the introductory credits for Enterprise, Paramount's latest addition to the Star Trek franchise. In other entertainment news, the RIAA has sent the MPAA a sizable bill. Details are still unclear, but sources report that it is a draft settlement for assertions that a member of the MPAA did severe harm to the music industry through the use of peer to peer sharing software and "one hour of 100% dreck." Disputing this claim, the MPAA notes that p2p usage has dropped some 70% in the last week.
CD sales receipts have remained unaffected.
I have to admit, I have something of an emotional attachment to the F-15 design - not just in its concept of being (or having been) the epitome of air superiority, bar none, but even the aesthetics of the plane.
:-)
So, a question to the experts out there - the fact that successive generations of fighters do not seem retaining the same maximum or cruising airspeed as the F-15, be it F-14, -16, -22 or -35:
is this because such speed, past a certain point, is tactically irrelevant for a fighter, or is this a cost issue (not necessarily exclusive points)?
:-)
But, I'd like to ask a question of those more in the know when it comes to military avionics - is it just me, or has overall airspeed become less important in military designs? I appreciate the advantages in both range and agility that the F-22 design provides... But the fact that an F-15 could pull Mach 2.5 (if memory serves) seems to me to be of value in the ability to cover several areas in the same theater...
I do not proclaim to be anything near an expert in these issues, nor have I really followed them in the last five years or so (though I do subscribe to the Jane's mailing lists
Hope the question makes some sense, seeing as it owes a lot to my memory of the specs on the designs mentioned
just imagine, a Beowulf clus^H^H^H^H^H
err... nevermind.
No, it was the 5200 with the overlays - I remeber, because it was my first gaming system. Complete with 2600 emulator... ah - the old days of Frogger and the Empire Strikes Back. Incidentally, the overlays were just one feature on a rather nicely designed system - the controllers were neat, a little storage case for wires, and a black and brushed steel look which has remained the best looking case for a gaming system ever. And supporting 4 controllers, IIRC. How the hell did Atari - the same company that designed the 2600, a classic, but a design reminiscent of a 70s station wagon - design such a pretty box?
Anyone been to Venice? (Italy, not Cali) Not much use for cars there. Though given the fact that the city smells like a sewer (I wonder why...) less than 100% realism would be nice - Thank god no one has built a OlfactoryBlaster 3D...
Personal Teleportation? A whole new meaning to network traffic...
Does that mean that endusers, watching the struggle are Ewoks - just less productive?