These player counts are really amazing when you consider how old the half-life game is. I think it came out in 98, and the whole mod thing seems to have given it amazing legs.
I think Natural Selection might be a little slower to adopt because of how different it is and how large the download it (I haven't tried it yet), but the chat on it is very positive. As someone who only plays on public servers I'm looking forward to trying something with better teamwork.
By the way, I think the GameSpy stats are low, particularly worldwide. I don't know how often they refresh this or how they poll servers, but I see many more servers and players with other locator utilities than with GameSpy.
Try addall.com, searches all other sites and finds used books also. And, price listed includes shipping. FYI, they list Amazon as the best price at $27.82 (used).
Sorry for the shameless plug -- I just use them, I don't get anything out of this.
The DoD is under tremendous pressure to have Microsoft blessed as the only products they use, as Microsoft has learned how to lobby and started throwing lots of money at this. The government is a huge purchaser of systems, and there are many legacy things out there. Since the past 10 years or so have brought many fresh college grads into the workforce, many of whom only know Microsoft products, there is pressure on the technical selection folks to replace with Microsoft since those precious MCSE's only know these platforms.
This report is probably an effort to build some evidence and support on why wholesale replacement of everything with off the shelf would add costs and hurt national security. Probably also explains IBM's (and others) shift to support Linux and variants over the past few years as they saw Microsoft tactics refined.
And, Microsoft's more recent license agreement language seems pointed at providing a legal reason why they need to be the only platform, since there are no technical reasons.
Thanks for the clarification. Unlike another post, I am not "sore". And I'm sorry I pushed a hot button. I also see the positive sides of many of their products, and I run them on several of my personal machines as well as work machines. I obviously took some of your comments the wrong way. I think I also was reacting to the post from "Anonymous Coward", and noticed after that you were playing on the spelling in your account name.
It would not be incorrect to say I have a pet peeve in respects to Microsoft -- I can't stand it when it is assumed that Microsoft is the first one to do something, when they mostly let the market develop and then come in. I was just trying to point out that Microsoft is not the first one to create a PIM, and the features you point out are not unique to Outlook.
And, their end result (because of the tight OS coupling and active execution of sent material) has created a whole host of problems that might be best avoided. I do agree with your comment on the business drivers. As long as the corporate powers bundle this stuff in with purchased hardware, its an uphill climb for any other product.
I'm sorry, but this seems like a Microsoft sales person's post.
First of all (as pointed out by others), Outlook 2K has had as many security issues as other Microsoft products. The whole concept of receiving code through Email and executing automatically or semi-automatically needs to be re-evaluated.
Second, as an Outlook user you have to run Outlook Express if you want to read USENET (and stay in the Microsoft family). This functionality is left out for some unknown reason, requiring you to start Outlook Express and deal with all the dialogs as these programs fight for control of file types.
Third, the "lot of cool things" comments are thrown out as if this is the first program to do these things. The "PIM" concept has been around since DOS. Many of us have been using Notes, Ascend, etc., which have done good jobs with these concepts for groups or individuals.
Fourth, the "synch" concept is not new. Cell phone alerts are thrown out as if this didn't exist before Microsoft. Any script writer could create this through text pagers, saving the cost of Exchange and "MOM".
So, this is a "run out and get outlook" post that is written as if none of us heard of these things before Outlook. Without getting into the colossal blunder of integrating Outlook with the OS so your machine locks up every time your PIM tries to talk to the Exchange server.
Don't mean to be offensive, but I'm surprised there wasn't a stronger reaction to this.
While you can't (affordably) duplicate the home theater yet, its just a matter of time. You can already duplicate the sound experience of most theaters, with DVD and surround technology being available for $500. It's just a matter of time before that 60 inch plasma screen comes down from $10K. I certainly agree that investing in public movie houses seems like a losing proposition in the USA. I don't expect public behavior to improve anytime soon...
The only thing I don't get about theater prices is why does it cost the same $8 to get into the $150M special effects laiden blockbuster as it costs to see the artsy snooze fest produced for $20M? If the theater doesn't make money on the showing, why don't they fill the seats by dropping the price on the poorly attended ones?
I'm not an audiophile (once I became a working musician I gave up on "money no object" sound), and I'm not in a hurry to replace the 400+ LP collection I have. But, I'm not as annoyed with this change as I was with the LP-to-CD one.
First, the hardware is already out and affordable. The Sony receiver I just bought is plugged into the CD player with an optical cable, and already understands CD and SACD. This is off-the-shelf stuff from Best Buy, not some stereo nerd store. So, I can listed to new and old formats on the same machine.
Second, Sony and someone else already are producing CD and SACD encoding on the same physical platter (didn't I read about this on Slashdot a few weeks ago?). So I get the new experience at home, and when I stick the disk in my car with the older player, it will play the CD format.
Seems to be that this will be a nice smooth transition, with media slowly being converted to dual use and I don't have to buy another copy of any of the CDs I already bought.
Unless that DVD version is what everyone goes to. Then I'm screwed again.
Select your operating system:
Mac OS X v10.1.3-10.1.5*
Mac OS 8.6/9
Win 98/NT/Me/2000/XP
The official line from Apple.
Although I thought QT6 was based on MPEG-4, so maybe there is a way.
I guess the WINE route might work as well.
If thrown on top of water it shoots around -- think of a rocket with no control. It may have melted a bit and broke apart (its a soft metal and melts at relatively low temperature), but it was inside a beaker and hard to tell. It happened fast and made a lot of smoke, smell, and noise.
If you dump the water on top (sodium in a dry beaker, then pour the water on top) the compression of the water on top of the rapid reation causes enough pressure to break the beaker (or to break a normal Pyrex beaker, anyway). You want to wear eye protection, as the broken glass explodes with pretty good force, enough to break the skin of the students sitting in the front row. Then, the chemistry teacher gets fired.
I think it would take a pretty small lake and a pretty big pile of sodium to substantially alter the pH of the lake. Guess it depends on how deep the lake is.
Sit in a coach seat for a few flights and you'll see the advantage. This laptop is much smaller that a typical 12 inch screen laptop (the screen is a letterbox format, not the typical screen proportions). If you wanted a separate camera and laptop, you still might want to give this form factor a look because it is so small.
I wouldn't compare this device to a laptop as much as I'd compare it to a PDA. A PDA that doesn't really fit into a pocket, but has the display you wish a PDA would have and the ability to look at a spreadsheet or document and comprehend it. Problem is -- it costs as much as a laptop.
The camera (at least at one point) was really sold for portable web-conferencing and not for video production. The ability to record MPEGs is more of a function of the newer processors. There's a firewire jack if you need to plug in a better camera.
the only people still using them are CS grad students
This is a joke, right? I'm not a CS grad student, and my whole life is in my PDA. I now go on business trips with the PDA and not a laptop, since I can go a week without charging and use an attached keyboard. And, everyone else I see in my company is using them also -- they've replaced the "Day Runner" book.
Will parents and children buy these? Not for the sole function of being a parent or a child. But, anyone that wants to synchronize their 1000 address list on their computer with something that fits in their purse might want to spent $100 for this Palm device over the $500 for the WinCE device. And, they might happen to be a parent or a child.
He's not a nut. He's a shrewd guy with an understanding of patent law and the dollars to go to court.
When you review his patents (see http://www.mercexchange.com), you'll find he's an expert at taking descriptions of business processes that have been around for years and placing "on a computer" at the end of them in a patent document. But there is nothing on his web site that indicates that he is a software designer, a database designer, a product developer, a computer scientist, or a business developer. There are no links to any actual products developed, or services delivered, or companies created. He is the patent equivalent of an ambulance chaser.
While I know little about patent law, Woolston's "business" (see link) seems to be creating patents, not creating software. MercExchange seems to be about quickly patenting things related to electronic commerce, without any ability to really put the things together.
I see things like these patents all the time in my business (writing software). Only we just call them "user requirements".
Note this product is a shortwave receiver, so by definition it is limited to the bands it pulls in. USA does not limit any shortwave I am aware of (although other countries do block things like "voice of america"). WinRadio has other products that are full spectrum receivers/scanners. For USA, mobile scanners are often OK (where they are restricted) for those with a ham radio license. The USA version of their full spectrum products do block out the 800 MHz cell telephone bands.
"By continuing to foster a rich developer community as we have in the past we can make sure the bulk of the talent is writing code for Windows and not Linux".
Unfortunately, the cost to get into this community has gotten too expensive. The subscription to many of the MSDN packages has passed $1000 annually. The open source community provides many equivalent tools at no cost. So, the long term question is if the open source community provides an incentive for the overall developer community.
I remember this too. DEC used to have great Alpha based machines running VMS, UNIX, and NT. Then, the "partnership" with an "investment" of thousands of engineers "certified". Now, no more DEC.
Others have listed the companies that were former MS partners. Lotus, Novell, etc. HP will learn too, that to Microsoft "partner" means "someone we haven't figured out how to take their market share yet".
As pointed out -- its not censorship if the original work is still available (and it would be cheaper to purchase, as well).
I wonder if anyone has pointed out that providing a "clean" version of a movie might help increase sales? Seems to me there are a number of people that don't really go to movies because they don't need to see the "artistic vision" that results in a R rating. If there are alternate versions it would increase sales. While the director may not like it, I would think the studios would.
Anyway, how different is this from the editing that is done to get a movie onto television?
Slashdot Mirror
These player counts are really amazing when you consider how old the half-life game is. I think it came out in 98, and the whole mod thing seems to have given it amazing legs. I think Natural Selection might be a little slower to adopt because of how different it is and how large the download it (I haven't tried it yet), but the chat on it is very positive. As someone who only plays on public servers I'm looking forward to trying something with better teamwork. By the way, I think the GameSpy stats are low, particularly worldwide. I don't know how often they refresh this or how they poll servers, but I see many more servers and players with other locator utilities than with GameSpy.
Good luck:
"This item is not stocked or has been discontinued."
Sorry for the shameless plug -- I just use them, I don't get anything out of this.
http://www.addall.com/New/submitNew.cgi?query=013Note, my location is in the URL and it uses this to calculate shipping. You will need to re-search for shipping costs...
...that there is no longer such a thing as a "multimedia PC".
The DoD is under tremendous pressure to have Microsoft blessed as the only products they use, as Microsoft has learned how to lobby and started throwing lots of money at this. The government is a huge purchaser of systems, and there are many legacy things out there. Since the past 10 years or so have brought many fresh college grads into the workforce, many of whom only know Microsoft products, there is pressure on the technical selection folks to replace with Microsoft since those precious MCSE's only know these platforms.
This report is probably an effort to build some evidence and support on why wholesale replacement of everything with off the shelf would add costs and hurt national security. Probably also explains IBM's (and others) shift to support Linux and variants over the past few years as they saw Microsoft tactics refined.
And, Microsoft's more recent license agreement language seems pointed at providing a legal reason why they need to be the only platform, since there are no technical reasons.
Thanks for the clarification. Unlike another post, I am not "sore". And I'm sorry I pushed a hot button. I also see the positive sides of many of their products, and I run them on several of my personal machines as well as work machines. I obviously took some of your comments the wrong way. I think I also was reacting to the post from "Anonymous Coward", and noticed after that you were playing on the spelling in your account name.
It would not be incorrect to say I have a pet peeve in respects to Microsoft -- I can't stand it when it is assumed that Microsoft is the first one to do something, when they mostly let the market develop and then come in. I was just trying to point out that Microsoft is not the first one to create a PIM, and the features you point out are not unique to Outlook.
And, their end result (because of the tight OS coupling and active execution of sent material) has created a whole host of problems that might be best avoided. I do agree with your comment on the business drivers. As long as the corporate powers bundle this stuff in with purchased hardware, its an uphill climb for any other product.
I'll stop now -- this is getting off topic.
I'm sorry, but this seems like a Microsoft sales person's post.
First of all (as pointed out by others), Outlook 2K has had as many security issues as other Microsoft products. The whole concept of receiving code through Email and executing automatically or semi-automatically needs to be re-evaluated.
Second, as an Outlook user you have to run Outlook Express if you want to read USENET (and stay in the Microsoft family). This functionality is left out for some unknown reason, requiring you to start Outlook Express and deal with all the dialogs as these programs fight for control of file types.
Third, the "lot of cool things" comments are thrown out as if this is the first program to do these things. The "PIM" concept has been around since DOS. Many of us have been using Notes, Ascend, etc., which have done good jobs with these concepts for groups or individuals.
Fourth, the "synch" concept is not new. Cell phone alerts are thrown out as if this didn't exist before Microsoft. Any script writer could create this through text pagers, saving the cost of Exchange and "MOM".
So, this is a "run out and get outlook" post that is written as if none of us heard of these things before Outlook. Without getting into the colossal blunder of integrating Outlook with the OS so your machine locks up every time your PIM tries to talk to the Exchange server.
Don't mean to be offensive, but I'm surprised there wasn't a stronger reaction to this.
Turn to the left. Now turn to the right. All that stuff outside the display is the real world. Go explore.
While you can't (affordably) duplicate the home theater yet, its just a matter of time. You can already duplicate the sound experience of most theaters, with DVD and surround technology being available for $500. It's just a matter of time before that 60 inch plasma screen comes down from $10K. I certainly agree that investing in public movie houses seems like a losing proposition in the USA. I don't expect public behavior to improve anytime soon...
The only thing I don't get about theater prices is why does it cost the same $8 to get into the $150M special effects laiden blockbuster as it costs to see the artsy snooze fest produced for $20M? If the theater doesn't make money on the showing, why don't they fill the seats by dropping the price on the poorly attended ones?
I hope this doesn't increase the number of sites with Passport logins. I've already created about 100 accounts and am getting tired of it.... ;-)
I'm not an audiophile (once I became a working musician I gave up on "money no object" sound), and I'm not in a hurry to replace the 400+ LP collection I have. But, I'm not as annoyed with this change as I was with the LP-to-CD one.
First, the hardware is already out and affordable. The Sony receiver I just bought is plugged into the CD player with an optical cable, and already understands CD and SACD. This is off-the-shelf stuff from Best Buy, not some stereo nerd store. So, I can listed to new and old formats on the same machine.
Second, Sony and someone else already are producing CD and SACD encoding on the same physical platter (didn't I read about this on Slashdot a few weeks ago?). So I get the new experience at home, and when I stick the disk in my car with the older player, it will play the CD format.
Seems to be that this will be a nice smooth transition, with media slowly being converted to dual use and I don't have to buy another copy of any of the CDs I already bought.
Unless that DVD version is what everyone goes to. Then I'm screwed again.
20 KHz is the average upper range for human hearing. Some can hear higher than this.
Select your operating system: Mac OS X v10.1.3-10.1.5* Mac OS 8.6/9 Win 98/NT/Me/2000/XP The official line from Apple. Although I thought QT6 was based on MPEG-4, so maybe there is a way. I guess the WINE route might work as well.
I've only seen this with a few grams.
If thrown on top of water it shoots around -- think of a rocket with no control. It may have melted a bit and broke apart (its a soft metal and melts at relatively low temperature), but it was inside a beaker and hard to tell. It happened fast and made a lot of smoke, smell, and noise.
If you dump the water on top (sodium in a dry beaker, then pour the water on top) the compression of the water on top of the rapid reation causes enough pressure to break the beaker (or to break a normal Pyrex beaker, anyway). You want to wear eye protection, as the broken glass explodes with pretty good force, enough to break the skin of the students sitting in the front row. Then, the chemistry teacher gets fired.
I think it would take a pretty small lake and a pretty big pile of sodium to substantially alter the pH of the lake. Guess it depends on how deep the lake is.
Sit in a coach seat for a few flights and you'll see the advantage. This laptop is much smaller that a typical 12 inch screen laptop (the screen is a letterbox format, not the typical screen proportions). If you wanted a separate camera and laptop, you still might want to give this form factor a look because it is so small.
I wouldn't compare this device to a laptop as much as I'd compare it to a PDA. A PDA that doesn't really fit into a pocket, but has the display you wish a PDA would have and the ability to look at a spreadsheet or document and comprehend it. Problem is -- it costs as much as a laptop.
The camera (at least at one point) was really sold for portable web-conferencing and not for video production. The ability to record MPEGs is more of a function of the newer processors. There's a firewire jack if you need to plug in a better camera.
How much R&D do you think it took to place a Palm III in a new case?
the only people still using them are CS grad students
This is a joke, right? I'm not a CS grad student, and my whole life is in my PDA. I now go on business trips with the PDA and not a laptop, since I can go a week without charging and use an attached keyboard. And, everyone else I see in my company is using them also -- they've replaced the "Day Runner" book.
Will parents and children buy these? Not for the sole function of being a parent or a child. But, anyone that wants to synchronize their 1000 address list on their computer with something that fits in their purse might want to spent $100 for this Palm device over the $500 for the WinCE device. And, they might happen to be a parent or a child.
I don't believe this guy is a nut
He's not a nut. He's a shrewd guy with an understanding of patent law and the dollars to go to court.
When you review his patents (see http://www.mercexchange.com), you'll find he's an expert at taking descriptions of business processes that have been around for years and placing "on a computer" at the end of them in a patent document. But there is nothing on his web site that indicates that he is a software designer, a database designer, a product developer, a computer scientist, or a business developer. There are no links to any actual products developed, or services delivered, or companies created. He is the patent equivalent of an ambulance chaser.
While I know little about patent law, Woolston's "business" (see link) seems to be creating patents, not creating software. MercExchange seems to be about quickly patenting things related to electronic commerce, without any ability to really put the things together.
I see things like these patents all the time in my business (writing software). Only we just call them "user requirements".
Note this product is a shortwave receiver, so by definition it is limited to the bands it pulls in. USA does not limit any shortwave I am aware of (although other countries do block things like "voice of america"). WinRadio has other products that are full spectrum receivers/scanners. For USA, mobile scanners are often OK (where they are restricted) for those with a ham radio license. The USA version of their full spectrum products do block out the 800 MHz cell telephone bands.
"By continuing to foster a rich developer community as we have in the past we can make sure the bulk of the talent is writing code for Windows and not Linux".
Unfortunately, the cost to get into this community has gotten too expensive. The subscription to many of the MSDN packages has passed $1000 annually. The open source community provides many equivalent tools at no cost. So, the long term question is if the open source community provides an incentive for the overall developer community.
Others have listed the companies that were former MS partners. Lotus, Novell, etc. HP will learn too, that to Microsoft "partner" means "someone we haven't figured out how to take their market share yet".
And how does the cost of HDTV compare to the cost of a real PC?
I didn't know this show made it past the first season. I'd rather see a PC version of My Dinner with Andre.
As pointed out -- its not censorship if the original work is still available (and it would be cheaper to purchase, as well).
I wonder if anyone has pointed out that providing a "clean" version of a movie might help increase sales? Seems to me there are a number of people that don't really go to movies because they don't need to see the "artistic vision" that results in a R rating. If there are alternate versions it would increase sales. While the director may not like it, I would think the studios would.
Anyway, how different is this from the editing that is done to get a movie onto television?