Is there a difference in anything but name between a "Service Pack" and "Update Rollup"?
In my experience, a Service Pack would generally include new features, whereas a Rollup package is just a bunch of bug fixes that install all at once.
This move seems to me to be MS trying to wean people away from 2k, so they can make more money from XP, 2003, etc. For most people, 2k is good enough, but it won't be for much longer if it's not kept supported with service packs.
I saw the result of a head-on between an SUV and a BMW Zx (1? 3? can't remember) about seven years ago. The BMW was so low to the ground that the SUV used it as a ramp, went airborne, flipped over, landed on its roof and killed the driver.
The quote I heard from him was along the lines of "at least they can't do to the Terminator franchise what Alien 3 did to the characters and story I created for Aliens." I guess that *might* be considered a blessing.
Only a few of the release groups could make the discs because of the hardware hacking involved, but once they got made, they got passed around all over.
This was true originally, but the tools to extract data from Dreamcast discs eventually became available to the general public. You could do it over the modem connection (which took about 24 hours per disc) or the broadband adapter (about an hour IIRC).
I bought all of my Dreamcast games, but I used the extraction tools to get at the audiovisual data on several discs, like to make my own Virtual On soundtrack CD.
True, getting outside and being active is important as well (perhaps join a gym, get into a workout regimine and encourage them to join you?)
I recommend paintball. The field I go to has a $15-$25 fee to play all day (9-5 or so), and you will burn more calories than just about any other recreational activity.
Martial arts are good too. I take ninjutsu on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I mention this because I've always disliked the idea of going to gyms, particularly when I was a teenager, but even then I would have liked both of the things above if someone had introduced me to them then.
I honestly don't see what the problem is with lots of online activity - I did the same thing for the first year or two I had internet access, although in those days it was shell only over 1200bps so I was mostly using email, IRC, and Usenet.
No they don't. The Firefly universe is set in a single habitable/teraformable-body-rich system, colonized (pretty recently) by a seeder ship.
I find this very hard to swallow. There was a different planet on pretty much every released episode, all of which were habitable, and none of which could be seen from the others. Unless the solar system in question is some sort of engineered thing where a blue giant provides light and warmth to a ring of planets running around a single orbit, it just doesn't make sense.
Do you have a reference to back this explanation up?
you dont read about it much today the anti-war groups lead by the likes of lindberg went a long way to delaying the US entry into WWII and as a result caused far more death and suffering by prolonging the war.
My WWII history is a little rusty, but if I understand correctly, people like Lindberg weren't anti-war so much as isolationists. They wanted the US to avoid getting entangled in wars that allegedly didn't affect itself, which is a fairly shortsighted view given the scope of the second World War.
I think February 9th makes the most sense as the date for downloadable/OXM demo disc content for Halo 2, most notably the final section of the game on Earth that was originally planned (Bungie staff mention it on the bonus DVD included with the Collector's Edition).
Finishing that chapter of the story still leaves a major cliffhanger that can lead into Halo 3 (no spoilers for people who haven't played through), lets MS keep their original release date for the game while allowing Bungie time to finish that level or levels, and brings more money to MS in the form of Live subscriptions and/or OXM sales.
I mean, I know that myself, as well as like minded people would probably be willing to work insane hours at minimum wage if it meant that we got to create some worthy games.
It's easy to think that until you have to actually do it day in and out for several years.
I *love* computers. I'm 26, so when I was a kid not everyone had one, but my dad thought ahead and got us an Apple IIe, and I've been hooked ever since.
I've been working in IT for the last six years. At one of my positions I ended up working an 80 hour week after a couple of 60-70 hour weeks. After that I had to take a week off (on the company's dime), because I was about ready to quit and never work in the industry again.
I cannot imagine what it's like for people who do it on a regular basis. People need time to do other things. I don't care how much money I'm making if I don't have time to take ninjutsu classes, play paintball or videogames, go to clubs, or whatever. It's just not worth it, and it *will* burn people out sooner or later no matter how much they love what they're working on.
I can't speak about GarageBand, but none of those others are drop-in replacements for Cakewalk/Sonar.
Logic is like a sci-fi set piece designed by a team of Germans wasted on PCP. I've tried using it before and couldn't even figure out how to send a SYSEX message.
Cubase is a sea of windows, and I also found it very unintuitive (although less so than "Logic").
ProTools is an awesome digital audio system, but the last time I used it the MIDI support was not very good. Maybe they've improved it recently, but I remember the focus being squarely on digital audio.
Cakewalk/Sonar are the only really intuitive MIDI/Digital Audio recording suites I've ever used. There used to be a Mac product with a similar interface, but I believe it was discontinued years ago. I think it was by MOTU. If Wired is like Sonar, I might consider setting up a Linux recording system the next time I have the space for one.
Where smoking burning leaves probably has some limiting factor on how much nicotine you get in your blood, you could probably really work yourself over with these things without turning green from too much smoke or passing out from CO and CO2.
Nicotine is a poison all on its own, so I would think it has its own limiting factor built in.
You can make a really nice insecticide for household plants by steeping some tobacco in water. Just thinking about that makes me not want to breathe cigarette smoke ever again.
People who are hardcore fans of a series often do whatever they can to expand on its world.
Re-making older games as a fan project is just another aspect of the same mentality that produces fan fiction/art, cosplaying, etc.
For example, if I had the time and the money, I would love to do something like this for Soul Reaver. I like playing Soul Reaver-esque games, but I would enjoy an updated version with improved graphics and mod-ability even more, because it's that particular game world that I like.
I don't know which version of the DVDs you have, but on mine the lightsabers have been completely re-rotoscoped to look pretty much the same as the ones in the prequels.
Their premise was that they shot people with paintballs (It isn't illegal to spill coffee on someone's shirt)
That sounds like a statement made by someone who's never actually played paintball - in reference to whoever wrote the script, not you.
The paint is only a minor concern, since it washes out relatively easily. However, the balls are propelled at several hundred feet per second. They can easily take out an eye, and can leave permanent scars at close range on unprotected skin.
It's an awesome game, but a marker is not something you should ever point at someone who isn't wearing at least a face mask.
Obviously you never played through the expansion pack for Battlezone. Let the Chinese get into space and the next thing you know they'll be building cloaked, super-fast hover tanks that kick the crap out of the American units you thought were so powerful in the original game.
One time I was at a bar with a bunch of ninjas after practicing at the ninja dojo. My friend (who is a ninja, but also a pirate, but also a babe, resulting in a great paradox in the lore of ninjas) thought "ooh, ninjas!" and sprayed all the other ninjas with Silly String. But she accidentally got some on the waitress, who decided to ban all the ninjas from the bar.
Then the ninjas totally flipped out and started stabbing people in the face while others took turns wailing on electric guitars. By the time it was all over, the bar totally looked like the opening shot from Bram Stoker's Dracula except instead of pikes all the people were impaled on pool cues because that's why the ninjas were at the bar in the first place and they wanted to make a point about denying ninjas their pool.
So you people just think twice the next time you start to get all hating on the ninjas. They might just flip out and go all taki ori zenpo kaiten from ichimunji no kamae on your punk pirate ass.
As has arisen in the post numerously, killing is natural. Combining skin and bone cells to grow a coat is not.
Dying at age 30 because you live in a mud hut with no healthcare and drink from a river that is used for waste disposal is natural.
Prolonging your life to 80 years or older through the use of pharmaceuticals and medical care is not.
Having twelve children of which more than half die off is natural.
Using birth control to limit or eliminate offspring altogether is not.
Humans consuming every possible resource until they've laid waste to the land like a plague of locusts is natural.
Consciously choosing to limit the use of unnecessary resources to benefit the other species on the planet is not.
We are not a natural species anymore; we are a technologically-augmented race. Growing things in a lab is just an extension of what we've been doing for the last few centuries. There are too many of us to live in a "natural" way, and the vast majority of us wouldn't want to if we really knew what it meant.
I find this manipulation of living things far more disrespectful to our environment, and all things living than harvesting the hide of dead cattle.
You find it less disrespectful to have something killed for your own benefit than to wear something that was grown in a lab? I find *that* extraordinarily creepy.
You are covered by and host to millions of things that are more alive than this coat. How is that any different?
We're growing cattle for their meat anyway - if we can't or won't use the leather (a byproduct of the cow) it would just go to waste.
Growing cattle en masse for meat is one of the worst possible things that can be done for the environment. It contributes to global warming through greenhouse gases, wastes agricultural space by growing feed and using water that could go to humans instead, et cetera.
A lot of cattle are even raised at the expense of rainforests, because people in e.g. South America will slash and burn e.g. the Amazon to make places to raise them.
The main reason that the meat industry is profitable is because they are able to sell so many by-products to be used in so many other ways - leather, gelatin, and so on. If, for example, cheaper vat-grown alternatives were used, I expect that meat prices would increase dramatically, and maybe Americans would end up eating food that is actually good for them and the planet instead of clogging up their arteries and digestive tract and helping to ensure the doom of the biosphere.
I would buy one of these jackets in a second if they were available commercially, but in the meantime I've found that Vegetarian Shoes' synthetic material lasts longer than the real thing anyway.
The people who were saavy enough to download and rip games were unlikely to be high enough in number to cause Sega to pull back.
I know that the plural of anecdote is not data, but every single Dreamcast owner I know had more pirated games than legitimate ones.
In fact, apart from the friend I bought mine from, I can't recall any of them actually having any legitimate games at all. The one I bought came with a roughly 25% original, 75% bootleg mix of discs.
I actually thought the tools used to pirate games were pretty cool - I used a broadband adapter to do things like copy my (legitimate) Soul Reaver disc to my PC so I could do some hacking and burn a custom disc, and also ripping the audio tracks from Virtual On to make my own soundtrack CD - but I was disappointed that more people couldn't see what the lack of retail game purchases was doing to the market for the system.
Think about it, when space travel will be cheap and if the technology is easily available to individuals, this could become the ultimate weapon for terrorists.
Yes, THINK OF TEH TERRORISTS!!!
What do you think they're going to do, conceal an orbital re-entry capable weapons delivery system in their carry-on luggage?
"Excuse me, I see a three meter by one meter bullet-shaped object in your duffel bag. Did anyone give you an ICBM warhead to bring outside the atmosphere for them?"
Think of how many cafes could be blown up with explosive belts, or skyscrapers blown up with moving trucks full of fertilizer for the same cost and effort as one space-based attack that might destroy a satellite or something if planned very well.
CD audio saw a similar success (DAT doesn't count, its a pro format, which, incidentaly, Betamax has become (or stayed, really))
DAT was not originally intended as a pro-audio-only format. It was supposed to replace cassette tapes. However, the recording industry forced the implementation of a serial copy prevention system on the manufacturers, which effectively killed it for home use.
A related issue was that originally DAT only supported 48KHz mode, which was done intentionally to prevent direct 44.1KHz copies of CDs being made. A lot of people think the additional 3.9KHz is for extra audio quality, but it hardly makes a difference. The entire 22.05 - 44.1KHz range is only an octave.
Betamax is not, and has never been, a pro format. You are thinking of Betacam, which is a different Sony product.
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Is there a difference in anything but name between a "Service Pack" and "Update Rollup"?
In my experience, a Service Pack would generally include new features, whereas a Rollup package is just a bunch of bug fixes that install all at once.
This move seems to me to be MS trying to wean people away from 2k, so they can make more money from XP, 2003, etc. For most people, 2k is good enough, but it won't be for much longer if it's not kept supported with service packs.
Mass always wins.
It depends on the type of collision.
I saw the result of a head-on between an SUV and a BMW Zx (1? 3? can't remember) about seven years ago. The BMW was so low to the ground that the SUV used it as a ramp, went airborne, flipped over, landed on its roof and killed the driver.
The driver of the BMW walked away.
though he gave his blessing.
The quote I heard from him was along the lines of "at least they can't do to the Terminator franchise what Alien 3 did to the characters and story I created for Aliens." I guess that *might* be considered a blessing.
Only a few of the release groups could make the discs because of the hardware hacking involved, but once they got made, they got passed around all over.
This was true originally, but the tools to extract data from Dreamcast discs eventually became available to the general public. You could do it over the modem connection (which took about 24 hours per disc) or the broadband adapter (about an hour IIRC).
I bought all of my Dreamcast games, but I used the extraction tools to get at the audiovisual data on several discs, like to make my own Virtual On soundtrack CD.
True, getting outside and being active is important as well (perhaps join a gym, get into a workout regimine and encourage them to join you?)
I recommend paintball. The field I go to has a $15-$25 fee to play all day (9-5 or so), and you will burn more calories than just about any other recreational activity.
Martial arts are good too. I take ninjutsu on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I mention this because I've always disliked the idea of going to gyms, particularly when I was a teenager, but even then I would have liked both of the things above if someone had introduced me to them then.
I honestly don't see what the problem is with lots of online activity - I did the same thing for the first year or two I had internet access, although in those days it was shell only over 1200bps so I was mostly using email, IRC, and Usenet.
No they don't. The Firefly universe is set in a single habitable/teraformable-body-rich system, colonized (pretty recently) by a seeder ship.
I find this very hard to swallow. There was a different planet on pretty much every released episode, all of which were habitable, and none of which could be seen from the others. Unless the solar system in question is some sort of engineered thing where a blue giant provides light and warmth to a ring of planets running around a single orbit, it just doesn't make sense.
Do you have a reference to back this explanation up?
Seems a little ironic to name a battle station 'Peace', though I guess it can be translated as 'Earth' too.
If you read the linked articles, this is discussed. One of the components was re-used from the planned MIR 2 project.
you dont read about it much today the anti-war groups lead by the likes of lindberg went a long way to delaying the US entry into WWII and as a result caused far more death and suffering by prolonging the war.
My WWII history is a little rusty, but if I understand correctly, people like Lindberg weren't anti-war so much as isolationists. They wanted the US to avoid getting entangled in wars that allegedly didn't affect itself, which is a fairly shortsighted view given the scope of the second World War.
Which means that Halo 3 is coming out because there has to be a vol. 2 which has to have Halo 3 music.
The article said the same thing, but it doesn't make any sense at all. Why would the soundtrack release progression be:
Halo soundtrack
Halo 2 soundtrack - volume one
Halo 2 soundtrack - volume two: Halo 3
?
It's a Chewbacca defence.
I think February 9th makes the most sense as the date for downloadable/OXM demo disc content for Halo 2, most notably the final section of the game on Earth that was originally planned (Bungie staff mention it on the bonus DVD included with the Collector's Edition).
Finishing that chapter of the story still leaves a major cliffhanger that can lead into Halo 3 (no spoilers for people who haven't played through), lets MS keep their original release date for the game while allowing Bungie time to finish that level or levels, and brings more money to MS in the form of Live subscriptions and/or OXM sales.
I mean, I know that myself, as well as like minded people would probably be willing to work insane hours at minimum wage if it meant that we got to create some worthy games.
It's easy to think that until you have to actually do it day in and out for several years.
I *love* computers. I'm 26, so when I was a kid not everyone had one, but my dad thought ahead and got us an Apple IIe, and I've been hooked ever since.
I've been working in IT for the last six years. At one of my positions I ended up working an 80 hour week after a couple of 60-70 hour weeks. After that I had to take a week off (on the company's dime), because I was about ready to quit and never work in the industry again.
I cannot imagine what it's like for people who do it on a regular basis. People need time to do other things. I don't care how much money I'm making if I don't have time to take ninjutsu classes, play paintball or videogames, go to clubs, or whatever. It's just not worth it, and it *will* burn people out sooner or later no matter how much they love what they're working on.
CakeWalk -> Logic Audio/Cubase/ProTools/GarageBand
I can't speak about GarageBand, but none of those others are drop-in replacements for Cakewalk/Sonar.
Logic is like a sci-fi set piece designed by a team of Germans wasted on PCP. I've tried using it before and couldn't even figure out how to send a SYSEX message.
Cubase is a sea of windows, and I also found it very unintuitive (although less so than "Logic").
ProTools is an awesome digital audio system, but the last time I used it the MIDI support was not very good. Maybe they've improved it recently, but I remember the focus being squarely on digital audio.
Cakewalk/Sonar are the only really intuitive MIDI/Digital Audio recording suites I've ever used. There used to be a Mac product with a similar interface, but I believe it was discontinued years ago. I think it was by MOTU. If Wired is like Sonar, I might consider setting up a Linux recording system the next time I have the space for one.
Where smoking burning leaves probably has some limiting factor on how much nicotine you get in your blood, you could probably really work yourself over with these things without turning green from too much smoke or passing out from CO and CO2.
Nicotine is a poison all on its own, so I would think it has its own limiting factor built in.
You can make a really nice insecticide for household plants by steeping some tobacco in water. Just thinking about that makes me not want to breathe cigarette smoke ever again.
People who are hardcore fans of a series often do whatever they can to expand on its world.
Re-making older games as a fan project is just another aspect of the same mentality that produces fan fiction/art, cosplaying, etc.
For example, if I had the time and the money, I would love to do something like this for Soul Reaver. I like playing Soul Reaver-esque games, but I would enjoy an updated version with improved graphics and mod-ability even more, because it's that particular game world that I like.
I don't know which version of the DVDs you have, but on mine the lightsabers have been completely re-rotoscoped to look pretty much the same as the ones in the prequels.
I have a friend who went to Canada to get her Laser Eye Surgery real cheap.
I don't know about you or your friend, but I wouldn't want the words "laser," "surgery," and "real cheap" together anywhere near *my* eyes.
Their premise was that they shot people with paintballs (It isn't illegal to spill coffee on someone's shirt)
That sounds like a statement made by someone who's never actually played paintball - in reference to whoever wrote the script, not you.
The paint is only a minor concern, since it washes out relatively easily. However, the balls are propelled at several hundred feet per second. They can easily take out an eye, and can leave permanent scars at close range on unprotected skin.
It's an awesome game, but a marker is not something you should ever point at someone who isn't wearing at least a face mask.
And why is this good news exactly?
Obviously you never played through the expansion pack for Battlezone. Let the Chinese get into space and the next thing you know they'll be building cloaked, super-fast hover tanks that kick the crap out of the American units you thought were so powerful in the original game.
Don't mock them. They have Real Ultimate Power.
Yeah, no kidding.
One time I was at a bar with a bunch of ninjas after practicing at the ninja dojo. My friend (who is a ninja, but also a pirate, but also a babe, resulting in a great paradox in the lore of ninjas) thought "ooh, ninjas!" and sprayed all the other ninjas with Silly String. But she accidentally got some on the waitress, who decided to ban all the ninjas from the bar.
Then the ninjas totally flipped out and started stabbing people in the face while others took turns wailing on electric guitars. By the time it was all over, the bar totally looked like the opening shot from Bram Stoker's Dracula except instead of pikes all the people were impaled on pool cues because that's why the ninjas were at the bar in the first place and they wanted to make a point about denying ninjas their pool.
So you people just think twice the next time you start to get all hating on the ninjas. They might just flip out and go all taki ori zenpo kaiten from ichimunji no kamae on your punk pirate ass.
As has arisen in the post numerously, killing is natural. Combining skin and bone cells to grow a coat is not.
Dying at age 30 because you live in a mud hut with no healthcare and drink from a river that is used for waste disposal is natural.
Prolonging your life to 80 years or older through the use of pharmaceuticals and medical care is not.
Having twelve children of which more than half die off is natural.
Using birth control to limit or eliminate offspring altogether is not.
Humans consuming every possible resource until they've laid waste to the land like a plague of locusts is natural.
Consciously choosing to limit the use of unnecessary resources to benefit the other species on the planet is not.
We are not a natural species anymore; we are a technologically-augmented race. Growing things in a lab is just an extension of what we've been doing for the last few centuries. There are too many of us to live in a "natural" way, and the vast majority of us wouldn't want to if we really knew what it meant.
I find this manipulation of living things far more disrespectful to our environment, and all things living than harvesting the hide of dead cattle.
You find it less disrespectful to have something killed for your own benefit than to wear something that was grown in a lab? I find *that* extraordinarily creepy.
You are covered by and host to millions of things that are more alive than this coat. How is that any different?
We're growing cattle for their meat anyway - if we can't or won't use the leather (a byproduct of the cow) it would just go to waste.
Growing cattle en masse for meat is one of the worst possible things that can be done for the environment. It contributes to global warming through greenhouse gases, wastes agricultural space by growing feed and using water that could go to humans instead, et cetera.
A lot of cattle are even raised at the expense of rainforests, because people in e.g. South America will slash and burn e.g. the Amazon to make places to raise them.
The main reason that the meat industry is profitable is because they are able to sell so many by-products to be used in so many other ways - leather, gelatin, and so on. If, for example, cheaper vat-grown alternatives were used, I expect that meat prices would increase dramatically, and maybe Americans would end up eating food that is actually good for them and the planet instead of clogging up their arteries and digestive tract and helping to ensure the doom of the biosphere.
I would buy one of these jackets in a second if they were available commercially, but in the meantime I've found that Vegetarian Shoes' synthetic material lasts longer than the real thing anyway.
The people who were saavy enough to download and rip games were unlikely to be high enough in number to cause Sega to pull back.
I know that the plural of anecdote is not data, but every single Dreamcast owner I know had more pirated games than legitimate ones.
In fact, apart from the friend I bought mine from, I can't recall any of them actually having any legitimate games at all. The one I bought came with a roughly 25% original, 75% bootleg mix of discs.
I actually thought the tools used to pirate games were pretty cool - I used a broadband adapter to do things like copy my (legitimate) Soul Reaver disc to my PC so I could do some hacking and burn a custom disc, and also ripping the audio tracks from Virtual On to make my own soundtrack CD - but I was disappointed that more people couldn't see what the lack of retail game purchases was doing to the market for the system.
Think about it, when space travel will be cheap and if the technology is easily available to individuals, this could become the ultimate weapon for terrorists.
Yes, THINK OF TEH TERRORISTS!!!
What do you think they're going to do, conceal an orbital re-entry capable weapons delivery system in their carry-on luggage?
"Excuse me, I see a three meter by one meter bullet-shaped object in your duffel bag. Did anyone give you an ICBM warhead to bring outside the atmosphere for them?"
Think of how many cafes could be blown up with explosive belts, or skyscrapers blown up with moving trucks full of fertilizer for the same cost and effort as one space-based attack that might destroy a satellite or something if planned very well.
some of the excellent books written by timothy zahn
I see that once again I've been pulled across to a parallel universe similar to my own, but with substantial differences nonetheless.
CD audio saw a similar success (DAT doesn't count, its a pro format, which, incidentaly, Betamax has become (or stayed, really))
DAT was not originally intended as a pro-audio-only format. It was supposed to replace cassette tapes. However, the recording industry forced the implementation of a serial copy prevention system on the manufacturers, which effectively killed it for home use.
A related issue was that originally DAT only supported 48KHz mode, which was done intentionally to prevent direct 44.1KHz copies of CDs being made. A lot of people think the additional 3.9KHz is for extra audio quality, but it hardly makes a difference. The entire 22.05 - 44.1KHz range is only an octave.
Betamax is not, and has never been, a pro format. You are thinking of Betacam, which is a different Sony product.