Don't forget Douglas Adams has also been involved in a few excellent computer games:
HHGTTG: an Infocom classic text adventure. Bureaucracy: Another Infocom text adventure Starship Titanic: Graphical adventure.
All of which you can find on eBay most of the time. One even contains Peril-Sensitive sunglasses.
I didn't play the last, since it was in the middle of the Titanic hype and some girl had just made me sit through that movie twice. HHGTTG is a true classic, and was the first adventure game I got through without any hints. I played it on a CGA-equipped genuine IBM PC with one of those excellent clicky keyboards, and enjoyed every second. It also made me more curious about tea, which I rediscovered and learned how to make properly as a result.
Crowther and Woods' Colossal Cave Adventure was the first one I ever played, on a family friend's CP/M system. But HHGTTG and that clicky keyboard were the things that made me really decide that I was going to do something with computers. Thanks Douglas, you changed my life!
The only users will be open source enthusiasts. There has already been too much investment in software and hardware for this to overtake MP3, at least in the consumer space. I'm sorry to have to say it but I think that's the truth. MP3 got commercial and successful and after that anything else is an also-ran. If you like, it's the difference between Amiga and IBM, or VHS and Beta - the one with the marketing won, and technical merit just doesn't matter.
No - the appeal of Palm has always been that it does simple tasks superlatively. If I had to name another device that works so well I couldn't think of anything in the same space - you have to go to the other classic simple devices, like the wheel or the ballpoint pen. Even if there was a fully-featured Crusoe-powered web pad for the same money as a Palm you would still have people preferring their Palm device. It's still smaller and simpler, and the batteries still last much, much longer. I don't believe Palm's success it built on the nerd factor at all. Most Palm users I see day-to-day are in personal contact jobs - sales, marketing, business devlopment etc. It's the personal networking tool par excellence.
A man walked into a pet store and saw three monkeys sitting in cages. Under the first monkey was a sign - "$20,000". Amazed, he asked why so expensive? The shop guy said "he's a C monkey - write great code, works for peanuts." The next monkey's sign read "$50,000". "Oh, he's a C++ monkey - does OO design too, very clever." The last monkey sign said "$1,000,000". "Wow!" said the man. "What does THIS monkey do?" "I don't know, but he says he's a contractor."
To be perfectly honest, a lot of the time I don't enjoy programming. I do it professionally, and the reason I still do it is money.
Sometimes I hate it and think about other things I could do, and there are a lot of choices open. I think of it as a bit like golf. Remember your first game of golf (if you've ever played)? Frustrating, I bet - except for that one shot that flew straight and true in an delicately skyward arc before coming to rest, in plain sight, sort of where you wanted it to be. Programming is like that. Those days when you FINISH a big project (and have a beer with the QA people you wanted to kill the week before), or the times when you write 500 lines of code with all kinds of heinous pointer transformations (and it works first time), or when you think up some new and novel way of doing something (in fact so cool that you hope the patent lawyers don't make you write up an application) - those days make it worthwhile.
My goals, as stated, are to make money. It's a good field to be in if you have that goal and I think it will be so for a long time. Dismantling the Microsoft hegemony is a worthy goal too, as is perpetuating the Microsoft hegemony:-) Whatever floats your boat. Personally I use what works, pay for it if that's what the license says, and don't much care who wrote it. Once I've made the money I'll be a recreational programmer, then I can get into open source full-time.
The thing that will most decide what your goals are is your personal interest in technology. What you like using, and what you feel is important, will change the world, whatever, that, more than lucrative job offers in other fields, will decide what you do. At the end of the day, if you derive no personal pleasure from what you create you may as well become an accountant. I went for embedded because I like to build things that ordinary people use - it's a buzz to know there are millions out there! Another factor might be language. I get to write in C, and rarely see anything else (maybe some assembly).
Getting there can be difficult. You will most likely spend anywhere from two to twenty years maintaining, porting or otherwise having to deal with somebody else's code. And you will come to know that nobody else in the world writes code just the way you like it written. You probably won't get to do your own stuff from design to test plan for a while, but it happens eventually. When you're there then you've arrived.
Of course if you an elite graphics programmer who has sold 2 million units in Wal-Mart (but nobody's ever heard of you, or your company, and your website doesn't appear to exist) - pick up Visual Basic, and stay there. You're only fooling yourself:-)
This is pretty cool. How long before we see web sites providing calculator software, accessible by calculators and for calculators? In fact how long before calculators are a thing of the past and the general-purpose wireless MP3-enabled CDMA touchscreen device can become a calculator at will?
OK, so I need a new calculator. It appears that the 85 is an old model, no longer available. Anyone recommend a new one?
Strangely enough the CD part worked OK when connected to the parallel port. Most of the problem was with the drivers and included software. The Shuttle drivers caused more BSODs than anything I have used to date. And there was one effect that was totally mystifying - when the CD was connected, the floppy drive stopped working. It was still visible to the system, just reported every disk as bad. Certainly it was Shuttle's fault. But HP slapped their name on it - they wear the reputation it creates.
"For our E100 / E105 customers, Casio will offer a choice of two exciting programs that will allow you to get all of the latest features of the Microsoft Pocket PC Operating System. You can either send us your device and we will upgrade the ROM for you or you can Trade-In your E100/E105 and get a new 32MB Pocket PC for $199 (plus tax)."
* Valid for US Models and US Residents Only
You've got to love anything that annoys Canadians:-) Joke! Joke, OK! Stop throwing moose!
I should have mentioned - I have HP-branded, specific-for-LaserJet, $2 more than other brands paper.
Those are OEM'd by HP, they are actually made by Mitsubishi
No, the drive itself is a Philips. And even if HP didn't make every nut and bolt like a hi-tech Unabomber, it says, right on the front, "HP". When you place your name on a product you wear the reputation it creates.
the market HP is going after with those level of products is joe average home pc user,
Silly me. I must not have read all those advertisements closely enough.
(click click)
Ah, there it is - on the HP web page - all of my products have "*Does not actually work. Choose a more expensive product to receive basic functionality."
HP Quality control has been shite for a while, at least in their consumer products. I have a LaserJet 2100N - leaving the almost useless JetDirect managent software aside, it FOLDS OVER the top of pages when I'm trying to print double sided (and jams every 6 or so). OK on single pages, but why use twice the paper? I don't have the room for a full-duplex printer. Then there's my external CD-RW drive, a 7200e with driver software by Shuttle - utter shit. The only way I made that lemon useful was to take the drive out of the enclosure and put it in a machine as an IDE device. The early 620LX CE machine had hinge problems, and keyboard that felt DEAD. It's a long, long list, and a sad one when you remember the quality of earlier products, like their calculators and older printers (wish I had my 6MP back).
If they're going to con people like this they should create a low-end brand, like National Panasonic did with TEAC years ago. Then the salesmen can say "don't buy TEAC, it's junk, buy HP!" - and people for whom Wal-Mart is a lifestyle choice can buy the TEAC gear.
Maybe they spent all the QA department's budget on all those 3-double-page Agilent magazine spreads.
Some of these guys have nothing better do to I guess. This article is about as useful as those old motherboard reviews that make judgements about power supply stability by counting capacitors - like they have a clue how many or what kind are really required anyway.
For a start, a 5mm grid? OK, if you want to not take too long in making your mesaurements. And don't forget those measurements were made by hand and eye using some unknown micrometer.
Second, the cache chips do not get very hot anyway. If you look at an Athlon minus the plastic outer shell you can see that the raised metal doesn't even touch the cache chips, there is a 1mm chunk of heatsink goo providing all contact. The part that matters is the part right above the die of the Athlon. And according to ryemax's questionable measurements, it's 100% flat - of course it isn't, but it's flatter than he can measure.
Lapping can't really hurt if it's done properly, and not to excess, but I can imagine lots of people taking a piece of sandpaper to their plates and making it into a nice rounded lump. The Athlon heat spreader plate has great big pins sticking out of it, so you can't lay it flat on a piece of glass while lapping - obviously he didn't do that. You could glue fine-grit paper to a piece of wood, but would the wood be flat? And while I'm ranting I have to laugh at those articles that show a PPGA Celeron wrapped up like a mummy so it doesn't get wet during sanding - these chips are allowed to get wet! I used to build prototypes by hand, wash the rosin off with solvent and then lather the whole board up with palmolive and a paintbrush before rinsing in water and drying in hot air.
If you do lap a chip don't bother with 1500 grit, you'll be there all night. And don't expect this to help very much. If a chip won't POST or boot at a certain clock speed then it's not going to do it lapped either, all you're looking for is to keep heat down once it builds up, possibly avoiding a crash once you're up and running.
A word on Athlon heatsinks: the standard one generally works fine. Two great alternatives are the Alpha 7125, and the Arctic Circle. I suspect other Alpha heatsinks like the PPGA or FCPGA versions would also be good on an Athlon, but the mounting hardware is wrong. The heatsinks on offer at http://www.coolwhip.dk look like they are also good but fit in a more constrained space. They also have peltier, slot 1 and socket 370 models.
Overclocking is about more speed for less money just like putting a big rear spoiler on your Honda is about performance - it is a bit, under certain conditions, but mostly it's just about looks. It's about having shiny flat surfaces, a big shiny copper or milled aluminium heatsink, or big dual fans. No wonder there is a market for cases like the submarine. (http://www.nikao.net/) It's also about feeling like you're sticking it to a big company. Well, as long as you ignore the fact that a top heatsink costs up to $60, and a "golden fingers" voltage and multipler switch can also cost up to $60. But remember, it's not AMD or Intel that got the money.
I do it - I have a Celeron 400 that's happy at 600 with a nice Alpha heatsink on it, as a third machine. I've extended that machine's useful (not operating) life a little.
The whole WAP protocol/corporate support is still very unstable
To keep it polite, you have some imagination! You only have to visit www.wapforum.org to disprove this statement. The WAP protocol is NOT unstable -go get the specs for yourself. Attend a bi-monthly WAP forum meeting and see representatives from ALL the vendors, including Symbian, Microsoft, Phone.com, Ericsson, Nokia and others planning the next enhancements. Go ask all the big handset manufacturers whether they will ship WAP-enabled devices in 2000.
I can understand why you think this - here in the USA the fragmented standards used for mobile device communications has slowed the adoption of WAP, but in Europe it's live, and it's big. You have a lot to learn about the state of WAP.
Here in the UK, we have WAP already, and despite the industry's best efforts to prove the contrary, it's damn boring
When I got a DVD player it was damn boring too, after I had watched the only disc I owned. Then I got more movies.
Wait for the content, and realize what WAP is supposed to do - it's a tool, not an entertainment medium. If you expect to go web surfing with a WAP device you might get bored, yes. Same goes for using Lynx.
>mystified as to why you should be getting the >perks and previews which you claim to receive
It's no mystery: - pay for the hardware and anyone can have a G4. - pay for the developer program and anyone can have DP4. I can't send it to you, as that would violate my license. Nor would it be included if I sold the G4 - I'd scratch some reflective coating off the CD and toss it. The days of CD-beer-coaster-chic went when AOL made it commonplace.
The G4 was to be the main machine but it just wasn't good enough. Great hardware - terminally lame OS. Visual C++ is a far better development environment than Codewarrior. The Mac DVD player can't sync the sound to the images correctly. The mouse is useless (luckily the MS Intellimouse w. IntelliEye is supported).
I invested in it because I had high hopes for the future of the Mac. They are dead yet but Apple is beginning to look like it will again fail to deliver the promised modern OS.
(Postman just arrived. Maybe it's in today's mail?)
Time to boot up the Mac again. It hasn't been used much since I got a SB Live Platinum and GeForce DDR in the main system - now the PC is a better DVD player than the Mac it pretty much gathers dust.
I'll be waiting eagerly for my DP4 CD in the mail. And if it turns out to be as disappointing as DP3 was, there'll soon be a cheapish G4 450MHz for sale. Expressions of interest are invited, I'm not that confident:-) And if it turns out that Apple really have pushed the real product back to 2001, I'll never touch an Apple product again.
Copeland, Raphsody, BeOS and X - it's like being a member of a cult that repeatedly predicts the coming of a saviour.
Are you a Linux open source hacker, programming for fun and no profit? Do you stay two generations behind in CPUs to max your price/performance ratio? Have you NEVER bought a complete system? Then they are overpriced.
Are you in the IT department of some Fortune 1000 company, or perhaps a developer of a graphically intensive application and are toying with the idea of a Linux port? Do most of your systems cost more than $3000 anyway, and do you buy many every year? Not overpriced.
They're not for me, as my franken-athlon is performing quite nicely. And a PC Power and Cooling case is good enough. And there are sexier cases out there if I cared enough.
If anyone has a Japanese PS2 and would like to get English menus, here's what you do right after a reboot:
Down (move cursor to System Configuration) Circle (select) Up (language selection) Circle (select) Right (move to English) Circle (select)
From then on things should become clear.... It's not ALL English but it is better.
Incidentally I have a 1.01 version (was in Akihabara the weekend after the 1.00s sold out) and the Circle + Square any region hack doesn't work for me.
Say what you like about PlayStation, but it had the all-time best racing game - Gran Turismo. Nothing else came close. If I had the space for a Daytona machine at home that might be better - but not by much. I'll buy a PS2 JUST for GT2000 when it is released later this year.
(Metal Gear Solid? Nice concept, but totally lame story and characterizations. I mean, picture Brian Denehy, Christian Slater and Asia Carrera)
Slashdot Mirror
I hope you remembered to mount a scratch monkey. :-)
Don't forget Douglas Adams has also been involved in a few excellent computer games:
HHGTTG: an Infocom classic text adventure.
Bureaucracy: Another Infocom text adventure
Starship Titanic: Graphical adventure.
All of which you can find on eBay most of the time. One even contains Peril-Sensitive sunglasses.
I didn't play the last, since it was in the middle of the Titanic hype and some girl had just made me sit through that movie twice. HHGTTG is a true classic, and was the first adventure game I got through without any hints. I played it on a CGA-equipped genuine IBM PC with one of those excellent clicky keyboards, and enjoyed every second. It also made me more curious about tea, which I rediscovered and learned how to make properly as a result.
Crowther and Woods' Colossal Cave Adventure was the first one I ever played, on a family friend's CP/M system. But HHGTTG and that clicky keyboard were the things that made me really decide that I was going to do something with computers. Thanks Douglas, you changed my life!
The only users will be open source enthusiasts. There has already been too much investment in software and hardware for this to overtake MP3, at least in the consumer space. I'm sorry to have to say it but I think that's the truth.
MP3 got commercial and successful and after that anything else is an also-ran. If you like, it's the difference between Amiga and IBM, or VHS and Beta - the one with the marketing won, and technical merit just doesn't matter.
No - the appeal of Palm has always been that it does simple tasks superlatively. If I had to name another device that works so well I couldn't think of anything in the same space - you have to go to the other classic simple devices, like the wheel or the ballpoint pen. Even if there was a fully-featured Crusoe-powered web pad for the same money as a Palm you would still have people preferring their Palm device. It's still smaller and simpler, and the batteries still last much, much longer.
I don't believe Palm's success it built on the nerd factor at all. Most Palm users I see day-to-day are in personal contact jobs - sales, marketing, business devlopment etc. It's the personal networking tool par excellence.
How about "this is the Battlefield Earth of computer games"?
But I think critics had even more fun with that disaster.
A man walked into a pet store and saw three monkeys sitting in cages. Under the first monkey was a sign - "$20,000". Amazed, he asked why so expensive? The shop guy said "he's a C monkey - write great code, works for peanuts." The next monkey's sign read "$50,000". "Oh, he's a C++ monkey - does OO design too, very clever." The last monkey sign said "$1,000,000". "Wow!" said the man. "What does THIS monkey do?"
"I don't know, but he says he's a contractor."
Sometimes I hate it and think about other things I could do, and there are a lot of choices open. I think of it as a bit like golf. Remember your first game of golf (if you've ever played)? Frustrating, I bet - except for that one shot that flew straight and true in an delicately skyward arc before coming to rest, in plain sight, sort of where you wanted it to be. Programming is like that. Those days when you FINISH a big project (and have a beer with the QA people you wanted to kill the week before), or the times when you write 500 lines of code with all kinds of heinous pointer transformations (and it works first time), or when you think up some new and novel way of doing something (in fact so cool that you hope the patent lawyers don't make you write up an application) - those days make it worthwhile.
My goals, as stated, are to make money. It's a good field to be in if you have that goal and I think it will be so for a long time. Dismantling the Microsoft hegemony is a worthy goal too, as is perpetuating the Microsoft hegemony :-) Whatever floats your boat. Personally I use what works, pay for it if that's what the license says, and don't much care who wrote it. Once I've made the money I'll be a recreational programmer, then I can get into open source full-time.
The thing that will most decide what your goals are is your personal interest in technology. What you like using, and what you feel is important, will change the world, whatever, that, more than lucrative job offers in other fields, will decide what you do. At the end of the day, if you derive no personal pleasure from what you create you may as well become an accountant. I went for embedded because I like to build things that ordinary people use - it's a buzz to know there are millions out there! Another factor might be language. I get to write in C, and rarely see anything else (maybe some assembly).
Getting there can be difficult. You will most likely spend anywhere from two to twenty years maintaining, porting or otherwise having to deal with somebody else's code. And you will come to know that nobody else in the world writes code just the way you like it written. You probably won't get to do your own stuff from design to test plan for a while, but it happens eventually. When you're there then you've arrived.
Of course if you an elite graphics programmer who has sold 2 million units in Wal-Mart (but nobody's ever heard of you, or your company, and your website doesn't appear to exist) - pick up Visual Basic, and stay there. You're only fooling yourself :-)
This is pretty cool. How long before we see web sites providing calculator software, accessible by calculators and for calculators? In fact how long before calculators are a thing of the past and the general-purpose wireless MP3-enabled CDMA touchscreen device can become a calculator at will?
OK, so I need a new calculator. It appears that the 85 is an old model, no longer available. Anyone recommend a new one?
Strangely enough the CD part worked OK when connected to the parallel port. Most of the problem was with the drivers and included software. The Shuttle drivers caused more BSODs than anything I have used to date. And there was one effect that was totally mystifying - when the CD was connected, the floppy drive stopped working. It was still visible to the system, just reported every disk as bad.
Certainly it was Shuttle's fault. But HP slapped their name on it - they wear the reputation it creates.
http://support.casio.com/tradein.htm
"For our E100 / E105 customers, Casio will offer a choice of two exciting programs that will allow you to get all of the latest features of the Microsoft Pocket PC Operating System. You can either send us your device and we will upgrade the ROM for you or you can Trade-In your E100/E105 and get a new 32MB Pocket PC for $199 (plus tax)."
* Valid for US Models and US Residents Only
You've got to love anything that annoys Canadians :-) Joke! Joke, OK! Stop throwing moose!
Use better paper
I should have mentioned - I have HP-branded, specific-for-LaserJet, $2 more than other brands paper.
Those are OEM'd by HP, they are actually made by Mitsubishi
No, the drive itself is a Philips. And even if HP didn't make every nut and bolt like a hi-tech Unabomber, it says, right on the front, "HP". When you place your name on a product you wear the reputation it creates.
the market HP is going after with those level of products is joe average home pc user,
Silly me. I must not have read all those advertisements closely enough.
(click click)
Ah, there it is - on the HP web page - all of my products have "*Does not actually work. Choose a more expensive product to receive basic functionality."
If they're going to con people like this they should create a low-end brand, like National Panasonic did with TEAC years ago. Then the salesmen can say "don't buy TEAC, it's junk, buy HP!" - and people for whom Wal-Mart is a lifestyle choice can buy the TEAC gear.
Maybe they spent all the QA department's budget on all those 3-double-page Agilent magazine spreads.
It's not just for Linux, it is Mac, Windows and Linux - simultaneous release, and ALL in the one box.
For a start, a 5mm grid? OK, if you want to not take too long in making your mesaurements. And don't forget those measurements were made by hand and eye using some unknown micrometer.
Second, the cache chips do not get very hot anyway. If you look at an Athlon minus the plastic outer shell you can see that the raised metal doesn't even touch the cache chips, there is a 1mm chunk of heatsink goo providing all contact. The part that matters is the part right above the die of the Athlon. And according to ryemax's questionable measurements, it's 100% flat - of course it isn't, but it's flatter than he can measure.
Lapping can't really hurt if it's done properly, and not to excess, but I can imagine lots of people taking a piece of sandpaper to their plates and making it into a nice rounded lump. The Athlon heat spreader plate has great big pins sticking out of it, so you can't lay it flat on a piece of glass while lapping - obviously he didn't do that. You could glue fine-grit paper to a piece of wood, but would the wood be flat? And while I'm ranting I have to laugh at those articles that show a PPGA Celeron wrapped up like a mummy so it doesn't get wet during sanding - these chips are allowed to get wet! I used to build prototypes by hand, wash the rosin off with solvent and then lather the whole board up with palmolive and a paintbrush before rinsing in water and drying in hot air.
If you do lap a chip don't bother with 1500 grit, you'll be there all night. And don't expect this to help very much. If a chip won't POST or boot at a certain clock speed then it's not going to do it lapped either, all you're looking for is to keep heat down once it builds up, possibly avoiding a crash once you're up and running.
A word on Athlon heatsinks: the standard one generally works fine. Two great alternatives are the Alpha 7125, and the Arctic Circle. I suspect other Alpha heatsinks like the PPGA or FCPGA versions would also be good on an Athlon, but the mounting hardware is wrong. The heatsinks on offer at http://www.coolwhip.dk look like they are also good but fit in a more constrained space. They also have peltier, slot 1 and socket 370 models.
Overclocking is about more speed for less money just like putting a big rear spoiler on your Honda is about performance - it is a bit, under certain conditions, but mostly it's just about looks. It's about having shiny flat surfaces, a big shiny copper or milled aluminium heatsink, or big dual fans. No wonder there is a market for cases like the submarine. (http://www.nikao.net/) It's also about feeling like you're sticking it to a big company. Well, as long as you ignore the fact that a top heatsink costs up to $60, and a "golden fingers" voltage and multipler switch can also cost up to $60. But remember, it's not AMD or Intel that got the money.
I do it - I have a Celeron 400 that's happy at 600 with a nice Alpha heatsink on it, as a third machine. I've extended that machine's useful (not operating) life a little.
To keep it polite, you have some imagination! You only have to visit www.wapforum.org to disprove this statement. The WAP protocol is NOT unstable -go get the specs for yourself. Attend a bi-monthly WAP forum meeting and see representatives from ALL the vendors, including Symbian, Microsoft, Phone.com, Ericsson, Nokia and others planning the next enhancements. Go ask all the big handset manufacturers whether they will ship WAP-enabled devices in 2000.
I can understand why you think this - here in the USA the fragmented standards used for mobile device communications has slowed the adoption of WAP, but in Europe it's live, and it's big. You have a lot to learn about the state of WAP.
When I got a DVD player it was damn boring too, after I had watched the only disc I owned. Then I got more movies.
Wait for the content, and realize what WAP is supposed to do - it's a tool, not an entertainment medium. If you expect to go web surfing with a WAP device you might get bored, yes. Same goes for using Lynx.
Does anyone have a physical mailing address for Metallica? I'd like to send back some CDs that I don't want any more.
Terminus has gone gold, according to Station Terminus, and an email received by myself. Chuck's email says I made the first 100 list!
It's no mystery:
- pay for the hardware and anyone can have a G4.
- pay for the developer program and anyone can have DP4. I can't send it to you, as that would violate my license. Nor would it be included if I sold the G4 - I'd scratch some reflective coating off the CD and toss it. The days of CD-beer-coaster-chic went when AOL made it commonplace.
The G4 was to be the main machine but it just wasn't good enough. Great hardware - terminally lame OS. Visual C++ is a far better development environment than Codewarrior. The Mac DVD player can't sync the sound to the images correctly. The mouse is useless (luckily the MS Intellimouse w. IntelliEye is supported).
I invested in it because I had high hopes for the future of the Mac. They are dead yet but Apple is beginning to look like it will again fail to deliver the promised modern OS.
(Postman just arrived. Maybe it's in today's mail?)
...but that's not a fair comparison - people _like_ using the etch-a-sketch.
Jobs listening to a customer? Nah. In fact, Jobs listening to anyone? ROFL!
I'll be waiting eagerly for my DP4 CD in the mail. And if it turns out to be as disappointing as DP3 was, there'll soon be a cheapish G4 450MHz for sale. Expressions of interest are invited, I'm not that confident :-) And if it turns out that Apple really have pushed the real product back to 2001, I'll never touch an Apple product again.
Copeland, Raphsody, BeOS and X - it's like being a member of a cult that repeatedly predicts the coming of a saviour.
Are you a Linux open source hacker, programming for fun and no profit? Do you stay two generations behind in CPUs to max your price/performance ratio? Have you NEVER bought a complete system? Then they are overpriced.
Are you in the IT department of some Fortune 1000 company, or perhaps a developer of a graphically intensive application and are toying with the idea of a Linux port? Do most of your systems cost more than $3000 anyway, and do you buy many every year? Not overpriced.
They're not for me, as my franken-athlon is performing quite nicely. And a PC Power and Cooling case is good enough. And there are sexier cases out there if I cared enough.
If anyone has a Japanese PS2 and would like to get English menus, here's what you do right after a reboot:
Down (move cursor to System Configuration)
Circle (select)
Up (language selection)
Circle (select)
Right (move to English)
Circle (select)
From then on things should become clear....
It's not ALL English but it is better.
Incidentally I have a 1.01 version (was in Akihabara the weekend after the 1.00s sold out) and the Circle + Square any region hack doesn't work for me.
Say what you like about PlayStation, but it had the all-time best racing game - Gran Turismo. Nothing else came close. If I had the space for a Daytona machine at home that might be better - but not by much. I'll buy a PS2 JUST for GT2000 when it is released later this year.
(Metal Gear Solid? Nice concept, but totally lame story and characterizations. I mean, picture Brian Denehy, Christian Slater and Asia Carrera)