...I will be buying a $150-$200 GeForce in a few months - to replace my, ahem, TNT2. *duck*
I replaced my TNT2 with a GeForce4 a couple of months ago. Of course, the boost in performance was astounding, but the old TNT2 did a great job with newer games - I played through Max Payne and Black & White with no problems and perfectly decent graphics. I only got a GeForce4 after NWN's Aurora Toolset Beta convinced me I needed something a little more modern. The TNT's residing in a built-from-parts Linux server and works like a charm.
I agree with you on your point regarding "good enough" picture quality and low-priced cameras. I just thought you came off as a mite disingenuous by grouping cameras into $2,000+ SLR models and "piece-of-crap" consumer models, when there are plenty of "prosumer" cameras in the $500-$1000 range that offer excellent photo quality and color reproduction (albeit without the Microdrive or fine adjustments of a professional camera).
Not true. I have a Sony DSC-P1 Cybershot that cost around $500 when I got it (it's disco'd, so it's probably less if you can find it now). It shoots at a max resolution of 2048*1536 and can save as a TIFF. That will print a good-looking 8x10 and an excellent 5x7. Granted, you can't hold more than a couple of photos on anything smaller than a 128 Meg MemoryStick, but the quality (especially black-and-white) is excellent for the price.
Re:Let's hope they do a better job than ATi
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Mac PVR Coming Soon
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
I mean, really. I see these people jumping around like morons, and while it's entertaining to watch, it's also a sad commentary at how few people realize how trivially easy it is to beat the game by simply changing the play methodology away from the expected.
Yes, but they're having fun.
Re:time to ditch Microserf XP?
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Gnome 2.0 RC1
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· Score: 1
Check out Best Buy and GameStop - they're clearing out their Dreamcast inventory, and if you do some scouring, you can pick up lots of stuff. I've picked up 5 games so far for $5 apiece, and some extra controllers to bank for when my current ones die. The only games I've seen that are still in the $40 - $50 range are recent sports titles.
I only have FM and AM radio in my car and I pay $120 a year for NPR (or at least WBEZ-Chicago). I wonder how much NPR gets from XM/Sirius with their signals rebroadcast on their service.
With the Playstation 2 on the shelves for a year prior to release and the Xbox on the way, I think Nintendo had no choice but to release the Cube and wait for the system sellers to roll in. The launch library was (I thought) a little thin, but it will flesh out eventually. Perhaps in a less cutthroat market, they could have held out until at least Mario Sunshine was ready, but who knows?
Really? That's kind of a boilerplate assessment. I'd take Super Monkey Ball over ET any day of the week. Of course, I'd also take Adventure over Wrestlemania X8, so I guess I agree with you on principle in some cases:).
Square and Disney teamed up for an interesting-looking RPG called (note: full-screen Flash-ified link ahead)Kingdom Hearts that will have an amalgam of Square-style characters along with Disney icons (as well as Final Fantasy and other characters from Square's universes). This will be a Playstation 2 game, but if Square and Nintendo mend fences (as is rumored) you might see it on the Cube.
Also, Rareware has as license for 12 Disney-based games for Nintendo systems. I don't believe they fulfilled all of them on the N64, so you should see more Disney character-based games on the Cube soon.
If (theoretically) Microsoft were to release a version of Office for Linux or some other open-source OS, they could just put out a binary and keep the source to themselves. Nothing says you have to run open-source software on *nix - you can run closed binaries just as well (assuming they're compatible with your setup of course)...
...but most people will not spend $170+ for a HD+Modem just to get online
Most people may not, but I will. The problem with console peripherals in the past was there really wasn't any added value other than eye candy - the Genesis' vaporware VR system or its all-too-real (and dreadfully unsuccessful) 32X come to mind, as well as the TurboBooster for the TG16 or the Sega CD (which I liked - I never could get through Sol-Feace though.
Anyway, this is a different situation. Not only will you get a modem/ethernet adapter, but you'll get a hard drive that any game developer can access. This may open the doors for custom football teams, gargantuan RPG's that can be one-time loaded onto the HDD and played without disk switching, new worlds and monsters for Everquest can be immediately downloaded... the possibilities are far deeper than any previous console add-on has offered, and I think that prior paradigm will give way to the huge leaps this can offer to almost any gamer.
Actually, there is a huge advance in movie projection technology that's not digital. Ebert's choice of the best next-generation projection medium is Maxivision 48, which is a fine-grain 48 frames-per-second method of projection that presents extremely high-quality pictures with no motion blur on pans and lateral dolly shots.
DVD certainly does offer a clearer picture, but that can't be extrapolated to digital projection just yet. It's very bright and the contrast and color are excellent, but I've seen them both, and I think Maxivision is considerably better at this time. However, since it's not "digital" it must be antiquated and not worth the trouble. Besides, wide adoption of digital is economically attractive to studios eventually, since movies will be downloadable instead of deliverable. That, and you won't have to worry about film splicing anymore.
I've seen a number of video rental stores that occasionally offload some of their inventory. I've picked up some NES and Genesis games at decent prices (and in surprisingly good quality) there, and I've seen the odd Neo-Geo rig as well, usually going for $500 or so, but as a package with two controllers and 10-12 games. A good deal, but I've never come across one when I'm ready to drop that kind of green. Ah well, Ebay for me...
I have a NYT login set to a spam trap email at my domain. I opted out of any "business partner" affiliations or the like, and answered all their questions. I've had it for around two years and I haven't recieved a single piece of spam from them. YMMV, of course, but I'm impressed so far.
As far as the OS is concerned, the iMac isn't diluted at all. It uses the same OS X as the G4 towers and portables that Apple puts out. It is less powerful than the towers (slower processor, less RAM), and has a less powerful graphics card. It may have a loess robust FSB, but I'm not sure.
The only thing the iMac has that the standard towers doesn't is a video and interactive application to help Mac noobs learn to manipulate files, access their web browser/email reader and open up iTunes and the like.
I've been passively looking for a new job for the last few months so I can relocate. I mentioned in an early phone interview with one company that I'd been tooling around with C# for about 6 months and had written a few minor applications to get a feel for it. The HR drone on the other end said the minimum requirement for the position was 7 years C# experience.
I sighed and wondered if I should even bother setting him straight, but figured he might see through the "25 years of Java programming experience" bit on my resume and remove me from contention...
I think Hollings is actually a visionary! He realizes that the high-tech industry can bring a lot of jobs and money into a state, and South Carolina's not really one of the hot geek destinations right now.
So, he's decided that if he can sponsor enough loony internet-related bills, he'll rile up enough geeks to move to South Carolina for the sole purpose of voting him out of office. Once they're settled there, they'll figure they might as well get jobs and some entreprenurial-minded individuals will start businesses that will eventually boost the economy of the state!
I have to admit, it's a brilliant plan from a brilliant senator, whose love of his state far outweighs petty concerns like hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbyist contributions.
A refuting quote from Lincoln is in order (egregiously cribbed from Metafilter):
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
Slashdot Mirror
...I will be buying a $150-$200 GeForce in a few months - to replace my, ahem, TNT2. *duck* I replaced my TNT2 with a GeForce4 a couple of months ago. Of course, the boost in performance was astounding, but the old TNT2 did a great job with newer games - I played through Max Payne and Black & White with no problems and perfectly decent graphics. I only got a GeForce4 after NWN's Aurora Toolset Beta convinced me I needed something a little more modern. The TNT's residing in a built-from-parts Linux server and works like a charm.
I agree with you on your point regarding "good enough" picture quality and low-priced cameras. I just thought you came off as a mite disingenuous by grouping cameras into $2,000+ SLR models and "piece-of-crap" consumer models, when there are plenty of "prosumer" cameras in the $500-$1000 range that offer excellent photo quality and color reproduction (albeit without the Microdrive or fine adjustments of a professional camera).
Not true. I have a Sony DSC-P1 Cybershot that cost around $500 when I got it (it's disco'd, so it's probably less if you can find it now). It shoots at a max resolution of 2048*1536 and can save as a TIFF. That will print a good-looking 8x10 and an excellent 5x7. Granted, you can't hold more than a couple of photos on anything smaller than a 128 Meg MemoryStick, but the quality (especially black-and-white) is excellent for the price.
The only thing in the page source is this:
4 6"></object>
:)
<object ID="dosIE-doe" CLASSID="CLSID:00022613-0000-0000-C000-0000000000
Nothing happened in Moz 1.1/WinXP, but IE6 died immediately. Cute
40 gigs of RAM? That's some Twinkie.
Wait... I just deep linked to a link prohibiting deep links! Ack! My brain!
Yes, but they're having fun .
Check out Best Buy and GameStop - they're clearing out their Dreamcast inventory, and if you do some scouring, you can pick up lots of stuff. I've picked up 5 games so far for $5 apiece, and some extra controllers to bank for when my current ones die. The only games I've seen that are still in the $40 - $50 range are recent sports titles.
I only have FM and AM radio in my car and I pay $120 a year for NPR (or at least WBEZ-Chicago). I wonder how much NPR gets from XM/Sirius with their signals rebroadcast on their service.
FIAT - Fix It Again, Tony.
With the Playstation 2 on the shelves for a year prior to release and the Xbox on the way, I think Nintendo had no choice but to release the Cube and wait for the system sellers to roll in. The launch library was (I thought) a little thin, but it will flesh out eventually. Perhaps in a less cutthroat market, they could have held out until at least Mario Sunshine was ready, but who knows?
Really? That's kind of a boilerplate assessment. I'd take Super Monkey Ball over ET any day of the week. Of course, I'd also take Adventure over Wrestlemania X8, so I guess I agree with you on principle in some cases :).
Square and Disney teamed up for an interesting-looking RPG called (note: full-screen Flash-ified link ahead) Kingdom Hearts that will have an amalgam of Square-style characters along with Disney icons (as well as Final Fantasy and other characters from Square's universes). This will be a Playstation 2 game, but if Square and Nintendo mend fences (as is rumored) you might see it on the Cube.
Also, Rareware has as license for 12 Disney-based games for Nintendo systems. I don't believe they fulfilled all of them on the N64, so you should see more Disney character-based games on the Cube soon.
It was funny in that in light of all his other accomplishments, books and publications, he was on the Simpsons, and that really means something.
Yes, Sony cut the price of the PSOne to US$49 last week.
If (theoretically) Microsoft were to release a version of Office for Linux or some other open-source OS, they could just put out a binary and keep the source to themselves. Nothing says you have to run open-source software on *nix - you can run closed binaries just as well (assuming they're compatible with your setup of course)...
Most people may not, but I will. The problem with console peripherals in the past was there really wasn't any added value other than eye candy - the Genesis' vaporware VR system or its all-too-real (and dreadfully unsuccessful) 32X come to mind, as well as the TurboBooster for the TG16 or the Sega CD (which I liked - I never could get through Sol-Feace though.
Anyway, this is a different situation. Not only will you get a modem/ethernet adapter, but you'll get a hard drive that any game developer can access. This may open the doors for custom football teams, gargantuan RPG's that can be one-time loaded onto the HDD and played without disk switching, new worlds and monsters for Everquest can be immediately downloaded ... the possibilities are far deeper than any previous console add-on has offered, and I think that prior paradigm will give way to the huge leaps this can offer to almost any gamer.
DVD certainly does offer a clearer picture, but that can't be extrapolated to digital projection just yet. It's very bright and the contrast and color are excellent, but I've seen them both, and I think Maxivision is considerably better at this time. However, since it's not "digital" it must be antiquated and not worth the trouble. Besides, wide adoption of digital is economically attractive to studios eventually, since movies will be downloadable instead of deliverable. That, and you won't have to worry about film splicing anymore.
I've seen a number of video rental stores that occasionally offload some of their inventory. I've picked up some NES and Genesis games at decent prices (and in surprisingly good quality) there, and I've seen the odd Neo-Geo rig as well, usually going for $500 or so, but as a package with two controllers and 10-12 games. A good deal, but I've never come across one when I'm ready to drop that kind of green. Ah well, Ebay for me...
I have a NYT login set to a spam trap email at my domain. I opted out of any "business partner" affiliations or the like, and answered all their questions. I've had it for around two years and I haven't recieved a single piece of spam from them. YMMV, of course, but I'm impressed so far.
The only thing the iMac has that the standard towers doesn't is a video and interactive application to help Mac noobs learn to manipulate files, access their web browser/email reader and open up iTunes and the like.
I sighed and wondered if I should even bother setting him straight, but figured he might see through the "25 years of Java programming experience" bit on my resume and remove me from contention...
So, he's decided that if he can sponsor enough loony internet-related bills, he'll rile up enough geeks to move to South Carolina for the sole purpose of voting him out of office. Once they're settled there, they'll figure they might as well get jobs and some entreprenurial-minded individuals will start businesses that will eventually boost the economy of the state!
I have to admit, it's a brilliant plan from a brilliant senator, whose love of his state far outweighs petty concerns like hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbyist contributions.
Bravo, Senator Hollings, bravo!
Is dragonriders_of.prn taken yet?
Financial Times Op-Ed Piece
A refuting quote from Lincoln is in order (egregiously cribbed from Metafilter):
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins)