I waited up all night in front of a Best Buy to get mine. I also purchased Project Gotham Racing 3 and Kameo. With both games, I've spent most of my time playing PGR3. I have not had one crash, and the only trace I've seen of it is on Kotaku.
As a note, the system is very thermally unstalbe. I have mine vertical, and every vent is needed. If you were to block any of the airholes for any reason, or to trap the air exiting via the rear of the sytsem, the system potentially could overheat. The exhaust was very high temperature when I checked it after an hour or two of PGR3.
My rig (for reference) was running at 720P for part of it, 1080i for the other part (to compare whose transcoder was better, my TV or the XBOX). I'm on XBOX live, and upon boot, the system updated itself and restarted. This could have been a critical update that fixed the problem that people are talking about.
All and all, I'm quite impressed with the hardware. The emulation works better with some XBOX games than others. For instance, Forza motorsport runs sluggishly on the 360, yet Dead or Alive 3 runs flawlessly.
The live marketplace is impressive. They have HD downloads available, such as music videos and trailers. In addition, you can download new games such as bejewled from Microsoft. There are also themes that can be purchased via live, and as Penny Arcade themes are available, many people should be able to get their themes for sale on Live.
If I see crashes, I'll repost. However, so far, after 10+ hours of operation, most of which with PGR3, I have no crashes or errors to report.
Wow, someone remembering Wayland MA, and if this post isn't about Wayland MA, than this is an eerie councidence.
Either way, to compound the story (and the stupidity of the driver), the kids in the front seat weren't wearing seat belts. The kid in the back seat, who was wearing one, had an arm injury (broken arm I think). The kids in the front seat were in a coma for months, and one will never be able to lead a normal life.
As it happens, the driver was able to finish high school and go to college. I do not beleive he was charged, and had no legal repricussions despite a clear case of "driving to endanger."
BTW, this is in a rich upper middle class town, and the accedent was less than 1 mile from my house. I also went to high school with all three (same grade). The kids in school all missed the point at the time, wearing their damn seat belts.
No one seems to mention that this would go against the eighth amendment to the US constitution.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. [www.law.cornell.edu]
I would define having P2P sharing suspects labled as felons as cruel and unusual punishment. IANAL, but I do know a few, and this kind of law would never stand up in a court, because it flies in the face of the constitution.
Other laws that do that have always been struck down. The reason that the Patriot Act et al has not been struck down is that it does take a court case to fight these laws. Congress can pass what it wants, but we can still fight it in court.
Guess its time to find money to support the EFF and the ACLU.
If you have problems with sound in old games, go follow this link
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/
The program allows you to emulate sound for older dos games that you would like to play under Win2k or XP. I use it for playing some old Space Quest games. The driver works so I have no need to go get a newer version of the game. (I am using the origional.exe)
I appoligize for not putting in a proper link, but it is 9:05 AM on sunday morning, my hands don't want to work that hard, off to get some coffee.
Not the case for GSM or TDMA. They will have problems over 100KPH. I work in sales for wireless phones, and people who have GSM or TDMA based handsets will always drop calles when they are on the highway ~75-85MPH/120-130KPH. The network handoff cannot handle it.
On the other hand, you have CDMA. It can handle much higher speeds. I am not sure as to the upper limit, but travelers around those same speeds do not report the same problems.
This is probably due to CDMA using a soft-handoff system, where all towers monitor the call. If one fails, if it is out of range, another instantly picks it up. While this is great for ground communications, I am sure that if thousands of towers start monitoring a CDMA signal, that could be a problem for the carrier's network.
Oh, as a side note to an earlir post, 30,000 ft (5.5 mi) is within range for most cell phones. Average ground range is around 7 miles, with 800MHz CDMA reaching an astonishing 15. with no interfearance from ground based objects, you would see a lot of signal in most parts of the US.
I have a brand new dell laptop. I run it at 1600*1200. It is very crisp and clear, so good for reading slashdot, checking email, and chatting with people all visible at the same time:)
I know that if you worked for Radioshack, you may not be happy with the company. However, you should keep in mind, that Just like M$, Radioshack is good for most people who don't know technology. In addition, unlike M$, Radioshack employies are suppoed to help the customers get the right itme (even if it costs more) to make their stuff work. So Joe average walks in and can't use his DVD player on his old TV, well, he may spend $30-40, but he'll have his DVD player working when he gets home.
Israel's Ben Gurion Airport is VERY secure for good reason. I have been through it a few times. They do not let you get away with anything there. I had a suvinear knife (not sharp at all) that I had gotten at one of those little tourist trap places. The security guards had me check it in regular baggage or i could not bring it out of the country. Now, I am an Israeli and a US citizen, and that is how I was searched. (This was two years before 9/11)
Israel also runs the most secure airline in the world. There is a reason that somone tried to shoot an El-Al Flight down with a ground based missle a while ago, because any action on th aircraft would have been futile. El-Al has at least 2 members of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) on each flight and they are armed. In addition, the doors to the flight deck are bulletproof and only openable from the inside. The last time someone tried to hijack an El-Al flight, he was shot and killed before he got anywhere.
One thing that makes El-Al and Ben Gurion so secure is that they do not follow these "fair" american practices. For one, they check EVERYONE for dangerous object such as knives. In addition, they do backround checks on those they think may be dangerous, honestly mostly arabs. They will prevent people with ties to known terror groups in Israel from flying. All the 9/11 terrorists were suspects in our databases before the terror attacks. If we ran our airports with the security seen in Israel, 9/11 may not have happened.
I wouldn't worry about it. Case law is an esablished fact in the US, it allowes powerful judges, such as ones in any supreme court, "create law" by interpreting what the law says. The way future cases are decided will refrence the cases and how the judges decided. This has been going on for years and will not stop, as it is how our legal system is built.
This could be a good thing, after all, if spammers had to pay for all that mail they send, they would have problems sending millions a day.
On the other hand, I don't want to pay for email, I already get it for free. I think that this idea would be great if it could somehow charge spammers for emailing me, while letting me send out whatever i want.
Email is already free, I don't see a way for any company to charge for it, but I am all for using any tool to stop spam as long as it doesn't hurt me.
This is regretable, I wonder if they will continue to run Comdex after emerging from bankrupcy. I remember reading about comdex displays (as I have been unable to get to the west coast) and a lot of the stuff was damn cool.
I guess I am just nostalgic for the supercooled 800MHz Alpha from Comdex '98. I got to play with that machine in Digital's labs in Marlboro...it was fun:-)
Software companies don't care as much if their work is traded as most of them use piracy to expand their marketshare. Adobe, for instance, knows that some kid isn't going to pay $500 or $600+ for software, so they will let them steal it (as Adobe releases about 20 keys to warez sites) in order for the kids to become proficient in the software. When the kids grow up, they go work in graphic design, and go buy Adobe's products, becasue they are familiar with it, and they can afford it.
Many software companies (including Microsoft) use this tactic to make sure their software sells more, and this method has been shown to work.
Not only do we have 11 digit dialing, we have multiple area codes in MA that are the SAME AREA! Such as 508/774, 781/339. Somone with a new phone number accros the street from my parents (who have 508) could get a 774 number. (its not long distance).
I'm in western MA right now, and there is only one area code out here, 413. From what I hear from the phone companies though, since Boston went so well converting us to 11 digits, (aside from the many complaints:P) Verizon is looking at converting most areas. After all, it is so hard for a telephone switch to detect that a number being dialed is 7 rather than 11 digits......
I defenetly think that this game can make it and compete. Snood survived with little or no advertizing and beceame a phenomonon. I defenetly think that this game can beat the big guys if it is unique and different from all the other drek that is handed out by the big developers.
I, for one, would pay for, and play this game if it is good. All it takes is a little work by the developers to make the game good, and then a lot of showing the game to the masses
YES! MPEG CAN compete with Microsoft. MPEG-LA is not a company that needs to make money, they are a consortium that makes sure the companies that developed MPEG get paid.
So, this means that, with all the involved companies, there is MORE money behind MPEG4 than there is behind WM9.
Anyway, I'm sick of everyone complaining that the price cut was illegal. I maintain that it is a good business move, because they are charging less in a competitive market. What makes a price cut illegal is IF and only IF the company is selling at a loss specifically to undercut competitors. When someone shows me that under the current WM9 price structure, that Microsoft cannot make money, then I will agree that the price is illegal. However, as it stands (being no physical item to sell), this is not the case; Microsoft can sell a large volume of its product and make money.
All this complaining about Microsoft, yet Wal-Mart does this every day and drives local businesses out of the areas they move into. Wal-mart sells mostly crap from what I have seen, it is cheap, so people buy it. How is this different than Microsoft? They are competing by charging less. That is the basis of a capitalist economy. Assuming that Microsoft complies with various settlements (and doesn't want further lawsuits), they will most likely NOT jack up the prices of WM9 later, because they simply don't need to. Wal-Mart stays in business by volume, not markup, Microsoft can do the same thing.
This used not to be true, Back before 1996, there was a Kiss in Boston MA. I was young (and stupid) back then, hence i had not learned what music was. I digress, yet then station was then a "local" station (they had broadcast studios in boston and actually had local DJs). I do not know if that is the case now, as i would never listen to that station now, yet i do listen to radio. I have found that there are local stations that still play local DJs. WAAF in Worcerster MA, and WCCC in Hartford CT both have local DJs. You can see these djs at promotions they run and actually call the station, and TALK to them. And the industry wonders why these stations are the top rated in their respective markets, after all, why would anyone want to hear something origional?
A good long article confirming what most of us already knew: Sony Sucks. The PS2 is about as buggy for developors, to the point where coding on it is a nightmare. he only reason it is popular is because Sony can market anything. I would never buy anything from Sony anymore. I've seen their Clie's fall apart in days after purchase, I've seen PS2s dying by the thousands, and their cust support is crap. They are worse than Microsoft, because there is no one that fights the power that they are, yet they release worse products with more bugs, yet never fix them. At least Microsoft does occationally fix their bugs.
I am very suprised to see so much radioshack bashing here because this is a very Pro-linux community. Radioshack uses linux and openserver 5.1 in its 5000 company owned stores. It has been running linux servers in over 5000 stores for years. They are very stable, and almost never have problems, They have the kind of reliability that a retail store needs to run every day.
Oh, and the names and addresses, the company has filtering software, they never send flyers to those fake addresses, and they actally have fired employees over entering fake information. The reason that the return rate on the flyers from Radioshack IS significantly higher than most retial is because most people (about 85%) surrendered their name and address, and the lists were very accurate.
Now that the manditory asking is gone, the names and addresses are not. The company still wants to collect them, but instead of asking every customer for their info, you ask them if they want flyers with sale information.
As retail goes, Radioshack isn't that bad. Some of the products aren't that great, but the company's practices are better than most. (assuming you don't run into a sales associate there that has no brain, as there are a few)
More importantly, Join the ACLU. The EFF has practices that unfortunetly go against practicality. The ACLU is an old and established group that fights for our rights. They do fight for our first amendment rights anywhere, including on the web.
Lobbying againt the right wing republicans and ashcroft is a good thing
Slashdot Mirror
As for that, lets just say I'm glad I'm not paying to maintain any of those cars. I'd be so broke... ;P
I mean there have been no glitches. For all intensive purposes, my Xbox 360 runs perfectly so far.
I waited up all night in front of a Best Buy to get mine. I also purchased Project Gotham Racing 3 and Kameo. With both games, I've spent most of my time playing PGR3. I have not had one crash, and the only trace I've seen of it is on Kotaku.
As a note, the system is very thermally unstalbe. I have mine vertical, and every vent is needed. If you were to block any of the airholes for any reason, or to trap the air exiting via the rear of the sytsem, the system potentially could overheat. The exhaust was very high temperature when I checked it after an hour or two of PGR3.
My rig (for reference) was running at 720P for part of it, 1080i for the other part (to compare whose transcoder was better, my TV or the XBOX). I'm on XBOX live, and upon boot, the system updated itself and restarted. This could have been a critical update that fixed the problem that people are talking about.
All and all, I'm quite impressed with the hardware. The emulation works better with some XBOX games than others. For instance, Forza motorsport runs sluggishly on the 360, yet Dead or Alive 3 runs flawlessly.
The live marketplace is impressive. They have HD downloads available, such as music videos and trailers. In addition, you can download new games such as bejewled from Microsoft. There are also themes that can be purchased via live, and as Penny Arcade themes are available, many people should be able to get their themes for sale on Live.
If I see crashes, I'll repost. However, so far, after 10+ hours of operation, most of which with PGR3, I have no crashes or errors to report.
Wow, someone remembering Wayland MA, and if this post isn't about Wayland MA, than this is an eerie councidence.
Either way, to compound the story (and the stupidity of the driver), the kids in the front seat weren't wearing seat belts. The kid in the back seat, who was wearing one, had an arm injury (broken arm I think). The kids in the front seat were in a coma for months, and one will never be able to lead a normal life.
As it happens, the driver was able to finish high school and go to college. I do not beleive he was charged, and had no legal repricussions despite a clear case of "driving to endanger."
BTW, this is in a rich upper middle class town, and the accedent was less than 1 mile from my house. I also went to high school with all three (same grade). The kids in school all missed the point at the time, wearing their damn seat belts.
Except that Verizon stopped using Nokia phones 2 years ago, the last supported phone was the 5185.
Verizon doesn't like Nokia
No one seems to mention that this would go against the eighth amendment to the US constitution.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. [www.law.cornell.edu]
I would define having P2P sharing suspects labled as felons as cruel and unusual punishment. IANAL, but I do know a few, and this kind of law would never stand up in a court, because it flies in the face of the constitution.
Other laws that do that have always been struck down. The reason that the Patriot Act et al has not been struck down is that it does take a court case to fight these laws. Congress can pass what it wants, but we can still fight it in court.
Guess its time to find money to support the EFF and the ACLU.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/
The program allows you to emulate sound for older dos games that you would like to play under Win2k or XP. I use it for playing some old Space Quest games. The driver works so I have no need to go get a newer version of the game. (I am using the origional .exe)
I appoligize for not putting in a proper link, but it is 9:05 AM on sunday morning, my hands don't want to work that hard, off to get some coffee.
Not the case for GSM or TDMA. They will have problems over 100KPH. I work in sales for wireless phones, and people who have GSM or TDMA based handsets will always drop calles when they are on the highway ~75-85MPH/120-130KPH. The network handoff cannot handle it.
On the other hand, you have CDMA. It can handle much higher speeds. I am not sure as to the upper limit, but travelers around those same speeds do not report the same problems.
This is probably due to CDMA using a soft-handoff system, where all towers monitor the call. If one fails, if it is out of range, another instantly picks it up. While this is great for ground communications, I am sure that if thousands of towers start monitoring a CDMA signal, that could be a problem for the carrier's network.
Oh, as a side note to an earlir post, 30,000 ft (5.5 mi) is within range for most cell phones. Average ground range is around 7 miles, with 800MHz CDMA reaching an astonishing 15. with no interfearance from ground based objects, you would see a lot of signal in most parts of the US.
I have a brand new dell laptop. I run it at 1600*1200. It is very crisp and clear, so good for reading slashdot, checking email, and chatting with people all visible at the same time :)
I know that if you worked for Radioshack, you may not be happy with the company. However, you should keep in mind, that Just like M$, Radioshack is good for most people who don't know technology. In addition, unlike M$, Radioshack employies are suppoed to help the customers get the right itme (even if it costs more) to make their stuff work. So Joe average walks in and can't use his DVD player on his old TV, well, he may spend $30-40, but he'll have his DVD player working when he gets home.
Israel's Ben Gurion Airport is VERY secure for good reason. I have been through it a few times. They do not let you get away with anything there. I had a suvinear knife (not sharp at all) that I had gotten at one of those little tourist trap places. The security guards had me check it in regular baggage or i could not bring it out of the country. Now, I am an Israeli and a US citizen, and that is how I was searched. (This was two years before 9/11)
Israel also runs the most secure airline in the world. There is a reason that somone tried to shoot an El-Al Flight down with a ground based missle a while ago, because any action on th aircraft would have been futile. El-Al has at least 2 members of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) on each flight and they are armed. In addition, the doors to the flight deck are bulletproof and only openable from the inside. The last time someone tried to hijack an El-Al flight, he was shot and killed before he got anywhere.
One thing that makes El-Al and Ben Gurion so secure is that they do not follow these "fair" american practices. For one, they check EVERYONE for dangerous object such as knives. In addition, they do backround checks on those they think may be dangerous, honestly mostly arabs. They will prevent people with ties to known terror groups in Israel from flying. All the 9/11 terrorists were suspects in our databases before the terror attacks. If we ran our airports with the security seen in Israel, 9/11 may not have happened.
I wouldn't worry about it. Case law is an esablished fact in the US, it allowes powerful judges, such as ones in any supreme court, "create law" by interpreting what the law says. The way future cases are decided will refrence the cases and how the judges decided. This has been going on for years and will not stop, as it is how our legal system is built.
This could be a good thing, after all, if spammers had to pay for all that mail they send, they would have problems sending millions a day.
On the other hand, I don't want to pay for email, I already get it for free. I think that this idea would be great if it could somehow charge spammers for emailing me, while letting me send out whatever i want.
Email is already free, I don't see a way for any company to charge for it, but I am all for using any tool to stop spam as long as it doesn't hurt me.
I loved that game. Many a quarter from my pocket went into that machine.
:(
If only there were new games that had that flair, that pazzaz (and were still unique)
Well, RIP Atari Arcade
Tide Ale, the tastey bleach flavor give it that nice kick! And it removes the puke from your shirts with no residue too!
What'll they think up next?!
This is regretable, I wonder if they will continue to run Comdex after emerging from bankrupcy. I remember reading about comdex displays (as I have been unable to get to the west coast) and a lot of the stuff was damn cool.
:-)
I guess I am just nostalgic for the supercooled 800MHz Alpha from Comdex '98. I got to play with that machine in Digital's labs in Marlboro...it was fun
Software companies don't care as much if their work is traded as most of them use piracy to expand their marketshare. Adobe, for instance, knows that some kid isn't going to pay $500 or $600+ for software, so they will let them steal it (as Adobe releases about 20 keys to warez sites) in order for the kids to become proficient in the software. When the kids grow up, they go work in graphic design, and go buy Adobe's products, becasue they are familiar with it, and they can afford it.
Many software companies (including Microsoft) use this tactic to make sure their software sells more, and this method has been shown to work.
Not only do we have 11 digit dialing, we have multiple area codes in MA that are the SAME AREA! Such as 508/774, 781/339. Somone with a new phone number accros the street from my parents (who have 508) could get a 774 number. (its not long distance).
:P) Verizon is looking at converting most areas. After all, it is so hard for a telephone switch to detect that a number being dialed is 7 rather than 11 digits......
I'm in western MA right now, and there is only one area code out here, 413. From what I hear from the phone companies though, since Boston went so well converting us to 11 digits, (aside from the many complaints
I defenetly think that this game can make it and compete. Snood survived with little or no advertizing and beceame a phenomonon. I defenetly think that this game can beat the big guys if it is unique and different from all the other drek that is handed out by the big developers.
I, for one, would pay for, and play this game if it is good. All it takes is a little work by the developers to make the game good, and then a lot of showing the game to the masses
YES! MPEG CAN compete with Microsoft. MPEG-LA is not a company that needs to make money, they are a consortium that makes sure the companies that developed MPEG get paid.
So, this means that, with all the involved companies, there is MORE money behind MPEG4 than there is behind WM9.
Anyway, I'm sick of everyone complaining that the price cut was illegal. I maintain that it is a good business move, because they are charging less in a competitive market. What makes a price cut illegal is IF and only IF the company is selling at a loss specifically to undercut competitors. When someone shows me that under the current WM9 price structure, that Microsoft cannot make money, then I will agree that the price is illegal. However, as it stands (being no physical item to sell), this is not the case; Microsoft can sell a large volume of its product and make money.
And that, is capitalism at work.
All this complaining about Microsoft, yet Wal-Mart does this every day and drives local businesses out of the areas they move into. Wal-mart sells mostly crap from what I have seen, it is cheap, so people buy it. How is this different than Microsoft? They are competing by charging less. That is the basis of a capitalist economy. Assuming that Microsoft complies with various settlements (and doesn't want further lawsuits), they will most likely NOT jack up the prices of WM9 later, because they simply don't need to. Wal-Mart stays in business by volume, not markup, Microsoft can do the same thing.
Is this evil?
This used not to be true, Back before 1996, there was a Kiss in Boston MA. I was young (and stupid) back then, hence i had not learned what music was. I digress, yet then station was then a "local" station (they had broadcast studios in boston and actually had local DJs). I do not know if that is the case now, as i would never listen to that station now, yet i do listen to radio. I have found that there are local stations that still play local DJs. WAAF in Worcerster MA, and WCCC in Hartford CT both have local DJs. You can see these djs at promotions they run and actually call the station, and TALK to them. And the industry wonders why these stations are the top rated in their respective markets, after all, why would anyone want to hear something origional?
A good long article confirming what most of us already knew: Sony Sucks. The PS2 is about as buggy for developors, to the point where coding on it is a nightmare. he only reason it is popular is because Sony can market anything. I would never buy anything from Sony anymore. I've seen their Clie's fall apart in days after purchase, I've seen PS2s dying by the thousands, and their cust support is crap. They are worse than Microsoft, because there is no one that fights the power that they are, yet they release worse products with more bugs, yet never fix them. At least Microsoft does occationally fix their bugs.
Is it any suprise that EQ is that bad?
I am very suprised to see so much radioshack bashing here because this is a very Pro-linux community. Radioshack uses linux and openserver 5.1 in its 5000 company owned stores. It has been running linux servers in over 5000 stores for years. They are very stable, and almost never have problems, They have the kind of reliability that a retail store needs to run every day. Oh, and the names and addresses, the company has filtering software, they never send flyers to those fake addresses, and they actally have fired employees over entering fake information. The reason that the return rate on the flyers from Radioshack IS significantly higher than most retial is because most people (about 85%) surrendered their name and address, and the lists were very accurate. Now that the manditory asking is gone, the names and addresses are not. The company still wants to collect them, but instead of asking every customer for their info, you ask them if they want flyers with sale information. As retail goes, Radioshack isn't that bad. Some of the products aren't that great, but the company's practices are better than most. (assuming you don't run into a sales associate there that has no brain, as there are a few)
More importantly, Join the ACLU. The EFF has practices that unfortunetly go against practicality. The ACLU is an old and established group that fights for our rights. They do fight for our first amendment rights anywhere, including on the web. Lobbying againt the right wing republicans and ashcroft is a good thing