OCD sufferers report rise in symptoms due to abundance of light switches and sinks with soap nearby!
In unrelated news, schizophrenic patient spends 4 hours yelling at convenience store security camera about CIA stealing his brain waves!...really guys, this is less article-worthy and more "duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh" worthy. I've heard more insightful commentary from an empty bottle of Guinness.
With the speed that hardware becomes outdated and unsuitable for gaming, coupled with the inability to upgrade anything terribly performance-enhancing on a laptop, why on earth would anyone spend the money on a machine like this?
For literally a little over half the cost you could custom-build a desktop gaming monster machine; 10k RPM drives in RAID-0 with an Athlon64, more RAM than you know what to do with, and a video card that outpowers that entire damned notebook.
Dell seems to be aiming at a really small target market with this machine: people who are serious gamers but also need to travel and also have so much money that they can piss it away on a laptop that's already underpowered by the day's gaming standards, and can't be given any meaningful upgrades in the future.
And to top it off, it weighs a ton, probably has the heat issues even low-performance laptops do, and it doesn't even look as nice as the Alienware competition.
One impressive piece of execution is that when you fire the machine up it plays a WAV file of a Ferrari race car revving its engine. That alone is worth the relatively low $1,899 price of admission.
You mean all these years I've been fixing PCs for peanuts when all I needed to do was spend 10 seconds changing the bootup music for some sucker and he'll fork over $2k?
I just started back to school to get away from IT. Maybe it's time to move back...
For Sony, it made sense to build in PS1 emulation to the PS2 because the original Playstation was so popular and sold so many games. Heck, they're *still* selling orginal Playstations, and people are still buying shrink-wrapped Playstation 1 games, to a lesser extent.
The PS2's backwards compatibility has practically nothing to do with the success of the PS1, and almost everything to do with Sony trying to save money. The PS2 actually includes most of the PS1's hardware. The PS1 processor actually handles I/O for the PS2, and since Sony already has fabrication facilities designed to produce those chips, it was a no-brainer. The backwards compatibility was just added because A) it was convenient and easy, and B) it's one more feature they can hype.
MS may ( correctly ) figure that the current crop of Xbox owners will buy the latest and greatest game machine no matter what, "because it plays Halo5" or whatever...
As opposed to what, buying an Xbox2 because it plays the original Halo? Yeah, that'd make sense...
I'm not arguing that backwards compatibility is a non-issue; it'd be nice. But ya know what? It's way overstated. I already have an Xbox, and anyone that doesn't will be able to get one dirt cheap by the time its successor rolls out. If Microsoft can include enhanced functionality in the Xbox2 and cut costs at the cost of losing backwards compatbility, I'm all for it. I'd rather my Xbox2 play Xbox2 games well, rather than cost a fortune with medicore performance because 5 people out there want it to play Xbox games, too.
Man... you're carrying the anti-Microsoft sentiment way too far. They may be greedy, law-breaking bastards, but they didn't get to where they are by being stupid and making a lot of poor business decisions.
And a personal rant: As an owner of all 3 consoles (well, two now... traded the Gamecube in), I'd easily put the Xbox as my favorite. It doesn't have the volume of good games that the PS2 does, but the (mostly exclusive) good titles it does have are just as high-quality, if not better. And honestly, I don't give a rat's ass about Dragon Ball or Final Fantasy or whatever the rage is with all the pre-teens with ADD these days; you take away those games (which are more "commercially successful" than "good" - heh, kinda like Windows), and there really isn't a whole lot left on the PS2. PS2 has SOCOM, Jak, Ratchet & Clank, and Armored Core, and the Xbox has Halo, Rainbow 6, Steel Batallion, and Crimson Skies. They're both great consoles, but when you take Xbox Live and upcoming games like Sudeki, Fable, and TFLO into account, I'd definitely give the edge to the Xbox. And the Gamecube? It was great for a while, but none of the games on that system have even the slightest bit of replayability except for Smash Bros. and Double Dash, both of which require a bunch of friends around to have a good time. Besides... these days, Nintendo's first-party characters are the $2 whores of the video game industry. They may not be as bad as Sega with Sonic, but...
There's really no other way for the cell phone companies to compete on price, they've pretty much hit the floor on pricing. Therefore, the price points are remaining the same, and the higher end model phones are simply moving to the lower price points.
I tend to disagree about pricing. Take a look at Verizon's website. They seem like reasonably competetive prices until you actually try to buy the phone.
Verizon's running a scam; what they advertise are discounted prices that are only available to new subscribers and existing customers who've had their phones for over 2 years. The prices they charge to the bulk of their customers are significantly higher (i.e. the Samsung SCH a530s, which is advertised on their site as $160 is still going for $420 in-store). I found this out about a month ago when I tried to upgrade my 20 month-old V60i to the Samsung SCH a530s, and the store's (incredibly pushy) sales droids informed me that I wouldn't be eligable for the sale price for another 7 months, and would have to pay the full price, which is quite conveniently hidden underneath the sale price sticker.
Despite the terrible coverage, at least Sprint had reasonably-priced phones. I could walk into Radio Shack every 6 months, plunk down $150, and walk out with the last generation's top-end phone. As opposed to Verizon, who's still trying to charge $200 for the exact same phone I paid $200 for nearly 2 years ago.
My point is that Verizon's not competetive on phone prices except by casual glance. They could do much better. It's especially bad since, compared to other carriers, Verizon has the hands-down worst line-up of cell phones out there.
For years, Comcast was the only cable company around. Their rates were pretty high, but I never thought anything of it until I moved away to Kalamazoo for college and realized I could get 1.54/786 internet AND digital cable with all the preium statiosn for only $10/month more than my parents had paid for Comcast's basic cable alone, back home.
Now, I'm living at home in Rochester again. I initially had my broadband through Speakeasy, but had a terrible problem dealing with Speakeasy, Covad, and SBC, which resulted in Speakeasy/Covad repeatedly trying to charge me $300 to reconnect my DSL circuit. Speakeasy was almost $100/month plus the cost of a phone line through SBC. It wasn't exactly what you'd call competetive, even though the service and support were top notch.
So, I decided to switch to cable internet; Wide Open West and Charter have both recently moved into town. However, there's some stipulation in my contract with my landlord that states that I can only get Comcast cable. So, I'm stuck with it.
My experiences so far have been mediocre. I don't exactly leach DVD rips all day, but it's not unusual for me to pull down a gig or two in a day. I've never been heckled by Comcast about it, either. And, also, the price is a bit more competetive, now. It's $70/month for 3mbps cable (with wretchedly slow upstream) and digital cable plus, which is essentially everything but HBO and Skinemax and the like.
That being said, my cable routinely goes out... usually at least once a week, and not during their scheduled maintainance times. I have mediocre ping times in most games, and, like I said, the upstream is terrible.
Overall, it's not a terrible service, though. Thankfully I've never had to deal with the customer service, though; I hear it's some of the worst around.
If Microsoft were to drop the price to $99, it would be purely to dethrone Nintendo from the "#2" position.
The only reason that Nintendo is in the #2 position is due to the GBA. Sales of the Gamecube, although up from the major price cut, are still dismal, and games aren't selling well, either.
Metroid, Zelda, and most of Nintendo's big guns are rentals, not buyers. They have zero replay value, despite their quality. And many gamers have come to realize that. The only games worth actually owning on that system are Mario Kart: Double Dash and Smash Bros. Melee, neither of which are really any fun with a bunch of friends around.
To offer more anecdotal evidence, my roommate's the 3rd key at the local Gamestop. He says the only way they can sell the Gamecube anymore is to hype it as kid-friendly (which it admitedly is) to soccer moms looking for something to shut their brats up.
I agree, the Xbox's hard drive has, so far, been underutilized (there are a couple MMOGs planned for release this year, and the downloadable content via Xbox Live has been a nice touch), but as far as a quality gaming platform, Xbox beats the living snot out of the Gamecube. The Xbox has strong third-party support from companies like Ubi (Rainbow 6 3 is a masterful game), Team Ninja (Ninja Gaiden), and Bioware, as well as a very strong and growing in-house development studio in FASA and Bungie.
I'm no Microsoft apologist, but I simply think that the Xbox is just a Final Fantasay-esque franchise away from being the PS2's superior, and that Nintendo's not doing well. Their portable, the GBA, is anything but inspired or high-quality, and has an absolutely terrible, one-dimensional game line-up. If Microsoft cuts the Xbox price to the same as the Gamecube's, it could cripple Nintendo's already tenuous grip on the home console market, and if Sony's upcoming PSP is anything but a giant piece of crap, it'll put the hurt on Nintendo's monopoly in the portable market.
Nintendo's going the way of Sega. Give 'em a few years, and they'll turn their major franchises into even bigger whores than Sega's turned Sonic into.
"What they do mean, is that someone is booksmart enough to sit there and study the material, go in, and take a test. They don't mean the individual can actually fix anything."
Can't the same be said for a 4-year degree as well?
I took classes for certification, as well as attempted a CS degree (and no, I switched majors upon realizing what a worthless piece of shit degree it was). While at New Horizons, I had some amazing professors. Most of them were extremely experienced and talented teachers. I learned a lot during that 6 months (finished classes and certs in A+, Net+, MCSE, CCNA, CCNP).
My college experience (at the University of Michigan), on the other hand, was quite the opposite. I sat in lecture halls full of 200 students while some professor right off the boat from India with an accent so bad that he may as well have been speaking Hindi. The core curriculum consisted almost entirely of programming classes, with basic network theory and a lot of math... which would be great if I wanted to graduate, then get my job shipped over to India to a guy who'll work for $4k/year, but I was more interested in administration.
Considering what I was actually educated in , a 4-year degree in Computer Science was about as relevant to network administration as a degree in economics.
So, sure, maybe a certification program only shows that the graduate memorized enough of a big to regurgitate it for class, but that's not any different than a 4-year degree, and at least the information he memorized for the certification program is relevent.
...and while I'm looking at building a new box in the next few months, one option I've ruled out are these small form factor PCs.
I built my SFF system about a year and a half ago. It's a Shuttle SS51G; the first XPC they offered with an AGP slot. At the time, it seemed like a great idea: it was small, quiet, attractive, and wasn't hideously expensive, and it would allow me to have plenty of power to run Dark Age of Camelot (which was the only game I played at the time). This was especially true in light of the fact that the whole reason I was building a new PC was because my incredibly large, hot, and noisy beige box AMD system had decided to destroy itself after AMD's 'recommended' fansink died only 6 months after being installed.
The problems I've had with heat in my Shuttle, however, have been even more irritating. Those, coupled with some of the other minor annoyances from the XPC line (which I'd assume are really problems of all SFF systems) have turned me away from them.
First and foremost, I've had major heating issues. The review sites, like Ars and [H] were right when they said that Shuttle's ICE cooling system (a heatpipe, really) was quiet and kept the processor running reasonably cool. The problem is that I automatically assumed that meant that the case itself had adequate cooling, and quite honestly, it doesn't.
My first heat-related issue was with my video card; a Radeon 8500. The AGP slot in Shuttle's cases is literally right next to the case wall. I honestly can't imagine there's more than a 1/4 of an inch between the case and the fan on my Radeon 8500, which means the thing can barely breathe. I've had to underclock it to maintain stability.
Second, I had issues with the RAM causing heat build-up, too. The system defaults to a speed of DDR200, even though the mainboard supposedly supports up to DDR333. I have a pair 512 MB DDR266 sticks from Crucial; both identical. When I changed the multiplier to force them to run at DDR266, I noticed I would get more crashes and lockups, and I wasn't even running an aggressive timing configuration. Ultimately, I had to back my RAM down to DDR200.
The worst part about the heat-related issues is that there's really nothing to do about it. There's no room for expansion in the case; it's not like you can just stick another fan in there. There's barely any room for the components that're already in the case.
Other minor annoyances I've come across are the excessively spartan BIOS, and complete inability to do any work inside the case without disassembling the whole damned thing.
Don't get me wrong, Shuttle doesn't make a bad product. My XPC has great construction quality, and was rather reasonably priced. But despite their claims that these systems offer gaming-quality performance, they really don't. And they're barely any more upgradeable than a laptop.
I'd recommend one to anyone who wants a good web browser or maybe to put together a media box or some sort of small server, but for any performance-intensive, stay away.
I live near Detroit, MI, and Comcast is the only broadband provider in this area***, and I'm paying $50 USD/month for a 3.0mpbs/348kbps connection that goes out several times a week.
What I want to know is how the Norweigans and Swedish get such awesome speed. Every single one I've met seems to have a symmetric 22mbps (or faster) connection for less than I'm paying. And if I'm not mistaken, they certainly don't have population density like Korea and Japan...
***We do have DSL around here, but, long story short, I had Speakeasy, and they tried to charge me $300 after SBC changed my circuit for no apparent reason. Had to get the BBB involved... was a big ugly mess, and the service was $90USD/month, anyways, plus the cost of the land line - not exactly what you'd call competetive.
I know I have an unpopular opinion of Microsoft around here, but when I hear things like:
Microsoft are moving from the PC space, where people have amazingly decided that a crashing computer is acceptable, to the consumer electronics space, where crashing is mostly unheard of.
I just have to wonder... have you even used a Microsoft product since Windows 98? I've been running XP and 2000 for ~3 years now, and I've had two crashes. One from a memory leak in Dark Age of Camelot, and another from ATi's buggy Catalyst 2.x drivers.
Look, I'm all for bearing a grudge against Microsoft for their nauseating business practices, but they've had stable products on the market for a long time now - find something relevant to bitch about.
But I have a question for you all. People don't believe a small store can match or beat the big... after the sale. So, what is the solution?
*sigh*
I had a long, thorough reply typed out, and then kicked the reset button my my PC...
In short, I'll offer these suggestions (based solely on my experiences, so take 'em for what they're worth). Keep in mind, I've never run a store, but I spent my college years building PCs and small networks for beer money, and have seen dozens of shops come and go.
First off, while your store may be different, local stores are rarely ever competetive on price. It seems to be due a lack of small stores revising the costs of hardware as subsequently faster hardware becomes available. Because of this, prices seem to go up and up and up, while older hardware never comes down in price. For instance, I've seen many cases of previous-generation video cards with higher price tags than the current generation's analogue occupying the same shelf space.
Second, many local stores seem to stock sub-par products, and do so almost exlcusively. In one case, a local store stocked nothing but those big, ugly, cheap-feeling Kensington pointers, and then had the nerve to charge even more than their competitors did for higher-quality products from Microsoft and Logitech. Another store I visited (and sadly purchased from) carried nothing but ECS and no-brand mainboards. They offered to order an Abit mainboard for me, and quoted it at ~$250, when the exact same mainboard was going for a little over $150 on GameVE.
Finally, local stores don't seem to understand their customers. Their stock is too low-quality to attract enthusiasts, too expensive to attract regular builders or bargain hunters, and their almost inevitably snotty sales staff, deluded into thinking their A+ certifications are worth a damn, have a tendancy to irritate the hell out of real geeks, and treat the laymen - the people who'd otherwise just be buying Dells - like they're unworthy of even setting foot in the store....okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but honestly, buying a PC can be an intimmidating experience for someone that's not very knowledgable about them, and very few exployees I've seen in local stores seem to understand that.
I guess in closing that what I'm saying is that even if your store does everything right, so many other stores do so many things wrong that I honestly do think that good service, friendly staff, high-quality components, and happy customers who tell their friends about you are the only way to go. I know that, given my past experiences with local PC stores, I don't even bother anymore. I go straight to GameVE and NewEgg, but if a friend recommended a local store to me, I'd definitely be willing to check it out.
I've been using Firebird/Phoenix since 0.5 now. A friend recommended Avant Browser, which I reluctantly tried. It finally got me away from Firebird.
Avant's not really its own browser, but an add-on for IE. It includes a built-in pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, and 2-click filtering for flash, java, activex, sounds, movies, images, etc. Plus, it has a built-in Google search, and renders IE immune to most of the malware crap you'd pick up just by browsing (at least, in the 3 weeks I've been using it, Spybot S&D's only found 1 piece of spyware).
It's worth a shot for anyone who's looking for a change in their browser. And while I wouldn't call Avant flat-out better than Firebird, it's definitely an equal, which puts both browsers head and shoulders above the overbloated Mozilla.;)
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating that PCs should be yanked from schools all together. But thinking back to high school (I graduated in '99), I can't remember the majority of my classes ever even attempting to use a PC, and when we did, it was rarely effective. Entire class periods would go to waste because we were supposed to be down at the library doing research, and instead, the teacher was trying to trouble-shoot the printer because it wouldn't print, and the only admin was across town at the other high school fixing their PCs because the entire district shared him due to budget constraints.
But PCs were definitely nice in the library. The school had moved its entire book index onto the PCs, and it was easy to search and find materials, and allowed the school to rip out that massive card catalog and install shelves for hundreds of extra books.
We also had computer literacy courses that were mandated; nothing fancy, but it was a nice introduction to basic word processing and spread sheets.
My school also had a lab where it taught BASIC and C++. I took both classes; the teacher didn't really know what was going on, so it was really more of the play-Quake-over-the-LAN class.
But other than those 3 instances, I'm really pressed to think of a need for PCs to actually be in a classroom. Our math and science teachers wouldn't even let students use those $100 graphing calculators that they demanded we have, much less a full-blown PC. There were a few instances where our English and writing classes would allow us access to PCs to do research for papers, but in many cases, the content filters were so restrictive that many students found it impossible to do any research in school.
The point is: PCs in the school are great, but PCs in the classroom are a complete waste of funds. There's no reason for them to be there because most classes have no use for them, anyways. Schools should funnel some of that extra money they'd save into employing more teachers and making the figures on their paychecks look a bit less sparse.
"What record companies need to realize is they can make money by selling the *image* not the song itself. After all, this is more or less what happens already. Just give the CD some extra fancy packaging and market owning it as a status symbol and you can continue to bilk the masses of of their money for years to come!"
That's what the record companies are doing; it's the sole reason MTV exists. They don't market music anymore; they can't. If they did, every ad would read out like: "Madonna's new hit single! It's exactly the same as the last five!"
One of the big problems with music these days is that it's not the songs that're marketed - it's the image.
I read a comment on Slashdot before that summed up the Linux vs. Windows on the desktop debate almost perfectly, and I really wish I could remember who said it so I could give him credit, but it was along the lines of:
--- I can take a PC running Windows XP, plug in any of thousands of pieces of hardware, and they'll just work. Or, I could spend hours putzing around with obscure config files and recompiling the kernel to get the damned scroll wheel on my generic mouse functioning. ---
But configuration and the nearly-endless number of package dependancy issues aren't the only reasons Linux won't catch on for the desktop. One of the largest reasons, which I rarely see pointed out, is that despite all the KDE vs. Gnome flamewars, it doesn't matter which you choose, because they both suck! Say what you want about XP's playschool UI (which can be skinned very easily, by the way); it's still years ahead of anything I've ever seen running on *nix.
I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that OSX is far and away the superior OS - I recommend it to anyone that wants a computer for home but isn't a gamer, but for your average home user, Linux is just out of the question. And for your average advanced user? Linux is way too much of a headache to be worthwhile.
In the end, Linux is practically designed to be a business OS. Security, stability and cost efficiency are selling points for PHBs and admins, not home users. I think Mandrake and Redhat ought to be commended for making such an effort to make Linux more user-friendly, but ultimately, it's futile. It's like trying to make an M1A1 tank practical for day-to-day commuting. You can modify the hell out of it, but in the end, you're still using a tank to do what a plain old car's much better-suited for.
I agree. For working out, I don't want to be hauling around a comparitively large and heavy MP3 player.
I have an older Samsung YP-33 that's RAM-based, and I adore it. It's very small, leight-weight, and came with a handful of accessories like a cradle/arm band, and short headphone wires. I'll admit, that at only 64MB (it's ~2 years old, now), I often wish I had more memory, but to be honest, I have over 300 CDs, and while I could easily have 20 gigs worth of MP3s, there are only a few hundred songs I actually listen to, and they're easily and quickly transferred to the player.
Besides, 64MB is just enough music to cover my usual jog or trip to the gym, so I can't complain.
...horizontal (not vertical) character growth, dynamic worlds, and serious penalties for death.
And in long... (please, hear me out)
These hybridised D&D/Chainmail-based combat systems need to go. They were fine 30 years ago, for a couple guys crowded around a card table eating pizza and drinking beer, with a DM who could change the rules on the fly. All current MMOGs do is show the limitations and oversights of such a system, especially when it's run under a DM as unforgiving as a computer.
Take, for example, the concept of hit points. They're supposedly a measure of a character's physical toughness. It's a concept that seems to make sense. After all, isn't it safe to assume that through physical training, say, a pro boxer, is tougher than you? The problem is scale; certainly a professional boxer can take a lot more of a beating than a regular guy, but if you take a regular guy and a pro boxer, and skewer them both on a greatsword, they're both going to die. MMOG convention, on the other hand, would have us believe that the pro boxer (the level 50 character) could take many, many, many stabbings before going down, where the average guy (the newbie character) keels over at the mere sight of the sword.
Honestly, take a look at hit point totals in Dark Age of Camelot as an example of typical MMOGs: a level 1 fighter will have, depending on his stats, 25-40 hit points, but that same character, by the time he's level 50, can approach 3000 hit points. That scale defies any sort of logic. As in the case with the average guy and the boxer, certainly the veteran level 50 warrior is tougher than the level 1 viking, but a factor of 120 is a bit off. More realistically, even the greenest newbie could kill the mightiest warrior if be manage to smack the warrior upside the head with a mace. Although, in games like EQ or DAoC, that couldn't happen, because the mystic, logic-shattering concept of 'levels' imparts upon the higher-level characters some sort of immunity-to-newbies forcefield. I'm not exaggerating: continuing with the DAoC example, that level 50 character could be sitting down, naked, with the level one character standing over him, wailing away with an axe for days on end, and the newbie will never connect.
So, what's the point?
The point is that obtuse concepts like levels and hit points prevent the majority of the player base from playing together. Hence, the need for robust, deep, and meaningful skill systems that allow characters to grow, change, and advance without becoming orders of magnitude more powerful. This would solve many problems; not only would it allow friends of different experience levels to play together (and anyone that's ever played an MMOG for any length of time knows how much it sucks when you're outpaced by your friends and can no longer group with them), but it would help eliminate a lot of the wasted world design.
Case in point, again: Dark Age of Camelot. During the first year of the game's release, the Camelot Hills, a low-level zone, were bustling. At any given time, there were easily a hundred people there. These days? It's a ghost town. The population has matured, and players have moved one. With the expansion pack, the few newbies who are around, anymore, play in the superior expansion zones. Camelot Hills, along with probably 90% of the game's land mass, is a ghost town. It's almost depressing to be there, now, but of course, it gets no love. The characters are older, and have more levels under their belt, so the players are clamoring for bigger mobs, new zones, and more ph4t 13wtz, and much like EQ feels now, most of the game feels forgotton.
Anyways, I'm getting ahead of myself: the short of it is that horizontal advancement would allow for 3 much needed changes:
1. Players of varying experience could still play together. 2. No more wasteful world design. 3. Perhaps most importantly, because of the sorts of changes required to make horizontal advancement possible, players could h
Now, I'm an avid gamer, and I fully realize that, comparing the performance, of, say, a video card to a hard drive isn't fair, because that video card has to do a lot more work than the hard drive, in a gaming environment. Still, when the video card's capable of pushing in the ballpark of 200 times the data that the hard drive is, it's quite telling of a deficiency.
We already have more storage than virtually anyone knows what to do with. How about making the drives faster?
I picked up a job as a trainer at the local Powerhouse Gym so I could pay the rent (and the occaisional video card upgrade;) back when I was majoring in kinesiology, and a lot of my clients had the same issue.
The short of it is this: If you want to lose weight, burn more calories than you consume. No fad diets, no gimicky workout equipment, no pills, just excercise.
The good news is that you won't need to spend anymore than it takes to get a good pair of running shoes to get into shape. The bad news is that a very significant part of weight loss is adjusting your diet, and the excersize you'll need probably isn't doable at the office.
Go running after work (make sure you keep good form), and pass on the beer when you can, and when you do drink, go for light beers, not Guinness (Sam Adams' Light is actually a good beer, but don't bother with that Michelob Ultra; just get a glass of water and spare yourself the couple bucks and the vile, pissy taste). If you feel like chicken, get it grilled, not fried. If you feel like a snack, eat an apple and have a glass of water, instead of a candy bar.
I know it can be really tough to start, but the best part about weight loss is that it's almost viral; once you actually see the results, you won't even want another beer. And trust me, after going a few weeks without junk like fast food, it'll almost make you nauseous to think about earing it again.;)
If you're into weight training, get a membership at the local gym; weight training is an excellent way to burn calories. Just don't entirely neglect running, biking, or some other type of aerobic excercise.
It's simple in theory, simple in practice, but amazingly hard to get used to it. Just remember, no matter how you choose to lose weight, it's a long-term commitment, so don't let yourself backslide before you ever really get a chance to see results; give it at least a couple months to see a difference, although you'll probably feel a difference in a matter of days.
That 'tool' was John Gilmore; a co-founder of the EFF.
I'm not one to agree with his actions; he had to have known that wearing such a pin would cause problems. Then again, I'm fairly sure Rosa Parks had to have known that not giving up her seat would cause problems, too.
Now, before I'm shouted down for drawing that comparison, let me point out that, no, I don't believe the two actions are of the same importance, but Gilmore's message is no less respectable: a cry to bring some measure of sanity to the airline industry.
How much government money has been thrown at existing air carriers of late? They're living in their own world right now, where they use taxpayer money and have common carrier status, yet seem to be exempt from the finer points of Constitutional decree. They just have way too much lattitude to govern peoples' behavior, and they chose to use that lattitude to install a false sense of security for the absolute dumbest fucktard imaginable.
Any rational person would view Gilmore's button as a political statement. Any reasonably intelligent person realizes that he can even more damage with his bare hands than a pair of nail clippers. Even the dumbest of the dumb realize that a 3-inch G.I. Joe doll's gun poses no threat to anyone.
Yet the airlines continue to enforce these absurd policies, and have turned flying into such a frustrating, nerve-wracking experience, that people just want to scream! Enough of this crap!
And if the above plea for sanity doesn't sway you, think of it this way:
The government is pouring tons of taxpayer money into an existing private industry that's a borderline monopoly (well, more an oligopoly), and exists to serve the public, yet is still allowed to behave as an entirely private industry, free from the constraints of Constitutional decree.
Sound like any other industry you know of? Maybe those telecoms we all hate so much, here on Slashdot?
It's the same concept: out tax dollars are being spent on a private, non-competetive industry. So where's our say? Why is our money being given to another industry that's just going to turn around and screw us over?
With the RIAA, it's our money. With the telecoms, it's our money. With the airlines, it's our money and our rights.
The Xbox is the console in most need of some sort of killer-ap (if you'll be so kind as to excuse the dot-bomb era expression). Gamecube and Playstation both have great developers, good franchises, and a decent selection of games, and what's the Xbox have? Halo? Sure, it was a decent shooter by console standards. Phantasy Star Online? It's been delayed 5 consecutive times, beginning in November of last year, and is supposedly due out in April.
The problem is that if game developers are disuaded from producing games by Microsoft's control of Xbox, it's bad for the consumers; we won't get any decent games made for the system. But on the other hand, I actually like what Microsoft's done with Xbox Live; every game has voice, and they all seem to have a unified (if someone spartan) interface. From a gamer's prospective, Live is a good thing; certainly better than Sony and Nintendo's feeble online offerings.
Xbox Live has a ton of potential. It's a shame Microsoft can't strike a deal with some of these developers to bring their games to Live....then again, I wouldn't exactly consider EA a _good_ developer.
As has been pointed out, $1 a song may get you an album full of songs you like, but it still doesn't get you liner notes, the album's artwork, or a jewel case.
What this comes down to is that the industry will be making just as much money per album, but it virtually eliminates their distribution, middleman and (physical) production costs. Why isn't the consumer's price being lower, accordingly?
Apple deserves kudos for taking a step in the right direction, but if I'm going to have to supply my own bandwith, make my own liner notes, and buy my own discs and jewel cases, I'd just assume deal with the mislabeled files on Kazaa and spare myself the cost.
I don't think this will really catch on until these services are offering DRM-less files that have full ID3v2 tags at 192 VBR, and are charging $0.50 (or less) per song.
Slashdot Mirror
Late, breaking news:
...really guys, this is less article-worthy and more "duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh" worthy. I've heard more insightful commentary from an empty bottle of Guinness.
OCD sufferers report rise in symptoms due to abundance of light switches and sinks with soap nearby!
In unrelated news, schizophrenic patient spends 4 hours yelling at convenience store security camera about CIA stealing his brain waves!
According to Dell's Site, the "Essential Solution" is $3279, down from $3259. The "Extreme Solution" is $4129.
With the speed that hardware becomes outdated and unsuitable for gaming, coupled with the inability to upgrade anything terribly performance-enhancing on a laptop, why on earth would anyone spend the money on a machine like this?
For literally a little over half the cost you could custom-build a desktop gaming monster machine; 10k RPM drives in RAID-0 with an Athlon64, more RAM than you know what to do with, and a video card that outpowers that entire damned notebook.
Dell seems to be aiming at a really small target market with this machine: people who are serious gamers but also need to travel and also have so much money that they can piss it away on a laptop that's already underpowered by the day's gaming standards, and can't be given any meaningful upgrades in the future.
And to top it off, it weighs a ton, probably has the heat issues even low-performance laptops do, and it doesn't even look as nice as the Alienware competition.
Really... I just don't get it.
You mean all these years I've been fixing PCs for peanuts when all I needed to do was spend 10 seconds changing the bootup music for some sucker and he'll fork over $2k?
I just started back to school to get away from IT. Maybe it's time to move back...
The PS2's backwards compatibility has practically nothing to do with the success of the PS1, and almost everything to do with Sony trying to save money. The PS2 actually includes most of the PS1's hardware. The PS1 processor actually handles I/O for the PS2, and since Sony already has fabrication facilities designed to produce those chips, it was a no-brainer. The backwards compatibility was just added because A) it was convenient and easy, and B) it's one more feature they can hype.
As opposed to what, buying an Xbox2 because it plays the original Halo? Yeah, that'd make sense...
I'm not arguing that backwards compatibility is a non-issue; it'd be nice. But ya know what? It's way overstated. I already have an Xbox, and anyone that doesn't will be able to get one dirt cheap by the time its successor rolls out. If Microsoft can include enhanced functionality in the Xbox2 and cut costs at the cost of losing backwards compatbility, I'm all for it. I'd rather my Xbox2 play Xbox2 games well, rather than cost a fortune with medicore performance because 5 people out there want it to play Xbox games, too.
Man... you're carrying the anti-Microsoft sentiment way too far. They may be greedy, law-breaking bastards, but they didn't get to where they are by being stupid and making a lot of poor business decisions.
And a personal rant: As an owner of all 3 consoles (well, two now... traded the Gamecube in), I'd easily put the Xbox as my favorite. It doesn't have the volume of good games that the PS2 does, but the (mostly exclusive) good titles it does have are just as high-quality, if not better. And honestly, I don't give a rat's ass about Dragon Ball or Final Fantasy or whatever the rage is with all the pre-teens with ADD these days; you take away those games (which are more "commercially successful" than "good" - heh, kinda like Windows), and there really isn't a whole lot left on the PS2. PS2 has SOCOM, Jak, Ratchet & Clank, and Armored Core, and the Xbox has Halo, Rainbow 6, Steel Batallion, and Crimson Skies. They're both great consoles, but when you take Xbox Live and upcoming games like Sudeki, Fable, and TFLO into account, I'd definitely give the edge to the Xbox. And the Gamecube? It was great for a while, but none of the games on that system have even the slightest bit of replayability except for Smash Bros. and Double Dash, both of which require a bunch of friends around to have a good time. Besides... these days, Nintendo's first-party characters are the $2 whores of the video game industry. They may not be as bad as Sega with Sonic, but...
I tend to disagree about pricing. Take a look at Verizon's website. They seem like reasonably competetive prices until you actually try to buy the phone.
Verizon's running a scam; what they advertise are discounted prices that are only available to new subscribers and existing customers who've had their phones for over 2 years. The prices they charge to the bulk of their customers are significantly higher (i.e. the Samsung SCH a530s, which is advertised on their site as $160 is still going for $420 in-store). I found this out about a month ago when I tried to upgrade my 20 month-old V60i to the Samsung SCH a530s, and the store's (incredibly pushy) sales droids informed me that I wouldn't be eligable for the sale price for another 7 months, and would have to pay the full price, which is quite conveniently hidden underneath the sale price sticker.
Despite the terrible coverage, at least Sprint had reasonably-priced phones. I could walk into Radio Shack every 6 months, plunk down $150, and walk out with the last generation's top-end phone. As opposed to Verizon, who's still trying to charge $200 for the exact same phone I paid $200 for nearly 2 years ago.
My point is that Verizon's not competetive on phone prices except by casual glance. They could do much better. It's especially bad since, compared to other carriers, Verizon has the hands-down worst line-up of cell phones out there.
...in Rochester, MI; it's a suburb of Detroit.
For years, Comcast was the only cable company around. Their rates were pretty high, but I never thought anything of it until I moved away to Kalamazoo for college and realized I could get 1.54/786 internet AND digital cable with all the preium statiosn for only $10/month more than my parents had paid for Comcast's basic cable alone, back home.
Now, I'm living at home in Rochester again. I initially had my broadband through Speakeasy, but had a terrible problem dealing with Speakeasy, Covad, and SBC, which resulted in Speakeasy/Covad repeatedly trying to charge me $300 to reconnect my DSL circuit. Speakeasy was almost $100/month plus the cost of a phone line through SBC. It wasn't exactly what you'd call competetive, even though the service and support were top notch.
So, I decided to switch to cable internet; Wide Open West and Charter have both recently moved into town. However, there's some stipulation in my contract with my landlord that states that I can only get Comcast cable. So, I'm stuck with it.
My experiences so far have been mediocre. I don't exactly leach DVD rips all day, but it's not unusual for me to pull down a gig or two in a day. I've never been heckled by Comcast about it, either. And, also, the price is a bit more competetive, now. It's $70/month for 3mbps cable (with wretchedly slow upstream) and digital cable plus, which is essentially everything but HBO and Skinemax and the like.
That being said, my cable routinely goes out... usually at least once a week, and not during their scheduled maintainance times. I have mediocre ping times in most games, and, like I said, the upstream is terrible.
Overall, it's not a terrible service, though. Thankfully I've never had to deal with the customer service, though; I hear it's some of the worst around.
The only reason that Nintendo is in the #2 position is due to the GBA. Sales of the Gamecube, although up from the major price cut, are still dismal, and games aren't selling well, either.
Metroid, Zelda, and most of Nintendo's big guns are rentals, not buyers. They have zero replay value, despite their quality. And many gamers have come to realize that. The only games worth actually owning on that system are Mario Kart: Double Dash and Smash Bros. Melee, neither of which are really any fun with a bunch of friends around.
To offer more anecdotal evidence, my roommate's the 3rd key at the local Gamestop. He says the only way they can sell the Gamecube anymore is to hype it as kid-friendly (which it admitedly is) to soccer moms looking for something to shut their brats up.
I agree, the Xbox's hard drive has, so far, been underutilized (there are a couple MMOGs planned for release this year, and the downloadable content via Xbox Live has been a nice touch), but as far as a quality gaming platform, Xbox beats the living snot out of the Gamecube. The Xbox has strong third-party support from companies like Ubi (Rainbow 6 3 is a masterful game), Team Ninja (Ninja Gaiden), and Bioware, as well as a very strong and growing in-house development studio in FASA and Bungie.
I'm no Microsoft apologist, but I simply think that the Xbox is just a Final Fantasay-esque franchise away from being the PS2's superior, and that Nintendo's not doing well. Their portable, the GBA, is anything but inspired or high-quality, and has an absolutely terrible, one-dimensional game line-up. If Microsoft cuts the Xbox price to the same as the Gamecube's, it could cripple Nintendo's already tenuous grip on the home console market, and if Sony's upcoming PSP is anything but a giant piece of crap, it'll put the hurt on Nintendo's monopoly in the portable market.
Nintendo's going the way of Sega. Give 'em a few years, and they'll turn their major franchises into even bigger whores than Sega's turned Sonic into.
Can't the same be said for a 4-year degree as well?
I took classes for certification, as well as attempted a CS degree (and no, I switched majors upon realizing what a worthless piece of shit degree it was). While at New Horizons, I had some amazing professors. Most of them were extremely experienced and talented teachers. I learned a lot during that 6 months (finished classes and certs in A+, Net+, MCSE, CCNA, CCNP).
My college experience (at the University of Michigan), on the other hand, was quite the opposite. I sat in lecture halls full of 200 students while some professor right off the boat from India with an accent so bad that he may as well have been speaking Hindi. The core curriculum consisted almost entirely of programming classes, with basic network theory and a lot of math... which would be great if I wanted to graduate, then get my job shipped over to India to a guy who'll work for $4k/year, but I was more interested in administration.
Considering what I was actually educated in , a 4-year degree in Computer Science was about as relevant to network administration as a degree in economics.
So, sure, maybe a certification program only shows that the graduate memorized enough of a big to regurgitate it for class, but that's not any different than a 4-year degree, and at least the information he memorized for the certification program is relevent.
...and while I'm looking at building a new box in the next few months, one option I've ruled out are these small form factor PCs.
I built my SFF system about a year and a half ago. It's a Shuttle SS51G; the first XPC they offered with an AGP slot. At the time, it seemed like a great idea: it was small, quiet, attractive, and wasn't hideously expensive, and it would allow me to have plenty of power to run Dark Age of Camelot (which was the only game I played at the time). This was especially true in light of the fact that the whole reason I was building a new PC was because my incredibly large, hot, and noisy beige box AMD system had decided to destroy itself after AMD's 'recommended' fansink died only 6 months after being installed.
The problems I've had with heat in my Shuttle, however, have been even more irritating. Those, coupled with some of the other minor annoyances from the XPC line (which I'd assume are really problems of all SFF systems) have turned me away from them.
First and foremost, I've had major heating issues. The review sites, like Ars and [H] were right when they said that Shuttle's ICE cooling system (a heatpipe, really) was quiet and kept the processor running reasonably cool. The problem is that I automatically assumed that meant that the case itself had adequate cooling, and quite honestly, it doesn't.
My first heat-related issue was with my video card; a Radeon 8500. The AGP slot in Shuttle's cases is literally right next to the case wall. I honestly can't imagine there's more than a 1/4 of an inch between the case and the fan on my Radeon 8500, which means the thing can barely breathe. I've had to underclock it to maintain stability.
Second, I had issues with the RAM causing heat build-up, too. The system defaults to a speed of DDR200, even though the mainboard supposedly supports up to DDR333. I have a pair 512 MB DDR266 sticks from Crucial; both identical. When I changed the multiplier to force them to run at DDR266, I noticed I would get more crashes and lockups, and I wasn't even running an aggressive timing configuration. Ultimately, I had to back my RAM down to DDR200.
The worst part about the heat-related issues is that there's really nothing to do about it. There's no room for expansion in the case; it's not like you can just stick another fan in there. There's barely any room for the components that're already in the case.
Other minor annoyances I've come across are the excessively spartan BIOS, and complete inability to do any work inside the case without disassembling the whole damned thing.
Don't get me wrong, Shuttle doesn't make a bad product. My XPC has great construction quality, and was rather reasonably priced. But despite their claims that these systems offer gaming-quality performance, they really don't. And they're barely any more upgradeable than a laptop.
I'd recommend one to anyone who wants a good web browser or maybe to put together a media box or some sort of small server, but for any performance-intensive, stay away.
I live near Detroit, MI, and Comcast is the only broadband provider in this area***, and I'm paying $50 USD/month for a 3.0mpbs/348kbps connection that goes out several times a week.
What I want to know is how the Norweigans and Swedish get such awesome speed. Every single one I've met seems to have a symmetric 22mbps (or faster) connection for less than I'm paying. And if I'm not mistaken, they certainly don't have population density like Korea and Japan...
***We do have DSL around here, but, long story short, I had Speakeasy, and they tried to charge me $300 after SBC changed my circuit for no apparent reason. Had to get the BBB involved... was a big ugly mess, and the service was $90USD/month, anyways, plus the cost of the land line - not exactly what you'd call competetive.
I just have to wonder... have you even used a Microsoft product since Windows 98? I've been running XP and 2000 for ~3 years now, and I've had two crashes. One from a memory leak in Dark Age of Camelot, and another from ATi's buggy Catalyst 2.x drivers.
Look, I'm all for bearing a grudge against Microsoft for their nauseating business practices, but they've had stable products on the market for a long time now - find something relevant to bitch about.
*sigh*
I had a long, thorough reply typed out, and then kicked the reset button my my PC...
In short, I'll offer these suggestions (based solely on my experiences, so take 'em for what they're worth). Keep in mind, I've never run a store, but I spent my college years building PCs and small networks for beer money, and have seen dozens of shops come and go.
First off, while your store may be different, local stores are rarely ever competetive on price. It seems to be due a lack of small stores revising the costs of hardware as subsequently faster hardware becomes available. Because of this, prices seem to go up and up and up, while older hardware never comes down in price. For instance, I've seen many cases of previous-generation video cards with higher price tags than the current generation's analogue occupying the same shelf space.
Second, many local stores seem to stock sub-par products, and do so almost exlcusively. In one case, a local store stocked nothing but those big, ugly, cheap-feeling Kensington pointers, and then had the nerve to charge even more than their competitors did for higher-quality products from Microsoft and Logitech. Another store I visited (and sadly purchased from) carried nothing but ECS and no-brand mainboards. They offered to order an Abit mainboard for me, and quoted it at ~$250, when the exact same mainboard was going for a little over $150 on GameVE.
Finally, local stores don't seem to understand their customers. Their stock is too low-quality to attract enthusiasts, too expensive to attract regular builders or bargain hunters, and their almost inevitably snotty sales staff, deluded into thinking their A+ certifications are worth a damn, have a tendancy to irritate the hell out of real geeks, and treat the laymen - the people who'd otherwise just be buying Dells - like they're unworthy of even setting foot in the store.
I guess in closing that what I'm saying is that even if your store does everything right, so many other stores do so many things wrong that I honestly do think that good service, friendly staff, high-quality components, and happy customers who tell their friends about you are the only way to go. I know that, given my past experiences with local PC stores, I don't even bother anymore. I go straight to GameVE and NewEgg, but if a friend recommended a local store to me, I'd definitely be willing to check it out.
I've been using Firebird/Phoenix since 0.5 now. A friend recommended Avant Browser, which I reluctantly tried. It finally got me away from Firebird.
;)
Avant's not really its own browser, but an add-on for IE. It includes a built-in pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, and 2-click filtering for flash, java, activex, sounds, movies, images, etc. Plus, it has a built-in Google search, and renders IE immune to most of the malware crap you'd pick up just by browsing (at least, in the 3 weeks I've been using it, Spybot S&D's only found 1 piece of spyware).
It's worth a shot for anyone who's looking for a change in their browser. And while I wouldn't call Avant flat-out better than Firebird, it's definitely an equal, which puts both browsers head and shoulders above the overbloated Mozilla.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating that PCs should be yanked from schools all together. But thinking back to high school (I graduated in '99), I can't remember the majority of my classes ever even attempting to use a PC, and when we did, it was rarely effective. Entire class periods would go to waste because we were supposed to be down at the library doing research, and instead, the teacher was trying to trouble-shoot the printer because it wouldn't print, and the only admin was across town at the other high school fixing their PCs because the entire district shared him due to budget constraints.
But PCs were definitely nice in the library. The school had moved its entire book index onto the PCs, and it was easy to search and find materials, and allowed the school to rip out that massive card catalog and install shelves for hundreds of extra books.
We also had computer literacy courses that were mandated; nothing fancy, but it was a nice introduction to basic word processing and spread sheets.
My school also had a lab where it taught BASIC and C++. I took both classes; the teacher didn't really know what was going on, so it was really more of the play-Quake-over-the-LAN class.
But other than those 3 instances, I'm really pressed to think of a need for PCs to actually be in a classroom. Our math and science teachers wouldn't even let students use those $100 graphing calculators that they demanded we have, much less a full-blown PC. There were a few instances where our English and writing classes would allow us access to PCs to do research for papers, but in many cases, the content filters were so restrictive that many students found it impossible to do any research in school.
The point is: PCs in the school are great, but PCs in the classroom are a complete waste of funds. There's no reason for them to be there because most classes have no use for them, anyways. Schools should funnel some of that extra money they'd save into employing more teachers and making the figures on their paychecks look a bit less sparse.
"What record companies need to realize is they can make money by selling the *image* not the song itself. After all, this is more or less what happens already. Just give the CD some extra fancy packaging and market owning it as a status symbol and you can continue to bilk the masses of of their money for years to come!"
That's what the record companies are doing; it's the sole reason MTV exists. They don't market music anymore; they can't. If they did, every ad would read out like: "Madonna's new hit single! It's exactly the same as the last five!"
One of the big problems with music these days is that it's not the songs that're marketed - it's the image.
I read a comment on Slashdot before that summed up the Linux vs. Windows on the desktop debate almost perfectly, and I really wish I could remember who said it so I could give him credit, but it was along the lines of:
---
I can take a PC running Windows XP, plug in any of thousands of pieces of hardware, and they'll just work. Or, I could spend hours putzing around with obscure config files and recompiling the kernel to get the damned scroll wheel on my generic mouse functioning.
---
But configuration and the nearly-endless number of package dependancy issues aren't the only reasons Linux won't catch on for the desktop. One of the largest reasons, which I rarely see pointed out, is that despite all the KDE vs. Gnome flamewars, it doesn't matter which you choose, because they both suck! Say what you want about XP's playschool UI (which can be skinned very easily, by the way); it's still years ahead of anything I've ever seen running on *nix.
I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that OSX is far and away the superior OS - I recommend it to anyone that wants a computer for home but isn't a gamer, but for your average home user, Linux is just out of the question. And for your average advanced user? Linux is way too much of a headache to be worthwhile.
In the end, Linux is practically designed to be a business OS. Security, stability and cost efficiency are selling points for PHBs and admins, not home users. I think Mandrake and Redhat ought to be commended for making such an effort to make Linux more user-friendly, but ultimately, it's futile. It's like trying to make an M1A1 tank practical for day-to-day commuting. You can modify the hell out of it, but in the end, you're still using a tank to do what a plain old car's much better-suited for.
Better yet...
Run -> gpedit.msc -> computer configuration -> administrative templates -> system
In the right pane, double-click "Turn off autoplay" and set to enabled.
Auto-running CDs is a security problem waiting to happen.
I agree. For working out, I don't want to be hauling around a comparitively large and heavy MP3 player.
I have an older Samsung YP-33 that's RAM-based, and I adore it. It's very small, leight-weight, and came with a handful of accessories like a cradle/arm band, and short headphone wires. I'll admit, that at only 64MB (it's ~2 years old, now), I often wish I had more memory, but to be honest, I have over 300 CDs, and while I could easily have 20 gigs worth of MP3s, there are only a few hundred songs I actually listen to, and they're easily and quickly transferred to the player.
Besides, 64MB is just enough music to cover my usual jog or trip to the gym, so I can't complain.
...horizontal (not vertical) character growth, dynamic worlds, and serious penalties for death.
And in long... (please, hear me out)
These hybridised D&D/Chainmail-based combat systems need to go. They were fine 30 years ago, for a couple guys crowded around a card table eating pizza and drinking beer, with a DM who could change the rules on the fly. All current MMOGs do is show the limitations and oversights of such a system, especially when it's run under a DM as unforgiving as a computer.
Take, for example, the concept of hit points. They're supposedly a measure of a character's physical toughness. It's a concept that seems to make sense. After all, isn't it safe to assume that through physical training, say, a pro boxer, is tougher than you? The problem is scale; certainly a professional boxer can take a lot more of a beating than a regular guy, but if you take a regular guy and a pro boxer, and skewer them both on a greatsword, they're both going to die. MMOG convention, on the other hand, would have us believe that the pro boxer (the level 50 character) could take many, many, many stabbings before going down, where the average guy (the newbie character) keels over at the mere sight of the sword.
Honestly, take a look at hit point totals in Dark Age of Camelot as an example of typical MMOGs: a level 1 fighter will have, depending on his stats, 25-40 hit points, but that same character, by the time he's level 50, can approach 3000 hit points. That scale defies any sort of logic. As in the case with the average guy and the boxer, certainly the veteran level 50 warrior is tougher than the level 1 viking, but a factor of 120 is a bit off. More realistically, even the greenest newbie could kill the mightiest warrior if be manage to smack the warrior upside the head with a mace. Although, in games like EQ or DAoC, that couldn't happen, because the mystic, logic-shattering concept of 'levels' imparts upon the higher-level characters some sort of immunity-to-newbies forcefield. I'm not exaggerating: continuing with the DAoC example, that level 50 character could be sitting down, naked, with the level one character standing over him, wailing away with an axe for days on end, and the newbie will never connect.
So, what's the point?
The point is that obtuse concepts like levels and hit points prevent the majority of the player base from playing together. Hence, the need for robust, deep, and meaningful skill systems that allow characters to grow, change, and advance without becoming orders of magnitude more powerful. This would solve many problems; not only would it allow friends of different experience levels to play together (and anyone that's ever played an MMOG for any length of time knows how much it sucks when you're outpaced by your friends and can no longer group with them), but it would help eliminate a lot of the wasted world design.
Case in point, again: Dark Age of Camelot. During the first year of the game's release, the Camelot Hills, a low-level zone, were bustling. At any given time, there were easily a hundred people there. These days? It's a ghost town. The population has matured, and players have moved one. With the expansion pack, the few newbies who are around, anymore, play in the superior expansion zones. Camelot Hills, along with probably 90% of the game's land mass, is a ghost town. It's almost depressing to be there, now, but of course, it gets no love. The characters are older, and have more levels under their belt, so the players are clamoring for bigger mobs, new zones, and more ph4t 13wtz, and much like EQ feels now, most of the game feels forgotton.
Anyways, I'm getting ahead of myself: the short of it is that horizontal advancement would allow for 3 much needed changes:
1. Players of varying experience could still play together.
2. No more wasteful world design.
3. Perhaps most importantly, because of the sorts of changes required to make horizontal advancement possible, players could h
I couldn't agree more...
Let's play a game of Find the Bottleneck!
Pentium 4 3.0C 800mhz CPU: 6.4 GB/s bandwidth
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro GPU:: 21.8 GB/s bandwidth
PC3200 DDR-400 RAM: 3.2 GB/s bandwidth
ATA/133 Hard Drive: 133 MB/s bandwidth
Now, I'm an avid gamer, and I fully realize that, comparing the performance, of, say, a video card to a hard drive isn't fair, because that video card has to do a lot more work than the hard drive, in a gaming environment. Still, when the video card's capable of pushing in the ballpark of 200 times the data that the hard drive is, it's quite telling of a deficiency.
We already have more storage than virtually anyone knows what to do with. How about making the drives faster?
I picked up a job as a trainer at the local Powerhouse Gym so I could pay the rent (and the occaisional video card upgrade ;) back when I was majoring in kinesiology, and a lot of my clients had the same issue.
;)
The short of it is this: If you want to lose weight, burn more calories than you consume. No fad diets, no gimicky workout equipment, no pills, just excercise.
The good news is that you won't need to spend anymore than it takes to get a good pair of running shoes to get into shape. The bad news is that a very significant part of weight loss is adjusting your diet, and the excersize you'll need probably isn't doable at the office.
Go running after work (make sure you keep good form), and pass on the beer when you can, and when you do drink, go for light beers, not Guinness (Sam Adams' Light is actually a good beer, but don't bother with that Michelob Ultra; just get a glass of water and spare yourself the couple bucks and the vile, pissy taste). If you feel like chicken, get it grilled, not fried. If you feel like a snack, eat an apple and have a glass of water, instead of a candy bar.
I know it can be really tough to start, but the best part about weight loss is that it's almost viral; once you actually see the results, you won't even want another beer. And trust me, after going a few weeks without junk like fast food, it'll almost make you nauseous to think about earing it again.
If you're into weight training, get a membership at the local gym; weight training is an excellent way to burn calories. Just don't entirely neglect running, biking, or some other type of aerobic excercise.
It's simple in theory, simple in practice, but amazingly hard to get used to it. Just remember, no matter how you choose to lose weight, it's a long-term commitment, so don't let yourself backslide before you ever really get a chance to see results; give it at least a couple months to see a difference, although you'll probably feel a difference in a matter of days.
Good luck to ya!
That 'tool' was John Gilmore; a co-founder of the EFF.
I'm not one to agree with his actions; he had to have known that wearing such a pin would cause problems. Then again, I'm fairly sure Rosa Parks had to have known that not giving up her seat would cause problems, too.
Now, before I'm shouted down for drawing that comparison, let me point out that, no, I don't believe the two actions are of the same importance, but Gilmore's message is no less respectable: a cry to bring some measure of sanity to the airline industry.
How much government money has been thrown at existing air carriers of late? They're living in their own world right now, where they use taxpayer money and have common carrier status, yet seem to be exempt from the finer points of Constitutional decree. They just have way too much lattitude to govern peoples' behavior, and they chose to use that lattitude to install a false sense of security for the absolute dumbest fucktard imaginable.
Any rational person would view Gilmore's button as a political statement. Any reasonably intelligent person realizes that he can even more damage with his bare hands than a pair of nail clippers. Even the dumbest of the dumb realize that a 3-inch G.I. Joe doll's gun poses no threat to anyone.
Yet the airlines continue to enforce these absurd policies, and have turned flying into such a frustrating, nerve-wracking experience, that people just want to scream! Enough of this crap!
And if the above plea for sanity doesn't sway you, think of it this way:
The government is pouring tons of taxpayer money into an existing private industry that's a borderline monopoly (well, more an oligopoly), and exists to serve the public, yet is still allowed to behave as an entirely private industry, free from the constraints of Constitutional decree.
Sound like any other industry you know of? Maybe those telecoms we all hate so much, here on Slashdot?
It's the same concept: out tax dollars are being spent on a private, non-competetive industry. So where's our say? Why is our money being given to another industry that's just going to turn around and screw us over?
With the RIAA, it's our money. With the telecoms, it's our money. With the airlines, it's our money and our rights.
...for consumers, I mean.
...then again, I wouldn't exactly consider EA a _good_ developer.
The Xbox is the console in most need of some sort of killer-ap (if you'll be so kind as to excuse the dot-bomb era expression). Gamecube and Playstation both have great developers, good franchises, and a decent selection of games, and what's the Xbox have? Halo? Sure, it was a decent shooter by console standards. Phantasy Star Online? It's been delayed 5 consecutive times, beginning in November of last year, and is supposedly due out in April.
The problem is that if game developers are disuaded from producing games by Microsoft's control of Xbox, it's bad for the consumers; we won't get any decent games made for the system. But on the other hand, I actually like what Microsoft's done with Xbox Live; every game has voice, and they all seem to have a unified (if someone spartan) interface. From a gamer's prospective, Live is a good thing; certainly better than Sony and Nintendo's feeble online offerings.
Xbox Live has a ton of potential. It's a shame Microsoft can't strike a deal with some of these developers to bring their games to Live.
It still seems awfully steep.
As has been pointed out, $1 a song may get you an album full of songs you like, but it still doesn't get you liner notes, the album's artwork, or a jewel case.
What this comes down to is that the industry will be making just as much money per album, but it virtually eliminates their distribution, middleman and (physical) production costs. Why isn't the consumer's price being lower, accordingly?
Apple deserves kudos for taking a step in the right direction, but if I'm going to have to supply my own bandwith, make my own liner notes, and buy my own discs and jewel cases, I'd just assume deal with the mislabeled files on Kazaa and spare myself the cost.
I don't think this will really catch on until these services are offering DRM-less files that have full ID3v2 tags at 192 VBR, and are charging $0.50 (or less) per song.