Before gamefaqs.com we had the alt.rec.videogames.arcade newsgroup. I think the maintainer of the newsgroup had something to do with starting gamefaqs.com. I prefered the old days pre-web though, cause I was one of the only people who knew was a newsgroup was and had a definite advantage over other kids in the arcade with access to secrets and tricks.
Making games costs money. People with lots of money don't want to spend lots of money on "intellectual" games. Because it's just games.
Movies can be "highly intellectual and cultural". Music too. Even food. Computer games are simply nothing to brag about in front of your high profile friends.
Funny, I thought music, visuals and storylines were key elements to video games... add to that the interactive aspect and you could have something great. I guess no one feels motivated enough to step up to the plate. Celebrities are all over them and Spike/MTV/Hollywood in general are creating shows around them. Sadly, I wonder if this will ever happen considering the amount of money video games are already generating these days.
Or maybe that is the problem, there's more than enough money being made with the lowbrow approach. It seems like Hollywood is suffering from the same problem at the moment considering the last few years worth of "blockbusters".
I have a 4th and a 5th gen iPod, having one on hand is very useful for deejaying. I can have tunes that are hard/expensive/impossible to find on vinyl. One drawback is there's no way to beatmatch/mix out of track to one on an ipod.
Rockbox has a pitch control function designed to more or less mimic the function of a Technics 1200 turntable. The only problem with Rockbox is that it's a little buggy and hiccups the music when accessing a large track/artist/album listing. Minor issues are, the default skin is hard to view, though there are others out there that work well, but require patching if you want to view album covers.
If apple copied the interface I'd expect them to do it in a easier to use and more functional way.
Because the first thing you see when you get to that site's homepage is:
---
This website is NOT affiliated with Rev. Dr. Jerry Falwell or his ministry. If you would like to visit Rev. Falwell's website, you may click here.
---
Just a guess, but I wonder if you could defeat it by shooting 3 RPGs from 3 different directions at it? Can it act that quickly against all of them?
Wether or not it could (it sounds like it can), you increased the difficulty of destroying the vehicle and tripled the manpower and firepower costs to fight it.
An example from one of my previous rants on this topic: "You can use the leviathan forces of attention and enthusiasm that are swirling around Web 2.0 these days as a powerful enabler to make something important and exciting happen in your organization."
This is a fairly typical management-speak sentence but what does this actually mean? The sentence essentially boils down to a simple statement: You can use new technology as an opportunity to improve the operation of your business.
---
Actually, I think this means... "You can use the power of hype to get an idea rolling in your organization."
Which boils down to this lesson: "Management speak works."
I use MySpace to keep in contact with my friends, it's a good way to let people know about an upcoming event. I've also been able to contact/been contacted by friends from my past, some I have not heard from in more than 10 years. I'm not sure where this "file-sharing" moniker came from though, I've never used it to send or recieve a file, nor have I seen it mentioned on the site. Regardless, I have used it for social/business networking purposes and have gotten jobs out of it.
It's also a good forum for unsigned/non-major label music artists to gather their supporting fanbase and recieve more exposure through reccomendations.
Make fun of it if you must... but please realize it's not just the offspring of the people who made fun of you in highschool (the site is 18+ BTW), it's a useful site. If you do want to make fun of them though... check out the First Annual MySpace Stupid Haircut Awards.
The UMass Dartmouth student who alleged that Homeland Security had questioned him over his library request for Mao's "Little Red Book" has now come clean.
"The student confessed that he had made it up after being confronted by the professor who had repeated the story to a Standard-Times reporter," Jonathan Saltzman of the Boston Globe reported.
Professor Brian Glyn Williams told the Globe that when he questioned the student about inconsistencies in his story, the student replied: "I made it up. I'm sorry. . . . I'm so relieved that it's over."
The DMCA is being legitimatized by mentioning it next to the real crime... which is:
"During the investigation, undercover agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $265 to have a modification chip, a hard drive and 77 pirated games installed on an Xbox..."
Re:around 40 already deployed in NZ... (was: Re:ha
on
Hacking Santa
·
· Score: 1
I saw around 40 drunken Santas out in Portland, OR on Friday night. Apparently there were a lot more of them than I actually saw and they were on a city-wide pub crawl.
I'd like to think that the internet has increased people's awareness of indie label groups through word of mouth and a more visible presense. The net helps level the playing field for artists and blogs (at least at first) tended to be written by more "hip", "cutting edge" and other social fringe type people.
Where would DJ Dangermouse's "Grey Album" be without the internet? Probably no where close to as big as it got. Look at what he's doing now, he released "Dangerdoom" with MF Doom, sponsored by Adult Swim... that music was considered "backpacker hiphop" before... music for music nerds. The DIY ethic that was so prevailant in the punk rock community of the 80s hsa converged with the "hustle" ethic of the hiphop world and is only growing and spreading with the tools technology.
Hell, I taught my friend to mix w/ a cheap audio mixer, record to his celeron 333mhz and mixdown/master. I moved away and two years later he showed up at my house with copies of his new vinyl pressing which he got into local records werever he went and onto internet distro. (A great site full of indie artists is http://www.truehiphop.com/
I'm sure the rise of the superstar DJ has helped non-major label sales as well... a lot of DJ tracks are on small labels (a lot of the remixes are vinyl only). Labels like Naked Music, K7, Om Records, Thermal Recordings, Siesta, Panhandle, Saddle Creek, Zen, Ninja Tune & Anticon have blown up. The whole electroclash fad of the last few years is totally off the radar of the majors. There are many successful nightclubs DJs out there that only dip into pop chart tunes if the music is actually good. If the RIAA wants to maintain control of the industry they better start taking over nightclubs and dictating playlists there.
It appears to me that taste is broadening and while sugar coated formulas might still make you rich, but people are noticing other choices. Even the youngsters are harder to brainwash.
I was at a party where this was tried with the CD and it worked quite well. I wouldn't say they planned it, but it turned out pretty cool. We were also smoking large amounts of pot and drinking alcohol, but I think it would be just as good sober.
I heard something about a band who recorded their albums in a way that they could be played together? I wanna say it's Radiohead but I'm not certain.
Currently there are 26 states -- mostly small, third-world nations in Africa and South America -- that have diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, although many countries such as the United States and United Kingdom have only de-facto embassies in Taiwan - the United States, for example, maintains diplomatic relations through the American Institute in Taiwan. ROC's de facto embassies are referred to as "Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Offices" (TECRO), with branch offices, the equivalent of consulates, called "Taipei Economic and Cultural Offices" (TECO). Each year, the government of the Republic of China petitions the UN for entry but has so far been unsuccessful because most countries, including the United States, view Taiwan as part of China. The ROC sometimes uses the name Chinese Taipei in the Olympics and other international events.
From RAID Explained. (See link for info on other RAID configurations.)
RAID 0 uses a method of writing to the disks called striping. Let's assume you have a server with three drives of 500 MB, 1 GB and 2 GB. Normally a server would treat each of these drives individually. By incorporating striping, the system would see all of the drives as only one drive for a total of 3.5 GB. Big deal, you say. Wait, there's more.
When the system writes data to the disk, the RAID 0 striping kicks in and automatically distributes the data across all three drives. Part of a file (chunks of data) will be written to the first drive, the next part to the second drive, the next part to the third drive and then it starts all over again until the entire contents of the file have been written.
What this does is greatly increase the speed of the reading/writing process. If you have two drives on your server, it increases the speed by about 25%. If you have three drives, it increases the speed about 33%. When you consider that the main task a server is performing is reading and writing data, any increase in speed is highly welcome.
Besides increasing speed, the other benefit is that the drives can be of different sizes.
Because RAID 0 only writes the data once, it does not achieve data redundancy. If one of the drives fails, the entire system has to be restored because all files are split or striped across all drives.
Because there is no data redundancy, there is no loss of disk space.
I think this is a good idea given the ineptitude of most local law enforcement agencies when dealing with high tech crime.
I could say the same for the FBI, we had a guy post intimate knowledge of a cop killing from our net cafe. The killing wasn't publicised much. The FBI came and bungled the whole computer forensics operation. For one they copied the HDDs w/ some slow crappy program and then took the copies instead of the originals. Luckily some other agents caught the guy after he posted from somewhere else.
Ahh yes! A brilliant concept album set in the year 3030. I got this album about 2 months before it hit the stores cause I'm involved in the underground rap scene and it flipped me out when I first heard it! Produced by one of the greatest producers of all time Dan (The Automator) Nakamura. Everything these guys get into is brilliant. Del has been rapping about comic books and all kinds of wierd things for a long time. Also, he's Ice Cube's cousin.
I suggest the people out there look into Dose 1 & Sole of Anticon and MC Chris (Adult Swim art director voice of many characters). I've also heard Buku One talk about comic books and playstation in his raps... MF Doom had a comic book theme to one of his albums as well (MetalFace a Dr. Doom clone).
Last time I checked, large numbers of ATM machines ran OS2, which is why you don't see the BSOD when you go to grab some cash.
I saw a newer Diebold ATM running some form of WinXP a few months ago. It was showing a desktop... I dunnno why. Also, I noticed a lot of gas station POS systems running OS/2.
Slashdot Mirror
I had a friend in highschool named "Rainbow" luckily he was a 6ft 2" black guy... but I'm sure things were rough when he was younger.
This guy thinks so: http://web3.0log.org/2006/09/01/new-secure-browser -browzar-is-fake-and-full-of-adware/
Before gamefaqs.com we had the alt.rec.videogames.arcade newsgroup. I think the maintainer of the newsgroup had something to do with starting gamefaqs.com. I prefered the old days pre-web though, cause I was one of the only people who knew was a newsgroup was and had a definite advantage over other kids in the arcade with access to secrets and tricks.
Maybe the screeners just got done watching Blazing Saddles?
Making games costs money. People with lots of money don't want to spend lots of money on "intellectual" games. Because it's just games.
Movies can be "highly intellectual and cultural". Music too. Even food. Computer games are simply nothing to brag about in front of your high profile friends.
Funny, I thought music, visuals and storylines were key elements to video games... add to that the interactive aspect and you could have something great. I guess no one feels motivated enough to step up to the plate. Celebrities are all over them and Spike/MTV/Hollywood in general are creating shows around them. Sadly, I wonder if this will ever happen considering the amount of money video games are already generating these days.
Or maybe that is the problem, there's more than enough money being made with the lowbrow approach. It seems like Hollywood is suffering from the same problem at the moment considering the last few years worth of "blockbusters".
Money > critical acclaim?
The Gorillaz did a virtual performace using holograms at the European MTV Music Awards show in Nov 2005.
He can head over to Uncyclopedia and mess with his entry there.
I have a 4th and a 5th gen iPod, having one on hand is very useful for deejaying. I can have tunes that are hard/expensive/impossible to find on vinyl. One drawback is there's no way to beatmatch/mix out of track to one on an ipod.
Rockbox has a pitch control function designed to more or less mimic the function of a Technics 1200 turntable. The only problem with Rockbox is that it's a little buggy and hiccups the music when accessing a large track/artist/album listing. Minor issues are, the default skin is hard to view, though there are others out there that work well, but require patching if you want to view album covers.
If apple copied the interface I'd expect them to do it in a easier to use and more functional way.
Because the first thing you see when you get to that site's homepage is:
---
This website is NOT affiliated with Rev. Dr. Jerry Falwell or his ministry. If you would like to visit Rev. Falwell's website, you may click here.
---
But it's in a larger bold red font.
Just a guess, but I wonder if you could defeat it by shooting 3 RPGs from 3 different directions at it? Can it act that quickly against all of them?
Wether or not it could (it sounds like it can), you increased the difficulty of destroying the vehicle and tripled the manpower and firepower costs to fight it.
An example from one of my previous rants on this topic: "You can use the leviathan forces of attention and enthusiasm that are swirling around Web 2.0 these days as a powerful enabler to make something important and exciting happen in your organization."
This is a fairly typical management-speak sentence but what does this actually mean? The sentence essentially boils down to a simple statement: You can use new technology as an opportunity to improve the operation of your business.
---
Actually, I think this means... "You can use the power of hype to get an idea rolling in your organization."
Which boils down to this lesson: "Management speak works."
I use MySpace to keep in contact with my friends, it's a good way to let people know about an upcoming event. I've also been able to contact/been contacted by friends from my past, some I have not heard from in more than 10 years. I'm not sure where this "file-sharing" moniker came from though, I've never used it to send or recieve a file, nor have I seen it mentioned on the site. Regardless, I have used it for social/business networking purposes and have gotten jobs out of it.
It's also a good forum for unsigned/non-major label music artists to gather their supporting fanbase and recieve more exposure through reccomendations.
Make fun of it if you must... but please realize it's not just the offspring of the people who made fun of you in highschool (the site is 18+ BTW), it's a useful site. If you do want to make fun of them though... check out the First Annual MySpace Stupid Haircut Awards.
http://progressive.org/mag_mc122605
0 5/a01lo719.htm
The UMass Dartmouth student who alleged that Homeland Security had questioned him over his library request for Mao's "Little Red Book" has now come clean. "The student confessed that he had made it up after being confronted by the professor who had repeated the story to a Standard-Times reporter," Jonathan Saltzman of the Boston Globe reported. Professor Brian Glyn Williams told the Globe that when he questioned the student about inconsistencies in his story, the student replied: "I made it up. I'm sorry. . . . I'm so relieved that it's over."
A much more detailed account is here:
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-05/12-24-
The DMCA is being legitimatized by mentioning it next to the real crime... which is:
"During the investigation, undercover agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $265 to have a modification chip, a hard drive and 77 pirated games installed on an Xbox..."
I saw around 40 drunken Santas out in Portland, OR on Friday night. Apparently there were a lot more of them than I actually saw and they were on a city-wide pub crawl.
I'd like to think that the internet has increased people's awareness of indie label groups through word of mouth and a more visible presense. The net helps level the playing field for artists and blogs (at least at first) tended to be written by more "hip", "cutting edge" and other social fringe type people.
Where would DJ Dangermouse's "Grey Album" be without the internet? Probably no where close to as big as it got. Look at what he's doing now, he released "Dangerdoom" with MF Doom, sponsored by Adult Swim... that music was considered "backpacker hiphop" before... music for music nerds. The DIY ethic that was so prevailant in the punk rock community of the 80s hsa converged with the "hustle" ethic of the hiphop world and is only growing and spreading with the tools technology.
Hell, I taught my friend to mix w/ a cheap audio mixer, record to his celeron 333mhz and mixdown/master. I moved away and two years later he showed up at my house with copies of his new vinyl pressing which he got into local records werever he went and onto internet distro. (A great site full of indie artists is http://www.truehiphop.com/
I'm sure the rise of the superstar DJ has helped non-major label sales as well... a lot of DJ tracks are on small labels (a lot of the remixes are vinyl only). Labels like Naked Music, K7, Om Records, Thermal Recordings, Siesta, Panhandle, Saddle Creek, Zen, Ninja Tune & Anticon have blown up. The whole electroclash fad of the last few years is totally off the radar of the majors. There are many successful nightclubs DJs out there that only dip into pop chart tunes if the music is actually good. If the RIAA wants to maintain control of the industry they better start taking over nightclubs and dictating playlists there.
It appears to me that taste is broadening and while sugar coated formulas might still make you rich, but people are noticing other choices. Even the youngsters are harder to brainwash.
OMFG! I think the music lovers are winning!
I was at a party where this was tried with the CD and it worked quite well. I wouldn't say they planned it, but it turned out pretty cool. We were also smoking large amounts of pot and drinking alcohol, but I think it would be just as good sober. I heard something about a band who recorded their albums in a way that they could be played together? I wanna say it's Radiohead but I'm not certain.
So what keeps people from recording the output and distributing that?
I learned to spell it "Aluminum" in the real world... off a box of Reynolds Wrap "Aluminum Foil".
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
Currently there are 26 states -- mostly small, third-world nations in Africa and South America -- that have diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, although many countries such as the United States and United Kingdom have only de-facto embassies in Taiwan - the United States, for example, maintains diplomatic relations through the American Institute in Taiwan. ROC's de facto embassies are referred to as "Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Offices" (TECRO), with branch offices, the equivalent of consulates, called "Taipei Economic and Cultural Offices" (TECO). Each year, the government of the Republic of China petitions the UN for entry but has so far been unsuccessful because most countries, including the United States, view Taiwan as part of China. The ROC sometimes uses the name Chinese Taipei in the Olympics and other international events.
From RAID Explained. (See link for info on other RAID configurations.)
RAID 0 uses a method of writing to the disks called striping. Let's assume you have a server with three drives of 500 MB, 1 GB and 2 GB. Normally a server would treat each of these drives individually. By incorporating striping, the system would see all of the drives as only one drive for a total of 3.5 GB. Big deal, you say. Wait, there's more.
When the system writes data to the disk, the RAID 0 striping kicks in and automatically distributes the data across all three drives. Part of a file (chunks of data) will be written to the first drive, the next part to the second drive, the next part to the third drive and then it starts all over again until the entire contents of the file have been written.
What this does is greatly increase the speed of the reading/writing process. If you have two drives on your server, it increases the speed by about 25%. If you have three drives, it increases the speed about 33%. When you consider that the main task a server is performing is reading and writing data, any increase in speed is highly welcome.
Besides increasing speed, the other benefit is that the drives can be of different sizes.
Because RAID 0 only writes the data once, it does not achieve data redundancy. If one of the drives fails, the entire system has to be restored because all files are split or striped across all drives.
Because there is no data redundancy, there is no loss of disk space.
I think this is a good idea given the ineptitude of most local law enforcement agencies when dealing with high tech crime.
I could say the same for the FBI, we had a guy post intimate knowledge of a cop killing from our net cafe. The killing wasn't publicised much. The FBI came and bungled the whole computer forensics operation. For one they copied the HDDs w/ some slow crappy program and then took the copies instead of the originals. Luckily some other agents caught the guy after he posted from somewhere else.
Ahh yes! A brilliant concept album set in the year 3030. I got this album about 2 months before it hit the stores cause I'm involved in the underground rap scene and it flipped me out when I first heard it! Produced by one of the greatest producers of all time Dan (The Automator) Nakamura. Everything these guys get into is brilliant. Del has been rapping about comic books and all kinds of wierd things for a long time. Also, he's Ice Cube's cousin.
I suggest the people out there look into Dose 1 & Sole of Anticon and MC Chris (Adult Swim art director voice of many characters). I've also heard Buku One talk about comic books and playstation in his raps... MF Doom had a comic book theme to one of his albums as well (MetalFace a Dr. Doom clone).
Last time I checked, large numbers of ATM machines ran OS2, which is why you don't see the BSOD when you go to grab some cash.
I saw a newer Diebold ATM running some form of WinXP a few months ago. It was showing a desktop... I dunnno why. Also, I noticed a lot of gas station POS systems running OS/2.
Because in Soviet Russia, Mars comes to you!