Yowza. That's impressive. If I ever get a job that requires even moderate amounts of travel, I'll probably start to very very seriously consider one of those.
Intel's apparently done a very good job with the Pentium M design, and Sony's apparently done a similarly good job at optimizing power consumption in other areas. And I guess the high price tag reflects the effort and component cost exerted toward that end.
I had always just assumed the sign on the door was a left-over gag placed on the door by the office cut-up when the display department saw more frequent use.
Every time I'm in CompUSA I have to take a few minutes to marvel at the tiny Sony subnotebook (I guess it's branded as a Vaio of some sort). No optical drive, of course, because it's maybe half an inch thick when closed, but a surprisingly nice screen (I forget if it's 800x600, 1024x768, or something in between with a different aspect ratio), full size keyboard that extends to all edges, and a 1GHz Pentium M. The pointing device is a Thinkpad style nub because there's no room for a touchpad (even the mouse buttons are curved a little around the edge of the case in the half inch beyond the space bar). It can't weigh much more than 1 pound. I fear I might have bought one by now if it was $1000 instead of $3000. I'm still paying off a bulky $2800 desktop replacement from a couple years ago... though I've bought a Mac mini (and the obligatory 512MB RAM and putty knife... and a new LCD...) in the interim and am enjoying it.
At the time, PA was also getting hammered by interest in their Child's Play charity. A few midafternoon hits from a Slashdot Games section-only post shouldn't be too much to handle.
I'm not saying that they should open up their file formats, just that they've managed to become pretty much the only way to go in a business environment these days if you deal with other businesses. Sure you can make rich text formatted documents, but if you accept documents from other companies, what happens when they send over an Office XP.doc or a.xls file with some VB macros in it? You can't get around using MS Office these days without severely limiting your selection of compatible partners, associates, customers, or suppliers.
I think the grandparent knows that the RIAA is a combined front for a group of labels. The point he was making is that Sony is not just a record label, so the various sectors of Sony (hardware, music labels, etc.) are going to be at odds in their aims. The "label people" in the comment are Sony label people enhorting Sony's lawyers and Sony's RIAA representatives (who are, I suppose, also Sony "label people") to do something about the loss of traditional distribution control embodied by the nature of the Internet. The RIAA's power, whatever it is, comes from the fact that they are a united front presented by the major record labels. It's as potent as the money and people the labels are willing to pour into it.
Being a customer of MSFT is a choice, of course...you don't have to buy their technology.
At the moment, by saying that, you're also saying, "You don't have to maintain compatibility with the rest of the world. It's a choice."
And I guess that may or may not have been your point, sarcasm being known to be of a frequency often undersampled in A-to-D conversion and thus not always successfully reproduced.
I played Counter-Strike for a while with a Logitech trackball. One of the ones with the ball on the left side so you moved it with your thumb, while fingers were used like on a normal 3-button mouse. I actually liked it pretty well. If I recall correctly, I think I found inverting the mouse Y-axis worked well for reasonably intuitive movement.
If it has a trackball, they'd better make sure you can remove it and clean it easily. I'd wager console controllers would get gunked up more quickly than at a PC.
Gamecube launched at $199. And there's speculation that since XBox 2 will have a few variations with respect to included hardware that the lowest end might be a little below the standard price.
I would have pegged 32-inch standard-definition TVs as around $300 or maybe $350, and those come with a built-in tuner (or two in some cases), unlike most HDTVs, which are advertised as "HDTV monitors." The exception is a 30-inch Sanyo I've seen at Wal-Mart for a little under $600 and have actually been tempted to buy.
So in addition to the mark-up for improved picture quality, to get much use out of it beyond progressive scan DVDs and upcoming consoles, you have to either buy a tuner and be lucky enough to get decent over-the-air offerings, or pay extra to your cable provider to get a few HD channels a month.
However! I don't know if it's just a trend in the Southeast or if it's pretty uniform across the country, but for years, even in the tiniest and most run-down of houses, you stand a pretty good chance of spying a gigantic 50-inch projection TV dominating the tiny living room, and just the other day while passing by a smallish house, I couldn't help but notice a huge 16:9 screen staring at me through the front window. So maybe in terms of passive entertainment, the price barrier is a little higher than some other early-adoption technologies. Anyone who stumbles into Circuit City is immediately bombarded with beautiful HD pictures on all sides. It's hard to resist if they have on-site instant financing. Not sure when I'll get around to going HD, though. Trying to avoid extra debt and don't necessarily want to settle for some stopgap solution.
And a random note: a 32" 16:9 screen has less area than a 32" 4:3 screen. So HD gets a few inches benefit when comparing to standard definition.
Console vs. PC games will result in either console players getting outmaneuvered by mouse-and-keyboard users or the PC players complaining about the cheapness of the auto-aim assistance the console players will need if they want to be competitive. That's, of course, if you're talking about FPS-type games.
I am definitely eager to see what the new round of consoles is capable of, though.
Didn't Sierra do this with The Incredible Machine?
Yeah, but don't tell that apparently time-traveling Goldberg guy.
Re:The Truth!
on
Planet Simpson
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· Score: 2, Interesting
That's pretty funny, actually. Nice work:)
It also reminded me that there have been recent trends in episodes of subtle and not-so-subtle jabs at the most common Internet criticisms of the show. The best one seems to be that many have latched on to claiming that recent seasons have featured what detractors refer to as "Jerkass Homer," with less family focus and the like. A couple of episodes recently have explicity used the phrase "Jerkass Homer" or a very close variation.
Also, the last couple of seasons of the show have been getting better, and even the bad episodes have some really funny parts in them, to the point where I'll sit through one that, while probaby overall not that great, has some amazing jokes within.
Re:Defined a generation
on
Planet Simpson
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Agreed. I've seen nothing edgy about it. Nothing that challenges any preconceptions or offends the sensibilities of anyone who's likely to watch it in the first place. What's edgy?
"What's this? Some people think Jewish people are naturally adept at finance, but that's not necessarily true? Time to update my worldview!"
"My goodness, there are stereotypes that some idiots apply to a particular ethnic group? And members of said group might be offended if an idiot attempts, however ignorantly, to perpetuate them? Why, this flies in the face of reason or decency! Time to phone in my indignance and outrage that such edgy, offensive content is being broadcast to my televisual viewing tube!"
"My word! That there's someone out there who has the audacity to propose such tired material in the guise of progressive humor shakes the very foundations of my apparently flawed and dangerously antiquated social conceptions! Seth MacFarlane, you've forced me to change my life. I'll never look at handicapped people the same way again."
"Ha! He referenced something I remember! Dude, this so rocks. It's daring art at the very boundaries of postmodern comedy."
I do remember playing Descent, and enjoying it. From what I recall, I think I probably made the choice of just forcing my perception into a specific reference coordinate system, so in any given room or area or tunnel I assigned an arbitrary "down" and generally remained oriented to that coordinate system until I headed into another area, at which point I picked a new "down."
I missed the boat on most modem direct-play stuff. All I can remember playing over a modem was Warcraft 2 around 1996/1997. Didn't really do much other long-distance multiplayer until being spoiled by college broadband, though Comcast is having to suffice now. Oh, and I tried Everquest the summer before the spoiling. I didn't like it on a 44000bps connection.
Oh, I'm not saying it takes a top-end machine, just that my best machine at the moment is not that great and is in a closet, and very very loud when it's running (a new power supply would probably help that). It could probably run HL2 (XP 1800+, 512MB PC2100, 128MB GeForce3 Ti200), but I'd rather play it on something beefier. Obviously graphics aren't everything, but playing it on that machine would almost be a disservice to the game. My other machines, which I do still use, are a laptop from early 2003 and a Mac mini.
I've seen a couple of other people complain about nausea while playing the game, too, which really surprised me. I imagine it might be something like car sickness, maybe caused by a disparity between what you see and what you feel. I know several people who claim that they have trouble reading in cars because they get sick if they do so. I also heard stories about people getting sick when playing the first Descent game, which I guess was among the first full freedom full 3D games.
I guess I should count myself as fortunate that I apparently don't seem to have problems with immersive 3D games, or reading in cars. Now if I had a computer that would run HL2 well... and space to put the giant case in which I'd have to put the hardware.
Glad my suspicions were correct last night. Took forever to access a domain by URL, but once accessed, it seemed fine. And yeah, it's definitely been fixed longer than two hours, as it seemed to have been corrected earlier this morning when I checked.
Didn't know their DNS servers were so centralized.
Unfortunately Comcast is the only cable provider in town, and I had already become dissatisfied with local DSL offerings.
I know that's how trademarks are kept and lost, but is that also the case with patents? And what might constitute "knowingly allowing" the offense? Could ignorance be claimed if no action is taken? Is there some sort of "due diligence" involved in patent enforcement, too?
Interesting trivia: the Transformers movie was the first animated feature ever rated PG. Also on the movie subject, most people say that Welles died before he finished his work and that Nimoy (who voiced Galvatron in the movie) recorded the remainder of the Unicron lines.
Also, the comic and cartoon came out around the same time, the comic probably coming out first due to the shorter production cycle of a comic book issue. Both were of course to promote and/or gain sales from a toy line composed of imports from several separate Japanese lines, which is why you have some that transform into full size vehicles, and others that transform into smaller items like guns and stereos, and a pretty wide range of construction methods, quality, and size across the line. The comic was not all that great, though they apparently incorporated it into the whole Marvel universe, with Spider-Man guest starring in one of the first few issues and the Savage Land figuring into the origin of the Dinobots. There were a few stories later on in the run that were okay. Fan favorite writer Simon Furman added some interesting backstory mythology to the universe, incorporating Unicron into some creation myth with another elder robot god of some sort called Primus. Furman also wrote the shorter "Generation 2" comic run, which was actually pretty good, and worked on the last few episodes of the Beast Wars show, which explains some of the craziness introduced there with the Book of Primus and the like.
Oh, and to the person claiming that Rodriguez can't do family style violence, in addition to the bloodfests like El Mariachi and Sin City, he also made Spy Kids 1-3, the first two of which weren't all that bad (3 sucked completely, even the Ricardo Montalban parts).
The old movie... cool? I have the DVD, like it and all... but cool? There was a Weird Al musical number with "Dare to be Stupid." There was the line "Me Grimlock kick butt!" The animation was great, there were some good fight scenes, even the opening theme was hilariously extreme 80s rock, but the movie was not "cool."
I agree that Beast Wars was pretty great, though. And yeah, the current shows are pretty much crap, though Armada did end up as a petty good PS2 game, with the collect-em-all power-up aspect of Armada integrating surprisingly well into a video game context.
If you have fond memories of the original series, I'd HIGHLY recommend you look for the "Alternators" toy line that's out right now. There's not a series associated with it, just a bunch of 1:16-scale licensed cars with amazing transformations and classic names. I'd really recommend Hound, who is of course a Jeep Wrangler. If you can't find Hound, Swindle is a yellow version of pretty much the same mold. Oh, and of course there's the 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime if it's still in any stores. About a foot tall in robot mode, and an absolutely amazing recreation of the TV show version of Prime, and it actually transforms.
Slashdot Mirror
Intel's apparently done a very good job with the Pentium M design, and Sony's apparently done a similarly good job at optimizing power consumption in other areas. And I guess the high price tag reflects the effort and component cost exerted toward that end.
I had always just assumed the sign on the door was a left-over gag placed on the door by the office cut-up when the display department saw more frequent use.
Ohhh, never mind, then.
Though I guess this attempted pun beats both the iPod and mp3 encoding in the "lame" department.
Every time I'm in CompUSA I have to take a few minutes to marvel at the tiny Sony subnotebook (I guess it's branded as a Vaio of some sort). No optical drive, of course, because it's maybe half an inch thick when closed, but a surprisingly nice screen (I forget if it's 800x600, 1024x768, or something in between with a different aspect ratio), full size keyboard that extends to all edges, and a 1GHz Pentium M. The pointing device is a Thinkpad style nub because there's no room for a touchpad (even the mouse buttons are curved a little around the edge of the case in the half inch beyond the space bar). It can't weigh much more than 1 pound. I fear I might have bought one by now if it was $1000 instead of $3000. I'm still paying off a bulky $2800 desktop replacement from a couple years ago... though I've bought a Mac mini (and the obligatory 512MB RAM and putty knife... and a new LCD...) in the interim and am enjoying it.
At the time, PA was also getting hammered by interest in their Child's Play charity. A few midafternoon hits from a Slashdot Games section-only post shouldn't be too much to handle.
I'm not saying that they should open up their file formats, just that they've managed to become pretty much the only way to go in a business environment these days if you deal with other businesses. Sure you can make rich text formatted documents, but if you accept documents from other companies, what happens when they send over an Office XP .doc or a .xls file with some VB macros in it? You can't get around using MS Office these days without severely limiting your selection of compatible partners, associates, customers, or suppliers.
I think the grandparent knows that the RIAA is a combined front for a group of labels. The point he was making is that Sony is not just a record label, so the various sectors of Sony (hardware, music labels, etc.) are going to be at odds in their aims. The "label people" in the comment are Sony label people enhorting Sony's lawyers and Sony's RIAA representatives (who are, I suppose, also Sony "label people") to do something about the loss of traditional distribution control embodied by the nature of the Internet. The RIAA's power, whatever it is, comes from the fact that they are a united front presented by the major record labels. It's as potent as the money and people the labels are willing to pour into it.
At the moment, by saying that, you're also saying, "You don't have to maintain compatibility with the rest of the world. It's a choice."
And I guess that may or may not have been your point, sarcasm being known to be of a frequency often undersampled in A-to-D conversion and thus not always successfully reproduced.
If it has a trackball, they'd better make sure you can remove it and clean it easily. I'd wager console controllers would get gunked up more quickly than at a PC.
Gamecube launched at $199. And there's speculation that since XBox 2 will have a few variations with respect to included hardware that the lowest end might be a little below the standard price.
So in addition to the mark-up for improved picture quality, to get much use out of it beyond progressive scan DVDs and upcoming consoles, you have to either buy a tuner and be lucky enough to get decent over-the-air offerings, or pay extra to your cable provider to get a few HD channels a month.
However! I don't know if it's just a trend in the Southeast or if it's pretty uniform across the country, but for years, even in the tiniest and most run-down of houses, you stand a pretty good chance of spying a gigantic 50-inch projection TV dominating the tiny living room, and just the other day while passing by a smallish house, I couldn't help but notice a huge 16:9 screen staring at me through the front window. So maybe in terms of passive entertainment, the price barrier is a little higher than some other early-adoption technologies. Anyone who stumbles into Circuit City is immediately bombarded with beautiful HD pictures on all sides. It's hard to resist if they have on-site instant financing. Not sure when I'll get around to going HD, though. Trying to avoid extra debt and don't necessarily want to settle for some stopgap solution.
And a random note: a 32" 16:9 screen has less area than a 32" 4:3 screen. So HD gets a few inches benefit when comparing to standard definition.
I am definitely eager to see what the new round of consoles is capable of, though.
Yeah, but don't tell that apparently time-traveling Goldberg guy.
It also reminded me that there have been recent trends in episodes of subtle and not-so-subtle jabs at the most common Internet criticisms of the show. The best one seems to be that many have latched on to claiming that recent seasons have featured what detractors refer to as "Jerkass Homer," with less family focus and the like. A couple of episodes recently have explicity used the phrase "Jerkass Homer" or a very close variation.
Also, the last couple of seasons of the show have been getting better, and even the bad episodes have some really funny parts in them, to the point where I'll sit through one that, while probaby overall not that great, has some amazing jokes within.
"What's this? Some people think Jewish people are naturally adept at finance, but that's not necessarily true? Time to update my worldview!"
"My goodness, there are stereotypes that some idiots apply to a particular ethnic group? And members of said group might be offended if an idiot attempts, however ignorantly, to perpetuate them? Why, this flies in the face of reason or decency! Time to phone in my indignance and outrage that such edgy, offensive content is being broadcast to my televisual viewing tube!"
"My word! That there's someone out there who has the audacity to propose such tired material in the guise of progressive humor shakes the very foundations of my apparently flawed and dangerously antiquated social conceptions! Seth MacFarlane, you've forced me to change my life. I'll never look at handicapped people the same way again."
"Ha! He referenced something I remember! Dude, this so rocks. It's daring art at the very boundaries of postmodern comedy."
I love legitimate the-ater.
I missed the boat on most modem direct-play stuff. All I can remember playing over a modem was Warcraft 2 around 1996/1997. Didn't really do much other long-distance multiplayer until being spoiled by college broadband, though Comcast is having to suffice now. Oh, and I tried Everquest the summer before the spoiling. I didn't like it on a 44000bps connection.
Oh, I'm not saying it takes a top-end machine, just that my best machine at the moment is not that great and is in a closet, and very very loud when it's running (a new power supply would probably help that). It could probably run HL2 (XP 1800+, 512MB PC2100, 128MB GeForce3 Ti200), but I'd rather play it on something beefier. Obviously graphics aren't everything, but playing it on that machine would almost be a disservice to the game. My other machines, which I do still use, are a laptop from early 2003 and a Mac mini.
I guess I should count myself as fortunate that I apparently don't seem to have problems with immersive 3D games, or reading in cars. Now if I had a computer that would run HL2 well... and space to put the giant case in which I'd have to put the hardware.
Didn't know their DNS servers were so centralized.
Unfortunately Comcast is the only cable provider in town, and I had already become dissatisfied with local DSL offerings.
I know that's how trademarks are kept and lost, but is that also the case with patents? And what might constitute "knowingly allowing" the offense? Could ignorance be claimed if no action is taken? Is there some sort of "due diligence" involved in patent enforcement, too?
Also, the comic and cartoon came out around the same time, the comic probably coming out first due to the shorter production cycle of a comic book issue. Both were of course to promote and/or gain sales from a toy line composed of imports from several separate Japanese lines, which is why you have some that transform into full size vehicles, and others that transform into smaller items like guns and stereos, and a pretty wide range of construction methods, quality, and size across the line. The comic was not all that great, though they apparently incorporated it into the whole Marvel universe, with Spider-Man guest starring in one of the first few issues and the Savage Land figuring into the origin of the Dinobots. There were a few stories later on in the run that were okay. Fan favorite writer Simon Furman added some interesting backstory mythology to the universe, incorporating Unicron into some creation myth with another elder robot god of some sort called Primus. Furman also wrote the shorter "Generation 2" comic run, which was actually pretty good, and worked on the last few episodes of the Beast Wars show, which explains some of the craziness introduced there with the Book of Primus and the like.
Oh, and to the person claiming that Rodriguez can't do family style violence, in addition to the bloodfests like El Mariachi and Sin City, he also made Spy Kids 1-3, the first two of which weren't all that bad (3 sucked completely, even the Ricardo Montalban parts).
I agree that Beast Wars was pretty great, though. And yeah, the current shows are pretty much crap, though Armada did end up as a petty good PS2 game, with the collect-em-all power-up aspect of Armada integrating surprisingly well into a video game context.
If you have fond memories of the original series, I'd HIGHLY recommend you look for the "Alternators" toy line that's out right now. There's not a series associated with it, just a bunch of 1:16-scale licensed cars with amazing transformations and classic names. I'd really recommend Hound, who is of course a Jeep Wrangler. If you can't find Hound, Swindle is a yellow version of pretty much the same mold. Oh, and of course there's the 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime if it's still in any stores. About a foot tall in robot mode, and an absolutely amazing recreation of the TV show version of Prime, and it actually transforms.
And such praise from a 3-digit UID! I'm glad the joke was appreciated by some.
Yeah, tell that to Wal-Mart, where Eternal Darkness is still $50. WHY ISN'T IT SELLING?!