I remember this! So glad someone else posted this, too. Wherever I went while I was working on that game (and a couple of weeks after), I was looking at things and wondering if they were "clickable", and what mysteries lay beyond...
Don't know why I hadn't thought to do this before, but I searched for my old OCF email address from back in 1989 when I was but a pup with my first net access.
Sure enough, there I am... a total Amiga fanboi. My favorite thread from that era is one where I made a typo ("add" vs. "ad" for advertisement, abbreviated), and someone flamed me for it. That person had a "to" vs "too" typo in their sig and some kind person flamed them for that.
Remember last year, when IDG moved their MacWorld NY to Boston and Apple pulled out? I'm guessing that IDG decided that video shot of *their* expo could be construed as theirs, and the bandwidth going out of the expo was certainly provided under their name...
They probably told Apple it was going to cost them a million dollars--or whatever they lost on MWBoston--to do the live oubound feed.
OK, Does anyone know what it costs to get in just for the keynote?
Cost really won't be an issue at first. Not only does the manufacturer need to recoup R&D quickly, but also, they don't necessarily WANT to go mass market immediately with such new technology.
The early adopter market is great for high tech because they:
don't mind paying a premium for cool stuff, and they
don't expect things to run perfectly.
You can imagine that if some company creating these things were to decide to just jump right to mass market, they would have huge problems with the volumes of customer support calls, returns, and so on. The people who bought the first plasma screens probably don't really care that they (the screens) look like crap by now from burn-in. They have probably replaced them AT LEAST once.
If you sell a million units to a million Joe Sixpacks, even if they didn't sell a kidney to get the product, that sort of potential problem would result in lawsuits a million times greater than the potential profits.
Now, when Apple sells me a 500GB iPod, it'll cost me $99,000.00 to fill it up. Oh, how I wish I could just fork over under $200.00 a year to have access to any piece of crap song that the RIAA is responsible for!
SIPPhone is cool. No monthly fees; just buy minutes in $10.00 increments, and they don't expire.
I needed to call indonesia, and my long distance provider gave me a rate of over $6.00 per minute without a special intl calling plan. With a calling plan, it was $0.80/minute, but the plan was $9.00 per month, so even if the call was only going to be a minute long, I'm still paying almost $10.00.
So I went to SIPPhone, bought $10.00 worth of minutes, used it to make my five minute call to find out why a furniture maker I'd contracted with had not shipped out the items (they had, just not the paperwork), and had $9.00 left. I've called Germany and Japan with it since then, and I've still got $7.00 left. I've even used it to check my messages while stuck on hold on my regular land line. It's pretty sweet.
Don't know about using the software behind corporate firewalls. I'm just behind a basic NAT box with minimal filtering. And I don't know about open source, but their basic software is indeed free, at least as in beer.
The other thing about using non-Apple memory is that if they're being sticklers, they can use that to void your warrantee. My recommendation is that if you're going to send your machine in for repairs, take out any non-Apple parts first yourself.
Absolutely, hence my feeling that the PDA is a bad thing, as it removes the barriers for the worst of the worst:-)
For anyone who's going to Japan and needs a few basic phrases, here are some of the essentials:
O-toyray-o doku des-ka?
Where's the lu?
Dozo
Please
Eh-go-gah hanassay mas-ka?
Do you speak english?
Gomen nasai, nihongo-wah hanassay mas-sen.
Deepest apologies, I don't speak Japanese.
Shinguro rumo, onegai shi mas?
Do you have any single rooms?
Yorushku-o onegai shi mas.
It's an honor to meet you.
There. Now print that out, forget the PDA and if you get lost, try interacting with the locals. In my experience, they don't bite!
Personally, I'm not in favor of this PDA system. I think the fear of the language barrier might be a good thing, because it keeps the people most likely not to even TRY to be good, respectful visitors from visiting.
I've been to Japan twice now, with only the Japanese language skills I learned from a Berlitz book/CD, Shogun and a great book called Japanese Street Slang. I didn't use anything from the last book, but the other two were enough for me to get around without relying heavily on using English.
Even in the northern provinces, where far fewer people speak English, my broken Japanese and lots of hand gestures made it possible to get by. I've been a lot of places, and a difficult language barrier is far easier to deal with than unsafe or unsanitary conditions. Remember, this is a culture where it's considered rude to count your change, because doing things honorably is a way of life there.
Another myth about Japan is that it's expensive to travel in. If you want a vacation that feels like you're in America, it is. Big hotel rooms are expensive. So is imported fresh fruit. Want a cantaloupe? $30.00 please. But if you're willing to go somewhat local--get a small hotel room with a futon on tatame instead of a king sized four poster, eat local foods--it's not much more than staying in any place in the states. It's not South America, but you can indeed get a nice hotel room in Tokyo for $40.00 a night.
Anyway, my point is, you don't need a PDA or any high tech stuff to get around Japan. You need an openness to a different culture. You need to be willing to try. You need to be willing to do things in an unfamiliar way. And you need to do a little research before going to make sure that you don't miss some of the subtle, wonderful differences.
Lastly, as an American, I recommend that every American with a conscience visit Nagasaki, visit Epicenter Park and the Atom Bomb Museum. It's a beautiful city, and a humbling experience. It's not easy to get to, but well worth the trip. So go out, pick up your copy of Lonely Planet and go!
Oh, and one more thing. If you're going to go, make sure to buy a JR pass. You can get full access to one of Japan's main rail systems for 1, 2 or 4 weeks. If you want to take one trip out of Tokyo, the pass pays for itself. Hope all this info helps!
With what lab, prototyping/manufacturing equipment, computers to run simulations, vakuum chambers to do some mbe/sputtering, REMs for analysis of the prototypes, ect?
This isnt mathematics, you need more than paper and pencils to create a LCOS...
True, but it won't take me 320 years to do it, either... Just don't hire anyone else and I'll work hard on the problem with that $50M budget for many years to come!
OK, I guess I'm being a little tongue in cheek, but I'm just saying that $50M isn't exactly chicken feed.
A stock 1541 got 4000bps, with a third party addon (Action Replay, Super Snapshot), it would hit 10kbps.
Yeah, well a stock MSD SuperDrive (1541 "compatible") would get--based on your numbers--12kbps or better. They had a 300% speedup on most operations over the 1541, and didn't have all the head allignment problems of the 1541.
Additionally, using the MSD knocked the time for formatting a disk from 1.5 minutes down to 17 seconds. It was awesome.
Unfortunately, the drive wouldn't load most copy-protected software. So even though I paid for EA's One on One (Dr J vs Larry Bird), I had to have a friend run it through a utility called "EA Cracker" so that I could actually play the dang thing.
... with the iPod. I still find it amazing to see how many people on BART during the commute hour have the telltale white headphones. And the number keeps growing, and growing...
I can't believe people are still using warez...
on
Feds Convict Warez Dealer
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I understand the draw, with software being so expensive, but with all the spyware, viruses, and malware in general, it's just amazing that people will download totally unverifiable executables in this day and age.
Of course, people are still having unprotected sex, too.
...but it really depends on how much actual work time one can get out of a set of batteries. If you have to change batteries with every coupld of offloads, that could get pretty annoying.
Of course, the local constabulary could make speedtrap "spam". If the perception of a speed trap is enough to make people slow down, then putting up some sort of network entity to warn about a cop ahead would be less expensive than actually posting a cop there, and maybe just as effective.
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I eat Lorna Doon, you insensitive clods!
I remember this! So glad someone else posted this, too. Wherever I went while I was working on that game (and a couple of weeks after), I was looking at things and wondering if they were "clickable", and what mysteries lay beyond...
I can't believe I let that one slip! How perfect is that?
Sure enough, there I am... a total Amiga fanboi. My favorite thread from that era is one where I made a typo ("add" vs. "ad" for advertisement, abbreviated), and someone flamed me for it. That person had a "to" vs "too" typo in their sig and some kind person flamed them for that.
Ah, those mere much more innocent days.
They probably told Apple it was going to cost them a million dollars--or whatever they lost on MWBoston--to do the live oubound feed.
OK, Does anyone know what it costs to get in just for the keynote?
The early adopter market is great for high tech because they:
- don't mind paying a premium for cool stuff, and they
- don't expect things to run perfectly.
You can imagine that if some company creating these things were to decide to just jump right to mass market, they would have huge problems with the volumes of customer support calls, returns, and so on. The people who bought the first plasma screens probably don't really care that they (the screens) look like crap by now from burn-in. They have probably replaced them AT LEAST once.If you sell a million units to a million Joe Sixpacks, even if they didn't sell a kidney to get the product, that sort of potential problem would result in lawsuits a million times greater than the potential profits.
Now, when Apple sells me a 500GB iPod, it'll cost me $99,000.00 to fill it up. Oh, how I wish I could just fork over under $200.00 a year to have access to any piece of crap song that the RIAA is responsible for!
No, no, no. Organic just means that they were created without chemical pesticides or fertilizers.
It's called Mac OS X Tiger. If you've used iTunes, you know how good and how fast searching can be. It's going to be pretty awesome when it comes out.
Jesus did not and does not compete with any south american ungulates with unusually soft and warm fur.
...into their advertising division. No word yet, so we'll see if my skills at writing resumes are as good as are my skills at keeping clients happy.
I needed to call indonesia, and my long distance provider gave me a rate of over $6.00 per minute without a special intl calling plan. With a calling plan, it was $0.80/minute, but the plan was $9.00 per month, so even if the call was only going to be a minute long, I'm still paying almost $10.00.
So I went to SIPPhone, bought $10.00 worth of minutes, used it to make my five minute call to find out why a furniture maker I'd contracted with had not shipped out the items (they had, just not the paperwork), and had $9.00 left. I've called Germany and Japan with it since then, and I've still got $7.00 left. I've even used it to check my messages while stuck on hold on my regular land line. It's pretty sweet.
Don't know about using the software behind corporate firewalls. I'm just behind a basic NAT box with minimal filtering. And I don't know about open source, but their basic software is indeed free, at least as in beer.
The other thing about using non-Apple memory is that if they're being sticklers, they can use that to void your warrantee. My recommendation is that if you're going to send your machine in for repairs, take out any non-Apple parts first yourself.
Absolutely, hence my feeling that the PDA is a bad thing, as it removes the barriers for the worst of the worst :-)
For anyone who's going to Japan and needs a few basic phrases, here are some of the essentials:
O-toyray-o doku des-ka? Where's the lu? Dozo Please Eh-go-gah hanassay mas-ka? Do you speak english? Gomen nasai, nihongo-wah hanassay mas-sen. Deepest apologies, I don't speak Japanese. Shinguro rumo, onegai shi mas? Do you have any single rooms? Yorushku-o onegai shi mas. It's an honor to meet you.There. Now print that out, forget the PDA and if you get lost, try interacting with the locals. In my experience, they don't bite!
I've been to Japan twice now, with only the Japanese language skills I learned from a Berlitz book/CD, Shogun and a great book called Japanese Street Slang. I didn't use anything from the last book, but the other two were enough for me to get around without relying heavily on using English.
Even in the northern provinces, where far fewer people speak English, my broken Japanese and lots of hand gestures made it possible to get by. I've been a lot of places, and a difficult language barrier is far easier to deal with than unsafe or unsanitary conditions. Remember, this is a culture where it's considered rude to count your change, because doing things honorably is a way of life there.
Another myth about Japan is that it's expensive to travel in. If you want a vacation that feels like you're in America, it is. Big hotel rooms are expensive. So is imported fresh fruit. Want a cantaloupe? $30.00 please. But if you're willing to go somewhat local--get a small hotel room with a futon on tatame instead of a king sized four poster, eat local foods--it's not much more than staying in any place in the states. It's not South America, but you can indeed get a nice hotel room in Tokyo for $40.00 a night.
Anyway, my point is, you don't need a PDA or any high tech stuff to get around Japan. You need an openness to a different culture. You need to be willing to try. You need to be willing to do things in an unfamiliar way. And you need to do a little research before going to make sure that you don't miss some of the subtle, wonderful differences.
Lastly, as an American, I recommend that every American with a conscience visit Nagasaki, visit Epicenter Park and the Atom Bomb Museum. It's a beautiful city, and a humbling experience. It's not easy to get to, but well worth the trip. So go out, pick up your copy of Lonely Planet and go!
Oh, and one more thing. If you're going to go, make sure to buy a JR pass. You can get full access to one of Japan's main rail systems for 1, 2 or 4 weeks. If you want to take one trip out of Tokyo, the pass pays for itself. Hope all this info helps!
True, but it won't take me 320 years to do it, either... Just don't hire anyone else and I'll work hard on the problem with that $50M budget for many years to come!
OK, I guess I'm being a little tongue in cheek, but I'm just saying that $50M isn't exactly chicken feed.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I just read that book! Pretty awesome...
That's $150,000 per person per year... I'd happily work on that salary...
Yeah, well a stock MSD SuperDrive (1541 "compatible") would get--based on your numbers--12kbps or better. They had a 300% speedup on most operations over the 1541, and didn't have all the head allignment problems of the 1541.
Additionally, using the MSD knocked the time for formatting a disk from 1.5 minutes down to 17 seconds. It was awesome.
Unfortunately, the drive wouldn't load most copy-protected software. So even though I paid for EA's One on One (Dr J vs Larry Bird), I had to have a friend run it through a utility called "EA Cracker" so that I could actually play the dang thing.
Those were the days...
... with the iPod. I still find it amazing to see how many people on BART during the commute hour have the telltale white headphones. And the number keeps growing, and growing...
Of course, people are still having unprotected sex, too.
...big business lobbyists didn't stop cities like Philadelphia from providing free public wireless access citywide. G(&* D(&** profiteers!
...but it really depends on how much actual work time one can get out of a set of batteries. If you have to change batteries with every coupld of offloads, that could get pretty annoying.
...porn video games?
Of course, the local constabulary could make speedtrap "spam". If the perception of a speed trap is enough to make people slow down, then putting up some sort of network entity to warn about a cop ahead would be less expensive than actually posting a cop there, and maybe just as effective.
6. ???
7. Profit!