...but I wish they'd remember what their Second Amendment is for soon. It's not good when their politicians shit all over the country, but they're currently shitting all over the world.
US/.ers, I'm not asking for a full-fledged civil war, just show those asshats in the big parties that the world doesn't like them, implement a democracy without kludges like electors and, well, reboot the system. It's pretty much what certain founders said anyway.
True. The PS3 and X360 are all mighty and stuff, but the Wii is the only interesting, novel console out there. The other two are, well, pumped-up Playstations with optional hard drives.
Likewise, the handheld sector: The only two interesting consoles out there are the GP2X (because Gamepark equals hotness) and the DS (because it's innovative). I don't care about the PSP - if I want to look at movies on the go I get a GP2X, which doesn't even require me to use some funky proprietary DVD-workalike. And allows me to play homebrew games without fighting a silly cracking war against the developer. Considering what the PSP does it's pretty frickin' expensive, even if the games were better than what I get for the GMX and the DS it'd be expensive.
Sony will retain many customers but it's not going to last forever. Sony's gaming section might just turn out a second SEGA. (OTOH, if that means they'll release an awesome last console...)
My own opinion is that there are no reliable "home" routers, wireless or otherwise. If you want something that will actually work rather than a $100 hodge podge of cheap microprocessor, buggy code, solder, plastic and hope, get a proper business model, because the home versions are not worth your time.
But what if the business model is "we're living here"? At my home we have a router sitting next to the DSL modem, into which some CAT5e cables plug, which then provide network access to the various rooms in the house.
However, every single router we've ever used goes insane after a while. We had a Netgear, a noname device (IIRC) and now a Siemens. Every one of them worked for two or three months and then started to randomly fail. The first two devices just went silent, necessitating a power-cycle, while the Siemens just starts dropping packets and can bve reset over the admin interface most of the time. In the case of the Siemens the failure rate seems to be coupled to the ration of UDP to TCP traffic - the more UDP the more failures (however the packet loss does not disappear when the UDP traffic goes away).
I'm seriously starting to wonder whether there's something with our telecommunictions equipment that kills routers or it's just that there aren't any affordable routers that can withstand even moderate BitTorrent activity.
So, are there any routers that can withstand some traffic and aren't prohibitively expensive for a regular household? Maybe it would be cheaper to build a low-cost, low-consumption computer with four NICs and a BSD and use that as a router...
1.) Buy used PS2
2.) Buy Katamari Damacy
3.) Laugh at people going apeshit because they can't await shelling out hundreds of bucks so they can play the extremely innovative Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Fanservice 2 on their XBox 360
4.) Since you still have about 200 to 300 bucks left in comparison to the X360 gamer buy a used Gamecube and Eternal Darkness. It's not so innovative, but the insanity flashes are funny
5.) Bring the rest of your money to the bank and wait
6.) PROFIT!!! (And even without dots!)
7.) Dominate world (In your face, Bungie! Now you're not the only one with a seven-step plan for world domination!)
In my opinion gaming hardware only becomes relevant about two years after the initial release. Until then you know what it does and what it doesn't, you know which console has the most compelling set of games and the prices are at a non-ridiculous level. Maybe I can't play all the newest games, but good games don't miraculously get worse with age - and if the game really turns out to be bad after two years it wasn't too hot to begin with.
Oh, don't worry. Next they'll release the Super Kore 2 xXx-treme Edition Turbo Alpha, leveraging the popularity of the popular Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter franchises as well as that of Vin Diesel, who thinks he's popular. There will also be a version oriented towards the movie maker scene called the Super Kore 2 xXx-treme Edition Turbo Alpha (Not Uwe Boll Edition).
Hey, let's be fair. This is an exciting year. The Nintendo DS is becoming cheap so even gamers who'd laugh in your face if you asked them to shell out 200 bucks for a piece of gaming hardware can buy one. That's the first non-Gamepark console since the original Playstation that's actually worth buying!
Let's face it: All serious computer gaming was done under MS-DOS, Direct3D is for weenies without imagination.;)
By the way, apparently I can't post anything with a subject line of "Score: +1, Retrogaming Elitism". A Slash bug?
Of course the microkernel would detect that, download a fixed version of the driver, compile it if necessary and load it. If there was no updated version the kernel would wait for it, polling the server every five seconds.
Mac owners don't use their computers for doing sums so those benchmarks don't matter.
Ha! Shows what you know!
Pantheon:~/Stuff jesus_666$ uname -srm
Darwin 7.9.0 Power Macintosh
Pantheon:~/Stuff jesus_666$ echo "1 + 1" | bc -l
2
Re:Wow, what a great comparison of 70s-80s vs now
on
Gadgets, Then & Now
·
· Score: 1
I would make a funny, insightful followup of redeeming value to that but that kind of/. post hasn't been invented yet.
(Note to future generations: And we like it!)
Re:Things are shrinking at a fast pace...
on
Gadgets, Then & Now
·
· Score: 1
The rate at which cellphones are getting feature packed, I see the death of (exclusive) PDAs within 5 years.
Weren't PDAs copmpletely displaced by feature-laden mobiles in 2001 and then again in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005? Seriously, "cellphones will kill the PDA" is exactly the same kind of statement as "next year will be the year of desktop Linux".
Another example could be laptops. They're still too big to walk on the streets while using them. Better input and foldable displays would soon change this scenario and we would see people editing excel sheets while walking on the pavement!
So you mean to say that PDAs will be killed by mobiles while laptops will be killed by PDAs?
...legally ambiguous at best. Most webcomics, that is. Yes, there are webcomics far above what you'd expect - like the excellent Blackbird (http://blackbird.ashen-ray.com/) that has the same graphical quality you'd expect from a commercial manga, the awesome Girly (http://go-girly.com/), which occationally features one of the most peculiar drawing styles ever (as well as some pretty peculiar characters), Concerned (http://www.hlcomic.com/), which is not only hilarious but also is a pretty good-looking piece of HL2 machinima, Howard Taylor's grandiose space opera Schlock Mercenary (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/) or the two grandfathers of the sprite comic genre, Bob and George (http://www.bobandgeorge.com/) and 8-bit Theater (http://www.nuklearpower.com/).
Free Comic Book Day is a great event but some people give out a free comic strip every day (like Howard Taylor or BnG's Dave Anez). Some of the online stuff is definitely worth checking out. And if you like it there are some quite direct ways of showing your approval.
Also, owning a graphic novel does not affect your geek factor by a significant amount. Pre-ordering the dead tree version of Schlock Mercenary does.
Britain now consumes more food than it produces - it fell into a food deficit a few weeks back. Not sure about other countries, but I suspect that many do likewise.
I think it's still a common practice in the EU to overproduce certain things (like milk IIRC) and then destroy some of it in order to keep the prices stable.
I admit this is shemelessly offtopic, but the thread might contain some Informative, so off we go.
I'm in a seminar on unsure knowledge (or however the title would be translated best). One example of a way of evalutaing such knowledge would be Bayes' theorem, on the practical application of which I am to give a presentation. I immediately thought of spam filters, which employ exactly that theorem and ow I'm looking for information on how any particular spam filter works.
Because I'm lazy and the story kinda fits and I figure it might be informative for someone else as well if someone in the know posts an explanation of a spam filter's inner workings I ask Slashdot first: How does Thunderbird/SpamAssassin/a similar program employ Bayes to handle spam?
And no, contrary to the cliché the answers don't have to be here by monday. I'm actually smart enough to ask random strangers well in advance of the deadline.
I'm currently watching the uncut Japanese version of Sailor Moon (hey, it beats having nothing at all to do in the train) and in episode 9 on two occasions Sailor Mercury uses her pocket computer to analyze something. The first time it reads (among other things):
PRIME DIRECTIVES
The second time the analysis result is:
1:SERVE THE PUBLIC TRUST
2:PROTECT THE INNOCENT
3:UPHOLD THE LAW
Y'know, I think that cat was actually sent by OCP.
Heh. You think you have it bad? Go ask any Marathon fan. They're still discussing the series on the Marathon Story Page and only have figured out most of it. If Hideaki Anno and Bungie ever came together to make a video game the gaming community's heads would probably explode.
And t
The thing is that the easily accessible party of NGE are quite servicable. The fighting scenes are diverse and entertaining, the mecha designs are good and the whole thing just looks nice. The background story is, well, it's not as deep as it wants to but it's also not complete drivel. The characters aren't too much over the top. And a big plus: NGE manages to avoid the "ZOMG WE'RE TEH ÜBER HEROES" attitude that plagues most mecha series.
Maybe it's no Shakespeare but it certainly is a great mecha anime, not too shallow but also not as confusing as Serial Experiments Lain (except maybe for the last two episodes).
Slashdot Mirror
(you don't think for a second that france or germany protested against the invasion of Iraq for ethical reasons do you?)
As for Germany, we probably did complain because it was illegal. When it comes to pea counting we're about the best in the world.
...but I wish they'd remember what their Second Amendment is for soon. It's not good when their politicians shit all over the country, but they're currently shitting all over the world.
/.ers, I'm not asking for a full-fledged civil war, just show those asshats in the big parties that the world doesn't like them, implement a democracy without kludges like electors and, well, reboot the system. It's pretty much what certain founders said anyway.
US
I agree. Any scientist who shoots people into space just to show them bad movies and who wears a green lab coat just has to be great.
True. The PS3 and X360 are all mighty and stuff, but the Wii is the only interesting, novel console out there. The other two are, well, pumped-up Playstations with optional hard drives.
Likewise, the handheld sector: The only two interesting consoles out there are the GP2X (because Gamepark equals hotness) and the DS (because it's innovative). I don't care about the PSP - if I want to look at movies on the go I get a GP2X, which doesn't even require me to use some funky proprietary DVD-workalike. And allows me to play homebrew games without fighting a silly cracking war against the developer. Considering what the PSP does it's pretty frickin' expensive, even if the games were better than what I get for the GMX and the DS it'd be expensive.
Sony will retain many customers but it's not going to last forever. Sony's gaming section might just turn out a second SEGA. (OTOH, if that means they'll release an awesome last console...)
My own opinion is that there are no reliable "home" routers, wireless or otherwise. If you want something that will actually work rather than a $100 hodge podge of cheap microprocessor, buggy code, solder, plastic and hope, get a proper business model, because the home versions are not worth your time.
But what if the business model is "we're living here"? At my home we have a router sitting next to the DSL modem, into which some CAT5e cables plug, which then provide network access to the various rooms in the house.
However, every single router we've ever used goes insane after a while. We had a Netgear, a noname device (IIRC) and now a Siemens. Every one of them worked for two or three months and then started to randomly fail. The first two devices just went silent, necessitating a power-cycle, while the Siemens just starts dropping packets and can bve reset over the admin interface most of the time. In the case of the Siemens the failure rate seems to be coupled to the ration of UDP to TCP traffic - the more UDP the more failures (however the packet loss does not disappear when the UDP traffic goes away).
I'm seriously starting to wonder whether there's something with our telecommunictions equipment that kills routers or it's just that there aren't any affordable routers that can withstand even moderate BitTorrent activity.
So, are there any routers that can withstand some traffic and aren't prohibitively expensive for a regular household? Maybe it would be cheaper to build a low-cost, low-consumption computer with four NICs and a BSD and use that as a router...
That should've read "Intel Yugo Dual Extreme Edition". Although an Intel Yubo would be cool, too... Powered by Karavan technology.
No,, it's the AMD Gremlin64 X2 vs the Intel Yubo Dual Extreme Edition.
1.) Buy used PS2
2.) Buy Katamari Damacy
3.) Laugh at people going apeshit because they can't await shelling out hundreds of bucks so they can play the extremely innovative Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Fanservice 2 on their XBox 360
4.) Since you still have about 200 to 300 bucks left in comparison to the X360 gamer buy a used Gamecube and Eternal Darkness. It's not so innovative, but the insanity flashes are funny
5.) Bring the rest of your money to the bank and wait
6.) PROFIT!!! (And even without dots!)
7.) Dominate world (In your face, Bungie! Now you're not the only one with a seven-step plan for world domination!)
In my opinion gaming hardware only becomes relevant about two years after the initial release. Until then you know what it does and what it doesn't, you know which console has the most compelling set of games and the prices are at a non-ridiculous level. Maybe I can't play all the newest games, but good games don't miraculously get worse with age - and if the game really turns out to be bad after two years it wasn't too hot to begin with.
Oh, don't worry. Next they'll release the Super Kore 2 xXx-treme Edition Turbo Alpha, leveraging the popularity of the popular Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter franchises as well as that of Vin Diesel, who thinks he's popular. There will also be a version oriented towards the movie maker scene called the Super Kore 2 xXx-treme Edition Turbo Alpha (Not Uwe Boll Edition).
Hey, let's be fair. This is an exciting year. The Nintendo DS is becoming cheap so even gamers who'd laugh in your face if you asked them to shell out 200 bucks for a piece of gaming hardware can buy one. That's the first non-Gamepark console since the original Playstation that's actually worth buying!
;)
Let's face it: All serious computer gaming was done under MS-DOS, Direct3D is for weenies without imagination.
By the way, apparently I can't post anything with a subject line of "Score: +1, Retrogaming Elitism". A Slash bug?
So Unbrellas are devices for native people that have rain coming from their underside on sunny days? Hmm, might be a hot seller in the Arab region.
Well, it's a really fast mirror.
Maybe one could modify emacs to use vi as the editor...
Of course the microkernel would detect that, download a fixed version of the driver, compile it if necessary and load it. If there was no updated version the kernel would wait for it, polling the server every five seconds.
Mac owners don't use their computers for doing sums so those benchmarks don't matter.
Ha! Shows what you know!
Pantheon:~/Stuff jesus_666$ uname -srm
Darwin 7.9.0 Power Macintosh
Pantheon:~/Stuff jesus_666$ echo "1 + 1" | bc -l
2
I would make a funny, insightful followup of redeeming value to that but that kind of /. post hasn't been invented yet.
(Note to future generations: And we like it!)
The rate at which cellphones are getting feature packed, I see the death of (exclusive) PDAs within 5 years.
Weren't PDAs copmpletely displaced by feature-laden mobiles in 2001 and then again in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005? Seriously, "cellphones will kill the PDA" is exactly the same kind of statement as "next year will be the year of desktop Linux".
Another example could be laptops. They're still too big to walk on the streets while using them. Better input and foldable displays would soon change this scenario and we would see people editing excel sheets while walking on the pavement!
So you mean to say that PDAs will be killed by mobiles while laptops will be killed by PDAs?
...legally ambiguous at best. Most webcomics, that is. Yes, there are webcomics far above what you'd expect - like the excellent Blackbird (http://blackbird.ashen-ray.com/) that has the same graphical quality you'd expect from a commercial manga, the awesome Girly (http://go-girly.com/), which occationally features one of the most peculiar drawing styles ever (as well as some pretty peculiar characters), Concerned (http://www.hlcomic.com/), which is not only hilarious but also is a pretty good-looking piece of HL2 machinima, Howard Taylor's grandiose space opera Schlock Mercenary (http://www.schlockmercenary.com/) or the two grandfathers of the sprite comic genre, Bob and George (http://www.bobandgeorge.com/) and 8-bit Theater (http://www.nuklearpower.com/).
Free Comic Book Day is a great event but some people give out a free comic strip every day (like Howard Taylor or BnG's Dave Anez). Some of the online stuff is definitely worth checking out. And if you like it there are some quite direct ways of showing your approval.
Also, owning a graphic novel does not affect your geek factor by a significant amount. Pre-ordering the dead tree version of Schlock Mercenary does.
Britain now consumes more food than it produces - it fell into a food deficit a few weeks back. Not sure about other countries, but I suspect that many do likewise.
I think it's still a common practice in the EU to overproduce certain things (like milk IIRC) and then destroy some of it in order to keep the prices stable.
As the FTA points out, people who robbed the pyramids in Egypt didn't pay any attention to the warnings about curses and such...
And seriously, why should they? Text-mode UIs aren't that bad, you know...
I admit this is shemelessly offtopic, but the thread might contain some Informative, so off we go.
I'm in a seminar on unsure knowledge (or however the title would be translated best). One example of a way of evalutaing such knowledge would be Bayes' theorem, on the practical application of which I am to give a presentation. I immediately thought of spam filters, which employ exactly that theorem and ow I'm looking for information on how any particular spam filter works.
Because I'm lazy and the story kinda fits and I figure it might be informative for someone else as well if someone in the know posts an explanation of a spam filter's inner workings I ask Slashdot first: How does Thunderbird/SpamAssassin/a similar program employ Bayes to handle spam?
And no, contrary to the cliché the answers don't have to be here by monday. I'm actually smart enough to ask random strangers well in advance of the deadline.
The second time the analysis result is:
Y'know, I think that cat was actually sent by OCP.
Yeah, right, troll. Your mum's a giant robot.
And she smells so bad they call her funk the Absolute Terror Field. Nobody can enter the Absolute Terror Field!
Heh. You think you have it bad? Go ask any Marathon fan. They're still discussing the series on the Marathon Story Page and only have figured out most of it. If Hideaki Anno and Bungie ever came together to make a video game the gaming community's heads would probably explode. And t
The thing is that the easily accessible party of NGE are quite servicable. The fighting scenes are diverse and entertaining, the mecha designs are good and the whole thing just looks nice. The background story is, well, it's not as deep as it wants to but it's also not complete drivel. The characters aren't too much over the top. And a big plus: NGE manages to avoid the "ZOMG WE'RE TEH ÜBER HEROES" attitude that plagues most mecha series.
Maybe it's no Shakespeare but it certainly is a great mecha anime, not too shallow but also not as confusing as Serial Experiments Lain (except maybe for the last two episodes).