You know what's really cool? He's a programmer who realizes that some of his older games are more-or-less worthless as a viable money-earning product as technology has moved ahead, so he has posted these old programs on his website for download, stating "For all you collectors of Macintosh antiquities, here is some old software from the dim past". I wish more programmers would do this, as there are tons of old programs that I'd like to see/try/reinstall if only I could find a relatively clean version from a reliable source... like the creator or publisher.
no need for Mario teaches typing (although your suggestion implies that you'd be using the whole keyboard, which may make the screen display really cramped... besides, I think popcap did a typing shark-type game already.... but I digress).
According to an article on [insert forgotten website here, but I think it was CNET], you have to turn the watch off when you go on a plane because the watch is classified as an FM receiver.
According to Forbes, Banc of America expects Sony and Microsoft to cut prices on their respective PlayStation 2 and Xbox videogame consoles to $149 (or even $129) from $179 prices ahead of the E3 trade show in May 2004, a reduction that is "long overdue." Such a move would be "a major catalyst" for videogame sales and videogame stocks.
And in keeping with the current topic, this bodes to be yet another nail in the GameCube's pending coffin... especially if the prices are cut to $129. To stay competitive, GameCube games may need to drop to a regular price of $39-or-lower from the standard $49.
Fine, let Disney shut down the (practically brand-new) Florida animation facility. What other effects does this have?
We all know that the Florida studio was responsible for creating "Lilo and Stitch". As WDW moves forward with a retrofit of the screamingly-fun "Alien Encounter" ride to a more family-friendly "Meet Stitch" format, they ran into a small glitch.
On the plus side, it gives Disney one more building to reuse for yet another cartoon-based stage show in the Studios theme park. Better get that created soon while they still have popular films that haven't been used yet. That's right, you can't have too many stage shows that all end before 5pm at a theme park open until 10pm to entertain the masses.
The reason Pixar is considered a threat to Disney is not because they have succeeded in 3D computerized animation where others (except Shrek) have not, but because they excel at the exact same things that the best Disney works did just as well: the storytelling. Toy Story 2 was supposed to go direct-to-video, but its story was so well done and compelling that Disney told Pixar to remake it as a feature.
The medium is not the problem here. It's the message. 2D vs 3D is not what Disney should be concerned with, but rather how to get back to telling a quality story instead of some rehashed dreck. If the story is good, then the audience will come and Disney can continue to build *original* park rides based on those stories.
Yes, Disney needs Pixar because Pixar "gets" what Walt did and will be terribly sorry if they can't come to terms with Pixar on the contract renewal. But Pixar also gets a benefit from the Disney association that they may not get with another studio distribution as the Disney name still carries a bit of class with it, so they may not want to play *too* hard to get. Being independent (like Lucasfilm) may allow you the freedom to create whatever you want and distribute it on your own terms, but it may not be the best solution for everybody.
Right -- don't just say "you've received this message because you agreed to do so from one of our third-party marketers". Why not tell us exactly which website we agreed to receive emails from. Show us the audit trail of mailing list purchases so we can go back to the original source and clear that checkbox.
if you have "one big hit" in a casino, the suits show up and take your SSN information. This is for hand-pays of over $1200 at the slots (as opposed to payouts that come directly from the machine).
I don't think that they care how many chips you cash in at one time (from a tax perspective), but for some reason the number $10,000 sticks out in my mind.
Just another way to track your play
on
RFID Casino Chips
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Casinos are already tracking your play. Being able to track an individual chip enhances their information flow.
Those gamblers smart enough to play with a players card (slot club) so that they can earn comps and get a slight percentage higher in returns know that they're being tracked. Of course, it's easier to do so at the slot machines where the computers can determine your exact coin-in and convert that to a specific number of points to throw into your club account.
At the tables, the casinos still track an individual's play via the pit bosses. While it's now a fairly automated/computerized instant process, it used to be done all on paper and entered into a system later. Regardless, pit bosses would still evaluate what your average bet was, determine the approximate number of hands per hour that you were playing, and then give you a rating. I don't foresee this process changing, as this allows the casinos to use a bit of fudge factor to favor some guests more if they're tipping, friendly, and happy versus the mean grouchy players.
What other benefits can the casino do by tracking individual chips? What about being able to monitor how a chip moves from game to game? Will it allow casinos to cut down the number of pit bosses? (probably not, for other reasons such as security) Are more chips moving from the blackjack tables to the pai gow poker tables? Would this affect gaming decisions that the casino makes regarding the blackjack rules, so it keeps players at the table longer? How about making the whole betting process more automated by being able to verify the total amount of money in a stack of chips? And, it's one more way to prevent cheaters from late-posting bets on the roulette table.
As others have already said: casinos are one place where you can expect to be watched no matter where you go or what you do. You already sacrifice some amount of privacy just by entering a casino in the first place.
With all the references to take passengers to various places like KFC, Pizza Hut, Tower Records, the Levi's Store...
And does anyone remember the uproar that SEGA ran into when they placed Marlboro ads in some of their early track-based racing games to make the game appear more realistic?
And to make matters worst, NBC is going crazy with their times on Monday. Fear Factor is running 70 minutes (8p-9:10p), Las Vegas is running an hour (9:10p-10:10p), and whatever they have at 10:10p (the Apprentice? Joe Average?) is running 50 minutes to 11p. Losing one minute of a recorded program is reasonable, but a 10-minute shift? Crazy.
Granted, when TiVo announced last year that they were going to have an HD-compatible version, we all assumed that it would be a standalone version.
Some cable companies are offering their own PVRs that will support HD. Unfortunately, those specs indicate that those drives will only hold about 8-10 hours of HD programming (memory says it was an 80GB drive, but I could be wrong on that). See the Motorola/Time Warner Cable website or the Comcast PVR website for further details.
The "TV On Demand" feature of my cable company has it's good points and it's bad points.
Good: it's usually free, and has a fairly decent selection of programs that I am interested in watching. Last season's Curb Your Enthusiasm and Sopranos are examples. Not a huge selection, but enough for me.
Bad: extremely awkward controls, massive pixelation; often ends up that if you even nudge the remote you'll end up back at some random menu that you'll have to go and restart the program from the beginning and fast-forward to where you left off; pause, fast-forward, and rewind don't work very smoothly.
Nutshell: if you're willing to *watch* instead of *control*, then you'll be mostly happy.
When I read the press release this morning (along with MSFT's announcement of a similar product), I gave a heavy sigh and said to myself that while it may be something that I would personally use, these will not gain broad acceptance by Joe Average anytime soon.
PS2: the BroadQ system requires the Network Adapter and installation of software on the PC. Allows streaming of music and DivX. Supposedly licensed to one of the myriad of PS2 third-party suppliers to also try to sell.
XBox: The Xbox Music Mixer (or the new "Media" thing mentioned above, requires software to be installed on the PC, but runs under WinXP only. Doesn't stream movies... yet. But the ability to do so is there, obviously.
TiVo: Home Media Option. Doesn't stream movies... yet, but handles music and slideshows. On the plus side, they say their streaming software works on Macs. Downside: currently limited to about 400 songs in the queue and you can't play the slideshow while listening to music - it's either one or the other. Hell, TiVo has enough problems convincing non-technical people that it's more than just a "glorified VCR", let alone explaining to non-believers the whole "streaming music" thing. (small disclaimer: I'd be lost without my TiVo.)
It's not like the idea is a bad one. I'm all for simplifying the Computer-to-HomeTheater process. How many of us have wanted to take our computer music libraries and play 'em through the stereo? For the most part, the easiest way to do so has been to get an MP3-capable DVD player and load a CD with hundreds of files, letting the player randomly take 'em. With the added bonus of being able to take the same CDs to the MP3-capable car stereo, it's a one-stop shop. Or we use an audio cable already setup to plug the iPod or Nomad Jukebox into the stereo and play that way.
Streaming music over the 'net implies that most homes are wired already, with network outlets near their TVs and/or stereos... or have gone wireless. I don't think the general buying audience is ready for this level of technology yet.
It's taken years for folks to get comfortable with digital cameras, and yet they still don't understand that you need to crop or resize that 2MB photo of little Sally before emailing it to the entire office.
I agree that TT had issue with giving you "free State" software, then requiring you to mail in a rebate form in order to claim the $$.
The kind folks at Intuit ("D. Jerry") have just informed me that if you buy the boxed version of TT this year at a local store (the Deluxe or Premiere versions, of course) then you will still have to fill out and mail in the rebate form. If, on the other hand, you purchase the download OR boxed version of TT directly from Intuit, then you don't have to fill out the rebate form.
The primary problem I see with education is that it is nearly impossible to evaluate teachers. If good teachers (and there are a lot of them) could be supported and not interfered with by others, it would be great. But this isn't the case. The good teachers out there are more than offset by ignorant policies, moronic teachers, incompetant administrators, and yuppie families.
I know it's not the best way to evaluate teachers, but the website Rate My Teachers is one way students/parents have to share commentary with others about their school experiences.
I can confirm this for the arcade version of NFL Blitz '99.
Another item: if you're a registered user and you're trying to beat all 30 teams, as you get closer to winning all the games you'll suddenly find yourself without being able to enter powerups (that is, the machine will automatically go into 'tournament mode' without actually being told to go into that mode).
Blitz doesn't actually learn how to play against you (as a true AI would, for example, notice that the quarterback always fades back and to the left before passing), it just cranks up the speed of the computerized players and their "random" factors.
Some of the best game soundtracks were for 7th Guest and 11th Hour, courtesy of The Fat Man. The music really added to the creepiness of the games.
It's not often that the music developer is given as big a credit as George was given in these games' liner notes. It does help that he... wrote the first General MIDI soundtrack for a game, the first direct-to-MIDI live recording of musicians, the first redbook soundtrack included with the game as a separate disk, the first music for a game that was considered a "work of art," and the first soundtrack that was considered a selling point for the game.
Other games that Fat Man composed for include:
Wing Commander
Cyberstrike
Ultima Underworld
Castles II
Interesting to note is that George is starting up a "game music licensing program", for developers and musicians to use to share/trade music created specifically for games:
GamePlayMusic provides high-quality, finished music for Game Developers through the use of an easily searchable database. The database contains game music by many composers and covering a wide variety of styles. The database has been structured to support searches by all of the criteria associated with game music development. Several custom options are available to assist the developer in obtaining the perfect music for his or her product.
You're probably talking about Polyphonic HMI, with a US office in the Philadelphia area.
In a nutshell, they took the songs from the Billboard charts from the past x years and ran them through a computer looking for dozens of different values (key, song length, tempo, mix of music to lyrics, etc). Because they're basing their statistics on songs that already were popular, they're guessing that all songs that have xx, yy and zz values for specific criteria also has the potential to be a hit.
As mentioned earlier on Slashdot in a similar discussion on videogame music and soundtracks and how music companies need to change their gameplan to survive, videogame soundtracks are available at your local Best Buy, Amazon.com, and other retail outlets. BB even advertised the SSX3 soundtrack in their sales flyer the week that it was released.
Add ropelight or neon, digital scorer/counters, digitized sounds activated when the puck bounces off the pegs (imagine a library of Simpsons audio of the dozens of Homer "Doh's!" sounding while the puck drops.... "Doh! Doh! Doh doh ooof!", then landing in the zero scoring spot... "Ay Carumba!")
Not that it wouldn't be an interesting project, but why build one when you can pick up a complete and working skeeball machine for about $100 at an arcade auction. I can't imagine that building one yourself would cost much less that that.
One of my buddies bought 3 at a Knoxville auction last year and ended up having to leave one at the side of the road because he ran out of room in his truck. Once he cleaned the dust off the two remaining machines, he kept one and sold the other for $250. At parties, he sets his machine up to dispense drink tickets, then asks for 2 tickets per Jell-O shot.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, there's one from 1990 available for free download on the original programmer (Chris Crawford)'s website but it's for Macs only, so that doesn't help me play along.
You know what's really cool? He's a programmer who realizes that some of his older games are more-or-less worthless as a viable money-earning product as technology has moved ahead, so he has posted these old programs on his website for download, stating "For all you collectors of Macintosh antiquities, here is some old software from the dim past". I wish more programmers would do this, as there are tons of old programs that I'd like to see/try/reinstall if only I could find a relatively clean version from a reliable source... like the creator or publisher.
Just go to Flash Flash Revolution to get your keyboard dancing groove on.
According to an article on [insert forgotten website here, but I think it was CNET], you have to turn the watch off when you go on a plane because the watch is classified as an FM receiver.
Of course, if they can do this, then it's just a short step from here to sharks with lasers attached to their heads.
And in keeping with the current topic, this bodes to be yet another nail in the GameCube's pending coffin... especially if the prices are cut to $129. To stay competitive, GameCube games may need to drop to a regular price of $39-or-lower from the standard $49.
We all know that the Florida studio was responsible for creating "Lilo and Stitch". As WDW moves forward with a retrofit of the screamingly-fun "Alien Encounter" ride to a more family-friendly "Meet Stitch" format, they ran into a small glitch.
With all the animators gone from the Florida studio, they ended up having to out-source the pre-show animation to some non-Disney company.
On the plus side, it gives Disney one more building to reuse for yet another cartoon-based stage show in the Studios theme park. Better get that created soon while they still have popular films that haven't been used yet. That's right, you can't have too many stage shows that all end before 5pm at a theme park open until 10pm to entertain the masses.
The reason Pixar is considered a threat to Disney is not because they have succeeded in 3D computerized animation where others (except Shrek) have not, but because they excel at the exact same things that the best Disney works did just as well: the storytelling. Toy Story 2 was supposed to go direct-to-video, but its story was so well done and compelling that Disney told Pixar to remake it as a feature.
The medium is not the problem here. It's the message. 2D vs 3D is not what Disney should be concerned with, but rather how to get back to telling a quality story instead of some rehashed dreck. If the story is good, then the audience will come and Disney can continue to build *original* park rides based on those stories.
Yes, Disney needs Pixar because Pixar "gets" what Walt did and will be terribly sorry if they can't come to terms with Pixar on the contract renewal. But Pixar also gets a benefit from the Disney association that they may not get with another studio distribution as the Disney name still carries a bit of class with it, so they may not want to play *too* hard to get. Being independent (like Lucasfilm) may allow you the freedom to create whatever you want and distribute it on your own terms, but it may not be the best solution for everybody.
You know, identify the strongest M&M in the bag, then mail it back to the M&M/Mars company for breeding purposes.
Right -- don't just say "you've received this message because you agreed to do so from one of our third-party marketers". Why not tell us exactly which website we agreed to receive emails from. Show us the audit trail of mailing list purchases so we can go back to the original source and clear that checkbox.
I don't think that they care how many chips you cash in at one time (from a tax perspective), but for some reason the number $10,000 sticks out in my mind.
Those gamblers smart enough to play with a players card (slot club) so that they can earn comps and get a slight percentage higher in returns know that they're being tracked. Of course, it's easier to do so at the slot machines where the computers can determine your exact coin-in and convert that to a specific number of points to throw into your club account.
At the tables, the casinos still track an individual's play via the pit bosses. While it's now a fairly automated/computerized instant process, it used to be done all on paper and entered into a system later. Regardless, pit bosses would still evaluate what your average bet was, determine the approximate number of hands per hour that you were playing, and then give you a rating. I don't foresee this process changing, as this allows the casinos to use a bit of fudge factor to favor some guests more if they're tipping, friendly, and happy versus the mean grouchy players.
What other benefits can the casino do by tracking individual chips? What about being able to monitor how a chip moves from game to game? Will it allow casinos to cut down the number of pit bosses? (probably not, for other reasons such as security) Are more chips moving from the blackjack tables to the pai gow poker tables? Would this affect gaming decisions that the casino makes regarding the blackjack rules, so it keeps players at the table longer? How about making the whole betting process more automated by being able to verify the total amount of money in a stack of chips? And, it's one more way to prevent cheaters from late-posting bets on the roulette table.
As others have already said: casinos are one place where you can expect to be watched no matter where you go or what you do. You already sacrifice some amount of privacy just by entering a casino in the first place.
With all the references to take passengers to various places like KFC, Pizza Hut, Tower Records, the Levi's Store... And does anyone remember the uproar that SEGA ran into when they placed Marlboro ads in some of their early track-based racing games to make the game appear more realistic?
Also, some of the iRiver MP3 players with built-in tuners will record broadcasts.
And to make matters worst, NBC is going crazy with their times on Monday. Fear Factor is running 70 minutes (8p-9:10p), Las Vegas is running an hour (9:10p-10:10p), and whatever they have at 10:10p (the Apprentice? Joe Average?) is running 50 minutes to 11p. Losing one minute of a recorded program is reasonable, but a 10-minute shift? Crazy.
Some cable companies are offering their own PVRs that will support HD. Unfortunately, those specs indicate that those drives will only hold about 8-10 hours of HD programming (memory says it was an 80GB drive, but I could be wrong on that). See the Motorola/Time Warner Cable website or the Comcast PVR website for further details.
Good: it's usually free, and has a fairly decent selection of programs that I am interested in watching. Last season's Curb Your Enthusiasm and Sopranos are examples. Not a huge selection, but enough for me.
Bad: extremely awkward controls, massive pixelation; often ends up that if you even nudge the remote you'll end up back at some random menu that you'll have to go and restart the program from the beginning and fast-forward to where you left off; pause, fast-forward, and rewind don't work very smoothly.
Nutshell: if you're willing to *watch* instead of *control*, then you'll be mostly happy.
PS2: the BroadQ system requires the Network Adapter and installation of software on the PC. Allows streaming of music and DivX. Supposedly licensed to one of the myriad of PS2 third-party suppliers to also try to sell.
XBox: The Xbox Music Mixer (or the new "Media" thing mentioned above, requires software to be installed on the PC, but runs under WinXP only. Doesn't stream movies... yet. But the ability to do so is there, obviously.
TiVo: Home Media Option. Doesn't stream movies... yet, but handles music and slideshows. On the plus side, they say their streaming software works on Macs. Downside: currently limited to about 400 songs in the queue and you can't play the slideshow while listening to music - it's either one or the other. Hell, TiVo has enough problems convincing non-technical people that it's more than just a "glorified VCR", let alone explaining to non-believers the whole "streaming music" thing. (small disclaimer: I'd be lost without my TiVo.)
It's not like the idea is a bad one. I'm all for simplifying the Computer-to-HomeTheater process. How many of us have wanted to take our computer music libraries and play 'em through the stereo? For the most part, the easiest way to do so has been to get an MP3-capable DVD player and load a CD with hundreds of files, letting the player randomly take 'em. With the added bonus of being able to take the same CDs to the MP3-capable car stereo, it's a one-stop shop. Or we use an audio cable already setup to plug the iPod or Nomad Jukebox into the stereo and play that way.
Streaming music over the 'net implies that most homes are wired already, with network outlets near their TVs and/or stereos... or have gone wireless. I don't think the general buying audience is ready for this level of technology yet.
It's taken years for folks to get comfortable with digital cameras, and yet they still don't understand that you need to crop or resize that 2MB photo of little Sally before emailing it to the entire office.
The kind folks at Intuit ("D. Jerry") have just informed me that if you buy the boxed version of TT this year at a local store (the Deluxe or Premiere versions, of course) then you will still have to fill out and mail in the rebate form. If, on the other hand, you purchase the download OR boxed version of TT directly from Intuit, then you don't have to fill out the rebate form.
I can confirm this for the arcade version of NFL Blitz '99. Another item: if you're a registered user and you're trying to beat all 30 teams, as you get closer to winning all the games you'll suddenly find yourself without being able to enter powerups (that is, the machine will automatically go into 'tournament mode' without actually being told to go into that mode). Blitz doesn't actually learn how to play against you (as a true AI would, for example, notice that the quarterback always fades back and to the left before passing), it just cranks up the speed of the computerized players and their "random" factors.
As mentioned in a different discussion, Wing Commander's music was written by The Fat Man, who also wrote the music for 7th Guest.
It's not often that the music developer is given as big a credit as George was given in these games' liner notes. It does help that he... wrote the first General MIDI soundtrack for a game, the first direct-to-MIDI live recording of musicians, the first redbook soundtrack included with the game as a separate disk, the first music for a game that was considered a "work of art," and the first soundtrack that was considered a selling point for the game.
Other games that Fat Man composed for include:
- Wing Commander
- Cyberstrike
- Ultima Underworld
- Castles II
Interesting to note is that George is starting up a "game music licensing program", for developers and musicians to use to share/trade music created specifically for games: GamePlayMusic provides high-quality, finished music for Game Developers through the use of an easily searchable database. The database contains game music by many composers and covering a wide variety of styles. The database has been structured to support searches by all of the criteria associated with game music development. Several custom options are available to assist the developer in obtaining the perfect music for his or her product.In a nutshell, they took the songs from the Billboard charts from the past x years and ran them through a computer looking for dozens of different values (key, song length, tempo, mix of music to lyrics, etc). Because they're basing their statistics on songs that already were popular, they're guessing that all songs that have xx, yy and zz values for specific criteria also has the potential to be a hit.
As mentioned earlier on Slashdot in a similar discussion on videogame music and soundtracks and how music companies need to change their gameplan to survive, videogame soundtracks are available at your local Best Buy, Amazon.com, and other retail outlets. BB even advertised the SSX3 soundtrack in their sales flyer the week that it was released.
Add ropelight or neon, digital scorer/counters, digitized sounds activated when the puck bounces off the pegs (imagine a library of Simpsons audio of the dozens of Homer "Doh's!" sounding while the puck drops.... "Doh! Doh! Doh doh ooof!", then landing in the zero scoring spot... "Ay Carumba!")
One of my buddies bought 3 at a Knoxville auction last year and ended up having to leave one at the side of the road because he ran out of room in his truck. Once he cleaned the dust off the two remaining machines, he kept one and sold the other for $250. At parties, he sets his machine up to dispense drink tickets, then asks for 2 tickets per Jell-O shot.