I managed to finish Monty On The Run, and I'm pretty sure my brother completed Mission Impossible (I found it, well, impossible...).
There were a hell of a lot of crap games for a small number of absolute gems, but then the more things change the more they stay the same. Today we get zillions of mediocre 3D FPS games. Back then we got zillions of mediocre 2D platform games.
Having said that, there was also some genuine creativity if you looked for it (Little Computer People, for example), and the ratio of crap:decent was probably lower then than it is now.
First of all - they're hideous. Few types of (sun)glasses look good on people (depends on the facial shape amongst other things), so a one design fits all is out the window if you expect people to use them in public.
I wonder how "in public" these things will ever become, however. Sitting on an airplane, sure. Sitting on the subway even, maybe (depending on how trustworthy your local subway passengers are). Sitting in a park? Doubtful. But in a sense they're no less a monstrosity than the headsets some people wear with their MP3 players...
However most ear covering headphones are uncomfortable to wear through a movie when you're wearing glasses, as the "legs" (no clue what they're actually called)
Actually you're close. They're generally referred to as "arms" rather than "legs".
By far the biggest "gotcha" for me was the backup Earth.
Good lord, that alone destroyed in one simple act whole swathes of the plot and purpose of the rest of the books. If they had a backup, in pristine condition at the exact moment of destruction then Arthur's brain is unnecessary, and we lose the Arthur-and-Trillian-as-last-humans aspect.
I'm sure Adams had a lengthy hand in much of the screenplay. I'm equally sure (though obviously without any proof) that this aspect was one he would never have authorised. Some Hollywood exec threw it in as a "happy ending", probably due to some "focus group".
She should be able to click click click, comfortable in the knowledge that she'll be able to watch "her show." You could just as easily call it the grand-dad aceeptance factor
Almost. There should be no clicking involved. No need to use a mouse, or a keyboard. It should all be easily accessible by the remote control.
You know, met as in meteorological, as in that wet stuff we tend to call weather in New Zealand.
There were a lot of complaints when they started using it on TV in New Zealand too, but now everybody's pretty much used to it. Really it was just an attempt to make the "boring weather bit" on the nightly news into something a bit more interesting from a visual point of view.
Other Slashdotters whining that the 500 freakin' gigabyte cap is an abomination when I'm stuck with Jetstream (aka NZ Telecom) and a 2 gig per month cap.
I'd sell my first born for a 500Gig cap and 8Mbps...
Remember, the Taiwanese have never declared complete independence. Why? Because they considers themselves to be the legitimate government of all of China. To declare independence would also mean giving up their claim to govern China.
In recent years (and I mean very recent, as in the last 4 years) the Taiwanese government has moved away from that posture.
Whilst it's certainly true that this "One China" policy was official political gospel in Taiwan for decades after the war, it is no longer the case. Escpecially so since the first election of Chen Shui Ban in 2000.
It can be clearly seen that Taiwan now does want to declare independence - although there may be some old diehards who disagree, as there always are. The only thing stopping true Taiwanese independence is the Chinese obstinacy.
As has been noted elsewhere on this topic Taiwan is already de facto independent. The sooner the PRC government realises that there is nothing to be gained from their continued hard line stance and allows Taiwan "true" independence, the better off both countries will be.
But isn't the point of middle age to replace things such as video games with more adult activities. You want fun, go buy a motorcycle or a boat.
Well speaking as someone who owns a motorcycle and a GameCube, (and will be buying a sea kayak in the not too distant future) I don't see why I can't enjoy both.
I'll go out and hoon around (responsibly of course!) on my bike on days when I feel like doing so and have a couple of hours free to get away from the house. I'll sit back and play Super Monky Ball for 45 minutes on a Wednesday night before turning in for the day, while my wife is writing letters to her friends.
One of the advantages of getting older is that you can have a much wider range of tastes and activities than you had open to you as a child. One of those opportunities includes games.
I firmly agree with all the "Don't Waste My Time", and the "Make it Accessible" comments. But by far the most important note in the article, in my opinion is : Don't demand a huge time commitment from the player or dictate the length of his sessions; let him take it at his own pace
It will render some area more or less unusable for a long period of time (ie, nobody will want to live or work in that region even when the radiative material has been removed).
There's your answer right there. Dirty bombs are of high value in terms of terrorism, rather than creating a body count.
Setting off a "dirty bomb" in a comparatively crowded city is going to cause a (relatively) small number of physical casualties, but as soon as the word "nuclear" is mentioned on Fox News that night you'll see public panic a couple of orders of magnitude greater than 9/11.
Terror, of course, being the object. Not necessarily dead bodies in the streets (though that's a favourable side effect as far as the terrorist is concerned).
Eiiither way, the main point beeing is edison wasnt all that great of an inventor, more a very shrewd business man. Unless you are in business, and wish to learn more about how a ruthless business man should behave, edison isnt really someone you should be idolizing.
So what you're saying is that Edison was his generation's Bill Gates?
There's no better justification for being friends than, "They can reduce our country to little more than a sheet of polished glass in 8.2 seconds."
If that's the "justification" then trust me, they're not friends and will likely turn on you as soon as they see a safe and feasible way to do so without being burnt - overtly or covertly.
Much better justification for being friends would be "because we're all decent human beings and we happen to agree on fundamental rights and concerns". Once people get to that point (probably in another 5 or 10 thousand years at this rate) then you won't need the ability to make polished glass out of civilised cities.
one shitty cd with just a fraction of working emails cd cost 300$
Odd - you can get a CD with 450 million e-mail addresses off of eBay for a mere $55... At least that's what it's currently at, though looks like it hasn't met the reserve yet.
buy some hard drives on eBay and you could end up with some cool data!
Of course you are more likely to buy some hard drives on eBay and end up with the entire history of some guy's girlfriend's medical problems in old e-mails, a small collection of old cached Slashdot pages, and some rather naff Flash animations.
It occurs to me that trying to use one of these alternatives will work great until the automated TV listing parser stops working due to a moved web page or some other problem.
Indeed. I was very interested in MythTV, but given that there are currently no active, reliable ways to obtain the program listings for New Zealand television (such as it is...) the whole thing became rather moot.
One of the great advantages I saw was being able to present my gf with a list of TV program names on screen that she wanted to record (or had recorded and therefore could play back), rather than dick around with the video tapes and the (let's face it) pathetic UI that exists on most video recorders.
Without that program listing things like MythTV lose some of their gloss.
The obvious solution being that I should create my own mechanism for scraping NZ TV websites for program listings but I spend far too much time on/. to have time to create, and more importantly maintain, such a method. My gf, and my mother, and their work colleagues would be even less inclined to do so.
Of course, being in such a small country we're SOL with regard to any kind of TiVo-like service anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I managed to finish Monty On The Run, and I'm pretty sure my brother completed Mission Impossible (I found it, well, impossible...).
There were a hell of a lot of crap games for a small number of absolute gems, but then the more things change the more they stay the same. Today we get zillions of mediocre 3D FPS games. Back then we got zillions of mediocre 2D platform games.
Having said that, there was also some genuine creativity if you looked for it (Little Computer People, for example), and the ratio of crap:decent was probably lower then than it is now.
First of all - they're hideous. Few types of (sun)glasses look good on people (depends on the facial shape amongst other things), so a one design fits all is out the window if you expect people to use them in public.
I wonder how "in public" these things will ever become, however. Sitting on an airplane, sure. Sitting on the subway even, maybe (depending on how trustworthy your local subway passengers are). Sitting in a park? Doubtful. But in a sense they're no less a monstrosity than the headsets some people wear with their MP3 players...
However most ear covering headphones are uncomfortable to wear through a movie when you're wearing glasses, as the "legs" (no clue what they're actually called)
Actually you're close. They're generally referred to as "arms" rather than "legs".
By far the biggest "gotcha" for me was the backup Earth.
Good lord, that alone destroyed in one simple act whole swathes of the plot and purpose of the rest of the books. If they had a backup, in pristine condition at the exact moment of destruction then Arthur's brain is unnecessary, and we lose the Arthur-and-Trillian-as-last-humans aspect.
I'm sure Adams had a lengthy hand in much of the screenplay. I'm equally sure (though obviously without any proof) that this aspect was one he would never have authorised. Some Hollywood exec threw it in as a "happy ending", probably due to some "focus group".
She should be able to click click click, comfortable in the knowledge that she'll be able to watch "her show." You could just as easily call it the grand-dad aceeptance factor
Almost. There should be no clicking involved. No need to use a mouse, or a keyboard. It should all be easily accessible by the remote control.
That's real WAF.
What, no frickin' "lasers"?
... not MetaService.
You know, met as in meteorological, as in that wet stuff we tend to call weather in New Zealand.
There were a lot of complaints when they started using it on TV in New Zealand too, but now everybody's pretty much used to it. Really it was just an attempt to make the "boring weather bit" on the nightly news into something a bit more interesting from a visual point of view.
Zaphod does have a second head.
If you watch the third trailer here then you'll see it.
It's a different concept to the TV series' second head, and I remain dubious about how well it'll work, but it's definitely there.
light weight? is this why it sucks up about 122MB of ram before you even load a web page with it? (and this is with memory cache off)
122MB? TaskManager reports Firefox is currently using around 40MB, with 9 tabs open and I've been surfing on and off for around 4 hours now.
Compare to IE's 21MB with one window open and about 20 minutes worth of use.
I wouldn't call Firefox particularly "light weight" either but it doesn't clock in at anywhere near 122MB...
None of this is going to be relevant a hundred years from now.
There are some theories that we don't have even 20 years, let alone 100.
I wish.
Other Slashdotters whining that the 500 freakin' gigabyte cap is an abomination when I'm stuck with Jetstream (aka NZ Telecom) and a 2 gig per month cap.
I'd sell my first born for a 500Gig cap and 8Mbps...
Remember, the Taiwanese have never declared complete independence. Why? Because they considers themselves to be the legitimate government of all of China. To declare independence would also mean giving up their claim to govern China.
In recent years (and I mean very recent, as in the last 4 years) the Taiwanese government has moved away from that posture.
Whilst it's certainly true that this "One China" policy was official political gospel in Taiwan for decades after the war, it is no longer the case. Escpecially so since the first election of Chen Shui Ban in 2000.
It can be clearly seen that Taiwan now does want to declare independence - although there may be some old diehards who disagree, as there always are. The only thing stopping true Taiwanese independence is the Chinese obstinacy.
As has been noted elsewhere on this topic Taiwan is already de facto independent. The sooner the PRC government realises that there is nothing to be gained from their continued hard line stance and allows Taiwan "true" independence, the better off both countries will be.
Meh. I summon Bridezilla! (No the link's not Gotse, it's Imageshack...)
I think age would come before sex
Surely dinner and a movie comes before sex?
But isn't the point of middle age to replace things such as video games with more adult activities. You want fun, go buy a motorcycle or a boat.
Well speaking as someone who owns a motorcycle and a GameCube, (and will be buying a sea kayak in the not too distant future) I don't see why I can't enjoy both.
I'll go out and hoon around (responsibly of course!) on my bike on days when I feel like doing so and have a couple of hours free to get away from the house. I'll sit back and play Super Monky Ball for 45 minutes on a Wednesday night before turning in for the day, while my wife is writing letters to her friends.
One of the advantages of getting older is that you can have a much wider range of tastes and activities than you had open to you as a child. One of those opportunities includes games.
I firmly agree with all the "Don't Waste My Time", and the "Make it Accessible" comments. But by far the most important note in the article, in my opinion is :
Don't demand a huge time commitment from the player or dictate the length of his sessions; let him take it at his own pace
Which basically says it all...
Perhaps a file containing the URLs of porn sites! ... Isn't it amazing how dull and pedestrian information ...
Man, you're obviously going to the wrong porn sites!
It will render some area more or less unusable for a long period of time (ie, nobody will want to live or work in that region even when the radiative material has been removed).
There's your answer right there. Dirty bombs are of high value in terms of terrorism, rather than creating a body count.
Setting off a "dirty bomb" in a comparatively crowded city is going to cause a (relatively) small number of physical casualties, but as soon as the word "nuclear" is mentioned on Fox News that night you'll see public panic a couple of orders of magnitude greater than 9/11.
Terror, of course, being the object. Not necessarily dead bodies in the streets (though that's a favourable side effect as far as the terrorist is concerned).
Eiiither way, the main point beeing is edison wasnt all that great of an inventor, more a very shrewd business man. Unless you are in business, and wish to learn more about how a ruthless business man should behave, edison isnt really someone you should be idolizing.
So what you're saying is that Edison was his generation's Bill Gates?
There's no better justification for being friends than, "They can reduce our country to little more than a sheet of polished glass in 8.2 seconds."
If that's the "justification" then trust me, they're not friends and will likely turn on you as soon as they see a safe and feasible way to do so without being burnt - overtly or covertly.
Much better justification for being friends would be "because we're all decent human beings and we happen to agree on fundamental rights and concerns". Once people get to that point (probably in another 5 or 10 thousand years at this rate) then you won't need the ability to make polished glass out of civilised cities.
one shitty cd with just a fraction of working emails cd cost 300$
Odd - you can get a CD with 450 million e-mail addresses off of eBay for a mere $55... At least that's what it's currently at, though looks like it hasn't met the reserve yet.
With all that freedom... why is this still just a rectangular box?
Indeed. And why is it called Orac when it doesn't actually look anything like Orac?
I hate to sound curmudgeonly, and the case mod looks interesting and all, but it looks about as much like a Dalek as it does Orac.
OS X could easily be spatial
OS X is (optionally) spatial. There is a preference option to set the "open-new-window" behaviour, or not, depending on how you like it, or not.
I'm surprised there's no clear option for doing so with Nautilus given that this "spatial" approach is so often a love it or hate it thing.
I have a working tv_grab_nz which scrapes off the TV1,TV2 + Sky Web sites. Works about 95% of the time at the moment.
Last time I tried it only worked (sometimes) for TV2 and not anything else - hence my frustration.
Don't suppose there's any chance of getting PrimeTV added to the list? ;)
I might give it another three or four months and revisit the whole MythTV option then.
Cheers.
buy some hard drives on eBay and you could end up with some cool data!
Of course you are more likely to buy some hard drives on eBay and end up with the entire history of some guy's girlfriend's medical problems in old e-mails, a small collection of old cached Slashdot pages, and some rather naff Flash animations.
To whoever bought my old hard drive on eBay, those pictures were all for research purposes only.
Sincerely
Peter Townshend
It occurs to me that trying to use one of these alternatives will work great until the automated TV listing parser stops working due to a moved web page or some other problem.
Indeed. I was very interested in MythTV, but given that there are currently no active, reliable ways to obtain the program listings for New Zealand television (such as it is...) the whole thing became rather moot.
One of the great advantages I saw was being able to present my gf with a list of TV program names on screen that she wanted to record (or had recorded and therefore could play back), rather than dick around with the video tapes and the (let's face it) pathetic UI that exists on most video recorders.
Without that program listing things like MythTV lose some of their gloss.
The obvious solution being that I should create my own mechanism for scraping NZ TV websites for program listings but I spend far too much time on /. to have time to create, and more importantly maintain, such a method. My gf, and my mother, and their work colleagues would be even less inclined to do so.
Of course, being in such a small country we're SOL with regard to any kind of TiVo-like service anyway.