Is it just me, or is that a little bit...strange? They cost $180 before the price drop, and then they cost $150 afterwards. It's not that much of a difference, is it? Certainly not enough to merit twice as many people rushing out and buying one...what kind of consumer thinks, ooh, I'd always wanted a PS2 but, y'know, they were just thirty dollars too expensive for me? I guess this is the same mentality that wouldn't hesitate to buy something that costs $19.99 but would flinch at anything costing a flat $20, because it's too expensive.
I had a teacher once who was very adamant on that point. We don't need pennies, he would say. Pennies are a waste of metal. We need to take pennies out of circulation. Someone would invariably ask about things that cost $19.99. Well, we'd raise their price to $20, fool, he would say. This makes sense to me--and it made sense to him, but I imagine that a lot of people wouldn't be able to handle it. The economy would collapse. A very large segment of the population considers $19.99 to be a hell of a lot cheaper than $20. On the PS2 front, these same people are ecstatic about the gigantic price drop and buy twice as many of the things as they bought before.
This could be a very interesting pricing strategy for video game console manufacturers: 1. Debut the console at a price point of something like $300. 2. Every three to six months thereafter (the timeframe could easily be extended or shortened) drop the price by, say, $10. 3. Laugh as sales nearly double right after doing this. 4. Repeat until console has saturated market.
This reminds of the GameCube thing that happened a while ago. I believe it was last summer that Nintendo had a deal going with the Cube:
Buy a $150 GameCube, and you get a free $50 game.
Well, this was quite a deal, but sales were stagnant. Some months later, the marketing geniuses at the big N decided to adopt a new tactic:
Buy a $100 GameCube, and you don't get anything for free.
Lo and behold, sales shot up. Why? Well, obviously, because now it's fifty dollars cheaper!!! Never mind that you have to buy a game to play the stupid thing, it's just a better deal.
It's interesting to think about this stuff. How stupid is the average shopper?
Just to dispute your disputations of my points, or something like that.
1. Rare had already been in the process of developing GBA games so MS did not immediately pull the plug on them. They're still happily developing for the GBA but once they've completed their current projects, do you honestly believe MS is going to encourage them to take on more?
2. I have a GBA and a PS2, and I too am in their exact demographic. But neither of us are Xbox owners so it's irrelevant what we have. The majority of people who have Xboxes are, to put it extremely bluntly, casual gamers and are uninterested in GBA titles.
3. You can play Halo with the arrow keys, too. Do you want to, though...?
There's no way Halo is coming to the Game Boy Advance . In no particular order:
1. Halo was developed by Bungie which is owned by Microsoft. Microsoft, in case you haven't noticed, is in direct competititon with Nintendo; there's no way they're letting one of "their" games be released on one of Nintendo's platforms. Granted, Microsoft doesn't have a handheld system--and isn't working on one to my knowledge--so there's no competition there, but they're still not gonna be giving any money to the big N. Remember, it was rumored that Microsoft-owned Rare would be developing DS games, but then this was debunked also.
2. Halo's a first-person shooter that's largely played by a bunch of twentysomething Xbox owners who enjoy playing "mature, adult" games. Most people who love Halo probably bought it because people said it was "like, totally awesome." These people bought GTA3 because you can "like, kill hookers and stuff." Note that I'm not disparaging Halo--I love the game myself--but face it, most of Halo's target audience does not own and probably will never own a Game Boy Advance.
3. It's an FPS. How the hell do you play that with a D-pad?
BLASPHEMY!!! They're SINNERS! How DARE they mess with the SACRED directory structure! Et cetera! Et cetera! Ad nauseam!
...In all seriousness, though, that does sound kind of like an interesting concept--might make things easier for people to understand. Me, I like my three letter unpronounceable paths all the same:)
In a perfect world, I mean. I use MAME, and I use it to play really old arcade games. Yes, I realize that this is almost certainly illegal--Nintendo would probably sue my ass off if they knew that I played Donkey Kong with my setup. But why? Look at it realistically; Donkey Kong is freaking old. Even if Nintendo were to rerelease it for, I dunno, the GBA or something--hell, they might have already done this--how well would it actually do? Most people who play games today would take one look at it and say "Eeew! That's crap!" based on the graphics / difficulty and go away. The only people who would actually buy a rerelease of Donkey Kong would either be people who played it in arcades long ago or those or who, like me, played it via MAME. MAME is therefore actually a good thing--it spreads around old games and gets people excited and interested in them, thus boosting sales if those games are ever rereleased. Changing the subject slightly, look at Super NES emulation. Tons of people use things like ZSNES to play old RPGs like Final Fantasy VI. When Square actually did rerelease that game, it sold pretty well, but it arguably would not have sold nearly as well if the ROM trade hadn't made games like that popular among "pirates." Hell, I played that game on an emulator and then gladly purchased the rerelease when it came out; had I not played the game before in ROM form, there's no way I would have done that. Emulation, especially for older/obsolete game platforms, is a Good Thing.
A few random, disconnected thoughts, in stream-of-consciousness style:
Would you be willing to pay $600 for a console with all of the capabilities of a standard OEM PC?
Well, why not just buy a "standard OEM PC" in the first place? You can get a decent machine from the Dells and Gateways of the world for about that much, and it could do more than this "theoretical console" could--you could use it to play games but also do to actually useful stuff, and it would also be upgradeable. You'd be sacrificing Xbox compatibility, sure, but, realistically, how many good Xbox games are out there that don't have PC ports? The only one I can name off the top of my head is Panzer Dragoon Orta. And, even though Xbox 2 is apparently going to have some radical design changes, and some have speculated that this might end the trend of games being jointly developed for the PC and the Xbox, that's still probably not going to happen. This is Microsoft--Windows and Xbox are their big markets. They're trying to create synergy between them, of a kind. The Xbox API and the DirectX API are similar, so it's not like porting costs them any real effort, and it probably dramatically increases their sales--especially if they really do sell Xboxen at a loss and make their money in game software. As long as Microsoft's publishing a game, does it really matter what platform it's for?
But...but multiple processors are so cool! Who cares about performance when you can tell people, yeah, I have a SMP PDA right here, isn't that sexy? Heck, I imagine that this new multiprocessor core will be an excellent way to pick up chicks. I'm looking forward to its release.
Maybe, but--and I am in no way an authority on this seeing that I don't own the game--FFXI has relatively low system requirements, I'm pretty sure. Actually, I have a PS2 but I've never really considered using it to play online RPGs. How the would you talk to people? By spending extra money and buying a keyboard? And the game itself would likely run more slowly than if you were actually playing it on a computer. The cost would break down something like this:
PS2 + network adapter ($200) + FFXI/hard drive ($100) + some kind of third party keyboard (~$25-30, something like that) + ~$13 per month = a lot. Whereas, if you already have a decent computer, it's just $50 for the game, and then your monthly fee. Hell, even if you don't have a decent computer, you can spend, what, $200 or so for a really cheap eMachine that'll play the game optimally. And you get a better gaming experience overall...
It's not really that surprising. FF has incredibly huge brand recognition, after all. Besides, EQ is getting kind of old/stale--at least, that's what people tell me. I don't play any MMO games myself (out of lack of money) but many of my friends have switched to FFXI simply because they've been playing EQ too long. Hell, if I could afford it, I would definitely be playing FFXI right now. The game looks really slick.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M, eh? That's easy. It stands for "Does Our Universe Often Say Very Ambiguous Variegated...." oh. I give up. Don't listen to me, I'm a moron. I apologize. That could have been really funny in the hands of the right/.er. Me, I dropped the ball and said something amazingly stupid. I think I'm gonna go cry now.
I really can't stand XP's cutesy appearance. Hell, when I go to fix a friend's XP machine, the first thing I do is change his theming to something that I can stand. I have to change it back for him, though; he likes it for some reason. You're right about being blinded by the icons.
Office XP with the standard look is pretty much the same as Office 2000. Well, almost identical. The menus are slightly prettier (in a good, nonintrusive way), but that's it, really.
Thanks for the "Pratchett" thing. I really can't believe I didn't catch that myself:)
It's not really so much innovation as it is slickness of UI. I currently use Office XP (but with no real plans to use 2003), and, yeah, it's more or less the same as Office 2000, only prettier. Office 97 looks clunky by today's standards; its successors are more or less functionally identical but look cleaner and more polished. On a slightly off-topic and rather contradictory note, they took a huge step backwards with Office 2003. It just looks ugly. I mean, that blue color scheme. And yes, I am aware that you can change it. It's still way too ugly...
So, yeah, overall, I don't know what I just said, either.
This looks like a weird idea, but it could also be used to make a lot of really interesting games. The two displays have a lot of possibilities. In an RPG or something, one could display the dungeon map while another could contiunally montitor your characters' status, or give the player other useful information in some way. Is this idea really gimmicky? Sure. But it might lead to a couple of neat games...
Well, from the perspective of a new or inexperienced user, most distributions are more or less the same. It doesn't really matter what kernel you have, or what KDE you're running to such users; they don't really look at what people who are more familiar with Linux might look at. Most mainstream news sources are run by people who are relatively inexperienced with Linux distributions--hence shallow reviews.
On a side note, what sets distributions apart is different for every experienced user, I think. For example, I run Linux on my desktop, because I'm a hobbyist. As such, I constantly remove and install lots of different packages, and so Debian happens to be the right distro for me. Apt-get allows me to search through a huge archive of binaries and install fun things, then remove them cleanly because of reverse dependency checking. Gentoo, on the other hand, is right for the user who has more time than I do to play around, and wants the very latest versions of software, as well as the coolness factor of having compiled it oneself. Fedora or Mandrake is targeted towards the user who has -less- time than I do to play around, and just wants a nice, workable system right out of the box. Basically, there's nothing that sets distributions apart for everybody. It depends on your specific needs.
I'm pretty new to Linux in general, but am not afraid of trying out something difficult or heavily CLI-based. I started with Mandrake and Fedora, but found them too bloated / Windows-esque for my taste, and am now relatively happily using Debian sarge, and have been eagerly awaiting its release. However, due to, er, some recent stuff, I'm getting slightly annoyed with Debian, wondering if the wait for Sarge might in fact be quite long, or indeed, interminable, and am looking at trying another distro. Gentoo looks rather appealing--it seems well-documented and so on, and looks like it might be pretty fun to set up. One thing, though: I have a dial-up connection. Is it possible/desireable to easily install Gentoo this way? I've got a fast connection at the University, and it seems [from reading the docs] that one can download ISOs containing binary packages built for Gentoo. But, er, doesn't that entirely defeat the purpose of installing Gentoo? Should I take the plunge? Is it a good idea to use Gentoo over dialup? I'd be interested if anyone has any thoughts on this.
Although it seems like burning at a slower speed means that your data lasts longer, for some newer CDs burning at 2x might actually cause your data to be less secure. Most CDs sold nowadays are optimized for faster burns, say at 48x. The "fast" media doesn't handle slow burn speeds quite as well as older media optimized for 2x would.
Microsoft will provide Windows 98 to schools, charities and non-profit organizations? Dear God. Is that not just a horrible form of torture? What have non-profit organizations ever done to deserve having Windows 98 put on their computers? That's just too harsh.
What if you're driving down a perfectly straight road and suddenly your car starts weaving back and forth because it's trying to correct its path because some dirt's gotten into its sensors and screwed them up? What if you're trying to turn and the car won't let you? What if you're trying to drive and the computer intervenes doing dangerous things? There'd better be a manual override...
Random possible application of this otherwise pretty useless idea: maybe it's easier to ride than a bike with actual round wheels, for [insert obscure technical reason here]. Maybe they could have gyms or something where toddlers or really young kids could get the hang of how to ride a bike. Or at worst they could be used in an amusement park or something. Ride a bike with square wheels! Fun! Or whatever.
with plaster, some time, a drinking straw up his nose and vaseline...
A drinking straw up his nose? That's an interesting thing to imagine. I haven't actually RTFA because I'm too lazy, and also I'm on 56k and can't be bothered, but think about it. How far up? That's what I'd like to know. Because I remember sticking things up my nose as a kid, but the things in question were relatively small. But...a straw? All the way up? Wouldn't that, like, create severe sinus damage, or something? Or wouldn't it at least look very, very silly? And which nostril? Or was it both? Was it one straw in each nostril, or one straw looped such that it went into both nostrils? How does he get it to stay there? Does he use tape? If so, how much? These are truly pressing questions.
Re:Actually a good move on Microsoft's part.
on
Red Hat Recap
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· Score: 1
That was completely the wrong article I liked to, sorry about that, here's the right one.. Actually, it is interesting to also note that MS is going t othe point of breaking some application compatibility to improve security.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me, or is that a little bit...strange? They cost $180 before the price drop, and then they cost $150 afterwards. It's not that much of a difference, is it? Certainly not enough to merit twice as many people rushing out and buying one...what kind of consumer thinks, ooh, I'd always wanted a PS2 but, y'know, they were just thirty dollars too expensive for me? I guess this is the same mentality that wouldn't hesitate to buy something that costs $19.99 but would flinch at anything costing a flat $20, because it's too expensive.
I had a teacher once who was very adamant on that point. We don't need pennies, he would say. Pennies are a waste of metal. We need to take pennies out of circulation. Someone would invariably ask about things that cost $19.99. Well, we'd raise their price to $20, fool, he would say. This makes sense to me--and it made sense to him, but I imagine that a lot of people wouldn't be able to handle it. The economy would collapse. A very large segment of the population considers $19.99 to be a hell of a lot cheaper than $20. On the PS2 front, these same people are ecstatic about the gigantic price drop and buy twice as many of the things as they bought before.
This could be a very interesting pricing strategy for video game console manufacturers:
1. Debut the console at a price point of something like $300.
2. Every three to six months thereafter (the timeframe could easily be extended or shortened) drop the price by, say, $10.
3. Laugh as sales nearly double right after doing this.
4. Repeat until console has saturated market.
This reminds of the GameCube thing that happened a while ago. I believe it was last summer that Nintendo had a deal going with the Cube:
Buy a $150 GameCube, and you get a free $50 game.
Well, this was quite a deal, but sales were stagnant. Some months later, the marketing geniuses at the big N decided to adopt a new tactic:
Buy a $100 GameCube, and you don't get anything for free.
Lo and behold, sales shot up. Why? Well, obviously, because now it's fifty dollars cheaper!!! Never mind that you have to buy a game to play the stupid thing, it's just a better deal.
It's interesting to think about this stuff.
How stupid is the average shopper?
1. MSFT is finishing the games that Rare already had in development.
:)
2. I fail to see what relevance this has to my original point. Do you think that the average Xbox owner / Halo freak has or wants a GBA?
3. This is your only point that makes sense.
4. Well, granted, so does this one.
But the same could be said for the DS and it seems pretty clear that they're not developing for that platform...
Just to dispute your disputations of my points, or something like that.
1. Rare had already been in the process of developing GBA games so MS did not immediately pull the plug on them. They're still happily developing for the GBA but once they've completed their current projects, do you honestly believe MS is going to encourage them to take on more?
2. I have a GBA and a PS2, and I too am in their exact demographic. But neither of us are Xbox owners so it's irrelevant what we have. The majority of people who have Xboxes are, to put it extremely bluntly, casual gamers and are uninterested in GBA titles.
3. You can play Halo with the arrow keys, too. Do you want to, though...?
There's no way Halo is coming to the Game Boy Advance . In no particular order:
1. Halo was developed by Bungie which is owned by Microsoft. Microsoft, in case you haven't noticed, is in direct competititon with Nintendo; there's no way they're letting one of "their" games be released on one of Nintendo's platforms. Granted, Microsoft doesn't have a handheld system--and isn't working on one to my knowledge--so there's no competition there, but they're still not gonna be giving any money to the big N. Remember, it was rumored that Microsoft-owned Rare would be developing DS games, but then this was debunked also.
2. Halo's a first-person shooter that's largely played by a bunch of twentysomething Xbox owners who enjoy playing "mature, adult" games. Most people who love Halo probably bought it because people said it was "like, totally awesome." These people bought GTA3 because you can "like, kill hookers and stuff." Note that I'm not disparaging Halo--I love the game myself--but face it, most of Halo's target audience does not own and probably will never own a Game Boy Advance.
3. It's an FPS. How the hell do you play that with a D-pad?
"Does away with" /usr/bin and /lib?
...In all seriousness, though, that does sound kind of like an interesting concept--might make things easier for people to understand. Me, I like my three letter unpronounceable paths all the same :)
BLASPHEMY!!! They're SINNERS! How DARE they mess with the SACRED directory structure! Et cetera! Et cetera! Ad nauseam!
Haiku poems from spam? Yes indeed! Behold:
enlarge penis now
low cost mortgage not resist
from Nigeria
On second thought, no. That was really stupid.
It will be in stores on the 3rd.
Wow. Although I must say, I had a sneaking suspicion...
In a perfect world, I mean. I use MAME, and I use it to play really old arcade games. Yes, I realize that this is almost certainly illegal--Nintendo would probably sue my ass off if they knew that I played Donkey Kong with my setup. But why? Look at it realistically; Donkey Kong is freaking old. Even if Nintendo were to rerelease it for, I dunno, the GBA or something--hell, they might have already done this--how well would it actually do? Most people who play games today would take one look at it and say "Eeew! That's crap!" based on the graphics / difficulty and go away. The only people who would actually buy a rerelease of Donkey Kong would either be people who played it in arcades long ago or those or who, like me, played it via MAME. MAME is therefore actually a good thing--it spreads around old games and gets people excited and interested in them, thus boosting sales if those games are ever rereleased. Changing the subject slightly, look at Super NES emulation. Tons of people use things like ZSNES to play old RPGs like Final Fantasy VI. When Square actually did rerelease that game, it sold pretty well, but it arguably would not have sold nearly as well if the ROM trade hadn't made games like that popular among "pirates." Hell, I played that game on an emulator and then gladly purchased the rerelease when it came out; had I not played the game before in ROM form, there's no way I would have done that. Emulation, especially for older/obsolete game platforms, is a Good Thing.
A few random, disconnected thoughts, in stream-of-consciousness style:
Would you be willing to pay $600 for a console with all of the capabilities of a standard OEM PC?
Well, why not just buy a "standard OEM PC" in the first place? You can get a decent machine from the Dells and Gateways of the world for about that much, and it could do more than this "theoretical console" could--you could use it to play games but also do to actually useful stuff, and it would also be upgradeable. You'd be sacrificing Xbox compatibility, sure, but, realistically, how many good Xbox games are out there that don't have PC ports? The only one I can name off the top of my head is Panzer Dragoon Orta. And, even though Xbox 2 is apparently going to have some radical design changes, and some have speculated that this might end the trend of games being jointly developed for the PC and the Xbox, that's still probably not going to happen. This is Microsoft--Windows and Xbox are their big markets. They're trying to create synergy between them, of a kind. The Xbox API and the DirectX API are similar, so it's not like porting costs them any real effort, and it probably dramatically increases their sales--especially if they really do sell Xboxen at a loss and make their money in game software. As long as Microsoft's publishing a game, does it really matter what platform it's for?
But...but multiple processors are so cool! Who cares about performance when you can tell people, yeah, I have a SMP PDA right here, isn't that sexy? Heck, I imagine that this new multiprocessor core will be an excellent way to pick up chicks. I'm looking forward to its release.
Maybe, but--and I am in no way an authority on this seeing that I don't own the game--FFXI has relatively low system requirements, I'm pretty sure. Actually, I have a PS2 but I've never really considered using it to play online RPGs. How the would you talk to people? By spending extra money and buying a keyboard? And the game itself would likely run more slowly than if you were actually playing it on a computer. The cost would break down something like this:
PS2 + network adapter ($200) + FFXI/hard drive ($100) + some kind of third party keyboard (~$25-30, something like that) + ~$13 per month = a lot. Whereas, if you already have a decent computer, it's just $50 for the game, and then your monthly fee. Hell, even if you don't have a decent computer, you can spend, what, $200 or so for a really cheap eMachine that'll play the game optimally. And you get a better gaming experience overall...
It's not really that surprising. FF has incredibly huge brand recognition, after all. Besides, EQ is getting kind of old/stale--at least, that's what people tell me. I don't play any MMO games myself (out of lack of money) but many of my friends have switched to FFXI simply because they've been playing EQ too long. Hell, if I could afford it, I would definitely be playing FFXI right now. The game looks really slick.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M, eh? That's easy. It stands for "Does Our Universe Often Say Very Ambiguous Variegated...." oh. I give up. Don't listen to me, I'm a moron. I apologize. That could have been really funny in the hands of the right /.er. Me, I dropped the ball and said something amazingly stupid. I think I'm gonna go cry now.
I really can't stand XP's cutesy appearance. Hell, when I go to fix a friend's XP machine, the first thing I do is change his theming to something that I can stand. I have to change it back for him, though; he likes it for some reason. You're right about being blinded by the icons.
:)
Office XP with the standard look is pretty much the same as Office 2000. Well, almost identical. The menus are slightly prettier (in a good, nonintrusive way), but that's it, really.
Thanks for the "Pratchett" thing. I really can't believe I didn't catch that myself
It's not really so much innovation as it is slickness of UI. I currently use Office XP (but with no real plans to use 2003), and, yeah, it's more or less the same as Office 2000, only prettier. Office 97 looks clunky by today's standards; its successors are more or less functionally identical but look cleaner and more polished. On a slightly off-topic and rather contradictory note, they took a huge step backwards with Office 2003. It just looks ugly. I mean, that blue color scheme. And yes, I am aware that you can change it. It's still way too ugly...
So, yeah, overall, I don't know what I just said, either.
This looks like a weird idea, but it could also be used to make a lot of really interesting games. The two displays have a lot of possibilities. In an RPG or something, one could display the dungeon map while another could contiunally montitor your characters' status, or give the player other useful information in some way. Is this idea really gimmicky? Sure. But it might lead to a couple of neat games...
Well, from the perspective of a new or inexperienced user, most distributions are more or less the same. It doesn't really matter what kernel you have, or what KDE you're running to such users; they don't really look at what people who are more familiar with Linux might look at. Most mainstream news sources are run by people who are relatively inexperienced with Linux distributions--hence shallow reviews.
On a side note, what sets distributions apart is different for every experienced user, I think. For example, I run Linux on my desktop, because I'm a hobbyist. As such, I constantly remove and install lots of different packages, and so Debian happens to be the right distro for me. Apt-get allows me to search through a huge archive of binaries and install fun things, then remove them cleanly because of reverse dependency checking. Gentoo, on the other hand, is right for the user who has more time than I do to play around, and wants the very latest versions of software, as well as the coolness factor of having compiled it oneself. Fedora or Mandrake is targeted towards the user who has -less- time than I do to play around, and just wants a nice, workable system right out of the box. Basically, there's nothing that sets distributions apart for everybody. It depends on your specific needs.
I'm pretty new to Linux in general, but am not afraid of trying out something difficult or heavily CLI-based. I started with Mandrake and Fedora, but found them too bloated / Windows-esque for my taste, and am now relatively happily using Debian sarge, and have been eagerly awaiting its release. However, due to, er, some recent stuff, I'm getting slightly annoyed with Debian, wondering if the wait for Sarge might in fact be quite long, or indeed, interminable, and am looking at trying another distro. Gentoo looks rather appealing--it seems well-documented and so on, and looks like it might be pretty fun to set up. One thing, though: I have a dial-up connection. Is it possible/desireable to easily install Gentoo this way? I've got a fast connection at the University, and it seems [from reading the docs] that one can download ISOs containing binary packages built for Gentoo. But, er, doesn't that entirely defeat the purpose of installing Gentoo? Should I take the plunge? Is it a good idea to use Gentoo over dialup? I'd be interested if anyone has any thoughts on this.
Although it seems like burning at a slower speed means that your data lasts longer, for some newer CDs burning at 2x might actually cause your data to be less secure. Most CDs sold nowadays are optimized for faster burns, say at 48x. The "fast" media doesn't handle slow burn speeds quite as well as older media optimized for 2x would.
Microsoft will provide Windows 98 to schools, charities and non-profit organizations? Dear God. Is that not just a horrible form of torture? What have non-profit organizations ever done to deserve having Windows 98 put on their computers? That's just too harsh.
What if you're driving down a perfectly straight road and suddenly your car starts weaving back and forth because it's trying to correct its path because some dirt's gotten into its sensors and screwed them up? What if you're trying to turn and the car won't let you? What if you're trying to drive and the computer intervenes doing dangerous things? There'd better be a manual override...
Random possible application of this otherwise pretty useless idea: maybe it's easier to ride than a bike with actual round wheels, for [insert obscure technical reason here]. Maybe they could have gyms or something where toddlers or really young kids could get the hang of how to ride a bike. Or at worst they could be used in an amusement park or something. Ride a bike with square wheels! Fun! Or whatever.
with plaster, some time, a drinking straw up his nose and vaseline... A drinking straw up his nose? That's an interesting thing to imagine. I haven't actually RTFA because I'm too lazy, and also I'm on 56k and can't be bothered, but think about it. How far up? That's what I'd like to know. Because I remember sticking things up my nose as a kid, but the things in question were relatively small. But...a straw? All the way up? Wouldn't that, like, create severe sinus damage, or something? Or wouldn't it at least look very, very silly? And which nostril? Or was it both? Was it one straw in each nostril, or one straw looped such that it went into both nostrils? How does he get it to stay there? Does he use tape? If so, how much? These are truly pressing questions.
That was completely the wrong article I liked to, sorry about that, here's the right one.. Actually, it is interesting to also note that MS is going t othe point of breaking some application compatibility to improve security.