The Turbo Express was ever TG-16 fan's dream come true.
The problem, is that while a brand new TG-16 cost $149 in it's day, a Turbo Express was roughly $349, as I recall. The price did drop, but it dropped proportionately to the popularity of the system.
Before it's final demise, I remember buying NEW games at Toys-R-Us for $9.
"Mode 7" when not done using the SNES Mode 7 hardware was normally called Rotoscaling.
It had been seen in arcade hardware prior to becoming popular on the SNES, thoughI believe arcade hardware often used brute CPU power to pull off the effects.
Psygnosis (I think) proved that it could be done using nothing but the COPPER in the Amiga. This was demonstrated in the game BRIAN THE LION.
If both those fail, then maybe he *should* be in the spam business.
Spam can generate a real return on investment, actually.
Unfortunately, it's quite probably partially to blame for the fall of the internet's advertisement market.
Because of spam, nobody trusts advertisement agencies. Because nobody trusts them, less people purchase online. Because less people purchase online, web-sites investing loads on legit advertisement don't make a return on their investment. Because Spammers reach more customers, cheaper, they sometimes profit.
Thus - SPAM killed the dot-coms. (Well, not really -- but it makes for a good anti-spam argument.)
Yah... but how long will it be before we get good and proper support for the GeForce 3?
I mean, I still hear people complain about TNT/TNT2/GeForce 2 support under X.
(Not that I've had any problems, cuz I haven't... but...)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Re:Congrats on repealing Conservation of Energy
on
Hydrogen Powered Cars
·
· Score: 1
It's not done in cars because it's an expensive extra complexity, leaves you with TWO consumable liquids to run out of, and tends to rot the metal.
Actually, I've thought about the lower-temperature and higher energy output of having "water" in the air...
And it seems to me this very thing IS happening anyway, though some people don't realize it. (Probably because it's too little to notice, normally).
I've been thinking about it because once there was this old throttle body engine that used to be in a Blazer I drove. It was slow. It wasn't very powerful, and it wasn't even good on gas. The throttle responce was lacking and basically this machine had just seen better days.
But I noticed that on cool foggy summer nights here in Tennessee, the machine seemed to get a slight boost in power. As if the humidity had some effect on this worn engine.
It wasn't mine (thank god) and when it was finally gotten rid of I didn't miss it.
Now days I drive a 2000 Camaro SS with Ram Air injection, and I've been wondering -- does the humidity add a couple of horsies? It's already pushing over 320 horsepower, so I probably wouldn't notice -- but what about smaller engines? Ram Air DOES have noticable power benefits and it doesn't seem to effect fuel efficiency much. (Compare a Z28 to a Z28SS...)
Just something I've actually been thinking about lately. Hmmm.
There are other factors 'working against the journey' so to speak.
It would take emmense propulsion power to get a craft of any reasonable mass up to near light speeds.
Technically, near-light speeds are attainable with enough propulsion force.
But, there's a lot of crap out there. Rocks and Dust, perhaps, but at those kinds of speeds any stray bits of matter in the way might as well be a brick wall, because they're coming right through the hull of any vessle that hits them.
Supposing you point your craft into the right trajectory, you then have to spend a long period of time accelerating up to the speed. You're THEN going to have to fly at that speed for several years hoping you don't plow right into something like a large rock, or a gravel cloud, or a really slow UFO.
And ONCE you've now pulled off two impossible stunts, you have to go for a third by stopping, which is going to take up just as much power as getting yourself UP to this speed (and let's not even get into the troubles associated with the attitude control of a vessel trying to come down from almost-photonic speeds.)
Then of course you have the superficial problems of keeping those silly humanoid things onboard alive for the journey. Food. Water. Environmental control. Internet Access. It's a real pain.
I wasn't personally advocating the theory at all. I simply posted the link because it was a quick "anti-blackhole" argument... accurate or not.
The point of MY post wasn't about the validity of black-holes.
It was simply used to illustrate a point.
The fact is, almost every single time some picture of some such new little sparkle is taken, scientists are very quick to yell about how useful this new information is and how they've learned so much.
If they've learned so much, we wouldn't be seeing articles such as the one you seem to feel so strongly against.
I think a lot of them say this kind of crap because it makes it seem like all that money spent on research isn't wasted.
I personally don't feel that it is wasted, mind you. I just wish that every time they made some kind of "cool announcement" it had something more substantial than "we think we may have found something that will lead us to future understanding of a theory we might come up with based on recent findings."
...but if true I suspect it may be that Sony no longer feels that the original Playstation is too big of an issue to keep fighting for.
Besides, if they actually lost this case to Connectix, then it would probably set some kind of precedent, and they can't have that considering they have something much larger to worry about... future Playstation 2 Emulation.
It may not be next week, or even this year, but history shows it will be. It's only a matter of when.
"an individual is already likely to be filmed by up to 300 cameras a day."
Anybody who really knows what's going on out there doesn't ever step outside!
Even if I lived in Britian (which I don't of course!), and even if I did go out side (which I don't of course!) they still wouldn't be able to get a good look at me because of my Groucho Marx glasses, full-body ape suit, and leather overcoat!
They can put up all the cameras they want! They will NEVER find me!
Makes perfect sense. But based on the notion that patents should only be granted in the case of technological innovations, most of the patents granted shouldn't ever have been.
And THAT is what's wrong with the US Patent Office.
Of course. I'd say the majority of honest people worth a crap DO pay for their software, or they use Free Alternatives. (There are some losers who are an exception to this rule, but they're not honest, are they?)
The problem here is that I think Sony (and anybody else [Microsoft!?]) is overstepping their "IP Control" the moment they start telling me where, when, and how I can use the software that I "liscense" from them.
If I buy a console (in this case, a PS2) game, I should have the right to play it on any PS2 I desire, any time I want. On the road, in my basement, in the desert, where the sun don't shine, etc.
I should have the right to do it in private. I should have the right to do it unmonitored. And I should have the right to continue doing so without constantly forking out cash.
These rights are the very rights a system like this is VERY OBVIOUSLY intended to slowly take away from me, and the only way for any of us to keep these rights is to prevent them from even STARTING THE PROCESS OF REMOVING THEM FROM OUR HANDS!
Buy a Playstation 2 if you want, but my vote against this sort of practise lies in the fact that I most certainly will not.
For example, in cases where use is limited to only the original purchaser, such as a game or character purchased and downloaded from the Internet, once the game is played on one PS2 it will not work on other consoles.
What this tells me is that gone are the days when you can just grab a bunch of your games and run over to a friend's house to play games for the weekend.
They're making consoles so complex, they're hardly "toys" anymore.
And I'm also wondering if the cost of creating this service and putting it into action isn't going to cost them almost as much as they "lose to piracy."
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
I actually wouldn't mind replaying classics...
on
Leisure Suit Unix
·
· Score: 3
But most of my old disks have become corrupt or lost over time.
So that means I have to hope I can illegally obtain the game files off of the net, and as we all know, that just ISN'T possible!
I mean, if it were then that would imply that poeple online were pirating. And nobody pirates, right!?
It's been a whlie, but I've heard talk of this very thing being done.
Someone built a PC Board with a radio wave receiver on it that sampled many frequencies and generated random numbers constantly.
This card was effectively "Dice" for your computer.
Likewise, there are other ways to get truely random numbers, if you don't mind poking deep into the hardware.
How random you want your number is soley dependent on how complex you want to make your method of getting the seed.
Methods I've heard about include taking values from psuedo randomly selected locations in video memory, sound memory, and other buffers in the system, putting them together to create part of a seed, and then using other methods such as system timers to finish it all up.
The more factors being brought in to generate the random number, the more random it becomes.
Of course, in my experience tech companies tend to be ill-managed.;)
Unfortunately, I've noticed that most companies tend to be ill-managed.
How long this can go on without causing some negative side effects is related directly to how long the people who work for them can "Blow Them Off" and carry on with business as ussual.
But my favorite Peer-2-Peer file transfer system is still just sending files over ICQ.
It's not as easy, it requires I actually interact with the other person, and it's not always reliable, but on the other hand I normally know the person pretty well.
3 Sprites and collision detection. The most basic of gaming concepts.
Who remembers the first 1st person version, also known as Ball Blazer.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Re:This ought to really catch on with Americans
on
Fiddler on the RUF
·
· Score: 1
An SUV made for rails is an SUV that's not "made to go off the beaten trail".
But that's just the point I'm trying to MAKE! MOST SUV's perform VERY POORLY off-road.
The ones that rank HIGHEST in all of the car and truck magazines rank high for reasons OTHER than offroad performance. The ones that handle off-road VERY well tend to rank very poorly, because they're tools, not luxury vehicles.
Slashdot Mirror
The Turbo Express was ever TG-16 fan's dream come true.
The problem, is that while a brand new TG-16 cost $149 in it's day, a Turbo Express was roughly $349, as I recall. The price did drop, but it dropped proportionately to the popularity of the system.
Before it's final demise, I remember buying NEW games at Toys-R-Us for $9.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Mode 7" when not done using the SNES Mode 7 hardware was normally called Rotoscaling.
It had been seen in arcade hardware prior to becoming popular on the SNES, thoughI believe arcade hardware often used brute CPU power to pull off the effects.
Psygnosis (I think) proved that it could be done using nothing but the COPPER in the Amiga. This was demonstrated in the game BRIAN THE LION.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
MONKEY KONG was supposed to be it's actual name.
DONKEY came from a either a typo, mispronounciation, or mistranslation - whichever it was has been lost to history, or so I've heard many times over.
No. This isn't a joke.
ALL YOUR MONKEY ARE DONKEY KONG TO US!
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Not only is the H2G2 now moderated, but they also still only take submissions from earthlings!
Not racist indeed!
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
If both those fail, then maybe he *should* be in the spam business.
Spam can generate a real return on investment, actually.
Unfortunately, it's quite probably partially to blame for the fall of the internet's advertisement market.
Because of spam, nobody trusts advertisement agencies. Because nobody trusts them, less people purchase online. Because less people purchase online, web-sites investing loads on legit advertisement don't make a return on their investment. Because Spammers reach more customers, cheaper, they sometimes profit.
Thus - SPAM killed the dot-coms. (Well, not really -- but it makes for a good anti-spam argument.)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Better yet...
Send all of the e-mails out to ABUSE at the ISPs being used.
Send hundreds of them, constantly.
I promise not much spam will get out before the ISPs pull the plug.
For added effect, put ABUSE @ ISP in the reply field.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
I intend to be a bumping mofo
Look at Nature.
June Bugs do it all the time!
"Thump Thump... Bzzzzz... THUMP!"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Maybe instead of admiting that Americans have increasingly less privacy, he should be fighting for our rights.
That kind of sort of is his job.
Oh, wait, I must be wrong. Since I just KNOW that the president has a purpose.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Not only was the Amiga version of the original EOTB first... it was a marginally better done product than the PC version.
The second one was developed for both systems.
The third one never made it to the Amiga, as far as I know.
That sucked.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Yah... but how long will it be before we get good and proper support for the GeForce 3?
I mean, I still hear people complain about TNT/TNT2/GeForce 2 support under X.
(Not that I've had any problems, cuz I haven't... but...)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
It's not done in cars because it's an expensive extra complexity, leaves you with TWO consumable liquids to run out of, and tends to rot the metal.
Actually, I've thought about the lower-temperature and higher energy output of having "water" in the air...
And it seems to me this very thing IS happening anyway, though some people don't realize it. (Probably because it's too little to notice, normally).
I've been thinking about it because once there was this old throttle body engine that used to be in a Blazer I drove. It was slow. It wasn't very powerful, and it wasn't even good on gas. The throttle responce was lacking and basically this machine had just seen better days.
But I noticed that on cool foggy summer nights here in Tennessee, the machine seemed to get a slight boost in power. As if the humidity had some effect on this worn engine.
It wasn't mine (thank god) and when it was finally gotten rid of I didn't miss it.
Now days I drive a 2000 Camaro SS with Ram Air injection, and I've been wondering -- does the humidity add a couple of horsies? It's already pushing over 320 horsepower, so I probably wouldn't notice -- but what about smaller engines? Ram Air DOES have noticable power benefits and it doesn't seem to effect fuel efficiency much. (Compare a Z28 to a Z28SS...)
Just something I've actually been thinking about lately. Hmmm.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
There are other factors 'working against the journey' so to speak.
It would take emmense propulsion power to get a craft of any reasonable mass up to near light speeds.
Technically, near-light speeds are attainable with enough propulsion force.
But, there's a lot of crap out there. Rocks and Dust, perhaps, but at those kinds of speeds any stray bits of matter in the way might as well be a brick wall, because they're coming right through the hull of any vessle that hits them.
Supposing you point your craft into the right trajectory, you then have to spend a long period of time accelerating up to the speed. You're THEN going to have to fly at that speed for several years hoping you don't plow right into something like a large rock, or a gravel cloud, or a really slow UFO.
And ONCE you've now pulled off two impossible stunts, you have to go for a third by stopping, which is going to take up just as much power as getting yourself UP to this speed (and let's not even get into the troubles associated with the attitude control of a vessel trying to come down from almost-photonic speeds.)
Then of course you have the superficial problems of keeping those silly humanoid things onboard alive for the journey. Food. Water. Environmental control. Internet Access. It's a real pain.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
I wasn't personally advocating the theory at all. I simply posted the link because it was a quick "anti-blackhole" argument... accurate or not.
The point of MY post wasn't about the validity of black-holes.
It was simply used to illustrate a point.
The fact is, almost every single time some picture of some such new little sparkle is taken, scientists are very quick to yell about how useful this new information is and how they've learned so much.
If they've learned so much, we wouldn't be seeing articles such as the one you seem to feel so strongly against.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
I know. I always see something along the lines of...
This data will help [fill in the type of scientist] understand [fill in the subject].
Yet, at the same time I'm always hearing about how much they don't know, and how they're not so sure about such and such.
In this case... how can the universe be teeming with black-holes if some people aren't even sure black holes exist?
I think a lot of them say this kind of crap because it makes it seem like all that money spent on research isn't wasted.
I personally don't feel that it is wasted, mind you. I just wish that every time they made some kind of "cool announcement" it had something more substantial than "we think we may have found something that will lead us to future understanding of a theory we might come up with based on recent findings."
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
...but if true I suspect it may be that Sony no longer feels that the original Playstation is too big of an issue to keep fighting for.
Besides, if they actually lost this case to Connectix, then it would probably set some kind of precedent, and they can't have that considering they have something much larger to worry about... future Playstation 2 Emulation.
It may not be next week, or even this year, but history shows it will be. It's only a matter of when.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"an individual is already likely to be filmed by up to 300 cameras a day."
Anybody who really knows what's going on out there doesn't ever step outside!
Even if I lived in Britian (which I don't of course!), and even if I did go out side (which I don't of course!) they still wouldn't be able to get a good look at me because of my Groucho Marx glasses, full-body ape suit, and leather overcoat!
They can put up all the cameras they want! They will NEVER find me!
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Makes perfect sense. But based on the notion that patents should only be granted in the case of technological innovations, most of the patents granted shouldn't ever have been.
And THAT is what's wrong with the US Patent Office.
Too many patents and too many lawyers.
(I wonder if Slashdot has a patent on Karma?)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Of course. I'd say the majority of honest people worth a crap DO pay for their software, or they use Free Alternatives. (There are some losers who are an exception to this rule, but they're not honest, are they?)
The problem here is that I think Sony (and anybody else [Microsoft!?]) is overstepping their "IP Control" the moment they start telling me where, when, and how I can use the software that I "liscense" from them.
If I buy a console (in this case, a PS2) game, I should have the right to play it on any PS2 I desire, any time I want. On the road, in my basement, in the desert, where the sun don't shine, etc.
I should have the right to do it in private. I should have the right to do it unmonitored. And I should have the right to continue doing so without constantly forking out cash.
These rights are the very rights a system like this is VERY OBVIOUSLY intended to slowly take away from me, and the only way for any of us to keep these rights is to prevent them from even STARTING THE PROCESS OF REMOVING THEM FROM OUR HANDS!
Buy a Playstation 2 if you want, but my vote against this sort of practise lies in the fact that I most certainly will not.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
For example, in cases where use is limited to only the original purchaser, such as a game or character purchased and downloaded from the Internet, once the game is played on one PS2 it will not work on other consoles.
What this tells me is that gone are the days when you can just grab a bunch of your games and run over to a friend's house to play games for the weekend.
They're making consoles so complex, they're hardly "toys" anymore.
And I'm also wondering if the cost of creating this service and putting it into action isn't going to cost them almost as much as they "lose to piracy."
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
But most of my old disks have become corrupt or lost over time.
So that means I have to hope I can illegally obtain the game files off of the net, and as we all know, that just ISN'T possible!
I mean, if it were then that would imply that poeple online were pirating. And nobody pirates, right!?
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
It's been a whlie, but I've heard talk of this very thing being done.
Someone built a PC Board with a radio wave receiver on it that sampled many frequencies and generated random numbers constantly.
This card was effectively "Dice" for your computer.
Likewise, there are other ways to get truely random numbers, if you don't mind poking deep into the hardware.
How random you want your number is soley dependent on how complex you want to make your method of getting the seed.
Methods I've heard about include taking values from psuedo randomly selected locations in video memory, sound memory, and other buffers in the system, putting them together to create part of a seed, and then using other methods such as system timers to finish it all up.
The more factors being brought in to generate the random number, the more random it becomes.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Of course, in my experience tech companies tend to be ill-managed. ;)
Unfortunately, I've noticed that most companies tend to be ill-managed.
How long this can go on without causing some negative side effects is related directly to how long the people who work for them can "Blow Them Off" and carry on with business as ussual.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
But my favorite Peer-2-Peer file transfer system is still just sending files over ICQ.
It's not as easy, it requires I actually interact with the other person, and it's not always reliable, but on the other hand I normally know the person pretty well.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
3 Sprites and collision detection. The most basic of gaming concepts.
Who remembers the first 1st person version, also known as Ball Blazer.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
An SUV made for rails is an SUV that's not "made to go off the beaten trail".
But that's just the point I'm trying to MAKE! MOST SUV's perform VERY POORLY off-road.
The ones that rank HIGHEST in all of the car and truck magazines rank high for reasons OTHER than offroad performance. The ones that handle off-road VERY well tend to rank very poorly, because they're tools, not luxury vehicles.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"