I'm not sure if NT 4 can ever be counted as having DirectX, it came with some DirectX 3 stuff, but I'm not sure if it was a complete implementation, but even if it was it was pretty useless for games, especially as it wasn't updated alongside the 9x implementation. I think a few components like DirectShow did get upgraded, because they were required for serious things.
AFAIK Windows 98 was the first retail release with bundled DirectX (v5), although the OSR releases of Win95 might've added DirectX before then, and Windows 2000 was the first useful NT release, with DX7.
I think you'll find 4GB compact flash (card / slot type) hard disks (ie: not flash memory) are surprisingly expensive, plus there is probably quite a bit of precision engineering involved, at that scale everything had to fit together perfectly. Smaller things often cost more than bigger things.
For scale, the full iPod basically consists of exactly the same things as a mini, except with a notebook ?IDE? hard drive instead of the C.F. one, and everything else scaled up. Plus Apple do wan't to make a profit on them, I don't think the iPod range is a loss leader.
Although the precision engineering in the iPod mini doesn't seem to be up to scratch. Apple really need to get better quality control.
Use a terminal to list the files in your Applications folder. You'll find all of them (or most of them) have hidden.app extensions, even though you've turned off extension hiding in the Finder. It's an annoying feature.
The traditional Mac OS file system has two forks, a data fork, which is where normal data (like an MP3) lives, and a resource fork, which contains stuff like window designs, icons, bitmaps etc. for applications. I guess the executable code also lives there as well.
Depending on what you do with the file, the resource fork can be stripped easily, which is why Apple switched to a bundled format for most Mac OS X stuff, and why stuff like binhex and macbinary exist, to combine both parts of a file into a normal data file.
This does hilight an annoyance with Mac OS X, that applications never have an extension shown in Finder (old style Mac ones don't have them, newer bundle ones hid the.app extension) which is a problem, although Windows does the same by default, it is possible to turn it off in Windows. Personally I'd give all executables a special label highlight to show that they're programs.
It could just be bad disks. I have some two year old disks that are falling apart (BASF / EMTEC), and others that work fine (Kodak). The EMTEC ones came in Jewel cases, the Kodak ones were spinedled, and stored in soft CD cases.
Put me off buying EMTEC disks again. And they were all burned at about 8 speed (I am careful about CD speeds, my drive may think it can do 52x burn, but I don't trust it to), and I verfied them.
I'm more interested about what'll happen to my disks that are so cheap they don't even have brands on them (which is fun when the burn side is so near silver it's hard to tell which ways the right way up.)
I somehow doubt the sort of software that is dongle protected is going to be vended by these machines. It'll be the GBP10 shit that companies like Softkey push out, that nobody ever has a use for. Family Tree manager? 2 billion clip art? Dogz 42? An also ran Encarta clone... (Encarta probably wasn't the first CD-ROM encyclopaedia, but you know what I mean).
In the UK the newsagents / stationers WHSmiths used a similar system a couple of years ago. It was based around an iMac (CRT, no flat panels then) with a touchscreen added, plus a printer setup to print all the labels etc. I think it used an external CD-R(W) drive (it might've been before CD-RW drives were in iMacs.)
I don't remember it having any really eyecatching software, mostly the 10 stuff that no-one ever buys. It did have Mac software though, but still a lame selection.
I have no idea if they're still around, the ones I've been to recently don't have them, but I haven't been the the store where I saw one for quite a long time (Birmingham city centre, if your wondering.)
I suppose DVDs could be useful for some things, like Mario Kart or Fighting Game, which might hard to explain in text. It's far easier if you can see what your supposed to be doing, rather than reading. In Japan some 2D shooters[1] come with DVDs showing skilled players doing perfect runs and the like. It'd be rather hard to express how to do that sort of thing in text.
On the other hand, it'd be rather stupid for something like Final Fantasy MCLMXXXVII.
Not that I read strategy guides, and I cheap lamer who just scans Gamefaqs if I get stuck (although I picked up a Shenmue one for about 3 (after haggling) at Dixons (yes, you can haggle at Dixons sometimes)). Some of the 'coffee table' style books seem nice though, with all the art and so on.
What if your games console is also your DVD player? You'd have to wait ages for all the loading each time you want to look up details. With a book you can just pause the game, look down, the be going again in a fraction of the time (although loading times vary between games.)
Or if like my TV, only has one SCART socket, the worlds least elegant AV connection, which requires you to manhadle the TV into a position so that you can actually get the bloody socket in/ (But at least it does RGB.)
According to the web page linked to earlier in the thread Tattoo Assassins was the only game by the American Data East Pinball division, who otherwise made pinball machines. The other video games were by the Japanese division of the company.
Pinball machines to arcade video games isn't that much of a tangent (other companies did it), but they obviously screwed up a bit.
IMO the transparent green Xbox is the ugliest console ever made. Yes, it even beats the cheap Playstation 2 Silver edition (where they couldn't be bothered to make things like the power button silver, so they stick out like a sore thumb instead, plus the silver colour seems really tacky.) I have a green controller (Microsoft sold them separately in Europe for a while after the green limited edition) but I really wouldn't want a green box. The green just seems to be too dark a shade of green for me to take.
Now the crystal Xbox (the current European special edition), that looks sweet, I wish I'd held out for one of them, although I can probably get a controller when it comes out, and my black box fits in better with my TV etc. (and the Megadrive (Genesis) sitting on top of it) anyway...
But nothing will stop me from getting a Sakura Wars Dreamcast -Pink and Grey, a perfect combination.:-)
That's becuase [HOME] and [END] are 'goto start of document' and 'goto end of document' in MacOS. The shortcuts you want are [COMMAND]+[LEFTARROW] and [COMMAND]+[RIGHTARROW] (which work in all text controls.) Although [COMMAND]+[UP/DOWNARROW] seems to do the same as [PAGEUP] and [PAGEDOWN]. I guess it's the same general weirdness as the Apple UK Keyboard layout being far more similar to a US layout than it's PC equivalent. Nobody ever said all OSs had to use the same keyboard layout, especially in the 1980s.
I personally don't mind, but that's partly because the Apple way of doing things has burned itself into my mind...:)
I'll have you know that Her Majesty's Government is extremely humorous, I mean just look at this University top up fees business that they're suggesting. How silly....
Oh bugger, that's a real law? Thank god I'll be out of university by the time it comes into force.
The original Playstation / PSOne is coming up to ten years old, and a few games are still being produced for it, albeit not many, and the console is still available. So Sony thinking they can get their current console to 2010 isn't that stupid.
Although the PSOne is getting rare nowadays, but Game (a UK games store) is selling PSOne + Official Screen for GB80 (only 30 more than the usual selling price of the PSOne on it's own), if only I had the money I'd get one and a car adaptor.:) I guess they're clearing stock, I don't think the PSOne has that much life left in it, although it might not get officially canned until a 'PSTwo' comes out.
In the UK I think I've only seen one cashpoint with a touch screen. Most (even new colour ones) have the common 8 buttons and a keypad system.
Second, if it's a custom installation of windows, the accessibility options (including the keyboard) might not be installed, AFAIK it's optional. I certainly don't install them, as I don't need them.
Pheonix BIOS? The HSBC cash machine in my students union (in the UK, it's a colour one, seems to be fine, nice and fast, no advertising except when it's not being used) had crashed at one point, and it was stuck at a BIOS copyright screen which revealed it to be something like "NCR Secure BIOS" as it's title. Although that's probably just the same as any other BIOS but with nice confidence boosting text on startup.
I think each bank still has it's own system though, as you can only do most functions with your own banks system. I'd imagine Link transactions would take longer as well though.
The rip-off (1.50? I only want a tenner!) standalone ones seem to be far worse, they (well, the only one I've ever used) appear to use a modem to contact, so you have to wait about 30 seconds just to get a balance out of them, and then they naturally disconnect so you have to wait another 30s to actually get the cash...
I personally remember after the LLoyds TSB merger our local Lloyds branch had two machines on the outside, one marked as being part of the TSB system, one part of the Lloyds system. I can't actually remember why they needed to be marked, but I do remember my parents always used the Lloyds one rather than the TSB one just in case.
I think nowadays banks are a bit better, They close at the awesomely late time of 5pm (or perhaps 4:30) nowadays. On Saturdays they're generally open till about midday.
Just don't expect them to be open on bank holidays.:)
Are any of these posters from America? Quite a few I would guess. Not me though.
When is the last time any of these shows aired? Last new episode was broadcast 06/12/89 (DD/MM/YY dates), a TV Movie coproduced by the BBC and Universal was broadcast 27/05/96 in the UK (earlier in the US). Repeats continue on UKTV Gold in the UK (early weekend mornings, set a video / PVR unless you want to get up a 7:30am on a Saturday), and some US PBS stations (but not many). Various other channels show it, like BBC Kids in Canada, UK TV and ABC[1] in Australia.)
Or, if they are any good, is there a Dr. who bittorrent site, since the BBC open-sourced their content. Note "announced plans" and "in the future" etc. in that news article. It doesn't mean you can just share BBC material freely, it's still copyright and so on. Plus Drama series are probably going to be the last stuff the BBC will make available online, I think the early stuff they're going to have available is stuff like documentaries. You can get DVDs, audio CDs and VHSs of stories.
Now I'll just do a quick "WTF is Doctor Who" bit...
Doctor Who was a Sci-Fi series predominately aimed at children (although it's exact target audience varied over the course of the series, it gradually shifted to older audiences as time went on) that ran between 1963 and 1989 on BBC TV. It concerned the adventures of a mysterious time traveller called The Doctor (not Doctor Who), with the ability to regenerate and change his body to cheat death, and who travel through time and space in a Police Box[1]. The Police Box is actually called the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space), and a broken chameleon circuit (which should make the ship blend in with any environment, not just 1950/60's British city streets[2]) was not it's only problem, as the ship appeared to be very unpredictable, often catapulting the Doctor and his travelling companions[3] into dangerous situations, often against evil aliens like the Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, or The Doctor's nemesis The Master. The series was at it's most popular during the mid-late 1970's, when Tom Baker took the lead role.
[1] Basically a big blue phone box so police officers could contact their station before the advent of portable radios, they also had a phone on the outside for the use of the public in emergencies (behind the panel with text on it.)
[2] Naturally the TARDIS was first seen in a junkyard, not exactly a common location for Police Boxes at the time. A junkyard did become common in the 1970's, as police forces began scrapping the boxes in there numbers, only a handful of real boxes still exist.
[3] Quite often young women.
Re:If you're going to count movies...
on
New Dr Who Actor Named
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· Score: 3, Informative
Peter Cushing starred in the movies "Dr. Who and the Daleks" and "Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD", which were based on the original TV stores "The Daleks"[1] and "The Dalek Invasion of Earth". "Day of the Daleks" was a Jon Pertwee TV story.But those two 1960s movies don't fit in with the TV series at all, being remakes of TV stories, featuring a human Dr. Who (not The Doctor) in his space ship Tardis (not the TARDIS) and various other changes. You'd have to really twist the timeline to include them.
I think the TV series will follow on after Paul McGann, as there are a large number of spin off books and audio plays set after the TV movie, and fans don't generally take kindly to having huge parts of a series wiped out usually. Although I somehow thing the amount of McGann stuff will be reduced (BBC Books are apparently going to phase out on the ongoing 8th Doctor series of books, although I think occasional books are going to be produced in the 'past doctor' line.)
I do hope they ignore any of the really stupid bits in the TV Movie though (the half-human bit is the most obvious, that's ripped strait out of Star Trek (Spock et. all).) But I think the current production them is knowledgeable enough to know that getting too hung up on continuity etc. is a bad idea, just look what happened in the early-mid 80's, with loads of really pointless references abound.
[1] This is sometimes know as "The Mutants", but that isn't used much as a Jon Pertwee serial also has that title.
I should point out Duke Nukem Forever is based on a licensed engine, originally Quake IIRC, then they moved to Unreal and then Unreal Tournament, I guess they'll be tracking the updates to the engine. If they aren't it's going to be seriously old tech by the time it gets out. The only redemption for this is that they were apparently rewriting parts of the Unreal Tournament engine to be less CPU bound (apparently a problem with the Unreal (etc.) engine), but really they should be trying to actually get a game out.
Personally I'm waiting for them to announce a move to Valve's Source (Half-Life 2) engine.
I haven't seen a single Taco Bell in the UK ever. I don't think we have them. There might be one in London somewhere, as they have a ?Wendy's? (not sure if the name right, they sell weird square burgers) and I haven't seem them anywhere else either.
Don't worry, we do have Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Domino's Pizzas, Costa Coffee and numerous other places to buy programming supplies (at least in big cities.) Just not Tacos. Or square burgers.
Well, (most?) games on Steam are based on the Half-Life engine, which will run on a Pentium. I ran Half-Life (and Counterstrike) on a P166MMX with a Voodoo 3 (128MB of RAM baby, yeah!) and it was almost playable with the optimised OpenGL minidriver thingy.
I'd guess a few people have installed Steam on such old beasts, but I doubty they'll be buying Half Life 2 for them.
I found Half-Life crashed horribley (as in BSOD[1]) when I tried to run it under Direct3D on my Windows 2000 box.) That's why I use OpenGL. Plus I think Half-Life is supposed to be better performing under OpenGL anyway, although that's probably a moot point on 2GHz machines with a game with a Pentium (no bloody 2, 3 or 4) as it's minimum requirements.
[1] The only BSOD Windows 2000 has even given me on that box. But I only use it for games and stuff, I use an iBook for most browsing.
I concur, although why the Ontario Film Review board? Im not sure having videogame ratings being assigned by the film review board is a good precedent....
One could consider it good or bad though, on one hand videogames being judged by a group well versed in making these types of judgements is defintely a plus, but on the otherhand this group probably doesn't have experience with games and dealing with their level of interactivity....
As noted below, in the UK the British Board of Film Classification can rate videogames. From the BBFC website (click on 'The BBFC' in the menu, the FAQ and it's in the list, horrible design really):
Under the Video Recordings Act, video games are exempt unless they depict (a) human sexual activity, or acts of force or restraint associated with sexual activity, or (b) mutilation or torture of, or other acts of gross violence towards, humans or animals, or (c) human genital organs or urinary or excretory functions, or (d) are likely to stimulate or encourage sex, violence, or criminal activity. Because most video games do not realistically depict humans or animals, they are exempt, but many video game distributors prefer to submit their games to the Board for classification in borderline cases. However, the industry itself has also become concerned with the accessibility and suitability of games and has introduced a self-regulatory system of classification for exempt videos which is run by ELSPA.
This is a bit out of date, the ELSPA game ratings have been recently replaced by PEGI ones. But basically the same laws apply to rated games as Videos and DVDs, so it's illegal for them to be sold to people younger than the rating. AFAIK the only ratings ever given to games has been 15 and 18 ones[1]. Manhunt (and the Grand Theft Auto series) is rated 18. But about the only games rated are the really controversial ones, like Postal etc. The BBFC also seem to be rating less harshly nowadays, Soul Calibur was a 15 on Dreamcast, but it's sequel was exempt, I think early FPSes (Ultimate Doom (15?) and Quake (15)) generally got certificates, but newer ones don't etc. but the laws still come into force for extreme games, I do think the Video Recording Act would allow the BBFC the ban a game (or require changes), but I don't think that's ever been done (except posisbley with Postal 1, as the new release it marketed as uncut (it's an 18 still)).
[1] Although Unlimited Saga has a U certificate on the box, that relates the the Final Fantasy X-2 preview DVD included with the game (most other games with bonus DVDs have been except it seems.)
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I'm not sure if NT 4 can ever be counted as having DirectX, it came with some DirectX 3 stuff, but I'm not sure if it was a complete implementation, but even if it was it was pretty useless for games, especially as it wasn't updated alongside the 9x implementation. I think a few components like DirectShow did get upgraded, because they were required for serious things.
AFAIK Windows 98 was the first retail release with bundled DirectX (v5), although the OSR releases of Win95 might've added DirectX before then, and Windows 2000 was the first useful NT release, with DX7.
I think you'll find 4GB compact flash (card / slot type) hard disks (ie: not flash memory) are surprisingly expensive, plus there is probably quite a bit of precision engineering involved, at that scale everything had to fit together perfectly. Smaller things often cost more than bigger things.
For scale, the full iPod basically consists of exactly the same things as a mini, except with a notebook ?IDE? hard drive instead of the C.F. one, and everything else scaled up. Plus Apple do wan't to make a profit on them, I don't think the iPod range is a loss leader.
Although the precision engineering in the iPod mini doesn't seem to be up to scratch. Apple really need to get better quality control.
Use a terminal to list the files in your Applications folder. You'll find all of them (or most of them) have hidden .app extensions, even though you've turned off extension hiding in the Finder. It's an annoying feature.
The traditional Mac OS file system has two forks, a data fork, which is where normal data (like an MP3) lives, and a resource fork, which contains stuff like window designs, icons, bitmaps etc. for applications. I guess the executable code also lives there as well.
.app extension) which is a problem, although Windows does the same by default, it is possible to turn it off in Windows. Personally I'd give all executables a special label highlight to show that they're programs.
Depending on what you do with the file, the resource fork can be stripped easily, which is why Apple switched to a bundled format for most Mac OS X stuff, and why stuff like binhex and macbinary exist, to combine both parts of a file into a normal data file.
This does hilight an annoyance with Mac OS X, that applications never have an extension shown in Finder (old style Mac ones don't have them, newer bundle ones hid the
It could just be bad disks. I have some two year old disks that are falling apart (BASF / EMTEC), and others that work fine (Kodak). The EMTEC ones came in Jewel cases, the Kodak ones were spinedled, and stored in soft CD cases.
Put me off buying EMTEC disks again. And they were all burned at about 8 speed (I am careful about CD speeds, my drive may think it can do 52x burn, but I don't trust it to), and I verfied them.
I'm more interested about what'll happen to my disks that are so cheap they don't even have brands on them (which is fun when the burn side is so near silver it's hard to tell which ways the right way up.)
I somehow doubt the sort of software that is dongle protected is going to be vended by these machines. It'll be the GBP10 shit that companies like Softkey push out, that nobody ever has a use for. Family Tree manager? 2 billion clip art? Dogz 42? An also ran Encarta clone... (Encarta probably wasn't the first CD-ROM encyclopaedia, but you know what I mean).
In the UK the newsagents / stationers WHSmiths used a similar system a couple of years ago. It was based around an iMac (CRT, no flat panels then) with a touchscreen added, plus a printer setup to print all the labels etc. I think it used an external CD-R(W) drive (it might've been before CD-RW drives were in iMacs.)
I don't remember it having any really eyecatching software, mostly the 10 stuff that no-one ever buys. It did have Mac software though, but still a lame selection.
I have no idea if they're still around, the ones I've been to recently don't have them, but I haven't been the the store where I saw one for quite a long time (Birmingham city centre, if your wondering.)
I suppose DVDs could be useful for some things, like Mario Kart or Fighting Game, which might hard to explain in text. It's far easier if you can see what your supposed to be doing, rather than reading. In Japan some 2D shooters[1] come with DVDs showing skilled players doing perfect runs and the like. It'd be rather hard to express how to do that sort of thing in text.
On the other hand, it'd be rather stupid for something like Final Fantasy MCLMXXXVII.
Not that I read strategy guides, and I cheap lamer who just scans Gamefaqs if I get stuck (although I picked up a Shenmue one for about 3 (after haggling) at Dixons (yes, you can haggle at Dixons sometimes)). Some of the 'coffee table' style books seem nice though, with all the art and so on.
[1] Which may have 3D graphics of course...
What if your games console is also your DVD player? You'd have to wait ages for all the loading each time you want to look up details. With a book you can just pause the game, look down, the be going again in a fraction of the time (although loading times vary between games.)
Or if like my TV, only has one SCART socket, the worlds least elegant AV connection, which requires you to manhadle the TV into a position so that you can actually get the bloody socket in/ (But at least it does RGB.)
According to the web page linked to earlier in the thread Tattoo Assassins was the only game by the American Data East Pinball division, who otherwise made pinball machines. The other video games were by the Japanese division of the company.
Pinball machines to arcade video games isn't that much of a tangent (other companies did it), but they obviously screwed up a bit.
IMO the transparent green Xbox is the ugliest console ever made. Yes, it even beats the cheap Playstation 2 Silver edition (where they couldn't be bothered to make things like the power button silver, so they stick out like a sore thumb instead, plus the silver colour seems really tacky.) I have a green controller (Microsoft sold them separately in Europe for a while after the green limited edition) but I really wouldn't want a green box. The green just seems to be too dark a shade of green for me to take.
:-)
Now the crystal Xbox (the current European special edition), that looks sweet, I wish I'd held out for one of them, although I can probably get a controller when it comes out, and my black box fits in better with my TV etc. (and the Megadrive (Genesis) sitting on top of it) anyway...
But nothing will stop me from getting a Sakura Wars Dreamcast -Pink and Grey, a perfect combination.
That's becuase [HOME] and [END] are 'goto start of document' and 'goto end of document' in MacOS. The shortcuts you want are [COMMAND]+[LEFTARROW] and [COMMAND]+[RIGHTARROW] (which work in all text controls.) Although [COMMAND]+[UP/DOWNARROW] seems to do the same as [PAGEUP] and [PAGEDOWN]. I guess it's the same general weirdness as the Apple UK Keyboard layout being far more similar to a US layout than it's PC equivalent. Nobody ever said all OSs had to use the same keyboard layout, especially in the 1980s.
:)
I personally don't mind, but that's partly because the Apple way of doing things has burned itself into my mind...
I'll have you know that Her Majesty's Government is extremely humorous, I mean just look at this University top up fees business that they're suggesting. How silly. ...
Oh bugger, that's a real law? Thank god I'll be out of university by the time it comes into force.
The original Playstation / PSOne is coming up to ten years old, and a few games are still being produced for it, albeit not many, and the console is still available. So Sony thinking they can get their current console to 2010 isn't that stupid.
:) I guess they're clearing stock, I don't think the PSOne has that much life left in it, although it might not get officially canned until a 'PSTwo' comes out.
Although the PSOne is getting rare nowadays, but Game (a UK games store) is selling PSOne + Official Screen for GB80 (only 30 more than the usual selling price of the PSOne on it's own), if only I had the money I'd get one and a car adaptor.
In the UK I think I've only seen one cashpoint with a touch screen. Most (even new colour ones) have the common 8 buttons and a keypad system.
Second, if it's a custom installation of windows, the accessibility options (including the keyboard) might not be installed, AFAIK it's optional. I certainly don't install them, as I don't need them.
Pheonix BIOS? The HSBC cash machine in my students union (in the UK, it's a colour one, seems to be fine, nice and fast, no advertising except when it's not being used) had crashed at one point, and it was stuck at a BIOS copyright screen which revealed it to be something like "NCR Secure BIOS" as it's title. Although that's probably just the same as any other BIOS but with nice confidence boosting text on startup.
I think each bank still has it's own system though, as you can only do most functions with your own banks system. I'd imagine Link transactions would take longer as well though.
The rip-off (1.50? I only want a tenner!) standalone ones seem to be far worse, they (well, the only one I've ever used) appear to use a modem to contact, so you have to wait about 30 seconds just to get a balance out of them, and then they naturally disconnect so you have to wait another 30s to actually get the cash...
I personally remember after the LLoyds TSB merger our local Lloyds branch had two machines on the outside, one marked as being part of the TSB system, one part of the Lloyds system. I can't actually remember why they needed to be marked, but I do remember my parents always used the Lloyds one rather than the TSB one just in case.
I think nowadays banks are a bit better, They close at the awesomely late time of 5pm (or perhaps 4:30) nowadays. On Saturdays they're generally open till about midday.
:)
Just don't expect them to be open on bank holidays.
Are any of these posters from America?
Quite a few I would guess. Not me though.
When is the last time any of these shows aired?
Last new episode was broadcast 06/12/89 (DD/MM/YY dates), a TV Movie coproduced by the BBC and Universal was broadcast 27/05/96 in the UK (earlier in the US). Repeats continue on UKTV Gold in the UK (early weekend mornings, set a video / PVR unless you want to get up a 7:30am on a Saturday), and some US PBS stations (but not many). Various other channels show it, like BBC Kids in Canada, UK TV and ABC[1] in Australia.)
Or, if they are any good, is there a Dr. who bittorrent site, since the BBC open-sourced their content.
Note "announced plans" and "in the future" etc. in that news article. It doesn't mean you can just share BBC material freely, it's still copyright and so on. Plus Drama series are probably going to be the last stuff the BBC will make available online, I think the early stuff they're going to have available is stuff like documentaries. You can get DVDs, audio CDs and VHSs of stories.
Now I'll just do a quick "WTF is Doctor Who" bit...
Doctor Who was a Sci-Fi series predominately aimed at children (although it's exact target audience varied over the course of the series, it gradually shifted to older audiences as time went on) that ran between 1963 and 1989 on BBC TV. It concerned the adventures of a mysterious time traveller called The Doctor (not Doctor Who), with the ability to regenerate and change his body to cheat death, and who travel through time and space in a Police Box[1]. The Police Box is actually called the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space), and a broken chameleon circuit (which should make the ship blend in with any environment, not just 1950/60's British city streets[2]) was not it's only problem, as the ship appeared to be very unpredictable, often catapulting the Doctor and his travelling companions[3] into dangerous situations, often against evil aliens like the Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors, or The Doctor's nemesis The Master. The series was at it's most popular during the mid-late 1970's, when Tom Baker took the lead role.
[1] Basically a big blue phone box so police officers could contact their station before the advent of portable radios, they also had a phone on the outside for the use of the public in emergencies (behind the panel with text on it.)
[2] Naturally the TARDIS was first seen in a junkyard, not exactly a common location for Police Boxes at the time. A junkyard did become common in the 1970's, as police forces began scrapping the boxes in there numbers, only a handful of real boxes still exist.
[3] Quite often young women.
Peter Cushing starred in the movies "Dr. Who and the Daleks" and "Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD", which were based on the original TV stores "The Daleks"[1] and "The Dalek Invasion of Earth". "Day of the Daleks" was a Jon Pertwee TV story.But those two 1960s movies don't fit in with the TV series at all, being remakes of TV stories, featuring a human Dr. Who (not The Doctor) in his space ship Tardis (not the TARDIS) and various other changes. You'd have to really twist the timeline to include them. I think the TV series will follow on after Paul McGann, as there are a large number of spin off books and audio plays set after the TV movie, and fans don't generally take kindly to having huge parts of a series wiped out usually. Although I somehow thing the amount of McGann stuff will be reduced (BBC Books are apparently going to phase out on the ongoing 8th Doctor series of books, although I think occasional books are going to be produced in the 'past doctor' line.) I do hope they ignore any of the really stupid bits in the TV Movie though (the half-human bit is the most obvious, that's ripped strait out of Star Trek (Spock et. all).) But I think the current production them is knowledgeable enough to know that getting too hung up on continuity etc. is a bad idea, just look what happened in the early-mid 80's, with loads of really pointless references abound. [1] This is sometimes know as "The Mutants", but that isn't used much as a Jon Pertwee serial also has that title.
I should point out Duke Nukem Forever is based on a licensed engine, originally Quake IIRC, then they moved to Unreal and then Unreal Tournament, I guess they'll be tracking the updates to the engine. If they aren't it's going to be seriously old tech by the time it gets out. The only redemption for this is that they were apparently rewriting parts of the Unreal Tournament engine to be less CPU bound (apparently a problem with the Unreal (etc.) engine), but really they should be trying to actually get a game out.
Personally I'm waiting for them to announce a move to Valve's Source (Half-Life 2) engine.
I haven't seen a single Taco Bell in the UK ever. I don't think we have them. There might be one in London somewhere, as they have a ?Wendy's? (not sure if the name right, they sell weird square burgers) and I haven't seem them anywhere else either.
Don't worry, we do have Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Domino's Pizzas, Costa Coffee and numerous other places to buy programming supplies (at least in big cities.) Just not Tacos. Or square burgers.
Well, (most?) games on Steam are based on the Half-Life engine, which will run on a Pentium. I ran Half-Life (and Counterstrike) on a P166MMX with a Voodoo 3 (128MB of RAM baby, yeah!) and it was almost playable with the optimised OpenGL minidriver thingy.
I'd guess a few people have installed Steam on such old beasts, but I doubty they'll be buying Half Life 2 for them.
I found Half-Life crashed horribley (as in BSOD[1]) when I tried to run it under Direct3D on my Windows 2000 box.) That's why I use OpenGL. Plus I think Half-Life is supposed to be better performing under OpenGL anyway, although that's probably a moot point on 2GHz machines with a game with a Pentium (no bloody 2, 3 or 4) as it's minimum requirements.
[1] The only BSOD Windows 2000 has even given me on that box. But I only use it for games and stuff, I use an iBook for most browsing.
I concur, although why the Ontario Film Review board? Im not sure having videogame ratings being assigned by the film review board is a good precedent....
One could consider it good or bad though, on one hand videogames being judged by a group well versed in making these types of judgements is defintely a plus, but on the otherhand this group probably doesn't have experience with games and dealing with their level of interactivity....
As noted below, in the UK the British Board of Film Classification can rate videogames. From the BBFC website (click on 'The BBFC' in the menu, the FAQ and it's in the list, horrible design really):
Under the Video Recordings Act, video games are exempt unless they depict (a) human sexual activity, or acts of force or restraint associated with sexual activity, or (b) mutilation or torture of, or other acts of gross violence towards, humans or animals, or (c) human genital organs or urinary or excretory functions, or (d) are likely to stimulate or encourage sex, violence, or criminal activity. Because most video games do not realistically depict humans or animals, they are exempt, but many video game distributors prefer to submit their games to the Board for classification in borderline cases. However, the industry itself has also become concerned with the accessibility and suitability of games and has introduced a self-regulatory system of classification for exempt videos which is run by ELSPA.
This is a bit out of date, the ELSPA game ratings have been recently replaced by PEGI ones. But basically the same laws apply to rated games as Videos and DVDs, so it's illegal for them to be sold to people younger than the rating. AFAIK the only ratings ever given to games has been 15 and 18 ones[1]. Manhunt (and the Grand Theft Auto series) is rated 18. But about the only games rated are the really controversial ones, like Postal etc. The BBFC also seem to be rating less harshly nowadays, Soul Calibur was a 15 on Dreamcast, but it's sequel was exempt, I think early FPSes (Ultimate Doom (15?) and Quake (15)) generally got certificates, but newer ones don't etc. but the laws still come into force for extreme games, I do think the Video Recording Act would allow the BBFC the ban a game (or require changes), but I don't think that's ever been done (except posisbley with Postal 1, as the new release it marketed as uncut (it's an 18 still)).
[1] Although Unlimited Saga has a U certificate on the box, that relates the the Final Fantasy X-2 preview DVD included with the game (most other games with bonus DVDs have been except it seems.)