Tru dat. I loved Sin City, and I loved the Spirit--but they're entirely different genres. Anybody familiar with Eisner's Spirit knows that it wasn't some ultra-violent film noir kind of thing. It started off as being vaguely super-hero-ish, but over time, The Spirit became almost a supporting character. The stories were sort of little slice-of-life kinds of things, some humorous, some dramatic, some off-the-wall. However, they were not grim "My city screams" sorts of things. I'll end up seeing the movie anyway, but I know I'll be humphing my way through it, and afterward trying to explain to all my friends how the "Real" Spirit is nothing like the movie. Bleh.
That e-book thing is the part that always gets me..my favorite app on the Palm OS was the e-book reader, with its access to a pretty hefty catalogue of content. Prices were competitive with dead tree versions of the same material, and its' DRM was the least onerous such scheme around. Ever since Palm's slow descent into oblivion, the up-to-date-ness of their e-book store has suffered, and a format which was (for me at least) a killer app has been withering away.
The problem with the Nokia devices is that the only e-books you'll be able to read are those that have fallen out of copyright (and those few that have been released into the wild by people like our friend Cory Doctorow). If somebody (broad hint in the direction of the people at Apple and/or Nokia) would make an e-book reader for their devices they'd have my money in a second
Now if the new iPhone-without-the-Phone-part had bluetooth, all my problems would be solved..I could tether it to my Verizon Treo 700WX, and have a good, usable web browser, without the crappy speeds from AT&Tingular. So close..
I agree--concept is interesting (if a bit niche), but game selection is terrible. I'm not that much of a gamer (have a Wii, my first console in years)--but the best way to do this would be to play Halo in one of those "Slayer" PvP (or 2Pv2P) modes, either to a preset score, or for a preset time. Like I said, I don't own an Xbox myself--but I assume there has to be some sort of way to set up an extra omnisicient "camera" that can move all through one of these battlezones, jumping around from place to place as the action dictates. That would be interesting to watch--on the few occasions I've played Halo, I've had trouble keeping track of what is "ahead" of me and what's "behind". If I could watch two other good players play, and observe from "outside" what was happening, I might even become excited enough to pick up a 360 myself.
Are you referring to right now, or if/when OS X switches to ZFS? With the state of play as it is today: Windows doesn't have access to anything but itself natively, but you can use MacDrive for Windows from Mediafour to give Windows the ability to read/write from HFS volumes:
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/
...Newt Gingrich is a great candidate from a nerd standpoint. He's a historian by training, and was deeply influenced by the Alvin Toffler books that were oh-so-popular in the '70s and '80s; I know, Toffler is a bit over-rated, but at least we'd have a guy who has some kind of background in the ever-changing interactions between technology, society, economics, etc.
I think you're not assessing the market accurately. These machines seem aimed straight at someone like me. I've been trying desperately to move away from Windows for years now. I've played with Knoppix and some of the other Live CDs. But I'm not in the IT biz like the typical slashdotter--I just don't have the time to learn how to edit config files and such. Heck, I once even bought a pre-built box with RedHat installed on eBay, just so that I could proceed from a known working configuration. I still found myself googling, and searching through user forums to solve problems--and of course, I had to endure all the typical unhelpful razzing from the folks there ("RTFM", "Search and ye shall find", etc). I have more money than time, I'd like something that just works (TM)..
With all the hype around Ubuntu as being the most accessible distro yet, and Dell offering (I assume) some sort of minimal help, I may be willing to try again, depending on what the word is on these machines, and how Dell handles support issues. OTOH, I have been eyeing the system76 website for some time now also, so I'm definitely interested in comparing the two, in terms of systems offered, and support.
Of course, my other option is to do the whole Apple/Boot Camp/Parallels thing, which I have also been considering....See? I'm a not-quite-geek who is definitely looking for something better than Windows. I just need somebody to package it up a bit and get me over the hump. We do exist. Whether or not there are enough of us for Dell to want to market to us, I can't say..but there's at least a 30-40% chance that Dell may get me to spring for a box in the next couple of months.
Within two years, some brilliant investment banker types will come up with a scheme to "unlock shareholder value" at MSFT. The company will be split up, probably into three separate entities: Company 1 will do nothing but make Windows and other OSes. Company 2 will concentrate on Office. And company 3 will concentrate on the Xbox.
Will it work? Probably not...but it'll make a lot of money for the investment community, and that's what really counts, isn't it?
Most online (and brick-and-mortar) poker rooms have a cap on the amount that they rake from each pot. The typical upper limit is something like $3 or so. This is based upon a 5% rake. IOW, a $60 pot and a $6000 pot both generate the same amount of rake to the house.
Anybody dumb enough to play in a 5% rake with no cap on the rake will get what they deserve. Some of the small B&M poker rooms in some European countries do this. At the end of the evening, all of the players at the table will be scratching their heads, wondering why nobody at the table is a winner....
Does this mean that I'm not going to be able to get the last three episodes of "Point Pleasant"? For some reason, some Swedish TV network has been the only one to get the rights to broadcast the series in its entirety, and (naturally) the eps have been popping up in all the usual places on the net. I believe there are only two or three episodes to go until the end of the series. I'd hate for this situation to interfere with that. It was a good show, and like "Firefly", it went before its time....
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Tru dat. I loved Sin City, and I loved the Spirit--but they're entirely different genres. Anybody familiar with Eisner's Spirit knows that it wasn't some ultra-violent film noir kind of thing. It started off as being vaguely super-hero-ish, but over time, The Spirit became almost a supporting character. The stories were sort of little slice-of-life kinds of things, some humorous, some dramatic, some off-the-wall. However, they were not grim "My city screams" sorts of things. I'll end up seeing the movie anyway, but I know I'll be humphing my way through it, and afterward trying to explain to all my friends how the "Real" Spirit is nothing like the movie. Bleh.
That e-book thing is the part that always gets me..my favorite app on the Palm OS was the e-book reader, with its access to a pretty hefty catalogue of content. Prices were competitive with dead tree versions of the same material, and its' DRM was the least onerous such scheme around. Ever since Palm's slow descent into oblivion, the up-to-date-ness of their e-book store has suffered, and a format which was (for me at least) a killer app has been withering away.
The problem with the Nokia devices is that the only e-books you'll be able to read are those that have fallen out of copyright (and those few that have been released into the wild by people like our friend Cory Doctorow). If somebody (broad hint in the direction of the people at Apple and/or Nokia) would make an e-book reader for their devices they'd have my money in a second
Now if the new iPhone-without-the-Phone-part had bluetooth, all my problems would be solved..I could tether it to my Verizon Treo 700WX, and have a good, usable web browser, without the crappy speeds from AT&Tingular. So close..
I agree--concept is interesting (if a bit niche), but game selection is terrible. I'm not that much of a gamer (have a Wii, my first console in years)--but the best way to do this would be to play Halo in one of those "Slayer" PvP (or 2Pv2P) modes, either to a preset score, or for a preset time. Like I said, I don't own an Xbox myself--but I assume there has to be some sort of way to set up an extra omnisicient "camera" that can move all through one of these battlezones, jumping around from place to place as the action dictates. That would be interesting to watch--on the few occasions I've played Halo, I've had trouble keeping track of what is "ahead" of me and what's "behind". If I could watch two other good players play, and observe from "outside" what was happening, I might even become excited enough to pick up a 360 myself.
Are you referring to right now, or if/when OS X switches to ZFS? With the state of play as it is today: Windows doesn't have access to anything but itself natively, but you can use MacDrive for Windows from Mediafour to give Windows the ability to read/write from HFS volumes: http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/
...Newt Gingrich is a great candidate from a nerd standpoint. He's a historian by training, and was deeply influenced by the Alvin Toffler books that were oh-so-popular in the '70s and '80s; I know, Toffler is a bit over-rated, but at least we'd have a guy who has some kind of background in the ever-changing interactions between technology, society, economics, etc.
I think you're not assessing the market accurately. These machines seem aimed straight at someone like me. I've been trying desperately to move away from Windows for years now. I've played with Knoppix and some of the other Live CDs. But I'm not in the IT biz like the typical slashdotter--I just don't have the time to learn how to edit config files and such. Heck, I once even bought a pre-built box with RedHat installed on eBay, just so that I could proceed from a known working configuration. I still found myself googling, and searching through user forums to solve problems--and of course, I had to endure all the typical unhelpful razzing from the folks there ("RTFM", "Search and ye shall find", etc). I have more money than time, I'd like something that just works (TM)..
With all the hype around Ubuntu as being the most accessible distro yet, and Dell offering (I assume) some sort of minimal help, I may be willing to try again, depending on what the word is on these machines, and how Dell handles support issues. OTOH, I have been eyeing the system76 website for some time now also, so I'm definitely interested in comparing the two, in terms of systems offered, and support.
Of course, my other option is to do the whole Apple/Boot Camp/Parallels thing, which I have also been considering....See? I'm a not-quite-geek who is definitely looking for something better than Windows. I just need somebody to package it up a bit and get me over the hump. We do exist. Whether or not there are enough of us for Dell to want to market to us, I can't say..but there's at least a 30-40% chance that Dell may get me to spring for a box in the next couple of months.
Within two years, some brilliant investment banker types will come up with a scheme to "unlock shareholder value" at MSFT. The company will be split up, probably into three separate entities: Company 1 will do nothing but make Windows and other OSes. Company 2 will concentrate on Office. And company 3 will concentrate on the Xbox. Will it work? Probably not...but it'll make a lot of money for the investment community, and that's what really counts, isn't it?
Most online (and brick-and-mortar) poker rooms have a cap on the amount that they rake from each pot. The typical upper limit is something like $3 or so. This is based upon a 5% rake. IOW, a $60 pot and a $6000 pot both generate the same amount of rake to the house. Anybody dumb enough to play in a 5% rake with no cap on the rake will get what they deserve. Some of the small B&M poker rooms in some European countries do this. At the end of the evening, all of the players at the table will be scratching their heads, wondering why nobody at the table is a winner....
Yeah and, in the US version, Greedo shoots first.
Does this mean that I'm not going to be able to get the last three episodes of "Point Pleasant"? For some reason, some Swedish TV network has been the only one to get the rights to broadcast the series in its entirety, and (naturally) the eps have been popping up in all the usual places on the net. I believe there are only two or three episodes to go until the end of the series. I'd hate for this situation to interfere with that. It was a good show, and like "Firefly", it went before its time....
He also did an interview with "Off the Wall", the hacker(?) radio show from the 2600 people, which airs on WBAI in New York.