without a doubt Jesus would've been the best president ever. When he was only 12 years old he went to the temple to preach to the Jews and was just amazing everyone. Think how much better the U.S.A. would be if Bill Clinton wasn't Bill Clinto but instead was Jesus? Do you think we'd be fighting a way? NO!! We'd all be loving each other because thats what Jesus was about! LOVE! There isn't enough love in the world! Jesus would also be great because hes not only the son of god, HES A PRINCE OF PEACE!!! Hed probably do things differently. Even George W Bush could learn from Jesus (and thats why George W Bush is a christian and we need to keep him in office!!)
LiveJournal -- Convincing teenage girls that someone cares about what they have to say since 1999.
A bit OT, but yes it is. I use a DWL-650+ with my SuSE 9 Pro laptop all the time (plug and play). Of course, YMMV.:-)
While I applaud the effort, and I'm sure many people will find it useful, I personally don't see this becoming a widely used resource. When I have problems with my hardware under Linux, I have a general routine of hitting Google, a few Wikis, some IRC channels and some forums. Between them, I get enough information to let me know what the situation is with the hardware in question. Rarely (in my experiences) is the hardware just straight 'incompatible'. I almost always find a hack on the Internet, or someone who's dealt with the same situation and come up with an ugly fix and/or solution. If hardware is truly incompatible, it tends tends to spread pretty fast in the Linux community anyway.
Maybe it's because I tend to stick with rather plain hardware for my Linux needs (servers, etc...), but I have rarely turned to a centralized resource for my troubleshooting needs. It'd be interesting to hear what the more 'bleeding-edge' Linux brethren think about this, or how other Linux users solve hardware problems.
Han did meet Jabba in the original cut, the scene was pulled from theatrical release though. Jabba was originally a dumpy irish fellow dressed in fur and leather.
If you're going to bitch about scene changes, at least have the facts my friend.
He speaks the truth. I'm by no means a connoisseur of the StarWars culture, but IIRC the scene was cut due to time-shooting restraints. It's explained in an obscure VHS I found at a flea market a few years back called "Star Wars to Jedi" and appears to be circa 1985-ish (Lucas still had solid black hair). The video includes the original scene with the aforementioned Irish fellow and George Lucas explaining why it didn't work out. It also includes some other concept sketches for how Jabba should look. Unfortunately, I can find no documentation on the VHS anywhere online, save for the occasional reference on a SW Geek's blog.
For me, it depends on expectations. An all-star cast and high-budget hype usually makes me expect more out of a movie. With that in mind, it's a tie between two movies.
Batman and Robin. I was a fan of the Batman comic when I was a wee lad, and I have fond memories of the show. Hell, the first two live-action movies weren't too bad either. But this one was just horrible. Cheesy one-liners replete with the obligatory "dynamic duo creatively dispose of hundreds of mindless, drone-like henchmen" scenes. A horrible movie. The sad thing is, its release date was 1997 and the special effects were just horrible. The cast was pretty nice; George Clooney, Uma Thurman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chris O'donnell and Alicia Silverstone were all in it. Proof that an all-star movie can still suck, no matter how much money you throw at it.
The second is a gem so truly godawful that it's worth seeking out if you want fodder for a night of adding running commentary in the vein of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. It's called Virtuosity and it is, quite possibly, the worst big-budget sci-fi movie I've seen. It has two of my favorite actors in it, Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe so it too joins the esteemed ranks of "movies that had a good cast and still sucked". All the cliches and stereotypes of the genre can be found in this one. Story line is cheesy and the special effects are laughable (after doing some thorough research, I can conclude that Crowe's character actually does bleed Gak). Seriously. Rent it or watch it on SciFi for some laughs.
Oh but there is, and for those of you too lazy to click the link, it's "exclusive" to the Xbox version of Doom 3. You know, it's id's way of thanking all the people who upgraded their systems to meet the rather,uh, "demanding" system requirements.
In any event, we can all breathe a little easier knowing that countless white suburbanites will be singing the liberating song of civil rights that is "Fuck Tha Police", thanks to its place on the soundtrack. Yay.
Even though they have been quite on it, has there been any word on Rockstar releasing it on CD like they did with Vice City? Last time with Vice City they let it be known in advance, but with a few months away for GTA SA they sure haven't said much.
From PSX Extreme, who ripped it from Play Magazine. A partial playlist (consistent with the claim in the article) --
Salt 'n' Pepa - Push it
Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby
Inner Circle - Bad Boys
KLF - 3AM Eternal
Massive Attack - Unfinished Sympathy
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
Jane's Addiction - Been Caught Stealing
Poison - Every rose has it's Thorn
Guns 'n' Roses - Sweet Child o' Mine
Smashing Pumpkins - Today
NWA - F*** Tha Police
NWA - 100 Miles And Runnnin'
Snoop Doggy Dogg - Gin N'Juice
Snoop Doggy Dogg - Ain't no Fun
Warren G - Regulate
Fugees - Killing me Softly
Coolio - Gangsta's Paradise
Public Enemy - Rebel without a Pause
The Stone Roses - Fools Gold
Happy Mondays - Step On
The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony
Radiohead - Creep
As to whether or not it will be released as box set in the vein of the Vice City soundtrack boxset, I would imagine yes. This came up on the IGN nSiders forum a while back, in which someone "in the know" (READ: BestBuy stockboy) claimed to have seen a product listing from Sony Records about a San Andreas soundtrack set. Take that with a grain of salt, however. Seeking cohesive information from IGN is like going to an Adam Sandler film for some deep, subtle wit.
Epic Games (the makers of Unreal Tournament, et. al.) have used Vorbis in their games ever since releasing Unreal Tournament 2003 to compress game music without having per-game license fees sap profits from every game sold. Vorbis saves developers money by avoiding patent-license fees.
Epic isn't alone; other Vorbis users include:
* Crystal Dynamics (Soul Reaver 2, Blood Omen 2)
* Croteam (Serious Sam: The Second Encounter)
* Pyrogon (Candy Cruncher)
* PopCap Games (Alchemy)
* EA Games (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)
Yeah, that's nifty, but where's my original games? Is this the best that they can do?
Here. Nothing particularly awesome, but still homebrew none the less.
Of course you know that the Dreamcast can emulate damn near anything, making it ideal for people who play a lot of ROMs. While I personally have never done it, I can imagine that plenty of people are getting use out of the Dreamcast strictly for that purpose.
You beat me to it. A link for those curious. As stated on the website, Windows disk encryption was neither innovative nor truly secure. In a security class I had to take, I watched the professor demonstrate just how easy it was to bypass the NTFS file encryption. With a simple hash-generating script (the inner workings of which I've yet to explore:-), he was able to bypass an "encrypted" directory's protection.
IPod shipments rose threefold amid ``staggering'' demand for the mini version of the music player, which Apple will start selling in Europe this month, said Timothy Cook, Apple's worldwide vice president for sales. The popularity of iPods helped reignite demand for Macintosh computers, fueling the best quarter for shipments in almost four years
"It gives me more confidence that the iPod will drive customers to other products" said Jim Grossman, a technology fund manager at Minneapolis-based Thrivent Financial, which manages $64 billion and owns Apple shares.
If by "other products", you mean the iPod mini or iTunes, sure, but otherwise, I'm just not sure about that. The iPod is a digital jukebox that ended up catering to Windows users for the sake of market dominance. Windows users who come to the ipod are not forced to unlearn old habits, or give up a selection of software for the sake of having a superior MP3/AAC player, but that's exactly what you have to do if you convert to Mac. Many of my Mac friends came from a broken Windows home, and migrated because of the simplicity and stability. Generally speaking, "stability" and "simplicity" or anything else like that aren't really big issues with things like MP3 players, since most MP3 players are created equal. Not Mac bashing at all, (very happy with my iMac:-), but I think Apple may be getting over-optimistic with its recent numbers. I'm curious as to how many of the ipod sales of the last year or so have been Windows versions.
In any event, I'll have a new Mac to lust over for the next few months, which is just what I needed. After all, idle hands inadvertently install Windows ME, and you know how much God hates that.
Going by the current offerings from the website, I'm not going to hold my breath. My experience with the Savage cards have not been that great. Drivers were delayed and needed patching, but that's no reason to condemn the entire manufacturer.
What's with the obsession to mod/hack stuff? Seriously, aside from the "fun factor", is there any real point to doing it?
Modding is fun and often a means to usher legacy hardware/software into a state where it can compete with newer generation hardware/software. Examples of good modding can be found in the Debian Familliar distribution, which allows old-skool iPaqs to run a far more robust operating system than the first-wave Pocket PC software, and you end up with a PDA competent to PPC 2k2.
As a child, I once modded a first-generation Mr. Speak and Spell to curse at me in German. I was the envy of the entire chess club.
I'm probably going against the general sentiment of the gaming community, but I found XIII to be an excellent game, do partly to the great voice acting. For those who never bothered to mess with the game, it's more or less a conspiracy story about how a man who allegedly killed the president and shortly thereafter loses his memory. It gets more complex when it is revealed that the alleged assassin is just counter-revolutionary agent 13 of 21. The game itself is a cel-shaded hybrid stealth/fps game that sits nicely on top of the Unreal engine. The gameplay is rather mediocre by Splinter Cell or Unreal standards (as is reflected in its often lackluster reviews), but it has some great voice work in it that really sets it apart from the typical FPS. David Duchovny (X-Files) plays the title character perfectly. Adam West also walks away from his infomercial grandeur long enough to lend his voice in the game here and there as well.
I picked up a new copy for GCN from GameStop for $20, and was not disappointed. Check it out some time.
It's a point seconded by Sheri Graner Ray, a senior game designer for Sony Online Entertainment. The game industry, by virtue of its overwhelmingly male employee-base, is missing a big market, she said.
Uhm, what? I don't really disagree with the assertion that female gamers are not something you see everyday, but I certainly don't think an entire gender of gamers are being ignored. Like another poster said, people create games that are fun, regardless of gender.
This seems to be a bit of a hot-topic, with mainstream media skewing the facts on female gamers. GameInformer ran an interesting feature about female gamers and women in the development and production of games, the results were astoundingly positive. I can't be troubled to walk 7 feet to get an issue of GI so I can login to GI-Unlimited for some linkage, but it's there if someone wants to put up a linky.
Surprisingly, slightly more women than men reported playing computer and online games
(approximately 60% women compared to 40% men) while about the same number of
men and women reported playing video games.
Microsoft (of all people) also featured an article about women in gaming, noting that games like EverQuest and Quake have a very large, vocal community. Add that to a Reuter's report that the women 18+ now outnumber the target audience of 8 years ago, and the claim that an entire market is untapped is sounding more and more like propaganda. I mean, obviously game developers/publishers are doing something right.
My point being this: While I believe that, collectively, female gamers are in the minority in the gaming world, I refuse to give into the whole "WE MUST HAVE WOMEN DEVELOPING GAMES OR ELSE WE WON'T TAP UNTO THIS GIGANTIC MARKET" bit. Hire whoever gets the job done (regardless of gender)and make games that are interesting and fun, and everyone will be happy. At least, statistically.
The DS has Wi-Fi ANDbluetooth. Actually, a lot of people are saying that it's not really bluetooth, rather some Nintendo proprietary stack based on bluetooth. But there is, in fact, two different ways to engage in multiplayer wirelessly -- Nintendo's Protocol/Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. So one could conclude that we'll be seeing some possibilities for world-wide (or nation-wide) online gaming soon.
The article uses chess as an example of multiplayer gaming on cellular devices, but I don't really think that's a good example of how cellular multiplayer gaming would fail. I don't think the kind of people who are going to go out of their way to play games online in a true multiplayer fasion (no "shadow gaming" here) are going to be playing chess. Chess is time-consuming, chess is thought intensive, and chess is limited to two players.
UbiSoft's mobile game titles (Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, XIII) are examples of where the mobile gaming industry is heading. A friend from my macroeconomics class use to spend the entire class playing UbiSoft's SC:Pandora Tomorrow on his Nokia cellphone, and the game looked surprisingly fun (despite lacking 3-D graphics). I can certainly see room for multiplayer for a game like that, and I imagine the same could be said for many mobile titles like it. But on a similar note, one could also point towards the upcoming Ghost Recon title for the bastard step-child of the taco-phone, which is a full, 3-D FPS. The game looks great, given its limited resources and the demo of online multiplayer on the Ngage's website looks fantastic.
Slashdot Mirror
The honorable judge Dr.Sbaitso, now presiding over the courts
Lawyer 1 : Your honorable Sbaitso, a bloody glove was found in the bushes of Branden Basham's front yard. If you'll just look at exhi..
Judge Sbaitso : Yes. But why?
Lawyer 1 : The glove was found within a 50 meter perimeter of the murder. Er, uh, if you'll just look at exhi..
Judge Sbaitso : I am just a simple computer program without a math-coprocessor.
Lawyer 1 : Your honor, if you would simply look at exhibit A
Judge Sbaitso : Yes, but you could be mistaken.
Judge Sbaitso : Did you know you can change my colors?
Haha. This part got me here --
without a doubt Jesus would've been the best president ever. When he was only 12 years old he went to the temple to preach to the Jews and was just amazing everyone. Think how much better the U.S.A. would be if Bill Clinton wasn't Bill Clinto but instead was Jesus? Do you think we'd be fighting a way? NO!! We'd all be loving each other because thats what Jesus was about! LOVE! There isn't enough love in the world! Jesus would also be great because hes not only the son of god, HES A PRINCE OF PEACE!!! Hed probably do things differently. Even George W Bush could learn from Jesus (and thats why George W Bush is a christian and we need to keep him in office!!)
LiveJournal -- Convincing teenage girls that someone cares about what they have to say since 1999.
If it's anything like this I'm happy
I would imagine with that whole 'desktop market dominance' thing. We've been through this before.
Finally, an MP3 player that appeals to the baker demographic of audiophiles.
Take solace in the fact that it's all a figment of my imagination. YOU'RE ALL PAWNS IN MY LITTLE ACID TRIP OF A GAME!!!
Not if you verify the potential purchase's Linux compatibility against the vendor website. There is a D-Link DWL-650+ driver link right there. I know this certainly isn't the same for all hardware, but searching on the web prior to purchase to see what luck others have had is certainly not a bad thing.
So if a product doesn't work under Linux, it's 'defective'? Or am I misreading this?
A bit OT, but yes it is. I use a DWL-650+ with my SuSE 9 Pro laptop all the time (plug and play). Of course, YMMV. :-)
While I applaud the effort, and I'm sure many people will find it useful, I personally don't see this becoming a widely used resource. When I have problems with my hardware under Linux, I have a general routine of hitting Google, a few Wikis, some IRC channels and some forums. Between them, I get enough information to let me know what the situation is with the hardware in question. Rarely (in my experiences) is the hardware just straight 'incompatible'. I almost always find a hack on the Internet, or someone who's dealt with the same situation and come up with an ugly fix and/or solution. If hardware is truly incompatible, it tends tends to spread pretty fast in the Linux community anyway.
Maybe it's because I tend to stick with rather plain hardware for my Linux needs (servers, etc...), but I have rarely turned to a centralized resource for my troubleshooting needs. It'd be interesting to hear what the more 'bleeding-edge' Linux brethren think about this, or how other Linux users solve hardware problems.
He speaks the truth. I'm by no means a connoisseur of the StarWars culture, but IIRC the scene was cut due to time-shooting restraints. It's explained in an obscure VHS I found at a flea market a few years back called "Star Wars to Jedi" and appears to be circa 1985-ish (Lucas still had solid black hair). The video includes the original scene with the aforementioned Irish fellow and George Lucas explaining why it didn't work out. It also includes some other concept sketches for how Jabba should look. Unfortunately, I can find no documentation on the VHS anywhere online, save for the occasional reference on a SW Geek's blog.
Oh but there is, and for those of you too lazy to click the link, it's "exclusive" to the Xbox version of Doom 3. You know, it's id's way of thanking all the people who upgraded their systems to meet the rather
Oh, wait.
Speaking of NWA, Ryder, the main character's homeboy, bears a striking resemblance to the late Eazy-E (of NWA fame), down to the Locs and the jerry-curl.
In any event, we can all breathe a little easier knowing that countless white suburbanites will be singing the liberating song of civil rights that is "Fuck Tha Police", thanks to its place on the soundtrack. Yay.
From PSX Extreme, who ripped it from Play Magazine. A partial playlist (consistent with the claim in the article) --
As to whether or not it will be released as box set in the vein of the Vice City soundtrack boxset, I would imagine yes. This came up on the IGN nSiders forum a while back, in which someone "in the know" (READ: BestBuy stockboy) claimed to have seen a product listing from Sony Records about a San Andreas soundtrack set. Take that with a grain of salt, however. Seeking cohesive information from IGN is like going to an Adam Sandler film for some deep, subtle wit.
You would be correct.
From Vorbis website --
Here. Nothing particularly awesome, but still homebrew none the less.
Of course you know that the Dreamcast can emulate damn near anything, making it ideal for people who play a lot of ROMs. While I personally have never done it, I can imagine that plenty of people are getting use out of the Dreamcast strictly for that purpose.
I believe the feelings are mutual. You're not exactly living high on the humanitarian list when you're suing former customers for some quick cash.
You beat me to it. A link for those curious. As stated on the website, Windows disk encryption was neither innovative nor truly secure. In a security class I had to take, I watched the professor demonstrate just how easy it was to bypass the NTFS file encryption. With a simple hash-generating script (the inner workings of which I've yet to explore :-), he was able to bypass an "encrypted" directory's protection.
If by "other products", you mean the iPod mini or iTunes, sure, but otherwise, I'm just not sure about that. The iPod is a digital jukebox that ended up catering to Windows users for the sake of market dominance. Windows users who come to the ipod are not forced to unlearn old habits, or give up a selection of software for the sake of having a superior MP3/AAC player, but that's exactly what you have to do if you convert to Mac. Many of my Mac friends came from a broken Windows home, and migrated because of the simplicity and stability. Generally speaking, "stability" and "simplicity" or anything else like that aren't really big issues with things like MP3 players, since most MP3 players are created equal. Not Mac bashing at all, (very happy with my iMac
In any event, I'll have a new Mac to lust over for the next few months, which is just what I needed. After all, idle hands inadvertently install Windows ME, and you know how much God hates that.
Going by the current offerings from the website, I'm not going to hold my breath. My experience with the Savage cards have not been that great. Drivers were delayed and needed patching, but that's no reason to condemn the entire manufacturer.
Modding is fun and often a means to usher legacy hardware/software into a state where it can compete with newer generation hardware/software. Examples of good modding can be found in the Debian Familliar distribution, which allows old-skool iPaqs to run a far more robust operating system than the first-wave Pocket PC software, and you end up with a PDA competent to PPC 2k2.
As a child, I once modded a first-generation Mr. Speak and Spell to curse at me in German. I was the envy of the entire chess club.
I'm probably going against the general sentiment of the gaming community, but I found XIII to be an excellent game, do partly to the great voice acting. For those who never bothered to mess with the game, it's more or less a conspiracy story about how a man who allegedly killed the president and shortly thereafter loses his memory. It gets more complex when it is revealed that the alleged assassin is just counter-revolutionary agent 13 of 21. The game itself is a cel-shaded hybrid stealth/fps game that sits nicely on top of the Unreal engine. The gameplay is rather mediocre by Splinter Cell or Unreal standards (as is reflected in its often lackluster reviews), but it has some great voice work in it that really sets it apart from the typical FPS. David Duchovny (X-Files) plays the title character perfectly. Adam West also walks away from his infomercial grandeur long enough to lend his voice in the game here and there as well.
I picked up a new copy for GCN from GameStop for $20, and was not disappointed. Check it out some time.
Uhm, what? I don't really disagree with the assertion that female gamers are not something you see everyday, but I certainly don't think an entire gender of gamers are being ignored. Like another poster said, people create games that are fun, regardless of gender.
This seems to be a bit of a hot-topic, with mainstream media skewing the facts on female gamers. GameInformer ran an interesting feature about female gamers and women in the development and production of games, the results were astoundingly positive. I can't be troubled to walk 7 feet to get an issue of GI so I can login to GI-Unlimited for some linkage, but it's there if someone wants to put up a linky.
Additionally, Pew Internet and American Life Project ran a survey that had some statistics to support the GI article, namely (straight from report) --
Microsoft (of all people) also featured an article about women in gaming, noting that games like EverQuest and Quake have a very large, vocal community. Add that to a Reuter's report that the women 18+ now outnumber the target audience of 8 years ago, and the claim that an entire market is untapped is sounding more and more like propaganda. I mean, obviously game developers/publishers are doing something right.
My point being this: While I believe that, collectively, female gamers are in the minority in the gaming world, I refuse to give into the whole "WE MUST HAVE WOMEN DEVELOPING GAMES OR ELSE WE WON'T TAP UNTO THIS GIGANTIC MARKET" bit. Hire whoever gets the job done (regardless of gender)and make games that are interesting and fun, and everyone will be happy. At least, statistically.
As long as they release it for OS/370, because God knows I want to run two instances of IE in paralell processes.
Very true that sex sells, but will it sell the Xbox/components? I'm skeptical. Microsoft has tried these shenanigans before without much success.
The DS has Wi-Fi AND bluetooth. Actually, a lot of people are saying that it's not really bluetooth, rather some Nintendo proprietary stack based on bluetooth. But there is, in fact, two different ways to engage in multiplayer wirelessly -- Nintendo's Protocol/Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. So one could conclude that we'll be seeing some possibilities for world-wide (or nation-wide) online gaming soon.
The article uses chess as an example of multiplayer gaming on cellular devices, but I don't really think that's a good example of how cellular multiplayer gaming would fail. I don't think the kind of people who are going to go out of their way to play games online in a true multiplayer fasion (no "shadow gaming" here) are going to be playing chess. Chess is time-consuming, chess is thought intensive, and chess is limited to two players.
UbiSoft's mobile game titles (Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, XIII) are examples of where the mobile gaming industry is heading. A friend from my macroeconomics class use to spend the entire class playing UbiSoft's SC:Pandora Tomorrow on his Nokia cellphone, and the game looked surprisingly fun (despite lacking 3-D graphics). I can certainly see room for multiplayer for a game like that, and I imagine the same could be said for many mobile titles like it. But on a similar note, one could also point towards the upcoming Ghost Recon title for the bastard step-child of the taco-phone, which is a full, 3-D FPS. The game looks great, given its limited resources and the demo of online multiplayer on the Ngage's website looks fantastic.