I agree...this is just a very small but very vocal group of people that grew up with the "vinyl sound" and got used to the clicks, pops, hisses, and distortion. They got so used to it that they consider it part of the music, and when they hear the same sound cleanly on a CD without all that they feel that something is missing. This is nostalgia, pure and simple...it has nothing to do with audio quality. CD's sound better in every way than vinyl, and they don't wear out with playback. Sure you can scratch them, but you can also scratch vinyl (and it's much easier to break). This is why vinyl very rapidly disappeared once CD's became affordable...and these people think that the reverse is going to happen? Yeah right.
However, that does give me an idea for a new product. Take a regular CD player, and add a DSP. Use this DSP to process the signal and add the "vinyl sounds" to the audio stream in real time. With a powerful enough DSP (and DSP's are cheap nowadays), you could do all kinds of post processing, even adding in the hum and distortion that vinyl has. Heck, the DSP from a SB Live or Audigy would be more than sufficient to handle that task. Put the whole thing in an old/weathered looking wooden cabinet, complete with old style knobs instead of buttons, and market it as a "CD player that sounds like vinyl". Sell it for a ridiculous amount of money...it would at least sell as well as the $10000 laser record player.
I have to agree. We don't know the whole story here, so I'm going to just take TFA at face value for the purposes of this argument and assume that's exactly what happened. Years ago, back around '92, I used to work at Meijer. I'll save my rants about how horrible of a place that is to work for another time, suffice to say it sucked. But anyway, that's offtopic. I worked night shift in the toy dept, which also carried all of the videogame consoles. I still remember what happened...it was Saturday, Dec 26, 1992. They called my department up to the service desk to get our returns. The store opened at 6am, and I worked 11-7:30 at that time. So this was maybe 6:30 or so, half hour after the store opened. Of course, as you imagine on the day after xmas, there were a LOT of returns. They were calling us up there every 15 minutes or so to get them. I was done with my nightly stocking, the morning shift people had just come in, so I said I'd go up and get the returns. When I got up there, there were 2 carts of returns waiting for me (we often got stuff in returns that we didn't even sell, but that's another matter entirely...this place was a lot more generous on returns than Best Buy)...but there was also an irate-sounding customer, the customer service desk manager, the night store manager, and the store manager. This guy had a SNES box and a receipt dated 3 months earlier. He was swearing up and down that he bought it as a gift, and it was never opened until the day before. (I stood up there behind the counter "sorting" my returns so I could observe.) As the story goes, the kids unwrapped it, opened the box, and discovered that the system was missing. The controllers, instructions, power supply, etc were all there, but no console. He was obviously just trying to "return" it for an exchange that had the console. People kept saying no until it got up to the store manager, who also said no. He said "I can understand how you must feel sir, but try to look at this from our point of view. How do we know you didn't just take the system out and then bring the empty box back? Don't you think someone would notice that the box is a lot lighter than it should be?" Now at that time, we sold a lot of those systems. Is it possible that he got one with the system missing? It's vaguely possible, but not very likely...they were kept in a locked case with the overstock on top of the shelf (16 feet up). A lot of things were stolen from that place, but in the entire time I worked there I never found out about any game consoles missing. Sure they were overly generous with their returns, but they did (at least the entire time I was there) check to make sure that returned items actually had the product inside. The boxes for SNES's weren't shrinkwrapped either, so it would've been very easy to check it (in fact they did check it). Is it possible that an employee or someone in receiving stole the system out of the box? I guess it's possible, but not very likely. I can't really say I would've done any different in the store manager's situation. However, the Best Buy story has one detail that makes it different...the people who had the authority to accept returns already said they would do it, and then the manager has to walk up in a Bill Lumburgh way and then grab the new hard drive out of the guy's hand that he had already bought? The transaction was complete at that point...if the manager grabbed the new one from him after he paid for it, that's theft, pure and simple. If everyone had said no to the return and it got up to the manager and he said no too, well that's a bit different from the way it appears to have been handled according to TFA. So at least from what I'm getting from TFA, Best Buy is definitely in the wrong, and the guy should file a complaint with the state attorney general, at the very least. If the manager touched the guy in any way when he grabbed the drive, the guy might be able to get the manager up on charges for aggravated robbery.
They assumed the PS3 would be the huge instant hit the PS2 was. The PS2 caused them to virtually drop Playstation support very quickly (aside from the whole "Try to sell a small PS1 with an expensive LCD addon as a portable system" thing). Each time they say the same thing: "The PS2 is a supercomputer. It's so powerful it can render Toy Story in real time!!!1111one" The PS2 turned out to be by far the least powerful system of the last generation...but it had DVD support at the right time for it to be a huge hit (when DVD good DVD players were still relatively expensive). The PS2 isn't as good at DVD movie playback as even the bargain bin DVD players in Wal-mart, but it's passable as long as you don't use a progressive display. In a lot of places it even proved to be cheaper than standalone DVD players. VHS was a horrible format for prerecorded movies...the PS2 helped DVD replace it in that fashion. The quality is much better, it enables full dolby digital surround playback, and the disks don't wear out. Sony assumed that the exact same thing would happen with the PS3. "It's a supercomputer! It can render Toy Story in real time!!!!111one" (Hey, didn't you say the PS2 could do that?) It's a Blu-Ray player and cheaper than any standalone Blu-Ray player. Problem...Blu-Ray isn't even remotely necessary like DVD was. DVD is more than good enough for 95% of the population. Heck, I have an HDTV, and DVD is more than good enough for me. Sure, the increased resolution of Blu-Ray does make it look a little better, especially on huge displays...but it's not worth the cost or the DRM headaches. This was all due to Sony's arrogance, assuming that the exact same thing would happen as did with the PS2 even though it was expensive for its time. Charge a lot, people will buy it anyway because it's a PS3, and they will have another huge hit on their hands. Since this didn't happen, and the PS3 is pretty much a flop, they're trying to fall back on the PS2 to save face. They had no intention of supporting it after the PS3 came out...it's just that now they don't really have a choice because barely anyone is buying a PS3.
> Windoze is like a Ford Pinto. It'll get you to work and back home again, just don't expect it to have any real power.
Very accurate. It will get you to work and back home, without any real power...but you forgot to mention that it is perfectly normal for it to sometimes explode.
So they compare a month in which the 360 had a "big" game released and the Wii didn't have any major releases, and saying that the 360 sold more than the Wii in that particular month is news somehow? Plus, the Wii is still having supply issues (at least in the US)...for the most part you still can't go into a store and pick one up off the shelf, whereas there are piles of 360's everywhere, this has to play a part too.
Yes yes...but that's not what happened here. The kid somehow messed with the caller ID system (the one 911 uses, this is NOT the consumer "Caller ID" but a different system) and then called 911, making it appear that he was calling from the residence in question. He then started going on about how someone overdosed on cocaine, shot him, and was torturing his sister in the other room. The 911 dispatcher was talking to a real person on the phone, it wasn't just "the computer made me do it". Now as to why the system was vulnerable (it definitely shouldn't be, that's an issue in and of itself) or how the kid did it, TFA doesn't say. This isn't the slippery slope you're making it out to be (from your comments you make it seem like words appeared on the computer saying "send the SWAT team to this address).
I beat that game quite easily without ever cheating once. I didn't find it that difficult...it was mainly just learning where to go and patterns the enemy used. The head-exploding guy was supposed to be Hitler also. I remember thinking at the time (even as a kid), boy that looks like Hitler. Of course they had changed his name in the US version, but when I read the plot of the original Japanese version (all they did was change names and edit swastikas to eagles), it was supposed to BE Hitler.
Agreed..."Thou shalt not commit murder" != "Thou shalt not kill". On the surface the two statements are similar, but the connotations are completely different. This is what happens when translating between two totally different languages, connotations change and translations can't be made literally.
...is who I was hoping to see at Scotty. AKA Dr. Beckett on Atlantis. The characters (Scotty and Beckett) are supposed to be from the same place in Scotland, while the actors (Doohan and Mcgillion) are both from the Vancouver. Paul's already got the accent down, and I think he even looks like a young Doohan. This sentiment was echoed by Doohan's son Chris (who was going to try for the role himself until he saw Paul audition).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McGillion
DRM does not stop "pirates"...it doesn't even slow them down. Quite frequently, cracked pirated verisons are available on the torrent sites before the actual products are released. The ONLY thing DRM does is inconvenience paying customers...you know the ones who actually went out and BOUGHT the product rather than just downloading it from a torrent site. Every time this happens, a fraction of those inconvenienced paying customers will get fed up and start downloading rather than buying. You'd think this is what the publishers wanted, from the way they act. Either that or they're just insane...the definition of insanity being repeating the same action time and time again expecting a different result.
Set up a WOW realm on the moon. Sure, internet connection with anything on Earth would have latency measured in 10's of seconds...but that's fine for web, IRC, IM, etc (everything but gaming). So the moon would just have its own dedicated realm(s). If they did that I'd go there.
No kidding! I was waiting for someone to mention this. I have a 2 and a half year old Athlon XP system (KT880 chipset, 2 SATA ports, DDR400 RAM, AGP 8x, etc). This isn't cutting edge stuff anymore. I have SATA hard drives. I mainly run Gentoo on that system, but I put an XP install on it also for ease of playing WOW while I worked on getting it working with Wine. During the XP install I had to go and hunt down a floppy drive so I could install. It absolutely cannot be done without a floppy drive, due to my SATA hard drives. Now, I do understand that a 6 year old OS can't possibly have ever driver for every new component available. But *why do they insist that SATA/SCSI drivers have to be on a freaking floppy disk*?!?!? Why can't I put them on a CD, or a USB stick, or SOMETHING? No, Windows will only accept it if it's an "approved" driver disk on a floppy with the correct directory structure. Finding this was relatively easy, it's simply in a directory from the unzipped drivers that I downloaded from the chipset manufacturer...but having to go and hunt down a floppy drive from an old computer just so they could be installed was ridiculous. Sure, maybe USB sticks weren't popular enough in 2001 to warrant their inclusion in the boot system, but CD's certainly were? But no, Windows can only install to a SATA drive if you have a driver disk in drive A.
RPM is a *terrible* package manager. It suffers from dependency hell like nothing else I've ever seen...and unless you know enough to grab source tarballs and packages, and make your own RPM's with them, forget installing any RPM's but the ones the distribution manufacturer provides you. Sure there are GUI frontends and automated tools that can help with some of the dependency hell issues, but those are a royal pain...I shouldn't have to use a GUI to install programs. I'm not always in a situation where I can be at the terminal or VNC in, and in fact one of my boxes doesn't even have X installed on it. The Slackware way of./configure ; make ; make install isn't TOO bad, but then you don't have anything that tracks what versions of packages you have installed. If you want real actual package management that doesn't suffer from these issues, there's only one choice: Portage. There isn't anything else right now that even comes close to where Portaeg was in 1999. I know the Gentoo way is usually compiling from source, and there are a lot of situations where that won't work, but it is very possible to use Portage to delivery binary packages. There are many binary packages available. Of course, if you use those they won't be optimized for your system, but then neither are RPM's or Debian packages unless you compile them yourself.
I have to update Redhat, SuSE, and Debian boxes where I work now, and it is absolute hell...so much so that automated tools are created to do it for you. On Gentoo, completely updating your box is very easy: emerge --sync ; emerge -uDNva world
I have 4 wires running from my DVD player to my amp: 3 component (YPbPr), and 1 coaxial digital (for Dolby Digital audio). Then 3 (YPbPr) running from the amp to the TV (sound is through speakers). It's really not that bad. Plus, component doesn't suffer degradation and signal dropouts over a cable longer than...oh...12 inches like HDMI does. It's just poorly designed.
No kidding. HDMI is a scam, pure and simple. It does not provide any better quality or any additional capabilities over component...in fact, it's worse. The ONLY purpose of HDMI is to let the media companies control what you watch and how you watch it via copy protection...and then the cable manufacturers get in on it and charge you $100 for a $10 cable. I have an LCD HDTV (1080p unit from Samsung), and when I got it I specifically got one that did NOT have HDMI or HDCP support (and as a result, saved some money). It does have a DVI port, but I don't use that either (though I may conceivably use that at some point if I want to hook it up to my computer for anything...sure beats composite or S-video if I want to do anything on the TV). I know DVI is pin-compatible with HDMI via an adatper, but mine specifically does NOT support HDCP (states in the instructions that the DVI port cannot be used with HDCP equipment). If I'm shopping for any higher end equipment, and it does not support component, and support FULL RESOLUTION output via component, I will not buy it. I will not even consider having a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player until there is one that supports full resolution output via component and basically ignores HDCP/ICT, and the formats are playable under Linux with completely free software (I don't care if it's legal or not). If this means I get left behind as far as media tech goes, oh well...I don't really care. I'm perfectly happy with DVD...If it gets to a point where movies are only playable via HDCP equipment, I will abandon them entirely, or watch the old stuff I already have, or read Slashdot all day, or maybe even go outside. Sure, from a technical perspective the higher resolutions of Blu-ray and HD-DVD look a little better, to a point...but the costs outweigh the benefits, right now neither format is worth touching with a 10-foot pole. And as far as audio, well CD's already go beyond the range of human hearing in both directions, anything more is a waste. Though I must admit, I haven't bought any CD's since the Napster fiasco started (even MP3, while vastly inferior to CD...I can definitely hear a difference...sounds "good enough" for most situations). The only actual hearable features that SACD and DVD-audio offer are Dolby Digital surround sound, but I don't need that for music. As far as movies go, DVD is likewise "good enough" for most situations.
Hey, I know this is slashdot where the concept of a *girlfriend* is a strange one, but a lot of people do have them, even geeks! It doesn't even have to be a girlfriend, it can be your mother, your sister, or just a female friend. Have them come over and stand in front of the webcam to "prove" that they're female, then you'll play the character. How the heck is anyone in-game going to know that the "player" changed? Are they going to require that the webcam be kept up for as long as you're playing? If they do that, well that's one MMORPG that won't be around very long. People are going to vote with their feet and the game will be dead and shut down before the dust settles.
I play both too. I still have my Super Metroid cartridge, but I haven't played it in awhile since I sold my SNES before I moved (no point in keeping it for just one game that I knew was coming to VC anyway). I got the VC download of Super Metroid 3 days before MP3 came out, and I ended up playing the two games together pretty much (take a break from one by playing the other...and I took a 2-week break from WOW to finish MP3). SM and MP3 are both fantastic games...they are very similar and yet very different at the same time. I really don't think I would say that one is "better" than the other, they are just different. Sure, SM is more nostalgic, but in 13 years MP3 will probably be nostalgic too. Heck, MP1 is getting a bit nostalgic to play now that it's been years ago and I've played 2 and 3. If you enjoyed a game when it came out, the older it gets, the more nostalgic it's going to feel to you. You tend to view old games that you enjoyed in the past through rose colored glasses. Sure, some games (like Super Metroid) stand the test of time, but I don't think 2D or 3D are "better" than the other...only different. There was a lot of crap in the 2D days too, but noone remembers the crap, only the few gems that stood out. The whole 2D vs. 3D argument is just another variation on the whole "kids these days...back in MY day" argument that's been going on for generations. Things change, things evolve. There are fantastic 2D games and crap 2D games, fantastic 3D games and crap 3D games. All that matters is that the game is fun to play. You can't expect a 3D iteration of a formerly 2D series to play exactly like the 2D one...besides, would you want to play the exact same game again? Not that I'd be against a "modern" 2D game in the Metroid series...imagine what could be done in a 2D game with the power of modern consoles. I had every bit as much fun with Metroid Prime 3 as I did with Super Metroid. No they aren't exactly the same, but they are both fun. Super Metroid is actually a lot more frustrating in places, there are powerups that you can see but are damn near impossible to get. The one that stands out in my mind is in that vertical room in Norfair where all the floors are collapsable, and the powerup is behind a shootable block on the left. ARRRRGH!
Firewalls *are* a good thing, but only if they're implemented properly (see Linux/*BSD). A firewall should be an extra line of defense, not the only security on the system. The Microsoft way: "All services run with full privileges and listen on all interfaces. Wow, look at all these ports open, every single one of them is a huge security hole. Just put a firewall on it so noone can access them." The problem with this approach...firewalls (especially software firewalls running in Windows) can be breached (in Windows case, pretty easily). The *nix approach: "Don't open any unnecessary ports. Only have services listening on interfaces where they're needed. Don't run services as root or give them unnecessary privileges. There, now there's nothing exploitable exposed, so noone can break in. Now put a firewall on top of it." If I really wanted to, I could completely take the firewall down on my Linux server and not really be any less secure. Ideally, the actual security is in the OS itself. The firewall is just there as the furthest line of defense. In Windows there is NO security whatsoever and the firewall is the only defense. Bad design.
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I agree...this is just a very small but very vocal group of people that grew up with the "vinyl sound" and got used to the clicks, pops, hisses, and distortion. They got so used to it that they consider it part of the music, and when they hear the same sound cleanly on a CD without all that they feel that something is missing. This is nostalgia, pure and simple...it has nothing to do with audio quality. CD's sound better in every way than vinyl, and they don't wear out with playback. Sure you can scratch them, but you can also scratch vinyl (and it's much easier to break). This is why vinyl very rapidly disappeared once CD's became affordable...and these people think that the reverse is going to happen? Yeah right.
However, that does give me an idea for a new product. Take a regular CD player, and add a DSP. Use this DSP to process the signal and add the "vinyl sounds" to the audio stream in real time. With a powerful enough DSP (and DSP's are cheap nowadays), you could do all kinds of post processing, even adding in the hum and distortion that vinyl has. Heck, the DSP from a SB Live or Audigy would be more than sufficient to handle that task. Put the whole thing in an old/weathered looking wooden cabinet, complete with old style knobs instead of buttons, and market it as a "CD player that sounds like vinyl". Sell it for a ridiculous amount of money...it would at least sell as well as the $10000 laser record player.
I have to agree. We don't know the whole story here, so I'm going to just take TFA at face value for the purposes of this argument and assume that's exactly what happened. Years ago, back around '92, I used to work at Meijer. I'll save my rants about how horrible of a place that is to work for another time, suffice to say it sucked. But anyway, that's offtopic. I worked night shift in the toy dept, which also carried all of the videogame consoles. I still remember what happened...it was Saturday, Dec 26, 1992. They called my department up to the service desk to get our returns. The store opened at 6am, and I worked 11-7:30 at that time. So this was maybe 6:30 or so, half hour after the store opened. Of course, as you imagine on the day after xmas, there were a LOT of returns. They were calling us up there every 15 minutes or so to get them. I was done with my nightly stocking, the morning shift people had just come in, so I said I'd go up and get the returns. When I got up there, there were 2 carts of returns waiting for me (we often got stuff in returns that we didn't even sell, but that's another matter entirely...this place was a lot more generous on returns than Best Buy)...but there was also an irate-sounding customer, the customer service desk manager, the night store manager, and the store manager. This guy had a SNES box and a receipt dated 3 months earlier. He was swearing up and down that he bought it as a gift, and it was never opened until the day before. (I stood up there behind the counter "sorting" my returns so I could observe.) As the story goes, the kids unwrapped it, opened the box, and discovered that the system was missing. The controllers, instructions, power supply, etc were all there, but no console. He was obviously just trying to "return" it for an exchange that had the console. People kept saying no until it got up to the store manager, who also said no. He said "I can understand how you must feel sir, but try to look at this from our point of view. How do we know you didn't just take the system out and then bring the empty box back? Don't you think someone would notice that the box is a lot lighter than it should be?" Now at that time, we sold a lot of those systems. Is it possible that he got one with the system missing? It's vaguely possible, but not very likely...they were kept in a locked case with the overstock on top of the shelf (16 feet up). A lot of things were stolen from that place, but in the entire time I worked there I never found out about any game consoles missing. Sure they were overly generous with their returns, but they did (at least the entire time I was there) check to make sure that returned items actually had the product inside. The boxes for SNES's weren't shrinkwrapped either, so it would've been very easy to check it (in fact they did check it). Is it possible that an employee or someone in receiving stole the system out of the box? I guess it's possible, but not very likely. I can't really say I would've done any different in the store manager's situation. However, the Best Buy story has one detail that makes it different...the people who had the authority to accept returns already said they would do it, and then the manager has to walk up in a Bill Lumburgh way and then grab the new hard drive out of the guy's hand that he had already bought? The transaction was complete at that point...if the manager grabbed the new one from him after he paid for it, that's theft, pure and simple. If everyone had said no to the return and it got up to the manager and he said no too, well that's a bit different from the way it appears to have been handled according to TFA. So at least from what I'm getting from TFA, Best Buy is definitely in the wrong, and the guy should file a complaint with the state attorney general, at the very least. If the manager touched the guy in any way when he grabbed the drive, the guy might be able to get the manager up on charges for aggravated robbery.
In NZ it's illegal to sell region-locked devices. Anything sold in the country by law has to be region free.
They assumed the PS3 would be the huge instant hit the PS2 was. The PS2 caused them to virtually drop Playstation support very quickly (aside from the whole "Try to sell a small PS1 with an expensive LCD addon as a portable system" thing). Each time they say the same thing: "The PS2 is a supercomputer. It's so powerful it can render Toy Story in real time!!!1111one" The PS2 turned out to be by far the least powerful system of the last generation...but it had DVD support at the right time for it to be a huge hit (when DVD good DVD players were still relatively expensive). The PS2 isn't as good at DVD movie playback as even the bargain bin DVD players in Wal-mart, but it's passable as long as you don't use a progressive display. In a lot of places it even proved to be cheaper than standalone DVD players. VHS was a horrible format for prerecorded movies...the PS2 helped DVD replace it in that fashion. The quality is much better, it enables full dolby digital surround playback, and the disks don't wear out. Sony assumed that the exact same thing would happen with the PS3. "It's a supercomputer! It can render Toy Story in real time!!!!111one" (Hey, didn't you say the PS2 could do that?) It's a Blu-Ray player and cheaper than any standalone Blu-Ray player. Problem...Blu-Ray isn't even remotely necessary like DVD was. DVD is more than good enough for 95% of the population. Heck, I have an HDTV, and DVD is more than good enough for me. Sure, the increased resolution of Blu-Ray does make it look a little better, especially on huge displays...but it's not worth the cost or the DRM headaches. This was all due to Sony's arrogance, assuming that the exact same thing would happen as did with the PS2 even though it was expensive for its time. Charge a lot, people will buy it anyway because it's a PS3, and they will have another huge hit on their hands. Since this didn't happen, and the PS3 is pretty much a flop, they're trying to fall back on the PS2 to save face. They had no intention of supporting it after the PS3 came out...it's just that now they don't really have a choice because barely anyone is buying a PS3.
> Windoze is like a Ford Pinto. It'll get you to work and back home again, just don't expect it to have any real power.
Very accurate. It will get you to work and back home, without any real power...but you forgot to mention that it is perfectly normal for it to sometimes explode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobobo
You just gave me flashbacks of that show. At least now what we know what the people that made that show were on now!
So they compare a month in which the 360 had a "big" game released and the Wii didn't have any major releases, and saying that the 360 sold more than the Wii in that particular month is news somehow? Plus, the Wii is still having supply issues (at least in the US)...for the most part you still can't go into a store and pick one up off the shelf, whereas there are piles of 360's everywhere, this has to play a part too.
Yes yes...but that's not what happened here. The kid somehow messed with the caller ID system (the one 911 uses, this is NOT the consumer "Caller ID" but a different system) and then called 911, making it appear that he was calling from the residence in question. He then started going on about how someone overdosed on cocaine, shot him, and was torturing his sister in the other room. The 911 dispatcher was talking to a real person on the phone, it wasn't just "the computer made me do it". Now as to why the system was vulnerable (it definitely shouldn't be, that's an issue in and of itself) or how the kid did it, TFA doesn't say. This isn't the slippery slope you're making it out to be (from your comments you make it seem like words appeared on the computer saying "send the SWAT team to this address).
That's the best description of the PS3 I've heard yet!
I beat that game quite easily without ever cheating once. I didn't find it that difficult...it was mainly just learning where to go and patterns the enemy used. The head-exploding guy was supposed to be Hitler also. I remember thinking at the time (even as a kid), boy that looks like Hitler. Of course they had changed his name in the US version, but when I read the plot of the original Japanese version (all they did was change names and edit swastikas to eagles), it was supposed to BE Hitler.
Agreed..."Thou shalt not commit murder" != "Thou shalt not kill". On the surface the two statements are similar, but the connotations are completely different. This is what happens when translating between two totally different languages, connotations change and translations can't be made literally.
Damn I spoiled the joke by not proofreading before hitting submit. It's 1.21. Ah well, it's been 10 years since I've seen the movie so...
Maybe 2.21 gigawatts would end the energy crisis! Satellites already go faster than 88mph so that's no problem.
...is who I was hoping to see at Scotty. AKA Dr. Beckett on Atlantis. The characters (Scotty and Beckett) are supposed to be from the same place in Scotland, while the actors (Doohan and Mcgillion) are both from the Vancouver. Paul's already got the accent down, and I think he even looks like a young Doohan. This sentiment was echoed by Doohan's son Chris (who was going to try for the role himself until he saw Paul audition). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McGillion
DRM does not stop "pirates"...it doesn't even slow them down. Quite frequently, cracked pirated verisons are available on the torrent sites before the actual products are released. The ONLY thing DRM does is inconvenience paying customers...you know the ones who actually went out and BOUGHT the product rather than just downloading it from a torrent site. Every time this happens, a fraction of those inconvenienced paying customers will get fed up and start downloading rather than buying. You'd think this is what the publishers wanted, from the way they act. Either that or they're just insane...the definition of insanity being repeating the same action time and time again expecting a different result.
Set up a WOW realm on the moon. Sure, internet connection with anything on Earth would have latency measured in 10's of seconds...but that's fine for web, IRC, IM, etc (everything but gaming). So the moon would just have its own dedicated realm(s). If they did that I'd go there.
No kidding! I was waiting for someone to mention this. I have a 2 and a half year old Athlon XP system (KT880 chipset, 2 SATA ports, DDR400 RAM, AGP 8x, etc). This isn't cutting edge stuff anymore. I have SATA hard drives. I mainly run Gentoo on that system, but I put an XP install on it also for ease of playing WOW while I worked on getting it working with Wine. During the XP install I had to go and hunt down a floppy drive so I could install. It absolutely cannot be done without a floppy drive, due to my SATA hard drives. Now, I do understand that a 6 year old OS can't possibly have ever driver for every new component available. But *why do they insist that SATA/SCSI drivers have to be on a freaking floppy disk*?!?!? Why can't I put them on a CD, or a USB stick, or SOMETHING? No, Windows will only accept it if it's an "approved" driver disk on a floppy with the correct directory structure. Finding this was relatively easy, it's simply in a directory from the unzipped drivers that I downloaded from the chipset manufacturer...but having to go and hunt down a floppy drive from an old computer just so they could be installed was ridiculous. Sure, maybe USB sticks weren't popular enough in 2001 to warrant their inclusion in the boot system, but CD's certainly were? But no, Windows can only install to a SATA drive if you have a driver disk in drive A.
RPM is a *terrible* package manager. It suffers from dependency hell like nothing else I've ever seen...and unless you know enough to grab source tarballs and packages, and make your own RPM's with them, forget installing any RPM's but the ones the distribution manufacturer provides you. Sure there are GUI frontends and automated tools that can help with some of the dependency hell issues, but those are a royal pain...I shouldn't have to use a GUI to install programs. I'm not always in a situation where I can be at the terminal or VNC in, and in fact one of my boxes doesn't even have X installed on it. The Slackware way of ./configure ; make ; make install isn't TOO bad, but then you don't have anything that tracks what versions of packages you have installed. If you want real actual package management that doesn't suffer from these issues, there's only one choice: Portage. There isn't anything else right now that even comes close to where Portaeg was in 1999. I know the Gentoo way is usually compiling from source, and there are a lot of situations where that won't work, but it is very possible to use Portage to delivery binary packages. There are many binary packages available. Of course, if you use those they won't be optimized for your system, but then neither are RPM's or Debian packages unless you compile them yourself.
I have to update Redhat, SuSE, and Debian boxes where I work now, and it is absolute hell...so much so that automated tools are created to do it for you. On Gentoo, completely updating your box is very easy: emerge --sync ; emerge -uDNva world
http://www.gentoo.org/
I have 4 wires running from my DVD player to my amp: 3 component (YPbPr), and 1 coaxial digital (for Dolby Digital audio). Then 3 (YPbPr) running from the amp to the TV (sound is through speakers). It's really not that bad. Plus, component doesn't suffer degradation and signal dropouts over a cable longer than...oh...12 inches like HDMI does. It's just poorly designed.
No kidding. HDMI is a scam, pure and simple. It does not provide any better quality or any additional capabilities over component...in fact, it's worse. The ONLY purpose of HDMI is to let the media companies control what you watch and how you watch it via copy protection...and then the cable manufacturers get in on it and charge you $100 for a $10 cable. I have an LCD HDTV (1080p unit from Samsung), and when I got it I specifically got one that did NOT have HDMI or HDCP support (and as a result, saved some money). It does have a DVI port, but I don't use that either (though I may conceivably use that at some point if I want to hook it up to my computer for anything...sure beats composite or S-video if I want to do anything on the TV). I know DVI is pin-compatible with HDMI via an adatper, but mine specifically does NOT support HDCP (states in the instructions that the DVI port cannot be used with HDCP equipment). If I'm shopping for any higher end equipment, and it does not support component, and support FULL RESOLUTION output via component, I will not buy it. I will not even consider having a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player until there is one that supports full resolution output via component and basically ignores HDCP/ICT, and the formats are playable under Linux with completely free software (I don't care if it's legal or not). If this means I get left behind as far as media tech goes, oh well...I don't really care. I'm perfectly happy with DVD...If it gets to a point where movies are only playable via HDCP equipment, I will abandon them entirely, or watch the old stuff I already have, or read Slashdot all day, or maybe even go outside. Sure, from a technical perspective the higher resolutions of Blu-ray and HD-DVD look a little better, to a point...but the costs outweigh the benefits, right now neither format is worth touching with a 10-foot pole. And as far as audio, well CD's already go beyond the range of human hearing in both directions, anything more is a waste. Though I must admit, I haven't bought any CD's since the Napster fiasco started (even MP3, while vastly inferior to CD...I can definitely hear a difference...sounds "good enough" for most situations). The only actual hearable features that SACD and DVD-audio offer are Dolby Digital surround sound, but I don't need that for music. As far as movies go, DVD is likewise "good enough" for most situations.
Hey, I know this is slashdot where the concept of a *girlfriend* is a strange one, but a lot of people do have them, even geeks! It doesn't even have to be a girlfriend, it can be your mother, your sister, or just a female friend. Have them come over and stand in front of the webcam to "prove" that they're female, then you'll play the character. How the heck is anyone in-game going to know that the "player" changed? Are they going to require that the webcam be kept up for as long as you're playing? If they do that, well that's one MMORPG that won't be around very long. People are going to vote with their feet and the game will be dead and shut down before the dust settles.
I play both too. I still have my Super Metroid cartridge, but I haven't played it in awhile since I sold my SNES before I moved (no point in keeping it for just one game that I knew was coming to VC anyway). I got the VC download of Super Metroid 3 days before MP3 came out, and I ended up playing the two games together pretty much (take a break from one by playing the other...and I took a 2-week break from WOW to finish MP3). SM and MP3 are both fantastic games...they are very similar and yet very different at the same time. I really don't think I would say that one is "better" than the other, they are just different. Sure, SM is more nostalgic, but in 13 years MP3 will probably be nostalgic too. Heck, MP1 is getting a bit nostalgic to play now that it's been years ago and I've played 2 and 3. If you enjoyed a game when it came out, the older it gets, the more nostalgic it's going to feel to you. You tend to view old games that you enjoyed in the past through rose colored glasses. Sure, some games (like Super Metroid) stand the test of time, but I don't think 2D or 3D are "better" than the other...only different. There was a lot of crap in the 2D days too, but noone remembers the crap, only the few gems that stood out. The whole 2D vs. 3D argument is just another variation on the whole "kids these days...back in MY day" argument that's been going on for generations. Things change, things evolve. There are fantastic 2D games and crap 2D games, fantastic 3D games and crap 3D games. All that matters is that the game is fun to play. You can't expect a 3D iteration of a formerly 2D series to play exactly like the 2D one...besides, would you want to play the exact same game again? Not that I'd be against a "modern" 2D game in the Metroid series...imagine what could be done in a 2D game with the power of modern consoles. I had every bit as much fun with Metroid Prime 3 as I did with Super Metroid. No they aren't exactly the same, but they are both fun. Super Metroid is actually a lot more frustrating in places, there are powerups that you can see but are damn near impossible to get. The one that stands out in my mind is in that vertical room in Norfair where all the floors are collapsable, and the powerup is behind a shootable block on the left. ARRRRGH!
Firewalls *are* a good thing, but only if they're implemented properly (see Linux/*BSD). A firewall should be an extra line of defense, not the only security on the system. The Microsoft way: "All services run with full privileges and listen on all interfaces. Wow, look at all these ports open, every single one of them is a huge security hole. Just put a firewall on it so noone can access them." The problem with this approach...firewalls (especially software firewalls running in Windows) can be breached (in Windows case, pretty easily). The *nix approach: "Don't open any unnecessary ports. Only have services listening on interfaces where they're needed. Don't run services as root or give them unnecessary privileges. There, now there's nothing exploitable exposed, so noone can break in. Now put a firewall on top of it." If I really wanted to, I could completely take the firewall down on my Linux server and not really be any less secure. Ideally, the actual security is in the OS itself. The firewall is just there as the furthest line of defense. In Windows there is NO security whatsoever and the firewall is the only defense. Bad design.
Phazon is here! Where's Samus when you need her?
It's gotta be a Leviathan, the strange substance is Phazon. Someone tag this with phazon or metroidprime.