Uh, have you seen the screen (dim and bad contrast) or used the keyboard (really bad feeling and sort of loud) on the most recent T-Series? They really suck. I'll stick to my Tecra M2, its much more comfortable to use. I had an IBM for 5 years, an X20, and it was far superior to the new ones, not in terms of specs, but in terms of build quality and feel. I'm not certain that I would personally buy another IBM. Even the Lenovo N series (same maker, cheaper brand) have better keyboards.
And for the record, I wouldn't want a MacBook Pro either.
Re:The rest of the launch lineup can go to hell...
on
Two Weeks with the Wii
·
· Score: 1
Silpheed was sort of OK. Granted I didn't play it until 4 years later and for only $10, but it was OK. I think it was a launch title.
Personally, I would have tipped the guy playing Dire Straits as they are/were my favorite band and they are sorely missed, but that's by no means a question of ethics. What was he playing, something from their earlier western-influenced days or the later jazz-rock?
I drive 35 in a lot of 45s... when there's a light every 2 blocks and lots of people entering and exiting the road there's no point in driving any faster. That would only lead to me having to brake harder and more frequently, and I don't like to brake.
Anyone who complains can either shoot me or shut up.
Heck, lately most of the search results before 10 have been meaningless too. Its getting to where you can't search common words or strings on Google at all; it has to have something fairly specific, in quotes, that hasn't been "gamed". I think I only come there for mail and maps now.
I wouldn't say Linux looks that bad... I don't even really like Linux, but I think the last 2 default Gnome GUIs in Fedora have looked much nicer than Windows XP or Vista (granted I've only used Vista briefly with some sort of mostly black interface; though it was quite ugly). I'd like to see those skins on Windows.
Personally, I think that Morrowind had better graphics than Oblivion... sure Oblivion had nicer face modeling, but the worlds are vastly different. Oblivion's world as extremely generic (and the weapon and armor designs were terrible), while Morrowind's was fairly novel and really felt like a new experience. I guess the actual art matters more than the polycount to me (granted, some very-low-poly games (most of the PS1) look like crap, but anything from the Quake 2 era onward has had enough polys to really look good if well designed).
I still think that Doom and Hexen have good graphics (and for that matter, the original Wolfenstein 3D, which is much nicer looking than the boring not-at-all-a-remake a few years back; granted, the ultimate Wolfenstein is still the old Mac port with the highres sprites, the flamethrower, and the rocket launcher). I still wish that Doom3 had used the psuedo-Doom-remake stuff from Quake 3 for its style rather than the dark, realistic look it ended up with.
Art > Polycount Style > Realism
For a terrific recent shooter, look at Timesplitters: Future Perfect or Second Sight... neither has very high polycount or looks particularly realistic, but they have a very coherent style with terrific texture and poly work, which leads to an immersive world.
Well, I've done 5 days without sleep, with no drugs, just willpower and lots of water, and I didn't have any hallucinations. From having attempted several periods of this duration, I can say a few things:
1) Eat very minimally, and wait until after the hunger pangs have gone to even consider it. If you eat when your body wants it, you'll feel satisfied and get tired.
2) Drink a lot, around a liter an hour. No soda, though cold tea seems to be OK.
3) Move around a lot. If you have to sit to work, get up and walk around whenver you're thinking. Print stuff to read as you walk, if you just need to be able to read. Walking outside is better, as having real airflow is helpful.
4) After the second day you'll get really cold. Ignore this and don't try to warm yourself up, you'll get tired.
5) After the third day you'll lose all sense of heat/cold anyway, so its OK. You'll also be very sensitive to light, not that its painful, but that everything looks overbright and oversaturated, its kind of neat. People reflect a lot of light that you don't normally notice. So do shiny floors.
6) Past the third day pain resistance drops a lot and/or nerve sensitivity increases a lot. I usually don't notice most things short of a decent puncture wound, but lots of things hurt after 3 or 4 days without sleep.
7) It may be best to avoid people after the third day. Every time I've stayed up past that, I've always 'lost' while talking to people. On the five day stint, I was having a conversation with someone, leaned against a wall for a moment, and was out cold for almost 10 hours. Fortunately the person in question knew me and dragged me out of the way into an empty room.
Er, the PS2 was not the most advanced graphics processor when it was released, but despite that it typically rendered at 480i (720x480, interlaced). It manages to look quite good, check out SkyGunner, Okami, or Gradius V sometime.
I know I've seen better looking games on the PS2 than Neverwinter Nights 2, and unlike NWN2, they ran smoothly.
Blair's Megadeath Sauce is actually pretty good; its got a good flavor beneath the pain. A drop of it in some rice or soup is tasty.
Don't try eating any of it straight though, I must have drank 3 litres of water the one time I tried it like that. Not that the water helped, but it hurt so much I thought I should at least try to do something to help.
Re:Say what about the Dreamcast?!
on
Consoles M.I.A.
·
· Score: 1
I turn it off immediately because it actually makes the backs of my hands hurt pretty badly. I've had more pleasant puncture wounds. Not that I'm likely to get a PS3, but good riddance to it anyway.
When I was 22 I was badly electrocuted by an elevator circuit breaker, and was unconscious for several hours. Sometime after I woke up from that (after having attempted to speak with a few people and having drank a ton of water), I collapsed again spontaeneously and slept for about 3 days. When I woke up, I sort of took inventory of what was different over the next few days. Its been three years since then. Some of the more significant effects:
The Bad:
- I was sort of a zombie for a few months, which isn't good two weeks before finals. I failed all my finals badly, but had good enough grades from before that I still got Cs (and in 1 or 2 cases, Bs). After the summer and the discovery of some other effects, I did have to change majors anyway, to something I could cope with.
- A sort of typing dyslexia where I reverse pairs of letters in words. This still happens, but I can control it very easily. Not critical or threatening anwyay.
- A tendency to lean/fall/drift when walking/driving slightly to the left. I also consistently lead shots very slightly to the right now. Also easy to control/compensate (well, at least if I can estimate range on the latter, and its not a problem with rifles or scoped weapons anyway).
- Slurred speech. Makes me sound like a redneck (a strong tendency to put Rs into words that don't have them, like warsh or warter), but still intelligible. I can control this and speak precisely now, but I like the slur better so I usually don't bother.
- I was completely unable to do complex algebra-based math for almost 6 months. I basically had to re-teach myself everything. Oddly, probabilistic math wasn't effected. I had to change majors in college to get around this. Took me almost two years to fully recover. I'm fine on this now.
- During the same time that I couldn't do algebra, I couldn't conceptualize code, not even simple recursion and looping structures. Probably related. Took about three years to recover (partially because I didn't need/want to program during that time). I'm fine on this now.
- Memory of arbitrary strings. Phone numbers/credit card numbers/serial numbers/UPC codes/etc. I used to be able to recall them from just a glance, and can't anymore. Not that bad; I didn't need to know 2 dozen Windows 95 B keys anyway.
The Good:
- Heartburn. Before I was shocked, I had terrible heartburn all the time. I ate extra strength Tums like candy, and many things (including bread) were guarunteed to give me heartburn or indigestion. After the shock, this stopped immediately. I even eat spicy foods and Mexican/Indian food now. I've recently (now that I have insurance) had a doctor check me for acid reflux, since I hear that it can happen without pain sometimes, but I don't have that either. The problem is completely gone.
- Migraines. Before, I got terrible migraines from certain overhead projector bulbs and most tube televisions. Tube televisions still make a teeth-grating, neck-tensing noise, but they don't give me headaches anymore. I haven't seen an overhead in a while, but I suspect those won't get my anymore either. I did finally get myself a TV and can watch DVDs and whatnot on it though, which is neat; I missed two or three good shows over the last twenty years. Its an older Samsung HD-ready set which doesn't bug me, and I can barely even hear it.
- Sleep. Before I had insomnia. Now I sleep fairly regularly, though my clock wants to wake up almost exactly around 9AM, and I have to force myself up earlier to go to work, which is a nuisance. But at least I sleep every night now. I have strange vivid dreams almost constantly now, which is neither good nor bad, just interesting (I distinctly remember having a prosthetic lower left leg fitted and the joy of walking again from a dream just a week or so ago, and I've never even injured that leg).
I recently ordered a Lenovo 3000 N100 at work just to see one, and strangely enough it was manufactured in Singapore. That said, its a lot more solid than I expected, though it does have a weak spot at the back/top of the screen between the hinges where it could have used some internal metal reinforcement or whatnot, but other than that its pretty good. I'm not impressed with it, but I'm also not disappointed, so its quite a bit ahead of most inexpensive laptops.
Actually, most Windows apps will work in that manner, without being "installed" and without their registry entries. I keep all of my applications on separate partitions from Windows, and rarely need to reinstall any if I reformat. The exceptions to this are most other MS products, anything that relies on integration with MS Office, and anything that modifies the system context menus. My installation of applications on C: is limited to MS Office, Daemon Tools, Symantec AV, WinRar, and Crystal Ball (Excel plugin). Everything else stays on E:, and has no trouble. I frequently zip program folders and burn them as backup, particularly things like Photoshop, once I've configured my plugins and whatnot how I want them.
Since I keep my images of the application CDs for C: programs and drivers on D:, I can blow away Windows, and be reloaded (needing only the XP CD itself) within 45 minutes. Whenever Windows consistently aggravates me on any given day, I nuke it. Though I haven't needed to do this since getting XP SP2. I came close once over some grief casued by Symantec AV 10, but managed to straighten it out and downgrade to 9. Haven't had a problem since.
Just to warn you: Ultraviolet makes Aeon Flux look like a masterpiece. Its so bad it hurts. The dialogue (what little there is) is some of the worst I've ever heard, each scene almost seems to be a standalone that has nothing at all to do with the previous scene, the use of color is insane, and even the action (fights, etc) is badly shot and actually boring. I found Aeon Flux tolerable (aside from the very awkward first 15 minutes or so), but Ultraviolet is terrible. Its an early candidate for worst movie of the year.
Well, to some extent I think the original twitch based videogame generation is lobbying a bit against the new 'MMO' skill-less videogame-as-timesink generation. At least it seems that way to me. I don't even consider those crapfests games. And I know I'm not the only one. I see MMOs going the way of persistent virtual reality worlds if technology allows, which lead to complete reality withdrawl of their users. I would lobby against that. Its not so much that its morally wrong (its not at all so far as I can tell) as it is completely unnatural and unhuman. We'll be reaching a point soon where the old moral standards aren't going to be able to completely explain why some of us feel strongly for or against some things... where the issues that are divisive will not be along lines of morality or law, but rather humanity and reality.
RC Cola is good, but the best of them is Kroger's cola brand, especially their version of diet lime cola... I think it beats all others. Food Lion (gross though they otherwise are) makes the best lemon-lime soda.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, have you seen the screen (dim and bad contrast) or used the keyboard (really bad feeling and sort of loud) on the most recent T-Series? They really suck. I'll stick to my Tecra M2, its much more comfortable to use. I had an IBM for 5 years, an X20, and it was far superior to the new ones, not in terms of specs, but in terms of build quality and feel. I'm not certain that I would personally buy another IBM. Even the Lenovo N series (same maker, cheaper brand) have better keyboards.
And for the record, I wouldn't want a MacBook Pro either.
Silpheed was sort of OK. Granted I didn't play it until 4 years later and for only $10, but it was OK. I think it was a launch title.
Personally, I would have tipped the guy playing Dire Straits as they are/were my favorite band and they are sorely missed, but that's by no means a question of ethics. What was he playing, something from their earlier western-influenced days or the later jazz-rock?
I drive 35 in a lot of 45s... when there's a light every 2 blocks and lots of people entering and exiting the road there's no point in driving any faster. That would only lead to me having to brake harder and more frequently, and I don't like to brake.
Anyone who complains can either shoot me or shut up.
But most of the idiots on the road drive cars that cost far more than $20,000!
Heck, lately most of the search results before 10 have been meaningless too. Its getting to where you can't search common words or strings on Google at all; it has to have something fairly specific, in quotes, that hasn't been "gamed". I think I only come there for mail and maps now.
Many HDTVs from 3-4 years ago (particularly Samsungs) only support 480p and 1080i.
I wouldn't say Linux looks that bad... I don't even really like Linux, but I think the last 2 default Gnome GUIs in Fedora have looked much nicer than Windows XP or Vista (granted I've only used Vista briefly with some sort of mostly black interface; though it was quite ugly). I'd like to see those skins on Windows.
Is this a rebuttal or a proof? The tone says rebuttal, but the evidence offered says otherwise...
Personally, I think that Morrowind had better graphics than Oblivion... sure Oblivion had nicer face modeling, but the worlds are vastly different. Oblivion's world as extremely generic (and the weapon and armor designs were terrible), while Morrowind's was fairly novel and really felt like a new experience. I guess the actual art matters more than the polycount to me (granted, some very-low-poly games (most of the PS1) look like crap, but anything from the Quake 2 era onward has had enough polys to really look good if well designed).
I still think that Doom and Hexen have good graphics (and for that matter, the original Wolfenstein 3D, which is much nicer looking than the boring not-at-all-a-remake a few years back; granted, the ultimate Wolfenstein is still the old Mac port with the highres sprites, the flamethrower, and the rocket launcher). I still wish that Doom3 had used the psuedo-Doom-remake stuff from Quake 3 for its style rather than the dark, realistic look it ended up with.
Art > Polycount
Style > Realism
For a terrific recent shooter, look at Timesplitters: Future Perfect or Second Sight... neither has very high polycount or looks particularly realistic, but they have a very coherent style with terrific texture and poly work, which leads to an immersive world.
Well, I've done 5 days without sleep, with no drugs, just willpower and lots of water, and I didn't have any hallucinations. From having attempted several periods of this duration, I can say a few things:
1) Eat very minimally, and wait until after the hunger pangs have gone to even consider it. If you eat when your body wants it, you'll feel satisfied and get tired.
2) Drink a lot, around a liter an hour. No soda, though cold tea seems to be OK.
3) Move around a lot. If you have to sit to work, get up and walk around whenver you're thinking. Print stuff to read as you walk, if you just need to be able to read. Walking outside is better, as having real airflow is helpful.
4) After the second day you'll get really cold. Ignore this and don't try to warm yourself up, you'll get tired.
5) After the third day you'll lose all sense of heat/cold anyway, so its OK. You'll also be very sensitive to light, not that its painful, but that everything looks overbright and oversaturated, its kind of neat. People reflect a lot of light that you don't normally notice. So do shiny floors.
6) Past the third day pain resistance drops a lot and/or nerve sensitivity increases a lot. I usually don't notice most things short of a decent puncture wound, but lots of things hurt after 3 or 4 days without sleep.
7) It may be best to avoid people after the third day. Every time I've stayed up past that, I've always 'lost' while talking to people. On the five day stint, I was having a conversation with someone, leaned against a wall for a moment, and was out cold for almost 10 hours. Fortunately the person in question knew me and dragged me out of the way into an empty room.
So, why didn't you try to sell them on PHP running on Windows? Maybe changing OS, server, and scripting language was too much for them at once.
Er, the PS2 was not the most advanced graphics processor when it was released, but despite that it typically rendered at 480i (720x480, interlaced). It manages to look quite good, check out SkyGunner, Okami, or Gradius V sometime. I know I've seen better looking games on the PS2 than Neverwinter Nights 2, and unlike NWN2, they ran smoothly.
Blair's Megadeath Sauce is actually pretty good; its got a good flavor beneath the pain. A drop of it in some rice or soup is tasty.
Don't try eating any of it straight though, I must have drank 3 litres of water the one time I tried it like that. Not that the water helped, but it hurt so much I thought I should at least try to do something to help.
Armada definitely used WinCE.
I turn it off immediately because it actually makes the backs of my hands hurt pretty badly. I've had more pleasant puncture wounds. Not that I'm likely to get a PS3, but good riddance to it anyway.
When I was 22 I was badly electrocuted by an elevator circuit breaker, and was unconscious for several hours. Sometime after I woke up from that (after having attempted to speak with a few people and having drank a ton of water), I collapsed again spontaeneously and slept for about 3 days. When I woke up, I sort of took inventory of what was different over the next few days. Its been three years since then. Some of the more significant effects:
The Bad:
- I was sort of a zombie for a few months, which isn't good two weeks before finals. I failed all my finals badly, but had good enough grades from before that I still got Cs (and in 1 or 2 cases, Bs). After the summer and the discovery of some other effects, I did have to change majors anyway, to something I could cope with.
- A sort of typing dyslexia where I reverse pairs of letters in words. This still happens, but I can control it very easily. Not critical or threatening anwyay.
- A tendency to lean/fall/drift when walking/driving slightly to the left. I also consistently lead shots very slightly to the right now. Also easy to control/compensate (well, at least if I can estimate range on the latter, and its not a problem with rifles or scoped weapons anyway).
- Slurred speech. Makes me sound like a redneck (a strong tendency to put Rs into words that don't have them, like warsh or warter), but still intelligible. I can control this and speak precisely now, but I like the slur better so I usually don't bother.
- I was completely unable to do complex algebra-based math for almost 6 months. I basically had to re-teach myself everything. Oddly, probabilistic math wasn't effected. I had to change majors in college to get around this. Took me almost two years to fully recover. I'm fine on this now.
- During the same time that I couldn't do algebra, I couldn't conceptualize code, not even simple recursion and looping structures. Probably related. Took about three years to recover (partially because I didn't need/want to program during that time). I'm fine on this now.
- Memory of arbitrary strings. Phone numbers/credit card numbers/serial numbers/UPC codes/etc. I used to be able to recall them from just a glance, and can't anymore. Not that bad; I didn't need to know 2 dozen Windows 95 B keys anyway.
The Good:
- Heartburn. Before I was shocked, I had terrible heartburn all the time. I ate extra strength Tums like candy, and many things (including bread) were guarunteed to give me heartburn or indigestion. After the shock, this stopped immediately. I even eat spicy foods and Mexican/Indian food now. I've recently (now that I have insurance) had a doctor check me for acid reflux, since I hear that it can happen without pain sometimes, but I don't have that either. The problem is completely gone.
- Migraines. Before, I got terrible migraines from certain overhead projector bulbs and most tube televisions. Tube televisions still make a teeth-grating, neck-tensing noise, but they don't give me headaches anymore. I haven't seen an overhead in a while, but I suspect those won't get my anymore either. I did finally get myself a TV and can watch DVDs and whatnot on it though, which is neat; I missed two or three good shows over the last twenty years. Its an older Samsung HD-ready set which doesn't bug me, and I can barely even hear it.
- Sleep. Before I had insomnia. Now I sleep fairly regularly, though my clock wants to wake up almost exactly around 9AM, and I have to force myself up earlier to go to work, which is a nuisance. But at least I sleep every night now. I have strange vivid dreams almost constantly now, which is neither good nor bad, just interesting (I distinctly remember having a prosthetic lower left leg fitted and the joy of walking again from a dream just a week or so ago, and I've never even injured that leg).
- Hand coordination. Since I had to relear
I recently ordered a Lenovo 3000 N100 at work just to see one, and strangely enough it was manufactured in Singapore. That said, its a lot more solid than I expected, though it does have a weak spot at the back/top of the screen between the hinges where it could have used some internal metal reinforcement or whatnot, but other than that its pretty good. I'm not impressed with it, but I'm also not disappointed, so its quite a bit ahead of most inexpensive laptops.
Actually, most Windows apps will work in that manner, without being "installed" and without their registry entries. I keep all of my applications on separate partitions from Windows, and rarely need to reinstall any if I reformat. The exceptions to this are most other MS products, anything that relies on integration with MS Office, and anything that modifies the system context menus. My installation of applications on C: is limited to MS Office, Daemon Tools, Symantec AV, WinRar, and Crystal Ball (Excel plugin). Everything else stays on E:, and has no trouble. I frequently zip program folders and burn them as backup, particularly things like Photoshop, once I've configured my plugins and whatnot how I want them.
Since I keep my images of the application CDs for C: programs and drivers on D:, I can blow away Windows, and be reloaded (needing only the XP CD itself) within 45 minutes. Whenever Windows consistently aggravates me on any given day, I nuke it. Though I haven't needed to do this since getting XP SP2. I came close once over some grief casued by Symantec AV 10, but managed to straighten it out and downgrade to 9. Haven't had a problem since.
Just to warn you: Ultraviolet makes Aeon Flux look like a masterpiece. Its so bad it hurts. The dialogue (what little there is) is some of the worst I've ever heard, each scene almost seems to be a standalone that has nothing at all to do with the previous scene, the use of color is insane, and even the action (fights, etc) is badly shot and actually boring. I found Aeon Flux tolerable (aside from the very awkward first 15 minutes or so), but Ultraviolet is terrible. Its an early candidate for worst movie of the year.
And they never clean out the sub-cielings... ours are full of several generations of wiring and old repairs and crap.
Well, to some extent I think the original twitch based videogame generation is lobbying a bit against the new 'MMO' skill-less videogame-as-timesink generation. At least it seems that way to me. I don't even consider those crapfests games. And I know I'm not the only one. I see MMOs going the way of persistent virtual reality worlds if technology allows, which lead to complete reality withdrawl of their users. I would lobby against that. Its not so much that its morally wrong (its not at all so far as I can tell) as it is completely unnatural and unhuman. We'll be reaching a point soon where the old moral standards aren't going to be able to completely explain why some of us feel strongly for or against some things... where the issues that are divisive will not be along lines of morality or law, but rather humanity and reality.
I dunno.
I'm probably nuts.
Maybe they wanted the vsync. I get really sick if I play an FPS without it for a bit.
RC Cola is good, but the best of them is Kroger's cola brand, especially their version of diet lime cola... I think it beats all others. Food Lion (gross though they otherwise are) makes the best lemon-lime soda.
Well, if I sold booze and hoes then... oh, wait.