I believe it stems from British English. They call pants trousers, and underwear pants. I also believe that pants is used as a somewhat general derogatory there.
I've seen several schools just bundle in the cost of a laptop with tuition for incoming students. Every professor knows that their students have a laptop, and certain software so they can require the use of a computer for assignments.
Especially in the age of cheap netbooks and OpenOffice, why isn't every school offering such a program?
Heck, we have a high school doing that in Omaha, except the school pays for a laptop and checks it out to the students for the school year.
The OP was talking about how Wolfenstein 3D started a trend, and many credit it with being innovative in gameplay. Ultima Underworld offered the same features, and many more features, but earlier.
To an extent, it is like saying The Beatles or Elvis invented rock and roll, even though Chuck Berry did it first. Rarely does the true innovator seem to get credit.
Heck, we have a holiday to celebrate Columbus in the United States, even though Amerigo Vespucci returned with maps before Columbus set sail, and the Vikings only beat him by 5 centuries.
It was a first person RPG, but many call Wolf3D the first "first person" game, or the first, truly 3D game.
And Ultima did have first-person combat, including ranged weapons, spells, and melee. Again, better than Wolf3D. Overall it is a MUCH better game that shipped first with a larger set of game features, but everyone said Wolf3D was the big innovator.
You could look up and down, you could jump, swim, examine objects, interact with objects, there were RPG stats, etc. Gameplay was non-linear, and there was even an honest-to-goodness story. Lighting was dynamic, and there was even auto-map.
I ran Vista for a few hours before hitting fdisk, and didn't dig, but Windows 7 has ten million services I'm unfamiliar with, and everything I've read about 7's performance on a netbook has to do with the disabling tons of services for the netbook verison.
I'm pretty familiar with what all the XP services are, and which I don't need, but what NEW can I disable in 7? What is MS disabling in the netbook version?
Other than Samba sharing, I don't expect I need much more than the netbook version would offer on my desktop.
That's why I run KDE. I can configure it to look and run like a Mac if I want, or really configure it largely however I want. I get a better user experience, and I don't need proprietary hardware.
Bring on the G2 (or whatever it will be called for Sprint and Verizon) in April. I'm also curious how Nokia will respond now that they own Qt, and they've got working fully functional KDE 4 desktops on their n810 tablets.
Bring on the OLED screens that are thinner, use less battery, and have much higher resolution.
Smartphones are going to explode in the next two years. People said you didn't "need" a camera in your phone, or GPS, and they're becoming commonplace. Most people don't "need" a smartphone, but everyone will have one, and we'll find new uses for them.
Chrome lost me when Google developed something that was written exclusively for Windows with very non-portable code, and now the Linux version is being written on GTK, because GTK was the "NATIVE" toolkit for Linux. My biggest beef with Firefox is the horridly ugly widgets, and the worst file dialog on the planet. Chrome on Linux will no doubt be faster than Firefox, but I lose Adblock Plus, and I'm still stuck with the GTK dialogs.
Chrome should have been written in QT from day 1, and it would just work on Solaris, Mac, BSD, Linux and Windows. Heck, QT ships with Webkit built in. I can not fathom why Google skipped over QT.
Chromium is OSS, so someone could do a QT port, but I don't expect it to happen.
I made the mistake of installing IE 8 Beta 1 to test it out. You couldn't uninstall it if you were running SP3 if I recall, but it didn't say that upfront, so I was stuck with it.
Standardss mode actually scored lowered for me on ACID tests than IE7. It was the single slowest browser I had ever tested, and most of our internal intranet pages wouldn't work at all, and they're mostly written in asp by pro-Microsoft guys here.
The IE7 compatibility mode didn't help, and it didn't really seem to replicate how IE7 rendered pages at all that I could tell.
I liked being able to quickly access web services, but it seems like IE8 was just stealing concepts from Flock. I'm married, boring and don't spend all day on Facebook. If I wanted a browser for social networking, I'd run Flock. For the masses who've never heard of Flock, they'll appreciate easily being able to post a photo, or blog.
I mean that seriously, as opposed to in the meme-fashion. I want to find a MMO my wife and I can play together, and she only has Linux on her laptop. I dual-boot for gaming, but if she can't run it under Linux, then I'm not interested.
At least WoW worked with Wine devs a bit to help it work under Wine, and Eve Online used to ship a Wine-wrapped client for Linux.
We may just end up looking at something like Planeshift because it has a native Linux client.
The Sims was released 9 years ago. By your logic, newer games should surpass it, since The Sims only sold well for being a recent game. What about all the other games released in 2000, or since then?
Half-Life is the best selling FPS of all time. Not Half-Life 2, and not Doom 3, or Quake 3, or Halo 3. You're supposed logic doesn't hold up. And while FPS games are normally the biggest genre, and best sellers, Half-Life sold 9 million copies. The Sims sold 16 million copies. It destroyed the competition. And between expansions and the sequel, The Sims have shipped over 100 million copies.
I've been told in Australia, members of Parliament are very well paid to encourage bright minds to work in government (as opposed to private sector failures), but at the same time, it is illegal for them to take any outside money.
Ross Perot suggested such a system a few years ago, and Congress responded by keeping him out of public debates.
People wonder why the government is so poorly run, and why our economy has issues, but when successful businessmen with a good mind for economics suggest common sense changes (like Forbes and Perot) Congress tries their best to make sure you never hear of it.
Everyone is caught up in the spin that the right is evil, or the left is evil to the point that they miss the message. No one in Washington is working for you. They all protect themselves and their special interests.
My concern is that there is so much hope and trust placed in an Obama administration, that Americans will tune out and assume everything is going to be fine.
No matter the leader, a democracy is best served with informed voters who pressure their government to serve them.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe pants to be an evil dichotomy. Pants are like morals, and they just get in the way. We should go without pants of any form.
Do you prefer the OMG Ponies! approach?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-6056735-7.html
Actually, I'd seriously like to know if there is a preserved version of the OMG Ponies Slashdot.
I believe it stems from British English. They call pants trousers, and underwear pants. I also believe that pants is used as a somewhat general derogatory there.
Safari but no Chrome or Opera?
I've seen several schools just bundle in the cost of a laptop with tuition for incoming students. Every professor knows that their students have a laptop, and certain software so they can require the use of a computer for assignments.
Especially in the age of cheap netbooks and OpenOffice, why isn't every school offering such a program?
Heck, we have a high school doing that in Omaha, except the school pays for a laptop and checks it out to the students for the school year.
Given that they give cellphones away for free, probably not. But in their defense, the iPhone also adds a decent GPS.
Google sells the G1 directly without a contract, fully unlocked, and with a root password.
It is aimed as a developed device, but do what with you you want.
http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/device.html
Except I'm not talking about popularity. What started this whole thread was the notion that Wolf3D was some innovator.
I loved Rise of the Triad. That is open source as well now.
The OP was talking about how Wolfenstein 3D started a trend, and many credit it with being innovative in gameplay. Ultima Underworld offered the same features, and many more features, but earlier.
To an extent, it is like saying The Beatles or Elvis invented rock and roll, even though Chuck Berry did it first. Rarely does the true innovator seem to get credit.
Heck, we have a holiday to celebrate Columbus in the United States, even though Amerigo Vespucci returned with maps before Columbus set sail, and the Vikings only beat him by 5 centuries.
It was a first person RPG, but many call Wolf3D the first "first person" game, or the first, truly 3D game.
And Ultima did have first-person combat, including ranged weapons, spells, and melee. Again, better than Wolf3D. Overall it is a MUCH better game that shipped first with a larger set of game features, but everyone said Wolf3D was the big innovator.
That's right, but it ran on a 50Mhz FSB.
You can probably recompile Wolf3D Redux for the g-phone today. The only porting you would likely have to do is input.
What really gets me is how Ultima Underworld never gets the credit it deserves. It shipped before Wolfenstein 3D, and was a better game to boot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Underworld
You could look up and down, you could jump, swim, examine objects, interact with objects, there were RPG stats, etc. Gameplay was non-linear, and there was even an honest-to-goodness story. Lighting was dynamic, and there was even auto-map.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Spector
Spector never gets the respect he is due either.
I used to argue how the 486 DX2/66 was faster and better than the P1/50.
I ran Vista for a few hours before hitting fdisk, and didn't dig, but Windows 7 has ten million services I'm unfamiliar with, and everything I've read about 7's performance on a netbook has to do with the disabling tons of services for the netbook verison.
I'm pretty familiar with what all the XP services are, and which I don't need, but what NEW can I disable in 7? What is MS disabling in the netbook version?
Other than Samba sharing, I don't expect I need much more than the netbook version would offer on my desktop.
The ones with Sony batteries!
That's why I run KDE. I can configure it to look and run like a Mac if I want, or really configure it largely however I want. I get a better user experience, and I don't need proprietary hardware.
Bring on the G2 (or whatever it will be called for Sprint and Verizon) in April. I'm also curious how Nokia will respond now that they own Qt, and they've got working fully functional KDE 4 desktops on their n810 tablets.
Bring on the OLED screens that are thinner, use less battery, and have much higher resolution.
Smartphones are going to explode in the next two years. People said you didn't "need" a camera in your phone, or GPS, and they're becoming commonplace. Most people don't "need" a smartphone, but everyone will have one, and we'll find new uses for them.
Chrome lost me when Google developed something that was written exclusively for Windows with very non-portable code, and now the Linux version is being written on GTK, because GTK was the "NATIVE" toolkit for Linux. My biggest beef with Firefox is the horridly ugly widgets, and the worst file dialog on the planet. Chrome on Linux will no doubt be faster than Firefox, but I lose Adblock Plus, and I'm still stuck with the GTK dialogs.
Chrome should have been written in QT from day 1, and it would just work on Solaris, Mac, BSD, Linux and Windows. Heck, QT ships with Webkit built in. I can not fathom why Google skipped over QT.
Chromium is OSS, so someone could do a QT port, but I don't expect it to happen.
I made the mistake of installing IE 8 Beta 1 to test it out. You couldn't uninstall it if you were running SP3 if I recall, but it didn't say that upfront, so I was stuck with it.
Standardss mode actually scored lowered for me on ACID tests than IE7. It was the single slowest browser I had ever tested, and most of our internal intranet pages wouldn't work at all, and they're mostly written in asp by pro-Microsoft guys here.
The IE7 compatibility mode didn't help, and it didn't really seem to replicate how IE7 rendered pages at all that I could tell.
I liked being able to quickly access web services, but it seems like IE8 was just stealing concepts from Flock. I'm married, boring and don't spend all day on Facebook. If I wanted a browser for social networking, I'd run Flock. For the masses who've never heard of Flock, they'll appreciate easily being able to post a photo, or blog.
I'll avoid IE8 final.
I mean that seriously, as opposed to in the meme-fashion. I want to find a MMO my wife and I can play together, and she only has Linux on her laptop. I dual-boot for gaming, but if she can't run it under Linux, then I'm not interested.
At least WoW worked with Wine devs a bit to help it work under Wine, and Eve Online used to ship a Wine-wrapped client for Linux.
We may just end up looking at something like Planeshift because it has a native Linux client.
The Sims was released 9 years ago. By your logic, newer games should surpass it, since The Sims only sold well for being a recent game. What about all the other games released in 2000, or since then?
Half-Life is the best selling FPS of all time. Not Half-Life 2, and not Doom 3, or Quake 3, or Halo 3. You're supposed logic doesn't hold up. And while FPS games are normally the biggest genre, and best sellers, Half-Life sold 9 million copies. The Sims sold 16 million copies. It destroyed the competition. And between expansions and the sequel, The Sims have shipped over 100 million copies.
Frankly, anyone who dismisses that is an idiot.
You should check out Novell's fork of OpenOffice, at go-oo.org. It has support for VBA, Micorsoft Office macros, Works file formats, etc.
I've been told in Australia, members of Parliament are very well paid to encourage bright minds to work in government (as opposed to private sector failures), but at the same time, it is illegal for them to take any outside money.
Ross Perot suggested such a system a few years ago, and Congress responded by keeping him out of public debates.
People wonder why the government is so poorly run, and why our economy has issues, but when successful businessmen with a good mind for economics suggest common sense changes (like Forbes and Perot) Congress tries their best to make sure you never hear of it.
Everyone is caught up in the spin that the right is evil, or the left is evil to the point that they miss the message. No one in Washington is working for you. They all protect themselves and their special interests.
My concern is that there is so much hope and trust placed in an Obama administration, that Americans will tune out and assume everything is going to be fine.
No matter the leader, a democracy is best served with informed voters who pressure their government to serve them.