This really has been an interesting trend in gaming. My only fear is that it's been slowly erroding the PC industry's ability to produce an actual game for playing rather than a platform for playing with. I love modding just as much as the next guy, but sometimes it's kind of fun to just do some semi-mindless shooting/puzzle solving/adventure.:-)
I'm one of the winners in this contest (you'll never guess what for), and I must admit that modding is one of the things I enjoy most about PC gaming. That said, there has to be a really good game underneath it all - I'd much rather be borrowing content from some world-class production than be messing around with building everything from scratch. I'm probably not the only one to think this.
Games that have intentionally set out to become the world's greatest modding platforms while neglecting the underlying games don't seem to do so well overall. Quake 3, for example, was a masterpiece of an engine, but the game itself wasn't so interesting to many people - including myself. So, while there were eventually some incredibly polished mods for the game, they never managed to be as popular as some of those on the archaic, primitive Half-Life engine.
I guess good mods might help sustain sales of a good game (look at Half-Life and its Counter-Strike), but there's the game to think about first - and if so many games do end up using the same or similar underlying engines, then sod the technology - it's the content, design and game-play which make the difference!
I just watched it on my iBook so there doesn't seem to be a total Windows dependence - it is Windows Media, though, so you'll need the appropriate software to play it.
There was the semi-official Flip4Mac being waffled on about a few weeks ago, I used the prehistoric Mac port of Windows Media Player instead. I don't think I've ever seen it work for a full 25 minutes or so before.
Anyway, trying to avoid sounding like a true nerd and switching off the white noise: the comedy itself. It was pretty funny, and was obviously more of the surreal Father Ted line than some razor-sharp nerd-specific humour - expect to see a vastly exaggerated version of reality, with the workers attempting to maim and/or kill the IT staff instead of some nerd-only Perl puns...
I do think I'm going to have to try the speech recognition thing on my non-boss, though...;-]
So, you bought a macbook? I guess you've got too much money in your hands. You could have a much faster Intel based laptop for half of what you've spent on that overpriced designer shit.
Well, jealousy gets you nowhere...;-)
For the record, please take advantage of your infinite Anonymous Coward wisdom and find us some high-performance laptops which run MacOS X in a completely supported manner. Your budget is precisely half the cost of a new MacBook Pro.
Six Months? How about right now. OpenOSX has released their "Wintel" package updated for MacOS X on Intel. It features the BOCHS 'emulator' that will run all manner of Windows, Linux, etc. MacNN has the scoop It's $25 to download.
Bochs? It's great if you want a full, perfect emulation of PC hardware done completely in software, but it's horribly slow. Oh, and it's both free and open source - that $25 is solely for some crappy third-party GUI. The 'native to Intel' thing just means you're doing a full PC emulation without going through Rosetta as well...
If you do want to emulate a PC in a slightly faster manner, try QEMU. I've no idea if it can be compiled on an Intel-powered Mac yet, but an emulated Windows 98 was just about usable for website testing on my 933MHz iBook G4.
Grow a spine and quit your whining. Either the hardware performs according to your requirements, and you buy it, or it doesn't, and you don't. Crying about "giving in to the marketing" is absurd.
But it was a (decidedly feeble) joke!
Basically, my iBook G4 has been somewhat extensively abused over the past two years (it's my main work machine, and is used daily), is almost out of both warranty and disk space, and the battery is rapidly approaching death. It's also a bit on the slow side for my needs. I really needed a new laptop, and decided to wait until the new Apple laptops were announced - since almost all the software I use has been ported to Intel already, or is platform-independent to begin with, I didn't have any real need to stay on PowerPC.
The fact that the new machine is sleek, silver and oh so terribly sexy had absolutely nothing to do with the decision whatsoever, honest...;-)
Considering that it has always been known that the MacBook Pro wouldn't be shipping for another month or so, and was in fact represented as such, is it any surprise that units displayed a month and a half before the unit started shipping wouldn't yet, well, you know, be shipping units?
I was foolish, and gave in to the marketing and ordered a MacBook Pro. (Oh, but the thrill of being an early adopter!)
Estimated shipping date for the UK: February 15th. So, just over a month between the announcement and the machines being available - I would expect that the computer's design was either finalised or in the very final stages, what with all the RF emissions tests, safety certification and so on which would be required to actually sell such a device.
The ones at MacWorld might have been development machines, but they were probably very, very close to what's actually going to ship...
Although it would still be a nice thing to have built-in to the camera. (How does it work on the Konica Minolta cameras? Does it wiggle the sensor round or something like that?)
(2006-01-18 09:20) Do you have some dirt between the keys on your keyboard? Spending a few bucks on a new keyboard might be a good idea. The latest issue of Pc för Alla shows that a keyboard can be a major source for contamination.
... And for those of us with laptops with integral keyboards, that's possibly the best excuse for getting a MacBook Pro ever - health and safety!
(Yes, Mr. Big Important Boss Person. My old laptop could have killed me at any time, so to preserve my health and the hygiene of these offices, I simply had to get a new machine straight away! No, sir, that's an Etch-A-Sketch. I don't believe they were covered by this study...)
There's a worryingly comprehensive compilation of all the different theme tune versions which a friend linked me to the other day - the current version is the 'Murray Gold' set. It's a bit of a pastiche of previous iterations, but it's approximately a million times better than the 'Dominic Glynn' version. Ow!
The Canon EOS 350D apparently takes a massive 0.2 seconds to start up - okay, so it's not a low-end point-and-shoot, but its developments in electronics will filter down sooner or later anyway. Shutter lag is similarly negligible.
I wouldn't be surprised if the main limiting factor for smaller cameras in future will be the motors unravelling the zoom lens on start-up. That was slow even on a film camera...
Neither good nor bad, just a random bit of information - and maybe a vague indication of how long one should wait before the inevitable 'OMG IT GOT SCRATCHED', 'it exploded in my lap!' and 'it's eeevil and I can prove it cos it doesn't boot Gentoo' stories on Slashdot...;-)
Although apparently, talking about a shipping date of a new Apple laptop which was announced by Apple at an Apple conference which is also the subject of the fabled article (in the 'Apple' section, no less) is off-topic. Moderators, I apologise. Would you prefer it if I made a tired 'in Soviet Russia!' joke instead?
Although I suppose they're both things more likely to be used by developers with the appropriate Intel development hardware to run them on - I guess Apple's edict is more of a strong guideline than a definitive rule. It would be silly to bloat downloads of consumer software and add confusion for 99.99+% of the market, anyway, I imagine.
Re:Where to get decent photo editing done [a bit O
on
Adobe Lightroom Review
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'll be happy to pay up to $5 per photo (even $20 in some cases) to have them cleaned up as needed by semi-pros or even pros. I'm sure there is a market for such a thing, but I just can't find it.
The solution to your problem: take better photos.
Some of my favourite photos make it to the printer absolutely untouched from when they came out the camera. The most I ever need to do is make minor adjustments to brightness and contrast, perform some extra cropping or rotate the image slightly. I mainly use iPhoto simply for its organisational abilities - it's great for that.
Get to know your camera. Take your time over shots. Just because you have umpteen gigabytes of memory cards and take ten thousand RAW-format photos a day doesn't make you a PROPAR PHOTOGRAFER. The best lens in the world won't correct for poor technique.
If your photos need endless work in Photoshop or similar to make them worth looking at, then you're probably doing something wrong...
Don't forget the Latin pun - 'invidia' means 'envy'. 'NV', geddit?
I find it absolutely awesome that a large technology company be named after such a groan-inducing bit of wordplay. And it finally explains all the chip names...
See, that is just the kind of thinking that gets a person into trouble. I thought my systems were OK until my wife went off and bought a 12A vacuum cleaner. Every time she fires the thing up (depending on if the socket shares the circuit) my UPS is screeching at me. She claims it is stock, but would not put it past her to over clock it. That road leads to madness...
I suggest you (and she) move to Britain. All electrical sockets are rated for 13A, 240V - good for 3kW with room to spare. My dad's theory is that it's to do with the English taste for a nice cup of tea - it is essential that a heavy-duty electric kettle be operable everywhere within the home!
An overclocked vacuum cleaner is no problem whatsoever. Our electricals can take the challenge.
(I'm probably not making full use of it, to be honest. The power supply of the computer I'm currently sat at is rated at a massive 45W...)
My iBook's got a caps-lock key with a light on it, but for weird freaky beardy UNIX people who don't know how to type, there's always fKeys, for remapping stuff.
Caps-lock keys were definitely mechanical at some point in the past, as I've got a huge extended Apple keyboard somewhere like that. It's also Belgian, for extra comedic value.
we could have a thread about/. individual's experiences with Apple laptops?
Bought a 14in iBook G4 the beginning of 2004. It hasn't exploded yet.
Hardware problems: the 'C' and 'L' keys getting a bit worn, and erm, that's it. I've used it just about every day since it was bought, yet its battery still gives about three hours of use when fully charged. A bit dull and unexciting really - I think I might replace it with an Intel-Inside Powerbook when they eventually come out, since the two year (John Lewis-assisted) warranty is nearly up. The bomb timer is now ticking!
Not a sequel, but there's always BioShock, which everyone seems to be describing as the "spiritual successor" to System Shock 2.
I haven't heard anything new about the game for ages now, so I can only hope it's still in development - but it's one of the few games I'm actively looking forwards to!
Slashdot Mirror
This really has been an interesting trend in gaming. My only fear is that it's been slowly erroding the PC industry's ability to produce an actual game for playing rather than a platform for playing with. I love modding just as much as the next guy, but sometimes it's kind of fun to just do some semi-mindless shooting/puzzle solving/adventure. :-)
I'm one of the winners in this contest (you'll never guess what for), and I must admit that modding is one of the things I enjoy most about PC gaming. That said, there has to be a really good game underneath it all - I'd much rather be borrowing content from some world-class production than be messing around with building everything from scratch. I'm probably not the only one to think this.
Games that have intentionally set out to become the world's greatest modding platforms while neglecting the underlying games don't seem to do so well overall. Quake 3, for example, was a masterpiece of an engine, but the game itself wasn't so interesting to many people - including myself. So, while there were eventually some incredibly polished mods for the game, they never managed to be as popular as some of those on the archaic, primitive Half-Life engine.
I guess good mods might help sustain sales of a good game (look at Half-Life and its Counter-Strike), but there's the game to think about first - and if so many games do end up using the same or similar underlying engines, then sod the technology - it's the content, design and game-play which make the difference!
Brilliant. :-)
No... Brad is an accomplished 2D director (Iron Giant, for one) and an amazing artist.
... And pay him enough, he'll do the voice-acting as well!
I'm still amazed that he did the voice for Edna (the super-fashionable super-suit designer in the Incredibles) - her voice is absolutely perfect...
I just watched it on my iBook so there doesn't seem to be a total Windows dependence - it is Windows Media, though, so you'll need the appropriate software to play it.
;-]
There was the semi-official Flip4Mac being waffled on about a few weeks ago, I used the prehistoric Mac port of Windows Media Player instead. I don't think I've ever seen it work for a full 25 minutes or so before.
Anyway, trying to avoid sounding like a true nerd and switching off the white noise: the comedy itself. It was pretty funny, and was obviously more of the surreal Father Ted line than some razor-sharp nerd-specific humour - expect to see a vastly exaggerated version of reality, with the workers attempting to maim and/or kill the IT staff instead of some nerd-only Perl puns...
I do think I'm going to have to try the speech recognition thing on my non-boss, though...
So, you bought a macbook? I guess you've got too much money in your hands. You could have a much faster Intel based laptop for half of what you've spent on that overpriced designer shit.
;-)
Well, jealousy gets you nowhere...
For the record, please take advantage of your infinite Anonymous Coward wisdom and find us some high-performance laptops which run MacOS X in a completely supported manner. Your budget is precisely half the cost of a new MacBook Pro.
Go for it, I know you can do it! Go, go, go!
Take a polaroid of Adam Sandler, write 'the brain surgeon' at the bottom, slip it in Henry M's pocket.
:-)
* scribble scribble scribble *
"He is the one. Don't believe his lies. Kill him."
Result!
But yeah, you can prove anything with facts...
Six Months? How about right now. OpenOSX has released their "Wintel" package updated for MacOS X on Intel. It features the BOCHS 'emulator' that will run all manner of Windows, Linux, etc. MacNN has the scoop It's $25 to download.
Bochs? It's great if you want a full, perfect emulation of PC hardware done completely in software, but it's horribly slow. Oh, and it's both free and open source - that $25 is solely for some crappy third-party GUI. The 'native to Intel' thing just means you're doing a full PC emulation without going through Rosetta as well...
If you do want to emulate a PC in a slightly faster manner, try QEMU. I've no idea if it can be compiled on an Intel-powered Mac yet, but an emulated Windows 98 was just about usable for website testing on my 933MHz iBook G4.
Grow a spine and quit your whining. Either the hardware performs according to your requirements, and you buy it, or it doesn't, and you don't. Crying about "giving in to the marketing" is absurd.
;-)
But it was a (decidedly feeble) joke!
Basically, my iBook G4 has been somewhat extensively abused over the past two years (it's my main work machine, and is used daily), is almost out of both warranty and disk space, and the battery is rapidly approaching death. It's also a bit on the slow side for my needs. I really needed a new laptop, and decided to wait until the new Apple laptops were announced - since almost all the software I use has been ported to Intel already, or is platform-independent to begin with, I didn't have any real need to stay on PowerPC.
The fact that the new machine is sleek, silver and oh so terribly sexy had absolutely nothing to do with the decision whatsoever, honest...
Considering that it has always been known that the MacBook Pro wouldn't be shipping for another month or so, and was in fact represented as such, is it any surprise that units displayed a month and a half before the unit started shipping wouldn't yet, well, you know, be shipping units?
I was foolish, and gave in to the marketing and ordered a MacBook Pro. (Oh, but the thrill of being an early adopter!)
Estimated shipping date for the UK: February 15th. So, just over a month between the announcement and the machines being available - I would expect that the computer's design was either finalised or in the very final stages, what with all the RF emissions tests, safety certification and so on which would be required to actually sell such a device.
The ones at MacWorld might have been development machines, but they were probably very, very close to what's actually going to ship...
While you have to pay over a $1000 for an IS lens for Canon or Nicon cameras [...]
Not really.
Although it would still be a nice thing to have built-in to the camera. (How does it work on the Konica Minolta cameras? Does it wiggle the sensor round or something like that?)
Use two cups of plain water with a cap of bleach in it to clean your keyboard.
Note of warning: only increase bleach concentration if you know how to touch-type.
(2006-01-18 09:20) Do you have some dirt between the keys on your keyboard? Spending a few bucks on a new keyboard might be a good idea. The latest issue of Pc för Alla shows that a keyboard can be a major source for contamination.
... And for those of us with laptops with integral keyboards, that's possibly the best excuse for getting a MacBook Pro ever - health and safety!
(Yes, Mr. Big Important Boss Person. My old laptop could have killed me at any time, so to preserve my health and the hygiene of these offices, I simply had to get a new machine straight away! No, sir, that's an Etch-A-Sketch. I don't believe they were covered by this study...)
There's a worryingly comprehensive compilation of all the different theme tune versions which a friend linked me to the other day - the current version is the 'Murray Gold' set. It's a bit of a pastiche of previous iterations, but it's approximately a million times better than the 'Dominic Glynn' version. Ow!
The Canon EOS 350D apparently takes a massive 0.2 seconds to start up - okay, so it's not a low-end point-and-shoot, but its developments in electronics will filter down sooner or later anyway. Shutter lag is similarly negligible.
I wouldn't be surprised if the main limiting factor for smaller cameras in future will be the motors unravelling the zoom lens on start-up. That was slow even on a film camera...
Neither good nor bad, just a random bit of information - and maybe a vague indication of how long one should wait before the inevitable 'OMG IT GOT SCRATCHED', 'it exploded in my lap!' and 'it's eeevil and I can prove it cos it doesn't boot Gentoo' stories on Slashdot... ;-)
Although apparently, talking about a shipping date of a new Apple laptop which was announced by Apple at an Apple conference which is also the subject of the fabled article (in the 'Apple' section, no less) is off-topic. Moderators, I apologise. Would you prefer it if I made a tired 'in Soviet Russia!' joke instead?
If anyone's wondering precisely what Apple meant by 'February' with regard to MacBook Pro's expected shipping date, I know! (For the UK, at least.)
:-)
It's February 15th.
I, erm, know this because I went and ordered one earlier this evening...
** Deep shame at falling for Apple's marketing so easily. **
On the bright side, my iBook's getting rather old, and I've never had genuinely new hardware before!
Everyone loses games, especially in FPS games, no one wins consistently 100% of the time.
In those aforementioned FPS games, I lose consistently 100% of the time. Therefore, if you were to play me...
EUREKA!
Apple has specifically asked developers to not release builds with Intel code in them, until there is actual shipping Intel hardware.
;-)
Here's two!
Although I suppose they're both things more likely to be used by developers with the appropriate Intel development hardware to run them on - I guess Apple's edict is more of a strong guideline than a definitive rule. It would be silly to bloat downloads of consumer software and add confusion for 99.99+% of the market, anyway, I imagine.
I'll be happy to pay up to $5 per photo (even $20 in some cases) to have them cleaned up as needed by semi-pros or even pros. I'm sure there is a market for such a thing, but I just can't find it.
The solution to your problem: take better photos.
Some of my favourite photos make it to the printer absolutely untouched from when they came out the camera. The most I ever need to do is make minor adjustments to brightness and contrast, perform some extra cropping or rotate the image slightly. I mainly use iPhoto simply for its organisational abilities - it's great for that.
Get to know your camera. Take your time over shots. Just because you have umpteen gigabytes of memory cards and take ten thousand RAW-format photos a day doesn't make you a PROPAR PHOTOGRAFER. The best lens in the world won't correct for poor technique.
If your photos need endless work in Photoshop or similar to make them worth looking at, then you're probably doing something wrong...
Don't forget the Latin pun - 'invidia' means 'envy'. 'NV', geddit?
I find it absolutely awesome that a large technology company be named after such a groan-inducing bit of wordplay. And it finally explains all the chip names...
See, that is just the kind of thinking that gets a person into trouble. I thought my systems were OK until my wife went off and bought a 12A vacuum cleaner. Every time she fires the thing up (depending on if the socket shares the circuit) my UPS is screeching at me. She claims it is stock, but would not put it past her to over clock it. That road leads to madness...
I suggest you (and she) move to Britain. All electrical sockets are rated for 13A, 240V - good for 3kW with room to spare. My dad's theory is that it's to do with the English taste for a nice cup of tea - it is essential that a heavy-duty electric kettle be operable everywhere within the home!
An overclocked vacuum cleaner is no problem whatsoever. Our electricals can take the challenge.
(I'm probably not making full use of it, to be honest. The power supply of the computer I'm currently sat at is rated at a massive 45W...)
My iBook's got a caps-lock key with a light on it, but for weird freaky beardy UNIX people who don't know how to type, there's always fKeys, for remapping stuff.
Caps-lock keys were definitely mechanical at some point in the past, as I've got a huge extended Apple keyboard somewhere like that. It's also Belgian, for extra comedic value.
we could have a thread about /. individual's experiences with Apple laptops?
Bought a 14in iBook G4 the beginning of 2004. It hasn't exploded yet.
Hardware problems: the 'C' and 'L' keys getting a bit worn, and erm, that's it. I've used it just about every day since it was bought, yet its battery still gives about three hours of use when fully charged. A bit dull and unexciting really - I think I might replace it with an Intel-Inside Powerbook when they eventually come out, since the two year (John Lewis-assisted) warranty is nearly up. The bomb timer is now ticking!
Not a sequel, but there's always BioShock, which everyone seems to be describing as the "spiritual successor" to System Shock 2.
I haven't heard anything new about the game for ages now, so I can only hope it's still in development - but it's one of the few games I'm actively looking forwards to!