It's interesting how polarizing the opinions on the N64 controllers are. I played the hell out of N64 games when they were current as a teenager, and to this day I still find the N64 controller one of the most comfortable and natural controllers to use. So I wonder if childhood acclimation has anything to do with it. (I feel the same about the Atari 2600/800 standard Joystick, which also has similar polarizing opinion). On the other hand, I never cared for Genesis controllers even though many people preferred them to the alternatives at the time. I didn't get a Genesis until only a year or two ago.
Absolutely agree on the durability (or lack thereof). There's several replacement thumbsticks using Gamecube-style sticks that look like they'd be a nice upgrade. May have to grab a few for mine.
Never had a problem with cooling, and the only cart I have that doesn't work is a Mario Kart 64 that looks like someone left it outside for a year or two.
Not to mention most of these were complete rewrites in just about every sense of the word. For example, King's Quest 1 and Space Quest 1 were both redone from their original low-res EGA to high res EGA and VGA with mouse support and such. This would have been sprites and backgrounds and animations and everything. There wouldn't have been much able to be reused between the two (though I don't know the internals of the AGI/SCI stuff, maybe they could import some of the scripts and such).
On the other hand, given the continued functioning of some glitches in Nintendo's stuff, it's clear that some of their updates are abstractions running on top of original ROMs.
This is another of those sorta-kinda things. Apple's hard drive formatting software refused to work on most third party drives. There were/are resedit hacks that allow it to work, but in the pre-internet days such things were touchy.
This led to the proliferation and great success of a lot of third-party disk formatting utilities and drivers like FWB Toolkit, Anubis SCSI tools, etc. IIRC it was around the Mac OS 8 era when it was made more universal.
There's a free version for Autohotkey that works decently on a standard keyboard available here. I used it a bit and decided it wasn't for me but it might be usable.
Tell me about it with the truck driver one. I had a run-in with one of those a few months ago, just finally got my car fixed from this. He didn't even realize he'd hit me for a moment, I could see him turning the wheel more trying to figure out why his truck wasn't turning.
Fortunately I knew the guy from work so he was more embarrassed than anything, but it was a pain.
Amiga has had most of those for some time now. But I still agree with your point that comparing computers from that long ago to modern times is silly. My Atari 800 boots into its cartridge-based DOS in something like a second and a half but it's hardly a fair benchmark for modern PCs.
I usually go by the rule of threes for Microsoft. It's usually their third attempt at things that succeeds. Windows 3.0 was the first one that made traction. NT 4 was the third version of NT (3.1, 3.5x, 4.0) and the first that really got great traction. 98 SE was the third 9x and probably the best. XP SP2 was the third version of XP and where they finally got it right. It breaks down after that, I suppose, though you could sort of go with XP-Vista-7 in NT-based consumer OSes?
Incidentally, sometimes I wonder if I'm the only geek that never had major trouble with 95 (or at least, no more trouble than later 9x versions). It was a huge upgrade from 3.1 in almost every way.
Not to mention I've been running various Linuxes on tablets since at least the 486/40 Toshiba Dynapad T200CS still stuck in my closet. People seem to forget that tablets weren't invented when the iPad came out and have been around forever.
My wife's gotten into some couponing stuff, but fortunately she's pretty practical about it. In our travels, we've run into people who don't seem to understand that just because you have a coupon for something doesn't make it the best deal. They'd rather use the $1 off coupon than buy another brand that's $3 cheaper than the one they have a coupon for. The "coupon savings" number on their receipt is their high score and all they care about, even if the total cost is a little more.
Coupons are probably the most effective form of advertising - give people an appearance of great savings and they're more likely to buy your brand and not a cheaper one. Give some of these people the ability to get instant coupons on things they're specifically looking at, and they'll eat it up. At least at first.
I wonder why it was so slow. I did something similar with my old Toshiba T3200SX, which is a 386SX-16 with 9 megs of RAM. I got both Win95 and a couple Linux varieties booted off a zip drive and a parallel "backpack" CD-ROM drive with some effort. They were both very slow and took forever get booted, but not on the level of 21 hours. Maybe twenty minutes at most for the Linux, which was some variety of Knoppix IIRC.
I wonder if SPP vs. EPP/ECP modes on parallel ports would made a difference.
Game of Thrones is actually a better example of questioning why they have the accents. It's pretty clearly not based on any real or even pseudo-real Medieval history, and short of a general fantasy feel is about the only excuse. I suppose it could fall under the Alternate History umbrella but it's hard. I generally figure the accents are used to imply something along the lines of it at least being based on European/English medieval technology and such even if the specific setup is nowhere close. That is, swords, shields, chain/plate armor, classic English-style castles, etc etc rather than, say, Samurai and Katanas or machine guns and bullet proof vests.
The main problem is you're not always aware of breakage until after the fact. Especially someone not-very-technical. They might have managed to get addons installed (or maybe their techy friend installed a few things for them) but are still the type that click OK on everything. Next thing they know they've installed a version of FF that breaks all their addons and all they know is "Firefox broke".
I still think Firefox's main problem is trying to change its update policy mid-stream. Chrome's been on the fast track since the beginning, so people are used to it and the plugin system is designed around it. Firefox was built expecting a slow release cycle, and its plugin system was set up that way.
Hadn't thought about that. My wife's 2003 Grand Am has approximate "handles" at 8 and 4 but also has bumps at 10 and 2. I mostly manage to stick to 9 and 3 but have to keep it in mind. Wonder why they backslid on that since earlier Pontiacs were correct. Popular pressure probably.
Similar experience for me. I suspect I had the wheel turned a little bit left so my right arm got a bit more brunt. Made a perfect Starfleet symbol.
All in all I'm not sure why this is news. I've always been told that 9 and 3 is proper for airbag-equipped cars, and even my '91 MR2 has the "handles" at 8 and 4, as did my wife's previously owned 1990 Bonneville and a 1990 Trans Am I almost bought. So apparently automakers have had this idea for a long time.
A buddy of mine was a mechanic at a local mom-and-pop auto repair place, and part of the agreement when he started working there was any side-work had to be approved before doing and had to be below some specified amount of money. They didn't want their mechanics poaching work on the side for lower than the shop would charge, effectively undercutting them. This ended up causing him some stress since apparently a large percentage of mechanics do side work to make ends meet.
Not quite the same thing but close, I guess. I'd expect most service industries would not want their employees competing directly, but the OP's issue would be more like my mechanic friend getting in hot water over helping build a friend's sand buggy. The original shop wouldn't do that anyway, so it's silly to prevent or claim ownership if it's done.
It seems like every discussion on cell phone providers ends up with stories like this. People who've had little or no problem everywhere they go, people who had trouble with signal on one provider in some area but fine with another, etc. I had an opposite experience with Verizon and T-Mobile - Verizon sucked in my house in a suburb of Atlanta, both T-Mobile and now AT&T have been great. Verizon also sucked at my in-law's house out in the very middle of nowhere PA, while T-Mobile also sucked and AT&T is at least usable.
So, it pretty much seems like everyone needs to find the provider that works best in their area while they all need to work more on network coverage.
I don't think I've ever met someone who wasn't a hacker/tweaker sort who didn't like their iPhones. Regardless of your beliefs about their business practices, Walled Garden, etc, by and large the iPhone works and works well. I'm not sure exactly who he talked to about being fed up.
I've also not met a lot of people unhappy with their Android phones, though they may not be using them to their full customization potential.
One of the actually kind of impressive things I ran into with Vista was a box I had with a dodgy video card in it - every now and then, it'd just randomly show crazy stuff and hard lock or bluescreen [under XP]. It was a nice gaming card otherwise so I kept with it. Later on I stuck a copy of Vista on it I'd been given to learn it, and after awhile the graphics went wonky... then the screen blinked and a box popped up that a problem had been detected with my video hardware and it'd been reset. Went right on along happily.
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting how polarizing the opinions on the N64 controllers are. I played the hell out of N64 games when they were current as a teenager, and to this day I still find the N64 controller one of the most comfortable and natural controllers to use. So I wonder if childhood acclimation has anything to do with it. (I feel the same about the Atari 2600/800 standard Joystick, which also has similar polarizing opinion). On the other hand, I never cared for Genesis controllers even though many people preferred them to the alternatives at the time. I didn't get a Genesis until only a year or two ago.
Absolutely agree on the durability (or lack thereof). There's several replacement thumbsticks using Gamecube-style sticks that look like they'd be a nice upgrade. May have to grab a few for mine.
Never had a problem with cooling, and the only cart I have that doesn't work is a Mario Kart 64 that looks like someone left it outside for a year or two.
Not to mention most of these were complete rewrites in just about every sense of the word. For example, King's Quest 1 and Space Quest 1 were both redone from their original low-res EGA to high res EGA and VGA with mouse support and such. This would have been sprites and backgrounds and animations and everything. There wouldn't have been much able to be reused between the two (though I don't know the internals of the AGI/SCI stuff, maybe they could import some of the scripts and such).
On the other hand, given the continued functioning of some glitches in Nintendo's stuff, it's clear that some of their updates are abstractions running on top of original ROMs.
This is another of those sorta-kinda things. Apple's hard drive formatting software refused to work on most third party drives. There were/are resedit hacks that allow it to work, but in the pre-internet days such things were touchy.
This led to the proliferation and great success of a lot of third-party disk formatting utilities and drivers like FWB Toolkit, Anubis SCSI tools, etc. IIRC it was around the Mac OS 8 era when it was made more universal.
There's a free version for Autohotkey that works decently on a standard keyboard available here. I used it a bit and decided it wasn't for me but it might be usable.
Tell me about it with the truck driver one. I had a run-in with one of those a few months ago, just finally got my car fixed from this. He didn't even realize he'd hit me for a moment, I could see him turning the wheel more trying to figure out why his truck wasn't turning.
Fortunately I knew the guy from work so he was more embarrassed than anything, but it was a pain.
Amiga has had most of those for some time now. But I still agree with your point that comparing computers from that long ago to modern times is silly. My Atari 800 boots into its cartridge-based DOS in something like a second and a half but it's hardly a fair benchmark for modern PCs.
I usually go by the rule of threes for Microsoft. It's usually their third attempt at things that succeeds. Windows 3.0 was the first one that made traction. NT 4 was the third version of NT (3.1, 3.5x, 4.0) and the first that really got great traction. 98 SE was the third 9x and probably the best. XP SP2 was the third version of XP and where they finally got it right. It breaks down after that, I suppose, though you could sort of go with XP-Vista-7 in NT-based consumer OSes?
Incidentally, sometimes I wonder if I'm the only geek that never had major trouble with 95 (or at least, no more trouble than later 9x versions). It was a huge upgrade from 3.1 in almost every way.
I had two history teachers across several years use the same phrase in a couple different states. It's probably pretty common.
Not to mention I've been running various Linuxes on tablets since at least the 486/40 Toshiba Dynapad T200CS still stuck in my closet. People seem to forget that tablets weren't invented when the iPad came out and have been around forever.
You've been able to buy unlocked GSM iPhones right from Apple for awhile now, though they're pricy
Here
My wife's gotten into some couponing stuff, but fortunately she's pretty practical about it. In our travels, we've run into people who don't seem to understand that just because you have a coupon for something doesn't make it the best deal. They'd rather use the $1 off coupon than buy another brand that's $3 cheaper than the one they have a coupon for. The "coupon savings" number on their receipt is their high score and all they care about, even if the total cost is a little more.
Coupons are probably the most effective form of advertising - give people an appearance of great savings and they're more likely to buy your brand and not a cheaper one. Give some of these people the ability to get instant coupons on things they're specifically looking at, and they'll eat it up. At least at first.
I wonder why it was so slow. I did something similar with my old Toshiba T3200SX, which is a 386SX-16 with 9 megs of RAM. I got both Win95 and a couple Linux varieties booted off a zip drive and a parallel "backpack" CD-ROM drive with some effort. They were both very slow and took forever get booted, but not on the level of 21 hours. Maybe twenty minutes at most for the Linux, which was some variety of Knoppix IIRC.
I wonder if SPP vs. EPP/ECP modes on parallel ports would made a difference.
Game of Thrones is actually a better example of questioning why they have the accents. It's pretty clearly not based on any real or even pseudo-real Medieval history, and short of a general fantasy feel is about the only excuse. I suppose it could fall under the Alternate History umbrella but it's hard. I generally figure the accents are used to imply something along the lines of it at least being based on European/English medieval technology and such even if the specific setup is nowhere close. That is, swords, shields, chain/plate armor, classic English-style castles, etc etc rather than, say, Samurai and Katanas or machine guns and bullet proof vests.
The main problem is you're not always aware of breakage until after the fact. Especially someone not-very-technical. They might have managed to get addons installed (or maybe their techy friend installed a few things for them) but are still the type that click OK on everything. Next thing they know they've installed a version of FF that breaks all their addons and all they know is "Firefox broke".
I still think Firefox's main problem is trying to change its update policy mid-stream. Chrome's been on the fast track since the beginning, so people are used to it and the plugin system is designed around it. Firefox was built expecting a slow release cycle, and its plugin system was set up that way.
Hadn't thought about that. My wife's 2003 Grand Am has approximate "handles" at 8 and 4 but also has bumps at 10 and 2. I mostly manage to stick to 9 and 3 but have to keep it in mind. Wonder why they backslid on that since earlier Pontiacs were correct. Popular pressure probably.
Similar experience for me. I suspect I had the wheel turned a little bit left so my right arm got a bit more brunt. Made a perfect Starfleet symbol.
All in all I'm not sure why this is news. I've always been told that 9 and 3 is proper for airbag-equipped cars, and even my '91 MR2 has the "handles" at 8 and 4, as did my wife's previously owned 1990 Bonneville and a 1990 Trans Am I almost bought. So apparently automakers have had this idea for a long time.
Firefox supports Win2k fine. Should just install and work. Can't speak to specific performance on your setup though.
Firefox Requirements
I have at least FF 10.0 installed on a Win2k VM at work, and it's still listed in the official requirements of FF. Should work fine.
A buddy of mine was a mechanic at a local mom-and-pop auto repair place, and part of the agreement when he started working there was any side-work had to be approved before doing and had to be below some specified amount of money. They didn't want their mechanics poaching work on the side for lower than the shop would charge, effectively undercutting them. This ended up causing him some stress since apparently a large percentage of mechanics do side work to make ends meet.
Not quite the same thing but close, I guess. I'd expect most service industries would not want their employees competing directly, but the OP's issue would be more like my mechanic friend getting in hot water over helping build a friend's sand buggy. The original shop wouldn't do that anyway, so it's silly to prevent or claim ownership if it's done.
I'm trying to find the original source instead of blog posts, but several years ago now morse code beat out texting by a decent amount: Here
This was before smartphones, most qwerty keyboards, and things like swype but it's certainly viable.
Apple was working on the Snow White design language at the time and designed lots of their products at the time to conform to it.
There's a reason for that. This was in the era where Apple was working on the Snow White design language and it follows it pretty closely.
It seems like every discussion on cell phone providers ends up with stories like this. People who've had little or no problem everywhere they go, people who had trouble with signal on one provider in some area but fine with another, etc. I had an opposite experience with Verizon and T-Mobile - Verizon sucked in my house in a suburb of Atlanta, both T-Mobile and now AT&T have been great. Verizon also sucked at my in-law's house out in the very middle of nowhere PA, while T-Mobile also sucked and AT&T is at least usable.
So, it pretty much seems like everyone needs to find the provider that works best in their area while they all need to work more on network coverage.
I don't think I've ever met someone who wasn't a hacker/tweaker sort who didn't like their iPhones. Regardless of your beliefs about their business practices, Walled Garden, etc, by and large the iPhone works and works well. I'm not sure exactly who he talked to about being fed up.
I've also not met a lot of people unhappy with their Android phones, though they may not be using them to their full customization potential.
One of the actually kind of impressive things I ran into with Vista was a box I had with a dodgy video card in it - every now and then, it'd just randomly show crazy stuff and hard lock or bluescreen [under XP]. It was a nice gaming card otherwise so I kept with it. Later on I stuck a copy of Vista on it I'd been given to learn it, and after awhile the graphics went wonky... then the screen blinked and a box popped up that a problem had been detected with my video hardware and it'd been reset. Went right on along happily.