Atari 400/800/XL series. One of the first computers to feature separate programmable chips for CPU, I/O, sound and graphics, and much more sophisticated multi-mode interrupt-driven video than either of its 6502 peers, the Apple ][ and the C64. The first digitized video I was on was connected to an 800 and the first computer playback of music I ever heard came from it (10 scratchy seconds of "You Really Got Me" by Van Halen).
Remarkably hackable OS for ROM firmware. Arguably the truest random number generator (derived from multiple hardware sources like timing and voltages rather than a seed). G:, the Epson-compatible graphics printer device. And a level of hardware incompatibility that paved the way for the first Macintosh.
"While the game will be available for both the PS3 and 360, only XBox Live will have access to the 'Throwing Chairs Monkeyboy' mod. Rockstar CTO Paul Walker was quick to go on record that the game will *not* become a single-platformer: 'We would never marginalize our most successful demographic, overweight white suburban kids who wish they were dangerous Negroes.'"
Tell me how to get Monsters Inc. Scream Team Training to run on a non-admin account without me manually entering an admin pw into Run As... every time and I'll be unbelievably grateful.
First, there was a plan: how to bring together the two different political extremes at work? My boss said there was a sort of tension he thought could be eased by some social interaction. Not easy. Both the different activist groups despised one another, each thinking its focus was more important and eloquent than the others'.
First there were the Greens. They worked on conservation policy, and simple call campaigns and some door to door stuff. They also did our web sites. They used pamphlets, targeted email campaigns, memes on YouTube, and a bit of radio show call-in work. They typically dressed casually, drank coffee and tea, and liked to work straight from their political philosophy: no "Earth in the Balance for Dummies" books were to be found in their cubicle farm.
Then we had the Libertarians. They worked special hours, coming in at one and staying late, supposedly, until seven or eight at night. They enjoyed blunts and had a penchant for Ayn Rand t-shirts and cracking jokes about the only good government being limited government. They all had beards or mullets or long, unwashed hair. Some had Adam Smith or Lazarus Long quote tattoos. Their cubicle farm was known for the bleating laughter that exploded when one of them found a political flamewar on Fark, and for the rotten, fetid stench that could only be compared to three-day-old shit reeking from inside a rotting corpse's abdominal cavity.
So, in order to get the guys to get to know each other, my boss had asked me to organize a during-hours, alcohol-friendly party. My ideas ranged from a keg or two to live entertainment, AKA Al Franken or Steven Colbert. But as to what to get them to actually talk to each other in a human manner I had no clue. So I let it go til the last minute and decided to let my inherent creativity mull it over in the back of my head.
When the day of the party had arrived, the catering company brought in a few trays of tofu eggrolls, chicken, hummus, and side dishes, I had picked up the four kegs from the local brewery, and the big-screen TV and DVD were set up ready to lay down Outfoxed into the eyes and ears of my co-workers. The eagerness in the the air was encouraging and I thought that loosening up and smiles going on even now were a good sign. I even saw some of the guys who'd known each other previously begin to bunch up, bringing along the co-workers they knew from everyday work.
The first thing everyone did was hit the food line, loading up their plates and grabbing a cup for beer to wash it down with. A few approached me and thanked me for the food; it seems appeasing the belly really did tame the beast. After a few minutes of silence and eating and a few second and third courses, they guys were ready to sit down and be entertained. After asking if anyone needed anything else before the movie started, the lights went out and Outfoxed began playing. I heard a few enthusiastic comments and jokes being told.
About half-way through the movie I noticed a lot of the Libertarians getting up and presumably going to the restroom. No surprise, as the second keg was history by now and the third was probably half-way gone. I also noticed some of the guys bumping into things and stumbling. Alcohol's the social lubricant, eh? Well, not long after, my bladder beckoned and I answered. As I made my way to the restroom, I had a self-satisfied smile on my face: my little plan was working, my boss would be happy, and it might even yield a holiday bonus or a promotion (even if in title only).
Well, as soon as I pushed the restroom door open, I knew something was wrong. The smell of vomit was pretty strong and I hoped that it'd only been the work of one guy. But the smell was so pungent! After standing at the urinal, waiting for the golden flow to commence, I stood in silence. It was then that I heard grunting. Listening intently for a few seconds, I hoped whoever was upchucking their beer and munchies wasn't leaving a huge mess for the cleanup crew. After pissing and still hea
So, Nokia ponied up all the cash to manufacture and package the game chips for the N-Gage and didn't request any money from their developer? It's possible, but sounds unlikely.
I didn't mean to troll, but someone begging on the Internet for a sum between $850K - $1.3M sounded like he was circling the drain. Good for the fans. I don't play their games, but the worst thing for any market is watching it turn into an oligopoly of two or three companies.
Y'know, if it had been modded Offtopic I'd be irked but lick my wounds. Mentioning an RPG company in trouble in the context of a story about paper/pen gaming platforms wasn't meant to start an argument, it was a comment that not everything is rosy in this arena and it's worth looking at.
Oh. Wait. I get it. Someone got offended by a sig satirizing someone else's sig.
While there are subtle incompatibilities between versions of MS Word they're often grossly overstated.
Dead wrong. Until version 6, Mac and PC didn't use the same file format, and the PC format was essentially a core dump (unless you disabled fast save).
This isn't trivial. Current versions of Office on both platforms don't consistently open documents predating Word 6.x, and those documents are not WordStar/WordPerfect-like text with binary markup, they're gibberish to a text editor. Mac users uniformly rejected Word 6, so the bulk of documents composed on Macs during the early 90s are Word 5 documents, which OpenOffice cannot read and Sun has gone on record that they will not support (whereas StarOffice quietly appears to be able to).
When Word 4 came out, it was almost blasphemous that its documents weren't backward compatible to 3 but used the same creator/type as Word 3 (meaning that Word 3 owners could open them by mistake).
Word 4 Mac lasted as a standard for at least three years and cemented Word's place as a standard on Macs. At the time, the equivalent DOS and Windows versions could read that format and transparently translate international characters, bullets, em dashes, all before Unicode made this moot. The Mac version handled many of the DOS extended characters gracefully as well, and there had to be charset table mashing going on behind the scenes in all versions. Word 5 dominated from the mid90s to 2001, when the first OS X compatible version of Office was released.
Currently, these 4.0 documents are unreadable by the two most recent versions of Office and OpenOffice on either platform, and I've run the tests to prove it. These aren't complex technical documents, they're single-page resumes with some style sheets, and the documents haven't been corrupted, either.
To reiterate: the format is a complex run-length binary stream like GIF which does not equate to ASCII in a text editor.
Some asshole in a tie decided the.doc extension constitutes a format because the program name didn't change and it came from the same vendor all these years, but that doesn't make it so. Counting both platforms from the first version of Word, it's at least five or six separate formats, and even Windows users are discovering that current Office versions aren't fully backwards compatible with the documents written more than ten years ago.
If Office hadn't penetrated twenty years ago, this wouldn't be an issue.
I missed that one somehow, and yelling in front of your supporters cuts no mustard with me. That was a hack job, plain and simple. Listen, the Republican frontrunner for '08 is a doctor who openly admitted in his autobiography taking home cats from animal shelters so he could vivisect them. Note I did not say "dissect." Define "mental illness" again?
As far as "big money" is concerned, he was more than competent at fundraising during his own campaign and others afterward. The DNC could ignore his politics, but ignoring his ability to get average citizens to pony up cash was suicide and they knew it.
It's called throwing your vote away because we insist on an electoral college we don't need any more.
Hicks and bible beaters are outraged at not being able to breed like roaches fast enough to outpopulate regions where people have dental care and educations, and whine like beaten children that they need gerrymandering to keep them relevant. Then, when the same issue confronts filibustering, they get selective amnesia and insist we should only listen to the majority.
The truth of the matter is that the Founding Fathers didn't believe peasants could be trusted with one man, one vote.
In other countries, if someone doesn't get the majority vote, they throw out the election.
A) the current system: government working hand in hand with business instead of overseeing its abuses (that political system Mussolini was so fond of)
or
B) complete governmental apathy towards business practices as if Adam Smith had ever been held accountable in an elected position to his "invisible hand" theory.
Read my post. The LP, Greens, etc., are functionally dickless if they keep believing there's such a thing as top-down reform. The Republicans didn't start with Lincoln running for President, they started with lower offices.
The neocons running things now started their work in the 1980s, when Democrats owned Congress pure and simple. Where did they start? School boards and mayoral elections. Are we going to point fingers and laugh at them, or concede this tactic works and adopt it?
This is Slashdot. Every other article is about how logical it is for Apple to steal from Microsoft and vice versa, but as soon as the topic turns to politics we get incredible amnesia.
Slashdot Mirror
"Concerned buckyball-momites asked, 'won't someone think of the chelates?'"
becaus if Linux wins, Sun will be reduced to a vendor of exotic albeit powerful and very expensive hardware running a commodity OS on it.
No, I believe that violates several of Apple's patents.Come quietly, before the leading IP-related Senator's son has to sue you, too.
So that explains why twenty minutes later I'm deleting spam again.
T/\lly H0! Av01d y0ur ch3m15t's f0r ch33p laudanum!
"Alpha developments were halted when game playback consistently altered whose saber lighted first."
"It's been there for years," Sun CTO Ned Baker replied, "just grep your /java/bin directory for the string 'malloc(all);' and you'll find it."
The first person to mod this one offtopic might want to read a book first.
Atari 400/800/XL series. One of the first computers to feature separate programmable chips for CPU, I/O, sound and graphics, and much more sophisticated multi-mode interrupt-driven video than either of its 6502 peers, the Apple ][ and the C64. The first digitized video I was on was connected to an 800 and the first computer playback of music I ever heard came from it (10 scratchy seconds of "You Really Got Me" by Van Halen).
Remarkably hackable OS for ROM firmware. Arguably the truest random number generator (derived from multiple hardware sources like timing and voltages rather than a seed). G:, the Epson-compatible graphics printer device. And a level of hardware incompatibility that paved the way for the first Macintosh.
"While the game will be available for both the PS3 and 360, only XBox Live will have access to the 'Throwing Chairs Monkeyboy' mod. Rockstar CTO Paul Walker was quick to go on record that the game will *not* become a single-platformer: 'We would never marginalize our most successful demographic, overweight white suburban kids who wish they were dangerous Negroes.'"
Tell me how to get Monsters Inc. Scream Team Training to run on a non-admin account without me manually entering an admin pw into Run As... every time and I'll be unbelievably grateful.
The Libertarian Party
First, there was a plan: how to bring together the two different political extremes at work? My boss said there was a sort of tension he thought could be eased by some social interaction. Not easy. Both the different activist groups despised one another, each thinking its focus was more important and eloquent than the others'.
First there were the Greens. They worked on conservation policy, and simple call campaigns and some door to door stuff. They also did our web sites. They used pamphlets, targeted email campaigns, memes on YouTube, and a bit of radio show call-in work. They typically dressed casually, drank coffee and tea, and liked to work straight from their political philosophy: no "Earth in the Balance for Dummies" books were to be found in their cubicle farm.
Then we had the Libertarians. They worked special hours, coming in at one and staying late, supposedly, until seven or eight at night. They enjoyed blunts and had a penchant for Ayn Rand t-shirts and cracking jokes about the only good government being limited government. They all had beards or mullets or long, unwashed hair. Some had Adam Smith or Lazarus Long quote tattoos. Their cubicle farm was known for the bleating laughter that exploded when one of them found a political flamewar on Fark, and for the rotten, fetid stench that could only be compared to three-day-old shit reeking from inside a rotting corpse's abdominal cavity.
So, in order to get the guys to get to know each other, my boss had asked me to organize a during-hours, alcohol-friendly party. My ideas ranged from a keg or two to live entertainment, AKA Al Franken or Steven Colbert. But as to what to get them to actually talk to each other in a human manner I had no clue. So I let it go til the last minute and decided to let my inherent creativity mull it over in the back of my head.
When the day of the party had arrived, the catering company brought in a few trays of tofu eggrolls, chicken, hummus, and side dishes, I had picked up the four kegs from the local brewery, and the big-screen TV and DVD were set up ready to lay down Outfoxed into the eyes and ears of my co-workers. The eagerness in the the air was encouraging and I thought that loosening up and smiles going on even now were a good sign. I even saw some of the guys who'd known each other previously begin to bunch up, bringing along the co-workers they knew from everyday work.
The first thing everyone did was hit the food line, loading up their plates and grabbing a cup for beer to wash it down with. A few approached me and thanked me for the food; it seems appeasing the belly really did tame the beast. After a few minutes of silence and eating and a few second and third courses, they guys were ready to sit down and be entertained. After asking if anyone needed anything else before the movie started, the lights went out and Outfoxed began playing. I heard a few enthusiastic comments and jokes being told.
About half-way through the movie I noticed a lot of the Libertarians getting up and presumably going to the restroom. No surprise, as the second keg was history by now and the third was probably half-way gone. I also noticed some of the guys bumping into things and stumbling. Alcohol's the social lubricant, eh? Well, not long after, my bladder beckoned and I answered. As I made my way to the restroom, I had a self-satisfied smile on my face: my little plan was working, my boss would be happy, and it might even yield a holiday bonus or a promotion (even if in title only).
Well, as soon as I pushed the restroom door open, I knew something was wrong. The smell of vomit was pretty strong and I hoped that it'd only been the work of one guy. But the smell was so pungent! After standing at the urinal, waiting for the golden flow to commence, I stood in silence. It was then that I heard grunting. Listening intently for a few seconds, I hoped whoever was upchucking their beer and munchies wasn't leaving a huge mess for the cleanup crew. After pissing and still hea
So, Nokia ponied up all the cash to manufacture and package the game chips for the N-Gage and didn't request any money from their developer? It's possible, but sounds unlikely.
I didn't mean to troll, but someone begging on the Internet for a sum between $850K - $1.3M sounded like he was circling the drain. Good for the fans. I don't play their games, but the worst thing for any market is watching it turn into an oligopoly of two or three companies.
Y'know, if it had been modded Offtopic I'd be irked but lick my wounds. Mentioning an RPG company in trouble in the context of a story about paper/pen gaming platforms wasn't meant to start an argument, it was a comment that not everything is rosy in this arena and it's worth looking at.
Oh. Wait. I get it. Someone got offended by a sig satirizing someone else's sig.
http://forums.palladium-megaverse.com/viewtopic.ph p?t=57048
Doesn't look promising.
Which troll are you on Fark? I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Dead wrong. Until version 6, Mac and PC didn't use the same file format, and the PC format was essentially a core dump (unless you disabled fast save).
This isn't trivial. Current versions of Office on both platforms don't consistently open documents predating Word 6.x, and those documents are not WordStar/WordPerfect-like text with binary markup, they're gibberish to a text editor. Mac users uniformly rejected Word 6, so the bulk of documents composed on Macs during the early 90s are Word 5 documents, which OpenOffice cannot read and Sun has gone on record that they will not support (whereas StarOffice quietly appears to be able to).
When Word 4 came out, it was almost blasphemous that its documents weren't backward compatible to 3 but used the same creator/type as Word 3 (meaning that Word 3 owners could open them by mistake).
Word 4 Mac lasted as a standard for at least three years and cemented Word's place as a standard on Macs. At the time, the equivalent DOS and Windows versions could read that format and transparently translate international characters, bullets, em dashes, all before Unicode made this moot. The Mac version handled many of the DOS extended characters gracefully as well, and there had to be charset table mashing going on behind the scenes in all versions. Word 5 dominated from the mid90s to 2001, when the first OS X compatible version of Office was released.
Currently, these 4.0 documents are unreadable by the two most recent versions of Office and OpenOffice on either platform, and I've run the tests to prove it. These aren't complex technical documents, they're single-page resumes with some style sheets, and the documents haven't been corrupted, either.
To reiterate: the format is a complex run-length binary stream like GIF which does not equate to ASCII in a text editor.
Some asshole in a tie decided the .doc extension constitutes a format because the program name didn't change and it came from the same vendor all these years, but that doesn't make it so. Counting both platforms from the first version of Word, it's at least five or six separate formats, and even Windows users are discovering that current Office versions aren't fully backwards compatible with the documents written more than ten years ago.
If Office hadn't penetrated twenty years ago, this wouldn't be an issue.
Now if that isn't a Frist Post, I don't know what is.
Thanks to you, we're in negotiations with Taco now for a "Thanks for sharing" -1 mod category.
Now how am I supposed to get laid?
I missed that one somehow, and yelling in front of your supporters cuts no mustard with me. That was a hack job, plain and simple. Listen, the Republican frontrunner for '08 is a doctor who openly admitted in his autobiography taking home cats from animal shelters so he could vivisect them. Note I did not say "dissect." Define "mental illness" again?
As far as "big money" is concerned, he was more than competent at fundraising during his own campaign and others afterward. The DNC could ignore his politics, but ignoring his ability to get average citizens to pony up cash was suicide and they knew it.
It's called throwing your vote away because we insist on an electoral college we don't need any more.
Hicks and bible beaters are outraged at not being able to breed like roaches fast enough to outpopulate regions where people have dental care and educations, and whine like beaten children that they need gerrymandering to keep them relevant. Then, when the same issue confronts filibustering, they get selective amnesia and insist we should only listen to the majority.
The truth of the matter is that the Founding Fathers didn't believe peasants could be trusted with one man, one vote.
In other countries, if someone doesn't get the majority vote, they throw out the election.
Dear Publius:
This one's going on Fark, but you knew that, didn't you.
So, my choices are
A) the current system: government working hand in hand with business instead of overseeing its abuses (that political system Mussolini was so fond of)
or
B) complete governmental apathy towards business practices as if Adam Smith had ever been held accountable in an elected position to his "invisible hand" theory.
No, fuck them both.
Read my post. The LP, Greens, etc., are functionally dickless if they keep believing there's such a thing as top-down reform. The Republicans didn't start with Lincoln running for President, they started with lower offices.
The neocons running things now started their work in the 1980s, when Democrats owned Congress pure and simple. Where did they start? School boards and mayoral elections. Are we going to point fingers and laugh at them, or concede this tactic works and adopt it?
This is Slashdot. Every other article is about how logical it is for Apple to steal from Microsoft and vice versa, but as soon as the topic turns to politics we get incredible amnesia.